Talk:Victoria (state)

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First talk

After a jurisdictional problem wherein a corps was discovered within the Murry ( between NSW and Victoria ).. it was decided that the Murry waters when on the boarder between NSW and Victoria would be NSW Territory.

There are still cases about crimes and things... like what if evidence was on teh south bank ( vic ) , but it errodes and falls into the river??

This page has a little info on the case.

http://www.surveyorsboard.vic.gov.au/guidelines.htm — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.12.60.120 (talk) 06:26, 3 February 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.

Population

which is the correct population? the one in the first paragraph or the one in the side box? Xtra

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)

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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)

Annual Manangatang Races

If we're going to mention sporting events like the Annual Manangatang Races, which, up until now I had never heard of, shouldn't there also be mention of Victoria's bigger sporting events, like the Melbourne Cup, Australian Open, and the (motorcycle and Formula One) Grands Prix? Novakreo 28 June 2005 06:09 (UTC)

yes. BTW what is a Manangatang? Xtra 28 June 2005 10:51 (UTC)

Requested move (2005)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

The initiator of this move feels that Victoria, Australia is better than Victoria (Australia) as per naming convention.

• Oppose. See my comment below. – AxSkov (☏) 08:45, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose. Same. Xtra 09:16, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose. Ditto. — Felix the Cassowary 12:14, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

It was requested that this article be renamed but there was no consensus for it be moved. violet/riga (t) 10:32, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Discussion

I always thought the brackets made the pipe-trick nice and easy to do.. -- Chuq 10:29, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Victoria is its own jurisdiction and is the official name of the place. It is not just a location within a country. The need for the brackets is for dissambiguation purposes alone. As such Victoria, Australia is an incorrect name. Xtra 11:47, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

I also prefer the current name.

Apropos the name of the jurisdiction, in historical documents it's often seen referred to as the Colony of Victoria and in post-federation documents as the State of Victoria (in contrast to the Commonwealth of Australia). The 'Colony' and 'State' are capitalised, and it makes it look they're a part of the name. Is and has always been the name actually title-less, merely: Victoria, or was it historically the Colony of Victoria and then the State of Victoria? Perhaps someone here knows.

Felix the Cassowary 12:38, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

It is interchangable. But I think that the name is "Victoria". Xtra 12:49, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

I prefer the current name too. The state is generally called 'Victoria' by most people; the (Australia) part is just to dab it from the other Victoria's in the world. – AxSkov (T) 05:18, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

I prefer the new suggestion as that is in keeping with other articles such as towns, i.e. Bendigo, Victoria isn't Bendigo (Victoria). Also, people searching for the article are going to type in Victoria, Australia over Victoria (Australia) and at the moment that means being redirected. In my opinion. --Silversmith Hewwo 08:50, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, but Victoria's not a town, and which other state is at Statename, Australia? "Victoria, Australia" sounds odd to me. (Anyway, if Bendigo weren't at 'Bendigo, Victoria', it'd be at 'Bendigo', because there's no disambig needed.) The (Australia)'s just a disambig, same as anything else. — Felix the Cassowary 09:33, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

Victoria (Australian state), maybe? After Georgia (U.S. state). - Randwicked 19:16, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

That is really the same as the current name; which should be kept for purposes of accuracy. Xtra 02:22, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

I disagree. The bracketed text really should be a short descriptor, vis-à-vis Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Topic_page_naming. The current version suggests to my pedantic self that Victoria is a type of Australia. But that's just me. - Randwicked 12:23, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

I think Victoria (Australian state) would be better here. — Trilobite (Talk) 10:40, 14 August 2005 (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 density

The intro has Victoria as the most densely populated state in Australia. The box lists it as second. Does this need an update?

No contradiction. The box ranking includes territories as well. Victoria is second to ACT.

Further on this topic: Densest state I'll grant, but most urbanised? How is this measured? - ҉ Randwicked ҉ 04:40, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

here's a citation, from 2001. Victoria and New South Wales are equally the most urbanised states (both 89%). Does anyone have a newer reference? - ҉ Randwicked ҉

Selective deletion

I am about to delete from the article history those revisions whose content and/or edit summaries libel Xtra, per Wikipedia's libel policy. Selective deletion requires full deletion followed by selective restoration. Therefore this article will be deleted for a very brief period of time. Snottygobble 04:40, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Complete. Snottygobble 04:41, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Proposed move to Victoria, Australia

Please refer to discussion at Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board#Victoria -- Longhair 22:22, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Conversation was archived to Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board/Archive 21#Victoria. I don't see a consensus to move. --Scott Davis ^Talk 14:59, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Where is Victoria?

The history of Victoria here is all wrong.

Yes, the colony of NSW existed but ended near Yass. Past that it was referred to as 'The Wasteland' not New Holland. 'Wasteland' has a meaning other than the obvious. Its political as well as nomenclature. What about 'Terre Napoleon' that went to 36th parallel, also Neutsland, etc. Also New South Caledonia? The boundary was to be along the Murrumbidgee and all below that was Port Phillip. The Brits actually declared this. The aussies wanted it south of the Murray. Guess what the aussies did. They moved the Murray. Easy. Then it matched what the Brits had declared. When south of Yass opened up, there were three NSW (which in those days also included current day Vic.), districts, North, Middle and South with South, Port Phillip.

Do you have any reliable sources for any of this? It'd be an interesting bit of trivia if it were true. Although even if it were the case we couldn't say that the victorian boundaries are not where they have been marked on maps. I dare say that common law would dictate that the boundaries are where they are commonly agreed to be, and that this has been confirmed by numerous subsequent interstate agreements between the Vic and NSW Governments on such issues as resource and river management. The fact that the Vic Gov't hasn't attenpted to exercise jurisdictional authority outside its boundaries for over 150 years would have something to do with it too. -- Adz|talk 06:44, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

New Projects!

• WikiProject Tasmania
• WikiProject Victoria
• WikiProject Western Australia

Please note that they are new state based projects - it is well worth getting behind the Victorian one - to join in and improving your state project !08:56, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Political parties

Hi all

Somebody lumped the DLP and Greens in "Other". To be fair to all parties I have expanded the chart out to show all the parties and Independents that have representatives in The Victorian Parliament. I also changed the Greens color to Green (makes sense) and changed the National's color to light blue although arguably I could have used the same color blue as the Liberals. I had no idea what to use for the DLP so they got purple.

Pberrett 07:39, 4 January 2007 (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.

List of Premiers

Someone compiled a table with a list of Premiers. Such a table already exists on Premiers of Victoria, and includes links to articles about all the Premiers, as well as their political affiliation. It seemed to me the list on this page duplicated that information and added far more detail than required for a general page about Victoria, so I removed it. --Michael Johnson 00:23, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Regions ?

I think the article would really benefit from a region map of Victoria. Victoria has some very distinct regions (ie. Mallee, Gippsland, Goldfields etc and these aren't clearly defined in the article. --Rulesfan (talk) 06:02, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Actually no it doesn't. These regions are really ill-defined, and governments have many different regions for different purposes. No two boundaries are the same. It would be really difficult, and not much assistance as these regions don't really mean much. --Michael Johnson (talk) 06:56, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps it might be worth creating an article similar to Regions of Queensland and Regions of Western Australia, which could discuss the various regions, however ill defined they may be. Ill-defined or not, there is no denying that there are regions, and that Bairnsdale is not in the same region as Bendigo. It's just a suggestion. I don't really have time to work on the article at the moment, but I thought I'd put it out there. -- Adz|talk 04:13, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Where the Western Australian one exists is exactly the point that Michael is discouraging about - there are so many forms of regional division - from different authorities and that is why exactly the article exists - to see how the local government, and other departmentes make a mess of it all - so as for meaning much is the whole point for in the end an article of regional messups in each state SatuSuro 00:55, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Well that is something different. An article describing regional boundaries for different authorities might be quite useful. But that is different from trying to draw some lines on a map, plonking it in this article, and saying that is the Mallee or the Gippsland region. The trouble is these "regions" are more concepts than realities. --Michael Johnson (talk) 01:19, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Sigh, tell me about it - tourist promo authorities are the worse at that as well creating tourist regions with admin powers under their acts or regs but nowhere else - we have in perth 'sunset coast' blah SatuSuro 01:27, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

VICTORIAN BUSHFIRES

Is it appropriate to have the paragraph on the February 2009 Victorian Bushfires in the History section? The fires are still occurring and casualties are still being counted. The entry also contains several spelling mistakes and poor grammar. Would it be more appropriate to temporarily have the information on the bushfires in it's own section until the event is over & then move it to the history section once all details are known? Swampy 121.216.3.222 (talk) 12:35, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

