Talk:Abbey of Saint Loup, Troyes

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We have an editor going through all the abbey articles changing Abbey of St. Loup, etc to this format, sometimes, as here, with results that betray complete unfamiliarity with the subject. An Americanism was intended, I suppose. We do have many bullies at Wikipedia.--Wetman (talk) 04:16, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

At any rate, here's all one has to do, in order to be completely informed in this matter: Google "St. Loup's Abbey" complete with the quotation marks. There! It should be kept in mind that not all Wikipedians have been indoctrinated to believe that uniformity is a quality desirable in and of itself.

I have fixed this by returning it to the title under which it was written, which one might think was not completely ignorant. -Wetman (talk) 16:22, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

I Amended the Title Because...

1) The issue is exactly the same as that of "Cathedral of Foo" versus "Foo Cathedral", and the google results are non-dispositive for exactly the same reasons (dominant among which is that "abbey of Saint-X" is a description, not a name). (Out of interest, what comes up the most often is "Saint-Loup Abbey", which presumably no-one would think a good option, as AFAIK it is not in a village called Saint-Loup).

2) Names of foreign religious houses in English are translations, of which, with VERY FEW exceptions, there IS no standard version (so it is a bit silly to start talking about solecisms). In the absence of a standard, best practice must be to use the most natural and economic English language form, which is "X Abbey", if there is only one in a single place, or, if there is more than one, "St. Y's Abbey, X". There is simply NO justification for anything more elaborate.

I suspect the preference for the longer "Abbey of St. Y, X" version is generally based on nothing better than (1) the usage of the Catholic Encyclopedia (of 1907-14, which puts it in perspective) or (2) an O Level knowledge of the French Abbaye de Saint-Y, X. I can only repeat that there is really no justification for transferring that totally literally into English.

3) Consistency actually IS a good thing in a reference work, especially when there is no good reason for not having it.

4) As to the other points above, well, if we don't want to sound like "How Very Dare You?", we should not edit as if tired and emotional. To change a poor title is not "bullying"; nor, on a small article with only a few links, does it require prior consultation. I would have hoped, in the light of my track record, that there was no need to mention WP:AGF and WP:NPA - but clearly it IS necessary - I will not hold my breath for an apology. HeartofaDog (talk) 23:59, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

I didn't want to mention a name, because this isn't a personal thing. Self-justifications aside, if you're editing for consistency within an article, you may be on the right track, if your edits help keep the reader oriented. If you're editing across a number of articles, in order to bring them into line with something you have justified in your head, you may be in error. There may be no natural consistency in naming.

It's always a good idea, when considering a move that is more than a trivial correction of a misprint, to offer a chance for discussion. That's what Talk pages are about.

Just as "assume good faith" is a Wikipedia mantra, it may be wise to assume that the editors writing the article knew what they were talking about, until you detect that they don't --Wetman (talk) 05:30, 3 May 2008 (UTC)