[WikiEN-l] River names Oder/Odra and Neisse/Nysa

Wed Feb 19 10:00:12 UTC 2003

Geoff Burling wrote:

> In other words, we should expect a number of edit wars between
> German chauvinists & Polish chauvinists to occur over territories that
> were formerly part of Germany for the foreseeable future?

No. The articles about Gdansk/Danzig and Szczecin/Stettin are findable under their 
Polish names (Gdansk, Szczecin), and that's fine, because these are now Polish cities. As 
for Oder/Odra and Neisse/Nysa, these are common German-Polish rivers, so I don't see, 
why the name "Oder" should be forgotten in the future, as Space Cadet predicted.

What do you think about that solution: call it "Oder" in articles relating to German regions 
(Lower Oder Valley National Park), call it "Odra" in articles relating to Polish regions 
(Szczecin). The article about the river itself is titled with one of these names, and the other 
name is stated in the first sentence of that article. The same should be done for 
Neisse/Nysa. And everyone can be happy again ;-)

So, my vote is to leave the main article where it is now: "Odra", since there are greater 
portions of the river in Poland. If you agree, I change the name for the German regions 
back to "Oder" and link it to "Odra". The same may be done for Neisse/Nysa.

If you agree, I will place this (or another) compromise on the Odra talk page, in order to 
refer everyone begining the dispute anew to that page.

Mirko.

-- 
Mirko Thiessen
http://www.mirko-thiessen.de