User:NielsF/Arbitration

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This arbitration will start August 31, 18:00 UTC. Until that time do not edit this page except for stating your acceptance of the procedure

This page is for the arbitration betweeen Juiced lemon and Martorell regarding the conflict about Catalonia, Land of Valencia and (Southern) France (notably categorization of these topics).

Procedure[edit]

Timeline[edit]

I propose the following timeline:

  • 3 days for parties to submit their views, arguments and proposals
  • 7 days for the arbitrator to ask the parties further questions (for clarification, requests for outside sources etc.) and ask for opinions from other users by posting in the Village pump
  • 3 days after that for the arbitrator to make a preliminary decision and submit this
  • 3 days for parties to comment on this preliminary decision (not "I don't like this" "This is stupid", but factual arguments)
  • 3 days for the arbitrator to make a final decision.

Rules[edit]

  • While this Arbitration is taking place:
    • Parties do not respond to each other and do not enter into discussion about this issue here, on their respective talk pages, on the arbitrator's talk page or anywhere else
    • Parties do not edit any page or category regarding the subject
    • Parties agree to respect Wikiquette, especially regarding personal attacks, and keep their argumentation businesslike
  • The final decision of the arbitrator is binding, also for other Commons users, and both parties shall respect it, even if they disagree.

Acceptance of procedure[edit]

Please indicate your acceptance below by stating Yes, I accept and signing.

Views, arguments and proposals[edit]

Juiced Lemon[edit]

Wikimedia Commons is a media repository. But, a repository to find items, not to forget them (as in the movie “Raiders of the Lost Ark”). I considered that adding new medias in Wikimedia Commons was an useless activity, because there are lots of medias which cannot be easily retrieved. So I prefered improve accessibility of current medias.

On July, I noticed anomalies in categorization of images, pages and categories regarding Catalonia, then Land of Valencia and Roussillon.

I began here (16:27, 17 July 2006) to move Category:Perpinyà to Category:Perpignan. Later, I started there (15:26, 31 July 2006), to organize the media files in categories related to Catalonia. This job was nearly completed when User:Martorell destroyed large part of my work without true discussion. I tried to stop it, but he blocked me two hours on August, 4.

According to these discussions :

Martorell'interventions raise these issues :

  1. Naming categories
  2. Naming articles
  3. Classification in specific categories
  4. Interference between several categorization systems
  5. Using of administrator abilities in a conflict for gain cause

Error correcting. --Juiced lemon 20:53, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Naming categories[edit]

The rule says : So far, Categories are in English.

In my opinion, it means that the category name must be understandable by any english speaking person. So, an immediate way to determine the name of a category is to find the matching article or category in en:wp. It is the current rule for places (See Commons:By location category scheme#Place names as determined by En: Wikipedia).

However, I think that we can still accept an other name with significant use. For example, I named a category Category:jaw harp rather than Category:Jew's harp. For place names, a possible alternative is the name which the concerned authority recommends. So, we'll often find these references in the web site of concerned governments or concerned representations. Example : Map of France (Perpignan in the South).

This table lists most of the disputed categories :

Category names Wikipedia references
according to Martorell according to the WC rules
Alacant Alicante w:Alicante
Cities and villages in the province of Alacant Cities and villages in the province of Alicante w:Alicante (province)
Comarques de Catalunya Comarques of Catalonia w:Comarques of Catalonia
Perpinyà Perpignan w:Perpignan
Province of Alacant Province of Alicante w:Alicante (province)
Province of Castelló Province of Castellón w:Castellón (province)
Province of València Province of Valencia w:Valencia (province)
Rosselló Roussillon w:Roussillon

These Catalan names breaks the rule, and Martorell didn't justify them. More, he don't accept the obvious that if a root category is named Here (it's a place), then the subcategories must be named Feature of/in Here or People of/from Here.

So I ask the renaming of incorrect categories according to the Wikipedia Commons rule.

Adding precision and link. --Juiced lemon 21:21, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Naming articles[edit]

Train station of Perpignan : GARE DE PERPIGNAN.
See also the famous painting of Salvador Dalí (“Perpignan” is writed on the wagon).

There is no rule about Commons:Language policy#Titles of articles : the proposal is to use native names for places, but it doesn't explain how to determine the native language.

Insteed, I propose to get the official name which the proper authority recommends. In most cases, it will be the government of the concerned country.

