Talk:Baden (disambiguation)

Baden

I think, its better to move the article Baden to Baden_Germany, because there's some Baden more. The main page of Baden, I mean have to be Baden (disambiguation) Then Baden-Germany is not more important than others. example Baden, Switzerland has got a big and very important history. And nobody can say this is more important than example Baden, Lower Saxony.

What you think about a moving? --Viperch 20:54, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

Proposed move

Please see the discussion at Talk:Baden Germany. Martg76 16:54, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Cleanup

This disambiguation page has been cleaned up by Wikiproject Disambiguation. DesertAngel 18:06, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Closed as No consensus. While it might not be the strongest primary topic ever I don't think there is a consensus for this move. With regards to the (excellent) readership statistics provided by Noetica I'm not convinced that Baden-Baden is obviously confusable with just Baden, personally I've never heard the town referred to as that. Once that town is removed from the readership numbers it becomes ~30k for the current Baden and ~30k for the other topics which I think is just about enough to meet WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. Certainly I don't think that argument is strong enough to override the 62% of people here who oppose this change. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 21:33, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

---

• Baden (disambiguation) → Baden
• Baden → Baden (historical state)

– Relisted. Discussion still ongoing.--Aervanath (talk) 22:18, 11 February 2012 (UTC)– Relisted. I'm giving it another trip around the block to take into account the stats provided by Noetica. Favonian (talk) 17:22, 29 January 2012 (UTC) – Relisted. Does anyone have something concrete to support a claim of primary usage? Currently those opposed seem to be basing this on what they know and not objective information. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:47, 22 January 2012 (UTC) A simple google and google books search shows that the term "Baden" is highly ambiguous ('Baden' means 'baths' in German). There are several (important) cities named "Baden" in Germany, Switzerland and Austria and they are probably what most readers are looking for. mgeo talk 20:28, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

• Support. Definitely. There are too many possible meanings and competing targets that readers will have in mind. The doctrine of "primary topic" is not helpful here. Noetica^Tea? 22:38, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

• Strongly oppose I do find the doctrine of "primary topic" is quite helpful here. I find that most references in English language documents are to Baden as the country (state) of the Grand Duchy of Baden, to its earlier incarnations and to the follow-on Republic of Baden, which are nicely covered in the existing Baden article. Most other English language references qualify Baden in some way such as Baden-Baden or Baden bei Wien or "the disputations of Baden" or "Swiss Baden" (i.e. the canton) or Baden, Ontario. They do so precisely because the primary topic for Baden is the country/province. --Bejnar (talk) 23:13, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
  • When was Baden a province? Anton Schulz (talk) 14:51, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

FYI

 – User:JCScaliger has been indef blocked as a sockpuppet of User:Pmanderson (blocked for another year for abusive sockpuppetry).

• • • In the Canadian sense of province (a constitutent of a federal state)? Until it ceased to be a state itself. JCScaliger (talk) 03:49, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
• oppose I've been to Germany once and studied the language for a year decades ago, but to me 'Baden' is the German state. If it's stuck in my mind then it must be by far the commonest use for it in English.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 00:13, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
  • Which of the states? Anton Schulz (talk) 14:38, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
    • All of them. As "Bavaria" has been several states, of different ranks, names, and areas, so has Baden. JCScaliger (talk) 04:38, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose: "Baden" as a German word for "baths" may well be a more common usage out there in the world of Google, but a reader searching for it here, ie in an English language encyclopedia (as opposed to a German dictionary) is much more likely to be looking for the historic state: this is the primary topic. PamD 11:02, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
  • Baden (Switzerland) and Baden (Austria) are known as "Baden" in English and they have both a long history in addition to be tourist destinations. Try searching for Baden and see what you get. mgeo talk 12:28, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose. Easily dominant usage. Big, well-known and historically-significant German state vs. a relatively unknown village or two? That's like redirecting Paris, France because of Paris, Texas. Walrasiad (talk) 11:04, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose -- The historic margravate then Grand Duchy is clearly the primary usage. In fact four or five of the articles on the dab-page relate to it on one form or another. After WWII, administrative convenience has led to it being amalgamated with the adjacnet Wurtemburg, but that makes no differnece at all. The fact that the name means baths, is no more relaevant to whehter it is the primary use than the City of Bath, but I expect that is so named to prevent confusion with an article on bathss. Peterkingiron (talk) 22:58, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose WP:PRIMARYTOPIC -- "much more likely than any other topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined" -- is indeed quite useful here. The page view counts for December are 6284 for Baden and 2381 for Baden, Switzerland. All the other uses, and the dab page, only get a few hundred hits, at most. So it's definitely "more likely than all the other topics combined", and being almost 3 times as likely as the second most likely meets the "much more likely than any other" criterion. The current use is clearly the primary topic and so should not be moved. --Born2cycle (talk) 02:51, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

