Here's my suggested solution.
current text
Convention: In general, use the most common form of the name used in English and
disambiguate the names of monarchs of modern countries in the format [[{Monarch's first name and ordinal} of {Country}]] (example:
Edward I of England).
addition
Reason: Creating a specified excluded list means people can't simple 'do their own thing' but can suggest that in 'x' case an exception could be made. If there is a consensus, then that state can be listed. In the event of a revertion war, you can say - look at rule 1.1 and that means you can kill of a time-wasting war without filling pages disputing it. The specific native form can then be explained in a paragraph, so later people adding a page who don't understand the format will understand how to do it.
(Most of the below suggestions would require creating a special talk name, maybe reference on the w-list, etc which to be honest is a pain in the backside for anyone trying it. It is better to include one of two self contained changes than trying to redo a whole passage! - written from experience! - STÓD/ÉÍRE 02:22 Mar 13, 2003 (UTC)
Also, if the general naming convention contradicts the naming convention for European kings, then something is also wrong.
What about the following standards:
1) A royal personage will be indexed a name based on the most common form used in English. Where there is no form that is most common in English, the most common form in the local language will be used.
Implications: This means that the names of East Asian emperors will be inconsistent. Under this rule, Hirohito will be referred to as Hirohito, his person name, but the Meiji emperor will be refered to by the era name.
2) When the most commonly used form is the personal name, it will be rendered using standard Wikipedia conventions for names.
Implications: The most common form of monarchical names for European monarchs is never the personal name and in the case of Europe the use of a personal name generally implies that the person is not a legitimate monarch. By contrast, East Asian monarchs are sometimes refered to by personal name.
The only place in Europe were this might be an issue is Napoleon and the kings of Poland.
Examples: Hirohito, Nordom Sihanouk, Cao Cao
3) Where a personal name and a royal name are equally commonly used among English speakers, the royal name is preferred.
Implications: This is the "Napoleon rule"
4) Where the most common English form is an era name. The title of the article should be "X emperor" with emperor in lower case.
Implications: This rule comes into play in Japanese emperors other than Hirohito and Akihito and for Ming and Qing Chinese emperors. The form "Emperor X" is incorrect in this case, and there is no chance for duplication.
I basically agree with this. We should come up with more examples. According to 1), I think most (except Hirohito and era name emperor such as Meiji emperor) of Japanese emperor becomes {name given after death) Emperor. No? -- Taku 04:24 Mar 13, 2003 (UTC)
Just to clarify a basic disagreement that I have with jtdrl. Why does "Henry II of England" have "of England"? I believe that his position is that "of England" is included in order to identify where Henry II is from. I would argue that this isn't why "of England" is there, and that the reason "of England" is there is because there are a lot of other people named "Henry II".
This matters with Japanese and Chinese imperial names using reign eras. Unlike European conventions, there simply is never going to be another emperor anywhere in the world with the reign name "Meiji". Because "Meiji emperor" is and will remain unambigous, I would argue that "of Japan" is redundant. My understanding is that jtdrl disagrees because he believes that the name should provide some information about the subject of the article, whereas I believe that it should not.
-- Roadrunner
The whole purpose of the monarch specific naming convention is to overcome the really bad ambiguity problems that exist with European monarchs. Therefore the "of country" is only for disambiguation purposes and not to provide the reader with descriptive information. The fact that is does provide some descriptive information is a secondary consequence of disambiguation and not a goal in and of itself (please read our disambiguation convention). So if there ain't any ambiguity with the names of Asian monarchs (I've always thought of them as despots so never connected them mentally with European monarchs) then there is no reason to use disambiguation - especially if that disambiguation is based on a European naming convention that was developed for European monarchs by European scholars. We don't pre-emptively and needlessly disambiguate unique movie titles by adding (movie) to each page title, so why in the world would we want to pre-emptively disambiguate unique Asian monarch page titles? Asian monarchs have different naming conventions and different needs. It is insane to try and impose a Euro-centric naming convention on Asian monarchs - this breaks the common name naming convention and nobody does it all. If we did this then anybody with any expertise in Asian history would not be able to take Wikipedia seriously. -- mav
So how are readers outside Japan to know which is a Japanese emperor and who is a Chinese emperor? Why is it wrong for wiki to refer to the Emperor of Japan but right for the Japanese emperor to call himself 'emperor of Japan', which he does in all english language statements? The same term is used by the Japanese government, the Japanese diplomatic service, the Japanese english language media, Japanese english language websites? If people don't know where someone is from, the information is worthless. I think this is patently absurd and nonsensical. No-one is talking about using english language nomenclature, merely clarifying that a very long list of emperors were based in Japan. Not to do so would make a joke of wiki and make its information worthless to everyone outside Japan, because they would not have a clue what the information is about. The articles themselves refer to the emperors as Emperor of Japan. They are put on lists as emperor of Japan. They call themselves Emperor of Japan. They are referred to in international sourcebooks as Emperor of Japan. BTW Taku has produced so many redirects to redirects to redirects that he has made an utter mess of many of the pages. I went into one, and was bounced between redirects, with no text. This is reducing wiki to a farce, as Zoe has said, as Deb has said. We now have a mess, littered with redirects, unrecognisable names, attached to lists that use the phrase 'Emperor of Japan' that can't be used in title of articles. The pages are now one blurred unworkable joke. (And that's not counting some of the rubbish Taku has placed in the article, which would be laughed at in any political science textbook. STÓD/ÉÍRE 21:14 Mar 13, 2003 (UTC)
PS: Roadrunner has just proved the point. If people can't find something, they have to go to the Emperor of Japan list. Great. Imagine if we said - if you can't find a british monarch, you must go to the list of British monarchs. If you want to find information on Germany, you have to go to a list on Germany. That would be absurd. The whole point of names is that you shouldn't have to do that. This is so absurd it like something from Monty Python.