For example : Târgu Secuiesc is a Romanian city, but 90% of the inhabitants are Szekely, an Hungarian ethnic group. The Hungarian name of the city is Kézdivásárhely. Category:Kézdivásárhely has an incorrect title; here the native name is the romanian name, so category and article (not yet created) must be named Târgu Secuiesc : that's the name which can be found in most books and atlas.

In France, there is a single official language : French, which is spoken by nearly 100% of people in every land of France. So, it is incorrect to name places with languages that only a minority group can understand or write. In Pyrénées-Orientales, Catalan belongs to folklore.

So, I ask the renaming of some articles regarding places of Pyrénées-Orientales, to obtain title with french names, and only french names. I ask to forbid the use of multiple names in titles, which leads to confusion; a list contains always a first item, and we can always choose the first name as a title. Examples :

  1. rename Perpinyà - Perpignan to Perpignan
  2. rename Elna - Elne to Elne

Classification in specific categories[edit]

The number of media files continually increases, so me must create new specific categories in order to reasonably limit the number of files in existing categories.

Martorell is opposing to this advancement. See these references :

  1. Martorell removes categorization in specific categories
  2. destruction of the Category:Culture of Valencia :
    1. [1]
    2. [2]
    3. [3]
    4. [4]

I ask for the restoration of the classification of articles and categories (before Martorell's last interventions).

Interference between several categorization systems[edit]

In Wikimedia Commons, buildings and other fixed places or items are generally categorized following present geographic subdivisions. Martorell messed this classification because he claims that Category:Catalonia concerns also the historic region w:Principality of Catalonia

Example : The category Category:Dams in Catalonia concerns only dams located in Spain. In spite of that, Martorell persists to categorize it in a french category.

Of course, Catalonia and Principality of Catalonia are two different subjects. We cannot merge these subjects in a single category. See Commons:Village pump#About Northern Catalonia.

I ask for the removal of incorrect categories, notably french categories from Catalonia, Land of Valencia categories and subcategories, Pyrénéees-Orientales in Catalonia.

Using of administrator abilities in a conflict for gain cause[edit]

As seen above, Martorell denies the Wikimedia Commons rules and reality. He don't debate neither with other people to find what is best for this project.

My opinion is that this user considers the project as a media to promote Catalan and Catalan political claims . He uses administrator abilities in direct conflicts to impose his point a view, and as a result supports other users who have similar aims. This diff is particularly enlightening.

Martorell don't respect the edits truce regarding the subjects of the arbitration. More, he takes part in edit wars with User:Joan Puigbarcell on September, 2.

So, I consider that all Martorell actions regarding the subjects of the arbitration are harmful to the project. I suggest the banning of user Martorell, for these only subjects, during a sufficient period. --Juiced lemon 11:01, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Martorell[edit]

The issue[edit]

  • He started to reorganize on July 31th categories related to Catalan and Valencian subjects.
  • Three Catalan-speaker users (Pmmollet via msg, Pepetps, and Toniher via IRC) adviced me on August 3rd some changes made by JL, and their disappointing with some of the changes, basically:
    • Removing upper category on French subjects from Catalan subjects, leaving there only upper category on Spanish subjects.
    • Changing toponyms in Catalan language, not only from Categories titles but also from Articles titles, into toponyms in Spanish, French or English languages, following titles used in en:WP. It includes changing from bilingual titles to monolingual titles on Articles, such Alacant - Alicante into Alicante.
  • I've made some changes, and almost all tree category organization revised by JL still remains unchanged. He reverted all corrections (well, I consider it as corrections) because other reasons, not because of organization tree. We think that this reversions is due to political and cultural bias of him, basically based on chauvinism.
  • He's claimig we've destroyed his work, but in this filtered contrib list you can see that most of categories related to Valencian or Catalan subjects are still on top in each page history.
  • I've hold his work done in possitive way in the first message posted by me to his discussion page, and I've expressed also our disappointing (of these users and of mine). In spite of it, his response was a first editwar (see this contrib as exemple). I decided to try behaviour with this issue, not to block him, and to continue to talk to reach some agreement.
  • He started a discussion in Village Pump started on August 3rd, and the extension of discussion is quite large. In this discussion me and some Catalan-speaker users have argued the following:
  • On August 4th, he expressed clearly in Village Pump he's not interested to reach a consensus, and immediatedly he was overindulged in a second editwar. At this moment I was online, so I've decided to block him only for two hours in order to enforce the discussion that he withdrawn from. See a selected contrib of him of the aborted ongoing editwar.

