text:
Wikivoyage talk:User rights nominations/Archives

Warning
"WARNING: This page is 33 kilobytes long; some browsers may have problems editing pages approaching or longer than 32kb. Please consider breaking the page into smaller sections." Should we make a second Administrator nominations archives to prevent browsers from being unable to read this? (WT-en) Sapphire 19:45, 28 March 2006 (EST)

 * I can't find the discussion right now, but there has been some talk about removing that warning. We have a LOT of pages that are longer than 32kb. -- (WT-en) Ryan 20:04, 28 March 2006 (EST)

Page appearance
Do you guys would like the idea of changing the look of this page. Please have a look here for an example. I've borrowed it from WN. I would like to propose the same change for VfD archive pages as well. See this for example. --Saqib (talk) 23:59, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Splitting up this archive
This page has gotten very unwieldy in recent years with the page size now sitting at 708,721 bytes, meaning it takes quite a long time to load on many browsers and on mobile. A few ways we can split it up:
 * By user, where each user has their own archive page (a similar model is used on Wikibooks – see b:WB:RFA)
 * By year (or several years)
 * By user right type (admin, bureaucrat, interface admin, checkuser, oversight, desysop, etc.)

Any other ideas? -- SHB2000  (talk | contribs | meta) 01:01, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

 * I don't see this as something that requires discussion. Go ahead and do it if you think it's important. I don't, though, because archives are rarely necessary to look at, and they're also easily searchable. If you are going to split up the archive, I think that chronological order is best. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:08, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I agree that it is a good idea as it does take a long time to load. Splitting it b user right type could lead to the same problem with admins, which is the most common type. We usually split archives by date, so I'd go year-by-year. That seems simplest. Ground Zero (talk) 14:30, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I could alternatively see doing a mixture of both, since there are not many requests for CU/OS/bureaucrat compared to admin, while the page for admins can be split further. -- SHB2000  (talk | contribs | meta) 21:23, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * That sounds like more work without any additional benefit. Keeping it simple is always a good way to go. Ground Zero (talk) 22:12, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Totally agreed. Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:31, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * By year sounds reasonable. By user right request type is also ok. OhanaUnitedTalk page 01:38, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * ✅. There are a few more things that I'd like to do with the formatting and the like, but it's getting late and lack the energy to continue. Don't I just love my new recent Xtools stats... -- SHB2000  (talk | contribs | meta) 12:16, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
 * With this all said, User rights nominations/Archives/2013 is over 200k bytes. -- SHB2000  (talk | contribs | meta) 12:26, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

Well done, SHB! I wouldn't worry about the 2013 page. it's unlikely that it is accessed very often. Ground Zero (talk) 13:22, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

 * One final thing: I've created URNArchive which in many ways is supposed to mirror deletion archive. I've already implemented this on the 2003, 2004 and 2005 pages – are there any objections before I roll it out elsewhere (will write out documentation)? SHB2000  (talk | contribs | meta) 08:46, 7 February 2024 (UTC)
 * No objection from me.Ground Zero (talk) 08:49, 7 February 2024 (UTC)
 * ✅. I think that's all that needs to be done? I might be wrong. -- SHB2000  (talk | contribs | meta) 10:23, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
Wikivoyage talk:Administrators

Inactive admins 2022/02
We seem to have a couple of inactive admins on this project. Just a list of accounts that fall into that criterion:
 * (last edit on 2019-07-21)
 * (last edit on 2019-09-29) (desysopped on 2022-02-02 as they have agreed to be desysopped)
 * (last edit on 2019-06-05) (created a new article on 2022-02-02)
 * (last edit on 2019-08-11)
 * (last edit on 2020-01-22)
 * (last edit on 2020-01-26) (desysopped on 2022-02-02 as they have agreed to be desysopped)
 * (last edit on 2019-01-30)
 * (last edit on 2020-01-25)
 * (inactive bot account)

As inactive admin accounts pose a security risk, their admin privileges should be removed per policy. Pinging our 'crats (and  with your main account). Thanks. -- SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 08:58, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

 * Did you successfully ping them here, or should they be notified on their user talk pages? –LPfi (talk) 09:13, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

 * The inactive users should be informed via their talk pages.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 09:19, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Done, except for Traveler100bot as they are not a human though I let Traveler100 know about this. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 10:15, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

 * Hi there, as I am no longer an active contributor, it is only reasonable to remove the admin rights from my user. Thanks :) --Danapit (talk) 10:24, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Makes sense to me. -- Mark (talk) 10:31, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Just a comment: It looks like, based on a thread on a previous round of desysopping that was just archived, we wait 2 weeks after inactive admins are notified on their talk pages, and if possible, also by email, before we desysop them. Ikan Kekek (talk) 11:51, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
 * That said, I'll act right away on the Danapit and Mark's accounts because they agreed in this thread. Ikan Kekek (talk) 11:52, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Danapit and Mark, you are now autopatrollers. We would welcome your return to edit any time you like, and if you ever decide you'd like to be admins again, just let us know. Ikan Kekek (talk) 11:55, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks! I hear-by confirm that I'm in favour of this -- Mark (talk) 12:48, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I've fixed the dates. Thanks for picking up the error . SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 12:01, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
 * @Ikan Kekek As it is 17 days now since notices given, when you get the time, can you please remove the sysop privileges off these accounts. Thanks :) SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 05:28, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Did anyone try to email them? We did before, as I remember. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:38, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Has anyone tried to email them? Does anyone want to, or should I just desysop them and post a talk page note encouraging them to let us know if they ever want their admin bits restored? Let me know. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:53, 27 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Did we have a standard email template from the previous times we did this? If so, it shouldn't be hard to email each of the five users with the notice, excluding the bot account. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 21:14, 27 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I didn't remember this, but per Wikivoyage talk:Administrators/Archive 1, it looks like the following wording of emails was agreed to:

Thanks for your service as a Wikivoyage administrator. As you may be aware, our Wikivoyage:Administrators policy indicates that administrators who have not edited on the English Wikivoyage in over two years should have their administrator flags removed. This is for account security purposes, not a reflection of a loss of trust or any disappointment.

As such, we have removed your administrator flag as of [today's date]. If you ever decide to return to Wikivoyage as an active editor, your administrator flag can be restored by request.

If you have any questions or concerns, let me know.

