On ven, 2002-03-08 at 09:20, Jimmy Wales wrote:
Brion L. VIBBER wrote:
Sure, but more often kanji than kana, so special kana markup wouldn't be that big a win. See the thread "International Upgrades"; the vague plan is to standardise the internal character set and present the wikipedias in Unicode to capable browsers. (Please comment!)
Really? There are kanji in articles about Japan?
Yeeessss.... You have such a difficult time accepting this. :)
I mean, articles other than articles about the language or other special cases?
Define "special cases".
That seems odd to me. I'm not opposed to it, necessarily, but it seems very odd. I mean, there's no reason to expect that kanji will be useful to the vast majority of readers.
No, but there's no reason to expect that any particular *article* will be useful to the vast majority of readers for that matter.
A few question marks or boxes in parentheses aren't going to drive non-Japanese readers mad with one look, but for those who *do* know it, they *do* get more information because they now can recognize the term in Japanese text, or usefully look it up in Japanese informational resources.
The English wikipedia isn't just for English monolinguals, is it?
Can you send some examples?
From a quick search...
Nagano, Japan Japan/Meiji Emperor Akihito of Japan Emperor Jimmu of Japan Satsuma Okinawa Hideki Tojo Tokyo Meiji-era leaders Shogun Koto Dejima Yen Tokugawa shoguns Kamakura shoguns Hanko Akihabara Samurai Cyprinus carpio Nintendo Nissan Ashikaga shoguns Kyoto Morihei Ueshiba Toyotomi Hideyoshi Jokichi Takamine Ju-jitsu Junichiro Koizumi World War II/Hiryu World War II/Kaga Iron Chef World War II/Soryu Akira Kurosawa Kamikaze World War II/Zuikaku Heisuke Hironaka Amakusa Tsurugi Raku Karaoke Kaifu Toshiki Toyota Tsunami Shibasaburo Kitasato Judo Gomoku Suzuki Kendo Zhu Shijie Isoroku Yamamoto Miyazaki Hayao Sushi Choshu Anime Otaku No Video The Vision of Escaflowne Kia Asayama Ghost in the Shell Tenchi Muyo Star Blazers Princess Mononoke Doraemon Hentai Masamune Shirow Manga My Neighbor Totoro Trigun Sailor Moon Ranma 1/2 Rumiko Takahashi
I'm sure I missed plenty. These can be broadly categorized as: * Geographical names, with the local native kanji "spelling" as a sidenote * Personal names of politicians, scientists, and artists, with their native kanji "spelling" as a sidenote * Various cultural items originating in Japan (sushi, karaoke, martial arts, companies, works of art/pop culture) with their native kanji/kana "spelling" as a sidenote
That said, I'm still not convinced there's much usefulness in more special codes that work on our wiki and nowhere else in the world; only a fraction of the above use kana at all.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)