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Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Chinese)/Archive 13

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Would everyone agree to this method for solving this discussion?

Latest comment: 12 years ago30 comments11 people in discussion

This discussion is starting to take a little too much time for what it's worth! How about we do this... 1) In Google Books searches for "Han Dynasty," "Tang Dynasty," "Yuan Dynasty," and "Qing Dynasty" (or Zhou, Jin, Song, and Ming, whatever), we count how many works capitalize "dynasty" in these compounds. Excluding books compiled from Wikipedia articles and books or articles that have no excerpts (this means we ignore abstracts and book jackets), we pick the first 20 relevant results. If more than 60% of these 80 works on four different dynasties use "dynasty," then we switch to "dynasty" as I propose; if not, we stick to "Dynasty." This way, we could conclude this discussion either way on the basis of tangible data. I volunteer to compile the results, with hyperlinks so that everyone can verify them. Would this be acceptable to most editors? Anybody who has not commented so far is of course welcome to comment even now. Cheers, Madalibi (talk) 07:07, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

  • Oppose. With all due respect (and I'll say it is a rational proposal) I still believe it to be wrong for reasons that I have argued — the main one being that in the Chinese-speaking world, at least, "Tang Dynasty" is thought of as a discrete proper noun referring to the polity, rather than "Tang" as an adjective modifying "dynasty." In other words, the use of "dynasty" creates logical conundrums that defy common conceptualization of the terms. But if there is a clear consensus that this proposal makes sense, then consensus rules regardless of what I think. Let's see what other people think about this proposal. (I do not believe that there is clear consensus, but let's see if your proposal creates a new consensus or not.) --Nlu (talk) 17:03, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
WP:USEENGLISH. If Chinese-language academics can't, it's not really the English-speaking world (or Wiki)'s problem. They all think "Chinese" can be used as a noun since Zhongguoren is one, too. — LlywelynII 10:46, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
"The Chinese" can't be used as a (proper) noun? I'm sorry, that's clearly proper usage in my book. Of course, maybe my English isn't good enough, either. --Nlu (talk) 14:57, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
The United States Supreme Court not so long ago used it in that usage (albeit in quoting a military court's conclusions). Porter v. McCollum, 558 U.S. ___, 130 S. Ct. 447, 175 L. Ed. 2d 398 (2009). Of course, given that it was a per curiam opinion, maybe they agree with you that it's so shamefully improper usage that none of the justices wanted to sign the opinion. --Nlu (talk) 15:02, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
  • Support. Madalibi's proposal seems a reasonable method to determine the balance of usage in reliable English-language sources, which the naming policy says we should follow. Kanguole 00:30, 12 November 2011 (UTC)
  • Support (as nominator). I don't understand Nlu's insistence on usage "in the Chinese-speaking world" and I believe "common conceptualization of the terms" strongly suggests we un-capitalize dynasty. Anyway, a simple statistical analysis of 80 works on Chinese history seems like a simple way to solve this problem. I chose a majority of 60% as a threshold because I think advocates of change (i.e., me) should bear the burden of proof. Madalibi (talk) 01:15, 12 November 2011 (UTC)
There is more than ample precedent for applying typical Chinese (including "Chinese English") usage on this very Chinese subject: Wikipedia uses American English usage for American subject areas, British English usage for British subject areas, Australian English for Australian usage subject areas, &c. I don't see how the Chinese view proper capitalization in English is is irrelevant or improper consideration. --Nlu (talk) 05:04, 12 November 2011 (UTC)
It should also be noted that "D" is hardly a completely local consensus. Articles about Korean and Vietnamese dynasties, in particular, generally follow that same convention as well. (For examples, see Joseon Dynasty and Lê Dynasty.) Again, I think this is part of Chinese influence (viewing "XXX Dynasty" as referring to the polity) as both Korea and Vietnam were, for millennia, within the Chinese sphere of influence, but it shows that this is hardly a Chinese-only thing. (And, I'd say, if you try to mess with those "localized" Korean and Vietnamese usage, be prepared for heavy fights on your hands.) --Nlu (talk) 05:09, 12 November 2011 (UTC)
Don't get me wrong, Nlu. I'm not saying that taking Chinese usage into consideration is improper or irrelevant. In fact I pointed out even before you did that Chinese sources usually capitalize "Dynasty." What I said is that this usage constitutes a small minority. We shouldn't grant it special favor, because this interpretation of the English language is confined to the small circles that publish works in English, almost always in translation (which is very different from the case of topics concerning America, Britain, or Australia). Whether the majority of Chinese people interpret "Tangchao" 唐朝 as a proper noun is entirely irrelevant, because this interpretation is about the Chinese language, not the English language. I've simply been arguing that we should follow the overwhelming majority of English-language scholarship on Chinese history in not capitalizing "dynasty." What if we raised the bar from 60% to 80%? Would this kind of majority be strong enough, or is majority not a consideration? Cheers, Madalibi (talk) 05:42, 12 November 2011 (UTC)
It should be noted that a lot of "support" !votes here were due purely due to what the !voters perceived as convention; the !voters agreed that capitalizing "D" is more logical. (Of course, I acknowledge that they may be doing so to sooth my feelings.) It is my opinion that what is logical should be used, regardless of what the prevalent western usage might be, particularly when uncapitalizing "d" will now create an inconsistency with other east Asian usages as well, unless you're willing to tackle the entire east Asian block in one swoop. Essentially, I think what we have is an east-Asian vs. non-east-Asian usage split here (in English); therefore, I don't think just "counting the sources" is a valid way to count here since western sources will be overrepresented in any kind of a Web search vis-a-vis Asian ones. --Nlu (talk) 16:21, 12 November 2011 (UTC)
  • Support. Seems reasonable enough to me. I empathize with User:Nlu here, because 1) his grammatical argument is logical, and 2) I think capitalized "Dynasty" simply looks better. Be that as it may, we're supposed to stick with the reliable sources.  White Whirlwind  咨  01:42, 12 November 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose. This is a reasonable-sounding proposal, for sure, and I appreciate the rationale. The reason I oppose it is because I do not hold titles to the same standard of capitalization that I do with prose in a book. I am of the belief that, given the ambiguity of the 'proper noun status' of these titles, it is fine to decapitalize them in the body of the article but capitalize them in the headings of articles and in article titles. An example that I can draw upon is the title "Prime Minister", which is almost always capitalized in titles but much less so in prose, unless it is followed by a name. Colipon+(Talk) 02:54, 12 November 2011 (UTC)
Hi Colipon. Personally I would be more than happy to accept a compromise by which we would decapitalize "dynasty" in the body of texts and keep "Dynasty" in wiki titles. I just don't know if this kind of local consensus would be acceptable, since Wikipolicy states that common nouns should not be capitalized, even in titles (see WP:TITLEFORMAT; WP:CAPS is also relevant). Though I like the compromise you propose, could it be that your "oppose" ignores Wikipedia's naming policy? Would you be willing to reconsider your point of view? Cheers, Madalibi (talk) 04:53, 12 November 2011 (UTC)
Same here. It's reasonable but doesn't seem workable, given the tendency to have editors come through and "standardize". — LlywelynII 10:46, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
  • Support: I support but only to foster group consensus, as I think the case for "dynasty" is clear already. The use of the lower case in article titles is Wikipedia policy, and lower case is the style in the Chicago Manual of Style and Library of Congress. I admit that I still get a little taken aback when the NY Times puts "secretary of state" in lower case, but this is now established practice. User Nlu's arguments are thoughtful but it's is not a matter of logic but of convention. ch (talk) 06:41, 12 November 2011 (UTC)
  • Support: I agree that capitalizing "Dynasty" would be logical, but it contradicts the convention of most books on Chinese history that I have read. (My argument is something like: "if the founder of Harvard's Sinology department department didn't do this, why should we?") Finding an objective criteria for what constitutes "common use" is more difficult than I expected it to be. This formula isn't perfect, but it at least gives some quantifiable criteria to make a judgement.Ferox Seneca (talk) 09:40, 12 November 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose. The proposed solution is arbitrary, and in my opinion no better than tossing a coin. A decision should be based on rational argument, not a random method that is intended to solve the problem as quickly as possible. BabelStone (talk) 23:33, 12 November 2011 (UTC)
Hi BabelStone. I think a rational decision should be grounded in Wikipolicy and in common usage in reliable sources. Six other editors (ch, Anna Frodesiak, Ferox Seneca, Kanguole, White whirlwind, and yourself) have confirmed my impression that English-language scholarship on Chinese history usually does not capitalize "dynasty." The dominance of this usage outside Wikipedia also shows that the lower case form is not a source of confusion. Logic alone cannot solve this issue no matter how long we spend on it. We need a reference outside Wikipedia, and I propose that this reference be a large sample of reliable sources that we will find through Google Books. Now I agree that 60% of 80 books is a bit arbitrary, but I don't see how deciding this issue on the basis of scholarly usage outside Wikipedia would fall outside of rational argument. Would a higher percentage and a larger sample be better? Do you have another solution in mind for solving our problem? Cheers, Madalibi (talk) 02:24, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
Is there a problem that needs a solution here? I don't see one. Keep the current policy. Of course, that's me. --Nlu (talk) 02:41, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
The violations of English language usage and general policy in favor of local consensus, as explained above. — LlywelynII 10:52, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
  • Soft Support. The case for decapitalization was already made above and the specifics of this method are pretty profoundly arbitrary (20, 60%, "relevant", etc.). Make it 20 for

    ∘ each major dynasty listed on {{History of China}}
    ∘ from sources after 1990

    and I'm fine with it establishing a solid current English usage, though. — LlywelynII 10:46, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
Hi LlywelynII. You're right about "relevant." It was just unclear, so I crossed it out from my proposal. And no problem about expanding the search. Madalibi (talk) 12:10, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
No, it was never resolved. Maybe Madalabi had something pressing to do in RL? If you are up to picking this discussion up and carrying it to its eventual conclusion, I would encourage you to do so.Ferox Seneca (talk) 02:56, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
Madalibi offered to perform an extensive survey of high-quality English-language sources, but I think everyone expects that this will show the lower-case form is more common in those sources, and several editors argued that the question should be decided on the basis of logic rather than usage in the sources. That being the case, the survey would be pointless. The only way forward is to get wider input, e.g. by making a request to move all the articles at WP:RM. Kanguole 09:26, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
  • The problem is that in the context of Chinese history, dynasty and empire are more or less the same thing. A dynasty is indeed an empire and the two terms are occassionally used interchangeably, such as in the case of Tang or Ch'ing. There aren't any dynasty that I can think of that created more than one empires (nor was there any empire that continued with another dynasty). 218.250.159.42 (talk) 08:08, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
The issue here is not about dynasty/empire, just capitalization – whether to write "Tang Dynasty" or "Tang dynasty". Kanguole 09:26, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
There was an argument above on whether 'dynasty' was used to meant a polity or a ruling family. If it's the latter it should be decapitalised. Obviously in Chinese history contexts the word 'dynasty' is more a reference to the polity. 218.250.159.42 (talk) 11:39, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Late Qing Dynasty Princely titles

Latest comment: 12 years ago14 comments4 people in discussion

I brought this up over at Talk:Yixuan, 1st Prince Chun#Rename, and no one has yet responded, so I thought I would extend this discussion to other articles in question. I do not agree with the naming conventions of late Qing Dynasty princes. The convention [Given name], [order] [princely title] for article titles is needlessly conforming to a standard only seen at article names of British peers (and to a lessor extend, European nobility). I do not think this standard applies to Chinese princes. I would like to change this convention to [Given name], [princely title], unless there is a vast body of English literature that uses another form of romanization that is well established. This would mean the changes to the following articles:

This naming convention would better mirror the formal naming convention of Chinese literature. In Yixuan's case he is referred to as 醇亲王奕譞, his son 醇亲王载沣. Never are they referred to as 第一醇亲王 (First Prince Chun etc.). Colipon+(Talk) 01:48, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

  • Support. We would need "1st Prince" and "2nd Prince" if the title if these wikis were just "Prince Chun"; the names Yixuan and Zaifeng make this kind of disambiguation unnecessary. Colipon's proposed format stays close to Chinese naming conventions, which are not contradicted by Western reliable sources, so I think it's a good idea to simplify. Cheers, Madalibi (talk) 02:01, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
  • Support, but I would also like this to be considered: why not just "Yixuan" and "Zaifeng"? --Nlu (talk) 14:13, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
    • Nlu, I used to be an advocate of just using the personal names of the Princes, but a survey of history books in both serious English-language scholarship and Chinese literature, you will notice that many historians prefer to actually use "Prince Chun" and "Prince Gong". This may not be the case with earlier Qing Princes - for example, Daišan, Hooge, Dorgon etc. More ambiguous are Kangxi-era princes, namely his sons, who are often simply named using their order of birth. For these latter articles I would much prefer them to be simply personal names. I will put up a proposal for this change sometime soon. It will affect a great many articles. Colipon+(Talk) 03:16, 23 November 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment. I prefer to follow the format used on Chinese Wikipedia for now. However if certain names such as "Prince Gong" churns out more results on search engines than "Yixin" or the princes' personal names, then I guess it's better to abide by WP:COMMONNAME. I feel that it's odd to use numerical order (1st, 2nd...) in the titles. Don't the personal names of the two Prince Chuns (Yixuan, Zaifeng) already distinguish them from each other? Lonelydarksky (暗無天日) contact me (聯絡) 01:23, 26 November 2011 (UTC)
    • Well, it's not just a matter of search results really. Even in Chinese literature there are more references to "Prince Gong" than to "Yixin". Few people who are not well versed in Qing Dynasty history will know who "Yixin" is. I think the common name convention would mean that Yixin be moved to "Prince Gong", but since the Prince Chuns still need disambiguation, they will be disambiguated with their personal names. Prince Qing is kind of a toss-up, being referred to in literature by both "Yikuang" and "Prince Qing". So perhaps we should just stick with both. Colipon+(Talk) 02:45, 26 November 2011 (UTC)


Case discussion

  • Hooge, Prince Su --> Hooge
    • There are two notable Prince Su's in the Qing Dynasty, with Hooge probably occupying the more prominent spot than his 6th generation descendant Shanqi. This does not, however, change the fact that he is commonly referred to in both modern Chinese history books and Chinese television series as "Hooge". Anyone looking for the subject will look under 'Hooge'.
  • Yinxiang, 1st Prince Yi --> Yinxiang
    • Yinxiang was known as "Yinxiang" for his entire life - his name of special significance since the Yongzheng Emperor allowed him to maintain the character "Yin" against the Emperor's nominal taboo. The "Prince Yi" is a title used only during Yongzheng's reign. In history books he is referred to as "the Thirteenth Prince" or "Yinxiang", very rarely "Prince Yi".
  • Yinti, Prince Xun --> Yinti
    • This one is debateable, since during the Yongzheng Emperor's reign his name was changed to "Yunti" to avoid the Emperor's nominal taboo, and indeed, some historical books prefer "Yunti".
  • Yinsi, Prince Lian --> Yinsi
    • He had many names during his lifetime, of which the most common is "Yinsi". His title Prince Lian was abolished by Yongzheng before he died anyway.
  • Hongzhou, Prince He --> Hongzhou
    • There aren't many English-language sources on this, but the Chinese sources almost uniformly use "Hongzhou".
  • Zaiyuan --> ???
    • This one is very difficult. Of the English-language sources, "Prince Yi" is more common. The Chinese sources tend to prefer Zaiyuan. But then there aren't many English-language sources that deal with this Prince. Google Book search yields 39 results for "Prince Yi" and "Cixi" searched in conjunction (to avoid conflating the earlier Prince Yi), and only 9 results for "Zaiyuan" and "Cixi".

Those are my two cents. Colipon+(Talk) 02:57, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Already moved for Hooge, Yongqi, and Yinti. However the Kangxi Emperor had another son also called "Yinti" (胤禔), so how are we going to distinguish between the two Yintis? I've no objections to Yinxiang, Yinsi, and Hongzhou. I propose moving Zaiyuan to Zaiyuan, Prince Yi. Lonelydarksky (暗無天日) contact me (聯絡) 05:01, 4 December 2011 (UTC)


Sounds about right. The other son of Kangxi that you are talking about is actually pronounced Yinzhi, not Yinti, so that should not be a problem. I think the proposal for Zaiyuan, Prince Yi, sounds good. Colipon+(Talk) 23:17, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Revamping single-character district conventions

Latest comment: 12 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion

The current naming practise for single-character districts (i.e. 城区) is to pinyin-ise the Chinese name and append "District" in the title. For example, any place named "城区" is titled Chengqu District. This is tautological because "区" (pinyin: qū) means "district". Conventions for other geographical features (i.e. mountains, lakes) ask that titles be non-tautological, since quality English sources avoid tautologies to begin with.
Now for the possibilities for the proposed change:

  • 城区, 郊区, 矿区
  1. "Cheng District", "Jiao District", and "Kuang District"
  2. "Chengqu", "Jiaoqu", and "Kuangqu"
  3. No literal translations (i.e. Urban District)
  • 东区, 西区
  1. "Dong District", "Xi District"
  2. "East District", "West District"
  3. "Eastern District", "Western District"
  4. "Dongqu", "Xiqu"

Please discuss which options you prefer and why. Thanks  The Tartanator  03:25, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

This is indeed an interesting discussion. I would be perfectly fine with "Chengqu" and "Jiaoqu" as standalone names, with a bracket denoting which city it is in. I believe "Chengqu District" is probably as tautological as "Mount Taishan". As for 东区, 西区, I would say "Eastern District" and "Western District" probably fit their descriptions the best, but that would make it a double standard - since we are not translating 'Chengqu' as 'Urban District', nor are we translating 'Jiaoqu' as 'Suburban district'. Colipon+(Talk) 04:10, 29 November 2011 (UTC)
Since you said you are perfectly fine with "Chengqu", then "Chengqu", "Dongqu", etc it is. Also, because there have been no objections raised in over a month, I will change the guideline myself. GotR Talk 22:32, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

"Chinese" vs. "Mandarin"

Latest comment: 12 years ago16 comments7 people in discussion

I understand there was some sort of broad (but controversial) consensus reached at an earlier discussion over "Standard Mandarin" being renamed "Standard Chinese", and then ostensibly a clean-up operation was performed pan-wiki to redact references to "Standard Mandarin" wholesale. This was previously also done to references of "Cantonese" and "Yue Chinese". I believe this approach is bad and creates some very problematic lines of text, and find it alarming that we want to impose this sort of standard without carefully going through every article ti affects.

For example, from "Chinese as a foreign language", we have the following phrase:

Here "Standard Chinese" refers to Putonghua on the mainland and Guoyu in Taiwan. Even though this is essentially the same concept on both sides of the strait, Taiwanese speakers would translate "Guoyu" to "Mandarin" rather than to "Chinese". Calling it "Standard Chinese" violates WP:NPOV. Similarly, what is known as Huayu in Singapore is also more often translated as "Mandarin" or "Standard Mandarin" than it is "Chinese" or "Standard Chinese". It would unambiguous and neutral for the phrase to instead read

Colipon+(Talk) 17:17, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Also, the government of the Republic of China (Taiwan) uniformly uses "Mandarin" as the standard English translation for the term 'Guoyu'. See this. Colipon+(Talk) 17:27, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Beware that Taivo et al. don't care at all about NPOV; in order to stand a chance against them in successfully reversing the move back in the direction of "Mandarin", we need to compile sources and show that most of Taivo's sources don't fit the description Putonghua/Guoyu/Huayu.  The Tartanator  21:49, 29 November 2011 (UTC)
Just for convenience sake I will link newcomers to the discussion to here as a reference to the archived discussion. As much as I am sympathetic to the academic side of the argument, and the sourcing on "Modern Standard Chinese", I object to the mess that it has now created on countless articles in much the same fashion that an article name change between 'Cantonese' and "Yue Chinese" did several years ago. I also do not believe the moves were made with sufficient consultation and due process according to the principles of consensus on this eencyclopedia and will seek ways to challenge it procedurally (it seems one or two editors with muscle pushed the move through despite continuing debate on both sides). Even if sources overwhelmingly state that "Modern Standard Chinese" is a better alternative to "Standard Mandarin", we have to weigh the practical considerations of how this will affect the rest of the Encyclopedia and the presentation of this subject. Awkward turns of phrase have appeared in many articles as a result of this blanket change across the encyclopedia. In addition, the government of Singapore and the government of Taiwan do not call Mandarin "Standard Chinese". They call it "Mandarin" or "Mandarin Chinese". Even the government of China does not call it as such, preferring terms like Putonghua to clarify. This brings about a real concern with WP:NPOV. Colipon+(Talk) 00:54, 30 November 2011 (UTC)
I think we have a very good starting point here then. It seems Taivo only considered academia, and that is understandable considering he himself is a linguist. But don't open a move request until you have made up your mind as to the new title and you have enough sources...a request that snowball fails will make us look laughable.  The Tartanator  01:52, 30 November 2011 (UTC)


It would be better to not use "Standard" everywhere. The use of "language" to primarily mean a dialect bundle and only secondarily a standard language that some people learn nonnatively, is limited to linguistic specialists. The common English usage of "language" refers primarily to a well-known standard language, and only secondarily to dialects.


As for Chinese vs. Mandarin I think both are appropriate and in fact both should be used. I don't think the question of the English words Chinese vs. Mandarin has anything to do with the differences between PRC, ROC, Singapore, or others. Saying Mandarin explicitly is less ambiguous as many people are not yet clear that the standard for Chinese is Mandarin, but it is good to let readers know by example that both are used. --JWB (talk) 18:31, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Continued discussion on Mandarin

I have done another review of the articles, and find that the current article structure is inappropriate.

I am willing to concede that the modern standard language is a standard for all Chinese, not just Mandarin. I am willing to concede that many sources, particularly academic ones, refer to "Modern Standard Chinese". But I dispute the following things:

  1. Users cannot find what they are looking for. Per WP:COMMONNAME, the principle behind article titles is for the reader to find the subject in the most convenient fashion possible. "Mandarin Chinese" currently garners some 2.5 k hits per day, as opposed to the 800 or so in Standard Chinese. I assert here that the vast majority of readers who are looking up the "Mandarin Chinese" article are really looking for the article on Standard Mandarin. This is a practical flaw. The "Mandarin Chinese" article currently deals with a lot of dialectology. I appreciate the linguistic classifications when dealing with dialectology, but not when someone wants to just learn about a topical area.
  2. The title is not neutral. Per WP:NPOV. In English language publications, the Taiwan government calls it "Mandarin", the Singapore government calls it "Mandarin". The Chinese government calls it "Putonghua". In the United States and Canada, people refer to "Mandarin" opposing "Cantonese", the two widely known spoken forms of Chinese. In this context "Mandarin" refers to the same concept as the "Mandarin" of Taiwan and Singapore governments (I doubt they would be referring to the "northern dialects"). Calling it "Standard Chinese" would be pandering to one group only - linguists. No official government sources or the average person calls it "Standard Chinese".
  3. The title can confuse spoken and written forms. You write in Chinese, you speak in Mandarin.
  4. Ambiguity. If the word "Mandarin" has taken on its own meaning (just like the word "Chinese") has in the English language, then that should be taken into context of article naming. "Standard Mandarin" is totally unambiguous. "Standard Chinese" is. It does not have to be 100% congruent with Chinese interwiki links. Just as there is no easy translation for the English word "Chinese" in Chinese, there is also no easy translation for "Mandarin" - all of it is context sensitive.