• The facts are not nearly so clear, in fact; and the maths need to be done accurately and rationally. See analysis below. Noetica^Tea? 11:45, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

• Comment Actualy I think this article should be split into the many versions of the Baden territory, or be merged with History of Baden. In this current stat it's pretty much useless.-Ilhador- (talk) 23:18, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Accurate pageview stats, as requested by Vegaswikian (see top of section)

Here are pretty complete pageview stats, for the 90 days preceding this post:

20834 Baden subject of the present article: a historical entity
 1894 Republic of Baden an earlier name for that same Baden
 1558 Margraviate of Baden an earlier name
 9402 Grand Duchy of Baden an earlier name 
33688 (Total for that entity, as it changed historically)

29515 Baden-Baden till 1931 called "Baden", sometimes with a locational qualifier added (so a historical entity also)
 5773 Baden bei Wien
  553 Baden District, Austria
 1934 Baden, Ontario
  430 Baden, Morbihan
 1950 Baden (wine region)
 8271 Baden, Switzerland
  430 Baden District, Aargau
 1187 Canton of Baden
  594 Baden, Ukraine
  343 Baden, Maryland
 1490 Baden, St. Louis
 1748 Baden, Pennsylvania
 3431 SMS Baden (1915)
 1031 Baden (disambiguation)
58680 (Total for other articles, excluding a couple)

So even on a generous accounting (with all phases in the historical evolution of the entity "Baden" counted together), the proportion of pageviews "Baden"/"all other" is just 33688/58680, or 57.4%. Put another way, "Baden" accounts for no more than 36.5% of all the pageviews under consideration. Primary topic??

Numbers don't determine this by themselves anyway. The many names on the DAB page are eminently confusable, and it is ridiculously easy to fix things to help the worldwide readership – whose needs we cannot predict mechanically and algorithmically.

If we are going to crunch numbers to determine the titles of Wikipedia's pages, can we at least do it accurately? I think I have got it right, but I would welcome any checking of my logic and my calculations.

