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Old talk

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This article is far from correct. It was certainly not founded by Sergej Korolev, he used this city to consolidate the space travel industry. Errabee 15:17, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Former name

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In the beginning of the 20th century, there used to be a village called Podlipki where Korolyov now stands. The village was granted urban-type settlement status and renamed Kalininsky in 1928, and in 1938 it was granted town status and renamed Kaliningrad. The city was renamed Korolyov in 1996. "Podlipki", by the way, is still a part of the name of several of the city's microdistricts, as well as the name of the railway station.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:03, December 18, 2009 (UTC)

Requested move

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The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. 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 move request was: page not moved: no concensus after 48 days. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 14:50, 20 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Korolyov (city) → Korolev (city) — Although this isn't the default romanization, the city's official website uses the transliteration "Korolev". It is named after Sergei Korolev, and I have also made a move request regarding that page. --Mlm42 (talk) 21:56, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

So the main argument here, (assuming Sergei Korolev's requested move goes through) is that I don't think we should have different article names for the city and the person - having both Korolyov (city) and Korolev (person), seems like a bad idea, so in this case maybe we should ignore WP:RUS. Mlm42 (talk) 16:24, 5 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. We do not decide the article title on what spelling the official website uses. We have a set of criteria at WP:RUS, with which this move request is at odds, and which has separate criteria for establishing the titles of articles on geographic locations and on people. Besides, what makes you think that the official website's URL is in English (rather than a generic Latinization)?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 3, 2011; 22:01 (UTC)
The point is that the city is named after the person, so it stands to reason it should use the same spelling as the person's name. Mlm42 (talk) 22:03, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No it doesn't. The point of WP:RUS (and of the BGN/PCGN romanization of Russian after which it is modeled) is that we shouldn't be bothering with establishing what was named after whom (if at all) before deciding what an article's title would be, but rather look at usage and industry standards of romanization (which never look at the origins of a name, but rather just at the original spelling). What stands to reason is that we have two different sets of conventionality criteria for people and for places, and if you think about it, you'll see that it makes a lot of good sense.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 3, 2011; 22:12 (UTC)
Okay.. but it doesn't make a lot of sense to me to have an article titled "Korolev" for the person, and one titled "Korolyov" for the city named after him. "Common sense" tells me something's wrong with that. Mlm42 (talk) 22:17, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That's actually more common than you think (cf. Dmitri Mendeleev and Mendeleyevsk). Common sense should be telling you that taking the original Russian spelling of a place name and applying the industry-accepted method of romanization to it is easier and makes more sense than figuring out who a place was named after, figuring the romanization of that person's name, and then deriving a place name based on the person's name spelling. By the by, Britannica uses "Korolyov" in both cases ([1], [2]), which makes our guidelines more flexible than theirs.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 3, 2011; 22:29 (UTC)
I understand your take on the guideline; but we know exactly where the name comes from - it was renamed after Korolev 15 years ago in his honour. WP:IAR also makes our guidelines flexible, and maybe IAR should be applied in this case. Mlm42 (talk) 22:39, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
You and I know that, but probably not your average reader. Like I said above, finding out who the place is named after may be one of the bits of the information a reader will be looking for. As for the IAR, it should be invoked when the benefits are overwhelmingly obvious and downsides negligible. Not the case here.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 3, 2011; 22:45 (UTC)
Actually, the only reason I know that is because the lead says it in bold letters. So no need to worry about readers looking for this information. Maybe we should let others weigh in on this move request. Mlm42 (talk) 22:49, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The information in the lead is useful to those who have already found the article, not to those who are looking for it :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 3, 2011; 22:54 (UTC)
  • Support appears to be the most common name. Korolev 1570k -- Korolyov 233k .. 65.95.15.144 (talk) 05:43, 4 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Comment. WP:RUS explicitly discourages determining a common name based on a search engine test alone. For good reasons, too.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 4, 2011; 13:07 (UTC)
  • Support as the conventional name, which WP:RUS does admit. Having a city not spelled like its eponym requires a positive reason; this is also the BGN Approved name for the city (in English). Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:14, 4 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • If you read the applicable section of WP:RUS, you'll see that it does not admit it as the conventional name. There is a very clear definition of what a "conventional name" is under WP:RUS, and having an eponym (which itself has multiple valid spellings, with the final variant being settled by the very same WP:RUS, albeit in a different section) is not it. As for the BGN link, first, their "approved" spelling is not "Korolev" but "Korolëv" (which under the simplified BGN/PCGN rules, which use no diacritics and which match our WP:RUS guideline, transforms into "Korolyov", not into "Korolev"), and second, there exist other, equally reliable sources, which use different spellings (Britannica uses Korolyov as primary, for example). Figuring out which source trumps another source, or which source is more reliable, is not a call we as Wikipedians should be making, which is precisely why we have WP:RUS in the first place—to agree on one acceptable practice, taking into account multiple practices used in the real world. Carving out an exception every time someone's personal preference is violated defeats the purpose of having a guideline at all. You yourself, for example, aren't nearly as accommodating to exceptions to WP:MOSDAB without a good cause; so why such lenience towards other community-approved guidelines?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 4, 2011; 19:37 (UTC)
      • Figuring out, however, which name is most useful to English-speaking readers is exactly our business.
