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Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(use_English)#Specific_proposals_to_change_the_wording_of_the_policy

I believe this page could attract the attention to the discussion about a proposed change in an important Misplaced Pages guideline. Thanks for any suggestions. --Vejvančický (talk | contribs) 14:46, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

I am very strongly opposed to this, as it is a move in the wrong direction. We should be strongly moving away from using excessive diacritics, as they are unhelpful and confusing for English readers. I see people saying "that the public doesn't understand them doesn't matter" - that's 100% wrong. We are here to write for the public, in English. Article titles should be in English and while some deviation from that can be a good thing, it should always be undertaken with caution.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:56, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your opinion. What about the proper names of people who are not English? --Vejvančický (talk | contribs) 15:06, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Jimbo has answered your query with a clear and concise response. Asking the same question in a different way will not change his initial answer. The policy as spelled out at Misplaced Pages:Article titles requires that the article title is to use the name that is most frequently used to refer to the subject in English-language reliable sources. This applies to the title of the article – but within the text of the article, pursuant to WP:MOSBIO, the person's legal name should usually appear first in the article. I trust that explains the current Misplaced Pages policy as it relates to this issue. Dolovis (talk) 15:32, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

You know copying and pasting the exact same statement over and over isn't useful either. His question was a valid question to ask as a follow up. He is asking about people where there aren't English sources, which happens a lot. -DJSasso (talk) 15:39, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Um, have you looked into Britannica or Encarta recently, with this question in mind? The current debate is about proposed page moves such as Julia Görges -> Julia Goerges. There is a wide range of practices concerning diacritics, ranging from the tabloid press and sites that publish sports tables (no diacritics at all), via the quality press (typically diacritics for a small, explicitly listed number of European languages) to academic publishing (all diacritics). Should we really move Gerhard Schröder to Gerhard Schroeder (Britannica), Selma Lagerlöf to Selma Lagerlof (Britannica) and Søren Kierkegaard to Soren Kierkegaard (Britannica)? (Note how ö, ö, ø becomes oe, o, o.) Do we really want to move François Mitterrand to Francois Mitterrand even though façade is the most common spelling of a normal English word of French origin?

So far we have had a de facto consensus that among the many alternative English spellings for foreign names (in Latin-based alphabets) we almost always use the original one, as it is the most 'correct' one and the one with the most prestige. Recently a small number of people have started to fight vehemently against this based on the theory that one can translate names into English simply by dropping diacritics. These disputes are often about the kind of names (French, Spanish, German) which newpapers such as the New York Times or the Guardian routinely spell with diacritics, even if they get their news via newswires that drop or transcribe them as a matter of policy.

When you read English newspaper manuals of style you generally find the following four concerns:

• Names should be spelled as 'correctly' as possible, and that includes diacritics.
• Can we get the name right? (It's easier in French or Spanish than in Vietnamese.)
• Are there technical problems? (More likely with Đặng Hữu Phúc than with Gérard Depardieu)
• Consistency. (For the same language, either drop all diacritics always, or never drop any diacritics.)

Basically the only points where they differ is in the lists of English words that are spelled with or without diacritics (some spell façade but nee, others facade but née, reflecting similar variations in which spelling comes first in the various dictionaries) and in the lists of languages for which they preserve diacritics. We have the time and qualifications to get all diacritics right, and technically we are limited only by Windows Glyph List 4 as the greatest common denominator of reasonable modern computer environments. Hans Adler 16:12, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

(response to Jimmy Wales). Bless you Jimbo, bless you. I too agree, the pro-diacritics side has hijacked English Misplaced Pages (via their numbers) & are hell bend on not loosening their control. GoodDay (talk) 18:46, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

To answer a bunch of specific questions above in one go: yes, all of those renamings to use English rather than foreign languages should happen immediately. I don't care what Britannica and Encarta do; they are resources for the 20th century, which is behind us now. I think moderation is in order, but I think we are very far from moderation. Đặng Hữu Phúc is a brilliant example: this is an absolutely ridiculous thing to have in an English encyclopedia as a title. What appalls me about this most is the weirdness of assuming that if something sort of looks like an English letter, we should have it, while if it doesn't sort of look like an English letter, we shouldn't. Shall we move Japan to 日本? Of course not, no one disagrees. But we have somehow, wrongly in my view, gotten to the point that Đặng Hữu Phúc is remotely plausible, since it sort of kind of in some weird way looks a little bit like English.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:11, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

What makes matters worst is a majority of editors want the diacritics in the article titles. Some of the pro-dios crowd accuse myself & others of being basically simple minded & sorta xenopohobic 'cuz of our opposition. Of course, I see many of them as pushing dios, due to 'old country' pride. GoodDay (talk) 19:17, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Agree. Which part of en.wikipedia.org is so complex? There is nothing racist or xenophobic about the practice of anglicising terms - if maintained consistently it's a methodology that alows people to easily search and navigate the enyclopedia - thus finding out information... which I assume is the point of the work after all. Pedro :  Chat  19:36, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Yup, include me in the 'anti-diacritics' crowd too. I think the 'pro' crowd are forgetting that Misplaced Pages is supposed to assist its readers, not cater to the predilections of editors. AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:47, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

(ec) There are actually two important differences between 日本 and Đặng Hữu Phúc:

• 日本 is a Japanese name for a country that has an English name. Đặng Hữu Phúc is a Vietnamese name for a Vietnamese pianist and composer who has no English name and apparently no direct connection to an English-speaking country.
• 日本 is written in Chinese script. If we wanted to use the name here in its original form, we would transcribe or transliterate it. Until recently, Vietnamese was written in a variant of Chinese script, but nowadays they only use a Latin orthography that was first introduced by Catholic missionaries in the 17th century. Đặng Hữu Phúc is already the transcription/transliteration.

I have given you this name as an example of where we may be overdoing it. We seem to be handling Vietnamese names inconsistently, and I can see why. On the other hand, given that English dictionaries contain several words with French accents (often as an alternative spelling, but in some cases such as exposé, resumé and façade usually as the preferred spelling), it would be absurd to drop accents from French names – and then in the (rare) worst case use them in English words in the same text!

Also, in many fields it's just standard for high-quality typesetting to use diacritics as appropriate. As a mathematical logician I am used to reading English texts that mention Gödel's incompleteness theorems and Łoś's theorem. While Łoś looks a bit unusual, most people who are exposed to the theorem know that the name is pronounced wash, and to these Los's theorem would look very jarring. I really cannot agree with the notion that English is so xenophobic that the use of diacritics is automatically un-English. This is a misconception that I have found debunked in various style manuals and in the Oxford Companion to the English language. Hans Adler 19:53, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages is not a specialist encyclopedia. Do you know how "Ł" is pronounced? It sort of looks like an "L" in English, but it isn't. Addendum: Jerzy Łoś is a perfect example of how we are not appropriately serving our readers on this issue. Nowhere in the article do I learn how to pronounce the man's name. Yes, we do have the (incomprehensible to 99.99% of all readers) IPA pronounciation guide. What we should do is have an appropriate and user-friendly explanation of his name *in Polish* (as we would for a Chinese name, for example) with an explanation of how it is Anglicized and how to pronounce it. Instead, we have a pseudo-intellectual snobbishness that we refuse (at least implicitly, I am not accusing the authors of this article of anything, just pointing out the consequences of weak policy o this point) to explain the main thing that a math student might need to know for class, i.e. how to say the man's name to talk to friends about his ideas.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:01, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

You're aware that "Los" is pronounced nothing like "Łoś" right? This'd be a bit like having an article on a Iimbo Valęz on Polish Misplaced Pages (pronounced as you think it'd be pronounced), whoever that may be. Or maybe Dzimbuś Waleski or something (ok that one is made up). You would have people under names which are nothing like their actual names, which have only a superficial relationship to English and which would probably end up confusing a lot of people. It's really omitting relevant diacritics that does a disservice to the reader, not vice versa. Same goes for place names of course too.Volunteer Marek (talk)

• For the record, I used to be opposed to the use of diacritics. I now believe that 26 letters are simply not enough.

