Talk:Order of Merit

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is part of WikiProject Orders, Decorations, and Medals, a collaborative effort to improve, organise, and standardise Wikipedia's coverage of national honours systems. For guidelines and a participants list see the project page. You can discuss the project at its talk page

This article about Exonumia is part of the WikiProject Numismatics, which is an attempt to facilitate the categorization and creation of accurate and formal Numismatism-related articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate please visit the project page, where you can join and see a list of open tasks to help with.

I thought the page might be better if we could see the field in which the recipients excelled, rather than going to each seperate page. Stevenscollege 9/5/2005

Definitely. Thanks for that! I'd been vaguely wondering who some of them were. Proteus (Talk) 08:27, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

Im wondering if we need the links mentioned under the "See Also" heading, that are also mentioned in the "Table of the British honours system" box, I dont think we need two seperate links to the same page. Stevenscollege 10/7/05

[edit] Disambiguation page ?

I think there should be a disambig page for Order of Merit, For example there is the Order of Merit of the Principality of Leichtenstein, and I believe there is (or at least was) one in Germany as well. Dowew 03:33, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

As far as I can see, Dowew has a point. Order of Merit Liechtenstein deserves a place on this dab page. Why, you may ask, don't you not fix the article appropriately? Well, we probably will – in due time --Ezeu 01:18, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

I moved the page from "Order of Merit" to "Order of Merit (Commonwealth)" as there are many orders of merit. Could an administrator move the disambiguation page from Order of Merit (disambiguation) to simply "Order of Merit" please. Cheers, Likedeeler 19:40, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

I have moved this page back to Order of Merit and the disambiguation page to Order of Merit (disambiguation), since this is the primary topic and the one that most articles are linking to. See Wikipedia:Disambiguation. -- Necrothesp 00:25, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

WP:ODM has specific guidelines for disambiguation. Given that medal names are often shared over various national honours systems, articles pertaining to these are disambiguated as a matter of course. When we are talking about the Cross of Valour, which is the primary decoration? The decoration of that name awarded by Canada or that awarded by Australia? It's a bit of a sterile argument, hence best avoided. As far as the OM goes, the Order of Merit (Russian Federation) seems to be the only listing on the disambiguation page which has the same wording - given that this has not been written yet, we can probably do without disambiguation until it is.

Xdamr^talk 01:05, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

The British OM should be the primary topic since it is the most linked to, as per the standard disambiguation guidelines. ODM is only a project and its guidelines do not therefore supersede established generic guidelines. To quote the disambiguation guidelines:

"When there is a well known primary meaning for a term or phrase, much more used than any other (this may be indicated by a majority of links in existing articles or by consensus of the editors of those articles that it will be significantly more commonly searched for and read than other meanings), then that topic may be used for the title of the main article, with a disambiguation link at the top."

If you have a look at the links to Order of Merit (bearing in mind that many links were recently changed from Order of Merit to Order of Merit (Commonwealth), which is incorrect anyway, after this article was originally renamed), I think you'll see what most are actually referring to and are likely to refer to in the future (unsurprisingly on English Wikipedia). You can't really compare it to the two Crosses of Valour, which are both awarded by English-speaking countries of similar size and are thus likely to be linked to equally often. We are aiming for maximum usability and it thus makes more sense for "Order of Merit" to link to this article, which is likely to be what the editor inserting the links intends, than to a disambiguation article. -- Necrothesp 13:14, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

I see no reason to prefer the British Order of Merit to any other ones. The fact that more articles link to the British one is simply because this is the English-speaking wiki. Things surely are different in the French or German wikipedia. If the British think they must name it simply "Order of Merit" rather than "British Order of Merit" it should still be treated just like any other order of merit. And it's not like the British invented the whole thing, the Pour le Mérite was established long before (1740) the British came into being in 1902. Likedeeler 21:35, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree. As I note above, I accept that at this point disambiguation is unnecessary (and that 'Commonwealth' was the wrong disambiguator in any event), but to privilege one nation's medal over another's strikes me as being a violation of the spirit of WP:NPOV. It is correct that that WP:ODM is merely a project, but it should also be noted that WP:DISAMBIG is a guideline, free to be departed from as and when appropriate. I would consider that this nexus of nationality, name, and subject is one which justifies such a departure.

Xdamr^talk 22:23, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

So you're inclined to ignore Wikipedia guidelines on article naming? Why exactly? Yes, things would be different on another language Wikipedia, but this is English Wikipedia and links from other wikis are irrelevant to us. In any case, how many other orders are just called the Order of Merit, in English? Most of them are in reality in another language. As in Pour le Mérite, which you may notice is actually in French (and doesn't actually mean "Order of Merit" in any case)! If a person speaking English says "Order of Merit" which one are they most likely to be referring to? That's the salient question. The answer, I think, is the British one, particularly since it's one of the few that's only ever referred to as the "Order of Merit" without a national qualifier (you may not like it, but it's a fact - it's simply not referred to as the "British Order of Merit"). This is simply a matter of usability, not a matter of favouring one nation's honours over another. It's the same as London defaulting to London, England, not London, Ontario (and equally Paris defaulting to Paris, France and not Paris, Texas). Because if someone links to those cities from another article, on balance of probabilities it's most likely that's the city they're referring to. Same situation here. -- Necrothesp 22:48, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

If a person who speaks English sais "Order of Merit", then he or she means "Order of Merit" - an order which exists in a variety of countries such as the USA, Germany, France and the United Kingdom. If many articles link to the British one, well, then perhaps those lings should be changed. There are nearly 40 "Orders of Merit" on the disambiguation page and I see no reason for preferential treatment of the British one other than the obvious national pride of an Englishman. As a compromise, I would suggest listing the British order first on the disambiguation page before all the others. Axt (talk) 12:40, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Status of Order

I was just reading through the British honours list and most of the articles mention the status of honours in comparison to the other honours availible whislt this article only mentions that the Merit is one of the highest regular honours today. Would the article read better if this was expanded to explain where the honour is on the British scale and how this compares with its use in the commonwealth?