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Requested move 6 May 2016

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The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: moved. There is a consensus in this discussion and in the article titles' policy that the form "XXX State" (WP:NATURAL disambiguation) is preferable to "XXX (state)" (parenthetical disambiguation) when a Nigerian state's name is ambiguous. There is no consensus, however, on which Nigerian states need disambiguation and which do not. Therefore, the articles listed will be moved to the proposed titles, restoring the titles that had long been stable prior to the 2015 bold moves. As the closer, I urge that editors here consider opening another move request to determine whether the word "state" could be dropped from any of these article titles without rendering them ambiguous. (non-admin closure) RGloucester — ☎ 03:02, 28 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]


– These articles were all moved by user:Jamie Tubers to the current names without discussion from the proposed (old) names in September 2015 with edit summery like Jamie Tubers moved page Benué State to Benué (state): more appropriate dab. With all of them the name alone – Abia, Adamawa, Benue, Cross River, Edo, Imo, Ogun, Osun, Plateau and Taraba – may refer to a subject other than the state, so sources that refer to the state often qualify the name by "state". Usually the qualifier will be written as "He was governor of Adamawa State", or less often "He was governor of Adamawa state", but hardly ever as "He was governor of Adamawa (state)." As sample searches [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8] for these Nigerian states make obvious, their commonly used names do not include parentheses. Aymatth2 (talk) 02:07, 6 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment. The question is not whether the common name includes the parentheses; what is in the parentheses is a disambiguator that would be necessary if "Abia" was the common name. Rather, the relevant question is—is the common name for the state "Abia", or is it "Abia State"? (The official name, as set out in the constitution, is "Abia", but that may or may not be different than the common name.) Alternatively, one could argue that "State" should be added as a natural disambiguator as opposed to a parenthetical one. Good Ol’factory (talk) 02:34, 6 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • The state calls itself Abia State. A raw search on abia, after filtering out the Australian Bridal Industry Academy and so on, shows that the qualifier "State" (without parentheses) is used more often than not in sources about the state. Almost all articles that refer to it use Abia State, as shows from Pages that link to "Abia (state)". Clicks on those natural "Abia State" links should not jump the reader to "Abia (state)". Ditto with the other states. It is best if a click on a linked phrase leads to an article with that exact phrase as title, unless there is a compelling reason to redirect to some other title. There is no compelling reason with these articles. Aymatth2 (talk) 03:24, 6 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The first set of search results I get for "abia" that refer to the state are
The newspapers drop "state" from the telegraphic style headline, but use "Abia State" in the text, which uses natural language. It is clear that "Abia State" is the common name and should be the article title, as it was before the recent move. Checks on the other states in this list show the same. Aymatth2 (talk) 18:38, 6 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose:Actually, newspapers' choice for headline is a good indicator for what the common name is. In Journalism, easily recognizable names (common names) are used in headlines, while other/official names are used in the body of the article. So I don't see how the above point validates your assertion that "It is clear that Abia State is the common name". Also; Just like User:Good Olfactory stated earlier, what Government agencies use on their websites is pretty much very irrelevant. Because California Government chooses to use "California State" on its web page title doesn't make "California State" the common name. Same way the common name for Nevada doesn't become "State of Nevada" just because the official webpage uses the name. I oppose this move, until I can see a valid reason for a move.--Jamie Tubers (talk) 00:36, 7 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • NY Gov. Cuomo nixes NC travel ... (Mar 30, 2016)
I would nix moving New York to NY (state) or moving Andrew Cuomo to Cuomo (politician). We follow article text, not headlines. Aymatth2 (talk) 00:45, 11 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I wasn't claiming that what name governments use on their websites is irrelevant. My point was only that this is not a good way of determining what the official name is. It's an indication of what an official usage is, and may be the same as the common name, but just because it's used on the official website of the state doesn't mean it's the official name of the state. Official names of political entities are generally established in constitutions or other statutes, not by website usage or names on a government seal. Good Ol’factory (talk) 10:08, 7 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • The text of the first eight non-Wikipedia sources from a raw Google search all use the term "Abia State". The text of almost all the Wikipedia articles that refer to the state use the term "Abia State". The same applies to the other states in this list. Common usage is Abia State, Adamawa State, Benue State etc. Perhaps the newspaper headlines are confusing the issue. Text from a search on Google Books for "abia", preview available, shows after discarding results that are clearly not about the state:
  • ...Community analysis of Asa North, Abia State, Nigeria - Page 27...
  • ...the National Root Crops Research Institute, Umudike, Abia State; Abia State Agricultural Development Project; ...
  • ...Catherine Ugwunwa Ajike Of Abia State - 2013 - ‎Preview - ‎More editions...
  • ...The new Abia State had a strong presence within the Nigerian military top brass at the time...
  • ...Eric Acho Nwakanma, former Deputy Governor Abia State, and Commodore Temi Ejoor (Rtd)-Former Military Administator of Abia State...
  • ...This needs assessment of the cassava producing communities in Abia Sate is a prerequisite for the expansion...