  I'm sure it's not out of "pseudo-intellectual snobbery" that a pronunciation of 'Łoś' isn't offered in the article, but more likely oversight because it's something the assembled authors may have taken for granted. As Misplaced Pages is a work in progress, that is surely an issue that can and will be addressed by the authors, now that this has been pointed out. --Ohconfucius 07:11, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Did you know that Misplaced Pages is an online encyclopedia, and the answer is just a Ł away? Thanks to hyperlinks, Misplaced Pages needs less dumbing down than other encyclopedias. For those who need it dumbed down, there is the simple English Misplaced Pages. —Kusma (t·c) 20:06, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Except, see above, we don't do that, we don't explain at all, and frankly, you are simply wrong about something important: using English in an English encyclopedia is not "dumbing down" - that's an anti-reader attitude that we should kick to the curb as quickly and strongly as possible. Our job is to educate the reader, not to be snobby pseudo-intellectual obscurantists.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:13, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Precisely: we educate the reader by giving Polish names in their correct spelling, and then teach them how to pronounce that correctly using IPA plus ideally a sound file. And the entire text can be in English even if foreign words are not horribly misspelled. —Kusma (t·c) 20:27, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Currently in Misplaced Pages, many foreign words are horribly misspelled - in English - by including things that aren't even remotely close to English letters, but which happen to be shaped similar to English letters. There is no problem with "giving Polish names in their correct (Polish) spelling" as long as we also give the correct English spelling - particularly in the title. What we do today is the worst possible choice: we spell things wrongly in English, misleading and confusing the reader, with no explanation other than the indecipherable IPA. That's just not helpful. I advocate that we use English primarily in titles, making exceptions in a handful of cases when there are good reasons, and that we give the local representation (whether it is Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Polish, etc.) and explain it to the reader. Giving people something completely wrong and misleading because Unicode allows us to be snobbish is just wrong.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:33, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Most high-quality modern English-language scholarly sources about foreign people and affairs use diacritics. That you suggest to deviate from good scholarly practice is quite disturbing to me, but fortunately you don't make the rules around here. —Kusma (t·c) 20:49, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

For the vast majority of Polish names the most correct English spelling is the correct Polish spelling, because no English version of the name exists. Other than the stupid method of just dropping them, there is no systematic procedure for getting rid of diacritics. Because none is needed, since everyone who cares about spelling foreign names correctly simply uses the diacritics. Hans Adler 19:49, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

But you are right that Misplaced Pages is not a specialist encyclopedia. It is many specialist encyclopedias all in one, combined with a general purpose encyclopedia. —Kusma (t·c) 20:11, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

No, you are mistaken. Misplaced Pages is not at all any specialist encyclopedia, at all. It is an encyclopedia for everyone.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:13, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Did Jimbo really mean move them all to"English"? Quite frankly, François Mitterrand is more familiar than Francois Mitterrand, the latter really would confuse because you just don't see it anywhere. Surely, WP:COMMONNAME has got to apply. DeCausa (talk) 19:57, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I think all should be moved to English. I disagree with you completely with respect to Francois Mitterand, it's an empirical question though, and I'm willing to be proven wrong. An important point here is that I don't know how to type "ç" and I bet 99.99% of English speakers don't either. That's relevant. Why? Because "ç" is not a letter in English. And this is the English Misplaced Pages.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:59, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

That's not true. As you can easily verify by taking any English dictionary and looking up the words façade and soupçon, ç is a letter that does occur in English words. They are loanwords that come from French, but now they are English. Hans Adler 23:34, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Well, that's what I mean by WP:COMMONNAME. It is an empirical question, and if it's provably more common to see diacritics in French names used in English (and some other languages eg Spanish), which I suspect it is, then there shouldn't be a diktat saying they can't be used. DeCausa (talk) 20:07, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

This is very similar to style and language registers. Some practices are OK and in fact perfectly standard when you are writing emails or technical documents at work, but are not OK for prestigious, professionally typeset publications. Concerning practicalities: About 3 years ago I got rid of all my German keyboards. Since then I am using British and US keyboards exclusively because I can type German umlauts and ß with them almost as easily, and it's much easier to type the diacritics in the most important other languages. I just have to switch my keyboard layout from US to US-International. I have never had a problem with that on any operating system, or any language version. Hans Adler 20:14, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

(ec) I think it's also worth noting that for Vietnamese names our usage is so far divided, while for names in (non-Cyrilic, non-Greek) European languages we almost universally use the diacritics. I am pretty sure that if we were going to change this we would have to rename hundreds of thousands of articles, and we would sometimes have to take non-obvious decisions such as whether to transcribe a Swedish person with the German last name Müller as Mueller (German style transcription) or as Muller (Swedish style transcription). We would also get thousands of new name clashes that would require the rethinking of many disambiguation pages. I just clicked Special:Random 20 times and got 2 articles with diacritics. If we are really talking about 10% of our articles, then this should certainly not be decided on a whim.

Oh, and as just one example of the problems we would face: Do you want to rename Fianna Fáil to Fianna Fail? Hans Adler 20:07, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

I think there can be a case to be made in some cases for including diacritics. My point is that this case does need to be made, and we've gone completely off the rails in terms of making the case. We have proposals that are absolutely wrong, to default to including diacritics in all cases: that's just wrong, a serious disservice to readers. I do agree that for a handful of English words, and a handful of names in a handful of languages, including some diacritics is the right thing to do. But we should always subject this to very strict scrutiny, particularly considering how badly wrong we have it today in so many areas.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:16, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

But those accent marks don't help me in anyways & they're just annoying. GoodDay (talk) 20:11, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Jimbo, I agree with that. You seemed to be going further with the "move them all to English". Just to be annoyingly repetitive, if we stick with WP:COMMONNAME on this it should deliver a reasonable solution on a case-by-case basis. DeCausa (talk) 20:19, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes, to be clear, I meant the examples that I had seen up above. I do think in some (relatively rare) cases, WP:COMMONNAME and common sense will drive us to accept the diacritic. However, I think that even in cases where WP:COMMONNAME via some simple metrics (google news searches, etc.) sends us in one direction, clarity and our sincere desire to connect with an educate our readers (rather than look down on them) may suggest a different course. Thoughtfulness is always required. My primary concern tonight is to strongly object to the suggestion, which I regard as disastrous, that we should have a default starting point of using non-English letters. That's a really bad idea.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:24, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

I fear that English-language Misplaced Pages will be pushed to morph into Multiple-language Misplaced Pages. GoodDay (talk) 20:30, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Well Jimbo isn't going to rule by decree on this, so those "pro-dios" who have "hijacked" Misplaced Pages can sleep easy. GoodDay, your fears are unfounded and are a hysterical flying leap from the use of diacritics. Jimbo, we do make mountains out of molehills and this debate is no exception - is the use of diacritics in article titles really "disastrous"? That's hard to believe, it's easy to get entrenched in minutiae. I fear that we are deciding the colour of the bike sheds here. Can anyone point to a discussion outside Misplaced Pages of the use of diacritics on Misplaced Pages? (other than our Metal umlaut article). We offer redirects for people searching with unadorned lettering and any English speaker can readily read Latin letters even if they've got funny twiddly bits on them. And if we do go down the path of not including twiddly bits in titles we can still include the foreign spelling in brackets as is common practice for non-English alphabets so all is not lost if the heathens win :)

If you think we need to do better in explaining pronunciation than the frankly impenetrable IPA then what should we use? Spelling out phonetically is clumsy and misses varying pronunciation across English dialects. Fences&Windows 20:56, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

If feasible, it would be nice to have a MediaWiki extension that automatically turns IPA into audio files. Hans Adler 21:01, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Apparently the Google Translate text-to-speech uses eSpeak, which is open source. Could use that? Fences&Windows 23:39, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

I think I can sum up my frustration as follows. When I see this name: Đặng Hữu Phúc I have no idea how to pronounce it. Up above, it was argued that I can just look up these symbols. Well, they aren't linked, but let's imagine that I am energetic enough to do so. My favorite unpronounceable symbol that I have never seen before in this name is ữ. What is that? It looks like a 'u' but it has a tilde on top and a bit of last nights dinner stuck to the side of his face. Fine. Let's look him up. ữ. Neat, it turns out that: "It is pronounced .". Wow, one unpronounceable character that I have never seen turns out to be pronounced as another unpronounceable character that I have never seen. What's worse is that now my confidence is even more shattered. It looks sort of like a 'u' with some stuff stuck on it, but it turns out to be pronounced like an 'i' with some slash through it. Great. So, being more diligent than anyone could be reasonably expected, I click on that... and I get this article: Close central unrounded vowel. This tells me some stuff about how my tongue should be positioned... "the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel."

Suffice to say, this is an insult to the reader, incredibly pretentious and of zero value. What I really need is a straightforward anglicization of the name according to some standard and comprehensible rules, preferably ones used by media that I know about and understand.

