Talk:San Jose, California/Archive 3

Requested move 23 July 2016

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

The result of the move request was: No consensus to move after extended discussion. — JFG talk 10:11, 12 August 2016 (UTC)

San Jose, California → San José, California – Per the discussion at Talk:San_Jose_International_Airport, the accent is common, official, and generally preferred, and users would like to see the city fixed like the airport, and probably other related articles to follow eventually. Dicklyon (talk) 04:46, 23 July 2016 (UTC) --Relisting. Cúchullain t/ c 17:07, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose because WP would be an anomaly to use the accent. In three pages of Google searches for the city, I was only able to find three pages that used the accent in the first three pages. Even people I know from there don't use the accent. So yes WP:COMMONNAME applies, readers are far more likely not to use the accent when searching for this article. Nohomersryan (talk) 11:31, 23 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Apparently you didn't really look, as the first page of Google web hits has at least 3 that use the accent, and the rest are basically junky ad websites; we know it is common to drop accents on the web, but less so in more formal works. If you look at better sources, like modern books and magazines, the percentage with the accent it much higher.  As a San Jose neighbor myself, I can tell you that many of us do use the accent.  And as for searching without it, that will not be impacted at all.  Dicklyon (talk) 17:06, 23 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Must be different results... for me the only first page result that uses the é is the one for the airport, combined with a ton of news articles without accents. Nohomersryan (talk) 17:24, 23 July 2016 (UTC)
 * You're not even seeing the city's official website? Dicklyon (talk) 18:36, 23 July 2016 (UTC)
 * The city's website only uses the accent about half of the time. —  AjaxSmack  01:22, 24 July 2016 (UTC)
 * They explain that they don't use it in all-caps settings. And sometimes, since it's a web site, it does get omitted.  Dicklyon (talk) 01:47, 24 July 2016 (UTC)
 * How is that not different than a title that would normally fall under WP:TITLETM and WP:MOSTM? The city basically is dictating a preferred difference in spelling/stylization depending on where the name is used. Zzyzx11 (talk) 11:15, 25 July 2016 (UTC)
 * There is precedent in Spanish for omitting the accent on CAPS (see es:Acentuación de las mayúsculas for some details) but this is not standard. The links I provided, however, are cases where the accent is omitted in lower case running text.  The first has mixed usage on the same page while another eschews the accent altogether in the running text.  This haphazard usage combined with lack of accents in other sources make it a case where the WP:OFFICIALNAMES provision should kick in. —  AjaxSmack   04:38, 30 July 2016 (UTC)


 * Oppose per WP:COMMONNAME. Use of the accent is sporadic and seems to be more of an affectation than serious usage.  A quick perusal of the article's sources show a dearth of cases where it is consistently used.  —  AjaxSmack   01:22, 24 July 2016 (UTC)