European settlement

Is there contradiction between the statements in the lead and the section History regarding European settlement? Lead says; "European settlement in Victoria began in the 1830s as a farming community." History section says; "The first European settlement in Victoria which was established in October 1803 under Lieutenant-Governor David Collins at Sullivan Bay, Victoria on Port Phillip Bay." Bleakcomb (talk) 08:01, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Looking further, the Portland article says; "By the early 1800s, whalers and sealers were working the treacherous waters of Bass Stait and Portland Bay provided good shelter and fresh water which enabled them to establish the first white settlement in the area." Bleakcomb (talk) 08:06, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't think it is so much a contradiction as something that needs clarification. The whaling settlements were temporary arrangements and the 1803 settlement was abandoned in 1804. The 1835 settlements at Portland and Melbourne managed to endure. -- Mattinbgn\^talk 09:24, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Settlement of melbourne began around 1824 - 1825 with both John Pascoe Falkner and John Batman (Batman was searching for new grazing land on behlaf of a consortium of wealthy investers) establishing settlements; the reference to 1830 would most likely be the time at which the commenwealth reclaimed, divided and sold off the land. [unable to reference this as my sources are in Australia and I am not - sorry] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.76.55.214 (talk) 17:37, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

August Melbourne Meetup

A new Melbourne Meetup is being organised for Sunday 9 August, 2009. The chief programs officer for the Wikimedia Foundation, Jennifer Riggs will be in town and is looking forward to meeting some of the local wikipedians. So, please check out Wikipedia:Meetup/Melbourne 14 and sign up if you can make it. Cuddy Wifter (talk) 07:28, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Peculiar graphs

• 
  The climate of Victoria's capital Melbourne, which is located on Victoria's central south coast, as measured and recorded at the Regional Office (altitude 31.2m).
• 
  The climate of Mildura on the Murray River on the north-western border of Victoria as measured and recorded at the Airport (altitude 50m).
• 
  The climate of Wilsons Promontory which constitutes the southernmost tip of Victoria and the Australian mainland as measured and recorded at the Lighthouse (altitude 88.7 m/291 ft).

This is very odd in the body of an article. I've removed them. No one could possibly read the information without clicking to high-res: they look like some kind of motherboard. The information needs to be expressed in proper graphs made for the purpose. Tony (talk) 01:46, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Requested move (2010)

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 moved. Vegaswikian (talk) 05:52, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

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Victoria (Australia) → Victoria (Australian state) — "State" should be included at the end according to article guidelines like Georgia (U.S. state) and Washington (U.S. state). ApprenticeFan ^{talk contribs} 14:08, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

• Support sounds good. 70.29.208.247 (talk) 04:54, 8 May 2010 (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. No further edits should be made to this section.

Requested move 3

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 moved. Reverted the earlier moved based on the WP:SNOW here. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:36, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

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Victoria (Australian state) → Victoria (Australia) — The reason given for the previous move was spurious. There is no guideline for the naming/disambiguation of Australian states, or sub-national entities in general. The only examples given were two US states and no reasons were provided as to why the US situation was in any way applicable in Australia. The new name is more complex, more difficult to find for a reader unfamiliar with Wikipedia naming guidelines and does not provide any additional information that is not in the very first sentence in the article. It is an unnecessary complication in a disambiguated name that does nothing of any benefit other than add key-strokes and confusion. In addition the claim for consensus given for the previous move was based on a sample of two. This is not evidence of any sort of consensus worthy of being called such. Mattinbgn\^talk 06:33, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

• Support Four issues: 1. "Australian state" is an unnecessary level of disambig as "Australia" is sufficiently clear. There is no other Victoria in Australia. 2. (U.S.) in brackets is confusing; (Australia) is not. Hence what is needed in one situation may not apply in another. 3. No policy or MOS issue was raised to support the original move. 4. The consensus claim is bogus. Orderinchaos 06:40, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

• Support. Let's keep it simple and not strive for a false 'tidiness' in the guise of standardisation. It was already unambiguous and the move, made without reference to the Australia project, was unnecessary. Maias (talk) 06:49, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
• Support per all three comments above. --Bduke (Discussion) 07:12, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

• Support as the renaming to Victoria (Australian state) was flawed as, no one from the projects which this affects was not notified, this is an article about a state of Australia but Victoria (Australian state) is too confusing and really not needed as Victoria (Australia) worked well, using the US naming for a state of Australia is wrong and lastly there was no clear consensus. Bidgee (talk) 07:14, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

• Support as per the reasons above. Grey Shadow | Talk 07:21, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

• Support As above - All good arguments. Umpteen thousand articles link to Victoria (Australia), high use templates such as {{Infobox Australian place}} will need modification, entire category trees will need renaming. This was not a simple page move and it should have been brought to the attention of the project, especially in the case of a top importance article like this, where agreement between one semi-retired editor and an IP is really insufficient to declare consensus to move. --AussieLegend (talk) 07:26, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Support There is no other "Victoria" in Australia. The 2 American examples cited, Georgia and Washington, both have unique issues in relation to those two states ( confusion with Washington D.C. and the entirely unrelated country of Georgia ) which do not apply here. The custom of superfluously adding additional geographical categories to place-names is mainly a peculiarity unique to American English.Eregli bob (talk) 07:34, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

• Support, for the multitude of reasons outlined above. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 07:42, 15 May 2010 (UTC).
• Guys, that RM was open for a week, nobody participated, and half an hour after closing another one gets opened? Victoria is not "an Australia", and looking at similar entries suggests that it's either the current title or Victoria, Australia, (that being the general pattern for dabbing geographic entities of varying sizes), given that parenthetical titles should usually be a common noun (no reason to make an exception here) and the other Victorias are not state-level entities. I also don't buy the idea that (U.S.) is somehow "more confusing" than (Australia). I also reject the idea that this is somehow an Americanism. Arguably the "state" is useful, since not all immediate subdivisions of Australia are states. Incoming links won't need to be changed - we've had redirects since the earliest days of phase3. I reject the idea that there is impropriety because somebody wasn't notifed. The RM log is public, and you've got watchlists. I notice that no policy or MOS issue has been raised in support. Given there are hundreds of thousands of user accounts, I fail to see how two apparently can't be "consensus" while eight can. I'm not seeing any compelling reasons to revert the move here. 81.111.114.131 (talk) 08:47, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

• Comment Where to start on this? Firstly, I am unsure what 'Victoria is not "an Australia"' means, can you clarify? I think you are trying to make some point about common nouns - not sure why it is relevant. Secondly, using US alone as a disambiguator for Washington and Georgia is not sufficient, this does not apply in the case of Victoria. That is why it is more confusing, whether you "buy" this or not. Thirdly, "Guys, that RM was open for a week, nobody participated, and half an hour after closing another one gets opened?" And your point is? I asked the administrator who closed the move discussion how to go about getting his decision reversed. This was his advice. Your argument of basically "you snooze, you lose" hardly seems in the spirit of consensus as is generally applied here on Wikipedia. "Consensus can change", it is said - sometimes quite quickly it seems Fourth I note you mention redirects, but fail to address the point about category trees and all the other items that someone will eventually decide need "tidying". Fifth, eight (to date) is at least four times more representative a sample than two - regardless of the large population size. Sixth, "I notice that no policy or MOS issue has been raised in support" I did not see one raised in the initial move discussion either. There was reference to a non-existent guideline but I hardly think that counts. Seventh, "given that parenthetical titles should usually be a common noun" There are literally hundreds (thousands?) of counter examples, starting with Fitzroy River (Queensland). Fitzroy River is not a "Queensland", is it. Even if argumet was actually supported by evidence (which it isn't), you then should be arguing for a name like "Victoria (state)", no? Lastly, the whole rationale for the original move was based around some sort of vague desire for consistency with the US practice, with no consideration given to whether this practice was appropriate in this case or even necessary. I have been consistently opposed to over-elaborate or non-necessary disambiguation (esp. in category names) and my objection to the existing name is based on this. Victoria (Australia) is entirely unambiguous (can you give an example, please?)and as such there was absolutely no reason why the name needed to be changed. -- Mattinbgn\^talk 09:26, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
  • Parenthetical disambiguators are, by and large, common nouns. Apart from odd cases involving titles, "A (B)" usually mean that "A is a B". I notice your counter-example is also in Australia. In the rest of the world, the preference has been to use a comma for geographical disambiguation (we have "Town, County", "Town, Country", "Town, State", etc.), as can be seen with the various articles ending in ", France" or ", Italy" (most are documented in WP:NCGN). Consistency is a good thing, especially for the readers, and there should be some compelling reason for making an exception - "that's how we've done it in this project" is an excuse, and a poor one at that. We don't usually identify people by their birth date, though there are a handful of cases where this has been done because two people share a name, a profession and a locality. Your attempt at an explanation as to why "(U.S.)" is somehow confusing fails miserably, both on facts and on logic. For what it's worth, the Georgia issue is also not a matter of American practice - that particular argument dragged on for weeks, and involved users from all over the place, and most American editors preferred that article to be simply "Georgia". Again, I say that there is no NC or MOS issue raised by the support voters here, hence I find it hypocritical to suggest that a lack of reference to the NC is fatal to request above yet not to their own "support" comments. So, I'm going for the answer which looks most correct according to our naming rules and existing practice, which is move to Victoria, Australia - with a comma, not parentheses. 81.111.114.131 (talk) 10:35, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