About names on categories[edit]

According to Commons:Language policy the convention names for articles are:

type of subject policy on Articles What does happen on Categories?
animals, plants latin binomial Category:Equus asinus instead of "Donkeys", Category:Sus scrofa domesticus instead of "Pigs"
music, art native Category:Die Zauberflöte, instead of "The Magic Flute", Aline et Valcourt instead of "Aline and Valcour"
people native Category:Alfonso_XIII_of_Spain, not "Alphonse XIII of Spain", Category:Benedictus_XVI instead of "Benedict XVI"
places native Category:Bretagne, not "Britanny". Should it be Category:Catalunya instead of Category:Catalonia?
specialty foods native Category:Paella, Category:Hummus, Category:Jiaozi, etc...
other free In English.

It's clear that sometimes English is not used for categories names. In all cases policy on articles are being applied also on some categories, specially for those wich are proper nouns. A toponym is also a proper noun, so it would be correct to use Category:Catalunya or Category:País Valencià (in native language) instead of Category:Catalonia or Category:Land of Valencia. In adding, if it's a sentence, such "Dams in Catalonia" it's other case, so it should be in English.

Here's no problem about understandig if we use native form for categories, as we have templates to help people to redirect from a empty category to the used category. Here's neither problem about writing diacritics, as we have a box on bottom of the edit panel wich several special symbols to be clicked and inserted on textbox. Here's neither problem about searching words with special characters, because the search engine á, à, ä, â, a, etc... are the same value: a.

I'm not against to use English for places, but I think that it's possible to use in native form in some reasonable cases (and if it isn't on Latin characters, it can be transliterated). And it should be used on multilingual thinkings in all the reasonable cases. Is it a multilingual project, or is it a project embedded on Wikipedia in English?. Because users from Wikipedia in Catalan, and in Spanish, and among others decided to stop uploading images on their sites, and to do it here, specially, because it's multilingual.

Questions (deadline 2006-09-13 00:00 UTC for questions and opininions, answers a day later)[edit]

Questions for Juiced lemon[edit]

  1. I concur that en:wp is a good first look for what the name of a category should be. What's your view on some of the exceptions mentioned by Martorell (e.g. Category:Sevilla, Category:Granada)? NielsF 22:32, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
  2. You mention "In Pyreneés-Occidentales" Catalan is folkore. Do you have something (statistics for example) that backs it up? Martorell provides some links of official authorities that seem to suggest otherwise. NielsF 22:32, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
  3. Regarding your remark "Martorell is opposing this advancement" (under Classification in specific categories above). I don't quite get the point of the cited diffs? Only the Category:Culture of Valencia seems to have been changed to Category:Culture of the Land of Valencia, which is maybe even a better name? NielsF 22:32, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Answers[edit]

Question 1: “Exceptions” mentioned by Martorell[edit]

The rule for Commons categories don't state exceptions, so we cannot call Category:Sevilla and others similar cases as “exceptions” (what is the problem with Category:Granada ?). These category names infringe the rule, and we must rename them to preserve the consistency of the categorization system.

Such “exceptions” are making the mess ; I quote some subcategories of Category:Sevilla :

--Juiced lemon 19:30, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Process to implement the rule - an example : category name and page name for the city of Saint-Louis, Senegal

  1. In en:wp, we find w:Saint-Louis, Senegal, so the category name for Commons is Category:Saint-Louis, Senegal.
  2. The en:wp article w:Senegal informs us that the official language in this country is french. Therefore, from w:Saint-Louis, Senegal, we go to fr:wp, using the wiki links, and we reach the fr:Saint-Louis (Sénégal) article; so the article name (the native name) for Commons is Saint-Louis (Sénégal).

You may notice that this town is called Ndar in w:walof. It doesn't matter for Commons, which is a tool for all the wikipedians from the whole world, not a media to promote linguistic minorities. Everybody in the world must be able to achieve the same, simple and logical process. --Juiced lemon 19:23, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Question 2: Catalan in Pyrénées-Orientales[edit]

According to INSEE, population in Pyrénées-Orientales is 421,200 (2004).

