Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Naming conventions for United States federal buildings

Name of RFC
The name of the RFC is biased, IMHO, in favor of the alternative preferred strongly by one participant in the discussions. In an edit with edit summary "moved Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Naming conventions for United States federal buildings to Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Naming conventions for federal buildings: remove bias in RFC title. Mention both "U.S. or United States" or neither.", I moved the RFC to a name not using either.

Immediately this was reverted by BD2412 with edit summary: "moved Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Naming conventions for federal buildings to Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Naming conventions for United States federal buildings over redirect: moving back, since the RFC title would otherwise fail to ind..."

BD2412, what is the rest of your edit summary? It is cut off in display. What reason, if any, is there that the RFC could not be at a neutral title? --doncram (talk) 23:09, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
 * The RFC title should indicate the country it is addressing, since the United States is not the only country with federal buildings. The purpose of having "United States" in the title is not to indicate which form is proper, but to indicate in a respectful manner that this discussion deals with buildings of the United States of America. I'd rather you had commented on the subject when I noted on your talk page that the draft of this discussion was underway, over two days ago. bd2412  T 23:45, 18 July 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm sorry i have been unable to address this RFC during this time, though I had done plenty previously towards setting this up. I thought we were going to discuss an unbiased RFC statement, and observe you just went ahead with one, while we might have still resolved some of the issues and pared the topic down to be more useful for more editors.  I am surprised you just opened the RFC, and especially at a biased title.


 * Okay, you want to indicate that it is about the U.S. So, a title using both term or neither would do:
 * Naming conventions for U.S./United States federal buildings
 * Naming conventions for American federal buildings
 * Naming conventions for federal buildings in the USA
 * Can you please agree to one of those, or suggest another unbiased one? Or, perhaps it would be most fair to move this to "Naming conventions for U.S. federal buildings" to provide equal air-time for the other usage. --doncram (talk) 00:25, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

How about "Naming conventions for federal buildings of the country formerly known as the British North American colonies"? Kidding, but really people are not going to be biased by the RFC title. I have yet to see a comment that suggests that. bd2412 T 01:22, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Old U.S. ones, and ones no longer serving as post offices
I notice we didn't ask the RFC question separately for places that are still serving as U.S. Post Offices, vs. many NRHP-listed places that are literally named "Old U.S. Post Office" and are no longer serving as post offices. Or for others that are not still post offices, named "Old" or not. BD2412 indicated somewhere else that he felt no-longer-current post offices could be called whatever, that his otherwise strong preference for "United States" no longer applied, that they could be called whatever their owners want them called. I feel that way too, that if the consensus was for "United States" to be used formally for current post offices no matter what is their actual common name, that i would strongly want to allow the actual common name for non-current post offices. There are at least a dozen NRHP-listed places named "Old U.S. Post Offices or "Old U.S. Post Office and Courthouse" or "Old U.S. Customhouse and Post Office" or other variations. There will be many more places no longer serving as post offices.  What to do now?  Ask each respondent a followup question?  Or add another RFC question or two? --doncram (talk) 03:29, 20 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I think I was referring to former post offices that had been renamed completely, like O. Henry Hall, the Hippodrome State Theatre, and the Imagination Station Science Museum. bd2412  T 12:04, 20 July 2010 (UTC)