I would like to initiate a discussion on whether USPLACE should apply to US territories as well as US states. I will not propose anything on places in US states since the discussions of those have been exhausted with no consensus to change. There didn't seem to be much discussion on whether US territories should be included in the guideline as well. I would like to discuss the applicability of the guideline for US territories. The question I would like to answer is "Should the guideline apply to US territories?" Please discuss here. Interstellarity (talk) 14:06, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

• Well, yes, since they are places and are US ones. Is there some kind of concrete example you have in mind with a clear rationale for some kind of divergence?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:53, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
  More to the point, to quote someone else below: if the drafters of USPLACE did not intend for it to include territories, it would not have mentioned Placename, Territory as a model to follow.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:09, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

  Sometimes, US territories are treated like it’s their own country. For example, in statistics, the US usually includes the 50 states and DC, but not the territories. They usually treat them as independent countries despite being part of the US. I think it would beneficial if we treat them in the same way we treat other Oceanian and Caribbean countries. Interstellarity (talk) 00:08, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

  National statistics and such don't have anything to do with our article naming patterns.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:24, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

• I would also say yes, here. Territories fall under the federal governance of the United States, and typically are assigned to the jurisdiction of a U.S. court. BD2412 T 00:52, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
• No. The (arguable) basis for using the comma convention for US cities is that including the state name in the name of the city is the COMMONNAME for cities in US states. I know of no reason to believe that is the case for cities within US territories. This is relevant to, for example, the village of Barrigada.
  • On July 1, 2017, Number 57 properly moved Barrigada, Guam to Barrigada because "unnecessary disambiguation".
  • Then, more than three years later, on October 28, 2020, Reywas92 moved it to Barrigada, Guam, dubiously citing USPLACE.

Now, the ngram viewer (which can't search for commas but omitting it find all occurrences) shows us that Barrigada is far more commonly used than "Barrigada, Guam" , so I think Number 57 was clearly correct in saying the ", Guam" is unnecessary disambiguation, and I see no basis for applying the USPLACE comma convention by default, even when disambiguation is not necessary, for this or any other US territory cities (Barrigada redirects to Barrigada, Guam). Of course, if a city's name is actually ambiguous, then the comma convention is appropriate disambiguation, as in Piti, Guam (see the Piti dab page for other uses), but that falls out of general WP:TITLE and WP:D policy, not USPLACE. As a reminder, the only way to justify the USPLACE default comma convention for US cities as not contradicting WP:TITLE/WP:D is, again, by the claim that including the ", state" is simply reflecting COMMONNAME, because "City, State" is so commonly used for (non-AP) cities. The claim that "City, Territory" is as commonly used cannot be made for cities in US territories. --В²C ☎ 04:23, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

The basis of USPLACE is widespread adherence to the AP Stylebook (or its reflection of widespread usage), which for non-independent territories prescribes the use of "the commonly accepted territory name after a city name." Regarding your Barrigada example, additional context is necessary. Taking, for example, newspapers.com results and excluding "Barrigada Heights," "Mount Barrigada," and "Mt. Barrigada," the 2229 results outside of Guam break down as 1322 (59%) including the phrase "Barrigada, Guam" or "Barrigada, GU"; 842 (38%) excluding those phrases but including Guam or GU elsewhere on the page, providing context; and 65 (3%) without Guam or GU (and most of those either refer to a horse or are transcription errors). Star Garnet (talk) 07:32, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

I'm also sketpical that random off-site usage is more often just "Barrigada" than "Barrigada, Guam", since hardly anyone knows where Barrigada is. Tooling around in Google News results, use of "Barrigada" alone seem to be mostly confined to news sources in Guam or nearby. Use of it alone appears in plenty of headlines that aren't from the region, but their actual article texts tend to specify that it's in Guam. At any rate, the argument that Barrigada by itself is not ambiguous and is in popular enough use to stand alone isn't really an argument against USPLACE at all, since it just has "Foo, Bar" as a default; we have lots of places at article titles like Chicago, Atlanta, Minneapolis, etc., when an overwhelming commonness and pattern of undisambiguated usage justifies it. But there is no such overwhelming pattern for Barrigada.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:23, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