This is a spurious argument. If this was valid, you would have "Paris, France", "London, England", and "Alberta, Canada" under those titles. The "A,B" form is where the places are normally refered to or referenced as A,B as the normal naming, which is not the case for those places ( except for Americans ), and not the case for Victoria.Eregli bob (talk) 16:27, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

• • • In case anyone is not happy with the lack of policy being mentioned here, I notice that the comma form is endorsed in WP:NCGN, both in the general case ("the tag is normally preceded by a comma") and in specific cases for Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, India, Ireland, Isle of Man, Italy, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Phillipines, Poland, Russia, South Africa, Switzerland, UK and USA. It notes that this applies mostly to settlements and administrative divisions, not so much to features such as rivers and mountains. 81.111.114.131 (talk) 11:00, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

• Support —Aaroncrick ^TALK 08:53, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
• Support. Timeshift (talk) 09:02, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
• Support - Bamborough (talk) 10:11, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
• Support - no need for disambiguation within Australia; the state is Victoria, nothing else, as far as we are concerned- outside Australia there is one in Canada, apparently, so we have had to adopt minimum dab for that reason. Georgia (United States). Washington (state) would be more correct for the divisions in another country in the other hemisphere; just needs two of us to agree (Crusoe8181 (talk) 10:34, 15 May 2010 (UTC)).
• Support should never have been moved, Victoria(Australia) is concise. Gnangarra 14:49, 15 May 2010 (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. No further edits should be made to this section.

Requested move - Victoria (state)

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: closed "no concensus" after discussion in Talk:Victoria (Australia)#Close this discussion. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 06:55, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

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Victoria (Australia) → Victoria (state) — 1) If a name of a state is ambiguous, then the normal way is to use the disambiguation term "(state)". This goes well with most official state names, that have a name like "State of Victoria" - i.e. often it simply means incorporating a part of the official in the article title. 2) Additionally the current disambiguation Victoria (Australia) is ambiguous, since there is another Victoria in Australia: Victoria (Western Australia). 3) Specifying an outstanding feature (here: to be a state) separates the topic better from other topics, e.g. there are other locations including the string "Victoria". Details below. --TopoChecker (talk) 14:22, 17 January 2011 (UTC) comment by banned editor

@ 3) Disambiguation term - Outstanding feature vs. location

• http://www.geonames.org/search.html?q=victoria+state - few hits, and only one hit within left column
• http://www.geonames.org/search.html?q=victoria+australia - several hits in left colume, e.g.

@ 2) Entities that include the string "Victoria", found via http://www.geonames.org/search.html?q=victoria&country=AU Victoria Lake, Victoria River, Victoria Park, Victoria (hill), Mount Victoria (Australia), Lake Victoria (Australia), Victoria Point...

@ 1) General patter for disambiguation of states in WP Disambiguation seems to follow the same pattern for all but two:

• Victoria (Australia), Australia
• Carinthia (state), Austria
• Salzburg (state), Austria
• Tyrol (state), Austria
• Amazonas (Brazilian state), Brazil - There is one in Venezuela.
• Bremen (state), Germany
• Hidalgo (state), Mexico
• Mexico (state), Mexico
• Al Jazirah (state), Sudan
• Blue Nile (state), Sudan
• Kassala (state), Sudan
• Khartoum (state), Sudan
• Lakes (state), Sudan
• Northern (state), Sudan
• Al Qadarif (state), Sudan
• Red Sea (state), Sudan
• River Nile (state), Sudan
• Sennar (state), Sudan
• Unity (state), Sudan
• Upper Nile (state), Sudan
• Warrap (state), Sudan
• White Nile (state), Sudan
• Amazonas (Venezuelan state), Venezuela - There is one in Brazil.
• Barinas (state), Venezuela
• Bolívar (state), Venezuela
• Lara (state), Venezuela
• Mérida (state), Venezuela
• Miranda (state), Venezuela
• Vargas (state), Venezuela
• Trujillo (state), Venezuela
• Portuguesa (state), Venezuela
• Sucre (state), Venezuela
• Washington (U.S. state), United States - Move to Washington (state) under discussion
• Georgia (U.S. state), United States - There is the country of Georgia which is a state too.

The only ones not fitting are Washington and Victoria. TopoChecker (talk) 14:22, 17 January 2011 (UTC) comment by banned editor

• Support Most precise and concise. ^walk victor falk ^talk 20:05, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
• Comment The proposal has some merit but some of the arguments raised by the nominator need some examination. "Victoria (Australia)" is unlikely to be confused with any of the places that are not actually called "Victoria" but "Lake Victoria". I fail to see the ambiguity here. Victoria (Western Australia), created immediately before this move discussion is an entirely non-notable geographical feature and is now up for deletion at AfD Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Victoria (Western Australia). Geographical features in Australia are almost never given just a plain name such as "Victoria" without a descriptor such as "Mount", "Lake" etc. and I suspect that anyone who actually refers to this hill at all (which is doubtful) would call the feature "Victoria Hill". -- Mattinbgn (talk) 20:36, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

• Agree with everything, except 1) the desire for deletion - I would like to have every location from GeoNames inside WP 2) the nonexistence of ambiguity. Technically if the hill is called "Victoria" there would be ambiguity. Please, understand me right, I really only mean technically, no proof anyone outside GeoNames before today ever called this hill Victoria. And I who did, don't know whether there even really is a hill at that location ;-) TopoChecker (talk) 21:56, 17 January 2011 (UTC) comment by banned editor

• Support: To be honest, I don't think it is any consequence whether or not there is also a hill in Australia named "Victoria". If those were the only two things in the world named "Victoria", the article on the state would be at [[Victoria]], and I doubt anybody would be calling it ambiguous. Having said that, I agree that sticking to convention used in similar cases is best, and I'm confused as to why they wouldn't all use the same to begin with. Nightw 23:07, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
• Support per precedents cited by nominator. Donama (talk) 23:38, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
• Support as if one looks very closely into the archives of the Victoria article - there are victoria's in other places that pushed the change of the usage of Australia into the title to please the outsiders - the convention given here looks good - but it would be good to see what other WP Australia users say. The issue of Victoria Hill is a complete furphy SatuSuro 02:20, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
• Can I have a bit each way? Yes, this Victoria is a state, and it's in Australia. Both pieces of information are useful. Can we call the article Victoria (Australian state)? The proposed change throws away one piece of useful information to replace it with another. Yes, I know it would be non-standard, but I like coming up with ideas from left-field. Maybe it could the start of something big. HiLo48 (talk) 02:40, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

• Comment Nice left-field suggestion but clearly rejected last year at Talk:Victoria (Australia)#Requested move 3 for the very good reason that it is not consistent with WP:PRECISION "When additional precision is necessary to distinguish an article from other uses of the topic name, over-precision should be avoided. Be precise but only as precise as is needed." The use of "Australia" or "state" is sufficient to disambiguate the article. The use of both together as "Victoria (Australian state)" is over-precise and potentially misleading - it appears to indicate that there are other states called "Victoria" is places other than Australia. I am not sure which way I am leaning on this change yet but I do know I oppose "Australian state" -- Mattinbgn (talk) 02:54, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

• That's cool. I understand your point about over=precision. HiLo48 (talk) 03:15, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

• Just for reference: At Talk:Washington (U.S. state)#Requested move - Washington (state) it seems that the State of Washington will be at Washington (state), also following WP:PRECISION. TopoChecker (talk) 03:52, 18 January 2011 (UTC) comment by banned editor

• Mild oppose. It would be so much better if the list above was Victoria (Australia), Carinthia (Austria), Salzburg (Austria), Tyrol (Austria), ... Hesperian 05:01, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

• It would be ambiguous for Salzburg (Austria) - could be the town, Upper Nile (Sudan) - could refer to water. Washington (United States) - the city. Etc. The only term that is very good to separate the topics is "state" due to the fact that there are not that many states in the world. TopoChecker (talk) 15:09, 18 January 2011 (UTC) comment by banned editor

