Talk:Hatting, Denmark

Latest comment: 11 years ago by Malcolmxl5 in topic Requested move

Requested move edit

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: not moved, without prejudice to a move discussion being opened regarding Hatting being made a dab page. Malcolmxl5 (talk) 23:10, 13 March 2013 (UTC)Reply



– Improper disambiguation. North American "City, State" pattern not applicable here. No clear primary. HandsomeFella (talk) 20:11, 4 March 2013 (UTC)Reply

  • Comment. These are similar moves so were combined so that discussion could take place in one place instead of needing to be repeated. Apteva (talk) 00:37, 5 March 2013 (UTC)Reply
  • Support. Let's makes it clear that these are disambiguated names, and not how the places are normally referenced. Agree about lack of primary for Hatting. --B2C 00:39, 5 March 2013 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose: Per naming conventions (it would help if the proposer read them). Standard pattern for geographic places is to disambiguate by comma worldwide (not just North America). Has absolutely nothing to do with North American "City, State" pattern. Skinsmoke (talk) 02:25, 5 March 2013 (UTC)Reply
    • The relevant naming convention, WP:NCGN, does not require or even strongly advocate the comma.  AjaxSmack  03:03, 5 March 2013 (UTC)Reply
    • The exact current wordings on WP:NCGN#Disambiguation on the comma convention is that "Any specific national convention takes precedence though". However, it also says in the last paragraph of that section that "If specific disambiguation conventions apply to places of a particular type or in a particular country, then it is important to follow these". Currently, WP:MOS-FR#Cities & communes states that articles on French settlements should use the comma convention, therefore Ry, Seine-Maritime should probably NOT be moved. I do not see a country-specific guideline for article titles on Danish settlements, while the one on Norway has never been specific on this issue AFAIK. The important thing is that, as WP:NCGN#Disambiguation says, "If a country has no convention listed, and there is a clear pattern among the articles on places in that country, follow it". Unfortunately, when I took a quick glance at the subcategories of Category:Populated places in Norway, it was very inconsistent. Likewise, Category:Cities and towns in Denmark by region was also sort of inconsistent as well. Zzyzx11 (talk) 05:55, 5 March 2013 (UTC)Reply
    • Comment: I'd be really surprised if the Danes called their city "Hatting, Denmark" (or even "Hatting, Danmark, in Danish). Given the fact that Hatting in Austria is about as small as Hatting in Denmark, most of them have probably not even heard of the Austrian namesake (and vice versa). It's pretty obvious that they call their city "Hatting", and nothing else. The same goes for the rest of the names – including Ry in France, for which the naming conventions say "However, when tags are required ... use the name of the ... department (France only) ...". Nothing indicates that the tag is required. Hence, the dab should be within parenteses. However, given the fact that Ry is called "Ry (Seine-Maritime)" in fr.wiki, I'm prepared to modify the proposal accordingly. But I still think that "France" would be a better dab, because it's more likely that people know where France is than where Seine-Maritime is. HandsomeFella (talk) 06:47, 5 March 2013 (UTC)Reply
  • Support per nom. Make clear that the country names are disambiguators and not part of the city names. The North American pattern need not be applied here. Create a dab page at Hatting. —  AjaxSmack  03:03, 5 March 2013 (UTC)Reply
  • Comment: A lot of very selective quoting from Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names) going on here. What that page actually says is:

With the names of cities, towns, villages and other settlements, as well as administrative divisions, the tag is normally preceded by a comma, as in Hel, Poland, and Polk County, Tennessee. Any specific national convention takes precedence though.

With natural features, the tag normally appears in parentheses, as in Eagle River (Colorado). Specific pre-existing national conventions may take precedence though.

Generic parenthetical disambiguating tags as used for most Wikipedia articles are used only occasionally for geographic names (as in Wolin (town), where no regional tag would be sufficient to distinguish the town from the island of Wolin).

That is a guideline. It is backed up by the policy at Wikipedia:Article titles, which states:

# Parenthetical disambiguation: If natural disambiguation is not possible, add a disambiguating term in parentheses, after the ambiguous name.