Noetica^Tea? 11:45, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

• Support; I was (but should not have been) surprised to see so many opposes here. There are simply too many other possible uses -- including some quite popular ones, as Noetica points out -- to assume any one of them to be the primary topic. Powers ^T 00:58, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose. First off, Baden-Baden, which by Noetica's analysis is the No. 1 topic for the term Baden, is more of a partial title match than a true Baden topic. Baden (wine region) is the same geographic area as historic Baden, just looked at from a different perspective. The post-1952 material on the region is in the Baden-Württemberg article. Of course BW is not just Baden, but at least some of the interest in that article has to be counted as interest in Baden. Kauffner (talk) 09:05, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose. For reasons cited by Kauffner. Besides, historic Baden was named after Baden-Baden the town, the historic capital and original seat of the Margraves of Baden (originally Baden-Baden was just Baden, and the reason for the state's name; the double Baden-Baden comes because later the family fragmented into different branches, so there was the Baden (centered at the original Baden), became Baden-Baden, the Baden (centered at Pforzheim) became Baden-Pforzheim, etc. (And I'd be willing to bet most of those New World "Badens" were established and named by emigrants from the historic state of Baden). Walrasiad (talk) 11:08, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
  • So what if they were? Powers ^T 13:06, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Primary topic. The state of Baden is the reason why most of those things are called "Baden". It should remain the hub. Nearly 1500 articles link here already. They would now all have to be disambgiuated. Not to say make writing a lot more cumbersome (historical articles - which are naturally over-represented in an encyclopedia - would become a bigger pain to write, as Baden will come up repeatedly; whereas I don't imagine those other "Baden"s sprouting many more articles than they already have now.) The highest counting points in your lists - Baden-Baden and Baden wine - are partial matches and already have well-established disambiguated titles that nobody in their right mind would confuse, since they are never referred to plainly as "Baden" (and the former two are the capital and wine of historical Baden anyway, so its a natural confluence, like Florence, Republic of Florence, and Florentine Renaissance.) (P.S. -I don't know where you get the idea that Baden-Baden was called "Baden" until 1932. e.g. 1858). So that really only leaves a handful of villages nobody's ever heard of and one small Swiss canton out in the cold. Pure cost-benefit analysis says it ain't worth it. Walrasiad (talk) 08:48, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Walrasiad, that should have been 1931, not 1932. I have fixed that now. The information comes from the article Baden-Baden. See this text, and all that precedes it: "In 1931, the town of Baden-Baden was officially given its double name, which is the short form for "Baden in Baden" (i.e., Baden in the state of Baden)." See also this text from the source that you cite: "The early history of the town of Baden is enveloped in the deepest obscurity." Search and you will find very many other occurrences of the undoubled "Baden" as the name of the town now called "Baden-Baden". The hyphen was a substitute for "in". Compare how in unregimented language "New York, New York" might be rendered. The book you cite in evidence is just one more testimony to the tangled mess of usages that warrants support for the present RM. Heh! Deepest obscurity, indeed. That has no place on Wikipedia, and serves the needs of no readers anywhere. Noetica^Tea? 10:22, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Primary topic has nothing to do with etymology or name origins. Else Boston would be the one in Lincolnshire. Powers ^T 18:01, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

• • The undoubled name is the original one, before the partition. It does not mean "in". The name comes from the Zahringen partitions. The name stuck a long time ago among Germans, took a only a little longer among foreigners. There are "Baden-Badens" in the New World, founded waay back in the 19th C. (e.g. Baden-Baden, Illinois, 1861-66). One would have to be well over a century-and-a-half old and illiterate to be confused. (another e.g. from 1848). Walrasiad (talk) 11:03, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry Walrasaid, I really don't care that much about the final definitive version of all this. It just seems that every new post demonstrates afresh just how confusing the whole mess is, for all but an inner circle of experts. You cannot reasonably claim that your contemporaries will be unconfused by such a ludicrous "primary topic" decision as we have seen here. The fact that you know what TF is going on is no evidence that anyone else does. Even the other commenters on this page are unsure about such a tangle of uses; myself included, after researching as I have in response to Vegaswikian's request. What matters is this: avoiding confusion for the unknown reader, out there in the real world. In New Delhi, in Cape Town, and in Tucson. It's so easy to make things clear by adding a short qualifier; yet time and again we see a chorus of stubborn resistance to doing so. I have said all I can say here, and I don't want to repeat myself. Let the matter be judged, and I will accept the judgement. Possibly in wide-eyed astonishment (though I should be used to this sort of thing by now). ♥☺ Noetica^Tea? 11:46, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Not really confusing. There's Baden, the historical state. Very important, nearly a thousand years old, played a large part in history, after which lots of things are named and known - the region, the wine, the dialect, half of the current Land of Baden-Wurttemberg, etc. Then there's Baden-Baden, a town, which no one alive calls anything else. As it happens, it used to be the capital of aforementioned state. And that's it. Against this big bad Baden, you've got counterpoised a small Swiss canton and a few villages no one has ever heard of. Walrasiad (talk) 12:10, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Or maybe a small English analogy might make it clear. There's historical state of Yorkshire. And then there's the city of York. Traditional capital, one named after the other, but they're worded distinctly, little danger of confusion (although in very old books they might be a little looser). Then there's also Yorkshire pudding, Yorkshire terriers and Yorkshire, Virginia. All named after Yorkshire. Should "Yorkshire" go to historical Yorkshire or to a disambiguation page? Walrasiad (talk) 12:52, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

