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Requested move - July 2006

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the debate was no consensus for move. Joelito (talk) 16:33, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

  • Georgia (country) → Georgia … Rationale: Countries should take precedent over sub-national units. —FrancisTyers · 12:13, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
    • This is a perennial point of contention. There has been an open-ended poll at Talk:Georgia for some time now, which has shown no consensus to give priority to either the country or the state. Rather than begin a new poll and rehash all of the same old arguments, pleast review that page. older ≠ wiser 13:36, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
I've been bold and closed that poll as no-consensus. It had been going on for way too long. Of course if anyone objects, I'm happy to have my actions reviewed on WP:ANI. This poll will be open for the standard amount of time per WP:RM, so 5 days in order to get a consensus of 60%. Of course if it remains at 50/50 we can see about extending the amount of time when it occurs. - FrancisTyers · 17:29, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Or you could simply accept that there will be no consensus to change anything, and simply leave the status quo. Otherwise, it smacks of just revoting over and over again until someone gets the result they want. FCYTravis 21:35, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Well, I'd have to say that the last poll was hardly following the standard procedure (unless it was for the era — 2004). I suppose one day non-USians will outnumber USians and then the name will be changed. Lets see if thats now :) - FrancisTyers · 21:53, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Now you're just being knee-jerk anti-American. It is hardly the case that this is "USA vs. non-USA." You might notice that the very first Oppose vote is from a non-US citizen. FCYTravis 22:00, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
I've spoken to you on IRC about the former. I'm afraid it is very much the case that it is USA vs. non-USA, Telex's vote can be explained by the fact that he doesn't want a precedent set that countries take place over regions with regard to names, because of the ongoing dispute over the Republic of Macedonia and Makedonia. The people who are voting support come from a much broader national background than the people voting oppose. Although as always I am prepared to be proven wrong. - FrancisTyers · 22:12, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Not wanting to throw stones, but it definitely feels a bit shady when one closes a discussion where consensus has not been reached and promptly re-opens the discussion on a different page. Is there a particular reason why this couldn't be addressed in the accepted forum for the issue (the main disambig page)? --Vengeful Cynic 03:04, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
What my point is that this issue has nothing to do with the nationality. People who are reading the article about Georgia are probably in most cases American. Another thing that I would like wikipedians to realize is that this is not an Europe vs.USA or some ignorant statement like that. Making the move is not an underestimation for the state of Georgia, because making one more click is not going to harm the article, but Georgia (country) is definitely a ridiculous title and all the other titles such as "Republic of Georgia" and etc are not acceptable by the Constitution of Georgia. Thanks.Sosomk 10:59, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Generally, to avoid the appearance of attempting to get a biased result, we try to include all viewpoints in the poll header instead of just one. As such... the opposing viewpoint here is that we should follow standard Wikipedia practice of having the primary page go directly to the most used article (the one with the most Wiki-links and/or page views), which in this case would be the state, unless there are one or more other articles with the same name which are also heavily used (as here)... in which case the primary page is a disambiguation page. Exactly as things are set up currently. --CBD 09:31, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Survey

Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your opinion with ~~~~

Support (moving Georgia (country) → Georgia )

  1. Support as nominator. - FrancisTyers · 12:20, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
  2. Support bogdan 12:28, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
  3. Weak support We should however keep and expand the "Georgia (country)" use in categories for people, landmarks etc., as many American contributors seem not to notice what it is about unless you make it THAT obvious. Dahn 12:44, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
  4. Support Georgia the country has an impact on the rest of the world, whereas Georgia that state doesn't (seperately from the rest of the US, at any rate) Damburger 13:19, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
  5. Support More people seem to be interested in reading the article about the country of Georgia than the state of Georgia and there is not a real reason for keeping the dab page.Sosomk 13:48, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
  6. Support Following some hierarchy it only makes sense to have Georgia as the country, with a disambig on the top. --dcabrilo 16:34, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
  7. Support.--Kober 17:04, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
  8. Support Countries taking precedent over non-countries with regard to Wiki article naming makes the most sense. "Georgia" should point to the country, with a disambiguation link at the top. -- Hux 18:08, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
  9. Support —Michael Z. 2006-07-05 18:43 Z
  10. Support The country is of global relevance, the US state only within one country. --Latebird 20:50, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
  11. Support - one is a member of the US, the other is a member of the UN. Zocky | picture popups 22:22, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
  12. Support Eggric 00:06, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
  13. Support. Rebecca 00:16, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
  14. Support. We had similar issue with Azerbaijan the country and Azerbaijan the province of Iran. The article named Georgia should be about the country, as the subject of international law. Grandmaster 09:58, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
  15. Support --Tēlex 12:07, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
  16. Support Wikipedia is used by the whole Internet population which is well over 1 billion people. Thus of course Georgia should point to the country, since as a subject of international law it takes precedence over other Georgia's. When we think of Paris, Moscow or St. Petersburg, we don't think of the namesakes in the state of Florida, but in France and Russia. Likewise, at least 3/4th of the internet population probably thinks of the country of Georgia, not the US state. --AdilBaguirov 14:15, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
    But even Americans who hear the unqualified word Paris think of the city in France. Georgia guy 14:17, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
    I would challenge you to qualify that statement with proof. In my experience the country of Georgia is relatively unknown compared to the state of Georgia. JohnnyBGood t c VIVA! 22:33, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
  17. Support. Countries should have priority in using a generic name. Now, if Georgia (state) also decides to secede... then maybe this discussion would become more viable... :) Cheers all. Alsandro 14:33, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
  18. Support Just put disambig links on the top of both pages.--Eupator 14:40, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
  19. Support. Not that I'd care terribly much either way, but as a matter of principle I'd say it's slightly more correct this way. Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:48, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
  20. Strong Support I agree with Alsandro and Adil points. Ldingley 19:11, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
  21. Support. US-centric to have otherwise. If the move request is not supported, it will merely be showing up Wikipedia's editor makeup; a reason why Wikipedia is not ever going to be NPOV or accurate, majority rule rather than referring to academic authority. zoney ♣ talk 20:32, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
  22. Support - other national/subnational naming conflicts have taken similar routes. Wikipedia should reflect a global viewpoint in its naming conventions, not give precedence to an American state over an internationally recognised country. --Sam Pointon 21:02, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
  23. Support - giving equal weight to a subnational entity over a country, just because it is more common, is a perfect example of Wikipedia's systemic bias. --FlavrSavr 23:44, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
  24. Support - I would hate to see "Armenia (country)" All countries should be treated equal--we don't say "Lebanon (country)" just because there is such city in US.--TigranTheGreat 23:54, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
  25. Support-The country is more prominent than the US state. --TimBits 20:29, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
  26. Support --Yath 21:05, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
  27. Support - I have nothing against the U.S. state, but the primary article should be about the country. Valentinian (talk) 22:28, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
  28. Support. Picaroon9288 00:56, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
  29. Support. -- Chuq 03:39, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
  30. Support and the issue would not have even appeared anywhere outside of the US. --Irpen 04:00, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
  31. Support the country with a thousand-year history, its own language, alphabet, national culture is more important than a sub-national unit abakharev 05:29, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
  32. Support: we used to have an article at Mongolia (country) but now it's at Mongolia because fully independent states take precedence over sub-national entities regarding namespace. This would still be a case for primary DAB. Jonathunder 05:32, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
    • Correct me if I'm wrong, but there appears to be no other major geographical entity named Mongolia. There is Inner Mongolia, but that is properly located at its title of Inner Mongolia. Hence, no disambiguation is needed. Here, we have two separate major geographical entities named exactly the same thing - Georgia. Your analogy is not analogous. FCYTravis 06:33, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
  33. Support, Georgia is a sovereign state (recognized member of the United Nations, including by the USA), whereas the Georgia is a regional entity. --Soman 06:52, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
  34. Support. The country has priority - plus anyone who types in Georgia expecting the state gets some valuable education about the world outside! Sabine's Sunbird talk 07:07, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
  35. Support per nom, makes perfect sense. Use the {{otheruses4}} hatnote for disambiguation at the top of the article. heqs 07:20, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
  36. Support per nom. In my view the number of google hits is a red herring because searching on English language pages is bound to pick up more for US-based topics. It is simply a matter of one being a nation state, and the other a sub-national administrative unit. David | Talk 09:04, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
  37. Support, the country is the primary meaning for the most users, I'd say. —Nightstallion (?) 09:37, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
  38. Support a country is more notable than a state. Computerjoe's talk 10:07, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
  39. Support per nom.--Aldux 11:25, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
  40. Support, since Wikipedia is an international encyclopedia, and country must have priority over administrative unit. MaxSem 13:00, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
  41. Support. As an essentially sovereign entity, the country should take prevalence. The state, while no doubt possessing an extensive history and culture, is a far less important entity in terms of the power and autonomy of the governing body. McPhail 14:16, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
  42. Support This should be of no offense to the americans. But rather than voting on the basis of what is your "top of the mind" term, we should keep to some basic logic in which sovereign countries take precedence. Anyways, in my case, "top of the mind" is definitly Georgia, the country, as I believe it is in most of Europe.--Radufan 15:03, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
  43. Support See reasoning above and in older votes. -- Jordi·✆ 16:04, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
  44. Strong Support. per TimBits Elk Salmon 21:29, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
  45. Support. Shanes 14:05, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
  46. Support the country is more noteworthy than the state, because its a country. Philc TECI 15:04, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
    I honestly do not mean to be sarcastic in any way, but can you please explain why your reason is logically different from "A is more noteworthy than B, because it is A"? Sincerely, Cultural Freedom talk 2006-07-11 12:13 (UTC)
  47. Support. Countries dont need to be dabed. --curling rock Earl Andrew - talk 17:56, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
  48. Support UN member state, should thus take precedence over any other geographical, legal entity or personal / business name. Intangible 18:01, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
  49. Support To enable some sort of hierarchy, that would increase the user friendlines of wikipedia, and because it is a more important entity than the state this article should have the Georgia page for it self. This would also end this dispute for the future (this is the fourth vote), as I doubt any one would promote changing it back once it has been moved. --User:Moravice 18:35, 11 July 2006 (CET)
  50. Strong Support. -- Clevelander 17:52, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
  51. Support with establishment of a formal "countries take priority over states" rule. Rules are good. Ad-hoc "whatever people agree on" discussions are bad. Stevage 22:22, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
    Comment You think so? I know it was (kind of) mentioned elsewhere on this page, but what if Rome happened to be the name of both an Italian city and some small country with 200 people in it? Would it make any sense to anybody if the Rome article was about that country with a For the city, see Rome (city)? Rules are not always right. (I assume that by "country" you mean "state", and by "state" you mean "subnational unit".) Now, I'm not suggesting Georgia (U.S. state) is nearly as important as Rome, nor that Georgia (country) is nearly as unimportant as my example. I'm just saying... you can't make a rule in this case to apply to every situation. --SuperNova |T|C| 22:50, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
    Leaving the endless confusion between various meanings of "country" and misunderstandings of "state" aside, and going straight for the Rome example: An article about the modern city of Rome vs. an article about a UN member called Rome? UN member wins straight up. But, "Rome" is also the ancient civilization which directly formed the basis of the modern western civilization, which might influence the decision. Zocky | picture popups 23:04, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
  52. Support. A country with such a long history deserves the main page. jonosphere 01:21, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
  53. Support Georgia the country is more important. Now saying something is more important is admitedly a biased and non-factual judgement, but, Georgia can and (occssionally) does have an effect on an international scale. Georgia the US state does not. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Furius (talk • contribs) .
  54. Support The term Georgia referred to the nation of Georgia considerably longer than the state. D.Papuashvili 11:01, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Oppose (keep disambiguation at Georgia)

