Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (geographic names)/Archives/2014/February

Commas in metro areas

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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CLOSE

The following closing statement of ~8500 words was written by Herostratus (talk) 08:17, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
I'm closing the discussion. I'll detail all reasons below. The result is:
1) No change to the conventions used for article text.
2) For article titles incorporating the specific phrase "metropolitan area" the form is "[city name] metropolitan area, [state name]", for example "Columbus metropolitan area, Ohio". Only applies firmly to entities in the United States, only applies where disambiguation is required, applies for terms closely related to "metropolitan area" (see below).

2A) For such titles where the metropolitan area spans two or or more states (or provinces, etc.), the form is "[city name] metropolitan area, [state name 1–state name 2–state name n]", for example "Kansas City metropolitan area, Kansas–Missouri".

2B) For such titles where the metropolitan bears the name of two or more cities, the form is "[city name 1]–[city name 2]–[city name n] metropolitan area, [state name(s) (if included]", for example "Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area, Minnesota".

The use of "Kansas City metropolitan area, Kansas–Missouri" and "Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area, Minnesota" as examples is not intended to imply that Kansas City metropolitan area or Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area require the further amplification, only that if they did the form shown should be used. The use of "and" (as for instance ""Kansas City metropolitan area, Kansas and Missouri") is to be avoided.

2C) State names should only be included when disambiguation is required (per the spring 2013 RfC here which asked the question "Should US metropolitan area article titles include a state name, even when no disambiguation is strictly necessary?" and the conclusion was "No", superseding the previous WP:USPLACE suggestion the state name should be omitted only if the first principal city is one of the 30 U.S. cities cited by the Associated Press Stylebook for stand alone datelines (BTW WP:USPLACE needs to be updated to reflect that).

3) There was little discussion of non-USA entities, so no hard decision is made here regarding non-USA entities, BUT it's strongly recommended that when practicable the same form ("[city name] metropolitan area, [appropriate larger polity name]", for instance "Leeds metropolitan area, Yorkshire" (if disambiguation were required for Leeds)) should be used, UNLESS superseded by some consideration specific to that nation and there's a strong demonstration that that consideration requires the general rule to be overridden.
4) No decision and no change for all other article titles. (Thus, no decision is rendered on whether (for instance) "Columbus, Ohio, train disaster" or "Columbus, Ohio train disaster" or "Columbus train disaster, Ohio" or "Columbus train disaster (Ohio)" or "Train disaster in Columbus, Ohio" or some other construction is preferred.)

In this and all text that follows, I've assumed that "metropolitan area" also includes very closely related terms such as "metropolitan statistical area", "micropolitan area" and "conurbation", and similar terms used outside the USA, such as "census metropolitan area" in Canada, if for some reason these need to be used in titles (when not inappropriate, the use of the uncapitalized non-country-specific generic English term "metropolitan area" is encouraged.)

Scope

The specific question was this:

"Recently our guideline Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names) was edited to state that when the city and state is given followed by something else, such as Dublin, Georgia micropolitan area, a comma is used after the state. Should there be a comma there, yes or no?"

And in the Survey section, the question was stated thus:

"On just the question of whether one comma or two commas are preferred when a state name is used parenthetically as in "Rochester, New York metropolitan area" versus "Rochester, New York, metropolitan area", in a title or in a sentence, please make a brief numbered signed entry..."

As I expressed in the subsection "Requested closure" at the bottom of the discussion, the questions could be taken to cover various circumstances. However, in reading the discussion and various related discussions, I find that most of the participants, by far, understood the discussion as bearing on article titles only. To expand this discussion to include a ruling on article text would not be proper, there simply wasn't enough discussion for me to gauge community feeling on that. This would be a significant change affecting very many articles and we'd need a new a separate discussion for that, one in which it was specifically made clear that article text was in play.

Furthermore, by far the majority of the examples used, and the discussion, specifically took the question to bear on titles that include the term "metropolitan area" (and related closely similar phrases) -- enough that I did not consider other terms to have been discussed enough that it'd be fair to gauge the community feeling on terms other than "metropolitan area". So I can't render a decision on those.

Besides this discussion, I read through these related discussions, and included them in my deliberations.

• Wikipedia talk:Article titles/Archive 42#Do article titles that include proper names need to follow standard grammatical rules?
• Talk:List of metropolitan areas of the United States#RfC: Should state names be included in article titles?
• Talk:Pensacola metropolitan area#Requested move and Talk:Pensacola metropolitan area#Requested move 2
• Talk:Brunswick, Georgia metropolitan area#Requested move 1 and Talk:Brunswick, Georgia metropolitan area#Requested Move 2

The titles (and contents) of these discussions further reinforces my feeling that only article titles are in play, and only those containing the term "metropolitan area".

I can't forbid someone taking this discussion and leveraging it as a implied precedent to cover either article titles that don't contain the term "metropolitan area", or article text of any kind, but I wouldn't recommend that, at all. Instead, run a new discussion; pointing to this one as a precedent would be a reasonable argument but no more than that.

Let's get down to brass tacks.

Policy arguments

The controlling authorities are, in descending order of precedence:

• Wikipedia:Article titles (WP:AT), which is a policy.
• Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Article titles, the Manual of Style style section dealing with article titles. The MOS (Manual of Style) is only a guideline, but a guideline with a great deal of de facto authority.
• Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names), a guideline. According to WP:AT, this is supplementary to WP:AT.
• WP:COMMA, which is part of the MOS. The extent to which the MOS (outside of the "Article titles" section) applies to titles is debatable.

In summary, my considered judgement is that on this particular issue, the first three of these authorities provides little useful guidance. They don't really prescribe or even suggest to the level of detail sufficient to answer the question we're asking here: should, or should not, there be a comma in a particular case in a a particular circumstance. The fourth authority WP:COMMA does provide guidance to this level of detail, but its applicability to titles is clearly subject to debate.

Let's look at the policy. Wikipedia:Article titles opens with

"[I]t is sometimes necessary to add distinguishing information, often in the form of a description in parentheses after the name. Generally, article titles are based on what the subject is called in reliable sources". The first section ("Deciding on an article title") reiterates this by opening with "Article titles are based on how reliable English-language sources refer to the article's subject". This in turn is based on the admonition that article titles should be formed in light of "other policies, particularly the core content policies Verifiability and No original research"

So article titles are based on what the subject is called in reliable sources, and we're not supposed to make up our own titles for entities (original research) or use titles that the reader can't independently verify is the actual correct name. This supersedes everything. If and only if what the subject is called in reliable sources is different in different sources (and there's not a clear and overwhelming preponderance in favor of one form over others) is there any need to continue looking into the issue or reading any further into WP:AT. That's what WP:AT says.

However, looking at our actual practice, it's clear that it's not that cut and dried for parenthetical disambiguation. But while preponderance of sources is (according to my reading) not, as a matter of Wikipedia practice, always a case-closed end-of-discussion point for disambiguating terms, it is true that preponderance of sources is something to pay strong attention to. You can't just wave away what the policy says.

OK, so at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (geographic names)#Commas in metro areas#What do sources say? it looks the preponderance of sources says to use two commas, according to some exhaustive and highly laudable research by User:Dicklyon (thank you Dicklyon!). However, this research covers what style guides and prescriptive grammars say. When it comes to what people actually write in newspapers and official documents and so forth, the answer is a less clear, and it looks like people ignore the style guides and grammars to some extent. My inclination is to take actual usage in text as the reliable sources.

By the way, the argument that this applies only to body text is pretty much knocked for six because the MOS says "The guidance contained elsewhere in the MoS, particularly in the section below on punctuation, applies to all parts of an article, including the title." (emphasis added).

(This leads to some contradictory prescriptions, as when the MOS says "Official names (of companies, organizations, or places) should not be altered" but WP:AT (in its WP:COMMONNAME section) says "Wikipedia does not necessarily use the subject's 'official' name as an article title; it prefers to use the name that is most frequently used to refer to the subject in English-language reliable sources." In cases of conflict, I assume that WP:AT is the operative authority, because it's a policy and because it's specifically tailored for titles. But there's no conflict here because neither the MOS or WP:AT address our specific issue.

(The MOS also says "Places should generally be referred to consistently by the same name as in the title of their article". This doesn't apply to us because adding or omitting a second comma doesn't really change the name of the entity.)

Anyway, User:Huwmanbeing and some others make a cogent and impassioned argument that we have to use common sense and not take this too far. The point was made that our article titles violate many rules that we apply to body text (by not containing verbs or ending with a period, for instance), which is true, and this shows a de facto flexibility on the matter (which is then further avowed to be beneficial). I'm constitutionally amenable to that point -- I don't think our rules were meant to be read as a fundamentalist might read the Bible -- but I'm not willing to just wave away the clear statement "The guidance... applies to all parts of an article, including the title.", so I'm somewhere in the middle on this I guess.

But there is also the argument that our other disambiguation policies carry some weight of precedent -- a great deal of weight, actually. Regarding the latter, User:Frungi makes the case "We don’t consult reliable sources for how to title articles for disambiguation... no reliable source uses the terms “Jumper (film)”, “Jumper (novel)”, “jumper (dress)”, “jumper (computing)”, etc. We have our own conventions for that, and I see no reason that they shouldn’t apply to ambiguous X-politan area names as well."

That's a fair point. Since it's a fair point, let's at least look further down into the policy.

So we then find in WP:AT (in the lede) "When [reliable sources] offer multiple possibilities, editors choose among them by considering several principles: the ideal article title

• resembles titles for similar articles,
• precisely identifies the subject, and
• is short, natural, and recognizable."

and the first section ("Deciding on an article title") expands on this a little, with five bolded bullet points: Recognizability, Naturalness, Precision, Conciseness, and Consistency with other articles of the same type (for which we are then pointed to this page (WP:PLACE) for details on, and I assume only on, this last point (consistency)).

None of these five bolded points are "Grammatical correctness" nor is there any prescription that article titles should be complete sentences or be congruent with normal rules for grammar in text. ("Naturalness" here means "[use what] readers are likely to look for" rather than natural prose stytle and "Precision" is about helping the reader "unambiguously identify the article's subject", not grammatical precision). It doesn't say "ignore rules of grammar" either. It doesn't say anything.

I think a fair assumption is that the prescription of use the name generally used in sources is to serve the important virtue of recognizability, and the other four virtues too, on the macro scale. And so really the prescription "follow reliable sources" is written to handle big differences -- whether to call an article New Orleans or The Big Easy or nouvelle-Orléans -- and not really to dictate small formatting details. The precise formatting used by the preponderance of sources is not something to completely ignore either, it's just the intent of the rule as I read it is not to make this the sole controlling factor.

Drilling down through each of the sections: "Use commonly recognizable names" (WP:COMMONNAME) -- again, I note that all of the many examples give much grosser differences than what we are talking about here -- "Use Guinea pig and not Cavia porcellus" and so on. There're no examples bearing on fine-tuning via comma placement or whatever. The editors who wrote the rule could have included some, but they didn't, and I think that that says something.

And here's something interesting: " Wikipedia prefers the name that is most commonly used (as determined by its prevalence in reliable English-language sources) as such names will be the most recognizable and the most natural." (emphasis added.) To stretch that out and informalize it a bit, the passage could be restated like this: "Remember when we said 'article titles are based on what the subject is called in reliable sources'? Well, we mainly did that because what we really want is the 'most recognizable and most natural' titles, and reliable sources almost by definition provide that. (After all, it's practically impossible to image a case where a clear preponderance of many reliable sources called a place by a certain name, yet significant numbers of readers did not recognize that name.)" This makes sense, and it explains an important reason why we go by preponderance of sources, I think.

So. There are two reasons for using commonly recognizable names:

1. So the reader can find the page, ("natural"), and
2. So the reader, when she has found the page, quickly and accurately perceives what it's about ("recognizable").

For the first purpose, I think that the addition or subtraction of a comma makes essentially no difference given the way our search engine works. It doesn't exactly ignore commas, but the autocomplete on "Columbus, Ohio, metrop" and "Columbus, Ohio metrop" (as well as "Columbus Ohio metrop") are identical, and I think this would be true in 100% of cases or very nearly so. (This is not even considering that, after all, we do have hard redirects.) I think that Google can't easily tell these forms apart either.

For the second purpose, I think that the addition or subtraction of a comma makes very little difference but not absolutely no difference. When a reader accesses the page about the Columbus (in Ohio) metropolitan area, we don't want her to think that maybe she's looking at a page about the Columbus (in Georgia) metropolitan area, or just the city of Columbus proper, or about a city called Columbus in the state of Ohio Metropolitan Area, or a neighborhood in Columbus called the Ohio Metropolitan Area, or any other wrong thing. If these last two seem silly, consider the foreign reader who has an indifferent grasp of English and isn't familiar with the names of our states and so on.

As a practical matter, I'm skeptical about how much the addition or subtraction of a comma is going to matter much. Any comma placement will suffice to differentiate between Columbus in Ohio and Columbus in Georgia, and no comma placement is going to much help the person who thinks that that maybe "Ohio metropolitan area" is the name of a state or a neighborhood.

However, "not much" is not exactly "none", and there is a difference between implying (Columbus)(Ohio metropolitan area) and (Columbus)(Ohio)(metropolitan area), and it mattersw. But then, since we're dealing with a person who's all at sea regarding American geography and English, "Columbus, Ohio, metropolitan area" could be taken to mean something similar to "Columbus, Ohio, great lakes region" (which would be a logical progression in size of entities) -- maybe "metropolitan area" is what Americans call the geographic core of the country and Ohio is a subset of that (see Metropolitan France for instance).

All in all, I'd avoid overemphasizing how much technical grammar structures are going to be helpfully understood by a person in this predicament, and as a practical matter, the person probably going to have to read the first sentence, which is "The Columbus Metropolitan Area is the metropolitan area centered on the American city of Columbus, Ohio".

So to some extent we're grasping at straws here. The fact is that all the solutions, suggested or imaginable, have flaws and are subject to various misinterpretations. If there was a perfect solution we wouldn't be here. We do want to find the solution that is least subject to misinterpretation.

Final note, we're advised via Wikipedia:Official names to not pay much heed to legal names, which doesn't really apply here anyway.

"Neutrality in article titles" WP:POVTITLE

Doesn't apply.

"Explicit conventions" WP:MOSAT

That takes us to this page (Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names)) of course. We'll look at that closely later, keeping in mind that it's a guideline not a policy.

"Precision and disambiguation" WP:PRECISION

It says that if you can't use natural disambiguation (which we can't), then "add a disambiguating term in parentheses"; but then "With place names, if the disambiguating term is a higher-level administrative division, it is often separated using a comma instead of parentheses" (emphasis added). Note that "metropolitan area" is not a higher-level administrative division. WP:CONCISE says "be concise" and I suppose that an extra comma makes a title a tiny bit less concise.

If you take this section straight up literally, my reading is that you might end up with "Columbus metropolitan area (Ohio)", which a couple of editors did suggest -- for instance User:Frungi says (in another discussion) "Rochester metropolitan area (New York); Rochester metropolitan area (Minnesota). This is consistent with parenthetical disambiguation across Wikipedia". He's right, I believe. That didn't gain much traction and isn't on table, though. And by precedent interest groups are permitted to set their own standards -- for instance ship names are usually in the format Soviet patrol boat Tuman rather than Tuman (Soviet patrol boat) per an decision made long ago (dunno why) by Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships. It may be the geography-oriented folks just like commas, or it may be just random chance that "Columbus metropolitan area, Ohio" is on the table and "Columbus metropolitan area (Ohio)" isn't. They're not substantively different and even if it made a difference its too late to worry about it now.

The rest of the page, English-language titles WP:UE and on down, doesn't apply to any issues in contention here.

digression re grammar

The question of grammatical correctness came up (and also the denial that it much matters for titles), so here I'll lay out my understanding of the matter just so people know where I'm coming from. It's not important and you can skip it.

According to our article Apposition, "Apposition is a figure of speech of the scheme type [a figure of speech that changes the normal arrangement of words in a sentence's structure], and often results when the verbs (particularly verbs of being) in supporting clauses are eliminated to produce shorter descriptive phrases." (It then goes on to double down on the "departure from standard word order" bit.)

I do see "Columbus Ohio" as having eliminated the verb of being, as being shorthand for "Columbus which is in Ohio" or something like that. I'm not seeing there necessarily being any abnormal word order, but then I don't see most of the examples given as showing this either, so maybe that's not crucial or maybe I'm just not seeing it.

If "Columbus Ohio" is an apposition, then "Ohio" is a restrictive appositive, because it specifies exactly which Columbus is being spoken of -- "it limits or clarifies the foregoing one [Columbus] in some crucial way". (A non-restrictive appositive would be something like "Columbus, a beautiful city", I think.)

The article Apposition then reads "In English, non-restrictive appositives are typically preceded or set off by commas, while restrictive appositives are not set off by commas." so thus we have "Bill's friend Alice said... but "Bill's friend, who is pretty smart, said..." requiring the commas (non-restrictive appositive). It gets rather involved.

However, as a matter of actual practice, "Columbus, Ohio" is very common, indicating that it's not an apposition, or it's an exception to the usual punctuation for restrictive appositives, or that as a matter of actual practice people treat "Ohio" as a general parenthetical phrase rather than an appositive. And if it's a general parenthetical phrase it would have to be enclosed by commas, giving "Columbus, Ohio, xxx" for any value of xxx.

And this is just what our Manual of Style (at MOS:COMMA) says specifically for geographical names: "In geographical references... a comma separates each element and follows the last element... the last element is treated as parenthetic."

Further down, User:Dohn joe points to Garner's Modern American Usage to make the case that that "it's not an appositive, really. An appositive 'points out the same person or thing by a different name'...". (If that's true our article (which says that one element serves to "define or modify" the other) is wrong, I guess.) Anyway, following some more points, he concludes that "'City, State'... is itself a single, unified name of a thing - that happens to have a comma included by convention. As such, 'State' does not need a second comma to set it off, because 'State' is an integral part of the name itself".

At any rate, it seems open to interpretation just what "Columbus, Ohio" is, so I'd go with MOS:COMMA, which gives a specific example of exactly the thing we're talking about here, but just keeping in mind that the question of what is "correct grammar" is a little involved here.

Anyway, the other virtues valorized by WP:AT are way more important if they compete with grammatical correctness. For instance, to use an extreme example, I would find the argument "I grant that this title will make it hard for people to find the article or quickly figure out what it's about if they do find it, but its grammatically correct so let's use it" to be quite weak.

That's my personal opinion, which I'll now proceed to basically ignore, since most editors do appear to believe that the example at WP:COMMA represents the correct grammar, and a number of editors do believe that it's important, and since it's a essentially a matter of opinion it's essentially a matter of headcount on this issue.

Survey, and headcount

Italics indicates that that's the editors second choice.

Supporting one comma:

• User:Dohn joe. Second comma is awkward.
• User:MelanieN. Reliable sources differ. Argument either way not sufficient to change status quo (which is one comma).
• User:SarekOfVulcan Titles are not sentences, so appositive rules may not apply.
• User:Omnedon. Titles are not sentences, clarity is key, and ll in all one comma does this best.
• User:Huwmanbeing. Per others. Second comma is pedantry. Making a big change for pedantic reasons not called for.
• User:BDD. Ditto Huwmanbeing.
• User:Ntsimp. It's not an appositive. Second comma after the state rarely called for.
• User:ὁ οἶστρος. Because "metropolitan area" is referring to the whole term "Columbus, Ohio", it's (Columbus Ohio)(metro area) and one comma is the best way to show this.

Supporting two commas:

• User:Dicklyon. Per accepted style guides including our own, state in middle takes commas on both sides. (Open to other constructs which obviate the issue.)
• User:sroc. Per style guides on proper construction of parenthetical clauses. (Open to other constructs which obviate the issue.)
• User:HandsomeFella. Per obvious sentence grammar. (Editor tentatively supported (in the discussion sections) "Columbus metropolitan area, Ohio" type structure as a second choice at least better than the one-comma version.)
• User:Bkonrad. Good grammar.
• User:Arthur Rubin. State name is parenthetical, which requires that it be set off by two punctuation marks.
• User:LtPowers. Longstanding grammatical practice and improves clarity.
• User:Frungi. Per standard English grammar and MOS:COMMA.
• User:Tony1. Grammar per others, avoids ambiguity.
• User:Agnosticaphid. It's both wrong and confusing to omit the second comma. ESL users will be confused if its omitted.
• User:Reify-tech. It's clearer and that's key. (Open to other constructs which obviate the issue.)
• User:Stfg. More precise and clearer.
• User:TCN7JM. Proper grammar and clearer.
• User:Orlady. Grammatically correct. Clearer: this discussion and others shows some are confused by one-comma form.

Supporting "Columbus metropolitan area, Ohio" type structure, as first choice:

• User:Ohconfucius. Avoid comma overload.
• User:Frungi. This, or a variant using parentheses, is by far the best option.
• User:Stfg. The 2-comma form is clunky and hard to parse, while the 1-comma form is misleading.
• User:sroc. Avoid awkward construction.
• User:Waggers. Makes much more sense, especially to English speakers outside of the USA.
• User:No such user. Ditto Waggers.
• User:Agnosticaphid. Least awkward. Some reservations but still best option.
• User:Ronan McGurrin. Much more unambiguous and clear cut option than slapping on more commas.
• User:Chris troutman. Best option.
• User:David Eppstein. It's the city that names the metro area, not the state, so why separate the two parts of the metro area's name?
• User talk:76.65.128.222. Preferable, it gets rid of arguments over one or two commas by displacing the whole state. "City (State) metropolitan area" or "Metropolitan area of City, State" OK too.
• User talk:71.21.81.61. Most logical option. [N.B.: redlinked IP, but sufficient edit history to have standing.]
• User:Ezhiki. Solves both problems at once.

(Specifically opposed to "Columbus metropolitan area, Ohio" type structure)

• User:Nyttend. Fails common name test, people don't talk or write like that.

Here's a somewhat recent discussion which is germane regarding, and only regarding, article titles, but not limited to those about metropolitan areas: Wikipedia talk:Article titles/Archive 42#Do article titles that include proper names need to follow standard grammatical rules? There's a huge of amount of discussion here. Furthermore, there are pointers to many other discussions which I looked at but which I'm not really going to bring in here, there's got to be cutoff somewhere.

The example of Riverside, Buffalo, New York (a neighborhood in Buffalo) is pointed out. User:Born2cycle makes the point: "I don't know of any precedence or reason to use 'common natural sentence form' in article titles". Note that he's talking about precedent and reason, not what our rules say. It is true that the three-word phrase ("including the title") that ties the MOS to article titles doesn't give any reason for doing that; and there's no objective reason that I can think of offhand, and really no one offered a strong objective benefit during the long discussions, and I don't think it's possible to do so; and as thinking persons we're permitted to heavily discount sentence fragments that may be the work of a few people long ago and for which no objective demonstration of benefit may be obtained. That's my reading of Born2cycle's point (OK I expanded it a little), and I think it's a fair point.

As far as individual editors (not included ones who commented in this current RfC) I get:

• User:Peter coxhead. Two commas, the article title should be styled the same way as it would be in text.
• User:Born2cycle. Neither, use parens e.g. "Columbus metropolitan area (Ohio)". [Editor did not say if this would extend to "Columbus train disaster (Ohio)".]
• User:Blueboar. Ditto Born2cycle. Also suggested "Columbus, Ohio (metropolitan area)".
• User:BD2412. How about "Columbus (Ohio metropolitan area)".
• User:DanielPenfield. Points to here with approval: "When the state or country's name becomes part of a compound structure, the second comma is dropped". This editor had many other things to say, and I think he was clear enough for me to count him as a one-comma guy. Hope that's right.

Here's a recent discussion which is germane regarding, and only regarding, the use of the phrase "metropolitan area" (and close cognates I assume): and I'll include it too: Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (geographic names)/Archives/2013/August#Metropolitan/micropolitan areas and the like. It's specifically and only about metropolitan areas.

• User:Apteva expressed support for the one comma rubrick.

36 respondents. For now, I'm going to put aside User:BD2412, as he had a (useful) suggestion different from the ones in play (and different enough that I can't guess if he'd support one of the others.) For now I'm going to put aside User:Nyttend as he just had an oppose to one option, don't know what he actually supports. That leaves 34. User:Born2cycle and User:Blueboar had early suggestion of "Columbus metropolitan area (Ohio)" which in my judgement is close enough to (the later-suggested) ("Columbus metropolitan area, Ohio" that I'll count them in that camp. This gives, counting first choice only:

• 9 for "Columbus, Ohio metropolitan area"
• 10 for "Columbus, Ohio, metropolitan area"
• 15 for "Columbus metropolitan area, Ohio" (Also 1 specific oppose.)

34 respondents divided 9/10/15 is 26%/29%/44%. Obviously the more choices the more diffuse your spread, and it's hard enough to get supermajority with two viable options on the table and near impossible with three. On the other hand, refusing to stick to a binary vote is good, and I'm not inclined to throw up my hands and say "no consensus possible!" just because people were flexible enough to not be binary. So let's see if we can tease something out of this. I feel I do have to try to do this because a lot of this comes down to opinion. I've done closes where most of the work is figuring out which of many applicable policies apply most strongly, and this ain't one. I need to try tease out a feeling of where people are at for this one.

There's a number of ways to look at this. One is "Columbus metropolitan area, Ohio" has about a 60% to %40 plurality over any single other option, but I don't think that means much. The two less popular options have near identical support, so something along the lines of "remove the least popular single option and refactor the survey" would be too close to "remove an option at random". Instead, I'm going to very loosely group the "Columbus, Ohio, metropolitan area" and "Columbus metropolitan area, Ohio" together for bit. Here and in subsequent exposition I'm going to call these these the "correct grammar faction".

My reason for doing that is that several of the "Columbus metropolitan area, Ohio" folks had "Columbus, Ohio, metropolitan area" as their second choice, but none had "Columbus, Ohio metropolitan area" as their second choice. (Put another way, none of the one-comma folks migrated to "Columbus metropolitan area, Ohio" but several of the two-comma folks did). This, and just the general tone of argument and what seems important to people, leads me to feel that that's how to do it. I just get the vibe that a lot of people who aren't on the one-comma boat are appalled by it, that to the extent that there are two camps, they would be "grammar doesn't apply to titles" vs. "grammar must be correct, however it's done".

OK, so this leaves 9/25 or 26%/74% for the two positions "grammar not so important/correct grammar is important" (or however you want to call it), so we knock out the one-comma folks, and when the remaining unstable compound splits apart we have 10/15 or 40%/60% for "Columbus metropolitan area, Ohio". With these numbers, and on this topic, that's just barely enough to consider a supermajority in play. Certainly not even remotely enough of one to say "case closed" but enough so that I consider headcount a factor.

Anyone who doesn't like my reasoning, we can talk. I'm doing my best to tease some forward movement out of this inchoate and widely-spread series of discussions. Giving up is not high on my list of options.

There was a an attempt at further polling in the "poll" section, which used a first-second-third-fourth-choice paradigm, which is probably a good idea when there are more than two options on the table, but not enough participation to count for much. "Metropolitan area of City, State" was brought up an alternative here, and (who knows?) might be the best form, but hasn't gained much traction.

Analysis of the discussion

OK, moving forward to the discussion.

• Point: Single comma not permitted by by rules of grammer.
• Counterpoint: Grammar rules don't apply to titles.
  • How I weighted this factor: A fair amount, in favor of either the two-comma version or the "Columbus metropolitan area, Ohio" version, either of which is viewed as preferable to the one-comma version from the standpoint of pure grammar, I think. The MOS does say in black and white "The guidance contained elsewhere in the MoS, particularly in the section below on punctuation, applies to all parts of an article, including the title.", with the "guidance contained elsewhere" including "In geographical references that include multiple levels of subordinate divisions... a comma separates each element and follows the last element (except at the end of a sentence)" and the example of correct use is "Cooper hijacked a Boeing 727 aircraft that had taken off from Portland, Oregon, and was...".

There was some discussion of cases such as "Columbus OH" but we don't use those kinds of abbreviations in article title; and many other points of grammatical detail.

• Point: Two commas is clearer.
• Counterpoint: No it's not.
• Point: One comma is clearer.
• Counterpoint: No it's not.
• Point: Putting "Columbus metropolitan area" all together, unbroken by punctuation, is the clearest construction.
• Counterpoint: No it's not.
  • How I weighted this factor: Somewhat, and in favor of "Columbus metropolitan area, Ohio". Couple things are clear to me: 1) there's no perfect solution here -- each option offers chances for misinterpretation -- and 2) absent an extensive survey of a broad reader population it's not possible to know which kinds of misinterpretations readers are going to have, particularly readers with low knowledge of American geography and maybe of English language conventions. (I discussed both of these points more extensively above.)

Because of that, I didn't give a huge amount of weight to this factor. If there was a clear "winner" in terms of clarity, that'd be a huge factor. After reading through the discussion, I think that the point that the entity is (Columbus)(Ohio)(metropolitan area), not (Columbus)(Ohio metropolitan area), is a reasonable point of grammatical logic for what that's worth and militates a bit for the two-comma version, but the point that "Columbus metropolitan area, Ohio" is maybe just a little bit clearer because it puts the actual topic of the article (Columbus metropolitan area) at the front, unbroken by any punctuation, probably has something to recommend it.

• Point: as WP:TITLECHANGES says, "Changing one controversial title to another is strongly discouraged. If an article title has been stable for a long time, and there is no good reason to change it, it should not be changed."
  • How I weighted this factor: Zero. There is a good reason to change these titles, mainly that the situation is contentious and inherently unstable. There were many many arguments for the various versions, it's not like this is somebody's not-well-thought-out whim. And absent a controlling decision the situation will remain unstable. Not an option.

• Point re actual usage (as opposed to prescribed usage in grammar guides and style guides): User:MelanieN writes "Reliable sources (not counting the US government, which uses state abbreviations) are split: in a search for half a dozen MSAs where disambiguation is needed, I found that the comma is usually added in formal or legal situations ('Portland, Oregon, Metropolitan Statistical Area'), but omitted in newspapers and general usage ('Portland, Oregon Metropolitan Statistical Area')". Later she writes "What I found was the second comma is commonly used in legal or official use, such as the name of a legislative action or a term in a lawsuit. On the other hand here's the EPA: 'Portland, Oregon metropolitan area'. But I also found that professional journalists find ways to write around it - not to use the actual phrase 'Portland, Oregon statistical area' but rather things like 'the statistical area of Portland, Oregon' - but when they do use the phrase 'Portland, Oregon statistical area' they generally omit the second comma. Example 'Portland–South Portland–Biddeford, Maine Metropolitan Statistical Area'. '[G]reater Portland, Oregon metropolitan area'. On the other hand here's CNN: 'the Portland, Oregon, metropolitan area'... The more I look, the more I find no pattern at all; some Reliable Sources use the second comma, some don't." There was a great deal of back-and-forth on this, some of it dealing with the difference of usage in formal and legal documents vs. news stories, and much else. At the end of the day I feel reasonably comfortable stating that neither version (one-comma or two-comma) can be shown to be clearly preponderant over the other.
  • How I weighed this factor: a lot, to the effect of "reliable sources is not really a factor here" since there's no clear preponderance. And thank you MelanieN! (And Frungi, sroc, and Dicklyon, and everyone else!) As I pointed out above, this actual-usage info carries a lot more weight to my mind than style guides. As I expounded on above, I'm already inclined to take the "use reliable sources" prescription as weak in this case because 1) it's not intended to deal with punctuation, and 2) it's somewhat negated by our de facto actual methods of disambiguating titles. And since there's no clear preponderance anyway, it's basically off the table.

• User:Nyttend points out a pretty knotty problem, taking Columbus in Georgia as an example. The metro area spans two states. "Columbus metropolitan area, Georgia-Alabama" (or "Columbus metropolitan area, Georgia and Alabama") is not satisfactory because it doesn't define what state Columbus is in, and the implication is that that's necessary (or at least useful) info. There wasn't really any counterpoint given to this.
  • How I weighed this: Quite strongly, in favor of either the one-comma or two-comma versions, because (since we have redirects to help searches) the single most important virtue for a title is to make it instantly clear to the reader exactly what she's looking at. Nyttend argues that using the "[city] 'metropolitan area' [state(s)]" construct works against this when multiple states are involved. He might be wrong, but he might be right, so its a good point. It wasn't refuted.

I'll just note that "Columbus metropolitan area, Georgia-Alabama" contains different information than does "Columbus, Georgia, metropolitan area" -- not saying one is better, it's just different info. The first doesn't tell us what state the city of Columbus is in, but it does tell us all the states the metro area is in. The second does tell what state the city of Columbus is in but it doesn't tell us what states the metro area is in. Which is preferable might depend on the individual reader, and which of these mindsets the term "Columbus metropolitan area" puts her in (I'll exaggerate a bit for effect):

• "Here's an article about Columbus in Georgia, and also (by the way) the contiguous large densely populated area which is technically outside the city limits."
• "Here's an article about a large densely populated area sprawling over several counties, which (by the way) is named for the large city at its center, Columbus in Georgia."

I don't have the answer to that and I guess no one does.

• The point is made that two commas is awkward, and this is bad. The general prescription is to try to avoid the situation by rephrasing. User:Dicklyon again did yeoman work in looking at various style guides, essentially proving that it is awkward or commonly seen as awkward, at least in style guides. For this quality (awkwardness) style guides carry a fair amount of weight, I think.

There's a great deal of discussion in the "Awkward" section, regarding different standards for titles as opposed to body text, and much else. Gets into some closely-argued points of grammar. Interesting and well argued from all points, but not necessarily always bearing directly on the subject of awkwardness. I saw Dicklyon's style guide cites as carrying a lot of weight here.

• • How I weighed this: Somewhat (not a whole lot), in favor of the "[city] 'metropolitan area' [state(s)]" which avoids the one-comma/two-comma problem, and secondarily in favor of the one-comma version which breaks up the flow of the title phrase a little less. It's not nearly as important as clarity, but it's not nothing.

• In the "Articles and categories affected" section, an editor (User:Apteva, I think) provides a list of usage of in titles. Very good work, Apteva, and useful, and thank you! One thing this shows is precedent. According to Apteva's list, which is certainly substantial but may not be exhaustive, the preponderance of one-comma to two-comma version is 100 to 3, not counting categories and not counting articles which don't use the term "metropolitan area" or something close. That's a large preponderance. (BTW of these 103, only three include the name of more than one city (Canton–Massillon, Ohio; Harrisburg–Carlisle, Pennsylvania; and North Port–Sarasota–Bradenton, Florida).)

(User:Apteva then provides a subsection, "Other examples of incorrect usage", which shows some use of the one-comma form. These don't include the term "metropolitan area" and (by intention) aren't balanced by examples of the two-comma form, so not very germane here.)

There's more discussion, around the concepts of "correct" vs. "incorrect". User:MelanieN makes the point "English is a dynamic language. Grammar rules change over time through usage" and "What Dicklyon called 'just an informality' is actually an English grammar rule in the process of changing", which I think is well put. The descriptive-vs-proscriptive approach to grammar is never settled, and I think that 100 years ago the prescriptive camp may have held the prevailed, but in this world in these times the descriptive camp has the whip hand, as a matter of practical fact, I think.

All this means is to to me personally prescriptive grammar points are not usually convincing so I don't give them too much "weight of argument" merit. For headcount, its totally different and what I think has no bearing: if a lot of Wikipedians are convinced by prescriptive-grammar arguments, then it matters -- a lot, in this case.

Getting back to User:Apteva's list, I think it shows two things:

1. To this point, the Wikipedia's editors have "voted with their feet" to go with the one-comma version, and thereby established a precedent, and
2. Changing away from the one-comma version will require a fair amount of work.

• • How I weighed this, for the first point (established precedent): A little -- those 100 titles were created by thinking humans who knew what they were doing -- but only a little. The whole point of this exercise is to establish a new precedent going forward (or sustain and codify the existing one), for the purpose of having the best encyclopedia in the future. It may be that the editors who created 100 one-comma version titles were doing so based on a long and closely-reasoned discussion, or they may have been blindly following a precedent established by whim or at random, or it may have been a precedent originally established from a single source (such as when a bot (User:Rambot) used U.S. Census Bureau records to create many articles back in 2002), or whatever. Not having any evidence at hand of why this situation exists, and since this is a long and closely reasoned discussion, to my mind it takes precedence over existing precedent. We're not slaves to the past.
  • How I weighed this, for the second point (workload): Essentially nil. We're talking about a few tens of man-hours or whatever. I'd certainly not be inclined to let an unsatisfactory situation continue to exist for another ten years or longer to avoid a bit of work now.

• After a great deal more discussion -- again mostly centered around concepts of grammatical correctness -- The suggestion of the form "Columbus metropolitan area, Ohio" is proposed (actually User:Bkonrad and User:Frungi expressed the opinion that "Columbus metropolitan area (Ohio)" is even better; but User:BDD opined "This form seems to be an invention on our part, which should be avoided at all costs".

Other discussions

A Recently closed RfC

Concurrently with this discussion, there was this RfC, opened on 25 October 2013 and closed (by the proposer) on 8 November 2013, and specifically mentioning WP:PLACE as a page to affecte:

• Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#RFC: Should it be "optional" as to whether a second comma after a date/place should be included?

The proposal was

1. Instead of being mandated or not being mandated, MOS should be changed to make it optional as to whether a comma should be included after a date or a place: "Rochester, New York metropolitan" area or "Rochester, New York, metropolitan area", for instance, both being acceptable.
2. If passed, then all pages within a certain Project be the same. This means that the comma would be optional on the "national" standpoint, but one version would be mandated by a discussion from a "local" Project standpoint (all pages within any Project either with the comma or without the comma). This allows members of a project to decide themselves on what to do.
3. This apply to titles and not sentences within an article (a clarification which was made only after the discussion had been live for awhile).

The proposal didn't pass.

(If one thing's clear from all this, it's that the proposition "Whatever forms are prescribed for article body text automatically applies to titles also" is debatable and not at all universally accepted. So therefore changes to article titles have to be implemented at WP:AT, the "Article titles" section of WP:MOS, and (for places) WP:PLACE. Changes made anywhere else don't apply to titles unless this is specifically stated. It's either at WP:AT or WP:PLACE (or WP:MOS, but only if a change to the "Article titles" section is specifically proposed) that such proposals should be made. It's unfortunate that this proposal was made at WP:MOS and wasn't clearly specified to apply only to titles from the get-go.)

There was some discussion at that RfC, including some of the same editors from this discussion and going over some of the same ground, specifically points of grammar. Since this was bound up with the question "individual projects should have the controlling authority", and also the proposal and its examples included dates, nor did it seem likely that "metropolitan area" was considered a special case, so the applicability of this to our discussion here is limited. FWIW, and not counting editors whom I've already counted here, I get:

• Support -- "My personal preference is not to punctuate unless it makes it easier for the reader" (but individual projects should decide) -- User:Tony1
• Support -- "There is no reason to require the second comma" -- User:Neljack
• Support -- User:SlimVirgin had just "Support per Dohn joe". Again, it's hard to tell if she was mainly supporting the idea that individual projects should decide, or what. But since User:Dohn joe had summarized his lengthy (and cogent) remarks as "We should not mandate an awkward second comma where it is not syntactically required, especially when omitting it is already WP practice, and when omitting it is recommended by a major style guide such as Garner" I gather she's supporting at least the option to go with the one-comma form.
• Oppose -- "These commas are needed for clarity, and that's why they are required by standard rules of punctuation" -- User:Orlady
• Oppose -- "If the correctly-punctuated result looks awkward, then rephrase." -- User:Odysseus1479
• Oppose -- "Although the construction with more commas can be awkward at times, it is often needed for clarity, which is more important than the secondary goal of smooth readability. Perhaps the MoS should recommend recasting a sentence if it is awkward" User:Reify-tech

There was some discussion of, and support for, avoiding the situation by recasting the title (I assume in some manner of the "Columbus metropolitan area, Ohio" form for instance, although this particular form wasn't mentioned). User:Nyttend suggested "PLACENAME, PLACENAME be in a title is [only] when that's the entire name of the article, e.g. Monowi, Nebraska, or when it's at the end of the name, e.g. History of Charleston, South Carolina. We entirely avoid the issue in this manner" which is a useful thought. User:Nyttend has a lot of cogent and useful thoughts, but they don't seem to gain much traction for whatever reason.

Anyway, proposal failed, I can see three new faces in the one-comma camp, one in the two-comma camp, and two in the rephrase-it camp. This discussion was on a different enough premise that I didn't formally add these into the headcount, though.

An open RfC

• Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#RFC: Proposed amendment to MOS:COMMA regarding geographical references and dates

Here, the proposal is to keep the same rules for commas, but add the advice to recast the sentence to avoid the one-comma/two-comma problem.

It's specifically about article text, but of course ideally WP:COMMA should match how our titles. (That'd be ideal but not absolutely necessary, as long as any differences are spelt out at at the places where titles are described -- WP:AT, the "Article titles" section of WP:MOS, and (for places) WP:PLACE -- using footnotes as necessary, as some rules pages do.)

Its stil open and right now its running 12 in support, 7 opposing (61% support), so its up in the air I guess. Fortunately, based on how I've close this discussion, it won't affect this close. Since this close is basically "recast", then if that proposal passes is just reinforces this one. If it fails it doesn't matter since we've carved out an exception for metropolitan areas and we'll support that with appropriate footnotes in the appropriate places.

Summary

OK then. Here's what we've got. Points that devolve to a policy or guideline are shown in red lettering. Points that refer to the discussion are shown in normal black font.

• For the two-comma version ("Columbus, Ohio, metropolitan area"):
  • Grammatical correctness, which is somewhat important. (I know that some editors don't agree that the one-comma version is incorrect, but that's a minority view.)
  • The rule WP:COMMA, which I judged as only a little important. (My reasons for giving relatively little weight to the policy are described above.)