 * My feeling is that we don't have to wait for a broad discussion on this wording, as no-one else seems to be following this thread, so the only question is whether I should in fact remove their admin bits now or whether we would like to postdate the removal. I'll go with whatever you prefer unless anyone else wants to express an opinion. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:51, 27 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I think we ought to give them a chance to see the email first, if that's what we've done with prior accounts. Does this email go from a particular email address? Or just the "email user" function? --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 22:00, 27 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I'd use the "email user" function if it's operational. If it's not, it'll probably be impossible to email them. Should we give them another week to see the email and reply to it? Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:18, 27 February 2022 (UTC)
 * The main reason I've pretty much abstained is because I have not been here long enough to do all this, but I think the bot account's admin privileges can be removed tho. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 06:54, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I don't understand what you're saying. Abstained from what? Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:36, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Apologies for not being clear enough. Abstained from commenting further because I'm very new to this process and the only time where I've seen this process done is on Commons' bureaucrat's noticeboard. As to the bot account, I'm taking about . SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 07:46, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I think you're right that I can remove the bot's privileges. I'll do that. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:16, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Selfie City, would you like to email everyone concerned? If not, I probably have time this week to do so. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:42, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
 * ✅. One user did not have a registered email, but I have emailed the others. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 00:32, 1 March 2022 (UTC)
 * I'm so sorry I am so late in taking care of this, but all the accounts listed above have been desysopped, with their statuses changed provisionally to autopatroller (except for the bot), with everyone invited to resume their status as admins if they would like to do so any time in the future that they would like to participate here again. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:07, 1 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Under "Current administrators," we see the following statement: "Wikivoyage has 45 administrators." However, I count only 42 at https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Special:ListUsers/sysop. Any insight into why? Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:19, 1 May 2022 (UTC)
 * It says 40 now. I'm not going to worry about it. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:37, 1 May 2022 (UTC)
 * The page says " Wikivoyage has administrators. ". I assume that there is a few hours delay between making the change and the number being updated, and the -2 is either an earlier attempt to fix what appeared to be an error, or is removing bot accounts from the total. AlasdairW (talk) 21:49, 2 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I don't understand what the code means, but there does appear to be a delay after the number of admins is changed by a bureaucrat. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:31, 2 May 2022 (UTC)
 * I think it should be changed from "-2" to "-1", as Abuse filter is the only non-human admin left. AlasdairW (talk) 22:40, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

Question about admin requirements
What are the requirements for being an administrator? Tailsultimatefan3891 (talk) 00:26, 27 October 2022 (UTC)

 * What it means to be one is here: Administrators, how to be come one is here: User rights nominations, how to be a good one is here: Administrators' handbook. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:32, 27 October 2022 (UTC)

 * OK, thanks for your reply. Tailsultimatefan3891 (talk) 01:31, 27 October 2022 (UTC)

Inactive admins 2022/12
I know it's only been 10 months since we last did an admin activity check, but I'm only starting this now so we can be consistent by doing one every year just before the New Year (and hopefully this permanently stays this way, as opposed to doing one every February).

Not that many users this time, but here's a list of all admins who have not made one edit in the past two years:
 * (last edit on 2020-11-01 )
 * (last edit on 2020-12-23 )
 * (last edit on 2020-10-26 )

I have not sent out a mass message just yet, only because I'd like to know when will their sysop privileges be removed (assuming they don't respond), but as soon as I get a few opinions on when, I'll send out the mass mail (and emails).

Also pinging our (active) bureaucrats. Apologies for the extra burden that I may have caused – one by starting this two months before we did our last admin check, and two because I sorta have to canvass both of you into this discussion (thankfully w:WP:CANVASS isn't a behavioural guideline here) so I can mass mail and message the three users listed above.

-- SHB2000  (talk | contribs | meta) 09:16, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

 * Also, genuine question, but should I self-nominate myself for bureaucrat rights to help out with inactive admins? SHB2000  (talk | contribs | meta) 09:44, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

 * It's no big deal to desysop 3 or fewer people. They should be given 14 days to reply after being emailed before they are desysopped. Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:20, 23 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Sure. I'll send out the mass message in just a moment. SHB2000  (talk | contribs | meta) 10:33, 23 December 2022 (UTC)
 * I think it is kind of unfair to send a letter with a two-week deadline the day before Christmas Eve. Schools over here are closed more or less until Epiphany, so people may be off with their families. People may be off the grid any time of year, but if we are trying to standardise on some dates, February is much better in my opinion. –LPfi (talk) 10:38, 23 December 2022 (UTC)
 * (edit conflict) ✅ all users notified and emailed. SHB2000  (talk | contribs | meta) 10:46, 23 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Setting a particular time of year to do these is a good idea, but I agree with and wish you'd waited more than a couple of hours to get more opinions before acting. This is a bad time of year for availability for many people. It's a bit late to back down now, because you've already sent the message, but I think you should send another one to tell them we've extended the grace period to a month (so they have until 23 Jan to reply).--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 11:06, 23 December 2022 (UTC)
 * apologies for being a bit hasty with this. Reflecting upon it, that was irresponsible of me and I probably should have waited until tomorrow morning. I'll make sure to remember to wait a day before acting on such decisions in the future.
 * Nonetheless, I've sent three follow-up emails plus a message on their talk page letting them know they have until the 23rd, not the 5th. SHB2000  (talk | contribs | meta) 11:23, 23 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Point well made, Thundering, and well resolved, SHB. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:17, 24 December 2022 (UTC)
 * We're not quite at 23rd January UTC yet, but it looks as though Ikan or I will be removing three sysops tomorrow.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 11:24, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Can also confirm that I have received zero email replies. SHB2000  (talk | contribs | meta) 11:47, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

just for the record, Texugo is very missed. He is my big mentor and we worked together very hard and very productively in pt-Wikivoyage, way back before the fork. After he went inactive, I lost interest and hardly edit the pt-version anymore. His desysopping taking place is a sad thing for me. Ibaman (talk) 11:51, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

 * Has any attempt been made to make contact since the end of the festive period? If not, then it might be good to send another email, and give them until the end of this week to reply. If somebody is offline for the holidays (in a mountain hut, or staying with Aunt Morag who has no WiFi), they may come back to 100 emails and just delete the lot. AlasdairW (talk) 14:04, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

 * These three were last active in 2020, so I think we've been accommodating enough. If they come back to regular activities in the future, and want to be reinstated it should be relatively easy.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 14:59, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Ok. I hadn't realised it had been so long. AlasdairW (talk) 15:47, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

✅ - The three former admins are now patrollers/autopatrollers. I have left a message on each of their talk pages confirming the change. Thanks for everyone's assistance.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 13:08, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

User:LilHelpa
Per User talk:LilHelpa (particularly Special:Diff/4679386), please remove their admin tools. -- SHB2000  (talk | contribs | meta) 03:32, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

 * Done. Changed to Autopatroller. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:32, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the swift response! SHB2000  (talk | contribs | meta) 10:52, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks both. This all happened a bit too early for me! ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 14:03, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Inactive admins 2024/01
Time for our yearly admin checkup – should we give 28 days for users to respond? I've done this a few days after December now that the holiday season is coming to a conclusion.

List of inactive admins:
 * (last edit on 2021-04-11 )
 * (last edit on 2021-05-20 )

I haven't sent out a mass message yet until I get a confirmation of the date their sysop privileges will be removed, but at this rate, shall we keep it at Jan 31, 2024? Pinging our two bureaucrats. Once I get the green light from either of you, I'll send a mass message.

