Talk:Family register

Merger proposal

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

I believe enough time has passed to declare this proposal has no consensus. --C S (talk) 02:14, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

• Support: These article names are not words found in standard English print dictionaries, and are not proper nouns. They are transliterations of the word for 'family register' in the Japanese, Chinese, and Korean languages, respectively. Rather than conducting a poll on this page at present, perhaps just an exchange of opinions might be helpful at least to start. Thanks.Mak Allen (talk) 05:12, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

• Support: I was thinking about proposing this myself not long ago. The basic concept is pretty much identical. In fact, the basic components of this concept exist in the West. The record component is called "vital records" in United States. They are kept by the local/state government as part of public records. The legal enforcement component is similar to domicile or residency. (i.e. you are "discriminated" based on your residency when determining tuition and taxes) --Voidvector (talk) 06:03, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

• Oppose. The three articles included in this merge proposal (Koseki, Hoju, and Hukou) all describe the specific details of the systems used in those respective countries. I don't see any advantages in combining them into one article. Secondly, the Koseki and Hukou articles are quite large in their own right, so merging them into the also large Family register article would create an unnecessarily large article. --DAJF (talk) 06:08, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

• Support: Firstly, I agree that the non-English named namespaces are not words which are widely used in the English-speaking world. Secondly, I believe there are more similarities than differences of the systems, what falls within their scope, and what issues are raised. Thirdly, I would say that a more interesting and useful article could be created by having a more broadly-based article which brings in different national and cultural contexts, with comparison of the evolution, use and implications for civil liberties. I imagine there are scholarly texts which offer such comparative studies which can be cited as references. My only concern is that it would result in an overly large article, but then hukou is the only large article, which I have felt for some time could certainly do with a lot of judicious pruning. Ohconfucius (talk) 06:26, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

• Oppose. The three terms Koseki, Hoju, and Hukou are internationally used terms when talking about the respective three phenomena. People interested in these topics usually will search them by using these definite terms. Therefore a merge of all three articles to family register will not only make the article unneccessary lengthy and confusing, but will also unneccessarily lengthen the search for this topic. A link within the family register article is enough. Furthermore , people interested in family register in most cases probably won't be interested in existing register practices in East Asia, which then would account for the major part of the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.76.60.220 (talk) 14:33, 22 June 2008 (UTC)
• Comment: According to the article, there is a similar practice in Germany. Should there really be one such article for all the different countries that have something like this? I think it may be best just to have a brief disambiguation page directing people to the relevant country of interest. --C S (talk) 08:32, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

• Comment Looking around, it's actually quite universal - there is a family register of sorts also in France, and in Switzerland; the concept has also existed in Belgium, so I'm definitely in favour of merging into a larger topic. Ohconfucius (talk) 09:12, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Wouldn't a merge just create an immensely large article then? Hukou by itself is already a big article. How do you see a merge as viable without loss of information? --C S (talk) 19:43, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

• Comment Based on Wikipedia:Naming conventions (country-specific topics), if merge fails those articles should probably be named "Household/Family registry in (country)" rather than their current name. I think most native English speakers would oppose unnecessarily coining new terms for article names anyway.
  I know the Chinese character for this is 户, which under strict definition (i.e. legal and formal writing) means "household". Obviously, this article is and will be about the universal form of this law, so we should probably try to find a universal term that fits it. Also under my impression, in terms of recordkeeping, register implies small record (ie. guest register), while registry is used for larger records (ie. phone registry). Just picking on the words here. --Voidvector (talk) 09:37, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose. Hukou system and Koseki are long enough to be separate articles. If their titles are not appropriate, then they should be renamed to "Family register in (country)". And I also oppose to renaming them. Hukou is widely used in English. A Google search shows 148,000 hits for Hukou, many of which are from reliable sources. --Neo-Jay (talk) 10:04, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

• Comment - Renaming could still be achieved through judicious use of redirects. Ohconfucius (talk) 10:07, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

• Conmment - It's fine if Hukou system remains as the article title and Family register in China and Taiwan servers as a redirect.--Neo-Jay (talk) 10:19, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