Anyone who says that Misplaced Pages should look down on me for not really wanting to spend a few hours studying linguistics to get a basic idea of how to say this name in English is mistaken.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:52, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

I have the same problem with this name. But I guess anyone who looks up a Vietnamese pianist and composer who is mostly unknown outside Vietnam is much more likely to have a rough idea what to do with these diacritics than you and me. Hans Adler 20:57, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

"Straightforward anglicizations" won't tell you how to pronounce it either, so your preferred option is not a solution to your problem. Fences&Windows 20:58, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Precisely. Let's compare Łoś and Los. For most people both spellings carry more or less the same amount of information, except the first also tells them it's from some Eastern European language while the second leaves that open. But those who have once seen the correct spelling will recognise it, may even know it's pronounced wash, and will be glad that they don't have to guess whether we are talking about the Polish guy they have heard of or a German whose name really happens to be Los. (3 hits in the phone book of Berlin, all with German first names.) Hans Adler 21:11, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

I appreciate the marks here, because without them I might pronounce it like the first word in "Los Angeles" and sound like an idiot. At least with the marks I have a clue that I need to figure out how it is pronounced. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 17:51, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Why do you want to say this name in English? It isn't English, and saying it "in English" will mean pronouncing it wrong. Many of the sounds used in the name do not exist in English, so no "straightforward" system can give you the answer. As Vietnamese is tonal, it is probably impossible to convey the sound of the name without really listening to it (or really studying about the linguistics). That does not mean Misplaced Pages looks down on you: it just means that the world is complicated. Misplaced Pages isn't looking down on you when you don't understand intersection homology either. —Kusma (t·c) 21:04, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Why do I want to say this name in English? Because I speak English. The point is, I want to say the name out loud, and Misplaced Pages not only gives me no guidance on it, it insults me by writing the name in a character set that is not English. You might just as well tell me that the capital of 日本 is 東京. Why might a person want to say a word from another language? There are dozens of reasons. Possibly I have seen the film A Far Time Past and I really enjoyed the score. I want to ask my friend who knows a lot about music about this composer, but I feel a little shy. He's sooooo knowledgeable, and I want to not embarrass myself by butchering the name. I'm a worldly guy, I travel the world, I'm comfortable with appoximations. The point is: Misplaced Pages doesn't even give me anything close to a usable approximation. I can't even type the name, I have to cut and paste it.

In reality what I'm likely to do is to go to the only source in the article, IMDB, and find the name there, and conclude that Misplaced Pages is written by wonky jackasses rather than people who care about the reader.

We could do better. Intersection homology is an entirely different kind of case. Even in this case, I argue that we do our readers a disservice when we don't include a basic explanation that more people could understand. But that's not why I say it is an entirely different kind of case.

Our composer friend here, however his name is spelled or pronounced, writes music for movies. One need not be an expert in linguistics (or the complex IPA system) to hear some music and like it and want to learn more. Arguably, one simply cannot grasp intersection homology without a lot of background. But I totally understand what this guy does: he writes music for movies. Asking me to learn Vietnamese, or IPA, just to be able to casually say to my friend, oh, hey, I heard this music in a movie the other day and I really liked it, I remember you know a lot about Asian music, do you know about <>?

The argument here is that we could give better explanations of how to say things. I say we should make that mandatory by insisting that outside of some clearly defined and highly limited exceptions, we absolutely ought not to be using characters that English readers will not understand.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:50, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

OK, we call him (or her?) Đặng Hữu Phúc, and IMDB calls him Huu Phuc Dang. We are putting the family name first as seems to be the custom in Vietnam, and the given name last. Which makes sense because where we would just say the family name, they just say the given name. IMDB puts the family name last. Both schemes make sense. As far as orthography is concerned, they have merely stripped off the diacritics. The result may look a bit more familiar, but surely you can do that in your mind as well? Of course when you are doing it yourself you are aware that you are doing something dubious. But it's not really better if someone else does it for you. It's the difference between a sausage whose composition and production process you know, and one where you are just trusting the butcher.

As far as I'm concerned, I have no idea how Vietnamese phonetics works, but I just read it's tonal like Chinese, I see tone marks that look like those in Pinyin, and that allows me to at least make an educated guess at the tones of the syllables. (Which consists in making the pitch follow the curves of the diacritics on the letters.) Therefore even if I get the vowels and consonants mostly wrong otherwise, I would have a better chance of being unterstood by a Vietnamese speaker.

And that's with Vietnamese. I am not even sure that we want the diacritics for Vietnamese, necessarily. But dropping them in French names and writing "Francois Mitterrand" in a relatively formal context such as an encyclopedia would be a sign of relatively extreme anti-intellectualism – at least on this side of the pond, where English speakers are used to having neighbours who speak different languages. Hans Adler 23:43, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

...pronounced "Dang Who Fuck"...no problem. We have neighbors who speak different languages, too. Mexico, Quebec, New Jersey...
⋙–Berean–Hunter—► ((⊕)) 03:16, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

:Đặng Hữu Phúc is an article originally written in Vietnamese, including the name of the article. When the article was translated (and greatly shortened), the English-form name was in the lede, followed by the Vietnamese name in parentheses. Then the English-form name was dropped, and the Vietnamese name moved out of the parentheses. The IMDb template has a 'name' field, to be used when the IMDb name is different from the Misplaced Pages articles name. Well, that field was filled with the article's name, NOT the IMDb name (I've now changed it). So, no English-form name is available anywhere in the article - in the (purportedly) English language Misplaced Pages. iow, the writers do NOT want "ordinary readers" to read these articles, just the "enlightened ones". Except anyone vaguely "enlightened" would click on the Vietnamese language version, use Google Translate, and see a much more extensive article. So what exactly was achieved here? If we were discussing where the English-form name should be in the article, vs. where the original language form should be, that would make sense. Instead, the goal seems to be to 'cleanse' all articles of all English-format names, even though those are in common use elsewhere. Sounds like a STATUSRULES or IMBETTERTHANYOU argument. We're supposed to be the accessible and welcoming encyclopedia, so imo this makes no sense. Wild guess: the composer is more interested in people listening to his music than trying to say or spell his name. So let's make it easy for them. I've noticed the lists of alternate-language articles for various people, and those articles are 'translated' into each language, as one would expect. See Bashar al-Assad and Barack Obama. So, this discussion isn't really limited to the English language Misplaced Pages. Flatterworld (talk) 00:52, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

• Đặng Hữu Phúc as an example (above) seems to me to be used in 'tabloid' or 'scare' fashion. Let's not concern ourselves with diacritics use in scripts that use diacritics for intonation. As I pointed out at the centralised discussion, the über-colonial English language is, in this day and age of globalisation, showing its limitations. Despite its widespread use, English is highly idiosyncratic, pronunciation is irregular; there are numerous variants in use around the world – most notably the two versions on either side of 'the pond'. The 26 letters of our alphabet are woefully inadequate when trying to capture pronunciations of even many other languages with Romanised characters and standardised pronunciations, such as French and Czech, both of which I speak. English officially recognises hundreds if not thousands of new loan words each year, and it is time to welcome loan letters too. At least three have already made it into daily English usage – the e-acute, the u-umlaut and the c-cedilla – and are in widespread use. These, and other letters with diacritics have no substitute in English. Pity poor Jiří Novák, English people seeing the bare 'Jiri Novak' would undoubtedly call him "Jerry Novak" instead of pronouncing his name as it should be – "Yirzhi Novaak". I won't burden your talk page any more. You know where the centralised discussion is. --Ohconfucius 06:51, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

**Own goal. That's why "Yirzhi Novaak" would be his English-form name. As I said before, look at what the Wikipedias in other languages do. If other sources have decided to use Jiri Novak, that's not Misplaced Pages's problem. otoh, many Misplaced Pages articles include both the pronunciation AND an audio recording of it. Example: (/bəˈrɑːk huːˈseɪn oʊˈbɑːmə/ Use those. As for Đặng Hữu Phúc, the problem is clearly that the article was purposely cleansed of all instances of the English-format name, including the External link. That's true of other articles as well, he was simply an example already used. Flatterworld (talk) 15:49, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

• Interestingly, I have my own to cent to offer here, completely 180° from Jimmy's: My given name is Marc-André. It's not "Marc-Andre", nor is it "Marc" and if I magically became notable, an article titled "Marc-Andre Pelletier" would be, simply, erroneous. I do not have a name in English, though I conventionally accept being called Marc for simplicity's sake, and I would be very much insulted at the suggestion that I should pretend that some random sequence of letters that resemble my name are my name to assuage some naming convention. "Marc-Andre" is no closer to my name than "Xarc-André" would be, and just as incorrect: in both cases you'd be randomly substituting some incorrect letter. — Coren  14:44, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Why do you think your position differs from mine? I think that "André" is a perfectly good example where the diacritic should be used.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 05:40, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
    • Perhaps this a diplomatic way out of an ideological position? or perhaps your opposition is to the intimidating rending of Vietnamese script, compared to the "more familiar" Latin-based scripts from European countries? --Ohconfucius 06:55, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
    • Then I don't understand your position right, because I can't see what the distinction is. Why would "é" be okay in my name, but "ł" iffy in another? Like Piotrus's name below, it could be approximately transliterated "Broniswav", but using a "l" instead of a "ł" would be just wrong.