  • ...Abia. State. Technology. of. production. Presently, there exists within the state agricultural sector...
  • ...The prevalence rate is currently at 5.6% among adults 15-49 years old (UNAIDS, 2006). In Abia State, the overall prevalence rate is 3.7%...
No result shows "Abia" alone being used to refer to the state. The books invariably use "Abia State". It is the natural term. The move without discussion to "Abia (state)" should be reversed. Aymatth2 (talk) 10:59, 7 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Strong support This is the convention on wikipedia, Even if people don't say xxx State in conversation we generally include the Province or State after name in places like this.♦ Dr. Blofeld 15:27, 7 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

In Nigeria, as the examples above show, people usually do say "xxx State." For example, Google Books on Nasarawa. Nigerians give first the name and then the type of thing named. All reliable sources follow Nigerian linguistic conventions. Wikipedia should too. Aymatth2 (talk) 16:22, 7 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support for procedural reasons (to undo a controversial undiscussed move) and on the merits (Nigerian states are almost always referred to as "XXX State" even with multiple mentions in the same source). —  AjaxSmack  01:59, 11 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. When working with Liberiana, I've often encountered Nigerian print publications, and virtually always they include "State" (but not "state") in the state's name, even when it could be unambiguous. It's the same online. See [9] for one example; while the first appearance of "Niger State" could potentially be phrased that way to distinguish it from the Republic of Niger, the other appearances also use "Niger State". Or look at this government profile of a member of the federal House of Representatives, which has something comparable to our infoboxes; the "State" line says that he's from "Abia State", not merely "Abia" or "Abia state". Yes, "State" is missing in the list here, but they have a narrow "State" column (it would mess things up to add an extra word of width, just as it would mess up the newspaper headlines to use "Andrew Cuomo" and "New York" instead of "Cuomo" and "NY"), and just like the representative, a sample senator is from Oyo State, not Oyo or Oyo state. Nyttend (talk) 02:06, 13 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per WP:CONCISE, Re-commenting below; I misread the RM. and because the "evidence" presented above is cherry-picked and one-sided, consisting simply of examples of the usage of the longer term, without any information on the frequency of the longer vs. the shorter. If there's proof the longer term is the WP:COMMONNAME across all English-language sources, I would reverse myself on this, but that means more than just African-English newspapers.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  09:54, 13 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • @SMcCandlish: There is no cherry-picking in the evidence. These are all the results from the first page of raw search items, none of which uses the term alone. The book results are all the results from the first four pages of a book search that refer to the state, none of which use the term alone. Websites and books seem a reasonable sample of sources. A search on Google news for abia gives the following complete set of results, headlines are skipped because of the "NY Gov. Cuomo nixes NC travel" problem noted above, but there is no cherry-picking:
  • ... The runway was closed for more than two hours while crews removed the plane. ABIA tweeted that the ... [Refers to Austin-Bergstrom International Airport]
  • Mother's Day celebrations were saddened in the Twin Cities Somali community by news of the death of Abia Ali at age 54. [Refers to a person named Abia Ali]
  • Traders at the Ariaria International Market, Aba, Abia State are currently on war path ...
  • UMUAHIA—AN Umuahia Federal High Court presided over by Justice Daniel Osiagor has nullified the election of Mr. Kelechi Onuzurike, representing Umuahia North state constituency in the Abia State House of Assembly ...
  • A private pilot was forced to make an emergency landing at ABIA on Wednesday afternoon... [the airport again]
  • Abia State has launched the go back to Agriculture project....
  • Abia State chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has elected Johnson Onuigbo as its new chairman.
  • Abia State government is to set up a marketing and standard regulatory board to encourage artisans,
  • In anticipation of improved power supply in Aba and its environs, the Abia State government...
  • Rice Farmers Association of Nigeria (RFAN) Abia State chapter has sent Save Our Souls (SOS) message...
