Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (schools)/Archive 7

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Current tag

It has been a while but I have been bold and switched the tag to historical on this proposal; mostly because I think it is more accurate of the current situation. This proposal has ceased to continue mostly because it has become inactive with a shortage of participants - the current version was never really fully rejected by the community as a whole. Camaron1 | Chris 18:19, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

The hsitoric tag pertains to pages which were accepted into use and then became obsolete. Not appropriate for this case. There is discussion of changing the name of the tag to "failed" as sounding less harsh than "rejected"; however, this is the appropriate tag. --Kevin Murray 18:28, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
An older version of this page did actually have accepted status for quite a while, though lack of community discussion on the guideline before marking it as accepted caused controversy, hence the guideline was heavily changed into the current version and the proposed tag was put on instead. I still think "rejected" is misleading, but since it is not that important, I am willing to accept the current tag. Camaron1 | Chris 18:57, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps the appropriate move would be to reinstate that which had been accepted and mark that as historical. --Kevin Murray 19:09, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
The problem is working out what has been accepted and what hasn't. The version of this page which was marked as accepted at one point if retrieved in the history for its own page, was heavily rejected eventually - read the archives of this talk page and you will see what I mean. The {{superseded|[[Wikipedia:Naming conventions (schools)]]}} is probably best in these cases - like with Wikipedia:Naming conventions (schools)/Archive 1. Camaron1 | Chris 19:51, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
I see your point. I'd say leave it be then. --Kevin Murray 21:06, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

I have found the tag Template:No consensus tag and have placed it on as an alternative. It is not misleading like the historical and rejected ones, and as far as I know it is appropriate use of it. Camaron1 | Chris 20:05, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

  • I'ts not a valid tag. Someone just made it up and it is not described at the policy page. --Kevin Murray 22:22, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
I never said there was any "shame in rejection", only that the current tag is misleading. I am also very confused on why this page must have the rejected tag, yet this page which is in a similar position has been marked by you as historical as a compromise tag? I thought there was no compromises due to policy? Camaron1 | Chris 09:45, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
I think the No consensus tag was a much better reflection of the current status of this proposal. It has never been rejected. We were working towards a consensus but were frustrated by the lack of input from editors from many of the countries involved and also by the lack of any clear policy at a higher level on Wikipedia on the issue of commas versus parentheses for buildings. I suggest we restore the no consensus tag. Dahliarose 13:22, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
I agree, I do not understand what the problem is with using a more accurate tag, I think putting a no-consensus tag is justified per WP:IAR. Even ignoring that, WP:POLICY is not clear on the issue; there is nothing that says you can not use alternative tags, it only explains what a historical and rejected proposal is supposed be, and does not clarify much on these kind of situations. Camaron1 | Chris 14:16, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Policy

The following is taken from the policy page:

  • A historical page includes any process which is no longer in use, or any non-recent log of any process. Historical pages can be revived by advertising them.
  • A rejected page is any proposal for which consensus for acceptance is not present after a reasonable time period, for which consensus is unclear after a reasonable time period for discussion regardless of whether there is active discussion or not, or where discussion has substantially died out without reaching consensus. Consensus need not be fully opposed; if consensus is neutral on the issue and unlikely to improve, the proposal is likewise rejected. It is considered bad form to hide this fact, e.g. by removing the tag. Making small changes will not change this fact, nor will repetitive arguments. Generally it is wiser to rewrite a rejected proposal from scratch and start in a different direction.

With consensus absent or neutral and not likely to improve this fits the rejected category. As it was never in use, it it not historical. There are no other tags specified at the policy pages, although people have made-up tags such as described above, these have not been accepted. Without reviewing the example in depth at this page, it appears to be using the wrong tag for the same reasons. There was discussion lately, which I supported, to come up with some different tags, but these did not receive support. --Kevin Murray 15:36, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

The old proposal has now been archived and has been marked with a superseded tag, I hope that solves the issue. Camaron1 | Chris 16:59, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