      I can see why you'd feel it confusing about how to pronounce a word if you're not familiar with the letters, but substituting some visual approximation for the right letter doesn't actually help with that. Part of the problem is perception: "é" isn't just an "e" with a funny squiggle on top of it, it's a different vowel altogether. — Coren  15:54, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

      • My basic answer is tied to the core ideas behind WP:COMMONNAME. Basically, André is completely familiar to English speakers, one of a handful of words like it (others have given good examples in this discussion). Right now, the de facto rule in Misplaced Pages, the rule which best explains the empirical results we see in Misplaced Pages, is this: "If a letter sort of looks like an English letter, but with some funny bits added on, then use it. Whether readers understand it or not is irrelevant. Whether other sources do it or not is irrelevant. It's the RIGHT THING TO DO. However, if the letter doesn't sort of look like an English letter, then don't use it." That's not a very sensible rule, but it is in fact what we do.
        • So yes, we can say that 'é' is a different vowel from 'e'. But it's also one that English speaking people know well enough in many contexts.
        • What I advocate is to look at whether or not the usage is so common that people will expect it. Interesting debates can be had, for example, as to how to write Francois Mitterand's name, and although I would say type it without the squiggle, I could be persuaded if the preponderance of sources do it. Where I think there is no legitimate argument, outside of sheer snobbery or the pseudo-rule that I outlined above ("It sort of looks like English!"), is for letters that we know full well most English speakers won't get it at all.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 16:29, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
          • Jimbo, I definitely agree with you that we need to deliver answers to our readers, and that current practice with diacritics often fails to do so. In the case of Đặng Hữu Phúc and other articles, I'd like to throw out another way to look at it: Yes, your average English speaker will have no clue where to begin pronouncing Đặng Hữu Phúc. However, that's an important fact and a truism: Even if we provide a transliteration, the reader will still have no clue how to pronounce the name properly. That's not so bad with the Romance languages; you may mangle someone's name, but it will usually be understandable. With highly tonal languages like Vietnamese, said reader is likely to pronounce some other thing entirely, and could wind up causing offense or great confusion. So, I wonder if it would be a bad thing for the formal title of such an article to be Đặng Hữu Phúc, and the first use to be Đặng Hữu Phúc, with the romanization Dang Huu Phuc used throughout the article thereafter for readability. For languages where normal English phonetic pronunciation suggestions won't sufficiently disambiguate one word from another, the diacritical marks serve as an intuitive warning sign: "If you don't understand the language, or at least these marks, you are going to seriously mispronounce this, because it isn't really 'Dang Huu Phuc'." It might actually be doing a service to our readers. (And it beats adding a "don't embarrass yourself" template...) // ⌘macwhiz (talk) 17:03, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
          • See, that's where we differ. Changing the "ç" to a "c" in "François" is doing exactly the same thing (in spirit) that you object to: you're using some letter because it sort of looks like the right one.

            In the end, you're giving dominion to a technological artifact (that incomplete keyboards/fonts used to force substitutions) and extending it to a principle when it never was. It's sort of like how in the early days of printing presses instances of "þ" were substituted by "y" when typesetting English because it sorta looked like it and the fonts imported from Germany didn't have any þ in them. It's a technological accident, not a statement of principle that using y was better English than using thorns. — Coren  20:17, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

  • Indeed. For the same reason I am Piotr, not Peter, even through I tell my American friends to call me Peter. We don't translate names in English, and my second name is Bronisław, not Bronislaw, just like Coren is Marc-André. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 18:52, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

**If you don't or won't exist in English, even with your 'own' name in the lede, then your article would remain in the French Misplaced Pages and readers could use Google Translate. Flatterworld (talk) 15:49, 21 June 2011 (UTC) ***None of these are 'wrong', imo, even though they don't match the native-language article. I wouldn't expect them to:

Actually, almost all of those are wrong. Maybe there is a person named "Барак Ҳусейн Обама", but it's not the president of the United States. — Coren  16:19, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

(To be clear, I'm certain that all of those are reasonable transliterations of Obama's name in the respective languages, and it would make a very great deal of sense to have redirects from all of those to the president's article — but none of those are the president's name, and the articles should not be titled thus). — Coren  16:24, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

:::::So what? The native language name is included in parentheses, as it should be, and I expect there's also a redirect - something for everyone (aka 'inclusive'), but the article name is as close to the local language as possible:

But this is a most inappropriate place to discuss what the policy and the style guide should say about diacritics in names. Tony (talk) 16:26, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Jimmy, during the British Library Editathon on January 15, Wikipedians were privileged to be given a guided tour of the the Evolving English: One language, Many voices exhibition. The curator explained that the English language had evolved though absorbing thousands of loanwords. Sometimes these words retained their original diacritics in common usage, e.g. née, fiancée, façade, déjà vu. This practice goes back to Anglo Saxon times, so Modern English does indeed contain diacritics through these loanwords.

I personally believe that a great deal of useful information will be lost, or not be as accurate as it should, if we exclude diacritics from Misplaced Pages. -- Marek.69 18:27, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

exceptions include: diacritics, accents and any other unidentified squiggles

- Marek.69

An excellent point. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 18:58, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Jimbo, if "diacritics, as they are unhelpful and confusing for English readers", could you explain to me then why are they used in Britannica () or Columbia ( - scroll down)? Are you saying that one of the "improvements" that Misplaced Pages is supposed to bring over them is to remove the diacritics? I am afraid this does not sound like helpful improvement to me, this smacks of dumbing down, or at the very list, of transforming English Misplaced Pages into the Simple English Misplaced Pages. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 18:58, 21 June 2011 (UTC) :Are you assuming Britannica is consistent? ;-) (I didn't check Columbia.) Flatterworld (talk) 19:29, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

I am not sure what the above link is trying to prove, other than the fact that you don't know how to spell the name of the Polish president (which you could check in our article...). If you look for correct spelling (without diacritics, you added two extra "c"'s...), you end up , where you can see the diacritic in the title. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 20:04, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

:::The point was to show that Britannica uses two different spellings about the same person: 1 and 2. One article uses diatrics, one does not. Therefore, Britannica is not consistent. The point of the misspelling was to ensure only one example of each spelling was displayed, to make it easier for you to follow. Anything else you're confused about? Flatterworld (talk) 20:53, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

This is easily explained by the fact that the Lech Kaczyński article is part of the encyclopedia proper, and the "Jaroslaw Kaczynski and Lech Kaczynski" article, an essay starting with the unencyclopedic words "It was not exactly a surprise when" and ending with "Lech was the more outspoken, polarizing figure, capable of riling people with his blunt pronouncements, while Jaroslaw was considered more the calculating diplomat." is signed by "primary contributor" Robert Rauch. This explains what is going on. Reading between the lines: They are learning from us and let their readers contribute! Hans Adler 22:20, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

:::::Congratulations on your own goal. Flatterworld (talk) 22:27, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

I fail to see how having shown the difference between professional and amateur contribution, and which one prefers diacritics and which does not, supports your argument rather than ours. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 01:05, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Indeed. The more reliable, traditional expert-authored article, uses diacritics. The new wiki-britannica article doesn't. I hope we want to resemble the proper encyclopedia more than the amateurish essay-collection site. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 22:24, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

::Comment This discussion is not about excluding diacritics from articles in total, but their use in article names. Per the example of Barack Obama above (chosen because that article has been translated into just about every language Misplaced Pages offers), we respect both local and native languages. Flatterworld (talk) 19:38, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