 * Support, per nom, the original name of the city, and after reading the various pages and past discussions. The nominator does seem to pick-and-choose which factors should predominate in individual RM's, and in this one is going with the non-standard and vastly inconsistent, but probably long-term correct, stylized use. The city apparently doesn't use it on all-cap renditions, hence the City Hall name. If this RM will be decisive on other named pages, it shouldn't change the newspaper name until the paper itself does, etc. Randy Kryn 15:18, 25 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose per COMMONNAME and similar. I see no evidence the accented E is in common use.  ONR  (talk) 00:05, 27 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose, per Columbia Encyclopedia and Britannica. "Follow the general usage in reliable sources that are written in the English language (including other encyclopedias and reference works)," per WP:DIACRITICS. Columbia and Britannica are the first two references listed in WP:WIAN. Fernando Danger (talk) 22:52, 29 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose per WP:COMMONNAME observations noted above. Generally we shouldn't be accenting things if English language reliable sources don't do so, and that applies particularly to places in the United States, where English is the majority language, and accents are not normally found. &mdash; Amakuru (talk) 16:46, 31 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Obviously support, per MOS:DIACRITICS, and the very recent closure in favor of the diacritic for the airport of the same name (see Talk:San José International Airport). All of the rationales raised there apply here. "WP would be an anomaly to use the accent" is pure fantasy. Books frequently retain the diacritics for the city . It's mostly newspapers that drop it, because (in 'Merica) they hate diacritics generally and drop them every chance they get. WP:ISNOT and does not follow news style. The city government site uses the diacritic quite consistently  (except in "sanjoseca.gov", since they have a basic ASCII domain name like 99.999¯% of the Internet). San José State University uses the accent, even in their all-caps logo  and even in internal, employee material  (though instances without the accent can be found on their main website, this seems to be a decision of their website people, presumably for text-entry expediency; printed material consistently uses the diacritic ).  Some airport-specific sourcing: the airport's own website uses the diacritic, and see that RM for other cites.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  15:44, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
 * How does NOTNEWS discredit reliable sources dropping the é? Nohomersryan (talk) 15:49, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Straw man; I made no such suggestion. See the discussion section below, where it's explained in detail why MOS is based on formal-English style guides not PR/journalism/marketing ones. It's a different register of English.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  15:58, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Well, you linked NOTNEWS as part of a reason why usages of "Jose" should be ignored, when NOTNEWS is about event notability and says nothing about spelling. Your reading of it is likely not shared by many. Nohomersryan (talk) 17:27, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Comment. For what it's worth, here is the city's official style guide, which includes a section describing how the city refers to itself in its own documents and materials.  ╠╣uw [ talk ]  20:02, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Support. In linking to the city's usage guide above, I said "for what it's worth" because I know it's not our practice to necessarily follow the official name of the subject (or even the name that the subject prefers) when it's at odds with common usage.  At the same time, though, the form that the subject itself uses and prefers is at least a consideration, and here it does appear that that's San José. I think this is a case where we need to weigh the importance of reflecting common usage (which tends to drop the accent) against what's encyclopedic.  I agree with Dicklyon's point above that some sources, particularly in the US, have poor support for diacritics generally, and so aren't terribly reliable indicators of whether an accent is integral.  I also agree it would be good to be consistent with other articles (like San José International Airport) which carry the accent.  San José, California seems the preferable encyclopedic title for our article on the city.  ╠╣uw [ talk ]  20:44, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose per WP:AT. Others have alluded to it, but no one has cited WP:CONSISTENCY. We do not generally use diacritics in U.S. city names, and the official status of this accent mark does not change that. So, consistency with Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Ramon, Santa Maria, El Cajon, etc....(just to keep things in California) suggests that we do the same for San Jose. The accent does little to help with the pronunciation, by the way. Merriam-Webster seems to have no problem figuring it out, for example. Dohn joe (talk) 18:24, 2 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose — "San José" appears to be much less common than "San Jose", and its official use is in question, so I do not find there to be strong arguments in favor of adding a diacritic.  Taylor Trescott  - my talk + my edits 00:44, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

Observations
The old Spanish name "Pueblo De San José De Guadalupe" is also very commonly found without the accent, in English sources on the web, and even in a few books, because many sources have a style that discourages or outright prohibits diacriticals. For example, this cited source (ref 9) omits the accent on all the name variants, citing the book California Place Names: A Geographical Dictionary, which I can't look at but am pretty sure would use the diacriticals. And if you look up such names in Google Book Search, all the search snippets omit the accent, because Google's OCR and search ignores such; but if you click through and look, it's clear that most books do use the accent. On WP, we don't have a style that opposes accents, so where they are official and common and useful, we should use them. Dicklyon (talk) 18:49, 26 July 2016 (UTC)
 * The exact wording on WP:DIACRITICS states that they are "neither encouraged nor discouraged", but it does not also give a carte blanche that we must use them in all cases, and consensus should thus decide which one is the best to fulfill WP:COMMONNAME. And yes, many American sources have style guides that discourage or prohibit such marks, which results in making it less common in everyday American English. So it should be no surprise that a case could be made on grounds of WP:TITLEVAR and MOS:TIES that the mark may not be that common as you think it might be. On the other hand, as WP:DIACRITICS states, "search engines are problematic". Depending what I enter into Google, it seems to be picking up other topics related to the city that do also use "San Jose" in their name like the Sharks hockey team, the Mercury newspaper and San Jose City College but do not use the mark. Zzyzx11 (talk) 04:25, 27 July 2016 (UTC)
 * I think it's OK that the Sharks and the Merc over-Anglicize the name by dropping the accent in their own names, but the city and university and the airport have chosen to continue to use the Spanish spelling. It's primarily through laziness and unfamiliarity with how to type accented characters that many English sources choose to ignore the correct the spelling of the city's name, and the application of the COMMONNAME principle here is not really helpful or relevant as a strategy for recognizability, as I don't think anyone could argue that including the accent like in the official name would make the title less recognizable; it in fact makes it more clear that it is the word pronouned like Spanish "José" as opposed to the one pronounced Jose.  Here the naming criteria favor the accent for such reasons,  and COMMONNAME is just an appeal to least-common-denominator laziness.  Dicklyon (talk) 16:48, 30 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Usage of and references to Jose outside of India are very rare (quick say "no way Jose"), and so I would argue the opposite.  Use of the accent would encourage an incorrect pronunciation.  I would assume that San José  is the capital of Costa Rica and San Jose  a city in the United States.  The pronunciations are different and there is no evidence that, from the city's incorporation in 1850 until now that the accent or the Spanish pronunciation have ever been that common for the American city. —  AjaxSmack   01:41, 31 July 2016 (UTC)
 * The officials of the city, the university, and the airport disagree with you. These subtle phonetic differenences come under the category of regional accent,  much different from the significant effect of the acute accent relative to the alternative described at Jose.  Dicklyon (talk) 06:03, 31 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Which is why we have WP:OFFICIALNAMES: to preserve common usage in the face of bureaucratic diktat. —  AjaxSmack  14:45, 31 July 2016 (UTC)
 * We don't care what Schmoe McDurko on the bus would use, we prefer what reliable, independent sources would use. As I showed above, the diacritic is very common in nonfiction book publishing; it's only uncommon in news journalism, especially sports journalism, which is generally anti-diacritic to the extent it can get away with it, because it's primary goal is expediency and pandering to the lowest common denominator. There are serious reason WP's MOS based damned near nothing on the AP Stylebook and other news style guides; they are in fact not reliable sources for how to write English in Wikipedia's formal register, only for how to style news and PR/ad copy. Consequently, when it comes to style matters rather than facts researched for stories, news sources are not reliable sources, categorically.  This also is one of the reasons that WP:COMMONNAME has never been and will never be a "style policy".  Certain individuals have been confused about this for years, but the constant river of RM does not at all treat it as a policy of "adopt the most common stylization".  The only exceptions are those permitted by MoS itself, as detailed at MoS; when reliable sources near-universally prefer a particular stylization we would not normally go with, then and only then do we go with it (thus Deadmau5, iPod, k.d. lang, but not Alien³, Ke$ha, P!nk, or e.e. cummings, all of which are redirects.  The fact that a divergent spelling can be  in sources, and is preferred for certain purposes (almost always marketing, which is also the case with the dropping of the diacritic in San José by sports teams), is insufficient.  I'll stop here; all the other points I would raise were already covered by Dicklyon, with whom I agree word-for-word on all of this.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  15:56, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
 * San Jose Freeway Sign.jpg"...We prefer what reliable, independent sources would use." I agree which is why I oppose the move.  I did extensive Google Book searches of a wide variety of quality print sources before commenting and was unable to find more than 10-20% sources using the é.  Some like Lonely Planet use the accent on "Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe" but not on "San Jose" showing a clear differentiation between how the English and Spanish names are treated.  I have always strongly supported diacritic usage in areas where it represents the correct spelling in a particular language (e.g. here and here), even when diacritics are dropped in English sources.  However, in this case we are dealing with a name where the "divergent spelling" is the one with the é and it does not ever appear to have been in wide use, the airport and university notwithstanding. —  AjaxSmack   01:17, 2 August 2016 (UTC)


