Talk:Victoria (state)/Archive 2

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Archive 1

Archive 2

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Requested move 30 January 2016

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: moved back to Victoria (Australia), restoring the status quo. Don't make page moves without first reading the talk page, which would have told you this was obviously not uncontroversial. Once this has been restored the status quo any editor should feel free to start a new RM, but having this page at a stupid title, "Victoria Australia", for a week does no one any good. Jenks24 (talk) 08:44, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

Victoria Australia → Victoria, Australia – Makes perfect sense, especially given none of the other Victoria places use brackets; this is the final part of a complicated series of moves that I tried to make in order to gain this title, but it didn't work out. – 4TheWynne^{(talk)(contribs)} 23:05, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

@4TheWynne and Niceguyedc: This is a contested technical request (permalink). Anthony Appleyard (talk) 06:26, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

Not uncontroversial: This article was at Victoria (Australia) from 15 May 2010 until earlier today (when it was moved by 4TheWynne). Victoria Australia should be moved back to Victoria (Australia), then any move from Victoria (Australia) should result from a move discussion. -Niceguyedc ^{Go Huskies!} 23:32, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
Don't worry, I'm already aware of the page history. I just don't see why the title needs to have brackets in it – it would make much more sense for it to incorporate a comma. I looked through the disambiguation page prior to doing this and noted that just about every single other "Victoria" place incorporates a comma (e.g. Victoria, Australia) and not brackets (e.g. Victoria (Australia)). That's why I thought that it would be uncontroversial, and why I decided to come here when I couldn't move the page. All I did was move some of the redirects so that the "Victoria, Australia" redirect didn't exist, and then I tried to move the proper article to achieve this title, but it didn't work. I'm not trying to cause any trouble; I'm just perplexed at why the title was formatted the way it was. Thank you for your time. 4TheWynne^{(talk)(contribs)} 00:16, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
- but you have moved this page and already affected 1,000s of links across the project Gnan garra 07:16, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
oppose not uncontroversial editors should not pages where there has been previous discussion and claim otherwise, IDONTLIKE is not a valid reason to move an article especially one thats linked to many 1,000's of articles and has previously been discussed by the community who reached a consensus. Gnan garra 07:16, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

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Requested move 17 July 2016

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The result of the move request was: No move. Cúchullain ^t/c 16:17, 26 July 2016 (UTC)

Victoria (Australia) → Victoria (state) – All other state names needing disambiguation use the (state) form. The only exceptions are Georgia (U.S. state), which would still be ambiguous to Georgia (country) (which is also a state); and Amazonas (Brazilian state) and Amazonas (Venezuelan state), which would still be ambiguous with each other. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 08:18, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

Oppose: per WP:PLACEDAB and WP:CONSISTENCY there are plenty of articles which use the country name as a form of disambiguation, see for example: Galicia (Spain) and Nord (French department) as well as the examples that the nominator themselves pointed out. The only example I can think of that fits the nominators claim is Washington (state) and we only use (state) in that case because saying 'United States' wouldn't be enough to distinguish it from Washington D.C.. Ebonelm (talk) 15:29, 17 July 2016 (UTC)
- See Talk:Washington (state)/Archive 2#Requested move - Washington (state) for a full list of states using a disambiguation. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 20:16, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

That isn't a full list, its a list of some states from 2011. It does not reflect current usage, and in fact didn't even reflect usage then! For example: Mexico (state) was moved to State of Mexico in 2009, two years before the list you are referring to was created. That list was a fix then and its even less reliable now. Ebonelm (talk) 21:30, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

Leaning oppose. I understand the nom's rationale, but I'm not seeing the benefit. The current title seems to be clearly more recognisable. Jenks24 (talk) 06:32, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

Strong oppose - regardless of the positive aspects of the nominators rationale, the de-countrying the qualifier of Victoria simply muddles and misdirects, it is bad enough thinking that the Australian state of Tasmania is considered another country by some editors (Tasmania state would be enough for some thinking it was a nation state), the qualifier of the word of 'state' of Australian are rarely (if ever) used in common language seen in media or public discourse. JarrahTree 06:40, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

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Requested move 9 October 2018

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Not moved. Support is slightly stronger than opposition, but not sufficient to establish consensus. Strong arguments on both sides. (non-admin closure) В²C ☎ 18:58, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

Victoria (Australia) → Victoria, Australia – Per WP:COMMADIS we should use a comma when disambiguating places with the higher place. As "Victoria" is its most common name and we aren't using natural disambiguation (like State of Victoria) then like Norfolk would be at Norfolk, England and we have Jura, Scotland it should be here. Victoria is a place located in Australia, its not an instance of Australia. Georgia (U.S. state) isn't comparable as there is also Georgia, Indiana, Georgia, Nebraska, Georgia, New Jersey and Georgia, Vermont. The Commons category is at "Victoria, Australia". Crouch, Swale (talk) 21:04, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