-- SHB2000  (talk | contribs | meta) 09:51, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

 * Bump – I will send the mass messages out tomorrow afternoon if I get no confirmation whatsoever. -- SHB2000  (talk | contribs | meta) 21:40, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
 * ? -- SHB2000  (talk | contribs | meta) 03:36, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Seems like a good idea to wait until mid-January. The Christmas etc holidays go on for quite a long time in some cultures. Epiphany is tomorrow for instance.-- ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 17:33, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Done – the deadline date is set at January 31, which is more than enough time to get back to us. -- SHB2000  (talk | contribs | meta) 03:21, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
 * AndreCarrotflower appears to have vanished from any wiki project involvement since April 2021. OhanaUnitedTalk page 05:09, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
 * (alt account) is still active globally. You'd almost certainly get a reply from Andrew through that account if needed. That said, if the sysop account is inactive and unresponsive, it might be better to remove the 'bits'.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 13:55, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * We would, but it's up to Andrew to check the account with their sysop perms if they want to keep it. Plus, I have not received any email reply either, so I think it's safe to say they're not going to respond. -- SHB2000  (talk | contribs | meta) 21:43, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I think it would be good courtesy to check whether Andrew wants to retain his sysop tools, as he was an extremely important member of the community for some time. He made clear that he was leaving for a time and wavered between indicating that move was temporary or permanent. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 00:57, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
 * What defines "important", though? Why should they be given special treatment because they just so happened to be more active than others? Policy is policy, and we shouldn't be wavering the policy for some users and not for others; it's antithetical to the inactive admins policy. -- SHB2000  (talk | contribs | meta) 01:04, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Let's just wait till the 31st, like we've agreed to do. If he replies later than that and says he'd like to have his sysop tools, it's no problem to restore them. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:24, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Anybody given the trust of admin has probably been an important contributor, so this is not really about having been more important, but about trying to be as respectful as possible, which is a virtue and important for keeping the spirit of the community. We can afford to take special circumstances into consideration. That said, nobody suggests deviating from policy. –LPfi (talk) 07:44, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Just a heads up with 3 days left and I still haven't received any email responses, for the record. -- SHB2000  (talk | contribs | meta) 12:07, 28 January 2024 (UTC)
 * ✅ Removed the tools from both of them and changed their status to autopatroller (with a message on their talk page). I hope I didn't miss anything. -- SHB2000  (talk | contribs | meta) 04:50, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Reference to Wikibooks
A bullet was added:
 * The policy on global sysops is the same as on the English Wikibooks.

Do we really outsource the policy to Wikibooks? Our policy may be identical, but I think, in that case, that the policy should be copied to here. Otherwise, any change enacted there would silently amend our policy, which feels weird.

–LPfi (talk) 10:23, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

 * It's always been the case (I clarified that because it's unreasonable to know that with just a single link – see the original first line). I'm indifferent on copying the content over here, though – very little actually changes on that wiki (the only policy that's changed this year is the policy on AI content). -- SHB2000  (talk | contribs | meta) 10:31, 4 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm not really afraid that there would be changes that we cannot accept. Its just cleaner not to refer outside (other than to Meta for global policies, and the like). "Always" here isn't too long ago, I assume, not before 2013 anyway. I am puzzled that I have no memory of such a decision. Was it actually never made, just assumed? Or made in a single posting in the relevant thread? –LPfi (talk) 11:20, 4 April 2024 (UTC)
 * The text was added by with the link when this wiki became a GS wiki in 2021; I vaguely recall a discussion before it was added, though. --  SHB2000  (talk | contribs | meta) 11:28, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

title: Wikivoyage talk:Administrators


text:
Wikivoyage talk:All pages by title

Please see bug report -- (WT-en) JanSlupski 14:31, 16 Apr 2004 (EDT)

title: Wikivoyage talk:All pages by title


text:
Wikivoyage talk:Article naming conventions/Accented characters

Moved from Project:Foreign-language names by (WT-en) Evan

The issue
The current style standards state that as a general rule "English" names should be used. Specifically,
 * Project:Foreign-language names indicates that "English-language names" should be used in article text.
 * Project:Article naming conventions indicates that "foreign language characters" should not be used in article names and that "foreign language spellings" should not be used in articles for technical reasons.

For the many instances where the place's native name is written in Latin script with non-English characters (which I'll haphazardly call "accented characters"), and a traditional English name (such as Munich) does not exist, some Wikivoyage contributors interpret the standard as advocating the simple replacement of accented characters by the closest English character. For example:

 * Malmo not Malmö
 * Sao Paulo not São Paulo
 * Popayan not Popayán

However, it is unclear whether accented characters are considered foreign characters in the way that Greek characters are. They are (conspicuously) not specifically addressed or given as examples in either article. (Project:Foreign-language names says Montreal instead of Montréal, but this is a bit special because English is used in Montreal, and the English pronunciation of the name differs significantly from the French beyond just the "é" sound.)

Why we should use accented characters
I think that accented characters should not be considered foreign, thus they ought to be used consistently in article text, and should be permissible in article names. Here is why:

1) Removing accents from a name does not make it an English-language name.

The standard says to use the common English-language name, but Malmo is not the traditional English in the sense that Munich is. Malmo is simply the closest approximation of the written name using only English-language characters, i.e., it's what people use when they can't write Malmö or don't know that it's Malmö.

2) Wikivoyage can use accented characters.

Wikivoyage is written for a medium that (for the vast majority of users) can display accented characters, for an audience that understands accented characters (i.e., knows that "ö" is some sort of variation of "o" rather than some totally incomprehensible squiggle).

Because of this, we should not be swayed by outside standards or usage, to which these conditions generally do not apply.

Thus, appealing to simple Google searches to measure usage is not legitimate. To put it bluntly, all those web pages that say Malmo do so because the writers are uninformed about the medium or the audience, or making certain assumptions about them that don't apply to Wikivoyage, or just lazy. The writer may assume that the reader's browser is not equipped to properly display accented characters. The writer may not know how to enter "ö". The writer may not even realize the difference. Or the writer may just be too lazy to write it correctly. (I myself have written a lot of Wikivoyage content that omits accents, and that's because I am lazy.) That doesn't excuse them, and it doesn't excuse me.

I don't even think style standards such as the New York Times or Associated Press should be relied on, as those standards were established for media that could not easily use accented characters, and a target audience that benefited little from their use (see next item).

There is actually one area of external usage which I think we can look to, and that is English-language material published in the country (including web pages originating in the country). Munich is used in English-language material such as local tourist information and media in Germany. Similarly, English-language material published in Sweden consistently writes "Malmö". Surely nobody knows more about Swedish names than the Swedes, and if they write "Malmö" in English text, wouldn't that make it the "English name"?

3) It benefits the traveler.

Whether it resides in the traveler's head or on a sheet of paper, the correct representation will be better understood by locals, and will enable better understanding by the traveler. Not using accented characters will hinder the traveler. If I don't know that it's Malmö rather than Malmo, it will be harder for me to understand why it is pronounced the way it is. It will be harder for me to recognize the spoken name. Using accented characters also educates the traveler on basic pronunciation rules in the native language that can be applied when learning other words and names.