And the claims of confusion seem only slightly more likely than confusion between York and New York, or Yorkshire and New York State. JCScaliger (talk) 04:38, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

I found a book called A summer at Baden-Baden which was published in 1853. There's also a guidebook that was published in 1858. So there is something fishy about this "renamed in 1931" claim. Kauffner (talk) 09:08, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

I said above that I don't want to repeat myself. I won't. But in answer to Enric:

• Notice the dominant way of referring to "Baden-Baden" in that first book you link (called A Summer at Baden-Baden, if that is indeed a hyphen; it could be a dash functioning like a comma in the title itself, for that 19th-century text). The town is usually called simply "Baden" in that book. Notice the page headers, as opposed to the title page: "A Summer in Baden". The key point is not that "Baden~Baden" (punctuation uncertain) was unused before 1931; it is that the name was variable, and arguably "Baden" dominates.
  • Let us have a citation, or indeed a parallel, for this figment, preferably with an equally short a mark. (This is the choice of M. Guinot's English publisher; the French title is L'Eté à Bade.) JCScaliger (talk) 02:29, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
    • Let us have some effort toward clarity, please. What is the "figment" to which you refer? You call for citations; but I see no link of any sort from you on this page. What point do you what to make about L'Eté à Bade? Perusal of it shows pretty consistent use of the French form "Bade" for the town of Baden[-Baden], and in the corresponding English version "Baden" is used for the town. If your claim is about the detailed characters and typography of the English title, note what I took the trouble to say clearly: "if that is indeed a hyphen; it could be a dash"; " 'Baden~Baden' (punctuation uncertain)". If you think that on the contrary the punctuation of the title is certain, please show first your evidence that it is certain, and second how your verdict is in any way decisive for these deliberations here – or even weighty, compared with the overwhelming evidence that these names are tangled and confused out there. That is the relevant consideration, since we are talking about making titles that are helpful to the general readership. Noetica^Tea? 03:21, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
• Notice that the second book you link has already been discussed, by Walrasaid and by me. See this report from Googlebooks, showing that "the town of Baden-Baden" is more commonly called simply "the town of Baden" in that book.
• Note this text (from Baden: Atlantic bridge to Germany, 2004):

  "The city of Baden was sometimes referred to as Baden-Baden in the 1800s but was not officially named until 1931. When finding that someone came from Baden-Baden, carefully consider if that meant the city or the old territory of Baden-Baden [sic!]."

I make no claims about the accuracy of that last book, nor about the accuracy of the present article Baden. I have made a claim that I will not repeat, about meeting real readers' real needs, by the simplest of short qualifiers. Vegaswikian called for "objective information" (not concerning an inner circle's certainties in these matters, but concerning usage). In light of such hard facts as I have laboured to supply, there is no case for invoking WP:SNOWBALL – unless we think that facts about confusing usage count for nothing in an RM about confusion in titles.

The remaining question is this: does the RM get closed on the basis of accurately reported evidence from sources, or by a head-count that shows more "oppose" votes than "support" votes? But I care less and less, day by day.

Noetica^Tea? 10:37, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

• Support – over-claiming of primary topics does no good overall. Dicklyon (talk) 15:55, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

FYI

 – User:JCScaliger has been indef blocked as a sockpuppet of User:Pmanderson (blocked for another year for abusive sockpuppetry).

• Snowball close? JCScaliger (talk) 04:38, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
• Support – It's just so many subjects to be treated in just one article -Ilhador- (talk) 15:02, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
  • This isn't an article; it's a disambiguation page, a navigational aid to get readers to articles. JCScaliger (talk) 02:20, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

    No, JCS. Look at the tabs at the top of this talkpage, and at the top of the content page. Whatever else it is, it is an article. Next, realise that this is a multiple RM. It is reasonable to assume that Ilhador is referring to the current article Baden, which as you can see from the top of this RM section is directly under discussion here also. Noetica^Tea? 03:21, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

    As the template at the bottom of the page says: "This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title." It's a disambiguation page; it leads to articles. Next? JCScaliger (talk) 00:41, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

• Comment - If I was the one looking this up, I would want to be taken to the entry that reflects the current usage, and be informed of that first, even if I was looking for a different entity. That is, if I saw the location in, say, a pulp spy fiction account set before WWII, I would want to know what the term means now before finding out the historical political landscape. But if I understand it correctly, there is no current usage of "Baden"; there is only a historical usage. There is no "Baden", only "ex-Baden". So, best to go first to disambiguation? Or is there a major article that explains it all?

