Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2007 August 8
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Contents |
[edit] August 8
[edit] Template:Indigenous Australians/deceased
[edit] Template:Mapquest
[edit] Template:MapQuest
[edit] Template:Map link
[edit] Template:Infobox Mighty Max episode
[edit] Template:JAPru7
[edit] Template:Foreignchar
- The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the template below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the template's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
The result of the debate was keep. IronGargoyle 02:13, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
Unencyclopaedic because an encyclopaedia should promote knowledge, not ignorance. Now that computers can handle practically any "extended" Roman letter, there's really no excuse for not getting these spellings right, and even less for purposely garbling them. Kelisi 17:56, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
- Speedy keep Mentioning the fact that Voßstraße contains ß and if that character is not available or not desired then the name is sometimes represented as Vossstrasse does not promote ignorance. It does promote knowledge since if anybody came to the article without knowing the character ß they can click on the link and learn about it. Stefán 18:30, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
- Delete - if there is an alternative spelling, mention it in the lead, after the main spelling. People (presumably) come to an encyclopedia article looking for information on a subject, not about which weird letters appear in the name of the subject. Wikipedia's hypertext is one of its greatest idiosyncrasies, but this is a tad too much, imho. GracenotesT § 19:30, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
- Consider the TfD template my vote - Actually, the ß isn't used in Switzerland; so replacing it with ss is always possible. Bad example, I'm afraid. Anyway, what is so hard about writing "Voßstraße (or Vossstrasse)"? Kelisi 19:46, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
-
- To answer the question, your suggested wording appears to give a legitimacy to the -ss- spelling which many people deny. It is still a matter of debate whether the street name you mention can be considered an English word, but if it isn't, then it would make sense to spell it by the German rules, which explicitly require ß in particular circumstances. The wording included in {{foreignchar}} is the best compromise that could be found after lengthy discussion which gives a degree of detail about what circumstances require the transcription of characters, and why the alternative spelling might be used, whilst remaining relatively brief. These nuances are lost if the text is reduced to a brief "or". I fear the proponent has misunderstood the purpose of the template, and has certainly underestimated the animosity among many editors to non-standard characters. Swiss variations in spelling rules apply to Swiss words, and so are not especially relevant here. The basic concept remains that Längenbühl should be circumscribed as "Laengenbuehl" only when necessary, and when it is necessary, it should only be transcribed as "Laengenbuehl" (and not, for instance, as "Langenbuhl"). Thus, the template also informs people without access to accented characters on their keyboards (I remember the ASCII codes, but it's a bit much to expect of everyone) what they need to type to get to the article in question again. The more I think about it, the more subtle and powerful the template seems to be. In contrast, the reasons for deleting it seem awfully weak. The last thing it does is "garbling" text; on the contrary, it gives the single most appropriate transliteration where it would not otherwise be obvious to a person who didn't speak the language from which the name derives. I think that probably counts as a keep vote. --Stemonitis 20:03, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
- I do get your point. The template seems a little "big" for this minor task; why not do something like "Voßstraße (common English transliteration: Vossstrasse)", then? After all, if the English transliteration is not common, including it would be original research. Original research, even for the sake of accessibility, is to certainly be avoided. GracenotesT § 16:49, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
- It's not really about how common the transliteration is. It's about the circumstances in which it is appropriate to do so (i.e. only when you cannot use the original spelling or if there is a good reason for deliberately avoiding it, whatever that might be). This is not the best place to discuss possible re-wordings of the template, and the current wording represents the result of a long period of work from several people striving to pack as much meaning as possible into a small space. Nor is this the place to discuss size; the template used to be displayed in smaller type because some people didn't like it being so big. Then it was made bigger because some people didn't like it so small. There is no obligation to use the template, so the question here is whether editors should be prohibited from explaining the orthographic issues in this way or not. Persistent efforts have failed to find any shorter text which adequately conveyed the relevant information. It's not as simple as "or". --Stemonitis 17:38, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
