Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (government and legislation)/Archive 1

Background
Over the past year I've seen the number of Wikipedia articles on assorted political institutions from around the world snowball exponentially; it seems that I haven't been alone in this particular guilty pleasure of knowledge.

I'd like to look into getting consensus on how best to format the names of articles for things like government Ministers and/or Secretaries as well as the Departments and/or Ministries they may head. The conventions as-is create some interesting grey areas in terms of what might be the best course of action. Some time ago I came up with a personal logic for names of new articles on such things, and while I'm pleased to see many others have picked up where I left off and extended my system throughout the wiki, at no point have I actually sat down and laid them out. I'm interested to see if there's broader support and making this or something similar the policy for the whole wikipedia.

In brief, the names used for departments and officials in governments around the world are drawn from a pretty small English-language pool&mdash;more countries than not tend to have a Minister of Public Works or a Department of Justice or a Ministry of Education, either by those exact names or something really close. In order to ensure disambiguation, article names must incorporate some kind of identifier linking the position/department to the jurisdiction in which it exists. (an aside: while I'm focussing on countries at the moment, I anticipate this covering the governments of subnational entities, too, once us nerds get around to them.)

Now, in some cases the identifier is almost always added in as part of its general use (e.g. President of Germany, Deputy Prime Minister of New Zealand, Supreme Court of Canada or Parliament of Australia) These cases are a non-issue.

But, to draw an example, the legal name of the chief politician in charge of Canada's finance department is the Minister of Finance. Not Minister of Finance of Canada, Canadian Minister of Finance, Canada Minister of Finance, Canada's Minister of Finance, Finance Minister of Canada, Canadian finance minister or Minister of Canadian Finance etc. The name, in it's standard usage, does not include the jurisdication in question. Now, we can squeeze in a jurisdiction name in there somewhere, should we so choose. The questions, however, remain:
 * do we do always insert a jurisdiction name?
 * where and how do we insert that jurisdiction name?

Proposed Solution
My solution has been to pre-disambiguate.... Minister of Finance (Canada), Minister of Finance (New Zealand), Minister of the Economy, Finance and Industry (France) and Minister of Finance (Manitoba) can all happily co-exist. No article is given precedence over another, and the article title recognizes that Minister of Finance is the actual true-to-life name of the thing we're talking about, with the addendum (Canada) or (New Zealand) outside the actual name but in there for informative purposes. There is no need for an artificial and arbitrary corruption like Newfoundlander and Labradorian Minister of Finance or Finance Minister of New South Wales that morphs the title away from its accurate form.

Now, to the best of my knowledge, the only position with the exact title "Minister of the Economy, Finance and Industry" in the world is in France, so wikipedia convention would have us name that article Minister of the Economy, Finance and Industry and dispense with the parenthetical jurisdiction altogether. I'd like to propose that the jurisdiction be a mandatory part of the name in all but one circumstance, for the following reasons:
 * Admittedly, this area is still far from complete and government nomenclature is ever-changing. We may discover that Estonia had a position from 1993 to 1996 called the Minister of the Economy, Finance and Industry... this means retroactive disambiguation which could've been prevented in the first place.  Likewise, the equivalent position in India could be renamed tomorrow and we'd need to wade through potentially dozens of occurrences and add in jurisdictions.
 * Wikipedia's notion of "Most common English usage" mucks with this subject, not least because so many of these names come from translation. I'd hate to have the Department of Justice in, say, the UK (I know there technically isn't one, work with me) go undisambigged while Iran's Department of Justice gets a big fat (Iran) tagged on, simply because English-speakers are naturally more familiar with the British government and/or because the article on the British one was started first and is substantially larger.  This is even an issue in disambigging between English-speaking jurisdictions: should Ministry of Education go an article about Ontario's ministry of education while a smaller Canadian province like PEI have to make do with Ministry of Education (Prince Edward Island) because the former is a better-known entity?
 * A huge portion of total names, while technically unique, still rub very close to one another... we have may have only one Minister of Environment, one Minister of the Environment, one Minister for Environment, one Minister for the Environment and one Minister of Environment and Conservation in the world, but I pity the wikipedian who's going to try to keep them all straight and match articles with correct jurisdictions.
 * Obviously, some department/secretary/minister names are going to need to be disambiguated... anything "...of Defence", "...of the Interior", "...of Justice" or "...of Labour" can be readily assumed to be only one of several That said, how about "...of Environment and Heritage" or "...of Human Services" or "...of Corrections"?  Checking uniqueness there is a headache.   From an editor's point of view, it's much easier to operate in a system where one assumes the need to insert a jurisdiction rather than the conventional wikipedia conventions where you disambiguate only if necessary.
 * For simply getting information across in the article titles, it makes sense to have the jurisdiction in there.

Basically, think of the convention for warships. There. That's accomplished things more clearly than the last x hundred words.

The one exception I've made to the above mandatory disambigging has been for titles where the jurisdiction name is already included in the basic name... Minister for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (Canada) is needless as a realtively-intelligent dog could assume that the article will be at Minister for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency.

