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. harej 08:55, 9 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Luxembourg (Belgium) → Luxembourg (province) — As the others in Category:Walloon provinces Schwyz (talk) 21:56, 24 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• A suggestion to move the article to Luxembourg (Belgian province) (or Luxembourg (Walloon province)?). While Luxembourg (province) is a fine title and is accordance with Wikipedia guidelines advocating the simplest disambiguator possible (WP:NCDAB), it is possible that it could still be ambiguous to some readers who may not be fully aware of the status of the Grand Duchy or the constituent Luxembourg District. Likewise, the current title, Luxembourg (Belgium), tells where it is but not what and does not contrast well with other entries at Luxembourg (disambiguation). Though a longer title, Luxembourg (Belgian province) would be much clearer. — AjaxSmack 01:27, 25 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• I agree with AjaxSmack. I, too, had the same thought about potential confusion with the other Luxembourgs, although I hadn't considered the problem with the current title that AjaxSmack pointed out. Quite right, though. Powers ^T 02:52, 25 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose The primary topic for Luxembourg is undoubtedly the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. Having established, by a disambiguator, that this is in Belgium, not Luxembourg, there is no need for any further disambiguation. There is only one Luxembourg in Belgium, just as there is only one Luxemburg in Iowa. This situation is not, contrary to the proposer's remarks, analagous to the other Walloon provinces, where it is necessary to disambiguate between the city and province of both Liège and Namur (of the other two Wallon provinces, Hainaut (province) should not be disambiguated as it is clearly the primary topic; and Walloon Brabant is not disambiguated). The page should, however, be moved to Luxembourg, Belgium per Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names), where disambiguating by parentheses is deprecated. Skinsmoke (talk) 11:21, 25 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment The other option is to rename as Province of Luxembourg, which is the format adopted at Category:Arrondissements of Wallonia. Skinsmoke (talk) 14:57, 25 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment See Category_talk:Provinces - Province of X is deprecated. Only 2 or 3 out of 74 sets use that style. Most common is "X Province"-format followed by plain name. "Luxembourg (Belgium)" is a real outsider. I think only the two Punjab use such a format. Schwyz (talk) 15:06, 3 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose - the grand duchy is definitely the primary meaning, but I don't like the parentheses in this title. What's wrong with just Luxembourg, Belgium? Green Giant (talk) 03:16, 26 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Not a common format for country subdivisions. Luxembourg, Belgium makes it looking more like a city or town or village. Schwyz (talk) 15:06, 3 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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.

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: No move. There is no agreement that the proposed title is preferable or more in line with the guidelines. It appears that there is some disagreement about the spirit of WP:PLACEDAB as well, which ought to be hammered out before more moves of this nature are proposed. Cúchullain ^t/c 20:58, 19 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Luxembourg (Belgium) → Luxembourg, Belgium – Per our WP:PLACEDAB guideline and as suggested by Green Giant in the previous discussion. Other locations have already been fixed. This is a last relic of an old standard. Maybe in 2010 it was still more widespread, not the guideline is clear! gidonb (talk) 14:50, 6 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment I forgot to give credit above to Skinsmoke, who mentioned first that the name has to change. gidonb (talk) 00:00, 7 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Support per nom. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 17:47, 6 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose: claim about WP:PLACEDAB is incorrect, that is the practice for settlements not country subdivisons/states/provinces which tend to use the parentheses such as: Victoria (Australia). As was noted by Schwyz in the previous discussion the proposed format makes it look like a city or town or village. Ebonelm (talk) 18:43, 6 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Per WP:PLACEDAB the guideline for cities, towns, and administrative divisions is exactly the same, I'm quoting directly from our guideline: With the names of cities, towns, villages and other settlements, as well as administrative divisions, the tag is normally preceded by a comma, as in Hel, Poland, and Polk County, Tennessee. [the bold is mine] gidonb (talk) 21:51, 6 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Gidonb: You are truncating the guideline to justify your preferred title. The full quote is 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)). (emphasis mine) A Belgian province is roughly the same size and administrative level as a French department, and nobody would seriously suggest renaming the latter to "Nord, France" although that would technically match the sufficient precision criterion. This consideration supports Luxembourg (Belgian province) or the status quo. — JFG ^talk 15:42, 14 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