      • Your personal remarks are misdirected; I consider MOSDAB well-intended but far too arbitrary, admitting too few exceptions. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:52, 4 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
        • Helping to figure out which name is most useful to Anglophones is exactly why we have WP:RUS. This guideline is the result of reviewing the usage of multiple romanization systems in various contexts, is based on the accepted industry practices (as your own BGN example confirms), has been approved by the community, and has stood the test of time. As such, WP:RUS is vastly superior to counting google hits every time a decision needs to be made. On the point raised by the original nominator, note that not a single system of the romanization of Russian requires knowing an eponym (or knowing if there even is one) to perform the transliteration. And if it's not a factor in anyone else's decisions, why should it be a factor in ours?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 4, 2011; 20:11 (UTC)
        • I still hold, however, that in this case the standard transliteration is not most helpful, any more than it would be helpful to call Moscow Moskva (or Cairo Qahira); without the strong reason to do otherwise (and the fact that most Anglophones do spell this Korolev), I would agree to apply it here too. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:35, 5 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
          • I just don't see how this case is of any special significance to warrant a customized exception. This place nowhere approaches the significance of Moscow or Cairo, and the commonality clause of WP:RUS takes care of such high-profile cases just fine anyway—just like the BGN's practices do. Consider, for example, the fact that the "approved" BGN spelling of Moscow is "Moskva", with "Moscow" being labeled "conventional", and that no similar "conventional" name is available for Korolyov. Since different romanization systems tend to be used in different knowledge areas (works on history, for example, tend to favor scientific transliteration, while the works on geography tend to stick with BGN/PCGN), it's no wonder that for some places a spelling in terms on one romanization system would be more common than in another, and that "one" and "another" would refer to different romanization systems for different entities. That only points to the fact that in some knowledge areas some romanization systems are more common than others, not that some particular spellings are more common in English (as a language) than others. Since our articles about places like Korolyov are first and foremost about the geographic entities, the conventions most common in dealing with geographic entities are adopted by WP:RUS. There is absolutely no benefit in carving out an exception here. There is a reason why we have naming guidelines in Wikipedia and not just count ghits instead.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 7, 2011; 16:51 (UTC)
  • Oppose. It's better to maintain consistency by following WP:RUS. The arguments presented are not good enough to warrant application of WP:IAR. Nanobear (talk) 19:54, 4 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
If the goal is to maintain consistency, then surely it would be less confusing the readers to have "Korolyov" (city) and "Korolev" (person) articles.. Mlm42 (talk) 16:21, 5 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
You seem to be confusing the consistency of having identical titles with the consistency of following the guidelines (which are based on what's done in the real world). The former is not the goal here; the latter is.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 7, 2011; 16:51 (UTC)
Will the average reader 1) understand that this is a simple application of Wikipedia's WP:RUS guideline, or 2) be like "Why are Korolyov (city) and Korolev (person) spelled differently", and then either try to fix it themselves, or ask questions on this talk page? Mlm42 (talk) 16:21, 5 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Referring such a reader to WP:RUS is all that's needed. With any luck, they'll learn something new.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 7, 2011; 16:51 (UTC)
I guess I'm not a fan of enforcing rules just for the sake of enforcing rules. I still think this should be an exception. Mlm42 (talk) 18:51, 7 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
If you are somehow under an impression that I am a fan of enforcing rules just for the sake of enforcing rules, that is not so. When something tangibly beneficial is produced as a result of ignoring a rule, then the rule should be ignored. Problem is, in this particular case there is nothing beneficial to be gained (with all due respect, the "average reader" argument doesn't hold much water—we have this problem in a good number of other Wikipedia articles; all because the reasoning behind some of the rules becomes clear only after one digs deeper than the obvious which lies on the surface). And ignoring a rule for the sake of ignoring the rule is just as bad.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 7, 2011; 19:16 (UTC)
