User talk:DavidLevinson/Long Names

Long Names
We generally don't want to redirect article names to their long forms--e.g. NOAA is better than the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. (though there are alternate schools of thought....basically, the shortest unambiguous/most common form of the name is usually the best.) --The Cunctator

Again, why are you redirecting things to longer forms? The shorter unambiguous form is usually better. Such as U.S. Department of State instead of United States Department of State. --The Cunctator

--- Consistency. Some of the agencies are US, some are U.S., some are United States. The latter is unambiguous, and we can redirect the others (notice, I have put in redirects for all the cabinet departments I think). No one will be surprised if the hit a link for U.S. this or that and it shows up at United States this or that. However if I want to create links, I will know that it is United States. See for instance the cabinet officers, which have always been like United States Secretary of State. Now, it would be odd for that to be United States and then to have the U.S. State Department or what have you. So what if its longer, a reference such as wikipedia needs to have some consistency as well.

The list of inconsistencies goes on (United States invasion of Iraq vs. U.S. attack on Afghanistan (or maybe vice versa). How am I going to get the link right?