• For the one-comma version ("Columbus, Ohio metropolitan area")"
  • Precedent (most titles use this format now), which I judged as only a little important.

• For the "[city[-ies] metropolitan area, [state[s]]" (e.g. "Columbus metropolitan area, Ohio") form:
  • Headcount, which is somewhat important. (It'd be very important if there was a clear headcount winner, but there wasn't.)
  • Grammatical correctness, which is somewhat important. (I know that some editors don't agree that the one-comma version is incorrect, but that's a minority view.)
  • Clarity, which is somewhat important. (It'd be extremely important if was clearly clearest form, but there wasn't. I judged this form to be a little bit clearer.)
  • Recognizability, per WP:AT, which I judged as only a little important. This is really just restating the above point, clarity, but by reference to a rule rather than the discussion, so this is kind of double-counting. (It'd be extremely important if was clearly most-recognizable form, but there wasn't. I judged this form to be a little more recognizable, at least in cases where the metro area doesn't span two or more states.)
  • The rules spelled out in WP:PRECISION, which I judged as only a little important. (Actually WP:PRECISION would give us "Columbus metropolitan area (Ohio)" if I'm reading them correctly,but "Columbus metropolitan area, Ohio" is the closest match. I didn't give this a lot of weight because it'd be kind of rules-lawyering to take this too literally.)
  • Lack of awkwardness, which I judged as only a little important.
  • As a negative, paucity of sources using this exact form, which I judged as only a little important. (I discussed at length above my relative discounting of sources as a control over how we disambiguate, as opposed to the actual names for things.)
  • As a negative, the point that for state-spanning metro areas the state in which the core city is in is not shown, which, all things considered, I judged as somewhat important. (Note that applies to only a small subset of articles, though.)
  • There's one other thing. The one-comma version makes some people pound their forehead on the table. The two-comma version makes some people claw at the draperies. This is matter where people's opinions matter a lot. I don't get the feeling that there's as much strong negative feeling around this version (except for User:Nyttend). That counts for something I think.

There's no one "right" answer here. All of the suggested solutions have virtues and weakness, and there's no perfect form. All things considered, I think that balancing consensus and strength of the arguments and weighing the existing rules, and even subtracting for its negatives, that the "Columbus metropolitan area, Ohio" form seems most acceptable to the community.

Re en dash for multiple states

Regarding the admonition to use the en dash rather than the word "and" for metro areas spanning two or more states (that is, "Kansas City metropolitan area, Kansas–Missouri" rather than "Kansas City metropolitan area, Kansas and Missouri", this wasn't discussed and I don't want to shove this down people's throats, and you want to have another discussion on this matter go ahead, but my reasoning was:

• Had to decide something.
• And the en dash is parallel with how the cities are named. We'd have ""North Port–Sarasota–Bradenton metropolitan area, Florida" and not "North Port and Sarasota and Bradenton metropolitan area, Florida", I think.
• And -- this is highly arguable -- but "Kansas City metropolitan area, Kansas and Missouri" (for example) might tend just a little more to imply the existence of the entity "Kansas and Missouri" (analogous to Turks and Caicos Islands for instance) than does the en dash. It's probably about the same really.
• And the word "and" is a little less succinct than the en dash, and WP:AT suggests succinctness.
• And if any metro areas requiring disambiguation span more than two states, you'll have stuff like "New York metropolitan area, New York and Connecticut and New Jersey" and that's a lot of "and"s. (And I'm pretty sure we don't want "New York metropolitan area, New York, Connecticut and New Jersey"...)
• And I could be wrong about this, but I think the en dash is a little more common, for our titles and in the general world, than the word "and" for situations like this. Herostratus (talk) 08:17, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

END CLOSE

Beginning of discussion

Recently our guideline Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names) was edited to state that when the city and state is given followed by something else, such as Dublin, Georgia micropolitan area, a comma is used after the state. Should there be a comma there, yes or no? There are dozens if not hundreds of articles and categories affected by this decision. Apteva (talk) 00:38, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

...and that revision was reverted since the discussion at the Talk Page had not reached any conclusion. --MelanieN (talk) 14:37, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

Survey

On just the question of whether one comma or two commas are preferred when a state name is used parenthetically as in "Rochester, New York metropolitan area" versus "Rochester, New York, metropolitan area", in a title or in a sentence, please make a brief numbered signed entry, with optionally up to 50 words of explanation, in one of these subsections. Keep responses and discussion in subsequent sections (neither of these choices is to be interpreted as a preference to not change to a construct that avoids the parenthetical state).

(this survey started late; we have notified editors who expressed an opinion before; note that nom has explicitly stated that he takes no position on the question)

One comma

1. Oxford and Chicago find the second comma awkward; I agree. Dohn joe (talk) 03:35, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
2. It's true that the second comma is required from a strictly grammatical viewpoint. But Reliable Sources often omit it, and titles here are supposed to be based on usage by Reliable Sources (that's per WP:AT which is policy). Since Reliable Sources are split, the argument for adding the second comma is not strong enough to change all those stable titles (that's also per WP:AT). --MelanieN (talk) 14:33, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
3. Since this isn't a full sentence, it's not clear that the appositive rules should apply here. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 17:51, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
4. Titles are not sentences. I don't think any reasonable reader would mistake the meaning of "Rochester, Minnesota metropolitan area", and adding the second comma introduces different problems already noted. Omnedon (talk) 13:24, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
5. Per the rationales advanced by Dohn joe, MelanieN, BDD, et al. (and the reasons elaborated in the discussions below), a single comma in the title is preferable. Adding a second seems necessary only to satisfy what I consider questionable grammatical pedantry – an insufficient basis for changing a large number of stable article titles, particularly given the reasonable counter considerations voiced by various other editors. ╠╣uw [talk] 20:21, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
6. Omnedon has summed it up best here. It's disheartening to see how absurd some editors' priorities are around here. --BDD (talk) 21:36, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
7. "Cleveland, Utah" does not contain an appositive. It's the name of a town. That's the standard way we write the names of populated places in the United States. There is rarely any use for a second comma after the state. The metropolitan area centered on a particular city shouldn't be any exception to this. Ntsimp (talk) 23:34, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
8. Because "metropolitan area" is referring to the whole term "Rochester, New York", not just to "Rochester" and not just to "New York". So, it's
   

   • "Rochester, New York metropolitan area" in the same way as it is
     
   • "Rochester, New York-related issues" ("-related issues" referring to the whole "package" "Rochester, New York") or
     
   • "the September 11, 2001 attacks" ("attacks" referring to the whole "package" "September 11, 2001").
     

   NB: other constructions would obviously still very much require two commas, e.g.:
   

   • "his house in Cookeville, Tennessee, was known throughout the city" (↔ "his Cookeville, Tennessee house was known throughout the city")
     
   • "they moved from Cookeville, TN, to Somerset, KY"
     
   • "Irn-Bru is produced in Cumbernauld, North Lanarkshire, by A.G. Barr"
     
   • "on September 11, 2001, an article appeared in [...]" (↔ "a September 11, 2001 article")
     

   Please, everybody, think about it. – ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 16:48, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

   (Just realized the up-to-50-word request, which I missed upon slotting my two cents; my apologies. If it's preferred I move my contribution someplace else, let me know. – ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 17:43, 5 September 2013 (UTC))

Two commas

1. per overwhelming consensus of guides to grammar, including our MOS, if we're going to have the state in the middle it should be set off by matching punctuation of some sort, whether parens, brackets, dashes, or commas. Dicklyon (talk) 03:00, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
2. Per style guides on proper construction of parenthetical clauses; better yet, avoid the construction altogether (e.g., "Rochester metropolitan area, New York"—which would also need to been followed by a comma if used in continuing text—or "Rochester metropolitan area (New York)" or "Rochester (New York) metropolitan area"). —sroc 💬 05:31, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

   Moving my !vote to the newer proposal for "[City] metropolitan area, [State]" below as my preferred choice to avoid the awkward construction as suggested in my original comment. Leaving my original comment here (struck out) since others have referred to it subsequently. —sroc 💬 23:37, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

   Unstruck my !vote since it was pointed out that favouring "[City] metropolitan area, [State]" need not rule out counting for "One comma" or "Two comma" (for some reason). Thanks, Dicklyon! —sroc 💬 23:38, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

3. Per obvious grammatical resons. WP:Copyedit has a few examples, which, in my opinion, needs to be expanded further. I'll use a similar example: He was born in Vilnius, Lithuania, in 1955. The appositive Lithuania calls for a closing comma. With less geographical precision, that sentence could read: He was born in Lithuania in 1955. No appositive, no comma. Thus, the only reason for the comma was the appositive. But there can be more than one reason for a comma. If there are, it doesn't mean that you put two commas there. Example: He was born in Vilnius, Lithuania, but moved to Poland with his family in his teen years (lots of creative writing here). With less precision: He was born in Lithuania, but moved to Poland with his family in his teen years. The phraseology calls for a comma between the two parts of the sentence. Thus, there were two reasons for the comma here. I think Dohn joe didn't realize this when he said "That comma serves a completely different function than the proposed one. It serves to set off two clauses, as opposed to setting off an appositive" on Talk:Rochester, New York metropolitan area. My response is that a single comma can serve both purposes. Regarding the "Awkward?" section below, it's the same thing with dates: The minister of finance said in a June 10, 2011, interview .... It's an awkward construct, but it doesn't get any better by adding a grammatical error to it. HandsomeFella (talk) 12:03, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
4. Good grammar requires two commas. If this construction is awkward, then find a way to re-word to avoid the need to use this form. older ≠ wiser 12:27, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
5. Definitely two commas. Even if there were no confusion, the state name is parenthetical, which requires that it be set off by two punctuation marks, whether they are commas or parentheses. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 20:06, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
6. This is longstanding grammatical practice and improves clarity for everyone. Powers ^T 21:30, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
7. Per standard English grammar and MOS:COMMA which advocates the same. On top of the precision concerns voiced by others, as an encyclopedia, we should adhere to the rules of the language and strive for professionalism, rather than preferring what several guides call an “informal” practice. Preferably, though, these titles should be written to require no commas whatsoever, which would avoid many of the problems pointed out by both sides. —Frungi (talk) 01:05, 5 August 2013 (UTC)
8. Yeah, per Arthur Rubin and Bkonrad. Avoiding potential ambiguities is best done by an unerring application of the second comma, even though I sometimes find it a bit bumpy. Tony (talk) 04:23, 5 August 2013 (UTC)
9. It's both wrong and confusing to omit the second comma. Is the "Rochester, New York metropolitan area" article referring to the part of the "New York metropolitan area" called Rochester? Clearly not, but I only know that because I'm familiar with New York geography; ordinarily, on Wikipedia an article titled "A, B" is talking about location A within area B. This is the most egregiously confusing example, but it illustrates what's wrong with this misbegotten proposal. AgnosticAphid talk 17:59, 5 August 2013 (UTC)
10. In an encyclopedia, clarity should always take precedence over avoiding simple awkwardness. However, it is even better to reword and preserve clarity while avoiding awkward constructions, as suggested above. Reify-tech (talk) 18:16, 5 August 2013 (UTC)
11. Two commas means that Rochester isgives its name to the metropolitan area; one comma would mean that New York is the metropolitan area. Therefore two commas are needed if commas are to be used at all. Those of us not in the US can't be expected to know which it is, so the one-comma fudge increases systemic bias. (I prefer the clearer phrasing of the option below, though.) (I overlooked that supporting the rephrase option doesn't preclude supporting here, too. Thanks to sroc and Dicklyon.) --Stfg (talk) 08:47, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
12. Two commas are necessary to change the title from "Rochester, in the New York metropolitan area" to "Rochester (New York) metropolitan area". This is especially significant since there is also a New York metropolitan area, and we're not writing an article about some Rochester in that metro area. Dworjan (talk) 00:51, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
13. My absolute disgust of this rule being broken aside, there should be two commas plainly because it is proper grammar in the English language, and it allows for more clarity. TCN7JM 02:12, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
14. Two commas looks odd in this context, but it's the grammatically correct form. Furthermore, the need for the second comma is supported by evidence in these discussions that a few users have misconstrued the meaning of the single-comma form. --Orlady (talk) 05:04, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Rename "[City] metropolitan area, [State]"

Feel free to also support this option, whether or not you have registered one way or the other on the main question.

1. I absolutely detest the comma overload, just like with US style (mdy) dates, but I can see the necessity to separate with that construction. so I would prefer to avoid this. We should rename it, per sroc. -- Ohc ^¡digame!_{¿que pasa?} 22:27, 5 August 2013 (UTC)
2. This, or a variant using parentheses, is by far the best option, in my opinion. In many cases, the state isn't included when such an area is referenced (the Detroit metropolitan area), so it makes sense to separate the state from it. —Frungi (talk) 07:41, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
3. My opinion is exactly as expressed by User:Agnosticaphid, but the 2-comma form is clunky and hard to parse, while the 1-comma form is misleading. Better this of or one of the other forms suggested by User:sroc above. --Stfg (talk) 16:10, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
4. Moving my vote here, now that this is being considered as a separate option, since this would be my preference to avoid the awkward construction. —sroc 💬 23:37, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
5. Per my earlier comments - this makes much more sense, especially to English speakers outside of the USA. WaggersTALK 08:26, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
6. I wanted to offer a comment of my own, but gave up after I read this one by Waggers, because I can sign every word of it. Both of the alternatives above stretch the grammar rules (and plain English) to an extreme (phrases containing appositions should not be used attributively), and are quite confusing, especially for readers less familiar with U.S. practices. No such user (talk) 08:55, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
7. I'm going to go ahead and support this, too. It is less awkward than sticking the state in the middle. And recasting an awkward title in a grammatically correct way is much better than leaving the articles at the current title, which are wrong and make wikipedia look bad. I kind of feel like this is a slippery slope to get rid of the "comma convention" in WP:USPLACE, which I am not really completely on board with, but that being said the recast title is a stylistic improvement. AgnosticAphid talk 15:32, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
8. This is unequivocally the most congenial conclusion in my mind. It is a much more unambiguous and clear cut option than slapping on more commas. Ronan McGurrin (talk) 22:29, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
9. Best option. Chris Troutman (talk) 01:55, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
10. Of course. It's the city that names the metro area, not the state, so why separate the two parts of the metro area's name? —David Eppstein (talk) 02:44, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
11. This form seems preferable, it gets rid of arguments over one or two commas by displacing the whole state. Alternately, "City (State) metropolitan area" also works form me; Or Metropolitan area of City, State -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 04:15, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
12. Definitely not; this completely fails the WP:COMMONNAME test. Everyone speaks of metro areas in one of three ways: "Metropolitan area nickname" (e.g. Chicagoland), "City metropolitan area", "City, State metropolitan area". Nyttend (talk) 13:43, 10 August 2013 (UTC) (Comment: Note that this is an "oppose" comment although it is listed and tallied here as if it was support. --MelanieN (talk) 15:48, 10 August 2013 (UTC))
13. This is the most logical option as the state name is a disambiguator, i.e. it is used to distinguish between other metropolitan areas of the same name but in different states. 71.21.81.61 (talk) 14:48, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
14. Solves both problems at once. Better yet, use "[City] metropolitan area (State)", the same way disambiguation is done is other similar situations across Wikipedia.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 5, 2013; 19:06 (UTC)
15. Only this option. I find both the comma solutions confusing. "Rochester, New York metropolitan area" seems to me like its the city of Rochester in the New York metropolitan area and "Rochester, New York, metropolitan area" just leaves me confused.--User:Salix alba (talk): 20:29, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

Off-topic discussion of Apteva's bizarre theory
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Arguments in favor of a comma. Rules of grammar require a comma there. Arguments in favor of not having a comma there. These are statistical areas, and the census department abbreviates the state name. Rules of grammar dictate that when the state is abbreviated, it is not followed by a second comma, for example in Akron, OH Metropolitan Statistical Area. It is argued that "OH MSA" abbreviated or not forms a token that is not to be broken up with a comma. Reliable sources are divided on the issue. --Apteva (talk) 00:45, 2 August 2013 (UTC) “OH MSA” is not a “token”. “Akron, OH” is the token, an attributive noun that modifies “MSA”. —Frungi (talk) 02:01, 2 August 2013 (UTC) I was going to ask "who changed that convention, inserting the "use a comma" rule, when the issue was still being debated at the talk page?" But I see that it was YOU who changed it, without any consensus or closure of the debate - until somebody quite properly reverted your change a few hours later. Apteva, this was out of line. --MelanieN (talk) 01:15, 2 August 2013 (UTC) Apologies, I misread the history. It was Frungi who made the change, you merely modified it. --MelanieN (talk) 01:30, 2 August 2013 (UTC) It took me by surprise, but I follow all guidelines, so we either need to change almost all of our articles or remove it. I did not even know it had been changed. I just added what to do if the state is abbreviated. A formal RfC is needed because we have editors who disagree with the change. Apteva (talk) 01:34, 2 August 2013 (UTC) I am going to remove it from the guidelines until the discussion is formally closed. IMO it is by no means clear what the consensus was. --MelanieN (talk) 01:52, 2 August 2013 (UTC) I’m sorry, I thought we had reached consensus (the last comment was made a week ago). Apteva had seemed to be the only one opposing, and that under a misunderstanding of the grammar involved. —Frungi (talk) 01:57, 2 August 2013 (UTC) I agree with Frungi; I thought we were pretty much all in agreement, except for Apteva, who didn't understand the intended parse. MelanieM, what is your concern? Furthermore, Apteva's special case for titles with postal codes in them is pretty irrelevant, since our guidelines say not to abbreviate states that way. Yes, there are still some things to fix about that. Dicklyon (talk) 02:41, 2 August 2013 (UTC) I didn't and don't find it clearcut; the discussion ranged all over the map, with no bolded !votes and some people taking more than one position. But going through it carefully right now I think this is the tally: In favor of the second comma are Frungi (who also supported "Cityname metropolitan area, state"), MelanieN (who initially wanted to leave out the second comma per Reliable Source usage, and still would except that Apteva convinced me it could be confusing without the second comma), sroc, Agnostic Aphic, and Dicklyon. Against the second comma: Apteva, offering several different arguments, including the "state metropolitan area" interpretation which no one else accepted. Favoring a third option "Cityname metropolitan area, State": Waggers, Doctor Kubla and Frungi. Am I summarizing it correctly? Maybe we can figure out the result even without a formal close. --MelanieN (talk) 03:12, 2 August 2013 (UTC) We will also need to contact the editors who created these articles, instead of just telling them that all of them are wrong (so far 80/82 use one comma). Apteva (talk) 03:20, 2 August 2013 (UTC) MelanieN: I believe so, yes. The alternatives I proposed were in case “City, State, area” was deemed completely unacceptable, but this seems to be unnecessary. Apteva: Why can’t we just silently correct them like we often do with other grammatical and typographic errors? —Frungi (talk) 03:34, 2 August 2013 (UTC) There are currently 939 MSA's, most of which we do not have articles on, but we do have a lot. It is not particularly diplomatic to tell someone else what they are doing is wrong without asking their opinion on what the correct title is. I personally do not care, I never do, I just want us to make the right decision, as always. However, I recommend that we specifically state that the categories that were created with one comma do not need to be moved if we decide to add a comma to the articles. Each category has multiple articles, so we are dealing not with hundreds of edits, but thousands. Categories do not get moved, a new one gets created and populated by editing each article in that category. While I have no problem with moving 100 articles, or whatever the count is, I can categorically say that it would be easier for all of us to decide that there actually should be one comma instead of two. Apteva (talk) 03:46, 2 August 2013 (UTC) I agree about not changing the categories (provided you don't try to claim they actually mean something else); changing categories creates a big mess. OTOH if we do end up adding the comma in the article titles, there is absolutely no need to notify the creators of the articles. We should simply move them, with an edit summary that links to the discussion (once it is closed). --MelanieN (talk) 03:54, 2 August 2013 (UTC) Notify them of this discussion, not the decision. They might have information that would be useful. People do not look at categories to decide how to title articles, they look at the articles in those categories. Apteva (talk) 04:05, 2 August 2013 (UTC) We can’t just “decide” to change the rules of written English… —Frungi (talk) 04:06, 2 August 2013 (UTC) No argument there, nor do we do any original research. We look to see what others use and report on that. English is both an evolving language and a complex language that even the best experts have disagreements on. All we can do is the best we can. The crux of the interpretation seems to be on the parsing of the state and the description. If we say the state goes with MSA there is no comma, if we say it goes with the city, there is. I am not expressing an opinion on which is correct, I am just summarizing the arguments. The editors who created the articles may have better information that will help us. Apteva (talk) 04:21, 2 August 2013 (UTC) I’m sorry, but unless I missed something, you are the only one in the discussions here and at WT:AT who has argued that the state name “goes with” the area label, and in fact the only one I’ve ever heard make that claim anywhere. I ask that you stop framing that misinterpretation as a valid argument, but I’d still very much like to know where you got that idea if not from the very lack of that comma. —Frungi (talk) 04:38, 2 August 2013 (UTC) See Talk:Rochester, New York metropolitan area. Apteva (talk) 04:53, 2 August 2013 (UTC) At that page again, you were the one to introduce the misinterpretation as valid (and the correct interpretation as a misinterpretation). There’s no mention on that page of where you originally got it from. Was it your own conclusion from seeing the missing comma? Was it something you read somewhere? What was the source of this misinformation? —Frungi (talk) 06:22, 2 August 2013 (UTC) I was aware that most of our articles used the one comma format, I was not aware that there were 100 of them but I knew there were a lot of them. I did quite a bit of searching for information about how commas are used and how these titles were presented in reliable sources. In most cases the articles are local and do not include the state at all, but where the state was included, it seemed to use only one comma quite a bit more often than two. That was the source of my recommendation – do whatever everyone else does. Apteva (talk) 06:37, 2 August 2013 (UTC) I’m sorry, maybe I wasn’t clear… I was asking you where the idea came from that a second comma means that the area is inside the city, or that “[City] area” means an area inside the city. If it was something you read on Wikipedia, whether in an article or in guidance, that desperately needs to be corrected. This is why I’m asking. —Frungi (talk) 06:56, 2 August 2013 (UTC) Oh that. Well if it was inside the city, there would obviously be no issue, the second comma would be required to indicate that the city, state were to be paired. When the region involved is not within the city is where it gets muddy, as the region involved is within the state, but not within the city. Some of the MSA's also cross state lines. Apteva (talk) 07:58, 2 August 2013 (UTC) Then allow me to clarify: The name of the city is an attributive noun that modifies “metropolitan/micropolitan area”, because the city is the identifying characteristic of the area. I’ve drawn this comparison before, but this is the same construction as “jelly doughnut”, where “jelly” is an attributive noun that modifies “doughnut”—it is a doughnut whose identifying characteristic is that contains jelly, not a jelly that contains doughnuts. There is never a comma between an attributive noun (the city) and the noun that it modifies (“… area”)—even if you’re under the impression that the “area” phrase has a state name in it (which is why the insistence that a single comma is grammatically correct is so baffling). As I’ve mentioned elsewhere on this page, when a city is clarified with its state, that’s called apposition, and it’s set off with a comma on both sides. To omit the second comma is to include “… area” as part of the appositional phrase, which it most certainly is not. —Frungi (talk) 08:28, 2 August 2013 (UTC) Or to put it even more clearly: commas used in apposition serve exactly the same purpose grammatically as a pair of parentheses. "Rochester, Minnesota, metropolitan area" has exactly the same meaning as "Rochester (Minnesota) metropolitan area." Omitting the second comma is as wrong grammatically as "Rochester (Minnesota metropolitan area" (without a second parenthesis) would be. Without that second comma or second parenthesis, it is apparently possible for literalists like Apteva to think it refers to some nonexistent concept called a "Minnesota metropolitan area" - in other words, that the way to correct "Rochester (Minnesota metropolitan area" is not "Rochester (Minnesota) metropolitan area" but "Rochester (Minnesota metropolitan area)". It is to avoid that misunderstanding that we must include the second comma (or second parenthesis). Most reliable sources omit the second comma, because they think it will be obvious to everybody that the meaning is "Rochester (Minnesota) metropolitan area". But since that is not obvious to Apteva, we must add the second comma to make it clear. The name without the second comma is ambiguous if the punctuation is taken literally. --MelanieN (talk) 16:04, 2 August 2013 (UTC) Commas, of course, are not always paired. Minnesota has two metropolitan areas that are partly in Wisconsin, two that are only in Minnesota, and 17 micropolitan areas. All are Minnesota statistical areas, which is the argument for calling the state attributive. If the statistical area was contained within the city, though, it would be descriptive of the city. In this case the state is descriptive of the statistical area. For the two that are partly in Wisconsin, Wisconsin is not at all a part of the city, Duluth. So the state or states go with the statistical area, the city or cities are the identifier. Apteva (talk) 17:17, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

• No As I said at a recent RM, "I think it's frankly absurd to suggest the presence or absence of that second comma is going to do anything for readers. And the highly pedantic justifications offered in support of the move fall apart upon investigation. The topic is either [for example] the metropolitan area of Rochester, New York, or the New York metropolitan area centered around Rochester. New York has several metropolitan areas, including Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse. Let this be. There are probably hundreds of articles which would need to be changed, all for a very unclear benefit." Don't assume our readers are idiots. --BDD (talk) 16:47, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your input, BDD. (See, folks, I TOLD you this wasn't settled!) I used to agree with you. I think it is perfectly obvious that "Rochester, Minnesota metropolitan area" means "Rochester (Minnesota) metropolitan area." I would like to be persuaded that this change isn't necessary, but is Apteva really the only reader who is ever going to make this mistake? --MelanieN (talk) 17:12, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Which mistake, this one? (Rochester (Minnesota)), (Minnesota metropolitan area)? Minnesota has 17 of these. Rochester has one. With or without a comma does not move the boundaries of the statistical area, as only the OMB can do that. Apteva (talk) 17:32, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Does Apteva really get confused about these titles based on the presence or absence of that second comma? Apteva, aren't you just trying to settle the inconsistency? --BDD (talk) 17:43, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

No, he actually argued strongly - in the discussion above - that the lack of a second comma was correct precisely because the relevant entity was "Minnesota metropolitan area". At least I think he did; he appeared to shift away from it later. I found it so hard to believe he could actually think this, I think I didn't respond until his third repetition of it. His insistence on that is the ONLY reason I shifted my opinion toward requiring the second comma. @Apteva, if you will assure me you do understand that "Rochester, Minnesota metropolitan area" means the metropolitan area centered around "Rochester, Minnesota," I will change my opinion back to "no second comma". --MelanieN (talk) 17:59, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

This has never been in contention. I have always held that it was centered on Rochester, Minnesota. Yes I have been trying to find a logical reason why all of our articles were created using a one comma format. The most telling one that I could see is that the census bureau abbreviates the state, which requires not using a comma, and when people spell out the state they just leave the commas unchanged. Apteva (talk) 19:50, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Um, ok. So this is only an issue because someone's making a semantic fuss? Why not just leave it alone? --BDD (talk) 19:04, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

• I'm changing my opinion back to Don't move. Thank you, BDD, for bringing me to my senses. It was crazy[1] for me to change my opinion based on the confused interpretations of one person - and it was crazy for me to suggest that hundreds of titles should be changed to avoid the mere possibility of such interpretations. To those who are arguing grammatical correctness, I apologize; you are correct and I agree with you in principle, but I think grammatical correctness is more than countered here by the policies of Reliable Source usage ("This page in a nutshell: Article titles should be recognizable to readers, unambiguous, and consistent with usage in reliable English-language sources") and Title Stability ("If an article title has been stable for a long time, and there is no good reason to change it, it should not be changed.") Reliable sources (not counting the US government, which uses state abbreviations) are split: in a search for half a dozen MSAs where disambiguation is needed, I found that the comma is usually added in formal or legal situations ("Portland, Oregon, Metropolitan Statistical Area"), but omitted in newspapers and general usage ("Portland, Oregon Metropolitan Statistical Area"). Title stability is firmly on the side of not changing the titles. Grammatical correctness is not enough of a "good reason," in my revised opinion, to change all these titles - if you ignore (as I should have) the peculiar theories of one person. --MelanieN (talk) 19:16, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
• One comma only. Ultimately, this comes down to a simple rule: more commas = less readability. Commas disrupt the flow of text, and should only be used where necessary. In this case, we have a proper noun, "Rochester, New York", that is functioning as an adjective, modifying "metropolitan area". While an argument can be made that "Rochester" and "New York" are separate nouns, connected appositively, I think that given the universally recognized "city, state" construct, the appositive reading is vestigial at best. The one-comma approach is also supported because there is no such usage as "(City), (State metro area)", and so there is no ambiguity to resolve with a second comma. No one lives in "Rochester, New York metropolitan area"; that's just not usage, anywhere. I'll also repost my contribution to the RM: "Grammatically, the second comma is not necessary, because "Rochester, New York" constitutes a single lexical unit. Just as we wouldn't insert a comma if we were writing about the "Rochester metropolitan area", neither do we need one for the "Rochester, New York metropolitan area". The confusion or misinterpretation of other editors is not pertinent to that. Adding the second comma would cause more confusion that omitting it. The second comma may satisfy some pedants, but it actually conveys the meaning of the phrase less naturally." Dohn joe (talk) 20:29, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
• One comma. In this case, the subject of an article is a metropolitan area. Which metropolitan area? The metropolitan area of Rochester, Minnesota (for example). Given that the city is indeed Rochester, Minnesota (with no trailing comma), I personally see that as being the modifier – rather than seeing Rochester as the modifier, which itself is further modified by the disambiguator of Minnesota. To me, this makes Rochester, Minnesota metropolitan area seem the more natural and less awkward choice – though I do understand the reasons advanced on the other side.

  As for the assertion made above that commas in this case work as parentheses do, I disagree. For instance, one could title the article on the Minnesota city of Rochester as Rochester (Minnesota) (with parentheses surrounding the state), but one would not title it as Rochester, Minnesota, (with commas surrounding the state). To surround the state on both sides with commas is not always necessary when using commas, whereas to surround it on both sides with parentheses is necessary when using parentheses.

  Also, regarding literalists: if I wanted to be obtusely literal, I could misread the two-comma form and interpret it as "Rochester, Minnesota, a metropolitan area" – as if a metropolitan area is all that Rochester is. I don't honestly think readers would make such an error... but nor do I think they'd make the kinds of pedantic errors that others suggest. Satisfying a minority of literalists would seem an inappropriate basis for changing the punctuation, and I don't see benefits emerging from changing the current form that would outweigh the awkwardness of a second comma – one that I don't see as necessary in accurately conveying the subject of the article. Per BDD, I think it's best to leave well enough alone. ╠╣uw [talk] 11:36, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

@Huwmanbeing: To surround the state on both sides with commas is not always necessary when using commas, whereas to surround it on both sides with parentheses is necessary when using parentheses. Have you read WP:COMMA and WP:COPYEDIT#Parenthetical comma? —sroc 💬 15:12, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

I have. The sentence you quote is correct. ╠╣uw [talk] 19:59, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

The sentence I quoted was you. It is contradicted by:

• WP:COMMA: "In geographical references that include multiple levels of subordinate divisions (e.g., city, state/province, country), a comma separates each element and follows the last element (except at the end of a sentence)."
• WP:COPYEDIT#Parenthetical comma: "Location constructions such as Vilnius, Lithuania require a comma after the second element, e.g., He was born in Vilnius, Lithuania, after the country had gained independence."

How do you reconcile your statement with the above? —sroc 💬 01:28, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

If I might be so bold, I think I get his point well enough to provide that answer: (except at the end of a sentence), among other situational exceptions. Hence, not always. Nitpicky. —Frungi (talk) 01:47, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

My point is that Huwmanbeing is lobbying for one comma despite the fact that this situation would not fall under one of the exceptions in running text (e.g., The statistics were drawn from census data from the Rochester, Minnesota, metropolitan area or The statistics were drawn from census data from the Rochester metropolitan area in Minnesota; not The statistics were drawn from census data from the Rochester, Minnesota metropolitan area). —sroc 💬 02:00, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Sroc: Again yes, the sentence you quoted was from me, and it's correct. It states that the two kinds of enclosing punctuation – commas and parentheses – close according to different rules, and they do. For instance:

• Rochester (Minnesota: no closing parenthesis and invalid.
• Rochester, Minnesota: no closing comma and valid.

That there's a difference seems clear, though I'm still not sure why that concerns you. Do you feel that the two are always treated the same (the example above notwithstanding)? I guess I'm just not sure what point you're trying to make by focusing on that one particular sentence.

As for what I favor, it's an approach to titling that considers more than merely the demands of grammatical pedantry, which as far as I can determine is about the only point in favor of injecting a second comma into the titles – and stands against the varied and legitimate concerns of awkwardness, misapplication of sentence rules to other areas, diminished use in reliable sources, being unnecessary to convey meaning that's already clearly conveyed in the current title, etc., etc. You are correct that the single-comma form does not match the examples sentences you cite... because (again) titles are not sentences. They're titles. ╠╣uw [talk] 23:11, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

I don't understand what "grammatical pendantry" means. Or why you'd want titles to be different from the same phrase in text. Or how you can say mean is conveyed clearly in the construct missing the comma. That only works for people who already know what it means, and would not work if the city and state were, for example, replaced by unfamiliar place names. Dicklyon (talk) 23:21, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Pedantry means giving undue attention to rules, details, etc.; grammatical pedantry would be giving undue weight to grammatical rules – in this case the enclosing-comma convention. I say undue because it seems that the intention here is to apply additional commas to titles simply because there's a rule (one that seems very much geared toward prose), and not because there's any other compelling need for it. If there is some further compelling need to now add commas to so many titles that have been stable for so long, it has yet to be demonstrated. (As for titles differing from what appears in the text, that happens frequently – most notably with parenthetical disambiguation – so I don't personally consider that problematic.) ╠╣uw [talk] 10:11, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

Back to basics? It's really sad that this discussion has been driven so far off the point by Apteva's bizarre theories. The result has included about three cycles of flip-flopping by MelanieN, and lots of ink wasted on the distraction of Aptevas confusion. He should never have gotten involved, and should certainly not have started this latest RFC even while being sanctioned for his disruptions. But now at least we have a comment or two from people with an opinion based on readability, which is roughly back where we started. Dohn Joe says "more commas = less readability". I don't agree, but it's something we can discuss. BDD says "I think it's frankly absurd to suggest the presence or absence of that second comma is going to do anything for readers." Again, I don't agree, but at least it's a point we can discuss. As I mentioned in previous related discussions, guides do differ a bit, but they mostly say that, in formal writing (an encyclopedia is kinda formal, no?), the second comma is generally preferred. It seems to me that the second comma clarifies the intended grammatical structure, in a way that will help, more than harm, readability. I hope we can talk about that, and not be further distracted by nonsense. Dicklyon (talk) 23:24, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

RE: about three cycles of flip-flopping by MelanieN: Feel free to WP:TROUT me; I deserve it. But at least my new (and original) position of "no second comma" is based on policies, namely Reliable Sources and Title Stability. --MelanieN (talk) 23:34, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Consider yourself trouted. I'm not sure where you found policy on title stability, other than B2C's user page; can you link it please? And I'm not sure I see your point on sources; if you search books for "statename metropolitan area", for most states you see mostly comma after the state, it looks like to me. Of course lot of books are wiki mirrors, so you see a lot of missing commas for Georgia, New York, Florida, and some of those others you can find in the list below. Try it. Also, the guides mostly require the second comma (I can post a long list later; does anyone have one that advising against?), and the gov't bureau of labor statistics uses it, even if the census doesn't, so I'd like to see a deeper look at sources. And how do you interpret WP:RS policy as having anything to say about grammar, punctuation, or title styling? Dicklyon (talk) 00:55, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

I, too, wonder what reliable sources we're talking about. It's not the census bureau, because then the articles would be titled like Rochester, NY Metro Area. That's a proper noun that refers to a specific definition that our articles may or may not precisely follow. Our articles are titled (quite properly) as generic nouns -- that is, we don't have articles on all of the proper statistical areas that the census bureau has defined, but rather we have articles on the generic concept of metropolitan areas centered around certain cities. Generic descriptive titles such as these should be formatted using our Manual of Style, with no need to reference any sources. Powers ^T 01:52, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

(ec) @Dicklyon: The Article Stability quote is not from B2C, and in fact I often use it to mean the opposite of whatever he is arguing for. It is from WT:Article titles#Considering title changes, which is a POLICY page. It says "Changing one controversial title to another is strongly discouraged. If an article title has been stable for a long time, and there is no good reason to change it, it should not be changed. " and "Debating controversial titles is often unproductive, and there are many other ways to help improve Wikipedia." As far as Reliable Sources, I searched for about 20 minutes using half a dozen different city names. What I found was the second comma is commonly used in legal or official use, such as the name of a legislative action or a term in a lawsuit. On the other hand here's the EPA: "Portland, Oregon metropolitan area"[2] But I also found that professional journalists find ways to write around it - not to use the actual phrase "Portland, Oregon statistical area" but rather things like "the statistical area of Portland, Oregon" - but when they do use the phrase "Portland, Oregon statistical area" they generally omit the second comma. Example "Portland–South Portland–Biddeford, Maine Metropolitan Statistical Area"[3]. "greater Portland, Oregon metropolitan area"[4] On the other hand here's CNN: " the Portland, Oregon, metropolitan area"[5] Many of my best examples are dead links or behind paywalls. The more I look, the more I find no pattern at all; some Reliable Sources use the second comma, some don't. The search is complicated by the fact that the official name of the MSA often includes multiple cities rather than just the main city, but our Wikipedia article may be named only for the main city. Legal sources and mainstream newspapers are both Reliable Sources, so I considered that a wash on RS. --MelanieN (talk) 02:05, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

Ah, yes, that one. I see that it came from this edit way back in 2007, without discussion (followed by this). It's awesome how much damage this guy did before he was banned. Anyway, that's fine, since the current discussion is not about controversial titles, nor about changes for no reason, but simply about trying to make titles more grammatically correct and explicitly parsable. As I mentioned before, we don't usually ape the styling and punctuation of sources; and if we punctuate these right, that doesn't interfere with any efforts to change to alternative less awkward titles wherever there's good reason to do so. One way we do so is by omitting states sometimes, especially where multiple city names makes it very unambiguous. I'm not opposed to such things when they help, but basically have a state set off by commas is so common and formally correct that there's no real reason to be avoiding it except in otherwise too-long titles. Dicklyon (talk) 03:00, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

@Powers: That's not what it says at WP:Article titles. The nutshell summary says "Article titles should be recognizable to readers, unambiguous, and consistent with usage in reliable English-language sources." See anything in there about MOS overriding Reliable Sources? I don't. --MelanieN (talk) 02:08, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

I didn't say the MOS overrode reliable sources, I'm saying that we're not using reliable sources to title these articles. We do that sometimes, such as for the reasons at WP:NDESC. Note there where it says "In some cases a descriptive phrase is best as the title ... . These are often invented specifically for articles..." While the passage is speaking mainly of cases where sourced terms have POV issues, it's very common for us to invent a descriptive title in cases where no "official" title is available. That's the case here, as our metro-area articles do not always strictly follow the census bureau definitions. We can tell this is true by the fact that our metro-area titles are not the proper nouns that the census bureau uses. Powers ^T 21:36, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

• Comment: Note that the vast majority of metropolitan areas should not have any state name in their title. State names are needed only for ambiguous metro-area names (like Portland and Rochester, each of which is the name of at least two metro areas) and for metro areas whose principal cities have non-unique names and are smaller than the usual census threshold for a metropolitan principal city (like Morristown, Tennessee, and Brunswick, Georgia). --Orlady (talk) 03:49, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
• Aren't we here due to a discussion about standardizing the naming of metro and micro areas of the US? If that's the case, then the decision to include the state would not have received consensuses if those commenting on on that discussion where aware of the fallout. If I'm right, then the decision to include the state should be reconsidered. Vegaswikian (talk) 23:15, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

  No, we are not here to standardize the naming of metro and micro areas. It was previously established that we can omit the state when there's no ambiguity. We're here to talk about how to fix the agrammatical constuctions like "Rochester, New York metropolitan area" with the missing comma. Dicklyon (talk) 04:02, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Moved from Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (geographic names) § Rename "%5BCity%5D metropolitan area, %5BState%5D"

 – Frungi (talk) 02:11, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

• At first glance this seems very nice, but on further thought it has a major limitation - many metropolitan areas straddle two or more states, and as such this form becomes inaccurate. For example "Kansas City metropolitan area, Missouri" is wrong because that metro area is half in Missouri and half in Kansas. "Kansas City, Missouri(,) metropolitan area" is OK though because it then becomes clear that it's the metro area centred on the city of Kansas City, Missouri.  — Amakuru (talk) 21:32, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

  @Amakuru: Easy: "Kansas City metropolitan area, Kansas and Missouri". This is expressly provided for in WP:USPLACE, giving the example of Glenrio, New Mexico and Texas. —sroc 💬 23:42, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

  Even easier: Kansas City metropolitan area. Nothing’s wrong with this current name (unless there are multiple Kansas Citys of which I’m unaware), and it avoids this problem entirely. Do we have any titles that do span multiple states? How are they currently handled? —Frungi (talk) 02:15, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

  Ahem. Glenrio, New Mexico and Texas. —sroc 💬 04:08, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

  That, along with Ray, Freedom, and similar pages, are completely different. These are individual unincorporated communities that span state lines, not metro areas: they need the state names because they're part of the community name, not for disambiguation purposes. See Columbus, Georgia metropolitan area for a better comparison: it's the metro area centered around Columbus, Georgia, but it includes areas in Alabama too. "Columbus metropolitan area" isn't an option because there are several Columbuses with metro areas, "Columbus, Alabama and Georgia [comma or no comma] metropolitan area" and "Columbus metropolitan area, Alabama and Georgia" both obscure the fact that this is centered around Columbus, Georgia, and "Columbus metropolitan area, Georgia" makes it sound as if it's only in Georgia. Nyttend (talk) 13:54, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

  Frungi has it. Cities which are sizable enough to have a metropolitan area named for them are likely to meet WP:PTOPIC, so disambiguation will seldom be necessary. "Rochester metropolitan area" is adequate. When WP:PTOPIC isn't satisfied, the single comma looks more natural to me. The disambiguation could be enclosed in parentheses as is done for other kinds of Wikipedia articles: "London metropolitan area (Ontario)". —rybec 03:07, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

  It was previously established that this is one of those disambiguation is needed. See Rochester, Minnesota metropolitan area, which will obviously get whichever fix we come up with for this one. Dicklyon (talk) 03:58, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

What do sources say?