To be fair, Simple English Misplaced Pages does not dumb down spellings in this way. On Simple English Misplaced Pages, as on Afrikaans, Asturian, Bosnian, Breton, Catalan, Czech, Welsh, Danish, Estonian, Spanish, Esperanto, French, Irish Gaelic, Galician, Croatian, Ido, Indonesian, Icelandic, Italian, Kiswahili, Kurdish, Luxembourgish, Lithuanian, Limburgish, Hungarian, Malay, Dutch, Norwegian (both varieties), Occitan, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Albanian, Sicilian, Slovak, Slovenian, Finnish, Swedish, Tagalog, Turkish, Vietnamese, Navajo, Waray-Waray and Yoruba Misplaced Pages, Gerhard Schröder is "Gerhard Schröder". Apart from Wikipedias in non-Latin scripts, I only found the following conversions of his name: "Gerhard Şröder" (phonetic spelling on Azerbaijani Misplaced Pages), "Gerhard Schroder" (Basque), "Gerardus Schröder" (funny Latinisation with diacritic), "Gerhards Šrēders" (Latvian; I guess this is phonetic spelling plus Latvian inflections -s), "Schröderi Gerhard" (Võro language). The picture is very similar for other names such as simple:Halldór Ásgrímsson, simple:Raúl Castro and simple:Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. Hans Adler 19:43, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Jimbo here. This is the English Misplaced Pages. English uses an alphabet with 26 letters, and none of them are Ł or ß or any of those other characters. The "local" spelling can be used in the article, but it should not be in the title. I also think it is reasonable to consider "accents" in certain cases, possibly including the title. But dots and circles over letters and various curleycues have no meaning in English, and should not be used in article titles. Neutron (talk) 20:03, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

"Dots and circles over letters have no meaning in English, and should not be used in article titles": so no more Motörhead, Eärendil, ... I'm glad you would at least accept Beyoncé Knowles, but what with Æthelred the Unready? It's too bad if even English kings can't stick your 26 letters of course... Fram (talk) 20:59, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

I have no problem with the Æthelred bit, but I wish I were able to do something about the Unready - it should more properly be "the ill readed" - understanding that "read" was a Saxon/Early English word meaning "advised" (and it probably had some squiggles around it, so it sounds neither like a symomym for red nor the riverside plant...) Somehow, though, I don't suppose there will ever be a redirect even for "Æthelred the Poorly Advised". LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:19, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Personally I would be fine with Ethelred, as it is in many sources. Or Aethelred. Those letters are all included in "my" 26, as Fram would have it. "My"? So I invented the modern English alphabet? I may be old, but I'm not that old. As for Beyonce, I don't care whether she gets an accent or not. I'm more interested in possibly allowing words like exposé and resumé, though I don't know whether they are really an issue when it comes to article names. However, if I had to choose between no diacritical marks at all, and the "open season" we seem to have now, I would choose none at all. I do not think it is necessary to make that either-or choice, but if that's how people want it, that's my opinion. Neutron (talk) 21:32, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

So why, exactly, is an é worth keeping, while an ö is not? That seems rather random to me. --Conti|✉ 22:44, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

• I see a lot of discussion about loanwords retaining accents and diacritics here, but that's a demonstrably deceptive debate point. I've used "resume" and "facade", for example, and I have several dictionaries that include them as I use them, without the accents and diacritics. Are you folks saying that I'm intellectually handicapped or something? This is ridiculous. As others have pointed out, the English alphabet includes 26 characters. That there are problems in translating non-English characters to an English equivalent is evident, but Misplaced Pages shouldn't be the battleground for this sort of fight on the preferred way to translate them (or whether to translate them at all).
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 04:26, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
• At risk of inviting even more Turkish butt stabbings borne out of wikidrama gone bad, I completely agree with User:V=IR. The Macintosh keyboard since 1984 has allowed me to directly type “naïve” and “señor” and “résumé” and a few other things. But some accent-advocates here are proposing we expand the gamut of accents to stratospheric levels unfamiliar to a general-interest readership. Let all wikipedians here remove our powdered wigs and have a moment of silence for our general-interest readership. Remember them? “English” (as if that matters any more) doesn’t generally use the vast majority of the diacriticals some proponents are advocating here. It is verboten in all good technical writing to write in a manner that unduly calls attention to itself. So, just pardon me all over the place for stating precisely what is on my mind, but it appears that we have once again descended into where some wikipedians are trying to Lead By Example To A New And Brighter Future That Is All-Inclusive And We Hold Hands And Sing About Coca-Cola And Will Change The World.©™® Yes, well… Plain English please. Greg L (talk) 02:52, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

  The current conflict started with people who insist on stripping the accents and dots off in the very common 'harmless' cases such as ö and é. It was me who brought Vietnamese in above as an example where it's actually not general practice in English to use the diacritics when available. (Consequently usage in Misplaced Pages is divided for Vietnamese, while for French and German we use the diacritics practically always.) While I personally have nothing against the Vietnamese diacritics, Britannica also strips them off, and so I can't really oppose doing that. Nobody has argued for these 'extreme' diacritics recently. But if we start systematically removing acutes and cedillas and transcribing umlauts, so that you can no longer tell from an article's title that Goethe and Goebbels are spelled that way even where umlauts are available and normally used, then we become the laughing stock among reference sources. We have acquired a reputation as a somewhat serious reference source, and removing accents that are so common in high-quality English sources that they can be considered part of the language itself would be a bizarre and eccentric decision that would risk this reputation. It would also require renaming almost 10% of our articles. Serious style guides distinguish between languages for deciding when to use diacritics. Serious reference works use diacritics in titles for the most familiar languages. We should do the same. Hans Adler 10:19, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

• Thanks for the summary, Hans. That all makes sense as to how things started out and how we got to where we are. I 100% agree, in principle, with you; especially this part: We have acquired a reputation as a somewhat serious reference source, and removing accents that are so common in high-quality English sources that they can be considered part of the language itself would be a bizarre and eccentric decision that would risk this reputation. It would also require renaming almost 10% of our articles. Serious style guides distinguish between languages for deciding when to use diacritics. Serious reference works use diacritics in titles for the most familiar languages. We should do the same.

  It is double-tough to get sensible MOS guidelines on Misplaced Pages and that underlies why so many of our guidelines are compromise solutions that amount to “Do whatever you like ta’.” The proper use of diacriticals for en.Misplaced Pages will require a nuanced and thoughtful guideline. Invariably, someone will be disappointed that a diacritical used by upper Mongolian yak herders that looks like a stomped on beetle is excluded. Well, most of the diacriticals known to mankind aren’t generally used in English that is directed to a general-interest readership; only some. As you say, serious style guides distinguish between languages for deciding when to use diacritics; that’s the way it must work here to best serve the interests of our readership.

  Things are getting busy for me in real life. I hope that you, Hans, stay firmly in your saddle on this one and help out, as I wholeheartedly agree with your basic approach to the problem. Greg L (talk) 14:59, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

I think that the diacritics per se are a distraction. We should view them as part of a spelling of a word. We should use whichever spelling is widely used when the person is discussed in English; if the person appears only in foreign-language sources, we should use the foreign version because we shouldn't make up one on our own. If I look at a name like "Łoś", what do I transliterate that to? Los? Wash? I don't know - I'd have to look it up. Making the decision on my own would be a poor sort of "original research". So there should be no talk of "stripping diacritics". Either you go out and find a diacritic-free version of the name to use, or you use the name with diacritics, but under no circumstance should you have to get out your scalpel and do the surgery yourself. Wnt (talk) 17:01, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Chicago Manual of Style

De facto we use diacritics more or less consistently, with some exceptions such as Vietnamese (usage divided), pinyin (mostly without the tone marks) or Hawaiian (without diacritics per the special guideline for Hawaiian). The main argument for renaming almost 10% of our articles to get rid of them is therefore that it is somehow wrong or not English. I am not sure why simply pointing to the fact that other English-language encyclopedias which actually do use diacritics isn't enough to immediately convince everybody that this is false. There is also Merriam-Webster's Geographical Dictionary, which is full of names with diacritics as the preferred spellings. (It's on Credo, so a lot of editors can access it easily.)

And there is the Chicago Manual of Style, an immensely influential work that is often referred to when we discuss our own manual of style. I am not sure that it says explicitly, anywhere, that one should use diacritics or that it's OK to use them. But it is clear that it's written under the assumption that that's the case. Repeating myself from an earlier post :

• Some example sentences speak for themselves: "He is a member of the Société d'entraide des membres de l'ordre national de la Légion d'honneur."
• But it gets more explicit elsewhere: "Any foreign words, phrases or titles that occur in an English-language work should be checked for special characters -- that is, letters with accents , diphthongs, ligatures, and other alphabetical forms that do not normally occur in English. Most accented letters used in European languages can easily be reproduced in print from an author's software and need no coding. If type is to be set from an author's hard copy, marginal clarifications may be needed for handwritten accents or special characters (e.g., 'oh with grave accent' or 'Polish crossed el'). If a file is being prepared for an automated typesetting system or for presentation in electronic form (or both), special characters must exist or be 'enabled' in the typesetting and conversion programs, and output must be carefully checked to ensure that the characters appear correctly."
• The following on typesetting French is particularly interesting: "Although French publishers often omit accents on capital letters they should appear where needed in English works, especially in works whose readers may not be familiar with French typographic usage." (My italics.)
• And on romanization: "Nearly all systems of transliteration require diacritics . Except in linguistic studies or other highly specialized works, a system using as few diacritics as are needed to aid pronunciation is easier to readers, publisher, and author. Transliterated forms without diacritics that are listed in any of the Merriam-Webster dictionaries are acceptable in most contexts."

