On Tuesday 19 November 2002 06:35 pm, Toby Bartels wrote:
> Zoe wrote in part:
> >Well, no, I disagree that "*everyone* agrees" the names are incorrect. In
> >your example of Confucius, should we use the old-style Chinese
> > transliteration or the new version?
>
> This isn't an argument that "Confucius" is incorrect,
> but rather that it's not quite clear what *is* correct instead.
> If any Chinese version is *more* correct than "Confucius"
> (a point that I admit that many here would deny),
> then any Chinese version would be an improvement,
> even if still not perfect.
Very wrong. What is most correct in English is the form used and recognized by
the greatest number of English speakers. Dictionary makers realize this and
make changes that reflect widest usage. This is an organic process that
changes with time and we should prefer the terms and forms that are most
useful to the greatest number of English speakers.
> >Should we not transliterate at all but force those who
> >only know the Latin alphabet to try to figure out his REAL name by only
> > being able to look it up in Chinese ideographs?
>
> Nobody will be *forcing* any user to do anything of the sort.
> Every article should have all common spellings (English and original)
> in boldface in the first paragraph (we do this now if we know enough to),
> and they should have redirects from all of these that are in Latin-1
> (we do this now too if we know enough to).
> Searching will work; linking will work -- no matter who wins.
I have to agree with Zoe here. Back in March, April and May I moved many
hundreds of articles from incorrectly named titles to correct ones per our
naming conventions. Many of these were from overly complex non-English forms
to forms that most English speakers would understand and find useful
(Google's language tools were and still are a useful resource in this
regard). I can't remember a single instance where the author of the
non-Anglicized titled article made a redirect from the Anglicized title.
In short: If most English speakers on both sides of the pond know a term by a
certain spelling, then why have a convention that places the article on that
term at a pedanticly "correct" spelling and then has to rely on redirects for
what most people use? Remember the "surprise factor": users should not be
surprised by where a link takes them.
That is not what redirects are for. Redirects are for doing the exact opposite
- to catch non-standard alternate forms that are not as used as widely as the
main form. That is why my idea of "redirect priority" never caught on as a
way to make my proposed city naming convention work (in which Paris would be
at [[Paris]] redirect to [[Paris, France]]). I learned the error of my ways.
Please learn from my "redirect fallacy" mistake.
> >decided that his name would ONLY be in Chinese?
>
> Nobody is proposing this, any more than anybody is proposing
> that his name should be given ONLY in English.
> Rather, the question is which form is to be *preferred*,
> in particular which form is to be the article title.
> Every form will be (and is currently, when set up correctly) *supported*.
>
>
> -- Toby
What is and should be preferred is the title that is most likely to be linked
to spontaneously in articles and what is most likely to be searched for.
Please don't try to make contributing and using Wikipedia more difficult than
it needs be by going down the opposite route.
This idea of yours is also more complicated than you might think: There are
many competing transliteration of many non-English terms. Which should we
use? What about non-Latin charsets? It only seems logical to allow them so
that we can have the exact name of things (there are also competing non-Latin
charsets).
This is madness and not at all useful -- leave the pedantic language lessons
in the article itself. Technical matters that touch on ease of linking, using
and searching for articles trump using the native forms any day.
There is no reason to belittle the intelligence of users and unnecessarily
surprise them by having articles at non-English titles. This is the English
language Wikipedia, so lets stop the sillyness and title things in *shock,
horror* English.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
Ray Saintonge wrote:
>Toby Bartels wrote (to Lir):
>>Have you signed up for the new English mailing list <wikiEN-l>?
>>You can go to <http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l>
>>if you want to subscribe to it; else you might miss some responses.
>Another mailing list!!!!!!! I'm already getting 100 e-mails a day.
>Should I want more?
Except for some crossposting while we make the transition,
I don't think that you'll get more email, just email with
a different little blurb in the bracket at the front of the Subject.
>From a purely practical POV, if you're not reading <wikiEN-l>,
then you're not participating fully in the Anglicisation debate.
-- Toby
Erik Moeller wrote:
>In a voting process, the discourse period can be time-limited. Of
>course, people could continue to discuss the issue on a dedicated page, but an
>enforcable decision could be made before that.
And the same thing is true of a consensus process.
We discuss until a consensus is reached an implement that;
The Cunctator (or whoever ^_^) can continue to talk forever afterwards.
(For example, Cunc still talks about getting rid of banning,
despite the clear consensus in favour of banning.
If we voted on banning instead, the result would be the same.)
>>Agreed, but IMO, that's exactly what *you* are trying to do ^_^.
>Not at all, the idea is to decentralize power, and thereby reduce the
>potential for abuse. Voting seems to me very much complementary to the
>wiki idea.
Voting seems quite antithetical to wiki if you ask me.
(Not completely antithetical, of course;
the usual web page written by a single author
is even more far off from either of these.)
And I've never understood how decentralisation will result.
What *would* help with decentralising administrators' power
is mav's idea of automatic old hand status.
-- Toby
Zoe wrote (sarcastically):
>Oh, good, I like that. Let's change all the rules intermittantly, thus
>requiring someone to go back to all of the articles that were created under
>the old rules and have to change all of them. That makes a lot of sense.
I'd propose that those that were the primary supporters of such a change
be the ones required to go over and change things. That's only fair.
-- Toby
I also want to chime in to support Larry's proposal. These past few weeks, we
have really been dealing with stupidity and forgetting our larger goals as a
result.
Danny
I think the purpose behind the convention is:
* put things where people can find them
* let people know the "correct" names
To fulfill these 2 principles, we several various naming conventions, as well as the redirect feature and disambiguation pages.
For English speakers (our target audience), Roma means gypsies and Rome is a city in Italy.
Of course English is not the only Wikipedia language. The Italian Wikipedia (when and if we get one) will call the Italian city something else (like 'Roma').
We can't yet write a single article with multiple translations, so we have divided up the work into several related 'pedias. But each 'pedia tries to put things where people can find them, as well as let people know the "correct" names for them.
Ed Poor
I can confirm that there is no longer any valid user on Wiki-EN whose name starts with "Throbbing".
All T.M.C.'s contributions are now under "TMC". You will see "TMC" under Recent Changes, not "Throbbing".
T.M.C.'s "Throbbing" account has been disabled, but of course he can still log in as "TMC".
Thanks to Jimbo for requesting this, and to whichever developer ran Brion's script.
Ed Poor
KQ wrote:
> LDC saw the writing on the wall long before I did. I should have left
> well enough alone. apologies again for the unbanning; I'm having less
> and less faith that Lir will cease antagonizing.
I should apologize for defending her early on as well. Yes, LDC was
right.
Larry
--
"We have now sunk to a depth at which the re-statement of the obvious is
the first duty of intelligent men." --George Orwell
Tarquin pleaded:
> Could someone fix this list? Reply-to is not set;
> Ed's last post came to me only.
I think I have fixed the reply-to address in "WikiEN-l mailing list administration, General Options Section".
Ed Poor
List Administrator Pro Tem
Wiki-En mailing list
"We aim to please"