• There are even fewer "Australias" in the world. --AussieLegend (talk) 15:45, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

• What would matter if one wants to count is the combination: How many Victorias are there in Australia? The combination Australia/Victoria can refer to a lot, the combination Victoria/state only refers to one thing, the State of Victoria. It is not Victoria of Australia. TopoChecker (talk) 17:25, 18 January 2011 (UTC) comment by banned editor

• Victoria (Australia) refers to only one thing. We're a pretty lucky country, we don't have people who are so poor they can only afford one name and geographical places are always named appropriately (Lake Victoria, Mount Victoria, Victoria Hill etc.) Changing to "Victoria (state)" doesn't make anything easier, it just creates a lot of unnecessary work. --AussieLegend (talk) 17:38, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

• That kind of luck was not given to the 7 things in Australia named Mount Victoria. If you don't like to work, I am happy to do it. That work needs to be done shall not prevent WP from getting better. Early fix, less work. TopoChecker (talk) 18:15, 18 January 2011 (UTC) comment by banned editor

• There are a lot of places in Australia that share names. The state of Victoria is not one of them. There is only one of those and changing the article's name to "Victoria (state)" will not fix the multi-naming issue with the Mount Victorias, nor is it relevant to this article. As for your "early fix, less work", I will reply with "no fix, no work" and remind you that Victoria (Australia) hasn't been a problem during the years that this article has existed, except for those seeking to make a mountain out of a mole-hill. I'm afraid that nothing you've said, or re-said has convinced me that there is any need, or anything to be gained from renaming this article. It just seems to be creating a lot of work for no reason at all. In fact, I'm seriously considering changing my vote to "Even more strongly oppose". --AussieLegend (talk) 18:30, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

• OMG it would be ambiguous here and there, just like that current convention, which sucks. Not a very strong argument against. Hesperian 22:41, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

• Strong oppose As I pointed out at the last RM,[1] umpteen thousand articles link to Victoria (Australia), high use templates such as {{Infobox Australian place}} will need modification, entire category trees based around "Victoria (Australia)" will need renaming and so on. This is not simply a page move; people need to look at the big picture. --AussieLegend (talk) 05:16, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't think it's being proposed that "Victoria (Australia)" should redirect anywhere other than this article, so no such problems should exist.--Kotniski (talk) 09:55, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

This is exactly why I said people need to look at the big picture. In order to maintain the naming consistency that this proposal is trying to achieve, categories with "Victoria (Australia)" in the name, such as Category:Victoria (Australia), its multiple subcats and numerous articles shall need to be renamed to "Victoria (state)", otherwise the single inconsistency that precipitated this move proposal will be transferred to god knows how many categories and articles. That will then necessitate other changes, such as to {{Infobox Australian place}}. It shouldn't be up to redirects to fix a problem that doesn't currently exist but which will if the article is moved. My father taught me that you should do a job properly or not at all, and that's what we should do here. If one article is renamed to make it consistent with others, we need to rename all related categories and articles to make them consistent, otherwise this move is just introducing a lot more inconsistency than it's removing. --AussieLegend (talk) 11:15, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Bots and editors will fix this easily. Esp. for templates it's only a little bit of editing, and for category changes there are bots. TopoChecker (talk) 15:09, 18 January 2011 (UTC) comment by banned editor

Sure. Of course they will. It's just a snap of the fingers. I doubt bots will come into it because of the number of categories involved. It's really not worth the effort to get a bot to do it and yet it's still a significant amount of manual work. Since the article moves will not be uncontroversial, most will have to go through a renaming proposal. I think you greatly underestimate the complexity of the task. Renaming the article doesn't automatically mean that everything will happen. There are procedures to follow and a lot of follow-up work. People underestimating the effort involved is why we have situations like {{Expand}} still existing and {{Infobox skyscraper}} and {{Infobox building}} not having been merged more than six months after the discussion finished. --AussieLegend (talk) 15:36, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

I guess merging of infoboxes is less of a standard task than category renaming. For category renaming a bot will be found fast. As for other articles - which others would need a move? For changing templates I offer my help. I would clean them up. TopoChecker (talk) 15:47, 18 January 2011 (UTC) comment by banned editor

As I said, there aren't enough categories to justify use of a bot and in any case, renaming of the categories isn't automatic. It's something that will have to be discussed first. (Yet more effort from other editors.) As for the articles, you can start, as I've already indicated, with those in Category:Victoria (Australia) and any that may be in its subcats. The required effort is just much as, if not more than, merging two infoboxes. --AussieLegend (talk) 16:00, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Bots will do the work depending on how much edits would be needed otherwise. It does not depend on how many categories do need renaming. Either a lot of changes related to categories are required and that is what you suggested in the first place, then there will be bots, or there are only few changes and it can be done manually. Categories follow article names, it is not that existing category names override judgement of editors to what is the best article name. TopoChecker (talk) 17:36, 18 January 2011 (UTC) comment by banned editor

Yes, you keep saying bots will do the work but that's not necessarily true and bots can't do all of the work anyway. A lot will still need to be done manually. There still has to be consensus to change the names and that involves discussion. Bots can't discuss. --AussieLegend (talk) 17:46, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

And I have evidence, WP:CFD talk confirmed the categories will be changed by bot after they went through CFD. Seems they even have their own one, so not even any bot request is needed. TopoChecker (talk) 15:49, 19 January 2011 (UTC) comment by banned editor

• Mild support, seems slightly more natural and consistent with what we normally do, though I wouldn't mind "(Australian state)" either (like Washington (U.S. state)), and in fact would probably most prefer simply Victoria, as primary topic.--Kotniski (talk) 09:53, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

• Comment Her Majesty would not be amused! -- Mattinbgn (talk) 10:49, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Notice that the state of New York is at New York, despite manifestly not being the primary topic for the phrase "New York", on the grounds that the true primary topic has a natural disambiguator (New York City). If that argument holds there, then it must surely hold even more strongly here, since the queen certainly has an equally natural disambiguator (Queen Victoria), and it isn't clear that the state isn't anyway genuinely primary for the phrase "Victoria" (people searching for the queen are, I think, far less likely to search for her under plain "Victoria" than those looking for NYC are to do so under plain "New York").--Kotniski (talk) 11:05, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

1) the "U.S." for Washington will likely be removed per WP:PRECISION 2) New York could be fixed too. Only because it is broken there, it does not need to be broken in other places. Same for Talk:Chihuahua#Requested move - Chihuahua (state). TopoChecker (talk) 15:09, 18 January 2011 (UTC) comment by banned editor

"Likely" is not really a statement you can make only a day or so into the discussion. to do so is WP:CRYSTAL. --AussieLegend (talk) 15:39, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose

@1 The list of articles following the (state) pattern (about 34) is quite small in Wikipedia terms, and thus the casual reader is unlikely to recognise this as a common pattern of disambiguation. Disambiguation for geographic articles overall is most commonly by a higher level of geographic hierarchy.

@2 I believe Victoria (Australia) is not readily confused with Victoria Lake, Victoria River, Victoria Park, Victoria Hill (Western Australia), Mount Victoria (Australia), Lake Victoria (Australia), Victoria Point etc.

@3 (Australia) is arguably a more outstanding feature than (state). In the list of disambiguated places, most do not list what type of geographic entity they are, but it is evident for all where they are.

I'm just not convinced by the reasons given for such a massive change, which would supposedly be carried through the very extensive category tree, as "Victoria (Australia)" was some time back. Melburnian (talk) 11:40, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

• @1 a) - The reader does not need to see a pattern. In case he would like to see one, then he could see it within the 34 using "(state)" - and they may wonder why Victoria (state) is not in the listing but uses it's own naming.
• @1 b) - Disambiguation for geographic articles is frequently done by feature type. Mississippi River, New York City, all the counties called XXX County. The first try mostly is to use the type, only if that fails, then higher level entity is used. TopoChecker (talk) 15:35, 18 January 2011 (UTC) comment by banned editor
• @2 - Might be. But for Victoria (state) we can be sure.
• @3 - Outstanding means that there is only one state called Victoria on planet Earth. But Victoria (Australia) could, for the uninformed reader - refer to the name Victoria as used in Australia. Search geonames.org for victoria+state and for victoria+australia - the tighter result set one gets with "state". TopoChecker (talk) 15:25, 18 January 2011 (UTC) comment by banned editor

@1a If the "reader does not need to see a pattern" why advocate one?

@1b Mississippi River (Ontario) is disambiguated by province, New York City is a commonly used alternative name, XXXX County is often the name of XXXX County.

