Hello,
First of all, as a collaborator of the Valencian (Catalan-speaking) community and a participant in the debates that we have within the Spanish community, I can verify that Jeslop is acting in accordance with what the Spanish community, for the most part, observed and denounced: that there was a user who, without collaborating and on his own, was vandalizing Galician place names (I did not remember that he also tried it with Catalan). No one defended that these editions were correct. Therefore, it cannot be said that Jeslop is vandalizing editions, quite the opposite. We are facing an example of misrepresentation. It seems to me a pity that a user who does not work in the community, who does not respond to changesets or who does it in a bad way, has not preferred to argue and discuss with the community about how to label the translations of some place names (I will obviate that his first performance was to directly modify the “name=*” to eliminate the official place name and that it was only in Spanish, which is not official).
Secondly, it does not seem fair to me that it is implied that the Spanish user community is not democratic. The reasons that led the user “dcapillae” to voluntarily leave the Spanish community have nothing to do with this topic and it diverts the debate. The Spanish community frequently debates various topics and tries to reach agreements without trying to exclude anyone.
Thirdly, regarding the edition of place names and their possible translations, it is a very complex issue. The easy criterion to follow would be that if a place name (such as the name of a city) is widely used by the Spanish-speaking population, name:es=* should be added. The problem is that this is not so easy to figure out. Although there are some Spanish-speaking people who use a translated place name, many others do not. Who do we listen to? On what basis do we base ourselves to know if that translated place-name really is the habitual use in Spanish?
In Spain, there have been records of toponymy for a long time. Currently, in many parts of Spain with official languages other than Spanish, the place names used by the local population in their own language are being recovered on official maps. In the past, translations of many place names were made official by putting them on maps, but their use was non-existent among the local population. For about 40 years (just after the dictatorship), works and maps have been published that recover the original place names. Before, during the dictatorship, Spanish translations were used that today have lost their use. That is why the Franco dictatorship is named as a historical period, not to accuse Andie of being a Francoist. Even the IGN, which in the past only showed place names in Spanish (and which defenders of translations use as a data source), is removing those place names.
And we come to the present, in which many of those old place names in Spanish are falling or have fallen into disuse. In the Valencian community it does not make sense to maintain translations that nobody uses except for the old maps that were published in Spanish. Based on all this argument, I think that the solution of the Catalan community seems to me very correct: label those place names that have fallen into disuse as old_name:es=. And if the usage is clearly current today, add the translation in name:es=. The key would be to define what we mean by a disused place name.
PS: Although I have reviewed it, this text is an automated translation. Sorry for the translation misunderstandings.