New proposal

I have decided to be bold and put this guideline back onto the proposal list. We were close, in my opinion, to having an accepted guideline - the main reason the previous proposal failed was simply because the talk page became inactive. I have put together a new proposal based on the previous one, both the old proposal and old talk page have now been archived. I also think we might get somewhere quicker if we keep the guideline reasonably simple and basic - the one before was getting a little complicated, with a few sections that were controversial. This new one is a lot simpler, though it will still need some further cleaning. To get some community attention I will inform the Village Pump and some WikiProjects. A NC guideline for schools is despretley needed and I am not giving up quite yet. Camaron1 | Chris 16:55, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

It seems it has always been disputed on if the guideline applies to universities or not. I suggest, if nobody objects, for the moment we keep it to schools and college under the hat of WikiProject Schools - to keep things simple. Universities have always generally been treated separately. Camaron1 | Chris 17:20, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

This gudeline, in general seems to reasonably sum up the state of consensun on the old guideline. I would suggest that we change the line about unique name to only include similarly named school articles. This was a big point of contention last time, and I don't think anyone disagreed that two articles with the same name shouldn't be disambiguated. Adam McCormick 19:25, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
I have done that now, all pre-emptive naming has been removed for now, as that was the biggest area of controversy last time round. Camaron1 | Chris 20:32, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Is this proposal dead?

I am not sure where to go now with this proposal, as there has been very little input on it. This is despite me bringing it up at the village pump and related WikiProjects. I have now done some allowed canvassing directly to users involved last time round to try and build some consensus. I want to avoid having to put the {{rejected}} back on again - especially when inactivity is the issue. Camaron1 | Chris 12:00, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

I would hope not. I have done a lot of categorizing of Education articles and have noted the problem with the current unstructured naming syntax being used for school articles. I would strongly support the adoption of these guidelines. Dbiel (Talk) 13:11, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
I think there is an overwhelming consensus for the disambiguation format as shown for America and Canada. I've changed Australia and the UK back to the single location parameter as that is what we previously agreed if I've understood our previous discussions correctly. Also the word municipality, as we previously discussed, is not used in these countries and can only confuse matters. The big sticking point to my mind is the issue of commas versus parentheses. The Americans seem to be happy with the parentheses format but there seems to be much less consensus for other countries. I know some UK editors were previously vociferously opposed to the use of parentheses. Lots of UK churches already use commas rather than parentheses and it seems logical for churches and schools to use the same format. As far as I'm aware WikiProject Western Australia advocates the use of commas and certainly lots of the Australian schools I've seen do use this format. Most Indian schools use commas. I've previously tried raising the issue at Wikiproject Architecture. Schools are buildings and it seems logical that all buildings should be disambiguated in the same way. Unfortunately I received very little response, so there is still no agreed standardised format for the disambiguation of buildings. There is nothing on the main naming conventions page which clarifies the issue either and my last posting asking about the situation received no responses whatsoever. I had wondered about raising the issue with WikiProject England and perhaps some of the other country projects. It seems to be very difficult when there are so many different WikiProjects working independently. Dahliarose 14:48, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
I have alerted all the school WikiProjects I am aware of of this proposal, and I have not received any kind of response as far as I know. It does appear that school articles in Australia use the comma rather than brackets. I personally think brackets are better than a comma - as the former allows for double disambiguation (i.e [[School (Location, Location]]), and it would be good if we can at least standardise to bracket disambiguation for this guideline. I agree it might be sensible to alert the country WikiProjects of this proposal - and see what they have to say. Camaron1 | Chris 16:54, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
  • I personally looked at all of the Australian School categories and there is a roughly even split between commas and not.
  • I'm not convinced that this convention has anything to do with schools as buildings. Schools change locations (if only locally), the specific building doesn't matter.
  • Disambiguating with Parentheses is pretty standard on English Wikipedia, and I've never understood why anything else should be part of the guideline.
  • I don't think there was ever "agreement" concerning Australia and the UK, only the dissension of a few editors.
  • As far as this proposal being "dead," I think the bottom line is that beside ten of us who care, there will never be a groundswell of support for this so it not ever likely to gain "community" consensus. Within WP:Schools, we know where we stand, but it would just be nice to be able to point a school here, to a standardized guideline and say "that would be the best choice".
  • I think this guideline can only succede as a direction forward, a best course of action, and it isn't at all valuable if it just states what's being done now.
  • Regardless of what is done now, would anyone argue that disambiguation should be done with commas? Adam McCormick 02:03, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