@2&3 Victoria (state), for the "uninformed reader", could be anywhere. You are assuming that this uniformed reader knows that it is a state when he or she is searching and that it is the only state of that name on Wikipedia. If, for instance, a reader has heard the news about flooding in Victoria in Australia, and subsequently searches for information on Victoria he or she may not know whether it is a city, local government area, region or state. Melburnian (talk) 23:17, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

@1a for the readers that want to see a pattern, for those that like consistency. For those reading several articles on states.

@1b and first the Mississippi River has the feature type included. First it reveals it is a river. That is what is true for most things Mount Victoria, Victoria Hill, XXX County, New York City, they get added the type. On Victoria except for Gallic Empire and Australia every link says something about the type.

@2&3 And Victoria (Australia) could be anything, which is much more than for something to be anywhere. Victoria (Australia) could be a type of meal from Australia. Victoria (state) reduces the possibilities of what the article could be about much more. Of cause it does not tell how many people live there or what the capital is, or who the president (do they have one?), and not where it is located. But it reveals one feature of the State of Victoria, namely to be a state. TopoChecker (talk) 04:54, 19 January 2011 (UTC) comment by banned editor

In my opinion, not as significant as the feature of Victoria, Australia that it is in Australia. Victoria has existed as both a state and a colony, but has always been in Australia. Melburnian (talk) 01:15, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

• Neutral for now Oppose, I've never really like Victoria (Australia) but I'm just not convinced with Victoria (state) however I wouldn't support Victoria (Australian state) per the reasons raised by Mattinbgn. Bidgee (talk) 11:58, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

So what do you support? How about my suggestion of plain Victoria?--Kotniski (talk) 12:32, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

With so many humans named "Victoria" it would fail the first paragraph of Wikipedia:Primary_topic#Is_there_a_primary_topic.3F TopoChecker (talk) 15:41, 18 January 2011 (UTC) comment by banned editor

No, I don't think so (at least, not obviously). Many other people and things are called Victoria this and that, but if somebody types "Victoria" into the search box, are they likely to be looking for any of those things? They might be, of course, but I don't find it particularly likely - they would more probably be typing "Queen Victoria" or "Victoria Beckham" or "Victoria Station" or "Victoria Falls" or whatever.--Kotniski (talk) 17:22, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Agree for Victoria Station, maybe same for Queen Victoria. But then, I would expect "Victoria" to be about the name. I wouldn't expect that people around the world would expect the state page to pop up. And what would people in Australia expect? I don't know. Would they mostly add "state" as you and me would expect other people to add "Queen" or "Station"? Victoria lists first the name. I really thing that people that are not interested in geography and that never have been in Oceania, would when searching for origin of the name just type Victoria. TopoChecker (talk) 18:28, 18 January 2011 (UTC) comment by banned editor

At this stage I support keeping Victoria (Australia) rather then moving it to "Victoria" which is a highly common name. Bidgee (talk) 01:43, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Me too, I would not support the proposal to move to just Victoria. TopoChecker (talk) 04:30, 19 January 2011 (UTC) comment by banned editor

Virginia is also a common name, but the article on the state still carries the unqualified title. If someone's looking for an article on someone called Victoria or Virginia, they're not going to just type the forename into the box, are they? Unless they're looking for the article about the forename itself, which I would say is not a very likely topic of interest, compared with a state of a major country. --Kotniski (talk) 08:46, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

While I agree that there is a good argument that the Australian state is the primary topic for Victoria, it has zero chance of being accepted as such, not least because of the existence of Victoria, British Columbia. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 09:06, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

• Support; identifying it as a state is more useful than identifying the country of origin, especially so since Victoria is a human name. Powers ^T 13:41, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

...which, I guess we should all remember, is how the state got its name in the first place. HiLo48 (talk) 17:04, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

• Comment Based on page views, Victoria (Australia) would seem to be the correct location for this article:

• Victoria (Australia) - 40,678
• Victoria (state) - 196 --AussieLegend (talk) 18:40, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

• Uh, yeah -- because people tend to link to the current title rather than to a redirect. Powers ^T 19:28, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

• Page views also indicate what people have searched for. Clearly, "Victoria (state)" is not what readers are looking for. --AussieLegend (talk) 19:58, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

• Even http://www.google.com/search?q=victoria+state brings readers to the old title, these view stats do not show what people type. And also, it would still be a redirect. Maybe with the term "state" included WP could outperform some of the states own pages that do include the term "state" in the title. TopoChecker (talk) 20:21, 18 January 2011 (UTC) comment by banned editor
• No, they don't. Page views are just page views. Most page views come through internal links, but we don't know how many by just looking at pageview stats. It could be that 40,600 of those views came via internal links and only 78 through searches; we don't know. Powers ^T 22:06, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

This discussion of State vs Australia google hits is spurious. They are disambiguators, that's why they are within parenthesis, to mark they are not part of the name proper. We could have our own internal conventions, like Victoria (864) where 864 is a code for "federal state of a monarchy in Oceania". The point is to decide not which is more likely to be associated with Victoria, but whether "state" or "Australia" has the maximum preciseness and conciseness per wp:precise. ^walk victor falk ^talk 01:43, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

I would highly oppose having "Victoria (864)" or even using "codes", who is going to know what 864 means? Joe Blow or Jane Doe will not. Bidgee (talk) 01:48, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

• Bah. If we wikieditors can fully master WP:OMGWTFBBQ, what's a couple thousands disambiguation codes for them luser plebs? ^walk victor falk ^talk 03:17, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose for now Been watching this discussion patiently and with interest. Learnt quite a bit. Some good arguments for the change, but AussieLegend's concerns about its impact elsewhere seems valid. Until I see a concise response eliminating that as a matter of concern I will have to oppose the change. HiLo48 (talk) 00:46, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

• Would be nice to see what really the problems are. Since I like to work on WP, I am happy to help with the clean up. The 108 templates that I found, I can likely fix within 2 hours time. I will also look to collect category name and post them to WP:CFD, it can go via speedy after the page is renamed to Victoria (state). Speedy needs no extra talk, after 48 hours the renames are performed. So lets say within 96 hours most stuff is done. The plain links can stay and change over time. As Mattinbgn said below, it does not need to be done overnight. But the most important stuff will be changed within maybe 4 nights. TopoChecker (talk) 05:09, 19 January 2011 (UTC) comment by banned editor

• Mild support Ok, if precision is the primary goal, I'll go with the change. Interestingly though, I just looked up Georgia in the USA (one of my favourite ambiguities because so many Americans don't even know that other Georgias exist) and found it under Georgia (U.S. state), which is kinda what I suggested earlier. Oh well, I guess it's not precise. HiLo48 (talk) 05:34, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

• Georgia is a known issue that is complicated by the Caucasus Georgia also being a "state" in the form of a State (polity). See Talk:Washington (U.S. state)#Requested move - Washington (state) for a better comparison. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 06:02, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

• Mild support No better reason than "I think it sounds better" (re Victoria (state)). It's the only state of Victoria in the world. Mild oppose The only concern at my end (echoing AussieLegend), which is a significant one, is that if it does change, fixing the links will be a nightmare as there's just so many of them, also bringing category systems and so on into line. (Edit: Each one of those, btw, went through a move discussion to get to its present name so wouldn't be eligible for speedy.) Orderinchaos 02:07, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

• I compiled a list of templates below. There are 108. I could maybe do it within 2 hours time. I like to work for WP. If the result is a better WP, I am happy to work on it. I really like to work on WP. It's a pleasure. :-) TopoChecker (talk) 05:00, 19 January 2011 (UTC) comment by banned editor

• The bigger issue is all the categories which are named [...] Victoria (Australia) to be consistent with this article - there could be quite a few. Orderinchaos 06:07, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

• I asked for clarification at WP:CFD talk and got it confirmed that a bot will do it. Seems they have their own for that. See here. The person that answered also said it may go through CFD speedy. TopoChecker (talk) 15:45, 19 January 2011 (UTC) comment by banned editor

• Mild oppose I don't have any specific objection to the use of "Victoria (state)". It is clear, concise and precise. However, it is no more clear, concise and precise than the current term "Victoria (Australia)" The use of "state" is consistent with the disambiguation convention for other sub-national units, which is an advantage. The amount of work in fixing links, categories, templates etc. is a bit of a red herring in my opinion. If the rename is an improvement, then we should not allow the effort of implementation to dissuade us, especially as it doesn't have to be done overnight - an "eventualist" approach is quite a reasonable one. What sways me towards a slight preference for "Victoria (Australia)" is giving consideration to what a reader would expect. If a reader was looking the article on the Australian state of Victoria and understood that "Victoria" is the name of a lot of topics - what would he or she think was the natural attribute of the place that separates it from the others, that would be used to clarify the topic. My opinion, based on no evidence than my own thought process, is that people would associate Victoria as being part of Australia more than associating Victoria as being a state. Hence "Victoria (Australia)" to me is the more natural disambiguation term. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 03:24, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

