GJR

Language tags

Hello,

would you mind explaining your additions of language tags, such as the one you performed at Luis de Narváez? They don't seem to do anything to the text, yet the size of the article increases dramatically, which is not good. Also, concerning the same article, why did you replace [[villancico]]s with [[villancico|villancicos]]? The link remains the same, but again, this increases the size of the article. I don't remember any MoS (or other) guidelines for these things.. --Jashiin (talk) 13:10, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

aloha! the reason i have added natural language tags is that i am blind and access the web via audio output (voice synthesis) alone; many, if not most, screen readers provide some support for natural language switching, so that the name, placename, title of a work, etc. is pronounced correctly if the user has a screen reader that supports natural language switching... for those interacting with the page visually -- especially those using high levels of screen magnifier|screen magnification, provided by a dedicated screen magnifier program -- by providing a hook to provide a glyph/character set switch; likewise, natural language tags can be used to control the output of a refreshable braille display, as there are different conventions for each natural language represented as braille, all of which are valuable aids to blind or visually impaired students, professionals, and the merely curious, which i argue is well worth the increase in the size of the article -- compared to a graphic, the addition of marking natural language switching is quite trivial... also, i replaced [[villancico]]s with [[villancico|villancicos]], because the "s" that makes it plural will not be properly pronounced if it is outside of the hyperlink text (e.g. the user hears "villancio link s", which quickly becomes quite annoying to those processing the page aurally... if there are no MoS (or other) guidelines for such considerations, then there needs to be a section about accessibility, interoperability and internationalization. -- GJR (talk) 05:37 UTC, 2008-09-26

See my message to Jashiin about the edit. I'm blind, and also use a screen reader, JAWS. Which one do you use? See the guidelines about accessibility at Wikipedia:Accessibility: they prescribe the use of Template:Lang to indicate languages. I wouldn't have used them as much as you did, but I dislike sudden voice changes so I suppose it's a personal preference. About the link lengthening, I have only encountered this problem with links with apostrophe's in them like "[[John]]'s car." In fact, MediaWiki automatically converts links like "[[jog]]ging" to display as "[[jog|jogging]]". Hope this helps, Graham87 08:35, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

aloha, graham! thank you for the pointers and advice... depending upon the machine i am using at the time, i use JAWS, NVDA, Orca, SpeakUp, and emacspeak. natural language switching may not be condoned by the Wikipedia:Accessibility guidelines, but they are most definitely condoned and encouraged by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, promulgated by the W3C to which i have contributed. my basic position on the matter is: if one wants natural language switching, one needs the natural language tags in the source code; if one does not want automatic natural language switching on the fly, one can always disable that feature, but one can never obtain natural language switching on the fly without programmatic hooks to provide a signal to the user's assistive technology. natural language switching is much less disconcerting to my ears than words mispronounced due to the mis-application of english pronunciation rules, but that oly highlights the point that "accessibility" lies in the ear, eye, fingertip, or whatever is available to an individual user. however, one cannot offer a choice, if the underlying markup is not allowed. oedipus (talk) 19:22, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Its just that the issue is kind of important. See, for example, the featured article currently on the main page: Verdeja. It has plenty of Spanish names, yet no tags whatsoever. Or take a look at our latest featured articles (or most of our featured articles, for that matter) such as Literature in the Hoysala Empire or 2002 Bou'in-Zahra earthquake that abound in foreign words, yet contain no language tags. If this kind of markup is that important for people who use screen readers and is even listed at the WCAG, then perhaps it should be suggested (at the Village Pump, if I am not mistaken? Or at Wikipedia talk:Accessibility?) that all articles currently on the English Wikipedia be reformatted with every foreign word in appropriate tags, and the markup made a more serious guideline (because as it stands, Template:Lang seems to be mostly used for pronunciations). --Jashiin (talk) 21:12, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Also English has its own pronunciations for foreign names, like Dante Alighieri, which are important as well, so often a speech synthesizer pronouncing a foreign word as if it were English is appropriate. When borrowing loanwords, most languages change the pronunciation to suit the language's phonology. Graham87 06:21, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

i very much agree that this is a serious issue, and earnestly would like to provide positive and constructive advice:

An Argument for a Consistent & Realistic @lang policy for Wikimedia

1. When there are English pronunciations of placenames or proper names, then the English version of that word or placename should be used:
   1. for example, the word "France" would not be spanned by a lang="fr" declaration, because in English, "France" is pronounced differently than it is in French;
   2. if, however, one is referring to an historical personage, such as Alfonso el Sabio, then such an instance of a name which has been incorporated into English usage in its original non-English form, SHOULD be marked as lang="es"; Likewise, whenever a placename has an English equivalent (Vienna for Wein) it is, of course, most appropriate to use the English equivalent in an article whose base natural language is English.
2. if there is a word or idiom absorbed into English intact from its language of origin, such as strum und drang, sang froid, realpolitik, zeigeist, gestalt -- any such instance SHOULD be not only marked as belonging to a different natural language than the base natural language declared for the page, but SHOULD also be glossed with the title attribute, because:
   1. not all capable of reading/understanding English will be congnizant of may foreign terms' meanings; and
   2. English is not the primary, secondary or tertiary language of a large numbers of users of thte English version of wikipedia;
3. Use of Latinisms, such as e.g.; i.e.; ca.; fl.; etc. should NOT be marked as Latin, but SHOULD be annotated using the ABBR element of HTML4x/XHTML1
   1. for example: <abbr title="and so on">etc.</abbr>; for example
4. a word comprised of non-latinate glyphs should either be:
   1. marked up using unicode (makes lang declarations redundant); or
   2. if entered directly as non-latinate glyphs, then the word should be marked up using the lang="xx" convention

remember, natural language declarations not only assist those using speech output, but those using high levels of magnification and refreshable braille displays

oedipus (talk) 20:11, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

I've copied this message to Wikipedia talk:Accessibility for further feedback. I'll have to think about this: I haven't researched all the issues involved yet. Graham87 05:17, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

I've provided a bit more feedback there, where the discussion will probably continue. Wikipedia editors don't like using HTML tags directly - instead they use them in templates like the language templates. There should be discussion on how to adapt these templates for better accessibility. Also, any comments you have about the current accessibility guidelines, or any new accessibility guidelines you can think of, would be welcomed. Graham87 06:03, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of Melville Davisson Post

A tag has been placed on Melville Davisson Post requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section A7 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the article appears to be about a person or group of people, but it does not indicate how or why the subject is notable: that is, why an article about that subject should be included in an encyclopedia. Under the criteria for speedy deletion, articles that do not indicate the subject's importance or significance may be deleted at any time. Please see the guidelines for what is generally accepted as notable, as well as our subject-specific notability guideline for biographies.

If you think that this notice was placed here in error, you may contest the deletion by adding {{hangon}} to the top of the page that has been nominated for deletion (just below the existing speedy deletion or "db" tag), coupled with adding a note on the talk page explaining your position, but be aware that once tagged for speedy deletion, if the article meets the criterion it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the article that would would render it more in conformance with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Lastly, please note that if the article does get deleted, you can contact one of these admins to request that a copy be emailed to you. Sam ^Blab 22:55, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Melville Davisson Post

I have nominated Melville Davisson Post, an article you created, for deletion. I do not think that this article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and have explained why at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Melville Davisson Post. Your opinions on the matter are welcome at that same discussion page; also, you are welcome to edit the article to address these concerns. Thank you for your time. Sam ^Blab 23:04, 5 October 2008 (UTC) Sam ^Blab 23:04, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

i fail to understand why the Melville Davisson Post article is a candidate for deletion? it is factual, the author has a place in the evolution of the mystery/crime novel, and his vital statistics have been documented. A bibliography is included, and might i suggest you google "Melville Davisson Post" and you will find that he is (a) far from obscure and (b) still in print, and hence still germane. what was/is your criteria for recommending "speedy deletion"? oedipus (talk) 23:24, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