 * Comment (mainly for the closer), this may be one of those where consensus doesn't follow head counts. The official name of the city, "San José", seems to have been its name at its beginning as well. Official names do count, they are important in the long run, and I'm probably not the only one who thinks that sooner or later the name of this page will include "the squiggly thing". The airport page now includes the official name, so there's that. And, for me, and maybe this will make a difference for you, the most important data point was when Dicklyon explained that the two names, Jose and José, do not mean the same thing. They actually have two different meanings, and come from different symbol-systems. I spent some time confirming that. Since "José" is the name that the city was born with, and has now officially gone back to, renaming this page fits naturally and comfortably within the WP guidelines mentioned in this discussion, giving the page the name that best represents the lineage of the word. Randy Kryn 20:08, 31 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, but COMMONNAME is a legitimate argument as well. Any close finding consensus to add the é would likely be MRed into oblivion. Nohomersryan (talk) 21:21, 31 July 2016 (UTC)
 * A brief question: if the article was already at "San José, California", then would there be consensus to drop the accented é character? I think a good number of the opposes (including mine) are on procedural grounds or lack of sources, not on honestly thinking the city is commonly accent-less.  ONR  (talk) 01:23, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
 * WP:COMMONNAME is policy, while WP:OFFICIALNAMES tells us that we should *not* necessarily use the official name, although of course it's always a contender. I see no reason why a closer would ignore the strong weight of numbers against the move in this case, particularly as policy is in favour of those opposing. If you insist on looking for consistency, then the airport should follow the city not the other way round. &mdash; Amakuru (talk) 05:21, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
 * The most official version of a geographic name is the one approved by the Board on Geographic Names. BGN is where the reference works get the names they use from. The board approved "San Jose" (no diacritics) back in 1943. There does not appear to have been any reconsideration of the issue in the years since. Fernando Danger (talk) 08:21, 1 August 2016 (UTC)


 * Support per COMMON NAME and Randy Kryn. Ḉɱ̍ 2nd anniv.   22:54, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

Policy analysis
It's important to read COMMONNAME closely; it nowhere even suggests that it covers style matters, and we've been over this literally thousands of times before in RM after RM after RM. The only time WP adopts a divergent stylization from what we would normally accept (and based on MOS rules, not anything at WP:AT), it's when the sources overwhelmingly do so (as they do for iPod, Deadmau5, and k.d. lang, but not "Alien3", "e.e. cummings", "Ke$ha", "SONY", or "P!nk", all of which are redirects. In all those cases, as with stripping of the diacritic from San José, it's a marketing stylization found sporadically in logos, website materials, and sports team names, not a formal, encyclopedic English practice.  WP:COMMONSTYLE covers all of this in much more detail.