--BTW, calling it a "historical state" in the lede just adds to the confusion for me. State of what? State of confusion? State of apathy? A province of a larger independent country? Or independent in its own right? Or all of these at different times in history? None of that is clear at first glance, and maybe not even after reading all the articles in depth. But I suppose that is separate from the title question. --A further comment, some seem to want to apply sweeping generalizations to the making of titles, but it seems all the issues are not understood yet, and cannot be understood without leaving all the buzz words at the door and working through individual titles to see what the actual problems are with naming real articles.Neotarf (talk) 21:27, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

• Neotarf, I couldn't agree more about the generalisations and buzzwords – if you mean principles like "primary topic" when they are applied unthinkingly. That is, applied without considering the more subtle matter of how readers might actually approach Wikipedia's articles (or try to; they may not easily find the ones they want). In this case of course, the potential confusions are very palpable.

As for "historical state" not dispelling all possible confusion, I appreciate your point. But we do what we can. In the present context, the qualifier would show that the topic is not Baden-Baden, not Baden, Pennsylvania, not SMS Baden (1915), and so on and on. Some uncertainty must remain though; it is a brute fact that the word "Baden" has many applications, and a further fact that the Baden at the centre of interest here is, according to the first sentence of its article, "a historical state on the east bank of the Rhine in the southwest of Germany, now the western part of the Baden-Württemberg (state) of Germany." Wikipedia cannot change those facts; but it can regiment its titles in the most helpful way available.

This is all highly relevant to a present ArbCom case, which I commend to you for a close reading: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Article_titles_and_capitalisation. How Wikipedia manages article titles needs a thorough review.

Noetica^Tea? 21:48, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Thank you, Noetica. Responding to your points, in reverse order -

1) the ArbCom case - I would like the chance to comment on it if I have the time, assuming they would be interested in the musings of a neophyte. I see anyone can comment in the "workshop" section, but they base their decisions on the "evidence" section. It's not clear who can comment in the "evidence" section.

2) The historical "state" of Baden - we "can" change the facts when they are incorrect. In this case I have changed the qualifier; see my longer note below.

3) Generalizations and buzzwords - I don't mean just the unthinking application of principles, whether it is "primary topic" or "DGAF", I mean more like the way some here hurl wiki-jargon and blue wiki-links at each other the way a literalist preacher hurls Bible verses at a soon-to-be-converted heathen instead of just conversing in English. Do they really expect everyone to have read pageload after pageload of verbose online rules -- especially when they themselves change the rules in the blink of an eye every time they violate one of them?

...Oh, yes, the rules here are broke, no doubt about it. That's what the ArbCom action is about. But, no matter. There is only one thing that matters here - 1)Collaborating. To 2) write an encyclopedia. Everything else is just common sense. Of course it has been pointed out elsewhere that common sense isn't that common. Also "collaborating" and "writing an encyclopedia" are fairly large and complex tasks that could benefit from being broken down into smaller elements. But the trend here and at MOS has been to write more and more rules with fussier and more opaque language, in order to nail down every possible eventuality, and slap a straight-jacket on anyone who tries to edit or write articles here. This, in a shifting, unpredictable universe that defies nailing down, and a Project that requires flexibility.

