Talk:San Diego

San Diego
As with Shenzhen, attributive use is required, whatever that means. Polarpanda 14:35, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
 * No it doesn't. The "attributive use" concept was never voted on. SemperBlotto 08:18, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
 * In common-law countries, usage is sufficient to make law. I didn't notice any consensus opposing this for the years the principle has been in practice. The restoration of Shenzen contrary to RfV process seems unwarranted. DCDuring TALK 12:33, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Can we get Shenzhen back then ? Polarpanda 11:37, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Voted on or not, it's in WT:CFI. If my current proposal (not yet finalized) passes into CFI, this would seem to be a good second change to make. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:41, 25 March 2010 (UTC)


 * The attribute-use rule has not been voted upon, and does not endorse even a 50%-majority community support, let alone 70%-majority community support. Anyone can start a vote for confirmation of the attributive-use rule. Common law does not rest on unvoted-on statute-like policies like CFI; it rests on the actual common practice, as far as I understand the concept of common law. --Dan Polansky 13:34, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, this has been well supported by community, or else we wouldn't get as many attributive use requests here! As I say I think at the very least it should be changed to make it clearer, or even better scrapped, but then, what do we replace it with? Mglovesfun (talk) 13:45, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
 * If you think that there really is a community support, you can start a vote for confirmation of the attributive-use rule. The number of posted RFV nominations alone does not really say much about the community support for the rule. The reason why no one starts such a vote is that there is very little chance for this vote to pass, or even to gain a 50%-majority support. --Dan Polansky 13:58, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, we don't normally have votes to support the status quo; we have them to change it. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:01, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
 * That's true - but CFI is not normally out-of-step with practice, or the feelings of the community. SemperBlotto 14:05, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
 * That may be right about what we normally do, but not about what we should do when it comes to unsupported policy items. Most parts of CFI are uncontroversial, and some parts of CFI have passed a vote. --Dan Polansky 14:31, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
 * If just one of those who wish that the status quo were different would simply do the work to find an alternative that actually has consensus, we could put all this bickering behind us. I personally will not do it because if I never again saw a proper noun entry in wiktionary it would be too soon.
 * We need some specific principles other than whim for inclusion or exclusion or some process for including or excluding. The items in question are proper nouns. There are two basic questions: inclusion and definition. I would bet on there being more consensus for inclusion of toponym components (York) than on either entire toponyms (New York) or on encyclopedic definitions (all or some of the specific entities that bear a word as all or part of their name). This would be similar to the closer-to-consensus practice with respect to personal names. Anyone? Anyone? DCDuring TALK 15:57, 25 March 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm thinkin’ on it.


 * From all the chitchat, I assume no one's trying to verify per CFI. Delete. —Michael Z. 2010-03-25 19:12 z 


 * DCDuring, fact is, there is not even a plain majority support, let alone consensual support, of the unvoted-on attributive-use rule; talk about people not doing policy work will not change that. If you want to enforce the attibutive-use rule, it is up to you to prove that it has a community support. Mere quoting of CFI does not prove consensus: you have to point to a vote or at least to a discussion in Beer parlour that documents the consensus. If you want get deleted things that only a minority of editors wants to get deleted, the political work of convincing the rest of editors is up to you. Those parts of CFI that have not been voted-on and clearly fail to achieve community support are illegitimate. --Dan Polansky 08:39, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
 * These are all very interesting assertions. Most elements of how things are done around here have not been voted on in detail. Whatever the irregularities in the establishment of the rules there may have been, the fact that they have been in force makes them part of the status quo. Common law is an important element of culture in most English-speaking countries. Laws that have been in effect for some time do not cease to be in effect merely because it was discovered that there were irregularities in the law's enactment. There could be restriction of the franchise, corruption, mistaken drafting, etc, none of which invalidate a law that has been in force. A journalistic expose might lead to some process to change the law but does not itself change it. I have never disputed your research, just its consequences. DCDuring TALK 09:50, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Common law is something I have no firm grasp of. From what I have heard, common law is something about precedent-based regulation as contrasted to continental rule-based regulation. I have read about common law in Encyclopedia Britannica, 1911. EB1911 tells me that common law is contrasted to several things, including statute law. Wikipedia says: "Common law is law developed by judges through decisions of courts and similar tribunals (also called case law), rather than through legislative statutes or executive branch action." From what I can see, CFI looks like a statute. It has been asserted that "it has been decided" that the attributive-use rule should be there. But my research has shown that it has not been decided. It seems that someone has managed to sell the community the idea that the rule is somehow well enacted, and the community has in part bought into it. I admit that the attributive-use rule has been accepted by various memebers of the community in their attempt to provide evidence according to the rule. I myself have tried to provide evidence to satisfy the rule in at least one case. But the reason I did so was that I thought that this was a well enacted rule. From what I can see, CFI has not much to do with common law, if anything at all. Given my constrained knowledge, I find the commmon-law argument that is supposed to let an unvoted-on unsupported rule overrule the community consensus implausible. But even if the argument was right in its claim that the analogy to common law is fitting—which I do not see, and it remains an analogy rather than a rock-solid piece of logical inference—, I still do not see how the argument could overrule the consensus principle of a Wikimedia wiki. --Dan Polansky 13:00, 26 March 2010 (UTC)


 * There's a consensus to follow the guidelines. If you disagree, then please point out the vote where we decided to just let you ignore this one? —Michael Z. 2010-03-26 20:39 z 
 * Re "There's a consensus to follow the guidelines": prove it. Prove that there is a consensus to stick to the letter of every single unvoted-on sentence of CFI. --Dan Polansky 10:03, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
 * The rule has been there for over 7 years. We still refer to it every day on RFV. Where's your evidence that there's consensus to drop this rule? —Michael Z. 2010-04-07 18:10 z 
 * (<) Re "We still refer to it every day on RFV." We don't. The burden of proof is with you. The rule is illegitimate. --Dan Polansky 18:40, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Striking. The cited clause has been removed from WT:CFI, and I think it's clear that the name is in widespread use. We don't currently have explicit criteria for place-names, but if you think this should be deleted, feel free to list it at WT:RFD. —Ruakh TALK 15:16, 6 August 2010 (UTC)