Many good grammar and style guides are not available online, so let us know if you find info in some you have.

Some online guides that recommend or mandate matching commas around states (I think it's fair to read "phrase" where they say "sentence"):

• Place a comma between a city and state and after the state.
• Use a comma to separate the city from the state and after the state in a document.
• If the sentence continues after the state name, place a comma after the state. I lived in Dallas, Texas, but I moved two years ago.
• Always use a comma to separate a city from a state; if the city and state appear in the middle of a sentence, use a comma after the state as well.
• Use a comma to separate a city from the state and after the state.
• Use a comma after the state name in a sentence whether you would normally pause there or not: Near Bel Air, Maryland, we passed a convoy of tanks on the highway.
• Use commas to separate city and state or city and country, items in dates, and every three numerals 1,000 and above: I used to work in Rockford, Illinois, until I was transferred to Paris, France. Note: A comma goes after the state or country if followed by other words.
• Does it surprise you to learn that a comma is required after the state name when a city and state are written together? If so, you are not alone; the following mistake is common: Incorrect: Atlanta, Georgia is a great city to start a new business.
• Also, when you include a city and a state in the middle of a sentence, use commas before and after the state name.
• When an address that includes commas does not fall at the end of a sentence, place a comma after the state or country.
• A comma separates a city and state. lf a sentence continues, also put a comma after the state.
• If the sentence continues after the state name, place acomma after the state. Jellibelle Tumtum lives in Bellyjelly, New York, but she is thinking of ...
• Note: Also use a comma after the state or country in a sentence.
• * after the state within a sentence
• If the two names come in the middle of a sentence, use another comma after the state or country.
• In a sentence, add another comma after the state.

Or generally in pairs around parenthetical items:

• Use commas in pairs to set off parenthetical elements in a sentence.
• Commas in pairs, dashes in pairs, and round hrackets (parentheses) are used to separate words or phrases that, for what they might he worth, are not part of the sentence per se hut rather are in opposition, are explanations, or are comments ...
• To set off parenthetic words, phrases, or clauses (commas in pairs have the force of weak parentheses): There is, my friend, no alternative.
• When the interruption to the sentence comes at the beginning or at the end, the grammatical rule of commas-in-pairs still applies, even if you can only see one of them.
• ... the sentences would be even worse punctuated, for there are many contexts that demand the use of commas in pairs, as a mild form of brackets, ...

And those that don't like commas around states, or allow the second to be omitted:

• Formal usage still dictates that you use a comma to separate the city from the state and use another after the state; however, it's becoming standard practice to eliminate the comma after the state.
• The practice of using as adjectives place names having two or more words is generally to be resisted. But it is becoming increasingly common. Although California home and Austin jury are perfectly acceptable, Sacramento, California home and Austin, Texas jury are not. To make matters worse, some writers place a second comma after the state. Thus, using a city plus the state as an adjective disrupts the flow of the sentence.

Dicklyon - thank you for that thorough search of style guides. I had done a similar search, with a slight variation: looking only for guidance where "City, State" was being used as an adjective, as it is in our metro area articles. As you can see, the only guidance that explicitly addresses that situation (your last excerpt) advises against it generally - but finds the two-comma construction even worse than the one-comma kind. ([6] This excerpt uses the construction, but without addressing it explicitly.) So while it may be more proper (albeit increasingly less common) to include the second comma when "City, State" is used as a noun, I think we're on solid ground if we decline to do so when it's used as an adjective. Dohn joe (talk) 04:23, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

Plus I would hate to move 100 articles, along with all of the many more edits that entails just to decide in a year or two that it was "standard practice to eliminate the comma", and take them all out again. Apteva (talk) 04:28, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

Well, it's true that it's hard to find anything that specifically addresses the use as adjective, but the principle would seem to apply equally well to either context (my search was hardly thorough, though). If you have guides that talk about that case, I'd like to see them. In the mean time, look at what people actually do when not copying from wikipedia articles (section below). Dicklyon (talk) 04:34, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

Ah, here's one: 11.7 City and state act as an adjective. When a city and state precede a noun and help to describe it, no hyphens are used. Also, make sure a comma (,) follows the name of the state..

That's a nice find. The Chicago Manual of Style seems to follow Oxford/Garner in recommending avoidance of commaed placename adjectives. I can only see the snippet online, but it says "A place-name containing a comma ... should generally not be used as an adjective because a second comma may be deemed obligatory," and the second comma "is awkward." So I'm not the only one who finds it awkward. But as long as we don't deem it obligatory, we can avoid that awkwardness. Dohn joe (talk) 06:58, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

Though sources do say that a comma should be placed after the state, and give sentence examples like "I arrived in Glens Falls, New York, at three o'clock," that's not always so — for instance, our article on Glens Falls is not titled Glens Falls, New York, (with a second comma). In this way, a comma is different from, say, a set of parentheses, where one would always have to supply a closing parenthesis when using them to note the state. That said, I entirely agree that the convention should be applied in normal writing; I'm just not entirely sure that it is (or should be) applicable in brief article titles. ╠╣uw [talk] 12:05, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

But the sources clearly cover that case, saying "when the sentence continues" and such. The "pair" concept is explicitly discussed as having such begin and end cases in this one that I quoted above. The fact that we don't put a spurious comma at the end of title like in Glens Falls, New York, in no way bears on the present discussion. Dicklyon (talk) 14:59, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

I understand; I was just noting that it's not contrary to the broader guideline for there to be exceptions in which the final comma does not appear. Your point that the guideline applies "when the sentence continues" is also reasonable to consider, since titles are not sentences. ╠╣uw [talk] 17:29, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

I think it would be beyond odd to use the comma in the lead sentence, and then omit it in the title just because it's not a sentence. As I noted already, I think it is fair to read "sentence" as "phrase" in all of these. I've seen no suggestion anywhere that those would ever be treated differently. Am I'm not sure what would motivate "exceptions" to the formally correct grammar in our context. Are metropolitan areas special in some way? Dicklyon (talk) 18:23, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

I agree that we should be consistent between the title and the body of the article. But I don't think that we would be creating an "exception" here. We'd simply be choosing between two perfectly acceptable - and correct - options, both of which are sanctioned by outside guides, and both of which are used in reliable sources. Dohn joe (talk) 18:41, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

Style and usage guides overwhelmingly advocate the second comma. I should hope that an encyclopedia, of all things, would use proper English and strive to be grammatically correct. I would be more than happy to see the state name done away with entirely wherever “City metropolitan area” would be unambiguous, and as I’ve suggested previously, “City metropolitan area (State)” could be done for disambiguation with nary a comma. —Frungi (talk) 22:38, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

I concur. —sroc 💬 02:22, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

Except that it would be a completely artificial construct, one that is virtually never used by Reliable Sources. --MelanieN (talk) 14:26, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

We don’t consult reliable sources for how to title articles for disambiguation. Do correct me if I’m wrong, but no reliable source uses the terms “Jumper (film)”, “Jumper (novel)”, “jumper (dress)”, “jumper (computing)”, etc. We have our own conventions for that, and I see no reason that they shouldn’t apply to ambiguous X-politan area names as well. —Frungi (talk) 22:40, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

Dicklyon: If I understand you correctly, you're saying you see no reason why a phrase or other isolated set of words would "ever be treated differently" from a sentence when it comes to rules of punctuation. This seems odd: we treat the two differently all the time. To take one obvious example, any well-formed sentence should end with a punctuation mark like a period, a question mark, or an exclamation point – that's a clear rule of punctuation, but we would never apply such a rule to titles, because they're titles and not sentences. Should the specific "enclosing comma" punctuation rule under consideration here apply to titles? Perhaps, perhaps not. I can see both sides, and I do appreciate the desire to apply all rules consistently (since it's one I normally share), but in this particular case I'm just not convinced it's necessary or adds any benefit for the reader. ╠╣uw [talk] 00:05, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

An article title clearly is not a sentence (they usually lack verbs, for example) and we make exceptions for some rules (style guides generally do not require sentence-terminating punctuation) but we don't just disregard all punctuation rules in the case of headings. No comma should come at the end of a heading that ends in a parenthetical remark, just as it wouldn't in a sentence. —sroc 💬 02:22, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

H, as you twisted my words "ever be treated differently" into a stupid context, you put stupid words into my mouth. Don't do that. We routinely punctuation sentence endings differently from phrase endings in captions, titles, headings, etc. Nobody would dispute that. So what's your point? Mine was that there's not a different rule for parenthetical state names in phrases from in sentences. If I'm wrong about that, show me something relevant. Dicklyon (talk) 02:44, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

Since you so politely ask what point I'm trying to make with my "stupid words", it's this: not all rules that apply in the context of a sentence should be made to apply in the context of a title, and I feel that the particular rule in question is one, for various reasons already given. That's all. ╠╣uw [talk] 08:59, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

Dohn Joe is laying a lot on two guides that don't quite agree with the rest. Let's look at them.

On the Oxford/Garner/American guide: Garner has a personal take on style that I usually like. I like his suggestion "The practice of using as adjectives place names having two or more words is generally to be resisted." However, I'm not sure why he states that using two commas is "even worse" than one for such things. It's OK that he has that opinion, but no other guides agree. No other Oxford guide, as far as I can tell, has anything but requirements that the commas be used in pairs for setting off a parenthetical state or such. For example, New Hart's Rules says "Ensure that a parenthetical phrase is enclosed in a pair of commas; do not use one unmatched comma: Poppy, the baker's wife, makes wonderful spinach and feta pies". The old Hart's Rules has nothing about parentheticals set off by commas; it has very little on commas.

And Chicago echos the sentiment, as Dohn Joe notes. They recommend avoiding the parenthetical interruption, because when it's used, "a second comma may be deemed obligatory". They seem to be admitting what almost all guides call for, even while admitting that they don't like the awkwardness of too many commas. Like Garner, an OK opinion, but not something that gets one away from the fact that in English grammar, the matching comma is "obligatory" in formal contexts. But I don't have this one handy; my 14th has nothing like that, but calls for commas "to set off the individual elements in addresses", and has examples with tons of commas consistent with the advice of all the other guides. The 14th does introduce a dropping of commas around years, but only when the day number precedes the month: "On 6 October 1924 Long arrived in Bologna." and "On October 6, 1924, Longo arrived in Bologna." Seems OK. But no evidence of any dropping of commas after states, and no opinion that they're awkward or to be avoided.

My impression is that the dropping of commas that we find in some sources is just an informality, not based on any reason to think it's better (as no such reason can be found in guides). It leaves the parse open to misinterpretation, especially by people not from the US that don't know that a metropolitan area is often designated by one city name, or one city name disambiguated with its state, as in "San Jose, California, metropolitan area". Dicklyon (talk) 05:01, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Dicklyon (talk) 05:01, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

@Dicklyon, please see my discussion with sroc and Powers, below, about English being a dynamic language. (I originally replied to you here, but these are discussions about the same point and should be in one place. --MelanieN (talk) 14:34, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

I understand all that, but for the benefit of our diverse readers, we usually strive to use best practices as detailed in guides. When the language changes enough that new ways of writing are being taught, then we should follow. Until then, we should follow what people all over the world are taught, to keep the text as standard, clear, and unambiguous as possible. Dicklyon (talk) 17:26, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

But it's debatable whether adding further commas to a small set of words like a title actually does make the title clearer to a reader – particularly when no data has been presented that the current and highly stable article titles have been causing any problem for the readership. Further, a number of editors – notably even including several who favor the rule – have voiced their opinion that the two-comma form is "awkward", which I think quite clearly begs the question of whether the change is really in the best interests of the average reader. ╠╣uw [talk] 10:22, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

This guide acknowledges and specifically disagrees with Garner, suggesting that he is alone on encouraging writers to omit the second comma after city, state, used as adjective. The author notes his own observation that "leading writers in leading newspapers put in the trailing comma even when the expression serves as an adjective." Dicklyon (talk) 04:20, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

Nice find, again. But why would it suggest that Garner is alone? Why doesn't it suggest that this one fellow disagrees with the other fellow? They both seem to think that leading stylists are on their side. Dohn joe (talk) 05:39, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

It bears mentioning, I think, that this writer also calls it apposition—another point of disagreement with Garner. —Frungi (talk) 04:33, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

True. And our own article Apposition defines it more broadly than some, in a way that would be appropriate here: "Apposition is a grammatical construction in which two elements, normally noun phrases, are placed side by side, with one element serving to define or modify the other." Dicklyon (talk) 04:45, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

What would California say?

Try more searches like this one on states not over-represented in the list below: [7]. Do you see many that omit the comma after the state? Any? Dicklyon (talk) 03:18, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

Or pick a city not listed below, like Albany, New York. Let us know what you find. Dicklyon (talk) 03:27, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

Good illustration of my off-the-cuff opinion that the comma usually IS added in formal or legal situations - which virtually all of these examples are of that type. But try a similar search at Google News instead of Google and you will get quite a different result. [8] [9] --MelanieN (talk) 15:46, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

In the Rochester RM, I had found several sources that omit the second comma: see [10] [11] as examples. I can look for more, but I think we can all agree that usage is mixed. Dohn joe (talk) 04:26, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

Indeed, and I'm not suggesting that it's not done. It's becoming more acceptable to depart from the formal standard as one of the guides points out. But they're not so common as to be compelling, and for some states, for some reason, they're really quite rare. Dicklyon (talk) 04:37, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

Awkward?

Chicago is quoted above saying, "A place-name containing a comma ... should generally not be used as an adjective because a second comma may be deemed obligatory," and the second comma "is awkward."

Oxford/Garner say, "The practice of using as adjectives place names having two or more words is generally to be resisted." for similar reasons; the flow of the sentence is interrupted by the comma-separated state, whether with one comma or two.

They don't recommend using one comma; they recommend avoiding the construct altogether. We can do that, too. But when we have the awkward construct with the intervening state, is there any reason to not punctuate it in the way it is punctuated in documents designed to help the unfamiliar reader understand the intended meaning, namely formal and legal and such documents? Are we not an encyclopedia for the masses, trying to help the unfamiliar read things correctly? Dicklyon (talk) 03:51, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

I don't understand what's awkward about it anyway. It's no worse than "The July 15, 2012, trial ended in a hung jury." Powers ^T 21:40, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

That's an identical construction, and I would be surprised to hear anyone say that one is awkward and the other is not. —Frungi (talk) 22:27, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

Yep, that one is awkward too. And a lot of Reliable Sources are leaving it out in that formulation as well. I just did a survey of recent (within the last month) Google News stories using a similar formulation. I found that while some publications (including the New York Times) still do use the second comma...

• "the aftermath of the July 7, 2005, bombings in London" [12]
• "In this Friday, June, 28, 2013, file photo," [13] (interesting, that one includes a punctuation error - the stray comma after June - so not a good source for a punctuation lesson)
• "Smith was on trial for the June 24, 2011, robbery of" [14]

many others do not.

• "free on bond as he awaits trial for the April 21, 2013 murder of his wife" [15]
• "The court’s July 17, 2013 settlement order states " [16]
• "Simpson was booked Wednesday July 24, 2013 for allegedly making threats" [17]
• "ordered up a March 17, 2014 date for a trial " [18]
• "potentially face the death penalty for the June 20, 2008 attack" [19]

In other words, as I keep saying, Reliable Sources are split.--MelanieN (talk) 22:48, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

And it always bugs me when they don’t include it, just as it bugs me when they misspell a word or do a comma splice. But anyway, do we have a WP-namespace page that says to consult reliable sources (and not major style guides) for questions of grammar? —Frungi (talk) 23:12, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

Me, too. I'm with you on this, Frungi. My reading of WP:AT is that we should consider reliable sources for what a topic is most commonly known as (e.g., Bill Clinton not William Jefferson Clinton or William Jefferson Blythe III) but we adopt our own style for how that title is presented in the article title (e.g., we have our own rules for when to use dashes and hyphens which apply equally in titles regardless of whether reliable sources follow the same style). —sroc 💬 23:32, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

MelanieN: Thanks for the sources; I spot-checked some as well and found similar inconsistency. Also agree on the awkwardness. ╠╣uw [talk] 10:05, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

I agree the construction is awkward because it is an exceptional case where a comma comes between the adjective and the noun it qualifies (the red balloon, not the red, balloon); but it is required because the adjectival phrase itself contains a parenthetical phrase which requires a comma (the September 11, 2001, attacks, not the September 11, 2001 attacks). The elegant solution is to avoid the awkward construction in such cases (the September 11 attacks or the attacks of September 11, 2001, … or the 11 September 2001 attacks or the 9/11 attacks). There are many ways to avoid the awkward construction; contradicting style guides is not a good one. —sroc 💬 23:42, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

Sroc: Other considerations go into the formation of the small set of isolated words used to form a title than go into regular body sentences – that in part is why we have separate guidelines for article titles. For instance: we widely use parenthetical disambiguators in titles; however, WP:COMMA seems to favor comma delimiters instead on the grounds that they "interrupt the sentence less". Does that mean it'd be reasonable to deprecate parenthetical disambiguation in titles in order to interrupt the title less? That would seem unlikely. Why? Because it's understood that guidelines for punctuation in sentences aren't always appropriate in titles – and titles are not sentences. Other considerations come into play.

That said, I certainly don't suggest that no rules of punctuation apply in titles – many do and should – but in this case there are good reasons articulated by various editors for why the current, long-standing, and stable titles are preferable and should persist... and seemingly little beyond what I would consider the over-broad application of a single grammatical rule arguing for why they should not. ╠╣uw [talk] 10:38, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

I must admit that I fail to see the logic in removing the comma just because it's not a full sentence. If you have the sentence NN worked in the World Trade Center, and was one of the victims of the September 11, 2001, attacks, and remove the "NN worked in the World Trade Center, and was one of the victims of" bit, why on earth go on and also remove a single comma a bit further down the string? HandsomeFella (talk) 11:02, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Disambiguation is not a good guide: disambiguation does not occur in normal prose, e.g., one would not say ...he played alongside Tom Jones (footballer born 1964) at..., but we have to make a special exception due to technical limitations that require disambiguation between unique articles titles. Titles do not have full stops because they are not sentences per se, and this is generally followed by style guides; that does not make a blanket exclusion to burn the style guide when it comes to titles. There is no particular justification to exclude titles from the application of MOS:COMMA, except you don't like it. —sroc 💬 11:14, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Please don't mischaracterize my position. I entirely agree we should not "burn the style guide," and have never suggested otherwise. (Perhaps you missed the part above when I said very specifically that I was not asserting that.) I'm simply noting that there are special considerations in article titles that don't necessarily apply in normal prose, and vice versa. It sounds like we both agree that Wikipedia accepts such differences, so the idea that everything in the non-title sections of the MOS must apply equally to titles as well as body sentences can, I think, be safely set aside.

Now, in this particular case the question is whether the enclosing-comma convention is one of those rules that must apply equally to titles as well as sentences. The relevant guidance in the MOS only gives sentences as examples, and provides as justification the notion that commas "interrupt the sentence" less than parentheses, so I think the question is an open one. I understand you favor applying the convention to titles in the interests of absolute grammatical consistency; I don't favor it on various other grounds as elaborated both by myself and others such as MelanieN, Dohn joe, etc., including the fact that insertion of further commas into an already very brief set of words produces what I consider an unnecessarily awkward result that hasn't been shown to serve the readers (and for which the alternative has not been shown to harm them). Put simply, there's a bar of justification that must be reached for us to legitimately change a large number of article titles that have been stable since their inception... and disputed grammatical pedantry by itself is not (in my opinion) sufficient to get us over that bar.

PS: Disambiguation occurs all the time in prose. An English teacher (the one I had in high school) taught me that. :) ╠╣uw [talk] 15:39, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Sorry that you felt I was mischaracterising your position. I didn't mean to suggest that you thought we should "burn the style guide". What I meant was that there may be exceptions but I have not seen a valid justification for this particular exception which seems, to me, to be arbitrary.

I think we understand each other now. Your view is that "the enclosing-comma convention" (as you call it) does not need to be applied to titles and should not be changed in this case. My view is that the convention always applies, should be applied consistently, and the fact that there are many mistakes that do not follow the convention is no reason to continue or endorse the mistakes rather than correct them.

I might add that I find a flaw in your argument: "The relevant guidance in the MOS only gives sentences as examples, and provides as justification the notion that commas 'interrupt the sentence' less than parentheses, so I think the question is an open one." What MOS:COMMA actually says is: "Pairs of commas are often used to delimit parenthetic material, forming a parenthetical remark. This interrupts the sentence less than a parenthetical remark in (round) brackets or dashes." (It is really an explanation of the rule, not a "justification".) This indicates nothing to suggest that commas can be used in this way other than in pairs, but rather that commas can be used for parenthetical remarks in place of matching parentheses, e.g.: Rochester (New York) metropolitan area is equivalent to Rochester, New York, metropolitan area; but it does not support Rochester, New York metropolitan area as the guide explicitly refers to "pairs of commas". —sroc 💬 23:29, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

I think we're getting quite a ways into the weeds here, but I'll try to stay with you for now:

First: Regarding the MOS's guidance on the parenthetical use of commas, you say there's "nothing to suggest that commas can be used in this way other than in pairs"... but I gave clear examples in the discussion above showing how commas are used in that way without having to be paired. If you're saying that a parenthetical comma must always close with a comma (just like a parenthesis must always close with a parenthesis), then I'm afraid that's simply not so. I learned that from an English teacher, the one I had in high school. (That sentence is an example.)

As for WP:COMMA (which we both quote): again, it repeatedly and explicitly puts its guidance in the context of sentences. Just from its five brief bullet points:

• "This interrupts the sentence less than..."
• "There are usually ways to simplify a sentence..."
• "Before a quotation embedded within a sentence..."

And, as already noted, every example is a sentence. To be clear, I don't mean to nitpick this or to say that we can't apply a rule just because it doesn't say "titles too"; however, I think it's incumbent upon those seeking to change many years' of stable article titles (which quite consistently do not apply this rule) to say why the rule must now apply to titles – despite the fact that titles are not sentences, and that they frequently follow their own conventions that differ from rules of normal sentence prose. As yet, I just don't see sufficient justification for that. ╠╣uw [talk] 09:55, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

Aside from usually having an initial capital (and occasionally a parenthetical disambiguation that isn't really part of the title), Wikipedia's article titles are always written as they would be in running prose. I'm pretty sure that I'm not wrong here, but I expect counterexamples. —Frungi (talk) 10:30, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

@Huw/Huwmanbeing, and your example "'I learned that from an English teacher, the one I had in high school."

You're forgetting the "a comma separates each element and follows the last element (except at the end of a sentence)" in WP:COMMA. You don't need a comma before the end of the sentence (that would look awkward, if anything). Why don't you need it? Because comma as a disambiguator works differently than other disambiguators, such as parentheses. The difference is that comma disambiguations implicitly end at the end of sentences (or when other punctuation appears). This is why the title is "Rochester, New York", not "Rochester, New York,". As soon as it is clear that it is not the end of a sentence or an expression, there should be a comma. That is undeniably what WP:COMMA says. HandsomeFella (talk) 11:35, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

Titles are not sentences. You've added "or an expression", but the rule refers to sentences. Omnedon (talk) 13:24, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

What Huw said was a sentence, so he was obviously wrong. It's pretty obvious that the same rule goes for the end of expressions, or else we would have "Rochester, New York,", with the comma at the end of the title, because – as you've said several times over now – it is not a sentence. HandsomeFella (talk) 13:37, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

Not sure what you mean here -- he clearly makes the distinction between titles and sentences. You are applying the WP:COMMA rule and quoted a portion of it which specifically addresses itself to sentences. Omnedon (talk) 13:41, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

Sure he does (as do we all), but when he denied that commas come in pairs, using that sentence, it seems he forgot the exception clearly stated in WP:COMMA.

HandsomeFella (talk) 13:56, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

HandsomeFella: When did I ever "deny that commas come in pairs"? Sometimes they do, of course. What I said was that they don't always have to come in pairs, whereas parentheses do. I also didn't forget about sentence endings, so I think you may be misreading parts of this thread. To clarify:

I entirely agree with you that there are cases where you don't need a closing comma (like at the end of a sentence), which is what I said to begin with; however, there is not a corresponding case where you don't need a closing parenthesis. That's all I said in the sentence that Sroc for some reason quoted, and which he seemed (confusingly) to be challenging.

I also agree that WP:COMMA presents that rule; I merely question the appropriateness of using it to change a large number of very stable article titles that have never used nor needed the two-comma construction before – particularly when so many editors (even including a number who otherwise favor the rule) are conceding that the two-comma construction is "awkward". In what way does making a title awkward serve the reader? It may serve to satisfy grammarians, but per WP:TITLE we should not form titles to satisfy specialists – and deliberately introducing an admittedly awkward construction into a large number of titles simply to meet a rule seems like something done more to satisfy specialists than readers. ╠╣uw [talk] 15:18, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

Ok, Huw, we seem to agree on the grammatics issue. I probably misread you somehow. Sloppy reading on my part, and not the first time, I'm afraid (not even on this page). Still, you're asking why we should include the comma in titles, and wonder in what way it serves the reader. I say it should be included because it's correct, and it serves the reader by being correct.

I put it to you that people who are not "interested" (for lack of a better word) in punctuation, or don't care much about it, will not complain on correct punctuation, just like people who are not "interested" in spelling, or care much about it, will not complain on a correctly spelled word. We don't misspell words here just because people commonly misspell it.

I instead ask you: in what way does incorrect punctuation serve the reader?

About the title stability argument: it is far more likely that we will have stable article titles if we spell and punctuate them correctly. Incorrect spelling and punctuation will provoke challenges to titles foever.

HandsomeFella (talk) 16:45, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

It seems my point has been conveniently ignored rather than refuted, so I’ll say it again: Wikipedia titles are written as they would be in running text. If I am mistaken, please provide counterexamples; if not, please stop claiming a substantial difference. I don’t recall any policy or guideline that advocates the use of informal language (or grammar); rather, Wikipedia should present itself professionally. —Frungi (talk) 17:33, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

In case clarification is needed: I totally agree with you. An interesting thing was pointed out in a discussion I started on WT:MOS#Clarification needed in WP:COMMA; a logical error by those who use the "a title is not a (full) sentence" argument, pointed out by User:Trovatore. HandsomeFella (talk) 18:46, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

HandsomeFella: Thanks for answering my question about why this is needed; your answer ("because it's correct") affirms what I'd assumed elsewhere in the discussion – that really this is simply about applying a grammatical rule. As for your question to me: I don't say that incorrect punctuation serves the reader. But what constitutes incorrect punctuation in a title? Is a title incorrectly punctuated if it does not follows every rule that a sentence follows? I don't believe that's so. Titles in Wikipedia exist for a different purpose than does the prose in the body of the article; they're of a different form and must satisfy different criteria and considerations. That being the case, I'm afraid I still don't consider (disputed) grammatical correctness a sufficient basis for changing extremely stable article titles to a form both sides concede is awkward.

As for stability, I agree that better titles tend to be more stable titles. In this case, these titles have already been remarkably stable, and applying the additional commas would in the great majority of cases change titles that have never been changed before, so on both counts I'd have to say that stability favors the status quo.

At this point I think we seem to understand each other (even if we don't agree with each other) and should probably just agree to disagree. ╠╣uw [talk] 09:44, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

@Huwmanbeing: To be clear:

• We agree that commas are not always paired. In particular, a final comma is not required at the end of a sentence, as specified at MOS:COMMA. A comma is also not required when followed by other punctuation such as a dash or closing parenthesis; and when followed by a remark in parenthesis, the comma is moved to after the parenthesis—these exceptions are not specified at MOS:COMMA, but they could be added if necessary. None of these exceptions apply to the case in point, however. In this case, the comma would be paired in a running sentence.
• We agree that some rules of grammar/style that apply to sentences do not apply to titles. In particular, titles do not end in full stops and do not require verbs as sentences do. The fact that there are these exceptions does not justify making exceptions to other rules of grammar/style at will. In my view, there is no justification to except matching commas in titles.
• Just because sections of the MOS give examples as sentences does not mean that it they do not apply to titles unless they expressly say so or it is a necessary implication from the context. There is no reason to conclude that here, since the use of commas in titles or sentence fragments is not materially different from use in sentences.
• Your view, as I understand it, is that title stability justifies making the exception for matching commas. I disagree. The justifications for making the change are, in no particular order: (a) to comply with the MOS, which reflects grammar/style set out in the pre-eminent style guides; (b) for consistency with use in prose; (c) for the sake of clarity (even where individual cases may not necessarily cause ambiguity either way, consistent use avoids confusion across the board). I do not see any real justification not to make the change save that it's a nuisance.

—sroc 💬 11:05, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

Regarding exceptions, it's good for titles to be discussed/considered by interested editors (as we're doing here), and to be formed based not just on an automatic application of certain rules but also on what the community determines to be most appropriate for certain classes of articles. This seems more likely to yield titles that better satisfy all the requirements of WP:TITLE, including the requirement that they meet the needs of users ahead of the needs of specialists (like grammarians). A title construction that's agreed to be "awkward" and "clunky", even by those favoring it, to me seems not to meet that requirement.

I also don't say that stability by itself justifies retaining the current titles; I do say it's questionable to argue for changing titles which in almost all cases have been extremely stable for years on the grounds of improved stability. In the case of metro area, most have been perfectly stable and unchanged since their creation, so my point is simply that changing them around now can't really be said to serve the purpose of improving stability. ╠╣uw [talk] 10:09, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

I don't think it's helpful to suggest that only a group of "specialists (like grammarians)" have an interest in using English correctly; all English speakers have an interest in it, even if it's only a certain breed that will go to the effort of defending it. This encyclopedia is written in English and should use it properly. The use of two commas is correct, even if it is "awkward", but that doesn't justify doing something that's incorrect just to avoid awkwardness; there are ways to be both correct and not awkward simultaneously.

As for stability, if we can reach consensus on an appropriate format that is at once accurate, grammatically/stylistically correct, and not awkward, then that will inherently promote stability—especially once it is established as a precedent (appropriate revisions to MOS guidelines may help, too). Sticking with the current format which is incorrect just because it's the status quo and it's been like that for ages is only likely to engender these wearisome debates. —sroc 💬 13:11, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

• Sure, "Rochester, New York(,) metropolitan area" is a title and not a sentence. So New York is not at the end of a sentence, therefore it requires the comma. WP:COMMA does not say that the comma rule applies only in sentences; it just says that the comma is omitted at the end of sentences. --Stfg (talk) 18:34, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

Articles and categories affected

Question: what is the point of this section? --MelanieN (talk) 18:02, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

I think it serves multiple purposes: it will be a useful guide to anyone who wants to help update titles after this discussion settles out; and it occupies Apteva's time. I think the intent, however, was to scare people about the scope of the work needed to actually bring titles into uniform alignment with what we agree is normal English punctuation. It will take literally hours to fix. Dicklyon (talk) 18:12, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

My expectation was that all of these were going to be moved, and I was simply making a list for that purpose. Of course, not putting in a second comma means that instead of moving 100 articles (after removing duplicates), only 3 need to be moved. All articles affected were listed, not just ones that were of one or the other format. Apteva (talk) 19:45, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Other examples of incorrect usage

Place names

• Graniteville, South Carolina train crash
• Meldrim, Georgia trestle disaster
• Newton, Massachusetts train collision
  • Compare with Newton (South Lanarkshire) rail accident
• Waverly, Tennessee tank car explosion
• Weyauwega, Wisconsin derailment
• 1996 Silver Spring, Maryland train collision
• 1999 Bourbonnais, Illinois train accident

Dates

• May 8th 1995 Louisiana flood (N.B.: Does not use this title in the lead)
• April 10–11, 2001 tornado outbreak
• April 6–8, 2006 tornado outbreak
• May 1–2, 2008 tornado outbreak
• April 4–5, 2011 derecho and tornado outbreak
• April 14–16, 2011 tornado outbreak
• April 25–28, 2011 tornado outbreak
• July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike

In spite of these examples (which set a precedent for others to follow in folly), I maintain that there cases are incorrect and should also be corrected to follow MOS:COMMA. —sroc 💬 11:39, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

But these seem to be entirely clear. For titling purposes, the second comma wouldn't really serve a purpose. Omnedon (talk) 13:13, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Except for being grammatically correct, you mean. Powers ^T 13:36, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

No, I don't mean that. These are titles, not sentences. See above. Omnedon (talk) 13:44, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Why shouldn't titles follow rules of grammar and style? We still put adjectives before nouns. We still capitalise proper nouns. We still use en dashes for date ranges (even in the above examples). We still have matching parentheses. Why should the use of commas consistent with our own style guide (MOS:COMMA) be excepted? —sroc 💬 13:50, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

This has all been gone through above. Not all rules of grammar for sentences apply to titles. Parentheses must match for reasons beyond grammar; commas are not the same. Omnedon (talk) 14:03, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

@sroc and @Powers, English is a dynamic language. Grammar rules change over time through usage, and that is what we see happening here. How many people do you know who still say "It is I" or "That was he"? Is it still illegal to split an infinitive, or end a sentence with a preposition? Those were iron-clad rules 100 years ago, but they are rarely observed now except as examples of pedantry. The dual-comma requirement, although it makes sense logically, is clearly destined for the same ash-heap of grammatical history - as demonstrated by many, many Reliable Source examples that have been cited here. --MelanieN (talk) 14:14, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Strawman argument ... even if some people incorrectly express themselves that way, that's no reason for Wikipedia to do it (unless in direct citation). If and when English evolves into that, Wikipedia would probably evolve with it, but as it currently isn't viewed as correct English, it will not find its way here. Btw, why do you keep capitalizing "Reliable Sources"? It's not a proper noun. HandsomeFella (talk) 14:23, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

I found myself having the same discussion above with Dicklyon (where he dismissed Dohn Joe's citations from grammar guides as "just an informality"). I decided to bring my comments here since both discussions are about the same thing, namely "grammatical correctness". What Dicklyon called "just an informality" is actually an English grammar rule in the process of changing. The textbooks are always slow to catch up to usage, and some die-hards will fight kicking and screaming against the changes, but eventually they have to give way to changing usage (and of course I mean usage by educated people, thought leaders, and Reliable Sources). When usage changes, grammar must follow. You say it "currently isn't viewed as correct English," but that is also changing. In Dohn Joe's examples you actually can see the grammarians beginning to acknowledge the change. The reason I capitalize Reliable Sources is that the term has a specific meaning here on Wikipedia, and I wish to indicate that I am referring to that specific meaning. I do the same thing with Notability, Verifiability, etc. Finally, please look up the definition of "straw man", because it does not apply here. I did not accuse them of arguing against split infinitives; I gave it as an example of a grammar rule that has changed.--MelanieN (talk) 14:48, 5 August 2013 (UTC) P.S. ...and why do you italicize "incorrectly"? Do you think that makes it truer? --MelanieN (talk) 14:56, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

You are confused. My "just an informality" referred to usage in sources. No guides recommend dropping the second comma; one says they're required in formal writing but are increasingly dropped in other usage, or something to that effect; I am agreeing. Everything I have said about the guides respects the opinions therein. Dicklyon (talk) 17:23, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Italicization is frequently used to signify emphasis in written text. Powers ^T 14:59, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Everybody knows that. I just wondered why he felt compelled to emphasize it. --MelanieN (talk) 15:01, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

I did it for emphasis of course, as it is in fact not correct English, not now, and not in the foreseeable future. I guess it could be common in daily parlance, but that probably depends on the company, and I doubt that it's more common than correct English. Having said that, Wikipedia does not lead, it follows. HandsomeFella (talk) 15:04, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

We are not talking about "common parlance" (which in fact is impossible; "parlance" means spoken language, which does not include commas). We are talking about written usage by educated people, thought leaders, and Reliable Sources. You and other here have made it abundantly clear that you regard this as a matter of "correctness", as if those grammar rules had come down from on high; does emphasizing it like this (aka shouting) make it even more true? --MelanieN (talk) 15:21, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

You misunderstood me. I was referring to the "It is I" and "That was he"? expressions you put forth as being more and more common (your claim), as support of the argument for removing a grammatically correct comma. I assume you agree that those expressions can be spoken language. HandsomeFella (talk) 15:28, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

OMG - you mean you actually meant to defend the old rules about "It is he" and split infinitives and prepositions at the end of sentences? I would not have insulted you by implying such; I assumed you would accept those as examples of "rules" that are no longer rules. If you still believe in those things as well as the commas, we are going to have trouble communicating. As Winston Churchill may or may not have said to a copy editor who altered one of his sentences in a manuscript, "This is the sort of arrant pedantry up with which I shall not put." --MelanieN (talk) 16:24, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

My mistake – "it was I" who misunderstood you, not the other way around. I totally misread what you had written. For some reason (a temporary bout of dyslexia?), I thought you had written something like "I is", "you is", expressions I've only heard coloured people utter (often in films or tv series). I'm sure you understand why I doubted that was coming into common use. HandsomeFella (talk) 17:13, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

By the way, if this discussion is about whether the encyclopedia should get ahead of the curve on this apparently changing rule, then it's WP:COMMA that would need to change. Here, all we should be talking about is whether WP:COMMA applies to article titles. Powers ^T 15:03, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

That's a good point. Since the discussion at WT:Article titles#Do article titles that include proper names need to follow standard grammatical rules? is currently unresolved, there is NO way we should impose any such change here. --MelanieN (talk) 15:29, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

That discussion concluded with a consensus to use the second comma in titles. It's unclear why Apteva opened this repeat, but it seems to also be showing that at least a majority respect the idea of using good grammar, in titles as well as in text. Dicklyon (talk) 17:17, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

You are mischaracterizing the position of those that disagree with you; please don't do that. I am all in favor of using good grammar, and I believe that's true of everyone here. I am not convinced this is a grammar issue. Omnedon (talk) 17:21, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

I admit to thinking of it as a gramma/style issue (that is, WP style is to use "best practices" grammar), and don't really understand what the alternative POV on it is. Perhaps you can explain. Dicklyon (talk) 20:18, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

You say "grammar/style". Which is it? As has been stated several times by several contributors here, titles are not sentences. Not all rules for sentences necessarily apply to non-sentences. Omnedon (talk) 13:25, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

True, but those rules tend to specifically address the nature and structure of a sentence. The rule in question has nothing to do with sentences specifically, so there's no reason it wouldn't apply. Powers ^T 14:31, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

Interpretation

This comment made me think:

Two commas means that Rochester is the metropolitan area; one comma would mean that New York is the metropolitan area.
— User:Stfg 18:47, 8 August 2013

Actually, I think that:

• Rochester, New York, metropolitan area doesn't mean that either Rochester or New York are a metropolitan area, but rather that Rochester, New York, is an adjective describing the metropolitan area—that is, the metropolitan area may be located in or centred around Rochester, which is in New York, but the metropolitan area is not synonymous with Rochester. (In this respect, I disagree with Stfg's comment above.)
• Rochester, New York metropolitan area refers to Rochester, which is in the New York metropolitan area. (In this respect, I agree with Stfg's comment above.)

—sroc 💬 12:57, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

Regarding the first bullet, you draw a distinction I had overlooked, and you're right. I should have said that two commas means that the New York Rochester gives its name to the metropolitan area. Quite similar to the fact that the phrase Sydney opera house doesn't mean that Sydney is an opera house :) --Stfg (talk) 14:53, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

I continue to be stymied by the claims of ambiguity caused by using one comma. I just don't see it, in any sort of practical way. Could someone from the two-comma camp please explain to me how the following sentence can have more than one plausible reading: "The Rochester, New York metropolitan area is known for its friendly inhabitants." How does having one versus two commas affect the meaning of that sentence? Dohn joe (talk) 18:13, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

This is the perfect example of the ambiguity. Because besides there being a Rochester metropolitan area, there is also a New York metropolitan area (for New York City). Without the second comma, we are referring to a Rochester that is within the New York metropolitan area. Not the Rochester metropolitan area that is within the state of New York. Contrast an article title like "Rochester, New York, metropolitan area" with something like "Jamaica Bay, New York metropolitan area". Since the second one refers to the Jamaica Bay neighborhood in Queens, it is within the New York metropolitan area, not its own metropolitan area in New York. If the state is going to be included, it is a parenthetical, and needs to be set off as such with two commas. Dworjan (talk) 20:54, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

But no - if you read it as "New York metropolitan area", that means you begin the sentence with "The Rochester", which makes no sense. Which means you cannot read it as "New York metropolitan area" if you want the sentence to mean anything. Right? Dohn joe (talk) 21:03, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Okay, maybe you're right that if you're an astute reader you could figure out that something like, "The Rochester, New York metropolitan area is awesome!" probably doesn't refer to a neighborhood in the NY metro area, based on the presence of the word "the." But really, we're talking about article titles here, not complete sentences. Nobody is proposing to call the article "The Rochester, New York metropolitan area". AgnosticAphid talk 21:13, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

But if the second comma isn't necessary in a sentence, why would we include it in the title? Dohn joe (talk) 21:27, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

In the context of that sentence, it is obvious what the meaning is, absent the second comma. The thing is though, in the article title, the reader does not have that same context to determine the meaning. That is why we need to be more grammatically strict with the article title than the inline grammar, because those commas are the only way to interpret the meaning. Dworjan (talk) 21:33, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

I'm glad you agree that that sentence has one obvious meaning with one comma. As for titling, again, while I understand the logical position, I don't see any practical ambiguity - i.e., how an actual reader would be confused. There is a longstanding, ingrained convention to use "Placename, State" with U.S. settlements (see any debate on WP:USPLACE for confirmation). There is essentially zero usage of the type "Placename, State metropolitan area" referring to a place within a metro area. A search for your earlier term, "Jamaica Bay, New York metropolitan area" has no results, for example. So again, there is no practical ambiguity to worry about, even in the title. Anyone reading the title will read it as "(City, State) (metropolitan area)" - and if they are confused, the article itself will soon enough explain the scope of the article. Does that make sense? Dohn joe (talk) 21:52, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

The meaning of the sentence is clear only because of the context of the sentence, not because the second comma is or isn't there. I've already highlighed how a reader could be confused; there is a New York metropolitan area. One which is far more well known than the Rochester metropolitan area. My earlier term wasn't to state that it was also used that way, but to point out that it is a valid way to describe a place, because of the absence of the second comma. And we also have a convention on wikipedia to use "placename, New York city borough". I go back to my earlier point. Regardless of whether the second comma is always necessary, it should be there for clarity. You may be right that most readers won't be confused by the title with one comma, but the fact is that no readers would be confused by the title with two commas. No reader should have to start reading the article to figure out the scope of it, when a simple second comma in the title could solve that problem.