It all depends how this guideline is used. We can by all means point people in the direction of this guideline if they ask but as there’s been so little input we cannot possibly claim to have a mandate to start changing school names from commas to brackets. There are arguments for and against both formats. I suspect if for instance you try to rename all the Perth schools which currently use commas there would be a complete uproar. The problem is that there is no overall consistent format on Wikipedia for articles which use place names as the disambiguator so you have River Axe, Devon and River Lyd (Devon), St. Paul's Episcopal Church (Georgetown, Delaware) but St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Augusta, Georgia. So long as people can find the articles they’re looking for it doesn’t really matter whether there are commas or brackets. Dahliarose 10:04, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

So what we really need are some UK/Australian editors to decide whether to use commas or parentheses to disambig. shoy 14:21, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

If this guideline is ever going to go anywhere, I agree it is going to need to do more than state what happens now, and standardising school naming conventions to the brackets is not a unreasonable idea. The problem comes that it will be difficult to get the mandate from the community to make such a change. I am starting to wonder at times if we should just mark this guideline as accepted, stating that the village pump and all related WikiProjects were informed of its proposal, and those that participated in the discussion gave consensus to this guideline - unfortunately that would probably still cause uproar and is a route I do not wish to go down again. I think what should be done for now is to keep informing more groups of people of this proposal, perhaps bringing home the consequences if it is accepted. The other alternative which can be considered, is making it a US schools only guideline to focus on where more consensus is present. Camaron1 | Chris 19:31, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

That sounds like a reasonable first step. I think it's reasonable to make this US only until we have more input so that it can be applied to US schools. We can then wait for more input from the Brits and Aussies. Adam McCormick 19:47, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
I think a US-only proposal is an excellent idea. It's the American schools anyway which are the most problematic by virtue of their sheer numbers and as far as I can gather most American schools do tend to follow the recommended format. I think we've had comments so far from around four Brits (one Brit being vociferously opposed to the parentheses) and two Aussies (one advocating commas and one advocating parentheses if I recall correctly) and with such small numbers I don't see how we can produce an enforceable guideline. Quite how we get any input is another matter. People only tend to comment if you make a change and they don't like it. If you mark the proposal as accepted and then start implementing it I think you can guarantee that there will be a lot of complaints. I tried to look at current usage as it seemed to be the only indicator we currently have of people's views in the absence of any input, and outside the US there seems to be no clear preference for one system over another suggesting that the community view is divided on the issue. Whether or not one or other camp could be persuaded to convert for the sake of consistency is another matter. Dahliarose 22:28, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
I am glad you both think it is a good idea. It was Mis Mondegreen who came up with that idea originally - though it got abandoned; since you should walk before you can run I thought it would be sensible to bring it back up now. The next issue is how will we go about implementing this idea? Do you think we should just re-format this page as US only for now, or create another cut down proposal at Wikipedia:Naming Conventions (U.S. schools)? Camaron1 | Chris 19:15, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

OK, following this I have created a new proposal at WP:NC(USS), I welcome your input at WT:NC(USS). Camaron1 | Chris 17:06, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

As a Canadian I would have to say I am more familiar with the use of commas but that may be just me. --Devin Murphy 21:04, 27 October 2007

comma v. parentheses

Wow, a lot has happened. I'm going to try to stay active with at least this. Two comments, long ones, but just two! :)


guideline or no guideline/comma v. parentheses

The revamped version (which is now some versions ago) of this naming convention took into account the bitter feelings on this. This had been brought up for discussion at wikiproject schools more than once and there was a straw poll that got a lot of votes. The reason I restarted the proposal was because a complete lack of naming conventions was brought up so often for discussion.