These are all the news items on the first page. What additional evidence would you need to confirm that the state name is usually written as "Abia State"? Aymatth2 (talk) 10:50, 13 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
See WP:GOOGLE. "The first page of search results" = "who paid Google more". Even if you work with 20 pages of search results, you still have to carefully construct searches, and focus them when possible of more useful search types, like Google News, Google Scholar, and Google Ngrams, and even then try to weed out biases, and get world-wide results, and so on. I also reliable sometimes, a bit, on search engine data, but it's partial and weak.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  11:18, 13 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • If the simple term abia is used to search Google, Google News and Google Books, and in each case all or almost all the results that refer to the state use "Abia State", then that is the common form. If we were getting just 60%, perhaps the searches should be refined to void any possible bias. But 95% is conclusive. Aymatth2 (talk) 12:08, 13 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • In all these cases, the state is not the dominant meaning of the word on its own. "Abia" is a fairly common personal name, for example. The editor who did these bold moves could not go to the name without "State", because that was being used by a disambiguation page or by an article such as Ogun that described the dominant meaning. So in effect User:SMcCandlish is recommending a move back to the natural article titles before the bold move, as "Abia State", "Adamawa State" and so on. Aymatth2 (talk) 12:08, 13 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Re: "the state is not the dominant meaning of the word on its own" – That's also true of the US state meaning of the word "state", and is a good reason not to parenthetically disambiguate with "(state)". I'm supporting the move away from this format. Re: "... is a fairly common personal name ..." and "... was being used by a disambiguation page or by an article ..." – That's why we do WP:PRIMARYTOPIC analysis on a case by case basis. It appears to me that Aymatth2 is taking WP:CONSISTENT to be the overriding concern of the WP:CRITERIA, when it may actually be the least important among them. I favor consistency myself, when it's not resulting in name that most users will find not very WP:NATURAL or which fail the WP:CONCISE criterion. Yes, it is clear that people local to these places, who speak English, prefer "State" tacked on at the end, but this is not a universal preference in English worldwide. If it turns out that most of these places would still fail WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, then okay, I would go with the CONSISTENT argument and say treat them all the same and use "State" not "(state)". But if only, say, half of them need to be disambiguated or are the primary topic, the go with no diambiguator, moving other, non-primary-topic pages as needed and only disambiguate (with "State") which strictly necessary.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  12:26, 13 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • I do not worry much about consistent naming, but all Nigerian states are usually written in the form "XYZ State". Many but not all the sources in the Google News and Google Books results are of course Nigerian. If the subjects were geological many would be geologists, and if they were butterflies many would be lepidopterists. All we care about is what form most English-language sources use. In this case, almost all use the form "XYZ State", whether they are Nigerian or not. None use the form "XYZ (state)".
The simplest solution is to return the articles to the names they had before the bold moves, the names used by most sources and most articles that refer to these states, then discuss moving to some other name on a case-by-case basis where there seems to be some justification. Aymatth2 (talk) 13:14, 13 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
SMcCandlish, this is a clear case of WP:ENGVAR. Nigerian English consistently uses "X State" when referring to individual Nigerian states, regardless of whether "X" would be ambiguous or not; it's not a disambiguator. Don't try to impose foreign varieties of English on Nigerian usage. Nyttend (talk) 02:11, 21 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The Constitution of Nigeria] clearly defines this state as "Abia", without the "State"; samething with every other state. It is also not uncommon to see Nigerian news outlets refering to Nigerian states without the "State". Nigerian plate numbers don't include "State". So it isn't a case of "imposing foreign varieties of English", and it also shows that "State" is infact a disambiguator.--Jamie Tubers (talk) 00:26, 22 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Jamie Tubers: Arbitrarily moving the articles on Nigerian states to US-style names without any discussion was a mistake. Nigeria is the largest country in Africa in terms of population and economy, and is forecast to have more people than the US by 2050. It should be treated with respect. I have started hundreds of articles on Nigerian topics. The sources almost always use the form "XYZ State". In modern English usage the Nigerian states are like Oblasts in Russia or Provinces of Italy.The relevant guideline is Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names). "By following modern English usage, we avoid arguments about what a place ought to be called, instead asking the less contentious question, what it is called". We should restore the articles to the long standing "XYZ State" form, then if you really think it is necessary formally propose moving to "XYZ" form on a case by case basis. Aymatth2 (talk) 01:26, 22 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I wonder how come we're disrespecting a nation by using a name declared by the constitution of the nation. Actually, disrespect is more like when we do otherwise! No, Nigerian states are not like Russia or Italy's subdivisions, because Nigerian names are in English. Most of the examples of usage you gave above, best qualify the usage of "State" as adjective/disambiguator, rather than part of the names. Yea, there are phrases like "Abia State Governor", "Abia State Government", "Abia State University", etc in sentences. But they can be explained as just being used to distinguish a state entity from a national entity. This is a common style with most federations, including the United States, that you think is being used as template! Examples:
So does this mean we have to add "State" to the end of American states? Of course not! So far, nothing suggests "Abia State" is more of a common name than "Abia". Type of usage in news articles, definition by the constitution, usage on plate numbers, etc all suggest "Abia" as the common name.--Jamie Tubers (talk) 03:13, 22 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • US state naming conventions are irrelevant, as are car license plates. The Nigerian constitution names the states once: "There shall be 36 states in Nigeria, that is to say, Abia, Adamawa, Akwa Ibom, Anambra, Bauchi, Bayelsa, Benue, Borno, Cross River, Delta, Ebonyi, Edo, Ekiti, Enugu, Gombe, Imo, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Kogi, Kwara, Lagos, Nasarawa, Niger, Ogun, Ondo, Osun, Oyo, Plateau, Rivers, Sokoto, Taraba, Yobe and Zamfara." It does not say how the names should be given in official or unofficial documents.
The Nigerian states were created between 1967 and 1996, named after a city, river, emirate, ethnic group etc.. People call them "XYZ State" to distinguish from the XYZ city, river etc. We should follow modern English usage for article titles. As shown above, there is no ambiguity. Apart from news headlines, almost all references to the states in newspapers and books use the form "XYZ State" – more than 95% – so that form should be used for Wikipedia titles, as it was for many years until the bold move without discussion. Aymatth2 (talk) 12:40, 22 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.
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