On 8 Sept K P wrote:
On 9/7/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
On 9/8/07, K P <kpbotany at gmail.com> wrote:
Use of parenthetical remarks in the intro paragraph is leading to these streams of other language words so long you can't find the introductory sentence--although they look less paranthetical when they're 27 words longer than the containing sentence.
I guess I find this elegant:
John Smith (1864-1899) was a....
but you're right, this becomes heavy: John Smith (born 1864 London, died 1899 Tunbridge Wells, England) was a...
Birth and death dates are fundamental to any biography. Birth and death locations can wait till later in the article.
I could compromise on years alone, but it's a give em 8 digits and a dash, and they'll take a dozen locations and alternative spellings situation.
I agree with you, I honestly do, but consider the challenge I face in my little corner of Wikipedia: it is the exception, not the rule, that a given placename has several spellings & at least one alternative name. Having only one name spelled one way per town, mountain, river -- & even person -- would make my research much easier, let alone naming articles.
Part of the problem is that there is no standardized method of transliterating words from the Ethiopian script, & the rest of the problem is that every nationality often has its own name for many places in that country. And these differences in transliteration are often not trivial: last week I wrote an article on a village whose name has been spelled "Imi", "Imay" & "Hinna". (All are in relatively common use.) Even the capital of that country, Addis Ababa, has its own variant spelling (Addis Abeba), & a common alternative name (Finfinne -- what the largest nationality in Ethiopia insist the city should be called). Follow what the experts do? Well, the experts also differ amongst themselves, but add th ecomplication of unicode characters; further, I've seen more than expert spell the same town or landmark different ways in different books. This could be a real mess if it weren't for the fact the few of us working on that topic tend to be rather easy-going about the issue -- & by default, I get to make the decisions because I'm writing the articles.
If you can come up with a better way to provide this information than using those ugly parantheses, I'm all ears. But until then, I'll stick with them. At least it's consistent, so if someone does come up with a better way, it'll be much simpler to fix.
Geoff
Geoffrey Burling wrote:
I agree with you, I honestly do, but consider the challenge I face in my little corner of Wikipedia: it is the exception, not the rule, that a given placename has several spellings & at least one alternative name. Having only one name spelled one way per town, mountain, river -- & even person -- would make my research much easier, let alone naming articles. [...] If you can come up with a better way to provide this information than using those ugly parantheses, I'm all ears. But until then, I'll stick with them. At least it's consistent, so if someone does come up with a better way, it'll be much simpler to fix.
One method I like is to move it to its own section once it gets past some subjective "too unwieldy" limit. For example, look at how [[Muammar al-Gaddafi]] handles the zillions of transliteration variations: In a separate "name" section (section 9 currently), not in the intro or anywhere near it.
-Mark
On 9/13/07, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
One method I like is to move it to its own section once it gets past some subjective "too unwieldy" limit. For example, look at how [[Muammar al-Gaddafi]] handles the zillions of transliteration variations: In a separate "name" section (section 9 currently), not in the intro or anywhere near it.
It's perhaps a question of taste. I like to see all the really different, but commonly used, variations on a name in the opening paragraph, so a reader is sure they're on the right article. For example, [[Karlovy Vary]] should definitely include "Carlsbad" in the lead...though I don't understand why the German name, "Karlbad" is listed there.
It's usually overkill and unwieldy to retain minor variations in spelling, though. Should [[Lyon]] mention its alternate spelling, "Lyons"? Torino and Turin? Hard to come up witha precise rule...
Steve
On 13/09/2007, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
It's perhaps a question of taste. I like to see all the really different, but commonly used, variations on a name in the opening paragraph, so a reader is sure they're on the right article. For example, [[Karlovy Vary]] should definitely include "Carlsbad" in the lead...though I don't understand why the German name, "Karlbad" is listed there.
It's usually overkill and unwieldy to retain minor variations in spelling, though. Should [[Lyon]] mention its alternate spelling, "Lyons"? Torino and Turin? Hard to come up witha precise rule...
Torino/Turin, certainly.
It might be worth considering the joy of footnotes here for things like three variant current spellings, or pronunciation, or local scripts...
On 9/12/07, Geoffrey Burling llywrch@agora.rdrop.com wrote:
On 8 Sept K P wrote:
On 9/7/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
On 9/8/07, K P <kpbotany at gmail.com> wrote:
Use of parenthetical remarks in the intro paragraph is leading to these streams of other language words so long you can't find the introductory sentence--although they look less paranthetical when they're 27 words longer than the containing sentence.
I guess I find this elegant:
John Smith (1864-1899) was a....
but you're right, this becomes heavy: John Smith (born 1864 London, died 1899 Tunbridge Wells, England) was a...
Birth and death dates are fundamental to any biography. Birth and death locations can wait till later in the article.
I could compromise on years alone, but it's a give em 8 digits and a dash, and they'll take a dozen locations and alternative spellings situation.
I agree with you, I honestly do, but consider the challenge I face in my little corner of Wikipedia: it is the exception, not the rule, that a given placename has several spellings & at least one alternative name. Having only one name spelled one way per town, mountain, river -- & even person -- would make my research much easier, let alone naming articles.
Part of the problem is that there is no standardized method of transliterating words from the Ethiopian script, & the rest of the problem is that every nationality often has its own name for many places in that country. And these differences in transliteration are often not trivial: last week I wrote an article on a village whose name has been spelled "Imi", "Imay" & "Hinna". (All are in relatively common use.) Even the capital of that country, Addis Ababa, has its own variant spelling (Addis Abeba), & a common alternative name (Finfinne -- what the largest nationality in Ethiopia insist the city should be called). Follow what the experts do? Well, the experts also differ amongst themselves, but add th ecomplication of unicode characters; further, I've seen more than expert spell the same town or landmark different ways in different books. This could be a real mess if it weren't for the fact the few of us working on that topic tend to be rather easy-going about the issue -- & by default, I get to make the decisions because I'm writing the articles.
If you can come up with a better way to provide this information than using those ugly parantheses, I'm all ears. But until then, I'll stick with them. At least it's consistent, so if someone does come up with a better way, it'll be much simpler to fix.
Geoff
Just don't put them all in the first sentence, moving the second word of the first sentence down past the bottom of the screen, that's all I ask.
I look up transliterated geological place names from the Iranian Plateau through southwestern Pakistan, so I know the troubles you have. Besides the fact of the multiple translisterations, the large changes from the 19th to the early 20th to the mid-twentieth, is the fact that Yakub had a lot of villages.
Kp