• No per this RM on Dededo in Guam. We should not be adding disambiguation where it's unnecessary. Number 57 08:21, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
• Yes. They're places in the US, so USPLACE is the convention to follow. I see no good reason why it shouldn't be applied consistently throughout. ╠╣uw [talk] 11:05, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

  The good reason USPLACE shouldn't be applied consistently to the territories as it is applied to places in the US is that the territories aren't places in the US; they are only places that belongs to the US. This is like your wallet: it belongs to you, but it is not in you, nor is it part of you. Your lungs and throat. on the other hand, are in you, so they are part of you. The territories are like your wallet: they belong to the US; the states and DC are like your lungs and throat, they are in the US. Mercy11 (talk) 03:54, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

  But the guidelines make no such distinction. It's one you're trying to impose, not a rationale for why the current guidance shouldn't apply. "I want to change X to Y" isn't an argument that Y applies now.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:41, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

• Yes USPLACE applies to US territories. Reywas92^Talk 13:35, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
• Yes—per SMcCandlish's well-reason comments and the common sense idea that a place in the US should follow USPLACE as a naming convention. Imzadi 1979 → 19:15, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
• Comment - the territories are not in the US. See the Encyclopedia Britannica entry for the United States which has a map and explains that the US is 50 states and DC. The Eloquent Peasant (talk) 23:36, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

  Our article literally says "The United States of America...consist[s] of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territories, and nine Minor Outlying Islands." Reywas92^Talk 00:28, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

  Which article is incorrect, and which is one reason we don't use Wikipedia as a source of reliable information in discussions like this. The United States consists of the 50 States and DC, not the territories or, more, accurately, not the unincorporated territories. Unincorporated territories are possessions, so they aren't a part of the US and, thus, places in the unincorporated territories aren't places in the United States, which is why WP:USPLACE should not apply to the unincorporated territories, but only to the 50 States and DC. Mercy11 (talk) 03:55, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

  They don't need to be "in" the US to still be US places.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:06, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

  The Eloquent Peasant: Per Geography of the United States: The term "United States," when used in the geographical sense, refers to the contiguous United States (sometimes referred to as the Lower 48), the state of Alaska, the island state of Hawaii, the five insular territories of Puerto Rico, Northern Mariana Islands, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, and American Samoa, and minor outlying possessions." Since we're here to discuss geographical names, that seems pretty clear. ╠╣uw [talk] 09:40, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

• No. As it currently reads, that "According to the comma convention, articles on populated places IN the United States are typically titled "Placename, State" when located within a state or "Placename, Territory" in US territories", WP:USPLACE uses "territories" implying UNincorporated territories, yet UNincorporated territories are, by definition, not IN the United States, making the statement at WP:USPLACE self-contradictory. For a territory to be IN the United States it has to be part of it, i.e., it has to be INcorporated into the United States, which the territories are not.^[1] The United States consists only of the 50 States and DC.^[2] The territories (or, more precisely, the "UNincorporated" territories) are possessions of the United States but aren't part of it.^[3][4][5][6] Mercy11 (talk) 00:15, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

  Your USGS link starts with "Geographically (and as a general reference), the United States of America includes all areas considered to be under the sovereignty of the United States, but does not include leased areas." Territories of the United States makes clear that "American territories are under American sovereignty." I'm not even going to touch the racist Insular Cases. Reywas92^Talk 00:43, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

  The link is from the US Geographical Survey so, naturally, it points out that they do geographical work that includes the unincorporated territories, and not just the 50 states and DC. You need to read further down to locate their definition for "United States", namely "The 50 States and the District of Columbia." This definition is in agreement with the definition the SCOTUS has used since 1901 (and for which I already included 4 references above) and with the definition of other reliable sources, such as the US Department of State.^[7] Mercy11 (talk) 03:32, 3 November 2023 (UTC) Mercy11 (talk) 03:32, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

  I believe the question asked is "should it apply", not "does it apply". You are answering the latter question, which is besides the point. (And the answer to that question is in fact obviously yes, because if the drafters of USPLACE did not intend for it to include territories, it would not have mentioned Placename, Territory as a model to follow. You're essentially saying, because they worded it slightly incorrectly, we should throw out whatever they had to say about territories, instead of making small adjustments to technical definitions in order to interpret it in line with their intent.)

