London, England, United Kingdom

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There have been repeated reverts of how to present the birthplace in the infobox. I favour just putting "London", whereas User:JayCoop has recently changed this to "London, England, United Kingdom". While this is a minor issue, after several reverts we should discuss it. There are several linked issues:

  1. Whether major cities such as London should be wikilinked. Irrespective of what is done in other articles, we should be guided by the Wikipedia Manual of Style (MOS), which explicitly says that we do not normally link cities such as London. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Linking#What generally should not be linked says:
    "the following are not usually linked: [...] The names of major geographic features, locations (e.g. United States, London, New York City, France, Berlin...),"
  2. Whether we should say which country London is in, or which nation state England is in. Here the MOS is less clear. I think I read that with major world cities we do not normally need to say where they are located. I would argue on a similar basis to wikilinking, that we do not need to state the obvious. This is complicated by the US convention of giving the state after the name of a city, this convention is not used in many other countries, except for disambiguation.
  3. Whether we should abbreviate "United Kingdom", and if so whether this should be to "UK" or "U.K." MOS:ACRO indicates that we should abbreviate to "UK", not to "U.K.", and that the full name does not need to be written out in full on first use.

While I favour having just "London" for the reasons given above, I am prepared to compromise on "London, England, UK" (at least until I produce more definitive support for my favoured option). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Verbcatcher (talkcontribs) 23:54, 19 December 2016