Talk:Sister city/Archive 2

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was moved to more common name. Aervanath (talk) 03:31, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

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• Town twinning → Sister cities — More common name for the concept, used in far more locations, and the the term "sister cities" has been used for several decades more than "town twinning". — TJ Spyke 21:19, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
• The usual expression here in England is "town twinning" or "twin towns". Anthony Appleyard (talk) 22:45, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
  • True, but "sister cities" is used in North America, Asia and Australia. The term "sister cities" has also been used at least 30 years longer than "twin towns" or "town twinning". I think it would make more sense to use the term that has been around longer and is more widely used. TJ Spyke 00:00, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
• I'm also more familiar with "twin town" (Canada). There's also "partner city". In the several times I've tried to sort out the vexed issue of those cross-refs around the wiki, I always use combinations of twin/sister/partner and town/city/cities/agreements to look for reliable sources. The perception may also be somewhat skewed by the existence ofSister Cities International which is widely taken as a definitive source on-wiki for these arrangements, but is also a commercial organization (non-profit maybe, but it charges money to be a member). I see no compelling reason to move the title.Franamax (talk) 07:47, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose - town twinning is an equally valid name for the concept (and as mentioned above, is what is used exclusively in the UK), no need to move. - fchd (talk) 17:21, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
• Strong support. Clearly there are several valid names for this. So the name with the oldest or widest use should be what is selected. Clearly at this point Sister cities is the choice that the evidence supports. As an official term, sister cities predates twinning by 30 years. Also for much of the world twining is not a word that is really used much and when it is it refers to the use of twine. The Merriam-Webster dictionary does not really show town twining as a use, the reference to twinning meaning couple may be the closest. In general use, calling something a brother or sister clearly means establishing a relationship. So moving would replace an obscure word for many with one that, even if not used formally, should be understood in most of the English speaking world. Also the wiki article on sister cities dates back to 2002-01-15. Town twinning appears to date to 2003-12-23 and was moved to List of twin towns and sister cities which may have been done to address the multiple terms that are in fact used. So the article at town twinning appears to not be the oldest and hence should not be where this winds up. Vegaswikian (talk) 16:19, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
• Support per Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names). The search results are pretty far apart:

	Google Web	News	Books
Town Twinning	169,000	621	643
Sister Cities	670,000	19,300	1,412
(Ratio)	4:1	31:1	2:1

The same searches using "Twin towns" is comparable though not returning quite as extreme a disparity on the news search.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 01:11, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

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. No further edits should be made to this section.

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was no consensus to move –Juliancolton | ^Talk 04:46, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

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Sister cities → Town twinning — Looking at the previous move discussion, I see little sign of consensus (6 users, 3 supporting, 3 opposing), so I'd like to re-open the debate. - IMSoP(talk) 17:40, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Reasons I prefer "town twinning" (apart from being British, which bias I will admit):

1. "Town twinning" is an abstract noun describing the concept, whereas "sister cities" is a concrete noun describing the towns themselves. [Incidentally, if we do use this term, we should use the singular "sister city".]
2. The term "sister city" may be ambiguous, as was the problem with "twin town" and "twin city" early in this page's history. By contrast, "town twinning" is unlikely to be used for anything else.
3. Fuhghettaboutit's Google test was badly chosen, since few discussions would talk about "town twinning" as a process, but this doesn't prove the term is uncommon. The smarter search "town twinning" OR "twin town" OR "twin towns" returns 621,000 web results,news results, and 968 books results.

- IMSoP (talk) 17:40, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

The first entry on that search, like many of the others, refers to Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota. They are commonly called twins - but not in the sense of this article. Oppose, per the previous discussion. This is not the place for language reform. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:36, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

oppose I had never heard of this concept being called "town twinning"; I don't think the term is used at all in the US. Whereas even in places where "town twinning" is more common, the "sister cities" is apparently used/understood.-- The Red Pen of Doom21:00, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Oppose Sister cities is by far the more common term (not conclusive, but "Sister cities" gets over 20 times as many Google hits as "Town twinning". 168K for "town twinning" [1] vs. 2.33 million for "sister cities"[2].), the organizations behind linking cities uses the "Sister cities" term" as well. TJ Spyke 22:11, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Support IAW WP:COMMONNAMES. Regardless of what all our personal feelings may be, the references that are currently in the article predominantly use "Town twinning". Either the guidance in COMMONNAMES means something, or it doesn't (in which case, it should be de-listed as a guideline). The term "Sister cities" is established by a single references, so it should be included in the lead. Since all others use "Twin cities" then that's verifiably "the most common name". Google searches can be suggestive where a lack of referencing exists or the referencing does not provide an answer, but we should not be at all beholden to the whims of Google's search program.
— V = I * R (talk) 15:43, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