Example: The word "mercury" has distinct meanings that do not have sufficiently common alternative names, so we use instead parenthetical disambiguation: Mercury (element), Mercury (mythology), and Mercury (planet).

Comma-separated disambiguation. With place names, if the disambiguating term is a higher-level administrative division, it is often separated using a comma instead of parentheses, as in Windsor, Berkshire (see Geographic names). Comma-separated disambiguation is sometimes also used in other contexts (e.g., Diana, Princess of Wales; see Names of royals and nobles). However, titles such as Tony Blair and Battle of Waterloo are preferred over alternatives such as "Blair, Anthony Charles Lynton" and "Waterloo, Battle of", in which a comma is used to change the natural ordering of the words.

In these cases, there is no national convention that advises parenthetical disambiguation, so we stick with the usual convention, which is to use commas. It really is a bit naughty to try and change that convention by drip-feeding a handful of places. If you want to change it, propose a change at Wikipedia talk:Article titles. However, if you succeed, I expect those advocating change to spend the next two years changing the hundreds of thousands of articles that will be affected.
Incidentally, it is disingenuous to argue here that these articles should not follow the "North American pattern of disambiguating by comma", when those same people were arguing last week on North American articles that those articles should not follow the "European pattern of disambiguating by comma" Did you really think nobody would remember? Skinsmoke (talk) 12:36, 5 March 2013 (UTC)Reply
  • Comment:
First, Skinsmoke, you need to AGF. I have not been trying to convey a biased picture of the guidelines, as your comments "very selective" and "dripfeeding" seem to suggest. While browsing the page, I may have missed something, and skipped parts that didn't seem to apply at first glance, but if so, it is an honest mistake, and I resent comments suggesting anything else.
Second, the guidelines seem to use the words "normally" and "often" and "sometimes". That doesn't seem very binding.
Third, I don't remember being in a discussion last week where the "European pattern of disambiguating by comma" argument was used. Which one of the supporters above are you referring to? It surely isn't me, because I strongly disagree. This "City, State" naming convention is North American, at least in my world.
On the subject matter, I can't imagine that any Dane in his right mind would refer to the Danish city of Hatting as "Hatting, Danmark". Likewise, I don't think any yodler would refer to the Austrian city of Hatting as "Hatting, Österreich". Ergo: both cities are named Hatting. Also, if you check the da.wiki names for the cities dabbed by the municipality name (in the other RM), you'll see that they're all having the dab in parentheses. So, "[a]ny specific national convention takes precedence though", right? Ergo: the dab should be in parentheses.
In any case, if there really are binding rules to your interpretation, I think they should indeed be changed.
HandsomeFella (talk) 15:32, 5 March 2013 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose. One form of disambiguation is already used, no reason to change to another particularly if editors and readers are used to the existing form. It isn't improper as it's in the policy and guideline quoted by Skinsmoke; also a search of Google Books for "Silkeborg, Denmark" (or "Silkeborg (Denmark)" shows that the comma is not only for disambiguation. Ry, Seine-Maritime is one of 85 articles in Category:Communes of Seine-Maritime disambiguated in this way, and that's just one of the 96 departments; from Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Infobox French commune it looks like the same naming conventions are used in the others. I don't see why Ry should be an exception to a naming convention, and if the proposal includes moving the others it should be in a discussion with more participation - maybe WP:RFC. Peter James (talk) 14:07, 7 March 2013 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose. The comma form is far commoner. Nothing to do with North America. This form is used everywhere on Wikipedia (and, in my experience, in most places outside Wikipedia too). From WP:NCGN: "With the names of cities, towns, villages and other settlements, as well as administrative divisions, the tag is normally preceded by a comma, as in Hel, Poland, and Polk County, Tennessee. Any specific national convention takes precedence though." How is that ambiguous? What you are advocating, apparently, is to move a select group of articles to a style which is nowhere near as common as the style they are already in. In what way does that benefit Wikipedia? Articles on settlements in the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark etc currently almost exclusively use the comma form. Settlements in Germany, Belgium and Portugal mostly use the comma form. Only North America? I think not! Of course people who live in Hatting and in Denmark would refer to the town just as Hatting. However, if it was referred to in the non-Danish media I think you'll find it would be "Hatting, Denmark" or "Hatting in Denmark", never as "Hatting (Denmark)", which looks plain weird. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:07, 7 March 2013 (UTC)Reply