Oppose COMMADIS has got seriously out of control, resulting in many article titles that in are in forms people would never say, simply because it maps onto certain countries' usages. The state is most commonly called "Victoria" not "Victoria, Australia". Timrollpickering 21:27, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
The state is most commonly called "Victoria" which is why it should be disambiguated with a comma. You might as well say that the current title suggest its called "Victoria (Australia)" which it doesn't. WP:ATDAB says that when natural disambiguation is not used then it should be with brackets (generally) and with a comma if its a higher diversion. Crouch, Swale (talk) 21:33, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
Support. Rreagan007 (talk) 23:48, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
Support - no one is talking here about how the state is called. No state is called "state, <some other place>". This discussion is about the disambiguation and the suggested one is the style which is the one used in Wikipedia for all the articles I've seen so far (including for Australian cities). I see no reason why this should not follow. --Gonnym (talk) 06:37, 10 October 2018 (UTC)
And there is also Angus, Scotland, the equivalent of a state in Scotland. Crouch, Swale (talk) 08:08, 10 October 2018 (UTC)
Support I've wondered about whether this would be an appropriate move before. Nom has set out the case for a move perfectly. AusLondonder (talk) 18:11, 10 October 2018 (UTC)
Support -- no need to force Americanizan standards on this place name. CookieMonster755 ✉ 01:18, 11 October 2018 (UTC)
The fact that the US adds commas when it isn't needed and doesn't use then (and uses brackets instead) is a bit odd. Here and at Commons Australia appears to have a mixture of using commas and brackets for non settlements (see Category:Buildings and structures in Geelong), but at Commons more use commas. Crouch, Swale (talk) 10:29, 11 October 2018 (UTC)
Support Consistent with other articles on Australian geography Nick-D (talk) 03:40, 14 October 2018 (UTC)

Actually - the proposed name is only consistent with the naming convention for towns and cities in Australia. Rivers generally use "(state)" or occasionally "(Australia)" if required (see for example category:Rivers of Victoria (Australia), as do lakes, mountains (mostly, but always parentheses), islands etc. There is no wider convention for disambiguating state names as this is the only one that is not overwhelmingly the primary use. --Scott Davis ^Talk 04:50, 14 October 2018 (UTC)

if we change Victoria(Australia) to Victoria, Australia then that category along 1,000s more will need to be changed to Rivers of Victoria, Australia to be consistent with the topic key. Thats just massive waste of resources and totally planning to cause hundreds of thousands of potential broken links Gnan garra 11:13, 14 October 2018 (UTC)