  • Disambiguation makes no judgements about importance, only about two things: what people are likely to want when they type "Georgia" into the search box and what usage incoming links are likely to refer to. Only if there is a supermajority for one usage, or possibly if that usage is the one after which the others are named, shall we use primary topic disambiguation. The second criterion is just as important as the first, as it affects not only our workload in fixing links but also whether a reader is confused. If an article says "The Coca-Cola Company is headquartered in Georgia", someone with only a vague idea of what each Georgia is will assume it is the country if the country's article is at Georgia. Yes, this is in theory something to be handled behind the scenes, but it is a lot harder to fix such links if we have a number of articles that should link to Georgia. --SPUI (T - C) 12:57, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
  1. Oppose - The country is not necessarily more noteworthy than the state just because it's a country. They are equally valid searches so the disambiguation page at Georgia is necessary. Jay32183 13:14, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
    Yes it does, the country is more notable because its a country. Just because you are in the US and you hear about it a lot, doesnt mean the rest of the english speaking world do. Philc TECI 15:04, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
    They are not equally valid. The United States and Georgia are both members of the United Nations, which makes Jay32183's argument totally invalid. Intangible 18:03, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
  2. Oppose, Georgia the country is both less populated and less known in the English speaking world. Seeing as this is an English language encyclopedia Georgia the state should take precedence over the country. JohnnyBGood t c VIVA! 17:37, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
  3. Oppose Georgia should remain as a disambiguation page. older ≠ wiser 17:49, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
  4. Oppose. State and country are about equally well known; Georgia should be a dab page. Eugène van der Pijll 21:01, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
  5. Oppose - Country being more important is irrelevant, in the English-speaking world, Georgia the state is on at least equal footing in terms of what people think of when they hear the word. This is the English pedia, we reflect the Anglosphere. --Golbez 21:23, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
  6. Oppose - Status quo should remain. FCYTravis 21:28, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
  7. Oppose - based on the wikimedia stats below, the two articles are of the same order of magnitude in terms of access and so Georgia should remain a disambiguation page. --Polaron | Talk 22:25, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
  8. Oppose - When there are two or more clearly important things with the same name, a disambiguation page is used. There exact relative prominence is irrelevant. Rmhermen 23:16, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
  9. Oppose, per Rmhermen. Both are important. Also: debates like this are divisive, which is not good for the Wikipedia community. --Cultural Freedom talk 2006-07-06 08:05 (UTC)
  10. Mild oppose. This is unnecessary divisive, and both sides have their valid arguments. I don't see particular reason to disrupt the status quo. Duja 08:43, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
    Actually I think the poll appears to be the opposive of divisive :) We have Armenians and Azerbaijanis both agreeing with each other :) A rare event indeed. - FrancisTyers · 19:18, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
    Just chiming in that there are also quite a few editors from English speaking countries who support the move. Zocky | picture popups 15:43, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
    If that's the case indeed, I'm scratching that argument...
    ...and changing my vote to "Strong oppose" :-). Duja 13:10, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
  11. Oppose, this debate is one of the most famous Wikipedia debates there are, and I doubt a consensus will ever be reached. These articles are of similar magnitude on Wikipedia. Disambiguation pages are an excellent way to increase the world-view of contributors and users. Someone looking for the state will see there's a country by that name, and vice-versa. -newkai | talk | contribs 10:46, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
    Someone looking for the state would see that there is a country from the page, someone looking for the country would see there is a state from the page, because the disambiguation would be noted in the disambig note at the top, e.g. "For the US state of Georgia, see Georgia (U.S. state, for all other meanings, see Georgia (disambiguation)." It really is 0 extra clicks for those trying to find the state, and -1 click for those trying to find the country. - FrancisTyers · 11:16, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
    However, in such a setup it is MUCH more difficult to disambiguate links to the articles. Editors (new and old alike) continue to link to Georgia for both country and state. The misplaced links to this page are gone through systematically on a fairly frequent basis using What links here to properly disambiguate the links. Such a process becomess immeasurably more difficult if the term is no longer a disambiguation page. older ≠ wiser 12:01, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
  12. Oppose. Neither entity is so much more important than the other as to warrant being placed at "Georgia". I believe it was inappropriate to suggest this; given the obvious division over this matter, there is little to no chance that 80% or so would be in favor. I am also dismayed by the overt anti-American agenda communicated by the nominator in his opening statements. — Knowledge Seeker দ 15:20, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
    The second time I've been accused of being Anti-American. I really am surprised :( - FrancisTyers · 19:18, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
  13. Oppose It shouldn't matter what their prominence is on the world stage, it matters what most en.wikipedia users are looking for. And neither Georgia is sufficiently head and shoulders above the other in that regard to make Georgia anything but a dab page. Kirjtc2 19:06, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
  14. Oppose per older/wiser. Septentrionalis 19:20, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
  15. Oppose - we have a disambig page because there is no clear-cut Georgia search topic in the english-language wikipedia. If we did, then one unit would be subordinated to the other. As is, leaving the disambig page is the best solution. --Vengeful Cynic 21:13, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
  16. Oppose -- Insufficient justification to change status quo. Maurreen 06:37, 7 July 2006 (UTC)``
  17. Oppose -- too much room for error. Chance for creating erroneous links is too high. Leave the disambig page. Errabee 12:39, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
  18. Oppose - purely anti-Americanism. The status quo is just fine. User:Zoe|(talk) 03:43, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
  19. Oppose as per the discussions we've had ad nauseum. If there were a Chinese province named France with a population greater than the country of France, I'd support having France be a disambig. page for those two also. --Delirium 04:30, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
  20. Oppose. I thought this was discussed at length before. No consensus is going to be reached on this issue so just keep it the way it is. --BWD (talk) 04:39, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
  21. Keep current solution/Oppose move - It's easier to disambiguate. Besides links to [[Georgia]] are more often about Georgia (U.S. state) (about 6000) than Georgia (country) (4000). -- User:Docu
  22. Oppose, present situation is a suitable compromise.-gadfium 04:58, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
  23. Oppose. I could accept either solution, but I don't see why a subnational state would necessarily be subordinate to a national state. You have to consider that not only are these regions political territories, but also populated regions in general. The state is over twice the size, and has nearly twice the population, and in many ways a longer standing history. Just because the independent state is independent doesn't necessarily suggest to me it is of enough greater importance that it should take the primary article. Sarge Baldy 05:21, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
  24. Oppose. The status quo has been working fine. Subsurd 05:50, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
  25. Keep status quo. Agree with above comments. The disambiguation page is good. Academic Challenger 05:41, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
  26. As agreed per long-standing consensus, this is pointless, as PTD in this case isn't possible. James F. (talk) 07:20, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
  27. Oppose. The current disambiguation page at Georgia is an acceptable compromise in a complicated situation - it doesn't make a value judgment between the country and the US state. lbft 07:31, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
  28. Oppose - Wikipedia's standards for disambiguation are entirely clear on this matter. We do not name and disambiguate pages based on some sort of elitist / xenophobic scale of 'precedence', but rather on actual 'traffic' and links from the encyclopedia users. While the state has more links to it and presumably greater traffic (given that a large percentage of English speakers are from the United States and more likely to be searching for the state - while those from the country would generally be searching on the Russian language Wikipedia) the difference is not so great that 'Georgia' should go directly to the state... and thus we disambiguate. We certainly do not go directly to the less used page based on some sort of 'anti-american' attitude. --CBD 09:19, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
  29. Oppose. Obviously one's proximity to either the country or the state will effect their better, meritocratic judgement. Past discussions were apparently inconclusive, and so is this one. Thus, I'm going to discount the fact that the state article gets more hits, ignore the fact that the country of georgia as we know it was established after the state of georgia as we know it, and keep things equal here. I move to keep the disambiguation page here. cacophony 10:34, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
  30. Oppose. Our policy is (rightly) based on the popularity of a term, not the significance of what it refers to on any other scale (such as nation vs. sub-nation). In this case, neither terms is suitable unpopular. ed g2s • talk 11:48, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
  31. Strong oppose If there was a country named New York, New York with 50 000 people would we force the article New York, New York to move to something else? just because its a country doesnt make it more notable than the state. EdwinHJ | Talk 12:47, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
  32. Oppose per above. Voice of Treason 14:20, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
  33. Oppose; think of the readers, not some theoretical judgment of value. --Spangineer[es] (háblame) 14:29, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
    Note that for readers who want either the US state or the country, there is no increase in clicks at all. To get to the US state, it is still one click from Georgia, and to get to the country it's a reduction of clicks to exactly nil from Georgia. Making no comment about which of these receives more clicks altogether, (I would think that) these two destinations are by far and away the most common targets for readers to go to, so one the whole there would be less inconvenience for the reader, because one of the most common targets has had its click number reduced and the other stays the same. --Sam Pointon 14:44, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
  34. Oppose. Keep the Dab at the title Georgia. Significance of both is sufficient to rule out either the US state or the independent state from having the title to itself. The English word is the most proper name for either topic, and anyone who fails to understand WP Dab policy is probably too ill informed to be voting on this. There is no priority for countries over subnational entities, nor of real people over fictional people: saying the country article should have the ambiguous title would be like saying Tom Sawyer should be an article about some jerkwater politician, rocker, or athlete.--Jerzy•t 17:08, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
  35. Oppose. Georgia can commonly mean two separate places, and that's exactly what disambiguation is for. We are not in the business of deciding which is the most "important", through whether it is a country of subnational entity, which has the most people, or whatever. The significant consideration is that the word is ambiguous - if someone says "hi, I'm from Georgia", you would not be able to reasonably assume, without further information, whether they were from the US state or the caucasian country. That's why we need the disambiguation page, and to keep the status quo. Enchanter 21:24, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
  36. Oppose. Neither Georgia (country) or Georgia (U.S. state) should occupy Georgia, because several editors fail to use piped links. At least half of the links to Georgia are meant for the U.S. state.--Khatru2 00:05, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
  37. Oppose Dab is the more correct route for this. PPGMD 00:16, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
  38. Oppose - Please see 1.2, # 8. Pædia 04:36, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
  39. I could not have said it any better than SPUI did. There is no need for any contentious discussion of which Georgia is more important. The simple fact is that both pages get tons of traffic and therefore Georgia is the perfect candidate to be a disambig page. — GT 18:01, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
  40. Oppose. The name is ambiguous, 'nuff said. (For the record, I'm a US citizen born in eastern Europe.) --Smack (talk) 20:17, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
  41. Oppose per WP:DISAMBIG#Primary_topic. There is no consensus for either the country or the state being the "primary" topic for the name "Georgia", hence "there is no primary topic page", and Georgia is a disambig page. —Stormie 08:17, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
  42. Oppose - SPUI said it absolutely perfectly. This isn't about being more important or taking precedence, just about what people mean when they type "Georgia" into a searchbox or type [[Georgia]] into an article. At least if "Georgia" is used as the disambiguation page, faulty links can be found and corrected. Georgians (of either variety!) should not feel in the slightest bit insulted by this; it's certainly not meant as an insult. If I have a conversation with a North American and they tell me they've visited Georgia recently, I'll assume it was a completely different place to if a Russian told me the same words. The phrase "Georgia" on its own lacks context and is impossible to assign a reasonable meaning to without formulating additional rules. Why formulate additional rules to handle the situation when the current situation works quite well (it's an unfortunate linguistic accident, not an insult against anybody or their culture) and has the advantage of allowing disambiguation link repair.TheGrappler 22:18, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
  43. Strong Oppose - No convincing rationale for the change. Are large numbers of people being confused or upset by having to make one more click to go from the dab page to the country page? And if they are, I wonder if even more people feel the same way re: the US state page. The article on English language says nearly 3 in 4 native English speakers worldwide are North American; I'n not at all trying to be ethnocentric here, but if (probably close to) three-fourths of our readers are more likely to be thinking "Georgia the state", I think putting the country as the main article is not a good move. Status quo is the best compromise solution. (And for those who think "Georgia (country)" is not aesthetically-pleasing enough, that's something you should take up with the Georgian government, not Wikipedia.) --SuperNova |T|C| 23:18, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
  44. Oppose as per WP:DAB#Primary topic. So far, there has not been enough concrete evidence cited so prove that the country of Georgia is the "well known primary meaning for the term or phrase (indicated by a majority of links in existing articles and consensus of the editors of those articles that it will be significantly more commonly searched for and read than other meanings)". Zzyzx11 (Talk) 06:16, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
  45. Strong Oppose as it has been said, the population of the state of Georgia is greater than the country, the native language of the country of Georgia is Georgian, and the translation into english is "Sakartvelo", so one searching for the country would most likely use that name. Obviously here, since there is a greater chance that people referring to the state of Georgia will be mistakenly redirected to the country. It is first of all twice as likely that "Georgia" would mean the state for someone linking (I made this mistake myself), second of all it would be even more likely since the native language of the country of Georgia is not English. If you look at it from a "majority rules" perspective, then it should direct to the state of Georgia. But since the other is a country, it should simply be kept at a disambiguation. Let me ask you, if you live in a town called Johnsonfield, and it's the capital of a small state/county in another country, and another city with a population of 15 million is also called Johnsonfield, which should a site linking to it redirect to? And for that matter, would a wiki site written in Georgian bother to redirect to the state of Georgia? Most likely not. And for whoever said it would be a nice "learning experience" for the page to redirect to the country of Georgia (experience for US users), and that redirecting to the state would cause confusion, I could easily say the same vice versa. And who's to say which is more important? ----edit---- Another thing to think about: Perhaps there is a congressman named Dan Marino who is the state senator for Montana, for example. You could easily say he is more important than the NFL player Dan Marino, but who's to say? In reality, a high percentage of people who link to or search for Dan Marino won't be intending to go to a state senator's page, although a senator could be considered "more important". The disambiguation is a fair compromise. And to those who stated that it wouldn't hurt to "learn something" by reading an article about the country of Georgia, the reason we use wikipedia is for REFERENCE, not to learn. If I wanted to look up the population of Georgia the state, I'd want to see the population, not read about another country's involvement in European wars.Zchris87v 05:56, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
  46. Strong oppose Parenthetical disambiguation for both is the only clean way to keep links to the correct Georgia going to the right place, given that there is no clear dominant usage for 'Georgia' and neither usage has an acceptable alternate name. If the country is moved to Georgia, then it will be a constant maintenance headache to fix all the links (and there will be many) that intend to go to the U.S. state (which is far more populous and economically significant - and thus likely to be linked to a lot - than the country by the same name). --mav 12:02, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Neither

