Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Macedonia/Greece-related

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

This page is for discussion on how to refer to the Republic of Macedonia in articles related to Greece, such as the main Greece article, as well as articles dealing with Greek locations, institutions, etc.

All letters on proposals were derived from proposals made during the first phase of the discussion.

For background of previous discussion, see Talk:Greece/Naming poll.

Please endorse only one proposal, and leave a (preferably) short comment if you wish. Direct any discussion of other users' endorsements to the talk page.

Statement of question

• What designation should be used to refer to the country constitutionally known as the Republic of Macedonia in articles related to Greece?

Proposal A: no exception rules

Greece-related articles should be treated no differently than other articles. The neighbouring country should be called "Macedonia" like everywhere else, as far as this is practically unambiguous (which, however, will be rarely the case in Greece-related articles). Elsewhere, i.e. in the majority of cases in this group of articles, it will be called "Republic of Macedonia".

Where a disambiguation contrast needs to be made particularly salient, e.g. in immediate contrast with one of the other Macedonias, additional ad-hoc qualifiers ("the neighbouring...", "the independent..." etc.) can be used (e.g. "the prefecture of Central Macedonia as well as the neighbouring Republic of Macedonia").

Additional material pointing the reader to the naming dispute should be used only where it is contextually relevant, i.e. in passages focussing explicitly on this aspect of Greek foreign policy, but not in places where the other country is just routinely mentioned like for instance in purely geographical descriptions.

Rationale

• This has already been shown to be the consensus of the large majority of Wikipedia editors except for Greek editors, as documented in Talk:Greece/Naming poll.
• This is a corollary to the general Proposal A for other articles. There is no reason to treat Greece differently from all other articles. The political objections held by the Greek government and many Greek people against the name of the neighbouring state are of no concern for Wikipedia, and Greece-related articles must not be treated as a "POV island" sympathetic to the POV of that national group.
• The only special consideration is practical needs of disambiguation. "Republic of" provides sufficient disambiguation from Greek Macedonia. Disambiguation must not be misused as a tool to foreground political POV issues where they are not immediately relevant to the article's topic (see WP:ARBMAC2#Disambiguation)

Rationale against

• This proposal while attempting to meet the NPOV clauses, it might be considered by some as an insensitive and bureaucratic implementation in a point that NPOV is broken in the opposite direction, by ignoring the fact that Greece recognizes no neighbor state by the name "Republic of Macedonia". Several editorial decisions can be followed to ease that without interfering with the naming conventions. Furthermore while the country is adequately disambiguated, the nature of the country's affiliation to the region of Greece is not cleared out and might become a source of controversy or edit wars, endangering the open nature of Wikipedia.
• Practical implementation: The fact that Wikipedia can be "edited by anyone" cannot be avoided and that principle does not include any saying about the ethnicity of editors. The fact is that while edits to include alternate names (Former Yugoslav...) from Greece geolocated IPs or users with Greece-siding concerns happens, it is not vandalism per se since the term is used both in Greece and by reliable neutral outside sources, organisations and other international bodies. Sustained total protection of all Greece-related pages is not a solution to that either.