Let us make a distinction between:
Now while as an American interested in Japan, I might want to look for an article called Emperor Hirohito, I would be pleased to learn that the man's name is actually Hirohito. I would also be gratified to know how Japanese people referred to him. Was it "the Emperor"? Was it "Hirohito-san" or "Hirohito-sama"? Or what?
Now the king of England long ago was named Henry and called perhaps "King Henry" during his reign and "Henry II" thereafter (especially by historians).
As a reader of this encyclopedia, however, I would really enjoy seeing an article called Henry II of England so I can find it easily. But the first thing I'd like to know is what the guy's name actually was. Surely the "of England" part isn't a piece of his name! So I would expect the article to begin like this:
-- Uncle Ed 21:43 Mar 13, 2003 (UTC)
Fine with Hirohito. Can you name 5 emperors? If you see their name, can you identify them without any contextual information? I can't. Zoe can't. Deb can't.
-- Roadrunner
And I doubt if 90%+ of potential users can. That is the whole problem. We cannot identify them. And neither will the vast majority of people using wiki. So what do you suggest? And what do suggest we do about chaotic links? And do you propose to put a note on the recent changes page 'Wiki pages can be found easily except in the case of Japanese emperors, who have been named in a way that no-non japanese person will understand. So for Japanese emperors, Wiki requires you to go through the ' Emperors of Japan' page.
BTW why do we have an 'Emperors of Japan' page? Surely it should just read 'emperors'. That is the logic of the situation, though logic is hardly the right word to use for the mess we know have. STÓD/ÉÍRE 21:47 Mar 13, 2003 (UTC)
Can you identify what bacteriocin is without looking it up? How about kinase, protium, proteomics, Holocene? Contextual information is in the articles on those subjects and will almost certainly be included in any sentence that links to these articles. The way to make sure links don't get too chaotic is to choose a name that is used by a majority of English speakers who are at all familiar with the subject (this is far from a "way that no-non Japanese person will understand" -- we are not talking about using native Japanese names here but the ones that are most often used in English). Usually this is clear-cut but sometimes we need redirects to catch forms that are not as widely used. BTW if you don't know the most common English-language form of the name of something, how does it make it easier to find it with the additional contextual elements? -- mav
Political science and history is fundamentally different to the sciences. Someone studying science will have elementary background information on technical matters. But political science knowledge is far more general and doesn't mean that people know details about political systems, titles, names, etc in South Africa, New Zealand, Portugal, Japan, Chile etc. When drafting nomenclature in these areas, encyclopædias invariably supply as much information as possible to contextualise people, titles, offices, identities, etc. They don't throw up the minimum degree of information and say 'now you guess from where this person is from.' If they did, no-one would use them. They would go to sourcebooks that do give that information. I had a Japanese student today burst out laughing when I mentioned this debate. All she could say was 'but he is Emperor of Japan'. I do not understand what is wrong with saying that.' Neither do I, especially when even the Emperor's office itself says that in all english language communication. I have not come across a single person off Wikipedia who understands the logic of this. The most widely used word was 'crazy' (used by 11 people, 3 of them Japanese). The second most common observation was the word 'joke'. Two used four-letter words to refer to it. The central point everyone made was simple. This is an english language version of wiki. The Japanese themselves in the english say 'emperor of Japan' (source: Visiting Professor of Japanese Studies.) So what is the problem? I do not see the slightest element of logic in refusing to use a term that even the Emperor uses. If this was Japanese wiki, it would be understandable. But it isn't. It is the english language version, aimed at english language users worldwide, most of which know very little about Japanese emperors and other than Akihito and Hirohito could not make anyone of them. And if all you give are uncontextualised names, they aren't likely to bother to try to find out more, at least not on wiki. STÓD/ÉÍRE 01:25 Mar 14, 2003 (UTC)
Is there yet a temporary concensus about Japanese Emperor article titles? I'm willing to clean up the endless bloody redirects if there's concensus about what I should do. Arthur 03:53 Mar 14, 2003 (UTC)
The issue is now being discussed on the w-list. And no, I don't think your 'unified theory' is workable. In any case, it would take weeks of work, of talk pages and wiki-listing, editing, resubmitting, etc before it would have the necessary consensus behind it to go on the page.