Grammatically, the second comma should be there. So arguments that state it is pretty much just as easy to understand without the second comma don't make sense. If we agree that either way is equally easy to understand (which I don't agree to, but bear with me), then the grammatically correct way should be the way to title the articles. In short, I see no advantage to the titles only having one comma. The only argument I see is that the titles are 'just as good' with one comma. If someone would like to present an opinion that the titles are better without the second comma then they should, because the grammatically correct form should be the default, unless the second comma should be dropped to make it more readable. Dworjan (talk) 22:12, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Your last sentence is, in fact, the argument of most of the one-comma supporters, if you check out the survey and the discussion just below it. The second comma is awkward and disrupts the flow of the phrase/sentence, and otherwise is "just as good" as two commas for understanding and conveying of meaning. So one comma is more readable. Dohn joe (talk) 22:50, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

The second comma is supposed to 'disrupt the flow'. If we're going to have "CityX metropolitan area" that need to have the state name inserted as parenthetical it needs to be set off with commas (or parenthesis, if we really want to go whole hog) in order to be clear. Proper grammar calls for the second comma; being explicitly clear on meaning calls for the second comma; it's both grammatically and technically correct. That the second comma gives some editors the willies because it is "awkward" is poor reason to abandon the rules of grammar and have improperly written titles that have different meaning than what it should. Dworjan (talk) 23:09, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

See my response to Stfg below. Dohn joe (talk) 23:17, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Dohn Joe: I think you express things well. So far I've seen nothing to suggest that normal readers actually have any problem at all interpreting titles with the current single-comma form. To misread them would seem to require a greater degree of grammatical hair-splitting (or obtuse misreading) than I think a normal reader would bring to the consideration of a title. ╠╣uw [talk] 19:45, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

@Dohn joe, much of the discussion has been about the title "Rochester, New York metropolitan area" rather than about how to refer to it in a sentence of running text. The sentence "The Rochester, New York metropolitan area is known for its friendly inhabitants" isn't so much ambiguous as ungrammatical. In that sentence, because it's referring to the Rochester metropolitan area, correct grammar requires a comma after New York. On the other hand, the sentence "Jamaica Bay, New York metropolitan area is known for its friendly inhabitants", also requires a further comma, but because it's referring to the New York metropolitan area, the comma needs to be placed like this: "Jamaica Bay, New York metropolitan area, is known for its friendly inhabitants".

Perhaps the best way to figure this is to replace the commas with parentheses, thus: Rochester (New York) metropolitan area versus Jamaica Bay (New York metropolitan area). Then you can replace both parenteses with commas, except that you omit the second comma if (a) it is followed immediately by other punctuation, or (b) if it's at the very end of something like a title, caption, list entry or table entry. --Stfg (talk) 22:46, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Stfg - I appreciate the thoughtful explanation. Like I indicated above, though, I do understand the logical underpinnings of the two-comma argument. "New York" is in apposition to "Rochester", and apposition (at least nonrestrictive apposition) requires paired commas. Generally speaking, I agree with that rule. What I'm saying, though, is that in this situation, where you have a placename that includes a comma by convention and is used as a modifier, the second comma is superfluous, which makes following that rule unnecessary. Because no one uses the "Jamaica Bay, New York metropolitan area"-type construction, there is only theoretical ambiguity to contend with. But resolving that theoretical ambiguity creates actual issues of readability and distraction. Because there are actual benefits to using one comma, using two simply because "that's the rule" is pedantic and ultimately unhelpful to our readers. I hope that makes sense. Dohn joe (talk) 23:15, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I see, thanks. But I don't agree that there are significant benefits there, except not having to bother to correct the error, and that's just lazy. OTOH, I think that having ungrammatical titles etc looks crass and amateurish. Sorry to be so blunt, but I do. --Stfg (talk) 23:30, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

I fail to see how properly applying the rules of English grammar (especially since there are so few actual rules in English) is being pedantic, and I've absolutely no idea how it is unhelpful to our readers. You agree that the correct way is to write the title with two commas, but then contend that that creates issues of readability? I've no idea how properly applying the rules of grammar is a bad thing. I don't think anyone of functional intelligence is getting distracted by a comma in a phrase or is unable to read that phrase because of the second comma. And it is only a theoretical example because I didn't take the time to find an actual example. But it highlights that it is an ambiguity.

I am completely confused as to how this is possibly a debate. Someone noticed a grammatically incorrect structure to article titles and pointed it out. It has been further explained that that grammatically incorrect structure leads to an improper reading of the phrase without some background knowledge. That should be all it takes to get this fixed.Dworjan (talk) 01:42, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Should it be "Diana, Princess of Wales Hospital" or "Diana, Princess of Wales, Hospital"?  — Amakuru (talk) 20:28, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

Interesting example. I can't figure how to apply WP:COMMONNAME, because Google seems to ignore punctuation in search terms. The name on the Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Trust web site is "Diana, Princess of Wales Hospital", so would use that. It isn't a geographical reference, though, so I assume WP:COMMA doesn't apply to it. --Stfg (talk) 22:41, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

Amakuru: That's an interesting parallel to the metro areas question. Is the article about a hospital named for Diana, Princess of Wales? Or is it about Diana who is the princess of a medical facility called Wales Hospital? Or perhaps Diana whom we disambiguate by specifying her association to the Princess of Wales Hospital?

There are various possible misreadings, but they seem very unlikely; to me, the intended meaning is clear without the second enclosing comma. ╠╣uw [talk] 09:59, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

@Stfg the two cases seem to be quite closely related to me. Both concern a proper noun "Rochester, New York" and "Diana, Princess of Wales" which has been formed using two other proper nouns and inserting a comma between the two. The metropolitan area and the hospital are both other nouns to which those aforementioned proper nouns apply. On the hospital issue, most sources seem to use the one comma form, but of course this is a British hospital so it's not entirely impossible that there's an ENGVAR issue here as well.  — Amakuru (talk) 15:03, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Dworjan: Actually it's only been claimed that the current title "leads to an improper reading of the phrase". I see no actual evidence that that's the case – that readers are actually having any difficulty reading the current title. Certainly if one wishes to speculate on ways that a reader might obtusely misread something, one can, and under such circumstances practically anything (including both the one- and two-comma forms) is potentially suspect, but I'm not sure that strained grammatical interpretations/misinterpretations reflect the reality of how readers are actually using these pages... and it's for readers that we choose titles.

One of my concerns is that a sizable number of commentators (notably even including some who support the rule) concede that the additional comma makes things "awkward", "clunky", etc., so I think we have to ask whether the benefit to be gained from applying the rule outweighs making the title awkward and clunky. For myself, I'm not convinced that it does, particularly given the absence of evidence that the current title is in practice at all problematic, the long stability of the current title form, etc. (And as I've elaborated before, I also have my doubts about whether the absence of the second comma in the title is even necessarily incorrect, given that we don't apply to titles all the same rules of grammar and punctuation as we do to prose sentences... and that good titles must meet other considerations beyond what may be correct punctuation elsewhere.) ╠╣uw [talk] 20:42, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

Additionally, it has only been claimed that the grammatically correct comma would lead to improper reading of the phrase. HandsomeFella (talk) 20:49, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

It's a comma, a comma that is supposed to be there. I don't see how that's "awkward" or "clunky". Multiple examples have been posted showing that without the second comma the title can be misread (Amakuru has just added another one above). Besides being necessary to properly label places it is also grammatically correct despite it not being a sentence. The rule states that parentheticals (which we all agree the state name would be), should be set off by commas before and after. The rule that people are misinterpreting is the one that says the second comma may be omitted at the end of a sentence or phrase. It is being read to somehow mean that if it isn't a sentence, the comma isn't needed. When what it is saying is that the second comma should be there, except in cases when nothing follows that second comma. We do have different rules of grammar and punctuation for titles and sentences, but those rules state to which they apply. So 'capitalization in titles', 'punctuation at the end of sentences' don't apply in all cases. But 'commas around parenthetical phrases' applies whether it is a sentence or not.

I don't see how "Rochester, New York, metropolitan area" is so horribly awkward and clunky as to make it unreadable as compared to "Rochester, New York metropolitan area". Especially since the second one is wrong. Not just "grammatically", but also in content. The second article title refers to a Rochester in the New York metropolitan area, not a Rochester metropolitan area in New York. Regardless of what grammar rules we apply, whether some construct is awkward or not, the plain fact is that the second construct refers to something different than the first. And that is why the comma is necessary. Dworjan (talk) 21:05, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

As one of those guilty of calling the two-comma form "clunky", may I just say that I find the one-comma form even more "clunky", on my own private and admittedly subjective scale of clunkiness. I used it only to explain why I like the option to rephrase. --Stfg (talk) 22:45, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

In simple terms, this should be the order of preference:

1. Rochester metropolitan area, New York—grammatically/stylistically correct, un-clunky and unambiguous (the Rochester metropolitan area in New York);
2. Rochester, New York, metropolitan area—grammatically/stylistically correct and unambiguous, but clunky;
3. Rochester, New York metropolitan area—grammatically/stylistically incorrect and ambiguous (Rochester in the New York metropolitan area?).

—sroc 💬 00:45, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

An alternative could possibly be Rochester (New York) metropolitan area, but I think both that and your number 1 fails WP:COMMONNAME. People do say "Rochester, New York, metropolitan area", unless of course the context is clear (e.g. when being in the vicinity), in which case people say "Rochester metropolitan area". And your number 3 would actually have 999 on my list.

I think it's time to close this discussion. The outcome is clear. HandsomeFella (talk) 09:17, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

I didn't have 996 other options ;-p —sroc 💬 10:53, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Dworjan: You don't think it's awkward, and that's fine. I simply note that many others (including even a number who seemingly favor the rule) do say that it's awkward. As for your assertion of that it's a "plain fact" that the two constructions will be read differently, that again is an opinion that you're welcome to, but (as far as I can see) there's no evidence for that. ╠╣uw [talk] 09:47, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

We can debate whether or not the second comma is "awkward" but that is simply an editorial opinion. Editors have also pointed out that they feel the first comma is awkward as well. Whether we think something is awkward isn't the basis for titling articles. Now, if it was artificial, then yes, that would be a good reason not to use a particular form. Which is why I would not support "Rochester (New York) metropolitan area" because that is an artificial construct. It has been pointed out several times how someone who understands English grammar, and the standard format of placenames (when X Location is a part of Y Area then it should be written "X Location, Y Area", not only could misinterpret "Rochester, New York metropolitan area" as Rochester of the New York metropolitan area, but in fact should interpret it that way, and given that there is in fact a New York metropolitan area which is also much more well known than the Rochester, New York, metropolitan area, that interpretation is entirely possible. Which is why the first format "Rochester metropolitan area, New York" isn't good either. Because we have metropolitan areas that span state lines, an article titled with that first format would be referring to that portion of the Rochester metropolitan area within New York. Dworjan (talk) 22:08, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

I agree with all except your last point: in the case where a metropolitan area crosses state borders, we name them both (e.g., Rochester metropolitan area, New York and New Jersey) just as we do for unincorporated communities (e.g., Glenrio, New Mexico and Texas) in accordance with WP:USPLACE. —sroc 💬 23:19, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

What about “Rochester metropolitan area (New York)”, as we do for any other disambiguation? This is of course assuming that the area may be called “Rochester metropolitan area” in context. I don’t think there have been any objections yet to this form, except for one who didn’t seem to understand how Wikipedia does DAB. —Frungi (talk) 23:45, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Correction: One argument I’ve seen that could apply against this is the fact that we follow Wikipedia practice here rather than dictate it. So then I guess the question is, would anyone object to making it the practice? It suffers from no grammatical errors. —Frungi (talk) 01:01, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

So, if I've understood the discussion correctly (which is far from certain), the discussion is now about these remaining alternatives (in no particular order):

1. Rochester, New York, metropolitan area
2. Rochester (New York) metropolitan area
3. Rochester metropolitan area, New York
4. Rochester metropolitan area (New York)

Right? Then, how do we proceed? HandsomeFella (talk) 18:12, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

I like 4 best, but by my reading, there seems to be the most consensus for 1 and 3. I guess the next steps are to determine which one of those we should use, and then go about moving the articles. —Frungi (talk) 18:48, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

If the title uses a form similar to #1, then the second comma is necessary. Among reformulations to avoid that construction, my preference would be for #4. #3 is a bastardization of the comma convention in that no one commonly uses that form, whereas the justification for the comma convention is that people do commonly refer to "Rochester, New York" and as such it is a sort of alternate title that incorporates natural disambiguation. As an aside, I find many of the other extensions of the comma convention, as with neighborhoods, to also be uncommon aberrations. Similarly, #2 seems an extremely odd use of parenthetical disambiguation that would effectively render the pipe trick unusable for such titles. older ≠ wiser 19:04, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

I like #1 best. I have started a poll below. If the participation is good, it could prove more effective than discussions/essays. — Preceding unsigned comment added by HandsomeFella (talk • contribs) 08:22, 16 August 2013

The point abouit the pipe trick is interesting. Here are the details:

• [[Rochester, New York, metropolitan area|]] generates Rochester
• [[Rochester (New York) metropolitan area|]] generates Rochester (New York) metropolitan area
• [[Rochester metropolitan area, New York|]] generates Rochester metropolitan area
• [[Rochester metropolitan area (New York)|]] generates Rochester metropolitan area

--Stfg (talk) 09:20, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

There seems to be a mistake in the poll: it doesn't include the option of Rochester, New York metropolitan area.  — Amakuru (talk) 14:40, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

I second this comment. Just because the "no second comma" people haven't been engaged in this latest round of the interminable discussion, or haven't been continuing to comment on a daily basis, that doesn't mean they have conceded the point. It may just mean they got tired of the squabbling and moved on to other things. Please include that option in your table. --MelanieN (talk) 15:18, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

P.S. I just saw this comment: I guess the next steps are to determine which one of those we should use, and then go about moving the articles. Forgive me, Frungi, but I object to the notion that you can just "go about moving" hundreds of article titles based on the consensus of maybe half-a-dozen people toward the end of an exhaustive/exhausting discussion. What about the fact that currently none of the existing articles use any of these four formats - so that EVERY disambiguated metropolitan area article would have to be changed? Is current usage to be given no weight at all in this discussion? Whatever happened to "policy is supposed to be descriptive, rather than prescriptive"? Please see the discussion on this point below. --MelanieN (talk) 15:31, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

I've got to agree with MelanieN about that. The poll below overlaps the proper RFC survey without subsuming it, and it can only generate confusion. I've removed my entry from that table, and I strongly suggest that the whole table be removed. --Stfg (talk) 16:18, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

I don’t think that was her point, but I have to agree, Stfg. But what do you suggest? Support for the two options in the original survey is about even. —Frungi (talk) 16:52, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

It's no mistake. There seems to be a stable majority against the one-comma option, and few new editors have arrived lately, and so it is not likely to change. That poll has already taken place, so to speak, and the one-comma option lost 7–14.

The latest discussions have only been re-hashing old arguments. After a couple of days with no new input to the section, we need to go on and implement. A discussion on alternate formats then arose, and I started the poll between these. HandsomeFella (talk) 16:22, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Current usage is grammatically incorrect, and there appears to be consensus for fixing that. There have been move requests in the past, including during this discussion, and the closing comments at Talk:Rochester, New York metropolitan area#Requested move 2 elected to wait until this discussion was resolved. Guidelines describe best practices, and that is exactly what we are trying to determine here. —Frungi (talk) 16:52, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

I don't think you can categorically state that the current usage is "grammatically incorrect". That's part of the nub of the argument, I would have thought. And your assertion that "there appears to be consensus for fixing that" is based not on arguments, or an attempt to genuinely find consensus, but on a straw poll which, as Melanie says, was hardly conclusive.  — Amakuru (talk) 17:25, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

If it would assist clarity, I'm fine with adding the status quo as a fifth option. My concern is with how the disambiguator in #3 and #4 is to be determined. As metropolitan areas sometimes cross state lines, would we have to list multiple states within the parentheses or after the comma? (It's not an issue with #1 and #2, because then the disambiguator applies to the city, which (with a very few exceptions) is only in one state. Powers ^T 17:45, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Is the disambiguator necessary when the base name is unambiguous? We require the state name for cities and towns, but do we also for areas named for cities? —Frungi (talk) 17:52, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

These are not named after a city but rather use the name of the largest city, or multiple cities, included in the area. Not quite the same. So using Vegas as an example it is either Las Vegas–Paradise, NV MSA which was changed this year to Las Vegas-Henderson-Paradise, NV Metropolitan Statistical Area. These are commonly shortened to use one city in the name. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:14, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Sorry for the confusion; I meant descriptive titles rather than proper nouns. Our “metropolitan areas” don’t always match up with statistical areas. So I’ll rephrase: Is the disambiguator necessary in unambiguous descriptive titles? —Frungi (talk) 18:30, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

I don't know if it's "necessary" but the prevailing style across the Wiki appears to be not to disambiguate with a state name where it's unambiguous. Thus Albuquerque metropolitan area but Albuquerque, New Mexico.  — Amakuru (talk) 19:27, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

For the record, I think option 3 (Rochester metropolitan area, New York) is the preferable option, as it provides natural disambiguation (using the accepted "[small area name], [larger area name]" convention) while avoiding the two-comma adjectival construction. —sroc 💬 13:10, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

Poll

Give points on a scale of 1 to 4. Most preferred = most points.

Editor	Rochester, New York, metropolitan area	Rochester (New York) metropolitan area	Rochester metropolitan area, New York	Rochester metropolitan area (New York)
HandsomeFella	4 p	1 p	3 p	2 p
sroc	3 p	1 p	4 p	1 p
Stfg	2 p	1 p	4 p	3 p
Dicklyon	4 p	2 p	1 p	2 p
Total	13 p	5 p	12 p	8 p

• I'd like to write in Rochester, New York metropolitan area, though I agree that another form of voting is unlikely to make things any more decisive in the survey above. --BDD (talk) 22:27, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
• Ditto BDD. This poll should have included both the one-comma version, as several people have mentioned above, as well as "Metropolitan area of City, State", which is the only other naturally occurring option. Dohn joe (talk) 05:17, 29 August 2013 (UTC)
• Ditto BDD and Dohn Joe. That makes three !votes for this format, which if included in the table above would have come to 12 points or a virtual tie with the other two leading alternatives. This issue is nowhere near as settled as some here claim; the apparent "consensus" mainly reflects the fact that most of us have lost interest in the interminable debate and have moved on to other things. --MelanieN (talk) 14:32, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Comment: given the fact that 10 of the 14 "two-comma editors" remain to vote here, I guess that would also affect the sums. HandsomeFella (talk) 14:49, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

The poll may be moot now, but as I said further up, the "poll" on including the one-comma version has already taken place, so to speak, and it lost 7–14. This poll is/was on the remaining alternatives, as they were then (I'm not sure whether that has changed). HandsomeFella (talk) 08:10, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

• Perhaps this "poll" was a bad idea, as appears to have confused the issue. I thought it was intended to clarify what would be the preferred form if the New York were to be viewed as parenthetical, IOW to ask what form the Rename "[City] metropolitan area, [State]" section should have offered, and not as an excuse to dissipate the 2-comma vote. --Stfg (talk) 17:01, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Using one comma is not grammatically incorrect

Folks, there's a major misconception here that using one comma is "grammatically incorrect". This misconception underlies 90% of the opposition to using one comma. The problem is, it's just not true. Using one comma is perfectly acceptable from a grammatical standpoint. There are dueling theories at work here. One, the dominant one, is that "State" acts as an appositive, and therefore requires paired commas to set it off.

The problem with that theory is that it's not an appositive, really. An appositive "points out the same person or thing by a different name," according to Garner's Modern American Usage. In other words, it requires a degree of identity between the two: "My brother, the dentist;" "George, the king of England;" "Route 12, the quickest way to get there." There is no identity, however, between "City" and "State." "Rochester" is not "New York" or vice-versa. The only way to get a degree of identity is to add a couple of words: "Rochester, (the one in) New York." Now, this or a similar construction may be how the comma convention originated (I'd love it if someone could find the history of the comma convention). But as I said above, this at best is a vestigial appositive reading.

The far better interpretation is that "City, State," at least in the U.S., is itself a single, unified name of a thing - that happens to have a comma included by convention. As such, "State" does not need a second comma to set it off, because "State" is an integral part of the name itself. Anyone who's hung around WP:USPLACE for five minutes knows this is one of the main arguments for defaulting to the comma convention in the first place. As a placename, it does not require an extra comma when it is used as a modifier, any more than "City" by itself needs one.

Bottom line? Stylistically and grammatically, one comma is a better option than two. Dohn joe (talk) 18:11, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Very well said indeed. Omnedon (talk) 18:16, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

You have a point that “appositive” is the wrong word to use here. But that’s not relevant. The fact of the matter is that every style guide says to use two commas in a “City, State” construction. Some say that omitting the second one is accepted in informal writing, but since informal writing doesn’t seem suited to an encyclopedia, and since we base much of our style guidance off of established style guides, I thought this matter had been settled. —Frungi (talk) 18:22, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Dohn joe, this sounds like a novel theory. However, published style guides almost universally recommend paired commas. older ≠ wiser 18:24, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Possibly when "City, State" is being used as a noun. However, we have only one guide that recommends doing so when "City, State" is being used as a modifier, and two giants of style (Garner and Chicago) that are squeamish about the second comma - and do not definitively recommend its usage. (Garner even says that some people will put in a second comma based merely on the theory that it is an appositive.) Dohn joe (talk) 18:31, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

IIRC, both recommend avoiding the use of two-part place names as adjectives -- NOT that using one comma is OK. older ≠ wiser 18:46, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Neither one takes a position either way on one versus two commas. One reason they say to avoid the construction is because people will think they have to use two, not that the second comma is actually required. Dohn joe (talk) 18:51, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Both recommend to avoid the use of two-part place names as an adjective. They do not appear to take any authoritative position regarding grammar. I see no reason to ignore the nearly universal advice of style guides to avoid the use. older ≠ wiser 19:27, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

But the point is that there is almost no guidance on the placename-as-modifier issue, and when two of the most well-respected guides do refer to it, they are silent. Dohn joe (talk) 20:40, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

On the contrary. There is abundant guidance, nearly universal, recommending to avoid using two-part place names as adjectives. And the vast majority are clear that when two-part place name are used as adjectives, they should use paired commas. older ≠ wiser 21:00, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

I don't know if it's "abundant", but I generally agree with the first part. But I've only seen one guide that addresses the adjective issue. Can you show other guides that do so? Dohn joe (talk) 21:21, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

(ec)Do any style guides have specific guidance for MSAs? I'm not sure it that was listed above, this discussion is getting rather lengthy and some points are easy to miss. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:32, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

The only relevant guidance I've seen is to omit the second comma when the state is given in its postal abbreviation (thus, no second comma after "Las Vegas, NV".) But nothing specifically in the context of MSAs that I recall. Dohn joe (talk) 18:53, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

If I remember correctly, it was originally you, Dohn joe, who said it was an appositive in the move discussion on Talk:Rochester, New York metropolitan area#Requested move 2. HandsomeFella (talk) 19:56, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

No, 'twasn't me - I got it from Frungi here. And several other editors, yourself included, have relied on that rule in calling the one-comma-version "incorrect grammatically". Garner refers to it as well in real life. Dohn joe (talk) 20:40, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

I don’t know if I was the first to use the word, but I was definitely one of the loudest. It was the best word I knew to describe the function. I accept that it was the wrong word (anyone know the right one?), but the function is similar enough that I think my points regarding it still stand. —Frungi (talk) 23:07, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

You're certainly not the only one to use it. Like I said, Garner himself says that many people feel obligated to use the second comma on the theory that the state is appositive. Dohn joe (talk) 23:19, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Ok...so it isn't an appositive. Many of the style guides make specific recommendations on how to use commas when given a "City, State" construction. So why are we debating whether it is an appositive, a parenthetical, or a single multi-word entity? The style guides provide direction on what to do in this exact circumstance, so we should just be using those guidelines. Dworjan (talk) 22:29, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Again - I have only seen one guide that recommends the second comma when "City, State" is a modifier. Garner and Chicago punt on prescribing, but don't prohibit using one comma. If it is a single multi-word entity, that means it's not grammatically incorrect to use one comma, and thus it comes down to a question of style. Since most people here agree that the one-comma option is less awkward, we should be able to choose it. The MOS does not always pick just the most popular option when there are several possibilities. We should have that latitude here as well. Dohn joe (talk) 22:52, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Again - I have only seen one guide that recommends the second comma when "City, State" is a modifier. Do the others recommend using the second comma unless the pair is used as a modifier? Because I thought it was recommended without qualification. Anyway, if the best practice is to avoid such usage, we can do so easily: [[City metropolitan area, State]]. [[City metropolitan area (State)]]. [[Metropolitan area of City, State]]. Or is there some reason we should use [[City, State[,] metropolitan area]] rather than consider alternatives? —Frungi (talk) 23:18, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

I never did think that "appositive" was the right concept here, but it's set off the same way. Some guides (e.g. this web page) treat appositives and states in distinct but similar rules. Dicklyon (talk) 23:52, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

To me the clincher, the conclusive evidence that the second comma is no longer required, is "Diana, Princess of Wales Hospital". If even the Brits are willing to accept this format - even about something named for their late beloved princess - then the second comma rule is dead. It is no longer a rule. It is as dead as "never end a sentence with a preposition" and "never split an infinitive", and we would be fools to rename hundreds of articles based on this former-but-no-longer requirement. --MelanieN (talk) 18:26, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

That may not be a very good comparison as it is both the formal and common name of a tangible entity. Many of these metropolitan areas are statistical abstractions. For those that are solely about the U.S. Census data, the article names probably should use the census names. For others that include a mix of census data and other information, the article should probably use a name based on common usage. older ≠ wiser 19:46, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

I realize it is not directly comparable. I was using it as an argument to support the thesis of this section, namely, using one comma is not grammatically incorrect. To me the example of "Diana, Princess of Wales Hospital" shows that omitting the second comma is OK grammatically - and destroys all the arguments here based on "grammatical correctness". --MelanieN (talk) 20:00, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

It destroys no arguments at all. One reason is that the meaning does not change by the missing comma in the "Princess of Wales Hospital" part. If you look at that separately, it has the intended meaning, because Diana was the Princess of Wales. In the case of the metropolitan areas, the "New York metropolitan area" is something entirely different than the "Rochester metropolitan area". HandsomeFella (talk) 22:07, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

Exactly. --Stfg (talk) 22:14, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

One counterexample does not a rule break, especially in cases of possible ambiguity (cf. HandsomeFella). If what you say is true, then sources will all stop using a second comma and style guides will stop recommending it, and then—after the rule change proliferates, not before—we should change our style guidance to match. (This has not yet happened, and I sincerely doubt it will any time soon, but we’ll see.) It’s a similar situation to changing place names; we don’t (or shouldn’t) move an article the moment a new name is announced, but wait to see if it’s picked up by reliable sources. —Frungi (talk) 01:39, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

On a side note, “never end a sentence with a preposition” and “never split infinitives” were never rules to begin with. —Frungi (talk) 01:46, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

Concur. The "one comma" version is a grammatical error, and we shouldn't use it unless it becomes accepted. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 02:18, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

The point is that the one-comma version is not an error. Dohn joe (talk) 05:42, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

I agree it's pointless to call it an "error", which really just depends on how you interpret the various rules and guidelines. What's clear, however, is that it is less preferred, and recommended against, by the majority of style and grammar guides. Dicklyon (talk) 05:45, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

Other than the one guide you found, where is it recommended against using one comma when a two-part placename is used as an adjective? Dohn joe (talk) 06:06, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

I think you mean, "… when a two-part placename is used?", to which the answer is what Dicklyon said above. As I've mentioned before, the recommendation does not have that restriction; all they say about the adjectival construction is that it's best avoided entirely—which we could easily do here. —Frungi (talk) 07:55, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

I've been pretty consistent in talking about the adjectival form, which has been separately addressed in style guides, including the one that dicklyon found, and Garner and Chicago. There's reason to believe that the comma guidance for the noun form and the adjectival form may be different. That's the guidance I'm looking for that no one has been able to provide beyond the three references mentioned above. Dohn joe (talk) 17:52, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

Can you quote the guides that recommend the second comma distinctly and exclusively for when the construction is used as a noun, or that recommend against the second comma for any other use? Because I’ve read several of them, and I don’t remember that exclusivity at all. Again, what they do say—in all the guides that discuss the topic at all, if I’m not mistaken—is to avoid using the construction as an adjective, which seems like the advice that we should heed here. —Frungi (talk) 22:12, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

In the analogous case of dates, yes. See Garner's Modern American Usage, pp.225-226, which describes the exact situation we find ourselves in. I won't quote the entire entry, but here are some interesting excerpts:

• "Stylists who use [the Month Day, Year] phrasing [as an adjective] typically omit the comma after the year, and justifably so: in the midst of an adjective phrase (i.e., the date), it impedes the flow of the writing too much."
• "The idea of the comma after the year, as it has commonly been taught, is that the year is in apposition, so the second comma is required....The more plausible argument - supporting the absence of the comma after the year - has two parts. First, the comma is really just separating the two numerals, so if a second comma isn't syntactically required, then it doesn't belong....Second, the comma after the date marks a nonexistent pause: when a full date is used adjectivally, a knowledgeable speaker of the phrase marches toward the noun instead of pausing after the year."
• "It makes little sense to punctuate a forward-looking adjective with a pause at the end of it."
• "Most usage books that call uniformly for a comma after the year in a full date, by the way, don't address the question raised just above. They show the comma without illustrating what happens when the date functions as an adjective. In other words, they illustrate the easy cases, not the more difficult ones."

Substitute "State" for "year", and "City, State" for "a full date", and you have our situation precisely. And yes, Garner does call the construction "particularly clumsy", so an alternative might work. But there's certainly no reason to move hundreds (thousands?) of articles and change article text to add a comma that is even clumsier when there's powerful authority against the need to do so. And for those worried about being in the minority, Garner explicitly says that stylists who use this construction typically omit the comma after the year. Dohn joe (talk) 18:25, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

"It makes little sense to punctuate a forward-looking adjective with a pause at the end of it." Nevertheless, it's what we do. Either we speak with no pause at all, like "Rochester New York metropolitan area", or we speak with two (however minute) pauses. No-one speaks with one pause (for a single comma). It's the same thing with dates: " ... the minister said in a June 10, 2011, interview ...". Another thing that can be observed, is that the intonation actually changes when we say it. The name of the state, and the year in the other example, is said with another pitch (slightly lower), and the previous pitch is reassumed after the state/year. This – how we speak it – actually supports the presence of a second comma. HandsomeFella (talk) 18:45, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

That's all WP:ORIGINALRESEARCH. We have an established style/grammar authority who explains otherwise why the second comma is wrong, or at least not preferred. Dohn joe (talk) 19:22, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

I note that you're not responding to the issue at hand. HandsomeFella (talk) 19:37, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Why do you continue to ignore the advice to avoid using it as an adjective? —Frungi (talk) 18:54, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

I didn't; I said "And yes, Garner does call the construction "particularly clumsy", so an alternative might work." My point is that we have a grammatically sound phrasing - as is - for these articles, and that making it worse for the sake of hypercorrectness would be a step in the wrong direction. Dohn joe (talk) 19:22, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

This discussion is going nowhere. We need to move past the filibustering from the one-comma side, and start implementing. Is there anything that needs to be changed in the guidelines, before we start the process? HandsomeFella (talk) 19:37, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

It's hardly filibustering. There have been plenty of responses from both sides. To what process are you referring? Omnedon (talk) 19:42, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, but there's not really been anything new the past week. I was referring to the process of renaming mis-named articles and categories, according to the outcome of the discussion. HandsomeFella (talk) 19:56, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

How is it not new to show - when specifically requested by Frungi - that a major style/grammar guide says a) most stylists use one comma in this situation; b) using one comma is more grammatically/stylistically sound than two; and c) most style guides don't even address this particular issue? Wouldn't we want people to consider that new evidence? Dohn joe (talk) 20:07, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

But you haven't shown that. You have extrapolated invalidly from the case of dates to the case of metropolitan areas. With dates, the presence or absence of a comma makes no difference to the meaning; here, there is a distinction between Rochester metropolitan area in New York and Rochester in New York metropolitan area. By the way, what about WP:LOCALCONSENSUS? --Stfg (talk) 21:46, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

But Garner makes the same connection: "Modern writers have taken to making adjectives out of dates, just as they do out of place names." He then goes on to make the description/analysis quoted from above. Elsewhere he makes the same connection to faulty reliance on appositive rules. And what about local consensus? Dohn joe (talk) 22:08, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Yes, Garner says that, but he does not go on to apply what he says about dates to place names. WP:LOCALCONSENSUS seems to apply because the one-comma proposal is a sepcific exception to MOS:COMMA. --Stfg (talk) 22:20, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Which part of MOS:COMMA are you referring to? The lines which deal specifically with cities and states were added a couple of months ago and in a sense form part of this debate, so that's not really a valid argument. Furthermore, MOS:COMMA has a general policy "Modern practice is against excessive use of commas" which seems to favour the one comma version, all other things being equal.  — Amakuru (talk) 22:27, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

The second bullet. That it was added a couple of months ago rather than a couple of eons ago is neither here nor there; MOS is the overarching guideline. If those lines "in a sense form part of this debate", then the debate should be happening there, not here. The avoidance of excessive use of commas is a separate point; it obviously doesn't extend to the avoidance of necessary commas. --Stfg (talk) 07:42, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

I presume Garner has a section on place names or some equivalent term. Does he address the adjectival use there? —Frungi (talk) 03:45, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

A local library has a copy, so I’ll be able to check for myself if no one else does by the time I get my hands on it. —Frungi (talk) 03:48, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

Place Names: As Adjectives redirects to Adjectives: Proper Names as Adjectives. Dicklyon quoted this in a previous section, but to repeat what Garner says: "The practice of using as adjectives place names having two or more words should generally be resisted. But it is increasingly common. Although California home and Austin jury are perfectly accrptable, Sacramento, California home and Austin, Texas jury are not." This section seems to be the only place where Garner addresses this. Let me emphasize: Using two-part place names as adjectives is not acceptable grammar, according to the guide that some have used to argue against using two commas. —Frungi (talk) 18:43, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

That's a complete misreading, of course. Garner's recommendation against two-part place names as adjectives is a stylistic proscription, not a grammatical one. Elsewhere, as with multi-part dates as adjectives, Garner is comfortable describing the grammatical underpinnings of the construction. Dohn joe (talk) 19:55, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

I think the point is that not a single style guide recommends the use and this guide that speculatively equivocates on the gramaticality also recommends unequivocally to avoid using them. older ≠ wiser 20:50, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

As far as I can see the RfC has not been closed by an uninvolved editor yet, as required by Wikipedia:Requests for comment#Ending RfCs. Furthermore, I personally don't see that a convincing case has been made that a change is necessary. Most arguments for the two comma version seem to be either (a) because its "bad grammar" (despite the fact that there's no real independent evidence for that), or (b) because a few obscure style guides suggest it, or (c) because they think the title could be mis-read as Rochester in the New York metropolitan area. The last point could be a valid one, I'm not sure which policy would apply for determining that; certainly there's no disambiguation issue, because we never refer to a city or suburb in terms of the metropolitan area it is situated in. You might also like to ask yourself why these vast numbers of supposedly "incorrect" titles were created in the first place. Were the editors back in 2007 really completely dumb? Or was there just one initial dumb person and everyone else just followed like sheep? Food for thought anyway.  — Amakuru (talk) 22:01, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

I object to your (b) point as mischaracterizing the argument. Please see #What do sources say?, as well as this comment from WT:AT—hardly “a few”. I believe the only major guide discussed so far that could be said to recommend against the second comma—and then only by reader inference—is Garner’s. Nearly all guides that discuss it agree that, regardless of how many commas are used, “City, State” should not be used as a modifier. —Frungi (talk) 03:40, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

In other words: [[City, State metropolitan area]] and [[City, State, metropolitan area]] are both bad grammar. —Frungi (talk) 04:02, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

Opinion on moving to the "City metropolitan area, State" form

Given Frungi's assertion, and others above, that both the adjectival forms are quite questionable, here's a question for everyone: do any of you have serious objections to the proposed alternative Rochester metropolitan area, New York form? I don't want this to turn into another poll, and I realize this ground has been partially covered above, but would be interested to know if anyone (from either the one comma or two comma camps) has any serious objections to it. If not, then this might represent the best compromise position.

I guess a few of the votes for the one comma version were on the basis that this is all a waste of time, so presumably those people would still be against any move, but assuming we have the legwork to make the move happen that doesn't seem too valid an argument.  — Amakuru (talk) 07:53, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

• Strong support: it's neater and clearer than either form where New York is in the middle. Not being an admin, I can't move over redirects, but if there aren't redirects of this form, I can offer some of the legwork. (P.S. did you mean this to be a top-level section rather than a subsection of the above?) --Stfg (talk) 08:09, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
• Tentative support: although I'm all for moving away from the current title one-comma titles, I'd prefer just adding a second comma to the previous title (as I indicated in the poll section above), since I believe this is the WP:COMMONNAME. HandsomeFella (talk) 09:38, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

• Comment: there is already a poll section above. Why not use it? HandsomeFella (talk) 09:40, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

  As I said above, I wanted to avoid framing this as a poll. Unless all the protagonists agree up front on exactly how to interpret the results, polls are of limit value in my opinion. For example, when assessing the poll results will you just take into account the total number of points each option received, or would you also take into account how many people had strong opposition to a particular option rather than just slightly preferring something else? As I see it, "City metropolitan area, State" could be a good compromise if fewer people have strong objections to it that either the one or two comma versions, but that compromise might not necessarily emerge in the poll.  — Amakuru (talk) 13:23, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

• Comment: This actually fits better with the existing WP:USPLACE guideline, I think. Everything else is [[Placename, State]]. See the line on counties and parishes: “Articles on counties and parishes are typically titled [[X County (or X Parish), State]].” Not [[X, State, County (or Parish)]] (assuming that the county was named for a city or vice-versa, as some are). —Frungi (talk) 04:23, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
• I think the Rochester metropolitan area, New York form is a bastardization of the comma convention. It has little basis in actual usage. I'd prefer using the metropolitan area name (e.g., "Rochester metropolitan area") and if disambiguation is necessary, use a parenthetical term. older ≠ wiser 12:04, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

  I find this preferable also, and it seems less likely to get “invented form” complaints—it’s the same way we disambiguate any other title. Have there been any objections to [[City metropolitan area (State)]]? —Frungi (talk) 02:15, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

  It's still an invented form. It's a little less inventive than the proposal, but it's still inventive. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 02:38, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

  But it’s how we disambiguate between titles of same-named subjects on WP. Or do you mean that not including the state in the title (when DAB is unnecessary) would be an invented form? —Frungi (talk) 03:13, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

  @Arthur Rubin: Right, parenthetical disambiguation is the norm where natural disambiguation is not possible or is undesirable. Part of the justification for the comma convention is that the form "City, State" is really an alternate form of the city's name in U.S. parlance. However, this convention has been bastardized in various ways to apply to entities that are rarely if ever referred in that form outside of Wikipedia. older ≠ wiser 11:25, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose per Bkonrad. Sorry, I know it's appealing to think we can strike a compromise here, but this form seems to be an invention on our part, which should be avoided at all costs. --BDD (talk) 22:29, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose per Bkonrad and BDD. There are metro areas which are "City, State, metro area", but are "City metro area, states". — Arthur Rubin (talk) 02:46, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
• Comment: Unless there’s going to be further discussion on this, I think it’s time we either change the guideline to recommend [[City metropolitan area]] / [[City metropolitan area (State)]], which seems minimally objectionable, and start moving articles; or leave it as is—[[City, State, metropolitan area]] with a comma before and after per MOS:COMMA—and start moving articles. —Frungi (talk) 04:21, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry to say that I kind of checked out of this discussion earlier, and so I haven't read all of it and maybe you guys agreed on this already (but I kinda doubt it!). I guess the question is, do we need to have a separate RFC about whether or not the USPLACE rule applies to metro areas? I don't think that's covered by the other USPLACE discussion, below – but again I could be mistaken. AgnosticAphid talk 04:44, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose – like Bkonrad, BDD, and Arthur Rubin, I don't see the advantage of inventing a new term, when "Rochester, New York, metropolitan area" and such are so common and conventional. The RFC results support simply fixing the commas. Dicklyon (talk) 05:12, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Requested closure

I have requested closure at WP:AN/RFC. --Stfg (talk) 10:53, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

Pending. I'm looking at this and reading the various applicable rules and the older discussions. I have not yet read through this thread; I'll soon turn to this thread and render a close soonest, within a couple days I hope. Although it's not usual, I'll share some of my preliminary thoughts regarding what issue are and are not on the table.

