Wiktionary:Votes/2021-02/Expanding CFI for place names

Background: The Place names section of CFI is poorly organized and leaves many place names not explicitly allowed or disallowed. A great number of our entries for place names could be nominated for deletion and would have to be argued individually with little basis in current policy. Clearer criteria of which place names are allowed will allow us to enforce CFI more consistently and facilitate the RFD process.

Current CFI text:

References:

Proposed text:

References:

Rationale:

• The allowed place names have been organized by category for clarity and to facilitate any future revisions. Examples are given, but the categories are left open-ended to allow more of our existing entries.
• The figurative use requirement for other structures acts as a notability standard and ensures that place names not in the explicitly allowed categories will have lexical value.
• The paragraph explaining unresolved issues is removed. The only unresolved issues that I foresee if the proposed text passes are celestial bodies and objects, which will be the subject of a future vote.
• All reference to the "significance" of place names is removed. There is no agreed upon standard, and it would be difficult to agree on one in the first place. In practice, rivers, lakes, mountains, hills, etc. are included regardless of size or cultural notability, so I'm inferring that the community's preference is to include them all.
• LDLs are exempt from the figurative use requirement because most are unlikely to produce even one figurative citation for structures significant to the speakers of these languages. Because of the little documentation available in these languages, there is little risk of anyone adding large numbers of unwanted place names, or place names that wouldn't be allowed in widely-documented languages.
• The three links to project pages are removed. The first is essentially a personal sandbox page, and the other two are abandoned projects.

Schedule:

• Vote starts: 00:01, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
• Vote ends: 23:59, 20 March 2021 (UTC)
• Vote created: Ultimateria (talk) 21:24, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

Discussion:

• Wiktionary talk:Votes/2021-02/Expanding CFI for place names
• Wiktionary:Beer_parlour/2021/February#CFI for place names
• Talk:Ludgate Hill
• Wiktionary:Requests_for_deletion/English#Arbër_Highway (to be archived at Talk:Arbër Highway)
• Talk:Aldersgate Street
• Talk:Lombard Street
• Talk:Threadneedle Street
• Talk:Angkor Wat
• Talk:Golden Gate Bridge
• Talk:Great Pyramid of Giza
• Talk:Bryce Canyon
• Talk:Horn peninsula
• Talk:Jordan River
• Talk:Kölner Dom

1. Support. Ultimateria (talk) 00:02, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
2. Support. It's absurd that we continue to argue over individual entries at RFD, again and again and again. No policy solution is perfect, but this one matches what we want to include with a robust framework to eliminate the endless wrangling. I only hope that we can one day make the rest of CFI this clear and explicit. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:16, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
3. Support. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 01:28, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
4. Support, marked improvement. MuDavid 栘𩿠 (talk) 02:01, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
5. Support — فين أخاي ^{(تكلم معاي · ما ساهمت)} 03:28, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
6. Support — SGconlaw (talk) 04:51, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
7. Support, indeed a great improvement, though I worry that the criteria for bodies of water may be too inclusionist. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 11:41, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

   Although not specifically mentioned, I hope it includes straits. It should also include gulfs and bays. DonnanZ (talk) 12:36, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

   @Donnanz The way I read the text is that it does include straits, gulfs and bays. I also think those should be included. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 15:12, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

   @Lingo Bingo Dingo: So what do you consider to be "too inclusionist"? DonnanZ (talk) 15:22, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

   @Donnanz Including small lakes, small waterways can get to a point where its actual utility appears to be low. There are a lot of those over here and I see little value in including very small bodies of water. There is even one large ditch in a neighbouring city that has an official name, it is called "stinking ditch". ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 15:41, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

   @Lingo Bingo Dingo: Yeah, I tend to draw a line here, leaving out minor lakes, ponds, tarns, old gravel pits full of water, reservoirs, man-made lakes (although I mentioned Virginia Water as a town is named after it); what do you do with the likes of Lake Roxburgh, which is a reservoir for a power station? The Fens of Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire, also the Somerset Levels, are well provided with man-made drainage channels (as well as straightened rivers), but I'm in no hurry to include them. DonnanZ (talk) 16:39, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