• First of all, that is not true; two references use sister cities.
• More importantly, following the references to the article is a rule of thumb; it assumes that they are representative of English usage, which is not true here.
• Most importantly, it does not relieve us of the rule of civility in WP:ENGVAR. Articles should not be translated from American to British English (as here), nor from British to American, without some benefit to the encyclopedia outside the conflict of dialects. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:55, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

  If we're going to abide by the civility clause that your'e citing in WP:ENGVAR (which is generally a good idea), then clearly we must move the article back to' Town twinning.
  — V = I * R (talk) 23:16, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

  Not at all. It was moved to this name by consensus - on grounds largely independent of dialect - and has been stable for months. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:31, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

  Rubbish. It was moved on 21 March 2009 and challenged on 4 April 2009. Stable for months? It just about managed to go a fortnight! Skinsmoke (talk) 04:35, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose per Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names). Since you chose to refer to my Google results and suggested a different criterion, I hope you don't mind being hoisted up by your own petard. Please note that many, many results for "twin towns" are in fact false positives (I have eliminated one source by taking out the movie by that name set in "swansea"), and yet sister city/cities is still far more common. I have also included results from the Times of London to show that even there "sister city" is near on par with "twin town" as well as results from each of Australia's and South Africa's largest newspapers. For the newspaper results I cannot use a boolean search so I did the three "OR" variations separately.

	Google Web	News	Books	Scholar	Times of London	Herald Sun	Sunday Times	NYT
"town twinning" OR "twin town" OR "twin towns" -swansea	[3]	7,930	[4]	[5]	[6], [7] & [8]	3,32 &32	[9], [10] & [11]	[12], [13] & [14]
"sister cities" OR "sister city"	1,410,000	67,600	1,920	7,430	[15] & [16]	64 &64	[17] & [18]	[19] & [20]
(Ratio)	2.8 to 1	8.5 to 1	2 to 1	4.6 to 1	---	Approx. 2 to 1	Approx. 4 to 1	Approx 15 to 1

--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 01:26, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Comment The references from The Times do not refer to sister cities in the sense used in the article, and reflect the British use of the term. That is not the same concept as the American use of Sister Cities, which is the equivalent of Twin Towns in Britain. Check out the references, and it becomes obvious that they have, with one exception, no relevance to this dispute (Manchester and Salford, for example, are sister cities because they are adjacent to each other and share a common history, not because they have any formal partnership link). The problem with the term Sister Cities is that, outside the United States, most of the organisations involved in them are not cities. Germany usesPartnerstadt (Partner Town/City), France uses Ville Jumelée (Twin Town/City), but not sure about other countries. Perhaps we need to look for a completely different term that doesn't have the ambiguity of Sister Cities.Skinsmoke (talk) 07:32, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

This ignores the wide variance in local dialect in the meaning of city; in California, for example, it means "any incorporated municipality". Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:46, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Exactly the second point I was making. City may mean practically any town in the United States; elsewhere it doesn't. That is why the American term is not really appropriate for this article. Skinsmoke (talk) 04:40, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

There seems to be a clear case being made here for two separate articles. I see no obvious reasons why both couldn't co-exist (with appropriate hatnotes on each article), making this debate a moot point. Based on the current state of this article, it seems most logical to move it back to Town twinning and allow this page to (re)develop with Sister city specific content.
— V = I * R (talk) 05:29, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

That's not all that bad an idea, as the two things operate under different umberella organisations/organizations. Mosttown twinning is not done under the banner of Sister Cities International. Perhaps we were trying the impossible in combining two similar concepts into the one article. Skinsmoke (talk) 06:48, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Actually, looking at the content of this article - which largely divides into "Europe" and "North America" - I think that's quite a sensible solution. The obvious downside is that there are a few things to say that apply to the concept in and of itself - basically, the lead and Criticism section of this article - which it would be unfortunate to duplicate.

I notice also that Sister Cities International has been a stub since January, whenit was purged of (alleged) copyvios. So a combined article dealing with the history of the concept (in North America, and that part of the world) and the organisation might be appropriate? - IMSoP (talk) 22:37, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose. The fact that the article has not been revised since the rename is not a reason to rename it back. The references will be cleaned up over time. And new references will be added. Vegaswikian (talk) 01:53, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

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. No further edits should be made to this section.

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was page moved. This was a controversial case, so I'll explain my closing rationale.