I strongly believe that schools need a fairly firm guideline for naming, and that just using the various guidelines of region x doesn't work. In large part, this is because of editors. Schools tend not to be edited by users with a regional focus, or some other focus that encompasses a lot of different related topics. Some yes, but that's not where we get the bulk of our editing. One of the reasons there are so many different naming styles used for schools is that school editors often don't know the naming guidelines for the region or the reasons why. We can't make this too complicated. We can't say, UK schools, go to this guideline, Australian ones, follow this.

That either means constantly keeping track of changes and updating our own guideline, which is impossible, or it means keeping a current list and expecting people to go there and understand the guidelines and figure them out. Which a lot of our editors won't. Especially, when these guidelines don't fit a school name and the editor has to figure out to adapt them. Which leads to....


comma or parentheses?

Both.

1 A lot of schools do need further disambiguation, and "school name (location, location)" is clearer than school name, location, location.

2 Sometimes schools are named after a place. Take Royal Grammar School Worchester and Royal Grammar School, Guiliford. Look at the disambiguation page for Royal Grammar School. There is no duplication on that page. And yet, it still gives me a headache and takes a second or third glance to realize that Worchester is part of the name. That's when there is no confusion.

3 Sometimes, schools are located in a different place then the one they are named after. Since I can't remember one right now, pretend that Royal Grammar School Worchester was located in someplace other then Worchester. So it would be named: "Royal Grammar School Worchester, location". Now this is MOSTLY a problem in the US, but it does happen other places, Australia, Canada, the Middle East, Asia. This generally occurs when a school is named after another school, and that school is named after their location. Or, when the location name changes and the school name doesn't.

4 This is number four, but should be number 1 in terms of no way to overcome this: commas are used in official school names. Which means that if we only used commas to separate the official name and the disambiguation, we'd either have to REALLY confuse people, or we'd have to not use the official name when naming the article. For me, both of these solutions are terrible. We only don't use the official name when we can't (weird characters), and if we use the official name and people can't tell whether it's the name or disambiguation, that's equally bad. In a prior discussion on this, someone may have found a school that uses parentheses in it's title (we aren't quite sure), but if there are any, they are WAY less common and we don't have another alternative there--we'd have to figure something out, or post the corrected name at the beginning, or override the title.

I don't like the idea of, or the practice of stepping on other naming conventions. But, these conventions are guidelines, and I don't think it's that big a deal for schools to break from something like the usage of commas instead of parentheses, when we have a real need to do it. I don't think it will look that terrible, or be that terrible. I think not doing something because people think parentheses are ugly or want everything to look the same is a bad idea and will let the schools project fall into further disarray.


Examples/explanation

I think this page desperately needs examples. Not just for the guidelines, but for the rest of the page. It needs to clearly state why this guideline is NEEDED, and why commas don't work, etc. One of the problems we have in moving forward is that we rehash the same things over and over and over again. New editors come to the guideline, look at something, ask why/find it in conflict with something else, and pose the question here. And then it's like the last round of discussion never happened. Sometimes that's good, new points are made, new things are thought of. But mostly, it's just terrible. It's like everyone is an amnesiac and can't remember WHY we did something or the prior discussion and they go, "hmm, you're right, it's unnecessary, why do we have this guideline again?" And then a week later, someone else comes to/back to the guidelines, sees what's happened and says the same things that they or someone else said before and everyone goes "hmmm, you're right, I don't know how we didn't see that before"

There's some really great discussion, but there's also some mind numbing stuff like that, and I confess that I've been a party to it too. Thinking, "wait, why aren't we doing things that way" and then remembering that we just went over that two days ago and that there were several reasons not to.

This guideline did get bloated at points, but that's because it didn't say the right things. And I think it desperately needs explanation. It will stave off some of the questioning. If people are coming to the talk page and asking why, then either we shouldn't have this guideline, or it's badly written. And the questions we do get, the discussion that does follow will be more intelligent and productive. If someone who knows region A and doesn't know schools reads this guideline and understands the basics of why we think this is important, they can come to us with more pointed details, better suggestions, better arguments. If they read it the way it is now, they'd have to understand a lot more than their region to be of help to us.