One issue is that the question is not stated with perfect clarity. The statement is:

On just the question of whether one comma or two commas are preferred when a state name is used parenthetically as in "Rochester, New York metropolitan area" versus "Rochester, New York, metropolitan area", in a title or in a sentence

And it's open to interpretation what "as in" means, and also what is the intended function of the "or" in "in a title or in a sentence". So to my mind, after looking at the actual issues under consideration a bit, is that there are four questions at least potentially hiding in this:

1. The question of whether one comma or two commas are preferred when a state name is used parenthetically generally, as in (to pick a random example) "Rochester, New York metropolitan area" versus "Rochester, New York, metropolitan area", in a sentence.
2. The question of whether one comma or two commas are preferred when a state name is used parenthetically specifically when followed by the phrase "metropolitan area" as in "Rochester, New York metropolitan area" versus "Rochester, New York, metropolitan area", in a sentence
3. The question of whether one comma or two commas are preferred when a state name is used parenthetically generally, as in for instance "Rochester, New York sports teams" versus "Rochester, New York, sports teams", in a title
4. The question of whether one comma or two commas are preferred when a state name is used parenthetically specifically when followed by the phrase "metropolitan area" as in "Rochester, New York metropolitan area" versus "Rochester, New York, metropolitan area", in a title

As a practical matter, I don't think #3 would come up very often -- we probably wouldn't title an article Rochester, New York, sports teams but rather List of sports teams in Rochester, New York or Professional sports in Rochester, New York or something, and ditto for most other cases.

It also doesn't look like #1 has been discussed much. The name of the section is "Commas in metro areas" and I'm seeing a lot of examples of the use with "metropolitan area" and not with other uses. If it's an overall rule change for article text that's being proposed, this would require changes to WP:COMMAand so forth, and this -- as opposed to specifying an exception for "metropolitan area" -- would be a pretty big deal, and my inclination is that this isn't the intent of the RfC we'd need a separate discussion for that.

As far as #2 and #4 being in play separately, I understand and appreciate that the most important thing to look at, for both article titles and article text, is preponderance of sources, but:

• As far as I'm aware there's no rule (or custom) specifying that article titles and article text have to be the same.
• And in fact they're often not, for various reasons including our article titling rules; for instance we have Joe Smith (footballer born 1890) even though the preponderance of sources may not use that exact phrase, nor is that exact phrase necessarily used anywhere in the article body.
• And the purpose filled by article titles and article text are not exactly the same. WP:AT either requires or suggests certain virtues, such as succinctness, that article text need not (and sometimes should not) be required to have.

So here's my understanding:

• We are considering carving out an exception to the general rule regarding parenthetical commas in place names, and not about the rule overall.
• The first question is whether, in article text, one comma or two commas are preferred when a state name is used parenthetically when followed by the phrase "metropolitan area"
• The second question is whether, in article titles, one comma or two commas are preferred when a state name is used parenthetically when followed by the phrase "metropolitan area"
• And the answer to these questions need not be identical (granting that there are certain factors pushing them to be identical)
• Also and by the way, I'm taking "metropolitan area" to mean "'metropolitan area', and very closely similar phrases such as 'metropolitan statistical area' and 'metro area' and 'MSA' and probably 'conurbation' but probably not just the term 'area'".

And if any of these are assumptions are not correct, now'd be the time to disabuse me ASAP. Herostratus (talk) 01:59, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure why you say "I don't think #3 would come up very often". There are, in fact, many other examples where a state name (or, equally, a province, country, etc.) is included in a title where the same considerations apply. See Other examples of incorrect usage above for a few hand-picked examples.

You may also note that there is a concurrent RfC on the use of the comma in such cases generally (see RFC: Should it be "optional" as to whether a second comma after a date/place should be included?). —sroc 💬 07:06, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

I think it's safe to say that this RFC is mostly about parenthetical commas in article titles, specifically article titles relating to geographic names, not text. We already have MOS:COMMA for sentences, and this page is mostly about titling geographic articles, although I suppose whatever this decision is conceivably might inform outside choices made for non-geographic titles. AgnosticAphid talk 15:39, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Sroc, you're right, thanks. Agnosticaphid, you're also right. It's a tough question, but my feeling is that the part of WP:COMMA that refers specifically to geographic place names is a summary of one aspect of WP:PLACE. WP:COMMA and WP:PLACE are both guidelines and neither is a controlling authority over the other. One thing is certain: WP:COMMA and WP:PLACE can't say different things. If the decision is to make a change I'll populate it in both places. I'll have more to say at the close. Thanks for posting, sorry for the delay, will finish soonest; there's a great deal of cogent thought in the RfC discussion and I'll try to honor that. Herostratus (talk) 08:01, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

@Herostratus: Note that consensus is building to amend the pertinent section of WP:COMMA to read as follows:

• In geographical references that include multiple divisions (e.g., city, state/province, country), a comma separates each element and follows the last element. Dates in month–day–year format also require a comma after the day and after the year. In either case, a comma is not required after the last element when the place name or date appears by itself (as in a title or list) or is followed by other punctuation (such as a full stop, dash, parenthesis, etc.).

Incorrect:	On November 24, 1971 Cooper hijacked an aircraft that had taken off from Portland, Oregon and was destined for Seattle, Washington.
Correct:	On November 24, 1971, Cooper hijacked an aircraft that had taken off from Portland, Oregon, and was destined for Seattle, Washington.

Wherever possible, avoid using compound place names or dates in month–day–year format as adjectives, as such uses can seem unwieldy and may raise disputes whether the final comma is appropriate in this context.

Avoid:	The April 7, 2011[,] trial of John Smith brought a capacity crowd to the Toledo, Ohio[,] courtroom.
Better alternative:	On April 7, 2011, the trial of John Smith brought a capacity crowd to the courtroom in Toledo, Ohio.

The main protagonists in that discussion have all agreed on this wording, so this seems likely to be adopted. As you say, we would not want WP:PLACE to be inconsistent. —sroc 💬 22:29, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

OK, got it. Herostratus (talk) 23:08, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Jesus, there's a lot of stuff here. One more big push and I'm done, still shooting for midnight Tuesday EST. More likely it'll be midnight Wednesday. I will say that it's certainly clear that for this close I'm not going to be touching article text. There's relatively little discussion of article text and it's just titles in play.

As to the other discussion you point to, sroc, ermmm. I can't really process all that. I'll close this one and we'll see where we stand. If that one's closed it'll either support this close or not. If it doesn't then I dunno, that's over my pay grade. Having simultaneous RfC's going on at once on different boards is maybe kind of sub-optimal, though.

I'm not sure why the discussion you point to is at WP:MOS rather than WP:AT since there's certainly a number of editors who hold that normal structures for article text (which I think the MOS is mainly about) don't necessarily apply to titles. Whether that's true or not I don't know -- I guess it's neither true nor false but something that people believe or don't. WP:AT is the controlling authority for titles though AFAIK, or has been up to now. None of this much affects me now, I'm just grinding to finish this one. Herostratus (talk) 07:59, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

FYI, a new discussion has opened at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style § RFC: Proposed amendment to MOS:COMMA regarding geographical references and dates. —sroc 💬 08:19, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Consistency of naming across articles

So a certain Swiss canton is known in English as both "Graubünden" and "Grisons", and after some discussion its Wikipedia article settled on Graubünden as the most common name. However, over at Romansh language, the guy who wrote much of it apparently prefers "Grisons" and reverts attempts to shift to the other, which seems a bit WP:OWN-y to me. However, I'm not seeing anything in this particular policy about enforcing consistent use of names *across* articles -- what's the guideline here?

It's probably also worth mentioning that, to the best of my knowledge, the difference between the name isn't American-vs-British, nor is there a political or perspective difference between the two names (or the two articles), it's just that Grisons is the "old" name in English and Graubünden is what it's usually called today. Jpatokal (talk) 10:13, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

That discussion is rather finely balanced, and I wouldn't regard this issue as closed even there. In any case, I don't know anything that covers this specifically, but the spirit of things like WP:STYLEVAR and WP:ENGVAR is surely to seek consistency within any given article, but not to forbid the use of correct variants across the whole encyclopedia, which can lead to instruction creep. Since both names are apparently used by English speakers, I would let it go. --Stfg (talk) 11:35, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Advice needed (regarding guideline no.2)

I'd like to ask your opinion about the way of application of WP:PLACE guideline. More exactly, I tried to apply the general guideline no.2 for at least 3 alternative names, but some editors (all of them being Hungarians who support the keeping in the first phrase of the alternative Hungarian name) are claiming that this is not "a widely accepted approach". Please submit a comment at Talk:Alba Iulia to help us to settle the dispute. Thanks in advance! 79.117.183.29 (talk) 06:44, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Request for informal discussion re joining state names in metro areas

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

So do you all want to use the en dash or the word "and" when joining names of states in metropolitan area, that is, which if these do you want?

• Columbus metropolitan area, Georgia and Alabama
• Columbus metropolitan area, Georgia–Alabama

I don't care. An editor had implied that maybe it needed more looking into, so let's do that. I had originally specified the en dash, on the following basis:

1. Had to decide something.
2. And the en dash is parallel with how the cities are named. We'd have ""North Port–Sarasota–Bradenton metropolitan area, Florida" and not "North Port and Sarasota and Bradenton metropolitan area, Florida", I think.
3. And -- this is highly arguable -- but "Kansas City metropolitan area, Kansas and Missouri" (for example) might tend just a little more to imply the existence of the entity "Kansas and Missouri" (analogous to Turks and Caicos Islands for instance) than does the en dash. It's probably about the same really.
4. And the word "and" is a little less succinct than the en dash, and WP:AT suggests succinctness.
5. And if any metro areas requiring disambiguation span more than two states, you'll have stuff like "New York metropolitan area, New York and Connecticut and New Jersey" and that's a lot of "and"s. (And I'm pretty sure we don't want "New York metropolitan area, New York, Connecticut and New Jersey"...)
6. And I could be wrong about this, but I think the en dash is a little more common, for our titles and in the general world, than the word "and" for situations like this.

Regarding #65, that's just meaningless blather. I can't back that up. Regarding #5, as a practical matter the number of three-state metro areas needing disambiguation is probably pretty small. Metro areas that span three states are going to be centered on pretty big cities I suppose -- Chicago, New York -- and those usually won't need disambiguation.

Regarding #3, it's probably not really fair to say that "and" implies anything that en dash doesn't. BUT, in looking as small sample of places at random, I do find Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Saint Peter and Saint Paul Archipelago, Akrotiri and Dhekelia, Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, Wallis and Futuna, Carriacou and Petite Martinique, and Brighton and Hove. All of these are formal names for actual administrative divisions, I think.

Not finding any dashes in the names of joined entities. There is Nuku-Hiva and many other similar French dependencies. But I think this doesn't mean "Nuka and Hiva" but rather "Nuka Hiva, with a connecting dash because we're French and that's how we roll", since Nuku Hiva is the name of the main island. And ditto for the other French stuff. There is Guinea-Bissau, but it doesn't mean "Guinea and Bissau" but rather "The Guinea whose capital is Bissau". So I dunno, maybe I was on to something?

But then, looking at our formats: Glenrio, New Mexico and Texas. This is not the name of an administrative division, it's just a unincorporated town, BUT it's actually mentioned at WP:USPLACE as an example of handing a case like that. Metro areas aren't administrative divisions either, so you could take Glenrio as a precedent. It's a pretty tiny precedent IMO since it applies to very few place (just that one, for all I know) and WP:USPLACE kind of goes out of its way to describe this as a special case.

So anyway, does Glenrio, New Mexico and Texas possibly imply "The town of Glenrio, which is in the American state of New Mexico and Texas"? It might if you're from N'djamena and don't speak English very well, I guess. It's a little confusing and naming the article Glenrio, New Mexico and Glenrio, Texas would arguably be better, gaining some precision at the cost of some succinctness. Why the article isn't just named Glenrio I don't know, since there aren't any other Glenrios.

But actually the question is, does Glenrio, New Mexico and Texas possibly imply "The town of Glenrio, which is in the American state of New Mexico and Texas" more than Glenrio, New Mexico–Texas implies "The town of Glenrio, which is in the American state of New Mexico–Texas"? Dunno. Thoughts?

There still remains points #2 and #3 which maybe have a little bit of weight but probably not a lot, and most importantly point #1: gotta decide something. IMO it doesn't much matter. I propose we discuss this below, and if it's OK with everybody I'll pick one based on that, as subset of the close I did above. If there's no agreement or some demonstration the superiority of one form over the other I'll generate a random number and go with with whatever comes up, if that's OK. We need this nailed down to move forward. Herostratus (talk) 03:55, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

• I favour the "and" construction. It's consistent with the treatment for "unincorporated communities" and there's no real justification to treat "metropolitan areas" as a separate special case. (After all, how many special cases with their own quirks do we need — and why?)

Such titles may require some clarification in the text, but this is to be expected in either case. Herostratus hit the nail on the head with this: 'But actually the question is, does Glenrio, New Mexico and Texas possibly imply "The town of Glenrio, which is in the American state of New Mexico and Texas" more than Glenrio, New Mexico–Texas implies "The town of Glenrio, which is in the American state of New Mexico–Texas"?' No, it doesn't. An ignorant reader who knew nothing of US states might be equally unsure whether "New Mexico and Texas" or "New Mexico–Texas" was a state, but in either case, this should become clear within the article. In reality, most readers (especially ones who are interested in a particular metropolitan area) would know enough of US geography to know that New Mexico and Texas are two separate states, so actual confusion is unlikely to arise in practice.

It is also the correct syntactic construction. Readers who routinely fail to include a paired comma after state names might argue that the construction suggests that Columbus metropolitan area, Georgia and Alabama, implies that the Columbus metropolitan area is in the state of Georgia, but this would not be logical because no one would write an article about one metropolitan area in Georgia and the entire state of Alabama as one topic. —sroc 💬 09:45, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Right. I agree with you that it's 50-50 as to which is like to be misinterpreted. But let me finish laying out the idea that formed in my head, based on the (very sketchy) research I did above. Keeping in mind that Glenrio, New Mexico and Texas is entirely our own Wikipedia construction (I suppose) and has nothing to do with the following real-life argument.

• It looks to be that when an actual political division is formed from two things, the word "and" is used a lot. It's "Wallis and Futuna" not "Wallis-Futuna". Ditto the other examples, and no counter-examples came up right off.
• But when two things are informally grouped, the dash is used a lot. "Minneapolis-St. Paul" and so forth. The Twin Cities are not an actual political union. "Champaign-Urbana" in Illinois, same deal, and so forth.
• So therefore, if a person, knowing this (maybe even just subconsciously), sees "ABC and XYZ" she will interpret this as an actual political division, but interpret "ABC-XYZ" as being informal like "Minneapolis-St. Paul".

Of course, as a practical matter that's meaningless, because we're talking about a person who maybe thinks that "Georgia and Alabama" is a state, so the subtlety of difference between "and" and dash will be miles over her head. Bottom line is it's 50-50.

But as a matter purely of style, I guess you could argue this: if it really is true that polities are usually named "X and Y" and informal joinings are usually written "X-Y", in sources, and since our use of "Georgia-Alabama" here certainly is an informal ad hoc joining for the purposes of clarification and not a reference to a political union of the two states, then we should use the dash, since we should tend to give some weight to what sources do, all else being equal which I think they are here. Herostratus (talk) 02:03, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Well OK then. It looks like it's just you and me, sroc. Well there's a couple ways to look at this:

• Since I'm not a party to this, your "vote" is the only one and 1-0 wins the day, so we'll go forward on the basis of "and". Or:
• I'm not a party to this, but on the other hand truth be told I do kind of prefer the en dash I guess, which would make it 1-1 among the people who've bothered to consider it, and anyway, neither 1-0 nor 1-1 is any kind of quorum, so I'd be just as fair to flip a coin, but how about asking a random stranger to decide via Wikipedia:Third opinion. Her random opinion makes the decision. That way we at least get one more person weighing in.

Either is fine with me, it's your call sroc. What you wanta do? Herostratus (talk) 21:57, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Before getting a "random stranger" involved, why not tag in everyone who participated in the earlier discussion and invite them to comment first. They might have overlooked this thread and it's better that we get someone who has a considered opinion on this before we rope in someone at random, I think. —sroc 💬 22:13, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

OK. Herostratus (talk) 17:48, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

En dash vs. "and" for multi-state metro areas

So do you all want to use the en dash or the word "and" when joining names of states in metropolitan area, that is, which if these do you want?

• Columbus metropolitan area, Georgia and Alabama
• Columbus metropolitan area, Georgia–Alabama

As far as I know it's basically a matter of opinion. There's some discussion above though. Herostratus (talk) 18:06, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

• I prefer "and" as well. I suppose the confusion with a phantom jurisdiction is present with both, suggesting either a Georgia–Alabama or a Georgia and Alabama. The "and" simply seems more natural, but I'm struggling to come up with a good argument besides personal preference. --BDD (talk) 18:22, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Personal preference is fine IMO. I don't really think there's any guidance much beyond that, so I don't see any big discussion happening here, just going what what feels right to people I guess. Herostratus (talk) 18:46, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
• I just slightly feel that "and" is nore natural, but it's only a feeling. I certainly won't argue the toss. --Stfg (talk) 18:32, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
• I read through the discussion above. I prefer the dash. I think there is a 0% chance of confusion with the dash, as opposed to a maybe 5% chance of confusion with the and. I don't think there are actually any single locations that use an en dash in their formal names. I'm familiar with various article titles on WP that use en dashes, like airports (Fort Lauderdale–Hollywood International Airport) and comets (Comet Hale–Bopp), but those use dashes precisely because they are named after multiple things (towns in the case of airports; discoverers in the case of comets). Both Minneapolis-St Paul and Champaign-Urbana use en dashes, as the person noted above. So I think that "Glenrio, New Mexico and Texas" raises the possibility that there is a state "New Mexico and Texas" whereas to me "New Mexico–Texas" or some foreign equivalent would mean that it is certainly two places. People listed a few French places above (Nuku-Hiva) but it appears that that place uses a hyphen, not a dash. I also think it is marginally more consistent with our titling rules to use an en dash rather than an "and" for these same reasons; usually distinct sub-components of a title are linked with an en dash here. Plus the risk of some northeastern abomination of "X, New Jersey and Pennsylvania and Delaware and Maryland" or something certainly exists, even if it's remote. YMMV. AgnosticAphid talk 18:44, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
• I can live with either, but still have a slight preference towards "and". It also sounds more natural to me, plus there are always more maintenance problems with the titles using ndashes than with the titles not using them (hardly anybody bothers to type a proper endash into the search box, so there's a higher chance that a redirect for some "endashless" alternative would be missing, resulting in broken links and other problems). And as for the possibility that someone could think that "New Mexico and Texas" is a state, with all due respect, to a person who never heard of New Mexico or Texas either "New Mexico and Texas" or "New Mexico–Texas" may mean pretty much anything at all (if you don't know what North Ossetia–Alania is, for example, can you guess whether it refers to one entity or two without clicking through?). No two people think alike, and trying to second-guess this kind of thing never satisfies all.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); December 11, 2013; 19:03 (UTC)
• My preference is for and, mainly for consistency with "unincorporated communities" per WP:USPLACE (e.g., Glenrio, New Mexico and Texas) since it is an analogous case and there does not seem to be a good reason for having different formats for these. It's also semantically correct. All things being equal, the en dash also gives rise to more technical issues as Ezhiki pointed out. If we go with a dash, we ought to amend the rule for unincorporated communities to be consistent. —sroc 💬 22:28, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
• Definitely and. Putting a non-typable character into a title is just asking for problems - completely unnecessary ones. Besides, "Georgia and Alabama" is much clearer in its meaning than "Georgia–Alabama" - whatever that is supposed to mean. --MelanieN (talk) 23:24, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Melanie, the fact that a basic character for writing isn't available means that you haven't yet made a macro for it (via insert symbols). And it's also available by button under the edit window. Tony (talk) 03:03, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
  • @MelanieN: It’s not non-typable. WP:How to make dashes. —Frungi (talk) 03:53, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
    • Please don't be condescending; I know how to make an en-dash. It's still not a "normal" keyboard character, and thus it is inaccessible to a huge portion of our readership. (Do we really expect our readers to have made macros? Or to have memorized the keystroke combinations for obscure symbols? Yes, like it or not, the en-dash is an obscure symbol to most people. BTW the edit window is not available when you are using the search function.) To choose such a character, unnecessarily, when a simple English word would do just as well or better, is simply not serving our readership well. --MelanieN (talk) 05:21, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
      • Redirects exist. --Jayron32 13:45, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
• The and feels more natural to me. It can be argued that the dash doesn’t really make sense; Georgia–Alabama, for instance, is not a single entity. (I know that’s not the intention of the dash here, but that’s what it feels like.) —Frungi (talk) 03:53, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
• I'm leaning towards and, because it seems more natural to me when paralleled to the case of Bothell, in King and Snohomish Counties, Washington. Referring to "Bothell, King–Snohomish Counties" just sounds wrong. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 14:25, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
• Both have their reasons, but since choice is needed, I'd prefer "and", partly because it sounds more natural as Sarek says, and also for the reason articulated by MelanieN: why use non-keyboard characters for titles when you don't have to? --Arxiloxos (talk) 19:52, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
• I have a preference, but I won't share it, because, like the preference of everyone else here, it's irrelevant. The issue here is what do reliable sources use in this case? We should follow that.

  However, in most cases I would think it's not an issue at all, as disambiguation should not be required for almost all metropolitan areas that span states. --B2C 04:37, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

  • Ok, but when it comes to titles, for the purpose of disambiguation, and at the level of punctuation, reliance on reliable sources breaks down, because our sources don't have the exact disambiguation needs that we do. As User:Frungi pointed out in the earlier discussion, ""We don’t consult reliable sources for how to title articles for disambiguation... no reliable source uses the terms “Jumper (film)”, “Jumper (novel)”, “jumper (dress)”, “jumper (computing)”, etc. We have our own conventions for that..." and I think that's spot on. Herostratus (talk) 01:41, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
• It's the Columbus, Georgia, metropolitan area. The fact that it includes parts of Alabama should not be mentioned in the article title. --Orlady (talk) 05:26, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Well... That depends on whether the term "metropolitan area" is viewed a "name" or as a "description". But the point is valid. This isn't dualistic choice between using an Em-dash or using "and"... its a choice between using an Em-dash, using "and", or creating a title that uses neither.

I think we need to be flexible here and not lock ourselves into over-consistency. There is no need for all our articles on metropolitan areas to do things exactly the same way... Sometimes it will make more sense to us a dash, at other times it will make more sense to use "and"... and in a few cases it is appropriate to not put any state name (for example, it's just: New York metropolitan area... not New York, New York, metropolitan area or New York metropolitan area, New York and New Jersey and Connecticut).

I would devolve the decision as to the title to a discussion and consensus at the article level. Blueboar (talk) 13:25, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

@Orlady, that's been decided and we're talking about a detail of an aspect of that decision. @Blueboar, right, about the New York thing, we'll only use disambiguation when it's called for. While I do personally agree that in theory there's no harm to the project if one article is titled "Podunk metropolitan area, Ohio and Pennsylvania" and another is titled "East Nowhere metropolitan area, Texas–Lousiana", I also think that:

1. Lots of people do care about consistency in these matters, which is entirely legitimate.
2. It's arguable that's it's a bit amateurish to have different title formats for the same thing in this way. (We are amateurs, but...).
3. But as the major point, it's a resource-waster to have these discussions on a case-by-case basis. Case-by-case is fine for deciding between (say) "Peter the Great" and "Peter I of Russia" for instance, where case-specific data and arguments can be brought to bear; but that doesn't really apply to the situation at hand. Herostratus (talk) 01:41, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Moving forward on metro name disambiguation

OK, to my mind, the next steps for the metro areas thing is:

• Wait a few days, at least until the issue in the thread above is decided. If I've made some huge mistake or missed something crucial or something, this'd be time and place to bring that up.
• I'll Integrate the decision into the rules, using footnotes in the appropriate places (WP:PLACE and WP:TITLE, and possibly at [[WP:MOS][ if that seems useful or necessary). If you look at Wikipedia:Notability (people) for instance there're a lot of footnotes, in small text at the bottom, pointed to by a ref in the body. Other rules use this format too. This is a lot better than putting every little thing in the body of the rules, I think.
• Then there's a lot of articles to be moved. We also have to check most of them: we can't just move (say) Mason City, Iowa micropolitan area to Mason City micropolitan area, Iowa; maybe it's Mason City micropolitan area, Iowa–Nebraska (or Mason City micropolitan area, Iowa and Nebraska if we're going with that). So the contents of some of these have to be checked. On top of that, I believe that any articles with an en dash in the title have to have a redirect pointing to them, using the hyphen, since our readers can't type an en dash.

Here's a list User:sroc generated (and a huge thank you to scroc! I had mistakenly misattributed this someone else above). Sroc, is this exhaustive? -- seems like it only covers a few states. We don't have to get every single one at once, it's something that can be completed over time. Herostratus (talk) 04:39, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Ah, that list was not mine. I believe it was Apteva. —sroc 💬 10:04, 20 November 2013 (UTC) [20] —sroc 💬 10:08, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

sroc, is that list exhaustive? If not, does anyone know a good way to generate an exhaustive list, rather than going about it by hand using the search box? Herostratus (talk) 21:59, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

I don't know. It's not my list. It's Apteva's. —sroc 💬 22:09, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Oh. And he's gone, indefinitely blocked. Herostratus (talk) 14:01, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

Encarta

Should Encarta still be listed as an example of an authoritative current reference, considering it's been shut down for five years? Kendall-K1 (talk) 02:42, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Removing sounds good to me. Qwyrxian (talk) 06:20, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Where are the archives?

The archives linked to at the top of this page only go up to November 2008. The oldest discussions on this page are from August 2013. I couldn't find any links to the archives for discussions between 2008 and mid-2013. Am I just missing them? --MelanieN (talk) 18:06, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

I don't know what's going on with the archiving for this page. Apparently the archive indexing got lost as a result of pages moves and changes in the archiving procedure. I edited the links at the top of this page to point to a couple of the additional places where some archives are found. Using those page names, you should be able to locate other archives. --Orlady (talk) 02:06, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Thank you, that fills in the gaps! --MelanieN (talk) 16:02, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

SEE ALSO: Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(places)/Archive --B2C 01:08, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Should the article be at Bothell or Bothell, Washington?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

For U.S. city articles which have primary topic for their base names, should the articles should be placed at the base name? (Note: "base name" means Bothell instead of Bothell, Washington, for instance.) Red Slash 09:04, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Discussion on U.S. city title format

• Strong nominator support. Let me explain the RfC. Current practice on Wikipedia is that with the exception of a few specific major cities, all U.S. cities must be named [[Settlement, State]]. This is the case regardless of primary topic: Bothell redirects to Bothell, Washington, even though Bothell (disambiguation) as I write this does not even exist. Nevertheless, current practice has placed the article at the Settlement, State location. This is less concise than just [[Settlement]], and conciseness is one of our five naming criteria. It is certainly inconsistent with our place names for literally every single country on God's green earth besides the USA. It's also arguably less natural, which is a third naming criterion. That's two or three out of our five naming criteria. (The precision criterion is irrelevant, as this proposal is only concerned with titles where the name is precise enough. A city such as Richland, Washington, for instance, is not the primary topic for the word Richland and therefore is not included in this proposal. The [[Settlement, State]] format will remain the preferred method of natural disambiguation for U.S. places. Meanwhile, the recognizability criterion is probably just as satisfied by the more concise name--is Orlando, Florida really that much more recognizable than Orlando?) To clarify the proposal, if it passes, editors will be free to move Bothell, Washington to Bothell through our normal processes, either doing it themselves, through the technical move process, or through the requested move process in case of possible difficulties in determining primary topic. Red Slash 09:04, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose It seems like we have this debate every few months, and the result is always the same. The state name isn't included in article names for disambiguation, it's included because it's considered part of the placename in standard American usage (e.g. the AP Stylebook and New York Times conventions, postal names, etc.) Furthermore, the majority of U.S. place articles will probably need state names in their titles anyway since so many names are shared between places in different states, so if a policy like this took effect, U.S. placenames would become incredibly internally inconsistent (which is worse than being inconsistent with other countries IMO, since national usage is a reasonable excuse for the latter). TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 09:27, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Except that this is not the American Wikipedia, so what seem natural to (some) Americans is pretty much irrelevant. I note your opinion, however personal opinion is not supposed to be the arbiter of how things should be done here. - Nick Thorne ^talk 07:56, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

• Mild support I definitely agree with the sentiment and principle of this nomination. As stated, all other town and city articles across the world, including in other federal nations such as Canada and Australia, use no subnational identifier alongside the city name. Also, the current policy is inconsistent (e.g. San Antonio but Albuquerque, New Mexico) although I do understand that there is a rigorous formula for determining this. The reason I'm mild in support at present is simply that I'm not American myself, and hence not directly familiar with standard usage in that country. Thus the point that User:TheCatalyst31 makes, that this is a strong convention in American usage, is one that I am unable to comment on.  — Amakuru (talk) 11:04, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
• Strong oppose There are several policy-based reasons why this standard is followed for U.S. cities. One is WP:Common usage (which includes naturalness; I note that the people who think this usage is "not natural" are generally not Americans); another is WP:Reliable sources.

Re Common Usage: It is absolutely standard and natural for Americans to refer to American cities as "City, State," whether or not the name is ambiguous. Listen to any radio call-in program and you will always hear the callers say "I am Jane from Des Moines, Iowa." "I am John from Orlando, Florida." And if a person in conversation omits the state - "I am from Missoula" - the other person will usually ask "Missoula, Montana?" There are many reasons why Americans do this, but the fact is that they do. Reasons include the vast size of America, so that the mere name of a city gives no clue where the city is located, while the state gives the listener a good idea of where the city is; the large number of duplicated city names from state to state, so that something like half of all US city names are ambiguous; and the importance of the states in our thinking - they are not merely a convenient political subdivision, but quasi-independent entities which existed before the country did (even the name United States emphasizes how central the states are to our understanding of ourselves). This is such standard practice in the U.S. that it should be accepted as a kind of National variety of English. Sometimes people object to this practice by pointing out that it is not done for cities in other countries, but that is because it is not common usage in those countries. (Frenchmen don't say "I am from Lyon, France". Germans don't say "I am from Wiesbaden, Germany.") Wikipedia DOES allow different naming conventions for different countries, as can be seen in the project page of this very article. There is no rule that every country has to do it the same for the sake of some kind of trans-Wikipedia consistency, especially if that consistency would violate Common Usage in the country itself.

Re Reliable Sources: Per Wikipedia:Article titles, "Generally, article titles are based on what the subject is called in reliable sources." The current policy follows the AP Stylebook and thus conforms to the usage by virtually all newspapers and other Reliable Sources. Deferring to a Reliable Source both follows Wikipedia policy and avoids hours of unproductive argument over how to title a city - of which this current discussion is likely to be another example. The current policy represents a long-accepted compromise between the "no unnecessary disambiguation" argument and the "use the state in every case" argument, and leaves us Wikipedians free to build an encyclopedia instead of arguing endlessly over titles.

There is also the convenience factor. Having a readily applicable, clearly-understood standard eliminates the need to do research about how to refer to a particular city. Say I am about to mention Bothell in an article and want to wikilink it. Since I won't know offhand whether there are other Bothells in the country, I will have to go look up whether to link it as Bothell or Bothell, Washington. Under the current Reliable Sources standard, I don't need any research; I know exactly how to title every city in the country without any further effort. (NOTE: This argument is supported by policy as quoted below by B2C: "Generally, article naming should give priority to what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature." [21].) The current understanding also eliminates arguments about which of several same-named cities is the Primary Topic. --MelanieN (talk) 15:56, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

MelanieN, you correctly state that the US states have separate identities rather than simply being part of the USA. However, the implication that this is not the case for other countries is simply wrong. As an example, Australia is a Federation of states that existed (as separate British colonies) prior to Federation. The States have special status in the Australian Constitution and are most definitely not merely a convenient political subdivision as you dismissingly put it. It does not serve your side of things at all well to get basic facts so far off beam. - Nick Thorne ^talk 10:15, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

For reference: the most recent discussions on this same topic (that I am aware of) were in June 2013, January 2013, November 2012, September-October 2012 and April 2012. --MelanieN (talk) 20:03, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose. The WP:USPLACE standard is clearly defined. MelanieN says it well; I won't try to repeat her points. Omnedon (talk) 00:35, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose per the consistency and common usage, and (in my opinion) conciseness, clauses of WP:TITLE. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 02:17, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose per MelanieN. It seems to me that USPLACE has achieved consensus even if it's a bit of an unhappy one. AgnosticAphid talk 00:46, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose – nom notes that "This is less concise than just Settlement, and conciseness is one of our five naming criteria." True. But there are four other naming criteria, and contrary to B2C's wishes, conciseness should not trump them all. In the case of US cities, the inclusion of the state in the title strongly supports recognizability and precision (though those who argue that precision is bad and recognizability is only for people who would have recognized it anyway will tend to disagree), as well as naturalness and consistency. Leave the USPLACE consensus alone. Dicklyon (talk) 00:54, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

And on that note, I would once again mention that a concise title is not necessarily the shortest possible title. At dictionary.reference.com, the definition is "expressing or covering much in few words; brief in form but comprehensive in scope; succinct; terse." So in fact "Bothell, Washington" is more concise than "Bothell", not less. It strikes the right balance between brevity and content. "Bothell" by itself communicates almost nothing, so how can it be concise? It is merely short. Omnedon (talk) 01:01, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose per MelanieN, et al. A number of other editors have already clearly articulated why the proposed change is unwarranted and undesirable, so rather than repeat their points I'll simply second them. This proposal should not be adopted. ╠╣uw [talk] 02:35, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
• Support, per nom. Thanks to Melanie for letting me know about this discussion. There is no doubt that the city, state form is commonly and naturally used to refer to US cities. But that's not an argument that that should be the title; that's an argument that that is a commonly used form. But nobody has ever challenged this, so I'm not sure why Melanie devotes her entire first paragraph to this argument. The fact is, that the city name only is also commonly used to refer to these cities, especially for the cities with unique names that are relevant here. Cities like Bothell, Carmel-by-the-Sea, and Tallahasee (but not so much Portland or Paris because they are ambiguous).

  Another fact is that city name only is more concise. Yes, I know some here argue that concise does not necessarily mean shorter, and to an extent they're right, but the intent at WP:CRITERIA is that all other factors held neutral, shorter titles are preferred, because they're easier to type when linking, if nothing else. So if two names are equally commonly used, equally natural, and equally precise, then we prefer the more concise (i.e. shorter) one. --B2C 05:45, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

"Bothell, Washington" is both more precise and more concise than "Bothell". I can hardly believe you are using ease of typing when linking as an argument for a shorter title. Titles are for the reader's benefit; saving a few keystrokes for editors has never been a titling criterion. Omnedon (talk) 12:32, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Believe it, Omnedon (talk · contribs). Making linking to articles "easy and second nature" has always been an important consideration in titling on WP. For example, from 14 years ago: "Generally, article naming should give priority to what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature." [22]. --B2C 15:57, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Making linking easy and second nature is not the same as saving a few keystrokes when typing. Including the name of the state is not a burden on editors. Omnedon (talk) 16:09, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

As a matter of fact, "making linking easy and second nature" is exactly what I was getting at in my third paragraph above. Under the USPLACE convention, it is "easy and second nature" to link to an American city from an article, because we know exactly how every American city article is titled, without doing any research or giving it a second thought. Under the proposed change, for most cities we would have to research whether we are supposed to link to "Bothell" or "Bothell, Washington." Thank you, B2C, for supporting for my point with policy. --MelanieN (talk) 16:54, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

If you think linking to Bothell, Washington rather than to Bothell is what is meant by "making linking easy and second nature", we'll just have to agree to disagree. --B2C 18:07, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

There's no reason why the editor couldn't create the link to Bothell anyway, even if the title is Bothell, Washington. For cases like those stated in the RfC, where the city is a primary topic, there will always be a redirect like that one so the extra keywords will never be required. Diego (talk) 07:03, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

If an article were moved from City, State to City then common sense would dictate creating a redirect—the mediawiki software does this for us automatically. Anyone who preferred to link to "City, State" could continue to do so. No extra research would be needed unless articles were moved without leaving redirects. That is not what's being proposed.

A page on the Associated Press Web site [23] is titled "Mood of the Nation: Boca Raton" and doesn't tell us the City is in Florida. The AP doesn't consistently append the name of the state to cities not on its list. For instance, an AP story carried the headline "Albuquerque voters reject late-term abortion ban" [24] [25]; neither USA Today which has a national distribuion, nor the Daily Herald, which appears to be published in the American state of Illinois, saw a need to add ", New Mexico" in the headline. There is indeed "Albuquerque, N.M." on the by-line, but in the running text the city is referred to as simply Albuquerque. The stories at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/russell-contreras follow a similar pattern. "Albuquerque, New Mexico" doesn't correspond to the way AP stories are actually written. This story [26] about an event in Orlando follows the same style: the by-line says "Orlando, Fla." and the running text calls the city "Orlando". A town is mentioned in the running text as "Decatur, Ga." Another story [27] carries a by-dateline of Norfolk, Va. and eschews "Virginia Beach, Virginia" in favour of simply "Virginia Beach". This AP story [28] republished by the American Broadcasting Co. has a byline of "Savanna, Ga." and mentions Virginia Beach without appending the name of the state.

The same is seen for this story [29] about something happening in Colorado Springs. On Wikipedia, USPLACE prescribes a title of Colorado Springs, Colorado.—rybec 20:33, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

"Headlinese" is a compressed telegraphic style that aims for maximal abbreviation and packs as much information as possible into the smallest number of characters; it serves a special purpose and uses constructions, abbreviations, and styles that are normally deprecated elsewhere. The dateline does consistently apply the state according to AP standards, which calls for the state to be appended with nearly all cities. This is what we follow in USPLACE. (As for running text, it's perfectly normal for something to be abbreviated once it's suitably identified: John Smith in a story will subsequently be called just "Smith".) ╠╣uw [talk] 00:15, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose. Only internationally recognized towns and cities belong at a base name without disambiguation by region (usually ", state", ",province" or ", nation"). Natural disambiguation by region is, well, natural, reasonably expected by readers, and far more useful, in adding to recognizability for readers who may not be sure that the undisambiguated name is unique, or even a city. WP:Concise is good, but regional location adds significantly to the information content and is arguably more concise in term of important information density. One word titles for topics not internationally recognized, are excessively short. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:51, 5 January 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose, per several above, particularly MelanieN's argument regarding "I'm from Bothell" - "Bothell what?". See also King of the Road's reference to "Bangor, Maine". (Granted, Bangor's a lot more ambiguous than I used to think...) --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 12:57, 5 January 2014 (UTC)
• Support: the need for disambiguation depends upon the context. Associated Press stories are distributed to many newspapers and other news outlets. Readers in Orlando may well be unaware that Bothell is in Washington; a Seattle paper could be expected to omit that fact in its own stories. Similarly for a radio call-in show, listeners would mention the state they are calling from, if the show were carried on a network of radio stations spanning several states; on a show produced for a single radio station with its audience in a single state, there is no need for this. In Wikipedia, some articles are about topics associated with a single American state. An example is Metropolitan Seattle Freeways. It now reads:

  Interstate 405 begins in Tukwila at I-5, SR 518, and Westfield Southcenter, and continues east through Renton and then turns north and runs through Bellevue, Kirkland, and Bothell, before turning northwest and crossing I-5 in Lynnwood (near Alderwood Mall), where it becomes SR 525, a freeway for its first few miles. I-405 was built in stages between 1955 and 1968, with a major upgrade north of Bellevue to Bothell in 1972.

  If the name of the state is truly "considered part of the placename in standard American usage" then this should be amended to

  Interstate 405 begins in Tukwila, Washington at I-5, SR 518, and Westfield Southcenter, and continues east through Renton, Washington and then turns north and runs through Bellevue, Washington; Kirkland, Washington; and Bothell, Washington before turning northwest and crossing I-5 in Lynnwood, Washington (near Alderwood Mall), where it becomes SR 525, a freeway for its first few miles. I-405 was built in stages between 1955 and 1968, with a major upgrade north of Bellevue, Washington to Bothell, Washington in 1972.