  1. Neither We could favour neither, by simply placing the disambiguation at Georgia so no one wins. :) Fad (ix) 23:11, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Oups, just realise it actually is. So, I don't see the problem. Fad (ix) 23:12, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
If you think that maintaining the status quo (the way it actually is) is the correct way to go, you are actually in opposition to the change and should vote as such. --Vengeful Cynic 15:43, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Discussion

Add any additional comments

Telex, anyone would think you are concerned about the move having an influence on Macedonia related issues. However this is not the case. The Macedonian issue is significantly more complicated and cannot be resolved on this basis alone (e.g. the Country vs. Sub-national region). Primarily this is because both the RoM and Makedonia inhabit the same region, have very similar history, etc. Georgia the country and Georgia the state do not share either of these and so the argument is much more simple. I would oppose moving Republic of Macedonia to Macedonia and I hope you will reconsider your vote based on this. - FrancisTyers · 12:34, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't want to vote on this until someone can explain why countries should take precedence over subnational units. That seems no stronger an argument than that population size should be determinative. (Another factor, perhaps: this is the English language Wikipedia.) Thanks in advance. --Cultural Freedom talk 2006-07-05 12:53 (UTC)

The English language Wikipedia is de-facto the international encyclopaedia. The country of Georgia has a much longer history, more importance, a more distinct culture, etc. , maybe not a greater population, but this isn't rule of the majority. Besides, for those USians who aren't aware that the country exists, it will be a nice learning experience. - FrancisTyers · 13:34, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
For those outside the US that are only vaguely aware of either, it will cause confusion, as I describe above. --SPUI (T - C) 13:36, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
It is understandable that this is an English wikipedia and some users prefer a dab page. However, according to statistics more than 2,000 users per month read the article about the country of Georgia and the state of Georgia gets around 800 readers per month. I would like wikipedians to realize that this is just an issue of a technical usage of theonline encyclopedia than comparing the cultures or histories of two Georgias. In addition, the populations have nothing to do with this. I don't believe that the cultural and historical aspects should also be compared of the two Georgias, because there is nothing to compare. The country of Georgia is an ancient hitorical country, has more UN world heritage sites than the State of Georgia, has its own language which is different from all the other languages in the world and etc. This discussion is not a cultural discussion. Making the Georgia search criterion to result in a redirect to the Georgia (country) page is not an underestimation of another beautiful State of Georgia.Sosomk 13:54, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Just curious, where did these statistics you cite come from? older ≠ wiser 13:58, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Assuming those figures are true, that's 28% wanting the state - too many for primary topic disambiguation. --SPUI (T - C) 14:11, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
User:Mintguy provided these figures last year. I don't think the statistics changed very much. You can contact Mintguy for more stats.
Ah yes, you're absolutely right Francis, it's not the rule of the majority - which means that if we go by guidelines instead of how many people line up to support or oppose this move, the primary topic disambiguation page is entirely appropriate and we might as well close this debate now. Thank you for acceding to my point. FCYTravis 01:12, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm not trying to antagonise you here, I realise you think Georgia, as in the state in your country is very notable, but what I'm trying to say is that the country with a >2,000 year history is more notable. - FrancisTyers · 08:59, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
And what I'm trying to say is that it doesn't matter what you think is more notable. What matters is that there is substantial confusion over which place the term Georgia refers to. Thus WP:DISAMBIG guidelines state that the term should be a disambiguation page. "When the primary meaning for a term or phrase is well known (indicated by a majority of links in existing articles, and by consensus of the editors of those articles), then use that topic for the title of the main article, with a disambiguation link at the top. Where there is no such consensus, there is no primary topic page."
Clearly, Georgia (country) is not "well-known" as the primary meaning for the term Georgia and there is no consensus that this is so. In fact, if one were to just look at inbound links (as WP:DISAMBIG suggests) I'm pretty sure that Georgia (U.S. state) would have far more - due, of course, to an Anglocentric systemic bias which we both agree exists. Therefore, I agree that Georgia should be a disambiguation page, rather than be the U.S. state. I'm not trying to be antagonistic either, but it seems to me that this move request has all sorts of justifications, but completely fails to take into account what the readers of Wikipedia are looking for. This is, in fact, precisely the sort of situation that the disambiguation page was designed for. We have two highly notable subjects with the same name. Thus, we disambiguate. FCYTravis 18:54, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Hits for March 2004 ( http://wikimedia.org/stats/en.wikipedia.org/url_200403.html - WARNING THIS IS A 43mb FILE)
    • Georgia (country) - 2312 hits
    • Georgia (U.S. state) - 1335 hits
    • Georgia [unqualified] - 763 hits
  • Hits for April 2004 ( http://wikimedia.org/stats/en.wikipedia.org/url_200404.html - WARNING THIS IS A 43mb FILE)
    • Georgia (country) - 1606 hits
    • Georgia (U.S. state) - 821 hits
    • Georgia [unqualified] - 441 hits
  • Hits for May 2004 ( http://wikimedia.org/stats/en.wikipedia.org/url_200405.html - WARNING THIS IS A 43mb FILE)
    • Georgia (country) - 2380 hits
    • Georgia (U.S. state) - 853 hits
    • Georgia [unqualified] - 675 hits
Mintguy (T) 21:32, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Sosomk 15:09, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

  • I really think using two-year-out-of-date statistics is pretty well irrelevant. This is July 2006, not May 2004, and the encyclopedia has grown exponentially since then. It might even have grown exponentially toward the country - but we just can't know. But I'm quite sure there's now more than 2,380 hits per DAY on Georgia. FCYTravis 22:37, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
    • Considering that the developers repeatedly deny requests for hit counts due to the strain on the servers, these numbers are highly suspicious. Mintguy, could you please explain where they came from? User:Zoe|(talk) 03:48, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

<moved from "oppose" above>:

  1. Oppose - Georgia (U.S. state) has almost twice the population of Georgia (country), and it's a monopolisation. Francis's assertion that country status takes precedent over anything with the same name (even if it is twice the size) is his POV. --Tēlex 12:27, 5 July 2006 (UTC) (changed to support --Tēlex 12:07, 6 July 2006 (UTC))

</moved from "oppose" above> -- User:Docu

Disambiguation

Per disambiguation guidelines, "When the primary meaning for a term or phrase is well known (indicated by a majority of links in existing articles, and by consensus of the editors of those articles), then use that topic for the title of the main article, with a disambiguation link at the top. Where there is no such consensus, there is no primary topic page." There is no consensus of the editors of the articles Georgia (country) and Georgia (US state) and therefore there should be no primary topic page. A "requested move" is irrelevant in this case.

