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So, I think we should transliterate in WP only for relatively obscure places which are not mentioned much in English texts. I hope this is going to crystallize into a less ambiguous text of the policy. And only for the names that are used in English very infrequently the discussion on the best transliteration rule should come into play. Of course this all is just my opinion. I am not a specialist in the field, not a veteran of WP and not a native speaker of English. But this is how I understand what is meant by the Policy. Luckily, the policy is not as rigid as constitutions, which are so hard to change that high courts spend all their time figuring out the "correct" way to interpret the text. I do not have skills to write a new version of the policy to propose to the community but I think this is going to happen sooner or later. Regards, —[[User:Irpen|Irpen]] 06:24, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)
: I disagree. I think the policy is represented by your first case. Remember that it speaks to all article titles, not just place names. English names are [[Moscow]], [[hammer]], [[oak]], and not ''[[Moskva]]'', ''[[molot]]'', and ''[[Quercus]]''. But ''[[Arctotis]]'' does not have a common English name, so it is named in Latin. If it hit the news it would still remain a Latin name. And incidentally, the convention only refers specifically to the naming of articles, and not other usage.
: The only geographic names in Ukraine which are well-established enough to have their own English names are "Ukraine" (which I'm guessing was once a German transliteration), and "Dnieper" (which looks to me like a less-awkward to pronounce by Anglophones transcription of Russian ''Dniepr''). All others that I can think of are simply transliterations from Ukrainian or Russian. The most well-known one, "Kiev", is hotly defended against "Kyiv" by Wikipedian Anglophones, because they've actually heard of it before, and they're offended by having to change their pronunciation. But even L'viv and Kharkiv seem to be obscure enough to hardly rate comment when used in place of the "traditional English" Lvov and Kharkov (although I wouldn't dare trying to change it to ''Kharkiv'' in a WWII history article).
: Their obscurity is also the reason that their usage is so elastic in the press. As a national capital, Kiev is in their style manuals. But they just look up other place names in an atlas, and most atlases now use Ukrainian names in place of Russian. I'm curious how highly Dnipropetrovsk/Dnepropetrovsk rated in LexisNexis, if one only consider the period before the Orange Revolution made the news.
: Anyways, it's madness to name every place name this way. We have to use consistent standard, or Ukrainian place naming will be a mix of Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Yiddish, and possibly Tatar, German, Romanian, and Hungarian. Everything that shows up in a "major news source" will be transliterated without apostrophes, and every other name will either come from a recent English-language atlas or from an official Ukrainian government list, and so will have apostrophes for the soft sign. As Ukrainian towns hit the news, their apostrophes will fall away, and you'll spend all your time counting hits on LexisNexis. No one wants that, and it would definitely go against the word and the spirit of the Wikipedia naming convention.
: We have an agreed standard, so let's stick to it. The Wikiproject is very quiet, and it may be no problem to change it if you propose to. In the mean time, I'm not going to bother moving this article, but it properly belongs at [[Dnipropetrovs'k]] ''—[[User:Mzajac |Michael]] [[User talk:Mzajac |Z.]] <small>2005-03-29 08:22 Z</small>''
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