And that's from an American style guide. I believe Brits are actually more used to diacritics then Americans and use them more often. Hans Adler 06:31, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

...and then we get the semi-annual (sometimes more) discussions about moving Cote d'Ivoire to Ivory Coast. Isn't it nice that I can write Cote d'Ivoire without the requisite diacritical marks and it still goes through to the correct article :-) (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 13:27, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

• None of this matters, so long as Google finds Jiří Novák when I search for jiri novak, which it does, and something in the lead explains pronunciation, which it does (a sound clip). Using IPA here is useful to language students but for the vast majority of English speakers it is useless. The Australian Macquarie Dictionary includes IPA but also simple English phonetic spelling and a sound clip. I have seen editors here replacing simple English phonetic spelling with IPA, which I equate roughly with vandalism. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 10:46, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
  • English "phonetic" spelling is about twenty different ways of approximating pronunciation that can only represent phonemes already present in English, and which is understandable only by fluent English speakers who will end up with a "pronunciation guide" that is entirely dependent on their regional dialect and completely independent of the word's. In other words, it's a completely worthless and uninformative piece of crap. — Coren  19:10, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
    • Yes, it's regionally dependent and so imperfect, but it is generally useful, as opposed to IPA which is generally useless. For example, the Macquarie's entry for 'encyclopedia' follows the IPA pronunciation with '(say en.suykluh'peedeeuh)'. That's useful. IPA is useful to a small few, so by all means include it, but not to the exclusion of simple phonetic spellings, which are useful to the majority of our users. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 19:55, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
      • I would expect everybody who has ever learned a foreign language with non-regular spelling (e.g. French, and for non-native speakers, English) to have learned the basics of IPA and to have been exposed to it every time they use a dictionary. That means most people in Europe. —Kusma (t·c) 20:33, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
        • • I think you are wrong. Do you have any evidence for this? I am with Anthonyhcole: I think almost no one understands or has been exposed to IPA, and that it is functionally useless for most people, in Europe and elsewhere. At the same time, I totally agree with Coren that phonetic spelling is problematic, although I disagree that it is useless. IPA is useless for most people for sure. Phonetic spelling is flawed.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:57, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
            • Even if it were "functionally useless" in isolation, if you click on the IPA representation, you get taken to an explanation. For words that use only normal English sounds (e.g. Arkansas), even the mouseover gives you a rough explanation for each sound. And I cannot believe that the vast majority of people reading Misplaced Pages have never used a dictionary that used IPA.--Boson (talk) 22:24, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
              • I think you are wrong, too, Kusma, at least as far as language schooling in North America is concerned. I have studied French, Russian and Latin, and have never been exposed to IPA except incidentally in a dictionary. This may be a deplorable state, but I suspect it is true for most of the populations here. I was trained as a teacher of English (both EFL and ESL), and never used IPA either. For the population at large, it is worse than useless, because it is another barrier to comprehension. Bielle (talk) 21:23, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
            • I have no hard evidence (and I'm German, not a native English speaker), but I did learn IPA in high school while learning English (when I was ten or eleven), as there is no way to do phonetic spelling of English in German (German lacks both the voiceless dental fricative and voiced dental fricative sounds you would need to pronounce the English th). Then I randomly checked an English/French dictionary, and of course it used IPA in both parts. Dictionaries for languages with regular spelling (like Spanish) or a well-established specialized phonetic alphabet (like Chinese) typically don't seem to include IPA in the main part. Anyway, the advantage of IPA is that with some work and using the sound samples at Misplaced Pages:IPA, everybody can figure out what sound is meant, even for those sounds that can't be pronounced by untrained native English speakers (the close front rounded vowel seems to be difficult to most Americans). I don't mind adding "phonetic" spelling where it gives the correct results, but it often fails. —Kusma (t·c) 21:40, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

My two cents (I came here following a notice on WT:MOS:

• WTH would be wrong with "do whatever reliable secondary sources written in English by English speakers usually do"? (If there are several names each used by a sizeable proportion of the sources, just pick one; in any event, the native name, if not identical to the article title, should be mentioned in the lead.)
• Saying that it is wrong for the Russian Misplaced Pages to use the title Обама, Барак makes as much sense as saying that it is wrong for the English Misplaced Pages to use the title Dmitry Medvedev.
• Of course the typical English speaker has no idea how to pronounce Đặng Hữu Phúc, but the same applies to Cruithne, and it has no diacritic. I've even heard the (obviously non-Irish) presenter of a documentary about the moons in the Solar System pronounce it in a way which would make any Gaeilgeoir LOL. (No diacritic in Gaeilgeoir, either...) :-) (Should we move it to Crinya, following the example of Enya?) :-) ― A. di M.​_plé​ 23:50, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

WP:BOMB

Further to the recent controversy around campaign for "santorum" neologism here on this page, here is a new essay:

• WP:BOMB / WP:Wikibombing.

Editors are invited to review or improve it, leave comments etc. Cheers, --JN466 15:23, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

I did, including a reference to the existing Misplaced Pages:Search engine optimization. You may want that article to include a reference to your essay at some point. Flatterworld (talk) 15:44, 21 June 2011 (UTC) I no longer have any interest in this or anything else at Misplaced Pages. Write whatever you like under whatever name you like. I've had it. Flatterworld (talk) 19:10, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Also see Misplaced Pages:Village_pump_(policy)#New_essay:_WP:BOMB; part of the ongoing discussion there focuses on the effect, if any, of navigation templates and other internal links on Google page rank. --JN466 00:52, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

I would like to point out I am the sixth long term, featured content writing editor to be retiring over this completely outrageous article. —Charles Edward  12:18, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm loathe to say I'm retiring too, because I've said it before then returned. But the way I feel at the moment, Misplaced Pages is not a good place to be. It's partly because of the article, mostly because of the ArbCom's failure to deal with the administrator who caused the whole mess. That failure has endorsed this as a legitimate way to use Misplaced Pages, and that shows contempt for the thousands of editors who try not to use it that way. It has not been a proud few weeks for the project. SlimVirgin 16:28, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

This is interesting evidence that POV-pushers are aware of the usefulness of internal navigation templates to push their points of view, a phenomenon I have seen before here on Misplaced Pages, and that right after an ArbCom case related to the issue. I'm surprised that it has taken the administrators so long to notice this simple trick. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 17:08, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

I suggested an impartial way to rein this in, by setting some limit to the size of navigation templates, above which people should use categories instead. The response was to say that templates like {{The Beatles}} are indispensable (note the special indulgence to use show/hide, so people don't see how much linkcruft this adds to an article!):

So I feel as if those opposed to Cirt are saying, it's right to promote the Beatles but it's wrong to promote Dan Savage. And I'm not willing to accept that.

True, Category:The Beatles looks crude and ugly compared to the fancy template, and I understand why people love it. But this is a reason to get the devs working on improving category displays so that they look more appealing, like the template, and are easier to navigate. Fix that and then maybe we could get agreement to limit the template sizes, which would limit SEO to reasonable levels. Wnt (talk) 17:49, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Excuse me if this is a stupid suggestion, or if it has been proposed and answered elsewhere, but perhaps there's a way to set all links in templates to nofollow to limit their effect on SEO ranking. —DoRD (talk) 19:04, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

IMO this raises a policy issue that the Foundation or management may want to take a look at. Does Misplaced Pages want to take steps (or can it) to modify how its articles appear in search engine results so that subjects of relatively lower importance don't get unduly elevated? That could be treated as a community content decision as well, but perhaps the way to fix it is a policy directive or behind the scenes change to the mediawiki setup. I'm also of the opinion that we can address this without singling out any particular editor or being concerned whether they've crossed the line (or even where the line is) between enthusiastically adding material about a subject they're interested in, versus doing so to promote an agenda. Most people's agenda here is to increase and improve Misplaced Pages's coverage of all subjects, but doing so in a disproportionate fashion on minor subjects gives us the Pokemon problem, and now Santorum. - Wikidemon (talk) 21:00, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