So, to recap:


 * If "Noun of Jurisdictionname" is the naturally-used name for that particular noun within Juridictionname, then title the article Noun of Juridictionname (c.f. Prime Minister of Canada, Diet of Japan, Queen of the Netherlands)
 * If "Noun of Descriptionname" is the naturally-used name for that noun within Jurisdictionname, then title the article Noun of Descriptionname (Jurisdictionname). Even if wikipedia has only one record of a Noun of Descriptionname in the whole world, stick (Jurisdictionname) in anyway.  (c.f. Leader of the Opposition (Australia), Minister of the Interior (France), Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (Canada)

Off the top of my head, the jurisdictions where the aforementioned naming scheme has been implemented (as far as I know, anyway) in Wikipedia articles include Canada, Canada's provinces, France, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

Implementation Issues
Finally, on a more practical note, I don't really propose aggressively knocking articles into conformity just yet. By way of example, the word "United States" is unique in that is both the name of a jurisdiction and an adjective that can precede various institutions. This little grammatical quirk means American articles already have a relatively uniform structure (United States Congress, United States Department of Health and Human Services, United States Secretary of State) that I'm recalcitrant to start ripping into. The Irish political articles are likewise well-ordered in their own way and unproblematic. It's the woolly frontier of countries that don't yet have a well-developed article network that I'm most concerned with standardization.

On the other hand, British political articles tend to unilaterally hog nondescript terminology that is used by dozens other countries. Ministry of Defence, Cabinet Office and Department of Health are among the most blatant offenders. While it would be a nightmare to add (United Kingdom) or (UK) to each one and clean up the hundreds of redirects, in this case I think it's something that's worthwhile in the name of NPOV.

As we say at this point in the game, Thoughts?

-- The Tom 04:16, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Comments

 * First of all, good work for going through the confusions, now I can clearly see what problems we got. Mostly, I agree with you; we should always use an official name whatever it is. Putting a suffix "of France" or such would make the title less factual. Then I am not sure if we want to go to preemptive disambiguations. The problem I see is twofold. (1) it looks very silly, say, to put (Japan) to Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications. And, we would be needing to coach people about this, which they would see little need. (2) Not sure the extent of this convention. For example, does Defence Agency need to have (Japan) as a suffix? If so (I think so), what about Cabinet Office or National Safety Public Commission (which is like CIA or FBI in practice) ? If the boundary is unclear, then the convention would appear arbitrary to the contributors. This gives a good chart of government agencies in Japan. Anyway, this is an interesting question I don't think we have discussed in the past. -- Taku 06:45, Dec 26, 2004 (UTC)


 * I agree with the proposal. True, it could be hard to get everyone to follow a new convention, if they don't see the need, but I think that the need is there. I think that all of the examples cited above (by Taku) could use the "(Japan)" suffix.  Perhaps "Cabinet Office" is a title used only in Japan, I don't know, but some other country certainly could have a cabinet office.  (Of course, I assume that that is an English translation of some Japanese title, which complicates things further.)  Additionally, I am thinking about a way that the system could automatically create disambiguation pages from things like Foreign Secretary (Japan) and Foreign Secretary (Canada), etc.  The idea would be that someone could type in "Foreign Secretary" and get an appropriate automatically created disambiguation page. Morris 14:49, Dec 26, 2004 (UTC)


 * About the abstract above: Would that apply just to the U.S. federal government, or also to states, etc.? Maurreen 09:19, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Excellent question. A quick punt around the database shows that wikipedia's coverage of US State Governments is rather sparse to date, so having them grow in accordance with the standards probably wouldn't be too hard to arrange.  Obviously this can be open to further debate; the main reason for giving the US federal government and Irish government a provisional exemption is because industrious Wikipedians have already built a very extensive article network with internally-consistent names that just happen not to match the Canada/Australia/France/Germany/etc. bloc. --The Tom 03:23, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * When the Library of Congress catalogs materials by and about government agencies, its style (and therefore what will be used in thousands of libraries) is JURISDICTION NAME. AGENCY. SUBAGENCY.  E.g.  "United States.  Department of State.  Office of Consular Services." ; "Ohio.  Governor."; "Ohio.  General Assembly.  House of Representatives.  Committee on Education."; "United States.  Congress.  Senate.  Committee on Rules."  For foreign governments the style is the same, "United Kingdom.  Parliament.  House of Commons.  Select Committee on Trade."  I've done a few articles on goverments and I've written them with the judisdiction first, e.g. Ohio Ballot Board, Ohio State Board of Education.  PedanticallySpeaking 20:16, Dec 30, 2004 (UTC)