  • Oppose per WP:RUS and per the fact that Korolyov (city) is not as much important or prominent as Sergei Korolev to warrant an exeption from the general transliteration guideline. GreyHood Talk 17:17, 7 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - The Majority of English Language Reliable Sources use "Korolev" to address the city by at least a ratio of 5:1. In this case WP:COMMONNAME is clear that a common name drawn from a majority of reliable english language sources outweighs any "correct" name by romanisation. WP:RUS should recognise this in it's fullness and it is to it's detriment that it does not. Wikipedia's benchmark is not and has not ever been what is correct or true but what can be verified by sources in this case English Sources speak clearly of the verifiable position. I also suggest an RFC on WP:RUS should occur since it appears to be conflicting with the interests of English Readers. Further debate on my position in this matter can be raised in WP:VPP where discussion is ongoing. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 00:53, 16 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • No one is saying this is the only "correct" variant. The whole point is that there is a number of "correct" variants (because there is a number of different romanization systems), and we standardize on just one. The hits you are seeing are indicative of a variety of romanization systems as well as the problems of romanization of the letter yo, not of a "clearly more common English name". There is no such thing as a "common English name" for small towns in Russia; there's only the matter of choice of romanization, which varies wildly from one source to another (Britannica, for example, uses "Korolyov").—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 16, 2011; 14:21 (UTC)
      • There is such a thing as a "common English Name" for small towns in Russia when that town is the subject of English Language History Books, Tourist Guides as well as Geographical and other relevant Papers and Books. This particular small Russian town does happen to have a common English name - possibly because of it's connection to Sergei Korolev and this article should represent that common name because it will be the name that Anglophones will search for. Which ever way you you search for reliable English sources - those sources return substantially in favour of "Korolev"
Books
"Korolyov" "Moscow Oblast" -inauthor:"Books, LLC" 8 Books
"Korolev" "Moscow Oblast" -inauthor:"Books, LLC" 120 Books
"Korolyov" "Kaliningrad" -inauthor:"Books, LLC" 120 Books
"Korolev" "Kaliningrad" -inauthor:"Books, LLC" 517 Books
Research Papers
"Korolyov" "Moscow Oblast" 4 Papers
"Korolev" "Moscow Oblast" 339 Papers
"Korolyov" "Kaliningrad" 31 Papers
"Korolev" "Kaliningrad" 180 Papers
Web Pages return about equally for "Korolev" and "Korolyov" but those are raw counts with no thoughts over the reliability of the sources and often include redundant uses in both cases. However with ratio's of 4:1 - 15:1 for books and 6:1 - 80:1 for research papers, English language sources win out in this case. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 15:02, 16 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
A "common English name" for places in Russia is what BGN labels as "conventional"—that's the name you will find in dictionaries, on maps, or in other reference materials such as encyclopedias (and last I checked, Wikipedia was an encyclopedia). You can find such conventional names for big places like Moscow or St. Petersburg, but not for most small towns and villages in Russia—those are romanized variations. And as I mentioned a bazillion times before, there is close to a dozen different systems of romanization of Russian, and each and every book author is free to use any one (or even more than one) of them without being "wrong". So, basically, when you google these variants up, it's a crapshoot—at any given time the results will depend on the preference for one romanization system over another in a specific context, on the number of sources, on how many books in certain fields google has scanned so far, and so on, and so forth. Hardly a basis to conclude that what you find is a "common English name"—it's more like winning a round in roulette. Also, suggesting that "most readers" will look this particular town up because of its connection to Sergei Korolev is a pure speculation unsubstantiated by facts. There are all kinds of different reasons why readers would seek that particular article, and if I had to make a guess, the spelling used on the English maps or in the English encyclopedias is an equally plausible origin point. Besides, this is not about finding the article anyway—we could title it "XYZREDWOP123", and readers will still find it if proper redirects and disambig integration are in place. This is about having a naming convention, which is consistent within itself, and which is based on a widely accepted real-world practices. Looking up each place name in google individually is wrong, makes no sense, not done by anyone else in the field of geography, and makes our own jobs much harder to do. That is what WP:RUS is here to fix. Now, I've asked the following question before, but since I got no answer, let me ask it again—if "common name" could be established by a google search, why in the world would WP:COMMONNAME even mention romanization or allow for sub-guidelines dealing with it? Why not just say "count the ghits and try being not too biased when 'refining' them"?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 16, 2011; 15:53 (UTC)
We are not BGN/PCGN we are Wikipedia and our *Policy* on titling is that we search for all reliable sources and see what the most common usage is we do not limit to those that BGN define as Convential sources. But even then BGN/PCGN use Korolev (sources available at WP:VPP) so WP:RUS is failing to even match BGN despite your claims otherwise. I have not suggested that ""most readers" will look this particular town up because of its connection to Sergei Korolev" I have suggested that the reason so many Reliable sources including BGN/PCGN choose to use Korolev is because of its connection to Sergei Korolev. This is a substantially different speculation and isn't really important to the debate at hand whether true or false. Our naming convention only defers to any Romanisation guidelines if no English sources use a name or if there is no clearly preferred name used in English sources This is not the case here so there should be no deferment to romanisation guidelines WP:CommonName should take preference. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 16:19, 16 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I see you ignored my question again. Hm.