Users who endorse Proposal A

• —Nightstallion 10:43, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
• I might have considered an option to consistently use the term Republic of Macedonia in Greece-related articles, but that's not even offered here! Hans Adler 12:01, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
• This is the only option that makes sense from WP:NPOV POV (no pun intended). man with one red shoe 14:00, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
• I believe that "Republic of" will be necessary in most cases as well to disambiguate the area in Greece from the country, especially since being Greece related, the area in Greece would be the one most likely referred to. Grk1011/Stephen (talk) 14:03, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
• Support. Hiberniantears (talk) 14:28, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
• Practically speaking, I expect that this amounts to using "Republic of Macedonia" throughout Greek articles. It seems to be logically consistent with the naming principles that have been adopted elsewhere. SHEFFIELDSTEEL^TALK 14:48, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
• (Taivo (talk) 15:27, 26 June 2009 (UTC))
• Obviously. Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:13, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
• The only reasonable option. The creation of country-specific POV areas needs to be resisted. -- ChrisO (talk) 16:15, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
• Absolutely. As I said back during the infamous straw poll at Talk:Greece, "Wikipedia has no place for the POV wishy-washing common in international diplomacy". Adding "Former Yugoslav" to all mentions of the Republic (I'm assuming it will practically never be called simply "Macedonia" because of ambiguity) is just conceding to nationalist interests in !their articles. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 16:20, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
• No special conditions for one country. Consistency is key, and edit warring over the name of the country to the north is why Greece was fully protected for almost three months. After it was reduced to semi-protection, the edit warring began again. Horologium (talk) 20:31, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
• Obvious. Black Kite 20:39, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
• Ok. -- Imbris (talk) 01:12, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
• Per above, I would oppose calling the country simply "Macedonia", which is insulting. IMO the consistent use of "Republic of Macedonia" is appropriate. But it gets more involved than that: User:Skamnelis and I are discussing what to do specifically with language issues: With the Greek-Macedonian city of Kastoria, how do we differentiate the local Macedonian Slavic name from the local Macedonian Greek name of the city? Calling either the "Macedonian" name would be inappropriate, but that's not covered here. kwami (talk) 02:51, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
• No compelling reason for special Greek conventions have been given. Eluchil404 (talk) 02:59, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
• Support. "Republic of Macedonia" is both non-ambiguous and consistent with WP policy. Constantine ✍ 08:55, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
• Support. The simplest and most consistent solution. Andrew Dalby 13:49, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
• No-brainer.--Caspian blue 14:26, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
• No need to create a double standard. Jafeluv (talk) 17:35, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
• No official names unless they are usage; no special bubble of reality for Greece. These are the Greek Government's official names for something not in their jurisdiction - which may be worse. And please do not claim that FYROM is "the name" of the Republic; the UN (correctly) calls it a "provisional designation", because there is a naming dispute. If it were a name, it would not be alphabetized under T. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:26, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
• Simplest and best. No national exception. Jd2718 (talk) 03:20, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
• Most logical solution. Anglophone readers don't need any more disambiguation than this. --Folantin (talk) 08:57, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
• Clear and simple. Kafka Liz (talk) 21:36, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
• I see no reason why the English Wikipedia should make an exception in Greece-related articles. I realize that some Greeks might dislike the name and I respect their opinion even though I don't share it. Their dislike, however, cannot dictate how the rest of the Wikipedia community name this country.JdeJ (talk) 22:04, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
• I'd prefer an option of "always use a qualifier such as 'Republic of Macedonia'": there are two other Macedonias (the internal subdivision and the ancient kingdom) that are often discussed in Greece-related articles. --Carnildo (talk) 23:32, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
• This is the obvious option, and it's important to say that there's no compelling reason for special exceptions for Greece-related articles. --Akhilleus (talk) 03:26, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
• This is the only option that is consistent with policies and guidelines. Walled gardens created to soothe another country's hurt feelings are utterly unacceptable. // Chris ^{(complaints)•(contribs)} 16:21, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Users who endorse Proposal A conditionally

• Endorse this proposal on the condition that the proposal B ("Republic of Macedonia") is adopted for the name of the article of the modern country over here. The first paragraph of the rationale (above) of these proposal would read:

Greece-related articles should be treated no differently than other articles. The neighbouring country should be called "Republic of Macedonia" like everywhere else as far as this is practically unambiguous (which, however, will be rarely the case in Greece-related articles). Elsewhere, i.e. in the majority of cases in this group of articles, it will be called "Republic of Macedonia".

When counting me, please check what was the result there. Deciding upon this without first having taken a decision on the name of the article of the country is somewhat non-sense-ical to me. I support the usage of "Republic of Macedonia" in all contexts without exceptions, but of this name, not of another. Dc76\^talk 21:08, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Proposal A.1: no exception rules (with added info in the lead)

Same as A but use an ad-hoc qualifier or explanatory note once in the lead of the Greece article, for instance "borders the Republic of Macedonia (recognised by Greece and the UN under the designation "former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia").

Rationale

Same as A) but clearing things up in the lead. WP:NPOV suggests the dispute be mentioned (it is notable). With that editorial decision all the rest references (currently two more, but that could change) would also not need disambiguation. This proposal does not interfere with any convention about the name applied in other articles since the mentioning of the dispute is an extra (not included in the name used & the term FYROM could also be unlinked). It should be noted that several non-Greek editors also sided with not using Republic of Macedonia alone in the Greece article.

This editorial decision might be used to ease some of the practical implementation concerns of proposal A that are related to NPOV as is evidently perceived by some Wikipedia users to be violated.