- Thanks for your explanation. Now there appears to be a bigger problem, in my opinion, with the wording—the fact that it mentions "undesirable". The template simply can't function as either explaining transliteration when foreign characters are unavailable or explaining transliteration when foreign characters are not desired. Some editors voting to keep this template seem to be under the impression that the former is the case, but you point out that one of the strengths of the template is the latter. This is no more useful than using "or", and may be less useful than "common English transliteration" when that really is the case. I realize that this only involves altering the template, but do you understand what I perceive as an issue? The template is far too vague, and in the case of "not desired" usages of foreign characters, merely explaining that it is "not desired" can confuse rather than help. In such cases, mentioning that unavailability of certain characters is also an issue can obscure rather than elucidate. GracenotesT § 01:38, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
- To answer the question, your suggested wording appears to give a legitimacy to the -ss- spelling which many people deny. It is still a matter of debate whether the street name you mention can be considered an English word, but if it isn't, then it would make sense to spell it by the German rules, which explicitly require ß in particular circumstances. The wording included in {{foreignchar}} is the best compromise that could be found after lengthy discussion which gives a degree of detail about what circumstances require the transcription of characters, and why the alternative spelling might be used, whilst remaining relatively brief. These nuances are lost if the text is reduced to a brief "or". I fear the proponent has misunderstood the purpose of the template, and has certainly underestimated the animosity among many editors to non-standard characters. Swiss variations in spelling rules apply to Swiss words, and so are not especially relevant here. The basic concept remains that Längenbühl should be circumscribed as "Laengenbuehl" only when necessary, and when it is necessary, it should only be transcribed as "Laengenbuehl" (and not, for instance, as "Langenbuhl"). Thus, the template also informs people without access to accented characters on their keyboards (I remember the ASCII codes, but it's a bit much to expect of everyone) what they need to type to get to the article in question again. The more I think about it, the more subtle and powerful the template seems to be. In contrast, the reasons for deleting it seem awfully weak. The last thing it does is "garbling" text; on the contrary, it gives the single most appropriate transliteration where it would not otherwise be obvious to a person who didn't speak the language from which the name derives. I think that probably counts as a keep vote. --Stemonitis 20:03, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
- Strong Delete - Those words, called “with foreign characters”, are not english words, they are words in other languages. Therefore, they should respect the orthography of the respective language and not follow the english spelling rules. Changing the characters leads to misinformation and wrong pronunciations. Besides, it’s insulting to the other languages, and an encyclopaedia should not only promote knowledge (as Kelisi said), but should promote reciprocal respect too. Ten Islands 07:01, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
-
- You miss the point that without the template, there is likely to be a greater insistence on the parts of certain editors to remove the accents from article titles. Thus, by insisting on deleting the template, there's a reasonable chance that you'll be shooting yourself in the foot. By making accented characters, ligatures and the like more palatable to those who would normally run screaming from them, we increase accuracy, increase the knowledge and increase the degree of respect. I find it odd that your stated intentions are so completely at odds with your voting. I also can't see any way in which the template could be seen as insulting — the alternative orthographies are taken from the languages' own methods for dealing with limiting situations (for use in URLs etc.). Indeed, in my experience, German accented letters are more likely to be avoided by German speakers in English than by native English speakers. They obviously do not find it insulting. --Stemonitis 10:25, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
- Keep I see no problem with listing an alternate spelling. Here is an answer I posted on Timwi's talk. Timwi, by your reasoning it is not allowed to write Tokyo, since this is not the correct way to write the word. Instead you must use the Kanji for East and Capital since this is the official way to write the name. I think this is an extreme position to take on the issue of transcription, especially in an English-based Wiki. In English it is common practice to transcribe symbols for which we have no standard equivalent. You see the same thing here: [2] Kalifornien is an acceptable transcription for the English California in German. And correctly, the article is listed under the heading California. Same thing here with Nußloch. The Gemeinde is listed under the main entry Nußloch with the English transcription under it.