Several arguments presented in these RMs' comments are a misreading of WP:DIACRITICS (which needs some copyediting for clarity). It says "follow the general usage in reliable sources that are written in the English language (including other encyclopedias and reference works)." It does not at all suggest that newspapers should be consulted, much less that their style should be followed, and MOS does not rely on news style for much of anything. The WP:NOT policy has many implications, but can be summarized as: WP is not, and is not like, a news source, and is not bound to follow any journalism practice; we do not follow journo definitions of adequate sourcing, use news article layout, or even use journalism definitions of primary and secondary sources, nor do we write in a journalistic tone or follow news style guide norms, deriving ours almost entirely from academic and general-audience style guides. Journalism is a specialized form of writing, shaped by four primary concerns: speed of writing and publication, grabbing attention, rapidity of reading (often having only seconds to get the gist across), and (in traditional newspapers) condensation of prose for tight, multi-column layout.

WP:DIACRITICS also clarifies: "If there is no consensus in the sources, either form will normally be acceptable as a title." Style matters in the NC guidelines are derived from MOS. The controlling, more detailed guidelines here are: A) MOS:PN: "Wikipedia normally retains these special characters, except where there is a well-established English spelling that replaces them with English standard letters."; and MOS:DIACRITICS: "their usage depends on whether they appear in verifiable reliable sources in English and on the constraints imposed by specialized Wikipedia guidelines" [none of which apply to this case]. The MOS:PN exception is for anglicizations that, in English, have totally supplanted the original and the example given is Aragon, Spain (spelled Aragón in Spanish); this is rarely the case except when a name has been used (and modified) in English for centuries, and may not hold even then (see, e.g., São Paulo). San José is not such a case.  And it is not the case that San Jose has replaced it in English, the way Vienna has replaced Wien; the city, the university and the airport all use the accent, as do many other sources.

One common source of confusion is this line in WP:DIACRITICS: "The policy on using common names and on foreign names does not prohibit the use of modified letters, if they are used in the common name as verified by reliable sources." This absolutely does not read "if they are the most common spelling". What it means is, if "Foo/Føø" and "Bar" are both names for the same topic, and "Foo/Føø" is more common than Bar, then use either "Foo" or "Føø"; if reliable sources verify that the modified letters are used in the name [it need not be used all the time, just well-attested in modern sources we trust], then use the "Føø" version. Why? Because of the MOS:PN rule quoted just above. An enormous amount of pointless drama and editorial time-drain would be eliminated if people with a bone to pick about some MoS line-item would stop looking for imaginary loopholes in WP:AT with which to try to "trump" MoS. They are not there.

Note also that WP:DIACRITICS warns: "Search engines are problematic unless their verdict is overwhelming". The sources show the opposite of a verdict that the diacritic is not used; it appears very frequently in independent sources and official sources, for the city, the airport, and the university. It is only near-univerally dropped for some local sports teams and other business names, which are trademarks and corporate registrations, not placenames. It is dropped in those cases because marketing/PR style generally eschews diacritics, and trademarks are stronger the less they match natural-language constructions and are instead unique proprietary inventions.

Next, the idea that misinterpretation of COMMONNAME as a style policy permits content forking the title from the content in such matters is another illusion easy to dispel, per MOS:DIACRITICS: "Spell a name consistently in the title and the text of an article." The sources tell us that the proper placename San José includes the diacritic, in California as in most places; the fact that some subset of sources choose after the fact to ignore it is ultimately of no consequence. Once it has been sourced that the diacritic belongs there, the fact cannot be magically erased, especially not in some PoV campaign against diacritics in English, an intellectual ghost that has been perennially rising from the dead and being re-exorcized here for years. The only thing that will erase the diacritic is an actual change in usage that becomes virtually universal for this particular place, as happened long ago with the similar accent in Los Angeles (it was on the A).

