Talk:Stratford-on-Avon

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Stratford-upon-Avon

Town in England that happens to be Shakespeare's birthplace. Covered by Wikipedia. Adds no value to the project, and also does not appear to meet CFI. -- Visviva 01:42, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

What kind of quote would meet the attributive use standard? No mention of Shakespeare (or a substitute like "the Bard" or "a certain playwright") in same paragraph, page, chapter? Use in the plural? It would be so much simpler if we decided not to have any "gazeteer" entries or to allow all of them or to have "only in Wikipedia" entries. DCDuring TALK 02:22, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, if it's used as a byword for something (e.g. "town that produces famous playwrights" or whatever), or as you say in the plural to denote some sort of generic type of town, that would certainly qualify as attributive use IMO. I would be happy with any use(s) of this term to refer to something other than its encyclopedic referent. (I honestly haven't looked; maybe it is used in this way, but the entry certainly doesn't suggest that.) Otherwise, there's just no point in having it here. None, zip, zero. Are we going to have every town in Warwickshire? Every town in Indiana? That way lies madness. -- Visviva 02:49, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Keep. I agree with allowing all, or at least all those important enough to be in one of the Wikipedias. Many excellent bilingual dictionaries, as well as the great American English dictionaries such as Random House, have gazeteer sections or include such entries and none of them cause madness. It’s extremely useful information. —Stephen 03:25, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Keep. Allow all city and country names. Anatoli 04:51, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, yes, but they have them in gazetteer sections, a la Appendix:Place names, or they have only a very limited set in their main entry list. I have no problem with allowing all such entries in an appendix, where they can be reasonably maintained and where the unique non-word-like characteristics of toponyms and their "translations" can be properly addressed. On the other hand, it might make more sense to have a whole separate project for this kind of geographical, encyclopedic content... and as it happens, such as project already exists. Who knew? </snark>

Seriously, there are substantial maintainability issues with these types of entries. If all they would do would be to sit quietly and gather dust, that would almost be OK, but these are extremely inviting targets for vandalism. Who is going to check every added sense-line for "a village in XYZ" to verify that it is real (and significant "enough")? We don't have Wikipedia's standing army of geography geeks to check these claims out. And what would be our standards for verification, anyway -- factual or lexical? Until a coherent policy on exactly what placenames are permitted under what circumstances is adopted, it is irresponsible IMO to open the floodgates by disregarding our extremely restrictive existing policy. In that vein, I believe it's been almost 2 years since the last serious effort at reforming CFI for place names; anyone want to take a crack at it? -- Visviva 05:11, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Delete Agree with Visviva. Until someone comes up with cohesive and workable CFI and formatting standards for placenames, we do need to stick to our current CFI (which doesn't allow anything not used idiomatically). Personally, I hope someone does write something up, as there are a lot of placenames I'd like to see. However, I am willing to not see them in order to prevent a thousand terrible entries for obscure villages in India and Indiana (come on folks, you known they would both happen). Some of the issues we need to address are inclusion standards (does every town of 35 in Northern Canada get an entry?), what constitutes a genuine toponym borrowing (how do we distinguish between genuince lexical units and transliterations), definition procedure (should Bloomington have a sense line for every listing at w:Bloomington?). Until we get these things worked out, we need to stick to the (admittedly ridiculous) standards we currently have. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 05:33, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Atelaes, I don't think you will be flooded with Indian village names here, if you do, there will be more editors. Wiktionary even lacks many larger regional centres of non-English-speaking countries, showing the background of editors. As for criteria for location inclusion, how about 1) all country capitals, 2) all regional centres (province, state, county, etc.) 3) if none of the above but is considered important, provide a dictionary link (list which ones are acceptable)? Also, I think multiple foreign transliterations of proper names are important (not just translations), it's one of the features that makes it attractive to users, even if it wasn't the original intention. Anatoli 05:50, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

I have always been of the opinion that, first of all, a city, country, or personal name should be entered in its original, native language and script. I delete names of villages in India unless they are written in Hindi, Tamil, Santali, etc., as appropriate. For place names, we should only take the spellings used by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names except when other spellings are clearly popular among English-speaking natives. —Stephen 06:40, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

I think that both comments reflect current practice reasonably well. We certainly have entries for most countries and country capitals in English, as well as a few translations for them. However, we have yet to figure out quite how the definitions should work. Part of the problem is defining a specific entity which has changed (often dramatically) over time, and yet the definition really hasn't. Borders change, governments change, and yet language generally treats it as a continuous entity. Between 1780 and now France has changed its borders and governmental structure many times. But the word [[France]] equally refers to all. Thus the current definition is wholly inadequate, but I'm at a loss for how to improve it. Also, Germany is clearly not a transliteration of Deutschland, but it is usually less clear than that. For small towns in India, I would guess that rather few have actual translations, with transliterations generally being used. How do we tell? -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 08:59, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Hm. Methinks France is defined as the land of the French. Perhaps we should also identify modern France as the country between Germany and Spain. But should we include encyclopedic information like its current population? —Michael Z. 2009-03-10 16:01 z

Wiktionary is not a good base for gazeteer. A gazeteer would need a structure at least as complex as Wikispecies': Focusing on administration would mean The hierarchical and overlapping administrative units (parks, sanitation, school, fire, watershed, election districts). Maps and GPS coordinates need to be included. What about connection with Google Earth? To me there seems to real potential for a whole separate kingdom, but not one ruled by linguists. It's not clear to me that Wikimedia software would do it justice. DCDuring TALK 10:46, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Move to Stratford-on-Avon. It seems to be attestable under that name under current CFI referring to "idyllic England". It may be attestable as "historic landmark". See Citations:Stratford-upon-Avon. DCDuring TALK 11:51, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Looks good to me. Striking, will move if there are no objections. Many of the transliterations will need to be changed. -- Visviva 15:05, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Er....hang on! The place is not called Stratford-on-Avon. These cites are mistakes, aren't they? Also, I believe technically speaking, the district (-on-) is distinguished from the town (-upon-). Ƿidsiþ 21:52, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

It's true, Widsith, I know Stratford-upon-Avon, what is Stratford-on-Avon? Isn't it the name of the district, not the town? Anatoli 22:00, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

"Stratford-on-Avon" is what is attestable under WT:CFI as it is now written, AFAICT. I found only one complete citation for Stratford-upon-Avon of the kind of attestable use that now counts. I am unaware of the official name of the place now and whether it has always incorporated "upon" rather than "on" in its official or vernacular names. COCA shows twice as much usage of the "upon" form as of the "on" form, even among Americans, but none of it seemed to be attributive use.

There are discussions in sundry places of changing CFI in this regard, which will eventually generate some accepted means for choosing among or otherwise accommodating the various monikers that places have. DCDuring TALK 22:35, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Craziness

For the record, I think this is crazy. Never in my life have I heard it referred to as Stratford-on-Avon. The -upon- form -- ie, what everyone actually says -- gets over 2.5 million g.hits, compared to fewer than half a million for -on-. Sometimes people confuse the two, that doesn't make it right, and it certainly shouldn't mean that this is our lemma form. Ƿidsiþ 12:58, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Even here in the U.S. I’ve only heard it with -upon-, and Wikipedia has it with -upon-. —Stephen 18:27, 31 May 2009 (UTC)