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Dispute over redirect of Philadelphia

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Recently, two users have disputed the redirect of Philadelphia to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a redirect that has lasted for over a year. They claim there is nationalistic or geographic bias in redirecting to the Pennsylvania city. (I originally thought they claimed bias in importance and common usage.) In the case of Philadelphia, towns that currently have the name outside of the U.S. do not have an article in Wikipedia, save for a town with a different spelling, Filadelfia, Paraguay; and other places that historically had the name are now called by other names.

I believe that Philadelphia is known throughout the world today to refer to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. I disagree with the claim of bias as an irrelevant reason for not redirecting. The vast majority of articles that reference Philadelphia refer to the Pennsylvania city, and that is sufficient reason enough for a redirect to that city. From Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, there is a link to Philadelphia (disambiguation) page, which was cut-and-pasted into this one.

The following U.S. major cities are also place names in other countries. Per the users' argument, they would also want these articles to point to a disambig page, which I obviously disagree with:

Another example I give is that Elgin redirects to Elgin, Moray in Scotland, a town of 21,000 people. Yet Elgin, Illinois is a city of about 95,000 people and its article size is longer than Elgin, Moray.

So I reject the users' reasoning, because Philadelphia widely refers to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, independent of nationalistic concerns and when referred to without any context. What's ironic is that both of these users have great knowledge of the Pennsylvania city. Tinlinkin 01:34, 23 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It should definitely stay redirecting to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania while there are 4000 incoming links to it, as there are now. Ideally, these should be checked and changed to avoid the redirect or properly disambiguated. If a significant (I'd say >100, don't know if there's a guideline) number of these were not to the city in Pennsylvania, there would be an argument for changing the redirect to Philadelphia (disambiguation) (or move, not cut/paste that page here). Fix the incoming links first! --Scott Davis Talk 04:21, 23 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • NO! Just because people are lazy and don't edit things properly doesn't mean we need to sacrifice WP:NPOV for people who want to take shortcuts. Redirects to disambiguation pages will be fixed when people notice them. It will be self correcting. I object just as much to a Scotish bias to an American bias, since I thought Wikipedia was not supposed to be biased. Shouldn't we error on the side of caution? I think yes, but we need to be careful and try to think about people out side of where we live! The problems the redirect causes will be self correcting! Kramden4700 05:39, 23 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The point is not just that people are lazy, the editors of those other pages may have checked that the link went where they expected. You are proposing the change, therefore you are responsible for mitigating the damage. And besides, fixing those links and finding lots that do not mean Philadelphia, Pennsylvania supports your case. Now quit reverting to your POV and dot the hard work first, then come back to chat. Do the first hundred and report the stats on where they went to. --Scott Davis Talk 05:45, 23 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Think about people who don't know about piped linking or are new to Wikipedia. Consider the time and effort that a serious editor contributes to an article. And also consider the relative usage of the word, here more than likely the redirect goes as expected. Bots correct ambiguous links all the time. But here no bot seems to have have taken up this disambiguity yet. And there are editors who are committed to correct amibugity. THINK! Laziness is not the issue. Tinlinkin 09:38, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
At the moment, this does not seem to be a nationality bias, but simply that Philadelphia, Pennsylvania appears to be by far the most significant use of the word, so primary topic disambiguation is appropriate. It is also necessary to fix the 4000+ links that would be broken by your proposed change before actually making the change, should it be required. I admire your enthusiasm for trying to consciously avoid a perception of bias, but in this case, I believe the effort is misplaced. --Scott Davis Talk 14:50, 23 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
So what if there is a nationalism bias? You need to use the talk page to discuss it and make your case and not make a major change until there is widespread agreement. Be patient. Also, bots detect major changes, and if you're caught by one, you will be rebuked. Tinlinkin 09:38, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
In the spirit of the song "Imagine", if there were suddenly no countries today, Philadelphia would overwhelmingly refer to the highly populated city (and its surrounding area). If any clarification is needed for other places, it would be stated. I suspect that most users want instant access to articles that are the most relevant to them. Yahoo, Google, and other search engines give most relevant and popular results first by default. Would you not want that convenience in Wikipedia? If you support this nationalism view, you must hate search engines as well. Tinlinkin 09:55, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I stumbled on to this while checking up on some users who I had AFD-ed some articles of. Taking the whole bias argument aside, if one takes a look at Syracuse, for example, it is a disambiguation page and it has fewer items on the Philadelphia (disambiguation) page and when you say Philadelphia I think cream cheese. I also don't think that Elgin is a good thing to redirect to some town in Scotland, since most people think of the Elgin Marbles when they hear Elgin. This isn't a WP:NPOV issue, but a lack of having a consistent format for things. I think that Syracuse would prove as a good model for such pages. Now is there a better place to discuss the global implications of this? Adam 1212 14:18, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Possibly a general discussion could be held at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (places) or Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (city names) (both are really about the title of the city article, not about redirects to it) or Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation. I see the conversation has already been drawn together at WikiProject Countering systemic bias. Even if a consensus to assist change in general, it would eventually be likely to need a local discussion for each place. My feeling is that there is little point even holding a discussion about a change until the incoming links to the redirect are under control. A quick glance at the count of incoming links to each topic on the disambiguation page shows that the overwhelming majority of links are to the city. Possibly that would change if there are a lot of links to Philadelphia meaning something else, but it cannot become a majority for any other target as Philadelphia, Pennsylvania already has more incoming links than the total of all the links to Philadelphia (second) and all the other articles on Philadelphia (disambiguation) put together. --Scott Davis Talk 15:07, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • OK, now how do we get those started getting a resolution to this? I would be happy to go through some of these articles ad do the replacing of [[Philadelphia]] with [[Philadelphia, Pennsylvania|Philadelphia]], and I have been doing things like that for various other things I have found, since I feel it best for the link to be direct to it. However it would be a daunting task to fix them all. This really needs to be figured out! Adam 1212 19:09, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see how having Philadelphia as a redirect is even remotely acceptable. It is an pretty clear-cut candidate for primary topic diambiguation. None of the other entries at Philadelphia (disambiguation) are as commonly known as the city. All of the others combined don't add up to a fraction of the city's reputation. older ≠ wiser 19:23, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think the decision at WikiProject Countering systemic bias will decide that the Philadelphia redirect wil not be changed, so it's of low priority to fix the Philadelphia links. Other cities might get different results. O≠W, I'm not sure what you're position is - the Naming conventions for city names clearly say that the article on the city should be named Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.--Scott Davis Talk 22:33, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
That is exactly what my position is. I thought that the dispute here was whether Philadelphia should be a disambiguation page or a redirect to the city in PA. I didn't see any mention of moving the city article to Philadelphia. older ≠ wiser 00:19, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry - I was confused by your first two sentences. My confusion compounded by also seeing the proposal to allow some Canadian cities to be at the primary topic name instead of at [[city, province]]. --Scott Davis Talk 09:51, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Leave Manifestly simple case of WP:PRIMARYUSAGE. "When there is a well-known primary topic for an ambiguous term, name or phrase, much more used than any other topic covered in Wikipedia to which the same word(s) may also refer (significantly more commonly searched for and read than other topics), then that term or phrase should either be used for the title of the article on that topic or redirect to that article."--Loodog (talk) 13:24, 29 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
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