• Comment Just because the original translator translated it phonetically thinking it's an unique system, doesn't mean we should blindly do so as well. We don't have a separate article for water at "aqua" when there is a million occurrences of "aqua" in English. --Voidvector (talk) 10:59, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

• Comment. It's not just the original translator's own translation. As I said above, Hukou is widely used in English. Please search the Internet by yourself. Thanks. Do you also want to merge Jian to sword, or rename it to Chinese sword? --Neo-Jay (talk) 12:48, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

• Comment I would be more supportive of keeping it separate if those countries hadn't been trying to get rid of them. From personal experience, China has relaxed it so much that it's very similar to the system in the west. In the city I came from Hefei (an inland provincial capital), you can now get your Hukou registered there by simply buying a real estate property. That's basically the residency system in the West with an ownership requirement. --Voidvector (talk) 22:13, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

• Comment. Even if China's hukou system will become the same as the residency system in the West, it still has its special history. That's enough to deserve a separate article to introduce it. --Neo-Jay (talk) 04:47, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

• Comment - All family registers arguably have its own special history or raison d'être, but their similarities are such that it makes plenty of sense to group them together into a comprehensive article, which would mention their differences and individual histories. Ohconfucius (talk) 11:28, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

• Comment - It's OK if you add some general information to the comprehensive article. But it does not follow that we should change all the individual articles to redirects. Hukou system is much longer than Family register now. Merging it to the latter is same as merging Privacy laws of the United States to Privacy law. It does not make any sense.--Neo-Jay (talk) 15:23, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree if people want to merge information into this article, there is nothing stopping them. Let's see how the general article shapes up following the plan outlined above by Ohconfucius. If it then seems that more or less everything important has been incorporated into the article, there should be no objection to turning these articles like on hukou system into redirects. But it seems to me that imagining some non-existent comprehensive article that is somehow going to magically cover say, the controversy over the hukou system, and manage to compare and contrast the different systems (and their problems), is somewhat unrealistic. The example given about privacy law... that article is a mess. It in no way comprehensive and has sections for only three countries. The section on the US just has a link to the main article on privacy laws in the U.S. I expect serious objections would be raised if someone wanted to redirect the US article to the privacy law article, namely because the former is a much better and comprehensive article than the latter. The same could be said (and I'm saying it) of the hukou article to this one. The hukou article is just so much better, it seems ludicrous to propose redirecting it to this one. Clean up this article first! Then let's see if it makes any sense to redirect. --C S (talk) 01:40, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

• Oppose: I see nothing wrong with the current situation: an overview article going over some similarities and differences, while the hukou, etc., articles go into specifics at much greater length. The length of the hukou article itself is several times the length of the current family register article. The nominator seems mainly motivated by the fact that he doesn't like transliterated article titles, but that appears irrelevant when considering a merge, which entails incorporating all the info into a single article! Perhaps it may be suitable to move individual articles to more appropriate titles, but a merge? How does that make sense? --C S (talk) 20:49, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

• Oppose. I agree that they are "not words found in standard English print dictionaries," however Wikipedia is not meant to be a standard print English dictionary. Legal and historical differences between the three countries can justify three separate articles to exist. I am not opposed to making comparison of the three in the "Family register" article, however. For more in depth detail, one can visit the individual articles. —Tokek (talk) 00:29, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
  • Addendum: Apparently there is also propiska. —Tokek (talk) 00:39, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
    • I think this adds more weight to what's already been said: propiska is an interesting, fairly fleshed-out article that has sufficient differences with the other articles that it really makes no sense to merge it with all the others into one big article. Nobody has made any effort to work on family register to bring it up to the standard required to see if Ohconfucius' plan is even viable. It's time to close this discussion, since there is no consensus to merge and it's been over a month. --C S (talk) 02:08, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

In no way does anyone in Mainland China refer to the HuKou system as the HuJi system, it is Hukou in mandarin Chinese, which is used as a word directly in English. --131.107.0.103 (talk) 08:25, 8 August 2011 (UTC)