The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposal. 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 debate was Do not move. — Wknight94 ( talk) 19:20, 17 December 2006 (UTC) reply

New London → New London (disambiguation) — To make way for redirecting New London to the city in Connecticut. Majority of unqualified links refer to the city in Connecticut, which is about 4 times larger than the next largest city, and has significant historical significance as well. Listing here since some might be against this action. -- Polaron | Talk 01:13, 9 December 2006 (UTC) reply

Additional note: The CT city article has about 612 articles that link to it (excluding templates). All the other New London place articles together have a combined total of 204 articles that link to it (again excluding templates). The submarine base has 145 incoming links and the court case has 52. In total, all links to articles with the name New London other than the city in CT have a combined total of about 401 incoming links. I realize this is not necessarily a scientific way of estimating likelihood of searches. But 60% of all New London links refer to the city in Connecticut (75% if you only include places) and this seems a good candidate for being a primary toppic. -- Polaron | Talk 17:50, 10 December 2006 (UTC) reply

Add  * '''Support'''  or  * '''Oppose'''  on a new line followed by a brief explanation, then sign your opinion using ~~~~.

• Support as nominator. -- Polaron | Talk 01:13, 9 December 2006 (UTC) reply
• Oppose with so many New Londons, odds are pretty high that any one searching for New London is actually looking for any one of those that is not in Connecticut. -- Serge 01:18, 9 December 2006 (UTC) reply
• Oppose - there are too many New Londons out there to make that simple assumption -- Orange Mike 01:53, 9 December 2006 (UTC) reply
• Oppose per above and understanding not to do any moves like this while the naming convention is being discussed. Vegaswikian 03:27, 9 December 2006 (UTC) reply

• I'm not sure what your second comment is alluding to. This is simply a discussion about whether the city in Connecticut is significant enough to merit primary topic and nothing more. This has nothing to do with naming conventions. -- Polaron | Talk 03:40, 9 December 2006 (UTC) reply

Check out Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (settlements) and the archives. Vegaswikian 09:12, 10 December 2006 (UTC) reply

Sorry to be insistent but I don't see what that discussion has to do with this one. I am not proposing moving any city articles here. -- Polaron | Talk 15:22, 10 December 2006 (UTC) reply

• Support Yhis does not propose moving New London, Connecticut; this would merely let New London redirect there. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:54, 10 December 2006 (UTC) reply
• Oppose. There are just too many cities named "New London", none of which are particularly notable or well-known enough to warrant being the destination of a "New London" redirect. -- Bobblehead 23:52, 10 December 2006 (UTC) reply
• Oppose - none is sufficiently notable to be the main use in people's minds. So each page need to keep a disamibuator. That policy is circumvented if "New London" goes anywahere but here. -- Beardo 06:58, 12 December 2006 (UTC) reply
• Support -- Presumptions of what Joe Blow might or might not know, or what is or is not in people's minds, are not pertinent. [Were such the case, Frisco would link directly to San Francisco, and Samuel Adams to Samuel Adams (beer).] The design standards of an encyclopedia ought rather consider how better to present the more useful knowledge to a serious student or actual researcher. Further, the argument that New London, Connecticut is not "notable" in its own right is parochial, if not uninformed.
  • New London, Connecticut is a central city of a Metropolitan NECTA of 771.66 square miles and 259,088 people [1].
  • Neither the Columbia Encyclopedia, nor the Encyclopædia Britannica contain entries for any "New London" other than New London, Connecticut and its namesake county. -- OWL 20:20, 12 December 2006 (UTC) reply
• Oppose. In my personal opinion, none of the NLs is a clear primary topic: readers would be served best reaching the dab page than being redirected to any of these locations. - Evv 21:02, 16 December 2006 (UTC) reply

None of the oppositions seem to be discussing whether the Connecticut city is significant enough or not. Just to be clear, what would be a good guideline for how many other places a name should share so that none of the places can ever become primary topic regardless of significance? Or, what is the maximum number of naming conflicts where the significance of a topic still matters? Of the places listed on the article, only about 4 are really even significant enough to compete with the one in Connecticut. Most of them are unincorporated places with no articles. -- Polaron | Talk 15:33, 10 December 2006 (UTC) reply

I think the real reason for opposition isn't the comparison between the city in CT and the other places named "New London". Rather it's that the city in CT isn't significant enough in comparison to other cities in the world - whether or not they're named "New London". To take an example of a city that gets a redirect to it, look at Boston - there are 11,344 wikilinks to Boston or Boston, Massachusetts. What the number is for how significant a city or town is in order to rate the redirect is what the previously mentioned naming convention discussion is about. -- SatyrTN ( talk | contribs) 04:55, 11 December 2006 (UTC) reply

What's not clear to me is this: Does primary topic disambiguation look at the significance of an object in relation to other objects of its class (regardless of name), or is it an evaluation of the relative significance of other objects that has the same name? If there were only 3 New Londons, would the CT city still not deserve being a primary topic because it is not as significant as Boston? What I'm trying to clarify is this: is it the relative significance relative to other topics with the same name that is the main factor, or is it the relative significance among all topics? -- Polaron | Talk 06:14, 11 December 2006 (UTC) reply

The city should be notable enough so that it far exceeds any other use of the phrase. It is in that arena that a comparison between Boston and New London might be applicable. Boston redirects to Boston, MA because ask Joe Blow on the street where Boston is and they are far more likely to say in Massachusetts (or some reasonably geographical location signifying a location within Eastern US) than any of the other Bostons, even if they live near one of the other Bostons. That isn't the case for New London. Most people won't know where New London is or they'll assume it's in the UK, or if they live near a New London, they'll say that New London. Basically, New London, CT isn't notable enough to override the notability of the other New Londons. -- Bobblehead 06:50, 11 December 2006 (UTC) reply

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. 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.