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in: Cities, Civilizations, Naming conventions, Watercooler

Forum:Nations - articles

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Forums: Index > Watercooler > Nations - articles



Standards desirable[]

Soon we should decide how to name and set out our pages for nations. Greece, Greek, or Greeks? Roman Empire? (ignoring the Republic, which could be one reason for NOT using such a long name). Whatever we decide, I suggest we redirect the unchosen two to the chosen one, except as below.

Robin Patterson 04:52, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Since they are refered to as civilizations in at least 3 of the 4 games, they should be named after the official civilization they are. So "Greek","Rome","Babylonia", ect. But, I believe they should also be grouped by the game they are from. So for example:
If these civs are referred to by different or slightly different names in different games then they can be listed as they are named. -- Mason11987 (T - C - E) 17:29, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the detailed response.
I've never seen Civ4 and possibly never will. The detail of Civ4 names can be left to those who know it.
However, for internal consistency you will have to correct your proposals; you say at the top:
... they should be named after the official civilization they are. So "Greek","Rome","Babylonia", ...
- but your list has "Greece" not "Greek"; Rome is a city not a civilization; and we have discussed Babylonia elsewhere as being possibly not a word used in any of the games! Your list has a mixture of people (eg Arabs, Celts), countries (eg America, Greece), cities (eg Carthage, Rome), and the (adjectival) names of civilizations (eg Byzantine and Ethiopian).
In broader terms I agree with your proposal to use the civilization name, which I think means (and as I proposed in the section below) using the adjectival names such as American, Arabian, Aztec, Babylonian, Celtic, Chinese, Egyptian, Greek, Holy Roman, Native American, Roman, Sumerian ... (the term the game uses in contexts such as "We are fascinated by your Greek concept of Navigation. Would you care to exchange knowledge..." and "TOP FIVE CITIES ... 4. Rhodes (Independent)"). Some of those adjectives - such as Chinese - are used also as (singular and plural) nouns; I doubt if that will trouble us.
Robin Patterson 23:33, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Confusion with cities[]

Some city names are the same as nation options - e.g. Rome, Babylon. City names are invariable, so I suggest we choose one of the adjective names for the nation so that there is no page ambiguity. "Rome" can be the city with a note at the top linking to the nation name.

Robin Patterson 04:52, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Current articles[]

(Special:Allpages. No need to update this; our List of nations and List of cities will grow eventually, as will the categories.)

Robin Patterson 04:52, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

---PS - for Mongols, see below. -- Robin Patterson (Talk) 15:53, January 16, 2012 (UTC)

Wanted articles[]

(Special:Wantedpages. Definitely no need to update this; as soon as we decide on a standard we can patrol the wanted pages to write a brief stub or to redirect.)

5 links[]

4 links[]

3 links[]

2 links[]

1 link[]

(Some duplication there, and we can't see more than 1000, so there may be several omissions. The saving of this page will promote the above to a higher link level!)

Robin Patterson 04:52, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Problematical names[]

Some of what we already have - though taken straight from the games - will be either difficult to handle or irritatingly long. Here we can list individual names for discussion. Robin Patterson 00:03, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Chinese[]

Can we agree in principle that "People's Republic of China" can be rendered as "Chinese"? Robin Patterson 00:03, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes I agree, that would be simpler (oh and yes I saw that sneaky addition to the list :P)--Jonru 00:35, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Reasons for using the singular adjective for all article names[]

(Extension and summary of some of what is above)

  1. It's usually the shortest option or among the shortest, e.g. Greek is shorter than Greeks or Greece; so, less typing time.
  2. It allows easy direct links from text in most cases, e.g. [[German]] from [[German]]s or [[German]]y in text, whereas linking to "Germany" takes more work with piping links, [[Germany|German]] and [[Germany|Germans]]. It won't make that difference when you type the name of a game-specific page such as German (Civ5), but I suspect that we will be able to save time with future templates if all pages of that form have the single standard form for the nation.
  3. It distinguishes between the nation and its capital in those few cases where there may be a tendency to use one for another, e.g. Rome and Babylon
  4. Some "nations" don't even have country names (unless you add something like "Empire", which is a LOT of typing) - Aztec, Celtic, Hittite, Iroquois, Mayan, Sioux, Viking, Visigoth.

— Robin Patterson (Talk) 03:08, August 21, 2010 (UTC)

Mongols[]

My apologies that we have not sorted out the Mongols sooner. I or someone else should have merged that page with Mongol years ago.

Now they have more problems. The Mongol hordes eventually got beaten back to a smallish area north of China, which got the name "Mongolia" applied by English explorers and/or mapmakers and has now stuck. Whereas Civ1, Civ2, C-evo, Freeciv, and possibly Civ3 use "Mongol", Civ4 and Civ5 and CivRev apparently have Mongolians. Probably logical if there are nations such as Uzbeks and Kazakhs and Tajiks and Georgians in the game occupying what used to be Mongol territory in the broad sense. One of our top contributors decided to rename "Mongol" accordingly, without much discussion. As a prolific writer on the older games, I wasn't pleased.

We could have separate nation articles, Mongol and Mongolian. Or we could stick to the simple one - Mongol - because of the typing savings, particularly as noted in point 2 of the previous section of this forum.

Opinions, please! -- Robin Patterson (Talk) 15:53, January 16, 2012 (UTC)

We agree with the principle that the less typing the better, (even though Dad is so good he only needs to use 2 fingers!). Also, 1 article is better than 2. DarthOrc 08:41, January 19, 2012 (UTC)DarthOrc
It's okay, you can say it was me who renamed the article. ;) I support having just one article but making one name a redirect to the other and explaining the difference in the lead paragraph. —ZeroOne (talk / @) 22:29, January 19, 2012 (UTC)
Mongol, then. Redirects will be pretty standard. I think one or both of the duplicates already discusses the geography etc, but I'll put more of that in. Now I'll have to re-read the procedure for merging articles and keeping all the history. -- Robin Patterson (Talk) 03:34, January 21, 2012 (UTC)
I've looked in vain for what I thought was a complex procedure for merging pages with all their histories. So I'll do a manual merge and note the histories somehow. -- Robin Patterson (Talk) 02:01, February 1, 2012 (UTC)

Arabs[]

Similar problems to the "Mongol" issue can arise with the Arabs, who spread all over northern Africa and a lot of south-western Asia, distinguished from Arabians (who are more distinctively called "Saudi Arabians"). Difference there could be that they don't appear in Civ1 or Civ2 or C-evo or the standard Freeciv. What are they in later games?

-- Robin Patterson (Talk) 15:53, January 16, 2012 (UTC)

They are Arabs in CivRev.DarthOrc 08:42, January 19, 2012 (UTC)DarthOrc

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