Wikipedia talk:Centralized discussion/Macedonia/Greece-related

Discussion of Proposal A.1

Shadowmorph, can you please clarify if you mean to propose that additional note in all Greece-related articles, or only in the main Greece article? Either way it is unacceptable, but in the first case more so than in the second. In contexts where simple geographical facts are being described, the political issues of the naming recognition are plainly irrelevant, and enforcing artificial notes in those places has no other function than to symbolically bow down before the Greek POV sensitivities. The naming issue is as irrelevant for the lead of Greece as the non-recognition of Israel is in the lead of Lebanon (where the neighbouring country is mentioned in the same way, simply in a description of what borders on what.) Same comparison for mentioning the Republic of Macedonia in Florina prefecture, and mentioning Israel in Bint Jbeil.

You might also want to remove some beating-dead-horses material from the rationale. The fact that the "f.Y." position in the naming poll was overwhelmingly represented by Greek editors and that the results were polarised along Greeks-versus-Non-Greeks lines was noted as a fact even by Arbcom, and the need to overcome such polarisation is a central and compulsory part of our task here. Also, WP:AGF has nothing whatsoever to do with the issue – saying that the proponents were Greek editors in no way implies they were acting in bad faith. Fut.Perf. ☼ 13:19, 13 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I mean only the Greece article.Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 18:02, 13 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ok maybe some official Greece and Greek administrative regions too but not in anything in Wikipedia that is Greek-related.Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 18:57, 13 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This clarification in a hatnote or footnote or whatever is totally unnecessary. If a reader is looking for information about a country, they do not care that some other countries or organizations don't recognize said country under the name that the page title or link uses. J.delanoy ^gabs _adds 02:32, 16 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It is certainly true that the naming dispute will need to be discussed in the article, but I can't see any reason it belongs in the lead. It's not anything that sums up the article as a whole, as a lead section is suppose to do. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 06:05, 16 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

As the article about Greece is about Greece, and not about Macedonia or its name, then anything that detailed about Greece's neighbor in the lead is silly and POV pushing. The lead should summarize Greece. As Heimstern says, the naming dispute is only a matter of Greece's foreign policy. It should have a mention there, but nowhere else. (Taivo (talk) 06:18, 16 June 2009 (UTC))[reply]

To support this, and just as a background reminder of what the status quo in the Greece article actually is. There are currently three references to Macedonia in that page:

In the intro: enumeration of neighbouring countries as part of the standard geographical overview. Uses "Republic of Macedonia", currently with a footnote "see naming dispute" (which I'd suggest we should remove)
In the "foreign relations" section: mentions "the naming dispute with the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia ('FYROM')". (which uses "former Yugoslav" not as part of the name but as a useful bit of relevant historical background information)
In a map in the "geography" section: uses abbreviated "Rep. Maced." (for space reasons)

Fut.Perf. ☼ 06:28, 16 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion of Proposal B

It is not Wikipedia's policy to use alternative names according to topic area, with one exception: when our reliable sources do the same. If you can show that either "Macedonia (Skopje)" or "Macedonia (FYROM)" are used by a clear majority of independent English-language sources dealing with Greece, we might begin to talk about this. Domain-specific alternate names, where they are used in Wikipedia, are never used with the purpose of making things more palatable to the POV sensitivities of some political group associated with the topic area. If at all, they are only ever used with the purpose of making facts more easily recognisable to the outside English-speaking reader. This is not the case here. Fut.Perf. ☼ 13:27, 13 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Macedonia (FYROM) would additionally be deprecated as it would introduce an unexplained (and frankly redundant) term into the article. There's already a general agreement that the term FYROM should not be used. -- ChrisO (talk) 15:01, 13 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't say to use Macedonia (Skopje) as the name. I said to use "Macedonia" or "Republic of Macedonia" as the name and (Skopje) or (FYROM) as a reference to the name that is used in Greece. The f.Y.... spelled out is used in many Greek related English texts (including some maps). Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 18:08, 13 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Why is "the name used in Greece" relevant for a general, English-speaking audience? -- ChrisO (talk) 18:43, 13 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

For one thing it will be included in almost all of the English texts that are written by an ethnic Greek. That includes Americans and Australians of Greek descent. Also international geologists, biologists... you get the point. Anything that a Greek wrote in English would use probably use one of those terms.

For another thing the reader might have encountered it just prior to searching for something Greek related in wikipedia. For instance he might have been reading about seismology in Greece in an English article (most of those are written by Greek seismologists) Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 19:03, 13 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Can you provide any examples? This seems very hypothetical to me. -- ChrisO (talk) 19:19, 13 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

None of these forms is the most common English term and none of them are even in the running for "common" English term. That should be enough to disqualify this option. (Taivo (talk) 02:09, 15 June 2009 (UTC))[reply]

They are not supposed to be. Think of it this way: it's like Macedonia (ΠΓΔΜ) or Macedonia (Σκόπια).Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 09:52, 15 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Just to be up front here. In my view, ideally, we should never refer to the same entity by different names. In reality this is not possible, thus we use different terms where there is a reasonable possibility of confusion about what a word is referring to. (For example, the word "Macedonia" alone may not be enough to differentiate between the Greek province and the sovereign nation in an article which refers to Greece.)

When referring to a single entity, we should use no more than the absolute minimum number of terms necessary to provide sufficient differentiation between possible meanings of a word. In my opinion, "Republic of Macedonia" is sufficient to differentiate the modern country, as there has never been any other republic named Macedonia. I see using any term other than "Republic of Macedonia" or possibly simply "Macedonia" to refer to the modern country, on any article on this project, as redundant, inconsistent, and unnecessary. "Any article" includes articles about or relating to Greece. (I will add my thoughts things such as the UN, the EU, and so forth on /other page titles later.)

I am willing to be persuaded otherwise, but before this discussion goes any further, I want to make it clear that I am inclined to follow my above reasoning on this matter. I believe that it represents a very good implementation of Wikipedia's policies and guidelines relating to disambiguation and general consistency across the project. Unless I see a good reason to make Greece-related articles a special case, I will not support any proposal that suggests doing this. Note that I consider

Greece does not recognize the modern country under this name
The country is recognized by the UN, the EU, NATO, and the Kingdom of Gondor as "the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia"

to be insufficient reason to justify making Greece-related articles a special case. If you are trying to change my mind, show me, from Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, why there should be a third term to refer to the modern republic. J.delanoy ^gabs _adds 02:28, 16 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, the remit laid down in the Arbcom decision was to consider this in conjunction with our existing policies and guidelines. I will stem off any suggestion of pre-judgement on our part here, but those who support this proposal should heed this advice if they want to make their case Fritzpoll (talk) 09:13, 16 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

For the record that proposal is not my first choice and I am not so concerned about the Greece-related part of this discussion.Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 10:46, 16 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion of proposal C

Wikipedia's editorial voice is solely its own. When it speaks for itself, it should use consistent terminology as much as possible. In Greece-related articles, "Macedonia" alone will not be sufficient under any circumstance I can anticipate, since there's a Greek region with the same name, but "Republic of Macedonia" is sufficient to distinguish the two. Using the term "Former Yugoslav..." is unnecessary and inconsistent with the rest of Wikipedia, and is just a concession to Greek foreign policy. Wikipedia speaks with its own voice, not that of its subjects. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 01:47, 22 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If you want to accurately quote Greece in Greece-related articles, then you'll have to use "former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" in the articles anyway. Using both "Republic of Macedonia" and the longer form in the article would sacrifice internal consistency. That is why "former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" is the best option to use in Greece-related articles. --Radjenef (talk) 02:06, 22 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]