SEO at Santorum (neologism) would not have been a problem if the article hadn't been a disgrace. After a great deal of effort on that page, and thanks largely to SlimVirgin and JN466, it is no longer such an embarrassment to the project or so complicit in a political campaign, though it'll need watching. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 21:43, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, assumptions of bad faith and Chicken Little "Misplaced Pages is a travesty" alamers miss the issue. A lot of people are working hard to build this project. Sometimes the result isn't what everyone would wish, sometimes it is. This is a question of adjusting expectations. - Wikidemon (talk) 05:37, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

New Top Level Domains

Might be cool to have .wiki as a new domain considering ICANN is going to let people pay to have customized top level domains. Of course, .sex will be a hot seller I'm sure. -- Avanu (talk) 02:56, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Note: It's wrong to abbreviate Misplaced Pages as "wiki," in my opinion. But, yes, if the WMF takes control of that, then I really would like it. At least it'll prevent Encyclopedia Dramatica and Misplaced Pages Review from gaining significance relevant to us :) .Jasper Deng (talk) 03:00, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

I read they're charging $185,000 a pop for those names. Can an expense like that be justified? It always amazes me the way that people let the Million Dollar Homepage or Bitcoin make up money out of nothing, but ICANN is the worst of them. If we were to pay that much, why don't we just hire some programmers (and/or solicit volunteer help) to write up a free "name bar" plugin for all the main web browsers with our own list of names as we choose to allocate them (in text; get rid of the stupid 'dots' while we're at it) and then people just type "wikipedia" to go to Misplaced Pages or "google corp" to go to Google. Wnt (talk) 16:56, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately, DNS was not written that way. I personally think that the price may be well worth it. If only 1% of Misplaced Pages's editors donated an additional $3 or so, it's very affordable.Jasper Deng (talk) 17:00, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

I wasn't suggesting using the DNS model. There are only 4.2 billion possible IPv4 addresses; if we allow an average of 16 bytes of name data per address that's a maximum of 64 GB if the scheme became fully populated. By which point everyone would have many TB of storage handy. In the short term the "name bar" would probably only work for maybe 10,000 popular addresses and some of relevance to us, and would be a quick download. Wnt (talk) 17:04, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Wnt, ICANN says the charge is justified by several reasons: one, to prevent domain squatters from obtaining "iphone.apple" or something like that; two, to pay for the technical aspect of setting up this new system of gTLDs and processing the requests; three, to fund any legal expenses that might arise from a company that didn't get the domain it wanted or is disputing it with some other organization. The application process, I've read, is also especially rigorous to ensure that only parties with a legitimate interest in obtaining a custom domain would be able to get one. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 17:07, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm sure WMF is among them. Concerning ICANN, yes, the TLDs are expensive, also because they have to be entered into many different name servers (See Root name servers - many of these are mirrored many times throughout the worlds using anycast routing).Jasper Deng (talk) 17:12, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Keep in mind that the $185,000 is only a registration fee, and is non-refundable; it costs an estimated $25,000 each year to run that separate domain. I'm not sure what the benefit of a new domain would be. Also, neither ED nor WR have any bearing on the WMF's decisions. And neither one has nearly enough resources to buy their own gTLD. So although it might be cool to have custom domain, I doubt the WMF really considers it a priority at this point. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 17:17, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. Notice that they did not participate in World IPv6 Day.Jasper Deng (talk) 17:19, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

(ec)Please note I suggested a browser plug-in, not the clunky DNS system, which from its introduction I've always seen as unreliable, clunky, prone to spying and censorship. You would download the full list of all sites indexed from the same site where you downloaded the plug-in. (The torrent system would replace the hierarchical name servers) If the WMF would sponsor such a project, the names would not be assigned by "rigorous application processes", but by volunteer curation. When sites moved or there were disputes, you might have your own web page where people trying to reach the site of interest would vote by clicking which one they want. So for example if people thought "encyclopedia dramatica" was sending them the wrong place, they could request a poll; the project would set up a disambiguation page where you the reader click for ohinternet.com or encyclopediadramatica.ch. Now of course such directory work has long been excluded by Misplaced Pages criteria, and though it should be done I doubt the WMF would really go for sponsoring it; but the point is, if they did it would be a much better and cheaper and more productive use of donated dollars than paying this tribute to ICANN. Wnt (talk) 17:22, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

That's basically just automatic bookmarking.Jasper Deng (talk) 17:34, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

But it would deliver an IP address, bypassing any DNS lookup. So, for example, typing "pokerstars" would get you the company's website, regardless of any "seizure" of the domain name. Even if it were censored by legal force from the current downloaded list, people might still be able to look it up in previous versions they've downloaded. Wnt (talk) 18:29, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Done long ago.... http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/1998/06/13039 -- Avanu (talk) 18:39, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Wow. There really is no idea too obvious to patent. I'm surprised they didn't patent the idea of beginning a domain name with "W" while they were at it. Wnt (talk) 19:03, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

A system already exists for this, actually, WINS, mapping NETBIOS names to IPs; however, its names are limited to 15 characters in length and there can be no spaces.Jasper Deng (talk) 21:58, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Here's a reference. It doesn't sound that generalizable, but maybe someone can use it for a "prior art" argument. But we need to stamp out this software patent nonsense for good and all. Wnt (talk) 16:58, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately, Microsoft is the biggest opponent of open source you can find in the world, concerning technologies like WINS. Tinyurl and bit.ly have been trying to do something in the spirit of this.Jasper Deng (talk) 17:18, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Senate election in Florida

This edit kind of confused me. The last thing I want to do is hurt or offend anyone, so I've left it alone, but perhaps Jimbo or somebody else could clear it up? Thanks. – hysteria18 (talk) 22:34, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

I think adding Jimmy as a potential is a weak claim sourced to the fact that he didn't say he wouldn't run. The original story looks like a blog to me and is not a WP:RS http://www.redracinghorses.com/diary/224/jimmy-wales-undecided-on-run-for-us-senate - issue was already discussed three months ago - nothing seems to have changed, so at this time it seems Mr Wales is not a potential and unless he asserts he is then its not worthy of inclusion. Off2riorob (talk) 10:50, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't disagree. I was mostly just wondering about the reasoning given in the edit summary, which doesn't invoke WP:RS or seem to have much of a basis in policy at all. – hysteria18 (talk) 12:15, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

As it seems "by the bye" anyways I would just ignore it. Seems like a reverse case of Misplaced Pages:Deny recognition to me. Off2riorob (talk) 13:13, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Unrelated to Jimbo, is it common to include "potential" candidates in election articles? This seems to be nothing other than forecasting, even if we have reliable sources making the prediction. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 13:31, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

It does seem to be something users like to report prior to the actual nominations. I saw a similar kind of thing with potentials on the British labour leader election 2010 page. After they didn't run the section was turned into Noteworthy MPs who declined to stand. Off2riorob (talk) 13:47, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Oh. I guess I will work on List of elections in which Jimmy Wales was not a candidate later this afternoon then. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 14:30, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Regardless of the reason given, the removal was clearly the right thing to do, considering the source is based upon some website that in turn bases its speculations on a random tweet. --Conti|✉ 13:49, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

I've also reluctantly decided not to run for the Presidency of Peru.  :-) Yes, I would say the correct answer has been reached here. I wrote a political tweet that attracted some attention from a handful of blogs. Nothing to see, move on.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 07:56, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Imagine the jokes about a wiki-candidacy. Anyone could edit Jimbo's political brochures, etc. Consensus would decide what he stands for.--Wehwalt (talk) 08:11, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Per WP:NPOV and WP:Due weight, Jimbo could take contrasting stances on various issues (and lets not even mention WP:FRINGE)! LessHeard vanU (talk) 12:55, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

It's idle speculation either way, and I'm not averse to anyone removing it or whatev, especially given the comment above. However, the banned editor who made that particular comment doesn't get to make that call. Have at it ... - Alison 08:18, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

As Jimmy has commented he is not a "potential" I have removed him from the list, thanks to all here. Off2riorob (talk) 11:02, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Maybe we need an article on this?