 * That sounds more logical to me. For example, that hierarchy puts Ohio articles together instead of putting board of education articles together. Maurreen 05:10, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * That is an interesting proposal, but it does not take into account whether the name of the jurisdiction is actually part of the official name of the agency or not. For that reason, I think Tom's proposal is better. Josh 21:19, Jan 1, 2005 (UTC)
 * Maybe the official name doesn't contain the jurisdiction name, but in many instances we're not using the official name anyway, we're using a translation. I do object to the Library of Congress's style for many foreign agencies because it requires you to know the foreign language name.  For example, the KGB is under "Soviet Union.  Komitet Gosundarstvennoi Bezopasnosti."  We should file things under the jurisdiction name, with the English enquivalent, e.g. "Japan Ministry of Foreign Affairs" or "United Kingdom Foreign and Commonwealth Office".  PedanticallySpeaking 18:26, Jan 3, 2005 (UTC)

I like the proposal as well. I find that it would be very easy, when editing a related article, to insert something like  Foreign Secretary (Canada) , knowing that only the title will show up, and that the piped link will point to the proper page (missing or not). -- Netoholic @ 15:34, 2005 Jan 3 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I totally neglected to note the pipe-rule advantage myself; it's an excellent point. -The Tom 04:30, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I agree with the basic proposal. The Library of Congress system was designed for use in a card file, where a greater-to-lesser taxonomy is most-helpful to the user. Given modern search technology, the use of the taxonomy is less to help find the item as it is to identify the item. Many users simply browse and open articles because they look interesting. The simple parenthetical jurisdictional reference is quite useful there. In many cases in the United States and the several states the jurisdiction is identified in the proper name of the entity, as has been noted above. The proposed convention addresses that situation adequately. --Mddake 00:31, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

Oppose
This is not the way to force policy. Especially as it appears to be a retaliatory response to the Requested Moves debate over moving Japanese Cabinet to Cabinet of Japan. I should recommend this for VfD, but I won't, like I did with the Macao and Hong Kong convention that was attempted when someone was ticked that a lot of people opposed the move from Macau to Macao. This is bad policy formulation. Just creating a "Wikipedia:Naming Conventions" article does not a naming convention make. I look forward to how this turns out. &mdash;ExplorerCDT 15:31, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Wow, don't so defense man. This is still just a draft discussion. --Golbez 17:58, Dec 28, 2004 (UTC)


 * In my own defence, I think you're drawing connections that shouldn't been drawn. The Cabinet of Japan/Japanese Cabinet thing is purely a single aesthetic debate that, if not for a double-edit on the re-direct page, would have quietly done with no fanfare.  Surely if you're going to throw around the "retaliation" word, you might point to something that I'm actually retaliating over?
 * This is about the broader question of whether we want some kind of unified naming style for these articles as they grow rapidly. I thought it was an appropriate time to stop my own somewhat unilateral imposition of standards (which, I might add, have ran in to virtually no opposition in the past, and even been utlized by numerous other contributors without my knowledge) and open up the question to other Wikipedians.  Surely there is no better way to begin such a discussion than a draft naming convention article?  Until such a time as either my proposal or some other one meets wide approval, then we'll continue to let these articles grow under whatever names the author is inclined to give them and have discussions about renaming on case-by-case basis.  - The Tom 02:52, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

RFC?
Does this page still need to be listed at WP:RFC? Maurreen 07:07, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Also grandfathered
&mdash; Instantnood 19:17, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Departments of the United Kingdom Government and government ministers of the United Kingdom
 * Bureaux of the Hong Kong Government and secretaries of Hong Kong