Support per Nick D and Scott Davis (as recognised regular users on the Australia project) - too often items like these go under the radar, and are not mentioned at WP:AWNB - thanks for Scott raising this JarrahTree 04:58, 14 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose - the naming convention is to use a comma then the state name for towns and cities in Australia, and parentheses (mostly with the state, occasionally "Australia") for everything else geographic that needs to be disambiguated at that level. There are several previous move proposals above, all of which overwhelmingly supported "Victoria (Australia)" against several different alternatives. Using parentheses makes no difference to many readers, but for some who have noticed the naming conventions, it will trigger the idea that Victoria, British Columbia is a city but Victoria (Australia) is something else. --Scott Davis ^Talk 05:15, 14 October 2018 (UTC)
- followup comment Gnangarra (below) has raised a point that has been alluded to but not explicitly addressed by this proposal. There are a lot of categories with names that include "Victoria (Australia)". The proposal does not explicitly state whether it is intended to also rename all of those categories, which would require an edit to every article in any of those categories, and light up everyone's watchlists for days. There would need to be a huge WP:CFD proposal to rename them, and if it doesn't pass, we have more inconsistency than is perceived by some now. Those category names have that high degree of consistency because (if I recall correctly) there was a discussion a long time ago that resulted in that standardisation when some of the categories were named "Victorian xxx", some were "xxx of Victoria" and various other forms that could be confused with things from the last half of the 19th century, things relating to a city in British Columbia, etc. Standardisation was seen as a good outcome. --Scott Davis ^Talk 13:48, 15 October 2018 (UTC)
  - Yep that standardisation was many many moons ago because of the complexities with the name Victoria its was a WP wide discussion because it impact was so significant even then when we had 1-2 million articles, this change will take many hours over many months to sort all the unintended consequences any of which could see us forced back to where are now. Ironically even if we change to Victoria, Australia there will still be a need to disambiguate the linking of [[Victoria, Australia|Victoria]], [[Australia]] any way. Gnan garra 15:35, 15 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose per ScottDavis' rationale. The Drover's Wife (talk) 05:17, 14 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose None of the examples given in the rationale for this proposal seem to match the Victorian case. There are examples given in England and Scotland, but there is no way "Angus, Scotland" could be considered equivalent to a state of Australia—Angus is a local government area. The equivalent country would also be the United Kingdom, not one of the Home Nations, which would be a far better analogue to an Australian state or territory. Speaking of states, you dismiss Georgia (U.S. state), when it is pretty much an identical case: an ambiguously-named state of a country. The naming conventions for U.S. cities and towns also called Georgia ("Georgia, [state]") is exactly what we are doing in Australia, so it is entirely comparable. --Canley (talk) 10:29, 14 October 2018 (UTC)
oppose - now having a better handle on this - per Canley and Scott Davis JarrahTree 10:32, 14 October 2018 (UTC)
Support Comma is the geographic disambiguator. Take it to to a higher court if you want to introduce a novel disambiguator. Parentheses are only necessary when disambiguation from a non geographic entity is required (e.g. Cork). Laurel Lodged (talk) 10:36, 14 October 2018 (UTC)
- According to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names) (my emphasis in bold): "With the names of cities, towns, villages and other settlements, the tag is normally preceded by a comma, as in Hel, Poland. This is often applied to low-level administrative units as well (Polk County, Tennessee), but less so for larger subdivisions or historical regions (Galicia (Spain); Nord (French department)). Any specific national convention takes precedence though." There's some leeway for national conventions, but this isn't some novel disambiguator only those crazy Australians are using. --Canley (talk) 10:48, 14 October 2018 (UTC)
oppose the only comparable situation I can think of is Georgia with Georgia (U.S. state) and Georgia (country) the current format Victoria(Australia) is a least consistent with that. Disambiguation is there to stop people getting lost changing tens of thousands of article links for the sake of change, which offer no alteration in clarity as to what the subject readers will be looking a, if anything a comma offers a slight confusion with the way in which we dab a town compared to a region. Gnan garra 11:08, 14 October 2018 (UTC)
Strong support. Place naming is always done with commas. Suburb, City, State, Country. Victoria, Australia is written as a place. Victoria (Australia) looks like an Australian type of “Victoria”. The levels are allowed to flow: “Grey St, St Kilda is in Melbourne, Victoria” works perfectly well as does “Melbourne is the capital city of Victoria, Australia”. This is consistent around the world and across languages, it is not an Americanism. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:03, 15 October 2018 (UTC)
- yes we dab towns/cities with coma city coma state or coma country but a comma isn't consistent with Gerogia which has Georgia, Indiana a town the comma, Georgia (U.S. state) and Georgia (country) state and country with the brackets. For Comparison Victoria, Australia would be the level as Georgia, Indiana or Victoria, British Columbia both of which are towns/cities not states any such move would be downgrading Victoria to a city. The change reason offers no justification for impacting 100,000+ articles it does nothing to improve the readers understanding. Gnangarra 09:47, 15 October 2018 (UTC)
  - I think Wikipedia should use commas for place names like the world does. I think it is silly to think readers recognise some code of hierarchy that the world doesn’t use. I am not really up to speed on the 100 000+ implications, are these the links, which would link to a redirect to the new title? That’s not really a proble is it? I’m not sure what I’d say to do about the Georgias. I don’t think they should limit an easy decision here. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:05, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

no redirects are an issue, and every article which goes to a redirect will need to be altered to by pass the redirect, every category that relates to Victoria in any way will need to change, every template that has victoria on it will need to be changed, and every external link to comes here will be impacted by the change. I understand you dont like it and think could be better to use a comma but neither of those points/opinions is acceptable for the shear magnitude of the impact that the move will have. I'll also add that the difference between state and city are significant the change will blurr that distinction between as well. Gnan garra 15:25, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

I think you overstate the difficulty of redirect fixing. Bots can fix them, and there is no need to do it quickly. I would definitely recommend waiting for dust to settle, if this proposal is agreed, before changing them, and the categories. Please don’t throw the blithe IDONTLIKEIT at me. My reasoning is based on the dominant styling outside Wikipedia. Virtually no one, excluding sites that draw from Wikipedia, use parentheses to separate levels suburb - city - state - nation. When multiple levels are used, everyone else uses commas. Wikipedia should not have gone its own way years ago. Sure, fixing old bad decisions can be work. “the difference between state and city are significant the change will blurr that distinction”? Can you explain this? I don’t understand it. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:48, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

It's not clear whether you and Crouch intend to change the names of all the categories (eventually) or whether you think that it's OK for categories to remain "forever" named "xxx of Victoria (Australia)" and it's only the article itself you think should be named "Victoria, Australia" instead of "Victoria (Australia)". Either way, if there is enough community support for it, you are right it could be changed, but it would be a disruptive change so needs a solid justification. If "consistency" is that justification, then I think the query sets linked by 99of9 show that it's not clear which way should be best if we were starting from scratch: "Victoria (Australia)", "Victoria (state)", "Victoria, Australia", "Victoria (Australian state)", "Victoria (state of Australia)" are all possibilities. As Gnangarra has pointed out, this is a big change. I suggest that you would be better off to fix the inconsistencies in some of the smaller sets, then come back here with an overwhelming demonstration that Wikipedia project as a whole would be better served by this article and its subordinate categories being renamed to one of the other forms. Category:States and territories of Australia contains 15 direct subcategories and 14 pages. One of each has parenthetic disambiguation and none have comma, so there is not any internal inconsistency. For the example I used somewhere else, Category:Districts of Azerbaijan contains 80 direct subcategories and 85 pages. Three categories and two pages have "(Azerbaijan)", 2 categories and 3 pages have ", Azerbaijan", 2 categories and one page have "(city)". There are less than 20 category names that would need to be changed to give Azerbaijan internal consistency (whichever way it goes). There are well over a hundred categories with a name that includes "Victoria (Australia)" and none that I found that include "Victoria, Australia". Large Wikipedia changes usually start with smaller pilots before moving on to the things that affect (hundreds of) thousands of articles to make sure that the bot edits are "right" before they get too far. Australians will likely support you if it is obviously worthwhile. --Scott Davis ^Talk 02:08, 16 October 2018 (UTC)