Also to quote from the guidelines, "Confusion - Ask yourself: When a reader enters this term and pushes "Go", what article would they realistically be expecting to view as a result?" Given that both entities have substantial worldwide recognition, it's presumptuous for anyone to say that they are expecting to view either one. Thus, we create a disambiguation page. This attempted move is preempting common sense. FCYTravis 01:07, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm afraid I'd have to say that the country has more worldwide recognition and representation than the sub-region in the US. - FrancisTyers · 08:59, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
What my point is that this issue has nothing to do with the nationality. People who are reading the article about Georgia are probably in most cases American. Another thing that I would like wikipedians to realize is that this is not an Europe vs.USA or some ignorant statement like that. Making the move is not an underestimation for the state of Georgia, because making one more click is not going to harm the article, but Georgia (country) is definitely a ridiculous title and all the other titles such as "Republic of Georgia" and etc are not acceptable by the Constitution of Georgia. Thanks.Sosomk 10:26, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
Let the user decide which Georgia is more notable. Where's this "anti-disambiguation" war coming from all of a sudden? No user is going to turn red with anger over a disambiguation page. Us editors are the only ones wasting our precious time with questions such as which Georgia is more important or which Syracuse is more important. No one is asking that Georgia go to the U.S. state! It's a disambiguation page! It does a great role at showing the extent of global Wikipedia coverage for the term Georgia! -newkai | talk | contribs 15:47, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
Georgia and the United States are both members of the UN. So saying that the US state Georgia should be on equal footing with the nation Georgia is absurd. Intangible 18:04, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
The UN is irrelevant. Please stop introducing red herrings. There is nothing in our disambiguation guidelines which mentions the UN. Please refer to WP:DISAMBIG which states that when two entities with the same name have relatively equivalent name recognition, we use a disambiguation page. FCYTravis 18:14, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
The State of Georgia is homeport of the Atlantic Fleet's SSBN's, it's home of Fort Benning where many of the US's Special Forces are based at, and is home to second (and sometimes first) busiest airport in the world. The State has a bigger population, greater GDP and a larger landmass. Saying that it's minor because the country is a member of the UN is absurd also. Being a UN member is like having a drivers license, sure there are some hops to jump through, but just about everyone is a member. We should be discussing what's best for the readers of Wikipedia, not discussing world issues. By keeping the DAB at Georgia Wikipedia doesn't make any assumptions on which page the users wants to goto when they put "Georgia" in the go box. PPGMD 18:20, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
This is not about UN politics, but about the UN as international body of law. That is what makes the state Georgia subordinate to the nation Georgia, because the state Georga can only affect the UN trough its federal government, while the nation Georgia has direct diplomatic representation at the UN. Intangible 21:20, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
Which has nothing to do with Wikipedia, nor it's how we setup the pages. A number of people seem to think that by not having one or the other occupying the topic page we are slighting it, it has nothing to do with that, by having the DAB on the topic page we are making it easier for a user to find the information they seek, and perhaps find something new. Because traffic is likely to be split between the state and the country having the DAB on the topic page it allows users to more easily find the data because it can be easy to miss the small italics with "For other meanings of..." PPGMD 21:50, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
Yes, but my argument is that a country should always have precedence over legal entities within countries in Wikipedia, such as names of provinces, county names, city names, corporation names, personal names, etc. The UN as supranational body of law between countries has both established the US and the nation Georgia as respective "law monopolist." Intangible 15:15, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
What's special about countries that makes them this way?? Georgia guy 16:00, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
Countries are "law monopolists." They define what the law is for their own citizens, including the legal status of states / provinces, cities and geographical names. International law is what governs conduct between countries, or between citizens thereof. Intangible 16:13, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Question (for anyone)

Do you think it is possible to have an encyclopedia that is worldwide NPOV?? I say the answer is no, because the United States and Europe have too many differences in points of view that there is no way they can converge. Georgia guy 23:09, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Note

Note: there is an ongoing voting at Talk:Georgia. However, it has lasted for 2 years already, and still attracts voters. I'm not sure what would be the proper procedure to resolve the "forked" voting. Duja 14:44, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure, personally I think that poll should probably be closed as no consensus. It's been open 2 years already. I'm not about to take unilateral action though :) - FrancisTyers · 16:58, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Well, there we are, I decided to go ahead and do it. If anyone disagrees, please mention it on WP:ANI or WP:AN. - FrancisTyers · 17:31, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
I don't think there will ever be a consensus unless we split into two separate Wikipedias; one for Americans and one for Europeans. Georgia guy 14:45, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Do you not mean one for USians and one for the rest of the world? - FrancisTyers · 16:58, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Oh yeah, let's go back to the "what does America mean" war raging on Talk:America! -newkai | talk | contribs 15:49, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Oppose, Georgia the country is both less populated and less known in the English speaking world.

Oppose this statement, English speaking world is not only the USASosomk 09:37, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

By "English speaking world" do you mean the United States? Or are you including all the countries that speak English? - FrancisTyers · 18:09, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Which of the two entities is home to globally known multi-national corporations like Coca-Cola? Which of the two has held the Olympic Games? Which of the two has the busiest airport in the world and the largest airline hub in the world, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport? I daresay in the English-speaking world, the state has by far the greater prominence on a global stage. Primary disambiguation is called for. FCYTravis 21:40, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
So yes, the United States. - FrancisTyers · 21:50, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Did you just totally ignore my statement? Are you claiming that the busiest airport in the world, Coca-Cola and the Olympics are all some sort of parochial American phenomena that are ignored once you step off a plane in London or Toulouse or Beijing or Sydney or Sao Paulo? That's utterly absurd. FCYTravis 21:56, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Coca-Cola is a symbol of the US (cf. Cocacolonization), the busiest airport in the world, for how long? So the Olympics was held there one year, its been held in a lot of sub-regions in a lot of countries. Was the Olympics widely advertised as in Georgia or in the United States? - FrancisTyers · 22:45, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Yes, Coca Cola is a symbol of the US. It has also become part of the global pop culture. Whether that is good or bad is debatable, but its massive global impact (perhaps more widespread than any other corporation) is undeniable. One cannot simply wish away our nation's impacts on the world, or pretend that these things are irrelevant. The history of Coca-Cola's spread is inextricably intertwined into America's history of international relations (bottling plants opened up to serve World War II troops, for instance). Are you to claim that somehow we should ignore these facts because it's inconveniently American? FCYTravis 22:51, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
The history of Coca Cola is interesting, you're right, but it is interesting not relation to Georgia, but it is interesting in relation to the United States (Which is the point I was trying to make). Coca Cola *bam* United States, America and not Coca Cola *bam* Georgia. Do you still think I am being anti-American? I'm disappointed about that frankly. But if I'm unable to convince you otherwise, and it is sad that I can't think of anything that would persuade you of the fact :( - FrancisTyers · 09:06, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
I am afraid it is turning into a cultural disscusion again, but the discussion does really make any sense. Ok. I do admit that the Unites States has a great potential in business as well as in politics and this is one of the main reasons that U.S. is the strongest country in the World and has more Assets than EU and Japan combined. Coca-Cola is indeed 100% American and it is based in the state of Georgia, but why does it matter in this case? The value of business is 0 without its international business relations. If we talk about the political significance, the country of Georgia is a very important country politically and geographically. I would advise to keep up to date with latest political events concerning Georgia: by the way the president of Georgia met with with the US president two days ago. In fact, we also do have lots of Coca-Cola factories in Georgia, Georgia also donated the most troops in Iraq if we consider its population and Georgia already ruined its landmark by the the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pineline which is going to benefit the US and Western Europe as well as all the countries involved in it. Personally, I like Pepsi better but that also does not mean anything. It is just my personal opinion.Sosomk 09:19, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Possible parallels

Azerbaijan

As User:Grandmaster noted, there's a similar case with the name of "Azerbaijan". We have the country of Azerbaijan and the region of Azerbaijan in Iran. The region has a larger population (~10 mil) than the country (~8.4 mil). bogdan 10:04, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Your point is valid, but it is a rough comparison. You can go ahead and change it on English wikipedia without much resistance from the Iranians, because their native tongue is not English. What my point is that this issue has nothing to do with the nationality. People who are reading the article about Georgia are probably in most cases American. Another thing that I would like wikipedians to realize is that this is not an Europe vs.USA or some ignorant statement like that. Making the move is not an underestimation for the state of Georgia, because making one more click is not going to harm the article, but Georgia (country) is definitely a ridiculous title and all the other titles such as "Republic of Georgia" and etc are not acceptable by the Constitution of Georgia. Thanks.Sosomk 10:20, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
Its not the Iranians, its the Azerbaijanis, are you suggesting that there would be few complaints if we moved Azerbaijan to Azerbaijan (country)? - FrancisTyers · 11:19, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
I don't think you understood my point. For example, if there was an issue of moving Azerbaijan (country) to Azerbaijan on Persian wikipedia, there would be lots of Iranian jingos who would fight over it. I don't see any real reason why the Georgia (country) should not be removed. Sosomk 19:01, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
All Wikipedias are supposed to be universal, not country-specific. This should be even more true for the English language wikipedia, as English is currently the lingua franca in the world and since this wikipedia has the most information, it's read by people across the world, including people from non-English countries. You should know, for example, that more than half of the EU citizens can speak English... bogdan 08:44, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

I fear that Sosomk is over-optimistic. The region is actually at Azarbaijan (Iran) (sic; the link above is a redirect) because of Iranian editors insisting that Farsi spells it that way; the fact that this is an (imperfect) transliteration does not seem to have swayed them. Septentrionalis 14:52, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

bogdan, I agree with you and I am saying the same thing that nationality has nothing to do with this issue. In addition, I believe that most people rading the article are our American friends. It is just politically and technically correct to move Georgia (country) to Georgia.Sosomk 06:55, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

The Farsi Wikipedia's approach is to put the Iranian region at آذربایجان, "Azerbaijan". There is a disambig link to the equivalent of Azerbaijan (disambiguation), from which you can get to the country, which is at جمهوری آذربایجان, "Republic of Azerbaijan". So their approach seems to even more strongly prefer the state; it would be equivalent to putting the U.S. state at Georgia, with a link to Georgia (disambiguation) at the top, from which you could get to Republic of Georgia. --Delirium 07:06, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

And that would work as an argument only if, just as Farsi speakers tend to be centered on Persian/Iranian cultural references, all native English speakers would be identifiable with the United States! Dahn 16:32, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

New York

I'd like to make a comparison between Georgia (country) & Georgia (US state) and New York & New York City. One is a subnational (federal?) unit, the other is a subfederal unit (city). The city is more widely known than the state, but the state gets to sit at New York, because 'New York' is the proper name of the state, and (this is implicit, I may be wrong in this interpretation) a state should have precedence over a city with regard to naming because it is a more fundamental division (see [1]). If we followed the rationale evident here, New York should be a disambiguation between the city and the state. However, this is not a perfect analogy, because the city has other potential names for use, wheras Georgia [the country] only permits one title as proper. --Sam Pointon 15:02, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Current disambiguation