JFG In fairness, I changed the guideline yesterday. Gidonb quoted it correctly, but it did not reflect the actual practice. No such user (talk) 11:59, 15 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@No such user: Well noted, thanks. Limburg is indeed another relevant example, and I support your guideline change. — JFG ^talk 15:09, 15 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

JFG, it was changed during the discussion, and after I had quoted, by someone who has a particular opinion in this discussion. See at the very bottom his own thoughts and the possibility that, from his "activism", he could have closed the discussion (yet didn't). Your false allegations, for which I saw no apologies, are most unfortunate and do not make it more pleasant to participate in this discussion. I gave it a break but firmly stand my ground in all that I have said in this discussion. The choice is between clear categories that would be dabbed in different ways by WP:CONSISTENCY and the relevant version of WP:PLACEDAB for this discussion, and unclear bigger and smaller regions with ill defined limits. This would make discussions go on forever. Some like that, some not. gidonb (talk) 10:39, 18 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Gidonb: When I answered your comment, I had not noticed that the guideline had recently been edited, sorry for accusing you of misquoting it. I do however stand by my arguments in this Luxembourg case (a name which applies to 5 very close geographical and administrative areas) and I support the new wording of this guideline. Remember that guidelines should follow reality; they can evolve as new cases are debated where a strict application of the current guideline does not serve readers best. WP:Readers first should be our guiding light in ambiguous situations. — JFG ^talk 12:57, 19 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• • In addition, Victoria is a state, i.e. very different from a province in Belgium that is an administrative division and local government. It is important not to confuse the provinces of Belgium and the Netherlands with those of Canada that really are states. Belgium also has states, even two different kinds (three of each kind), that can be compared to the states of Australia and Canada (naturally there are also differences), but the provinces of Belgium are local government. That said we could also look at the correct name for Victoria but the purpose here is only to correct the last local government administrative divisions that have their dab in brackets. Our guideline is very clear about these! gidonb (talk) 23:54, 6 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The historical status of provinces within Belgium however is much closer to that of a state than a mere local government administrative division. The Communities and Regions of Belgium represent a unique federal arrangement which cannot be easily compared to any other country. Provinces are definitely not equivalent to US counties, the appropriate Belgian equiavlent for this would be the Arrondissements of Belgium. The provinces of Beligum are defined by the Belgian Constitution. Under your sub-divison logic we should be calling this article Luxembourg, Wallonia because we tend to not 'skip' division levels. The risk of confusion with the country of Luxembourg makes the use of the parentheses vital otherwise there is risk of giving the impression that the country of Luxembourg is actually part of Belgium. Ebonelm (talk) 16:46, 7 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Absolutely untrue. The provinces are local government and are correctly categorized as such. They can be compared with the American counties as both are the highest level of local government. I purposefully raised the similarities and differences of the Belgian federation so you are not correcting me in any way. The differences could allow us to skip Wallonia, in any case they allow doing that at present, but the provinces are not sub-national government and the discussion wether to skip Wallonia or not is just another distraction. You try this also below in your answer to SMcCandlish: to lead away from the fact that the current format that does not follow our guideline. That is the problem and that needs to be fixed! gidonb (talk) 14:48, 13 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe what underlies Ebonelm's position on this is some kind of "historical importance" angle. E.g., because in Ye Olde Tymes some of these places were sovereign entities, it's somehow disrespectful, or something, to treat them as local. The thing is, our title policy doesn't care. Texas and California were both independent nations for a while, but they are not marked out through some kind of special differentiation in article title formatting. Whether the analogy to counties in the US is good (maybe one to counties in Ireland, under the provinces, and the UK, under the constituent "countries plus Northern Ireland" of the UK, would be better) is ultimately irrelevant. The fact remains that these are not direct subnational entities (of which there are three in Belgium – Flanders, Wallonia, and the Brussels Capital Region – none of which need any disambiguation).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  17:38, 13 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