Scott Davis, I am in favour of someone else's proposal to change the big text at the top of the page (aka the title), the url, the hovertext, and the title as listed in categories etc.

Consistency with real world (non-Wikipedia) usage is my !vote's motivation. I believe that Wikipedia should reflect the real world. Consistency within Wikipedia is a mess, agreed.

I definitely do not like the look of Victoria (state), as "state" is ambiguous, and "Australia" is what is usually used, and "Australia" aids considerably to recognisability, which is important for a hugely overused name.

As it is a big change, no disagreement there, I would support the decision being delayed in implementation, delayed for a policy-space implementation discussion.

I do not agree with pushing for changes on smaller less-prominent pages, as I see that as stage guerilla-style destabilisation of what limited consistency there is to start with.

--SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:30, 16 October 2018 (UTC)

Comment: Here are 242 brackets and 215 commas in en-wiki titles for first-level administrative districts. Wow, we are inconsistent! --99of9 (talk) 01:35, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

It looks like "consistency with other countries" is ruled out as a criteria. I noticed a few articles come up in both lists as they have both a comma and parentheses. I also spotted Districts of Azerbaijan in both lists. The winner of the diversity award is perhaps the district with an article named with a comma and a category named with parentheses: Salyan District, Azerbaijan and category:Salyan District (Azerbaijan). --Scott Davis ^Talk 03:27, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

that inconsistency is what this change will create with between categories, templates, articles it'll also break an unknown number of external links as well, we dont move major articles without exceptional needs. Gnan garra 09:47, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

Oppose The burden of justification to change is really on the proposer to show how the proposed name is better and I'm not convinced. There are many, many examples of the bracket usage for articles that are not "instances of" the thing in brackets (e.g. Limburg (Netherlands)) as highlighted by 99of9's WikiData query, so there's no argument whatsoever for consistency. If proposer can update the justification to show why the comma format is genuinely better I might still change. Donama (talk) 03:35, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

we just dont move articles on a whim, and article like this which have 100,000 plus internal links, plus category renames plus template changes, along with an unknown but easily an order of magnitude more external links with out an exceptional reason Gnan garra 09:47, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

External incoming links will not be broken because the moves will leave redirects behind. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:54, 16 October 2018 (UTC)

Neutral Technically it should be a Victoria, Australia, and not Victoria (Australia). Hierarchical disambiguation is supposed to be done by comma. Type disambiguation is supposed to be done by brackets. Confusion arises when the term can be both hierachical and typed. If brackets are to be used then it should really be Victoria (Australian state). On one hand I support moving to Victoria, Australia BUT I do NOT support it is unless there is a thorough cleanup of ALL relevant links. Is the change to be technically consistent pragmatically worth the disruption and the effort? Aoziwe (talk) 13:01, 16 October 2018 (UTC)
Comment: Gnangarra, you should really relax. This isn't the first time a name change has been done that has many pages linking to it. We have bots to fix that. So please stop repeating this statement under each person who supports. Also, the reason why the category issue wasn't raised here, is that how Wikipedia set up discussions, this isn't the place for asking for category changes. But to answer your question, it would be advisable to change the category to match the article. And again, this isn't the first time this has happened and bots should be able to easily handle this. Finally, if you get bothered by seeing these pages on your watchlist get lit up, you have a "Mark all changes as seen" button to clear them all in one click. --Gonnym (talk) 10:25, 17 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose - the onus for justifying a move, particulalry one of this scale, lies entirely with the proposer. What we might have done if we were starting all fresh again is beside the point. Now we have the page as is and no one has shown an overwhelming reason why the project will be improved by making this change. There is plainly no consistency throughout the project for this type of disambiguation as 99of9 has clearly shown. Leave it alone. - Nick Thorne ^talk 10:50, 17 October 2018 (UTC)
Move to Victoria (state) for consistency with New York (state) and Washington (state) (and possibly others). And no, it's not a new idea, and yes, I know it's not. Andrewa (talk) 23:55, 17 October 2018 (UTC)
Support. Clear appropriate move. This is its common name throughout the world (outside Australia itself, where disambiguation is obviously not needed). -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:13, 19 October 2018 (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 or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Contradiction in religion statistics

"...32.1% stated that they had no religion. 31.7% of Victorians stated they had no religion..." Which is it? Ypna (talk) 02:23, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

The 32.1% is "no religion, including secular and other spiritual beliefs". The 31.7% is the people who ticked the "No religion" box in the census, which is "No Religion, so described". I'll rewrite the sentence to clarify. --Canley (talk) 02:40, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

Queen Victoria would have hated Victoria

How about addressing the hypothetical that Queen Victoria would have hated this state that was named after her.