None of his books are published by notable companies. Sam ^Blab 23:31, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Is that truly criterion for the inclusion or exclusion of an author? Post's books are widely in print, even if not by Fortune 500 publishing companies; moreover, his work is cited extensively in the scholarship on the developmet of detective/mystery/crime fiction. In addition, there are reams of authors included in Wikipedia whose works are not widely available nor published by "notable companies"? what precisely is a "notable company" and what are the criteria for including an author when a majority of that author's works are not generally available? this seems like a couter-intuative criterion -- Joseph Plumb Martin's memoir of the Revolutionary War is in print, but not by a "notable company" but by specialist reprint houses. Simply because mainstream publishers no longer value the work of an individual author, cannot be a determining criterion upon which an author is included or excluded from Wikipedia. In fact, the many editions of Posts work by small and/or specialty presses show that there is interest in this figure, and since his works are not readily available from the nebulous "notable companies", it increases the importance of including authors such as Post in Wikipedia. oedipus (talk) 16:56, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Traditional marriage RFC

It dawned on me just now that what you are proposing is a "Manual of style Guidline" addition. This actually could be made in a similar way to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Baltic states-related articles. This allows a broader consensus of the general community to make this change. This may be what you are looking for. Let me know. Good debate by the way. I don't agree of course but I will accept the consensus of the community and this may be a way to keep this from being overrode if the RFC does indeed move forward.--Amadscientist (talk) 00:31, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

@Amadscientist: that is a brilliant idea! thanks! i couldn't figure out how to address the issue, and decided to try an RFC on the Talk:Traditional_marriage page because i had raised the issue on the talk pages where the term had been used in the u.s.-specific context a few times, but even when i received positve feedback, the issue was soon lost in a flurry of other issues concerning the content and POV of the pages... moreover, every talk page for an article at wikipedia which i have ever visited which contains a reference to the southern poverty law center contains an RFC notice as to how the SPLC should be referenced when it opinion is cited... that -- coupled with the previous discussion on the "traditional marriage" page -- led me to conclude that the "traditional marriage" talk page might be the "best" place to raise the issue in a way that would achieve traction within the community...

i really do appreciate all of the effor you put into the debate, and i do know that the only reason you put so much thought, energy and effort into it is because you are a true and dedicated wikipedian, and a true and honest human being (the highest compliment i can hand out to a fellow homo sapien)...

i also really appreciate your not only suggesting the move to the manual of style, but also your suggestion that i use the baltic states-related articles discussion as a model...

by the way, i don't know the inspiration behind your wikimedia userid, but one of my favorite producer/dubmasters is the mad professor... my userid comes from the fact that (a) i am blind and (b) throughout my life, people have often referred to me using a certain twelve letter maternal epithet... many thanks -- i "look" forward to working with you in the future and continuing to learn from your contributions to the community oedipus (talk) 01:19, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Also, we should both back off now. The RFC is recieving attention from others now and we should not attempt to overpower the voices of other contibuters or look as if we are.--Amadscientist (talk) 01:11, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

@Amadscientist: takes forever to review content and add content, review that content, and then post that content with a screen reader -- by the time i got your message here, i had already replied there, and when i went to save my reply above, there was an edit conflict -- obviously you leaving your last comment... no worries -- from the time i read your idea to use the manual of style, i had already resolved neither to add content to the RFC nor to promote it by adding notice to pages that use the term in a u.s.-specific manner (hence the google search for wikipedia pages that use the term "traditional marriage")... oedipus (talk) 01:24, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

No problem. I have just gotten back from dinner and had left a question about the RFC at an admins page but they are not of the opinion tht it is an MOS matter. Though I still think it is. I will look further to see if this is the right palce and format for the proposal. If this is agreed on by the community, we should be sure we are doing it right. I know that there are some issues that can be added through the various notice boards. For example the situation with Indian caste system has a similar problematic concern with many users and they were able to limit the use and editing of caste system information through a similar process I will ask the editor who knows the most about that situation. By the way, thanks for the very kind words above.--Amadscientist (talk) 02:34, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

November 2013

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