We want to communicate and work with non-school editors, and we also need to keep in mind that lots of school editors, especially ones starting out may only have worked on one or two articles. School editors tend to at least start their involvement on a personal level, something they know well. If a school editor has only edited their alma matter, and is directed here and they have had no other experience in this area, and someone has proposed a rename, or is trying to create a disambiguation page and their page is involved in a move... We're working towards this scenario, cleaning up schools. An editor is much less likely to take something like this personally if they understand it. If they're referred to a guideline and it simply dictates, and they don't see any reason why, they aren't likely to take that well. If they are referred to a guideline that explains as it dictates, it sounds less like it's dictating, the editor is less likely to react badly and feel that they are being told what to do, and the editor gets a better understanding for the area that they are working in.

I started this guideline up again because I saw from discussion that it was badly needed. But, no matter how badly needed, the success of a guideline had to do with how well it's written. Does it cover everything? Is it useful? Does it reach people? Miss Mondegreen talk  05:08, November 3 2007 (UTC)

I agree highly that this guideline is needed, how well it is written is important as well. Making this guideline accepted though is a tough challenge with the simple divide in opinion on how it should be written. I have created a specific U.S. version of this guideline as that is where consensus is strongest, a guideline is better than no guideline. I do hope that one day though it will be superseded by a accepted version of this guideline. Camaron1 | Chris 19:02, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
I think the biggest reason this guideline keeps failing is that noone else besides the five or so of us really cares or sees the need. They all want to just keep going as they are. I'm no rabble-rouser, but If we don't get a lot of participation, both in discussion and consensus, it will just get shot down by the consensus Nazi's and Admin wannabes. Adam McCormick 23:05, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
That is probably the biggest problem yes. The best we can do is try to generate discussion and keep WikiProjects informed. Camaron1 | Chris 19:01, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
That's been our biggest problem all along, yes. We wouldn't need so much of our time etc, if we weren't always dealing with a new, well your language was good. I'm hoping that if we rewrite this with a slightly different form then other guidelines--saying why instead of just DO, or SHOULD, then when we get those problems we can refer people to the guideline itself and prevent that ridiculous cycle. I'll try to work on it when I have time. I also think that we should get it as done and complete and thorough as possible before we let the lions at it. Miss Mondegreen talk  08:00, November 9 2007 (UTC)

The de facto standard for everything but populated places is "name (location[, location])"

There are certainly exceptions like River Axe, Devon, but if you look at Category:Rivers of California, for example, you'll see just parenthetical disambiguation, like is used with most topics, per WP:DISAMBIGUATION. The only subject that uses a comma after the actual name, that I am aware of, is populated places, such as Category:Cities in Switzerland. I would argue that unless consensus is reached to make schools an exception, parenthetical disambiguation should be used per WP:DISAMBIGUATION. Commas that are part of the most common name of the school, should, of course, be left as commas, per WP:NC. Ravenna1961 07:16, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that there is no de facto standard for rivers, buildings, etc, where the place name is used to disambiguate. Lots of churches and other buildings use the comma, but just as many don't. See Cathedral of Saint Paul as an example. Unless some overall consensus can be reached throughout Wikipedia on the treatment of all such articles I don't see how it is possible to reach a consensus for schools. Dahliarose 08:40, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
Agreed. ~ Scribble Monkey 09:40, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
There may be no defacto standard, but Parenthetical disambiguation is much closer to being standard than commas Adam McCormick 21:29, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
Parentheses are the standard for describing what something is (ie, a book, film, planet, song, etc). Commas are used to disambiguate all place names. See: Paris (disambiguation) as an example. There is no de facto standard whatsoever where the place name is used as the disambiguator so there is a complete muddle across Wikipedia, eg, St. Peter's Church and of course all the conflicting formats in our school articles. I've tried raising the subject in various places in the past but have had no responses. Dahliarose 15:41, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
I believe there is indeed a de facto standard for schools, see Category:High schools in Washington for example, and non-parenthetical disambiguation is just plain incorrect per WP:DISAMBIGUATION, just like every other topic except populated places. And again, to make schools an exception to WP:DISAMBIGUATION would require discussion and consensus. Following existing guidelines by using parenthetical disambiguation requires no further discussion. Ravenna1961 (talk) 05:55, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
The vast majority of American schools do indeed use the parenthesis system but the same does not apply to other countries. India uses mostly commas, and WikiProject Western Australia uses commas for everything with place names. English churches all use commas and so do a lot of schools. Dahliarose (talk) 12:34, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
That brings up on to the reason why WP:NC(USS) is been proposed, brackets are generally standard for schools in the US, so this proposal will achieve less if accepted but will avoid the brackets v. comma debate. Camaron1 | Chris 14:34, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