They would need to be completed re-worked, reworded, then submitted onto a talk page for a debate, then the general idea submitted to the wiki-list for discussion, then the suggestions received would then have to be added into a reworded version, which again would have to be put for discussion on a talk page and passed around on the wiki list, the distilled again, before being included where relevant and workable alongside the current rules.
Fair point. I'll mull it over in mo leaba (gaelic for bed). Oh no. This page has hit 30k AGAIN. Is it multiplying like rabbits or what? See you later, STÓD/ÉÍRE 05:19 Mar 14, 2003 (UTC)
-- Roadrunner
BTW Taku, your naming convention proposal should be on the talk page, not the actual naming convention (Japanese) page, as it is only being discussed. It hasn't been agreed to yet. But this whole issue is now on the wiki-list. Furthermore your suggestion that you did not do the corrections to the links list because they had not yet been agreed is rubbish. Any more changes are simply going to make the entire mess even worse, if such a thing was possible. Any more changes will just add more redirects on top of multiple redirects. If you thought it OK to rename vast numbers of pages, then you should have done the links too, not lazily left them for someone else. Your comments to Zoe, btw, were a disgrace. You have been complained about to the wiki-list as has your system and your refusal having repair screwed up links that were screwed up by you and you alone. STÓD/ÉÍRE
Here's my suggested solution.
current text
Convention: In general, use the most common form of the name used in English and
disambiguate the names of monarchs of modern countries in the format [[{Monarch's first name and ordinal} of {Country}]] (example:
Edward I of England).
addition
Reason: Creating a specified excluded list means people can't simple 'do their own thing' but can suggest that in 'x' case an exception could be made. If there is a consensus, then that state can be listed. In the event of a revertion war, you can say - look at rule 1.1 and that means you can kill of a time-wasting war without filling pages disputing it. The specific native form can then be explained in a paragraph, so later people adding a page who don't understand the format will understand how to do it.
(Most of the below suggestions would require creating a special talk name, maybe reference on the w-list, etc which to be honest is a pain in the backside for anyone trying it. It is better to include one of two self contained changes than trying to redo a whole passage! - written from experience! - STÓD/ÉÍRE 02:22 Mar 13, 2003 (UTC)
Also, if the general naming convention contradicts the naming convention for European kings, then something is also wrong.
What about the following standards:
1) A royal personage will be indexed a name based on the most common form used in English. Where there is no form that is most common in English, the most common form in the local language will be used.
Implications: This means that the names of East Asian emperors will be inconsistent. Under this rule, Hirohito will be referred to as Hirohito, his person name, but the Meiji emperor will be refered to by the era name.
2) When the most commonly used form is the personal name, it will be rendered using standard Wikipedia conventions for names.
Implications: The most common form of monarchical names for European monarchs is never the personal name and in the case of Europe the use of a personal name generally implies that the person is not a legitimate monarch. By contrast, East Asian monarchs are sometimes refered to by personal name.
The only place in Europe were this might be an issue is Napoleon and the kings of Poland.
Examples: Hirohito, Nordom Sihanouk, Cao Cao
3) Where a personal name and a royal name are equally commonly used among English speakers, the royal name is preferred.
Implications: This is the "Napoleon rule"
4) Where the most common English form is an era name. The title of the article should be "X emperor" with emperor in lower case.
Implications: This rule comes into play in Japanese emperors other than Hirohito and Akihito and for Ming and Qing Chinese emperors. The form "Emperor X" is incorrect in this case, and there is no chance for duplication.