• Thanks for addressing the rename work "issue". Me too I think this is a none issue, esp. since the old name will stay as a redirect. For the thought process: Everyone living in Australia and having a girl-friend named Victoria would likely think of the state primarily to be a state, and not as something like his girl-friend being in Australia? Also what do you think if you see: Victoria (Gallic Empire)? Is it a place? Something to eat? Victoria (state) reveals it is a place, and not a kind of meal from Australia that is named "Victoria". "(state)" reveals much more about it's nature than only the location. What is Gallic Empire? A computer game? Something that really existed? That can be asked for Australia. Australia is a second proper name next to the first one. While state is an English language word. If one sees Victoria (Australia) and one knows that Australia is a country, then the topic is not very specific still. It is Victoria (motorcycle) and not Victoria (Germany). To use a feature, described with a word is more precise, isn't it? Except for the Gallic Empire and for Australia every article title (correct me if I am wrong) on Victoria reveals something about the nature of the topic. TopoChecker (talk) 04:26, 19 January 2011 (UTC) comment by banned editor

• A person looking for an article on Victoria "the place in Australia", knows that the place is in Australia, but may not know it is a state. On the other hand, a person looking Victoria "the state" may not know it is in Australia. Hence, "Australia" in my opinion is the term most useful to assist in leading a person to the correct article - remembering that not everyone will get there via a disambiguation page. Also, it is important to remember that the purpose of disambiguation terms is not to reveal the "nature of the topic" but to guide people to the correct article. I think "Australia" does this marginally better than "state" - although both work well. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 04:58, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

• Agreed, purpose is to disambiguate. I don't understand your first conclusion: (Australia) reveals location, (state) reveals type, why then is (Australia) better? If one has the task: "Find the state of Victoria"... "Find Victoria in Australia" one will find the article irrespective of article title, since the redirect will still exist. So that point is neutral. Toponyms mostly get disambiguated by type. Mississippi River, New York City, Buenos Aires Province (like almost all provinces, except for cases where the word "province" wouldn't be sufficient), all the states listed above. Only for cities and towns feature type is mostly left out, since it often does not help much, there preemptively location is used. But for things in Category:country subdivsions that are states, provinces, counties, districts, departments... the choice number one is the type. The only outside I know of is Victoria. The issue will pop again and again, because other people will find it out of place to use a different way for Victoria, despite the standard way, namely Victoria (state) being feasible. I guess if we would have to name the article today from scratch, while knowing the other subdivisions all use "(type)" as first choice people would more agree to use that way too. TopoChecker (talk) 05:42, 19 January 2011 (UTC) comment by banned editor

Oppose. Victoria (Australia) is more useful than Victoria (state). It seems more intuitive. –Moondyne 06:33, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose. while it appears to be consistant with other articles IMHO its those other articles which are the problem disambiguators should be readily recognisable so as to help viewer/reader to find the topic they are looking for. The disambiguator of state does nothing to assure the reader is heading the right direction, Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(geographic_names)#Disambiguation says Places are often disambiguated by the country in which they lie, if this is sufficient.. State is not a clear disambiguator because state itself is an ambigious term as such provides no clarity so as to distinguish what the reader is looking for. Gnangarra 18:24, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
• Support. Personally I find (state) more intuitive than (Australia) because we normally disambiguate with what something is e.g. (band). I know for geographic places we do normally disambiguate with the next highest entity but this is normally for settlements rather than higher units so I'm unsure how much that applies. Essentially whether people like one or the other comes down to WP:ILIKEIT argument which is far from ideal. Therefore I'm largely supporting on the ground of consistency. The amount of work this may create is a complete red herring. If it improves the encyclopaedia it should happen even if it creates a lot of work. Its not the end of the world if this takes a little while to happen - slightly misnames categories isn't a big problem and we're have a redirect for links. Dpmuk (talk) 13:04, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose. I am more convinced by the oppose arguments than the support arguments. Victoria (Australia) is just clearer. --Bduke (Discussion) 21:39, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose. Blahblahblah (state) is mostly used (IME) when Blahblahblah (Upper) is impossible, because there's a city and a state which share the same name (or similar). We don't have a Victoria which is the capital of Victoria or anything of the sort, so a country-name disambiguator is to be preferred, I think. Victoria (Australian state) is too verbose. —Felix the Cassowary 16:30, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Nominator blocked as a sockpuppet of banned editor

• Comment Worth noting the initiator and key protagonist of this piece is now blocked as a sock of a banned editor (something I'd actually been keen to find out about but never got into - seemed weird that an account started on 1 January would have such familiarity with Wikipedia processes), and that the "ambiguous" article was deleted at AfD today. Orderinchaos 07:23, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

• Procedurally, how does this affect this nomination? As the puppet master was actually banned,[2] and not just blocked, anyone is free to revert any edits made by the sock. Pages created by banned editors are eligible for speedy deletion; surely the same effective process applies to discussions initiated by a banned user. ie the nomination itself is eligible for reversion. This applies to several pages, not just this one. --AussieLegend (talk) 08:45, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
  • Well given the amount of discussion this one has got it would seem silly to revert. Edits by banned users are liable to deletion / reversion, they don't have to be. In this case doing so would appear to be process for process sake and a bit pointless. If any of their move requests have no comments then I'd probably revert but given the number of supports here it's obvious other's feel the same way so we may as well see what the consensus is now. Dpmuk (talk) 09:09, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

• The thing you have to look at is that by continuing with the discussion we're effectively endorsing edits made by an editor in defiance of a ban. Because the editor was banned, the original nomination should never have been made and if it hadn't been, we wouldn't be having this discussion. This particular editor has been making these edits since 2007 and will continue to do so while his edits are being given credibility. If the outcome of the discussion is move, those who support the move have helped the banned user achieve what he set out to do, effectively becoming his meatpuppets. --AussieLegend (talk) 09:38, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I agree with this, the nomination is invalid and the present discussion should be closed without prejudice to a new nomination and rationale being subsequently provided by a good-faith editor. Melburnian (talk) 10:21, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

AN/I thread started to try to get some uninvolved input on this. Dpmuk (talk) 10:59, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't see any issue with closing this discussion and giving the banned user a clear indication that his editing in the defiance of a ban will not be tolerated. At the moment there are 9 supports and 9 opposes so no consensus exists in either direction. --AussieLegend (talk) 14:06, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

All of the move discussions initiated by TopoChecker have now been closed. Only this one remains open. --AussieLegend (talk) 16:44, 25 January 2011 (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. No further edits should be made to this section.

Discussion - Categories

See also: Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2008 September 5#Victoria (Australia)

• Exactly what speedy criteria applies to the categories? None of them as far as I can see. That will mean discussions and really, your reliance on bots to do everything is unrealistic. --AussieLegend (talk) 06:29, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

• Exactly C2C. The new top category Category:Victoria (state) would follow the article Victoria (state) and all categories within Category:Victoria (state) will follow the main category, i.e. Category:Victoria (state) IF they currently follow the main category. TopoChecker (talk) 15:39, 19 January 2011 (UTC) comment by banned editor

• C2C says "A rename bringing a category into line with established naming conventions for that category tree". "(state)" is not an established naming convention for that tree, which was renamed for reasons athat actually had little to do with this article. --AussieLegend (talk) 16:18, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

• Rename the top cat under C2B "A rename enforcing established Wikipedia naming conventions and practices" and the rest under C2C. If the top cat does not go through speedy then it will go through normal process, and it takes 7 days or so. What the heck is the problem with 7 days? TopoChecker (talk) 17:47, 19 January 2011 (UTC) comment by banned editor

• The problem is not with 7 days, it's that the situation is not as straightforward as you seem to think it is. Presently, all of the categories are consistently named and use of "Australia" seems to be appropriate for all categories. However, "state" is not appropriate for all categories. It is far more logical to use the location (Australia) in many of the cats than it is to use the entity type (state), since the location is more descriptive. As has already been pointed out, "state" can be anywhere, while "Australia" can only be one place. Picking just one at random, Category:Visitor attractions in Victoria (Australia) is more appropriate than Category:Visitor attractions in Victoria (state) since anyone looking through that category can immediately identify the geographical location of those visitor attractions. Category:Visitor attractions in Victoria (state) doesn't provide any precision. There is likely to be significant resistance to changing many of the cats and the expected result with be that some of the cats will end up staying "Victoria (Australia)" while some will change to "Victoria (state)". This goes back to what I said very early on,[3] "this move is just introducing a lot more inconsistency than it's removing". --AussieLegend (talk) 08:51, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