- Nor do I see any problem with listing an alternative spelling, as I said above with "Voßstraße (or Vossstrasse)", but we're talking here about languages that use Roman script, and names for which there are otherwise no English equivalents. The Kalifornien/California example is not valid, as Kalifornien is a German name, not an English one. Likewise, Tokyo has become a naturalized English name, derived from the original Japanese pronunciation of the kanji "East, Capital" (which are pronounced "DōngJīng" in Chinese, whose speakers preserve the Japanese written form, although the first character is usually the simplified form nowadays). The name Cölbe has no English equivalent, for instance, and there is no native English way of rendering the vowel /œ/; so it seems to me that one can jolly well render it "Cölbe" since, as this text demonstrates, we are quite capable of doing so. For those who have no idea how to pronounce it, we can put IPA transcriptions (/'kœlbə/), and there's an article about those, or readers can look up German orthography or German phonology, or better yet, .ogg files could be used. Writing it "Coelbe" doesn't really clear anything up. It just creates a confusion of variant spellings. Kelisi 20:22, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
- Delete In my opinion the alternative spelling should be in the lead of ther article, we do not need to clutter the top of article with too many templates. Mads Angelbo Talk / Contribs 20:24, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
- Keep The article itself should always use the "correct" spelling, including special characters were applicable. Were alternative spellings exists, this template is quite useful to distinguish correct from incorrect alternative spellings. (Nürburgring -> Nuerburgring, but not Nurburgring) MikeZ 20:41, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
- Strong keep. The article should use the spelling customary and natural in English, noting (as one encyclopedic piece of information) what the "correct" local spelling or spellings are. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:16, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
- Keep - Although this template is used in hundreds of articles, one example will help to make to make the point. Note the case of footballer Dušan Đurić. This person is listed at IMDB and Amazon.com only as "Dusan Duric"; a search for "Dušan Đurić" on either of these major sites returns zero hits. Even his official biography on his team's website lists him as "Dusan Duric", but "Dušan Đurić" is unquestionably the more correct spelling. One problem is that the Đ character is not even included in ISO 8859-1, the encoding standard Windows uses natively for English users, making its display impossible in some settings. The information is obviously useful, and it concerns the name and location of the article, not just information about the person; this makes its use in a top template appropriate. – Quadell (talk) (random) 21:31, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
- Keep, one of the chief arguments some people use in favor of avoiding all letters other than the English 26 in article names is that English speakers won't know what these unfamiliar characters are. By supplying a link to the article about the letter in question, this template allows people to whom the letters are unfamiliar to learn about them. Thus this template helps promote knowledge, whereas avoiding diacritics and letters like ß, ð, þ, and ə promotes ignorance. Using the unfamiliar letters but without providing a way for the reader to learn more doesn't exactly promote ignorance, but it doesn't help combat it, either. —Angr 22:51, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
- It is not our business to campaign for any purpose, let alone for the eszett. We do not exist to ladle knowledge down our readers' throats. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:28, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
- Speedy keep Although computers are capable of displaying - they are not on every keybord. Agathoclea 07:24, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
- Keep. It is encyclopedically relevant knowledge to tell the reader what the preferred representation of the title is in media that can only handle the 26 unaccented English letters. Some of the alternatives mentioned above (such as "or") do not adequately express that one title is the correct one and the other merely a transliteration into a restricted alphabet. Using "or" would amount to promoting ignorance. –Henning Makholm 10:21, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
Keep as per Stemonitis and Henning Makholm — OwenBlacker 22:09, 12 August 2007 (UTC)- Keep per Stefán. — $PЯINGεrαgђ 22:33, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
- Keep as a useful template, though the Voss Strasse discussion seems to be what has sparked this debate, so I'll repeat my opinion on that here, as I've done at Talk:Voßstraße, and where anyone else with an opinion is welcome to participate. In a nutshell: Wikipedia follows the lead of outside sources, meaning that we should title articles by the most common name that is used in English-language sources. In my opinion, that article should be at Voss Strasse since that's how most English-language newspapers refer to the street. We're on the English Wikipedia, let's stick with English usage in the article titles here. We can include the foreign spelling in the lead paragraph, and we can of course link via interwiki to any other language articles about the subject. But for the title, Use English wherever possible. --Elonka 23:27, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
- Delete the "ß" is a good example: see the article on German spelling reform of 1996, where substitution of -ss- for ß is not uniform. Also in older texts such as those that demonstrate German exonyms of places now outside of German-speaking countries, it is ahistorical to use -ss- for ß, one should use -sz- if at all - Straßburg (Strasbourg), and hundreds of others. Carlossuarez46 01:21, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
- The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the template's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