The way this Australian state is represents the polar opposite to the values that the said queen believed in. 49.3.72.79 (talk) 03:03, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia does not do hypotheticals. We need reliable sources. --Bduke (talk) 03:22, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

Boundary Islet

The lede of this article contained the following text:

Victoria is bordered with New South Wales to the north and South Australia to the west, and is bounded by the Bass Strait (which separates it from the island state of Tasmania) to the south,^{[note 1]} the Great Australian Bight portion of the Southern Ocean to the southwest, and the Tasman Sea (a marginal sea of the South Pacific Ocean) to the southeast.

The following note is also attached to that passage:

Due to a previous surveying error, Victoria and Tasmania share a land border on Boundary Islet. At 85 m (93 yd) in length, the border is the smallest between any two Australian states or territories.

An anon editor has removed the reference to Tasmania in the parentheses "(which separates it from the island state of Tasmania)" with the reasoning that because of the land border on Boundary Islet, Tasmania and Victoria are not separate. Technically true, but that geographical quirk is explained in the note, and in my opinion removing the reference to Tasmania kind of renders the note pointless and confusing.

Any other thoughts or opinions? Perhaps it could be reworded to better cover the technicality but I don't think removing the reference to Tasmania entirely is the answer. --Canley (talk) 13:49, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

I love a good geographical anomaly. I'll add it to my list of islands shared by different states. It would, however, be undue weight to accord the anomaly anything more than the marginal note as mentioned above. Laurel Lodged (talk) 14:01, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

Requested move 18 July 2021

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Consensus not to move as proposed to the originally proposed title. After reading this discussion, it sure seems like Victoria (state) is the title that best aligns with our policies and practices; however, there's quite a few dissenting opinions that aren't really fully explained, and I want to give people a chance to explain their positions more fully, since many people were opining vis-a-vis the original proposal, not comparing (state) to (Australian state), for example. However, it definitely seems that the comma title is rejected per the implicitly cited policy of WP:TIES (it's not natural disambiguation in Australia). I fully recommend a new move request to Victoria (state). (And if someone really just wants to see a bunch of commas, please refer back to the second sentence of this close, which contains an absurd amount of commas that honestly embarrasses me.) (non-admin closure) Red Slash 16:45, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

Victoria (Australia) → Victoria, Australia – Per the guideline on article titles, we use a comma when disambiguating place names, not brackets. The page was moved five years ago, but no guideline or consensus was stated. The title as it currently stands causes confusion, and calls into question whether we should be titling other articles the same way, because we should be aiming for consistency with article titles. Sean Stephens (talk) 05:00, 18 July 2021 (UTC) —Relisting. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 19:38, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

Support as per guidelines mentioned in above request.Fade258 (talk) 05:23, 18 July 2021 (UTC)
Support per my previous request in 2018. Crouch, Swale (talk) 11:54, 18 July 2021 (UTC)
Support per above. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 12:02, 18 July 2021 (UTC)
Support per above. O.N.R. ^(talk) 13:49, 19 July 2021 (UTC)
Support. Comma-Region is for place names, parentheses is for geographical features. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 14:30, 19 July 2021 (UTC)
I have re-read the seven old RMs for this page. I will score out of ten all of the current and past suggested titles.
Victoria (Australia). 7/10. Readily recognisable. Format suggests geography, one could say that Victoria is a place on the island of Australia.

Victoria, Australia. 8/10. Readily recognisable, best for consistency. Format suggests place hierarchy. Victoria is a place in the nation called Australia.

Victoria (state). 5/10. Correct but recognisability is sacrificed. "State" is a highly ambiguous word, and the ambiguity is compounded by "Victorian" the adjective and several antiquated Victorian other uses of forms of the word "victor".

Victoria (Australian state). 6/10. Correct, good recognisability, less concise.

Victoria Australia. 3/10. Stupid.

