Talk:Squamish

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived 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: Not moved. DavidLeighEllis (talk) 01:38, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

– Under WPCanada disambiguation practices, unique town names do not take the comma-province disambiguation. The Squamish title was created before this convention came into wide application. Other examples with name-conflicts with local indigenous groups of such town-name titles are Kamloops and Nanaimo; but the overwhelming primary topic in English of such names is invariably the town. COMMONNAME has been invoked on the related CfD and RM re Squamish people, where there is another RM I should have filed these other two changes at the same time with, to give context to the PRIMARYTOPIC issue that is being ignored at that RM and CfD (all but by a few who "get it"). Similar situations where a disambiguation page was created out of deference to the primacy (though not primary topic) of the terms' sources in the local aboriginal peoples and their name exist, in at least one case (Comox I will file a similar RM. Since the primacy of aboriginal peoples' preferences to their name-usages is being ignored elsewhere, it seems that there is no point in continuing such deference here (they prefer K'omoks anyway.Skookum1 (talk) 05:18, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Squamish → Squamish (disambiguation)
 * Squamish, British Columbia → Squamish
 * I would've thought the Squamish people (however you spell it) would be primary for the term. Why do you think the town is? --BDD (talk) 17:29, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
 * LOL sorry to laugh; try a google comparison, it'll take some sifting, but as with Okanagan or Comox or Nanaimo the town is by far the most common usage, particularly in Canadian English and even more particularly within BC. Whether "Squamish" more commonly means the people rather than the town in the UK or South Africa or Upper Volta is not relevant.  Although buried by tit-for-tat and my infamous "walls of text" in the CfD on Category:Squamish, you'll find other Canadians (VolcanoGuy, CambridgeBayWeather, some IP user and of course myself) who know that "Squamish" primarily means the town.  I have a bad net connection but I'll see what I can do about such a comparison google, provided my wifi doesn't crap out again like it has the past few days.  Only on ethnographic and linguistics bookshelves is "Squamish" going to mean the people, but not in spoken English; not in Canada anyway.Skookum1 (talk) 02:18, 8 March 2014 (UTC)
 * On this basic google for "Squamish", the Squamish Nation band government homepage comes up on page one, the Squamish Lil'wat Cultural Centre at Whistler comes up on page two; I've scanned a few pages forward, see nothing else about the people. How you might want to winnow those results to compare town-specific results vs people-specific results I don't know; partly because many of the non-town-specific results are going to be about businesses, institutions, events and such all named for the town; not the people.Skookum1 (talk) 02:39, 8 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Just noting, while formatting that google URL-link, that your misconstruing what is the primary usage here has underlain many of the votes/comments on the CfD and current RMs and even on the RM from last year where it was observed as an issue on the name change to Squamish people from the old full-diacritical Skwxwu7mesh title. As with Chilcotin, Kootenay/Kootenai, Lillooet and Shuswap (and various others), the primary usage is overwhelming the geographic one, not the peoples - whose names and article-titles (Tsilhqot'in, Ktunaxa, St'at'imc and Secwepemc) were established to distinguish themselves from such geographic confusion; only a few BC peoples are still commonly known by their "English" names, e.g. the Musqueam, the Okanagan, the Squamish (so far) and the Nicolas; the last-named have no aboriginal name for themselves, that name being French in origin (see Nicola (chief)) and themselves being an alliance of Scwx'emx (a branch of the Nlaka'pamux) and the Spa7omin (a group of Okanagans).  Some such as the Tsawwassen and Semiahmoo have no other anglicization or a different native spelling, though the Coquitlam Indian Band have "nativized" or I suppose you could put it "repatriated" their name as Kwikwetlem even though the name Coquitlam is exactly the same name, and the Chehalis have respelled their name Sts'Ailes to differentiate themselves from the similarly-named larger group in SW Washington; similarly the Nanaimo people "Salishized" their name by adding 'S' on the start and added the -muxw "people" ending (Snunexmuxw First Nation).....among major bands only the Squamish Nation has not so much indulged the native-language form of their name, which is one of the obstacles towards getting that name re-established as an article title, despite growing usage evident in more recent googles; but even with the predominance of "Squamish" as the spelling for the people, that meaning still doesn't show up in the top google hits except for the band government (which is a top-level domain i.e. squamish.net) and the cultural centre in Whistler (which also goes by Skwxwu7mesh Lil'wat Cultural Centre.  