What needs to be yet done to make this happen?

This has been on Template:Cent a long time. And while that isn't necessarily a good thing or a bad thing, I think that if this is a good idea, that it should happen sooner than later.

I'm going to say honestly that I'd rather not go through the talk page archives. Would someone like to fairly summarise the concerns (if any) which are keeping this from being a guideline as it is (while accepting that continued clarifications to any guideline is an ongoing process). - jc37 (talk) 07:11, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

The main concerns that have been raised here and at WT:NC(S) are:
  • "Parentheses should not 100% replace commas as the way of disambiguating articles, many people and WikiProjects prefer commas."
  • "There is not full agreement for the disambiguation formats listed for each country."
  • "No pre-emptive disambiguation is proposed in the current version of this guideline, some should be included."
  • "Not necessary, WP:NC and WP:DISAMBIGUATION should cover this." Camaron1 | Chris 19:07, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
That's a good summary. There are also concerns that there has been insufficient input to enable the guideline to be implemented even if agreement is reached. There have only been around five people involved in the discussions with input only from people in the US/UK. Dahliarose (talk) 19:16, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Ok. Thank you for the summary. I'm giving each concern its own section for discussion/comment. - jc37 19:54, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Is anyone else planning to comment? - jc37 21:51, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
Sorry for the significant delay, I am motivated to get this passed. Hopefully we can accomplish something Adam McCormick (talk) 20:28, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

One

  • "Parentheses should not 100% replace commas as the way of disambiguating articles, many people and WikiProjects prefer commas."

Discussion

What is believed to be the current standard at WIkipedia:Disambiguation, comma or parenthesis? (I'm not saying we have to follow it, but it gives a nice starting point.) - jc37 19:54, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

In every other type of disambiguation besides places (from my understanding) there seems to be consensus for Parentheses (and the guideline seems to support this). But for Architecture, it seems to be that commas are used. There are also a few enclaves (Perth and Western Australia come to mind) where they insist on using commas and challenging any guideline to the contrary. Adam McCormick (talk) 07:51, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Two

  • "There is not full agreement for the disambiguation formats listed for each country."

Discussion

Which countries do appear to have consensus? Is it necessary to have most or all in place in order for there to be a clear system? - jc37 19:54, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Up until a few weeks ago, the US was settled but is now disputed. There is some dispute about all of them. Adam McCormick (talk) 07:53, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Three

  • "No pre-emptive disambiguation is proposed in the current version of this guideline, some should be included."

Discussion

Can you explain what is meant by "pre-emptive"? - jc37 19:54, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

My responce to the same question earlier: I didn't at one stage know what it meant either - though fortunately another project provides the answer [1]. It means disambiguating pages (such as adding the location in brackets to the article title) to avoid a article naming conflict on Wikipedia which has not yet occurred, but could happen in the future. Pre-emptive disambiguation can vary from disambiguating all school articles to just a few where a naming conflict looks very likely to occur. Camaron1 | Chris 20:07, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
Are there examples of such, or are these phantasmic concerns? (Which could be dealt with later should such situations come up.) - jc37 20:15, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
They can all be dealt with later when the situations arise, and I think that is the best solution for now. However, the concerns still exists as shown by recent comments on the straw poll at WT:NC(USS). Camaron1 | Chris 21:23, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
There are specific guidelines against such and, in general, hasn't been the issue Adam McCormick (talk) 08:04, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Four