The current disambiguation should in any case be Georgia (state), not Georgia (country), as the name refers not just to a country, but a sovereign state. There is no difference for Georgia, but there is for other places. Ireland the country is the whole island, while Ireland the state is only five sixths of the country. Scotland, England and Wales are countries, but not states. Georgia on the other hand, is, and the state should take precedence over the country. zoney ♣ talk 20:39, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Then it would have to be Georgia (Eurasian state). --SPUI (T - C) 21:02, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
Yes, it should be noted that "state" is a better term than "country" for a sovereign entity. "A state is a set of institutions that possess the authority to make the rules that govern a society, having internal and external sovereignty over a definite territory." -State ...But of course, it's used in the U.S. as a province-type meaning. It's all a mess. -newkai | talk | contribs 21:36, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
The US usage is fine too, just that US states are federal states, not sovereign states. zoney ♣ talk 21:37, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, it's fine. Hence it's a mess :) -newkai | talk | contribs 22:33, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
There's no 1 to 1 relationship between a state and a country. A country is a politically defined geographic area, while state is one of the ways to regulate relationships with other people. State is an entity that holds the monopoly on using violence over a certain geographic ares, so it can make and enforce rules and judgments.
Sometimes states delegate some of that monopoly to a larger state, but they retain some of the sovereignty and remain states themselves. Compare positions of a US state congress against the federal congress with that of a district council agaist the state congress. The federal congress can pass laws that override state laws, but a state congress can also pass a law that abolishes district councils all together.
There are also some countries where no state exists, so relationships with other people are regulated in other ways, e.g. code of honor and vendetta. Sometimes all regulation collapses and countries fall into anarchy, but they're still countries. Zocky | picture popups 15:40, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

I think Georgia (country) is what's really meant here; it's the country of Georgia the article is about, not only the state that's existed since 1990. In some sections (like describing the current government) that's identical, but in others (like history), we're clearly giving the history of the country of Georgia; if we were giving the history of the sovereign state it would begin in 1990. --Delirium 04:34, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Somebody PLEASE answer this question

Why is the strength of wanting Georgia (country) moved to Georgia more than it was 2 years ago?? Please explain with as much detail as you can. Georgia guy 21:07, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Now, wikipedia is more international than it was two years, the percentage of Americans is lower than it used to be. bogdan 21:59, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
I think it has to do more with poeple being aware of the existence of Georgia (country) these days.--Eupator 23:53, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Well, I was aware of it since I heard the beginning of its existence in 1991. Do you think it is probable that it will still be a country as late as 2221?? Georgia guy 00:57, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Do you think that the state of Georgia will still be a state by then? Fad (ix) 01:22, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Well, I don't know of any regions that were formerly states of the United States but no longer are. Anyone know of any?? Georgia guy 01:26, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
My point was that no one knows what will happen by then. I don't see what is the relevancy of the plausible statu of Georgia in the hundreds years to come. To be fair, indeed Georgia should direct to the country, but given that this is English Wikipedia it becomes more problematic. I understand the concern of Americans. It is like having in the Armenian language Wikipedia an Armenian province with the same name as the one of a country and someone expecting Armenians to approve that the direct link direct to the country. In all honesty, I will not have a problem with that, but I will understand those who might have a problem. It is obvious that a concensus will never be reached, and that it is a waste of energy to fight over something which does not affect directly the content of the articles. Fad (ix) 01:44, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
The prognosis for 2221 is in the domain of sci fi and is absolutely irrelevant to the present discussion. Let's leave this subject to the future generations of Wikipedians if our encyclopedia outlives Georgia "the country" and the State of Georgia:) The desire to move Georgia (country) to Georgia is as strong as it was two years ago, but the number of Wiki users supporting the move seems to have been increased. Also, I think the "State of Georgia" is much more acceptable and generally usable form than the annoying name "Georgia (country)". --Kober 04:49, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
This is an encyclopedia, not a crystal ball. Jonathunder 05:36, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Consensus

I came up with a possible consensus. It is obvious that using Georgia (country) is politically and technically wrong. The constitution of Georgia says that the official name of the coutry is "Georgia". In addition, there is no discussion of moving Georgia (U.S. state) to Georgia. Our American friends have to make 2 clicks to see the information about the state of Georgia anyway. What if we move Georgia (country) to Georgia and write on the top. See also Georgia (U.S. State) and Georgia (disamb). Then people don't have to make any extra clicks to see the information about the state of Georgia. I believe that this is the most realistic consensus.Sosomk 07:08, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

If Georgia (country) were moved to Georgia that would be the right thing to do, IMO. We usually separate out "likely to be searched for" disambiguation things to be listed directly on the page, using phrasing like "If you're looking for 'prominent thing', see Blah (foo); for other uses of the term, see Blah (disambiguation)." I may change my vote to neutral, because I think this is reasonable enough. --Delirium 07:17, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
"Georgia (country)" is not wrong; it is standard disambiguation, and implies that the name is Georgia. --SPUI (T - C) 07:43, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
What? Sosomk, have you seen the discussion above? There are currently 27 people opposed to your consensus. And of course, "(country)" is not part of the name, but when multiple entities share a name, Wikipedia uses parenthetical modifiers to clarify the entries. Saturn's satellite is not called Titan (moon), nor is the New Zealander's name Robert Lawson (architect), but in all cases, they share their name with other entities. — Knowledge Seeker দ 08:38, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
I totally agree with Delirium and I don't subscribe to the point of view which says that the constitutions of sovereign countries with a huge political importance for the UN and the world in general can be disrespected. I would advise to keep up to date with the current political events: by the way the president of Georgia and the president of the U.S. met several days ago. Robert Lawson (architect) is a single individual and this comparison is not very accurate. I am very mystified by the resistance from some wikipedians.Sosomk 10:03, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Completely agreed with Sosomk and Delirium. Our American friends will just have to realize minor subnational entities are not of the same level of importance as independent countries. Look at Luxembourg for example: as an independent country it occupies its own article space, whereas the neighbouring and much larger province of Luxembourg (Belgium) is clearly linked to from the disambiguation space. -- Jordi·✆ 14:23, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Further suggestion

This is a possible compromise suggestion:

  1. Move Georgia (country) to Georgia (Sakartvelo) or Sakartvelo.
  2. Move Georgia to Georgia (disambiguation)
  3. Redirect Georgia to Georgia (Sakartvelo) or Sakartvelo.
  4. Place a disambiguation notice at the top of Georgia (Sakartvelo) or Sakartvelo pointing at Georgia (U.S. state) and Georgia (disambiguation)

This way the complaint regarding "can't find whatlinkshere" is taken care of, the complaint that a subunit of a country is taking precedent over a sovereign state is taken care of, the clicks will be reduced for people wanting the country, and the clicks will stay the same for people wanting the state. - FrancisTyers · 16:20, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

But Sakartvelo is not the country's name in English. Country name: Georgia. The English Wikipedia uses English names. -- Jordi·✆ 16:28, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Hence one of the suggestions puts it in parentheses. - FrancisTyers · 16:38, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
How many non-Georgians or people who don't have foreknowledge of the country know its transliterated name? I couldn't tell you it off-hand before now, so I don't think it reduces clicks for the average reader looking for the country. If we're not talking about the average reader, then it's moot, because the non-average reader will just tap in Georgia (country), bypassing the disambig altogether. --Sam Pointon 16:51, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Well, Georgia (country) will redirect to Georgia (Sakartvelo). Of course it reduces clicks for the average person looking for the country, the Georgia page redirects to the page with the country on. - FrancisTyers · 17:16, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Oh, my apologies on the clicks front, I didn't read thoroughly enough. But if Georgia redirects to Sakartvelo, why not just have it at Georgia in the first place? --Sam Pointon 17:33, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Because it has been said that this will make disambiguation clean up harder. If Georgia is a redirect to the country article, then it won't have any legitimate links to the country article, only links that point to either the state or the country without specifying. I believe that is the rationale, to be honest I'm not totally convinced, but it seemed to be an argument that was presented above. - FrancisTyers · 17:53, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
This proposal fails to address the contention that at least as many, if not more, users of this encyclopedia are looking for Georgia (U.S. state) as are looking for Georgia (country) - and thus a disambiguation page should be used so that neither is given precedence. Until any evidence is presented that there is an overwhelming majority of users looking for one or the other, Georgia should remain a disambiguation page. FCYTravis 23:50, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Broader poll needed here

There's no logic in precedence of a sub-national entity over a country or vice-versa. E.g, a subnational entity may be more populated, with longer history, higher awareness etc, but a nation is a nation. Ergo? Moot. There has to be a rule for WP over this frequent (and silly) question and a notice (like those dab notices) over the article stating the rule and WP non-support of either choice. I am sure that all Georgians, Macedonians etc would feel much better if Georgia (country) and Georgia (state) had a clear dab notice of the form that follows just above the article:

This article is about the country of X-ia. Under Wikipedia naming policy/guideline XYZ, all countries take precedence in their name over all other homonymous entities, regardless of their size, population, history or any other criterion. WP does not take position regarding any priority.

or

This article is about the [type of subnational entity] of X-ia. Under Wikipedia naming policy/guideline XYZ, the entity that takes precedence in their name over all other homonymous entities, is judged by criterion X [eg. population or size etc]. WP does not take any position regarding any priority.

Thoughts? Should we move all this to Wikipedia:Naming conflict? :NikoSilver: 22:45, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

No, I think this is just a case where there's absolutely no precedence to be had, and in that case, we use a disambiguation page. For the sake of argument, if this was about Georgia the country vs. Georgia, a town of 200 people in California, there would be little question that the country should be at Georgia with a disambig link to the town. Clearly, the country has the wider recognition and significance. But in this case, both the country and the U.S. state have substantial recognition and use around the world, and neither can be shown to have any sort of clear use above any other. Hence, per policy, we should use a disambiguation page to allow our readers to decide which Georgia they're looking for. FCYTravis 23:05, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
Well which is more popular? And for what reason? Which is more well known? Personally I can't say that anyone can make that call and be absolutely correct, (hypothetical since states would be hard to work out) the US State might be more well known, but the Country might get more traffic because being that it's less well known people want to got and find out about it. Personally because it's a close call I think having the DAB where it is is best, that way people can find out alternate meanings, for example, someone from Europe might be looking for information about the country and put it in the search box and make it to the DAB and find out that there is not only a country but a US state by that name, the same being true the other way around. PPGMD 23:10, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
Oh forgot to mention, we will probably be having this poll again in about a year. PPGMD 23:10, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
I still believe that in close-calls or not-so-close-calls, there should be a damn clear rule we should be forced to use. I don't care which rule, just any rule that would save us the debate here and there. The dab page is included in the rule thing. I wouldn't object if there was a mandatory dab-page regardless if we were talking about Georgia the country vs. Georgia, a town of 200 people in California. A rule should apply, and in this case we'd have to rename both articles to Georgia (country) and Georgia (US town). So the options for naming guideline should be the following:
  1. Mandatory dab page (per example immediately above)
  2. Force country status priority (plus dab/disclaimer notice)
  3. Force any other criterion priority (e.g. Google test, population, area etc, plus dab/disclaimer notice)
I don't vote for any of these just yet, I just move for a clear rule on how it should be for all cases. :NikoSilver: 00:03, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
I think it should be criteria based with DABs used on close calls. PPGMD 00:34, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

There already is a clear rule to apply in such cases: it is called Disambiguation. When the primary meaning for a term or phrase is well known (indicated by a majority of links in existing articles, and by consensus of the editors of those articles), then use that topic for the title of the main article, with a disambiguation link at the top. Where there is no such consensus, there is no primary topic page. It's pretty obvious that there is no consensus that there is a "primary topic" in this case, and hence the term "Georgia" should remain a disambiguation page. older ≠ wiser 03:01, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Exactly. There is no need to call for the 'creation of a clear rule'... because there has been a consistent standard on this issue for years. If two names/terms are exactly the same we determine which name gets primacy or if none do based on links to and frequency of viewing for each variant. If one use of the term is overwhelmingly more common than all others then that article appears under the term itself with no '(qualifier)'. Otherwise, the term itself is a disambiguation page. That's the 'rule' and the reason that a hundred 'polls' on doing just this article differently will never succeed. Wikipedia is not structured by some 'conceptual order of precedence', but by actual use... exactly as it should be. --CBD 10:57, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Practicality (i.e. fixing broken links) is a concern in naming things, but it is not the only concern. To give a drastic example, if there was a Pokemon called Chichester and it had many more incoming links than the English town, the article Chichester would still be about the town.

