Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (political parties)

I propose including the following chapter into the text:

"

Differentiation between media usage and self-presentation
The general rule is that English translations of party name ought to be used in the name of an article. But in many cases a variety of translations are possible. In some cases guidance can be taken from websites of a party or organization, or from promotional material of the party in question.

In the case of most parties of non-English speaking countries no well-established naming convention is present in international English-language newsmedia. The party name ought to be translated into English with the generical meaning intact, even if such a translation is different from the English-language name presented at the website of the party. Translations imported from party websites should only be used in cases were the generic meaning remains unchanged (like whether to use 'Labour' or 'Labor', 'Popular' or 'People's', etc.). "

--Soman 08:47, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

"Ressurected" parties
There are a number of cases where a party formally either merges or dissolves (or splits, often around name changes) and a legally new organisation subsequently emerges using the name and claiming the legacy of the previous party. And usually the "resurrected" party is a much smaller entity with less political impact than the original at its height, but it's not always clear which should get the name.

Examples include:


 * The default namespace for both Liberal Party (UK) and Social Democratic Party (UK) are held by the parties that merged in 1988 to form the Liberal Democrats. A group of Liberals opposed to the merger and resulting party formed the Liberal Party (UK, 1989). Similarly an anti-merger Social Democratic Party (UK, 1988) was formed but dissolved after two years. Anti-dissolutionists formed the Social Democratic Party (UK, 1990) which is now in truly micro party form.


 * The default for the Australian Democratic Labor Party is the post dissolution ressurected party, with the more significant historic party at Democratic Labor Party (historical).


 * Communist Party of Australia redirects to Communist Party of Australia (defunct) with the less significant revival at Communist Party of Australia (revived).

And the biggest mess I'm aware of (including a mix of English and Afrikaner names - and that linguistic division is not unimportant for some of the splits):


 * National Party (South Africa). This went through a number of splits, refuseniks carrying on the name, "reunifications", rebrandings and so forth throughout it's history, with articles on:
 * National Party (South Africa) (trying to cover 1914-2005, claiming continuity in the 1934-1940 period and that the party only renamed itself in 1997)
 * Gesuiwerde Nasionale Party "Purified National Party" (not yet an article but the rump who rejected the merger into the United Party in 1934 and joined a breakaway faction from the United Party in 1940)
 * Herenigde Nasionale Party "Reunited National Party" (the resulting fusion which went on to win the 1948 election and subsequently shrank the name down to National Party; this article starts off describing a distinct party but trails away as though the National Party article carries on)
 * New National Party (South Africa) (covering 1997-2005 and claiming the party was created then)

There's also issues about which party or parties should get the Sinn Féin namespace, another situation with multiple splits that in most cases saw the minority faction carry on with the name (at least in the long term).

And of course Communist Parties in general pose numerous problems in this field.

Anyone got any thoughts on the best advice for how to handle such situations? I'm not convinced the current arrangement always gives the main namespace to the strongest claimant. Timrollpickering (talk) 19:42, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Parties in multilingual countries
Could someone please explain the reasons for Exception No. 4? Because I am not able to see any sense in that, or to think of any reason for that. Also, through using the word always in the rule, isn't it a bit of nonsense anyway? Can't be too hard finding at least one single mention of the translated name... --Completefailure (talk) 22:06, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Because English-language media tends to follow the same principle. Batasuna is never refered to in English-language media as 'Unity'. If local media don't translate the name from one language to another, foreign media generally follows the same naming pattern. --Soman (talk) 00:57, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Belgian parties
However, I still don't understand how Exception No. 4 is applied to Belgium. The main parties, whether French-, Dutch- or German-speaking, have names with obvious translations and are referred in English in English media (the only exception is Vlaams Belang), but only some of them have been translated in en.Wiki article names.

Thus, we have some with an English title...
 * Open Flemish Liberals and Democrats
 * Socialist Party – Differently
 * Socialist Party (francophone Belgium)
 * New Flemish Alliance
 * National Front (Belgium)
 * Christian Social Party (Belgium)
 * Communist Party (Wallonia)
 * Left Socialist Party (Belgium)

...and others with a French or Dutch title:
 * Christen-Democratisch en Vlaams
 * Centre démocrate humaniste
 * Mouvement Réformateur
 * Vlaams Belang
 * Lijst Dedecker
 * Groen!
 * Ecolo
 * Partei für Freiheit und Fortschritt

This inconsistency is simply unacceptable to me and I already proposed to discuss the issue in order to find a general rule consistent with the fact that most parties in en.Wiki have English names in order to make life easier to readers. In that occasion only one user strongly opposed the all-English solution and nothing was done. I confirm my opinion in support of all-English names (with the only possible exceptions of Vlaams Belang and, maybe, of the two green parties) and I hope to see a new discussion of the subject. --Checco (talk) 14:29, 18 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Belgium parties seem to be a mess all round. Most English language media coverage I've seen of them tends to hide behind acronyms like "Open VLD" that are fairly incomprehensible to all but the initiated. I'm not sure there is a workable solution that will easily fit beyond the handful where the name is known and easily fit into Exception 2 (e.g. Vlaams Belang). Timrollpickering (talk) 15:06, 18 June 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) 16:38, 17 February 2012 (UTC)