8. Support, although I have some reservations about the classification of figurative use. Editors may have to use their discretion here; named roads and streets, bridges, parks and beaches may lend their names to communities, ports are often a part of a settlement, although I included Teesport as I found a mention in a magazine. DonnanZ (talk) 11:58, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
9. Support Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 13:48, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
10. Support. Great step forward. Although we should still narrow the "countries and their administrative divisions" and "human settlements" some more in a future vote (an issue I raised some nine months ago). Imetsia (talk) 16:09, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
11. Support — Dentonius 10:44, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
12. Support Seems sensible to me. BigDom 21:12, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
13. Support --Numberguy6 (talk) 23:46, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
14. Support -- Allahverdi Verdizade (talk) 15:06, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
15. Support — Vorziblix (talk · contribs) 14:36, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

    Support Clears up a lot. -- AnotherEditor144 (talk) 09:56, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

    Not eligible to vote. — surjection ⟨??⟩ 23:29, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

16. Support 🔥शब्दशोधक🔥 08:45, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
17. Support — Saltmarsh. 10:11, 14 March 2021 (UTC)
18. Support PseudoSkull (talk) 05:00, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
19. Support Looks good to me. --Whoop whoop pull up (talk) 00:08, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

1. Oppose (weak) - too inclusive, in my opinion. Not clear about all possible multiword variants, inclusion of "the" and qualifiers, such as "river", "bridge", "school", "house", etc. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 22:51, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
2. With possible exceptions much stricter than those proposed, I Oppose listing geographical entities whose definitions contain no non-geographical information. For example, I oppose listing a village in X with the definition "Village in X", or a district of town Y as "District of Y". This is nothing to do with a dictionary, but can be a separate project. Or, I should say, if the desire is to combine a language dictionary with a place-name or geographical dictionary, then why are there ANY restrictions? Mihia (talk) 23:54, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

   Entries can always be improved. Basic information can be expanded, including etymology and pronunciation, where not included already, and other links, including maps where available. I have attempted to do this with Woburn Sands. DonnanZ (talk) 10:52, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

   By "non-geographical information", I mean in the definition. Thus, I oppose listing a "village in X" if the word does not mean anything except geographically, irrespective of ancillary information. While such information is of course in itself worthwhile and of interest, the question is whether it belongs in Wiktionary. Traditionally a language dictionary such as Wiktionary will include only very limited geographic entries. While there is no absolute reason why the two cannot be combined, a better solution IMO would be a dedicated geographical or place-name dictionary where there can be proper tailored support, especially map support. And again I ask, if the purpose or intention of Wiktionary is to be a geographical or place-name dictionary, in addition to a language dictionary, then why do we need these restrictions? Why do we not just say that we will allow all geographical names or place names? Mihia (talk) 12:21, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

3. Oppose as too inclusive. While it's tempting to say that these entries are harmless at worst, I can think of a few ways in which allowing the proliferation of low-value entries could hurt the project. One example is by adding a lot of noise to lists of derived/related terms. Looking at granite#Derived_terms, we currently list Granite County, Granite Falls, and Graniteville. Based on Granite (disambiguation)/Special:PrefixIndex/Granite and following the proposed criteria, that should be expanded to include Granite Island, Granite City, Granite Peak, Granite Bay, Granite Lake, Granite Basin Lake, Granite Belt, Granite Canon, Granite Canyon, Granite Chief, Granite City Township, Granite Creek, Granite Dells, Granite Falls Township, Granite Flat, Granite Harbour, Granite Hill, Granite Hills, Granite Hot Springs, Granite Knolls, Granite Ledge, Granite Mountain, Granite Mountains, Granite Pass, Granite Pillars, Granite Point, Granite Quarry, Granite Range, Granite Rock, Granite Shoals, Granite Springs, Granite Spur, Granite Township, Granite Vale, Granite Village, Granite Wash, Granite Wash Mountains, Granite Wash Pass.

