Mav wrote:

Toby wrote:

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Whether we use The Original Name or What's Most Common In English Today, we'll still have to decide *what* these things are. If the former is more difficult to figure out than the latter (since the latter can be found by Google -- but does that really work?), then that's not an argument against the former, because if we choose the "wrong" version, it'll still work out. That is, the question for [[Confucius]] is not <Wade-Giles or Pinyin?>, it's <Chinese or Latin?>. *If* we decide for Chinese, then either Wade-Giles or Pinyin will be better than Latin; whereas if we continue with Latin (on the grounds that it's most common in English text), then Wade-Giles vs Pinyin will of course be a nonissue.

Boy you make it sound even more complicated than I even thought.

Really? You thought that it would be complicated to decide what the correct transliteration of Kong-fu-zi's Chinese name is, but you thought that it would be less complicated than <Wade-Giles or Pinyin?>? How does a decision get less complicated than a choice between 2 possibilities, and remain a decision?

Under the current system all we need to determine is what the majority of English speakers would recognize. Searching only webpages that are in English via Google is a very important tool that can give a statistically significant objective measure (of at least Internet usage - but netcitizens are our main audience anyway).

We can do the same with transliterations. But I don't think that this is a very accurate measure, since the Internet has such a small portion of human text. I'd rather know the name most commonly used by all the philosphers, historians, and Sinologists that currently write about Kong-fu-zi in English (if that's what we continue to hold relevant) than the name most commonly found on the 'Net.

Mind you this isn't the only thing that should be used to settle naming arguments but it is an objective measure nontheless.

Choosing to take objective numerical measures ("metrics") when one can, over more relevant material that's unfortunately harder to find, is one of the infamous hallmarks of a broken bureaucracy. Let's stick to whether Google tells us anything *useful*, not whether it tells us something *objective*.

Under the proposed plan everything would be subjective and requires a good deal of knowledge by the author.

It wouldn't require any particular knowledge of any particular editor; that's the beauty of the wiki!

Somebody starts an article at [[Confucius]], with the opening paragraph:

'''Confucius''' was an ancient [[China|Chinese]] [[philosophy|philosopher]].

Then someone comes along and adds some knowledge, say some dates:

'''Confucius''' ([[551 BC]] - [[479 BC]]) was a [[China|Chinese]] [[philosophy|philospher]].

Then somebody puts in more information, a Chinese transliteration:

'''Confucius''' ([[551 BC]] - [[479 BC]]), called "Kung-fu-tze" in the original [[Chinese language|Chinese]], was a [[China|Chinese]] [[philosophy|philosopher]].

The somebody remembers that back in 2002 we adopted a new policy of titling articles about people at their original nonAnglicised names, moves the article to [[Kung-fu-tze]], and rewrites the introduction:

'''Kung-fu-tze''' ([[551 BC]] - [[479 BC]]), often called '''Confucius''', was a [[China|Chinese]] [[philosophy|philospher]].

Then someone else sees that we adopted (say) a policy of preferring Pinyin, looks that up, and moves the page to [[Kong-fu-zi]], writing:

'''Kong-fu-zi''' ([[551 BC]] - [[479 BC]]), also transliterated '''Kung-fu-tze''' and often called '''Confucius''', was a [[China|Chinese]] [[philosophy|philosopher]].

Then a new person remembers that "Confucius" is itself just an old Latin transliteration:

'''Kong-fu-zi''' ([[551 BC]] - [[479 BC]]), also transliterated '''Kung-fu-tze''' and '''Confucius''', was a [[China|Chinese]] [[philosphy|philospher]].

Finally, somebody looks up the Chinese characters and incorporates them:

'''???''' ([[551 BC]] - [[479 BC]]); transliterated '''Kong-fu-zi''', '''Kung-fu-tze''', and traditionally '''Confucius'''; was a [[China|Chinese]] [[philosophy|philosopher]].

(This change doesn't accompany moving the article, since page titles must be in Latin-1 on [[en:]].)

Complicated? In one sense, yes. Just look at all of the edits! But in this sense, the wiki process itself is inherently complicated. We improve slowly, step by step, building long history logs. In another sense, however, this isn't complicated at all. Each individual edit is the addition of a single fact. One person comes along, with one piece of knowledge, and updates the article appropriately. Nothing could be simpler!

(There is one complication in that whoever makes the move from [[Kung-fu-tze]] to [[Kong-fu-zi]] will have to go back to [[Confucius]] and fix the redirect. We can avoid even this by fixing redirects to redirects automatically when moving a page -- a feature request that we'd be wise to implement in any case.)