To answer yours, yes, we are Wikipedia, but it is not our job to invent brand new ways of dealing with things when perfectly good practices are available for borrowing. As for our policy, it says exactly this: names not originally in a Latin alphabet, such as Greek, Chinese, or Russian names, must be transliterated. That much, I hope, is obvious. It further says that established systematic transliterations, such as Hanyu Pinyin, are preferred. So far, so good. Next, it says however, if there is a common English-language form of the name, then use it, even if it is unsystematic (as with Tchaikovsky and Chiang Kai-shek). Good, but how do we know what "a common English-language form of the name" is? The next sentence answers this question: for a list of transliteration conventions by language, see Wikipedia:Romanization. Which is where we find WP:RUS, among other guidelines, and which is where the definition of what "a common English-language form of the name", developed with real-life solutions of this specific problem in mind, can be found. With this said, if you intend to file an RfC, I suggest you first propose to get rid of WP:UE altogether. Surely, a "well-refined" ghits count makes it completely redundant?
Additionally, if using →"Korolev" "Moscow Oblast"← is your idea of sufficiently refining the results, I have to disappoint you—it's not. The scientist lived and worked in Moscow Oblast, which skews the results. "Korol[yo/e]v" is a very common last name (and we do consider the spellings of individual names separately; per the same WP:RUS, by the way), which skews the results. Most of the papers you find deal with an area of knowledge unrelated to the geographic entity, but merely mention it in passing, yet our article is primarily about the geographic entity—that skews the results. After you account for all this, the remaining margin will be pathetically negligible to be able to announce that the "winner" is the "common English name" with any degree of confidence.
Finally, I need to point out that BGN does not use "Korolev" (it doesn't even list it as an alternative)—where'd you get that?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 16, 2011; 17:23 (UTC)
Yes it does - I should point out that this is the US federal Gazeteer and is identified by BGN as their repository of all correct romanisations. Refining in this manner is not perfect but the tiny number of sources using korolyov should also have been increased unsurprisingly they are not. You also work our common name policy backword - the first section explains how to establish a common name, you seem to ignore this and look to romanisation guidelines to tell you what is common. The romanisation guidelines are for use when either reliable sources show no preference for any particular transliteration or when all sources are all in the non-romanised language. This is the second time now that I've answered your question, I'm sorry if you don't like my answer but I did not ignore it. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 18:40, 16 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No, it does not. Take another look; it's "Korolëv", not "Korolev". They are using the strict BGN/PCGN romanization (as they should—it's their system, after all), while our community was more lax and adopted the simplified version for WP:RUS (for the record, I personally was not in support of such approach). Under the simplified rules, "ë" is replaced with "yo", not with "e" (and had you read this entire discussion before posting, you would have noticed that I already explained this exact reason on this very page in this very RM). Sorry, but this is yet another example of what kind of havoc the solutions of a person unfamiliar with the problem can wreak. As for the "correct romanizations" remark, I said it before, and I will say it again—they are all "correct". The issue is not their accuracy, the issue is which one should be picked to deal with a certain subject matter (in this case, toponymy). And if we don't want to pick, then having WP:UE is pointless.
