Talk:Ethnological Museum of Berlin

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merge article with: Ethnological Museum of Berlin

Which one should be kept, which one merged into the kept one? I would keep Ethnologisches Museum (EM) and merge Ethnological Museum of Berlin (EMoB) into it. --Berny68 (talk) 17:53, 13 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

We normally go w WP:English. Are we sure that this is the same as the Museum für Völkerkunde in Berlin? kwami (talk) 23:05, 13 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Here my collected criteria, why both are about the same museum:

Both articles link to the same web page, (EM) just to the German version while (EMoB) links to the English version of it. The text shown there however translates 1:1.
Both articles refer to the same German interwiki link.
Museum für Völkerkunde just adds to confusion and is not the current German name anymore, as was the case until 1999. Since then the correct German name is Ethnologisches Museum.

Regarding the naming convention: If you look at List_of_museums_in_Germany#Berlin you find a curious mix of English and German names. I wonder how that language choice is justified in all these cases. In my humble opinion there should be more consistency, as I think one should expect to find in an encyclopedia. Otherwise you risk to easily get lost while searching.--Berny68 (talk) 11:52, 14 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I agree on the naming problems. We have two competing standards: use English, and use the most common name. That's a problem when they produce diff results if they're not combined to mean "most common English name". What may be happening is diff subjective judgements of which is more important for diff articles. The German has the benefit of being precise (assuming it's precise in German, which isn't always the case); the English has the benefit of being comprehensible, though there may be more than one English translation. kwami (talk) 06:30, 15 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Both articles are definitely referring to the same museum (I've been there several times). In case of a merger, one would remain as a redirect to the other, so the naming problems seem to be a fairly minor problem in this case. "Ethnological Museum of Berlin" is probably preferrable simply because it's easier to memorize for an English-speaking audience and would be name used travel guides etc. Malc82 (talk) 19:42, 15 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The museum site uses "Ethnological Museum" in its English version, so that would seem to be the appropriate name for us to use. kwami (talk) 12:41, 16 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think the name of the city should be part of the article lemma. The article Museum of Ethnology, Vienna links to the English offical website named "The Museum of Ethnology", while the article Vietnam Museum of Ethnology links to the official English website named "Vietnam Museum of Ethnology". I think Wikipedia should come up with its own system of naming as consistently as possible and redirect any more official name to that article. Just using an English name where officially existing and a local name where that's not the case leads to a wild mix of English and local names, which should be avoided in my humble opinion, in favour of consistency. --Berny68 (talk) 23:32, 16 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it needs the city. My point was that when the museum writes in English, it uses an English name, so so should we.

Merged. kwami (talk) 09:10, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, kwami. --Berny68 (talk) 21:07, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]