Finally, WP:TITLEVAR says not to manually move an article (if the move may be controversial), without a consensus discussion supporting it. The entire point of RM is that it that consensus discussion. MOS:TIES has nothing whatsoever to do with such questions, and only addresses differences between English-language dialects. There is no such thing as a national variety of English in which diacritics are never used. Some also seem to imagine that Americans do not use diacritics in Spanish names that call for them; only someone who has never lived in a part of the US with a lot of Spanish placenames could believe this, and it's quite false. The entire "we shouldn't use a diacritic because this is in the US" argument is fallacious. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  19:12, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Again, I seem to fail to understand the link between WP:NOTNEWS and WP:AT. On the one hand, WP:NOTNEWS says "Wikipedia is also not written in news style". On the other hand, news sources seem to frequently be used in various RMs to determine WP:COMMONAME. After all WP:COMMONAME says, "the term or name most typically used in reliable sources is generally preferred". So many Wikipedians interpret that as using WP:RS as an guide, including WP:NEWSORG (reliable news sources). Furthermore, there is at least one naming guideline, Naming conventions (geographic names), that uses a news manual of style (The Associated Press Stylebook) as a reference to determine the naming of a U.S. city articles (vis a vis whether to append the state name like on this article or not). Zzyzx11 (talk) 06:07, 2 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Already answered this at the other page: .  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  02:51, 3 August 2016 (UTC)
 * And how is "this is in the U.S." not relevant? The first sentence of WP:TITLEVAR states, "The title of an article on a topic that has strong ties to a particular English-speaking nation should use the variety of English appropriate for that nation". This city is in the U.S., thus doesn't it have strong ties to the U.S., so shouldn't some consideration how it is used in most reliable American English sources be put into play? Thus, I'm not sure this analysis or your interpretation of WP:NOTNEWS above is shared (as another seemed to state above) by the broader community on a wider scale. And WP:COMMONSTYLE is an essay, for which widespread consensus has not been necessarily established (with you currently being the only contributor or what currently is a relatively a small list [currently less than 50] on Special:WhatLinksHere/Wikipedia:Common-style fallacy). Zzyzx11 (talk) 06:34, 2 August 2016 (UTC)
 * This was already covered above (at "MOS:TIES has nothing whatsoever to do with such questions ..."). Please read before responding with the same argument that has already been addressed (see WP:IDHT, proof by assertion). To recap: It's not relevant, obviously, because there is no "drop diacritics from names" rule in American or any other English variety, and MOS:TIES is about (and only about) US vs. UK vs. Canadian, etc., English; it's like trying to cite a copyright statute in a case about patent law.  Each time you have cited a policypage as your rationale in this discussion you have clearly been misinterpreting it, so this seems like a good place to mention the first law of holes.  Your handwaving about something being an essay, instead of addressing the substance of the arguments in the essay, has already been addressed here.  PS: The clearest and funniest way to simultaneously illustrate the fact that diacritics are used (increasingly, because it easier with computers than with typewriters) in the US for Spanish names  the point that news sources are not reliable on style (for an encyclopedic register if at all) and sometimes have a "kill all diacritics" bias (even seeming to very unwisely automate the process sometimes in their online materials) is this article from the Los Angeles Times, about the city replacing over-anglicized street signs with correctly spelled ones with diacritics, in which the newspaper stripped the diacritics even from words-as-words references, and thereby made their text meaningless nonsense: "Dona without the tilde, for instance, might sound like the name Donna, pronounced with a soft tongue. Dona, in contrast, requires more of the tongue to meet the palate ...", etc.  The article is also interesting to read because it correctly pegs opposition to the use of tildes as a anti-multiculturalism stance against "political correctness".  We know for a fact that Wikipedia, both officially from WMF and communally from editorial consensus, is multiculturalist in and by intent (see WP:Systemic bias for an overview).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  02:51, 3 August 2016 (UTC)
 * The vast majority of English language reliable sources, books and news alike, do not include a diacritic. Thus we have sourced that it doesn't belong there. If you want to demonstrate something to the contrary please do so, but otherwise this is really an irrelevant argument. If English sources were 50/50 then we'd probably go with the diacritic version. But they aren't. Even the official city name and the BGN official name do not include it, it's only the city council's recent policy that suggests it should be used. &mdash; Amakuru (talk) 17:17, 2 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Already answered this at the other page:, in responding to Zzyzx11. In short, if you were correct, we would have policies and guidelines saying "never use diacritics except when the majority of sources use them", but we have the opposite, an instruction to use diacritics if they can be reliably sourced. What we actually have as a result is thousands and thousands of articles on people and places using the diacritics, without any regard to whether most sources in English use them, and this is result of a decade-and-a-half of consensus discussions. When a cabal formed to try to thwart that consensus it was rapidly and firmly shut down. The "vast majority" of sources we have easy access to on this question are news websites, which we know are stylistically heavily biased against diacritics. It'b blatant sampling bias, and amounts to "Jesus must really have been the son of God, because the vast majority of sources on Jesus [i.e. works by Christians with a bias in favor of this view] say he was".  Most of the caveats at WP:GNUM, WP:ONLYGOOG, WP:GOOG and other pages here about misuse of search engines, usually for WP:N discussions, apply here.  The actually reliable sources for what to do with Spanish names in English are academic and mainstream, not journalism, style guides, and I have yet to find a single one that recommends stripping diacritics.  MOS is already based on those style guides, and already has a rule to include diacritics if they're reliably sourceable (not "if the majority of sources use them"). It was written that way on purpose because we already know that a large number of English-language publishers have not bothered with them and that this is only slowly changing, as cultural sensitivity instead of jingoistic nationalism becomes the norm. If we went with a majority-based rule, no article in WP would ever have diacritics, because a head-count majority of source material will be diacritics-free for all cases.  The fact that we have thousands of articles at names with diacritics is concrete proof that WP consensus favors retaining, not deleting them (as is the fact that we have a rule to retain them, obviously). QED.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  02:51, 3 August 2016 (UTC)
 * When I agree with you about something you are a joy to read, and your walls of text can be textbook level Wikipedia endowments. Sometimes I believe you get it wrong, and shape an argument with those same walls of text. This is not one of those times, and your logical point by point analysis of why the diacritic should be used by Wikipedia on this article will hopefully be taken into account by a closer who puts some time into forming, and then studying, a detailed mental map/picture created from the multiple viewpoints in the discussion. Nice work. Randy Kryn 4:02, 3 August 2016 (UTC)
 * We have thousands of articles with diacritics because we have thousands of subjects with no common name in English. Then there's no reason not to retain them. But for names that are commonly written in English, we don't need to fall back on foreign sources, we can check what English sources do. MOS:DIACRITICS says that we neither prefer to include them nor to exclude them, which is absolutely how it should be. Wikipedia reflects the world it does not change it. Thus in some cases, such as Novak Djokovic, Ana Ivanovic, Los Angeles, San Jose, California etc. we omit diacritics, because they are written that way in a large majority of sources, while in other cases, we include them. And yes, that "cabal" was rightly shut down, because we don't do things by cabal, we rely on WP:RS and WP:CONSENSUS for our decision making. Blanket insistence on including diacritics against sources would be another sort of cabal in its own right though, and you should be opposing that too. &mdash; Amakuru (talk) 12:14, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