Those are just my thoughts. I want to make this encyclopedia as accessible to our readers as I can. I believe calling the article "Standard Mandarin" is the most neutral, unambiguous, and accessible way for our readers to find what they are looking for. Colipon+(Talk) 15:38, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

I believe you're right that most people arriving at "Mandarin Chinese" are looking for the standard language, not the dialect group, and that's a problem. (I'm afraid I don't find the other points convincing.) But renaming the article on the standard language as "Standard Mandarin" would not address that problem; after all Standard Mandarin already redirects there. The ambiguous term "Mandarin Chinese" would still take readers to the dialect group. Kanguole 17:32, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
If you are not convinced, read the latest references in the New York Times, the Economist, and other reputable international newspapers that set guidelines in proper naming conventions in the English language. They refer to the language much more often as "Mandarin" than "Standard Chinese". Colipon+(Talk) 01:05, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
I agree with Colipon. This clearly contrary to WP:COMMONNAME because it's pretty clear what most people look for when they type that term in the search box. The spoken northern dialect ought to occupy the namespace 'Mandarin'. --Ohconfucius ¡digame! 01:35, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
Colipon's arguments are persuasive. "Mandarin" means something slightly different in common English than "Chinese". Article titles should reflect standard use.Ferox Seneca (talk) 20:52, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
I support Mandarin but Standard is not WP:COMMONNAME either. --JWB (talk) 22:48, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
Trying again:
  1. isn't an argument for moving "Standard Chinese" to "Standard Mandarin"; it's an (IMO persuasive) argument for moving the article on the dialect group to a new name so that "Mandarin Chinese" can be redirected at the standard language.
  2. The article title policy explicitly discounts neutrality arguments in favour of usage in reliable English language sources. (WP:AT#Neutrality in article titles)
  3. I know lots of people who say they speak "Chinese", and the shops are full of books and CDs offering to teach people to "speak Chinese".
  4. if the claim is that "Standard Chinese" is ambiguous, what else is the term commonly used for in English sources? Kanguole 23:47, 15 December 2011 (UTC)


I don't see anyone arguing particularly for Standard, just for Mandarin. I would support your proposal for Standard Chinese -> Mandarin Chinese and Mandarin Chinese -> Mandarin dialects. It sounds like the other editors in this discussion would too. --JWB (talk) 03:13, 19 December 2011 (UTC)
To continue this discussion, if one takes a look at the principles outlined on WP:TITLE, it would become increasingly apparent that "Standard Mandarin" is the name that fits all the guidelines, i.e., recognizability, naturalness, precision, conciseness, and consistency. I do not have the time to elaborate on the details right now, but "Standard Chinese" certainly does not appear to fit into any of these, except for perhaps consistency. Colipon+(Talk) 00:46, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
If you want to change the title of Standard Chinese then you should be making a case for a move request there, not here. There is already extensive refutation of your arguments in that article's talk archives. Shrigley (talk) 22:34, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Taiwan Province (ROC) vs. Taiwan Province (PRC)

Latest comment: 12 years ago4 comments3 people in discussion

Under the Republic of China, Taiwan, and variations thereof template it mentions the Taiwan Province. I think we should make it more clear if we are talking about the Taiwan Province of the Republic of China or the Taiwan Province of the People's Republic of China. --Gimelthedog (talk) 06:04, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Well, the government that administers "Taiwan Province" calls itself "the Republic of China", but the status of Taiwan is obviously ambiguous/controversial in a way that I'm sure you are familiar with and which doesn't need to be reviewed here. What do you believe would be the fundamental difference between "Taiwan, ROC" and "Taiwan, PRC"? What sort of information would even be included in a "Taiwan, PRC" article?Ferox Seneca (talk) 07:43, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
Have you seen Taiwan Province, People's Republic of China? Kanguole 15:06, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
Wow. Very interesting.Ferox Seneca (talk) 19:04, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

The "China" and "ROC" articles.

Latest comment: 12 years ago29 comments12 people in discussion

Clearly, that move is still causing problems for some as you can see on the talk pages of both Talk:China and Talk:Republic of China. I once suggested formal resolution discussions, but that didn't go anywhere. In either case, I'm just raising this issue here, I doubt I'll play much of an active part in any future discussion, as I've accepted the move as it stands. However, in my opinion, while its true that nothing is going to please everyone, something is going to need to be done to alleviate the problems caused bt it somewhat, it's just a question of what and how.--Tærkast (Discuss) 18:40, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Some serious revision is needed of this guideline, which appears to at best ignore, and at worst deprecate, the simple use of "Taiwan" to refer to the political unit. This flies in the face of common English language usage in 2012, in which Taiwan is far more common than "Republic of China" or "ROC" or whatever; and not just in casual or "incorrect" usage, but in serious governmental, international, media and academic sources. Obviously there's an issue about the main Taiwan/ROC page itself to be resolved, and there's always context (eg in terms of historical references, and references to official names and titles) to be considered, but I can't believe that this convention can be allowed to stand as drafted. Following it just leads to everything jarring with what readers see in the outside world, and confuses more than it clarifies through its purported technical correctness. N-HH talk/edits 23:35, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
Essentially what we must decide is whether NPOV trumps COMMONNAME. Both are valid Wikipedia principles. In some articles, such as "aircraft", NPOV does indeed trump COMMONNAME. One way or the other, though, the overall policy should be consistent. Either call it China and Taiwan, or PRC and ROC. Not a mix-and-match. Colipon+(Talk) 00:42, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
I strongly disagree with the notion that a "mix-and-match" should be avoided. There are clear instances where we would use official names and titles, such as with legal documents and government organs, and instances where we would use common names and titles, such as when referencing a place. Accuracy takes on a greater role in article text than it does for article titles. There are many instances where using the common name would not diminish accuracy, while many others where we would be implying the name of an institution is something that it is not. For example Republic of Korea Navy is a proper name, so the article exists there and not at South Korean navy (which avoids the proper name) or South Korean Navy/Navy of South Korea (which implies the wrong proper name).--Jiang (talk) 01:53, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
Well, if that principle applies for Taiwan, then it ought apply for China as well. China is officially called the People's Republic of China - more often than Taiwan calls itself the Republic of China anyway. If that is the argument then "China" should be moved back to PRC. Colipon+(Talk) 02:23, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
I agree that based on widespread usage in print media that there is more justification for People's Republic of China and China to be separate articles than there is for the countries template to reside at Republic of China rather than Taiwan. However, the merge of People's Republic of China into China does not justify the wholesale change of "People's Republic of China" to "China" in article text and in article titles. Our most recent edits to the naming conventions reflects the notion that whether to use the official name is context dependent. For example, President of the People's Republic of China isn't going anywhere.--Jiang (talk) 03:30, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
That part I agree with, much like the dogma that has led to the modification of all "Standard Mandarin" references on the encyclopedia to become "Standard Chinese", regardless of their context. Colipon+(Talk) 04:14, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
Sorry, I don't see why "President of China" is an illegitimate title for that article, any more than President of Germany shouldn't be used for the President of the Federal Republic of Germany. The Presidents of the Republic of China can be included to the extent that they are part of the PRC's history. But nobody calls the President of Taiwan the "President of China". Shrigley (talk) 22:34, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
@Colipon or we could compare to other countries and our policies WP:COMMONNAME and WP:POVTITLE, in which case China is in the right place, and Taiwan isn't... -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 08:15, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
I'm also not sure about this idea that we have a clash between NPOV and COMMONNAME. Indeed I'm sceptical what NPOV has to do with much of this wider debate really - if anything it should surely lead us to avoid the more politically charged and motivated reasoning that goes on around this issue, and simply ask: what do people, around the world in 2012, from the person in the street and the media, through to international bodies and even up to the ROC government itself at times, normally refer to this thing as? And if we ask that question, the answer, undoubtedly, is "Taiwan". I also disagree that "mix and match" is a problem - as noted, for official titles, of course ROC will stay, where appropriate, both in article text and in article titles; then there's the issue of context, where one formulation will be more appropriate or clearer than another; and finally of course, it's a basic principle of writing prose that you switch between different terms as you go simply for the aesthetic reason of avoiding repetition (this applies also, say to mixing references to "China" and, say, "the People's Republic", "the PRC" etc). The issue here is that these guidelines should not only allow use of the term Taiwan for the political unit, they should surely prefer it over ROC in most cases (and, btw, that should almost certainly, as now with China, include the main country article title - it's standard for country pages on WP and for real-world country profiles to use the common, short-form country name, eg "France", "Iran" etc). N-HH talk/edits 09:19, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
' and, btw, that should almost certainly, as now with China, include the main country article title - it's standard for country pages on WP and for real-world country profiles to use the common, short-form country name, eg "France", "Iran" etc ' - What about countries such as the Republic of Macedonia, the Republic of the Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of Ireland, and the Federated States of Micronesia? 218.250.159.42 (talk) 18:38, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
Those are the result of disambiguation and the lack of a primary topic. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 02:38, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
As a native speaker of English residing in Europe (and not an American, apparently), I'd say more than 90% of the time that I come across the name Georgia is about the independent state in Caucasia (instead of the US southern state), and more than 95% of the time with Washington about the US capital (instead of the US state in the Pacific Northwest). So what's the primary topic of Georgia and Washington? Why should we consider the communist republic as the primary topic of China just because the politicians in Washington and London equate them as such? Why don't we consider English sources from the Far East too? 1.65.152.12 (talk) 12:55, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
English sources from around the world were considered. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 01:45, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
@Chipmunkdavis - You sure Ireland and Macedonia aren't primary topics? 218.250.159.42 (talk) 13:15, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
I'm personally not, but as there have been ARBCOM rulings on both, I assume the views are fairly well backed up. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 01:45, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
In that case shall we bring this to the ArbCom too? 218.250.159.42 (talk) 15:21, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
The option is always there. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 15:26, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
ArbCom would reject the case as "premature" until the dispute was a complete trainwreck. Both those disputes had degenerated into extreme misconduct, which is thankfully a long way from the situation here. Even then ArbCom didn't decide the naming issue – after banning and restricting several editors they directed the survivors to seek neutral outside administrators to come to a policy-based decision. You're probably better off just going to that last step directly, say at WP:AN. Kanguole 16:02, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
@Jiang - I don't think 'widespread usage' could override neutral point of view. It's meaningless if a certain usage or some certain sources aren't neutral, no matter how widespread they are. 218.250.159.42 (talk) 18:38, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
@Jiang and Colipon+ - The navy and aircraft example highlights how WP:Commonname isn't everything. But how can we apply that rule in the case of the PRC? In both cases, the terms got the same meanings (e.g. South Korean Navy = Navy of South Korea = Republic of Korea Navy), but the PRC and China aren't essentially the same thing. 218.250.159.42 (talk) 18:38, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
@N-HH - What if we gotta write about the ROC in the 1950s, 1970s or 1990s, if we set 1949 or 1945 as the cut off point? Shall we write 'Taiwan and the United States signed the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty in 1954', 'Taiwan was a permanent member of the UN Security Council until 1971', or 'Taiwan's diplomatic ties with South Korea, Saudi Arabia and South Africa were severed in the 1990s'? Wikipedia isn't a newspaper or a news magazine. 218.250.159.42 (talk) 18:38, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
According to the PRC, the ROC seized to exist after 1949. That is why they celebrated the 60th anniversary instead of the 40th anniversary. Benjwong (talk) 22:01, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
Yes. It's PRC's point of view that the ROC ceased to exist in 1949 and the PRC succeeded as the rightful ruler of all China. Yet they also admit the existence of another authority controlling the islands of Taiwan, Kinmen, Matsu, etc. But all these are sort of irrelevant as far as the above statements are concerned. 'Republic of China' couldn't readily be replaced by 'Taiwan'. 218.250.159.42 (talk) 13:19, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
That is easy to fix. Just say "Republic of China (Taiwan)" or "Taiwan (Republic of China)" in the article. This treaty wasn't even signed on mainland soil or US soil. The name is the least concern. Benjwong (talk) 03:06, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
That's rewriting history. The United States wasn't signing a treaty with Taiwan, but a government that it by then recognised as China. What we can only say is that 'The Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty was signed in 1954 between the Republic of China, which had lost the Chinese mainland and relocated its government to Taipei in 1949 as a result of the civil war with the Communist Party of China, and the United States.'. 218.250.159.42 (talk) 19:05, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
There are various contexts where we would find it necessary to mention some or all of these facts: that this regime is known formally as the Republic of China, that it rules Taiwan and is nowadays commonly referred to as Taiwan, and that it has a complicated relationship with mainland China. I would think that there is a cutoff date before which we would err on the side of calling it the Republic of China and explaining that its rule after 1949 was limited to Taiwan and nearby islands; and after the cutoff we would heir on the side of calling it Taiwan and explaining that it is known formally as the Republic of China. One option for a cutoff date would be when the ROC loses its seat in the UN in 1971. Another option would be when the ROC government last made serious plans to try to reclaim the mainland by force, which I believe was ca. 1966 — after this time, they had resigned themselves to rule only Taiwan.—Greg Pandatshang (talk) 03:50, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
(outdent)
I bet you are talking about 1996 instead, when the president was elected by the people of the Free Area, i.e. Taiwan and Kinmen, Wuchiou and Matsu. But then no matter the cut-off day is 1971, 1978 or 1996, such a cut-off day would still be OR among Wikipedia editors. Further, we cannot readily rename the articles President of the Republic of China, Flag of the Republic of China, Constitution of the Republic of China, etc., readily, into '.. of Taiwan'. We can't say Chiang Kai Shek or Lee Teng Hui is the founding president of Taiwan in 1972 or 1996. 218.250.159.42 (talk) 08:08, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
No, actually, I was thinking of Project National Glory, the KMT plan to launch an invasion of the mainland and expel the Communists by force. It looks like the plan was no longer being actively pursued after November, 1965, which means that the ROC government was no longer actively working on becoming the government of all of China after that point. However, Project National Glory seems to have had something of a gradual end, and so it might not be an appropriate cutoff point.
I don't think that a sytlistic decision like this can be considered original research. The facts we're presenting are the same either way.—Greg Pandatshang (talk) 02:04, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

NC-TW straw poll

Latest comment: 12 years ago82 comments32 people in discussion
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
As promised, the poll lasted for more than a week, and without any further efforts to advertise it in the form of an RfC or centralized discussion, it is closed. NC-TW is a polarizing guideline. There is about an equal level of supporters and opponents, with slightly more opponents. As such, the guideline cannot said to be a "consensus guide", as it describes itself. It has been moved to Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Chinese)/Taiwan and marked as a failed proposal. Efforts to make a new guideline on naming Taiwan-related articles to which the majority of supporters and opponents of NC-TW can agree are encouraged. Shrigley (talk) 21:15, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

It's time to start a new discussion of WP:NC-TW, a guideline which is often referenced as a representation of "consensus", but which in light of current events, many people are complaining does not still represent consensus. After seeing the trainwreck at Talk:Republic of China, I think we need a straight up-or-down vote before we try to propose anything new, because of the real possibility of filibustering with ten dozen "alternate proposals". So just indicate your preference below; there is a separate section for discussion. Shrigley (talk) 17:16, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

I'd suggest that this is possibly one of the worst possible issues on which we should think that a vote at a particular time could give a sound indication of broad consensus. It's obvious that this issue attracts people deeply concerned with the complex geographic-socio-political history of the area. While they make a very valuable contribution, they are not representative of the broader, global Wikipedia community. My interest arose on one of our genuinely global pages, Wikipedia:In the news/Candidates. To balance those very interested people perennially watching this page, is it possible to also invite to comment here those who commented on this matter in relation to the recent election in the ITN article? HiLo48 (talk) 00:10, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
Sure. There were a variety of viewpoints expressed about this convention at ITN. Shrigley (talk) 00:44, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Does NC-TW represent current consensus?

Support

(NC-TW continues to represent current consensus. The guideline needs minor tweaks or no tweaks at all in light of the current China title.)

  1. Raiolu (talk) 19:10, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
  2. GotR Talk 21:15, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
  3. Hsinhai (talk) 23:24, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
  4. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 06:30, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
  5. Jiang (talk) 14:46, 17 January 2012 (UTC) Support basic thrust of existing guidelines, but strongly believe it needs to be reworded to respect rather than denigrate common usage (has nothing to do with placement of China article).
  6. wctaiwan (talk) 15:54, 17 January 2012 (UTC) Given a broad interpretation of "identifying a geographic location" (e.g. Radiohead plans to visit Taiwan in July, not Radiohead plans to visit the Republic of China (Taiwan) in July), and without endorsing the underlying motivation of other editors.
  7. User:虞海 11:00, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
  8. Nyttend (talk) 19:29, 19 January 2012 (UTC) Definitely. This is the only way to be in line with WP:NPOV. Nyttend (talk) 19:29, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
  9. --王小朋友 (talk) 14:59, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
  10. Without a strong proposal for a replacement, I don't think it should be decommissioned. Rennell435 (talk) 05:30, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
  11. Taiwan is NOT A COUNTRY.--Edouardlicn (talk) 06:40, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
  12. — ASDFGH =] talk? 01:35, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
  13. --tOMG 06:38, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
  14. 24.22.232.117 (talk) 15:17, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Oppose

(NC-TW does not represent current consensus. It should be decommissioned and we should write a new NC-TW guideline or just defer to greater WP policy.)

  1. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 17:21, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
  2. N-HH talk/edits 17:30, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
  3. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 18:37, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
  4. TechnoSymbiosis (talk) 20:20, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
  5. HiLo48 (talk) 21:10, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
  6. Tktru (talk) 23:19, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
  7. John Smith's (talk) 08:09, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
  8. 95.232.244.111 (talk) 09:46, 17 January 2012 (UTC)— [[User:{{{1}}}|{{{1}}}]] ([[User talk:{{{1}}}|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/{{{1}}}|contribs]]) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
  9. Kanguole 12:57, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
  10. SchmuckyTheCat (talk)
  11. Kirby173 (talk) 17:48, 17 January 2012 (UTC) It is because of the China renaming that NC-TW no longer reflects the current consensus. A change is required to maintain a form of consistency between the two Chinese states.
  12. mgeo talk 13:10, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
  13. It seems apparent from the discussion at Talk:Republic of China that WP:NC-TW does not reflect consensus. Mlm42 (talk) 17:25, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
  14. Benjwong (talk) 09:21, 20 January 2012 (UTC) - After the move of PRC -> China, the current consensus looks seriously out of date and need changes.
  15. Shrigley (talk) 03:18, 25 January 2012 (UTC)


Criticism on the polling

The poll want us to express our opinion about WP:NC-TW, while WP:NC-TW redirects to WP:NC-CHN! So the poll statement is confusing. ––虞海 (Yú Hǎi) ✍ 18:02, 17 January 2012 (UTC) I doubt if the voter (either support or oppose) know what they're doing. ––虞海 (Yú Hǎi) ✍ 18:02, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Do they have to? 42.3.2.237 (talk) 07:05, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
Of course! If you vote for a topic with completely absense of cognition, then it's no different to nonsense. (e.g. you vote “yes” to “Obama is a Muslim” at a congress but you don't know who is Obama, then your vote is nonsense.) ––虞海 (Yú Hǎi) ✍ 10:59, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
There's no such requirement on Wikipedia. Neither is there any such requirement in the US congress or any state legislature in the states. 42.3.2.237 (talk) 11:22, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
There is: WP:DEM. Wikipedia does not allow any poll if the voters do not know what they're polling about. ––虞海 (Yú Hǎi) ✍ 13:28, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

I believe these guidelines are meant to reflect usage of terms within articles more so than the naming of articles. This should really be about the "Manual of Style (Chinese)" instead of the "Naming conventions (Chinese)." Kirby173's comment above seems to believe that this ought to determine the placement of the Taiwan article, which the guidelines as worded for do not aspire to do. Article titles and article text are two separate issues. It's now hard to tell here what people are really responding to.--Jiang (talk) 20:53, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

I think that's exceedingly sensible. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 20:56, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
Well, they're related in that we're not going to call an article one thing and then use an entirely different term to normally refer to that same thing in actual text, presumably. Obviously there's more flexibility in text, in terms of qualifying/explaining use and also in terms of switching between different terms at different times, for aesthetic variety or depending on precise context, but we have to decide what the primary, contemporary designation for Taiwan/ROC is, surely? And that then applies to the article title AND to the majority of non-historical or non-specialised in-text references. And no, this poll does not decide anything, but it may well suggest - as it seems to be doing so far - that there's no consensus for these guidelines as currently written. N-HH talk/edits 00:16, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Discussion

Currently, the guideline suggests that Taiwan should only be used for references to the island itself, and that references to the state should be to "Republic of China", or at a pinch, "Republic of China (Taiwan)" - but the latter only on first mention, reverting to the simple "ROC" designation subsequently. This simply flies in the face of what nearly every real-world source does in 2012 when referring to the state/nation/geopolitical entity at issue here. Universally, as amply demonstrated elsewhere, they talk about "Taiwan" doing this that or the other, about elections "in Taiwan", about "China warning Taiwan" etc etc. Basically, this part of the guidelines needs to be flipped on its head. ROC should only be used in a historical context, or when talking about the more abstract idea of the regime that still claims sovereignty over the whole of China but whose authority is currently limited to the state/area known as Taiwan. This should apply of course to both the main article titles, and to in-text references. Regardless of what people claim is "correct" or "more neutral" or whatever, this is simply the way the world uses the terms, and we should follow that; not declare that everyone else has got it wrong and that a small clique of WP editors somehow know better. N-HH talk/edits 18:44, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I would suggest having an RFC on this fairly soon, as given this is a guideline we can list the discussion at WP:CENT to get wider participation. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 18:46, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
Wider participation is key, since we hopefully might get a more detached, objective and representative consensus sorted out, rather than just a repeat of the kind of thing we have now, which was presumably agreed by a small group of interested parties with an inevitably narrow and often partisan focus. N-HH talk/edits 18:56, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
This guideline is not consistent with Wikipedia's other policies and standards like WP:COMMONNAME, nor with standard usage in modern English-speaking society. The ROC government itself even uses the name Taiwan frequently to refer to their country in official English writing, evidenced by the press releases on the GIO website. I would say not only that it should be superseded by more updated guidance, but that its inconsistency with other elements of policy makes it unsustainable and compelled to change. TechnoSymbiosis (talk) 20:24, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
Can't we just edit the Taiwan guidelines to be a mirror of the recently edited China guidelines? We simply made the wording less descriptive and more ambiguous, leaving the issue to editor discretion. That was relatively painless.--Jiang (talk) 02:32, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
No. That would solve nothing. I came here as a result of an intense debate at Wikipedia:In the news/Candidates on the issue of the recent election. Several editors used this policy as an absolute reason why China had to be mentioned in the blurb for that news item. Many disagreed. Deliberately creating ambiguity here would only make things worse, recreating this debate in perpetuity every time this place was discussed elsewhere. We need a clear policy here. HiLo48 (talk) 02:57, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
I think what would make the most sense and offend the least people would be to change the current "China" article to "People's Republic of China" and leave the "Republic of China" alone. The hardcore Mainlanders cannot complain about the article saying "People's Republic of China" versus "China" because "PRC" is the name of their country, there's no debating that. And the hardcore Taiwan Independence people cannot debate the fact that their country is legally called "Republic of China" until such time as that government actually declares independence. You can't compare this case to Ireland or even America (United States) in this case and use those (and any other) article as an example to move forward here, the situation is unique and requires its own unique solution. People's Republic of China/Republic of China; using the unarguable, official, legal names in this case, is the way to go.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.40.129.169 (talk • contribs)
"Deliberately creating ambiguity here..." is arguably the most laughable thing I have heard any established editor say while here on Wikipedia. The policy on the ROC versus "Taiwan" makes itself unequivocally clear, and the only ambiguity that is being created here is to alter the status quo: In a modern context, the term "Republic of China" has only one meaning, while the term "Taiwan" has many. I do not care how much your side attempts to refute this—it only means further denial, denial, and more denial of the complicated, intricate truth. GotR Talk 03:43, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
If you think you can establish consensus here to wipe the term "Republic of China" off Wikipedia, well then, good luck. We can only pinpoint the instances were each term would be more accurate and acceptable, and the many other instances where they are interchangeable. Consensus is about taking into account as many views as possible - on the basis of existing discussion, replacing every instance of Republic of China with Taiwan isn't going to get consensus. The best that can be achieved is to permit Taiwan to be used a some sort of conventional short form of Republic of China, rather than limiting it to the island as the current guidelines do now.
What do you propose to replace the current text with?--Jiang (talk) 03:50, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

The issue is not so simple. For example, the current ITN blurb could be shortened from "In the Republic of China (Taiwan), Ma Ying-jeou is re-elected as president and the Kuomintang retains its majority in the Legislative Yuan." to "In Taiwan, Ma Ying-jeou is re-elected as president and the Kuomintang retains its majority in the Legislative Yuan." without sacrificing either neutrality or accuracy, as Taiwan is used to refer to the geographical place of the political entity. Less accurate but not necessarily biased would be "Ma Ying-jeou is re-elected as president of Taiwan and the Kuomintang retains its majority in the Legislative Yuan." Not only less accurate but misleading would be "Taiwan was replaced by China in the UN in 1971." See the difference?

