Category talk:Birds at the Cincinnati Zoo

Renaming proposal

I think renaming this category as "Birds at the Cincinnati Zoo" is unnecessary. It would make the category inconsistent with sister subcategories of "Category:Birds in zoos in the United States". — SMUconlaw (talk) 10:27, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

"Birds in zoos" is grammatically correct, but "Birds in Cincinnati Zoo" is not. It would need a "the" at the very least. Also, "at" is clearly the most common preposition to use in these situations; note the following list. Category:Waterfowl at the Cincinnati Zoo, Category:Animals at the Cincinnati Zoo, Category:Reptiles at the Cincinnati Zoo, Category:Insects at the Cincinnati Zoo, Category:Mammals at the Cincinnati Zoo, Category:Ungulates at the Cincinnati Zoo, Category:Bears at the Cincinnati Zoo, Category:Polar bears at the Cincinnati Zoo, Category:Primates at the Cincinnati Zoo, Category:Rhinoceroses at the Cincinnati Zoo, Category:Felines at the Cincinnati Zoo, Category:White lions at the Cincinnati Zoo, Category:Cheetahs at the Cincinnati Zoo, Category:Tigers at the Cincinnati Zoo, Category:Canines at the Cincinnati Zoo, and Category:Plants at the Cincinnati Zoo.

This is the way the Cincinnati Zoo itself talks about the animals here, e.g. "Pay tribute to Martha, the last known passenger pigeon that passed away at the Zoo in 1914" (not "in"), etc. The local paper also most often uses this language, such as "Look what's new at the Zoo" (not "in" the Zoo). Google "Birds in Cincinnati Zoo" and all the top hits are Commons and Wikipedia, but Google "Birds at the Cincinnati Zoo" and the top hits are the zoo itself and locals who have taken photos. It's overwhelmingly clear that this is the preferred grammatical structure to use here. – Quadell (talk) 11:24, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

I agree with you about the missing the. As for renaming the category so that it uses at instead of in, at the end of the day I have no strong objection, but for consistency all the subcategories of "Category:Birds in zoos in the United States" will also need to be renamed. In fact, it is likely that all "[ABC animal] in [XYZ Zoo]" will have to be renamed for consistency, which makes me wonder if the possibly enormous time and effort required is worth it. One or more editors working on "Category:Cincinnati Zoo" have decided to use the at formula, but that doesn't make the in formula incorrect. — SMUconlaw (talk) 13:46, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

I have seen hundreds of such moves back and forward, and that has to stop. We should at least be coherent with the higher level cats. It is not google that has to dictate our category structure and naming, and the less variations we do have, the less problems. 62 at variants, 80 or so in variants and 700 of variants. It is clear that we will have least problems with "of" but this should become a CFD for all zoo animals. --Foroa (talk) 14:16, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

I don't really have an opinion about the nomenclature for other zoos. Dialects are different in different parts of the world; if people in San Diego are more apt to say "Come see the birds in our zoo" rather than "Come see the birds at our zoo", that's fine. I just know how it's referred to here in Cincinnati. I don't want to take part in any larger preposition crusade; I just want the Cincinnati Zoo's categories to be named appropriately.

Anyway, I think everyone agrees that the current name is wrong, since it's missing "the". Since we need to change it anyway, I say we change the name to match the 17 other Cincinnati Zoo categories. It doesn't sound like anyone objects to that suggestion, right? We just want to avoid back-and-forth petty naming disputes, right? – Quadell (talk) 18:09, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

To summarize, my position is (1) a name change is warranted in this specific case, and (2) Category:Birds at the Cincinnati Zoo is at least as good as any other option. If there's a larger movement to standardize "in", "at", and "of", that's fine, but this really isn't the venue to sort that out. – Quadell (talk) 18:09, 7 May 2013 (UTC)