...What does our culture teach about the purpose of online behavior? Why, it's to "pwn" someone, to dominate, even if you have to game the system. Then, you rush over to their talk page and declare some version of "All your base are belong to us". This Gameboy mentality may work fine for training a workforce to be cannon fodder, but it can stand in the way of "collaborating" or "writing an encyclopedia". The other danger is similar to with other types of dysfunctional individuals. If the disruption isn't contained quickly, everyone gets fatigued trying to work around it, and starts to modify their behavior to the point where they may no longer be able to work effectively with "normal" users. All their energy goes to putting out fires - reacting - instead of working on the task at hand. Ah, but ask me what I *really* think. :) Neotarf (talk) 21:07, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Baden realy don't exist anymore, just the Grand Duchy of Baden, which both article cover the same areas, with the same content. WHy not just merge Baden into the Grand Duchy of Baden?-Ilhador- (talk) 01:40, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

For the same reason we have a distinct article on the Empire of Austria or the Kingdom of Bavaria - or the Kingdom of Great Britain; it's the form of government of a country or region during one period of its history. JCScaliger (talk) 02:20, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Fair enough. For a stretch of time the entity that is the topic of the current article Baden was called "Baden"; for other stretches of time it bore other names; currently it is subsumed as a part of Baden-Württemberg, which as you can see has its own article, with 83,612 pageviews over the last 90 days. That, for what it is worth, completely swamps all the other pageview numbers I tabulate above. See this text from that article, which serves yet again to show how confusing all of this must be if we don't provide precise titles:

"The area used to be covered by the historical states of Baden, including the former Prussian Hohenzollern, and Württemberg, part of the region of Swabia."

So, your point? I'm sure others would like to know whether you support or oppose this RM. I can't see what you're getting at, myself.

Noetica^Tea? 03:21, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

But Austria has an article for the nowadays country and Bavaria for its federal state. Baden it's not a country anymore, the article don't say anything more than Grand Duchy of Baden says.-Ilhador- (talk) 09:44, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

@Noetica, You seem to be supposing people have a very naive sense of confusion. Remember: this is an encyclopedia. Encyclopedias are not dial-up directories or ethnic restaurants where you had better know the meaning of everything before you order. Believe it or not, encyclopedias are where people learn things. Learning. So you didn't know that Baden was a historical state in southern Germany where the fabled Black Forest lies? Now you do. You didn't know the Margraves of Baden ruled Baden? Now you do. You didn't know Baden-Baden used to be the capital of Baden? Now you do. You didn't know that Baden wine, Baden, Pennsylvania and the S.S. Baden were all named after the historical Baden? Now you do. One more enlightened person. Wikipedia has done its job. Walrasiad (talk) 04:49, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

• Comment - In this current situation, the article Baden is a relic from 2003. As a historical state there's much more useful articles that already cover this period with half of this misunderstood.-Ilhador- (talk) 10:50, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

As it turns out, there is a present-day Baden after all. If you look at the talk pages for the Baden article, you will see many of these same issues were discussed in 2005, when articles of the historic Baden were spun off the main Baden article, but it was decided "to have Baden be about the historical region in Germany, with other places accessible through Baden (disambiguation). Baden is not just a now-defunct margravate and grand duchy, it's still very much a distinct cultural region in Germany. I suspect very few people from Baden-Württemberg think of themselves as Baden-Württemberger; they think of themselves as either Badeners or Swabians. (And woe betide the person who calls a Badener a Swabian!)".

In 2009 the Baden topic was reorganized along the same lines as the Prussia article, with "Baden" as the main article, and links to the Baden's historical political entities in an information box. Along the way several users have noted that although there is no longer a state with the name "Baden", the region still identifies itself culturally with that name, and there is frequent political friction with nearby regions based on religious and dialect differences.

Although Baden's historical "states" were given their own articles long ago, and the Baden article is now about the historical "region" of Baden, for some reason the lede was never fixed. I have now changed it and will fix the wording in the disambiguation page as well. Neotarf (talk) 19:23, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

• Support: Reworking Noetica's stats, 20,834 hits for the current primary topic article, 40,988 for other articles (incl. Republic, Magraviate, and Grand Duchy, since they are separate articles, but excluding the disambiguation page, since it's not an article and we assume visitors there contributed to the other pageviews), not more likely than all others combined. -- JHunterJ (talk) 17:43, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