Article titles reflect common names. Article text reflect accuracy and precision.--Jiang (talk) 04:03, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Those arguing against accepting the name Taiwan for current events are showing very bad faith by completely ignoring the fact, pointed out in GOOD faith by many editors, that Taiwan IS the common name of the place now all over the world. (Obviously except among some hardliners obsessed with history.) They are not arguing against that point made by so many. They are acting if it hadn't been said at all. It's either very poor comprehension on their part, or very bad manners. This is meant to be Discussion, not repeating old political position over and over while ignoring what everybody else says. HiLo48 (talk) 04:42, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
Hahahahaha. I can't believe you are this desperate, desperate enough to resort solely to commenting on personal conduct to confront your opposition...you have sunk to a bottomless new low. Almost no one here, myself included, disputes that "Taiwan" is the common name of the ROC, yet in the face of this fact, you unforgivably pretend otherwise. You are in enough denial to even deny the fact that your side has consistently REFUSED to acknowledge (and even learn) the subtleties involved. GotR Talk 04:58, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
There are absolutely no subtleties about the common name. The world's media and therefore the world's people use it. Please comment on that point. HiLo48 (talk) 05:26, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
What's the common name of the Republic of China? It is Taiwan fair and simple. But are there subtleties involved in differentiating between the common name and the official name? Of course there are. (See the post by me immediately above this one.)--Jiang (talk) 14:32, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Common name isn't something so authoritative that cannot be trumped. It's a principle subjected to actual contexts. As far as the title of the article about the ROC is concerned, the subject of the article isn't only the modern state, and therefore the modern common name isn't everything. For example, it's the ROC that fought against Japan in the Second World War, not Taiwan. It's the ROC that declined to sign the Treaty of Versailles in the Paris Peace Conferece, not Taiwan. It's the ROC that was one of the founding members of the UN, not Taiwan. It's the ROC who lost the UN seat in 1971, not Taiwan. 42.3.2.237 (talk) 07:26, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't bloody well care! The more people try to tell me about the history (of which I do happen to know more than the average bear, but not as much as some here), the more I think that you are being deliberatlely obtuse. The reason for the increase in interest in the past week has been because of Wikipedia's attempt to cover the recent election. That isn't ancient history. It's this bloody week! And this week the place is known almost universally as Taiwan. I don't want to change historical articles. I just want "In The News" items to actually make sense to the millions of people reading them, and not think that Communist China has suddenly started having elections. Although the blurb for the item In The News now says Taiwan as well as RoC, the discussion, still active today, is headed with only China in the title and not Taiwan at all. That is nonsensical and makes Wikipedia look like it is playing 50 year old political games. A very bad look. HiLo48 (talk) 08:07, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

(Might be somewhat off-topic, but I'm sure it definitely must be addressed right now...) I don't get it. Are we supposed to assume that all IPs from Hong Kong are User:Instantnood? I don't think that is a practical manner of doing things, since we're talking about a city of eight million, many English speaking, and each revert potentially being a false-positive. Can't we do this some other way? How can you prove that this IP is, in fact, Instantnood? A hunch isn't good enough; I don't think that the IP fails the WP:DUCK test yet. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 09:00, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

There aren't many IP editors who make contributions to talk pages, let alone policy pages. That an IP editor has come along and made contributions from the same city and with the same modus operandi (replying to every comment going) only a couple of days after being blocked for sock puppetry is pretty damn obvious.
Even if this was in court its not a criminal case, so you only have to prove it to balance of probabilities rather than beyond all reasonable doubt.
Balance of probabilities its the same user. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 09:10, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
Also refer to User:Deryck Chan's 16 January 2012 comment here, where he shares similar concerns as mine. I don't mean to assume bad faith, but it seems that under the pretext of "thwarting Instantnood sockpuppets", users are scaring away IP editors that have any dispute or opinion regarding China topics. Keep in mind that IPs are people as well, and have the right to edit as per WP:PILLAR. WP:DENY does not mean that we can silence all IPs from an entire city, since we suspect that someone might be using sockpuppets from within that city. In fact, nowhere within WP:DENY does it say that we are permitted, or actively should, delete comments based on suspicions alone. Find me the exact line of text within WP:DENY that justifies these actions. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 09:10, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
If I had made as many talk page edits as the IP user did on China after everyone else on my side had stopped I'd be blocked for WP:DEADHORSE beating if nothing else. Deryck was wrong to complain about the block.
The sock puppetry card wasn't used until the problem got entirely ridiculous, in principle we weren't sitting there reverting Hong Kong IP's at the first hurdle.
With regards to just removing the comments what else am I supposed to do to make sure the IP user is following their block? Its generally standard practice to remove contributions by blocked users unless they are clearly good. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 09:19, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
So if I flew to Hong Kong, and started using the same ISP as Instantnood did three years ago (back in 2009), then it's my fault for using that ISP? -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 09:25, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
If you did it less than a week after that user was blocked, yes. Especially if you continued that users modus operandi. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 10:01, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
For the record, one of my comments got deleted. But in light of the evidence about the sock-puppetry, I think it was necessary. John Smith's (talk) 21:06, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Taiwan and the ROC aren't congruent. 1.65.130.202 (talk) 12:23, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

There seems to be a lot of point-missing going on above, as there has been all over this debate. The suggestion, as I see it, is not to replace ROC with Taiwan in every context, including historical or more theoretical references. There, ROC will often of course be the appropriate designation. The point is that the current guidelines, which demand the use of ROC in every context, including modern references to the state, and which effectively bar the use of Taiwan except very specific references to the geographic island, neither reflect real-world usage nor the likely consensus of wider WP editors without political axes to grind. In fact, not only do they not reflect it, they jar with it massively and are inevitably confusing to the average reader - who, pray, uses ROC these days to refer to the actions of the modern state? Who? If we agree that the guidelines are inadequate, we then move to working on them - so that they specify those more specialised occasions when we would actually rather use ROC than Taiwan. N-HH talk/edits 12:54, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Best thing to do is use their official names. How did the pro PRC->China crowd begin to own the dialogue by making it a law that articles names MUST be 1 word? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.53.174.144 (talk) 19:07, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

If you're referring to WP:COMMONNAME, that's been Wikipedia policy for a long time and was a deciding factor in the PRC->China move, it wasn't born from that move. TechnoSymbiosis (talk) 19:27, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
And we had a separate policy for naming conventions in place for PRC/ROC and it was completely disregarded when PRC=China. We need to follow the naming conventions that we have in place in regards to PRC/ROC; in this case, calling the PRC=China is denigrating the ROC. Having the articles called "PRC" and "ROC" is the most accurate and NPOV way forward.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.53.174.144 (talk) 22:42, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
And these "separate" naming conventions directly contradict every other Wikipedia rule and guidelines as well as common real-world usage. That's precisely why they are coming under question and criticism. There's no "denigration" involved in talking about "China" and "Taiwan" and it's no more or less "POV" than using PRC or ROC, which carry baggage all their own; and either way, commonname means all that is irrelevant. Neutrality is more relevant to how susbtantive text is written. Now, there's some space to debate to what extent and in which contexts decent guidelines might recommend the alternative uses of ROC or Taiwan, but I'm struggling to see how a naming convention which outright bars the use of the word Taiwan for the geopolitical entity is sustainable (note no one's suggesting a bar on ROC or "wiping" the term from WP when the convention changes). Or why anyone would ever have thought it appropriate, or still wish to support it. N-HH talk/edits 23:29, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
The "baggage" that comes with using PRC and ROC is absoutely acceptable because it is their LEGAL names. The baggage that comes with using "Taiwan" and "China" is less acceptable because "Taiwan" is not the legal name of the ROC, it is the Republic of CHINA, not the Republic of TAIWAN (now that would be Baggage). It's denigrating because, somehow, the People's Republic of CHINA can be called "China" and the Republic of CHINA cannot.
Precisely. I don't care how common one is versus another — WP:NPOV is a core principle, unlike COMMONNAME, and the current naming convention obeys NPOV far better than alternatives that I'm seeing here. Note that news agencies and other sources that typically use "Taiwan" and "China" are typically allowed to be biased, even though they often bear pretty obvious biases. Nyttend (talk) 19:33, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
What about WP:POVTITLE? -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 19:41, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
What about the Republic of Macedonia? Exceptions are made where things can get sensitive. WP:POVTITLE is not the end all be all. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.53.174.144 (talk) 23:06, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
Right, I'm going to say this again, and this time hope it gets through. The Republic of Macedonia article is not named as such as an exception to commonname. Yes, the commonname of the country is indeed Macedonia. However, there is a Greek province called Macedonia (also its commonname), also an ancient kingdom called Macedonia (also the commonname), and a couple of other ones which probably aren't as important. It was established that none of these different Macedonias was the primary topic. Hence, Macedonia (ancient kingdom), Macedonia (Greece), and Republic of Macedonia. In fact, many people think Republic of Macedonia is POV, and want it named Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Now with China, there has been no challenge that the country currently at China is not the primary topic. Basically, Macedonia does not in any way support an argument against China, and in fact shows that a proper legal, UN recognised, long name, "Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia", wasn't chosen as the article title. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 00:20, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
Does WP:POVTITLE apply in that case? How do the names stack up? -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 23:40, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
And having WP refer to what everyone else calls Taiwan as the "Republic of China" is no more neutral, implying as it does that the Taiwanese regime is somehow the legitimate and usurped ruler of all of greater China. Like I say, every title in this arena carries baggage. Also, if we're going to throw policy around .. i) wp:povtitle and wp:commonname are as much policy as wp:npov; and 2) the latter anyway says "If a name is widely used in reliable sources (particularly those written in English), and is therefore likely to be well recognized by readers, it may be used even though some may regard it as biased". Add the provisions of commonname to that, and we're done. And the Macedonia example is neither here nor there, as pointed out ad nauseam. The issue there is genuine ambiguity, not primarily political sensitivity (which, up to a point, we rightly ignore anyway) - "Macedonia" is a term that is commonly used to refer to several different things, with no clear primary topic, and hence it's a disambiguation page. That doesn't apply when it comes to "China" and "Taiwan". N-HH talk/edits 00:09, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
The Republic of China has been China since at least 1912. Which is before the PRC. The PRC still considers the ROC government as China under the 1992 Consensus. You have your history backwards.
I'm not sure the unsigned intervention immediately above makes sense. And, esp. @Nyttend, further on the "neutrality" point - which remains pretty much a red herring as far as I can see, once we look at what npov and other policies actually say, and once we bear in mind that all possible names carry some apparent bias or implication - since when was it assumed that an official name is magically neutral; and that the common name, in the media and elsewhere, is somehow definitely not? N-HH talk/edits 10:57, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
It makes no sense to you because so many who want the PRC=China and ROC=Taiwan are also the ones with the least understanding of history and the facts of this subject. You used the word usurp, the ROC's creation precedes the PRC's, how can the ROC be the usurper? Legal names are not "magically" neutral, but no one can argue that it's the wrong name to use, because there's a legal precedence, it would hold up in a court of law, however, there's no legal precedence for "Taiwan". "Dumbing" down this issue (which many news articles tend to do for space, readablity and comsumption by the masses, eg, 6th grade and up) is not the way to go with a place like Wikipedia, a place that seeks to EDUCATE people, not just inform.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.53.78.140 (talk) 15:51, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
Is Taiwan ever mentioned in the verdicts laid down by the law courts of the U.S., Canada or any other western jurisdiction? 116.48.84.248 (talk)
(EC) Er, I said the ROC was supposedly "usurped"; not that it was a "usurper". That may not be very good or technical English, but the intention was surely fairly obviously to refer to claims that the PRC "stole China" from the ROC, which preceded the PRC as the claimed legitimate authority. Something I am very well aware of, thank you. And no one here says ROC is the "wrong" name - they just point out, entirely correctly, that virtually no one else out in the real world uses it these days (even the ROC government itself half the time). Finally, I don't know what your point about "legality" has to do with anything in this debate. Thanks. N-HH talk/edits 16:05, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

After the poll has run for a week (to 23 January), we should see if we have some actionable consensus. If the users on this page are too divided to agree on what to do next, then we should follow Eraserhead1's suggestion and get greater community input with either a RfC or a notice at WP:CENT. Following that, one or more uninvolved administrators might need to close the poll. Shrigley (talk) 23:00, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Have we decided yet that the poll was a complete waste of time? There's a good reason we aim for consensus after discussion here, rather than having votes without reasons. HiLo48 (talk) 06:55, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
That's if we wanted to make a new guideline. As of this comment, the people who support this guideline are outnumbered by those who oppose it (13 support, 14 oppose). Therefore, NC-TW can be said not to represent consensus, and some bold person can remove it lieu of some other agreement. If we don't want to extend the poll by means of RfC or CENT, then that is the most likely path forward. Shrigley (talk) 22:04, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
WP:!vote, WP:NOTDEMOCRACY, etc etc -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 03:00, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
We already know what more discussion on this argument will bring. The anti-"Taiwan" editors will keep on repeating "ROC is not Taiwan! ROC includes Quemoy and Mazu, which are part of Fujian! ROC is China, not Taiwan; there is no Republic of Taiwan." There's clearly a small bloc here that won't have their minds changed. But from the pages of discussion on Talk:China, Talk:Republic of China, and elsewhere, we have witnessed a sea change in editors' attitudes, expressed in the rejection of the status quo.
In other words, this poll puts numerical force to what we already know from discussion. There is no consensus underpinning NC-TW. NC-TW's self-description as a "consensus guide on when to use which term in reference to subjects related to [Taiwan]" is a fraud. There may not be a consensus for a consistent way to refer to Taiwan, but there is definitely not a consensus to continue using a guideline which limits the use of "Taiwan" to the island only, and which gives ROC an equal claim with PRC to China. Ergo, there is a consensus against NC-TW. We cannot allow a minority to continue to browbeat editors by pointing to this supposed "consensus guide", when it is really an "anti-consensus guide". Shrigley (talk) 03:18, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
You can include me as a changed opinion. When that section went in, I supported it because the proposers said it meant a moratorium on changing article/category titles back and forth between RoC/Taiwan (at the time, move wars were rampant) and stating RoC/Taiwan were equivalent terms where they currently existed. Now a few years later and it's been re-interpreted and used as a hammer to push page/category moves again. SchmuckyTheCat (talk)
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.

Meaning of consensus

Latest comment: 12 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Does the roughly equal, or slight minority, of opinion in the poll reflect that the current text does not maintain a consensus and should be removed? Or does the lack of a clear consensus opposing it mean there isn't support to change and nothing should happen? SchmuckyTheCat (talk)

We don't vote on Wikipedia (see my post immediately above), for the very simple reason that votes like this prove nothing. We have no idea how representative the votes are. There was no requirement for discussion or reasons to be associated with the votes. That means that in the poll itself there was no attempt made at all to achieve consensus. The poll had nothing to do with consensus seeking. It was a waste of time. HiLo48 (talk) 17:52, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

China / PRC

Latest comment: 12 years ago32 comments15 people in discussion

The current NPOV guideline suggests that "[i]n many cases, China can be used to refer to the modern nation-state officially known as the People's Republic of China." The PRC is not a nation-state. It's officially and in reality multi-ethnic. Further, neither "many" nor "modern" is defined. This is leaving people to ask in what cases China can be used to refer to the PRC, in what cases it cannot, and from when onwards is the PRC modern, and prior to when is it not. 119.236.8.59 (talk) 14:41, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Oh, why all this nitpicking? The reason this discussion intensified in the last couple of days is that some editors at In The News insisted that policy absolutely prevented the use of Taiwan to describe the country when this week's election was added to In The News. Obviously this week is modern. That is the only issue, so in fact there is no issue. HiLo48 (talk) 17:00, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
Ma Ying-jeou is the President of the Republic of China, not the President of the Republic of Taiwan/President of Taiwan. That's not nitpicking, we don't call Barack Obama the President of America, we call him the President of the United States of America. "United States" is in United States of America. No where is "Taiwan" in the Republic of China.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.53.78.140 (talk) 17:46, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
President of Taiwan Chipmunkdavis (talk) 18:11, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
See also this incomplete list of English-language reliable sources which use "Taiwan" instead of "Republic of China". It seems that "Taiwan" is winning.. Mlm42 (talk) 18:16, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
As a Taiwanese national who regularly reads English-language news, I'd say that it's very rare, if ever, that the term "president of Taiwan" is used formally. There are indirect references--"the island nation", "the Taiwanese president", etc., but sources are usually careful to avoid saying or implying that there is a state by the name of Taiwan. While "the president of Taiwan" may be okay when used informally (or euphemistically...) to refer to the head of the state that is on Taiwan, it is simply factually inaccurate to say "Ma Ying-Jeou was re-elected the President of Taiwan", since no such position exists (the Obama analogy above is pretty good). (Though if we wanted to "be neutral" on the question whether Taiwan is a state, we could say "In Taiwan, Ma Ying-Jeou is re-elected president." I think that's ridiculous though, akin to providing equal weight to fringe theories.) wctaiwan (talk) 07:51, 20 January 2012 (UTC) Struck. wctaiwan (talk) 08:45, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
As I've said elsewhere, this issue is very difficult to discuss for several reasons. One is that people make absolute statements that are very easily refuted. Please have a look here. The use of the name Taiwan as the name of the country is not "very rare" at all. And it's used that way in very major sources, so I don't know where you've been looking. I got involved in this discussion after seeing a headline in my local top quality newspaper that said "China welcomes second term for Taiwan's leader". There's no problem with that. It's 100% clear. I knew exactly what was happening. It's not trying to deceive. It shouldn't offend anybody. HiLo48 (talk) 08:04, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
Striking my comment, partially because you're right to a certain extent--some of those links do use 'Taiwan' to refer to the state; but also partially because I'm not prepared to argue the finer points of the issue. I'll stay out of this as long as phrases like "President of Taiwan" (with a capital P) don't start showing up in articles. wctaiwan (talk) 08:45, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
Isn't that how he's commonly referred to in English? If so do we use full titles for other world leaders? -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 08:59, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
If we're using formal titles (President, as opposed to president), shouldn't we use them in full? wctaiwan (talk) 09:29, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
We don't have to. Obviously we'd note the full title on their article, but something concise that is still perfectly understandable seems better to me. We say Prime Minister of Australia, President of the United States, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, so why not President of Taiwan? Chipmunkdavis (talk) 15:29, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
For the same reason we don't call David Cameron the Prime Minister of England. England is a part of the UK, but not the UK. Taiwan is a part of the ROC, but not the ROC. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.53.174.144 (talk) 20:44, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
You're obviously unfamiliar with the English language. I suggest you read a bit from a google search for Taiwan. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 02:26, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
Do a search on the "Queen of England" and a search on the "Queen of Scotland" and consider what David Cameron is named. Then do a search on "President of the Republic of China" and a search on "President of Taiwan". After you've done that, let's talk. Your over-simplifications help in readability while sacrificing the truth and the facts. Wikipedia should be educating, not just informing.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.40.129.169 (talk) 21:40, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
You do realise don't you that some argue that the Queen of England and Queen of Scotland are separate don't you, and that the current monarch is part of their line? I don't sacrifice "truth" or facts, you just refuse to acknowledge one key one; that Taiwan is the English name for the country. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 21:49, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
I do realize that about England and Scotland; I am relatively well versed in the geo-politics of the British Isles along with the Taiwan Straits. However, where I'm from, the vast majority call Elizabeth II the Queen of England and, by extension, David Cameron is the Prime Minister of England. If you agree to work with me to change Wikipedia to reflect that it's Queen of England and PM of England (their common colloquial names), I'll be glad to work with you to change Wikipedia to call Ma Ying-jeou to be called the President of Taiwan instead of his LEGALLY recognized title of the President of the Republic of China (he was registered as such and will be SWORN IN as such).
Excellent. Provide the WP:Reliable Sources for that and we'll begin. As we have the RS for Taiwan, shall we start that first? Chipmunkdavis (talk) 22:25, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
What could be a more reliable source document than the Constitution of the Republic of China? Read it. Ma Ying-jeou will be registered and sworn in as the 13th President of the Republic of China. Ma Ying-jeou WILL NOT be registered and sworn in as the 13th President of the Republic of Taiwan. Are you disputing the authenticity and validity of the ROC's Constitution???
No, see WP:PRIMARY. That's a bad argument; it argues that Sarkozy wasn't sworn in as the President of France, and David Cameron wasn't sworn in as the Prime Minister of the UK. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 22:35, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
Sarkozy was sworn in as the President of France. How was Cameron not sworn in as the PM of England? How is Ma Ying-jeou sworn in as the President of Taiwan? (Edit: The ROC Constitution isn't just a PRIMARY document, it is a SOURCE document. It's like anybody else showing the USA Constitution to prove that Freedom of Speech is guaranteed under law in America; how do you figure that is disputable?).— Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.40.129.169 (talk) 22:39, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
By your argument, Ma was sworn in as the President of the ROC, not of Taiwan. By extension, your argument says that Sarkozy was sworn in as the President of the French Republic, not of France. Also, primary sources remain primary, so I don't see what your point is. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 22:54, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
Read the papers. Ma Ying-jeou was and will be for the 2nd time, sworn in as the President of the Republic of China. You missed my point with the France/UK. But what does it matter? The ROC is neither France nor the UK. Please stop trying to shoe horn the ROC into those geo-political (for lack of a better word) situations; the ROC is the ROC and requires its own, unique definition and naming conventions (and President Ma is the President of the ROC, not the President of Taiwan).
The papers also say he'll be the new President of Taiwan, so once again not much of a point there. In the end, yes, the ROC is the ROC, however there is no reason we should treat it as a special case and exempt it from the policies and guidelines that determine the naming of other articles. That would be the antithesis of any decent attempt to NPOV. I tire of countering arguments only to have another one thrown at me which is followed by another until the first one is used again, and would rather not clutter up this page and other's watchlists needlessly. If you have good sources, add them to the list. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 23:36, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
If you recognize the authority of a newspaper over the authority of the Constitution of a country, then there's not much more for you and I to argue over; your bias is clear. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.40.129.169 (talk) 14:51, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
Don't be silly. Wikipedia has policies like WP:COMMONNAME specifically to avoid getting into arguments of bias. DPP says 'Taiwan is a country', KMT says 'ROC is a country'. These are two sides of the same argument. Wikipedia doesn't 'take sides' and determine which one is legitimate and which isn't, we defer to what everyone else uses so that we reflect our sources. The common name in English sources is Taiwan, regardless of which political party supports what, regardless of who wrote the constitution and why, regardless of who likes it and who doesn't. This is the standard across all of Wikipedia: the US constitution says United States of America, not United States; the Mexican constitution says United Mexican States, not Mexico; the legal name of the former US president is William Jefferson Clinton, not Bill Clinton. Legal names are important but they do not take precedence over common names on Wikipedia. I'm sorry that you don't like this fact, but accusing people of bias for following Wikipedia's standards is inappropriate. TechnoSymbiosis (talk) 22:58, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia also has WP:NC-TW as policy which many of you are accusing of many of us as being biased in continuing to insist that we adhere to it. So, what's your point?
NC-TW is a guideline, not a policy. Policies take precedence over guidelines and in cases where policies and guidelines conflict, the guideline is the one to change, not the policy. TechnoSymbiosis (talk) 03:07, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
There is nothing here that suggests that Policies take precedence over guidelines: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Policies_and_guidelines. It seems that guidelines expand on policies (policies are broad-ranging); an addendum that gives more details on things that editors are urged to follow when editing. Both are created by concensus. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.53.46.140 (talk) 16:29, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
See WP:POLICY. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 23:39, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
Goodness gracious. Eraserhead1, read my post and then click on the link I provided and then answer. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.53.110.140 (talk) 16:06, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
Policies take precedence over guidelines (bar any IARing on the policy). They're established by consensus to be the rules, so to speak, of wikipedia. Guidelines offer best practice, but don't have the same element of inflexibility. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 16:19, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
From WP:POLCON in the documentation you linked, 159.*, referring to situations where policies and guidelines conflict, a process is undertaken to resolve that conflict: "As a temporary measure during that resolution process, if a guideline appears to conflict with a policy, editors may assume that the policy takes precedence." We've been engaging in that resolution process here, to some extent. TechnoSymbiosis (talk) 22:25, 29 January 2012 (UTC)
Indeed. If one is reading something that happened between China and the United States in 1965, for example, it's really difficult to tell if it's about the communist People's Republic or the renmant of the China that the US recognised by then. Eisenhower visited China in 1960 but that wasn't the communist one. Further, for those who don't know when the ROC was displaced by the PRC in the United Nations, they wouldn't be able to tell which China was it in an article about the Chinese votes in the UN in a meeting in the 1960s and in another meeting in the 1980s. We obviously cannot say the vote in the 1960s was cast by Taiwan. 116.48.84.248 (talk) 16:00, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
Nor would we say that. What is the point being made here exactly? The old, irrelevant and long-sorted one that things had different names in the past? We will cope, as we do with other similar examples and as all other publications do in this case. N-HH talk/edits 16:09, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

