Wikipedia:WikiProject Transport/Categories

Proposal to rename all subcategories having a title containing the word "transportation" and belonging to

Special:CategoryTree/Transport or Special:CategoryTree/Transportation

except for those

contained in Category:Transportation in Canada
contained in Category:Transportation in Mexico
contained in Category:Transportation in the United States
containing a proper name and the proper name contains the word "transportation"

For all those that should be renamed, the word "transportation" shall be replaced with the word "transport".

Rationale: Inconsistency causes confusion for readers and editors. Transport is the most widely used term in articles, categories, the main project and at commons:

Main article: Transport
Portal:Transport
WP:WikiProject Transport
Commons:Category:Transport
12,000+ categories use "transport" [1]
- Category:Transport in Africa, Category:Transport in Antarctica, Category:Transport in Europe, Category:Transport in Oceania
3,900+ categories use "transportation" [2] - mainly US, Canada, Mexico, North Korea, South Korea, Philippines, Iran, Iraq, ...

Some examples

Per country, compare current use at Category:Transport by country:
continent, compare current use at Category:Transport by continent
- Category:Transportation in Asia to Category:Transport in Asia

Talk

Oppose in general. This is (largely) a GB/US Eng difference (and, as such, there will be more countries using the GB version, as there are a lot of ex-colonies which tend to use GB-Eng, some, such as India, very large). If Iran (say) uses Transportation in its official English (as it does) then Wikipedia should do likewise. I personally think all the top level categories should use 'Transportation' (as it got there first) and individual countries should use whatever they use in that country (as is done within Category:Organizations, which is somewhat different as 'organization' was perfectly OK in the UK until the last few decades: see Oxford spelling). Category:Transportation in Iran in particular should stay where it is, per Iran Ministry of Road & Transportation. I really don't buy the argument that inconsistency of spelling from place to place should be avoided because it is confusing: such inconsistency is a fact, and wikipedia should reflect this fact (unless there is ambiguity, which is not the case here). Occuli (talk) 12:16, 8 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
- Award of cleverness. There is no ambiguity because there is no ambiguity. TruckCard (talk) 01:49, 9 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]