4) It does not hinder the traveler

If you don't know how to pronounce the accented character, you can just pronounce it "in English", and come reasonably close.

5) It makes Wikivoyage look better.

The correct written representation will be better appreciated by locals. It won't be considered amateurish or incorrect.

Objections
There are a number of objections to using accented characters on technical grounds, which I respond to:

1) Accents mess up sorting and searching.

As far as I know, Wikivoyage doesn't use any automated alphabetical sorting in generating content. As for searching on Wikivoyage, redirects make things work out so whether you search for the accented name or unaccented equivalent, you end up in the same place. Sorting and searching Wikivoyage content outside of Wikivoyage (e.g., in your own word processor, on Google) should not be of our concern.

2) Accented characters are difficult to enter with an English keyboard

The only time a Wikivoyage reader has to enter text is to search, and as stated above, redirects take care of searches. Surely someone searching for Malmö is not going to give up because he can't type "ö", without trying "Malmo". As for the inconvenience to Wikivoyage writers, sorry, but the traveler comes first.

Thus, I don't believe that extended Latin characters in article names is a real problem. However, I think that restricting article names to English-language characters will not be a problem either, and will at the very least make URLs look nicer (Malmo instaead of Malm%C3%B6). If there is a way in Wikimedia to name the article file Malmo but the title Malmö, that would be ideal.

-- (WT-en) Paul Richter 15:44, 29 May 2004 (EDT)

 * I'd like to cast in a rather belated vote with Paul here: I think we should allow the entirety of ISO 8859-1 (Latin-1) in article names, with redirects as appropriate. See Talk:Fuerth for yet another example of why not doing so is causing problems. (WT-en) Jpatokal 00:32, 17 Jan 2005 (EST)

 * Ok, but what so special in ISO 8859-1? We are using utf8 anyway... If we accept ç, why not ć? I would rather vote for acceptance for any latin letters with accents additions. (Sure, that's because I'm egoist. Most Polish-specific chars are ISO 8859-2 ;-). Only general objection I have, is that sometimes printers have problems with  national chars. (I'm having some difficulties when printing ISO 8859-2 characters under Mozilla/Linux on Postscript printer, but I'm able to workaround this). According to URLs, if you need to use nice looking syntax (eg. in promotinal materials) you can always create ASCII-only redirect page, and promote this URL. Probably even better will be if article is under ASCII-only title, and redirects are made from real name. -- (WT-en) JanSlupski 08:49, 17 Jan 2005 (EST)

 * Just fyi, Wikivoyage is both edited and published in UNICODE. There's no technical reason for limiting ourselves to the ISO 8859-2 charset. Maybe that's beside the point and you all realize that already?  -- (WT-en) Mark 08:59, 17 Jan 2005 (EST)

 * ISO 8859-1 is the default character set of HTML pages, while UTF-8 isn't. I've seen a number of severely mangled attempts to use Unicode (in UTF-8 or various other encodings, often corrupted) on Wikipedia, hence my hesitation. I also don't think it adds much value to start using names like Tōkyō or Hà Nội, where the diacritics are not strictly necessary. (WT-en) Jpatokal 10:13, 17 Jan 2005 (EST)

 * I've had a look at english Wikipedia, and it appears that they do use ISO 8859-1, but Wikivoyage uses UNICODE (in practice, yes, UTF-8). Wikivoyage quite clearly does not mangle UTF-8, but I'm very willing to believe that Wikipedia does.  So again, I think there is no technical reason whatever to limit ourselves to any variation on ISO 8859. -- (WT-en) Mark 04:50, 18 Jan 2005 (EST)

 * The problem is not Wikimedia, the problem is users and browsers. A user can enter Latin-1 and be fairly sure it'll pass through unscathed, but outside the basic 8 bits things get iffy.

 * But I'm being conservative here. If we want to adopt UTF-8 wholesale in titles — and obviously this is more or less workable, because eg. the Japanese Wikipedia uses nothing but — then it's fine with me. (WT-en) Jpatokal 07:00, 18 Jan 2005 (EST)

Moved discussion
I moved this discussion from Project:Foreign-language names since Project:Foreign-language names is about doing this:

 * Mexico City (Spanish: Mexico)

...and not about accented chars in article names.

In addition, I've tried to rationalize the foreign-language characters part of the article naming conventions with the most-common-English-name part. I think the first section is clear: use the most common English name, or in the absence of any English name, take the most common local name and romanize it. --(WT-en) Evan 08:00, 18 Jan 2005 (EST)

Continuum of anglicization
I was thinking about anglicization and came up with this diagram:

Comments (or additions!) welcome. --(WT-en) Evan 08:16, 18 Jan 2005 (EST)

 * Helsingør was discussed on the Elsinore discussion page. And ø is not an accent, neither are æ or å. I better make a redirect for Helsingør. -- (WT-en) elgaard 14:31, 18 Jan 2005 (EST)
 * I understand and like the general idea, but this is hard to codify; I, for example, would say that the English name of São Paulo is São Paulo, as I can't see how this is different from Malmö being Malmö. A name written in Roman letters cannot be romanized, and "English name" should only be applied in the comparatively rare case when the place in question has a distinctly different and widely used name in English, eg. Copenhagen for København.

 * Howabout "any name written in Latin letters is used as is complete with diacritics, unless the place already has a widely used alternative English name"? (WT-en) Jpatokal 09:05, 18 Jan 2005 (EST)

 * I don't think that's right. I think we should first exhaust options for English names, then, as a last resort, use romanized versions of local names. Places that don't have some name in English are very, very rare -- a quick review of the Getty Thesaurus of Geographical Names usually comes up with at least something.

 * The difference between Malmö and Sao Paulo is that the unaccented version of the Brazilian city's name is widespread -- in fact, it seems more popular than the accented version for English. But the unaccented version of the Swedish one ("Malmoe") is less widely used than the accented version. But, yes, understood: there's nothing inherent in either name that could tell you algorithmically whether or not to use the accented version.

 * See Talk:Sao Paulo for a discussion on "Sao Paulo" versus "São Paulo". I, too, was originally inclined to think of "São Paulo" as the most common English name, but some (admittedly light) research seems to point towards the unaccented version. We don't use "Sao Paulo" just because it's unaccented; we use it because it's the most common (we think) English name. It's definitely not ubiquitous, though -- one of those difficult cases. --(WT-en) Evan 13:46, 18 Jan 2005 (EST)

 * I believe that diacritics should not appear in article names. For example: Whakatane is more correctly written as Whakatāne in Māori, and in some English texts, although Whakatäne is also considered acceptable. However, in common English the ā or ä is normally written as a, mostly because (US English) keyboards (and previously typewriters) do not possess ā or ä keys, (though German ones might). While it is possible to copy the ā or ä, it is far easier to simply type a. If you cannot read the ā character because your computer does not have the macron characters loaded or do not know the keyboard combination code to type the character then I think this challenge highlights my concern at having diacritics in Article names . If someone had to search for the placename would they necessarily put the diacritics in? Would you? Would other Wikivoyage's readers? If the answer to those questions is Yes, Definitely then use diacritics. However, I do not believe that most, or even many, English readers will use diacritics, instead they will simply type the letters a to z without the diacritics.  Finally, let me be clear - I have no objection to having the placename with diacritics being the first (or any) word of the article. I just believe that the Article name should not have them. I believe that if you want to have diacritics in Article names then make it a redirect to the Article name without diacritics. This also gives flexibility as links work with and without diacritics. -- (WT-en) Huttite 06:13, 20 Jan 2005 (EST)

 * Getty gives Whakatane as the preferred English spelling.