New Zealand Government Agencies
The current de facto naming convention for New Zealand Government agencies is New Zealand Agency Name. A suggestion that the more standard Agency Name (New Zealand) be used has been raised at Talk:State sector organisations in New Zealand, and feedback would be welcome there.- gadfium 20:22, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Province of Saskatchewan
Should the Government departments be named departments or ministries...On the Government of Saskatchewan web site, the choices are to choose a ministry such as the Saskatchewan Ministry of Highways and Infrastructure the actual web page comes up with this title however, Saskatchewan Department of Highways and Transportation looked after by cabinet member Honourable Wayne Elhard Minister of Highways and Infrastructure. So the name of the wikipedia article should be Highways and Infrastructure (Saskatchewan) according to Wikipedia MofS? Or should it be...Department of Highways and Transportation (Saskatchewan) / Ministry of Highway and Infrastructure (Saskatchewan) / Highways and Infrastructure (Saskatchewan) / Saskatchewan Highways and Infrastructure / Saskatchewan Department of Highways and Transportation / Saskatchewan Ministry of Highway and Infrastructure OR... Highways and Transportation (Saskatchewan)...? Would like to begin a few articles and start right from beginning. Kind Regards SriMesh | talk  02:00, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm not seeing "Department" on the webpage in question, and "Ministry" seems to the formal title as far as I can tell. Accordingly, Ministry of Highways and Infrastructure (Saskatchewan) would be correct. The Tom (talk) 16:20, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Shortly after the Saskatchewan Party took power, there was an announcement saying that all government "departments" would be referred to henceforth as "ministries". I can't find the news release but the information on the government web sites would appear to corroborate that.
 * Thank youSriMesh | talk  16:03, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Just recently found this in 2005 archives as well...Federal Government Departments Style SriMesh | talk  16:25, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Non-ambiguous municipal entities
Is this guideline really intended to apply to non-ambiguous municipal entities??? Someone citing this guideline moved Seattle Police Department to Seattle Police Department (Washington), which seems like entirely unnecessary disambiguation, which is generally discouraged. 76.121.3.85 (talk) 04:33, 2 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Ninetyone (talk) and SGT141 (talk) moved almost all those articles, including one (Sacramento County Sheriff's Department) that I had reverted and asked for a discussion (Talk:Sacramento County Sheriff's Department) more than a year before another round of moves (before this one) by one of the same individuals, to no avail. Apparently, there was a Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Law Enforcement which I do not frequent, apparently in response to this new round of undiscussed moves. The discussion took place over the span of a week (giving me, in particular, no time to respond) with a total a 4 people contributing, which resulted in a completely new round of pre-disambiguation moves. My point on my particular page is that SGT141 has pre-disambiguated a page with no ambiguity (there is no other Sacramento County) and with the jurisdiction clearly a natural part of the title. The reasons for the move (a interpretation of this convention), if let stand, would be applicable to any government department, leading to the moves of pretty much every municipal government department/agency. And compared to the original 4 votes in favor, there has been considerable opposition to the moves, which were done claiming the discussion was a consensus. I would like people's input on the matter, preferably on the WikiProject talk page. Also see my discussion on the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department talk page. Int21h (talk) 03:48, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Shouldn't Houston Police Department be in the same boat as New York City Police Department. A user is saying it should be at Houston Police Department (Texas) - But the article about the Texas city is at Houston, not Houston, Texas, and the guideline is saying to generally follow U.S. city naming guidelines, yes? WhisperToMe (talk) 07:46, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Odd regional bias in legislation section
For some reason Naming conventions (government and legislation) seems to be entirely biased towards the UK. However, the convention set out is already in use for non-UK legislation so this regional bias seems redundant. I've therefore taken out the word "UK". -- ChrisO (talk) 15:21, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

RFC – WP title decision practice
Over the past several months there has been contentious debate over aspects of WP:Article Titles policy. That contentiousness has led to efforts to improve the overall effectiveness of the policy and associated processes. An RFC entitled: Wikipedia talk:Article titles/RFC-Article title decision practice has been initiated to assess the communities’ understanding of our title decision making policy. As a project that has created or influenced subject specific naming conventions, participants in this project are encouraged to review and participate in the RFC.--Mike Cline (talk) 16:37, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Elections
I would like to propose changing: "Demonym type election, date" (Canadian federal election, 1867). to "Demonym type election of date" (Canadian federal election of 1867). to allow making the title bold in the article. Apteva (talk) 05:12, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't understand the problem. You can just pipe it: Canadian federal election of 1867.  I prefer keeping the established convention of using a comma rather than parentheses, lacking a good reason to change, keep the status quo. Wbm1058 (talk) 17:33, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
 * If you mean making the title bold in Canada elections, 1867 is in boldface in the template at the bottom of the article. Wbm1058 (talk) 17:40, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
 * WP is going to be around for a long, long time, and I see no reason for making everyone create articles like Canadian federal election, 1867, which in the lead has no way of making the title bold, and instead makes the proposed title, Canadian federal election of 1867, bold. Why make everyone for the next forever years do it this way just because it was done this way originally? Apteva (talk) 21:09, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Requested moves
Regarding naming conventions for initiatives and referendums, or, more specifically, Initiatives and referendums in the United States, there are some open requested moves. Should a more specific policy be developed to address these? – Wbm1058 (talk) 16:32, 12 December 2012 (UTC)


 * (Discuss) – Nebraska Initiative Measure 416 (2000) → Nebraska Initiative Measure 416 – * Unnecessary disambiguation 82.132.139.249 (talk) 23:46, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Colorado Amendment 43 (2006) → Colorado Amendment 43
 * Arizona Proposition 102 (2008) → Arizona Proposition 102


 * (Discuss) – Arizona Proposition 200 (2004) → Arizona Proposition 200 – per WP:PRECISION 82.132.139.248 (talk) 12:20, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Arizona Proposition 107 (2006) → Arizona Proposition 107
 * Arizona Proposition 207 (2006) → Arizona Proposition 207
 * Arizona Proposition 100 (2010) → Arizona Proposition 100


 * (Discuss) – Washington Initiative 1029 → Washington Initiative 1029 (2008) – Undo massive unquestioned technical request moves. (formatting request, not proposing or opposing) Apteva (talk) 03:08, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Washington Initiative 1068 → Washington Initiative 1068 (2010)
 * Washington Initiative 1185 → Washington Initiative 1185 (2012)
 * Washington Initiative 1240 → Washington Initiative 1240 (2012)
 * Washington Initiative 276 → Washington Initiative 276 (1972)
 * Washington Initiative 692 → Washington Initiative 692 (1998)
 * Washington Initiative 912 → Washington Initiative 912 (2005)
 * Washington Initiative 920 → Washington Initiative 920 (2006)
 * Washington Initiative 933 → Washington Initiative 933 (2006)
 * Washington Initiative 937 → Washington Initiative 937 (2006)
 * Washington Initiative 960 → Washington Initiative 960 (2007)
 * Washington Referendum 74 → Washington Referendum 74 (2012)
 * Washington Initiative 502 → Washington Initiative 502 (2011)


 * (Discuss) – Colorado Amendment 38 (2006) → Colorado Amendment 38 – * unnecessary disambiguation (these are numbered individually so the year is not needed). 82.132.248.41 (talk) 11:04, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Current guideline is:

==Elections==
 * For elections, use the format "Demonym type election, date" (Canadian federal election, 1867).