  But the purpose of this discussion is to argue whether or not the guideline should be modified to say "no, it does not apply to territories". And for that we want to study common practice in those territories, rather than pore over what "in the United States" means. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 04:39, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

  USPLACE didn't used to include reference to territories. Mention of them was added without any consensus I can see shortly after the Dededo RM (which decreed the disambiguation wasn't necessary) by an editor who had fiercely opposed removing the disambiguation from that page. It was quite rightly removed some time after by BDD, but was subsequently readded by the same editor, although with reference to "some" usage, which they later changed to "most". IMO its inclusion has no legitimacy – it was added in a response to an RM not going the way someone wanted – and should be removed until there is shown to be consensus for it. Number 57 16:15, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

  This is true, but it is also clear that the RM should have been closed as 'no consensus' (further, roughly two-thirds of non-local mentions refer to it as "Dededo, Guam," so even the COMMONNAME argument fails). This discussion is, I believe, effectively to determine whether that inclusion stays in an edited form or goes. Star Garnet (talk) 17:53, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

  Number 57: The convention currently states, "articles on populated places in the United States are typically titled "Placename, State" when located within a state or "Placename, Territory" in US territories." That is accurate, as you can see for yourself. (A quick tally suggests around 80% of populated places in US territories are so titled.) ╠╣uw [talk] 18:21, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

  Number 57's WP:FAITACCOMPLI objection to changing the guideline text without consensus after the Dededo RM seems to be valid. (And I think there's a more narrow shortcut to something about changing policy/guideline pages without consensus to "win" a content dispute, but I don't remember what it is.)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:59, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

  I was pointing out that the specific language Number 57 mentions is no longer in the guideline, and either way simply notes the form that's typically used. Most such articles have done so since their creation. (Incidentally, I opened a discussion at that time for input on the very thing we're now discussing: how we define what's included in a country for the purposes of applying our geographic naming conventions.) ╠╣uw [talk] 10:54, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

  That's fine, I guess, but I wasn't replying to you (note the indentation level) and what you said isn't really responsive to what I wrote.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:59, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

• No As demonstrated above, this is neither the original intent nor something that has been added via consensus later. --BDD (talk) 18:03, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
• Yes, while they may not be "in" the United States, they are certainly "of the United States." USGS, which determines official names in the territories, considers them part of the United States, they participate in the same postal system that has made "city, state/territory" so ubiquitous, their governments are thoroughly intertwined with the larger United States, and the vast majority of non-local media coverage of the territories is in the United States. Star Garnet (talk) 18:13, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

  I am not sure where you got that the USGS "considers them part of the US". Did you not read the USGS link included herein? The USGS considers the territories part of their geographical work, but it's a stretch of the imagination to imply that means the territories are "part of the US" -- especially when the USGS is already saying the US is composed of the 50 states and DC plus nothing else. Likewise, the USPS and non-local media coverage operating in the territories doesn't make them part of the US, simply makes them part of their operational territory. I suggest the read the SCOTUS court cases: they have all established the territories aren't part of the US... that's why they are called "UNincorporated territories". Mercy11 (talk) 03:40, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

  You continue to focus on and emphasize irrelevant points. Whether or not the constitution extends in full to the territories has little bearing here, particularly with congress having granted birthright citizenship to 4/5 and SCOTUS determining that the territories do not have their own, separate sovereignty. All that matters here is whether the United States' naming practices have extended to them, which extends largely from whether or not they are functionally part of the United States. For two of the most relevant agencies, USGS and USPS (along with plenty of others), they functionally are. That the vast majority of American media coverage of the territories is non-local for the territories is also irrelevant; that's simply how American media works. Media in the Chicago Metro doesn't need to specify a state when they refer to Naperville, Kenosha, or Waukegan, but 95%+ of other American media will specify a state(/territory) if it's not made clear by context. Star Garnet (talk) 07:09, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