Part of the WP:POINT of this RM is to demonstrate that "Squamish people" is not the primary topic of Squamish and that should be respected vis a vis WPCANADA practices (if not formal guidelines) about unique town-names not taking disambiguation. If town/people were more balanced in usage across the board, then Coquitlam and Nanaimo should be disambiguation pages.Skookum1 (talk) 03:05, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

Another example from across the line, Spokan vs Spokane, Washington; if US disambiguation practices were the same as in Canada, there's no question the city would be the PRIMARYTOPIC, same as with Yakima vs Yakama and Palouse vs Palus. This may relate more to the Squamish/Skwxwu7mesh RM but it points up the fallacy of your Coeur d'Alene example.Skookum1 (talk) 07:47, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Oppose per WP:PRIMARYTOPIC (primary long-term significance). The aboriginal people of nearly 4,000 souls are at least as encyclopedically notable as a town of around 15,000, if not more so. Cf. Coeur d'Alene:  2,000 Coeur d'Alene people vs. 45,000 in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho but the city is still not considered primary.  —  AjaxSmack   05:35, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Reply That's a red herring. US city/town articles do use state disambiguations even for unique town names; the existence of a disambiguation page at Coeur d'Alene is not proof that the people are as much a primary usage as the city.  Also, Native American article conventions are generally in their English forms; only a few exceptions exist, one being Yakama people (originally Yakama until someone added the "people" part to the title) vs Yakima, Washington.  cf also Palus people vs Palouse.  The PRIMARYTOPIC of "Squamish" is the town and you're welcome to trot out googles to disprove that, you won't be able to; this fact was also affirmed by the other Canadians in the CfD, though as usual Canadian input on Canadian topics gets ignored; that those same Canadians did not yet comment here is a side issue; the closure of the Squamish people RM that the change to Skwxwu7mesh was "unlaterally opposed" is patently false and only true if only the "votes" on that RM are totted up; but Wikipedia is not a democracy, something that seems lost on many discussion closures.  What you have done here is compare apples and oranges, Canadian English and Canadian indigenous conventions vs USian ones.  I've made comparisons to other people/town conflicts in BC here which you have ignored, instead choosing to cite something from the United States and Native American titles.  Sechelt is another case where the town is recognizably the PRIMARYTOPIC and the lack of disambiguation there is a demonstration of the primacy of the town usage over that of the Sechelt Indian Band/Sechelt First Nation.  Don't you think an example from close to home (the Shishalh are the next people up coast from the Skwxwu7mesh, Sechelt and Squamish are within 50 miles of each other (or less) should apply as much as anything from Idaho??Skookum1 (talk) 08:40, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, US city/town articles do use state disambiguations even for unique town names but if the city were primary, Coeur d'Alene would redirect there à la Danzig, Siam, &c per WP:PRIMARYREDIRECT (as do Biloxi, Erie, and Omaha). Anyway, I just presented it for its comparative value.  My decision in this case was made on the relative importance of these two topics.  Even moving Squamish people to another title would not suddenly make the town the primary topic. —  AjaxSmack   01:10, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Why does OTHERSTUFFEXISTS get quoted to diss examples of titles relevant to the BC milieu and Canadian disambiguation practices, but then something is thrown out of left field (another country, another set of disambiguation practices) using OTHERSTUFFEXISTS as the justification? And I never said that moving Squamish people to something less ambiguous (namely Skwxwu7mesh, which isn't the slightest ambiguous) would make the town of Squamish the PRIMARYTOPIC: the problem there is the people in that RM, likewise those non-Canadians in the CfD, don't GET that the town of Squamish already IS the PRIMARYTOPIC no matter how many times they're told.  You've asserted otherwise but have yet to prove your point.  Moving this to match other Canadian unique-town articles will underscore the case at the other RM that "Squamish people" that that name has ambiguity problems; per what's on UCN about names, it's also unnecessarily long (two words, when one word is available).  