2012/8/14 Nikola Smolenski smolensk@eunet.rs:
I believe it should be possible to alleviate this problem to an extent by introducing automatic transcription between languages and specifying what language the mayor's "default" name is in. If automatic transcription gets it wrong, it could still be overriden when someone enters the name in another language.
It is guaranteed to be profoundly broken. The above-mentioned Hebrew names will be transliterated as <'mrm mcn'> (the apostrophes are part of the transliteration!) and <ywnh yhb>. The same problem applies to Arabic, Punjabi and many other languages. Without manual maintenance it will perpetuate horrendously wrong transliteration.
Some very limited auto-transliteration is OK, but just as a suggestion. I was actually going to write an email about that. But it must not be automatic all the way and propagate to all wikis.
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore