Scriptions

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Guangzhou's sound files

Hello. I have noticed your edits in Guangzhou, and you said that sound files should be in the lead paragraph. However, it doesn't make the lead paragraph look orderly, so I decided to put them in the Chinese infoboxes, since that is the purpose of the infoboxes. You may talk to me about the reason why you usually put the sound files in the lead paragraph even though there are already the infoboxes which usually serve that purpose. Aki (talk · contributions), 12:23 (UTC), March 27, 2017 (Monday).

Being a repository for sound files is not the purpose of the infoboxes. They were created because some people felt that too many transcriptions were being put in the ledes. In non-Chinese articles, equivalent information is normally in the lede; there is no need to minimalise the amount of such information in the lede. Sound files are too important not to be in the lede, and the other information is necessary as context for the sound files. The only piece of information that could conceivably be left out of the Guangzhou lede is the spelling in Traditional characters, but as removing it would make no appreciable difference, I see no reason not to leave it in. Scriptions (talk) 08:05, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

Transcriptions in leads

@Scriptions: You have added Hokkien POJ transcriptions to the beginning of the leads of Taoyuan, Taiwan, Kaohsiung, Taichung, Tainan and possibly other articles. I removed them since they were already covered in the infoboxes. You just reverted my removals without any edit summaries or explanations in the corresponding talk pages. Please explain your reasoning per WP:BRD. Phlar (talk) 04:47, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

Per MOS:ZH: Any encyclopedia entry with a title that is a Chinese proper name should include both the Chinese characters and the Hanyu Pinyin representation for their names in either the first sentence or in an infobox clearly visible in the lead.... Where there is more than one parameter in use in a given article an {{Infobox Chinese}} template can be used instead of {{zh}}. This removes the characters, romanization and pronunciations from the opening sentence, thus making it more readable, while retaining the information off to the side so that the reader can still see it. Phlar (talk) 04:56, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

@Phlar: The point of {{Infobox Chinese}} was to avoid what was felt as excessive material inside the first parentheses of the lede. A couple of transcriptions is never excessive material. All over the rest of Wikipedia, that amount of material is routinely included, and that is completely uncontroversial. Wikipedia-wide consensus is that this amount of material is perfectly fine, and the Chinese-related part of Wikipedia doesn't get to override that Wikipedia-wide consensus by creating a local consensus that goes against it.

One use of transcriptions in the lede is to guide the reader as to the relative importance of the transcriptions found in the infobox. In Kaohsiung City, for instance, Hokkien and Hakka are majority languages in parts of the city and so are more important than Cantonese, which isn't indigenous to the city at all. Including the Hokkien and Hakka names in the lede also serves to counteract the false impression that the names Takao, Takow, and Takau are all more important than the Hokkien and Hakka names, since the three former names must be included in the lede as there is no place for them in the infobox. Scriptions (talk) 02:10, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

Sticking with the Kaohsiung example, the Chinese characters are much more important than the Hokkien and Hakka transcriptions, since that's what everyone in those areas actually writes. And the Hanyu Pinyin transcriptions would also be more important, since Mandarin is still the language of government and education, even in those Hokkien- or Hakka-dominant districts. And according to MOS:LEADPRON, we would need to show the English pronunciation since it's not readily apparent from the spelling of "Kaohsiung." I don't see how you can elevate the Hokkien and Hakka transcriptions as more important than IPA, Chinese characters, and pinyin. But if you add all of those, the sentence will be extremely cluttered, hence the preference to put all of them in {{Infobox Chinese}}. As to the former names, that's what the {{{other_name}}} parameter in {{Infobox settlement}} is for. Phlar (talk) 04:04, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

While it's a good idea to include the names in all the local languages, it's unnecessary to include each name in more than one format. When picking the format, readability for the general reader should be prioritised, hence Romanisations, not characters. When picking a Romanisation, it should be the official one, hence Kaohsiung, not Gāoxióng, for the Mandarin name.

Kaohsiung does not have an established English pronunciation.

Spreading the names across different infoboxes does a disservice to the reader: when one infobox is entirely about names, the reader will expect to find everything about names in that infobox and not look through others. Scriptions (talk) 04:46, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

Upon further consideration, I feel the rendering of {{{other_lang}}} isn’t right for this situation. But I still feel that listing just the Hokkien and Hakka pronunciations in parenthesis after the name gives the mistaken impression that these are the dominant pronunciations. Wiktionary does list an English IPA pronunciation for Kaohsiung, /ˈkaʊ ˈʃjʊŋ/, and it’s neither the Hokkien nor the Hakka. Phlar (talk) 14:20, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

In the same way that writing

Liège (German: Lüttich; Dutch: Luik)

would just imply that the city is called Lüttich in German and Luik in Dutch, not that Lüttich and Luik are the dominant names, writing

Kaohsiung (Hokkien: Ko-hiông; Hakka: Kô-hiùng)

would just imply that the city is called Ko-hiông in Hokkien and Kô-hiùng in Hakka, not that Ko-hiông and Kô-hiùng are the dominant names.

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Names of Hohhot

The name in Traditional Mongolian I kept is a form of general writing both locally and officially used in China for the Mongolian language. Unlike the dialectical term of Khalka, it’s used for many Mongolian dialects like Chakhar, Tumed or even Khalkha. If we have to write the local name in Tumed of the subject, we also need IPA for dialects I thought. So it was not kept for the locality. Thought about: should we delete the irrelevant forms of name like in Outer Mongolian Khalkha, Buryatian Buryat or Kalmykian Kalmyk? 王相国 (talk) 11:28 4 December 2017 (UTC)

@王相国: There are two standard forms of Mongolian; let's call them China Mongolian and Mongolia Mongolian. When we give the name of a place in Taiwan, we always give it in Simplified characters as well as in Traditional characters, even though Simplified characters aren't used in Taiwan. We do this because we want to give the name in Chinese – not just the local Chinese but Chinese in general, and so we provide the spelling in both standard forms of written Chinese. We should follow this practice for Mongolian-language place names as well, which means to give the Mongolian-language name of Hohhot in both China Mongolian and Mongolia Mongolian. Scriptions (talk) 03:27, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

@Scriptions: I agree with you that we can give non-official variant forms of a name in an article. But as the same as in the articles of cities in Taiwan, the better way placing the variants is listing them in the infobox of name, but not in the parentheses behind the name of the subject. 王相国 (talk) 13:52, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

Consider me trouted on that one

I mis-read the edit. Apologies. Simonm223 (talk) 14:07, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Template gods

We seem to have a difference of views on Hong Kong and the appearance of Guangdong Romanization on the page. Your standpoint, as you have declined to address the reason given by me at the outset for the edit I made, is that if a template exists and if it includes a field available for completion, that field must be completed and its content, thus, must appear in any article(s) where it is employed. This sets up the argument, which is the only argument you have deployed, that no question of relevance may be mounted because the template rules regardless. Is that your position? If it is, kindly justify it. If it is not, would you kindly address the question whether or not it is relevant to publish GR in the Hong Kong article. sirlanz 01:40, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

You gave two reasons for your edit: 1. You thought there was too much information in the infobox. This is adequately dealt with by hiding most of it. The hidden part of the infobox is supposed to have lots of transcriptions; that's why it has so many parameters. 2. You found the transcription system too obscure. That's not your call to make alone; the transcription system is part of the infobox template, which means it can go in any article that has the infobox and is not to be removed in any of them.

What is shown outside of the hide area is subject to relevance criteria, but the hide area is intended as a repository for all possible transcriptions. A transcription system may be too uncommon to appear outside of the hide area, but there's no such thing as a Romanisation system being too uncommon to appear even in the hide area. Hiding uncommon transcriptions deals sufficiently with the issue; there's no need to remove them from the article entirely. The hide area is designed so that transcriptions in all systems can appear in all articles without appearing to readers who don't actively seek them out. This takes care of both those who don't want to see the transcriptions (they simply don't click ‘show’) and those who do want to see them. Everybody wins.

The point of a transcription is to communicate a pronunciation. People who are familiar with the Guangdong Romanization for Cantonese can tell the pronunciation of a term from a transcription of it in that system. Transcriptions are not meant as variant spellings, so the fact that this system is little used in Hong Kong is of no relevance. You might as well remove the IPA because IPA is rarely used to transcribe Cantonese in Hong Kong.

If editors are to bother with adding transcriptions, which is quite a time-consuming affair, they need reassurance that their transcriptions aren't just going to be removed again. The hide area came into being as a compromise between those who wanted all transcriptions to be shown by default and those who didn't. The compromise was intended to satisfy both parties by hiding most transcriptions so they wouldn't appear to you if you didn't actively seek them out, while at the same time providing a space where editors could add many transcriptions without being concerned that they would be deleted.

It's OK if you think hiding the transcriptions isn't enough, but you can't make a new consensus all by yourself. The current consensus is that hiding most of the transcriptions takes sufficient care of the issues you raise and that all hidden transcriptions are to be kept. That can't be overridden by a local consensus on the Hong Kong talk page, so if you want it changed, you need to take it elsewhere. Scriptions (talk) 03:06, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

I reverted your undo before seeing that you had taken time to write up a lengthy reasoning for your action. The Talk notification comes through after the edit, unfortunately. If your principled position as set out here is valid, then every Romanisation scheme for the language must be included, without exception. The template is completely deficient and derelict in that regard. The principle is, therefore, obviously flawed. The reality is that only a selection of Romanisations is accommodated by the template. On what basis? On your account, that is somewhere in the region of who's-willing-to-make-the-effort. Seriously? There are over 20 Romanisation schemes for Cantonese and some far more relevant to Hong Kong than GD. Templates are a convenience tool. They must not be permitted to become an editing stricture which distorts the material published for readers. We have just that happening here: an obscure, irrelevant Romanisation present while other, much more relevant schemes are absent. What's your solution? Or are you content that no editorial judgement be deployed in this matter? sirlanz 04:40, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

As I point out above, I reject the relevance of the ‘relevant to Hong Kong’ argument. A transcription system is either important enough to be on Wikipedia or it isn't. The issue of transcriptions is too specialised to leave it to the editors of the individual article that includes the template; decisions about it should instead be made at a central location, namely Template talk:Infobox Chinese/Chinese. The editorial judgment deployed there will be better, as the discussion there attracts more competent editors. It's not the case that ‘every Romanisation scheme for the language must be included, without exception’ but that the discussion about which schemes to use on Wikipedia is most competently carried out at the central location. If the matter is to be discussed at every single one of the thousands of articles that use the infobox, a huge amount of time will be wasted for no convincing reason and project-wide consistency will suffer. If a centralised discussion is permitted, the question of whether Cantonese Guangdong is important enough can be dealt with once and for all, rather than having to be discussed again and again and again to the detriment of more important issues. Then the fact that this Romanisation system has been deemed important enough to be included in the template will be sufficient reason to include it in every article that has the infobox, without the need for repeated discussions of what is essentially one issue.

I don't find it acceptable to attempt to solve a perceived problem that important transcription systems are left out by having yet another system be left out. The more systems, the more readers covered. The only acceptable solution would be to add transcriptions in the left-out systems.

As for whether Cantonese Guangdong, one of the major systems for transcribing Cantonese, should be used widely on Wikipedia (as is the case today; in fact, it's often the only system used) or not, that's a question for Template talk:Infobox Chinese/Chinese. Scriptions (talk) 05:13, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

There are numerous flaws in the logic here but I shall restrict myself to the most obvious. Following your lead, the template must be changed to incorporate all of the missing Romanisation schemes ("The more systems, the more readers covered"), so we end up with about two dozen. Then, when an editor calls the template, he/she is obliged to complete all of the Romanisations for all of the schemes, a feat of considerable prowess, not to mention massively time-consuming. Which is simply nonsense. Yes, the template can be loaded with as many schemes as anyone wishes but the key point is that the editor of the page in question must and will exercise judgement in deciding which of the offered schemes is relevant in the context of the article. This is the manner in which templates are deployed all over the encyclopaedia and I believe the reasons, as set out here, are patently obvious. So I reject your suggestion that the template must de rigueur appear in all its glory on all pages. Editors have the discretion to apply them intelligently and appropriately. They are not a Trojan device for delivery of some brilliant central policy; they are an editing and presentation tool. sirlanz 05:38, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

I'm not saying that whenever an editor calls the template, they are obliged to complete all the transcriptions. I'm saying that when a transcription has been completed, there is no good reason to remove it. Removing it accomplishes absolutely nothing positive.

I'm also not saying that the template must be changed to incorporate all remaining transcription systems. But which Romanisation schemes to include in the template is a question that can only be answered at template talk.

The issue of transcriptions is too complicated to be left to the average editor, who will rarely be able to apply the template ‘intelligently and appropriately’. The average editor should be encouraged to add transcriptions where competent to do so but to refrain from removing transcriptions, as it's impossible to imagine a situation in which the positive consequences of such an act would outweigh the negative ones.

Even if I were to agree with your opinion that editors should be able to remove transcriptions willy-nilly – thus discouraging other editors from adding transcriptions, to the detriment of the encyclopaedia – it would make no practical difference, as I would still hold that the most important Cantonese-using polity should be transcribed in all the most important Cantonese Romanisation systems, and those include Cantonese Guangdong, which despite your insistence to the contrary is not in any way obscure. Scriptions (talk) 07:43, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

I note your change of position again on the policy of inclusion/exclusion in the template (abandoning the more the better), i.e. you now say it should be selective. So I return to my earlier point (before you changed position the first time): the template is seriously defective. And how is it that your imagination does not extend to applying the essential principle of relevance which is at the core of every WP page? Why is it a revelation to you that editors add and remove material, back and forth, almost ad infinitum in WP? That's the way our community works. Why is template content sacrosanct? In the context of Hong Kong, the article about which we are at loggerheads, Guangdong Romanisation is irrelevant. English-speaking readers of WP do not use it. It is relevant only to Guangdong-based linguists and how many of them are reading the Hong Kong English WP page? sirlanz 08:23, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

I've never said that the more transcriptions we give, the better, and I've also never said that we should be selective. What I have said is that the question of which Romanisation systems should be used should be discussed at template talk and not here, and that using all the parameters in the template covers more readers.