Discussion

As far as I'm concerned, this statement is DOA in regards to this discussion. While Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy, Wikipedia:Naming conventions (precision) indicates that specificity in naming is a good thing. We should lean on those other pages for support, obviously, but having this one would seem to be necessary. (And it's not as if having topical naming conventions is unprecedented.) - jc37 19:54, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

From the perspectives of those of us working with Schools and little else it is necessary. There is too much confusion over which of the manyfold guidelines otherwise applies. Adam McCormick (talk) 07:55, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Five

  • There are also concerns that there has been insufficient input to enable the guideline to be implemented even if agreement is reached. There have only been around five people involved in the discussions with input only from people in the US/UK.

Discussion

Considering that this has been listed at Template:Cent for a rather long time, and it's posted in quite a few noticeable places, I think that concerns of community inclusion are unfounded. If someone wished to comment, they would have by now. At this point, consider yourselves a committee of sorts. Once there is consensus of a version that you (and any other commenters) feel is stable enough to go forward, then it can be labelled a guideline, and editing continues. - jc37 19:54, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

"English-centricity" has been a concern in discussions on the en:Wikipedia. What we need to do is assume good faith of our contributors. Remember that Wikipedia:Ignore all rules exists for just such concerns (if legitimate), so please understand that this doesn't have to be "perfect" : ) - jc37 19:54, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

The biggest issue seems to be that as soon as anyone who usually uses something different to disambiguate arrives they take issue with the small group which has been willing to hack these out. It always seems to dissolve into five people coming to an agreement and one who is unhappy. Adam McCormick (talk) 07:59, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Now what?

I've tried to keep the Oregon school articles to the naming conventions here. Last time I checked it went like this: If a U.S. high school needed disambiguation and it had the same name as the place it was located, you only had to put the state. If the name needed disambiguation and it wasn't named after its location, you put the city and state. Now I see that someone has moved Ashland High School (Oregon) to Ashland High School (Ashland, Oregon) citing this page (note the high school is located in Ashland). Has the naming convention changed again? How tedious. Does someone here run a bot that can change the rest of the Oregon articles and links to them? Or is this a misunderstanding of the convention. Thanks. Katr67 (talk) 07:05, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

These guidelines are a bit up in the air just now. Generally redundancy is a bad thing unless there are more than one school of the same name in different cities in the same state. Adam McCormick (talk) 08:06, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
A new editor decided to move a whole load of school articles without understanding that this guideline is not policy and also without even understanding what had been discussed and agreed. We had pretty much agreed that repetition was unnecessary so it might be best to move this school article back to its old page name. Fortunately the user now seems to have stopped moving pages around so not too many schools have been affected. I've moved all the English schools back to their original names. Dahliarose (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 09:53, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
Great, thanks, I think so far there are only two Oregon ones affected so I'll see about moving them back for now. I all really care about is that they are consistent one way or the other. Good luck hashing out the guideline. If I were to !vote, I'd agree the redundancy is bad. Katr67 (talk) 15:10, 22 January 2008 (UTC)


District Names

This is specifically in reference to changes being made on the California School District List List of school districts in California.

All Elementary districts do not have the word "Elementary" in their name. The same goes for several other words that editors seem to want to add to this listing. I have checked into each district's website-- "annotated links on edit page, hidden". Even going so far as to check on downloads of PDFs of Board Minutes and the like, to make sure the name that is listed here is the name that is USED by that Califonia district.

I find that greatschools.net added the word "Elementary" to all districts names that are only Elementary districts. Districts, however, seem to go by one or the other, so I am now working through the list going to each individual Elementary district to see what NAME THEY ACTUALLY USE, which is what I will leave on this list. In a few cases the word "City", has also been appended, so I will eventually check every one of them.DavidPickett (talk) 03:05, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

This is the talk page of a proposal which has been dead for a while, and is hence watched by few people. I would suggest posting at WT:WPSCH which gets more traffic. CT Cooper · talk 18:30, 1 May 2011 (UTC)
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