In this web page about L'aire linguistique catalane, we read (§2 Les locuteurs du catalan) that there are 140,000 Catalan speakers in Pyrénées-Orientales (so, the proportion is 33.2%). We still learn that near half of these persons declare they don't speak Catalan very well. We must keep in mind that near everybody in Pyrénées-Orientales speaks and understands French language (result of french education).

This study by Institut de Sociolingüística Catalana is also of some interest (See the Catalan version for the missing sections). --Juiced lemon 10:15, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Question 3: Classification in specific categories[edit]
Baby in historical Valencian costume.

In en:wp, w:Valencia is a disambiguation page which includes notably w:Valencia (city in Spain) and w:Valencia (autonomous community). The matching categories in Commons are Category:Land of Valencia and Category:Valencia, because we have to decline them in subcategories, and we need simple names.

So Category:Culture of the Land of Valencia is a subcategory which regards the autonomous community of Valencia, then Category:Culture of Valencia is a subcategory which regards the spanish city of Valencia.

On July, 22 a bot (MakBot) changed Category:Valencian culture to Category:Culture of Valencia ; it was a mistake, because this category concerned the autonomous community of Valencia : Image:Loza Ribesalbes.jpg, Revision as of 06:48, 22 July 2006. I identified the problem, and consequently I created the Culture of the Land of Valencia category (See the history).

Look at the history of Image:Baby in historical Valencian costume.jpg :

  1. Revision as of 17:07, 3 August 2006 : Martorell removed the Category:National costumes of Spain.
  2. Revision as of 13:21, 6 August 2006 : Martorel replaced Category:Culture of Valencia with Category:Culture of the Land of Valencia (this image is in a set of city of Valencia pictures).

Two modifications = two losses of information. --Juiced lemon 17:45, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Questions for Martorell[edit]

  1. You listed a very helpful link about the names of municipalities and their official status. Is there also something like that for the higher level administrations (provinces etc.) or have they only Castillian official names? NielsF 22:32, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
  2. You say you use native names for categories (like Category:Rosselló), but is that native? Please specify what you mean by native. NielsF 22:32, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
  3. I cite you: Here's no problem about understandig if we use native form for categories, as we have templates to help people to redirect from a empty category to the used category. Yes, but these templates are relatively new and should (in my opinion) only be used in limited cases. They still not prevent splitting up content between different categories. They're a bit better than a hard redirect (#REDIRECT[[Category:Something]]), but still not the best solution ever. What's your view on this? NielsF 22:32, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Answers[edit]

Question 1: About endonyms.[edit]

It was a list of municipalities inside the official native Spanish-speaking area, and Catalan-speaking area published in 1983. Since this year a lot of municipalities in Catalan-speaking area have changed their toponym into Catalan or into bilingual Catalan/Spanish. A list of official toponyms name form can be found here for Valencian municipalities, and it's accomplished also by the Spanish Government. Here in commons, normally we use the local official toponym, but if it's in bilingual form Catalan/Spanish we choose the language native area officially declared there for categories, and the biligual form for article titles. Indeed, there's no municipality in the Spanish-speaking area wich name is in bilingual form. --Joanot Martorell ✉ 01:15, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Question 2: About meaning of "native language"[edit]

My opinion about the meaning of "native language" of a place is difuse, but it isn't only about the "most spoken language", and both are different concept, almost for me. In some cases, people living in a region or in a place can consider they have a native language altough it's spoken in very few cases, but it's considered one of the most important cultural identity. A very clear exemple about this case is the Gaelic Irish. It's spoken only by 15% of Irish population, but it's considered the "First Official Language" in the Constitution of Ireland, and it's used in all the public scope (road signals, forms, public media, etc... ). Both languages, English and Irish could be considered as native languages, but Irish language historical presence started much before English, only Irish is specially protected, only Irish is recognized in the society as cultural heritage, etc. Nowadays English doesn't need support in Ireland, but it wouldn't be supported more than Irish in any case. So, someone could conclude that Irish language is more "nativelly" than English (recognized as "Second Official Language"), but Irish is not used enough there, so because of it English is often used.

In the case of Land of Valencia, Catalan is often used by more than 45% of population in official Catalan-speaking area (in some important areas it's more than 65%). Altough every citizen must learn both official languages, Catalan and Spanish, in the law only Catalan have a special protection and respect status in Valencia (and other Catalan-speaking countries); altough both are officialy used, only Catalan is officially recognized as a "proper/native language" of the Valencian Goverment (and of others one); Catalan language historical presence started before of the Spanish language; it's also a basic reference of cultural identity. So, it would be corret to say that Catalan language is more "nativelly" than Spanish, and it's often used.