On your other concern, no, I don't have it "backwards". The first section explains how to establish a common name in general, and it works in most cases without the need to refer to any sub-guidelines. WP:UE is there to handle special cases where there is the need to deal with foreign names and their Anglicization. Since we are dealing with such special case here, we should use the appropriate subsection—doing otherwise is like trying to advocate for storage of all trains in airplane hangars—it is perfectly possible, but the result will be ridiculous. So, let's assume that you have indeed answered my previous question twice, and look at the matter from this angle: in cases other than those where "reliable sources show no preference for any particular transliteration" or when "all sources are all in the non-romanised language", who is to ensure that all applicable English sources have been reviewed (if that's unimportant, we can use ghits counts and dispose of WP:UE)? Who is to decide that "no preference for any particular transliteration" can be observed (if that's unimportant, we can use ghits counts and dispose of WP:UE)? Who is to ensure that the results have been filtered in a non-biased way (if that's unimportant, we can use ghits counts and dispose of WP:UE)? Who is to assign proper weights to variants transliterated using different methods and decide which can be discarded (if that's too much work, we can use ghits counts and dispose of WP:UE)? Most importantly, why should we even bother going through all these motions, when a perfectly good practice of dealing with this exact problem has been available in the English-speaking world since the 1940s? If your answer to the above questions is "consensus", then please tell us again the purpose of having WP:Romanization and of all the sub-guidelines it lists, many of which have separate conventionality clauses the same way WP:RUS does. Do you think there might be a reason for that other than the "conflict with interests of English readers"? Perhaps something completely opposite?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 16, 2011; 20:02 (UTC)
No you take another look at the bottom the BNG state that then name when not using Diacritics is transliterated to Korolev and they never mention Korolyov. You're essentially saying that you know better than the BNG even though you're using their transliteration standard. Like any Article on Title we use that which is represented by the Majority of reliable sources, not what is its "Ofiicial Title" or "Properly Tranliterated" and you can ask the same questions about "ensur[ing] that all applicable English sources have been reviewed" of them as well but it is policy and works in all other cases. We decide that there is "no preference for any particular transliteration" if the number of sources is roughly similar - certainly not if there is a 5x or 10x (or more) difference in source uptake of a particular transliteration because then policy says that that suggests one transliteration is more common. WP:UE clearly says "If there are too few English-language sources to constitute an established usage, follow the conventions of the language appropriate to the subject" - Your arguments seem to revolve around "I can't trust English Language Sources so even if there are enough of them I'll ignore them in preference of blindly following a specific Transliteration policy" . Again you are working backwords because the romanisation section says if it's common use it, even if it is unsystematic which you seem to feel means use the system. The problem is that we use what reliable sources way - and your insistence on ignoring reliable sources in favour of following a set transliteration even where that goes against reliable sources borders on if not crosses into original research. Guidelines exist to assist in finding consensus and I'm sure there are plenty of Russian towns that have no English Sources whatsoever and where WP:UE will be essential in finding consensus on what article title to use - this is not one of those. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 20:43, 16 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The simplified version is not endorsed by BGN/PCGN, it's a commonly used system to make strict BGN/PCGN "more convenient for Anglophones", which can "easily be observed in real usage" (including Britannica). Like I said, I did not support it; I was in favor of using the well-defined strict version. So you are way off with labelling me as someone "who knows better than BGN". Put the blame on our infamous "consensus" instead. I have axes to grind with the current version of WP:RUS too, yet somehow I can live without running around and submitting random RMs in hopes to change the situation.
The rest of your points I already addressed above; I see no reason to repeat myself. In short, I can summarize them as follows: it's not about "I can't trust English Language Sources so even if there are enough of them I'll ignore them in preference of blindly following a specific Transliteration policy", it's about "let's look how the academia goes about this and do the same". You, on the other hand, seem to be in favor of "screw what the academia does; I can do a better job of counting ghits on my own even though I know little about Russia in general and about problems related to romanization of Russian in particular". A typical attitude around here these days, sadly. You don't even care that the majority of the "reliable sources" you found are not even about the town (which are the only sources that matter); they are about something else entirely which happens to mention the town in passing. Tell me where my assessment is wrong, please.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 16, 2011; 21:07 (UTC)
This again is the problem - we should not be going through either system to determine which transliteration system is best we should only ever report exactly what reliable sources say. The only reason for going through that process is because either no source exists in English or no Usage has preference - Again that is not the case here. It is not a case of "screw what the academia does; I can do a better job of counting ghits on my own even though I know little about Russia in general and about problems related to romanization of Russian in particular" against "let's look how the academia goes about this and do the same". Because we do not repeat the process that Academia does - we look at the material Academia has published in English and ask which romanisation do they predominantly use? Looking through the sources I see works on the political make-up of the area and city, The geography of the area and city, scientific works citing experiments as occurring in the city, business details in the city, etc - but whatever way I refine Even "Korolev, Mosow Oblast" vs "Korolyov, Mosow Oblast" or "Korolev, Moscow Region" vs "Korolyov, Moscow Region" Korolev is used in more sources. If you have a way that refines the search for sources in favour of Korolyov I'd be interested to hear it but I cannot see any refined searches that suggest Korolyov is more common in English sources than Korolev which is what is suggested by the current article title. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 23:26, 16 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, I am not interested in "refining" sources and neither should you be—that is not our job. If you find yourself in a position where you have to sift through ghits and review each one individually, it's a good indication you are doing something wrong. At any rate, you certainly didn't do a good job at said refining either. For example, what makes you think that a search for "Korol[e/yo]v, Moscow Oblast" will leave you only with the applicable sources pertaining to the town? Take, for example, your refined search for "Korolev" "Moscow Oblast", which somehow produced 339 papers (a result I can't replicate, for the record). To tell you the truth, I'd be ever so happy to find 339 high-quality papers about the town when doing a search in Russian'! Heck, I'd be happy with a couple dozen! The caveat here is that they have to be primarily about the town, not about an experiment in the town or a scientific work where the town is mentioned as an afterthought. Start whittling those down, and you'll be left with a very applicable and relevant body of ghits, but, unfortunately, it will be too small to honestly announce that the "winner" is the "conventional English name".