I propose:

==Elections, initiatives and propositions==
 * For elections, use the format "Demonym type election, date" (Canadian federal election, 1867).
 * For initiatives, use the format "Demonym type initiative, date" (Washington initiative 1068, 2010).
 * For propositions, use the format "Demonym type proposition, date" (Arizona proposition 207, 2006). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wbm1058 (talk • contribs) 17:27, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Note that in political science, a Proposition is an initiative or referendum. – Wbm1058 (talk) 17:47, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

For those concerned that this guideline violates WP:PRECISION, my feeling is that this is a valid exception, along the lines of Bothell → Bothell, Washington. – Wbm1058 (talk) 17:54, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Articles in categories Ballot measures and Initiatives and referendums in the United States are effected by this proposal. Wbm1058 (talk) 18:35, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

It occurs to me that the comma guideline works well for United States presidential election, 1796 because there is only one presidential election in a given year and thus we don't need to number the elections for disambiguation. If we did, then United States presidential election 3, 1796 would look kind of clunky with the two adjacent numbers. So maybe when two numbers are required for disambiguation, it makes sense to put the second in parentheses, e.g., Washington initiative 1068 (2010). Note that redlinks because of MOS:CAPS issues, or does an initiative become a proper name when it's numbered? (Washington Initiative 1068 (2010)) Wbm1058 (talk) 18:58, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Propositions in the United States re often by letter, but usually by number. I agree that it is desirable to include four-digit years in article titles. Given that the comma is used in the US to separate place-values (for numbers above 1000) this is visually confusing. Any digit, followed by a comma and another group of two or more digits risks visual ambiguity. Are we agreed that some indication of four-digit year is desirable, though, preferably at the end of the article title? Rorybowman (talk) 23:19, 12 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Support Demonym + Proposition + Designator + Year format, however punctuated. Rorybowman (talk) 23:26, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

I would make a friendly, clarifying note, that the date of official filing be the date used. Some measures may be filed in one calendar year, but voted on in another, as was the case with Washington Initiative 502 (2011), an initiative to the legislature which was actually on the ballot in 2012. Rorybowman (talk) 15:19, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Demonym. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. For American initiatives, at least, this would result in a mass renaming that in many cases will look awkward at best. The topics listed in the above RMs would become Nebraskan, Arizonan, Washingtonian, and Coloradan. Demonyms may work at the national level, * but not at the state level. ( * And yet we have "United States presidential election," not "American presidential election," presumably due to avoid ambiguity.) --BDD (talk) 17:20, 14 December 2012 (UTC)


 * I would have rephrased it to read Jurisdiction + Proposition + Designator + Year, but the concept of specific precision remains. For any move request the key guideline is WP:NAMINGCRITERIA which values recognizability, naturalness, precision, conciseness and consistency. WP:DAB fetishists will often disagree, which is one thing which makes WP:REDIRECT so helpful. Nothing in giving a name the most precise and concise title policy forbids shorter and less precise redirects. Rorybowman (talk) 22:30, 14 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Also, oppose the proposed changes. They indeed violate WP:PRECISION, and I'd want more than personal preference to run with that. This is an argument to disambiguate everything. --BDD (talk) 17:22, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Oppose. We don't need to add a new policy which conflicts with existing policies - and which prioritises lining up lots of article titles neatly, at the cost of accuracy, readability, and naturalness. WP:AT and WP:COMMONNAME work just fine. The recent RM disagreements have come about because, apparently, a project has set its own guideline which is incompatible with WP:AT and WP:COMMONNAME; but that should be a non-issue because consensus across enwiki takes precedence over consensus within one wikiproject. bobrayner (talk) 01:14, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I believe there was a discussion in February (mentioned just above this section) which addressed both of these opposition concerns, and this can be reviewed at Wikipedia_talk:Article_titles/RFC-Article_title_decision_practice. It is heartening that we are back to WP:AT though and stepping away from previous WP:DAB distractions and WP:REDIRECT avoidance. Rorybowman (talk) 15:56, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't follow the concept that my proposal "violates" or "conflicts" with policy, if this were true then "Exceptions to the precision criterion, validated by consensus, may sometimes result from the application of some other naming criteria. Most of these exceptions are described in specific Wikipedia guidelines, such as Primary topic, Geographic names, or Names of royals and nobles." would not be allowed by policy. Just to further flesh out the opinions of "precision purists", why not Initiative 692? If we don't need a year to disambiguate, why do we even need a state.  There is only one Initiative 692.  If this causes any confusion, then the year and state can be given in the lead sentence.  692 is a year, so we can't drop the word initiative, i.e., "Yes on 692!" requires disambiguation of 692 (except during a campaign, when ubiquitous TV advertising may make "the issue" primary topic). – Wbm1058 (talk) 01:11, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm strongly with you on this, Wbm1058, and am not certain what the concern is, given WP:CHEAP. Ballot propositions of various sorts clearly fall within the general rubric of elections, and the elimination of parenthesis in preference to a comma-delimter is more in keeping with those, established WP:NAMINGCRITERIA. Concerns about WP:DAB are clearly WP:GOODFAITH but seem to miss the importance of the Bothell, Washington example given at WP:PRECISE. Rorybowman (talk) 02:37, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Years in Proposition and other Ballot Measure Titles
There are a variety of lists which demonstrate it has long been custom to include year numbers in proposition measures, such as California Proposition 13 (1978) or Oregon Ballot Measure 9 (1992) as can be verified by a glance at List of Arizona ballot propositions, List of California ballot propositions 2000–2009, List of Oregon ballot measures etcetera. There is a proposal just above to slightly modify this convention to use commas as the four-digit-year delimiter rather than parentheses to enclose the year? Would it be simpler to simply amend it to match the current custom for now (recognizing parenthetical years) and come back to the question of a comma delimiter?