  ...yet no one has attempted to make such a change--even though there's another Bellevue in the neighbouring state of Oregon, and the freeways connect to Oregon. Sometimes it's desirable to mention the state; other times it is not. The mandatory disambiguation for US place names goes against the general practice of avoiding unnecessary disambiguation. Wasn't the USPLACE practice adopted in order to facilitate the use of scripts to create or maintain articles about places in the United States? That reason may no longer pertain. If USPLACE were dropped, the top of the Orlando page could have a bit less clutter, like the Miami page has now. WP:USPLACE mandates that the article about the town of Glenrio must have the awkward title "Glenrio, New Mexico and Texas", not because there is ambiguity nor because anyone calls it by that name (the article has sections about a a Glenrio Historic District and a Glenrio Welcome Center), but just because. It's actually given as an example in the guideline. —rybec 14:07, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

In your freeway example, if the context of "Washington" has already been established, it needn't be always stated. You are talking about content within an article. We are talking about the title of an article. The article needs to be at least minimally descriptive. "Bothell" as an article name communicates almost nothing. "Bothell, Washington" communicates much. Omnedon (talk) 14:47, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Bothell /ˈbɒθəl/, city in King and Snohomish Counties, Washington, USA would communicate a great deal more. The trouble is the direction: titles are communicated from the reader. When searching for an article, a reader may not know much about the topic. A reader may come to Wikipedia not knowing that Glenrio is in both New Mexico and Texas, or not knowing that Bothell is in Washington. Indeed, that may be the information someone seeks. For other topics on Wikipedia, including place names, article title only identify the subject, rather than attempting to explain it. We have Nahan and Rhyl, not Nahan, Himachal Pradesh nor Rhyl, Denbighshire.

My freeway example was in response to a comment that "The state name isn't included in article names for disambiguation, it's included because it's considered part of the placename in standard American usage (e.g. the AP Stylebook and New York Times conventions, postal names, etc.)"--I'm using the text of the article as an example of standard American usage which contradicts that assertion by consistently omitting the name of the state, even though the omission causes ambiguity (I'm assuming the article was created at least in part by Americans). The AP's style guide is further evidence that the name of the state isn't an integral part of the place name: if that were true, surely the AP would recommend always using the name of the state, rather than omitting it for a few of the largest cities? Surely ", Florida" is as much part of the name of Miami as it is part of the name of Boca Raton. —rybec 01:42, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

• Bothell, Washington, compared to Bothell communicates succinctly important extra information. That it is a place. That it is in Washington.

  Bothell /ˈbɒθəl/, city in King and Snohomish Counties, Washington, USA additionally communicates:

(1) phonetic information (does nothing to contribute to recognizability),

(2) more specific regional information, (to how many are King and Snohomish Counties aiding borderline recognizabilty?)

(3) the fact that Washington is in the USA. Most people already know this, even if they do confuse the state with DC, and the long title doesn't help that.

None of this is "a great deal more". It is trivially more, at much greater length, and is therefore much less concise. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:15, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

• I have noticed that opponents of the USPLACE convention often use Slippery slope and Straw man arguments - "Well, if you're going to add the state, why not add the pronunciation and the county and, and, and..." or "Well, if you're going to add the state in the title, why not add it to every city mentioned in the article?" But of course such arguments have no validity. Nobody is proposing to do what they are suggesting, and nobody ever will. IMO the appropriate response to such arguments is to refer them to the website Your logical fallacy is... --MelanieN (talk) 14:51, 6 January 2014 (UTC)
  • These are not strawman arguments. Nor are they logical fallacies. They are examples of taking arguments to their logical conclusions. This question -- If the argument to include the state is to make the title more recognizable, then why not also include the country (to make it even more recognizable)? -- is a perfectly valid and logically coherent question. And it's not a strawman when stated in a context where including the state even for cities with unique names is defended on increasing recognizability grounds (as, for example, Dicklyon did above). --B2C 18:12, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

• "Taking arguments to their logical conclusions" is pretty much the definition of a Slippery slope argument. --MelanieN (talk) 18:29, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Uh, no. "Taking arguments to their logical conclusions" is not a slippery slope argument, nor is it any other kind of logical fallacy. It's just logic. Or, if you will, Reductio ad absurdum ("a common form of argument which seeks to ... demonstrate that a statement is false by showing that a false, untenable, or absurd result follows from its acceptance").

In this case, I note that a key statement of the support position is that "city, state" should be preferred to "city" because "city, state" is more recognizable than "city". I demonstrate this statement is untenable by showing that if we accept it, we must also accept that "city, state, country" should be preferred to "city, state", because "city, state, country" is more recognizable than "city, state". --B2C 06:59, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

• You inaccurately describe opponents position, and exaggerate. It is classic strawman. In this case, your opponents are not saying:"The better title is more recognizable", but "The better title is much more recognizable, conveying much more information, without so much more length, thus with more concision". Your strawman examples are not "much more recognizable". --SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:45, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

I was exaggerating in order to make the point that a title is something a reader looks for. For a reader who doesn't know that Boca Raton is in Florida, having to include "Florida" in the title is a hindrance to finding the article. For readers who do know that Boca Raton is in Florida, seeing "Florida" in the title only tells them what they already know.

I can see immediately that Nahan, Himachal Pradesh is a place in India and that Rhyl, Denbighshire is a place in the UK; I find Nahan and Rhyl far less recognisable. Yet we muddle through without recognisable titles for them, while more populous places in the US must be disambiguated. Whyalla and Dubbo get undisambiguated titles, with Whyalla, South Australia and Dubbo, New South Wales as redirects. Qikiqtarjuaq (pop. 520) and Pangnirtung (pop. 1,325) don't need "Nunavut" in their titles.

The US isn't the only country where the name of a sub-national division is often written after the name of a settlement [30] [31] [32] [33]; why then should Wikipedia have an exception for it? —rybec 13:16, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

SmokeyJoe, it's not a strawman as my counter-argument is not saying that the "more recognizable" statement which I am refuting is the entire argument. But that statement is a key part of it (moreso for some defenders of the status quo guideline than for others). It's reasonable to dismantle the other's argument one element at a time, especially when the other's arguments is presented by several others in different ways.

And for someone outside of the US unfamiliar with Utah, yes, Provo, Utah, United States is much more recognizable than Provo, Utah (and it's a standard/natural way to refer to Provo, especially when mailing to an address in Provo from outside of the US). --B2C 17:27, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

• It is a strawman argument to oppose an opponent due to your perceived boundary of their argument with a hypothetical third position on the far side, very remote from your own argument. You are not focusing on the boundary region between yourself and the opponent, but attempting to defocus and to obfuscate.

  Deconstructing other's arguments is a good way to understand other's arguments, and helps to compare and contrast with your own, if you keep a focus on the boundary line of difference. More general deconstruction rapidly becomes unweildy.

  No one (but your hypothetical strawman) is saying that States need to be disambiguated by Nation. No one but your strawman wants to move Utah to Utah, United States, or Provo, Utah Provo, Utah, United States. Provo, Utah, United States is not much more recognizable than Provo, Utah, what makes you think it is? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:12, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

  • I'm not arguing that anyone else is explicitly saying that states need to be disambiguated by nation. If I was doing that, that would be a strawman. But I'm not doing that, so there is no strawman.

    What I am doing is showing that that the argument that Provo, Utah is preferred to Provo because Provo, Utah is more recognizable than Provo suggests that Provo, Utah, United States should be preferred to Provo, Utah, because it's even more recognizable.

    Now a valid retort is yours: challenging the obvious premise of my argument that Provo, Utah, United States is much more recognizable than Provo, Utah. Now, you asking me what makes me think that, when I just answered that, is a bit strange. Again, for someone outside of the US who is unfamiliar with Utah, Provo, Utah, United States is much more recognizable than Provo, Utah. If making titles of articles recognizable to those who are unfamiliar with the topics was something we strived to do, then clearly we would prefer Provo, Utah, United States over Provo, Utah. Many people around the world are no more familiar with the names of our 50 states than many of us are with the names of African countries. Telling someone in, say, Austria, that something is in Utah is like telling someone in Mississippi that something is in Benin. It's not helping them recognize anything.

    Of course someone in Mississippi might not recognize Provo, but will recognize Provo, Utah. But if that's the reason to include Utah in the title, why stop there?. Why not make it even more recognizable, so people in other countries who don't recognize "Utah" can still recognize the title as a place in the United States, by including United States in the title? The only answer I can conjure is because we don't strive to make titles recognizable to people who are unfamiliar with the article's topic. But then that indicates we should not include "Utah" in the title either (unless Provo is ambiguous, which it is). --B2C 02:16, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

• You first introduced to this debate the suffixing of places multiple levels of region. You introduced that strawman.

  "Again, for someone outside of the US who is unfamiliar with Utah, Provo, Utah, United States is much more recognizable than Provo, Utah." No. Anyone with the least interest in a city like Provo with be familiar with Utah being a place in the US.

  I dare say, due to existing technology related biases, most of our readership even outside America is more familiar with Utah (a place in the US) than Benin (a place in Africa). Perhaps Benin belongs at Benin, Africa

  "why stop there?" you ask. The answer lies in considering the information content of the title, and the information redundancy in the title. To a majority if reasonable readers, "in Utah" will be redundant to "in the US".

  You seem adverse to the concept of finding the middle of the road. Are you able to balance a canoe? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:01, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

  Reason and logic are my guide. I follow them wherever they take me, without regard to "finding" whatever I may want to find. Starting with Oppose arguments presented here, reason and logic lead me to suffixing of places with multiple levels of region. So I showed how that is. The fact that you, I or someone else may not want to go that far is irrelevant to the point that that is where reason and logic leads.

  That said, I suggest you're ignoring non-American readers, or assuming they are as familiar with our states as we are. In fact, that's one of the things that wrong with the US city naming guideline - it's saturated in American bias. And the support it has simply reflects the greater interest that American editors naturally have with US city names than do non-American editors. But we should be able to rise above that, put our biases aside, and treat US city article titles no differently than we treat other titles. Can we? --B2C 06:24, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

• In the interests of reason and logic, I suggest that you may be easier to follow (and then, conceivably, to agree with), if your were to focus your reason on the middle ground of the debate. Referring to extremes, to exaggerations, leads to over-reaction, and the canoe rolls over. Don't look to the sides, but to the centre where the path is leading. cf. "Hard cases make bad law".

  Maybe we can agree, here and now, that only in very unusual cases (prominant examples exist), do we disambiguate a title with multiple levels of region.

  You think I'm ignoring non-American readers? OK, but I try to imagine the perspective of school children in Borneo, with limited access to computers, slow connection, and very little cultural exposure to American and British norms. However, American TV and movies, and internet is permeating deep into Indonesia, disjointedly. They are well aware of pop culture, the US, and the 50 US states, although few can name many. Utah is actually well known, Mormons, they permeate this Muslim nation more freely than France.

  I do not understand why, as I think you suggest, American bias, mostly a bias due to ease of access, would mean that Americans prefer disambiguation of cities by state, whereas the rest of the world prefers bare city names. I'm not sure what you are saying. I think you may be mistaken as to how exposed the rest of the world is to America. But I don't think there is an issue here of us failing to avoid bias. I think you overrate brevity (in the name of concision, though they are not the same), and underrate recognizability (to the passingly familiar), and underrate precision (eg Welland does not precisely define Welland, Ontario, for the vast majority of the world). --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:15, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose omitting the state, per MelanieN et al. This is a settled question after repeated attempts to change it. There are good, solid, sufficient reasons for including the state in the title. I didn't like the final result at Glenrio either, but it is a compromise that I can live with. --Bejnar (talk) 23:14, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose for all the excellent reasons provided by MelanieN. There's nothing new motivating this proposal and the same old JDLI arguments combined with a "my rationality is more rational than yours" attitude. older ≠ wiser 21:05, 6 January 2014 (UTC)
• Comment To counter Bkonrad's JDLI accusation - we have strong policy-based arguments to change the guideline now (see nom). Now, consider if the guideline did change as proposed. While Melanie's policy-based arguments may seem okay for defending the status quo, how strong would they be for establishing good reason to change the guideline back to what it is now? Are they compelling with respect to changing the guideline to add the state to San Francisco and Boston? No. And they would be no more compelling to change the guideline to add the state for titles like Bothell. The whole thing is based on a very weak JDLI rationalization. You can tell because there is nothing there when you reverse the tables. To characterize the argument in favor of this proposal as JDLI is ironic. --B2C 23:13, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

they would be no more compelling to change the guideline to add the state for titles like Bothell. Not at all. For the majority of U.S. locations, when given without any other context, it is completely natural and expected to give the state name with the city. And the irony is intended. older ≠ wiser 00:23, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

But "San Francisco, California" is just as "natural" as is "Bothell, Washington", and yet that's not a compelling policy-based reason to change the guideline back to requiring San Francisco be disambiguated by state name. The same argument would not be any more compelling with respect to changing the guideline to requiring Bothell be disambiguated. --B2C 01:26, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

WP:Reliable sources is policy. It supports the omission of "California" from San Francisco and the addition of "Washington" to Bothell. Reliable Sources policy would continue to be an argument for the USPLACE convention, regardless of whether it was the status quo or not. --MelanieN (talk) 01:46, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

And how exactly do RS support "Bothell, Washington", not "Bothell", but "San Francisco", and not "San Francisco, California"? Let's take a look at RS that cater to readers familiar with Bothell (you know, the recognizability criterion that is relevant on WP), like the official site for the city, and the Seattle Times. The official web site does not have a single reference to "Bothell, Washington"[34]. And the Seattle Times does not seem to ever bother with ", Washington" [35], [36], [37], [38], [39], [40], [41], [42]. The claim that RS policy would support Bothell, Washington over Bothell, but not San Francisco, California over San Francisco, at least in the relevant context of readers familiar with the city, is baseless. --B2C 06:01, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

• All those sources are from within Washington and should be discarded for that reason. Look for remote reputable sources instead. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:45, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

But B2C has fought strenuously for the principle that recognizability is only for readers already familiar with the topic. Sources by and for readers outside of Washington, who choose to include the state name to help people know what they're talking about, should therefore largely be excluded by his logic. He seems to have many who agree. I don't. Dicklyon (talk) 06:51, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

The "someone familiar with" qualification in the recognizability criterion has been supported unanimously in the past, for very good reason. The goal of making titles recognizable for people who are unfamiliar with each article's topic would mean retitling almost every article on Wikipedia.

Anyway, SmokeyJoe (talk · contribs), the point is that to the extent that recognizability matters in WP titles, the scope of relevance is people familiar with the topic in question. In this case usage in a local paper like the Seattle Times is a much more influential reliable source for us in deciding how those familiar with the topic refer to it than is usage in a source intended for readers likely to be unfamiliar with the city. --B2C 17:34, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

• No it's not. The scope of relevance is both local interest and wider interest. A title must be recognizable to readers interested. While the city name alone may be sufficient for readers near the city, cities are of global interest. Recognizing remote interest in a local city does not mean retitling almost every article on Wikipedia, you are scaremongering with strawman arguments, and for what benefit? Why is shorter better? Because if we have shorter titles, you'll argue less?. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:49, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

B2C: The Seattle Times also frequently omits the state from non-unique local places too, like Des Moines[43][44], Covington[45][46], Kent[47][48], etc., so I'm not sure what your Bothell examples are meant to show. A local newspaper has an explicit local context that an encyclopedia does not, so it can get away with simply saying "Des Moines" and trust that its readers know what it means (i.e., not the city in Iowa). Wikipedia is not a local newspaper; it cannot do that.

This phenomenon is everywhere: a site about pioneering science fiction authors can simply say "Clarke" and be understood; a magazine about contemporary country vocalists can simply say "McGraw" and be understood. Narrow, pre-established context allows a source to use forms that would be unacceptable in broader venues where that context is absent. ╠╣uw [talk] 19:15, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

WP does in a sense have the same local/narrow context as a local newspaper or specialized magazine does since we choose our titles to be recognizable to those who are familiar with the topic. If we were to title our articles to be recognizable to those unfamiliar with the respective topics, we would have to rename most of our articles (but then titles like Bothell, Washington, or even Bothell, Washington, United States, would be justified).

The only reason we add disambiguation like the state name to titles of topics with ambiguous names is because WP titles have to be unique. Otherwise we could title all articles about cities named Kent as Kent. --B2C 22:25, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

B2C: Since you bring up "the official site for the city" as an important source, it's worth noting that a great many of the cities around Bothell – both uniquely-named and non-uniquely named alike – prominently identify the state along with the city name, generally in their sites' titles, headers, banners, and so forth: for instance, see the official city websites for many of Bothell's uniquely-named neighbors: Federal Way, SeaTac, Mercer Island, Issaquah, Bainbridge Island, Edmonds, Ellensburg, Burien, Woodinville, Mukilteo, Sammamish, Snohomish, Tukwila, Lake Stevens, etc., and of course lots of its non-uniquely named neighbors too, such as Redmond, Lynnwood, Kirkland, Everett, Des Moines, Tacoma, Covington, Marysville, Auburn, Centralia, etc. It's true that Bothell and a few others do not prominently show the state (though even Bothell uses the construction elsewhere, e.g.), but I don't see evidence that that omission is representative. I do see plenty of evidence that including the state is representative.

Though the topic here is of course Bothell, Washington, it's not inappropriate to consider how that city's self-identification compares to others in its class. If we do wish to look to city websites as indications of whether the state name is normally included with the city name, then such a metric would not appear to favor the kind of change advanced by this nomination. ╠╣uw [talk] 16:35, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Have you considered the difference is that Bothel is a unique city name? That most of the other names are not unique, and that's why they disambiguate with state name? That's exactly the approach that we use for the vast majority of our titles. And that is the approach apparently used by most US city official web sites. Why don't we also use this same approach for the titles of our articles about US cities? That's the point. --B2C 17:27, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Data please. "Most US city official web sites"? Omnedon (talk) 17:36, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

B2C: Of course I considered it: that's why I specifically listed above the many other uniquely-named cities around Bothell whose websites prominently include the state with the name of the city. ╠╣uw [talk] 17:46, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Displaying the name of the state that the city is in in the graphic header portion of the website is hardly a citation for a reliable source that uses the "city, state" form, especially on any city website that does not use the "city, form". Even most cities on the AP list display their respective state on their official websites, like Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Houston (which does actually use "Houston, Texas"), etc. So what?

I went through the first 10 in your list, and not one of them uses "city, state". Not even one. --B2C 22:25, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

No, every one of the ten does use "City, State" in the site header. And look at the title of the page, which appears outside the webpage itself where the browser displays the web page's title. There too, "City, State" is used. Omnedon (talk) 22:45, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

"...appears outside the webpage itself where the browser displays the web page's title", I believe you mean the URL, like http://www.ci.federal-way.wa.us/. The wa.us is the domain name for the state, and their convention is to use ci.city-name.wa.us for individual city sites. This does not support "city, state".

And the form used in the site header is "City-name, WA", not "City-name, Washington", again not supporting the status quo convention. --B2C 23:00, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

I said title, not URL. Web pages have titles which appear in the title bar for the website. In any case, in the main heading for each of those websites, the "City, State" format is consistently and prominently used. Omnedon (talk) 23:14, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Ah, so you're talking about the undisplayed title that's inside the HTML, like this:

<title>Federal Way, WA - Official Website</title>

As noted above, that's using "City-name, WA", not "City-name, Washington". This does not support the status quo city, state convention. --B2C 23:56, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

No, not "undisplayed". The title is normally shown by the browser, though various browsers will handle this differently. In any case, it does refer to the city and the state. More significantly, each of the cited sites uses "City, State" prominently on the home page. Omnedon (talk) 00:04, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

B2C: Your responses are frankly rather odd on several fronts:

Not only is it patently false to say that the sites I list "not even once" use the City, State convention, a number of them use it in the title on every major page of the site: Federal Way, Issaquah, Bainbridge Island, etc. (And of course that's not even considering the prominently displayed city-and-state title banners that in many cases appear on practically every page of every site.) Suffice it to say that many municipal websites prominently identify themselves using the state.

It's also quite strange to suggest that an occurrence of something like "Federal Way, WA" doesn't support the City, State convention because the state is abbreviated. What does abbreviation have to do with the question of whether or not the state is appended? Is the presence of the state somehow nullified by abbreviation? Your position is perplexing.

Further, you say that the content inside a <title> tag is the "undisplayed title". Um, what? The title is always displayed, either in the title bar of the entire browser window or (increasingly commonly) in a particular tab, as well as in search results, etc. (You may want to learn more about titles.) Still, if you're looking for a title that is actually displayed within the page's rendered content, well, that would be the title banner – which again (in all these cases) prominently appends the state. ╠╣uw [talk] 02:30, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose per MelanieN. In addition to that a change like that would lead to a constant flurry of RMs due to disagreement over which small town is the primary leading to article instability and mislinking. Agathoclea (talk) 06:57, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

• • Wow, every JDLI rationalization for retaining the status quo US city guideline is being unearthed. Here we have the old canard that chaos will ensue as we fight over which of several cities with the same ambiguous name is the primary topic. Never mind that this could be easily handled any number of ways, like declaring that only a US city on the AP list or is a state capital can be primary if it has an ambiguous name. --B2C 22:33, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

(reply to Agathoclea 06:57) Of course this change would lead to moves and move requests, but moving an article to a better title isn't just busy work.

As for mislinking, it isn't proposed that the "city, state" names be prohibited, so anyone who prefers to link to those could continue to do so. Currently, the short names are not prohibited and they exist as redirects for many American settlements. Editors can already link--or mis-link--to those short names. There's already room for disagreement over what can be at the short names. They can already redirect to articles about American cities; if this proposal is accepted then the articles themselves could be at those names, were they the primary topics.

The cases where this could lead to some discussion are when an American settlement shares a name with some topic that is not an American city. Right now, if someone asks whether the articles about Plymouth, Massachusetts; Alhambra, California; or Vancouver, Washington may have shorter names, the answer is a flat "no, not unless the Associated Press says so". If the guideline were changed, some thought would have to go into the answer. Perhaps in some cases (not necessarily my examples), the chance of mis-linking could be lessened; there's no reason it would increase. —rybec 23:42, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Actually, there is a no-discussion solution:

For any US City named City-name such that City-name is currently a redirect to City-name, State-name, move City-name, State-name to City-name.

So simple a bot could do it. No other articles are affected. Done. --B2C 00:03, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

There is no need for a "solution" because there is no problem. We have a well-established guideline. Omnedon (talk) 00:13, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes, there is no problem with the proposal. But one was imagined by Agathoclea (talk · contribs) ("... [implementing the proposal] would lead to a constant flurry of RMs ..."), and it is not unreasonable to point out it is not a problem at all. --B2C 01:11, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

No, I clearly meant the guideline, WP:USPLACE. This RfC is just a re-hash of many previous ones, and it's clearly not going to succeed this time either. Omnedon (talk) 01:17, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I ignored your sophistic attempt to derail this discussion. The "problem" under discussion was the one raised by Agathoclea regarding the proposal, and the solution was about addressing that. Stating your opinion that the guideline itself has no problem is a non sequitur in this thread, that completely ignored the proposal, and the reasons given for it. --B2C 06:34, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

I can see no solution to the problem I raised. In fact someone mentioned Plymouth which is the type of town I am worried about. Longterm stable incoming links suddenly pointing to the wrong target. Agathoclea (talk) 11:51, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose per MelanieN and others. Just one reason is because "Bothell" begs the question, what is a "Bothell"? While "Bothell, Washington" is pretty clearly a place in the U.S. state of Washington. This has been settled again and again and I think the current settlement is best. Any settlement is going to be opposed by some who will arrive and propose discussing it again, disregarding all past consideration. --doncram 06:59, 7 January 2014 (UTC)
  • It's ironic that as I'm being criticized for using strawman arguments, yet another editor bases his reasoning entirely on the very idea I was refuting above with a supposed "strawman". To anyone familiar with the city of Bothell, the topic of an article named Bothell is obvious. We make no attempt to make our article titles recognizable to anyone who is unfamiliar with the given article topic. This is true not only for articles about cities outside of the US, but for every other article on Wikipedia. This can be easily confirmed by anyone by clicking on SPECIAL:RANDOM a few times. About every other article, at least, will have a title that is unrecognizable to you. This is the norm for WP. It is not a problem we strive to address in anyway whatsoever. Why should we for titles of US city articles? --B2C 18:34, 7 January 2014 (UTC)
    • Ironic indeed. You say that We make no attempt to make our article titles recognizable to anyone who is unfamiliar with the given article topic. But some of us do value recognizability. It is useful that Bothell, Washington is recognizably a US place, while Bothell is just 7 random letters to most English speakers in the world. I guess we better have that discussion again, as it would be more productive, hopefully, than this oft-repeated USPLACE discussion. By the way, when I click for a random article, I can usually tell right away if it's a person, a place, a composition title, or some other category; we could do better though. Dicklyon (talk) 01:30, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
      • I've started such a discussion here. Omnedon (talk) 01:58, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
• Support. That there is a consensus that the state is somehow the actual part of the name does not make it a true statement. Wishing so doesn't make it so. "Washington" is no more a part of the city of Bothell's name than "President" is a part of President Obama's name. It's merely a style choice, and the style used for the US cities sticks like a sore thumb on the background of the style used for pretty much every other city on Earth.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); January 7, 2014; 17:39 (UTC)

• Strong support I have avoided this subject for a long time. Here we are with all the usual suspects. nevertheless, once more I appeal for the end of the special pleading for US placenames. There is nothing special about US places that demands a different treatment to that applied to virtually every other subject area on Wikipedia, including the entire rest of the world's places. This is simply the result of the US centric systemic bias that is rife here. Until serious efforts are made to address that bias Wikipedia will not^{(edit: inserted missing word)} truly be able to claim that it is an international project. Please take away the US eyes only blinkers and understand that those of us outside America - and we actually outnumber you by an order of magnitude - are tired of your childish insistence that the American Way must be imposed on the rest of us. - Nick Thorne ^talk 04:36, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

• It is not US-centric. Other examples include:

• Arlington, Free State
• Carrick, Tasmania
• Concepción, Chile
• Griffith, New South Wales
• Hamilton, New Zealand
• Holt, Wales
• Howick, New Zealand
• Invermere, British Columbia
• Labasa, Fiji
• Lyttelton, New Zealand
• Nadi, Fiji
• Napier, New Zealand
• Natal, South Africa
• Nelson, New Zealand
• Orange, New South Wales
• Osorno, Chile
• Oxford, New Zealand
• Perth, Scotland
• Richmond, British Columbia
• Scone, Scotland
• Sigatoka, Fiji
• Tamworth, New South Wales
• Vernon, British Columbia
• Victoria, British Columbia

All of these cities are so much more recognizable with the region suffixed. Yes, generally, these names are ambiguous. However, an awful lot of names are ambiguous, and the situation of place-name ambiguity will only increase as we increase article coverage of more places.

With the lowest well-recognized level of region suffixed, the places are much more recognizable’ than without. The titling is Natural. The article title is always precise. The title is concise because both parts of the title convey important information for most readers, whether they want that city, or they do not want to arrive at that city while looking for something else. Titling all cities and towns this way will lead to betterconsistency, and will mean that never again will a city/town be mistaken for a river or a person.

In South Africa, few cities are disambiguated by region, but typical English names are fairly rare. I doubt any South Africans want to see additional disambiguation, because local names are WP:PT to locals. However, for the rest of us, we freqeuntly have to guess that an Afrikaans looking name belongs to South Africa, which is great if we recognize Afrikaans, and useless if English is not our first language.

In Australia, towns are frequently disambiguated by state, necessarily because there were frequently named ambiguously. However, many places have indigenous names, and these are mixed with respect to disambiguation. They would be better all disambiguated by state so that readers know immediately that the odd-looking word is a city, and not something else, and vice-versa.

As for familiarity - I am passingly familiar with all of these cities, though certainly not an expert, but familiar enough to recognize them and recall some few things I know of them, and all of them I would have failed to recognize without the regional suffix. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:10, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Your argument would carry a lot more weight if it weren't for the fact that the entire rest of Wikipedia manages quite well without this sort of pre-disambiguation. Millions of articles get along just fine without unnecessary disambiguation. If a city is unambiguous, or it is the primary topic, why should we disambiguate it? The title of an article is not the place to put information about the subject - that is what the article itself is for. The title is just the name of the article. The state does not need to be included in the title for a non-knowledgeable reader to find it. Any half decent search engine will find it, and if the reader puts in "Fubar, Texas" the article on Fubar will be found, because the article itself will contain the word "Texas". Don't any of you people use Google? Oh, and the majority of the cities on the list above (at least the ones I recognise), are both ambiguous and not the primary topic, so that little list adds nothing to this debate. - Nick Thorne ^talk 07:48, 8 January 2014 (UTC).

• My arguments (that city, region, one level of regional information is very helpful in greatly helping with recognizability, and that many (though probably a small minority outside the US) city/town article titles are already in this format), I think are reasonable, are stronger than opposing arguments, but I do not mean to argue that the future of the project depends on it. Wikipedia is fairly robust, and can function with many non-ideal practices, but this doesn't mean we shouldn't seek to improve.

  "If a city is unambiguous, or it is the primary topic, why should we disambiguate it?". Why suffix the city name with ", State"? To greatly aid recognizability, etc.

  "The title of an article is not the place to put information about the subject". So you say. Can you point to other reference works, or explain the advantage if minimalist titling?

  The title is not just the name. It forms part of the url. It is the standard text in bluelinks, and even if piped, revealed by cursor hovering. With name, region precision, it enables confident recognition of the article subject without needing to load the article page. This sort of thing is important for readers with poor access speed.

  Yes, the above list lists examples that have region precision due to ambiguity. The point is that the format is widespread already. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:24, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I heard you the first time. Repeating the same argument does not make it any the more valid. How about answering my main point? What is it about US placenames that sets them apart from every thing else in Wikipedia that requires us to ignore the convention that applies to every thing else? US exceptionalism gets a bit old after the first few times it is used. How about the US editors here try to come out from their isolated little cocoon and join the rest of the world for a change. - Nick Thorne ^talk 12:50, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

• You heard me the first time. Sorry. You are new to me, and I was not sure. Your main point? That confuses me. I don't think that the US should be any different. I think that USPLACENAMEs works best, for readers, for non-US readers, and that all places would be better titled as per the US places guideline. US exceptionalism? Did I ever suggest it?

  I think Australian, New Zealand and Canadian cities and towns should be titled as per US cities and towns, largely because very many are non-uniquely named. Other countries, such as South Africa and India, have mostly unique names for their cities, but a suffixed region would still help, and I don't see any reason, from and reader perspective, not to. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:18, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

That's never going to happen. Years ago, there used to be a joint naming convention for U.S. and Canadian placenames, but a separate naming convention was established for Canadian place articles when the U.S. convention sunk into the morass of endless battles over "City, State". --Skeezix1000 (talk) 20:35, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Can you point me to records of the US-Canadian place naming convention schism? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:22, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

It's in the history of this page. IIRC, the Canadian convention was first separated within the context of this page, and then later moved over to form part of a MOS for Canada-related articles. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 16:51, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

I checked what's at the short names corresponding to SmokeyJoe's 24 examples: 17 are disambiguation pages (indicating that editors believe there is no primary topic), and 3 are articles about other topics (indicating that the other subject is the primary topic).

Labasa, Fiji and Sigatoka, Fiji were originally created at the short names. Both articles were moved by Schwyz (now banned as a sock-puppet of Tobias Conradi), who gave disambiguation as the reason for both moves. Similarly, Nadi, Fiji was at Nadi until someone moved it, expressing doubt that it is the primary topic.

That leaves Invermere. The name is ambiguous: Invermere (riverboat) is about a boat named for the town. This does look like a valid example of an article about a non-US settlement which may be the primary topic for its name, yet has a disambiguated title.

Articles about Australian settlements do indeed often have the name of the state in the title. The guideline says:

Most Australian settlement articles are at Town, State/Territory; however, the name of a city or town may be used alone if the place is the primary or only topic for that name (e.g., Sydney rather than [[Sydney, New South Wales]]).

The current proposal would make the American guideline similar to the Australian one.

analysis of examples

Arlington is a disambiguation page Carrick is a disambiguation page Concepción is a disambiguation page Griffith is a disambiguation page Hamilton is a disambiguation page Holt is a disambiguation page Howick is a disambiguation page Invermere is a redirect Labasa is a redirect, created with the remark "moved Labasa to Labasa, Fiji: dab" Lyttelton is a disambiguation page Nadi is a redirect, created with the remark "moved Nadi to Nadi, Fiji: unsure whether a town with pop. 30,000 can be considered the primary meaning here." Napier is a disambiguation page Natal is a disambiguation page Nelson is a disambiguation page Orange is a disambiguation page Osorno is a disambiguation page Oxford is about the city in England Perth is about the city in Western Australia Richmond is a disambiguation page Scone is about the bread Sigatoka is a redirect, created with the remark "moved Sigatoka to Sigatoka, Fiji: river" Tamworth is a disambiguation page Vernon is a disambiguation page Victoria is a disambiguation page

—rybec 10:17, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

RE: There is nothing special about US places: Wikipedia DOES allow for regional variations in English; it's why some articles say "color" and some say "colour", or some say "aluminum" while others say "aluminium". "City, State" is the standard form of speech and writing in the United States, just as "color" and "aluminum" are standard in the U.S. We don't have any rule here that all usage must follow the British way or the American way; both are accepted. RE: your childish insistence that the American Way must be imposed on the rest of us: Nobody is trying to impose anything on the rest of the world. In countries where it is NOT standard usage to add a political subdivision to the city name, Wikipedia doesn't do it and nobody is suggesting they should. But in the US it IS standard to add the state to the city name, as proven by Reliable Sources and Common Usage. This is a legitimate WP:ENGVAR issue and should be accepted as such. --MelanieN (talk) 15:34, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

• Support. While I understand that the comma convention is a long-standing convention for U.S. place articles, I'm not an American so I don't really have any strong opinion regarding the prevalence of this convention in the United States. That said, I see that a large majority of other countries name their place articles without unnecessary disambiguation. And based on my interpretation of the WP:NAMINGCRITERIA policy, I agree that using only the base name when disambiguation is unnecessary best meets the criteria, especially WP:PRECISE and WP:CONCISE. I understand that other editors don't see it that way and it is fine that we disagree. —seav (talk) 16:29, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose for the reasons laid out above by MelanieN and others, and changing the long-sufficient status quo is both pointless and an invitation to a massive amount of make-work edits and profitless disputes over primary topics, disambiguation pages, and hatnotes. Surely there is some better way to make use of the editing energy that would be consumed in this project. --Arxiloxos (talk) 18:25, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
• Support Here we go again. While the arguments in support of mandatory disambiguation (yes, that is what it is) for US cities etc. grow ever more convoluted and byzantine, they still remain nothing more than exercises in special pleading. "US cities are different ... well just because ... it's America!" It has always appeared to me that the proponents of mandatory disambiguation decided on their position based on little more than "I like it" and then searched around for arguments to support their preference - including redefinition of standard English words! When "Bothell, Washington" is considered more concise than "Bothwell" (both of which uniquely identify the topic) then we definitely have jumped the shark. There is zero evidence that US places are any different than every other topic in the encyclopedia - which all manage to live within the general naming guidelines. If this practice of mandatory disambiguation wasn't already happening, we would never, ever consider introducing it. Its continued existence is a simple case of bureaucratic inertia. It is well beyond time it was done away with and the naming of US city articles brought into line with the naming principles across the rest of the encyclopedia. Let's just do it. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 20:08, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Try reading the definition for "concise" in various dictionaries. This is not a redefinition. Rather, "concise" tends to be misused here. "Zero evidence"? Plenty of evidence has been provided. Omnedon (talk) 20:16, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Apparently, this needs to be explained in detail.

Terms are constantly "misused" in specific contexts (engineering, law, etc.), because precise meanings of terms are needed in specific contexts. General terms are commonly used to convey specific meanings in specific contexts. WP titling is such a specific context. The term "concise" has long been used to mean something specific in the context of WP titles. In particular, it means "conveys the name of the topic as briefly as reasonably possibly".

More specifically, "more concise", when used to compare one title to another, has long meant "shorter", but accurate conveyance of the name of the topic is always assumed.

That said, if you insist on looking at the dictionary definition, it says things like "brief but comprehensive". Well, what is "comprehensive" in the context of WP article titles? Again, it's accurate conveyance of the topic's name. This can be confirmed by just a few clicks on SPECIAL:RANDOM. Example after example, for titles about topics that have names (ignoring topics that have no names and require WP editor contrived descriptive titles), will show titles that are comprised entirely of just the name of the topic, without any additional descriptive information, unless disambiguation is required. This supports my claim that the meaning of "comprehensive" within the meaning of concise ("brief but comprehensive") is accurately conveys name of the topic. Bothell accurately conveys the name of the city, and is more brief than "Bothell, Washington". Therefore, in the context of WP titles, Bothell is more concise than Bothell, Washington.

To illustrate further, Paris is also more concise than Paris, Texas. That's why we use Paris for the city in France, and would use it for the city in Texas if it were the only (or primary) use of "Paris". The only reason based on WP policy, besides the current US guideline special case anomaly, to include ", Texas" in Paris, Texas, is disambiguation. But disambiguation considerations notwithstanding, "Paris" is more concise than "Paris, Texas", and "Bothell" is more concise than "Bothell, Washington". To argue otherwise is indeed jumping the shark. Such argument can also be used to say that (clicking on SPECIAL:RANDOM to find example) Dale Brandland should be moved to Dale Brandland (Washington state senator) to make that title more comprehensive and thus more concise. Ridiculous! That is where the logic of your interpretation of "concise" leads, whether you acknowledge it or not. --B2C 21:00, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

No, that is not where this leads. In the context of United States place names, "Bothell, Washington" is more concise than "Bothell". It communicates that the article is about a place. "Dale Brandland" communicates that the article is about a person. Words have meaning. Concise simply does not mean "short". To ignore that is what's ridiculous. Omnedon (talk) 21:10, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

You're still ignoring the context - WP titles - and just using the general dictionary meaning of "concise". In the context of WP titles, where "what kind of topic the article is about" is not a role of the title (support: see how many thousands of times you'll need to click on SPECIAL:RANDOM to find even one example of an undisambiguated title that conveys what kind of topic the article is about).

No one says "concise" means short. But since brevity is an aspect of conciseness, and given two potential titles of a named topic, both of which adequately serve the purpose of a title (convey what its name is), the shorter one is more concise, at least in the context of WP titles. --B2C 22:40, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

I consider that Wikipedia has, broadly, typically, too brief, too imprecise titles. I think it probably reflects a lack of anticipation for number of article that would be written. Geographical names are a prime example. If every small town that ever existed gets its article, then it will overwhelme the convention of placing them all at their base names. Already, ambiguous base names are commonly encountered. For consistency, supported by precision, with benefit to recognizability, we should alter the convention to a standard format of PlaceName, Region.

Other types of articles have similar problems. Pointing out that other types of articles have similar problem is not a good reason to not improve the convention for this sort of article.

I think that no one has articulated a good reason to prefer shorter titles. It's not as if readers have to type them. I think a 50 character title is a reasonable length before its getting "too long". --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:16, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

"It's not as if readers have to type them." That's a very interesting remark. How do you imagine people are using the site? —rybec 23:56, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Do people type urls?

I imagine that readers get to pages by clicking blue links, or using the search box, and I also image that readers use the hover function to read the piped link.

Editors? I expect them to use a lot of copy-pasting.

Maybe what motivates your concerns, I'm guessing (sorry if you have said clearly elsewhere, please point me), is that most incoming links to Bothell are from a section in a page where the local context of Washington State is already established, that ". Washington" is undesired mid sentence, and so editors will need to use Bothell, and that this is tedious for editors? If this is a concern, I apologize, but I would not rank the editors' preference above the readers ability to verify the target by hovering. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:22, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

First, people type titles, and not everyone runs the javascript required to see the hovering information. Second, one of the main reasons we have concision is as a tie-breaker. When there are multiple titles that meet the criteria equally well for a given article, the shortest one is normally chosen. If that weren't true, there would be many more possible titles to consider and argue about for every single article. And many more titles would remain unsettled. It would be a nightmare. The RM backlog get big enough as it is, thank you very much. --B2C 02:41, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

• Why would people type a url? Do you?

  Is javascript required for the full url that appears at the bottom of the browser?

  Concision is a tie breaker? That's a terrible reason, and if that is it, it should be tossed. There are far better tie breakers, such as status quo, or first version. Your rationales, as typical, are not the least bit persuasive to me. I am interested to hear from User:Rybec --SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:38, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

SmokeyJoe, thank you for your reply. I do often edit Wikipedia URLs as a way of navigating the site (typing something after https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title= or after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ ) and when using the search I often type the term I'm looking for. I've also seen Wikipedia pages linked from other sites, or appearing in the results when I use search engines; I imagine that people sometimes follow such links. I hadn't thought about what happens when someone mouses over a piped link. However this discussion turns out, both Bothell and Bothell, Washington are going to continue to bring readers to the same article. If the guideline were changed, editors could continue to use Bothell, Washington and pipe it to say "Bothell". All that's at stake here is redirection. Whatever we do, some readers are going to see a different title than they expected, and a "Redirected from..." message at the top of the article. Currently, that happens to readers who enter via the short name. With the proposed change, it could happen to readers who enter via the long name. I find redirection a minor annoyance: it's as though the page is informing me that what I searched for was incorrect, and the "Redirected from ..." above the body of the article looks like clutter. I don't know that everyone perceives redirection as an annoyance; judging from this discussion, opinions may be divided. Anyway, if it is annoyance then the question is how to minimise it. An obvious answer is to compare the traffic to the short names with that to the long names. The traffic isn't gospel, but imperfect information is still better than none. I'm going to quote some numbers from stats.grok.se. It's missing the data for the first few days of the year but still has some usefulness. When I cite its "last 90 days" numbers, those are really from 2013-10-11 through 2014-01-01.

The article about Miami is now at the short name. In the past 90 days, 278022 requests were logged to the short name [49], as compared to 26010 for "Miami, Florida" [50] and 2490 for "Miami, FL" [51], 62 for "Miami, Fla." [52] and 4 for [53]. For Denver and Chicago, also at short names, the data are similar.

The Orlando article is at the long name, "Orlando, Florida" where it got 139170 requests [54] versus 14783 for the short name [55].