• @precision: Since there is only one state named Victoria it is more precise in most cases. Not for visitor attractions, where it does not matter, but e.g. for the top category: "Victoria (Australia)" - what is that, a restaurant chain from Australia? TopoChecker (talk) 18:03, 20 January 2011 (UTC) comment by banned editor

• What is "Victoria (state)"? A state of matter called Victoria? See, I can be silly too. There is also only one Victoria in Australia. Even your attempt to create a second one didn't work because you called it Victoria (Western Australia) Your argument holds for both state and Australia so it's really a non-issue. What does matter is that regardless, this move is really only achieving inconsistency and making work where none is needed. It doesn't achieve anything other than that. That's why it's insupportable. --AussieLegend (talk) 18:32, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

• What may Victoria Hill think if you tell her there is only one Victoria in Australia? TopoChecker (talk) 17:28, 21 January 2011 (UTC) comment by banned editor

• As I said, there is only one Victoria (Australia) and it and Victoria Hill are sufficiently disambiguated. Really, you need to stop going down this track, as it's looking more and more ridiculous. If you really are concerned about confusion, why did you create the article about the Western Australian hill at Victoria (Western Australia) instead of Victoria (hill) or Victoria Hill (hill)? --AussieLegend (talk) 17:38, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

• I wanted to make it more obvious to people like you that there are other things called Victoria that are located in Australia, assuming these people could deduct that Western Australia is located in Australia. Furthermore I didn't had the time to check whether there are other hills named "Victoria" in the world. And that is the difference: I know there is no other state called Victoria. I am concerned about accuracy and consistency. The naming you defined is not consistent, with naming conventions for other states. There exists a name that is consistent and is accurate, namely Victoria (state). TopoChecker (talk) 17:22, 23 January 2011 (UTC) comment by banned editor

• The point you are missing is that there aren't other things called Victoria. The woman called Victoria Hill is not just Victoria, she is Victoria Hill. Similarly, the hill is called Victoria Hill, not just Victoria and it was incorrect to name the article as you did, which is why it has been moved. Your attempt to create an ambiguity simply to demonstrate a point failed because it was easily fixed by moving the article to the correct name. I have trouble believing your stated concern for accuracy and consistency after you deliberately gave an article an inaccurate and inconsistent name. You've been arguing that "Victoria (state)" is more precise than "Victoria (Australia)", so why is "Victoria (hill)" not more precise than "Victoria (Western Australia)"? You can't have a bet each way. Your admission that you know there is no other state called Victoria destroys the opening claim of your nomination; ie that the name is ambiguous. Clearly it is not. --AussieLegend (talk) 18:01, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

• I don't know what you're on about here - we don't have to change every template to bypass the redirect. And the categories are named weirdly anyway - just because it's been decided that the article title needs disambiguation, doesn't mean that every category needs disambiguation in the same way - like "History of Victoria (Australia)" - surely this is the primary topic out of anything called Victoria that might have a history category, and we can just call it "History of Victoria"? --Kotniski (talk) 08:39, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

• You'll note that I've said nothing about templates, so I don't know why you've raised them. I was specifically talking about the misconception that categories can be speedily renamed in the post you've replied to. However, my earlier reply to a comment that you made explains "what I'm on about". This proposal seeks consistency but if we don't rename related categories and articles to make them consistent with the new name this move is just replacing a single perceived inconsistency with a lot of actual inconsistencies. Calling this article "Victoria (state)" but calling the category "History of Victoria (Australia)" is inconsistent. Calling it just "History of Victoria" would be wrong, unless this article was called "Victoria". --AussieLegend (talk) 08:58, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
• @Kotniski I agree with you entirely but have a look at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2008 September 5#Victoria (Australia). The smart-arse comment in the close gives you of the heat in the discussion. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 09:10, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

@AussieLegend - I agree with you (The first time on that page, I think.) that all categories that are subcategories of the state category, and that currently have (Australia) in their name, should be renamed, after the rename of the article has been done. I asked at WP:CFD talk and got it confirmed that a bot will do the rename. Seems they have their own, so no further bot request needed and therefore no delay. TopoChecker (talk) 16:12, 19 January 2011 (UTC) comment by banned editor

They can say that happens, but as I found out earlier today, it doesn't necessarily actually happen--I found redlinked cats on an article (United States Senate special election in Washington, 1983) where the cat had been deleted (per a rename) more than two years ago. I've also previously found redlinks on templates from other non-mitigated category renaming. EG 76.121.3.85 (talk) 04:56, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

• So you mean WP:CFD should not exist, categories NEVER been renamed? TopoChecker (talk) 18:04, 20 January 2011 (UTC) comment by banned editor

Strike throughs

What gives AussieLegend the right to make this page illegible? Perhaps an editor has been banned, but the opinions should stand or fall on their own. In coming up with a final decision, the fact that he has been banned needs to be taken into account, certainly, so I can understand a struckthrough "vote", but in me deriving my own opinion, it's completely irrelevant [retracted with apologies]. —Felix the Cassowary 16:22, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Apparently the answer is Wikipedia:BANPOL#Edits_by_and_on_behalf_of_banned_editors. —Felix the Cassowary 16:32, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Well, not quite the answer. The vast majority of the strike-throughs in the move discussion were not made by me at all,[4] they were made after a proposal at WP:ANI that "leaving the comments in place preserves the sense and continuity of any discussion, but the strikethrough alerts a closer who might be unaware of this thread that the comments should be given no weight in the closng."[5][6] I just caught the ones that he missed although, as you've now discovered, WP:BANPOL endorses complete removal. --AussieLegend (talk) 16:42, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

I made the initial strikethroughs above, for the reasons given by AussieLegend, who I thank for completing what I inadvertantly left undone. Policy allows that a banned (not simply blocked) editor's contributions to Wikipedia can be deleted on sight, but my feeling was that doing so in these move conversations would make them virtually impossible to understand. For that reason, since some (at least) appeared as if they were going to left open, I went with striking through the comments. That they make the page messy is unfortunate, but the alternative was incomprehensibility. Beyond My Ken (talk) 02:23, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Close this discussion

Given the mess that this discussion has descended into, which includes being proposed by a banned editor and then having all his contributions struck, followed by having the discussion closed as no consensus and then reopened again, I propose the simplest thing is to close this discussion as irreparably flawed. If someone wants to propose a new discussion, then they are welcome to do so. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 22:19, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes please HiLo48 (talk) 22:51, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

My preferred option is to close it as an invalid nomination. However, regardless of the sockpuppetry it can clearly be closed anyway as a no consensus result. I would have no problem with a good faith editor renominating with their own rationale and having a new, untainted discusssion. Melburnian (talk) 00:01, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Why should editors, who made comments in good faith, have to re-make their comments in a new discussion. Why inconvenience lots of good faith editors for no other gain. I support a normal close (by an uninvolved admin) who can take the socking into account and close as they see fit (and to me it's far from clear that there is no consensus for a move - remember this is not a vote). This is what normally happens at AfDs etc when a sock comments, why should the fact they started the request make this so different - essentially it just means their arguments at the top instead of somewhere else. Dpmuk (talk) 00:07, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Discussions like that inevitably contain a fair bit of to-ing and fro-ing as editors respond to each others' comments and, in my case at least, as they actually make up their minds. That old discussion is also now quite difficult to read. I'd like to hope that any new discussion would be much more straightforward, with no need for changing of minds and responding to others, including the now banned editor. HiLo48 (talk) 00:20, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

(ec) I am relatively indifferent between the two names offered here. My own preference for the name of this article is "Victoria" per WP:PRIMARY but this would never be supported by most editors. Most of the heavy lifting for the "(state)" option was done by a banned editor. If a closing administrator ignores his comments as is proper, I can't see much in the way of consensus or even good argument for the "state" option, but I could be wrong. What I can see regardless of what decision a closing administrator makes, is the "losing" side complaining about how the process was compromised by the actions of a banned editor and an almost immediate second discussion. The best, cleanest and fairest option is to start again - and tolerate some minor inconvenience. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 00:22, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

(ec) @Dpmuk It is quite clear that there is no consensus, you are acting in bad faith by dismissing the concerns of those who opposed the move in good faith. I have no idea why you are trying to keep something open which is really now a dead proposal. Bidgee (talk) 00:25, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't see that Dpmuk is actually opposing the close, only the wording used when closing it. What we appear to need is an admin who will close with "No consensus to move", rather than "page not moved (majority for "oppose" if banned contributor's messages are ignored",[7] which technically was correct anyway if my last count was right. --AussieLegend (talk) 01:57, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

"My own preference for the name of this article is "Victoria" per WP:PRIMARY": To me in England, the primary meaning of "Victoria" is Queen Victoria, not likely not in the USA etc. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 06:59, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

OK, now I'm not going to unduly influence a closer, I'll give my reason for thinking there may have been a consensus to move. I can quite easily see how it could be closed as no consensus and are happy with that close. The reason I queried the first close was that it seemed to suggest it was closed based on a !vote count and that's not how we determine consensus - I asked the admin involved about this and expected him to change his wording but instead he re-opened it. Anyway my reason for thinking this could have been closed as 'move':

• I'd have largely discounted any !votes largely based on the problems it would cause - it's a long established principal that we're here for the readers and so if we decide it's better to move this title the work will just have to be done.
• There are many !votes that seem to largely consist of ILIKEIT for one side of the other (although more the 'oppose' camp). I'd have given these little weight.
• There are !votes on both sides suggesting one term or the other is more likely to be searched for / understood. This is a valid reason, based on policy, but a) I think the arguments about equal on both sides and b) Neither side's arguments are supported by evidence.
• Which leaves the consistency arguments. As based on the above I think the arguments are about balanced, these IMO, leave the consensus as move.