  By that reasoning, we wouldn't have a primary sense of Austria either. But we do; we use it for the country, of which the state-forms, from the Mark, to the three empires with a capital at Vienna, to the modern Republic, are aspects. JCScaliger (talk) 03:49, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

  By that reasoning with supporting numbers, possibly. What are the numbers? -- JHunterJ (talk) 17:47, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

  Feel free to look them up and post them. As I say immediately below, I don't think this is an issue on which statistics are helpful. JCScaliger (talk) 18:10, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

  I do feel free to look them up, but I don't feel the need, since this discussion isn't about that title. If you still feel that the reasoning is analogous, you should complete the analogy first, and look them up and post them. Without those numbers (that neither of us wants to bother with) your claim about "that reasoning" is empty. -- JHunterJ (talk) 18:23, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

• Comment, with regard to Vegaswikian's extension above. This is not a dispute about statistics, where more data can help; this is a dispute about the application of WP:PRIMARYUSAGE to an almost uncontested set of facts. Is the Margraviate of Baden, or the Grand Duchy of Baden, really a competing usage, or is it a specialization? To take an English-speaking parallel, is there a reasonable alternative to the primary sense of Pennsylvania being Pennsylvania? Do the viewing statistics of Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Colony of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Railroad, Pennsylvania Turnpike make any difference to that? (Pennsylvania, South Gloucestershire might make a difference; it is a distinct meaning of the word. But it is as miniscule in usage as the other towns called Baden.) Yet they are all on Pennsylvania (disambiguation). 20:20, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
  • The analogy is a bit flawed, however, in that we are the English Wikipedia, and so the primacy of the historical German region may be more "obvious" to locals than to the target population of this encyclopedia. And it is the latter whom we serve here. Powers ^T 01:26, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
    • Incidentally, the German language entry for "Baden" opens to a disambiguation page. The present configuration of the English language pages, with "Baden" as the main topic page, was set up by a group that did not speak English as a first language, probably the German group. Neotarf (talk) 14:54, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
      • That's surprising, but strong evidence we should execute this change; if "Baden" has no primary meaning in German, it's odd to claim that it does in English. Powers ^T 19:32, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
        • Not really, it probably just supports your observation that speakers of German probably already know where Baden is. Apparently the "Badener" are known for quarreling with other regions, especially Swabia, over politics, religion, and language. Also, the primary "Baden" article, with its box of annotated links, functions as a sort of a de facto disambiguation page. Neotarf (talk) 09:43, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
  • The problem here is that Pennsylvania exists today, while Baden not. If Pennsylvania article is clearly about the state, which Baden are we talking about?-Ilhador- (talk) 14:25, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
    • Baden still exists as a cultural region that identifies itself with the "Baden" name. Neotarf (talk) 14:44, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Just like Yorkshire, Normandy, etc. Walrasiad (talk) 06:04, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

• Baden was a historical state. It was effectively a small independent country within the Holy Roman Empire, whose rulers were successively Margraves and Grand Dukes. The Canton of Baden was a shortlived Swiss canton that proved unviable and was merged into a neighbour. All the rest are towns or villages. It should thus be obvious that the historical state is primary. Itsw capital might need to be "Baden (town)" or "Baden (city)", if it was not Baden-Baden. Peterkingiron (talk) 14:26, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose: Baden is clearly the primary topic and normal disambiguation methods are working properly. Don't see the need for this move away from the quite standard way of doing things. — Bility (talk) 17:15, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Baden and Grand Duchy of Baden

Why do this highly ambiguous page and Grand Duchy of Baden act as they aren't aware of each other's existence?-Ilhador- (talk) 10:41, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Not quite. The Baden page has an information box with Grand Duchy of Baden in the history section. The Baden page used to have all the history of Baden, but several years ago, someone took out pieces of the article to make smaller history articles. Unfortunately, the main article now needs some cleanup -- it has a lot of past tense and other problems, but the people who know enough English to do it probably don't know anything about Baden. If you know something about Baden, you should probably just do whatever you can with it. Neotarf (talk) 11:28, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

And there's History of Baden too.-Ilhador- (talk) 12:10, 6 March 2012 (UTC)