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Q: When linking to city or town names, especially with names where there may be another city or town with the same name and spelling in another state or country (i.e., Paris, France and Paris, Texas), what type of convention might we use? I understand that Paris, France would stand alone as Paris because it is a city of note. But, might we use Paris[?], Texas to specify this particular town in Texas? -- Invictus
I don't think the principle of "least surprise" implies that we should make Paris a links page. I think it implies that we should make Paris about Paris, France, and also, on that page, include links to Paris, Texas and wherever else. Bear in mind, though, that pretty soon we're going to be able to use parentheses in titles, and all of this will be moot (thank god). --LMS
I agree with Lee, see :Eclecticology's revision of seal. --Aidan
It might be tempting to write about Paris, Texas on a page named Texas/Paris, i.e. a subpage to the entry on Texas, because that city lies entirely within the state of Texas. In this case, Texas could also be a subpage to the United States, which might be a subpage to the North American continent. At some level this hierarchical structure gets very ridiculous, so where should the line be drawn? The state of California has been part of USA since 1850, but was earlier a part of Mexico. Some cities in Europe have belonged to different nations during history, so the hierarchical approach is not universally useful.
This article should only be about Colorado the state -- some minor disambiguation at the bottom could then be done with links to the other various "Colorado's". Generally in these cases if two terms are known by the same name then you always first try to see if one of those terms is also widely known as something less ambiguous (such as Colorado River]]). This way articles can be naturally disambiguated. However, Colorado the state is almost never called "Colorado state" by English speakers (at least in the 'States), so that type of disambiguation would be inappropriate. Cheers! --maveric149
As for the other rivers or anything else for that matter -- naming should give priority to what most English speakers would most easily recognize with the minimum of ambiguity. This doesn't always follow any set pattern or logic, so we have River Thames, Colorado River and Rhine. However the "Rhine" example is the most problematic example since "Rhine" is aslo the name of the river valley amoung other things. In this case the most famous and widely used example of the word is used for the Rhine entry (this is similar to reasoning behind having the home of Paris, France at Paris). Hope this helps. --maveric149
Thanks; some more questions though: The R in Colorado River (and also River Thames) is capitalised; this means it is considered part of the proper name? And is that common for all rivers in English/American lands, or only in the case of Mississippi and Colorado (don't know any other Thames's, however)? I often also see "xxxx river" in texts on rivers located in non-English countries, and then usually not capitalised, so I assume that is to clarify it is about a river then? Or is it, as you say, completely without any logic (which seems to be the case with the big river in Egypt, which you may encounter as both Nile and River Nile). Also, it seems the "River" prefix is English (UK), is that right? Sorry for being this curious and all... jheijmans
The capitalization of of "R" in river, "M" in mountain, or even "O" in ocean or "S" in sea is a problematic topic with wikipedia right now. There seem to be equal numbers of people who want to lowercase all these and another set of people who feel that those words should be capitalized since they feel the words are part of a proper name. So this is something that we are still trying to work out. I personally feel that these words should be capitalized but then that flys in the face of our naming conventions for these things so I am often compelled to lowercase the title when in doubt and provide a redirect for the capitalized term. One useful tool to use, however, is Google. What I do when pondering this, is enter in the term in question into Google (which isn't case sensitive) and search for it. I then look for examples of the lowercased term being used in one of the hits on the 1st and 2nd search result pages (The terms will almost always be capitalized when they are presented as titles or headings, so look for the highlighted term within the sample body text that Google displays). If a see a few examples of the term not capitalized then I revert to the wikipedia naming convention of Lowercase second and subsequent words for words that are not always capitalized in English (you shouldn't look too hard for examples though, since you can easily find incorrect English usage on the Internet). I dont' really know about the "River" prefix issue since I am only familiar with the River Thames example -- sounds like something the Brits would do though. BTW, being curious is a good thing and not something to be sorry for. :) --maveric149, Monday, May 6, 2002
I see the problem with this capitalisation. As (vaguely) mentioned above, I'd say that the second letter should be capitalised if part of the proper name, which I would say to be the case if:
Now, the (non-existing) Gobi Desert article is a nice example. First of all, Gobi means desert in Mongolian, so adding desert is quite useless (there's a Gobi article). However, most people will not know this, and in English (also in my native language, Dutch) it is quite common (looking at Google) to say Gobi Desert, which is also seen on maps (Looking at other web-encylopedias, there is no consensus). So, actually, Gobi Desert should be the name of the article, not Gobi.
I would say that a redirect from Gobi Desert to Gobi also does the trick here (leaving the first article, redirecting is also some Wikipedia policy, isn't it), or not? jheijmans
Which is preferred, River Thames or Thames River? Should we agree on one form? Which one is currently dominant? -- Tarquin 14:33 Oct 18, 2002 (UTC)
How do we handle cities and other places with "Saint" vs. "St.", "Mount" vs. "Mt.", etc.? We have "St. Louis, Missouri" and "Saint Paul, Minnesota". -- Zoe
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