All this makes me very suspect that a lot of what you included shouldn't have been included, even if it looked acceptable at the first glance. Like I said before, "Korolev/Korolyov" is a very common Russian last name, which means a lot of people with this last name would reside in Moscow Oblast (which itself is the second most populous federal subject of Russia... and that's after Moscow itself), which means that the counts are bound to be inflated in any context, including geography, business, or scientific research. On the latter, by the way, why should we be using, say, a scientific paper about cosmic radiation to determine what the "conventional English name" is for a town in Russia? Sure, the paper may be a great resource in an article dealing with cosmic radiation, but to use it for anything else would be quite a stretch.
All in all, the only purpose of WP:RUS is to help establish the article title; it certainly is not to figure out how the town is being referred to in unrelated contexts. It is the practices used by the academia to address this very problem (i.e., establishing the article title) we are borrowing, and somehow I doubt that Britannica chose this title because they manually went through oodles of ghits. We should be doing things the same way other encyclopedias are doing it, not invent and ride our own bikes. The very least we could do is to recognize the "technical limitations and biases" of the search engines—something none other than WP:COMMONNAME warns about.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 17, 2011; 14:04 (UTC)
I'm sorry your not interested in identifying Reliable Sources but that's how we determine whether the town is notable and whether the information about it is verifiable - This is clear Policy. Identifying English Language Sources is an important part of that - not simply using only Russian Language sources and making a choice on how they should be transliterated and we should not ignore reliable English sources in order to apply a transliteration that is not consistent with the majority of sources discussing the subject. The fact that reliable organisations likeNASA, the BGN (And U.S. Federal Government), and so on use Korolev so should we (especially since Britannica use both spellings with no real contextual reason why.) - if we search for sources that say "Kaliningrad" ... "renamed foo" foo is most frequently Korolev (with a ratio of between 1:3 and 1:6) - If we search for "City of Foo" it's between 1:8 and 1:13 for Korolev. It's not simply about counting those hits (as you keep implying) but that's the first step in identifying which sources are reliable and which are not - but its a process that should be carried out and not brushed over for some rigid interpretation that is not helpful to our readers. From that we can find works like Tour Guides to the City for instance Discovering the Moscow countryside: a travel guide to the heart of Russia by Kathleen Murrell these are relevant , there are also substantial numbers of works on the History of the Space Race Establish the City as currently being "Korolev" whilst discussing in detail the importance of the city (either "Korolev" or as "Kaliningrad") to the space race. The fact that the subject of the source is the Space Race does not change the fact that the city is an important factor in that and is established as being both important and currently called Korolev. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 15:11, 17 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't say I'm not interested in identifying reliable sources. I said I am not interested in manually "refining" random ghits to do that (and that you shouldn't be either). The former is our clear policy. The latter isn't, and we have a very good essay describing the problems associated with that approach. It is especially relevant when the number of ghits one is dealing with is so low and the person dealing with them is neither aware of the various problems associated with the romanization of Russian, which wildly skew the results, nor is even willing to hear about them. It's one thing to say that such and such must a "conventional English name" because, hey, here are several million ghits confirming it. It's another thing entirely when you declare something a "conventional English name" based on "refining" a few thousand ghits, which you yourself narrowed down to measly few hundred, based on the criteria known only to you. Do you not think there is a cause for concern with such approach? While counting ghits is indeed often a good first approximation, "refining" them is not a good second step. When the results are inconclusive or unclear, we should next be looking at how the academia goes about solving the problem, not try sorting out the results on our own. With names of places in Russia, the academia uses romanization (one of many available systems), and each organization standardizes on the system that works best for their field. We do the same.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 17, 2011; 15:46 (UTC)
Refining searches is given by WP:SET as a suitable way to proceed - but that's beside the point. The point I have being trying to make is that we look at the trend - and no matter which way you choose refine, either amongst the refined terms I've offered or the ones I've yet to consider (and I have considered many, many variations) the trend is nearly always the same - Korolev is used several times more than Korolyov - the only time it fails is in books that say "Kaliningrad renamed Korolyov" which is 2 books with only 1 supporting "kaliningrad renamed Korolev" and if you add a "was" in-between "Kaliningrad" and "renamed" this figure reverses and again Korolev has more sources. You're right when we say "When the results are inconclusive or unclear, we should next be looking at how the academia goes about solving the problem, not try sorting out the results on our own." The problem is that there is no evidence that Korolyov is the name that is used by academia and you have yet to provide any evidence that it is. Whittling down through academic papers has shown that academia commonly use "Korolev" and you have yet to show any evidence contrary to this other that referencing the inconsistent Britannica which is one tertiary source and not considered as reliable as say the U.S. Federal Gazetteer, or The Columbia University Gazetteer, or the papers of Chatham House, etc, etc. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 17:03, 17 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Well, it's great that you took time to consider many many variations, I'm sure it was fun, but that doesn't make what you did right (and which, incidentally, is the reason why I don't "provide any evidence" as to the use of any particular variant). If you need to feed google different variations and then look at the results individually, it's a sign that you are doing something wrong—your personal bias, lack of familiarity with the problem, and opinions as to what is acceptable and what is not all influence the "refinement" process, yet you claim the end result to be impartial, indicative of usage in the whole body of the English language, and especially relevant for this particular problem. These are the same vices we avoid when dealing with content and your insistence looks awfully like WP:SYNTH taken to the policy space.