CN¥

Updated Citation Needed
Hello, I found several links that need to be updated or removed since it leads to a dead link. Dianan.nguyen (talk) 02:35, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Skyline / Overview image for infobox
Hi all,

Perhaps this is the best way to settle what should be the best photo to top the infobox. I think

What do you guys think? Cristiano Tomás (talk) 23:42, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

capital of silicon valley?
really people get a grip. Really really needs a source and you can probably find a source for almost every city between there and Palo Alto. And that's also only based on the county line. Facebook is in Menlo Park for example. Elinruby (talk) 12:18, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
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Removal of Diversity section
It seems that the entire diversity section is poorly sourced or not sourced at all. The issues: I have done some searching to find reliable sources for these claims but have been unable to find any. If anyone else wants to take a stab at it that would be good, but I think it would be best just to remove this section since it seems so much of it is unverifiable. Let me know your thoughts. dominiktesla  -talk- 03:54, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
 * "San Jose and the rest of the Bay Area is home to many Christian congregations..." I can't find a source for this, although I don't doubt it's true.
 * "San Jose ranks among the top 5 US cities ... for Asian Americans ... as well as Middle Eastern Americans." Is completely unsourced (but it does include an irrelevant source for the Japanese school).
 * "It also ranks among the top 10 US cities and counties for Hispanic and Latino Americans, and certain European ethnicities like Portuguese Americans" Has sources but the source doesn't actually back up the claim.
 * "African-Americans are in decline ... due to gentrification ..." I can't find a source for this but I don't doubt it's true

Requested move 23 December 2018

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

The result of the move request was: Not moved. Closing this discussion early per WP:SNOW.  Calidum   18:12, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

San Jose, California → San Jose – A city with over one million and the 10th largest in the country must be the primary topic (San Francisco, a smaller city, is not entitled "San Francisco, California". Also San Jose should be moved to San Jose (disambiguation)  IWI  ( chat ) 16:34, 23 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Maybe we should also move San José, Costa Rica to San José per WP:SMALLDETAILS since "San José" and "San Jose" can have different PTs.  Crouch, Swale  ( talk ) 17:47, 23 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Can't tell if you're kidding or not. Hope so. Dicklyon (talk) 05:44, 24 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Oppose, per San Jose, the capital and largest city of Costa Rica. Randy Kryn (talk) 19:21, 23 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Oppose. WP:USPLACE. Rreagan007 (talk) 19:29, 23 December 2018 (UTC)
 * San Francisco, a smaller city, is not called San Francisco, California.  IWI  ( chat ) 20:01, 23 December 2018 (UTC)