I have no problem with either "President of the Republic of China" (formal) or "president of Taiwan" (informal). But if we're going for correctness, why not use the full legal international name of the country?:

President of the Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen, and Matsu (Chinese Taipei)

— kwami (talk) 10:23, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

That's used by the WTO which could be said to be used by the international community. However, if we expand that, we can see that it is unique and specific to the WTO. Otherwise, why cannot that be used for the ROC to join the WHO? If we take a look at Chinese Taipei, why could not the ROC join the United Nations as Chinese Taipei? It can't. The name you have listed is not universal and is only correct in one context. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.40.129.169 (talk) 22:09, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Removal of content for alleged block evasion has screwed up this whole page

Latest comment: 12 years ago7 comments3 people in discussion

Someone may have been breaking the rules. I'm in no position to judge. But those posts had many responses which now make no sense. The whole page is now a bloody big mess. Don't hurt Wikipedia because one editor did something wrong. It's like a form of self harm.

Please put back the posts so conversations become readable again. HiLo48 (talk) 21:30, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Then someone should have reverted the blocked user earlier in the day.
We can't possibly move forward on this if any attempt at discussion is continually filibustered. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 21:49, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
I was under the impression comments by block-evading users were normally struck rather than removed. It does tend to cause confusion when comments directed in reply to now-removed comments are left out of context. TechnoSymbiosis (talk) 21:59, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
That would make a lot more sense (unlike this page now). HiLo48 (talk) 22:01, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I didn't realise that. That sounds like a better approach for the future. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 22:02, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
No problem. I don't think there's any point restoring and striking it now (edit: never mind, I see this has already been done) (looking at the revision history, it's quite a lot of commentary) but it's worth keeping in mind at least. TechnoSymbiosis (talk) 22:06, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
(edit conflict)I've restored and struck the two comments that were replied to. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 22:08, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

More deletions and s Some appalling Discussion

Latest comment: 12 years ago12 comments4 people in discussion

This has become one of the worst Talk pages in Wikipedia. Yet again, conversations have been rendered meaningless by the deletion of a lot of posts. Chunks of the page are now unreadable, AGAIN! We should NOT punish Wikipedia in that way because of alleged sins of an editor. We should punish the editor, and strike out the posts, not delete them.

And h Here is a precis of many discussions above.... EDITOR 1: We should use the name Taiwan for the country when discussing current events. EDITOR 2: The correct name of the country in 1960 was Republic of China.

It's a ridiculous disconnect. It's NOT a conversation. It makes the defenders of the old, official name look like fools, and I'm sure they're not. Maybe we have a language or a cultural problem. I really wish there was a sane way forward here, but I can't see it when Discussion is not actually happening. HiLo48 (talk) 23:34, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

HiLo, no content has been removed since your last thread on this, and some has been restored and struck. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 23:42, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
Weird. There's been a couple of "Oppose" votes removed above, but I'll swear I saw some deletions when I looked at a shorter period. But basically, you're right. I'm still very concerned about the non-discussion happening here, so I'll strike out the inaccurate part of this thread. HiLo48 (talk) 00:01, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
I removed some content that was re-added by the banned user, but all of it had been removed before. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 08:24, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

OK, it's happened again. At least 20 posts have disappeared since I last looked around 11 hours ago, again making several conversations incoherent. What's going on?

All of which are from banned users, or were re-added by a banned user, and none of which had replies from other users. Why do you care? -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 09:52, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
I care because when I came back to this page after 11 hours I saw massive deletions, with no explanation here. OK, I now see there was an Edit summary for a single edit somewhere during that period, but really, it involves big changes to the page, in many places, among many posts and many Edit summaries, and when I looked at all the changes since I had last posted that Edit summary didn't stand out. All I saw was massive deletions. If they are banned users, and you're going to be quite that unilateral in your treatment of their posts. block them, ban them, do whatever needs to be done to get rid of them, but stop the apparent disruption to continuity here. And it would help to add something to this page to explain what you have done. That would be a lot more likely to be seen than a transient Edit summary. HiLo48 (talk) 10:11, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
I'd much rather lock the page from IP editors. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 10:15, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
So, do it. HiLo48 (talk) 10:27, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
I'm not an admin so I can't. Otherwise I would. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 10:29, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
I care, as I am acting as IP editor here, and for sure I am not a banned user, so I don't understand who gives you the right to delete all the contributions from every IP editor. If you have evidence of some specific IPs belonging to banned users, please just delete the votes from those IPs. And if the contributions of IP users are not vandalism, they should be welcommed and not erased. If you think IP editors has not the right to vote, at least have to state this precondition on the poll. I casted my vote from IP 95.232.244.111 on day 17, and I invite user Eraserhead1 to restore my vote. Thank you. 84.222.120.138 (talk) 11:21, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
Done. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 11:29, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
Unfortunately it's difficult to positively identify IP addresses in the way you describe, 84.*. I do agree that there has been some overcompensation against IP editors here. Editors may find this site useful for identifying IP addresses that belong to the same ISP (the problem IPs have mostly come from Netvigator in Hong Kong), but it should be noted that Netvigator has 1.3 million residential and business subscribers. For the sake of WP:BEANS I'll leave it at that, sufficing to say definite identification is difficult and range blocks won't be employed on such a large ISP. Semi-protection would work, but would affect all IP editors, not just the problem ones.
84.*, I realise that there's no obligation for you to register an account on Wikipedia, but you should be aware that even in spite of best efforts otherwise, because the China/Taiwan area is moderately controversial, you may be inadvertently caught in protective actions. This could be avoided by registering an account, which also has the advantage of collecting your contributions under different IP addresses (for instance, if your IP changes regularly, or if you edit from both work and home) under one name for attribution. It's something worth considering, at any rate. TechnoSymbiosis (talk) 19:59, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Proposed replacement for WP:NC-TW

Latest comment: 12 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Moved discussion to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/China-related articles to reflect new location of existing guidelines. --Jiang (talk) 21:35, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

The English Names of State Organs

I am not familiar with English translation of Chinese State Organs. I have spent some time googling for English names for these State Organs. I find some names on some private websites or blogs, but those url don't look very prestigious, and those names and lists look like they are copied from somewhere else. I list some lists that seem reliable here, and I hope people who are familiar with the matter can correct me and provide better source.

  • sank0916 (2006-11-10 17:19). "国家机关翻译表". Baidu Zhidao. {{cite web}}: |author= has generic name (help); Check date values in: |date= (help); External link in |author= (help); Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  • "国务院机构英文译名" (MS DOC). Center of International Cooperation and Exchanges (Hong Kong, Macao & Taiwan Affairs), North China University of Technology Office. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)
  • "单位及部门名称英译概述". junpengyuan (in Chinese). 2008-10-7 12:39. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help) This looks like an excerpt of a manual.

Proposed revision of township rules

Latest comment: 12 years ago12 comments6 people in discussion

Except in the case where multiple towns or townships exist within a single province, why are they currently disambiguated by county? In the case of "Guocun" – one of which is in Shanxi and one of which is in Hebei – it seems less helpful to differentiate based on county or municipality names few users (or even native Chinese) have ever heard of, rather than by the simple province names.

Vanceburg is distinguished by Kentucky, not Lewis County, regardless of how small it is. French villages don't even bother with disambigging in general but, when they do, they use departments. — LlywelynII 04:49, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

From the first sentence, I have it that you have no problem with subdistricts remaining where they are? Since they are urban, densely populated, and associated more with their governing cities, I see no reason to DAB subdistricts by province. GotR Talk 05:35, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
The reason would be for better recognizability to a larger audience (who would know Hebei but not Zhangjiakou), although I suppose that aim could be accomplished with a redirect, good hatnotes, and good disambiguation notes. Shrigley (talk) 15:31, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
That is why I don't oppose changing the guidelines for towns and townships. However, districts do not follow the rules in place for counties; they are automatically disambiguated by the city. Unless you are suggesting that districts change as well, (in terms of spirit) I don't see why subdistricts should be different from districts. GotR Talk 04:09, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
While it may be better recognizability to disambiguate the townships by province, I think if we go up to that level, it would be very difficult to find only a single township in a province with it's specific name. Each province has an average of 832 towns and 636 townships, and many characters have the same pronunciation (as in Guocun). While it would be nicer to disambiguate by province alone, I believe it's nearly impossible.  –Nav  talk to me or sign my guestbook 15:47, 30 March 2012 (UTC)
I am not too fuss which way it goes. GoTR has done heaps of work and disambiguating by counties is practical. I can understand disambiguating by provinces looks a bit neater, follow the same conventions as those used in the US county articles but for as far as practicality goes, too many towns with similar sounding names. China is a hierarchy unitary state, so it make senses to disambiguate at one level up which for townships is the county. If two counties have the same name, then you disambiguate by the prefecture or the province.--Visik (Chinwag Podium) 01:37, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
If we were to start from scratch, I think it would be better to disambiguate by province first, and county second. Chinese administrative boundaries change frequently, and counties are often renamed or upgraded to cities or districts of larger cities, requiring renaming of all townships articles that use the county name for disambiguation. Province-level boundaries are far more stable and less likely to change. However, since so many articles have already been created under the current guideline, I think it's better to stick with it. What I don't like, however, is situations like Longmen, Fuyang, Zhejiang, when a simpler Longmen, Zhejiang would suffice. The guideline should be tweaked so that townships are disambiguated by county first, province second, and county+province as a last resort. --Zanhe (talk) 12:31, 3 April 2012 (UTC)
You are suggesting that if the county/county-level city is ambiguous (such as Fuyang), disambiguate by the province (if unique within the province)? Except for subdistricts, all should keep in mind that I am open to any options and will not mind enacting moves en masse to adjust to the new guideline. However, this means a delay in the addition of entries, so please work a new guideline out by next Wednesday. GotR Talk 18:22, 3 April 2012 (UTC)
If you don't mind moving existing articles, I agree with LlywelynII that it's better to disambiguate by province (if unique within province), then county (if not unique within province), for the sake of consistency with other countries and long-term stability of article names. I further propose that if the county name itself is not unique (such as Fuyang), maybe the prefecture name (Hangzhou, in this case) can be used as the third choice.
BTW, thanks for all the work you've done creating the articles and dab pages. --Zanhe (talk) 19:05, 3 April 2012 (UTC)
I take it that you prefer the subdistricts remain the way they are? And you and the project are certainly welcome. GotR Talk 01:36, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
Yes, your reasoning wrt the subdistricts makes sense. --Zanhe (talk) 03:10, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Since the objections raised were over practicality, when I don't mind carefully redoing the work I have done, I will within a couple of days reformulate the guideline. Examples will come later, though. GotR Talk 16:24, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

re-purposing of article

Latest comment: 12 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

It appears that on 17 February 2012 one author rewrote the stated purpose of this set of naming conventions and moved a significant amount of content to a separate article (Wikipedia:Manual of Style/China-related articles). Yet I'm unable to find any discussion of the move or a proposal for the move. Was this discussed? One the reasons for this article's title and usage was to avoid NPOV issues over what is "China". I'm concerned that the narrowing of purpose for this article and the movement of content appears to have been done unilaterally without discussion. Readin (talk) 20:55, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm not aware of any discussion that authorized the splitting off of the content, other than the comments here that the existing setup was unsatisfactory and something needed to be done.--Jiang (talk) 02:17, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

A Proposal

Latest comment: 12 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I think that due to the long history of the names Peking, Canton, Nanking, and other Postal Map Romanizations in English, Postal Map Romanizations should appear as the other name in the info box. OttomanJackson (talk) 14:19, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Amendment to township rules

Latest comment: 12 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

Unless someone raises total objection within 48 hours, the disambiguation guidelines for Towns/Townships will be amended to include the following exceptions: Harbin (*), Changchun, Shenyang (*), Dalian (*), Qingdao (*), Jinan, Nanjing (*), Wuxi, Suzhou, Hangzhou (*), Ningbo, Wenzhou, Fuzhou (福州) (*), Xiamen (*), Shenzhen (*), Guangzhou (*), Nanchang, Wuhan (*), Kunming, Chengdu (*), Xi'an (*), Lanzhou, Lhasa, and Ürümqi. These are nationally, and in many cases, internationally, known cities, so they won't take away from recognisability. Feel free to add or remove (except for the starred) from this list. For example, a location in Wuhan's Wuchang District will be at [[XX, Wuhan]] instead of [[XX, Hubei]]. GotR Talk 18:16, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

I support these changes, since in many cases these cities are more recognizable to an international audience than their parent provinces. The exception list is pretty solid; the only entries which I would challenge are Jinan, Nanchang, and Ürümqi (however, these are based only on my personal impressions of recognizability). Shrigley (talk) 01:45, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
Those won't be included, then. Also a no-brainer is Jilin City. Going ahead with the changes as stated now. GotR Talk 21:25, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

Request for Comment: Regarding WP:NC-TW

Latest comment: 11 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I have opened a Request for Comment regarding WP:NC-TW, which was part of the policy regarding naming conventions related to Taiwan, and Republic of China, but since been removed and marked inactive. There is no current policy placed in place of WP:NC-TW, so the request for comment seeks a replacement for it. - Penwhale | dance in the air and follow his steps 06:52, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Names of people

Latest comment: 11 years ago6 comments6 people in discussion

Most people are now identified by their names in Pinyin, except for few people like Sun Yat Sen and Chiang Kai Shek. But there are many people who had lived for extended period in countries where English (or any other language in Roman letters) was official. Other may had received honours before Pinyin became the de facto standard internationally. These people include Zhang Fakui, Zhang Xueliang, Liang Qichao, Liang Sicheng, Wu Tingfang, Wang Zhengting, to name a few. They probably never knew their names in Pinyin all through their lifetimes. Should the names that they were actually known by be mentioned and be used as titles of the articles? 116.48.86.50 (talk) 23:35, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

The current guidelines are merely an extension of the WP:UCN policy. We look at recently published reliable sources - what do modern historians use? Wikipedia does not write an article about Chaucer in Middle English.--Jiang (talk) 06:50, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
If they were known by a different version of their name during their lifetime, but recently published reliable sources have settled on the Pinyin, then the article title should be in Pinyin, but the alternate version should be mentioned in the article.—Greg Pandatshang (talk) 07:06, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
That's very true. We should use contemporary common names. But Pinyin has only become the de facto international standard for only two decades or so. We definitely have to include the old names or else readers can't look for the relevant information in slightly older publications. Further, for some of the above cases, Pinyin isn't actually relevant to them. Don't think modern historians would have to change those names into Pinyin given those people were already commonly known by their own names. 218.250.156.2 (talk) 00:30, 31 December 2012 (UTC)
The Korean naming conventions (and de facto practice) prescribe the use of the later, basic-English-alphabet-compatible, and government-created Revised Romanization system over the older, apostrophe-and-diacritic heavy, and missionary-son-created McCune–Reischauer. This despite the fact that RR was promulgated in 2000, decades after pinyin. Although I had to get over some initial cognitive dissonance of writing in a romanization that didn't match what I read in sources, I rather like that system, since it makes it just that much easier to find articles. A lot of the opposition to pinyin comes from a retrograde and blanket opposition to the PRC government, to which some expiring sinologues and translators of "Taoist" (Daoist) texts will readily (proudly, and grotesquely) admit.
More and more high-quality texts nowadays are not only using pinyin names for Chinese historical figures, but also using correct and contemporary names for the era, for example "Sun Wen" rather than "Yat-sen" or "Zhongshan" before he was so christened. Redirects from older names are easily handled by redirects. The fact is that not many Chinese historical figures were household names in English-speaking countries. Careful Anglophone scholars in the 1940s transcribed Chinese characters into Wade-Giles, and if they were still publishing in the '80s and '90s, they would be using pinyin. The naming convention needs to more strongly come out on the side of the superior system for romanization that helps more readers find additional resources and reduces mistakes. Shrigley (talk) 01:48, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
FOLLOWING THE SUBJECT'S OWN CHOICE: To expand on the initial comments, naming is not a area where complete consistency is possible. But, as the guidelines in fact imply, if a Chinese who knew English well chose his or her own English names, even if in a weird romanization, and especially if they published works in English using them, then in these cases, which admittedly are not numerous, we need to follow the person's own preference, which will generally be the one used in recent work in any case. Examples include Yung Wing, V.K. Wellington Koo, and T.V. Soong, and Lee Teng-hui. ch (talk) 03:43, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Expressway naming

Latest comment: 11 years ago12 comments6 people in discussion

I've been working on expressway articles in China for awhile and have come to some dissatisfaction with the current naming conventions. Currently, for naming conventions, it states

For expressways, add the expressway number as a prefix to the expressway name in the article. The prefix and the expressway name should be separated by a space.

I propose that we drop the numbered prefix from article names. Here is my rationale why:

  • The expressways are readily identified by their names. There aren't multiple Beijing–Shanghai Expressways, so the article name Beijing–Shanghai Expressway would be sufficient. This is true for most if not all expressways in China - they are named based on their terminal locations, and expressways generally don't have the same terminal locations (even if so, like the case with the three expressways being constructed between Beijing and Tianjin, there are different names). In the Chinese Wikipedia for example, only the name is stated; no numbered prefix.
  • The number in front of the expressway name doesn't make sense when you're dealing with expressways that cross provincial borders but have the same name. For example, one is the Shanghai–Jiaxing–Huzhou Expressway in Shanghai and Zhejiang. Some background: the expressway is designated S32 in Shanghai and S12 in Zhejiang. According to naming conventions, I would have to create two articles, one S32 SJH Expressway and one S12 SJH Expressway or some mess of one article name like S12/S32 SJH Expressway which is confusing. Under my proposal, it would simply be Shanghai–Jiaxing–Huzhou Expressway without any numbered prefix. In the article and the infobox in the article itself, we can mention the various provincial designations without having all the numerical clutter in the title.

