Talk:List of geographic acronyms and initialisms

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Complete reorganization[edit]

I have no idea how this is supposed to be organized or where I would add a new entry if I had one. This article requires a complete reorganization. Also, are we gonna include towns whose names are words (such as the Snafu names), and in that case, should we include words? I'll work on a reorganization in the coming days. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 05:26, 24 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Another thought - this page is long enough, I think it is reasonable to drop all entries that don't have an article. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 05:30, 24 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
What kind of reorg did you have in mind? Currently it's sorted into two broad categories: Acronyms and Initialisms. Acronyms are abbreviations of multi-word terms. Initialisms are collections of words or names that are not a multi-word term, but they've been given the same treatment. The difference is that the order of words making up initialisms can rearranged to make a pronounceable name. Pakistan is a good example of an initialism. They could have put the P, A, K, and S in some other order, but of course they wanted it to mean something in Urdu. Other initialisms don't usually mean anything, but they have an arrangement of consonants and vowels making for easy pronunciation. Anyway, I'm quite willing to reorganize it, if you can come up with something better. I don't think any entries should be removed though. AFAICT, there's nothing special about a place having a Wikipedia entry; for small localitites it's more a matter of chance than anything else. Dtilque (talk) 06:12, 24 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- A thought occured to me. If the list is too long, perhaps we can break out one of the longer sections as a separate list. The Company Names list would be a good candidate.Dtilque (talk) 07:52, 24 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Dtilque:In theory, acronyms versus initialism is a logical way to sort it, but in practice and actually looking at the list, I can't figure out the difference or which entry should go where. So, I'd dump that distinction entirely, and instead sort entirely by what is named. So, I would have main level headings of Populated Places, Geography, Corporations, etc. I would also have a paragraph or two bringing attention to unusual or notable entries, like Pakistan. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 18:01, 24 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
As far as dropping entries, I think I would probably only drop corporation entries that don't have articles. These types of names are so common for corporations, that it isn't at all notable to have such a name, so if the company isn't notable, it shouldn't be here. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 18:01, 24 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Oiyarbepsy: I'm OK with dropping the initialism/acronym distinction. If it's going to sort by type of geographic entity, then the biggest section, by far, will be populated places. To make that managible, there'd need to be some secondary sort factor to break it up into smaller chunks. Here's a potential outline:
- Country
- Provinces
- Counties
- Populated places
  - places named after companies
  - places named after people
    - single person
    - multiple persons
  - other
- neighborhoods
- bodies of water
- topography
- other
The last "other" would include a few acronyms from INdonesia and Philippines that don't really fall into any of the other main sections. They're not provinces nor cities nor counties.
On thinking this over, the neighborhood section is probably the best to split off to a separate list. I'm not sure it really fits in with everything else. For that matter, somewhere else on Wikipedia is a list of Philippines acronyms where I got many of the ones from that country. Instead of listing them here, there could just be a link to that other list. Dtilque (talk) 02:32, 25 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Dtilque: I think this is a good layout. I might combine Countries, Provinces and Counties into a heading of Regions, and maybe put neighborhoods under populated places, but otherwise good. What's your thought on Snafu and Targu - these are named for real words that happen to be acronyms, and not acronyms invented to be a name for the place. I would say to remove these. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 18:10, 25 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Oiyarbepsy: Hadn't really thought about Snafu & Tarfu Lakes as being different that way. At the time they were named (which was almost certainly during the building of the Alcan Highway during WWII) those acronyms hadn't yet become commonly known. They were still only used by people in the military. The Alcan Hwy was built by the US Army Corps of Engineers in the early days of WWII.
But as far as applying an existing acronym to a place, those aren't the only ones. The names in the Topography section were named that way, as are most of the company names and a few others. There's a similar set of names of streets, mostly university and corporate acronyms for streets on or near their campuses. (Last night, while engaged in a hobby, I encountered an example of one on Googlemaps: Aum Drive on the edge of the campus of Auburn University, Montgomery.) When compiling the list, I decided not to include street names.
Right now, I'm inclined to keep such names in the list.
As far as neighborhoods, those have a very different feel than the other names. Most of them were a result of rebranding a rundown neighborhood, trying to get the property values up. So they were mostly thought up by realty agents and imposed on the neighborhood. There's an artificial feel to them. The original was SoHo in Manhattan and most of the others in different cities copied that pattern, trying to steal the MoJo. That's why I think that list should be split off to a different wikipage.
As far as combining sections into one Region section, I'm fine with that either way. The Philippino and Indonesian acronyms would fall into a Region category, so we may not need the 'other' section at the bottom. Dtilque (talk) 20:08, 25 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Oiyarbepsy: Just had a quick look at the changes. In general looks pretty good. Did see one thing: The stuff about initialisms (both title and lede) can be removed since that distinction is no longer being made in the list. I'll do that tonight (at least for the lede) and take a closer look in a day or two and see if there's anything else that can be improved. Dtilque (talk) 10:42, 27 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Oiyarbepsy: The "and initialisms" needs to be dropped from the name. But I can't remember how to change a wikipage name.