 * Oppose per WP:USPLACE and the existence of the national capital that is San José, Costa Rica (ALSO commonly known by that name). Paintspot Infez (talk) 02:31, 24 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Oppose, because of the prominence of San Jose, Costa Rica. Worldwide, when you say "San Francisco", most people think of the city in California.  But the same is not true of San Jose (even though it happens to be more populous than San Francisco). Ross Finlayson (talk) 03:16, 24 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Nonstarter per WP:USPLACE. Dicklyon (talk) 05:43, 24 December 2018 (UTC)
 * But there are plenty of exceptions to WP:USPLACE for other large U.S., cities - e.g., "San Francisco", "Chicago, "Detroit" - that have no significant namesake elsewhere. The big problem with "San Jose" is not WP:USPLACE, but the fact that there's another prominent "San Jose" in Costa Rica. Ross Finlayson (talk) 06:14, 24 December 2018 (UTC)
 * You may need to read USPLACE a bit more thoroughly. Further down it says Cities listed in the AP Stylebook as not requiring the state modifier in newspaper articles have their articles named City unless they are not the primary topic for that name. The cities you mention fall under that criterion whereas San Jose does not. I don't totally agree with it, I think more cities should be included than just the current set, but it does have the advantage of being unambiguous. &mdash; Amakuru (talk) 08:32, 24 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Any attempt to re-open USPLACE to more exceptions would be hotly contested, because if it passed it would lead to interminable squabbling. I think a more likely outcome if it was to be modified would be to remove the AP exceptions and do all US cities the same way. Dicklyon (talk) 17:59, 27 December 2018 (UTC)


 * Oppose / SNOW close per USPLACE "Cities listed in the AP Stylebook as not requiring the state modifier in newspaper article" The cities listed by the AP are Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Honolulu, Houston, Indianapolis, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, New Orleans, New York City, Oklahoma City, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C.—although Washington, D.C., does have a territorial qualifier. Wikipedia titles all of these except Phoenix, Arizona, by city name alone. In ictu oculi (talk) 08:34, 24 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Comment there is only one San Jose in the US and USPLACE is only a guideline.  IWI  ( chat ) 21:48, 25 December 2018 (UTC)
 * "there is only one San Jose in the US". Actually, according to San Jose, there are also "San Jose"s in Arizona and Illinois.  But in any case, remember that Wikipedia is meant to be an international encyclopedia; not US-centric. Ross Finlayson (talk) 22:29, 25 December 2018 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Number of photographs is grossly excessive
When an article begins to look like a Google Image Search page or an Instagram feed, it's a sign that certain editors haven't read the Manual of Style, aren't sufficiently familiar with What Wikipedia is not, and don't have sufficient publishing experience in a professional production environment. The only commercial environments where this style is acceptable are coffee table books, tabloid magazines, and certain types of travel guidebooks (Dorling Kindersley in particular comes to mind). It is totally inappropriate for an encyclopedia written for adults, though I suppose more pictures might be appropriate for the Simple English Wikipedia version of this article. At some point, someone will need to clean up this chaotic mess, but I personally don't have the time or energy right now. This is just to point out the issue. --Coolcaesar (talk) 06:18, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Also, I just realized that I missed the proposed move above because I was on vacation in late December. This is to reiterate my longstanding support for that move. When people around the world refer to a city called San Jose, they are usually referring to the one where Adobe software comes from. --Coolcaesar (talk) 17:58, 28 April 2019 (UTC)

San Jose bigger than San Francisco?
SJ biggest city in northern California? Seems like SF is bigger than SJ. Regarding sentence within lede paragraph.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 16:21, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Not sure what you mean by "seems like." San Jose is objectively bigger than San Francisco. Moonboy54 (talk) 17:33, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
 * From the lede paragraph of the SJ article as of January 2 2015: San Jose is the largest city within the Bay Area and the largest city in Northern California. So San Jose beats out San Francisco because SJ has a larger land area -- but San Francisco is really the major city in northern California, in terms of its metro area, shouldn't be penalized because of narrow city boundaries. Its airport has much more traffic than San Jose's airport. If we think of metro areas, San Francisco is the dominant one in the Bay Area.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 19:48, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
 * The metro area is referred to as the San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland area, so really San Francisco isn't necessarily dominant. Apart from that, bigger is not just in terms of size but population, which San Jose also beats San Francisco at. Apart from that, San Jose is the driving base for the majority of Silicon Valley's enterprises, thus making the city an economic hub of significance. The difference is that San Francisco is more "city-like", with a condensed, population-dense city core and obviously a longer history as a powerhouse city, a thriving financial center, and continues to be the dominant cultural center. This, however, does not diminish San Jose's objective place as the larger city, land-wise and population-wise, and as a significant regional and national economic hub. Cristiano Tomás (talk) 22:58, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Fair enough, it just seems like SF is the "center" of the Bay Area, not SJ, regardless of where the city lines are drawn. The rest of the country probably sees SF and LA as the two primary California cities, and it may look like SJ is trying to squeak past SF here on a technicality. The SF airport is clearly a major one (with direct flights); the SJ airport (while nice and newer) has basically one runway, and flights there are of the hub-and-spoke variety.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 00:08, 3 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I think the confusion here is that there are two different definitions of "biggest" being argued here: "most important" versus "larger." The former is debatable, while the later is a fact. San Jose has both a larger landmass and a larger population than San Francisco. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Zeldafanjtl (talk • contribs) 16:54, 8 April 2016 (UTC)