So, the kind of topic is also relevant. In this case, they're both geographical entities, but they are not entities of the same kind. Georgia the country is of the same kind as Germany, and Georgia the US state of the same kind as Bavaria.

We shouldn't be arguing about which is more important. Georgia the country is obviously more important globally (and we're a global encyclopedia) than Georgia the US state. What we should do is weigh the difference in importance against the difference in practicality the move would cause. Zocky | picture popups 13:25, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Exactly, hence my proposal above for a clear rule on this, to spare us the silly debate. :NikoSilver: 13:32, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
Who's to say which is more important? The country has very few foreign policy concerns (ATM of course), while the State is home of the Atlantic Fleet's SSBN base, home of Fort Benning, and the second busiest airport in the world. The State has more population, greater GDP and greater land area. Arguing which is more important is a futile exercise, right now the current state of the pages is correct. PPGMD 13:36, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
Well, my view is that even one poor, unedjucated, unemployed, sick person's soul is equally important to the sum of the souls of a million of rich and famous others, because infinity X 1 million is equal to infinity X 1. Exactly for the sake of not argueing about such things as "importance", I would move for a clear rule that applies regardless of Google usage or consensus or whatever. The three options are above. Where do you stand? :NikoSilver: 13:43, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
Zocky was the one arguing importance, I was showing that he might not be right on his judgment. Also after reading the DAB page, there is a procedure, we attempt a consensus and if there is none, the DAB is put on the primary topic page. People are trying to argue importance which is incorrect IMO, because important to one is not so much to another. The polls remains open 5-7 days and then it's closed, ATM it shows it's going to be business as usual because there is no consensus for the fourth time. PPGMD 14:12, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
I don't agree with the accuracy of the 'Chichester' example. I know nothing about the town, but I suspect that there are probably more Pokemon fans in the world then there are people interested in info on the town. This idea that 'town automatically (or even 'usually') trumps fictional character' is just dead wrong. There is no such scale of precedence. If there were a rinky-dink town that virtually no-one had ever heard of named 'Sherlock Holmes' it absolutely should not be given primacy over the character. As PPGMD points out, these issues of 'precedence' are entirely subjective... issues of actual use of the page are not. And it is ease of use which logically should (and does) drive our layout. The 'clear rule' on when 'subjective precedence' trumps 'usage' is never. Why should it? What benefit is there in makng Wikipedia harder to maintain and use? Wikipedia should not be in the business of saying 'the state of Georgia is inferior to the country of Georgia'... only in saying which article is more heavily used and whether it is sufficiently more common to warrant going directly there rather than disambiguating. --CBD 14:55, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
There are ways to measure importance. One is to answer the question: if the encyclopedia had a limited number of articles, and it could include just one of the articles, which one would it be? Another way, suited to geographic entities, is to look at world maps: are modern maps of the world on which one is marked and the other isn't much more common than the other way around? Zocky | picture popups 00:09, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
There are loads and loads of ways we could measure importance. Most of them are subjective in choice of methodology though (e.g. looking at a world map gives an advantage to national entities over subnational ones, even though a subnational entity may have a larger population, economy and influence), and some are subjective in measurement as well ("if the encyclopedia had a limited number of articles, and it could include just one of the articles, which one would it be?" - well, I guess the Encyclopedia Americana would pick one thing and the another Encyclopedia may pick differently). It's hard to say with any certainty that, even for encyclopedic purposes (and therefore not speaking purely objectively), "A is more important than B". Our naming and disambiguation rules have to cope with country vs state, fictional character vs town, planet vs deity vs cartoon character... how on earth can this be done in an objective way if we considered the entities themselves? The reason we think about the articles, not their subjects, is both practical (far easier to do) and simple (one set of basic rules), and moreover, avoids exactly this kind of debate about how to measure importance. The "Sherlock Holmes" example given above was spot on. TheGrappler 02:26, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
What's missing from that analysis is that Wikipedia is a global general encyclopedia, so it's easy to choose which maps and which encyclopedias we should be thinking about. Think world maps and Britannica, not national maps or encyclopedias about particular subject. I'm pretty sure that every modern general encyclopedia published in the US includes an article on Georgia the country. Zocky | picture popups 11:29, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
As an afterthought, the "which one a limited general encyclopedia would include" criterion passes gloriously when tested against the Sherlock Holmes example. ;) Zocky | picture popups 11:54, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
What a splendid proposition. - FrancisTyers · 12:03, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
You're right, it does 'pass gloriously'... if a "limited general encyclopedia" had to choose between including 'Sherlock Holmes' the fictional character recognized around the world or a "rinky-dink town that virtually no-one had ever heard of" with the same name they would clearly choose the fictional character. Glad we agree. Likewise, the sovereign nation of Tuvalu (UN member since 2000) would almost certainly get axed before the city of Rome if they happened to have the same name. You won't find a single 'general purpose encyclopedia' anywhere that works off an 'Order of Precedence' standard rather than by what people are actually likely to want to read about. Wikipedia is no different... and should not be. --CBD 16:41, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information and it does need to choose and rank topics. Of course the current readership is still more interested in the US and computers, but much less so than a few years ago and much more so than in future. In any case, this is not a popularity contest, but rather an encyclopedia. If we simply follow what the public wants to read about, we're not countering the systemic bias, we're perpetuating it. Zocky | picture popups 17:33, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
With respect, I disagree with your analysis. Our page naming rules have to be able to cope with all kinds of different problems: weighing up a historically important cartoon character vs. a planet vs. a deity, for instance, isn't something where there is a clear order of importance. Even with country vs state it's really not as simple as looking it up on a map, because CBD's Tuvalu/Rome comment is absolutely spot on. It's also not clear that legal importance is the most important kind of importance! Law is just a social construct, population and area are physically real. We could argue about this forever, and there isn't a clearly objective correct answer (see my alternative dispute resolution suggestion below...). But the simple question "if a somebody, especially a newbie editor, puts in a link to [[Georgia]] in an article, is it largely unambiguous what they intended to link to?" gives a perfectly simple and basically objective answer - no. And that method also works for [[Pluto]], [[Cambridge]] and [[George Michael]]. We really don't need a new set of guidelines on "how to compare the importance of fictional characters and planets", another on "how to compare the importance of real academics and arguably trivial pop stars", another on "how to compare the importance of Pokemon cards to places with the same name"... TheGrappler 17:57, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
We were talking about whether it's possible to rank articles by importance, and I think I've presented a coherent way to measure enyclopedic importance of things, and according to that method, Georgia the country is more encyclopedically important than Georgia the US state. That simply means that it's more urgent for any encyclopedia to have an article about the country than the one about the state, not that the country is in any other way more important than the state (I remain unconvinced that there are modern general encyclopedias which don't include all UN members. Now, as I said at the beginning the difference in importance needs to be weighed against other concerns, like the practicality of disambiguating links. You'll notice that I haven't argued for the move outside of the poll, and I'm still not entirely sure that moving the articles is the right thing in this case.
But let me repeat, yes, the encyclopedic importance of topics can and should be measured when these decisions are made. Zocky | picture popups 18:37, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
Sure, encyclopedic importance of a topic is one factor to consider. But I don't see that it overrides the generally applicable guideline for determining a primary topic for disambiguation, which is that a primary topic exists only when there is strong evidence that one sense of a term is overwhelmingly more common than any other sense of a term. That is just not the case here. older ≠ wiser 19:14, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

(deindent) I'm not sure if it does or doesn't. For now I'm leaning towards the idea that it does, because:

  • In limited encyclopedias, subnational entities are mentioned in articles about their mother nations, if at all, and in a hierarchical table of contents, the subnational entities are on deeper levels than sovereign countries (unless they are the local subnational entities, but the word "local" has no meaning for Wikipedia). In short, the importance of UN members as encyclopedia topics is at least an order of magnitude greater than that of subnational entities, which gives at least one point for encyclopedicity to Georgia the country being the primary topic in this case.
  • The global relevance of sovereign states is vastly larger than that of subnational entities (and neither is extraordinarily relevant individually in this case), so a rather strong point for relevance to Georgia the country. (Note: this is different than the previous point and relates to real-life relevance, not position in a logical hierarchical categorization scheme).
  • Georgia is not a particularly extraordinary country, the other Georgia is not a particularly extraordinary subnational entity, and the disambig is not that interesting either. So no points for interest.
  • Both are widely meant and undrestood when the word "Georgia" is used, with no overwhelming majority. OTOH, there are strong indications that Google (and the geographical distribution of internet content in general) is still biased towards US. All in all, a weak point for causing least surprise to the disambig there.
  • The encyclopedia is growing fast and there are constantly new links made to Georgia - a rather strong point for practicality to the disambig.

So, in my mind it's at least 2 points for Georgia the country vs. 2 points for the disambig and no points for Georgia the state. An impasse leaning towards the country. This is rather nicely reflected in our poll - nobody is even suggesting that the US state should be the primary topic, and there's a small majority for the country being the primary topic.