 * That is the common New Zealand spelling too. However allowing diacritics potentially permits articles to be created in their native language form -- (WT-en) Huttite 07:16, 25 Jan 2005 (EST)

 * Yes, but we ask that the article names be the most common English name, not the native language name. --(WT-en) Evan 11:40, 25 Jan 2005 (EST)

 * I don't think that English's relative dearth of accented characters derives from their absence on our Druid forefathers' oaken keyboards. It's more likely, I believe, that causation is in the other direction and that keyboards follow English usage. That all said, it's a mistake to think that English does not use accented characters; risqué, résumé, and café all come immediately to mind. I'm no linguist, but as I understand it, words often enter English from other languages, maintain their foreign characters for a while, and eventually the "edges" get smoothed down with use. And, often, the words that enter our language this way are place names.

 * So, I think we should use the most common English name for a place, regardless of whether it has accented characters or not. --(WT-en) Evan 08:04, 20 Jan 2005 (EST)

Here's a simple solution: When in doubt, use Getty's English-Preferred name. This also resolves, among other things, the long-running Bombay-or-Mumbai debate in favor of Mumbai. Incidentally:

 * Are there diacritics (accent marks) in the vocabulary data?
 * Names and other information in the vocabularies may include dozens of different diacritics. However, not all diacritics may be viewed on the Web. Diacritics that are outside the Latin 1 character set are suppressed in the Web versions of the Getty vocabularies. These diacritics are expressed by codes in the licensed data files. [

Neener neener. =) (WT-en) Jpatokal 08:58, 20 Jan 2005 (EST)

 * Can we please come to some sort of conclusion on this already? As Project:Article naming conventions now says accented chars are OK, I will hereby start using my own proposal above until convinced of the error of my ways. (WT-en) Jpatokal 03:37, 25 Jan 2005 (EST)

 * I have had a nasty little experience with an article named Großglockner Hochalpenstraße which displayed as GroÃŸglockner HochalpenstraÃŸe for both the title and the title's text in the article. (See Project:Bug reports 1.3.5) This error makes me wary of using diacritics for technical reasons. I would suggest that article names containing diacritics redirect to article names without them. By all means have diacritics in the article text but the article title generally should not, (unless it is a redirect article). Also having 2 alternative spellings means google will index the article under both alternatives. -- (WT-en) Huttite 07:16, 25 Jan 2005 (EST)

 * The conclusion is: most common English name, like it's always been. Getty's English or English-P name is probably usually a good starting point, but not definitive. If there is no English name, use a Romanized version of the most common local-language name. --(WT-en) Evan 07:44, 25 Jan 2005 (EST)

 * No, no! Up to now we have considered name Łódź, as already Romanized (as in table above). My understanding is that while using Łódź in article content can be allowed, article should be named Lodz, with eventual redirect Łódź → Lodz. -- (WT-en) Jan Słupski 07:53, 25 Jan 2005 (EST)

 * Webster's gives Lodz, Getty gives Lódz. I think one of the two of these is the most common English name. I also think that we should refer to places in articles in the same language that we use for linking. --(WT-en) Evan 11:30, 25 Jan 2005 (EST)

 * Hmmm. But, as far as I understand, Getty version is not English name in fact. It's result of stripping anything outside ISO8859-1, from the original name (and it's done because place has no English name!). I guess that this is done to support pre-utf8 browsers, etc. But I hardly imagine that anybody would ever enter Lódz to search box. --(WT-en) Jan Słupski 15:39, 25 Jan 2005 (EST)

 * You're mistaken. The so-called "Getty name", if I follow Jpatokal's suggestion correctly, is the name that the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names gives as the "English" or "English-Preferred" name for a place.

 * GToGN says: Note that, where there is an English name for any place, the Preferred English name is flagged as "English-P". (...) Note that for over 90% of the geographical places in the world, there is no English equivalent; English speakers use the vernacular name for these places. Also: Names and other information in the vocabularies may include dozens of different diacritics. However, not all diacritics may be viewed on the Web. Diacritics that are outside the Latin 1 character set are suppressed in the Web versions of the Getty vocabularies. These diacritics are expressed by codes in the licensed data files. . So back to example. Lódz is not the English name (it's not flagged "English-P"), and it is only so-called Web name. But in licensed data would be in full form of Łódź. I don't see any point on using strange form Lódz. Of course I do not object using "English-P" form if one exist. But I suspect it would never use accented characters, as they are simply not part of English language. -- (WT-en) JanSlupski 20:21, 25 Jan 2005 (EST)

 * One more "No, no!" from me. The problem with most common English name is that there is no way of determining what it is (unless you're Evan).  You yourself now list several choices in the table above, but the article can only have one name.  We must figure out some consistent, neutral, mutually agreeable way of determining this, and I've proposed two: 1) as in Wikipedia, or 2) as in Getty.  (Google isn't really an option because it doesn't handle diacritics or multiple languages very well.)  Can we choose one, or do you have better ideas? (WT-en) Jpatokal 11:51, 25 Jan 2005 (EST)

 * In the past, we've taken into account a lot of different criteria: reference material, recent media citations, past media citation, Google popularity, other guidebooks. See Talk:Myanmar and Talk:Bombay for examples. I realize it's a hard process, but it's only so for a microscopic minority of articles. For most (Germany, Greece, Zimbabwe, Saint Petersburg) we've had little or no problem -- the issue hasn't even come up.

 * I think the Getty thesaurus is a very good starting point. I'm wary of the fact that their criteria for choosing names doesn't match with ours (familiarity for contributors and readers), though. I also don't think it's a good idea to cede our decision-making powers to anyone else. There doesn't seem to be much point in offloading the discussion to Wikipedia, for example: there's just a bunch of contributors over there, arguing the points the same as we do. Why don't we start an article on Project:Finding the most common English name, and come up with some good sources and guidelines? --(WT-en) Evan 18:33, 25 Jan 2005 (EST)

Another proposition
Ok, once more proposition: --(WT-en) Jan Słupski 15:29, 25 Jan 2005 (EST), modified -- (WT-en) JanSlupski 20:27, 25 Jan 2005 (EST)
 * ¹city has English name if there is entry in Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names flagged English-P
 * article name never uses any diacritics. Only pure lower ASCII.
 * of course, in any case article content can (and should) contain original name, probably in header (before TOC)
 * there can be any redirects from original, non-romanized or with-diacritics names to the article


text:
Wikivoyage talk:Article naming conventions/Archive

Conversation moved from Project:travellers' pub

An Important question about Naming Conventions There are a million cities/tourist attractions with duplicate names in this world. What are we going to do about naming their articles? I just wrote a stub for Victoria the state of Australia and I just called it Victoria because it's a state, which I assume takes precedence over Victoria the city/ies. I'd put that under Victoria(Canada)... As more is written this is going to come up more - there is only one Kakadu National Park in the world, but how many hundred Ribbon Falls or Rainbow Falls etc are there? They can't ALL have the same article name.