To repeat the current guideline for elections from Wbm1058

==Elections==
 * For elections, use the format "Demonym type election, date" (Canadian federal election, 1867).

Rather than quarrel about comma consistency, might it be simpler to recognize current parenthetical practice, by slightly modifying [User:Wbm1058|Wbm1058]]'s proposal above, recognizing "that in political science, a Proposition is an initiative or referendum" or various similar ballot measures, such as those at List of Colorado ballot measures.

==Elections, initiatives and propositions==
 * For non-US elections, use the format "Demonym type election, date" such as Canadian federal election, 1867.
 * For US elections, continue the current practice of "Jurisdiction election, date" such as United States elections, 2006.
 * For US initiatives, use the format "Jurisdiction Initiative, date" such as Washington Initiative 1068 (2010).
 * For US propositions, use the format "Jurisdiction proposition, date" such as Arizona Proposition 207 (2006).

The point about the Bothell → Bothell, Washington example at WP:PRECISION still stands, but is it simpler to codify the parenthetical practice here rather than hector for comma consistency? Rorybowman (talk) 15:37, 23 December 2012 (UTC)
 * See above. I think that of year is more practical than, year. I do not see any need to add advice on propositions and initiatives, particularly singling out US props and initiatives - I rather suspect that many other countries may have them too. It is fine to change Demonym to Demonym/Jurisdiction:

==Elections==
 * For elections, use the format "Demonym type/Jurisdiction election of date": (Canadian federal election of 1867, United States Senate elections of 1788, French presidential election of 1848).

Note that all of those use of in the lead sentence. --Apteva (talk) 08:33, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

Calling the Question re Article Titles for Ballot Measures
In response to a batch of undiscussed moves over a month ago, discussion about WP:AT was initiated above and it seems to me there is a proposal consistent with other government and legislation article titles:


 * For US initiatives and similar ballot measures, use the format "Jurisdiction Measure Identifier, Year" (California Proposition 13, 1978; Washington Referendum 71, 2009; Maine Question 1, 2009).

Currently there are at least four different ways that such measures are titled, and recent changes have created inconsistency within given states, complicating the previous inconsistency across the project. Is there any desire to have a consistent naming convention or should this be kicked down to as many as fifty different projects on a state level. For the recent Initiative 502 in Washington there is no other discernible initiative 502 anywhere else, ever, so a strict WP:DAB partisan might assert that this is sufficient. Some states re-use initiative titles and some do not, so there are dozens of potential articles called Oregon Ballot Measure 1. Past practice for Washington and Oregon has been to include parenthetical years and WP:CHEAP so that Measure 9 and Oregon Ballot Measure 9 both WP:REDIRECT to Oregon Ballot Measure 9 (1992), but this is not consistent with other G&L election titles such as Maine Question 1, 2009 and Maine Question 1, 2012. Is there any consensus to adopt ANY of the four options available (Measure 9; Oregon Ballot Measure 9; Oregon Ballot Measure 9 (1992) or Oregon Ballot Measure 9, 1992) or to go forward with no standard? If so, what is it and (as importantly) when do we decide that there is no consensus and that this topic should be abandoned here? Rorybowman (talk) 15:08, 31 December 2012 (UTC)
 * It's disappointing to hear the crickets chirping here. FYI, if you haven't noticed yet, the RM at Talk:Nebraska Initiative Measure 416 closed.  I also opened a discussion at Categories for discussion/Log/2013 January 3.  It seems the community consensus is to drop the year from the article title Nebraska Initiative Measure 416 (2000), so that on the category page Category:Nebraska ballot measures you don't see what year the measures were voted on. Well, you do know that one of them must have been in 2000, and the other in 2008, but you need to click on the subcategory links Category:Nebraska ballot measures, 2000 and Category:Nebraska ballot measures, 2008 to see which is which.  I think the consensus has it all backwards, but what can you do. Nothing to lose sleep over. Actually the problem of display on the category pages could be fixed by categorizing the redirects which show the years. – Wbm1058 (talk) 14:31, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
 * The RM at Talk:Colorado Amendment 38 has also been closed. Seems that only states like Arizona, with clearly documented re-use of numbers, will keep their parenthetical year disambiguation. Might as well just update  Naming conventions (government and legislation) to reflect that. Wbm1058 (talk) 14:31, 5 January 2013 (UTC)