SMcCandlish, I am really unsure what Ebonelm says. From my perspective, he says a lot but he doesn't say anything. Points here, points there, makes claims that are totally incorrect, and does not explain why we need to deviate from the guideline. I am even more puzzled about those who object per Ebonelm. It's just a bunch of Other Stuff Exists and I don't Like It with a thick smoke curtain. And no, other stuff exists is not a valid argument, as the closer in the other discussion claimed, if used to sidetrack and to deviate from the guidelines and the majority of the cases while pointing at a few exceptions. I will contest that decision as the closing person made an incorrect statement at closure, disregarded the strength of the arguments, and their foundation in the guideline. gidonb (talk) 18:14, 13 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn't. The close wasn't faulty. The problem was that the RM had insufficient participation for a consensus to move to emerge. The closer is correct that WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS arguments are weaker at RM than at XfD, due to WP:CONSISTENCY. However, the consistency alleged by the few participants there actually, site-wide, runs the other direction, and this was not clear in that discussion; it's much clearer in this one.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  18:28, 13 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I think that movers had much stronger arguments, based on the guidelines, and this should have been reflected in the close, but agree that there was a problem of unequal support. I'll follow your advice and relist after a reasonable period of time. gidonb (talk) 23:59, 13 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose per Ebonelm — JFG ^talk 20:02, 6 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Then please also see above how Ebonelm's claim about the relevant guideline, WP:PLACEDAB, is refuted. gidonb (talk) 21:51, 6 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Gidonb: I have carefully read both sides of the arguments and I stand by my choice. This is not a case where we should blindly apply the WP:PLACEDAB guideline, because of the risk of giving the impression that the country of Luxembourg is actually part of Belgium in Ebonelm's words. I would also support Luxembourg (Belgian province) to clarify the title irrespective of any reader's perspective or assumptions. — JFG ^talk 09:15, 14 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

JFG, personally I view this is one of the weakest claims made on this page as [1] The intelligence and knowledge of Wikipedia readers should not be underestimated [2] The bracketed dab does not make it clearer vs a comma that Luxembourg is a province and that another independent country exists [3] We have a disambiguation page and references to that page and/or the other entity on top of the Luxembourg/Luxemburg pages that already resolve the ambiguity. Therefore it's just another distraction or piece in the smoke curtain mentioned above, where Ebonelm real arguments are I don't like it and Other (yet extremely rare) stuff exists, leading away from thousands (conservative estimate) of similar dabs. Dabbing with (Belgian province): [1] Would allow bracketing [2] Conflicts with WP:CONCISE as Luxembourg, Belgium is the one and only Luxembourg in Belgium [3] Solves a non-problem or solved problem (as explained before) that doesn't need to be fixed once again, lest we insult our readers and complicate our article names. gidonb (talk) 10:05, 14 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Gidonb: You've made your point loud and clear; neither of us will convince the other to change their mind on this case. Neighbouring provinces are titled Namur (province) and Liège (province) to distinguish them from the eponymous cities. We could arguably switch this one to the same format per WP:CONSISTENCY. Similar cases in Switzerland have been standardized to "Canton of X" form (Canton of Zürich vs Zürich and Zürich District, Canton of Geneva vs Geneva, etc.). The "Luxembourg" name is overloaded with 5 meanings, all in the same geographical area (city, canton, district, Grand Duchy and Belgian province), so extra precision is justified. Far from insulting readers, title precision contributes to help them grasp the nuances of this subject no matter their background (see WP:Readers first#Our audience). — JFG ^talk 15:12, 14 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Support The naming convention is very clear. The article should be at Luxembourg, Belgium. There is only one "Luxembourg" within