Rationale against

The naming dispute is only relevant to contexts where the political relations between the two country are the topic. Pushing additional references to it into contexts like the intro, where mere geographical facts are being discussed, would serve no other purpose than to artificially foreground the Greek POV concerns.

Users who endorse Proposal A.1

• As filling party I endorse A.1 for the reasons I included in the draft. I think this is better than A by following the suggestions of WP:NPOV to mention the dispute if it is notable. Although doing it in a more direct way (in the lead), it enables us to use whatever name in the rest of the article in a more neutral fashion having cleared up the situation up front. Also this proposal would likely ease tension and decrease edit wars involving the naming dispute that led to the locking of the whole Greece article recently. It would also do so without violating naming practices. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 05:40, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Proposal B: use official name or common name with the Greece recognized term in parentheses

Use Republic of Macedonia (Skopje) or Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) or Macedonia (Skopje)) or Macedonia (FYROM) (any, linked as shown). Use that way throughout the article.

Rationale

That way is used when an alternate name is relevant to an article even though it is not the most common name in English. E.g. sometimes the Greek name Constantinople is used or the Bulgarian names of Greek cities are used in parentheses (e.g. Florina (Lerin) in some contexts, Istanbul (Constantinople) in some contexts). In either way the current official name is what is used. Again the pipe-link used is important to seperate the name from the alternate name used in discussions and official English documents that are related to Greece.

The part of the naming dispute that is connected with the territorial concerns is about the name Republic of Macedonia implying a false connection of the Republic with the Macedonia region of Greece in the same sense that Republic of Kosovo implies a connection with the region of Serbia and Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh a connection with the region of Azerbaijan. NPOV should be applied to those implications in Wikipedia too with the lay (possibly uninformed) reader in mind. Any room about possible misconceptions regarding the relation of the country with the Greek region should be reduced to zero (considering the existence of the "United Macedonia" nationalistic ideology).

Compliance with Wikipedia policy

• compliant with Wikipedia naming conventions by using whatever name is suggested by those as the name of the country (rationales for specific names can be found in the main articles subpage of this discussion)
• compliant with WP:NAME that the simple name can be used without being used in an ambiguous way
• compliant with the spirit of WP:NPOV by not ignoring the position of Greece in the naming dispute.
• compliant with internal consistency in that a single name is used all around the body of text in a way that is compliant with naming conventions (simple English name) but in addition is not ambiguous in any part of the text via the added parenthesized supplement.

Rationale against

• Topic-specific use of double or alternative parenthesized names is only useful to the reader where a large part of the English-speaking neutral literature uses that name in topic-specific ways. This is true for use of "Constantinople" when dealing with certain historical eras; it is not true for the names of Macedonia when dealing with Greece. Neither "Skopje" nor "FYROM" are used with significant frequency by third-party sources.
• As for NPOV, our policies dictate that concerns over the legitimacy of a name and its political connotations raised by third parties, such as Greece, should explicitly not be taken into account for our choice of naming practices (see WP:NPOV#Article naming, which points further to WP:NCON)
• Repeated use of double/parenthetical names in the same article is stylistically awkward and unnatural.

Users who endorse Proposal B

• As a filling party of this draft, I include my endorsement of this alternative as a second choice to A.1 by a small margin. Note that this proposal does not include the alternate names as part of the link (thus independent from WP:NAME) but rather as a referent to the name used by official Greece so as to better relate with the Greece-related texts where the "FYROM" term or the "Skopje" metonymy might trivially come up. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 05:47, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