One thing we could do to solve the impasse is to remove the practicality from the equation. We can do so by choosing to redirect the non-disambiguated title to the disambiguated primary topic and leave the "XY redirects here, for the other common topic see XY (wz), for other meanings see XY (disambiguation)" notice on top. Zocky | picture popups 13:36, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Except for the fact that many wouldn't notice the DAB link at the top, and people looking for the State would have to click 2 more times to get to the state, along with the fact it would become next to impossible for people to notice incorrect links unless they are editing the article directly. This isn't a traditional encyclopedia, we can have links to stuff, and move back and forth easily, we can have entries for uncommon names that link to the main name, so going by paper encyclopedia standards which are fundamentally limited and incorrect for Wikipedia. The way that it is now is perfectly fine, have the DAB on the topic page isn't slightly the country, it simply is making the encyclopedia easier to use for something where it is nearly evenly split between the two. PPGMD 14:04, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
I think you should read what I said once more. The solution would mean (a) 1 click for the country instead of 2 as now (b) 2 clicks for the state, just as it is now, and (c) 2 clicks instead of 1 for the disambig.
Also notice that the case is not almost evenly split between the country and the US state - it's almost evenly split between the country and the disambiguation, which could be extrapolated as roughly 75%:25% for the country, if we needed that calculation, which we don't seem to. Zocky | picture popups 14:17, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Alternative dispute resolution involving a ruler

Sosomk has reported that he is "very mystified by the resistance from some wikipedians." I will try and explain it to him. We opposers are, by doing so, saying nothing at all about how important your country is. We mean no disrespect at all, to you or your constitution. Should Wikipedia have to follow the Georgian constitution? Of course not. Neither do we follow the American, Russian or Moldovan constitution. The fact that an article is at "Georgia (country)" in no way indicates that that country's name is not Georgia. "Our name is Georgia, not Georgia (country)!" is to misunderstand article titling conventions. We are talking about the articles not the entities - once you understand that, things may become clearer for you. We're not talking about renaming your country, just this article. We're not talking about how important your country is, we're talking about what article might be expected to be found if you clicked on [[Georgia]]. The answer is, in fact, that there is no clear primary meaning of the phrase "Georgia" in English. If somebody tells me "I come from Georgia" the I have no idea where they are from! If they tell me "I come from Luxembourg" then I know immediately they are from the country not the Belgian province. If they came from Belgium, they would tell me "I'm from Luxembourg, ahh but not the country! I'm from the part of Belgium also called Luxembourg!" because they'd know that in English "Luxembourg" refers primarily to the country. This says absolutely nothing at all, rien, nada, jack, nowt about the importance of "Luxembourg (country)" and "Luxembourg (Belgium)". In fact, the latter is larger than the former, and the former has a higher constitutional status, but how much does that matter to Wikipedia's naming conventions? Zilch, diddly squat and zero - because those conventions were precisely designed to avoid this ridiculous argument about importance. Why try to avoid this kind of argument? Because we start getting comments like "Our American friends" (which I will take in good faith, but by God that sounds like bitter sarcasm) "will just have to realize minor subnational entities are not of the same level of importance as independent countries". So Georgia, USA is now "minor", apparently? That's just non-constructive slagging off, and what reaction does it provoke? Replies to the effect of "yeah, but we've got twice the population, twice the area, much bigger GDP, a nuclear weapons base and the world's second busiest airport!" And what effect should all that have according to our naming conventions? Gar nichts, nič, zip.

This kind of debate is fractious, bitter, divisive and completely pointless. I urge anybody, whether they support or oppose, to think about the articles not the entities, and not to attempt to compare the importance of the entities, how good they are, how big they are, how green the grass there is. The naming conventions are in their current form for a reason, and apply equally as well to any article from one on an architect to one on a planet, and I believe they support the status quo (what on Earth would a link to [[Georgia]] mean? There is simply no way to tell without contextual information which the link can't give... and if we hadn't split the support and oppose votes above and somebody had voted "This is ridiculous! The article about Georgia is the one that belongs at [[Georgia]]!" we'd still be clueless which side they were on!) while others may disagree. Please note that my opinion in those brackets said nothing about how big, good, or important either the country or the state were. The inability to hold a debate about something as dull as naming conventions without it degenerating into that kind of ridiculous dispute doesn't say good things about the current state of the Wikipedia community. Then again, remember "Gdanzig"?

If people wish to continue along the "We're sovereign!" - "But we're bigger!" - "But we've got a longer history!" - "But our current political entity is far older, and we never got conquered by Russians!" - "But we're at the UN!" - "Yeah, but if there elections to the UN, we'd have twice as many votes!" - "But our constitution even calls us 'Georgia'!" - "But we've got nukes!" - "We've got our own language too, you know!" - "So what, check our GDP!" - "Our GDP is measured in our own currency!" - "Yeah, but which of us has got the biggest airport?" ... ad nauseum, I propose a simple and effective solution. I will travel around both the state and the country with a ruler, and measure the penis size of the male populations (well, those above a certain age of course, I don't want to get in trouble for that kind of thing...). I shall endeavour to take a fair and representative sample and to measure to within the accuracy of plus or minus two millimeters. An independent adjudicator, if required, will be on hand to witness the results. I appreciate that this leaves women out, which is a little sexist, but I was relying on the (equally sexist?) opinion that women tend to be sensible enough not to be interested in bragging contests. If they're really keen I can measure their handspans or somesuch. After I have taken sufficiently large samples I shall publish the results, openly and transparently, on Wikipedia. The entity with the largest arithmetic mean penis size clearly deserves usage of the [[Georgia]] article space. In the case of a tie-break, the individual with the largest penis size will win that article name for his country/state. Alternatively, we could just use the naming conventions. TheGrappler 23:49, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Ha ha! At first I was stunned by the size of your comment, but when finished reading it, I was sorry it wasn't longer (the comment). I have one alteration to propose: You need to measure the arithmetic mean of the penis size in cubic centimeters (or inches). You will have to measure circumference, square it, multiply by length, and divide by 4π. We wouldn't want to disregard other possible physical privileges...:NikoSilver: 14:37, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
If the proposal proves to be successful, wha'd'ya think about applying it also to Macedonia naming conflict...? pa kom' obojci kom' opanci... Duja 14:53, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
The big problem with the Macedonia dispute seems to be that it's locus is that both sides believe have completely objective knowledge that the other usage of "Macedonia(n)" isn't properly Macedonia(n) at all. Whereas here it is quite clear that both sides actually are Georgian (apart from the fact they don't appear in fancy but decidedly outmoded dress speaking very poshly in BBC miniseries, but I guess that's yet another Georgian) so all that needs to be measured is their importance; and since it tends to be men that like to assert just how big and important they are, the only dispute that remains to be settled is whether to measure volume or length. Unfortunately, taking the arithmetic mean of these may produce different winners (if you are unconvinced, compare the hypothetical data sets of {2,2,2} and {1,1,3}). However, in a flash of inspiration, I've realized that so long as you take the geometric mean both results will always agree! (Hey, not only do you get to argue about naming disputes, you get to learn some maths, isn't Wikipedia educational?) Macedonian on the other hand will require me to measure neither length nor volume, but genuine Macedonicity. To this end, I could travel around all areas and entities that have been declared by either side to be truely Macedonian, and measure the Macedonicity of men's penises using my special patented Macedonicitymeter. The risk is this won't be perceived as neutral, because the losing side may claim that I have been measuring the wrong kind of Macedonicity. The important point here (I think there is actually is one) is that sometimes it's not importance which is at the heart of the dispute, but historical and moral rights to claim the name. It's easier when the other side isn't still around (I dread to think of the rows we'd have if the Albania in the Caucasus was still around to claim the name!) but if it is, arguing about how big and important both sides are is going to help even less. On an unrelated issue, what language was that? I was able to read and understand it - thank goodness for the Slavic dialect continuum! - but still don't have the foggiest idea what language it actually was... TheGrappler 18:39, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
Dear TheGrappler, (quote) If somebody tells me "I come from Georgia" the I have no idea where they are from! (end quote) Well, there are here I think 2 important issues to deal with considering this quote:
1. context: When someone would say that (s)he's from Georgia, I (neither from the state of Georgia nor the United States) would immediately think of Georgia, the country, if I would be outside the US. Being inside the US or talking with someone from the US or about the US I would know the state is referred to. But generally people in the world don't know the name of the states of the US but often do know the name of the country, the US. So in a universal context, where country names prevail, someone from the state Georgia would have to be more explicit (mentioning state and eventuallly the location within the country), saying "I'm from the US, from the Southeastern state Georgia" (preferably) or "I'm from the Southeastern state Georgia, US" (Southeast could of course also be coupled with US), mentioning both the name of the state and the country.
2. size/identification (territorial, demographical, economical etc.). I assume here the following: the bigger the size of the state/province/city, the more the name of the state/province/city is mentioned first and then the name of the country, especially by people who are from the big state/province/city concerned. Or: "A change in territorial identification (a more local identification) as a result of the size of the place people live". Some Google searches I think (superficially) proofs this (assuming that most webpages that are found by Google are from inhabitants of big states/provinces/cities (more research would be needed as well :))). On Google, the name of the state Georgia is mostly mentioned first and then the name of the country (US): the Google search on "Georgia, United States" ([2]) has more results than "United States, Georgia"([3]). And let's see for the biggest Indian state Uttar Pradesh: "Uttar Pradesh, India" ([4]) has more hits than "India, Uttar Pradesh" ([5]). The city of London: "London, United Kingdom" ([6]) has a lot more hits than "United Kingdom, London" ([7]).
So in this discussion these 2 issues meet. The first point seems to the the most significant all in all: we (the now over 1 billion ([8]) users of the Internet (and hopefully soon all +6.5 billion inhabitants)) often use the English Wikipedia (most articles and English is the most common lingua franca of the world, especially on the Internet) now expect to find the country Georgia when typing Georgia in Wikipedia (and a disambiguation page above the page to the state and other uses). Countries are still considered more significant globally. So state names need to be referred to in case of territorial identification. In the case of the country Georgia the name of the country Georgia suffices. In case of the state Georgia, mentioning the name of the state Georgia does not suffice and also the name of the country has to be mentioned. This is the current situation (future trends (as shown by the Google searches) will change the situation.). Best regards, Brz7 21:34, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
Brz7: What? I don't see what typing the nonsense phrase "United Kingdom, London" into Google proves about anything. It's a convention of English (at least in America) that entities almost always get bigger listed in a sequence (awkwardly-phrased but you get my point)...even if I were from a small town, I'd never say a silly phrase like "Australia, Smallville", but rather "Smallville, Australia"; same as if I had said Sydney. Regardless, we're not discussing how to dab the US state, but rather whether to dab the country.
I think a Google test is precisely the wrong way to go about this, but if you want one with slighly more meaning than yours, try typing "Georgia" into Google. On Google.com, nine of the top ten results point to the US state; on Google.co.uk, it's 6 of the top 10, with one of the country references being to Wikipedia; on .com.au, it's 8 of the top 10, with both WP articles referenced; on .ca, it's 9 of the top 10, with only the US state WP article referenced. When I searched for Tbilisi Georgia, the capital, limiting it to pages from the UK, I got 157K results, nothing compared to Atlanta Georgia, the US Georgia's capital and a "gamma" global city, or even minor cities Savannah, Georgia or Athens, Georgia, both of which topped half a million.
All this searching proves nothing about my position or yours, other than that you can't write off the US state's notability as "American bias". Both usages of Georgia are important on a global scale, and suggestions of "what if you had to write an encyclopedia without one or the other", debated above, are preposterous. None of us can objctively prove one's "importance" or "notability" over the other (last time I checked, international law had nothing to do with Wikipedia's internal decision making), nor do we have to try; that's why we have dab pages, and that's why we should use them, here included. --SuperNova |T|C| 23:04, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
Supernova, thanks fo your reply. As far as your comments on size/identification are concerned, the Google searches were used here to figure out more about the way people identify themselves as far as territory is concerned: whether they first refer to the name of their state/province/city and then the name of their country or vice versa.
As you said in common language first the name of the state/province/city is mentioned which was also the result of the Google searches. It superficially proves the claim I made (the bigger the size of the state/province/city, the more the name of the state/province/city is mentioned first and then the name of the country, especially by people who are from the big state/province/city concerned). The Google searches you did also have their value when researching identification. I welcome more ideas on how to investigate this claim by using Google. Some other ideas for Google searches: "Georgia -Atlanta" ([9]), "Georgia -Tblisi" ([10]). Of course Google is mainly a quantity search results and analysis of them all (quantitatively and qualitatively) would still need a lot of human reading :).
More important (now) is the research on identity and territory/location (e.g. [11], [12]), with or without taking into accordance the size of the state/province/city. As I mentioned the identification with location/territory/place is continuously evolving and more global research is needed (e.g. survey research on this topic like the World Values Survey could shine a light on the global trends in identification vice versa territory?).
Br, Brz7 11:47, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
Google searches prove nothing. And it isn't a problem with "American bias" only, it is also a problem with "Western" bias. - FrancisTyers · 00:21, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
FrancisTyers, I think Google searches can prove something (see above). I agree it's an American and western bias, though mainly an American bias since a state in the US is concerned. I think only in some parts of the Western world (which parts? Canada? Which other countries?) the first association is the state when "Georgia" is mentioned without context. Br, Brz7 11:47, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
So, what do you think? Should we use length or volume? :NikoSilver: 23:49, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
SuperNova just said a whole bunch of things that saved me the bother, but I'd like to point out that, in particular, Special:Whatlinkshere/Georgia has no context at all! A Wikipedian userpage or comment that says "I come from Georgia", unless you know them through other means, doesn't have enough context. There are so many uses of both forms of Georgia, that it's just a coin toss which is being meant (although on Wikipedia, chances are it's the Georgia, USA). So long as [[Georgia]] is a dab page, the "bad links" to it can be fixed (they regularly are by Wikipedia's hard-working, largely unseen, maintenance crew) but if either this, or the U.S. state, was moved there, they couldn't. Anyhow, SuperNova is of course quite wrong when he says None of us can objctively prove one's "importance" or "notability" over the other - like I say, all we need to do is pick a sampling methodology, find a neutral way of picking between volume and length, and we're done! Since women have so far been largely excluded from this proposal, I think it would be fairest to allow them to participate through an opinion poll in which they decide which of these two assets is most important :-) TheGrappler 00:19, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
Can they also be the members of the measuring committee please? :NikoSilver: 00:41, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
Strong Support for proposal by TheGrappler. I stand corrected. --SuperNova |T|C| 01:33, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