I basically agree with this. We should come up with more examples. According to 1), I think most (except Hirohito and era name emperor such as Meiji emperor) of Japanese emperor becomes {name given after death) Emperor. No? -- Taku 04:24 Mar 13, 2003 (UTC)
Just to clarify a basic disagreement that I have with jtdrl. Why does "Henry II of England" have "of England"? I believe that his position is that "of England" is included in order to identify where Henry II is from. I would argue that this isn't why "of England" is there, and that the reason "of England" is there is because there are a lot of other people named "Henry II".
This matters with Japanese and Chinese imperial names using reign eras. Unlike European conventions, there simply is never going to be another emperor anywhere in the world with the reign name "Meiji". Because "Meiji emperor" is and will remain unambigous, I would argue that "of Japan" is redundant. My understanding is that jtdrl disagrees because he believes that the name should provide some information about the subject of the article, whereas I believe that it should not.
-- Roadrunner
The whole purpose of the monarch specific naming convention is to overcome the really bad ambiguity problems that exist with European monarchs. Therefore the "of country" is only for disambiguation purposes and not to provide the reader with descriptive information. The fact that is does provide some descriptive information is a secondary consequence of disambiguation and not a goal in and of itself (please read our disambiguation convention). So if there ain't any ambiguity with the names of Asian monarchs (I've always thought of them as despots so never connected them mentally with European monarchs) then there is no reason to use disambiguation - especially if that disambiguation is based on a European naming convention that was developed for European monarchs by European scholars. We don't pre-emptively and needlessly disambiguate unique movie titles by adding (movie) to each page title, so why in the world would we want to pre-emptively disambiguate unique Asian monarch page titles? Asian monarchs have different naming conventions and different needs. It is insane to try and impose a Euro-centric naming convention on Asian monarchs - this breaks the common name naming convention and nobody does it all. If we did this then anybody with any expertise in Asian history would not be able to take Wikipedia seriously. -- mav
So how are readers outside Japan to know which is a Japanese emperor and who is a Chinese emperor? Why is it wrong for wiki to refer to the Emperor of Japan but right for the Japanese emperor to call himself 'emperor of Japan', which he does in all english language statements? The same term is used by the Japanese government, the Japanese diplomatic service, the Japanese english language media, Japanese english language websites? If people don't know where someone is from, the information is worthless. I think this is patently absurd and nonsensical. No-one is talking about using english language nomenclature, merely clarifying that a very long list of emperors were based in Japan. Not to do so would make a joke of wiki and make its information worthless to everyone outside Japan, because they would not have a clue what the information is about. The articles themselves refer to the emperors as Emperor of Japan. They are put on lists as emperor of Japan. They call themselves Emperor of Japan. They are referred to in international sourcebooks as Emperor of Japan. BTW Taku has produced so many redirects to redirects to redirects that he has made an utter mess of many of the pages. I went into one, and was bounced between redirects, with no text. This is reducing wiki to a farce, as Zoe has said, as Deb has said. We now have a mess, littered with redirects, unrecognisable names, attached to lists that use the phrase 'Emperor of Japan' that can't be used in title of articles. The pages are now one blurred unworkable joke. (And that's not counting some of the rubbish Taku has placed in the article, which would be laughed at in any political science textbook. STÓD/ÉÍRE 21:14 Mar 13, 2003 (UTC)
PS: Roadrunner has just proved the point. If people can't find something, they have to go to the Emperor of Japan list. Great. Imagine if we said - if you can't find a british monarch, you must go to the list of British monarchs. If you want to find information on Germany, you have to go to a list on Germany. That would be absurd. The whole point of names is that you shouldn't have to do that. This is so absurd it like something from Monty Python.
Let us make a distinction between:
Now while as an American interested in Japan, I might want to look for an article called Emperor Hirohito, I would be pleased to learn that the man's name is actually Hirohito. I would also be gratified to know how Japanese people referred to him. Was it "the Emperor"? Was it "Hirohito-san" or "Hirohito-sama"? Or what?
Now the king of England long ago was named Henry and called perhaps "King Henry" during his reign and "Henry II" thereafter (especially by historians).
As a reader of this encyclopedia, however, I would really enjoy seeing an article called Henry II of England so I can find it easily. But the first thing I'd like to know is what the guy's name actually was. Surely the "of England" part isn't a piece of his name! So I would expect the article to begin like this:
-- Uncle Ed 21:43 Mar 13, 2003 (UTC)
Fine with Hirohito. Can you name 5 emperors? If you see their name, can you identify them without any contextual information? I can't. Zoe can't. Deb can't.
-- Roadrunner
And I doubt if 90%+ of potential users can. That is the whole problem. We cannot identify them. And neither will the vast majority of people using wiki. So what do you suggest? And what do suggest we do about chaotic links? And do you propose to put a note on the recent changes page 'Wiki pages can be found easily except in the case of Japanese emperors, who have been named in a way that no-non japanese person will understand. So for Japanese emperors, Wiki requires you to go through the ' Emperors of Japan' page.
BTW why do we have an 'Emperors of Japan' page? Surely it should just read 'emperors'. That is the logic of the situation, though logic is hardly the right word to use for the mess we know have. STÓD/ÉÍRE 21:47 Mar 13, 2003 (UTC)
Can you identify what bacteriocin is without looking it up? How about kinase, protium, proteomics, Holocene? Contextual information is in the articles on those subjects and will almost certainly be included in any sentence that links to these articles. The way to make sure links don't get too chaotic is to choose a name that is used by a majority of English speakers who are at all familiar with the subject (this is far from a "way that no-non Japanese person will understand" -- we are not talking about using native Japanese names here but the ones that are most often used in English). Usually this is clear-cut but sometimes we need redirects to catch forms that are not as widely used. BTW if you don't know the most common English-language form of the name of something, how does it make it easier to find it with the additional contextual elements? -- mav
Political science and history is fundamentally different to the sciences. Someone studying science will have elementary background information on technical matters. But political science knowledge is far more general and doesn't mean that people know details about political systems, titles, names, etc in South Africa, New Zealand, Portugal, Japan, Chile etc. When drafting nomenclature in these areas, encyclopædias invariably supply as much information as possible to contextualise people, titles, offices, identities, etc. They don't throw up the minimum degree of information and say 'now you guess from where this person is from.' If they did, no-one would use them. They would go to sourcebooks that do give that information. I had a Japanese student today burst out laughing when I mentioned this debate. All she could say was 'but he is Emperor of Japan'. I do not understand what is wrong with saying that.' Neither do I, especially when even the Emperor's office itself says that in all english language communication. I have not come across a single person off Wikipedia who understands the logic of this. The most widely used word was 'crazy' (used by 11 people, 3 of them Japanese). The second most common observation was the word 'joke'. Two used four-letter words to refer to it. The central point everyone made was simple. This is an english language version of wiki. The Japanese themselves in the english say 'emperor of Japan' (source: Visiting Professor of Japanese Studies.) So what is the problem? I do not see the slightest element of logic in refusing to use a term that even the Emperor uses. If this was Japanese wiki, it would be understandable. But it isn't. It is the english language version, aimed at english language users worldwide, most of which know very little about Japanese emperors and other than Akihito and Hirohito could not make anyone of them. And if all you give are uncontextualised names, they aren't likely to bother to try to find out more, at least not on wiki. STÓD/ÉÍRE 01:25 Mar 14, 2003 (UTC)
Is there yet a temporary concensus about Japanese Emperor article titles? I'm willing to clean up the endless bloody redirects if there's concensus about what I should do. Arthur 03:53 Mar 14, 2003 (UTC)
The issue is now being discussed on the w-list. And no, I don't think your 'unified theory' is workable. In any case, it would take weeks of work, of talk pages and wiki-listing, editing, resubmitting, etc before it would have the necessary consensus behind it to go on the page.
They would need to be completed re-worked, reworded, then submitted onto a talk page for a debate, then the general idea submitted to the wiki-list for discussion, then the suggestions received would then have to be added into a reworded version, which again would have to be put for discussion on a talk page and passed around on the wiki list, the distilled again, before being included where relevant and workable alongside the current rules.
Fair point. I'll mull it over in mo leaba (gaelic for bed). Oh no. This page has hit 30k AGAIN. Is it multiplying like rabbits or what? See you later, STÓD/ÉÍRE 05:19 Mar 14, 2003 (UTC)
-- Roadrunner
BTW Taku, your naming convention proposal should be on the talk page, not the actual naming convention (Japanese) page, as it is only being discussed. It hasn't been agreed to yet. But this whole issue is now on the wiki-list. Furthermore your suggestion that you did not do the corrections to the links list because they had not yet been agreed is rubbish. Any more changes are simply going to make the entire mess even worse, if such a thing was possible. Any more changes will just add more redirects on top of multiple redirects. If you thought it OK to rename vast numbers of pages, then you should have done the links too, not lazily left them for someone else. Your comments to Zoe, btw, were a disgrace. You have been complained about to the wiki-list as has your system and your refusal having repair screwed up links that were screwed up by you and you alone. STÓD/ÉÍRE