User talk:Zocky/Country bias

Nice one. The only thing, a FAQ should consist of questions ;-) I like how you mention how to remedy bias! Kokiri 13:40, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)

My heart dropped when I saw the flyer for this, thinking I was about to be confronted with another rant about Evil Wikipedia. I am astoundingly happy to say I was completely wrong. This is exceeding good.

My only suggestion is to generalise it a bit. I can't believe that the English Wikipedia is the only one to have this trouble: do none of the other languages have arguments on how to translate foreign terms? Maybe suggesting that the same problems happen in other languages (comparing en:London with fr:Londres for example) might help. Was the problem with Stettin and Szczecin confined to English?

Meanwhile congratulations on an excellent first cut. --Phil | Talk 15:01, Jul 28, 2004 (UTC)


 * I'm not really sure, but I guess it appears less on other wikis because their editor base is less international. Zocky

Many thanks for this excellent first draft. Is the following from any official policy document?

In the section "Wikipedia uses a foreign name for a place in my country"


 * The article's title should be the most common name in English.

There was a debate at Talk:Kolkata about whether to use Kolkata, Mumbai, Chennai or Calcutta, Bombay, Madras respectively as the article titles. I think the consensus there was to use the official name, so long as it's widespread, commonly used by locals and was once upon a time the primary name. Although Kolkata (official name) redirects to Calcutta (more common name), it's the opposite case with Mumbai and Chennai. I wonder if the policy ought to be clarified. Ambarish | Talk 21:20, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)


 * No, this is based mostly on common sense and wikipedia's general naming conventions. Naming conventions (city names) is still far from consensus. OTOH, this FAQ must be inline with policy before it goes live. Probably best to wait with it until that policy is settled.
 * We can still try to make it nicer in the meantime. Zocky

Very good. I'd suggest also pointing out that this is the English-language wikipedia, and that articles are oriented toward English-speaking readers. Thus, for example, an article about Poland may contain information that seems to a Pole like "stating the obvious", whereas an article about a newspaper will not bother to mention that it is an English-language newspaper. -- Jmabel 06:47, Jul 29, 2004 (UTC)

Nice. I'd however propose to mention that any official statements do not mean much for decision which names to use. If the spelling is more used in English, it should be used, no matter what do officials claim. Dr Bug (Volodymyr V. Medeiko) 09:28, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Very good. Clear, short and easy to understand. --ZayZayEM 13:20, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Terms for administrative subdivisions
Useful and very pedagogic. Being new to Wikipedia and not from an English-speaking country, there is however something that is still unclear to me: What about the terms for administrative subdivisions? In Sweden the smallest subdivision is kommun. The page "Municipalities of Sweden" is called just that, even though it mentions the Swedish term. (Oddly enough, the corresponding page for Italy is called Comune which is the Italian term for the smallest subdivision in Italy.) But in pages for individual municipalities (such as Uddevalla), the Swedish term is not even mentioned. The term municipalityseems to be employed troughout Wikipedia as a translation for the smallest administrative subdivision in just about every country (see Municipality). Perhaps this is a standard term generally used in English for this purpose. However, I feel that the term municipality is problematic and might lead to some misunderstandings, since the Swedish kommun does not correspond to, for instance, the U.S. use of the term municipality. Furthermore, the translated term can refers to quite different entities in different countries. In Italy, for instance, a rural comune can have less than 500 inhabitants, while in Sweden almost no kommun has less than 5.000. A similar discussion could apply to the term county.

I'm not sure if this is somehow covered by a Wikipedia standard or guideline. If it is I would be glad if it could be pointed out to me. If not, this is perhaps not the place to ask for one to be written (or is it?). But I think it might be a good idea to include a paragraph about the problem on this page. Alarm 15:54, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)