Essentially, I'm proposing that we drop the number prefix from article names. They would still be mentioned in the infobox and in the article themselves. Heights(Want to talk?) 16:38, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

I would think WP:COMMONNAME would apply here. I'm certainly not going to oppose this idea, but I will defer to other editors who are more familiar with Chinese articles. –Fredddie™ 23:57, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
Your comparison to Chinese Wikipedia, is of course, not without merit, but sometimes the numbering prefix may be a helpful identifier. I will wait until others give their input before firmly coming on side or the other. I suggest you contact ContinentalAve, Vmenkov, and other users heavily involved with mainland Chinese transport. GotR Talk 01:13, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for your feedback. Although the number prefix may be helpful, in my opinion, it leads to redundancy and prevents/hinders searching (a user looking for information on highways would be unlikely to type something like G2 Beijing–Shanghai Expressway. I also think WP:PRECISE may apply here, since both the numbering prefix and the name makes the article title overly precise/redundant to a degree. I couldn't find any examples of other highways or roadways with articles named this way. I've already contacted ContinentalAve and other users that I have seen editing Chinese transport/expressway articles when I first wrote this proposal and have just left a message for Vmenkov. Heights(Want to talk?) 01:32, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
I understand your rationale and see the need to avoid clunky prefix titles. Naming conventions for express highways in China remain somewhat unsettled as highways are extended and new naming and numbering schemes are implemented. In fact, S102 Beijing–Chengde Expressway now redirects to G45 Daqing–Guangzhou Expressway. The NTHS 7918 scheme does not account for many expressways. Looking around Wikipedia though, it appears that the naming schemes of most highways systems around the world have evolved toward numeral names as highway networks take shape. Older names based on the location of the endpoints most often re-direct to the numeral names. Santa Monica Freeway re-directs to U.S. Interstate 10 and the Long Island Expressway to I-495. But see: New Jersey Turnpike and Interstate 95 in New Jersey (two articles for the same highway using equally prominent names). See generally Numbered highways in Canada, German autobahns, Autoroutes of France, Russian federal highways, Brazilian Highway System (where numeral names predominate).
If China were to follow this trend, then it may be that the numeral names will outlast the location A-Location B names. For example, it may be that the G4 Beijing–Hong Kong–Macau Expressway, which used to be called the Beijing-Shijiazhuang Expressway, will simply become G4 or some variant of NTHS G4. Hence, it might be prudent to retain the numeral prefix in the highway name to ensure that the numeral name for a highway and the location name are in the same article.
An exception could be made where a given highway crosses provincial lines and changes numbers but is still predominantly referred to as a single highway. In those instances, the numeral prefix could be dropped from the title. ContinentalAve (talk) 01:44, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
I understand and agree with your comment that over time, the naming schemes of expressway systems worldwide have become heavily based on numbers and that in many countries, people refer to highways by numbers and like the United States, some have dropped names altogether. However, in my opinion, it is unlikely that a Chinese system will become fully numbered, because of the prominent usage of highway names when talking about highways. This is simply due to the fact that in Chinese system of naming highways has always been two or three major termini points along the highway followed by Expressway or 高速. As we know, in Chinese, these termini points are abbreviated to one character, and when read out loud, is just as easy to read as a set of numbers. For example, 常台高速 can be said just as quickly as G15W, its numeric designation. In fact, some Chinese unfamiliar with English characters may have difficulty pronouncing G and W. However, with other Western expressway systems where the language is based on an alphabet, if we were to name Interstate 5 based on this naming scheme, it would likely be San Diego-Seattle Expressway or San Diego-Blaine Expressway. This is MUCH longer and much more tedious to say that simply I-5. Therefore, out of necessity, in these highway system with names, these names dropped out of favour because you're not going to say "Take the San Diego-Seattle Expressway to Los Angeles and then go east on the Los Angeles-Jacksonville expressway" you are going to say "Take the I-5 and then the I-10 east." One example of a language similar to Chinese, Japanese, in the Shuto Expressway system, each of the routes still has a number and a name (the name has not been dropped). My point here is (although a bit long-winded): at the moment, I don't see the number being favoured over the name in the Chinese expressway system and I don't see it becoming favoured over the name in the future; I think that if the number becomes favoured in the future or the name is dropped, we can re-evaluate the situation and change article titles to the number if necessary. And also, the number + name combination creates unnecessary complexity and confusion: expressways with the same name that cross provincial lines are numbered differently, and there are multiple expressways with different names but the same designation in a province (e.g. Zhejiang S1). By dropping the number, these can be easily solved; we would just use the expressway name, and mention the designation in the article/infobox. Heights(Want to talk?) 01:59, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
Okay. What I wrote earlier seemed like an irrelevant rant, and I apologize if the argument was confusing to anyone. I was making a comparison between languages that was not relevant to this topic. So I decided to rewrite my response, and to be more organized in my efforts, I will respond to your points one by one.
  • First, your point that expressway names and numbers remain unsettled and may change is true. This system was not the first system that China had in place, and if I remember correctly, it was changed several years ago. Your example about S102 Beijing–Chengde Expressway is correct; it has now been absorbed into the longer G45 Daqing–Guangzhou Expressway. When the new system was placed, many short expressways (you also mentioned, for example, the Beijing–Shijiazhuang expressway) "pieces" or "segments" were joined together to form longer expressways, and then renamed with one name. Their old names are still commonly known; for example, the stretch of G2/G42 going west from Shanghai is still known by some as the Shanghai–Nanjing Expressway, the name of the old "segment" or "piece" of expressway that was there before. On expressway signs, drivers often see signage such as G2 Beijing–Shanghai Expressway (Shanghai–Nanjing segment); G2 京沪高速 (沪宁段).
  • I believe your argument that the NTHS 7918 scheme does not account for many expressways is untrue. All expressways (built) in China are now accounted for either through a national-level designation G, or some provincial level designation S. Of course, some city expressways in major urban centres, such as the Inner Ring Road are not part of this system and won't be numbered. But most, if not all "true" expressways are part of the national network or a provincial network. And each provincial network has its own system of numbering and naming expressways as well.
  • Your point about how over time, highway systems have gradually evolved to favour the numbers and drop or disuse names is true, as seen in many countries you have pointed out. However, we are not a crystal ball and we can not assume that usage of the name of the expressway will fall into disuse in China. I personally do not believe that the numbers will outlast the naming scheme of Location A-Location B. I am actually supportive of de-cluttering either way: we could drop the number or the name. My issue is in the fact that there are both at the moment, leading to redundancy and unnecessary confusion/complexity. If the number does become in everyday use and the name is eventually dropped, I would support using the number in the article title. Heights(Want to talk?) 02:32, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
  • I agree that to have both the numerical and the final destinations in the article name is redundant, and we should go for one or another. Because much of it is still being built, I think it will be years before infrastructure nomenclature is settled. My preference would be for the number, because I think that's the direction of the likely evolution of names, although a more ambiguous 'local' naming will also coexist (because there is no ambiguity at a local level). Another advantage of using the numbering system is that it conforms to most other motorway nomenclature here on the project. -- Ohconfucius ping / poke 03:10, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
  • This is a fairly cumbersome issue. AFAIK, the "start"-"end" format is currently much more commonly used than their numerical designations. For example, even in Beijing traffic radio, the Beijing-Tibet Expressway is known as such, despite the fact that only a small segment of it is within the municipality, and never mind the full route isn't even near completion (there isn't even a plan for when it will be completed). As soon as this route took on its current name in 2009, all segments of this expressway (which were previously known by disparate names) are referred to as such, regardless of where you are in the country. Similar case happened with the Beijing-Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong High Speed rail, which was previously known by the names of its numerous segments. In the United States, the numerical forms of interstate highways is the norm. Personally, I also favour numbers, but this baldly contradicts WP:COMMONNAME. We are a long way from seeing numbers in highway designations being used as the norm in China. Colipon+(Talk) 15:03, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
Heights, your comments (both original and revised) are well taken. This discussion reminds me of the confusion I feel driving out of Pudong Airport in recent years when I see new highway signs with unfamiliar designations. Have the preexisting highway names changed? Or just the just numerals changed? Or have new highways been built? In contemporary China, all three scenarios are plausible. Given all the naming changes that have occurred and will occur, we should strive to maintain an article naming system that is both (1) precise in describing the particular highway about which the article is written because once a highway is built it is likely to remain (regardless of how the highway is named or renamed) and (2) be flexible enough that the article name can adapt to future, unknown changes in the highway nomenclature system, so as to reduce the confusion of Wikipedia readers. When they come upon an expressway article, they should not have to ask the same questions -- is this article about an expressway that I previously knew to be X and numbered # or is it an article about a whole new highway? To maintain this flexibility, I still believe that is worth the extra verbiage to retain both the numeral prefix and LocA-LocB name in the title of the article, when doing so does not create an internal ambiguity in the name. The redundancy reduces the likelihood of wholesale name change. So long as one part of the name is retained, the retained portion will help reader orient themselves. Just to elaborate on that a bit more, expressways are built in sections and LocA-LocB names tend to follow the section's endpoints and when a highway is extended to LocC, the whole highway name changes to LocA-LocC. But if the numerical prefix remains the same, the reader will be able to tell that LocA-LocB has simply been extended and that LocA-LocC is not a wholly new highway. Similarly, when A30 Shanghai Expressway Outer Ring Expressway became G1501 Shanghai Ring Expressway, the text portion of the highway helps readers identify the highway.
Now, when a trans-jurisdictional highway has different numerals in each jurisdiction, it's okay to leave off the numeral prefix. I do not purport to know how often such instances would occur, but there is evidence that provinicial authorities are working together to reduce confusion. The Beijing-Tianjin-Tanggu Expressway, for example, is numbered S40 in both Beijing and Tianjin, though the Wikipedia article doesn't yet reflect that.
Of course, this naming system will have longer titles, but writers need not write the full title each time they make in-text citations. Each article will have a good number of alternative names feeding into it such as the expressway's abbreviated name(s), constituent section names, numeral names, past numeral names, etc. The goal is to keep related content feeding into the same article so that should the highway's official name or number change, only part of the article title will change. This avoids someone else starting an overlapping article (say, with the numeral name) and creating greater confusion. Even if numeral names remain underused in common parlance in China for the time being (although I recall lots of people in Shanghai giving directions based on the A-numeral system), the numerals, besides being easier to remember and easier to identify on maps, can also contribute to the understanding of the LocA-LocB part of the name. Take the G18 Rongcheng–Wuhai Expressway for example. Most readers of English Wikipedia are unlikely to know where Rongcheng and Wuhai are. But if they have some familiarity with the NTHS naming system (which is hardly a model of cartesian rationality), they can tell from the G18 that the highway is (1) part of the National expressway system, (2) runs roughly east-west because the numeral is double-digit even and (3) oriented north of the G40 Shanghai–Xi'an Expressway because routes in the north have smaller numbers.
The broader objective is to make sure that the article names don't get in the way of article creation. For while there's lots of unknowns about what the future highway system will look like, there are greater gaps in Wikipedia's coverage of existing expressways. To the extent we can future-proof article names and organization, all the better.
The reason why I said the NTHS system is incomplete is that there are expressways under construction for which there are no apparent numbers -- e.g. the Wuzhou-Guigang Expressway. In such cases, simply create the article without the prefix, which can be added later. Does that make sense?ContinentalAve (talk) 00:38, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
Yes, that makes sense and I agree with your point. I think at this moment, I am fine with the status quo. I made this proposal originally after realizing that the Shanghai–Jiaxing–Huzhou Expressway, a inter-provincial expressway in Shanghai and Zhejiang, was designated differently (S32 in Shanghai and S12 in Zhejiang), and thought it would be confusing/unnecessary to have two different articles for different sections of the same expressway. I also thought putting both numbered prefixes in the article title wouldn't work. Then I looked around and came to the conclusion that the number wasn't really needed at all and made this proposal, but I can see your points about why the numbers can help readers understand the system better, with the rapidly-changing and expanding network that China has. So below I have rewritten the Roadways section; no major change, just better rewording to take into account cases that may arise.

Roadways

For expressways, add the expressway number as a prefix to the expressway name in the article. The prefix and the expressway name should be separated by a space.

For provincial-level expressways that cross provincial boundary lines but have different numeral designations, or for expressways with no numeric designation, do not include a numeral prefix in the article title. For example:

The Chinese abbreviated name should be mentioned in the first sentence of the article as an abbreviated/secondary name of the expressway and should be made a redirect link to the article.

For China National Highways that are numbered, the article title should be China National Highway followed by the number.

National Highways can be abbreviated with "G{no. of highway}", e.g. G105 as a redirect link for China National Highway 105.

Heights(Want to talk?) 16:48, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
Thank you, Heights, for understanding my explanation and agreeing to the more limited modification of the rule that numerical prefixes should appear in the title of highway articles when the highway has a single numeral name. I am calling the prefixes a "numerical name" because it is an alpha-numeric designation. Below, I've made slight adjustments to your proposed revisions. Let's give others some time to comment.

Roadways

For expressways that have a single numeral name, add this numeral name as a prefix to the expressway name in the article title. The numeral name and the expressway name should be separated by a space.

Note: some provincial-level expressways that cross provincial boundary lines carry different provincial highway numeral designations. In these cases, leave out the numeral name prefixes from the article title. For example:

The Chinese abbreviated name for the expressway should be mentioned in the first sentence of the article as an abbreviated/secondary name of the expressway and should be made a redirect link to the article. Any numeral name designations should also be mentioned in the lede and redirects created as applicable.

For National Highways that are numbered simply follow the format {China National Highway [number]}:

National Highways can be abbreviated with "G{no. of highway}", e.g. G105 as a redirect link for China National Highway 105.

ContinentalAve (talk) 00:09, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Strong wording in Place names

Latest comment: 11 years ago7 comments4 people in discussion

No, it is not my decision alone to discourage ridiculous titles such as "Changjiang River" or using ", China" to disambiguate. Rules regarding the naming of two-character rivers/lakes/mountains/etc as well as the wording "use the province and alike" at WP:NCGN#China were all in place well before I began editing extensively here. At this point, with the correction of awful titles such as Taihu Lake (to Lake Tai) and Qinling Mountains (to Qin Mountains), "expressly prohibiting" carries more symbolism, and, if anything, codifies what we (i.e. those of us who are competent) have already been doing for years. Both of these two points are in line with WP:PRECISE as well. Therefore ANY obstructionism to these prohibitions is against policy and long-standing consensus. GotR Talk 22:46, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Even so, it was expressed and formatted in a way that is out of place in a naming guideline. Also, instead of just saying not to disambiguate with ", China" it might be useful to suggest an alternative (the province?). Kanguole 23:07, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
I believe the section "Administrative" covers the alternatives thoroughly (if you disagree, please elaborate), and saying not to disambiguate with ", China" was to discount that possibility once and for all. GotR Talk 23:10, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Very few things are "expressly prohibited" in Wikipedia. The only things that come readily to mind are threats and things to do with biographies of living persons. Kangoule's modification is much more in keeping with the tone of Wikipedia guidelines.
  • Discouraging the use of redundant terms seems fine, as long as it doesn't conflict with WP:common name or reliable source usage. I used to feel strongly that redundancies (or tautologies if you prefer) in naming were simply incorrect English, but that was really just my opinion. Table Mesa, for example, is the name of a geologic feature in Arizona, regardless of my opinion. A Wikipedia article on the feature should be called Table Mesa, in spite of the fact that mesa is Spanish for table. (I don't see an article on Table Mesa in the English Wikipedia at present). (When I was learning geography in school, Tian Shan was called the Tien Shan Mountains. This can be useful in helping remember what the Tian Shan is for people who don't speak Chinese, but in a way it's good to see that the redundant "Mountains" has been dropped, at least by some).
  • The guideline on ", China" disambiguation is not very clear to me as written. Is it meant to discourage article titles like "Changsha, China" because Changsha is not in any other country (as a hypothetical example)?
  • As for being unilateral, it looks like GOtR added the provision here [1], strengthened it to a prohibition here [2], and re-added it after it had been removed by another editor here [3]. The edit summary on the last one, which reads in part, "I'm not going to put up with this tomfoolery" didn't help to dispel the impression that it was a one man show, nor did GOtR adding the provision a third time [4] after a second editor (me) removed it and asked him to discuss it. Bringing it to the talk page has generated some easily-seen support for discouraging tautologies (but not for prohibition), so I'm glad GOtR brought it to the talk page.--Wikimedes (talk) 05:05, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
  • The only Chinese example of a tautology/redundancy that has wide common-name acceptance and that I can readily think of is "Bohai Sea". The proliferation of others, such as "Haihe River", on this site is almost exclusively the problem of those editors with lower English proficiency; during last summer's floods in Beijing and Tianjin I even heard a CCTV reporter making that error.
  • Regarding the ", China" provision, it is meant to discourage titles such as "Anshan, China" (instead of "Anshan, Liaoning") or, worse, "Sinan County, China" (instead of "Sinan County, Guizhou"). It has the effect of forcing readers who don't know China's provincial divisions to learn them: I suppose the title "Anshan, Liaoning" will bring the question "what/where is Liaoning?" into readers' mind, and once they open the article, the answer to that question will be more instantaneously ingrained in their mind; under the title "Anshan, China", Liaoning's identity may be more susceptible to becoming 'passing information', so to speak. GotR Talk 05:51, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
My own reasoning for Sinan County, Guizhou instead of Sinan County, China would be that China is a big place and it's nice to narrow the location down further. I can see good reasons for either one, but as long as both Guizhou and China are mentioned early in the article or disambiguation page (they are), it doesn't really matter to me which is used. Looking at the entries of the first page of Bing searches of Hai River [5] and Haihe River [6] leads me to believe that Haihe River is the more common term. But this is pretty superficial evidence and I don't intend to pursue the matter further.--Wikimedes (talk) 20:21, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
  • On the first point, I agree with GoR that 'Taishan Mountain' is both tautological and a redundancy that ought not to be encouraged; 'Hainan Island' would be acceptable if it does not violate other naming constraints. Just because some editors' Chinese may not be up to level does not justify perpetuating this type of ridiculous nomenclature. On the second point, it seems that we are on the same page, and perhaps we could adopt similar wording as in WP:USPLACE. -- Ohconfucius ping / poke 00:26, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Request for clarification of Languages/Dialects section

Latest comment: 11 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

In the section that discusses when to use "language" or "dialect", I'm not sure what "xxx" is supposed to represent. Is it supposed to be an adjective? Noun? Please provide an example. –Temporal User (Talk) 01:12, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Chinese Emperor renames (and possible NCZH change?)

Latest comment: 11 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

See Talk:Emperor Gaozu of Later Jin where a large number of Chinese emperors are proposed for renaming. It also appears to be an adjustment in the Chinese emperor naming scheme is proposed (which should be occurring here, instead of there) -- 65.94.76.126 (talk) 21:07, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Official names vs. Common Names

Latest comment: 11 years ago5 comments2 people in discussion

I recenty moved the article titled Dehong Dai and Jingpo Autonomous Prefecture to Dehong, because wikipedia doesn't care about official names and it is clearly established policy to use the common name if doing so doesn't conflict with other policies. Dehong is cleary the common name for the place and I made the move assuming that there would not be controversy. I was surpised however to find that this is a common pattern in Chinese place names on English wikipedia and that editors are quick to defend it. My move was immmediately reverted and I was told to consult WP:NC-ZH for clarification. I didn't find that clarification so I'm asking you. Is there any good reason that we are using long official names for places in China when WP:AT policy clearly states that simpler common names are prefered? One example given is "United Kingdom" being used instead of the longer official name "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland". Naming conventions for China should clarify how we apply the policy described at WP:AT and elsewhere, not vaguely contradict it. - Metal lunchbox (talk) 04:47, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

To be clear, I'm not here to win an argument about the title of a page. I am looking for clarification about how exactly we should be naming articles in situations like this, and how the naming convention article can be improved to make this clear for people in my situation. - Metal lunchbox (talk) 05:22, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
Well, for starters, the current arrangement provides far more consistency than a straight application of WP:UCN. For example, using that standard alone, Jinghai County, Tianjin would be titled "Jinghai", yet Xiangcheng County, Henan would remain under that title? Not having a hard rule would be a recipe or calamity. The remarkable consistency our standard at this conventions page provides should therefore be immediately apparent. GotR Talk 05:35, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
The biggest reason why I think that NC-ZH needs to be a little more clearly written is the inconsistency with usage of discriptors after the name. When do we use them and when don't we. I believe this is exactly what you are talking about above. All else being equal some consistency would indeed be nice, but I'm not seeing it. the section titled "Disambiguation of settlements and administrative units" clearly states that the names of ethnic minorities and the word "autonomous" should not be included in the title of the county unless required for disambiguation. Does that only apply to counties. If so, why? What is the standard for prefectures, such as Dehong? I'm not an absolutist and I don't think we have to use only the commonest name in every situation. If there is some China-related standard to follow instead it should be stated more clearly.
Are you sure "Disambiguation of settlements and administrative units" clearly states that minority group names and "autonomous" should not be included except for disambiguation purposes? In the table, entities officially designated as being "autonomous" fall under both the "Normal" and "Disambiguate" column. Perhaps due to Yanbian County, Sichuan, Jilin's Yanbian Prefecture is not a great example, but that's far beside the point.
BTW, prefectures, counties, districts (mainland only), townships (mainland only), subdistricts, leagues, banners, and more invariably use such descriptors in their titles. Only officially-designated cities and towns do not, and the exceptions are laid out in as concise of a manner as can be written. GotR Talk 06:10, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
I am sure, just read it, "autonomous counties should omit the ethnic groups and the word "Autonomous" (e.g. Huanren Manchu Autonomous County → Huanren County) as long as no ambiguity is created by the short form." In general I'm happy with the naming convention page. Chinese place names pose some complications and it is helpful. I'm pretty familiar with Chinese geography and I'll say that prefectures do not invariably use "prefecture" in their name. I have noticed that Prefecture-level cities are not often distinguished from the city by name. English wikipedia reflects this, such as with one of the examples from the table you mention. It is listed as "Haidong Prefecture", but this is just a redirect to Haidong. This seems to be a consistent pattern on wikipedia. This should be stated explicitly. In addition I am looking for a little guidance on what to do with prefecture articles. I would propose that in the case other than a prefecture-level city we balance common name usage with any need for disambiguation. In other words, follow WP:UCN. That means the Yanbian, Haidong, and Hainan examples would stay exactly where they are, and Dehong would be determined by a combination of common name and concensus. If one name isn't clearly established then maybe the editors choose one of the common names that seems more precise, simpler, or more consistent with similar articles.- Metal lunchbox (talk) 06:50, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Qin Shihuang

Latest comment: 11 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Anyone wants to contribute to the naming of the article under discussion at the talk page for Qin Shihuang here? Hzh (talk) 14:16, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

Talk:Anthony Wong (Hong Kong actor)#Requested multi-move (2013)

Latest comment: 11 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

We are discussing a rename request on Hong Kong personalities (plus another Australian personality) of the similar name, Anthony Wong. Please join in to improve consensus. --George Ho (talk) 21:20, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Discussion regarding inadequacy of current policy with regard to Chinese names

Latest comment: 11 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Please join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Article titles#Inadequacy of current WP:UE guideline with regard to Chinese names. -Zanhe (talk) 23:35, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

Capitalization: "Foo Dynasty" or "Foo dynasty"? (RFC)

Latest comment: 10 years ago37 comments15 people in discussion
There's a general acceptance of the RFC outcome to move to lowercase "dynasty", but the discussion has been moved to [7] for further considerations. --Cold Season (talk) 18:04, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

The following discussion 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.

Should Chinese dynasties be capitalized as "Foo Dynasty" or "Foo dynasty"?