• Wikipedia name conventions stipulate common usage, simplicity and lack of ambiguity. First, common usage is not the same as correct usage. For example, in common usage there are animals and then there are birds. Correctly speaking, however, birds are animals – to some this may seem awkward and unnatural. Secondly, the choice of the name “Macedonia” by the Republic of Macedonia is tied up with territorial ambitions, is controversial, and an almost unique case, that may not be easily fitted by WP rules. The final name of the Republic of Macedonia is not going to be Republic of Macedonia, if the UN Interim Agreement is carried through. The added appellation FYROM is unambiguous and internationally recognized. The position re: FYROM is not only that of Greece but also of the UN, EU, NATO, Olympic Committee, UEFA, etc and above all of the world’s academia, and that is not irrelevant to an encyclopaedia: 340 academicians have signed a letter protesting the historical revisionism by the Republic of Macedonia (http://macedonia-evidence.org/obama-letter.html). It is impossible to deny that the adoption of “Republic of Macedonia” by WP as if it were the only place allowed to have the title of Macedonia does not fully satisfy RoM while completely dismissing Greece and the international organizations. There is barely an article in the US, Australia or UK referring to the RoM or “Macedonia”, without mentioning the pending name issue. In relation to Greece wiki articles there should be (a) use of the Greek terminology (eg. FYROM) where reference to Greek documents or positions is made, (b) similarly with the decisions regarding the wikipedia naming of RoM, the readers of the articles on Greece are likely to be interested on information on Hellenic Macedonia, geography, history, heritage, etc to be distinguished from RoM (FYROM) and (c) this is still consistent with the previous decision regarding the title of the article on the Republic of Macedonia, on which in any case there was no consensus. Skamnelis (talk) 03:49, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Proposal C: Follow country-specific conventions

Similarly to what is stated in "Proposal C" for international organizations [1], wikipedia should follow the conventions used by Greece, using the fully spelled-out "former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" on every occasion where the country is mentioned.

Rationale

• The reader is likely to have encountered the full term in Greek texts. Quoting official texts in citations would be facilitated by consistency of Wikipedia's references and Greece's conventional ones.
• By only copying the conventions of Greece inside articles strictly related to it, Wikipedia arguably maintains its Neutral Point of View by avoiding making a selection between alternate names of countries.
• This convention allows us to reflect sources authored by Greece more directly in our text, and avoids conflicts of usage between passages spoken in our own voice and passages quoted directly from those sources.

Rationale against

• By "copying the conventions of Greece", we would not be "avoiding" to make a POV selection, quite to the contrary, we would clearly be taking sides with one POV, against the criteria dictated by our policies (common use in English and self-identification of the named country)
• The practical issue of consistency with the wording of sources is overstated: there are few instances where a reference to the neighboring country in a Greece-related article needs immediate support through a literally quoted source, and in the few cases where this would involve a source using the Greek naming choice, the contrast can be handled in other ways. As long as sources aren't quoted literally, there is no fundamental problem in substituting our own policy-conformant naming choices for those of the source in our summary.
• Repeated "former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" is stylistically awkward and unnatural.

Users who endorse Proposal C

• The country's name is the Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia, FYROM. This is the name accepted by the United Nations. Until the naming dispute between Greece and FYROM is settled, the official name of the country is FYROM. Since WP is supposed to be neutral and uses the international names of countries, then it is more than obvious that the name FYROM should be used. Think of it this way: if one country wants to change its name, that is not an issue of WP to resolve. WP depicts reality and, at least for the time being, the country's name is FYROM. Pel thal (talk) 16:34, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

• The article about Greece mentions that Greece recognizes the Republic as "the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia". The only way to accurately quote Greece when mentioning this fact is to use its conventions. The Manual of Style's section on internal consistency explicitly states that: "[...] style and formatting should be consistent within a Wikipedia article, though not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole". If we were to use two different ways of referring to the Republic in our article, then we would be violating internal consistency. The only way of doing this accurately and without misquoting Greece is to use its conventions and refer to the Republic as "the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" throughout the article. This solution also conforms to Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy by assuming an impartial tone; it describes (as opposed to prescribing) how the country of this article refers to the other country. Saying that: Greece is involved in a naming dispute with the Republic of Macedonia, which Greece refers to as "the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia", is prescriptive and takes a side in the dispute by adopting the Republic's POV. Saying that: Greece is involved in a naming dispute with the country it refers to as "the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia", assumes no POV; it is descriptive, accurate and internally consistent. --Radjenef (talk) 20:52, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

• C is my first choice. Second choice B. In my opinion, the recent disturbances in Macedonia-related Wiki articles were totally unnecessary, as unlike cited reference cases like Ireland, Luxembourg or America, there is a recognized international dispute here, and an accepted binding obligation to resolve it. While the latter is yet to happen, it is already clear at this stage of the process that neither ‘Republic of Macedonia’ nor ‘Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia’ would be among the eventual choices. Apcbg (talk) 06:47, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

• C. By doing this, the reader in Greek texts will not be confused about the two common similar terms.--Dimorsitanos (talk) 22:40, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.