It isn't about wich language is native and wich is not for a place/region, but about wich one is more nativelly than other. The most spoken language is only one of the factors to be considered, but also historical, political, laws, education, media, cultural identity, etc. factors must be considered. In this case, both French and Catalan language are native in Perpinyà, but, the Department of Pyrinées Orientales, by exemple, states their pride of Catalan heritage and of Catalan language in this official map of Northern Catalonia; Catalan is spoken or understandable for 45% of population in Northern Catalonia; historical presence; altough Catalan have not official recognision in the French Republic, it's used in local institutional and official context (as can we see above links to official webpages of cities in Catalan), etc... So Catalan, IMHO, is more "nativelly" in Perpinyà, and there is an important use.

So my general criteria about "native" and "most spoken" language is a mixture of both (as you can see we respect Valencia Spanish-speaking native area, avoiding translation of these municipalities from Spanish into Catalan -i.e. Torrevieja Sp., Torrevella Ca.-).

--Joanot Martorell ✉ 01:15, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Question 3: About template advising category redirect[edit]

The problem of splitting content is not a problem derived because of redirections. When a redirected category is classified in to the redirecting one, it isn't splitting. By exemple: Category:Catalunya is a redirection to Category:Catalonia, so Category:Catalunya should be categorized into the last one, and clicking it gives you to their content. Altough here a decision was taken about the name, always it could be possible that some user isn't being noticed about it, and maybe he uploads here some media with the category Category:Catalunya instead of the chosen Category:Catalonia. Redirections template, in my opinion, provide more information and it could be very useful for habitual commonist users working in often categories, in order to change more effectivelly the categories. Also template category redirection can be used as a flag signal to help bots to move content from one category to the redirecting one. --Joanot Martorell ✉ 01:15, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Outside opinions[edit]

Diacritics[edit]

We do have a nice box on bottom to write them, and i agree of its use. However, Martorell is wrong when he says the search engine treats them the same. It doesn't. It should do it. But now, you must provide exact spelling (a quite common problem). The error message also tells this Sorry, there were no exact matches to your query. e.g. Special:Search/Xàbia vs Special:Search/Xabia

Platonides 13:49, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Process for deciding[edit]

My suggestion on process:

  1. The name used for the category is that which corresponds to the name used in the WP of the language used by the most residents in that locality. This WP shall be known as the "authority WP"
    1. The language of most residents is established by official records of the locality.
    2. "Locality" means any region for which official statistics on language use is available.
  2. Venue for disputes (such as those made for the Catalan case). If people believe that a name is incorrect, they may go to the authority WP and make their case. If they succeed in having the name in the authority WP, then the category on commons shall be renamed, the contents moved, and a hard redirect made to the new category name.
  3. If symbols or diacritics appear in the name used by the WP article for that location, they must be transliterated to the equivalent in ASCII (lower ascii). The authority for the transliteration shall be the authority WP.

Discussion: The idea behind this is that the authority for what a place is called ought to be what the local residents call it. If the rest of the world calls it something else, then there is a price paid in that people will find it somewhat more difficult to find the category. Advocates need to consider this and they may elect not to press the case. This process mitigates the effects of majoritarianism and monolingualism in the various wikimedia sites.


Without such process, we will stifle diversity and the honoring of the unique and wide spectrum of cultures in the world.