There is surprisingly little on the internet about the infrared reflectivity of trousers. -- Avanu (talk) 15:18, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

? Could you give some indication of what this is referring to? Fram (talk) 15:23, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Tinfoil hat? (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 15:43, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

You're right that this important military technology is not well covered on or off Misplaced Pages. We mention it very briefly in reference to the official military version of CADPAT. I should also mention that a single molecular layer of graphite generally absorbs light, regardless of frequency, by a proportion equal to the fine structure constant, so I think it would darken your trousers as effectively in near infrared as in normal light, though brightening them via thermal imaging (as a blackbody). In a camouflage pattern it might have some use, and by great luck a dead campfire is one of the few things you might have access to in the swamp while surrounded by dogs and helicopters... But to see if I'm right, I would strongly encourage you to ask this question (with a bit more detail on what you're interested in) at WP:Reference desk/Science. Wnt (talk) 17:34, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Comment Critical of Misplaced Pages

My comment here is critical of the Misplaced Pages editing environment. GenKnowitall (talk) 22:19, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

A related discussion was held here. Johnuniq (talk) 23:32, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

There is a problem with the Arbitration Commitee

Jimbo, ArbCom, stalkers, random-passers by, whoever. I'm frustrated, but please don't dismiss me because I'm frustrated, please hear me out. My confidence in the Arbitration Committee has taken a few serious dents recently, and I have a feeling that others' confidence in that Committee might also have suffered in recent weeks and months. So, I've identified what I think are the problems and how I think they can be solved. I may be completely wrong, but it can't hurt to hear me out.

Over the last few months, I've noticed what, to me, seems to be a dangerous trend from the Arbitration Committee. I hold most of the 18 individuals who make up that Committee in the highest esteem, one or two of them, I have the honour of being able to call friends. But collectively, something seems to have gone wrong. The Committee has become very good at implementing and adjusting its procedures and policies to its liking and at passing motions on obscure details on the wording of pages that, while of course valuable, spend most of their time gathering dust. There is nothing deeply wrong with this, per se, but I would suggest to you, Jimmy, and to anyone who might be reading this (since this seems as good a place as any to say what I have to say), that this has become more important to the Committee than dispute resolution.

Dispute resolution is the defining purpose of that Committee, yet its noticeboard is full of relatively minor adjustments to its policies and procedures (like a slight update to the procedure on handling motions) and its members seem pre-occupied with issuing secret instructions to clerks. Almost all of its business is done on its private wiki or its mailing list (I assume) and all the "dirty work" is passed either to its clerks, who are charged with maintaining and supervising the case pages or to administrators in the form of discretionary sanctions. This all contributes to my impression that it is out of touch with the community and has become too wrapped up in making sure people obey its rules (for arbitration pages) and rulings (for the result of a case or motion).

The specific events that prompted me to post this are this notice, which I'm certain was ordered by an arbitrator, but I have no idea which one or where, since the Committee leaves no on-wiki paper trail, and the broader MickMacNee case, but I've felt there's a problem for a while. A week into the case and four arbitrators have made any sort of comment at all, out of the 10 who voted to accept the case and the 16 who are active and not recused. As each day passes, my confidence that arbitration will solve the problems, or at least not make them worse, decreases. This is an important case. There are things that need to be dealt with and issues that need to be resolved where RfCs and and other dispute resolution fora have been tried and failed, but arbitrators don't seem interested. In fact, my prediction is that it will turn out to be very much like the Arbitration Enforcement sanction handling case, where nothing new or useful arises and the disputes only get worse and the damage to various people's reputations ranges from shrapnel wounds to the irreparable.

There are, however, other examples. One from the top of my head that illustrates my point perfectly is this motion. The dispute was not resolved, questions about administrator misconduct (which the Arbitration Committee is the only body with the power to deal with) and the Committee hugely exceeded its powers by effectively re-writing part of the protection policy and lumbering admins with more unneeded red tape.

I apologise for the length of my post, and for putting it here, because I know you're a busy man, Jimmy, but where else can I take a dispute with the highest dispute-resolution body? What I would like to see is:

• The Committee conducting its business and, where practical, its discussions on the wiki, except where privacy is concerned.
• An increased focus towards dispute resolution, giving it the highest priority behind whatever urgent privacy concerns etc it has to deal with; that also means attempting to find the root cause of a dispute and dealing with it (even if that means attracting controversy) rather than passing the buck through discretionary sanctions
• All active, non-recused arbitrators actively partaking in cases. Not just voting, but actually making an effort to comment in discussions about proposals and evidence and being seen to work suggestions from parties and passers-by into the final decision.
• Raising issues with parties, such as evidence length, on their talk page in person, instead of secretly ordering a clerk to do it. And, more importantly, being more concerned about getting the best, yet most concise, evidence instead of forcing evidence into an arbitrary word limit.
• Monthly (or at least quarterly) reports to the community on what the Committee has done in that time and a collegial discussion between community members and arbitrators on how anything could have been handled better.
• Clearly defined scope to cases, to be determined before the evidence phase opens, and the removal of any evidence outside the scope of the case.
• It would also be nice to see one arb a fortnight spend that fortnight on the "front line" as an admin (since all are currently admins) dealing with vandals, closing AfDs, answering RfPP requests and doing what admins do. I think, with one or two exceptions, those arbitrators who had significant experience of day-to-day admin work have forgotten their experiences there and some had very little before they were elected arbitrators (and I mean that not as a criticism; I understand being an arb is not easy and the job has a high burn-out rate).

I love Misplaced Pages, so I'm not posting this because I need to vent, though my experiences will inevitably be reflected in my opinions. I'd like to hear what you and others have to say, and if the consensus is that there is no issue and I'm just bitter about my recent experiences surrounding arbitration, then I'll shut up. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 03:12, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Personally, I feel arbcom is given too much power. Whoever came up with the idea that all members must have CU and Oversight access by default, and keep it indefinitely? Misplaced Pages shouldn't be, and isn't, a bureaucracy.Jasper Deng (talk) 03:25, 25 June 2011 (UTC

• When I saw this pop up on my watchlist, I assumed you were talking about this. Is there a Deep Throat on arbcom? Maybe we should find out and close the hole, as this should never be able to happen. --John (talk) 03:30, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
  • John/Jimbo: See WT:AC for what's going on with the hack/theft of mail.

• • HJ: I can say this. I was the one who requested a clerk remove the yelling at sandstein, and I'll stand behind that. However, as far as I can tell, no one requested AGK do what the rules tell him, arb, clerk or whatever. I do know that we had people getting frustrated that we weren't enforcing word/diff limits on other cases/requests (the latest one is still on WT:RfArb, so in general, they're being hard-line in enforcing the word/diff rules that have been in place.. I think everyone needs to abide by them. Also, as one of the drafting arbs on this, I can assure you I'm paying attention to this case, I do so on every case possible. A lot of my fellow arbs have other duties and can't monitor cases 24/7, for example, Roger Davies spent the last few months shepherding through the latest version of the ArbPolicy.. As for your request to more narrowly delineate scopes, I think that's counterproductive. The Committee needs to go where the evidence (and its own review of the situation takes it). Sometimes, this gathers in related events (for example, MMN is primarily focused on MickMacNee's editing actions, specifically how he interacts with others, however, as a related issue, Sandstein's lengthening of the block (and your undoing) becomes part of the case. SirFozzie (talk) 03:56, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

(OK, edit conflict with above) There's a lot to digest here, HJ Mitchell, but you kind of lost me at "The specific events that prompted me to post this are this notice, which I'm certain was ordered by an arbitrator, but I have no idea which one or where, since the Committee leaves no on-wiki paper trail...". There's a rule requiring a 500-word limit on submissions, and you made a 2000-word submission, is this correct? Well, what did you expect would happen, and what difference does it make if you were upbraided by an arbitrator, a clerk acting on her own, a clerk acting at the direction of an unnamed arbitrator, or the Swiss Minister of Tourism? If your submission had been 503 words you could claim pettifoggery, but 2000? It's a perfectly reasonable rule -- people are busy -- and I'm still wondering what your problem is with that particular diff. Herostratus (talk) 04:00, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

This decline show the importance of dispute resolution over conduct review (WRT roles the committee has), well that was my interpretation of it was, and this as well. So I think we are doing both. Casliber (talk · contribs) 05:20, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

I agree with most of HJ Mitchell's systemic criticism and strongly support his suggestions. Seen from the outside, the Committee as a body seems to spend too much time administering itself and trying to run a government of sorts, rather than actively resolving arbitration cases, which is its job description. Even simple cases last for months with ill-defined scopes and little arbitrator activity (on the WP:AESH case, several active members did not even vote!), while arbitrators are busy micro-managing and dabbling in the community's feuds and soap operas via e-mail (at least that's the superficial impression one gets from the e-mails being leaked on external websites). Arbitrators should focus on their main job (resolving the cases before them), do their work onwiki and refrain from accepting or sending e-mail unless really necessary for privacy reasons, come up with a sensible division of labor (an 18-strong committee can't do much as a body), and stop wasting time on complex "rehabilitation" projects of disruptive editors instead of just banning them and letting the rest of us get on with their work. Of course, there's little that Jimbo can do about that.  Sandstein  06:18, 25 June 2011 (UTC)