The very existence of multiple variations to play with is a good bet that there is no one established variant to be found, even if some options seem to be somewhat more common than others. On top of that, each organization is free to standardize on any transliteration their hearts desire, their choices will depend on the field, and as a result, the aggregates will add up pretty much randomly. Add on top of that that some letters are consistently transliterated the same way in most transliteration systems while some have significant variations, and you'll understand why some variants will show up more often than others, and why these patterns are so easy to mistake for a "common name". Perhaps I am being overly broad with my use of the term "academia"—what I mean by that is the scholars who not just need to make a passing remark about the town in whatever scientific paper they are publishing, but scholars who are working in the field of geography and are faced with the same daunting task we are facing, which is establishing the best way to refer to a place in English on its own merits. That Britannica is a tertiary source has no relevance in this situation—we are not using them for supporting the facts; we are borrowing the practice used to establish a title for an article. Do you see the difference? Somehow between Britannica and your research, I tend to trust the former, if only because they at least know what kind of problems need to be addressed in the process of romanization of Russian.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 17, 2011; 17:46 (UTC)
The tone of this thread has taken a definite turn for the worse.. ("I'm sure it was fun", "your personal bias", etc.) In any case, I think we all know that google hits are to be used with care in discussions like this, but Stuart's searches, with wise uses of quotation marks, show very convincing evidence that "Korolev" is the WP:COMMONNAME used by English language sources. My original move request was name simply to bring this into line with Sergei Korolev's article.. but now the evidence that this is indeed the common name is hard to ignore.. Mlm42 (talk) 19:05, 17 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Mlm42, I would appreciate it if you didn't read the negativity into my comments. I was by no means accusing Stuart of "personal bias" or worse; I was merely stating that an editor (him, you, me, doesn't matter) who has to look at the google hits individually and then cherry-pick the ones that "work" will inevitably introduce personal bias into the result regardless of how good or well-meant his/her original intentions were.
My point is that where an established procedure of dealing with a problem exists, we should be striving to follow it, and that if one has to sift through google results to find a "common name", it's on its own an indicator that no such "common name" exists. His point (and it seems yours also) is essentially the opposite, plus we have a disagreement over the interpretation of WP:COMMONNAME—not something to be discussed in an low-profile RM.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 17, 2011; 19:32 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Assume the assumption of good faith? Frankly, it's hard for me to read what you wrote without reading in the negativity.. "Do you see the difference?" sounds condescending.. "I'm sure it was fun" sounds patronizing, and "your personal bias", in that sentence, the most obvious interpretation is you were referring to Stuart. But your right, I could have misinterpreted all of these, and I suppose it's possible you didn't have a negative tone. But if that's the case, it would be helpful if you were to write in a way that makes your tone more obvious, and less open to interpretation. Mlm42 (talk) 19:51, 17 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I am sorry, but it is easy to read whatever you want into someone else's typed comments. That's the problem with the written word—you don't know the emotions the other person is trying to express, you can only guess. And as far as guessing and interpretation goes, WP:AGF is the best starting point we have...—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 17, 2011; 20:41 (UTC)

Arbitrary Break

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Mlm42, I'm not sure I read any bad faith into Ezhiki's position, but we must remember he has the most to lose from this debate - It was his action in January 2006 to move this article from Korolev, Moscow Oblast to Korolyov, Moscow Oblast without discussion and again in December 2007 it was his proposal to re-write WP:RUS including the requirement that only English dictionaries and not other reliable sources (Maps and Gazetteers primarily, but other reliable texts on Geography, Economics and Politics may also apply) be consulted to establish conventional place-names. If the debate closes on no-move; you and I can walk away from the article having tried and lost, but if it closes on move; then not only has Ezhiki had his decision to rename this article overturned - he stands to have his changes to the WP:RUS guideline challenged and possibly other articles he has moved likewise challenged. It is only right he takes a defensive position and not accept anything I put across - however it will be the closing Admin who will have to weigh up our respective arguments and make a decision to that end.
