On Friday 29 November 2002 04:00 am, Ray Saintonge wrote:
It seems that Mav doesn't hasn't even read his own policy. Before responding I just made a point of reading it at [[Wikipedia:Naming conventions (anglicization)]]. Even the qualification that he emphasizes is simply NOT THERE. Admittedly, even that qualification is better than nothing.
It is on the actual naming convention page. The parenthetical subpages are for "Rationale and specifics" and are not the actual conventions (the conventions are restated for convenience though.. that is where the trouble lies). Alas I did not copy over the convention correctly when I moved the detailed explanation off the main naming conventions page. I have already fixed my blunder.
Who determines that majority?
The involved parties doing research and practicing common sense. Just as you, me and Ortolan did with the Franz Josef. Google was a useful tool but not the last word.
Notice the addition of: "at all familiar with the subject" (this includes all interested English speaking parties, not just the experts).
"at all familiar" is a step in the right direction.
Then if nobody objects I will make this change to the general statement on the main naming conventions page. Also if nobody objects I will add "... unless the native form or transliteration is used by English speakers more often than the Anglicized or English translation." to the actual Anglicization convention on the main naming convention page and its re-statement on the "Rationale and specifics" subpage.
We don't need for people to be self-appointed enforcers except in the most egregious cases; enforcement actions only irritate people. If any kind of enforcement is appropriate on borderline cases it is to ensure that there is a redirect from the alternate form to the one actually used in whatever direction is needed.
I think you are reading too much into the word "enforcer." Moving a page is analogous to fixing many bad spellings, or wikifing and reformatting a page so that it follows our style guide. So that makes Ortolan a style enforcer, Axel a spelling enforcer, me a naming convention enforcer and everybody here 'add useful content' enforcers. All these things aim to improve the articles, not punish the original author.
I would thus favour that when the difference between the native form and the usual English form is a matter only of diacritics that are a part of ISO 8859-1 the standard form should be the one with full ISO 8859-1 diacritics. The search function should include a provision that allows the plain character to be treated as equivalent to the one with diacritics.
This is where we differ. I am content with the current preference for English in the English language Wikipedia in toss-ups. The use of diacritics is a bit more problematic - if and when a non-diacritic form is in very wide used, we should prefer to use that form. But you will notice I haven't been moving other cases from their diacritical forms and have simply been making redirects for the (vast majority) of English speaking netcitizens that don't know how to create diacritics with their keyboards.
--Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
Payment for this post:
Several more paras to the Billy the Kid article; http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Billy_the_Kid&diff=450052&am...
Creation of a stub for a recent celebrity death; http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verne_Winchell