 * I haven't been following discussions across all fifty states, and don't have an issue with each individual state choosing an alternative WP:AT convention. My hope is that we can agree on a default convention here and let more local projects decide to do something different, saving time in the absence of any such discussion. My hope is to eliminate semi-random WP:DAB changes by WP:AGF editors who may a bit too WP:BOLD and all subsequent waste. I had hoped to clean up the variously-abandoned lists of initiatives and ballot measures for Oregon and Washington this past month (now that elections are over) and want some clear structure before starting that. After all, WP:PACT, eh? 8^) Rorybowman (talk) 17:34, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Proposed naming convention (UK Parliament constituencies)
Advertising the proposed Naming conventions (UK Parliament constituencies) here, as specified in Article_titles. I'm not sure whether constituencies are covered by this or not. Pam D  13:43, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

Swiss federal popular initiatives
Switzerland is a unique case in term of voting ("Since the end of the eighteenth century, more than five hundred national referendums were organised in the world; among them, more than three hundred were held in Switzerland", see Referendum) and I think we could add a sentence about the Swiss federal popular initiatives in the naming conventions.

The current situation is predominantly as Federal popular initiative "against excessive remunerations" and it make sense as (1) this is clear and accurate and (2) it corresponds to the use in Switzerland's own languages (e.g. Eidgenössische Volksinitiative «gegen die Abzockerei» in German and Initiative populaire « contre les rémunérations abusives » in French). Note: for your information, see also Talk:Swiss popular initiative "Against mass immigration".

Therefore, I suggest that we add the sentence "For Swiss federal popular initiatives, use the format Federal popular initiative "official name" (e.g. Federal popular initiative "against excessive remunerations")." in the "Elections and referendums" section of the convention page.

Rv Req Taqc (talk) 16:51, 24 September 2014 (UTC).
 * In response to the suggestion, the short answer is no - there is no need for Swiss article titles to be any different to those of other countries. Other editors might want to note that this editor is almost certainly a sock of User:Soapamalkanmaime, and an SPI has been opened. Cheers, Number   5  7  16:55, 24 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Number 57, you renamed some articles during an ongoing discussion, violating Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point. Ms Mitch Kwan (talk) 17:09, 24 September 2014 (UTC).
 * Another sock. Number   5  7  17:13, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

Need to include standard content
The Project needs to include standard content as follows:

For "Elections in n", content should include certified elections results if available. Other content may include:
 * Polls leading up to the election, where germane
 * Campaign summary, where appropriate
 * A political analysis of the electorate, germane to elections
 * Binding referendums and constitutional changes enacted by the public at large

Unique legislation should be included in article entitled "Politics of n." Only legislation which has actually been enacted into law should be included.

The intent of the above is to prevent articles from being so open-ended that no limit is possible. By recognizing that most countries are run as a republic (representative government), only the representative participates directly in the "political process." The public votes for the representative. Their ability starts and stops there. No amount of talk show discussion can alter that fact! Everything else is "campaigning" = Elections. Student7 (talk) 02:58, 15 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I missed this when it was posted. This isn't the right place for this to be detailed. This should be in the respective manuals of style for WP Politics and WP Elections and Referendums. Also, I'm not sure it is actually an accurate reflection of what should be included – opinion polls and campaign details should be in individual election articles, but not in the main Elections in X article. Number   5  7  22:09, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Well, I've moved it. Don't really feel that comfortable distancing titles from content. Student7 (talk) 22:18, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

We've got a problem
Discussion moved from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Elections and Referendums.

Hello.

The current naming convention for election articles – election, – does not work well when is a comma-disambiguated item, such as in the case of most American cities. "City, State" makes an awkward compound modifier that is recommended against in several style guides. An example with such comma disambiguation – other than election article titles – I've seen mentioned somewhere in the WP guidelines (though I don't remember where) is:
 * a May 10, 2010 Toledo, Ohio court case

Per WP:Copyedit, a comma is needed to "close" the disambiguation, except at the end of an expression or a statement, or followed by other punctuation. But a grammatically correct result is not much of an improvement:
 * a May 10, 2010, Toledo, Ohio, court case

Way too many commas. So, this is what's preferred:
 * a court case in Toledo, Ohio, on May 10, 2010

Thus, I'm proposing a change in the current naming convention for election articles that cover elections in places with a two-part comma-disambiguated name. This is mostly (I guess) articles on mayoral elections, so the impact should be limited.