 * I'd suggest that since this is a travel wiki ALL articles on places are cross-referenced with the country name eg.Ribbon Falls(Zimbabwe) - that way there can be no future confusion when somebody comes along and wants to write on Ribbon Falls(Antarctica)... (WT-en) KJ 01:32, 6 Aug 2003 (PDT)

 * I've used links like "State of Morelos, Mexico" in the Mexico City article. Personally, I prefer something that's as conversational as possible. If it's easy to write, but hard to pronounce (parantheses count here), it might not be such a great title. (WT-en) JZ 09:55, 6 Aug 2003

 * OK, so, I did a first pass at naming conventions. The examples you guys gave would be the following:
 * Victoria (state) and Victoria (city).
 * Morelos or Morelos (state) (I think there's a Morelos (city) too, right?)
 * -- (WT-en) Evan 09:47, 6 Aug 2003 (PDT)

 * What about that larger locations (Mexico City, London, Kakadu National Park) can be entered with only their name, while smaller locations (such as the mentioned Ribbon Falls) are given in the form "Keyword (Country)" or maybe "Keyword, Country". But then again who decides which locations that are large and which are small? (WT-en) Andreas Holstenson 14:50, 6 Aug 2003 (PDT)

 * So, doesn't the disambiguation section pretty much say this? -- (WT-en) Evan 21:38, 10 Aug 2003 (PDT)

One more comment. You say to use the commonest English name for a given place... use the magic of wiki and redirect the 'other' common names for it to that article eg. the article is under Burma but somebody might come along and search Google for Myanmar, and it can redirect them to Burma when they click on the 'article'. (WT-en) KJ 15:46, 6 Aug 2003 (PDT)

The following was copied from Talk:List of Brazilian states:

Thanks. A question though: in Portuguese, accents and diacritics are used in quite a few place names (eg. Pará, São Paulo) - are these also present in English or not? (WT-en) D.D. 12:48, 8 Oct 2003 (PDT)

I've looked a bit how other sites spelled them (including Wikipedia). Apparently they're written with diacritics. I've adapted the list accordingly. (WT-en) D.D. 12:43, 9 Oct 2003 (PDT)

What about for other languages (like French?) Mostly in english people write "Montreal" and not "Montréal", same with "Quebec" and not "Québec" ... It doesn't matter to me, but it will matter to the software (for links...)  Of course, maybe our convention can be to use accents (and diacritics) in some languages and not others? However, maybe it is better to write everything the english way, using only the english alphabet/symbols. Otherwise, things can get complex (I would guess that many eastern european place names have a spelling using Cyrillic characters ... right?) -- (WT-en) CL 13:01, 9 Oct 2003 (PDT)

 * I think the article naming conventions are pretty clear: we want to use the most common English names for places. I don't think there are very common English names for most of the states in Brazil. Sao Paolo, though, is usually spelled in English without the accent marks. And the English spellings of Montreal and Quebec would be correct. When places are so remote that there's not really a common English name for them, though... I dunno. It's kind of an open question. Can we move this discussion to Project:article naming conventions? -- (WT-en) Evan 14:37, 9 Oct 2003 (PDT)

OK, for the Brazilian states we can follow the general rule: article titles without accents/diacritics if they're not used in English. But I'm convinced there should be a reference to the local spelling(s) and name(s) in the article itself, especially if the local name differs substantially from its English equivalent. If there exists no English form, what other options do we have than to use the local form (transliterated into the Latin alphabet if needed)? (WT-en) D.D. 09:08, 10 Oct 2003 (PDT)

 * So I have to pipe up here. This might be a good place to use a current standard for Geographic names. According to the AACR2

"Use the English form of the name of a place if there is one in general use."--23.2A1. "Use the form of the official language if there is no Engligh form in general use."--23.2B1. "If the country has more than one official language, use the form most commonly found in English language sources."--23.2B1."

So if there is no English for it, certainly use whatever the place most commonly refers to itself as. For example, São Paulo shouldn't ever be called "St Paul" or something, but Geneva shouldnt be Geneve or Genf or Genebra. Maybe the alternative names should always be mentioned in the "Know" section in the same way that full offical names are listed in the CIA info (ie Loas is offically Peoples Something Something Repulic of Loas]]). (WT-en) Majnoona

 * I think I updated this to be a little more clear and specify that you should ESPECIALLY give the local name. -- (WT-en) Evan 10:42, 10 Oct 2003 (PDT)

An additional question: what do we do with non-Latin alphabets? (Cyrillic, Chinese, Hindi, etc...) I'd like to see those places mentioned as such in the article, but I don't know in how far the software can support that. (WT-en) D.D. 12:04, 13 Oct 2003 (PDT)

 * Yeah, I don't know. That's going to take some experimentation. We're set up to use the UTF-8 character set, so supposedly that stuff should work. But I don't have the input availability to add Chinese or Hindi or Arabic to the site. I also doubt that, for an English-language site, there's much point in having a bunch of gobbledy-gook on the screen. No offense intended, but the greater part of English speakers have no clue what the scribbles mean. -- (WT-en) Evan 09:56, 14 Oct 2003 (PDT)

 * Not all foreign names that can't be written in Latin-1 are scribbles. Poland and Hungary have place names with accented z's and n's and double accented vowels, respectively. Most Polish places (exceptions are Warsaw and maybe some places with German names) and AFAIK all Hungarian places except rivers have the same name in English, but some can't be typed on a Latin-1 keyboard. So for example Győr should also be reachable at Györ (ő is alphabetized the same as ö in Hungarian) and Gyõr (the result of misinterpreting the Latin-2 code as Latin-1; ű turns into û). -(WT-en) phma 22:44, 17 Apr 2004 (EDT)

I realize that the English speakers themselves generally do not know what these characters mean, but the can be very helpful while traveling. I found that out while taking local buses and trains in India (and other places with non-Latin script). I was fortunate to have the names of the destinations in both the local and the English script. In certain remote places (or places not yet geared to travelers) you might be very lucky if you find someone who speaks enough English to direct you to the right bus, train or whatever other mode of transport you've chosen. If you don't find such a person, it might be very helpful to have the names in local script, so you can compare character by character with what's on the board or the vehicle. But this is just my experience. (WT-en) D.D. 12:28, 14 Oct 2003 (PDT)

 * Another reason to write the native name in the local script (as well as transliterated, of course) is that you can't always be sure how to pronounce a name from the transliteration. For example, Indic languages have a letter for the diphthong ai as well as two each for a and i. Usually when ai appears in an Indic word, it's the diphthong, but there are exceptions, at least two of which are cities in this guide: Nai Dilli (nuh-ee DILL-ee) and Mumbai (MOOM-buh-ee). (I think I got those right; the only book I have with Indic writing is a Bible in Gujarati, published in Benglor.) The local scripts will be explained in the phrasebooks. -(WT-en) phma 10:25, 26 Dec 2003 (PST)

So, what's the official Wikivoyage position on abbreviations in article names? Specifically, should I use "Saint", "St." or "That Guy"? (WT-en) Ckape 12:09, 8 Nov 2003 (PST)

 * Ha! I was just thinking about that (with respect to St. Paul, of course).