So, no assuming bad faith. I admit I'm not "uninvolved" on this but I'd like to think I'd accept such an argument when I was on the "losing" side. Because I could see how this might be closed as move (based on the argument above) I was not happy with a close that suggested vote counting as that's not how we determine consensus. Dpmuk (talk) 08:46, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

•  Done Anthony Appleyard (talk) 06:56, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Impact of colonisation on Aborigines

I have changed the term "owned" back to "settled" as I have always had a real issue with Aboriginal "ownership" of Australia before the white man, as it wasn't "owned" in the sense that we think of ownership today, therefore it can be misleading. I am happy with other terms such as "settled", or "custodians" or something that gives a clear understanding that they were here before white settlement. But "ownership" can be misleading. Supt. of Printing (talk) 05:53, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Requested moves of 30+ Melbourne street names

Editors here may be interested in this multiple RM that I have initiated. My preamble:

These articles are all concerned with street names in Melbourne. (I would have include another 17, but the template has a limit of 30.) I do not support these moves; but I know that some very active editors do. It is time to air the matter, once and for all. Is it better to have an article on Collins Street in Melbourne called simply Collins Street, or to have it called Collins Street, Melbourne as at present? Which option serves the needs of Wikipedia's worldwide readership better? In almost all cases that I list there is no content in the destination article, just a redirect. And in almost all cases there is no Wikipedia article that very closely resembles the Melbourne-oriented one. There are, for example, no other Collins Streets with their own articles.

Your vote ("Support" or "Oppose") would be welcome, along with your reasons.

Noetica^Tea? 12:44, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Issue with the Victoria portal

The Victoria portal has no "News" section. Ericardo1979 (talk) 08:54, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

The State of Victoria

Main page: Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board § "State of"....

The info box links to States and territories of Australia but neither the lead nor the body of the article informs, or confirms for, a reader that "the State of New South Wales/ Victoria / Tasmania/ South Australia..." is the proper name of those states of the Commonwealth of Australia, per the preamble to the Australia Act 1986;[8] and, while section 13 applies specifically to Queensland, and 14 to Western Australia, the other sections apply to all the states generally. States of a federal union may have different names, as in USA, and not all the constituent parts the Commonwealth of Australia are States. Qexigator (talk) 18:28, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

I may be being a bit thick living in Victoria, but I do not understand what the problem is. Victoria is a State and the article says so, linking to the article of states and territories. If you think the lede needs changing then change it and we can then discuss it if necessary. --Bduke (Discussion) 05:24, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Agreed, is there a problem? or problems? If so: external to Wikipedia or internal? In brief (!):

• Internal:

• the single sentence added to the lead with ed.sum. a constituent state of Australia, see Talk, for the reasons given above, was peremptorily deleted, with ed.sum. Misinterpretation of the official name[9]

• And see also New South Wales,[10] South Australia,[11] Western Australia[12] and Queensland[13]
• ...and discussion at Talk:Queensland, Talk:South Australia, User talk:AussieLegend and User talk:Dmol.

• What should be informative text is hidden from readers by inexplicit pipe links, which may be due to failure on the part of regular editors (over-used to this device, and/or too familiar with the topic) to read afresh from the plain reader's point of view. Encyclopedically speaking, that reader's point of view (regardles of "POV") is a principal criterion for all or most articles on any given topic. In respect of the several states federally united in the Commonwealth of Australia, readers, especially outside Australia, cannot reasonably be expected at a glance to discern when a proper name is being used in respect of a location, or in respect of an entity having jurisdiction determined by public law (and acknowledged by international law) within an area whose territorial limits are defined by the law governing the greater area of which it forms part. But such a reader can reasonably be expected to need to be informed here about that, at a glance. The lead follows a standard pattern for the other states: location; capital; population; historical origin; federation (why Federation?); statehood. In the present day, those items are determined by the state boundaries given or affirmed by the federal constitution, and the proper name of the state, as given thereby, should be in the forefront, in the first two or three sentences of the lead, so that the reader can immediately see it, and can relate it to the other states.

• External: Why is the constitutional status of the Australian states of particular interest, deserving clear and explicit wording? Well, for one thing, see the timetable at Perth Agreement, where the legislation of all Commonwealth realms is waiting for the several states of the Commonwealth of Australia to pass the legislation which will enable the federal parliament to legislate with intent to let the proposal for amending the royal succession come into effect in all realms at the same time.
• Internal and External: Regular editors will know that inconsistencies/mistaken uses of caps and uncaps occur in Wikipedia articles, sometimes due to similar inconsitencies/mistakes in sources (including official and authoritative sources and well-respected writers): other instances are f/Federation, Royal Prerogative, Royal Assent, king/King, President/president, military ranks[14]. In any given context it is not always clear whether the word/s are being used as a proper noun, to be cap'd, or not, and good writers (or publishers) may differ. Queensland is an example as discussed at[15]. It is in this kind of borderline or doubtful case where it can be helpful to gather informed "consensus". So far, it is remarkable that no source has been offered to refute using caps to acknowledge that the proper name of a state of Australia, so constituted as a part of the Australian Commonwealth, by or after "Federation", is "the State of (Name)". Qexigator (talk) 11:51, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

To clarify statehood

In view of comments on my previous edit, I propose that the articles about Australian states would be improved by a sentence such as now added[16], and at Queensland,[17] which meets the point in a sufficiently informative way. Qexigator (talk) 16:34, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

• Note The above discussion is being undertaken at several talk pages. Since all discussions are essentially about the same topic, a centralised discussion has been started at Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board#"State of"..... Further discussion on this subject should continue there to avoid fragmenting the discussion. --AussieLegend (✉) 17:07, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

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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)

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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 Gnangarra 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. Gnangarra 07:16, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

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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.

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Requested move 17 July 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: No move. Cúchullain ^t/c 16:17, 26 July 2016 (UTC)

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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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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.

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)

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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 Gnangarra 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. Gnangarra 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. Gnangarra 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. Gnangarra 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. Gnangarra 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 Gnangarra 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)

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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)

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)

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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 [18] 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:

• Al Wusta Governorate (Oman)
• Bolívar Province (Ecuador)
• Capital Region (Iceland)
• Central Region (Ghana)
• Central Region (Eritrea)
• Centre Region (Cameroon)
• Eastern Region (Ghana)
• East Region (Cameroon)
• Federal District (Brazil)
• Galicia (Spain)
• Hwanghae Province (Republic of Korea)
• Kangwon Province (North Korea)
• Limburg (Netherlands)
• Littoral Region (Cameroon)
• Northeastern Region (Iceland)
• Northern Region (Ghana)
• Northwestern Region (Iceland)
• North Pyeongan Province (Republic of Korea)
• Prizren District (Serbia)
• Quba District (Azerbaijan)
• Quba District (Libya)
• Sangha Department (Republic of the Congo)
• San Juan Province (Dominican Republic)
• Santiago Province (Dominican Republic)
• Southern Region (Eritrea)
• South Hamgyeong Province (Republic of Korea)
• South Pyeongan Province (Republic of Korea)
• West Coast Division (Gambia)
• Western Province (Kenya)
• Western Province (Papua New Guinea)
• Western Province (Solomon Islands)
• Western Region (Ghana)
• Western Region (Iceland)
• West Region (Cameroon)

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[19]. 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. Gnangarra 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.

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)

Poo

I love poo 2001:8004:27F0:A01A:A57F:6574:3ED3:226F (talk) 10:04, 8 April 2022 (UTC)