-Mak 17:54, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Following this logic, the authority WP of Ireland is the English one? I agree with Martorell when he talks about native language. Even if a city has more inhabitants speaking a "foregin" language than the native one, since the latter has more tradition and the local governament considers it as some special own language, I think we should write it in the native language. Then we can create all the necessary redirecions, with and without diacrytics, etc.--Xtv 17:18, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
Unfortunately, yes. It's not that I don't see the shortcomings. I also find the idea of identifying the native language of the region appealing. But how does one define this admittedly diffuse idea of "Native" language? Is the Native language of New Zealand Maori? It's an official language there. So should the entry be Aotearoa? Let me take a stab at enumerating the metric for determining the authority WP:
  1. The most native language should be one of the official languages of the region, as declared by a unit of government with jurisdiction over that region.
  2. The native language is that which was the majority language in the region for the longest period of time.
  3. The "native" language is spoken by at least 20% of the population.
  4. If a WP for that language exists, it becomes the authority WP
How does that sound? -Mak 07:06, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
If here's some Maorian-speaker user, and he wants to use endonyms in Maorian, I think it should be welcome on Commons. But if here was no Maorian-speaker user, we could follow WP criteria. The criteria of "most spoken language" can be used as a natural effect, but not as a rule: if any language is not enough used, it won't be used in Commons, or it's rarely here. An exemple of it there are English titles for Category:Dublin and Dublin, instead of "Baile Átha Cliath". In the other hand, about following statistics for every place, I think it's a good work for an encyclopaedia, but for a media repository it's an overwork. In spite of my opinion, let me to see an exemple of application of this enumerating of yours for Catalan case:
  • Catalan in "Alacant / Alicante" (Land of Valencia, Spain):
    1. Offical languages: Spanish and Catalan. Catalan is declared as native language for this municipality.
    2. Traditional presence: Arabic predominance until XV century, and disappeared on XVI century. Catalan presence since XII century, predominance since XIV century. Spanish presence since XII century, predominance since XX century.
    3. Catalan: Often spoken by 25% of population. Spanish: Often spoken by 65% of population. Other languages: 10%.
    4. WP in Catalan exists: entry ca:Alacant
  • Catalan in "Perpinyà / Perpignan" (Northern Catalonia, France):
    1. Offical languages: French. In spite of it, Catalan is used and promoted by local and regional governments in Northern Catalonia.
    2. Traditional presence: Catalan presence since X century, predominance since XII century. French presence since XVIII century, predominance since XIX century.
    3. About usage, I have no data.
    4. WP in Catalan exists: entry ca:Perpinyà
Wich should be the entry for every case? In any case, I think that it's too work for an media repository. --Joanot Martorell ✉ 07:15, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

I do not understand the problem in the Land of Valencia towns. There is one legal statute created to solve this things called predomini lingüístic (es:predominio lingüístico) that we can use to know which towns must be written in Spanish and which ones must be written in Valencian. In addition the name of the provinces should be in Catalan since all three province capitals are in the Valencian-speaking area. The situation in Northern Catalonia is much more difficult. Despite the efforts of the departamental government, Catalan does not have an official status. However, there are some words that must be kept in Catalan and one of them is Rosselló. It is not an official toponym in France and it is very used in Catalonia (both in Spanish Catalonia and French Catalonia) to describe the comarca and the historical Catalan county.--SMP (talk page) 16:02, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

But in the Valencian Region, the statute of predominio lingüístico/predomini lingüístic does only mean if there is a significative number of Valencian speakers, id est it's a bilingual town (if there is a "predominio lingüístico valenciano"), or not, and it's a monolingual town in Spanish (if there is a "predominio lingüístico castellano"). In fact, lots of towns in the area of "predominio lingüístico valenciano", for example the 4 main cities (Valencia/València [5], Alicante/Alacant [6], Elche/Elx [7], Castellón/Castelló [8]), have a much larger number of Spanish-speakers than of Valencian-speakers. Why should we use only the valencian name?, if for example in Alicante:
  • both Spanish and Valencian forms are official;
  • 81,0 % of inhabitants usually spoke Spanish at home in 1994, face to 17,5% who usually spoke Valencian at home [9];
  • the historically presence of the Spanish language in Alicante (as well as the half-south of the province of Alicante), coming from the XIII century, is before the presence of Valencian, though the city was first conquered by the Kingdom of Castile; for example, the first christian statutes of the city (los Fueros de la ciudad) were written in Spanish.
  • Alicante is the traditional form in english, french, german, italian, dutch, portuguese and most of the other most world-spoken languages.
On the other hand, for the 3 valencian provinces, all have areas of "predominio lingüístico/predomini lingüístic castellano", so there are lots of towns in all the 3 provinces were the Valencian has no traditional usage. Saying that the name of the provinces should be in Catalan since all three province capitals are in the Valencian-speaking area has 2 objections:
  1. the provinces do not represent only the capitals, but also the monolingual in spanish-areas that belong to them;
  2. in fact, in all the three province capitals the Spanish is the most spoken language. --Rodriguillo 03:09, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