I think the first principle, most common English name, would favor "St.", but another principle, clean urls, would favor using "Saint". I'm not sure, frankly, but I'm leaning towards "St.". -- (WT-en) Evan 12:28, 8 Nov 2003 (PST)

 * I think Saint Paul is better as it is unambiguous. Also it means the links work correctly. When I checked the what links here for St. Paul, I could not find all the linking pages.  Also St. could be spelt as St without the period. Interestingly, St. Paul is also spelt Saint Paul in the related articles.  I think that the name should be spelt out in full and a redirect added for the abbreviation to the name in full.  BTW:  The abreviation St. could also mean street if at the other end of the article. -- (WT-en) Huttite 06:46, 25 Feb 2004 (EST)

As promised in Talk:Chennai I'd like to comment on a certain aspect of the article naming conventions. We state that the most common English name should be used for article titles. I don't think this is a watertight criterium. Comments? Thoughts? I'm really interested. (WT-en) D.D. 14:18, 8 Nov 2003 (PST)
 * 1) Do we mean the English name as used by native English speakers or by speakers all over the world who use English (without making a distinction between native and non-native speakers)? If we mean the former then we don't take into account a large percentage of travellers.
 * 2) How do we decide what exactly is the most common English name? The article naming conventions give a few examples, one of which says we prefer Burma over Myanmar. A quick search on Google (English sites only) give 3,300,000 hits for Myanmar and 1,630,000 for Burma. The May 1997 National Geographic map South Asia already shows the country as Myanmar (Burma). I can give other examples, but I think my point is clear enough. (BTW, while reading this article for the first time I thought: Oh boy, are they still using Burma? This site must be really out of date. ;-)
 * 3) Travellers especially are faced with "new" names, such as Chennai (Madras) or Mumbai (Bombay) - which, incidentally, also feature on the same National Geagraphic map. Since Wikivoyage is destined to travellers, I think we should use those names.
 * 4) We'd like Wikivoyage to be an up-to-date travel guide, much more than printed guides can dream of. We'd like to give information on the most recent hotels, restaurants, and anything else that is travel-related. Not doing this when a name officially changes is not being consistent. Using the correct name can help us to be taken seriously.

 * DD, let's take two of the examples you give: Burma and Bombay. Burma was renamed by its government, for some unspecified reasons I won't get into. The Western press and most other governments still refer to the country as "Burma". Technically, "Myanmar" is probably more correct, since it's the official name of the country, but the more common colloquial name, in my experience, for the country is still "Burma".

 * Bombay (Mumbai) is another good example. The city's official designation is Mumbai, but most residents and other Indians still call it "Bombay". Most people in the rest of the world also call it "Bombay".

 * That all said, in particular cases I'm willing to bend. I'm not sure the Google test you did is a fair one, since many things on the Web will either be produced by official governments or by international organizations that cater to their official designations. But I could be wrong on the popularity of the names "Burma" and "Bombay", and I'm totally willing to bend on these or any other specifics.

 * I think the principle remains the same: use the names that English-speaking travelers worldwide will most probably expect to see. That gives them a better chance of finding and using our information.

 * Names are powerful things; governments and other groups have strong reasons to use different ones. In the USA, for example, some Latino advocacy groups call Mexico and the parts of the US that were formerly Mexican territory Aztlan. While this gives a strong perspective on the cultural map of North America, would it serve travelers to have this be our most common designation? I think not. People are going to be expecting to find information on Texas, not Aztlan del norte.

 * I think the guiding principle here is, as usual, that the traveller comes first. We're not under the same obligations as national governments or other groups to bow to the official or unofficial designations given by people with a political or cultural agenda. It doesn't seem to me that that would serve travelers better. And that is an obligation we have. -- (WT-en) Evan 08:23, 10 Nov 2003 (PST)

Evan, I took your contention that the Western press mostly referred to "Myanmar" as "Burma", and did some research on it. I was pretty sure that I would find that "Myanmar" would come out on top. These are the results: As you can see (and to my horror), only in the New York Times, the BBC and The Economist did "Myanmar" come out on top.
 * The New York Times (USA, since 1996): 728 hits for Burma / 864 hits for Myanmar
 * Time (USA, past 30 days): 5-Burma / 1-Myanmar
 * The Times (UK, unspecified period): 22-Burma / 3-Myanmar
 * BBC (UK, unspecified period): 237-Burma / 802-Myanmar
 * The Economist (UK, unspecified period): 38-Burma / 180-Myanmar
 * The Australian (Australia, unspecified period): Burma-858 / Myanmar-113
 * Le Monde (France, past year): Birmanie-64 / Myanmar-0
 * Der Spiegel (Germany, past year): 19-Burma / Myanmar-9
 * El Pais (Spain, past 5 years): 174-Birmania / 67-Myanmar

I did the same tests for Madras vs. Chennai and Bombay vs. Mumbai. Both Madras and Bombay are still much more used than Chennai and Mumbai (except in The Economist).

Well, uhm, I guess you're right... You know, this is funny and interesting at the same time, because it shows that the way we see the world is rooted in our environment. I was convinced that "Myanmar" was used more then "Burma" nowadays because many sources I have access to use the name "Myanmar".

I propose to do the following: the main articles come under Burma, Madras and Bombay, with redirects from Myanmar, Chennai and Mumbai (at least until I do another test in 2008 or so ;-) Agreed? (WT-en) DhDh 14:51, 10 Nov 2003 (PST)

 * Absolutely! The new names should also be noted on the pages. I hope we kind of agree on the principle of using the most common name, too. -- (WT-en) Evan 15:11, 10 Nov 2003 (PST)

Sure. It would be a bit silly to have a rule for one place and another rule for another place, wouldn't it? (WT-en) DhDh 15:17, 10 Nov 2003 (PST)

Here's another case. A name is most commonly used for place A, but is not the most common name for A, and is also the name of place B. In Chaco, there is a Formosa, but if anyone had asked me where Formosa is, I'd have said it's near China - it's another name for Taiwan. -(WT-en) phma 20:35, 25 Dec 2003 (PST)

 * What about Formosa (province) which contains the article about the Argentine province of Formosa and Formosa (island) which redirects to Taiwan? (WT-en) DhDh 15:00, 26 Dec 2003 (PST)