WP:TITLECHANGES means that a strong consensus is required for change. The page has been here a long time, and it is an important page. If the consensus is not strong, go to RfC. SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:35, 23 July 2021 (UTC)
I acknowledge USer:Cavalryman 22:55, 24 July 2021, below, having shown parenthetical disambiguation of the county is common, possibly CONSISTENT. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:20, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
Support per nom. LSGH (talk) (contributions) 15:29, 19 July 2021 (UTC)
Support. Supported it before, still support it now. Standard for place names. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:24, 21 July 2021 (UTC)
Comment. Participants are reminded to read the previous RM. This proposal has broad implications addressed there; it’s not clear that’s even being recognized this time. I will ask, should Georgia (U.S. state) and Georgia (country) be moved to Georgia, United States and Georgia, Earth respectively? Natural disambiguation is favored over parenthetical, but is Victoria, Australia natural disambiguation? Any examples of this usage from reliable sources? —В²C ☎ 14:36, 22 July 2021 (UTC)
Ping previous RM participants @Timrollpickering, Rreagan007, AusLondonder, CookieMonster755, Nick-D, JarrahTree, Laurel Lodged, Canley, 99of9, ScottDavis, Donama, Gnangarra, Aoziwe, Gonnym, Nick Thorne, and Andrewa: You are being pinged because you participated in the 2018 RM of this same proposal. Hope I didn't miss anyone. I did omit users in the previous RM who have already weighed in on this current RM. --В²C ☎ 23:27, 22 July 2021 (UTC)
Oppose It may come as a surprise to many American editors, but the way the USA does things is not necessarily the way the rest of the world does them. The English Wikipedia has a decidedly American bias and in this case using "Victoria, Australia" looks like a typical Americanism to someone who actually lives in Victoria. Parenthetical disambiguation, on the other hand seems much more natural to a non-USA resident. Finally, as I said in the previous RM, how, exactly, does this change improve the project? If we make this change, then a whole lot of work needs to be done everywhere that a link to this article exists on the project. All this for no good purpose and with considerable work/effort to implement the change. We would be far better concentrating on actual content rather than this sort of make-work. - Nick Thorne ^talk 00:31, 23 July 2021 (UTC)
The way the US does things is often not the way the rest of the world does things, but the parallels between the US and Australia are very strong, and for pre-WW2 things the parallels are independent and not Americanisations. En.wikipedia.org most definitely has US culture bias, but comma format place naming is not a good example.

"Parenthetical disambiguation, on the other hand seems much more natural", regardless of residency, is a statement to be challenged. In Wikipedia speak, parenthetical is not natural by definition, and from a real world (non-Wikipedia) perspective, parenthetical titlings is an extraordinary Wikipedia thing.

On CONSISTENCY concerns:

Victoria, Australia is consistent with Georgia, USA and Georgia, Eurasia.

Victoria (Australian state) is consistent with Georgia (U.S. state) and Georgia (Eurasian country).

Victoria (Australia) is consistent with neither.

On: Don't fix things because then other things will need fixing, all the other things are readily fixed by bots and scripts and bot and script skilled editors. SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:18, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

This has absolutely nothing to do with American differences with the rest of the world. I'm English and the parentheses here look bizarre to me too. In the rest of the world, commas are very common. In fact, we have long argued that buildings, for example, should be disambiguated using commas in Commonwealth countries (including Australia) rather than using parentheses (as they are in the United States). If we make this change, then a whole lot of work needs to be done everywhere that a link to this article exists on the project. No need. The redirect will work perfectly well. -- Necrothesp (talk) 10:22, 23 July 2021 (UTC)
Comment: My only contribution last time was some query statistics. There are now 295 brackets and 197 commas in en-wiki titles for first-level administrative districts. Curiously since the last discussion, these numbers are trending in the direction of brackets and away from commas. --99of9 (talk) 00:35, 23 July 2021 (UTC)
Comment Shouldn't it be Victoria (Australian state) to be consistent with something like Georgia (U.S. state)? But I might be comparing apples to oranges since they are separate countries. what do you think? cookie monster (2020) 755 03:26, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

The only reason it's Georgia (U.S. state) is to distinguish it from Georgia (country). -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 04:22, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

I thought it was because "state" in Georgia (state) is ambiguous with "nation". Victoria (Australia) would correspond to Georgia (USA), meaning the status quo is not consistent. SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:35, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

Right, but there is a (nation) state named Georgia, so Georgia (state) is ambiguous. Victoria (state) is not ambiguous. There is only one state of any kind named Victoria. —В²C ☎ 08:34, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

Oppose, reiterating what I said three years ago: the naming convention is [now usually] to use a comma then the state name for towns and cities in Australia, and parentheses (mostly with the state, occasionally "Australia") for everything else geographic that needs to be disambiguated at that level. There are several previous move proposals above, all of which overwhelmingly supported "Victoria (Australia)" against several different alternatives. --Scott Davis ^Talk 05:36, 23 July 2021 (UTC)
- Overwhelming? I'm sorry, but that is a blatant misrepresentation of the truth. The last couple of requested moves resulted in a somewhat begrudging consensus, in spite of the same points being raised over and over. ~~This is the only Australian title with this style of disambiguation~~, and it sticks out like a sore thumb. There is no good reason to keep it at this title. Sean Stephens (talk) 16:00, 23 July 2021 (UTC)
  - I thought I would list a couple of other examples of Australian article title with this style of disambiguation, but [1] shows 596 articles that end in "Australia)" in the top three levels of Australian categories. The one that stood out as odd to me was Soil policy (Victoria, Australia) which looks like it needs a lot of work anyway. --Scott Davis ^Talk 00:48, 24 July 2021 (UTC)
    - I wasn't aware of those other cases and as such have struck my sentence above stating otherwise. If this move does end up succeeding, I wholeheartedly support moving all others with parenthetical disambiguation for consistency. Thank you for engaging in good faith (and, I apologise if I haven't come across as such; looking back now, my reply to you comes across as a little snarky). Sean Stephens (talk) 10:22, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
Comment: I know it's at least a week away at the minimum, but can the closing admin (/editor) please {{ping}} me when they close this discussion, as I will then have to nominate the relevant category (Victoria (Australia)) for speedy renaming. Sean Stephens (talk) 12:56, 23 July 2021 (UTC)
- The 7-day period has now elapsed, but I suggest this discussion remains open for now, as no consensus either way has been established. Sean Stephens (talk) 10:22, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
- @Sean Stephens: Red Slash 16:45, 23 August 2021 (UTC)
Oppose, pretty much per Scott Davis. Cavalryman (talk) 15:01, 23 July 2021 (UTC).