Belgium, and disambiguation by parentheses is deprecated for administrative entities (towns, villages and provinces), while it is preferred for geographical features (hills, lakes, rivers and mountains) Skinsmoke (talk) 01:10, 7 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose, the clear assumption with a comma following the name is that it is a place. Would you take "Ohio, United States" seriously? I would support a move to Province of Luxembourg though. —Brigade Piron (talk) 10:25, 7 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Just like Ebonelm above, you are comparing apples and oranges. Ohio is a state in the US, a province in Belgium, however, is local government. It is the highest level of local government and comes *under* the Belgian states! The equivalent in the US is counties, such as Lake County, Michigan, where the dab is consistently written with a comma as prescribed in our guideline! You may have been set off by the provinces of Canada that actually are states. This is not the situation in Belgium! gidonb (talk) 11:38, 7 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose per User:Ebonelm. The comma format reflects a common American convention for towns, cities and smaller administrative units but it does not translate as well for larger units outside of the US. In addition, I will copy part of my comment from the previous RM above: if there is a problem with the current title, move the article to Luxembourg (Belgian province) (or Luxembourg (Walloon province)?) for clarity if not succinctness. —  AjaxSmack  22:02, 7 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Also note a similar move request at Talk:Limburg (Netherlands). —  AjaxSmack  03:18, 9 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • But there isn't anything at all unclear about "Luxembourg, Belgium", since there aren't two Luxembourgs in Belgium. Your proposed names are WP:CONCISE failures.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  18:08, 13 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • For a total lack of foundation in the guideline and extremely weak WP:IDONTLIKEIT and WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS arguments, I understand that AjaxSmack now proposes a compromise. This compromise, however, conflicts with WP:CONCISE and there is no need for a compromise when the yay sayers have a clear advantage over the nay sayers, based on the strength of their arguments and Wikipedia's guidelines. gidonb (talk) 22:37, 13 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Support per gidonb and Skinsmoke; their actually analytical, instead of assumptive and knee-jerk, approach is correct. This is a local administrative unit, not a subnational one. Furthermore the comment 'the clear assumption with a comma following the name is that it is a place. Would you take "Ohio, United States" seriously?' doesn't even make sense. Ohio certainly is a place; I've been there. We have a parenthetical convention for major subnational divisions as a completely arbitrary rule, and in fact you can find innumerable sources that use a comma between subnational and national geographical entities. If people are going to split hairs this fine, we should simply eliminate the parenthetical convention here, and use commas for all such things, without the arbitrary subnational-vs.-local split. This would be more consistent with both WP:PARENDIS and WP:CONSISTENCY policies.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  20:47, 11 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@SMcCandlish, then surely you want the title to be "Luxembourg, Wallonia" or "Luxembourg, Wallonia, Beligum" as otherwise you are skipping administrative levels? Ebonelm (talk) 13:42, 13 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

No, that would be unnecessary over-disambiguation. Our article titles are not a geographical categorization system (we have actual categories for that). If there are not two Luxembourgs in Belgium, there is no need for the title to include additional administrative units to disambiguate; doing so would be pseudo-disambiguation. In some countries there are quite a number of layers of geographical administrations, and we do not chain them all in the title, because it would get unwieldy quickly. (I know this by direct experience, having worked on a geographic coding system for genealogical data, which did not skip administrative units; modern Paddington would be coded as Paddington, WMN, LON, GRL, ENG, GBR [imagine how long that would be when not abbreviated!], while for pre-modern data it would be Paddington, MSX, ENG.) Oakland, California is sufficient disambiguation per WP:PRECISE and WP:CONCISE; the article is not Oakland, Alameda County, California, United States. It turns out there's actually more than one Minneapolis, but one is by far the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, and the article is just Minneapolis, not Minneapolis, Minnesota; WP:CONCISE generally trumps WP:CONSISTENCY unless for a particular topic the consistency has been applied very uniformly and for clear reasons. The use of any geographical disambiguation (whether it be WP:COMMADIS or WP:PARENDIS) serves only a single purpose: to make it clear to readers that they're at the right article. It is not a replication of a governance hierarchy, nor is it a replication of regional natural language usage (e.g. the British habit of writing something like "Long Crendon in Aylesbury Vale in Buckinghamshire"). Sometimes it coincides with a regional natural language pattern, but this is inevitable unless we use something completely unnatural, e.g. forcing parenthetic disambiguation in all cases. The accident that the comma pattern happens to be familiar to a large subset of readers is a) a feature not a bug, producing incidental WP:NATURALDIS for a lot of readers (perhaps a majority), and b) even if it were a bug, insufficient reason to change policy to prefer parenthetic disambiguation over comma and natural.