Albuquerque, New Mexico got 177533 [56], with 20413 for Albuquerque [57] and 1760 for Albuquerque, NM [58]

I don't mean to say that the Glenrio example is representative of the results of USPLACE, but I looked at it because it's clearly a made-up name. The hit count is 1418 for Glenrio, New Mexico and Texas [59]; 222 for Glenrio, Texas [60]; 43 for Glenrio, New Mexico [61]; 40 for Glenrio [62]; 22 for Glenrio, TX [63]; 8 for Glenrio, Texas and New Mexico [64] and 0 for Glenrio, Tex. [65].

It does seem that the great majority of traffic comes to whichever title is selected, consistent with the observation that "it's not as if readers have to type them." —rybec 23:30, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

• I think Dale Brandland could be mistaken for an old land called Brand, located in a valley. On inspection, I see it is an unsourced BLPstub, with one broken reference. Not a good example of anything. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:21, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

  SmokeyJoe (talk · contribs), you missed the point, apparently. I got that article from SPECIAL:RANDOM. I was demonstrating how common such articles are. Articles with titles that are recognizable to those familiar with the respective topic, but not to most of our readers, is the norm. That's why you can quickly find so many examples like this with SPECIAL:RANDOM. A title lacking recognizability to people unfamiliar with the respective article's topic is not a problem seeking a solution. Therefore, making the city article title recognizable to those unfamiliar with the city, by including ", state" in the title , is not a strong policy/practice based reason to oppose this proposal. That's the point.

  Now, you've suggested that adding ", state" to the title makes a person who is only slightly familiar with the city more likely to recognize it from the title, but I think that's splitting hairs (or, rather, splitting the "familiar" into those that are quite familiar and those that are slightly familiar, and debating about which are to be considered how much in titling articles) and not really addressing the spirit of the recognizability criterion. We can agree to disagree on that point. It's relatively minor anyway. --B2C 18:30, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

• Generally, most Wikipedia articles are titled too briefly. It is as if the early writers didn't anticipate millions of articles. It is if writers assume that articles can be accessed in a fraction of a second (true for some, far from universal). That Special:Random produces uninformative titles does not mean that it should. The increased recognizability, the familiar natural formatting, the precision ("Place, Region" is much less often ambiguous), the maintenance of a reasonable definition of concise, and better consistency, are policy reasons to support "PlaceName, Region" for all Cities/Towns.

  Increasing recognizability to a larger range of degrees of familiarity is not "splitting hairs" but increasing accessibility. You have not articulated an benefit of limiting recognizability. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:33, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

  • Yes, it is your opinion that "most Wikipedia articles are titled too briefly". But that opinion is not supported, at all, by community consensus. The argument concluding that this proposal should be supported is comprised of reason and logic based on premises and practices supported by community consensus, not the opinion of any one individual, nor of a minority of individuals. --B2C 22:44, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Arbitrary break 1

• Oppose - WP:USPLACE is arbitrary and sometimes seems unreasonable, but it has prevented an enormous amount of unproductive argumentation and will continue to do so in the future (the time wasted on discussions such as this one notwithstanding). Stare decisis, please. --Orlady (talk) 20:23, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
  • Simply moving every instance of US-city-name, state-name to US-city-name where US-city-name currently redirects to US-city-name, state-name would require no discussion whatsoever.

    To claim that what is arguably the most controversial naming guideline on WP is needed to prevent "an enormous amount of unproductive argumentation" is, frankly, absurd. Because USPLACE is (as you say) "arbitrary and ... unreasonable" is the cause of the controversy, and the remedy is to bring in it in line with our general naming policy and other conventions, per this proposal. If preventing unproductive argumentation is the goal, supporting, not opposing, this proposal, is the way to get there. --B2C 21:00, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

No the remedy is to accept consensus that has been repeatedly validated. --Bejnar (talk) 02:35, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

• There is no definitive "answer" to exactly where we draw the balance between conciseness and recognizability and naturalness and consistency and precision in this context. And you can't win on a technicality by saying that recognizability is essentially irrelevant because it implies knowledge of the subject, because that's just an opinion too. So any decision is on some level arbitrary. That means the appropriate course of action is to move on or at least wait a reasonable interval before tiresomely rehashing a discussion that can't be resolved -- not being argumentative in the hopes that everyone will get exhausted and you'll win by default. AgnosticAphid talk 07:12, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Bejnar (talk · contribs), you are mistaken. The only consensus achieved with regard to this guideline has been for incremental changes, most notably the AP list modification compromise. But there has never been consensus for the overall guideline itself. The failure to garner a consensus to change it, like the current proposal, is not evidence of consensus favoring the guideline. Most of these discussions ended up "no consensus". That doesn't validate anything.

And even if there was consensus for the guideline, WP:CONSENSUSCANCHANGE, clearly there is a lot of objection to it, for good reasons (see nom), and discussion must be allowed accordingly.

Agnosticaphid (talk · contribs) the last substantive discussion about this guideline (that was not immediately closed) was a year ago. Is waiting a year not a "reasonable interval"? --B2C 07:23, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

• (ec)Or we can work at having a consistent naming structure that does support imprecise or ambiguous titles. I wonder who will say consistent, is wrong while ignoring all of the exceptions that exist while fighting for concise titles? Vegaswikian (talk) 07:30, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

• If conciseness is valuable (eg [66]), then why disambiguate lengthily, unabbreviated? Why Bothell, Washington, not Bothell, WA? Why Orange, New South Wales, not Orange, NSW? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:47, 11 January 2014 (UTC)
  • Good question. If you are going to include the state, according to usage in reliable sources, I suspect (but have not verified) that the spelled-out state or province is more commonly used than the abbreviation. If that's not true, and the abbreviate forms are more commonly used, that's a good argument to use the abbreviated forms. Conciseness does not trump usage in reliable sources. --B2C 05:26, 13 January 2014 (UTC)
• Support changing U.S. Place. It doesn't make sense to treat U.S. municipalities differently than others elsewhwere. This should by decided on a community-by-community basis. Hot Stop 03:35, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Actually, we are not treating U.S. municipalities differently than others elsewhere. We are applying the basic criteria from WP:Article titles (Recognizability, Naturalness, Precision, Conciseness and Consistency) to all. However, when we do this, we discover a (possibly unique) pattern with US Place names that does not occur with places elsewhere. Other countries don't repeat place names to the extent that the US does ... more than half of US place names require disambiguation because the names are repeated in multiple states. With so many requiring disambiguation, we find that the disambiguated "city, state" format becomes the norm... the most recognizable, the most natural and most consistent format. Blueboar (talk) 14:04, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, but that's simply not true. Australia and Canada both "repeat place names" at least to the same extent as the US does, and our guidelines for city article titles for both of those countries once also required the higher level regional place in titles, and have since been changed to not require that any longer (with no ill effects, I might add). It is only the United States that it is still treated this way.

Further, there is no argument that either form, with or without the state, meets Recognizability (limiting scope to "those familiar with the topic"), Naturalness, and Precision for US cities with unique names. Consistency is also at best a wash, with including the state for consistency being favored if you consider that most US cities need to have the state, but favoring no state when possible for consistency to be consistent among all cities worldwide and to be consistent with cities that happen to be on the AP list.

That leaves conciseness, which means "comprehensive without unnecessary words". Since, titles comprised of only city name are no less comprehensive than those that include the state for all intents and purposes in the WP title context (being more comprehensive in description, so those only vaguely familiar can glean better what the topic is, is not relevant to WP titles, or we would have very different titles), the state is an unnecessary word, so not including the state is more concise and meets WP:CRITERIA better than including the state. --B2C 18:28, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Data, please. Show that Canadian and Australian place names are duplicated similarly to the data given below for United States places. I seriously doubt your assertion. Omnedon (talk) 19:01, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, I misunderstood what was meant "repeat place names" (brain fart). The repeats are irrelevant since we're talking about place names with unique names. Regardless of why, the bottom line is that just like for the US, most Australian and Canadian city articles currently include the higher level place name in the title. The difference is that this is required for the US; it is not for Australian and Canadian cities. We chose to remove the state from a small minority of US city names (those on the AP list) with no ill effects whatsoever. Do you think growing the size of that minority to include cities with unique names would be problematic? --B2C 19:41, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes. Reasons given here and in the archives. Omnedon (talk) 19:52, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Reasons given for why you believe it would problematic to not include the state in the titles of US cities with unique names? Maybe we need a summary of pro/con arguments for each side. Then you could just say, CON #3, #7 and #11, or whatever. --B2C 00:45, 14 January 2014 (UTC).

B2C: Just like before? It seems unnecessary to tiresomely repeat the exercise once again here (though doing so might be quite useful as a demonstration of the repetitiveness of these debates, apropos to the moratorium question).

Omnedon: That only about 6% are non-unique in Canada versus over half non-unique in the US certainly demonstrates how considerably placename repetition can vary, and is one reason (among various others) why the current convention is appropriate and fitting for the US. ╠╣uw [talk] 02:22, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Those stats are pretty meaningless. Whether a placename is repeated within a polity is irrelevant. What matters on Wikipedia - unless you are trying to argue that its systemic USA bias is valid - is whether names are repetitive world wide. I saw your stats for Australia and the fact is that many of our place names are duplicates of (mostly) UK ones. I suspect you would find a similar case exists for many places in Canada. That a name is not repeated within a country matters not at all. So you comparison is totally meaningless. - Nick Thorne ^talk 13:09, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

I don't appreciate your edit summary on this, "lies, damned lies and statistics". Please try to assume good faith here. The statistics are quite meaningful in the context of the current discussion regarding WP:USPLACE. Also the amount of repetition of names in the US compared to other countries has been questioned, and it has been claimed that names are re-used as much in Canada as in the US. This shows that is not true. Omnedon (talk) 13:27, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Oh, please. "Lies, damned lies, and statistics is a phrase describing the persuasive power of numbers, particularly the use of statistics to bolster weak arguments. It is also sometimes colloquially used to doubt statistics used to prove an opponent's point."

Speaking of new points coming up in this discussion, I think the one Nick makes here is not only new, but quite valid. What difference does it make if a country has many city names that conflict with other city names within that country, or if a country has many city names that conflict with other city names in another country? Either way, the city name that conflicts cannot be used alone.

The amount of repetition also does not matter. Whether a given use conflicts with one other use or multiple other uses, either way it needs to be disambiguated. --B2C 16:30, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Oh, please, indeed. It's dismissive and rude. You and he are trying to change the focus of this discussion. First you claimed, "Australia and Canada both 'repeat place names' at least to the same extent as the US does..." That's been shown not to be true, which was the point of the statistics. The point is that there is a great deal of duplication of names among United States places, which is one of many reasons to include the state in the title consistently within that group. Omnedon (talk) 17:33, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Sorry I did not realize the point sooner (thanks to Nick for bringing it to our attention). That makes it no less valid. You're right that the amount of repetition has been questioned, and it has been shown that US name are reused more than Canada names. That doesn't mean the point about repetition is relevant to the question of whether this proposal should be supported or opposed.

The amount of repetition is, in fact, irrelevant in this discussion. Consider that there are dozens of cities in the US named Lincoln. There is only one place in Australia named Cambridge. Nevertheless, each of those uses must be disambiguated for equally strong reasons. All the other Lincolns in the US do not make the argument to disambiguate Lincoln, Alabama any stronger than the argument to disambiguate Cambridge, Tasmania. The amount of repetition is irrelevant. --B2C 18:26, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

The point is irrelevant; the amount of repetition is not. This RfC is about a place in Washington, and more broadly about WP:USPLACE. Within that context, the amount of repetition among United States place names definitely supports the current practice. You made a false claim comparing the US to Canada, and now that it has been refuted, you're shifting ground. This is about United States places. Omnedon (talk) 18:52, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Omnedon: Exactly so. The number of times any one individual placename is repeated isn't significant to the broad topic of USPLACE, but the percentage of places throughout the country that are repeated is very relevant. In the US, most placenames are indeed repeated (as the stats show), which is a good reason to simply append the state to all places in that class as a matter of consistency. ╠╣uw [talk] 19:11, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Then you also have the issue of places names repeated across countries which adds another level of conflict in the name space. That is probably something harder to measure. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:49, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

First you should AGF yourself. Perhaps you are not aware of the phrase Lies, damned lies, and statistics but I used it indeed because I saw an attempt to prove a point, about how the USA is supposedly so different to everywhere else that it warrants special treatment, through the use of some statistics that purport to show this. I was simply calling out the misuse of statistics, since they do not prove the alleged point at all. I'm sorry, but I really am getting very tired of the blatant US-centric bias being used here by the supporters of the current guideline. If this discussion was being held about any other subject the move to standard Wikipedia practise would be immediate and uncompromising. However, because of the fact that the great majority of Wikipedians are US based it seems that US practice trumps all in this discussion. This is known as the "tyranny of the majority". So much for Wikipedia being an international effort. I doubt that most US based editors arguing for the status quo even realise that they are allowing national preferences to over-rule what should really be an open and shut case for standard practises. Please try to remove the blinkers, instead of dismissing all counter arguments out of hand, try to think about what would be the case if we were arguing about mandatory disambiguation for BLP articles. Would you be arguing that we should include (by way of example) a person's nationality in the title of all BLP articles? If not, then you already understand the reasons why I oppose the unnecessary mandatory disambiguation of US place names. - Nick Thorne ^talk 21:33, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I'm familiar with the phrase, and it doesn't apply here. The statistics I provided supported the point I was making. You are focused on something else. And you seem to ignore all the reasons given why this case is different than others. Wikipedia must have some degree of flexibility, as not all topics and subject areas can be treated identically. In this case, WP:USPLACE makes good sense. It's not a tyranny of the majority; it's that some editors see good reason for this practice and others choose to ignore that. Omnedon (talk) 01:31, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

No, the good reason is not being ignored. It's acknowledged and discounted, appropriately. There are good reasons to make countless titles more descriptive, more recognizable, and more consistent. For example, we could add the (year film) tag to every title of every film, thus clearly describing each film as being a title, making each topic recognizable as a film from the topic even to those only vaguely familiar with the films, and make all film titles consistent with each other. The (year film) tag is also commonly used in reliable sources. However, we still don't do that, even though many if not most films are ambiguous (due to conflicts with book titles, play titles, remakes, and using popular names as their titles). Good reason for a practice is not good enough. The good reason has to be better than not having the practice. That case has not been made. --B2C 02:40, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Is there a functional difference between "ignored" and "acknowledged and discounted"? I think not.

Indeed, there are good reasons to make titles more descriptive. More recognizable. More consistent with very similar topics.

Tagging every film with "(year film)" would make all films more recognizable, and would make articles on films more consistent with each other. Many films area ambiguously titled. As this is done in reliable sources, it is natural. Why not? Because it is less concise? It is not hyperconcise?

Why should concision rate so highly? I get it that a lot of editors want short titles. Why? I've seen a lot of circular arguments, rhetoric, strawman constructions, non sequeters and nonsense. The first three WP:NAMINGCRITERIA have robust justifications. the next two much less so, they are preferences. There is no need for consistency, and we readily abandon it, for similar topics with unambiguous and ambiguous titles. But some people are attached to hyperconsistency. Why? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:14, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

This is not the place to debate the merits of adding "(year film)" to all our titles about films. The point is we don't do that. You don't agree with the reasons for that. That's fine. But consensus disagrees with you. My argument here is based on the premise that consensus on WP is to avoid unnecessary descriptive information in titles, no matter how "helpful"; that that is not the role of titles. The use "(year film)" only when disambiguation is necessary is an example of that. It's factual support for my claim. There is tons of it. If you want to argue that we should not be doing that, and defend USPLACE on the grounds that it's different for good reason, something that should be expanded on copied on other titles, okay. Do that. But you would be the only one. Most other defenders of the status quo vehemently deny that USPLACE is different in this place; they don't support adding "(year film)" to the titles of all film articles. They argue that adding ", state" is different because ", state" is part of the name of the city, and that it is more commonly used in RS that city name only. --B2C 00:15, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

"Year, film" is commonly in RSs. And film names are even more often ambiguous than city names (though not place names, if you count suburbs, but if you count suburbs, virtually all are technically ambiguous). And "unnecessary" is such an easily met criterion it is useless. You are the only one I've seen argue that helpfulness to readers is unimportant. Helpfulness, helping readers more accurately recognize the towns they are interested in, is better for readers than short URLs that nearly nobody ever types. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:49, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

B2C never said that being helpful to readers is unimportant. What he is saying—and I agree with this—is that the article title is not the place to be extra helpful. The article title is merely where you name the topic of the article. You do not need to provide context (such as that the article is about a film or that an article is about a place in the state of Washington) in the article title. Providing context is the job of the WP:LEAD section. —seav (talk) 16:43, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

• So you say, but why do you say it? Why is a helpfully informative title not desirable, or less desirable than a hyper concise title? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:31, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Because B2C has spent years working to water down the recognizability and precision criteria to where he claim that they say that; which they almost do; so that he can say it is policy for titles to be not helpful; which he does. But we don't have to buy it. And we ought to fix it. Dicklyon (talk) 23:49, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Too rich. You brought up the "(year film)" example. Now that someone tries to explain why WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS you say, "oh, this isn't the place to discuss adding "(year film)" because it's obviously the consensus to exclude it!! AgnosticAphid talk 00:52, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Nick Thorne: I agree that the US shouldn't receive special treatment, nor does it in this case. We simply follow the same process as we do when assigning any other article title: consider the subject and decide accordingly how to weight or balance the criteria of recognizability, naturalness, precision, conciseness, and consistency. For US settlements, that's led (rightly, IMHO) to the longstanding WP:USPLACE convention.

You (and others) seem to suggest that any naming convention for US settlements that varies from some Wikipedia-wide norm is American exceptionalism, but it's not. It's simply a reasonable acknowledgement that not all places in the world are the same, and that one size doesn't necessarily fit all — an idea that Wikipedia's titling policy very clearly recognizes. ╠╣uw [talk] 10:44, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

OK, I get it. This is not US exceptionalism, the USA is just special. Yeah, right. - Nick Thorne ^talk 20:52, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

The above mentioned statistics help to understand why the US is disambiguatating by default. Sources will always assume there is another town somewhere else. Germany has also a high proportion of repeated names at least among the smaller places, but there disambiguation is handled by sources in using rivers and regions not states. There often the disambiguation has entered even the official designation of place names. Agathoclea (talk) 12:03, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

The statistics do not show what you think they do. Sorry. Place names are not a uniquely US concept. Consequently, the area of knowledge we are talking about is not limited to the USA. There are approximately 200 countries in the world. Showing me statistics that only include data from the US therefore cannot show anything about why the US needs to be so different from everywhere else and from all other areas of knowledge within Wikipedia. - Nick Thorne ^talk 20:52, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, but you misunderstand. No one has claimed that "place names are a uniquely US concept". Obviously other nations have place names. The statistics show that compared to Canada, the United States re-uses place names to a far greater extent (over 50% compared to 6%). That's what the statistics were intended to show, and that's what they do show. Do you feel that there are other nations that re-use names to a great extent? Then show that. Omnedon (talk) 21:12, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

I don't need to show anything, I'm not the one claiming that the USA is a special case. I want it treated exactly the same as everywhere else. - Nick Thorne ^talk 01:53, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

You want to overturn a long-standing guideline, but you don't need to show anything? I'm not claiming that the US is a "special case". As others have already said, it's a matter of flexibility. And though some claim it is against policy, others have cogently argued that it is in fact in line with policy. Omnedon (talk) 02:00, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

No, what I want to do is bring that anomalous guideline back in line with the guidelines for all other places and with Wikipedia naming conventions in general. You are indeed arguing that the USA is a special case, otherwise there would be no question about this at all. This example is the very epitome of US exceptionalism and if you can't see that, perhaps that says more about your perceptions than it does about the merits of a consistent Wikipedia wide naming convention for place names. - Nick Thorne ^talk 03:10, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Nick Thorne: Your argument is very odd. You suggest USPLACE is a "special case" and the "epitome of American exceptionalism" because it puts in place a convention governing how its articles are titled that varies in some ways from how other Wikipedia articles are handled. I don't get that — a great many topics have their own naming conventions which apply some special guidelines to their topics, in the recognition that those topics differ in some ways from the broader Wikipedia norm. You seem to feel that such conventions are abhorrent aberrations to be stamped out — but a naming convention for a particular class of article is a very suitable and appropriate practice that exists for very good reasons, and is a practice that Wikipedia clearly embraces. Please accept that. ╠╣uw [talk] 10:46, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

There is the crux of the matter. Why are US places a "different topic" to all other places? It seems to me that considering the USA to be an exceptional place is so second nature to those that insist it is that they do not even realise they are doing it. You post merely emphasises my point. It is my contention that US place names are not a separate category, they are merely part of the category of place names overall. No one has produced the slightest objective evidence that US places are somehow so different to all other places, that they belong in their own separate category, without resorting to what boils down to an unsupported assertion that "the USA is special". - Nick Thorne ^talk 13:29, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Um, they are in their own separate category: Category:Populated places in the United States. You're now suggesting US settlements don't even merit separate categorization? Um, OK. Good luck pursuing that... ╠╣uw [talk] 14:12, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

OK, my bad: I used a word that has a special meaning. I was not referring to categories in the sense of Wikipedia categories. Rather, it was within the context of this discussion, which is about US place names, and which should have been obvious. Just as Wikipedia's systemic US bias is obvious to those that are concious of it. - Nick Thorne ^talk 14:20, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

In any case, this RfC is about a place in the United States. It doesn't matter in this context what other nations do; in the US, the majority of names are re-used, so including the state by default makes sense, and the guideline has been in place for years. And of course that's just one reason for it; many others have also been given. Omnedon (talk) 21:48, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Ah! The old "we've always done it that way" defence. That line of argument has never been satisfactory and it doesn't work here. Had this guideline not been adopted years ago when Wikipedia was a lot less formalised than it is now, this guideline would never have got up. That it has existed for a long time is no justification for keeping a guideline that is clearly out of step with everything else. - Nick Thorne ^talk 03:10, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Nick Thorne: That USPLACE is a stable and longstanding guideline is a valid point to raise. Per WP:CONLEVEL, Wikipedia sets a high bar on changing established policies and guidelines, and recognizes that "their stability and consistency are important to the community". That being the case, an even higher burden than usual rests with challengers to show why it must be changed or repealed. I understand you dislike the convention, but merely lamenting that it makes titles in this set of articles different in some ways than titles in other sets of articles is hardly good grounds, given that Wikipedia clearly embraces the concept of topic-specific conventions on article titles. ╠╣uw [talk] 10:46, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

I don't like "we've always done it that way" either. That is why I always ask: "Why?" In this case we have an answer. WP:USPLACE codifies what the prevelance of RS dictates in connection with WP:COMMONNAME. In the US a state is commonly appended to the name of a place. In other countries that is - more often than not - not the case. The argument above, that RS will even disambiguate when there is no need because disambiguation is so prevelant, is not the reason why we do it, it is an explanantion why sources do it. We can only follow, else we go against our policies. Agathoclea (talk) 11:21, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

See my response to HUW, above. We follow sources for the content of our articles but we often do not when setting naming standards for articles. I have yet to see a valid argument for why the USA is so special that articles on US places should be in a category of their own. As I have said previously, however you try to deny it or dance around it, this is just another example of systemic US bias. - Nick Thorne ^talk 13:29, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

If you have yet to see valid arguments then you're not looking or reading. Case in point: my post earlier which you summed up as "we've always done it that way", whereas I've never given that as a reason for doing it this way; the point was that this guideline is long-standing, and yet you do not feel the need to show any sort of data, as I've done. I specifically pointed out that there are many reasons why it is done this way. I am not in favor of "doing things just because they've always been done this way" either. The various reasons have been brought up in discussion after discussion over the years. You're just not acknowledging that. Omnedon (talk) 14:18, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Yet in your post above at 21:48, 15 January 2014 (UTC), you said "It doesn't matter in this context what other nations do; in the US, the majority of names are re-used, so including the state by default makes sense, and the guideline has been in place for years." Not only is this clearly an example of "we've always done it that way", but it's also a perfect example of US exceptionalism. - Nick Thorne ^talk 14:27, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Not at all. Rather, I'm saying that different situations call for different solutions. And in the sentence you quoted, I gave one of the many reasons for it. The reason is not "this is how we've always done it", but "in the United States the amount of name duplication means this makes sense". This project page has various guidelines for many parts of the world. This is just one of them. Please provide some sort of data that shows that any other nation comes even close to the amount of duplication that exists in the United States. Rhetoric isn't helping. I've provided data; you provide some. Omnedon (talk) 14:45, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

I don't see it as US bias either that for US towns we follow US styles and for German towns we follow European styles. Agathoclea (talk) 15:27, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Nick, you said We follow sources for the content of our articles but we often do not when setting naming standards for articles. That is not what our guidelines say. The nutshell of WP:TITLE - the summary of the most important points in that page - says This page in a nutshell: Article titles should be recognizable to readers, unambiguous, and consistent with usage in reliable English-language sources. WP:RS was the original basis for the USPLACE guideline, and its basis in RS is one of the reasons it has been so stable. Furthermore, as Agathoclea points out, Wikipedia DOES follow national style in titling; we do not insist on a Wikipedia-wide, one-size-fits-all format. Take rivers for example: in the US they are generally titled as Mississippi River, while in the UK they are generally titled as River Thames. This is not some kind of prejudice in favor of one usage or the other; it's simply a reflection of how the titles are given in the different countries. Consistency does not trump WP:RS; on the contrary, WP:ENGVAR is specifically allowed here. --MelanieN (talk) 15:47, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Very well said. Omnedon (talk) 17:39, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Since use of just the city name is at least as commonly used in RS as is city, state for US cities, the ENGVAR argument at best makes city, state equivalent to city in terms of recognizability and naturalness. Conciseness, in the context of WP article titles, still clearly favors the shorter variant for unique city names, since including the state is unnecessary to meet WP:AT requirements, and avoiding unnecessary words is fundamental to concision. --B2C 22:39, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

....And..... B2C repeats himself for the umpteenth time. I think we're done here. --MelanieN (talk) 00:42, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes, every time you repeat the ENGVAR argument without even acknowledging (much less addressing) the refutation of it, you can expect me to repeat the refutation of it. You keep repeating that titles are to be "consistent with usage in reliable English-language sources". So what? You imply that suggests a preference for city, state. It does not. City alone is at least as consistent with English RS as is "city, state". --B2C 01:24, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Indeed, just as these editors refuse to acknowledge the systemic US bias embodied in their special pleading for US place names in what is supposed to be an international project. Until and unless they remove their blinkers this matter will never be resolved. I've had enough for now. See you later. - Nick Thorne ^talk 02:50, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Nick Thorne: An international project should be responsive to relevant international and regional differences, which Wikipedia does, and which USPLACE does. To forbid that would seem like the antithesis of diverse internationalism. ╠╣uw [talk] 14:59, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

B2C: Your refutation, though, is merely your assertion that City by itself is equally consistent with RS, which is obviously disputed — so simply repeating it without compelling evidence adds little to the debate. As has been noted, many significant reliable sources relevant to this topic, from the US Census to the Associated Press, follow the City, State convention, which reflects an American usage that's so common as to be reasonably considered ENGVAR. Further, many official municipal websites for the settlements themselves also prominently append the state, as shown. Certainly some sources like the Seattle Times (which you cite) frequently use just "Bothell" rather than "Bothell, Washington", but such usage in local papers where the context of Washington state is already implicitly established is less than compelling.

If we've reached a point where you're simply continuing to restate your objections and dismissals of others' positions, and others simply continue to counter with their own restatements, then we've concluded fresh debate and are now just slogging through stale repetition, which I suggest benefits no one (though it does illustrate why the proposed moratorium deserves serious consideration). ╠╣uw [talk] 14:59, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

If you reject the to someone familiar with standard set by the recognizability criteria, even though it has been supported unanimously when challenged, then of course local paper usage like the Seattle Times referencing Bothell without the state is not going to be compelling to you. But the indisputable fact is that that is precisely the context which is relevant to choosing WP titles - because the person searching for a topic is familiar with the topic (or he would not be looking for it). On the other hand, when a newspaper in Maine publishes an AP article about an event in Bothell, of course it's going to include Washington, at least in the first reference to the city, because it doesn't presume that its readers are familiar with that town. Yes, my refutation is based on this point, and you guys keep conveniently ignoring it when you repost your arguments (thank you for not doing that this time).

But denial is not going to make the point, or the arguments and refutations based on it, go away. More importantly, this fundamental truth about how WP titles are selected in general (easily confirmed by any small selection of WP:RANDOM titles), and how this guideline's endorsement of adding unnecessary words to titles (words not made necessary by any of the WP:CRITERIA) keeps this guideline controversial. It's why year after year after year after year people keep showing up who to try to either bring this guideline in line with the others, or fix individual titles of US cities with unique names, or both. And that will never stop, because the fundamental reason they keep doing that is not being addressed by this guideline, and can't be. The only remedy is to fix it (or, perhaps, just delete WP:USPLACE and title US places directly per WP:AT and generic WP:PLACE). --B2C 23:59, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Huwmanbeing (talk · contribs), please note how English RS refer to Kitzbuhel. AP articles in newspapers all over the US almost universally use "Kitzbuhel, Austria". And, yet, we don't title that articles that way. Why? For the same reason that we should not include Washington in the title of Bothell - to those familiar with the respective topic, the higher regional place name is unnecessary. --B2C 00:15, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

For bibliographies, The Chicago Manual of Style advises "Washington is traditionally followed by DC, but other major cities, such as Los Angeles and Baltimore, need no state abbreviation." [67] —rybec 04:09, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

In other words, pretty much exactly what USPLACE says. The USPLACE convention was based on the AP Stylebook, but here's additional Reliable Source support for it. --MelanieN (talk) 05:38, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

At Template_talk:Citation/Archive_5 someone posted a somewhat larger excerpt, as I perhaps should have done:

If the city of publication may be unknown to readers or may be confused with another city of the same name, the abbreviation of the state, province, or (sometimes) country is usually added. Washington is traditionally followed by DC, but other major cities, such as Los Angeles and Baltimore, need no state abbreviation.

How about replacing "Cities listed in the AP Stylebook as not requiring the state modifier in newspaper articles" with "Major cities except Washington, DC,"? —rybec 07:18, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Right now it is very clearly defined. If we move to the language you suggest, I agree the intent is similar and I don't intend to be dismissive of your suggestion at all; but the problem I see is that "major city" is not clearly defined and would, I think, generate another disagreement. The nice thing about the current language is that it is clear and unambiguous. Omnedon (talk) 12:33, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Is clear and unambiguous a goal? If so, "Cities on the AP list and cities with unambiguous names" is just as as clear and unambiguous as the current language, and much more consistent with how we name other articles on WP, not to mention complying better with concision and just as well with all the other criteria. --B2C 14:52, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

No, the current language is much more clear than what you suggest, which hurts rather than helps concision (among other things). Include the state unless the place is on the AP list. Period. It works great and is entirely appropriate for the subject area it covers. Omnedon (talk) 15:00, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

You can be as clear as "unambiguous", but you can't be more clear, much less "much more clear".

The proposal is proven to work even better than the current approach. Canadian and Australian city guidelines were once also as rife with conflict and endless discussions as USPLACE is now. How was it resolved? By bringing those guidelines in better compliance with our general naming conventions; by ceasing to require unnecessary disambiguation.

To say the current system "works great" requires the level of denial engaged in by those who claimed the title Yoghurt "was fine" through 8 years of conflict and debate about that title. Why do you devote so much time and energy to defend what is the most controversial guideline on Wikipedia? --B2C 17:16, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

The main reason this guideline is controversial is that there is a relatively small number of editors who just don't like this guideline and have devoted so much time and energy to undo what is otherwise an entirely satisfactory and clear guideline for most editors. older ≠ wiser 17:50, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

• The Australian city guideline is extremely disconnected from reality. Where do city/towns end, and localities and suburbs begin? Implementing the rule change of 2010 would not be so simple. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:01, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

• From SmokeyJoe's summary " Australian 2010 rule change never implemented". This just isn't true. The 2010 change in Australia did not make it mandatory for Australian cities and towns to be non-disambiguated if possible. It simply allowed them to be at their ordinary, common sense name if that was suitable. Your (deliberate?) mischaracterisation of the Australian naming convention is sadly typical of the special pleading of the pro-compulsory disambiguation cabal. "The Australian city guideline is extremely disconnected from reality." In what way? Where in the Australian naming convention does it say anything about differences between cities, towns, suburbs, localities etc with regard to mandatory disambiguation? Any "settlement" (for lack of a better term) can be at its ordinary name if it is uniquely names or is the primary topic. You are simply throwing FUD about to aid your cause. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 22:36, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

• You are right about "mandatory". It is not mandatory to unnecessarily disambiguate with , State. Perhaps I read the change wrong? Is it mandatory to not disambiguate unnecessarily? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:03, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose. Consistency is highly underrated but it is an important part of the MoS. This policy provides for it and does no harm. The argument against pre disambiguation is often raised to rally the troops who are opposed to the concept no matter any other reasons for choosing a naming convention even if pre disambiguation is not the goal. I sometimes help out on links to dab pages. One of the most difficult and time consuming fixes is when your only context is linked words that you don't know. So when you have, say a school dab page with a list by country, the links in the article should give you some idea of the country where the school is. But too many times, it does not. Realize that most tools that help give article snippets. So you have to then go to look at the entire article more time and sometimes that does not help either. So bottom line we need better titles that help all readers, not just experts. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:24, 28 January 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose. Having a consistent, clear naming convention saves endless disputes about individual articles, freeing editors to focus on substantive content. The current US-city-name, state-name convention reflects the common usage for US places, and has worked well for years. The large number of failed proposals to change the convention is evidence that some editors have a W:IDIDNTEARTHAT approach to this topic. However sincere their views, the repeated efforts to rehash the same debate amount to a strategy of attrition, which is the opposite of a collaborative approach. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:56, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

Do you have any evidence of bad faith besides the mere fact that there have been multiple proposals to change this guideline? The discussions go back to at least 2004. Are you saying that the same editor has started several of them? I looked at several, and the account names I saw are all different. Wouldn't attrition also happen among editors who wish to change the guideline, not only among those who like it as it is? —rybec 09:57, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

Repeated discussions of the same failed proposal waste the energy of everyone involved, whatever their view on the underlying issue. The editor re-opening a repeatedly failed proposal may not have started any of the previous discussions, but they bear the responsibility for choosing to take up the community's time this way. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:37, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose For all the reasons already stated every time this comes up. Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:44, 16 February 2014 (UTC)

Arbitrary Break 2

Bkonrad (talk · contribs), you claim "the main reason this guideline is controversial is that there is a relatively small number of editors who just don't like this guideline and have devoted so much time and energy to undo what is otherwise an entirely satisfactory and clear guideline for most editors".

Similar claims were made about why Yoghurt was controversial, for seven years. In both cases we're talking about aberrations contrary to the guidelines that exist for weak if any reasons. That's what makes them controversial. That's why different people ask questions and try to fix them, year after year after year. If Yoghurt hadn't been moved two years ago, people would still be debating that title on that talk page. But as soon as it was moved, the aberration disappeared, and so did the controversy. The same will happen here. Maybe not this time, but sooner or later it will. And when it does, the controversy will finally be over. But as long as people like you keep defending the status quo, the aberrations and the controversy it causes will remain. Don't shoot the messenger. I got blamed for Yogurt too. But I was just telling it like it is. As I'm doing here. --B2C 23:59, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Analysis of census and GNIS data

I've just done an analysis of the Census gazetteer data for 2010. Looking at the list of places in the 50 states (which includes incorporated places and CDPs, not unincorporated places), there are 29,261 listed. Of those, 13,719 use names that are non-unique, or 46.9% of the total. Of the 3779 names that are used more than once, 1887 are used exactly twice, and 730 are used exactly three times. Some names are used many times; for example, there are 30 places named Franklin, 28 named Fairview, and 27 named Clinton. In any case, according to the census, nearly half of all places in the United States have names used at least twice. Omnedon (talk) 16:46, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

If we use the GNIS data which includes both incorporated and unincorporated places, then out of 183,661 populated places, 97,620 use non-unique names, or 53.2%. Omnedon (talk) 17:08, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for doing that analysis; it nicely quantifies the US's repeated-name phenomenon, and demonstrates why most US settlement articles need to have the state appended no matter what. ╠╣uw [talk] 18:45, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

From this Canadian government site I took the list of cities, towns, villages and hamlets in Canada. That's 3109 places, of which 185, or about 6% of the total, have names that are not unique within the set. 158 are used twice, 27 are used 3 times, none is used more than 3 times. Entirely different than the United States. Omnedon (talk) 19:46, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

From this Australian 2012 gazetteer I got a list of 13,755 places, of which 2950 (21.4%) use non-unique names. Omnedon (talk) 17:10, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Arbitrary restraint idea

Since Born2cycle has 50% more edits here than the most active other contributor (and much longer comments, too) so far this year, I propose we arbitrary ban him from here to make the problem go away. Barring that, maybe a boycott on responding to him will work. Dicklyon (talk) 23:46, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Dicklyon, that proposal (which I suspect is offered sarcastically) is unworthy of you. As you know, B2C is already under warning with regard to this kind of discussion. If you think he has violated the warning by becoming "disruptive," then take your complaint to AN. If you're not prepared to go to that length, then lay off this kind of comment; it basically amounts to a personal attack. My own recommendation is that we just all stop responding to him; that way the discussion might finally slow down to the point where someone could close the thing. --MelanieN (talk) 23:59, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

I think we agree on that strategy. The "50% more than anyone else" noise level is not at the level that a disruption complaint could be based on, but it sure is annoying to have it go on year after year on the same topics. Dicklyon (talk) 00:16, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

(ec) When a position is rationally indefensible (and compulsory disambiguation is certainly indefensible) then the easiest way to maintain the status quo is to shut the dissenters up. It speaks volumes for your confidence in your position. Seriously, the faith in compulsory disambiguation is almost religious. To read the arguments in its defence you would think that is the only thing standing between normality and chaos with regard to US place names. All the same arguments and fear campaigns were run when Australia moved away from mandatory disambiguation - all of them were shown to be groundless. Still, the witch must be drowned! -- Mattinbgn (talk) 00:07, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

If USPLACE had been based on an indefensible position like your strawman it would have been gone years ago. That's not what this is about. It's about B2C's stated goals of remaking title policy into the form he wants, over strong opposition from the community. He saw a place to fan the flames here, so we have this interminable discussion over his lost cause. Dicklyon (talk) 00:16, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

• "compulsory"? I am against compulsory disambiguation and compulsory non-disambiguation. Are you?

Guidelines are supposed to recommend preferred practice. True, the MOS guidelines generally are over-enforced.

Recommending titling by City, Region is not religious, but based on helping readers through providing more recognizability, and more consistently, consistently most obviously between the non-technically ambiguous and the technically ambiguous. Readers shouldn't need to be up to speed with technical ambiguity. It is also natural, and it occurs often in reliable sources, and it is virtually always "precise", unlike that status quo where towns, worldwide, frequently class with surnames or rivers.

On the contrary, the hyper-concision camp seems religious. I have not yet seen one reader-based reason for it. I've seen circular arguments and worse. User:Mattinbgn/Draft RfC Naming conventions for Australian populated places "The town is not called "Deniliquin, New South Wales" by anyone"? What about http://www.doitindeni.com/index.html which introduces with "Welcome to Do it in Deni - the place to do it all in Deniliquin NSW." Your numbered arguments being with one that is demonstrably false.

"Australia moved away from mandatory disambiguation"? Some committed hyper-concisionists had some guidelines changed, but the reality is that Australian places remain overwhelmingly in the form "Place, State". "Mandatory" was never in the guideline, that is your emotiveness.

Category:Cities in New South Wales (albeit terribly incomplete) ", State"

Category:Towns in New South Wales is mostly ", State"

Category:Suburbs of Sydney is overwhelmingly ", State"

Why should North Parramatta, New South Wales be inconsistently titled compared to Parramatta? Who is that helping? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:43, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

SmokeyJoe, a request: Please stop trying to make other countries use a comma-region format for their city names. That idea has been firmly rejected by the people who live there, and IMO they should be the ones to make the call. (That's why we have region-specific guidelines on the project page here.) Trying to impose a convention like USPLACE on to other countries that don't want it just makes enemies and confuses the USPLACE discussion, without furthering any achievable goal. Please note that you are the ONLY one proposing this idea. Clearly there is no consensus to do this, and I for one would appreciate it if you would graciously drop it. --MelanieN (talk) 00:58, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

MelanieN, No. The idea has NOT been firmly rejected by the people who live there. Look at the categories I listed. And I disagree with regular participants at the AWNB should be granted ownership, just as I would disagree with shutting Mattinbgn out of this discussion on the basis that he doesn't live in the US.

No. Because Mattinbgn is actually largely right. He was right, at 01:05, 11 January 2014 (UTC), to point out that the US and Australia are far less different than many here seem to think. He is right about consistency. I'm afraid that if Mattinbgn does convince me that Australian places should only be disambiguated by state when the base name is unavailable, then I am going to have to agree with his that "consistency" is a good reason for USPLACE to not be special. So, I think it is quite justifiable to probe his position, especially as I honestly think that it is a less widely supported consensus than what he suggests. The status quo, if you look into the categories, is that Australia abides by the USPLACE style more than not.

Am I the ONLY person arguing that USPLACE is actually sensible on its own merits? And that these merits have merit elsewhere? They have merit wherever placenames are not typical placename type words. This is true in the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. These places frequently use surnames for town names, without suffix, or reuse town names. It is not so true in South Afika or much of Europe. Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Johannesburg, Pretoria, Queenstown, Munich, Hamburg, St Petersburg, & Novosibirsk are all recognizable as placenames. It's as if it is an peculiarly English colonial thing to have named places ambiguously.