Further, this is not unique. An incomplete list:

Cavalryman (talk) 22:55, 24 July 2021 (UTC).

Oppose. Despite the guidelines, most articles for first-level divisions do not follow the comma convention -- perhaps because the convention makes more sense in the context of city, state articles than it does for state, country ones. Georgia (U.S. state) was mentioned above. See also Maine (province). I don't see how the current title causes confusion either. The proposed title would actually be more confusing -- Victoria, Australia is how one commonly refers to a city or town, not a state. This discussion is just a waste of time; we don't enforce rules solely for the sake of enforcing rules. -- Calidum 17:42, 23 July 2021 (UTC)
Georgia is a US state. It is not Georgia in US state. Maine the province is a province called Maine, it is not Maine located in province. Victoria is located in Australia, there is an undeniable hierarchy, regardless of sovereign states rights, and comma notation speaks to hierarchical designation, and naming.

Do people actually do this, you bet they do. Eg https://www.visitvictoria.com/ “Official site for Melbourne, Victoria, Australia”

Do people outside wikipedia use parenthetical disambiguation? No. Does policy WP:AT, WP:QUALIFIER list preference for Natural over Comma over Parenthetical disambiguation? Yes. SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:09, 24 July 2021 (UTC)
I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make. My point is we don’t have articles titled Georgia, United States or Maine, France, so why call this one Victoria, Australia? And Melbourne, Victoria, Australia isn’t the same as Victoria, Australia. Go badger someone else -- Calidum 14:57, 24 July 2021 (UTC)
Oppose better make it Victoria (Australian state) Muzi (talk) 05:24, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
Strong oppose per Scott Davis. Deus et lex (talk) 05:58, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
Neutral Pinged so I came ... Same as here ... Neutral. Aoziwe (talk) 08:01, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
Oppose Argument for this change is still not convincing. Donama (talk) 08:03, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
Oppose; propose Victoria (state) I’m no longer neutral on this as I’ve been persuaded that “Victoria, Australia” is not natural disambiguation, and is therefore not an appropriate choice for a title here. Of course “Victoria (Australia)” is not common in RS usage either, but that’s not a standard to which parenthetic disambiguation is held. That said Victoria (state) is probably the best choice here. The reason Georgia (U.S. state) is not at Georgia (state) is because the country is a state too, in the national sense. But there is no other Victoria that is a state of any kind, so to disambiguate further to Victoria (Australian state) is unnecessary. Note that Georgia (state) redirects to the Georgia dab page while Victoria (state) redirects here. See also: New York (state) —В²C ☎ 21:12, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
Per WP:ATDAB while we prefer natural disambiguation over comma disambiguation we still prefer comma over brackets and with Georgia apparently US NC generally only uses commas as part of the common name rather than disambiguation and Georgia#United States lists 4 other places called "Georgia" for if we were going to use Georgia, United States, WP:PDAB. Crouch, Swale (talk) 11:14, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
Reviewing the article names in the search provided by 99of9 above, it seems that the majority of the article titles ending in "(state)" are disambiguating against an overlapping (larger or smaller) city, district, region etc. Disambiguating against similarly-named places in other countries tends to be done by country name. --Scott Davis ^Talk 12:23, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
- No, ATDAB doesn’t say nor imply we prefer comma over brackets. Obviously if the two places with the same name are both states, “state” is not the appropriate disambiguator. Again, in this case this Victoria is the only one that’s a state, so here “(state)” is the appropriate disambiguator. —В²C ☎ 14:32, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
It lists natural then comma then parenthetical where it says "when none of the other solutions lead to an optimal article title". Crouch, Swale (talk) 17:32, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
It’s neither the intent of that section to imply, nor does it reflect practice, to prefer unnatural comma-disambiguation over parenthetic disambiguation in our titles. Hence Cork (city) rather than Cork, County Cork. —В²C ☎ 21:30, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
Indeed. The relevant part of ATDAB, immediately before listing the options, says When deciding on which disambiguation method(s) to use, all article titling criteria are weighed in:^{my emphasis} This clearly does not state or even imply any preference. That the options are numbered is meaningless in this regard. - Nick Thorne ^talk 02:21, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

Having reviewed the policy I agree with the above, there is no merit in the policy based rationale for this move. Cavalryman (talk) 02:35, 28 July 2021 (UTC).