This would be fine if we were all experts in the subject's field and were writing for other experts but we ain't on both counts. "Know your audience and write for that audience" is a basic maxim of good writing style.

I've explained (I hope to your satisfaction) why the writers' expertise isn't necessary at any stage. How about the readers'? I don't see how the above paragraph requires any expertise to be read -- everything is explained. (Another paragraph further down in the article can also go over the origin of the name "Confucius" itself, and yet another one can explain how "Kong-fu-zi" means "Master Kong".)

Under the proposed system redirects are absolutely necessary to make it work. Under the current system only a few links will be missed if there are no redirects (which is the case for the great majority of articles).

OK, now that's a good point, one that hadn't been made before. (Actually, it had, but reading in digest messes with chronology ^_^.) Any policy that I support will demand redirects from other common names -- this goes beyond the current debate and should be our convention anyway. Sometimes a writer won't *know* about other common names, but the current convention is no help in that case either. Sometimes a writer won't know our conventions or won't follow them, but the current convention is no help in that case either either. So I think that we can manage this if the naming convention is clear that redirects from other common names are a standard requirement.

BTW, If we change the convention and you spot some user going around creating articles at obscure but (under the new convention) correct titles without creating these redirects, then you'd certainly be justified in dropping me a note and telling me to go clean it up, since it's all my fault that they're doing this. (Hey, I already create new redirects all the damn time ^_^.)

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Belittle their intelligence??? How?

By forcing a pedantic and foreign title down their throats that they probably have never seen before and probably won't ever be able to pronounce - no matter how many times they see it.

I've already dealt with the pedantry charge in another post. But who's forcing things down anybody's throat? Are you forcing incorrect and Anglicised titles down my throat? No, we have to choose one thing or the other, and that happens to be the current policy (not that I characterised it very kindly just now -_^). The other options are listed there at the beginning. The same situation will persist if the policy is changed.

There is no reason we should start off an article by talking down to our readers from an ivory tower.

Agreed. But I just can't see how this is doing that. Heck, I never knew that Luna was called "Lunik" in Russian, but I'm glad to learn that and will call it "Lunik" myself now, rejoicing in my increased knowledge.

Of course the native form and alternate transliteration should be bold on the first line and the article with those titles redirected to the most widely used form.

Right, we agree on the most important point: All reasonable forms should appear in bold on the first line and appear as redirects to whatever form is chosen by our conventions. Whatever happens as a result of this debate today, we should strengthen our preference for creating redirects. Would anybody object if I put in such a point on [[Wikipedia:Naming conventions]]?

A good article would also explain just how and when the non-English forms have been used. This is information best suited for explanation in the article - no reason to have it in the title.

Indeed, no reason for such an explanation even in the first paragraph. That paragraph will just list the possibilities, as seen in my [[Confucius]] example above. And we should also explain just how and when the *most* common form is used.

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"Confucius", of course, is not English. It's a Latin form of a Chinese name, which happens to be the form of that name most commonly (but not exclusively) used in English text.

Yes it is English because that is what is most widely used by English speakers. English picks-up and modifies non-English terms all the time in the process of Anglicization. If and when those terms are used by a good majority of English speakers then they have entered the English language and we should therefore use that term to title articles. This is especially true for proper nouns of people, places and things.

Proper names like "Confucius" and "Toby" and "Daniel" aren't English, IMO. But this may be an argument over semantics -- what counts as English, and what counts as the inclusion in English text of something else? I can accept for the sake of argument that any name that appears in ordinary English text is itself English. What I can't accept is that only the plurality form is English. Is "favor" not English because it's outvoted by "favour"? If it is English, then why is "Kong-fu-zi" not English because it's outvoted by "Confucius"? Both do appear in English text.

It could also have a general chilling effect on the whole project: People would feel that it is required to properly research what the "true" name of an article should be before they create it instead of just relying on the name they know (which may be wrong, but is very often correct per our current system).

This is part of a much bigger problem that affects all of Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a work in progress, and we need to stress to people that they can write what they know and don't need to be perfect. Any change that we subsequently make to somebody's writing is chilling -- I remember how disconcerting it was when my work was first corrected -- but that's fundamental to how Wikipedia works. We all just do the best we can, and it keeps improving.

Otherwise somebody will come by later and move the article and probably chide the original author for their Anglo-centric based ignorance. Burr

Well, Lir might chide them, but that's because she's mean. Eclecticology and I certainly won't, we'll just move it (if the convention is in fact changed). Just like you wouldn't chide somebody for a poor title now.

-- Toby