On Mon, Jul 14, 2008 at 3:22 PM, WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
Please address the argument, not the person.
Ok, then the argument being made by you is very POINTy.
But to actually get to the content, allow me to summarize my interpretation of the two positions on the page in question.
1. The correct name of the sword should be the title because it's correct, and there is no clear indication that the incorrect name has achieved much more widespread usage than the correct name. Redirect the incorrect morons over to this page.
2. The incorrect name of the sword should be the title because more people know it by that name. Redirect the pedantic elitists over to this page.
(Personal attacks added for flavor.)
While calling a source would be an effective card for either side to play, I don't see sources as being as much a part of this dispute as you make it out to be. Presumably sources exist on both sides -- that is, sources referring to either name, not claiming that one is correct (an "existence" or "usage" source).
I would be surprised if a reliable source could be found claiming that either is correct, short of a translation chart. Which we have. So, yes, we arguably have a source for case 1.
So your comment of "The problem is how to determine whether knowing how to use a particular look-up table is really trivial..." seems incredibly asinine to me. It's a lookup table, something you learn how to use in elementary school, so I would hope our editors know how to use one. And if the actual characters in the table are confusing to someone due to unfamiliarity with the language under discussion then that person probably doesn't have an informed opinion on translation from that language to English.
In that case "show me a source that says f(x) = y" is the only remaining argument that case 2 has, a request that looks utterly ridiculous to someone who has even minimal knowledge of the language -- or even someone of average intelligence who has both the chart and the Japanese name.
To conclude, it seems clear to me that case 1 wins. Linking to some chart should be all that's required as a source.