Aside from the point in the last RM that commas are used "less so for larger subdivisions" what other policy suggests otherwise, the fact that it says "when none of the other solutions lead to an optimal article title" suggests we do prefer comma disambiguation over brackets. Georgia is different in that there are several other places like Georgia, Vermont also in the US. I'd personally disambiguate as England, United Kingdom like with Angus, Scotland though I'd use Scotland (country) and Wales (country) since there are places in England called "Scotland" and "Wales" but not "England" and Northern Ireland is also unique[2]. Crouch, Swale (talk) 18:39, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

Support per nom. Fecotank (talk) 06:20, 28 July 2021 (UTC)
Oppose woohoo another move request, we'll be back here again inside two years wanting to move it along with all the associated categories and then it'll flow outwards to Wikidata and Commons. The current option is acceptable as it aint broken this just an eternal internal squabble it provides no improvement to the users experience. With no improve there is no benefit for resulting effort of realigning many thousands of articles, categories, templates either. Gnan garra 13:46, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
The Commons category is already at the comma form and most of its sub categories are to. Crouch, Swale (talk) 16:07, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS - wikisource:Category:Victoria, fr:Victoria (État), wikivoyage:Victoria (state), ceb:State of Victoria, the most common form for other language wikipedias looks like the local equivalent of (Australia). This discussion is about the best name for the English Wikipedia article. Nobody has presented a convincing argument to change away from Victoria (Australia) yet. --Scott Davis ^Talk 14:12, 30 July 2021 (UTC)
Support per above as well. Rng0286 (talk) conts D'oh! 22:17, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

Some poor sod has to eventually close this discussion and determine if there is a consensus to move the page. It is WP:NOTAVOTE, so they have to weigh up the policy and guideline arguments, not just count the voices. I can't see your argument above, and it's not clear which comments by other people in this discussion you have weighed up as leading to your conclusion that you support moving this page. Please explain why you support the move. --Scott Davis ^Talk 03:35, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

Comment and correction to the rationale: The rationale says that the page has only been at Victoria (Australia) for five years. I was puzzled as my memory said longer. It looks like that is only the history of the current redirect at Victoria, Australia. The history of VIC (Australia) shows that the page has been at Victoria (Australia) since at least July 2002 (19 years) except for about 13 hours in 2010. The move requests higher up this page confirm that. --Scott Davis ^Talk 03:48, 1 August 2021 (UTC)
Support per nominator, standard for place names. JIP | Talk 06:33, 2 August 2021 (UTC)
Support move to Victoria (state). I think this is the most succinct and matches e.g. Georgia (country), New York (state), Washington (state). Ivar the Boneful (talk) 10:25, 4 August 2021 (UTC)
Support Victoria (Australian state). Least concise but other advantages outweigh that. In parallel to Georgia (U.S. state). Satisfies recognizability by having "Australia" in it. EB1911 uses "Victoria (Australia)". User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 02:58, 11 August 2021 (UTC)
Support Victoria (Australian state). Recognisable, unambiguous, the obvious solution. Andrewa (talk) 16:31, 11 August 2021 (UTC)
Oppose - but would accept Victoria (Australian state), if there's other Victoria (country's state) articles. GoodDay (talk) 03:20, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

Previous moves

I note

18:31, 15 May 2010 Vegaswikian talk contribs block  34 bytes +34  moved Victoria (Australian state) to Victoria (Australia) over redirect: WP:SNOW close following followup WP:RM discussion to the previous close.

and evidence of previous moves and at least one RM. So we should take our time over this one and aim for some stability. Unfortunately Vegaswikian is no longer active. Andrewa (talk) 16:31, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Population

which is the correct population? the one in the first paragraph or the one in the side box? Xtra—Preceding undated comment added at 13:37, 23 September 2004 (UTC)

They may *both* be correct. The population, as measured in the 2001 census, was 4,644,950. However, over the past three years the population has grown; the 2004 figure must be a projection, though I'd like to know from *where*. If we can verify the 2004 projection as from the ABS, we should probably use that figure rather than the older one. If not, we should stick with the older one. --Robert Merkel 20:37, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Of course, the updated population was by a bloody anonymous user, so there's no way we can ask them where they got the new figure from... :( --Robert Merkel 20:42, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

OK, the latest ABS data I can find on their website is a projection for 2002. I'm tempted to just go with the 2001 census number. Any objections? --Robert Merkel 21:29, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

People

Is there a "people/population" section linked to this article? I would have thought it pretty essential. And having just two lines about sport and culture is an insult to what is arguably a world leader in both categories.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.50.200.118 (talk) 11:38, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Victoria - The Place To Be

This is a slogan of the current Victorian government and not of the State of Victoria and thus would be better included included on the Victorian government page.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 211.27.235.53 (talk) 01:28, 14 February 2007 (UTC)