If you think the template is so defective, why don't you want to discuss it at template talk?

It's not actually true that readers of English Wikipedia don't use Cantonese Guangdong. But if it were true, we would have a major problem on our hands, since many articles use nothing else to transcribe Cantonese.

Anyway, you've failed to convince me that removing the Cantonese Guangdong will achieve anything at all worth achieving, so the transcriptions stay. There's no consensus for your edit: the editor who added the transcriptions in the first place and myself are two people, while you're just one, so you're outnumbered. Scriptions (talk) 11:14, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

The "hide area is intended as a repository for all possible transcriptions"; "no such thing as a Romanisation system being too uncommon to appear even in the hide area"; Look familiar? But then you say any Romanisation has to be "deemed important enough to be included in the template". But, hey, no, that's not right, so back to "the more systems, the more readers covered"; oh, but then, "not saying ... to incorporate all remaining transcription systems"; and now you tell us you haven't said either but something (I'm breathless guessing what) should be talked about in template Talk.

I'd be intrigued to see the WP articles you tout which display Guangdong Romanisation exclusively. sirlanz 13:58, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

If you were to make a good-faith attempt at understanding what I mean instead of your constant bad-faith creating of straw men, you would find that it's really not that difficult: The hide area is intended as a repository for all those transcriptions that are possible according to the template. There is no such thing as a Romanisation system that is part of the template being too uncommon to appear even in the hide area. That we cover more readers the more systems we use is a statement of fact, not opinion, and doesn't mean that I would necessarily go in for adding all existing transcription systems to the template; what I've objected to is that you won't allow all the systems in the template to be used. What I've said about transcription systems being deemed important enough to include in the template is that if the question of which systems to use is decided at Template talk:Infobox Chinese/Chinese, ‘[t]hen the fact that [a] Romanisation system has been deemed important enough to be included in the template will be sufficient reason to include it in every article that has the infobox, without the need for repeated discussions of what is essentially one issue’. As I wrote last time, the question of which Romanisation systems should be used should be discussed at template talk.

Off the top of my head, the Guangdong article's section on administrative divisions uses only Guangdong Romanization to transcribe Cantonese. Scriptions (talk) 01:51, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Well, guess what. The Guangdong article employs the template and Canton/Guangdong Romanisation is not even in the Hide: several others are. So can we go beyond off the top of your head? sirlanz 01:59, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

The point is that the article lists the Cantonese names of the prefecture-level cities in Guangdong Romanization only, i.e. Wikipedia sometimes provides Cantonese pronunciations in nothing but Guangdong Romanization. That suggests Cantonese Guangdong isn't the obscure system you claim it to be.

Anyway, I take it that you're not going to revert again, in which case the discussion might as well end here. Scriptions (talk) 04:25, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Another climbdown, then? You cannot back up your proposition that articles exist which exclusively provide Guangdong Romanisation? sirlanz 04:37, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

I haven't climbed down anywhere except in your imagination. Apparently, the same lack of reading skills that makes you misinterpret my contributions made you miss that the Guangdong article does include Cantonese Guangdong in the hide area.

When I wrote that ‘many articles use nothing else to transcribe Cantonese’, I was of course referring to the fact that many articles transcribe numerous Cantonese pronunciations in nothing but Guangdong Romanization (as exemplified in Guangdong#Administrative divisions), not transcribing them in any other system. How could it possibly be relevant that the same article transcribes other words in multiple Cantonese transcription systems? Scriptions (talk) 04:53, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Yes, I grant that I missed spotting GR on the Guangdong page but it remains no exmplar of your claim that it is an example of an article that uses "nothing else to transcribe Cantonese". I still await any example from you of an article that, as you put it, uses "nothing else to transcribe Cantonese". One subsection within one article does not come close to satisfying your claim. sirlanz 05:20, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

As I've already explained, my claim that ‘many articles use nothing else to transcribe Cantonese’ was another way of saying ‘many articles transcribe Cantonese using nothing else’. But an example of an article that transcribes all its Cantonese in Guangdong Romanization only is List of administrative divisions of Guangzhou, which transcribes the Cantonese pronunciations of 170 subdistricts and towns in nothing but Cantonese Guangdong. Scriptions (talk) 05:40, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

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pls join a talk at Talk:China#‎Religion gallery.--Moxy (talk) 17:03, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

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