    • What does the BBC do, I wonder? The first page I looked at with a search for Oslo, just to pick a random Scandinavian city that the BBC might have an article referring to: oh look, town, country!. The second one: "University of Oslo, Norway", not "University of Oslo (Norway)". Third: "Oslo, Norway". And I assure you, I'm not being selective. That's just common usage. The claims above that this is not how these towns are commonly referenced are just plain wrong. I don't know what the foreign-language media do, but the English-language media (and this is English Wikipedia, remember) do it this way. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:18, 7 March 2013 (UTC)Reply
    • Comment: (What you are quoting from NCGN has already been quoted above.)
      My point is that there's a difference between the actual need for a disambiguator and the convention of adding a state suffix. While the latter serves as a disambiguator too, it also serves as information on where a place is located in large countries (US and Canada), which helps the reader/listener. If I'm not misinformed, except for some 20 big cities like New York and Los Angeles, the "Lincoln, Nebraska" style is used everywhere in North America regardless of whether the specific placename is ambiguous or not. Thus, one could argue that the state suffix is not a "genuine" disambiguator (while obviously it strongly reduces the need for other disambiguators). Having said that, I realize that the guidelines, at present, seem to view the suffix as a disambiguator in the same way as a parenthetical expression.
      Using your own logic on the Oslo example, that city would be at "Oslo, Norway" rather than "Oslo". Why isn't it then? See my point? Since "Placename, Fylke" – or "Placename, Amt" for Denmark – is not the naming convention, the disambiguator should in my view be in parentheses. Mentioning "Norway" in your example serves to help the reader/listener. So your example doesn't really prove anything.
      What I'd like to know, is when ""[a]ny specific national convention takes precedence though" comes into play? HandsomeFella (talk) 16:47, 7 March 2013 (UTC)Reply
      • No, I don't see your point. I'm saying that it is common practice in English to specify possibly unfamiliar placenames using a comma, not parentheses. And we use common practice in English here. On Wikipedia we do not disambiguate anything that doesn't need disambiguation, so we don't need to disambiguate Oslo, since it's the only Oslo of any significance and is clearly the primary topic. Oslo may or may not be disambiguated in the media, but where it is, the comma version is invariably used. Hatting (and all the others you've listed) would of course always be disambiguated, since most native English-speakers would never have heard of any of them. And the comma form would be used. It is standard Wikipedia practice to use natural disambiguation if at all possible, and this is clearly natural disambiguation since it's the convention used by the media and in other written works. Do you see my point? What you are essentially advocating is a complete change in the way we disambiguate placenames on Wikipedia, yet you have mysteriously chosen to do that by choosing fourteen obscure settlements. If you think it's worthy of discussion, then a Requested Move is not the place to do it. -- Necrothesp (talk) 17:02, 7 March 2013 (UTC)Reply
        • Recent world champion Johan Olsson's commonname is obviously "Johan Olsson", yet we keep him at Johan Olsson (skier), the reason obviously being that there are more people with the same name. Still, using your own logic, I don't imagine media write about him as "Johan Olsson (skier)". So your logic is faulty. (Keep the primary/not primary dicussion apart from the format of the disambiguator.) The reason I requested this move was that I just came across them, and thought their titles here were odd, being unaware of the guidelines being what they are. I'm contemplating starting a discussion on that matter. And I'd still like to know when "[a]ny specific national convention takes precedence though" comes into play. HandsomeFella (talk) 21:33, 7 March 2013 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose. There is no naming convention specific for the locales that indicate usage other than the normal convention for other places on Wikipedia. olderwiser 18:10, 7 March 2013 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose all. The comma convention seems to be the applicable one here. Agree that Hatting should become a two-way DAB, similar populations and importance, no primary topic. Andrewa (talk) 06:54, 12 March 2013 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose per Necrothesp and by that I mean I see no need to repeat as I have read his posts and what he is responding to, agree with the points made and believe he has admirably summed up the policies and their interpretation, parts of which I had a hand in drafting.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 22:52, 12 March 2013 (UTC)Reply
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.