The two concepts of twin towns and sister cities are not different names for the same thing in different varieties of English, but they refer to different phenomena. Town twinning, as practiced in Europe since 1920, is a practice that involves formal "twinning charters". Sister cities, on the other hand, is a designation tracing its roots to the US in 1931, and is affiliated with SCI, Sister Cities International. A more general name, such as "inter-municipal partnership", does not appear to be in common use, while the two distinct terms "sister cities" and "twin towns" are in common use, each in their respective domain.GTBacchus^(talk) 22:13, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

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Sister cities → Twin towns and sister cities — The term ‘Sister cities’ is used primarily in United States and links to cities in US. ‘Twin towns’ is common usage in UK and Europe, as previously discussedhere -- Marek.69^talk 03:24, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose per above. Even if it were move, the only name I think I could support is "Sister Cities and twin towns".NES Wii (talk) 16:40, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

I can go with that, as it basically the same idea, just in a different order :-) Marek.69 ^talk 21:46, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

The reason I suggested the other way was that the majority of lists already in existence on this subject are already named‘List of twin towns and sister cities of...’

Please see ‘Lists of twin towns and sister cities’ for verification of this. -- Marek.69 ^talk 21:58, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Somewhat I oppose this article, because if we have to give 2 terms for 'Sister Cities', we would have to change all the templates to pleased both U.S. and Europe term, e.g. format for typing date (May 4, 1983 or 4 May 1983), format for typing numerals (100,000 or 100.000), format for words (glamor or glamour). BTW I think there is one better format in Paris, they use term 'International Relations'. But then again, they divide the content into 2 sections: Sister city and Partner city, I have no idea what's the differences between Sister and Partner. -- Rochelimit (talk) 05:53, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Rochelimit, This proposed renaming refers to the name of this article (currently 'Sister cities', which was merged with the 'Twin towns' article). I've simply suggested that we use both terms in the title of this article.

Btw, I agree with you on splitting into two lists under 'International relations', but that is a different discussion. --Marek.69 ^talk 09:45, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Oops sorry, well in that case I'm still opposing this, although I don't really know what's a strong reason to oppose this. My only reason is this: http://www.sister-cities.org/. So I say, stay with the 'sister city' --Rochelimit(talk) 10:01, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

The problem is that most international relations between European towns and cities do not come under Sister Cities International; they are governed by a different organisation. Skinsmoke (talk) 03:41, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

• Support Splitting the baby here seems good since, as has been discussed in the previous move requests, the two phrases do have mildly different meanings—maybe not enough to warrant separate articles—but enough so that the suggested title is not just a listing of two synonyms to appease both sides of the previous move debate. I do not care about the order, though I do find the Tees followed by the esses version more pleasing to my ear for some reason.--Fuhghettaboutit(talk) 23:11, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

• Mild oppose – Awkward and unnecessary. Rees11 (talk) 03:29, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

• 'Support There are slightly different concepts involved in Sister Cities and Twin Towns and there are two separate organisations governing each. It was perhaps never a good idea to combine the two into a single article! If we persist with the single article option, and using both titles does not find favour, how about something like Town and city partnership links or Town and city friendship agreements? Skinsmoke (talk) 03:31, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

I like that idea. Separate articles would be silly, so a generic term that encompasses both concepts would be perfect, if we can agree on the term. Rees11 (talk) 04:05, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

• Opposed I view this as an WP:ENGVAR situation. We don't change the titles of articles using "Color" or "Colour" simply for the purpose of changing the spelling, and I see no reason to do something similar here. Both titles redirect to the same article, and the first sentence clearly identifies all of the possible names, so I don't see a real problem here.
  —V = I * R(talk to Ω) 04:29, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
• Here in England such pairs of towns or cities always called "twin towns" and the process is called "twinning". Anthony Appleyard (talk) 06:14, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
  • Not just in Britain. As far as I know, everywhere apart from America uses the phrase "twin towns" or the equivalent in the local language. To insist on maintaining the status quo is a brash example of American imperialist thinking - we do it so that's fine and the rest of you are wrong. It has been suggested above that this somehow impinges on whether to adopt only US or UK spelling in articles (it doesn't - non-Americans are quite OK with US spellings) or having to standardise on US or other date formats (when, in reality, the formats cited are all acceptable in the US and other regions). These are irrelevancies; the key issue is whether Wikipedia should have an article title that is completely unknown to the vast majority of readers of English, whether as their first language or a second language. It is ridiculous to insist on a minority view. SupportEmeraude (talk) 11:19, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Do you have a source for that assertion? The article says otherwise. Rees11 (talk) 12:42, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry. Which assertion is that? I've stated my opinions but as far as I'm aware the only assertion is the on in the article that says "In the United Kingdom the term twin towns is most commonly used, generally referring to town-twinning with Europe, differentiating with the term sister cities which is used for twinnings with the USA": this, of course is unsourced!!! My "assertion" is based on 58 years living in the UK and travelling extensively in Europe, but if you want an example you could do worse that look at the first image in the article which, in German refers to "partnership", in French to "twinned with" and in Italian to "twinning". Further useful research might be done by examing the foreign language Wikipedias, such asfr:Jumelage or it:Gemellaggio. Emeraude (talk) 13:04, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