The guideline currently states that Chinese dynasties, "should always be [[(Name of Dynasty) Dynasty]]." For example, Han Dynasty, Tang Dynasty, etc. This proposal would change the clause to read "[[(Name of dynasty) dynasty]]." The various dynasty articles could then be retitled as "Han dynasty," "Tang dynasty," etc. This is clearly the more common usage, although not by an overwhelming margin, as you can see here. Britannica gives these dynasties lower cased here and here. The Chicago Manual of Style gives the examples "Qing dynasty," "Ming dynasty," and "Shang dynasty." The manual explains that the word "dynasty" should be lower cased because it is, "considered an era rather than a political division" (Section 8.71). CMOS is the most widely used style guide and is cited or recommended in the MOS in several places. For non-Asian dynasties, the convention of lower casing is well established, as you can see from this ngram. Taekwondo Panda (talk) 05:16, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

  • Move to lowercase dynasty—I'm glad if more sources are using the correct grammar, but I don't really think this is an issue where we should bother following incorrect usage in the first place. Even better would be restricting the "XXX dynasty" pages to the actual dynasty and era and discussing nation and its administration, culture, &c. at "X Empire" or (at worst) "China under the X dynasty"... but I understand I'm practically alone in that opinion. — LlywelynII 08:10, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
  • Move to lowercase dynasty — WP:TITLEFORMAT instructs to use lowercase except for proper names, and "dynasty" is not a proper noun. WP:TITLE claims that titles should be "consistent with usage in reliable English-language sources", and English-language scholarship on Chinese history (our reliable sources) almost never capitalizes "dynasty". Note that ngrams that show the dominance of "dynasty" over "Dynasty" in reliable sources would be much more overwhelming if they didn't include Wikipedia usage (the very thing we're trying to change) and all instances in which "Dynasty" is capitalized only because it's in a title. We hadn't mentioned the Chicago Manual of Style in our discussion more than 2 years ago. It is a new and strong reason for moving to lowercase. Finally, the guideline we're trying to modify was added on 4 January 2004 by Ktsquare, one day after he created the page, and without apparent discussion,[8] so we're not trying to revert a strongly established consensus of editors, or anything. Madalibi (talk) 08:56, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
  • Move to lowercase dynasty — These ngrams show that "dynasty" is more common for Chinese dynasties in English-language sources: [9][10][11][12]. In fact they significantly understate the preference, because the counts for "Dynasty" are inflated by the inclusion in the search of titles, which tend to capitalize most words. (Perhaps someone could craft a search that distinguishes text from titles.) And indeed "dynasty" is the standard practice among historians of China writing in English, including those we use as sources in these articles. Kanguole 09:16, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
  • Move to lowercase dynasty. I've thought for some time that this is probably a good idea, though I can understand the argument on the other side. But I'm convinced by a lot of the information set out above. Good Ol’factory (talk) 09:22, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
  • Move to lower case dynasty This has been kicking around for far too long. Although I like the capitalisation as it is, it looks like there is strong support for the change and the reasons seem fully justified.► Philg88 ◄  talk 09:36, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
(Addenda) A search of The Economist's website shows they too use lower case - the magazine's style guide is considered a leading standard in the UK.► Philg88 ◄  talk 13:00, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
  • Move to lower case dynasty Capital dynasty is contrary to common usage and normal Wikipedia naming conventions. BabelStone (talk) 09:46, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
  • Keep upper case. While I do understand the arguments to move it, I am not convinced that "Dynasty" is not part of the proper noun — and if it is part of the proper noun, then it should be uppercase). "Han" without "Dynasty" does not denote a proper state as such. (This is opposed to Shu Han, Cheng Han, Southern Han, &c., where the additional descriptor is part of the title and designates that the whole title is a proper noun without the use of a capitalized "Dynasty.") Similarly for "Qin," "Zhou," "Tang," "Song," "Qing," &c. Do they have sufficient meaning without being part of the term "Qin Dynasty," &c.? I don't believe so, and if that were the case, "Dynasty" is part of the proper noun. --Nlu (talk) 11:05, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
    • I would also believe that the comparison to "Tudor dynasty" and "Romanov dynasty" are inapposite. Those aren't the most common names for the regimes in question — that would be "House of Tudor" and "House of Romanov" respectively, I would think. With the being the case, comparing in such manner is comparing apples and oranges, because in "Tudor dynasty," then, "dynasty" would not be part of the proper noun. I believe the more appropriate comparisons are to Ottoman Empire, French Fifth Republic, and British Raj — each of which involves a state denotation with a description of the state, much like "Han Dynasty" or "Tang Dynasty." I would say that "Han dynasty" makes as much grammatical and syntactic sense as "French Fifth republic" (or "Fifth republic" by itself, without "French") (and logically, one should lead to the other). --Nlu (talk) 11:14, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
    • It is quite common for historians writing in English (e.g. the Cambridge History of China) to use Han, Tang, etc to refer to the state, both as a single word and as a qualifier in terms such as "Tang poetry", "Tang armies", etc. Kanguole 12:23, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
      • Right, but in those situations, as you noted, the reference is to poetry or army or some other object, not to the state. --Nlu (talk) 17:42, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
        • And also as a single word name (preceded by "the") for the state, as I said above. You'll find "the Tang" did this and "the Ming" did that in just about any serious work of Chinese history written in English. Kanguole 18:08, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
  • Move to lowercase dynasty - per most arguments above. In response to Nlu's arguments, "(French) Fifth" and "British" are adjectives and are not the names of regimes by themselves as far as I know. (Ottoman seems to be a different case and I'm not knowledgeable enough to judge.) "Han" on the other hand is the name of the regime, and can be used as a noun by itself, as has been pointed out in Shu Han, Cheng Han, Southern Han, &c. for example. As for the argument that "Han" by itself does not denote the state, I beg to differ, just a quick search reveals titles like Han–Nanyue War, Han–Xiongnu War, Han suppression of the Trung sisters' rebellion, Han campaigns against Minyue, Chu–Han Contention, Four Commanderies of Han, Gojoseon-Han War, Han campaigns against Dian, Comparative studies of the Roman and Han empires, not to mention the Book of the Later Han and all of the Category:Han Dynasty emperors. The reason that the word "dynasty", or in the original Chinese language "chao" (朝) was added was because "Han" by itself is too short to be completely unambiguous, it does not mean that "Han" cannot be used by itself. I also would like to point out that "dynasty" is just a common translation and not the most accurate; in my opinion the best translation would be "empire" for "chao" — to me, Xin Dynasty and Shun Dynasty don't make sense as they only have 1 ruler each. Timmyshin (talk) 12:45, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
  • Move to lowercase dynasty As an aside, on the interesting point brought up by Timmyshin, I've been wondering who first used the English word "dynasty" to apply to China. Presumably translated from the Jesuits Latin or French, and also presumably there's a story behind their choice of words. Also, when was 朝 first used by a "dynasty" about itself? As late as the Qing, wasn't it often simply Da Qing? Sorry: Questions for elsewhere and for another day, since here we are talking about clear common usage, not the complications. ch (talk) 19:08, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
  • Lowercase 'dynasty' – I seem to remember commenting on this once before. Although I personally find the capitalized "Dynasty" more natural and appealing to the native English reader, it is prima facie that the common convention in the relevant published sources is the lowercase "dynasty".  White Whirlwind  咨  22:16, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
  • Move to lowercase dynasty with respects to Nlu and his well-argued points, though we must, per Wikipedia policy, follow the established conventions of the reliable sources as convincingly shown above. _dk (talk) 02:48, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
  • Move to lowercase dynasty per the established convention and usage that is reflected in the academic literature. The capitalization usage has has never received the majority support in earlier discussions, so I find this long overdue. --Cold Season (talk) 01:00, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
  • Comment. I understand that the consensus is beginning to take on the shape of WP:SNOW. But before final thoughts are entered by all, I urge everyone to consider just how awkward using lower case would look in prosaic style. (Yes, I realize that it is used in academic writing. I also believe that that should not necessarily dictate what we use.) But even more awkward will be article names and category names. Consider, for example, Category:Tang dynasty people and Tang dynasty. (I do believe that if we are going to effectively declare that "Dynasty" is to be rendered in lower case because is not part of the proper name, then perhaps it should be removed from article/category titles to avoid this awkwardness, but that will itself introduce problems in some cases. This is a reason to consider, I think. (Perhaps somewhat of an analogy to consider is that we use Pink (singer) as an article title, rather than "P!nk." --Nlu (talk) 03:47, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
    • Perhaps these new articles and categories look awkward simply because some of us are used to the capitalized style on Wikipedia. For my part I've always found Qing Dynasty and Category:Qing Dynasty empresses very odd-looking, but that's probably also a matter of habit. You also raise a good question: what should we do with category names if we do opt for the lowercase in article titles? Would we go for Category:Tang dynasty princesses, Category:Tang-dynasty princesses (hyphenated because "Tang dynasty" is used as a compound modifier as in "a five-year-old Pomeranian"), or simply Category:Tang princesses? I would prefer the 3rd one – Timmyshin has shown that state names can be clear on their own – but "Tang-dynasty" might be clearer in limit cases like Category:Tang-dynasty people. We will probably need time to make sure all these categories work fine without capitalization, but I don't think many will pose problems. Madalibi (talk) 07:06, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
    • Like Madalibi mentioned, if you stare at something long enough, it'll no longer seem so awkward... However, Nlu's concern about the categories is valid. I initially wanted to go with the format "Tang princesses" like Madalibi, but then Tang people is ambiguous, so is Han people. "Tang-dynasty princesses" looks even worse than "Tang dynasty princesses". Maybe "Princesses of Tang dynasty", like Category:Princesses of Baden etc.? Timmyshin (talk) 07:31, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
      • I may consider asking to move Tang Dynasty (if it becomes "Tang dynasty") to "Tang (dynasty)." If that happens, it could potentially be "Tang (dynasty) people." (That, I think, logically makes more sense than "Tang dynasty people." --Nlu (talk) 18:25, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
  • Comment As mentioned above, I would prefer to keep capitalisation if for no other reason that it seems to scan better. Nevertheless, per WP:NCCAPS "adherence to conventions widely used in the genre are critically important to credibility," and that has to override any personal preference. ► Philg88 ◄  talk 04:51, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
  • I think we have well over the 60 percent needed for a new consensus. It doesn't seem like there was ever a consensus for upper casing in the first place. This was just something that kept slipping through the cracks. I have taken down the RFC. Taekwondo Panda (talk) 02:19, 13 March 2014 (UTC)
  • Seeing no objection, I have moved this issue along. The RM is here. Taekwondo Panda (talk) 13:19, 14 March 2014 (UTC)
    • I'm not sure you need to go through a requested move and make us all go through the same hoops again. With this new consensus, I think we can just move the pages and refer to this discussion as having established our new naming standard. The problem is that most of the pages have a redirect at the non-capitalized form, so we will probably need an admin's help! Madalibi (talk) 13:27, 14 March 2014 (UTC)
      • @Madalibi: Further discussion in progress here. ► Philg88 ◄  talk 14:10, 14 March 2014 (UTC)
      • I disagree with the rush to move. A move like this will affect millions of pages and the titles of thousands. I think we need to take more time to carefully consider the consequences. I definitely think Nlu's proposal needs to be looked at. Timmyshin (talk) 18:19, 14 March 2014 (UTC)
        • Timmyshin: I posted my message above before Nlu posted his alternative proposal, so I meant no disrespect. What I meant was that the new RM makes it look like we're going to discuss capitalization again, even if we seem to have settled the issue here. Nlu's proposal is actually excellent! I'm now preparing a response to the RM that will take into consideration all kinds of titles that have "Foo dynasty" in them. Will post when I'm ready. Madalibi (talk) 05:55, 15 March 2014 (UTC)
      • I agree that since this change affects a large number of articles it should be done carefully and needs more discussion. But let's not create any more WP:RMs and fracture that discussion all over the place. I guess we're stuck with the one that's underway, but in future let's discuss types of articles here. If we can come to agreement we can put it into effect by moving the articles ourselves or using {{db-move}} if there's an edited redirect in the way. Kanguole 10:14, 15 March 2014 (UTC)
        • I've assembled a list of the article titles that I think are affected by the RFC, grouped by the way the name is used, at User:Kanguole/Dynasties. The only problematic ones are the last group, where "X Dynasty" is used as a modifier, but these are so few they could be handled separately. I think that for some of those re-phrasing might be the best course. Kanguole 18:42, 15 March 2014 (UTC)
      • I concur that the RFC closure was rather prematurely... Since the discussion has moved and opponents have shown acceptance of the RFC outcome at the new move request, I will archive this now. --Cold Season (talk) 18:04, 16 March 2014 (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.

Dynasties

Latest comment: 10 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

I don't think we should rename Five Dynasties, and that's the proper name of the period. Usage seems to be divided for Northern and Southern Dynasties (hmm, our article has that name the other way round, following the Chinese order). Kanguole 15:50, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

I think it depends on use. In some cases it is part of a proper noun, in other cases it is not. For example, "Foo happened during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period" it could be considered part of a proper noun as could the short hand, "Foo happened during the Five Dynasties". However in the opening line of Later Liang (Five Dynasties), "The Later Liang ... was one of the five dynasties during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period in China." (emphasis added) the fist instance should be "five dynasties" with both 'f' and 'd' in small letters because it is not a proper noun. The simple test is that if you append the word "period" to the first instance, the sentence no longer makes sense. Therefore the first instance in that sentence is not the name of a period but simple a numeration of dynasties. Several related articles do not make this distinction and capitalise the words everywhere. Likewise for northern and southern. Rincewind42 (talk) 23:13, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
Fair enough. So shall we move Later Jin (Five dynasties) back? Kanguole 01:10, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Articles specifically about certain characters should be titled more concisely

Latest comment: 10 years ago4 comments4 people in discussion

I find the article title Li (surname 李) to be awkward, and would find 李 to be a much more straightforward title when we want to convey something that is not transcribable. The moment that we introduce the pre-transcribed 李 character in the article title, the effort to transcribe the character in the article title is lost. WP:PRECISE states "Usually, titles should be precise enough to unambiguously define the topical scope of the article, but no more precise than that. " Thus, the moment that we decide that we need to show the Chinese character in the article title, the romanized version becomes unnecessary. (Generally speaking, ? (surname) would be the proposed pattern if there were conflicts with a ? article that required it.)

As another example of an article specifically about a character rather than the pronunciation, the article Li (unit) would make more sense under the title 里 (unit), because it is not about a unit pronounced as "li", but about a unit written as "里", as demonstrated by the fact that Ri (unit) redirects to it. --Makkachin (talk) 09:32, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

The current naming system is the result of an RFC from last year and many other previous discussions. See Talk:Li (surname)#RFC regarding multiple Chinese surnames transliterated to the same surname in English for details. See also WP:UE. It is a decent compromise between the requirement to have article titles in English, and the need to distinguish different Chinese names that share the same English romanization. -Zanhe (talk) 09:47, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
The problem with 李 (surname) is accessibility. There are still many people with e.g. older operating systems like Windows XP that don't come with Chinese characters, so they'd see a box in the title. Using 'Li' is therefore much better. It still includes the character for the majority with an OS that supports it (though that does not mean they can read it). The same applies to your other example.
The easiest solution is to create redirects for such title variations, and such are valuable for e.g. Chinese character spellings of Chinese/Chinese language topics such as the examples you give. Then anyone searching using Chinese will find them while anyone finding the page who doesn't know/have and OS that supports Chinese won't experience problems.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 09:49, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
Not everyone who reads the English Wikipedia will be able to distinguish between the general appearances of Chinese characters, let alone be able to read them, so having article titles such as "里" instead of "Li (unit)" would be counter-productive for many readers. Articles should be made so that they can be accessible by a general audience, and we shouldn't expect that our readers are already specialists on the topics we cover. Since this is the English Wikipedia, article titles are catered towards people who are capable of reading English alphabet letters, and Chinese characters fall outside of this. --benlisquareT•C•E 09:54, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

Lu vs. Lü in titles

Latest comment: 10 years ago54 comments9 people in discussion

I cannot find any particular guideline on this important topic, and the following is my opinion only.

Personally, I prefer using "Lü" in titles. The problem is, at least before 2012, PRC passports always (?) use "Lu" for 呂, and I believe the situation is similar in Taiwan, Singapore etc. Therefore modern people, especially athletes who are mostly identified internationally by official documents, should be disambiguated. e.g. Lü Bin (swimmer) (or Lu Bin (swimmer) ?) vs. Lu Bin (sprinter).

However, for historical people or fictional people like Lü Fang, I think the umlaut is sufficient to disambiguate in a title, e.g. Lü Guang doesn't need to be further disambiguated from Lu Guang (photographer) or Lu Guang (painter). I think any serious historian or translator who writes in English will be able to distinguish the 2 sounds. Although hatnotes and/or mentions in dab pages are still required.

Again, my opinion only. Pinging User:65.94.169.222, User:In ictu oculi, User:White whirlwind, User:Underbar dk, User:Benlisquare, User:George Ho, User:Zanhe, User:BD2412, User:Bejnar. Timmyshin (talk) 09:27, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Lü (surname) (呂) should be represented as Lü, not Lu. However in titles the pinyin diaeresis alone is not usually enough to pass Wikipedia:Article_titles#Using_minor_details_to_naturally_disambiguate_articles and therefore e.g. Lu Bin vs Lü Bin require further disambiguation.

'Tone diacritics are not used to transcribe names or terms that appear in the normal flow of an article (e.g. "...early Ming dynasty scholar Gù Yánwǔ..." or "...a bronze dǐng excavated from a Zhou dynasty tomb..."). They should only be used in templates and parentheticals (e.g. Chinese: 顧炎武; pinyin: Gù Yánwǔ) or in infoboxes.

There's no reason we should think of article names any differently. It's not proper disambiguation, because those marks aren't used in English. - Metal lunchbox (talk) 11:33, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

We were just talking about how the umlaut is not a tone mark over at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/China-related_articles#Added_bracketed_note_on_.22umlaut-u.22. We really need to stress that u and ü are different vowels, ie. they are not just tone differences. _dk (talk) 11:39, 5 September 2014 (UTC)
I know how pinyin works. I would like to suggest that the above is intended to include the diaresis above the u, since it fits the same category but is much less common. It's a diacritical we don't use in English and it's a distinction that isn't represented in English pronunciation, so it's the same. They are different vowels in Chinese, not English. - Metal lunchbox (talk) 14:11, 5 September 2014 (UTC)
It is not in Wikipedia's goals to further misconceptions and conflate different things into one just because it's not English. _dk (talk) 14:49, 5 September 2014 (UTC)
This is not a misconception, just as we don't use Chinese characters in English we also don't use the mark above the u, because it doesn't have any meaning in English. English isn't Chinese. And it is firmly established that whatever logic you think supports the spelling you prefer is irrelevant. WP standards are to stick to common English practices and the usage present in the sources. - Metal lunchbox (talk) 04:16, 6 September 2014 (UTC)
The umlaut is not a tone diacritic, but is used to represent a vowel that cannot be expressed in the basic alphabet. Tone diacritics are added on top of the umlaut (the surname Lü with the tone is Lǚ). There is no reason why the umlaut should not be used. We have Führer, Lübeck, Münster, Lü (state), and numerous others. -Zanhe (talk) 06:27, 6 September 2014 (UTC)
  • Comment – To cut through all personal preferences and points of view, I propose we simply follow the usual Wikipedia convention of doing as reliable sources do. Reliable sources on China basically never use tone marks, but they consistently use "ü" when needed, presumably both because this is correct pinyin and because there is an important sound difference between "ü" and "u". (Note that the umlaut is sometimes omitted when it makes no difference, as in the syllable "lue/lüe".) This means I would support using "ü" as Timmyshin proposes. Madalibi (talk) 18:03, 5 September 2014 (UTC)
The sources that I have looked at for the articles about people named Lü don't use the mark above the u, though perhaps there are some that do. What I am proposing is that we stick both to common English usage and the reliable sources for our articles, that is, Write it as "Lu". That is, as you suggest, the way we do things on WP. I suggest you take a closer look at those RS you mention. Which ones use the mark? They certainly do not " consistently use "ü" when needed". Although, I'm not sure what you mean my "needed". - Metal lunchbox (talk) 04:16, 6 September 2014 (UTC)
My point was based on a general impression of reliable sources on China as a whole, not only on those that concern people surnamed Lü. I'm ready to grant that journalistic conventions (among others) may differ from the scholarly ones I'm most familiar with. And it's possible that some athletes, writers, etc. surnamed Lü are regularly known as "Lu" when they're discussed in English-language sources. But for history it's definitely Lü Buwei, Lüshi Chunqiu, and Lü Liuliang!
I would far prefer a simple rule saying "let's use correct pinyin (without tone marks)", but in some cases we may indeed have to go case by case, as with "Napoleon", who has dropped his accent aigu. But I'm not convinced by the argument that we shouldn't use "ü" just because it doesn't exist in English. In addition to place names like Lübeck and Mälaren, we have personal names like Lech Wałęsa and Slobodan Milošević, which use much more exotic symbols than the "umlaut" we're debating. I think we should do like these other WikiProjects, and not let the limits of the English alphabet detract from correct spelling (or, in our case, Romanization) in the international topics we discuss on WP. In other words, if we're going to use pinyin, it's less confusing to use all of it than to pick and choose the parts of it that fit with the rules of the English alphabet. As I said, there may be exceptions dictated by reliable sources in certain fields, but the general guideline should be to use all of pinyin. Madalibi (talk) 09:12, 6 September 2014 (UTC)
The biggest difference between what we are talking about and the examples you cite is simply, those names are written that way in their original language, so sometimes they may preserve some of their original spelling because they have been writen that way so many thousands of times already. Lu Lin's original name on the other hand is 吕林. Pinyin is just a heuristic tool. Beyond this distinction we need be careful not to make too many otherstuffexists arguments, since they don't make binding precedent in this situation. - Metal lunchbox (talk) 09:47, 6 September 2014 (UTC)
Pinyin is not just a heuristic tool, it's the ISO (7098:1991) and UN standard for romanizing Mandarin Chinese. -Zanhe (talk) 21:21, 8 September 2014 (UTC)
  • WP:V, WP:NOR, WP:UE, WP:BLP ; whatever the spelling, it must be used. If there are no references that use that particular spelling, but there are references that use another spelling, we cannot use a spelling that is not used. So, there must exist at least one reference in English for which the form "Lü" is used to show that it is used. If there are no English language references at all, then the form must still exist and be used in non-English sources. If the form does not exist in any references provided, it cannot be used. The situation is very simple. The two articles that are involved (1) have no references using the form "Lü" (2) only have references using the form "Lu" ; To use "Lü" would violate WP:V and WP:NOR, as well asn WP:BLP, to be able to use "Lü", a reference must be provided. -- 65.94.169.222 (talk) 05:38, 6 September 2014 (UTC)
I've added a couple references that use the correct Lü spelling on Lü Lin. -Zanhe (talk) 06:41, 6 September 2014 (UTC)
  • After looking at this issue for a while I've discovered that the situation is somewhat diverse. I'd like to retract my previous request that the naming conventions and MOS be edited to suggest that editors not use the diaresis. I don't think the situation is simple enough to merit such a proscription. Some of the editors above point to RS which use the diaresis. For many topics it seems that a large number of the sources keep the diaresis. I strongly disagree with statements like "it isn't optional". Instead I would like to suggest that existing WP practices be used. Where the majority of reliable sources preserve the diaresis, WP can and should also keep the diaresis. If the sources more or less consistently do not, then WP should not add one just for the sake of "correctness". In this way Lü Buwei would keep the diaresis, and Lu Zushan wouldn't. What do you think? - Metal lunchbox (talk) 12:58, 6 September 2014 (UTC)
This is about what I proposed (with perhaps less clear words), so sure, no problem! But my understanding of this guideline would be "use the diaresis unless a majority of RS do not". This may still be a little different from what you propose, metal.lunchbox. Madalibi (talk) 14:29, 6 September 2014 (UTC)
How different is that from "do not use the diaresis unless a majority of RS do"? which seems to be the normal Wikipedia stance on diacritics. --Bejnar (talk) 17:45, 6 September 2014 (UTC)
@Bejnar: Sorry I missed your question the first time around. There would be no difference if all RS could be assessed automatically, but there is a major practical difference in the real world. Deciding to use the diaresis as default would put the WP:BURDEN of proof on those who want to remove it in particular cases. That way we would generally observe the rules of pinyin, but also remain flexible in cases where reliable sources do not follow those rules. I see this as good Wikipedia practice. Madalibi (talk) 04:15, 10 September 2014 (UTC)
It isn't different, I'm proposing not making a new standard on this page and instead defering to existing Wikipedia practice. However I think it may be necessary to add some mention of the practice with the words you give. The majority of this discussion has not been about normal WP practice or what a majority of RS do, but has instead focused on correctness and confusion about to what extent editors understand how pinyin works. - Metal lunchbox (talk) 01:21, 7 September 2014 (UTC)
@Madalibi, yes this is based on the sources you cited and the discussion we had about them. but with an important difference. You seem to suggest that we should use the diaresis as a general rule, I am suggesting that we don't use it unless a majority of RS do and forget about subjective motivations like correctness, and fixing misconceptions, etc. For some of the topics I have looked at, a majority of RS do in fact use it, for other topics, it's rarely or never used. - Metal lunchbox (talk) 01:21, 7 September 2014 (UTC)
  • I agree with Metal lunchbox's revised opinion. With regard to disambiguation pages, because the diaresis may not be used in all sources, "Lu" and "Lü" would need to be disambiguated on the same page. However with regard to surname pages, they could have separate, albeit cross-referenced, articles, so long as one knew for sure which actually surname was appropriate for every individual. --Bejnar (talk) 17:45, 6 September 2014 (UTC)
  • I disagree with Metal.lunchbox's revision proposal. There is nothing wrong with following Wikipedia's current convention, which is to use the standard pinyin spelling Lü. Pinyin is not just an ad hoc system of writing Chinese in the Latin alphabet; it has been adopted by the ISO as an international standard in 1982. I fail to see what we stand to gain by abandoning this standard, at the high cost of inaccuracy and inconsistency. "Lu", though fairly common, is nothing but a workaround for people who can't type Lü on their keyboard (which is easily addressed on Wikipedia by creating a redirect), and there exist several other common workarounds including Lv and Lyu (Lyu being the only officially sanctioned workaround adopted in 2012, see Lü (surname)#Romanization for details). Some sites, such as chinavitae.com that Metal.lunchbox cited before, don't even use them consistently: it spells Lu Zushan for Lü Zushan, Lv Zhengcao for Lü Zhengcao, but Lü Fuyuan correctly. I don't see any benefit in introducing similar inconsistency to Wikipedia. As for the common name argument, the standard Lü spelling is also extremely common, especially in academic publishing, as well as millions of Chinese passports and textbooks (although you won't find them in a google search). -Zanhe (talk) 04:47, 7 September 2014 (UTC)
It's easy to pick on one source. But, my point about Lu Zushan was clear, all sources I can find on the topic use the same spelling, a different spelling than what we use. That one source is inconsistent is beside the point. I'm not proposing abandoning pinyin or any established wikipedia policy. Actually quite the opposite, deffering to higher-level guidelines on naming, using plain English and the common name used by reliable sources. Also, officialness is irrelevant, so please stop using it as an argument. - Metal lunchbox (talk) 17:25, 8 September 2014 (UTC)
The idea that it is only spelled as "Lu" in English when it is not technically possible to write it "correctly" is simply not true. The passports are one counter example. Also, no shortage of sources that we are referencing here on wikipedia. the Telegraph is a real English-language RS. Most of the books on Lu Zhengcao also appear to spell his name that way, but there are many web sources spelling it the way we do. To be clear, we should use the diaresis if a majority of reliable sources do, with some common sense about the relative quality and relevance of sources, keeping in mind we like to use plain English, and not use the diaresis otherwise. To pretend that English has some ironclad rule that requires the use of the diaresis above the u is to indulge in simplistic fantasies. - Metal lunchbox (talk) 17:46, 8 September 2014 (UTC)
The inconsistency of Chinavitae.com is not just about a single website, but a reflection of the situation on the web as a whole, and what Wikipedia may become if we abandon the standard spelling. And you still haven't addressed the most fundamental point: how does introducing the inconsistency help Wikipedia and its readers? We've always used the pinyin and ISO standard spelling of Lü without any problem, why should we "fix" something that's not broken by adopting an ad hoc approach and end up with Lü, Lu, Lv, and Lyu all mixed up, and frequently arguing about which form is slightly more common for each individual? -Zanhe (talk) 19:02, 8 September 2014 (UTC)
The pervasive inconsistency you mention is proof that we would be making up a rule, not enforcing an existing one. I'm only trying to stop us from making such a rule, I have never suggest that we frequently argue about which form is slightly more common. - Metal lunchbox (talk) 19:13, 8 September 2014 (UTC)
How is adopting a Chinese and international standard "making up a rule"? And how would it benefit Wikipedia readers if we abandoned the standard in favour of pervasive inconsistency? The main reason why we have naming conventions on Wikipedia is to avoid inconsistency and ad hoc solutions. You say you don't want to frequently argue about the issue, yet you just started a new move request on Talk:Lü Zushan while the discussions here and on Talk:Lü Lin are still in progress. -Zanhe (talk) 21:34, 8 September 2014 (UTC)
And we will certainly not argue about which form is more common since there is only one form of that name. The talk at Lu lin and here do not prohibit talk of move at the article about Lu Zushan, or any other page for that matter, since this is not a discussion which is based on a clear proposal to limit the naming of those articles and a talk at Lu Lin could never be. This discussion started with a vague query asking for some guidance. From that discussion has emerged that several editors believe the naming should defer to WP:COMMONNAME, consistent with Article naming policy while some editors repeat references to standards which have no authority over Wikipedia titles. Should I feel constrained by such arguments? If you still have doubts about what WP guidelines say, see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English) "do not substitute a systematically transliterated name for the common English form of the name". If you have a phobia of inconsistency then you've no business reading or editing wikipedia, especially not China-related topics. Whatever you do, don't read Peking University! - Metal lunchbox (talk) 23:03, 8 September 2014 (UTC)
I have no phobia of inconsistency, but I'm no fan of deliberately introducing inconsistency and inaccuracy without a compelling reason. If the inconsistent names (such as Peking University, or Chiang Kai-shek) are well known and widely used in English, then Wikipedia should reflect that, and that's the purpose of WP:COMMONNAME. But the names we're discussing here are obscure to most people, and arguments in favour of nonstandard spellings are based on small and inconsistent bodies of evidence. In such cases, we ought to default to the accurate and consistent spelling as dictated by internationally accepted standards. -Zanhe (talk) 23:50, 8 September 2014 (UTC)
  • They did use Lü before, but thanks for pointing out that things have changed. Actually, according to this news article, Lü was previously often spelled LV or LU on Chinese passports until 2012, when the government standardized it to LYU. The reason given for the workaround is that there is no capitalized form of ü in pinyin, (the machine-readable passports nowadays require names to be spelled in capitalized letters). On Wikipedia we don't capitalize people's names, so using the original Lü is the best solution to avoid all the confusion, IMO. -Zanhe (talk) 18:43, 8 September 2014 (UTC)
Interesting but that's a machine-reader compatibility issue, the format for Passport names is decided internationally, much like the format of names on ATM cards. Has no bearing on WP:PINYIN and WP:CONSISTENCY. In ictu oculi (talk) 01:30, 9 September 2014 (UTC)
Should I dump here thirty examples of books with editors which don't use the diaresis or are you going to have a look for yourself, and stop making such declarations about what is permissible in English. - Metal lunchbox (talk) 17:49, 8 September 2014 (UTC)
User:Metal.lunchbox you are being disruptive. In ictu oculi (talk) 00:13, 9 September 2014 (UTC)
I have absolutely no intention of being disruptive. I'd like to see this discussion conclude in a manner which either devolves quietly into a (temporary) lack of consensus, or hopefully, we can get on the same page about how these establish naming conventions, guidelines, and policies apply to topics transliterated with a ü. If you believe that I am being disruptive, then please explain how, so that I can approach this discussion in a more productive fashion. Simply accusing me of being disruptive for having an opinion supported by logic and direct references to WP policy and guidelines, strikes me as, well... disruptive. - Metal lunchbox (talk) 00:20, 9 September 2014 (UTC)
Let's stick with the arguments and refrain from making accusations. I don't think Metal.lunchbox has been disruptive, although starting a new discussion on Talk:Lü Zushan in the middle of the current discussion is uncalled for. Metal.lunchbox has done good work before, but I think his opinion here is (at least initially) based on his misconceptions that the umlaut is equivalent to the tone mark, and that the pinyin standard is nothing but a "heuristic tool". -Zanhe (talk) 00:37, 9 September 2014 (UTC)
Where did you get the idea that people are mistaking the tense u marker for a tone marker? Where did you get the idea that I was so confused about how tone markers work. I told you that I know how Pinyin works. Anyways, regardless of what you think I was confused about initially and a bit of semantics about the difference between the Hanyu Pinyin standard and common English spellings of standard Chinese, none of that actually has anything to do with the issue. Are we okay with sometimes not using the marker above the u to be consistent with all or most English-language sources on the topic, or will we make a new rule, that the mark must always be included no matter what? As for the parrellel discussion. You are aware that there's discussion on three article talk pages right now related to this issue of the diacritic above the u in Chinese names, right? Why should my move request suddenly be taboo. - Metal lunchbox (talk) 01:02, 9 September 2014 (UTC)
Because you are picking a minor stub to challenge existing guidelines, again: En.wp uses all six Chinese vowels, including Results 1–500 of 9,720 for Lü Chinese