I have added a disambiguation rule if there are several places with the same name in different countries. Do we agree on this or has someone a better idea? (WT-en) DhDh 16:39, 25 Dec 2003 (PST)

 * I agree. I also added a paragraph about disambiguation pages (I made the one about Georgia when I found a link redirected to the wrong Georgia, and there's another one somewhere). -(WT-en) phma 20:04, 25 Dec 2003 (PST)

 * Can we maybe start a Project:Disambiguation pages article? --(WT-en) Evan

 * I don't like the commas. Also, the example you gave is already covered by the previous rules, as "Santa Cruz (department)" (department of Bolivia), "Santa Cruz (province)" (province of Argentina), "Santa Cruz (Bolivia)" (could be "city", but clashes with city in Argentina, so up one level on the hierarchy, still the same, up another level to the country), "Santa Cruz (Argentina)" (same rule). If the department and the province weren't different, though, we'd have a problem. I really strongly dislike the commas, though, and I really, really don't want to get in the habit of having articles named "Santa Cruz (city in the Blablabla Region of the Foofaraw Department of the Wigwam province of Bolivia)"? Can we make this "department of Foo" or something? --(WT-en) Evan 20:51, 25 Dec 2003 (PST)

 * Oh, and also: I don't like a rule that gives any particular level of the hierarchy ("name of the country"). Could we make that more general, like, "next level up the hierarchy"? --(WT-en) Evan 20:53, 25 Dec 2003 (PST)

Re. disambiguation pages: good idea to start a separate page about this.

Re. commas: My first idea was to use something like Santa Cruz (department of Bolivia). But I doubted that this would sound OK for different levels (can you say "city of Bolivia", "region of Bolivia", etc...) But this is probably due to my linguistic feeling of English which isn't good enough to judge this. I have no problem with the use of the word "of".

Re. previous rules: I agree that my example is technically covered by the previous rules. But there are so many places called Santa Cruz (a quick count in my atlas gives the number of 35), and I think we're going to end up with an obscure mix. I propose doing the exercise of trying to organize all the Santa Cruzes and see what problems surface. I'll do that on my user page shortly.

Re. "department of Foo". I don't like that one, because we were in the habit of naming the place and disambiguate it between parentheses. I think that's a good rule and we should stick to it.

Re. the reference ta a particular level of hierarchy (country). I know but I wasn't able to formulate it otherwise.

I'm taking out this rule temporarily until we agree on a workable solution.
 * 1) If there are several places with the same name in different countries and they cannot be clearly disambiguated as above, we write both the geographical unit and the country they belong to between parentheses. Examples: Santa Cruz (department, Bolivia), Santa Cruz (city, Bolivia), Santa Cruz (province, Argentina) and Santa Cruz (city, Argentina).

Oh and BTW, there is no Santa Cruz (city of Argentina). It's called Puerto Santa Cruz. Shame on me! (WT-en) DhDh 00:24, 26 Dec 2003 (PST)

I think that there is a problem in using "the most common name in English". First, the guide books use the official name, Second, if a name was changed 4 years ago, than now the old name isn't widley used yet (especially outside of that country), but in a few years that WILL be the more common name - than we'll have to go and change the name of the article? and how do you decided what's used more? what you and I heard?

It should always be the official name, and in bracets state the former name or other names it's known by (and also a redirect will be in order...). (WT-en) F16

 * Let me respond point by point. First, this is a guide book.

 * Second, you're correct, the "most common English name" will change over time. But so will "official" names; after all, we wouldn't have problems with official names if they'd never changed.

 * Also, there are many places with "official" names that have had English names for centuries -- The Hague, for instance, or Geneva, or Prague, or Spain, or Athens. There's no indication that English speakers are going to start using the local names ("Den Haag", "Geneve", "Praha", "España", "Athyny") any time soon.

 * It's a matter of seconds to change the name of an article, if we feel the need. If, say, "Mumbai" becomes more commonly known and used than "Bombay", then we can switch it easily.

 * As to how we decide: many are pretty easy (like "Spain"), but some are harder cases. The hardest are places where the local governments have changed the "official" name of a place for political reasons. Burma and Bombay are two major examples that haven't stuck; Belorus and St. Petersburg are examples that have.

 * Burma and Bombay we decided on based on doing Google searches on the different variations, and seeing what major newspapers, magazines, etc., used.

 * The point here is that the traveller comes first. Officials in the city or country may want everyone to use the official name, but if it makes finding information harder for travellers and contributors, then we're not serving travellers well by using by using it. --(WT-en) Evan 17:40, 28 Mar 2004 (EST)

I have added some general comments about using abbreviations, numbers spaces, special characters and foreign language characters with some explanations. These rules seem to be unwritten conventions so far and are generally common sense. The only controversial bit may be spelling out abbreviations like St. and Mt. in full, though I think it is a more formal approach that is consistent with other conventions. - (WT-en) Huttite 19:10, 17 Apr 2004 (EDT)

 * We haven't been consistent on that. I also don't think the non-English characters one is accurate; sometimes the most common English name for a place has an accented character. --(WT-en) Evan 20:24, 17 Apr 2004 (EDT)

 * I know we haven't been consistent, but I am expressing what I see as an unwritten convention when people move page names as well as what is common sense. For example there are a lot of country articles that were imported as Saint, thus the convention was established that Saint be spelt in full.  To overcome the inconsistency I have said use the abbreviation if it is officially spelt that way.  Also people can use those special foreign characters but need to be aware of the problems they cause. That is why I imply having a redirect page for the alternative spellings, but the prime article title has the abbreviation spelled in full or anglicised spelling. -- (WT-en) Huttite 20:37, 17 Apr 2004 (EDT)

 * w/r/t numbers, Nurg and Pierre had the following to say in response to a question of mine (See User talk:(WT-en) Nurg):

 * Yes, the rule is that if a sentence begins with a number it should be spelt out. The exception to this is years. It is ok for a sentence to begin:
 * 2001 was the dawn of a new millennium.
 * The rule applies even to long numbers, but there is another rule that says you should try to reword the sentence so that it does not start with a long number.
 * 838 Wikivoyage articles have been written. - Wrong.
 * Eight hundred and thirty-eight Wikivoyage articles have been written. - Better but still not good.
 * There have been 838 Wikivoyage articles written. - Best.

 * As to when you should spell out numbers that are not at the start of the sentence, this varies from one style manual to another. Some say spell out one to nine. Others one to ten. Some say one to ninety-nine. Some say to do it differently depending on the context. I think ten should be spelt as ten is only one more character than 10. I have my own idiosyncratic view that we should spell out one to twelve. Why? Because they are unique words. After twelve the numbers are -teen, -ty and combination numbers (except for the round ones like hundred, thousand etc.) Nurg.

 * If a sentence begins with two numbers connected by a conjunction (or "to", as in "Eight to 12"), and one is written in digits and the other is spelled out, it looks weird. Spell both out or write both as digits. -(WT-en) phma 11:16, 9 Dec 2003 (PST)

 * (WT-en) Akubra 05:30, 18 Apr 2004 (EDT)