WE (Canadians/BCers) know that it is the primary topic, same as the city of Nanaimo is the primary topic there and with a similar population comparison (and right next door to Squamish) there's Sechelt; the usual trotting-out of google numbers will prove that handily.  In all BC geographic name cases town names which match or adaptations of native names, the geographic name is the primary topic.  Some of these such as Tsawwassen, British Columbia and Matsqui, British Columbia are disambiguated not because of the native name but from inertia; Matsqui is a disambiguation page, Tsawwassen is a redirect to the community (which is a neighbourhood within Delta, British Columbia).  Okanagan and Chilcotin have already been pointed out, and Kamloops; there are others.  But instead you want to use an example from Idaho and validate it with OTHERSTUFFEXISTS without admitting to the OTHERSTUFFEXISTS in Canada and in BC; in fact you used that as a reason to disregard those examples.Skookum1 (talk) 01:55, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I did find another geo-dab page, Nazko, but the Nazko First Nation's name is not an endonym, it's named for the community, which is named for the river; not the same thing as the name of a people vs the name of a PRIMARYTOPIC town or region like Okanagan, Nanaimo, Sechelt...or Squamish.Skookum1 (talk) 02:14, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
 * For what it's worth, Spokane does redirect to Spokane, Washington. --BDD (talk) 17:34, 11 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, indicative of the city's primarytopic status; huge difference in scale between Spokane and Squamish of course.....and Spokan redirects to Spokan people, another case of "someone" adding "people" unnecessarily on a stand-alone aboriginal name - which like its BC counterparts was coined to prevent confusion with the city's "white" name.Skookum1 (talk) 01:35, 12 March 2014 (UTC)


 * I certainly would've thought the First Nations group would outrank a Vancouver suburb in importance, but the town does get more page views, even if you include Squamish Nation and Squamish language into the mix. It still doesn't feel right, but I won't oppose the move. --BDD (talk) 17:37, 11 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Squamish is actually an exurb, though people do commute from there (craziness, if you know anything about the highway, and the Vancouver bridges :-D). In the global context, perhaps the aboriginal people are more known about, but CANENGL applies and within Canada the town, though small, is prominent and a key part of the British Columbia landscape/toponymy, alongside other names which are adaptations of native names; Nanaimo, Sechelt, Comox (which has a similarly-motivated RM underway cf.), Chemainus, Chilcotin etc.  Even Nanaimo, which is Vancouver Island's 2nd largest conurbation, is largely unknown outside BC (as if the Snuneymuxw were...).  Tsawwassen, British Columbia remains disambiguated not because of the Tsawwassen First Nation but because the Tsawwassen Ferry Terminal, which is nearby, is better-known but not part of the community designated by Tsawwassen, British Columbia; also Tsawwassen, Delta just wouldn't look right and indeed you'll find most references to "Tsawwassen, BC" (myself I don't like the comma-city disambiguation for neighbourhoods of large district municipalities e.g. Matsqui, Abbotsford doesn't look right, nor Clearbrook, Abbotsford or Silverdale, Mission if it were there instead of at Silverdale, British Columbia); at one time if there had been a separate post office, or the community has a distinct identity as "FOO, British Columbia" we left the disambiguation in place, there are other similar examples Agassiz, Kent vs Agassiz, British Columbia being another example - not sure if Brackendale is now Brackendale, Squamish or still at Brackendale, British Columbia - the latter being how it is most widely known, and there being a good 10 miles between the town of Squamish and the "town" of Brackendale (has no downtown to speak of and is a suburb of Squamish).  Squamish may seem not seem large outside of BC, but communities of 10,000 are large by BC standards, and its position on the highway to Whistler means it gets lots of public attention/awareness (to a degree the aboriginal group do not, by any name).Skookum1 (talk) 01:35, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Oppose There is no primary topic. Having the disambiguation page be where people end up is better than forcing them somewhere they may totally not want to go.John Pack Lambert (talk) 00:05, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
 * You're pretty good with pat statements that have no evidence. Canadians on the CfD have already all concurred that the town is the primary topic.  Nobody's forcing anybody anything; Squamish (disambiguation) will be in a hatnote, obviously.Skookum1 (talk) 02:50, 16 March 2014 (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.