• Yes, per SMcCandlish. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 13:40, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
• Yes - AFAIK, "city, province" & "city, territory" is used for Canadian places. Therefore why not the same idea for US "city, state" & "city, territory". I believe roughly the same is done for post-1707 British places. GoodDay (talk) 18:36, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

  U.S. territories and Canadian territories are very different concepts. WP:USPLACE and WP:CANPLACE are not interchangeable. 162 etc. (talk) 19:36, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

  They should be interchangeable, as they're all parts that make up a sovereign state. GoodDay (talk) 19:42, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

  The sovereignty of U.S. Territories is open to question -- they are considered to be dependent territory and not an integral part of the nation. The uninhabited places are for the most part treated as if the federal government were the sole proprietor. But the inhabited territories occupy a gray-ish area between fully independent and an administrative subdivision. older ≠ wiser 20:36, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

  On the federal level: Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa & Guam, can't vote in US presidential elections, but they can vote for delegates to national party conventions. They don't have voting members in the US House or US Senate, but do have non-voting members in the US House. So there'en lays the question - Is this enough to call them Americans? GoodDay (talk) 20:53, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

• Yes, because 1.) we are already de facto doing this, 2.) because it aligns with common usage, and 3.) neutrality on the internal/external distinction argues for that choice. 1: We already do this almost all the time for U.S. territories, and removing the territory name would be considerably more disruptive to local consensus for specific articles and territories. Looking in Category:Municipalities in insular areas of the United States, I see that all the municipalities in Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico, and half of those in American Samoa include the territory name. (Except Dededo; if it hadn't been mentioned above, I wouldn't have noticed it was moved from Dededo, Guam because its category was not also moved, and in the years since 2015 it seems other Guam municipalities have not been changed.) The municipalities in the NMI don't, but they are a bit weird in that three out of four of them are also islands. WP:NCCS says it's a good reason not to follow the national convention when municipalities and islands are co-terminous. So like we have Nantucket instead of "Nantucket, Massachusetts", I'd support keeping those three as they are and moving the fourth to Northern Islands Municipality, Northern Mariana Islands. Today I came across an American Samoa village article that was missing the territory name, and for me this violated the principle of least surprise since I'd gotten used to US and AS locations having it. (Which is how I ended up on this discussion page.) Making the remaining AS articles consistent with the existing territory articles makes more sense; I expect they are different mostly because they have been neglected. 2: The states, territories, and federal district of the United States form a uniform namespace that does not distinguish between the different types of top-level entity. If you are addressing a letter, putting your birthplace on a form that is asking for "City, State", or mentioning the full name of a town in a national or international presentation or written conversation, you would be expected to write something like "San Juan, Puerto Rico" just as someone else might write "Springfield, Massachusetts". 3: WP:NCCS suggests "City, Country" as a reasonable default rule, so whether you consider any given territory to be geographically part of the United States or not, our current use of e.g. Arecibo, Puerto Rico is a safe choice. Choosing to write "Arecibo" instead could be interpreted as a disputable assertion that Puerto Rico is not part of the United States, because it breaks with the convention used for all other U.S. places. Pointing to the fact that it's an unincorporated territory (as are all the inhabited territories) doesn't really resolve that dispute, especially given (2). Freely associated states are probably the closest-affiliated entities that are indisputably not part of the United States. -- Beland (talk) 00:06, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

(I guess not completely neglected: there were discussions on Talk:Amouli and Talk:Futiga about whether or not to move them to match the other AS articles that include the territory name, but I guess concerns over lack of broad enough participation are what prompted this discussion. -- Beland (talk) 00:17, 3 February 2024 (UTC))

One difference about American Samoa is that birth-right U.S. citizenship does not apply there. People born there are instead United States nationals. Persons born in the other territories do have birth-right U.S. citizenship. I would still argue for using [placename], American Samoa, for articles about places there, as the territory is under U.S. jurisdiction. Donald Albury 17:55, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Since there are no comments recently, do you think we are ready to close the discussion? Interstellarity (talk) 19:18, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

@Interstellarity: Not sure my long comment adds anything new; if there are no replies within a week, I'd say it's time to wrap this up one way or another. -- Beland (talk) 00:06, 3 February 2024 (UTC)