   But wait, those are just places that pass Wikipedia's notability guidelines, which is not a necessary condition for us. So we mustn't forget to add Cape Granite, Granite Point, Granite Siding, Red Granite Mountain, Granite Gulch, Granite Quarry Cove, Red Granite Lake, White Granite Lake, Red Granite Point, Granite Brook, Granite Knob, Granite Glacier, Granite Narrows, Granite Pond, Granite Rock Pool, Granite Village Brook, Granite Lake Falls, Granite Run, South Granite Lake, North Granite Lake, Granite Lake Brook.

   The latter list is just places from Canada, btw. Granted, I didn't verify that each one is attested, but give me some time and a library card and I'm sure I can find 3 mentions for most of them.

   So that's a lot. Are we okay with 80% of the derived terms for an entry like granite being place names? Moreover, is it even correct to say that these are "terms derived from granite" in the same way that graniteware or granolith are? Aren't they more like things that are named after granite?

   I think there absolutely is a place for place names here, but we need to consider the reader. CFI begins: A term should be included if it's likely that someone would run across it and want to know what it means. Something like Zipangu is a great example of this. It's an old name for Japan that writers and mapmakers centuries ago would have used routinely with the assumption that their readers would know what it referred to. Recording the many names that have been used historically to refer to major geographic entities seems totally on mission for a dictionary. If I wanted to learn more about Zipangu and related terms, I would totally turn to Wiktionary. On the other hand, there's a 0% chance that when I read "Red Granite Lake", I go to Wiktionary to look up the definition. Colin M (talk) 08:54, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

   Just one more example where a high volume of geo entries could gum things up: searching. Just now I wanted to know if we had any entries for compounds using dodge (e.g. tax dodge), so I entered "dodge" into the "Page title contains" field of the "Advanced search" UI. The 15 results included Dodge City and Dodge County. Not so bad, but now consider that Dodge Lake, Dodge River, Dodge Cove, Dodge Point, Mount Dodge, Dodge Island, etc. are all places that exist. (Yes, you could avoid these results by using a case-sensitive regex search like intitle:/dodge/), but I'm guessing fewer than 1% of editors are familiar with the search syntax to that extent.) Colin M (talk) 18:48, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

4. Oppose as too inclusive, especially without a rule on containing "non-geographical information" as Mihia mentioned above (although personally I would possibly perceive even mere pronunciation, transliteration into a different script (if attestable) etc. as "non-geographical information"). --Droigheann (talk) 19:45, 7 March 2021 (UTC)
5. Oppose While I like the cleaned up rules, I think it's just too inclusive for an English language dictionary and risks swamping the project trying to verify/clean up entries. E.g. from Wikipedia: "Several thousand place names in the United States have names of French origin, some a legacy of past French exploration ...". There are also an awful lot of tiny islets, tiny waterfalls, settlements with 4 people, etc. We might consider:

   1. Must be in Wikipedia.

   2. Settlements must have at least 500,000 people.

   3. Islands must have 10,000 people or at least 1000 km2.

   4. Etc.

   What does everyone think? Facts707 (talk) 00:08, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

6. Oppose (strong) Makes much "waste". I didn't even know there are many non-notable places with very small population. BengkelBerkah05 (talk) 01:29, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

1. Abstain --DannyS712 (talk) 03:05, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
2. Abstain Interesting rewrite. I would like to note that "Bodies of water: oceans, seas, lakes, rivers, waterfalls, etc." seems potentially broader than before- I'm thinking of creeks, streams, ponds, gullies, etc. Also, under this rewrite, any island anywhere of any size or significance is included, right? --Geographyinitiative (talk) 15:02, 22 February 2021 (UTC) (modified)

   @Geographyinitiative: Yes, as long as it's named. Ultimateria (talk) 20:21, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

   I would leave out ponds, as I mentioned above. A gully is a ravine or valley, which can have a watercourse in it. I do wonder about islands in rivers though, like Eel Pie Island, Inch Clutha, etc. I guess they are includable. DonnanZ (talk) 13:54, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

