On Wednesday 20 November 2002 09:44 am, Toby wrote:
..... 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. Thanks for proving my point for me with specifics. 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). Mind you this isn't the only thing that should be used to settle naming arguments but it is an objective measure nontheless. Under the proposed plan everything would be subjective and requires a good deal of knowledge by the author. 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.
This is madness and not at all useful -- leave the pedantic language lessons in the article itself. Technical matters that touch on ease of linking, using and searching for articles trump using the native forms any day.
I agree with the last sentence. However, it is irrelevant.
How is it no relevant? 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).
There is no reason to belittle the intelligence of users and unnecessarily surprise them by having articles at non-English titles.
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. There is no reason we should start off an article by talking down to our readers from an ivory tower. 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. 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.
This is the English language Wikipedia, so lets stop the sillyness and title things in *shock, horror* English.
"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.
If a naming system is not useful we shouldn't use it. The proposed naming convention is needlessly complicated, talks down to non-experts, leads to pedantic writing and because of this would reduce contributions to affected articles. 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). Otherwise somebody will come by later and move the article and probably chide the original author for their Anglo-centric based ignorance. Burr
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)