 * San Jose will likely see the gap growing more and more. I'd argue this is mainly due to the area difference. San Jose has an area of almost 4 times that of San Francisco. (3.766). In discussions of city size, population, and economy in the future, the defining factor would likely be what is considered in city of San Francisco and what is not. By strict city limits, San Jose beats San Francisco currently and for the foreseeable future. However on a global scale, San Jose barely registers as a separate entity. "Most important" would probably be on the cities "sphere of influence" which would be impossible to define. ```` — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rtbittaker (talk • contribs) 17:22, 26 April 2019 (UTC)


 * If anybody can find sources to back these thoughts up to add to the article: San Francisco had the advantage of being the first major city in the Bay Area, first achieving worldwide significance as the major port city during the California Gold Rush. Thus, it has been hard to change the worldwide common wisdom that SF is the "center" of the Bay Area. San Jose on the other hand had the advantage of having the ability to expand across the Santa Clara Valley to increase its area and population, while SF, as a consolidated city-county, could not expand unless the state legislature changed county borders. Zzyzx11 (talk) 01:02, 5 November 2018 (UTC)


 * The article lists San Jose as a Global City, but the primary report that article cites that ranks cities on their importance to global affairs - The World According to GaWC 2018 - lists San Francisco as an 'Alpha -' (alpha minor) along with cities such as Montreal, Rome, and Washington D.C., while ranking San Jose as a 'Gamma' city, on par with cities like San Diego, Bilbao and Calcutta. The report's methodology uses things like impacts to global finance, tourism, commerce, cultural influence, and other factors. So, at least from that report, San Francisco is almost an order of magnitude more 'global' than San Jose as far as its influence on world affairs. Hence, while the article's statement about San Jose's size (both area and population) is inarguable, there could be room for a mention on 'importance' or 'prestige' in comparison to other cities in the Bay Area and the state. Mwehman (talk) 14:49, 30 May 2019 (UTC)
 * This is a little tricky, because when "San Francisco" is mentioned in a global context, it often refers to the whole San Francisco Bay Area, which includes Oakland, San Jose, and many other smaller cities (e.g., Palo Alto, Mountain View) Ross Finlayson (talk) 18:32, 30 May 2019 (UTC)


 * Adding some history to this long-standing topic... San Jose and San Francisco as well as some rivalry between them go back to their beginning. San Francisco was established as a Spanish military fort in 1776. San Jose was established by its city charter issued by Spain in 1777, making it the first incorporated city in California. By the time of the Gold Rush, San Francisco became influential as the primary Gold Rush seaport. As California's oldest city, San Jose was selected as the first state capital at the state constitutional convention in Monterey in 1850. Quotes from that convention are at the historical marker at Circle of Palms Plaza. The railroad that was built to connect the seaport in SF and the capital in SJ still exists today as CalTrain. Before the railroad was completed, both cities lost their original influence as the Gold Rush ended, crashing the economy of SF's seaport, and the capital was moved from SJ to a sequence other cities in a state-capital bidding war. The 1906 earthquake affected both cities, except that the water mains weren't broken in San Jose and fires were extinguished before reaching the devastating scale that occurred in SF. As California's boom-and-bust economic cycles continued into the 20th Century, both cities saw phases of economic development and increasing influence again, but with San Francisco leading that curve at a good time to gain fame. The rise of Silicon Valley fueled San Jose's economic growth but mainly visible to business (i.e. SJ contributes far more to US exports) and not nearly as much for tourism (SF also has big businesses but is known for the bridge & bay views). Even though the two cities are separated by only 30 miles, California's mountainous geography has given each a different climate - SF is open to the ocean and much cooler; SJ has a warmer and drier climate in the rain shadow of the 3000' Santa Cruz Mountains. The difference in weather (i.e. you'll be very cold if you go to SF dressed for the weather in SJ) accentuates the differences in culture between the cities. There is no clearly dominant city among the two; and along with the economic influence of Oakland's seaport, it's realistic to look at the Bay Area as having a triumvirate of dominant cities. Trying to pick just one doesn't work. It's primarily the body of water, not the city, that gets the area called the San Francisco Bay Area. Ikluft (talk) 22:20, 29 June 2019 (UTC)