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  17:06, 13 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Once again there is an over-reliance on the United States in trying to make arguments in support of this move. The Oakland example is a poor one as it is a town not an administrative unit. A better analogy would be to focus upon the 'Alameda County' part of the example. Under the logic you are using above it shouldn't be entitled: 'Alameda County, California' but 'Alameda County, United States' given that there are no other Alameda Counties. However I hope you can see that to move the page to 'Alameda County, United States' would be ridiculous. Ebonelm (talk) 17:27, 13 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not "relying on" the US (see Paddington example already given), just using my current location as another example (a few years ago I would have used Toronto; going back further, I would have used a town in Buckinghamshire). If the US were the size of the UK or (population- and administrative-units-wise, of Canada) what you suggest about Alameda Co. would not be "ridiculous" at all. The problem in the US is that it is huge, and it has a large number counties with same names in different states (especially Jefferson, Washington, and Lincoln; Alameda County is actually a unique name, so Alameda County, California is actually over-disambiguation, and would be moved to Alameda County, but for the fact that a particular wikiproject has a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS/WP:OWN stranglehold on US place names, for now, and would filibuster any such WP:CONCISE move attempts as a voting bloc; we've seen that before already with some of these names). As I noted further above, an analogy to Ireland or the UK is better; if, for some reason, County Kerry had to be disambiguated (e.g. because they dropped the "County Foo" convention), it would be sufficient to use Kerry, Ireland, not Kerry, Munster, Ireland, nor Kerry, Munster (because Munster is not globally WP:RECOGNISABLE), and there would be no call to use Kerry (Ireland); the combined pressure of COMMADIS and (for probably a majority of readers) NATURALDIS outweighs any argument in favor of PARENDIS, which (because it is awkward) is the last choice, other than WP:DESCRIPTDIS, which we only resort to when something doesn't really have a proper name (and which would result in CONCISE problems in this kind of case, e.g. Kerry in Ireland which can be compressed to Kerry, Ireland; note that "Kerry (Ireland)" is exactly as long as "Kerry in Ireland" and thus has a comparable lack of concision). I'm content that we've both laid out our rationales, and I don't feel the need to continue back-and-forthing about it, per WP:BLUDGEON; other respondents and the closer don't want to read endless two-party argumentation.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  18:04, 13 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Support Luxembourg, Wallonia or any move. Clearly the current title is unacceptable. SSTflyer 06:41, 14 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment I amended WP:PLACEDAB yesterday, per the outcome of failed RM at Talk:Limburg (Netherlands). It apparently did not match the current practice, and/or was not precise enough. I won't close this RM due to my own involvement, but I obviously oppose it. No such user (talk) 11:56, 15 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose per Ebonelm. The comma format is commonly used inside and outside the Wikipedia world for towns, cities, and a few low level administrative units (primarily in the US). It is rarely used for large subnational units, however, of which this is one. (Yes, technically there is one level between this and the nation state, the Wallonia/Flanders/Brussels level, but as this is one of just 10 provinces in the country, it is de facto equivalent to a large subnational entity. Furthermore, there is a WP:RECOGNIZABILITY issue with the proposed title. Many people may be unaware there is a Belgian province called Luxembourg, so would interpret the present title as some sort of comma separated article talking about the two nations of Luxembourg and Belgium.  — Amakuru (talk) 14:18, 19 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Support per Skinsmoke. ✉cookiemonster✉ ^𝚨755𝛀 19:54, 19 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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.