   Another latent "problem" with the handling of geographical terms is the requirement to have three cites. I agree with the spirit of the policy, but one of the grave downsides is that English Wikipedia can make entire non-stub pages about geographical locations that English Wiktionary cannot even have an entry for. For instance, I could make a Wikipedia page about Sujiadang that would be accepted without any question, but I believe that Wiktionary's Sujiadang page fails the three cites test based on my first glance at archive.org, google books, google scholar and etc. Translated terms should be incorporated somehow, but it's a hard line to draw of course. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 21:06, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

   Maybe some kind of rule could be developed one day that would say that if a geographical term can be triple cited in the native language, a transliteration into English can also be added based on names found in databases (like GEOnet). I realize it's a dangerous "door-opening" move, but I thought I would suggest it. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 22:25, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

3. Abstain. I am concerned that this is too inclusive, including some very minor geographical features: for example, for every famous city district, there are a dozen or a hundred or more insignificant ones attested three times in local papers, statistical or other works reporting data broken down by district, etc. I'm not sure that will actually cause problems, though, so I'm not voting oppose yet. But Colin makes some good arguments for how it might cause issues, and I may think about this more and change my vote to 'oppose' later. I do appreciate the effort to introduce some comprehensive rules here, and most of them seem like reasonable rules. - -sche (discuss) 22:35, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

• This doesn't relate directly to the vote, but I am wondering whether we should make it a requirement, or at least encourage, editors to add coordinates (latitude and longitude) for all places for which we have entries. I think this could have the following benefits:
  • It might discourage editors from adding places that they do not know the coordinates of.
  • It would make geographic entries more useful. At the moment, a lot of such entries just say something along the lines of "a village/town/city in X".
  • It would help to improve the verifiability of entries, especially if a template is created that would enable readers to click on the coordinates and be taken to a map. (I believe the Wikimedia Commons already has something like this.)

— SGconlaw (talk) 14:47, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

Although not quite the same, I do add Ordnance Survey grid references for places in Great Britain and the Isle of Man. The Ordnance Survey in Ireland and Northern Ireland have a separate grid system, and publish their own series of 1:50,000 maps. I'm not averse to the idea, although I find coordinates cumbersome. DonnanZ (talk) 15:08, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

The OS also publish coordinates, like here for Cambourne. DonnanZ (talk) 15:18, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

• @Ultimateria, I suggest changing the line “In the case of simile and metaphor, the definition should note the place's relevant characteristics.” to “In the case of simile and metaphor, the place's relevant characteristics could be noted in the etymology section; the definition should be reserved only for listing the figurative meaning.” This way, we can avoid mentioning the non-figurative sense in the definition. -_⸘- inqilābī ^{‹inqilāb·zinda·bād›} 22:44, 4 March 2021 (UTC)
• Oh yeah- what about glaciers, icecaps and snowfields? I plan to work on the little understood desolate wilderness region Changtang in northern Tibet as well as Aksai Chin. Entries I have already made include Guliya, Tianshuihai, Tianwendian, etc. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 22:53, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

@Inqilābī, Geographyinitiative: Unfortunately it's too late to change the proposed text now that the vote is underway. Ultimateria (talk) 23:58, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

@Ultimateria Can I ask this: under a strict reading here, will Thwaites Glacier be excluded from Wiktionary? Antarctica gets ignored because no one is there, but it's important. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 00:07, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

@Geographyinitiative: It wouldn't be outright excluded, just subject to an RFD debate if someone disputes it. You could argue that it's a geological landform, but the term typically refers to formations of rock/soil/sand. It's hard to say whether it would pass. Ultimateria (talk) 04:50, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

I would concur that it is technically a landform, but we should've given it explicit mention. After this vote is concluded, this seems like the sort of thing we could add to the text through consensus at the BP, without requiring a vote. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 06:02, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

When I last checked there was no category for Places in Antarctica, only Category:Antarctica. DonnanZ (talk) 09:05, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

• Passes 19–6–3. Ultimateria (talk) 01:48, 21 March 2021 (UTC)