Ezhiki, I'm not sure how you work my position into Synthesis when you are the one who takes one fact "The name of the city in Russian is Королёв" then takes another fact "The United States Board on Geographic Names transliteration method transliterates these letters in this way" and combines them to create a new fact that is not substantiated by any reliable source that you can provide - indeed is denied by the second source in question(The BGN) which uses the same transliteration as the majority of other reliable sources - this is pure synthesis on your part. I am just showing that reliable English sources exist and they confirm a particular name is the common name and it shouldn't mater how I find them - what does matter is that I have found them. BTW you should re-evaluate the BGN source Korolёv is an acceptable transliteration into English as the trema diacritic is regularly retained on loanwords and either retained or simply ignored - This is the method BGN recommend and is the correct method - it is certainly not correct to re-transliterate "ё" in the English word into "yo" - that should only have happened in the original transliteration from Russian to English which isn't what BGN recommend in this case and BGN (and PCGN) are reliable for this purpose. Finally If Britanica "know what kind of problems need to be addressed in the process of romanization of Russian" then why do they use different variations with no contextual commonality? - They are as errant as any tertiary source which is why we take our reliability from sources such as the BGN and PCGN and widely from other sources such as experts in geography, cartography, economic, politics and so on - we trust their research not mine. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 00:19, 18 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment We have guidance on BGN: its Approved field is its standard transliteration from whatever script is in question; in this case Cyrillic. It also Approves Moskva for Moscow. It, very rarely, has a Conventional Name field, which it uses for some cases like Moscow and Florence, but not for all of them. To quote our guideline: Where it acknowledges a conventional name, it is evidence of widespread English usage; where it does not, it is not addressing our primary question. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:43, 16 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • ...which is why WP:RUS does not say "use the conventional name as defined by BGN", but provides a conventionality clause, which advises to use the dictionaries to establish what a conventional name is. I would say that using other reference works such as encyclopedias or maps should also be acceptable, but a generic ghits count refined by a person unfamiliar with the topic is hardly a replacement solution that we should be pursuing. Too many factors influence the ghits, accounting for all of them is a titanic (and pointless) exercise, and the final "refined" sets would be too small to substantiate the use of one variant over another anyway. When it comes to establishing article titles for places in Russia, we do what the academia does, and I am yet to hear of an encyclopedia that counts ghits to establish what a conventional name is. We could be the first!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 16, 2011; 17:23 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. 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.

Korolev is correct name.

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The "Korolyov" variant can be used as the second version (closer on a pronunciation in Russian). But "Korolev" is the official toponym (place name). See maps and rules of Russian toponyms. And everybody can see this correct name (Cyrillic and Latin) on the photo in article (under rocket). Open your eyes! --= APh =-- (talk) 21:27, 7 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, there is no "correct" name. Both Korolyov and Korolev (as well as Korolëv and Koroljov) are equally correct in a sense that these are transliterations produced using different romanization systems. Additionally, there is no such thing as "the official toponym", as there is no body to legislate which rendering of a place name is official in English and which is not. There are only recommendations and established practices. The recommendations and established practices Wikipedia community has agreed to use are documented at WP:RUS; other organizations, of course, are free to adopt whatever other guidelines suit their purposes. With the city sign in particular, first, there is no indication that the Latinized name is specifically in English (it's likely just a botched up GOST version), and second, even if it is meant to be, English can use different romanization systems as demonstrated above. Hope this helps.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 8, 2011; 13:50 (UTC)
H-m-m... :-/ But there are official list of toponyms in Russia in Latin (Yes, it's may be the GOST.). (This transliterated names use on national Russian maps and Google Maps e. g. And US military maps as I know.) Why we can not use it?
(There are special guide book for Russian toponyms in US DoD. This book can be found in the Internet. I read one a couple of years back.) --= APh =-- (talk) 23:39, 8 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
You raise an excellent point, and I agree it should be moved to "Korolev". Mlm42 (talk) 23:45, 8 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Mlm, do you really believe it is an "excellent" idea for the English Wikipedia to use the Soviet GOSTs (which produce a generic Latin transliteration, not one aimed specifically at Anglophones)?! Wow. APh, the US DoD uses the same guidelines every other government agency in the US and the UK is supposed to use, namely BGN/PCGN romanization of Russian. That, incidentally, is the same romanization system our own rules are based on, except we use a simplified version instead of the full strict version. This has been addressed during the most recent move request; did you get a chance to read through the section immediately above?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 9, 2011; 13:25 (UTC)
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