MOS:CHINESE The tone mark is added to the vowel in the syllable that comes first in this sequence: a o e i u ü.

WP NC-CHINA: The titles of Chinese entries should follow current academic conventions, which generally means Hanyu Pinyin without tone marks.

as all 496 articles with Lü in title. In ictu oculi (talk) 01:51, 9 September 2014 (UTC)
I cannot have this discussion with you on four different pages at once, this is insanity. I don't even know what you are talking about anymore. you are just pasting the same stuff on each page now. How can we have a coherent discussion with the community in this manner? I've been trying to get back to the point on this page for a long time. Is it okay to sometimes use "u" instead of "ü" to be consistent with all or most English-language sources on the topic, or will we make a new rule, that the mark must always be included no matter what? - Metal lunchbox (talk) 01:57, 9 September 2014 (UTC)
You don't have to have this discussion at all. But you have seeded 3 new RMs, when the other Lu/Lü RMs were withdrawn by proposer which go against the entire Chinese + Serbian + Lithuanian article corpus and MOS:CHINESE and WP:NC-CHINA need to be stated in the RMs you have started to show that your proposal goes against existing article guidelines. If you don't want all those pages open, then close them. In ictu oculi (talk) 02:02, 9 September 2014 (UTC)
Please stop. I have asked you to stay on topic several times, instead you have chased me around Wikipedia pasting the same thing and making some kind of accusation that I'm using every edit to manipulate the MOS for Chinese topics or something. If you don't want to answer the basic question that this discussion has centered on then i have no interest continuing to participate. - Metal lunchbox (talk) 03:14, 9 September 2014 (UTC)
You are currently arguing against WP:NC-CHINA and WP:PINYIN (or at least the common understanding of those guidelines shown in the status quo in the article corpus) on 4 article Talk pages and 2 guideline Talk pages. In those Talk pages the guidelines should be clearly stated. In ictu oculi (talk) 04:14, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

Cross post

Just noting this helpful comment from User:Kanguole at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/China-related_articles#Added_bracketed_note_on_.22umlaut-u.22: "As you say, the current wording of this quideline is perfectly clear on the distinction between tone marks and vowels in pinyin. There's already a discussion of Wikipedia naming conventions at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Chinese) – please continue there. Kanguole 07:52, 9 September 2014 (UTC)"

Good advice, doesn't need to be in two places even if MOS:CHINESE and WP:NC-CHINA are both affected. In my view also they are also perfectly clear to me, evidently to Zanhe and others. I am not now sure what the problem is at Talk:Lü Lin and Talk:Lü Zushan, evidently the IP nominator at Talk:Lü Lin misread WP:PINYIN and didn't reference WP:NC-CHINA, but I am not clear if Metal.lunchbox at Talk:Lü Zushan (who did not mention WP:PINYIN and WP:NC-CHINA in proposal) is now claiming that WP:PINYIN and WP:NC-CHINA don't say use Lü, or whether Metal.lunchbox just disagrees with the WP:PINYIN and WP:NC-CHINA guidelines? In ictu oculi (talk) 01:42, 10 September 2014 (UTC)
I cannot understand why you choose to make this issue about me. There is no problem. There are move discussions underway, even if you disagree with the logic used in the proposals. Attempting to litigate those move discussions here is also not appropriate. - Metal lunchbox (talk) 03:00, 10 September 2014 (UTC)
User:Metal.lunchbox, there is a problem and I am not the only editor of the opinion that your launch of RM Talk:Lü Zushan was not helpful, as you can see by comments there.
Now please, can you please clarify
(a) WP:PINYIN and WP:NC-CHINA don't say use Lü, or
(b) WP:PINYIN and WP:NC-CHINA do say use Lü, but you disagree with the guidelines.
Can you please state clearly the rationale behind your edits. In ictu oculi (talk) 03:26, 10 September 2014 (UTC)
Let's please all calm down and step back from it. Arguments from both sides have been expressed, repeatedly, on numerous talk pages. Unless there's fresh input from other participants, we should all devote our energy to more productive endeavours. -Zanhe (talk) 03:34, 10 September 2014 (UTC)
User:Zanhe I agree (the Talk:Lü Lin and Talk:Lü Zushan things have been a distraction and a sideshow). Do you think it's possible to go back now to the original issue as raised by TimmyShin above? Most of the editors TimmyShin pinged didn't respond to the ping. In ictu oculi (talk) 04:15, 10 September 2014 (UTC)
I am aware of the opinion that the RM at Talk:Lü Zushan was not helpful. That opinion was expressed clearly on that page and I responded there as well as above and on several other pages. For the rest, I agree with User:Zanhe about this discussion, but I will answer part of your question, because I think it may help clear a misunderstanding. I did not specifically mention the guideline at WP:PINYIN becuase I don't think that it has information which helps us decide the title of that article. It says that when there isn't a common name in English we should use Pinyin without tone marks and explains further with some examples. It does not say that Chinese names must always be written in exact accordance to all the rules of Pinyin. The common name part of that is repeated in every single article on naming, some of which I cite. There are many articles on wikipedia about naming, I mentioned some others that I thought were more relevant. And to answer your bizarre question, no the name "Lü" doesn't appear on either of the articles you mention. - Metal lunchbox (talk) 04:21, 10 September 2014 (UTC)
You've been asked to calm down but you appear to still be in battle mode; witness "bizarre", and "no the name "Lü" doesn't appear on either of the articles you mention", (who said the name did "appear").
Nevertheless your answer appears to be (a), namely that neither WP:PINYIN and WP:NC-CHINA give any guidance to normally use ü as in Lü. Is that a correct understanding of your position? In ictu oculi (talk) 04:59, 10 September 2014 (UTC)
I fail to see how thinking the question is bizarre makes me in battle mode. You ask if the articles say to use "Lü" and they make no mention of it, forgive me if I find the question puzzling. In response to your restated question, no that is not my position, because of the ambiguous word "normally", among other reasons. - Metal lunchbox (talk) 17:38, 10 September 2014 (UTC)
Do you think that WP:PINYIN and WP:NC-CHINA give guidance to use ü or not? In ictu oculi (talk) 22:54, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Names of people for Hong Kong

Latest comment: 9 years ago55 comments15 people in discussion
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.
For the RFC:

We Wikipedians have trouble naming many Hong Kong people, especially low-profile ones. Many people insisted on using "English name" or "Chinese name" per WP:COMMONNAME; some others insisted on using "English Chinese English". Recently, I have encountered disruptive moves that disregard the recent page move discussions but have been fortunately reverted. Moreover, I have proposed page moves on articles of Hong Kong people, and so have others. This caused conflict between us Wikipedia. To ease tension, we would like to hear your comments on this; thank you. --George Ho (talk) 09:08, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Discussion below:

This seems to be an old unsolved issue, and without going to the extend of creating a separate naming convention for Hong Kong, I want expand on the"Name of people" section either in "General principle" or "Romanization of names" subsection to clarify a little more when somebody has an English name who is also Chinese from Hong Kong. If they are more commonly known with their English name, the English convention should apply with "First Last" name format such as Jackie Chan, Donald Tsang, Nicholas Tse. If they do not have an English name, or is more known by their Chinese name, the Chinese convention should apply with "Last First" name format such as Tung Chee-hwa.

Some editors believe it should be something long like "Jackie Chan Kong-sang" with "English-First Last Chinese-First" name, making the title extremely long in most case. This sparked many past and ongoing edit wars. Few years back, the Hong Kong editors agreed Tony Leung Chiu-Wai and Tony Leung Ka-fai were the only exceptions, all other articles should follow the English name with English convention, Chinese name with Chinese convention. I think we need to decide on a convention we can follow for Hong Kong related biographies. Maybe also add a list of examples similar to the WP:UCRN section would help unfamiliar editors?

For example:

  • Chow Yun-fat (not Donald Chow Yun-fat)
  • Donald Tsang (not Donald Tsang Yam-kuen)
  • Jackie Chan (not Jackie Chan Kong-sang)

TheAvatar (discuss–?) 17:18, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Shouldn't WP:COMMONNAME be the ultimate fallback for this sort of thing? Codifying every single thing as a rule would eventually become instruction creep, so I don't think forcing some kind of "rule" would be helpful. Whatever naming style is used the most within third-party reliable sources should be used, there is no need to have a unitary style (i.e. the "Donald Chow Yun-fat" format that is being pushed by the people you've mentioned) for all Hong Kong biography articles on Wikipedia. I'd say that WP:COMMONNAME should probably be mentioned, however one would assume that common sense would be applied to naming these articles without needing for specific guidelines to be cited. --benlisquareT•C•E 19:38, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
Tavatar (talk · contribs) has accused me sockpuppetry. Also, he disruptively moved Gary Fan Kwok-wai (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) without knowing or regarding the RM that I installed. Enough about him, I have been aware of this problem for a long time. I proposed dropping "Po" or "Ivy" on Talk:Ivy Ling Po (edit | article | history | links | watch | logs), but there was no consensus on doing so. Slowly, I realizes that "English Surname Chinese" helps balance the article a lot more in case of edit warring. Too bad certain editors don't see it this way. Another example is Talk:Connie Mak Kit-man (edit | article | history | links | watch | logs); she is notable but not very recognizable to many people, including Hong Kongers. She did drop "Connie" when she left one record company, but discussions about naming here have been very, very low and stale. This reflects people's unfamiliarity with the singer who sang "Rhine River Love" and is married to Kwong Wa. --George Ho (talk) 01:49, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
How we treat high-profile HK people (Chow Yun-fat and Jackie Chan) is different from low-profile ones (Connie Mak Kit-man and Raymond Chan Chi-chuen). Perhaps we focus too much on high-profile Hong Kongers and barely noticed low-profile ones. --George Ho (talk) 01:52, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
Agree that WP:COMMONNAME should in theory be the general principal. For Joshua Wong (activist), anyone not familiar with HK media would probably have a hard time recognising Joshua Wong Chi-fung in the article title. It's on the info-box, though, which is correct. This principal is complicated by the fact that, in HK media, he is commonly known by the Chinese name. Rather than "commonly known", I would say "commonly known internationally" to resolve such conflicts. So, I would say that, at present, common sense is required more than strictly codified rules. This is not ideal, of course, because common sense is a surprisingly rare commodity, so perhaps a rough guideline should be formulated. I would say that internationally high-profile people will tend to require different naming, especially in article titles. zzz (talk) 02:52, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
I realize that Joshua Wong Chi-fung is too recently known for now. If the discussion closes as "not moved" or "no consensus", I'll wait for another year or two to anticipate his fame. Also, the 2014 Hong Kong protests, initiated by Umbrella Movement, has not helped changed Chinese government's mind. --George Ho (talk) 03:43, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
Yes, the political dimension sure doesn't help (and isn't conducive to common sense either). zzz (talk) 03:57, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
Now back to the main topic, Jacky Cheung, Jackie Chan, and Liza Wang are high-profile actors/singers (yes, Jackie Chan sang ming ming bai bai wode xin [明明白白我的心] with Sarah Chen), but English sources would rather use these names instead. What about low-profile notable people, like Connie Mak Kit-man and Kenneth Chan Kai-tai? Number of English sources covering two people are very minimal at best and does not make their Chinese, English, and Chinese/English names commonly used. In fact, their notability to English sources are very low. --George Ho (talk) 04:43, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
The real problem is not whether those subjects are high or low profile. The real problem is when you hit a common-first common-last combination. Joshua, Tony, or Raymond combined with Wong, Chan, or Leung become quite ambiguous, especially for low profile people as they will likely not modify names/nicknames to avoid conflicts with other people of the same name. This won't happen to Jackie Chan or Jackie Cheung. HkCaGu (talk) 05:20, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
Circumstances may be different. In fact, I found the name "Ivy Ling Po" awkward when I visited the page, but the page move discussion that I initiated resulted "no consensus". Keith Chan may be an exception; two of them are Hong Kongers and composers. Same for Tony Leung; two Hong Kong actors of the same English name but different Chinese name. I don't mind any page scrapping out the HK Chinglish name if the title is no longer stable and consensus is formed. But Chinglish names are probably stable in case of circumstances like Raymond Wong Yuk-man (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views). It scrapped out the parenthetical disambiguation for the Chinese name. Then I proposed re-adding the English first name with Chinese name retained because "Raymond Wong" is also commonly used. --George Ho (talk) 09:24, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
Articles which need disambiguation should be able to use the style in use in Hong Kong, such as the result of the recent requested moves, per WP:NATURALDAB. Since the Hong Kong newspapers use the style ENGLISHname SURname CHINESEname in ENGLISH, that should be a valid title to selection if one were to name an article. t's been used by the Chinese University of Hong Kong [13] and the British Colonial Government of Hong Kong [14] prior to the rise of the commonly used Internet. So statements that this was an invention of Wikipedia or does not exist in real life is clearly not factual. The style exists, since it does exist, we should be allowed to use it for NATURALDAB purposes. These forms also preserve the the common name as part of the article name, and if both the Chinese and English names are common, it allows readers who only know one or the other to actually see the name they know it by. -- 67.70.35.44 (talk) 05:28, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
  • I'm with Benlisquare on this one. We should use WP:COMMONAME and not overblow things. For example, "Donald Chow" is sufficient to identify the subject and adding "Yun-fat" is at best superfluous and at worst confusing. If there is ambiguity then English name (Chinese name) can be used. Common sense says that we don't need to formalise a guideline—it will require acres of discussion and is likely to reach only a weak consensus.  Philg88 ♦talk 08:05, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
Philg88, I'm sure you could use a better example: Chow Yun-fat is internationally renowned, but people will be scratching their heads if asked about "Donald Chow" :) _dk (talk) 09:01, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
@Underbar dk: I did of course mean Donald Tsang (not Donald Tsang Yam-kuen)  .  Philg88 ♦talk 09:08, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
I don't think that fully addresses the issue that was raised. What do we do with the Tony Leungs? I don't see the advantage in adopting the hybrid naming convention occasionally seen in papers in HK, as I definitely feel it too confusing. For most of the world, it's nonsense to have the surname in mid-cluster like for "Tony Leung Chiu-Wai" and "Tony Leung Ka-fai"; better "Tony Chiu-Wai Leung" and "Tony Ka-fai Leung" or "Leung Chiu-Wai Tony" and "Leung Ka-fai Tony". -- Ohc ¡digame! 10:31, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
To avoid protracting this discussion, I'd say that for now we focus on the general case then move on to the specifics of disambiguating unusual situations on a case by case basis.  Philg88 ♦talk 10:40, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
  • Comment: In general, use the most common name in whatever format; if there're more than one compatible common names, then the native Chinese full name should be used for accuracy and precision. STSC (talk) 14:01, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
In other words, a Chinese guy may have two or three English names, right? Or you mean a person has commonly used English and Chinese names? --George Ho (talk) 16:54, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
Artists for example often have used stage names instead of real names for page titles, as the real name can be different than the one that is notable. Jin Yong uses his pen name as page title instead of Louis Cha, which loops back to the WP:COMMONNAME case. TheAvatar (discuss–?) 17:39, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
Hong Kong has been a very small territory a size of our world map. Nevertheless, it has also influential people. Too bad Wikipedia has to deal with the naming mess here. --George Ho (talk) 18:10, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
I mean the common name as defined in Wikipedia which could be stage name, nickname, pen name, adapted name, Baptismal name, Christian name, birth name, etc. for a Hong Kong Chinese. STSC (talk) 18:27, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
How would a common name apply to a Chinee person whose notability is verified by many Chinese sources and very few English sources and whose English name may exist? --George Ho (talk) 20:45, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
Quoting from WP:NOENG, title names should be treated the same as sources: "because this is the English-language Wikipedia, English-language sources are preferred over non-English ones whenever English sources of equal quality and relevance are available". If any is available, the name quoted in English sources are preferred over Chinese sources with this being English-language Wikipedia. TheAvatar (discuss–?) 20:59, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
From WP:NCUE, "If a particular name is widely used in English-language sources, then that name is generally the most appropriate, no matter what name is used by non-English sources. [....] It can happen that an otherwise notable topic has not yet received much attention in the English-speaking world, so that there are too few English sources to constitute an established usage." Names like Danny Chan, Priscilla Chan (a singer, not Zuckerberg's wife), and Anita Mui are widely known, so commonly-used names are established. Nonetheless, I am unsure of how well-known Raymond Wong Yuk-man is. He is not widely influential as a Hong Kong politician. His multiple names have been used by sources, but conflicting rules and edit discussions make situation complicated. --George Ho (talk) 21:29, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
CNN refers him as Wong Yuk-man. Other names they mentioned were Tanya Chan, Leong Kah-kit, and Chan Wai-yip. BBC also refers him as "Wong Yuk-man". I understand people in Hong Kong do not pay attention to politics much, and politicians may seems less notable internationally, but the sources say otherwise. One can argue the same for oversea folks not knowing anything about Hong Kong pop singers. If people forgotten Anita Mui one day, will we need to rename her article to Anita Mui Yim-fong? TheAvatar (discuss–?) 22:13, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
Haven't you read the whole talk page, or have you decided to stick to your viewpoints? Whatever. BBC has been considered left-leaning lately, despite its high reputation and good programming, like Sherlock (TV series) and Coupling (TV series). Let's discuss "Raymond Wong" politics guy at the other talk page; I'll provide sources using it. --George Ho (talk) 22:29, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
Skip that; review of "Raymond Wong Yuk-man" (no, I didn't copy-and-paste his name) at MRV isn't appropriate because MRV reviews comments and administration closure. I'll give you sources using the full name (or "Raymond Wong"): Central Intelligence Agency (US) and another book. I'll provide more if you want more proof. --George Ho (talk) 22:36, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
Another book and then another and Christian Science Monitor and AP via Yahoo and Epoch Times, The Atlantic, WSJ, and search elsewhere. Unsure about this book. There are many Raymond Wongs. --George Ho (talk) 22:54, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
I'm also with Benlisquare: The Common Name should be used where it can be established through reliable, English-language sources. For the most part I'll leave it to others to decide what to do when common name can't be established from English-language sources. When using Chinese-language sources, characters should be transliterated to the Roman alphabet.--Wikimedes (talk) 20:31, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
There is Hong Kong English, but it is considered rarely used because, according to article, people use either American or British English or both. ENGVAR doesn't mention titling in any variety. --George Ho (talk) 07:36, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
Some are saying that HK style is confusing (ENGLISHname SURname CHINESEname), but many things on Wikipedia use styles that are not the standard style of England. For instance, people named in the Spanish tradition, whose full names are used as article titles will not have their surname as the final name on their article, it will be the second to last name (thus, in the middle). Korean people use SURname KOREANname, which is not ENGLISHname SURname order. In Japanese articles, the older personages have SURname JAPANESEname, while the modern people have JAPANESEname SURname order, so a flipping of order, for people of the same country. Further, full names for Ancient Romans also have their "surnames" in the middle of the name. And these are not English-language styles, but are used in Wikipedia, the style discussed here is an English language style, in use in Hong Kong, WP:ENGVAR. Thus it should therefore be perfectly viable, since it is used in WP:RS from HK in WP:UE English. There should be no bar in using the WP:NATURALDAB form in use in English in the originating English-language locality of the person. -- 67.70.35.44 (talk) 00:31, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

I'm with I think most editors here that per WP:COMMONNAME we should use whatever's currently used in English sources. Currently as names change for various reasons, such as marriage, adopting a professional name etc., but this is not a problem particular to Chinese or Hong Kong names, and can be resolved through normal discussion on the article talk page.