In order to avoid the clunky compound modifier, one has to place where it feels less awkward, either where there's already a comma per the current naming convention (example 1 below), or at the end of the expression/sentence (example 2 below).

Example 1:
 * Mayoral election in Portland, Maine, 2011

Example 2:
 * 2011 mayoral election in Portland, Maine

I created an RM at Talk:Portland, Maine mayoral election, 2011, and a CfD at Categories for discussion/Log/2015 November 4, but user User:Udonknome advised me that I should start a discussion over here instead.

HandsomeFella (talk) 19:14, 8 November 2015 (UTC)
 * The relevant naming convention is WP:NC-GAL. Any discussion should probably talk place on that talk page, with members notified here.
 * I'm not a fan of the proposed style. If a double comma is really a problem (I'm not sure it is), then perhaps removing or moving the disambiguation would be better. For example; Portland mayoral election, 2015 rather than Portland, Maine mayoral election, 2015. If there were two Portlands having an election that year, it could be disambiguated as "Portland mayoral election, 2015 (Maine)", which would fit better into the naming convention.
 * Alternatively, I wouldn't mind Udonknome's suggestion of 2015 Portland, Maine mayoral election. I have often wondered why elections are not named with the year first. I would go as far as saying I would support amending the guideline in this way, providing we could get a bot to do the move of (tens of) thousands of articles. Number   5  7  21:05, 8 November 2015 (UTC)


 * I'm fine with having the year first (as in example 2 above), but the thing is that the problem is not solved with Udonknome's proposal. It is still lacking the closing comma per WP:Copyedit (after "Maine"), and it is still an awkward compound modifier.
 * There is actually a Portland, Oregon, which is both the state capital, and a bigger city than Portland, Maine, so I guess there's a considerable chance/risk of there being articles on mayoral elections in both cities in the same year sooner or later.
 * And are there really tens of thousands of articles on mayoral elections? A quick sum from the category trees gives me less than 300.
 * HandsomeFella (talk) 21:30, 8 November 2015 (UTC)
 * If the guideline was changed to the year-fronted solution, it would apply to all election articles, of which there are indeed tens of thousands. Number   5  7  21:53, 8 November 2015 (UTC)
 * We don't have to have one-solution-for-all, regardless of grammatical consequences. Two-part comma-disambiguated names require a different approach. HandsomeFella (talk) 11:21, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

I, for the longest time, have wanted to move these election articles into  election, but that's just me... – H T  D  17:51, 2 December 2015 (UTC)
 * By all means start an RFC and I will support it. However, a major issue that needs to be borne in mind is that there are tens of thousands of articles – can we can get a bot to do the moves (and how it would recognise appropriate articles) if a decision is made to change? Number   5  7  21:27, 2 December 2015 (UTC)
 * I guess a bot could easily to do this if all election articles were categorized properly and no article would be left behind. I don't think anyone would oppose this though, right? What could be the possible hindrances? A year fronted name would produce "2016 Portland, Maine mayoral election", and that looks good enough grammatically(?). One would like the year at the end, like "Portland, Maine mayoral election 2016" and I would like that as well (as a second choice). Either of those would be an improvement to the current nomenclature. – H T  D  16:59, 3 December 2015 (UTC)
 * I disagree that removing the comma would be an improvement. Number   5  7  19:46, 3 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Anything that comes after the comma could be perceived as a "disambiguatory" clause. "United Kingdom general election, 2015" implies that the most commonly used name for this event is "United Kingdom general election". That could very well be possible, but people who prefer "2015 United Kingdom general election" or "United Kingdom general election 2015" would say otherwise. The latter example removes any doubt on what the article is about. – H T  D  04:41, 24 December 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't think the inclusion of the comma leaves anyone in any doubt. But anyway, as I said, I would be fully supportive of putting the year at the start. Number   5  7  09:46, 24 December 2015 (UTC)
 * none of your two proposals solve the problem, as the omit the comma that is called for by WP:Copyedit. See instead my proposals above. They are the only variants I can think of that would solve the problem. HandsomeFella (talk) 16:34, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
 * I still don't think it is a problem. Plus I don't believe WP:COPYEDIT is a relevant guideline in respect to article titles. Number   5  7  16:40, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Why wouldn't it apply to article titles? So guidelines in general apply for running text only? Or does that go for that particular one only? Where can you find support for that? HandsomeFella (talk) 11:18, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
 * It's quite obvious that it applies to article text. Where in the guideline does it mention article titles? Number   5  7  13:10, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Article titles are fragments of article text. Where does it say that the guideline doesn't apply to article titles? If no exceptions are mentioned, then it of course applies to article titles too. HandsomeFella (talk) 14:06, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
 * If it's not in Category:Wikipedia naming conventions, then I don't think it's relevant to article titles. But even if it was, I still don't think the comma is a problem. Number   5  7  14:38, 31 December 2015 (UTC)