I supported above for a reason that contains no ad hominem speculation on the thinking of all people of a particular country to sully the very point I was making. I'm wondering why you couldn't get yourself to do so?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 13:45, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

I'll make you guys a deal. If you agree to allow me to run around changing all instances of "Colour" to "Color", I'llgladly support a rename here.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 15:18, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

• What's there to say that we can't have both? I would also like to note that the comments on "color" and "colour" are an ignoratio elenchi, since we're not really talking about an "either or" situation here - we could not reasonably have an article with both titles in that instance, but here we're talking about an expression which is not exclusively traceable to either English variety. So, yes, Support, whatever order. Dahn (talk) 19:00, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

• Thank you for clarifying this point Dahn, this is not an either/or rename discussion ('Sister cities' versus 'Twin towns') as the previous discussions have been. The suggestion is simply to include both terms (as many Town and City official websites are already starting to do)

In the UK, I notice that 'twinnings' generally refer to links with European towns & cities, whereas the US version of this partnership is referred to as a 'Sister city' (and listed on the Sister cities International website)

I would like to give for example a typical UK town, Eastleigh, where the two terms are listed separately on Wikipedia and on the town's official website

These two systems have separate histories (on two continents) and are administered by two different bodies/agencies. The two terms also had separate Wikipedia articles, which were merged together into this one. I feel that the title should reflect this and refer to both, instead of having a US vs. UK name change discussion every few months which achieves nothing. I too am not particularly bothered by the order. I simply Support a title which has both terms. --Marek.69 ^talk 06:30, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

• Support either a title with both terms or a neutral term - it may end up looking unwieldy, but the very fact that this discussion has come up so many times suggests that using one term or the other is always going to lead to conflict. Actually, I think a neutral term like some of those that Skinsmoke has suggested might be the way to go; if and when we end up with enough region- / scheme-specific information, it can be naturally shifted out to Sister Cities International (currently a stub) and a Europe-specific article - at Town twinning, say - with discussion of the concept kept here. -IMSoP (talk) 18:28, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose move to twin cities - I was asked to contribute to this discussion by the nominator (thank you!) as I have been working on the twin/sister and other kind םכ agreements between cities/towns and other kinds and levels of local government. Since twin and sister agreements do not cover the whole range of agreements and cities and towns do not cover the range of local government involved (that also includes villages and municipal districts), I wish to propose a move to municipal partnerships as this is a truly location-neutral all-covering term for these partnership agreements. For the record, I object to a change from sister cities to twin cities (or vica versa) as these terms are imho equally bad and perWP:ENGVAR. gidonb (talk) 21:04, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

  I think municipal partnerships is the best compromise presented so far, and would support a move to this name. -IMSoP (talk) 21:26, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, just to clarify, the original proposal was to change from 'Sister cities' to Twin towns & sister cities to cover both concepts and names.

I've nothing against municipal partnerships though :-) -- Marek.69 ^talk 21:40, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

It looks like you didn't get the move template quite right at the top, so it wasn't actually displaying what your proposed name was - I've fixed it now, so hopefully there'll be slightly less confusion! - IMSoP (talk) 22:49, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Thank you Marek and IMSoP. I am having second thoughts. Municipal partnerships are mostly private-public partnerships. Between municipalities is intermunicipal partnerships, however these are usually service provision pacts of adjacent municipalities. The search goes on. gidonb (talk) 23:36, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

• Mild support - "International Partnerships" may be a suitable substitute. JB82 (talk) 23:56, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose. There is no good case made to change this again. The article started out with this name and the proposals to change come close to arguing WP:ENGVAR as the reason. The proposal to use International partnerships is flawed as it is a totally ambiguous name. Vegaswikian (talk) 07:08, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

"Municipal partnerships"? "International Partnerships"? What possible reason can there be for inventing an article title that has no relationship to what people say in the real world? Some people (in the US mostly) say "sister city"; other eople (everywhere else mostly) say "twin town". Although the two concepts are not identical, they are not dissimilar and their coverage in a single article makes sense - hence the proposal that the article name reflect this. But to suggest that the discussion be halted and a made-up name that no one use should be used simply beggars belief. Emeraude(talk) 11:26, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

The article says "sister cities" is used in North America and Asia, not just the US. If you have sources (not OR) that say otherwise, the article should be changed. I agree that a made up name would be ridiculous. Rees11 (talk) 13:10, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

• Per WP:ENGVAR we should move back to Town twinning, it was a mistake to move the article to sister cities earlier this year. I could live with Twin towns and sister cities as an awkward compromise - but moving Town twinning tosister cities because there are more references in American English than English is a bad precedent that was unhealthy for Wikipedia. ϢereSpielChequers 19:08, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

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. No further edits should be made to this section.