More discussions

Can we be open-minded and make a right decision despite our nationality? Anybody in th world should realize that the country of Georia has the title "Georgia" for more centuries than the state of Georgia. It is a sovereign political entity, has its own culture, traditions, language and etc and politically is more important than the State. However, the state of Georgia has also very important and interesting culture, but the country is just more important today and deserves the title "Georgia". Couintries should have a priority of choosing the title. Any discussions disproving this statement make no sense and please don't waste your time. It is a summertime and try to relax.Sosomk 18:20, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Is it more important today in any way independent of being an independent nation?? Georgia guy 18:27, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
For the overwhelming majority of the world both are foreign, so for them (us) the question is: is a foreign independent country today more important than a foreign subnational entity today? The answer for many is yes. Zocky | picture popups 19:15, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Having Georgia topic on Wikipedia is nothing more then a prestige for people that like the country. Wikipedia is an information source, our first concern should not be which is more important, but what makes the information more accessible. Have the DAB on Georgia makes the information more accessible, because we can easily monitor bad links, and it makes no assumption on which article is more important. It's been more then a week, a concensus hasn't been reached because there is none, thus the voting should be closed and the topic should be closed, at least for the next year. PPGMD 20:30, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

What in the world are you talking about? What prestige is there to be had? And yes, importance should be one of the first things to look at, and so should practicality. OTOH, ignorance of readers (and editors) is not something that should be taken into account and all arguments based on "I think more people will be looking for one, because I personally don't know a thing about the other" should be discounted. Zocky | picture popups 22:31, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Request to end debate

As has been pointed out, the requested move has gone past the recommended 5 days and is now on Day 8. Although Wikipedia is not a democracy, it might be helpful to note that the current count of users who have entered their opinion is 51 to 45 or 46 (the numbers go up to 44; there are two number ones, hence 45 votes; additionally, one vote of "neither" was in favor of the status quo, which is the same as opposing the move). WP advises a minimum of 60% in favor to reach consensus for a move; the current percentage, after eight days, is about 53%. While there continues to be vigorous debate on this page, there is no sign that consensus is approaching. The only reason to prolong the debate would be in hopes that eventually, at some indeterminate future point, enough users added to support to tip the scales. However, after eight days, it seems all who wish to vote have had the chance, and as consensus appears no closer than it did 8 days ago (or even 1-2 years ago in previous polls), I ask that this requested move be closed and marked as Opposed. --SuperNova |T|C| 23:07, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Agreed besides in another year it will come up again. PPGMD 23:50, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

I think the problem with this debate, the cause for it emerging again every year or so, is that people that are objective, or, that being a silly word for someone raising an oppinion, people that live neither places and perhaps also excluding people that live in the US, instantly agree that a country, of any size, is a more important entity then a state or county of another country. However the US and the state of Georgia have a lot of people, very many of them are online and an impresive number of them edit on english wikipedia, a lot more then people from the country Georgia obviously. Therefor it seems that this debate will be raised again and again, it beeing what makes the best encyclopedia, just to be put down by wikipedians with what may be a diffrent agenda or a biased oppinion. --Moravice 03:10, 14 July (CET)

If that were true you would see the State of Georgia folks doing the same thing on their page, but it simply is not true, it seems the people that edit the Georgia article are happy with the DAB because it's the best conclusion, it's fair and and makes no claim that either article has supremacy over the other. PPGMD 01:25, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
That does not follow at all. You use the fact that half of the people support one option and no people support the opposing option as an argument for the compromise between the two options. If the poll calls for any compromise, it's for the compromise between the disambiguation page and the country article, not betwen the country article and the US state article.
And no, people who support the move are largely not the people who come from or edit articles about Georgia the country. Zocky | picture popups 02:05, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Majority thinks that Georgia (country) should be on Georgia.Sosomk 07:20, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Not only the majority (Wikipedia is not a democracy), but the people voting for the country have a wider range of national backgrounds. - FrancisTyers · 13:24, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
New here, Sosomk? As I pointed out in my first post, Wikipedia is not a democracy; the slim majority that prevails at the moment does not, in any way, represent consensus, so it's really irrelevant.
Zocky: The dab isn't at all a "compromise"; the position that the US state gets Georgia isn't advocated by anyone; the two positions are and have always been: Should Georgia point to country article or a dab page? And seeing as how the options are mutually exclusive, there's really no way to compromise. I think PPGMD was just saying that, if people from Georgia/US were really as biased as Moravice claims, why wouldn't they actually argue that Georgia (U.S. state) should be moved to Georgia? Surely, if they're stuffing the ballot box as much as alleged, it could be done, right? But in fact, not everyone voting Oppose has "a biased oppinion" as Moravice says; some (gasp!) honestly feel that the status quo -- which has yet to be overturned in four RMs -- is the best decision. This debate has run its course, and rather than moan about regional bias or whatnot, Wikipedia etiquette would dictate that it's time to let this one go. If something in the world or on Wikipedia changes significantly in the next year, then bring it back up. --SuperNova |T|C| 08:20, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
If Georgia country was still called Republic of Georgia, it could be moved there. As it isn't, can't Georgia (US state) be moved to State of Georgia, and Georgia (country) to Georgia (i.e. sticking with the official names). --Tēlex 13:36, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
They both have the offical name of Georgia, having the DAB on the topic is the best way to handle the traffic that simple enters Georgia in the go box, for people linking to Wikipedia, or article links within Wikipedia, the links are handled already. No one from the State is arguing that it should have the topic page, instead they believe the DAB is the best compromise. The debate has ended, the DAB stays for the moment. PPGMD 13:43, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

What if...

In 2045, the world decides to celebrate the 100th anniversary of an important day in history (the end of World War II) by reverting all countries to what they were then. All country changes from then until 2091 imitate the country changes they are the 100th anniversaries of (e.g. any country change in 2068 imitates a country change in 1968.) Then, in 2091, the Soviet Union tries so hard it remains a single country, and the United States can't stay united any more and breaks up into 49 independent nations; all the states become nations except Nevada and Utah remain united under the name "Nevada Utah". In 2101, Wikipedia is reset to having no articles and has to start all over again. If this happens, what do you think the Georgia article status for 2106 would be?? (Please note that I have no wishes for this story to come true; it's just to test people to see what would happen then.) Georgia guy 14:51, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't know, but I'm pretty sure the answer involves unicorns. Anyway, you don't have to go through so many contortions to imagine the American Georgia as an independent country with its own President and Congress. It was, briefly, after the Declaration of Independence and before joining the U.S. And again after seceding in 1861, it was briefly an independent state with no affiliation to any larger political entity.
And if in a few years the European Georgia joins the EU, and the EU gets a constitution and starts looking more like a country, both Georgias will be in comparable situations, though one will be larger, and the other will have a longer history. And presumably lots of people will again waste countless hours arguing about whether the article names are appropriate, and which entity if any is more important, in the continued mistaken belief that Wikipedia articles are intended as a measure of importance or value.
If that happens again, I think I'll skip it. --dreish~talk 07:39, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
Let’s all shake hands and forget about the names. Who knows what future will bring. Ldingley 17:32, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Doesn't matter what the future will bring Georgia (country) is more important historically, politically, culturally and in every single aspect. I don't believe that the state of Georgia has a single place that is important as UNESCO World heritage site. In addition, if Georgians are very proud that Georgian soldiers were very brave during the Civil War, European Georgian had fought thousands of wars more devastating than the US Civil War. Making all the discussions trying to stop the move is just a JINGOISM. There are more US Georgian Users on English speaking wikipedia and this was influenced by the jingo disussions. According to Pascal, "Justice without force is powerless." SO I guess I have to take the status quo, when it really needs to be the way as the majority VOTED.Sosomk 07:57, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Sosomk, that's enough. I realize you are very proud of your native country and feel very strongly about this issue, but the move proposal is complete; understand that many users disagree with you. Please limit discussion to how to improve the article in its current location. You may debate the importance of your country with individual Wikipedians who are willing; if so, please do so on your personal talk pages or off Wikipedia. And please don't place your entire comment in bold. — Knowledge Seeker দ 08:17, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
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