Taw/Historical terminology for Central and Eastern Europe

Recently, conflict occured between some German-speaking and some Polish-speaking Wikipedians about terminology that should be used in Wikipedia articles about history of Central and Eastern Europe.

This page is intended as a place to discuss this issue and come to result that is, if not satisfactory, at least acceptable to all sides.

Here is draft of rules that, hopefully, will evolve into satisfactiory solution.

While this is subpage of Taw's page, Taw doesn't have any special priviledges over it.

First draft

Rules:

• Articles about all places, with the exception of those which have really well-established English names, should be located under their current local names. Alternative names, in particular names in other languages of that region, should be redirects to main article, and should be listed as alternative names in main article.
• Local names of titles and offices should not be used unless local version of it differs significantly enough to deserve own article. In such case, local names should be used, but always as links to article in which title or office is described in details.
• Latin names of titles and offices should be added if disambiguation is needed.
• Because issue is controversive, no edit, no matter how insignificant, should be marked as Minor edit.
• It's good to present etymology of names of various places. Because there is lot of folk or deliberately falsified etymology, etylomogy should be as detailed as possible and should reference to some well-known and respected linguist.
  • [Jan Miodek]? is well-known and respected linguist in Poland.
• Articles about places should contain links to local government home pages, with list of languages available. By default, link should go to English version or, if there isn't one, to local language version.

Issues not resolved yet:

• Naming in historical context
• Using language that might offence some people
• Representing propaganda that come from various sources
• Prussian has two meanings, one refering to Baltic and other to German people. What to do with this ?
• What to do with majon portions of articles that contain some false statements.
• Other external links

Discussion