The 'formal' full name is a little like English full names. And it's Bill Gates not Mr. William Henry Gates III – middle names, numbers and titles aren't usually part of the common name. The difference with the Hong Kong name is you hear it more often as all parts are useful; all of it is used by someone. But in common usage only the 'English' part or the 'Chinese' part is heard, i.e. the English name + Surname or the Chinese Family name + given name. In most cases WP will use English name + Surname as that's what's used in English but we don't need a rule for this, it should be based on sources and there will be exceptions. Again it should be whatever's currently commonly used.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 20:49, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

What about WP:DIVIDEDUSE, JohnBlackburne? What if both names are commonly used? --George Ho (talk) 21:18, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
I guess that's when we do Raymond Wong Yuk-man. HkCaGu (talk) 21:22, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
Then the article is at one (the one it was stable at before, as the guideline says) while the other is a redirect. You still generally don't need to use the full English and Chinese name as the article title. One exception might be for disambiguation. America's 41st president was George Bush but the article at George H. W. Bush to disambiguate him from his son George W. Bush. Similarly there are many people called Raymond Wong; that is a dab page and links to Raymond Wong Yuk-man and Raymond K. Wong as well as articles on other people with the same English name and surname.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 22:49, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
Shall we make proposals then? The rules are inadequate for HK people. --George Ho (talk) 07:34, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
Bluerasberry, you could be right on using common name at default. However, if there is more than one person of same name with same occupation, how about natural disambiguation instead of parenthetical disambiguation? We've done that with Keith Chans and Tony Leungs. A person's both English and Chinese names may be commonly used, but scrapping out a Chinese name in favour of English name—otherwise, the other way around—neglects the fact that the other name is also commonly used. There is a man named George Ho, and I am not that person. There are no other 'George Ho's notably, but his full name is George Ho Ho-chi. Well, Ho-chi is actually Jo-chi, sounding like "George" or "Georgie". --George Ho (talk) 02:44, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
George Ho Disambiguation in Wikipedia should not change the title of an article except sometimes to add parentheses to the best title for an article. I think by "natural disambiguation" you mean choosing an article title other than the one which would be chosen if disambiguation where not done; that is, if two people have the same name, change the article title for one of them in a way that avoids uses parenthetical disambiguation.
The "common name" rule is not a restriction; if there is a common name then that should be used as the article's title, and if there is not a common name, then other procedures are used to determine the article's title. In the case of Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, it seems that multiple reliable sources call this person "Tony Leung" and "Tony Leung Chiu-Wai", so both names seem to meet "common name". If the shorter name were much more common, though, disambiguation is not a reason to use the longer name for the title. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:38, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
Bluerasberry, regarding longer name, we have Paul Chans here. Two of them are Paul Chan Mo-po and Paul Chan Wai-chi, previously "Paul Chan (Hong Kong legislator)" and "Paul Chan (Macanese politician)", respectively. Which one is longer, Mo-po—five characters—or (Hong Kong legislator)—twenty? I changed "Joshua Wong (student activist)" to "...you know (activist)", although (activist) is two characters (including parentheses) longer than Chi-fung. --George Ho (talk) 17:54, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
George Ho What you describe to me seems nonstandard in Wikipedia. Tell me if you have any criticism with this scheme: If "Mo-po" is part of the common name, then it goes into the article without regard to length. If it is not part of the common name, then it is excluded also without regard to length. Here is the procedure:
  1. Identify the common name.
    1. If there is a common name...
      1. ... and only one person uses it, then that is the article's title.
      2. ... and if multiple people share a common name, use parenthetical disambiguation
    2. If there is no common name, or there are multiple candidates for common name, then with Wikipedia community consensus choose any name that is a candidate for being a common name, and act as if that name were the common name.
I am not seeing a test case in which this normal scheme would fail to apply. Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:27, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
@Bluerasberry: What about WP:NATURAL? "If it exists, choose an alternative name that the subject is also commonly called in English reliable sources, albeit not as commonly as the preferred-but-ambiguous title," says the policy. However, it also discourages obscure or made-up names. Is Mo-po obscure or made-up? Hong Kong and China presses use it often. Outside HK, NYT, AFP via FOX, CFO， and Daily Star use it. If I use "Paul Chan Hong Kong" in Google and Bing, the results will include this person and Paul Chan (artist), who was also born in Hong Kong. --George Ho (talk) 18:42, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
It does not say so, but I think the WP:NATURAL rule is not intended for typical biographies, and that commonname is the overriding rule here. If Mo-po is part of the common name then just say so and use it. If that is not part of the common name then I would say to avoid using it. A big part of Wikipedia is coming to consensus on what names to use for things, and I would not advocate that a name other than the common name be used for an article. Another way to say this is to use the name that would be used if more sources in more places started writing about this person in newspapers and discussing them in the news; the name that people use to discuss the person should be the name of the article. Blue Rasberry (talk) 19:34, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
An RM at talk:Paul Chan Mo-po disagrees with you. I was going to advise you to do another RM, but there are similar ongoing requested moves on other HK biographies. Even when there are outcomes of them, I think waiting until the results of this discussion is the best recommendation for now. By the way, you didn't read what WP:NATURAL says? Look at bolded "natural disambiguation" part and tell me that I'm wrong here. Also, the policy says, "If natural disambiguation is not possible, add a disambiguating term in parentheses, after the ambiguous name." How is Mo-po not possible? And what are examples of common sense nowadays? Also, per WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, neither Paul Chans are primary subjects of similar name. How is parenthetical disambiguation more appropriate than natural disambiguation if natural disambiguation is possible and natural names exist? I am sure that "Paul Chan Mo-po" is more commonly used and natural than "Hong Kong lawmaker Paul Chan" or "Paul Chan, Hong Kong politician" or whatever, which you see in certain sources. --George Ho (talk) 19:46, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
I read WP:NATURAL in the "natural disambiguation" and I still think it is not about people and ought not be used for any proper name, but rather about other article titles especially for common nouns. People usually only have one name that they use in the media, so "natural" disambiguation is not possible. I fail to recognize how this could apply to any of these articles shown anyway, because in all of these cases any of the common names could be chosen.
Names and titles like you shared are not common names and are not options.
"Paul Chan Mo-po" is obviously the correct name for that article because every source cited uses that name, so that name is the common name and no other option is reasonable to be considered. I am not sure what you want to happen with that article. Blue Rasberry (talk) 19:00, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
WP:NCP gives out examples, but not one Hong Kong person's name is used. WP:NC-ZH encourages using common names but doesn't explain which method of disambiguation to use. Commonality may not apply to Chinese story "White Horse Neighs in the Western Wind", whose current title is not commonly used by reliable sources. Consensus agreed, nonetheless, to use it regardless of rules that prevented use from improving Wikipedia. --George Ho (talk) 21:29, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
George Ho After all this discussion I have failed to identify any problem or conflict here. This started with some names being used all correctly and ended with no change. So far as I can see, WP:COMMONNAME applied in all cases here and nothing changed. I am glad you consider this resolved. Blue Rasberry (talk) 19:25, 26 December 2014 (UTC)
Actually, some don't see "English SURNAME Chinese" as a good method. What can I do with these opinions? --George Ho (talk) 20:38, 26 December 2014 (UTC)
George Ho You can jump into any policy and just change it to the way you like. You mentioned WP:NCP not having an example about people in Hong Kong. Add one there if you wish. The same could go for any other policy. Blue Rasberry (talk) 01:30, 27 December 2014 (UTC)
I must wait for consensus first. Adding one example without consensus is counterproductive and may be reverted. --George Ho (talk) 02:26, 27 December 2014 (UTC)
Talk:Jasper Tsang Yok-sing and Talk:Wong Sing-chi are closed with different outcomes. --George Ho (talk) 07:02, 30 December 2014 (UTC)
George Ho In the case of Wong Sing-chi, there are no sources cited in the article except for two dead links. I am not ready to consider any Wikipedia article covering a topic with no media coverage cited. Most links are dead for Jasper Tsang Yok-sing, but one that I see calls him "Jasper Tsang Yok-sing", so per WP:COMMONNAME, that is the name to use. I still fail to see any case in which consensus has been for something other than COMMONNAME. Blue Rasberry (talk) 17:09, 30 December 2014 (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.

Provincial highway naming

Latest comment: 9 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Do provincial highways follow the naming rule for provincial expressways (S101 Changdong - Wannian Highway) or the rule for national highways (Jiangxi Provincial Highway 101)? Or something like Provincial Highway 101 (Jiangxi)? --Zhantongz (talk) 00:05, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

Districts of Taiwanese cities

Latest comment: 9 years ago2 comments1 person in discussion

Beitou is given as an example of a Taiwanese city district. However, I think it is pretty much a consensus by practice at this point that Taiwanese city districts are to be referred to as "Foo District" (in this case, Beitou District). Is there a consensus to edit the table to reflect this actual practice? (I am unable to find any other district titled the same way other than Beitou; every single other one that I've seen uses the "Foo District" formula.) --Nlu (talk) 18:38, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

I've also brought a move request at Talk:Beitou. Please chime in there as well. --Nlu (talk) 04:42, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

metro stations

Latest comment: 7 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

A lot of metro stations have its original English names, like the East Nanjing Road Station instead of Nanjing East Road Station,or East Xujing Station instead of Xujing East Station, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Xujing_Station#/media/File:East_Xujing_Station.jpg, as a result, i would like to say that the names of the metro stations in China should follow its own original names. Jiangyu911 (talk) 14:49, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

What about Yongping Road Station vs Yongping Lu Station? Should one of them be a redirect to another? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kakurady (talk • contribs)
This rule goes against the general spirit of the rest of the naming conventions, which is go with what is easier to understand for English readers, not what is the official spelling. (I've left the rule as-is for now.) --Kakurady (talk) 17:09, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Mountains

Latest comment: 7 years ago7 comments3 people in discussion

First off, just a thanks to everyone who has contribute to these useful naming conventions over the years.

I appreciate the clarity surrounding naming conventions for mountains and peaks. I have previously been confused about whether to refer to a mountain range (for example) as Daxue Shan or Daxue Mountains. These conventions make it clear to me that the name of the feature should be spelt out in pinyin, while the class of the feature should be translated to English (with exceptions where other English or Tibetan or other names are more common).

Where I am still confused, however, is for mountains and mountain ranges that have prefix before shan (山). For example, there are several mountain ranges called Name Dashan (Name Big Mountains, e.g. 云开大山) or Name Xueshan (Name Snow Mountains, e.g. 玉龙雪山).

I am comfortable translating Xueshan (雪山) as Snow Mountains or Snow Mountain where necessary, but nothing looks right about Big Mountains in English. Would Dashan (大山) be better left translated as Mountains or Mountain and leaving the Da (大) out in the English name? Any advice would be appreciated. --NoGhost (talk) 03:36, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

@NoGhost: Hello there. Without widely established English name used by reliable sources, best to use pinyin as "status quo" article title per WP:NC-ZH#Place names, like dandan youqing or fuzao. However, if one of English names for a topic is most commonly used by reliable sources, like Jade Dragon Snow Mountain (to which you refer), you may use it. George Ho (talk) 11:02, 8 March 2017 (UTC)
@George Ho: Thanks for commenting. Just to be clear, are you suggesting than a mountain range such as 云开大山 would be best translated as Yunkai Dashan? My interpretation of WP:NC-ZH#Place names was slightly different, but perhaps I am mistaken. I will quote the relevant paragraph below:

The default naming pattern is "X Class", e.g. Taihang Mountains, Hai River, Fei County. Articles for provinces and cities can leave out the class name, e.g. Liaobei, Beijing. Naming "X Mountain", "Mount X", "X Shan" depends on English usage, e.g. Mount Everest, Tian Shan. Avoid tautologies; e.g. use Mount Tai instead of "Mount Taishan", and Xi River instead of "Xijiang River".

As I read this, the first two sentences indicate to me that the class of a subject (e.g. mountain, lake, river, peak) should be translated to English except for administrative divisions such as cities and provinces. Therefore the standard translation of a geographic feature such as 岷山 would be Min Mountains. The third sentences clarifies that exceptions can be made when there is a standard English usage (e.g. Huangshan) but I haven't seen too many instances of this where the pinyin shan is kept for 山. The third sentence also seems to indicate that the ordering of 'Mount X' vs 'X Mountain' is dependent on English usage, but this may need some clarification when there is no common English usage (see Mount Jizu vs Daxue Mountain). The fourth sentence is self-explanatory and needs no clarification.
Back to my example above, "云开大山 (Yunkai Dashan)", it is not clear whether "Dashan" should be considered the class of the subject or part of the proper name of the subject. A strict interpretation of the relevant quoted policy could lead to either Yunkai Da Mountains or Yunkai Big/Great Mountains ("Yunkai Dashan" wouldn't be supported unless there is evidece of widespread English usage). Alternatively, you could get fancy with something like Great Yunkai Mountains but I am against allowing this much freedom of translation. My proposal is to ignore "Da (大)" and translate the subject to Yunkai Mountains, but I'm hoping to hear from others. --NoGhost (talk) 23:09, 8 March 2017 (UTC)
@NoGhost: Oh... I didn't see The default naming pattern is "X Class", e.g. Taihang Mountains, Hai River, Fei County.. I must have interpreted it somewhat poorly. I'll correct my opinion: I don't mind "Yunkai Mountains" if you want to. However, I recommend alternatively using "Yunkai Dashan" if you are very uncertain about translating it. Of course, someone else may disagree. George Ho (talk) 23:24, 8 March 2017 (UTC)
@George Ho: Ah, okay, thanks for the feedback! I'll wait and see if there are comments from others too. --NoGhost (talk) 23:40, 8 March 2017 (UTC)
@NoGhost:I note that in this specific case the Library of Congress prefers translating the term as Yunkai Mountains. Cobblet (talk) 14:01, 20 March 2017 (UTC)
Good catch! --NoGhost (talk) 20:20, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

RfC for creating Wikipedia:Naming conventions (China and Taiwan)

Latest comment: 7 years ago31 comments8 people in discussion

I propose that there be a Wikipedia:Naming conventions (China and Taiwan) that, similar to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Macedonia), deals with the naming of various geographical and political entities relating to "China", "Mainland China", "People's Republic of China", "Taiwan", "Taiwan Island" and "Republic of China". Hopefully it can be thoroughly discussed such that the endless disputes and move proposals, particularly on Taiwan, can be reduced, and that there can be an easy reference. Szqecs (talk) 10:12, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

There are history of Taiwan and history of the Republic of China, which are not treated the same. --George Ho (talk) 12:41, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
That's because they are not the same. The RoC did not govern Taiwan at its start, of course, and only came to do so after the Second World War. Despite that, Taiwan was still part of China whilst it was under Japanese rule, because China is not a state or a government, but a historical-cultural entity. This is not a comparable situation. "China and Taiwan" implies "Taiwan" is not a subcategory of "China", as it properly is. Would one title an article "Canton and China"? That'd be absurd, and I'm sure you can recognise that. This proposed convention is about the "Taiwan dispute", so perhaps one might title the convention "Taiwan dispute" or "Political status of Taiwan". RGloucester — ☎ 15:13, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
@RGloucester: There could be a Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Britain and the UK) because it's about terminology, not what is a part of what. Szqecs (talk) 12:45, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
Just a suggestion to avoid an edit war over the name of the naming conventions guideline: maybe we could call it Wikipedia:Naming conventions (East Asia) or something like that? With that title, we could merge in content related to naming disputes involving the Koreas and Japan as well, such as the Sea of Japan naming dispute. –Grondemar 13:35, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
Umm... naming disputes involving the Koreas and Japan in Eng. Wikipedia hasn't gotten out of control, has it? I think "China and Taiwan" would suffice, wouldn't it? George Ho (talk) 13:38, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
The comparison is not apt. Japan no longer maintains a claim on the Koreas as both the PRC and RoC do on Taiwan. A better comparison would be to Japan and Russia and the Kuril Islands dispute. Beyond My Ken (talk) 14:40, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

I'm happy with calling it whatever as long as editors can reference it when needed. Also, it can be changed later, so we can always have a lengthy discussion on that. Szqecs (talk) 13:48, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

I agree. Let's first decide "if", then decide on its name. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 15:02, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
This is not possible, because a guideline with an incorrect, misleading, and non-neutral name will by definition itself be misleading, incorrect, and non-neutral. A rotten framework cannot support a sturdy house. RGloucester — ☎ 15:15, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
@RGloucester: So what do you propose then? Szqecs (talk) 15:37, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
Can Wikipedia:Naming conventions (People's Republic of China) and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Republic of China) work separately? Alternatively, what about Wikipedia:Naming conventions (China)? George Ho (talk) 16:38, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
Oh... I didn't realize that "Wikipedia:Naming conventions (China)" is a redirect to this guideline. George Ho (talk) 16:39, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
I said above that something like "Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Taiwan dispute)" would be appropriate. It is quite clear that what is being proposed is a guideline related to the Taiwan dispute specifically, not "China", the "RoC", or the "PRC", in general. RGloucester — ☎ 18:59, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
Szqecs, what do you think about "(Taiwan dispute)"? If you agree, may you withdraw the RfC tag and start another RfC at here, Wikipedia talk:Article titles, or where else? George Ho (talk) 19:17, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

Never mind. RGloucester's and Kaldari's opinions may differ. Guess I'll wait for other opinions then. --George Ho (talk) 21:01, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

The title of the guidelines seems to fine to me. I don't really see what all the fuss is about. The words "China and Taiwan" do not imply anything about the relationship between those two entities. It does, however, make clear that the scope of the guidelines is articles about China and Taiwan, which seems to be accurate. Kaldari (talk) 20:55, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
Yes, 'China and Taiwan' does imply something about the relationship between the two entities. That's what the word 'and' does. One might remember the case of the infamous Jews and Communism article, which was deleted largely because of the problematic nature of the relationship posited by the use of the word 'and'. In any case, the scope of the guidelines is not about 'Taiwan and China' generally. As proposed, the guideline would be specifically about the dispute over the political status of Taiwan, not some kind of general causal relationship between Taiwan and China. RGloucester — ☎ 21:24, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
Is it? I thought this was going to be a guide about how to handle naming articles related to China and Taiwan (generally)? Am I misunderstanding it? I feel like we read two completely different proposals. If this guideline only deals with the political status of Taiwan, it should probably be called Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Taiwan), but that wasn't the impression I got from the proposal. Kaldari (talk) 01:11, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

@RGloucester: Actually no I was hoping it also covers stuff like when to use Mainland China instead of China. So not specifically to the dispute. If "and" must mean what you say, what about Wikipedia:Naming conventions (China, Taiwan)? Szqecs (talk) 02:14, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

If it isn't about the Taiwan dispute, but about China in general, it should just be (China), should it not? Why are you separating Taiwan from China, but not Hong Kong, Canton, Dalian, or whatever? RGloucester — ☎ 20:08, 6 April 2017 (UTC)
Because Taiwan is often used to refer to the ROC, and its a different word. I don't put Hong Kong because "Hong Kong" is not used to refer to the PRC or whatever. Szqecs (talk) 02:13, 7 April 2017 (UTC)
That doesn't make any sense. If what you say is true, the guideline should be titled "(China)". RGloucester — ☎ 12:32, 7 April 2017 (UTC)
Personally, I would not expect a guideline called Wikipedia:Naming conventions (China) to deal with Taiwan. In common English usage "China" refers to the PRC. Obviously, the most correct title would be Wikipedia:Naming conventions (People's Republic of China and Republic of China), but that's way too long. Shortening it to just "China and Taiwan" makes sense to me. This is just in Wikipedia namespace after all. We don't have to worry about being exactly correct. We just need a name that people will understand. Kaldari (talk) 06:44, 18 April 2017 (UTC)
Your ignorance is not a reason to spread falsehoods. In common English usage, "China" refers to a historical-cultural entity including the PRC, the RoC, the Qing, the Ming, &c. Instead of promoting ignorance, perhaps you could study the subject a bit more closely before commenting on it? RGloucester — ☎ 17:54, 18 April 2017 (UTC)
Try typing "China" in the search box up there and let me know where it takes you. Next try typing "China" into Google search and let me know what the top 10 results refer to. I'm not promoting ignorance, I'm just describing reality. At this point, though, I think it's clear I'm not welcome in this discussion, so I'll leave it to you. Cheers! Kaldari (talk) 03:48, 19 April 2017 (UTC)
The "historical-cultural entity" is currently incarnated as the PRC ("China"), the ROC ("Taiwan") hasn't been part of that "historical-cultural entity" for almost 70 years (regardless of how silly that makes their official name). THAT is the reality, THAT is what English usage reflects. --Khajidha (talk) 17:40, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

Dear all. I have created a centralized discussion for this. @George Ho: This repeats the current one, so maybe you could remove the one you listed? Szqecs (talk) 04:29, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

I removed the RfC tag and subheaders. Is this fine? If not, feel free to revert. --George Ho (talk) 04:37, 6 April 2017 (UTC)
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