I will not stop asking questions just because they do not suit someone's debate flow sheet. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:19, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Extending USPLACE beyond the US is a question that's outside the scope of this RfC (which I suggest we allow to close without further complication). ╠╣uw [talk] 02:30, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

It is alleged that USPLACE doesn't have merits, and that it is inconsistent with place naming elsewhere. I have disputed both points. Some argue that the merit of USPLACE is US-specific, and I dispute that. True, it would be beyond the scope to seek to extend USPLACE from within this RfC, that is because the rest of the world may be ignoring it as a US-specific issue, if for no other reason. My point is that more helpful "city, region" naming is a good idea wherever the city names are typically not characteristic city names of the region.

I also think it is more than reasonable to explore whether Mattinbgn's opposition to USPLACE is mostly focused on its mandatory nature (and he prefers more flexibility, less consistency). The facts are also relevant. Yes, Australia moved away from mandatory disambiguation by state, but it remains mostly disambiguated by state. And the question remains unanswered: "Why is hyper-concision more important than reader-helpfulness"? In the US context, or in any context. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:55, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes, the good old "helpfulness" canard. This makes the unspoken assumption that the title alone is primarily used by readers to locate articles. I would suggest that this assumption is grossly incorrect. The two most likely sources for access to articles would be, firstly, Wiki-links where, obviously, whatever the article title may be is irrelevant - it would work just as well if the article title was an arbitrary numeric "article number" or some such thing. For example a Wiki-link to a hypothetical article such as [[123456789|Some subject]] will work despite no obvious connection between the article title and its subject. The alternative would be Google (or other search engine) searches, and once again, so long as the article content actually contains the information searched for, it will be found - again this would work no matter what the article title is. So in terms of linking to and finding articles, the title is primarily a convenient, unique, identifier for the article for use by editors, it does not need to be relevant in any way to the subject and there is absolutely no actual advantage in making it more "helpful". Of course, the title is used as a page header, which is only of interest or even visible to readers once they already have the article displayed, but then (given that the lead will have all the information included by the current USPLACE guideline and more) there is no need to duplicate extra information in the title. - Nick Thorne ^talk 02:26, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Actually helpfulness is pretty much zero-rated, which I argue is a bit under the optimum. Sometimes a little helpfulness in a title is a good thing, especially when it contributes to recognizability, naturalness, and precision. Nobody is claiming that articles are found primarily by their titles, though that is one way that some are found. But the title is supposed to provide a pretty good idea what the article is about. When it doesn't, that's not so helpful. Dicklyon (talk) 02:42, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Your opinion is noted. I do not agree. - Nick Thorne ^talk 07:34, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

• “Helpfulness” does not assume that the title alone is primarily used by readers to locate articles. It assumes that sometimes the title is primarily used by readers to locate articles.

  “I would suggest that this assumption is grossly incorrect”. Yes, you can beat up your exaggerated strawman.

  Wiki-links. In good browsers, when you hover over the link, at the bottom of the window you’ll see the full url that would be downloaded were you to click the link. With so many links in articles, and so many of them piped, it is a good idea to check the precise title.

  Google. When you do a google search, it returns results, and by far the most prominently displaced thing is the title of returned page.

  Yes, the title is redundant when the page is downloaded. The lede provides lengthier and alternative titles in bold if appropriate. But there is a cost to downloading pages, and it is not negligible for many readers.

  What is the cost of a long title? I agree that a multi-line title costs valuable screen space and is very undesirable for that reason. So a title should avoid being longer than the pagewidth. But why should a title be ultrashort? What is the advantage of a lot of whitespace to the right of the title?

  “Helpfulness” is part of recognizability. I would have thought that surely, in the interests of disseminating knowledge widely ad easily, in maximising accessibility, we should help readers recognize topics, and help them not misrecognize topics as the one they are interested in. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:02, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

If you are so concerned about the amount of whitespace at the top of a page, I assume that means you think appearances are very important. Therefore, please do not bullet all your answers, they are not so important that you need to emphasise every one and it confuses the indentation making it harder to see to whom you are addressing your comments. Please just indent your posts like everyone else. Also, please learn how to use the edit summary field, continually inserting a great wad of text from the beginning of your post is not a summary.

Now to the subject at hand. You entirely miss the point of my post. It does not matter what the browser shows at the bottom of the page when hovering the mouse pointer over a link. In a Wiki-link, the editor that inserts the link can readily insert whatever meaningful name (or whatever) that makes sense within the context of where the link is placed. If the editor is linking appropriately then what is meant by the link should be obvious. Putting more info into the title is simply unnecessary. The whole point of hyper-links generally is so that if someone wants to see what the thing linked to is all about they can click on it. Again, this will work regardless of what the actual article title is. The article title is really just a place holder. Now, for a whole lot of reason on Wiki it makes sense for the title to be related to the subject, but as I explained above: it does not have to be that way. However, I am not arguing that titles should be completely meaningless, even though there are actually technical reason why this can be more efficient in terms of database optimisation. What I am arguing is that it is completely unnecessary to include more information in the title than is required to uniquely identify it. In the case of place names, if the place name is unique or is the primary topic for that name, additional information to satisfy nothing more than the preference of a few vocal supporters of the status-quo, when for millions of articles making up the entire rest of Wikipedia such mandatory pre-disambiguation of already unique titles is not required, the practise stands out like sore thumb. It is high time this out of step with the rest of Wikipedia nonsense is eliminated. - Nick Thorne ^talk 07:34, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Your arguments are riddled with ad hominem attacks and don't make very much sense. When you say that the title shouldn't "include more information...than is required to uniquely identify" the article, you are admitting that a purpose of the title is to "identify" the article. Of course that's true, since a main purpose of the title is recognizability. Except you keep arguing that there is no point in the article's title being informative because people are going to use links and search engines. If that's your position, then the logical implication of your argument actually is that titles "should be completely meaningless." We could just assign every article a different number and be done with it, as you pointed out yourself. But anyway, your statements also either completely ignore the consistency criterion or presume that there aren't very many non-unique place names, which is totally false in the US at least as someone pointed out above. Maybe we can just all agree that it's a question of degree and there are more productive things with more conclusive answers to fight about? AgnosticAphid talk 08:45, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

I wonder, do you see the irony of your first sentence?

I was talking from the point of view of database design and normalisation. I am not arguing that articles titles should not be meaningful, only that there is no technical reason that they have to be and that, from a purely database design POV, there could be advantages in using arbitrary ones. Nevertheless, such considerations do not outweigh the obvious advantages to humans of meaningful titles. I just don't get this consistency argument. In what strange universe is it consistent to have a completely different requirement for US place names that does not apply to all other place names in the whole world? Never mind that millions of articles in all other subject areas also get by just fine without mandatory pre-disambiguation in the title. How can it possibly be argued that there is a rational consistency argument in favour of the current US place name guideline, when it is the very epitome of inconsistency? - Nick Thorne ^talk 21:29, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

USPLACE produces a class of articles that's very consistently named: nearly all titles follow the same "City, State" form. If we apply strict minimum disambiguation everywhere, yes, that's a consistent application of a rule... but doing that would mean that the titles for US settlements would be split nearly half-and-half between forms that include the state and forms that omit the state, and that's a very inconsistent result. ╠╣uw [talk] 14:45, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I get it that you think the US is a special case. I disagree. - Nick Thorne ^talk 09:41, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Also, the argument that the US should be treated differently to the almost 200 other countries and the millions of articles in Wikipedia in other subject areas is simply special pleading. Everywhere else in Wikipedia gets along fine with only disambiguating when necessary, there is no actual reason that US place names could not also do so, that does not ultimately boil down to the personal preference of the cabal of (apparently) US based editors that want to keep the status quo. It is time for this blot on the Wikipedia landscape to be erased. - Nick Thorne ^talk 09:53, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Article titles dominate the first page of a downloaded PDF. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Book&bookcmd=download&collection_id=542f7b0e3ee2613c&writer=rl&return_to=Welland

Thankfully, Wikipedia does not embrace your notion of a one-size-fits-all approach to titling where any variation must be treated as a "blot to be erased". ╠╣uw [talk] 11:50, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Nick Thorne,

I am not concerned about the whitespace maximised by title minimisation.

Article titles are more than placeholders. They are the most prominent text, read first. In skimming a multipage document, it is normal to read only the titles. In downloaded PDFs, the title is dominant and may be far separated from the lede. See this example, produced by the default process. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:10, 22 January 2014 (UTC) Corrected spelling of surname. 21:54, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

If you are going to use my name, please show the courtesy of spelling it correctly.

It wasn't me that brought up the subject of whitespace. As for titles being placeholders, within the context of database design (which is the context within which I was speaking) that is exactly what the they are. That the titles also have other uses is not in dispute. None of the rest of the post immediately before this is relevant, since how one uses and accesses information outside of Wikipedia does not impose a requirement to do it the same way within. - Nick Thorne ^talk 21:29, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Nick, hopefully you are done complaining about how others contribute to discussions. As to the subject at hand, you describe a title both as a mere placeholder and also as an identifier. From WP:AT, "This page in a nutshell: Article titles should be recognizable to readers, unambiguous, and consistent with usage in reliable English-language sources." Where do you get the idea of a "placeholder" from anywhere in that policy? Including the state makes "Bothell" vastly more recognizable to readers, and it's consistent with usage in reliable sources. Omnedon (talk) 13:05, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

See my response above. I agree that for most purposes the titles are more than placeholders, but within the narrow context I was using, placeholders is what they are. - Nick Thorne ^talk 21:29, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Moratorium on WP:USPLACE change discussions

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

I suggest a one year moratorium on WP:USPLACE change discussions. --Bejnar (talk) 02:35, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

With the exception of expanding it to all place names? Vegaswikian (talk) 03:38, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

One thing I would suggest is to set up a special "USPLACE archive" page ... and copy into it all of the past discussions on WP:USPLACE. Then, the next time someone wants to start it up again, we can point them to that archive page and say...

• Please read the "USPLACE archive"... We have discussed this issue over and over again, and each time there has been a strong consensus to not change what USPLACE says... unless you have something new to bring to the table, something we have not already discussed, you are unlikely to change consensus.

It might help. Blueboar (talk) 04:01, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

The ongoing dispute that is now WP:USPLACE dates back to 2004 (and possibly earlier). There have been numerous discussions that I do not think all of them can be copied into one page. Even this 2006 debate takes an entire page. We could possibly add a list of links to the discussions at the top of this talk page, either in the FAQ box, or the gray box listing the 2008 discussion that implemented the so-called "AP Stylebook rule". Zzyzx11 (talk) 05:27, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

• Support moratorium on challenges to USPLACE. One year at least. Dicklyon (talk) 05:51, 9 January 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose suppression of discussion. Conspicuously missing from the proposal is a rational justification for it. Just making this proposal is taking Wikipedia:Status quo stonewalling to a new level. It only takes a few minutes to participate in one of these discussions by registering your !vote and reasons. And usually a year or so goes by between them anyway. Any follow up is purely optional... no one who chooses to spend their time on multiple follow-ups during the discussion can blame anyone else for it. So what problem is created by such creation? It's not like anything else was going on on this talk page that got derailed. The only downside, from the perspective of those that support the status quo, is that consensus may develop supporting a change. So of course suppression is supported by that side. How blatant can you be?

  The USPLACE guideline has always been controversial and has never had community consensus support, for good reasons (except when the AP list compromise was achieved). Reaching consensus through discussion is how we develop consensus on Wikipedia. Sometimes it takes many years. See WP:Yogurt Principle. But if you suppress discussion, it will never happen. That's what supporters of the status quo want, of course. But that's no reason to support this proposal. --B2C 07:09, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Born2cycle said: And usually a year or so goes by between them anyway Nope, not recently, it seems like one just ends, when a new one begins. Discussion is not being suppressed, it is being postponed. If you are unaware of the volume and repetition in these discussions, please read the archives. --Bejnar (talk) 11:07, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Well, B2C, I expected you to bring up Yogurt again - you always do (although I've never understood why you are so proud of triumphing in an issue so documentedly lame). But that discussion had nothing in common with this one. That involved a single article, of interest to a few people; this involves tens of thousands of articles, of interest to millions. --MelanieN (talk) 17:09, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

• In the section above, I referenced the four five most recent discussions: June 2013, January 2013, September-October 2012, November 2012, and April 2012. It seems to come up as a knock-down-drag-out fight about twice a year, so this one is right on schedule, six months after the last one. They usually end with the same result as this one (so far), namely, roughly two-to-one in favor of retaining USPLACE. --MelanieN (talk) 16:36, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

BTW the closer of the most recent one, in June 2013, recommended "waiting at least until 2014" to raise the issue again, so we are right on schedule. Whoever closes this discussion might consider a similar recommendation. Six months or so seems to be the natural rhythm of these discussions; anything more frequent, such the January 2013 one which began mere weeks after the November 2012 one ended, results in overwhelming shouts of "not again!" --MelanieN (talk) 16:57, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Bejnar (talk · contribs), I don't doubt that it seems to you "like one just ends, when a new one begins". But the facts cited by USPLACE status quo supporter MelanieN, just above, show otherwise. It should be noted that the cited June 2013 discussion never developed as it was quickly closed, so it doesn't really count. The last serious discussion about this guideline was a year ago, in January of 2013. I note a justification for suppressing or delaying such discussion at all has still not been given. I, for one, learn from all of these discussions, including the current one. For those who do not, I suggest you go on to something else.

Melanie, of course USPLACE and Yogurt discussions are very different in many important and fundamental ways. However, they have the following characteristics in common:

1. Unresolved/recurring for many years (8 or more).
2. Discussions are typically closed as "no consensus".
3. Oppose side repeatedly and often argues non-substantively - "again?", "waste of time", "this has been settled", etc.
4. Support side is better supported by policy (the oppose side is strong here because there is a coalition of sorts between those who generally support more descriptive titles on WP contrary to current policy, practice and practicality, and are usually in the minority, and those who normally don't support unnecessary disambiguation/description in titles, but support adding ", state" in this case never-the-less for a variety of reasons, including acknowledging that it's an exception in this case).
5. Once the proposed change in each case is implemented (move from Yoghurt to Yogurt; use ", state" only when necessary), then there would be no strong policy based reason to go back to the pre-proposal state.

That last point is the most important; combined with (2), that is the basis for applying the WP:Yogurt Principle. --B2C 18:09, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

2. Discussions are typically closed as "no consensus". Not true. The most extensive discussion of the past few years, the one in November 2012 which involved at least 55 contributors, was closed as "maintain status quo (Option B)."

5. there would be no strong policy based reason to go back to the pre-proposal state. You always say this, but it based only on your own blind dismissal of the strong policy-based arguments in favor of the state name based on WP:Common name, WP:Reliable sources, Recognizability, Naturalness, and WP:ENGVAR. Believe me, if this got changed as you wish and all those titles got bot-changed, you would have a Wikipedia-wide outcry at the time - as well as a years-long drumbeat of demands here at this page that the states be restored - as well as individual city talk page demands for cities like Hawaiian Gardens to get changed back to Hawaiian Gardens, California and Sleepy Eye to Sleepy Eye, Minnesota and on and on. Right now the situation is well understood and stable; it would certainly not be if the state names got removed. Your "Yogurt Principle" would get stood on its head if this change were implemented; there would be ten times as much agitation and argument as there is now. Because only a handful of people cared how the "yogurt" article was titled, but many thousands of people care how articles about cities are titled. They are not here debating - they don't know that this discussion is going on - but if the name of the state is dropped from their city, they will care. --MelanieN (talk) 18:37, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

In such discussions, maintaining the status quo is the default when there is no consensus. That doesn't mean consensus supports maintaining the status quo.

There has been no such cry about titles when Canada and Australia loosened their guidelines to no longer require state/province. There has been no cry to include the state for US cities on the AP list after they were removed (despite all the prediction about that occuring, similar to yours here). I see no reason to believe it would occur for US cities with unique names either. I've already shown you that RS supports use of the name without the state. The argument that general title policy indicates the state must be included in such titles is very weak at best. There would be nothing to debate. If Cityname currently redirects to Cityname, Statename, it will be moved, and there would be no strong policy based reason to move it back. --B2C 19:28, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Once again, since you apparently didn't hear me the first time: The decision after that huge discussion in November 2012 was not "no consensus, so default to status quo". It was that consensus favored option B (which happened to be the status quo). BTW almost as many people wanted to go back to using the state in ALL circumstances. And fewer than a third of commenters wanted option E, "don't use the state except when necessary to disambiguate". --MelanieN (talk) 20:45, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Melanie, the closer simply concluded, "After sifting... I can only conclude that this discussion be ended as maintain status quo". There is nothing there to indicate that consensus was found for anything; hence "maintain status quo". --B2C 23:04, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

• BTW I Oppose any early closure of this discussion - let it run its course and be closed in proper form by an uninvolved administrator. But I would then Support a pause of at least six months before another such discussion. --MelanieN (talk) 18:49, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

I agree that the current discussion at /* Should the article be at Bothell or Bothell, Washington? */ should run its course, and be closed, as well as this discussion about the moratorium. However, this discussion is not about WP:USPLACE qua WP:USPLACE; it is about moderating the amount of time and energy this topic takes up. --Bejnar (talk) 19:20, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Again, similar statements were made about the years-long discussions at Talk:Yogurt. I always responded the same there - if the proposal to move is approved, all this allegedly problematic discussion will end. Same thing here. If the proposal to move is approved, all the problematic discussion will end. When I made those predictions at Yogurt, I was accused of threatening. But it's not a threat. It's a prediction based on observation. And it's just as obvious here as it was there.

When an exceptional condition is the basis for controversy, if you remove the exceptional condition, the controversy will end. The exceptional condition at yogurt was acceptance of a regional variant change against policy - what was sought was reversal of that change as it was against the rules. Was JDLI involved? Absolutely, on both sides. Some clearly preferred one spelling, and others the other. But only one side happened to have the WP:RETAIN (the original variant) policy on their side. Same thing here, where the exceptional condition is unnecessary disambiguation (notwithstanding arguments that it's not "disambiguation" - you know what I mean). Plenty of JDLI on both sides. Some prefer ", state"; others do not. But only one side has the unnecessary disambiguation policy on their side. Melanie claims WP:Common name, WP:Reliable sources, Recognizability, Naturalness, and WP:ENGVAR, but those favor "city, state" no more than they favor just "city". At best you can argue the current titles meet these as well as the shorter titles. But the shorter titles, and only the shorter titles, can argue they meet conciseness (in the sense in which it is traditionally and commonly used with respect to WP titles) better than the current state-qualified titles. The other criteria will be met by the shorter city-name-only titles at least as well as they are met by the current state-qualified titles. That's why I predict the issue will be settled once and far all when the guideline is changed, just like I predicted Yogurt would be settled once the move was made. --B2C 19:44, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Hopefully we won't get the chance to find out. I would take no satisfaction in saying "I told you so" while trying to deal with the predictable uproar. --MelanieN (talk) 20:34, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

You can argue that the shorter titles are more concise, but that doesn't make it so. By the definition of the word, they are not. Omnedon (talk) 21:26, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Part of making something more concise is eliminating unnecessary words. Given two wordings, both of which are comprehensive, the one with fewer words is more concise.

In the context of Wikipedia titles, conveying the name of the given topic is comprehensive ("The title may simply be the name (or a name) of the subject of the article"[68]) . Therefore, the name with fewer words meets the concision criterion better. Unless the city's name is ambiguous and the city is not the primary use of its name, the longer state-qualified name includes an unnecessary word in the title per Wikipedia titling policy, conventions and practices. A special guideline mandating that the title include the state's name does not change the fact that such a title is less concise than one comprised of only the unqualified city name. Removing unnecessary words makes titles more concise. That's what the proposed change to the guideline would do. --B2C 22:07, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

A city name without region is not comprehensive. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:13, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

In the context of WP titles, per policy, a name of the topic is a complete title. It is a comprehensive WP title, by definition.

If you want to argue a city name without region is not comprehensive in some context other than WP titles, that's disruptive, as it is not relevant here.

WP is replete with articles about cities where the title is a city name without region that are fully supported by community consensus. In the context of WP titles, a city name without region is comprehensive. --B2C 22:56, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

B2C, if you're going to quote from and cite the Article Titles page, it would be more honest to quote the entire sentence - which says "The title may simply be the name (or a name) of the subject of the article, or it may be a description of the topic." --MelanieN (talk) 23:05, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

My point there was that a name comprises a complete/comprehensive WP title. The portion of the statement I quoted, as well as the entire statement, supports this. But why include the irrelevant part? The fact that titles can also be descriptions of the topic is not relevant to this point, so I omitted it to be, well, concise!

But that was a sub-point. The main point is that when one of two comprehensive titles is a subset of the other, the subset title is the more concise choice. --B2C 23:27, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Actually, contrary to B2C's statements, there would still be policy-based reasons for returning to the guideline of always using the state name for cities, as city, state per "real name" (not actually a policy or guideline, but it is nearly a policy when applied to persons), "common name" and "consistency". And, for what it's worth, in the discussions after the AP list (as modified) was decided on, there were policy-based !votes in favor of return to "all but NYC have states". — Arthur Rubin (talk) 01:08, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

"Consistency"? Really? Applying compulsory disambiguation (and that is what it is) makes US cities inconsistent with every other topic in the encyclopedia and every single other country naming guideline. It is the very model of an arbitrary and idiosyncratic guideline. The US is on its own here and it isn't as unique as it seems to think. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 02:23, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

I am not going to repeat myself except to state that "consistency" is only between articles of the same type (US cities), and it's not "compulsory disambiguation" or "predisambiguation"; it's the real name and the common name. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 03:13, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Even if "CityName, StateName" is a "real name" for a given US city, it's no more "real" than is "CityName" alone. That evens the score, at best, between the two choices, per "real name", "common name" naturalness, recognizability (to those familiar with the city) and precision. A wash across those four WP:CRITERIA. But conciseness, interpreted in the context of WP titles, squarely favors "CityName" alone. Both long and short forms are comprehensive, but only one has words in it that are unnecessary to make the title comprehensive in this context.

One can rationalize a policy-based argument favoring "CityName, StateName" for cities with unique names, but it's a weak one. --B2C 00:55, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Mattinbgn: Yes, consistency — really. The current convention results in a highly consistent and predictable form of titling across nearly all US settlement articles: City, State. Applying the proposed change would replace that with a very in-consistent manner of titling, one in which many articles would retain the state and many articles would drop it, for a reason that seems unlikely to be readily apparent to the average reader. Far from being "arbitrary", the current convention exists for many sound, policy-based, and broadly-supported reasons; the fact that most articles would need to include the state anyway no matter what (because of the US's remarkable and unusual duplication of placenames) is merely one. ╠╣uw [talk] 01:51, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

@B2C. I find very few clauses in your previous sentence which are correct and have a basis in Wikipedia guidelines. "Common name" favors including the state, and "recognizability" is neutral, although artificially favors removing the state in cases where the unadorned name shouldn't be used because of ambiguity. Conciseness is neutral or in favor of including the state. Consistency favors adding the state in more cases named in the AP list, although "common name" (in those cases, and those alone), leans against using the state. Furthermore, the fact that the same arguments which have been rejected in previous discussions are still being repeated, provides strong grounds for a moratorium until such time as a new argument is presented. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 23:28, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Arthur Rubin (talk · contribs), I presume you're not interested in my opinion. Rest assured I'm not interested in yours. So, let's focus on what the reasons are that we hold our respective opinions, shall we?

Now, we appear to disagree on how the various criteria apply to US city names. My position is that for recognizability, naturalness, precision and consistency, it's basically a wash. I provided the reasons I believe it's a wash for recognizability here, and many times for the others, so I won't repeat all that here (I will if you ask), but will note you did not explain why you did not find my reasoning compelling, nor did you provide reasoning for why you thought it's not a wash (except for recognizability which you agree is neutral), but that they each favored city, state. In particular, how does "common name" favor including the state? How is conciseness neutral, much less possibly favoring including the state? Is your interpretation of "conciseness" here the same as that which is used to choose most of our titles? --B2C 06:40, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

I've explained myself many times, as well, as well as explaining why your comments do not hold water. My position, as you well know, that recognizability is usually a wash, although sometimes supports adding the state; naturalness is strongly in favor of including the state, consistency is in favor ("consistency", as described, is consistency within a particular domain), "common name" is weakly in favor, and precision and conciseness contradict each other whatever reasoning is used. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 06:58, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

• Support moratorium on challenges to USPLACE. One year at least, suggest 2 years. No matter what your opinion is on the current standard (which I happen to think is best), all parties should agree that USPLACE is largely a subjective, editorial issue. All should agree that it does NOT help build content in the encyclopedia to discuss it further; it hurts the building process to consume time and energy again and again disputing the standard. And, I happen to further think that the current standard is best for reducing costs of debate at many pages. --doncram 20:59, 9 January 2014 (UTC)
  • There would be no good policy-based grounds to challenge a guideline that indicates titles that meets all of the criteria, including concision, as well as, or better, than any other title. And that's what the guideline would be if it indicated the more concise form of a city's name be used when possible. --B2C 22:07, 9 January 2014 (UTC)
    • You really just can't see that some people think that the criteria of recognizability and conciseness support including the state? You actually think that your resolution to this question -- exclude the state because everyone obviously agrees that the title should assume that the reader is intimately familiar with the exact article topic -- is not debatable? How can you possibly say that there is one definitive answer to this question when the answer involved balancing five competing factors that aren't in alignment? I had thought that we were trying to be more understanding of others' positions here, but I'm beginning to this that this is all part of the world's most fantastic trolling campaign. AgnosticAphid talk 23:27, 9 January 2014 (UTC)
      • Yes, I really just don't see it. Not for anyone who interprets recognizability and conciseness in the same way consensus supports they be interpreted for all other titles.

        And my argument is not "exclude the state because everyone obviously agrees that the title should assume that the reader is intimately familiar with the exact article topic". That's a strawman (which I agree is debatable).

        My argument is: The scope of recognizability is explicitly limited at WP:CRITERIA to "someone familiar with, although not necessarily an expert in, the subject", and, so, recognizability (as used on WP with respect to titles) is not an argument for including the state in the title of a city with a unique name (e.g., anyone familiar with Beverly Hills will recognize it without ", California"). I'm quite confident this is not debatable. I mean it would be ridiculous to argue that Beverly Hills (or Bothell) is not recognizable to someone familiar with that city.

        SEE ALSO: Once and for all: Poll to establish the consensus, where the "to someone familiar with" clause was unanimously supported by all participating in a poll about just that. If that doesn't establish consensus, along with it being reflected in all of our titles, what does? And don't just look at the results - read the comments. Reasoning from a wide spectrum of experienced editors is explained there. --B2C 23:59, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

• "Beverly Hills" is highly ambiguous to readers unexposed to US movie culture (such readers exist). Readers familiar with other BHs may misrecognize the short title, would not misrecognize Beverly Hills, California as their own BH, and nobody is put out by having the title rendered in the longer form. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:31, 10 January 2014 (UTC)
  • The scope of WP:AT recognizability criterion is limited to people who are familiar with the topic of the article in question (in this case the Beverly Hills in CA). This is not debatable. Did you review Once and for all: Poll to establish the consensus?

    The fact that the topic might be mis-recognized by people familiar with other uses of that name is irrelevant to evaluating whether the recognizability criteria for WP titles is met by using that title for that article. In other words, for an ambiguous term, the ambiguous term meets the recognizability criterion for all of the different uses. For example, "Paris" is recognizable as referring to the Paris in Texas for people familiar with that use, but we don't use it for that article because of its conflict with the city in France (not because it does not meet the recognizability criterion - it does).

    If you want to discuss interpretations of recognizability that apply in contexts other than that of WP title selection, that would be irrelevant and disruptive. Please don't do that. --B2C 00:52, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

• Paris is not misrecognizable as Paris, Texas, even by the residents of Paris, Texas, because Paris is so widely knowns and historically signficant that no reasonable, educated resident of Paris, Texas would not expect that "Paris" would likely refer to Paris, France. If this were not true, than Paris should become a disambiguation page. The possibility of mis-recognition is important to our readership, and discussion of it is worthy. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:56, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

• • • It is simply false to act as though the question of the scope of the recognizability criterion has been definitively settled in your favor. First of all, it's a bit ironic that you act like everyone here needs to abide by the result of that discussion out of a sort of stare decisis – notwithstanding the many cogent arguments made here about why "Bothell, Washington" is more recognizable article title – when you are entirely willing to disregard the settled USPLACE guideline. Maybe we can all agree to abide by past discussions and accordingly draw this discussion to a close? Moreover, the examples trotted out in that discussion as justifications for avoiding unwarranted disambiguation (including United States (North-American country) and Collins Street (a premier street in Melbourne, Australia and not one of the many non-notable streets by the same name just because they return a hit on Google Map) are not remotely comparable to the sort of tiny little towns that perhaps 100 people are actually "familiar" with that are at issue here. Second of all, even assuming for the sake of argument that "Bothell" is a more generally recognizable title than "Bothell, Washington", – which I dispute, but nevermind – other criteria support "Bothell, Washington," including but not limited to the fact that (1) the latter title seems to be more frequently used in English and better fits the "naturalness" criteria and also (2) we've come up with a "consistent" and comprehensive naming system that resolves this question for every single American city article and doesn't require a case-by-case assessment of the extent to which the "City" rather than "City, State" name is actually used by people discussing the article subject in question. Moreover, the five titling criteria "should be seen as goals, not as rules," so the entire premise of your argument is kind of wanting -- obviously this is a controversial decision and one that people express a variety of views on, so to act as though this is a sort of repeat of the "yoghurt" debacle where there at least arguably was no countervailing policy is completely misguided. AgnosticAphid talk 01:10, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

• Comment I have no opinion on any morotorium on discussion about ending mandatory disambiguation of US cities but I do find it interesting that one participant in this discussion is quite willing to open up a discussion about mandatory disambiguation for Australian place names! I guess it must be OK to call for a morotorium where the status quo in line with your opinion and but call for yet another discussion where the status quo doesn't! Hmmm. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 00:43, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

• The one participant (me) was not pushing for morotoria. The Australian naming convention is the most similar to USPLACE, was mentioned, and I probed. Vocal members at the Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board clearly are not interested in participating in this debate, they are generally anti-mandatory disambiguating, but are not driven to actually moving articles very often. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:07, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

• I can see why the Aussies don't need or want the state added. Australia is not like America. As I have pointed out before, the states hold a unique place in American thinking. In most countries the state or départment or province is simply a convenient political subdivision, but not in the United States. The states here are quasi-independent entities which pre-existed the country, and even the name of our country reflects their importance to us. That's one of many reasons why we automatically add the state name when talking about a city (unless it's already clear from context). I don't think anyone but SmokeyJoe is trying to apply the USPLACE model to other countries, although I would support any other country whose people wanted a particular naming convention. Take a look at the project page here; many countries have their own guidelines, and that's as it should be. Common name and Reliable Source usage support the idea that we don't need and shouldn't have a Wiki-wide, one-size-fits-all guideline here. IMO the people of a given country should be able to decide how to name things in their country (just as they decide how to spell color/colour or labor/labour or analyze/analyse in articles relevant to their country). --MelanieN (talk) 15:22, 10 January 2014 (UTC)
• @SmokeyJoe - No you didn't "probe", you came over to the Australian project and made a specific proposal with the heading "A preferred format for titling Australian cities and towns". As you admit at WP:AWNB it was an attempt to address one of the criticisms made about the idiosyncractic US place names convention - i.e. nowhere else has mandatory disambiguation. You had no interest in Australian placenames other than how it affects your argument about US placenames. As I have said elsewhere, the Australian convention is not a place to fight proxy battles about the US convention. If pointing this out is "obnoxious badgering", so be it. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 01:05, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

• • • • @MelanieN. Actually, the Australian states are more similar to the US states than you realise. The Australian states all existed as sovereign entities in their own right before Australian federation and they retain that sovereignity. Australia is a creation of the various states, not vice-versa. Where the Australian example is instructive however is that the FUD arguments being used in the US discussion were also used during the discussions about getting rid of mandatory disambiguation in Australia. All those arguments (mass renaming, move-warring, endless RM discussions, disagreements about primary topics et al) were shown to be baseless. The change has led to less discussion about place names and less disruption. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 01:05, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

• • The strong opposition to the proposal to return Australian naming back to the comma convention is an excellent indicator of what will happen once the comma convention is dropped for the US: the controversy will end, once and for all.

    Just like at Yogurt (where peace has ensued as I long predicted it would once the change was adopted), it's those who resist inevitable change towards greater policy compliance, and the closers who are unable to get past the !vote counts to uncover community consensus favoring the change per the WP:Yogurt Principle, that prolongs controversy unnecessarily, for years and years and years. --B2C 09:16, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

    You definitely seem to be a big lover of yogurt, @Born2cycle: - it looks like you mention it in almost every discussion that occurs around the pedia :) On that topic, I have been assuming for many years that the New York / New York City situation would eventually resolve itself with New York becoming a dab page (as Washington did after many years of argument); in my opinion the current situation is a violation of WP:PRIMARYTOPIC given that for most people around the world "New York" means the city. That one does raise it's head periodically, but is always shouted down, and seems unlikely to change any time soon! (also perhaps it is legitimate, I'm only one editor so my opinion isn't necessarily the correct one).  — Amakuru (talk) 10:37, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

• There is nothing useful to be learned from peculiar view written at User:Born2cycle/Yogurt Principle. The rename debates of Yogurt may serve as an example of how not to do things well. Obnoxious badgering doesn't work. Achieving consensus was long and difficult, and the result is recorded atTalk:Yogurt/Archive_6#Move_page_to_yogurt. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:07, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

• Support controlling the frequency, after the current discussion reaches its natural conclusion. I don't have a firm opinion on the period, though six months or a year seem like reasonable minimums — whatever others prefer.

  I should say that under other circumstances I'd be very hesitant to support limitations on the frequency of discussion of a topic... but the lengthy history of repetitive and unproductive debate in this area makes me think some kind of formal moderation is now probably justified. Also, regarding the point raised above that consensus can change: certainly it can. But it hasn't, not after countless discussions, all tiresomely similar to each other. Might consensus change at some point in the future? Conceivably. Revisiting the issue occasionally to see if consensus has indeed changed sounds fine, but revisiting it regularly, merely to repeat what's substantially the same discussion over and over (and over), with the same result over and over (and over), merely succeeds in burning editorial time and energy that could be better spent elsewhere. ╠╣uw [talk] 13:46, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

• Support moratorium of at least 1 year, preferably two, after the current discussion runs its course. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 22:24, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

• Support a moratorium of at least one year. It seems like we have this discussion every few months, and it ends the same way every time with the same group of editors making the same arguments. If there's a significant change in user opinion on the matter, it'll probably take at least a year to happen anyway. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 22:46, 10 January 2014 (UTC)
  • Things are not what they seem. Again, the last substantive discussion about USPLACE (that wasn't cut off abruptly), since the current one, was a year ago - in January 2013. MOst of the support for a moratorium seemed to be based on a misperception about how often these discussions occur. --B2C 00:53, 11 January 2014 (UTC)
    • That is pure speculation about a misconception. Many editors are simply tired of these discussions. Actually a larger number are tired of a very limited number or editors who monopolize these discussions and keep them active. But that is my opinion. Vegaswikian (talk) 00:59, 11 January 2014 (UTC)
      • Sorry, but that's a load of bull manure. If someone is tired of a discussion, they can take a few minutes to register their !vote with explanation and then just ignore it. Problem solved. The last time anyone had a real opportunity to do that was a year ago (the discussion 6 months ago was speedy closed). There is absolutely no need to gag everyone who wants to participate because YOU are tired of the discussion. Everyone knows this. Perhaps they don't realize it, but that cannot be the real reason to support the moratorium. --B2C 05:19, 11 January 2014 (UTC)
        • That comment is <redacted>. I suspect a majority of the interested editors are tired of reading B2C's rants, and are almost willing to have Wikipedia damaged to avoid seeing them again. Furthermore, the discussion isn't always here (where it should be). — Arthur Rubin (talk) 01:01, 13 January 2014 (UTC)
        • B2C, "If someone is tired of a discussion, they can take a few minutes to register their !vote with explanation and then just ignore it." Is that an admission that there will be nothing new in the discussion?

          you view supports a decision making bias, in favour of participants prepared to talk longest. Wear everyone out. Wait a bit. Start a formal discussion. If too many turn up, go back to "wear everyone out". Repeat. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:19, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Oppose This is simply an attempt to "win" the argument by gagging the discussion. - Nick Thorne ^talk 04:58, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Any moratorium being considered should have no application to the current RfC above. Also, the proposal would simply put in place some kind of formal management to control the frequency of needlessly repetitive proposals; discussions would still have the opportunity to continue on some periodic basis. ╠╣uw [talk] 10:48, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

• Support moratorium of 1 to 2 years following the (probable WP:SNOW) close of the current discussion. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 01:01, 13 January 2014 (UTC)
• Support some sort of moratorium after the current discussion is closed. Opponents of WP:USPLACE seem to have little or nothing new to say compared to previous discussions. And B2C's assertion that people can just walk away isn't helpful. If one cares about a subject, one will feel obligated to participate in discussions; but that doesn't mean that we enjoy having to go over and over the same arguments each time. I'm not walking away, but I'm tired of doing this. Omnedon (talk) 01:06, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

• "Opponents of WP:USPLACE seem to have little or nothing new to say compared to previous discussions." And its defenders? It appears to me that each of these discussions continues to be an attempt to find ever more esoteric reasons why US places can't possibly comply with the naming guidelines that every other topic in the encyclopedia can follow. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 02:23, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

WP:USPLACE has been in place for years and has never been successfully challenged. Good reasons for it are given over and over, yet some opponents continue to claim that there are no good reasons for it. I don't know what you mean by "ever more esoteric reasons". Reasons are given, and repeated every time this subject comes up. It's all in the archives. There is no consensus to change this. Omnedon (talk) 14:34, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose - Seems to me to be an attempt by a group to use !votes to close down debate and preserve their preference in perpetuity.-- Mattinbgn (talk) 02:23, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

This is not about closing down debate. The current RfC will go through the normal process. It's just that once such a discussion is closed, there seems to be little point in rehashing it again with nothing new. Let some time go by before bringing it up again. That's all that's being said here. Omnedon (talk) 18:05, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

It has been a YEAR since the last serious discussion. What is the problem? And if somebody does have something new to offer in 6 months, this proposal would not allow it to be introduced. It is about closing down debate. --B2C 18:31, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

This is about discussions after the current one. No one is closing down the current RfC. It's just that nothing new has been offered. People don't want to go over and over the same stuff all the time. And you can't just tell them to walk away if they don't like it. If they care about the issue, they'll want to be involved; yet if it's just the same old debate again, it's frustrating. Surely you can see that. Omnedon (talk) 18:53, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

• Support if there's a consensus against the change. Red Slash 01:46, 14 January 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose I am indifferent as to the form WP:USPLACE ultimately takes. On this one issue, however, I am not convinced that there is any policy support that we can simply shut down discussion for a subjective amount of time. Having said that, I am sympathetic to those (on both sides) who are tired of debating the issue again and again. The only comparable I can think of is Montreal Expos, where there have been numerous discussions over the years as to whether that article should be merged with Washington Nationals, for the most part rehashing the same arguments over and over again. There hasn't been a discussion over there in awhile, and I believe some of the credit belongs to User:Isaacl who drafted Talk:Montreal Expos/FAQ, which includes a neutral summary of the various opposing views, and then lists the discussions that have occurred in the past. Editors are asked to review the FAQ prior to embarking on a new merger or rename discussion. While the debates over USPLACE are more numerous and lengthier than those over the Montreal Expos, I think this page would benefit from a similar approach as was taken for the Expos (more than the existing FAQ).

  While I do not support an arbitrary moratorium here, I would support a consensus in which any new discussions can initially held in abeyance until such time as the initiator has confirmed that (s)he has read the FAQ and reviewed the previous discussions. It's not perfect, I know, but I think it is a good step. Skeezix1000 (talk) 18:38, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

  Right now, the top of this talk page has a summary of the USPLACE debate listed last in the FAQ box. And last week, I added an expanded list of the numerous past debates to the grey box of highlighted archived discussion. I'm not sure if these two areas need to be reformatted, or moved to a different page, to make it more noticeable. Zzyzx11 (talk) 04:33, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

UTC)

• Support the longest moratorium possible, preferably for at least one year, and ideally for a lot more. I would suggest a moratorium until 2016 at the earliest.
  The community has repeatedly rejected (or failed to support) proposals to change this, and an extraordinary amount of editorial energy has been wasted on repeated discussions which produce no change, and endlessly rehash the same arguments. This wastes time which editors could otherwise devote to expanding and improving actual content, and a time when editor numbers are falling, that is an appalling waste of Wikipedia's most precious resource. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:45, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
• While I'm not familiar enough with this to have a horse in this race, I'd like to point out (mainly for outsiders who may read this) that there is no such thing as the "WP:YOGURTPRINCIPLE". It's an essay that was kicked out of Wikipedia-space long ago. Intentionally linking to the redirect rather than the essay itself (which uses the prefix "User", not "WP") seems purposeless at best and misleading at worst. Joefromrandb (talk) 21:58, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
  • That redirect (and 3 other similar redirects) have been nominated by me for deletion. See Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2014 February 7#Wikipedia:Yogurt_Principle. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:07, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose any sort of moratorium. I am, however, in favor of Skeezix's proposal. --TorriTorri(^talk/_contribs) 00:40, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
• Support As with Ireland, and Muhammad pictures, there should be a breather between regurgitation of the same disputes; it's unhealthy, otherwise, per BHG. Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:42, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.