My thought on that point was that a uniform measure ought to incorporate a factor that measures official status in some way. If a language is not recognized locally as an official, it is harder to make the case that a global reference should recognize that language over other official languages. My view is that though the venue (the authority WP) for Valencia would indeed be the castillian WP under those proposed rules, it would not necessarily the end of the road for Catalan names, because the struggle for naming can continue in that venue. The venue for the Anasazi controversy turned out to be en:WP, but still the views of the local peoples won the day and the article was renamed from the pejorative (though commonly used) term to Ancient Pueblo Peoples. Personally? I like the aural texture of Anasazi so much more than the replacement. But I would rather that these matters be decided using a sets of uniform measures rather than do them all on a case by case basis. -Mak 04:56, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Category RDRs[edit]

Although they don't work, bots can be used to monitor the redirect names and if someone puts files into those categories, can manually move the images to the right categories. pfctdayelise (translate?) 06:32, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Catalan speakers[edit]

Like Juiced lemon says, it’s true that everybody in Northern Catalonia speaks and understands French. Another reality is that there aren’t monolingual Catalan speakers into Catalan speaking area. So, because of all Catalan speakers understand Spanish or French (or Italian in l’Alguer), shouldn’t we use Catalan in Commons? Names used in English for some cities are simply Spanish or French ones, but aren’t English exonyms. Few years ago was very common to use “Gerona” instead of “Girona” or “Lérida”/”Lerida” instead of “Lleida” in English. Nowadays, WP uses Catalan names for this cities.

We don’t oppose using Spanish or French names in some cases, but we also think that Catalan names should be respected in a multicultural project. --Pmmollet talk  15:35, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Comparison with Finland[edit]

I liken this to situation in Finland where 5 % of the population speak Swedish and Swedish in many parts the language of the majority. Here in Commons the cities with a Finnish majority carry the Finnish name (Category:Turku, not Category:Åbo) and cities with a Swedish majority carry the Swedish name (Category:Karis, not Category:Karjaa).

Applying the same principle in this dispute, Perpinyà would be Perpignan. For the rest, I don't know the majority language.

(Btw, When you take a train from Turku to Helsinki, this is the names you will hear:

  • In Finnish: Turku, Kupittaa, Salo, Karjaa, Kirkkonummi, Espoo, Pasila, Helsinki
  • In Swedish: Åbo, Kuppis, Salo, Karis, Kyrkslätt, Esbo, Böle, Helsingfors
  • In English: Turku, Kupittaa (both maj. Fi), Salo, Karis (maj. Sw), Kirkkonummi, Espoo, Pasila, Helsinki (maj. Fi x 4)) -Samulili 15:59, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Catalonia in France[edit]

By the way, from a Catalan point of view, it's clear that the category Catalonia has to be naturally inside of the spanish and the French one since the Catalan region is divided in the two countries. Another fact would be if the category were about the spanish comunity, but isn't the case. I wouldn't find correct neither to change the name of the category since many people form Catalonia is interested on searching things in the whole Catalonia (and we have to thing that this category will be used mainly by this comunity). Maybe we can create also the category of the Catalan Autonomy depending only in Spain and not to France, but from the people who will mostly use this media, the category Catalonia meaning the whole Catalonia is without a doubt of a great use and importance.--Xtv 22:20, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Preliminary decision[edit]

View of Juiced Lemon[edit]

User:NielsF does not kept the schedule he specified himself.

Obviously, the acceptance of the procedure did not bind me for eternity, but only for the previous duration of this procedure, which had to be ended on September, 2006.

More three months have passed since, and I received this only message from User:NielsF. During this period, User:NielsF had a very reduced activity in Wikimedia Commons and the arbitration did not make any progress.

This situation cannot go on anymore, since the arbitration concerns important issues for Wikimedia Commons, and these outstanding issues are causes of disputes and waste of time for many users.

Consequently, I declare that:

  • I terminate the present arbitration, and I'll not recognize any further decision from User:NielsF about it.
  • I am not binded by any prescription of this arbitration since October 1st 2006.
  • I agree to begin a new arbitration in order to resolve the current dispute with user:Martorell (the present situation, not the situation in August 2006), with new persons, new arguments. --Juiced lemon 13:34, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
Unfortunately I did not have the time nor the interest to completely finish this arbitration. All parties should consider it finished, as did juiced lemon. I'll delete this page in a couple of months. NielsF|talk/overleg/discussion/discussione 05:03, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
Please, don't delete this page, because I'll refer to it in subsequent discussions. --Juiced lemon 19:03, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

View of Martorell[edit]

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