Talk:Q84

Delete files of the coat of arms and the flag of the City of London, unrelated to the city as a whole (Greater London). --Maxton (talk) 03:32, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

Greater London is another object: [1] --Dieterdreist (talk) 10:19, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

…and City of London Corporation is another one: [2].— GJo (talk) 13:53, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

I've remove the instance of metropolitan area here, because the metropolitan area is another object as well. --Dieterdreist (talk) 10:19, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

Banner change (temporary)

I am about to change the pagebanner to verify something on behalf of English Wikivoyage. It will be changed back within 10 minutes. Thanks --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 13:51, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

"Modern Babylon"

A well-meaning but highly wrong editor is attempting to add "Modern Babylon" to London as an alternative name on the basis of it once having been used in a movie title.

(a) We don't do needless advertising, especially for unnotable movies.

(b) It is an completely unnotable movie, unimportant to anyone's conception of London. It has some newspaper reviews but doesn't even have a Wikipedia page 10 years on.

(c) If the standard is "any epithet for any city from anyone ever", there are also movie titles like London: The Greatest City, London: Next Stop, ... London-City (not used for the City of London), London: The Capital, &c. Are we adding "The Greatest City", "Next Stop", "London City", and "The Capital" as alt names for London? It seems clear many people do refer to London as "the capital" but it's obviously not restricted to London in any meaningful sense and unhelpful to include. "Modern Babylon" works the same way.

(d) The relevant and notable Disraeli quote is that "London is a modern Babylon" and even if it had been (which it wasn't) "...the Modern Babylon" (like in an historically important Yellow Journalism campaign the editor didn't mention because no one but specialists remembers it a century later), it's an entirely religious and descriptive name, based on the Book of Revelations. There are also Judeo-Christians out there saying New York/Paris/Hollywood/Berlin/... is/was a/the modern/Modern Babylon. It's just a definition of the word "Babylon" in the English language: "a place of moral turpitude", "a place where people have more fun than should be allowed", "a place with powerful/rich/famous people enjoying the benefits of power/wealth/fame and I wasn't invited", etc. It's just another word for "Sodom".

(e) The much more important use, which Disraeli was referencing obliquely, is Voltaire's "Paris, Babylon Moderne". (Voltaire uses "moderne" but that's just because of the rules of French orthography. It'd be capitalized under normal English rules.) Even so, our entry for Paris (correctly) doesn't include that in the town's list of names.

The Voltaire involvement is direct and historically important, possibly, but apart from him are we adding The Capital to every world capital and Babylon and Sodom in every language to every city that occasionally comes onto a local moralizing Christian's radar? It's unnecessary, unhelpful, and silly.

Put another way: I'm adding a shit-ton of alternative spellings of the Arabic name which is apparently officially and irregularly transcribed as "Jebel Quruntul" to our entry on Mount of Temptation. They aren't right and they may only have been used in a few places. I'm still adding them because if someone is trying to figure out what an author meant by "Jabal al-Quruntal" I want them to be able to find the right information and links to an article about what it should have been. If someone is looking to understand which city is "Modern Babylon"... to anyone who would use that name unironically in the first place, the answer would be any modern city and (cross culturally) Paris or Weimar Berlin much more so at every level than London. From a Google result that I'm not going to dignify with the traffic from clicking through for the whole quote:

https://m.facebook.com › ... › Sunday Service 1-3-20

Fountain of Life Covenant Church - Sunday Service 1-3-20 | Facebook

... Yes, Washington DC is Babylon Silicon Valley is Babylon Seattle is Babylon New York City is Babylon Shanghai is Babylon Kenya is Babylon Mexico City is ...

Hopefully you get the point?

One cool exception, by the way! To the KGB, San Francisco was "Babylon" in their coded messages. I think important official code names might deserve inclusion, even if this vague moralizing descriptor doesn't. LlywelynII (talk) 19:53, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

Problem with P17

It seems that the default value of the Country is Q2277 which is the Roman Empire. It should be Q145 / United Kingdom following the example of other cities. Languageseeker (talk) 14:19, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

@Languageseeker: no, it's Q145 (look at preferred rank or at query). --Infovarius (talk) 22:12, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

@Infovarius:. Thank you! The query is a much better solution. Languageseeker (talk) 20:01, 26 May 2022 (UTC)