[WikiEN-l] Naming convention: popularity vs. correctness

Sun Feb 9 22:20:38 UTC 2003

On 2/9/03 4:47 PM, "Erik Moeller" <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> 1) Ockham's Razor should not reside at Occam's Razor (Occam is the
> latinization of the town name Ockham; the town still exists today).
> 
> 2) Pennsylvania Dutch should be at Pennsylvania German (it is not Dutch at
> all; the word is merely a corruption of "Deutsch" or "Dütsch").
> 
> As I wrote on [[Talk:Pennsylvania Dutch]]:
> 
> Regarding the title, I agree this should be under Pennsylvania German.
> This is a case where a redirect makes perfect sense. I support anglicized
> article titles, but I do not support using an obviously inccorect title
> because it is more popular among the uninformed. It is not POV for us to
> assert that "Pennsylvania German" is correct if there's nobody who
> disagrees, based on factual arguments and not mere habit, with that
> statement. This "Dutch" has nothing to do with Dutch.
> 
The current policy is the healthier one. Wikipedia should by and large
reflect the common consensus, at least on a zero-order approximation, not
try to enforce the "correct" view of specialists or linguistic sticklers (of
whose ranks I consider myself a member), in particular with the names of
entries. 

For example, I know about the term "Pennsylvania Dutch" and have seen it
used in many contexts (social, political, commercial branding, etc.) whereas
"Pennsylvania German" is just not a term in use.

Similarly, "Occam's Razor" is by far the more prevalent and *preferred*
spelling for the term by English speakers. 