Talk:Tomáš Kubalík

Move?

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: no consensus to move page at this time. Diacritics have always been a contentious issue here, but support for their use has steadily grown over the last 5 years. Now it is clear that the practice of removing diacritics does not enjoy the consensus support that it once did. -GTBacchus^(talk) 20:05, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

One additional note: This page was recently moved from the title without diacritics to the current title. I'm not going to revert that move, because that would add yet another page move to the history, and it would be a move that's not supported by consensus. I know that some people like to take "no consensus" as "maintain the previous status quo", but I've never been that kind of closer. In this case, I know that the wind has been steadily changing in the direction of using diacritics, so I think that a reversion at this point would be especially pointless. This sort of thing is controversial, so I absolutely invite review of my actions by the Wikipedia community. -GTBacchus^(talk) 00:04, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

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Tomáš Kubalík → Tomas Kubalik – Relisted. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:33, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

• The article Tomas Kubalik was recently moved to Tomáš Kubalík. This is a controversial move as all sources within the article verify that the commonly used form of name is “Tomas Kubalik”. Please move this article back to its original position so that I may invoke the Wikipedia:BOLD, revert, discuss cycle, as is my right. Thank you. Dolovis (talk) 15:32, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
  • User:Dolovis asked me in User talk:Anthony Appleyard to make this move, so I copied it here to be discussed. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 15:46, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose move. Per consensus players names who contain diacritics keep them. You can't claim bold 5 months after the fact. Not to mention that there is an established consensus on hockey players that if their name contains diacritics we leave them on their articles. -DJSasso (talk) 16:55, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

  I would note there is an english source for the name now. -DJSasso (talk) 18:48, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose I'd like to add that it's a really bad idea to start 20 threads on 20 talk pages about an issue that was already resolved at a central location. Pichpich (talk) 21:09, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
  • What "central location", and why does it contravene policy? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:16, 17 May 2011 (UTC)
    • This is the established convention for hockey players, see Wikipedia:HOCKEY#Wikiproject_notice). A change to that agreement would best be discussed there. Pichpich (talk) 02:37, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
• Support peding evidence of use in English; this is the spelling of the sources, and of newspaper coverage. Many who come to reside in the English-speaking world Anglicize their names; we use Henry Fuseli and George Frideric Handel, not Heinrich Füssli or Georg Friedrich Händel, when reliable sources do.Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:16, 17 May 2011 (UTC)
• Support as this is the english-language Wikipedia. GoodDay (talk) 23:46, 17 May 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose. The standard practice (in our encyclopedia) is to use a person's actual name in cases where the most common spelling in English sources is the name with only diacritical marks omitted. There are exceptions to this but none of them apply here. Prolog (talk) 19:23, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
  • Can you give any evidence that this is the standard practice? Andrewa (talk) 12:57, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
    • I'd say that the practice is abundantly clear from categories like Czech ice hockey players (which includes the featured article Dominik Hašek). Wikipedia:Requested moves/Tennis is the largest discussion that I know of to attempt to challenge the usual practice and the result was more than clear. Prolog (talk) 21:56, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
• Support move: This is the English Wikipedia, and according to the policy of WP:COMMONNAME and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English), a biographical article does not use the subject's name as it might be spelled in Czech (with diacritics) as its article title, nor does it use the person's legal name as it might appear on a birth certificate or passport; it instead uses the name that is most frequently used to refer to the subject in English-language reliable sources. Simply put, the use of "Tomas Kubalik" is verified by the sources used within the article, and "Tomáš Kubalík" is not supported by the sources used as references for the article. Dolovis (talk) 23:32, 28 May 2011 (UTC)
• Support move to remove diacritics. All evidence points to the name in English being commonly without them. I'm skeptical that Wikipedia:WikiProject Ice Hockey#Wikiproject notice should overrule the normal conventions, it's not listed as a Specific-topic naming convention at WP:AT and appears to be a draft under discussion rather than an accepted convention, but in any case it reads in part All North American hockey pages should have player names without diacritics. Andrewa (talk) 12:54, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

  As is currently being discussed on the MOS pages. Common convention seems to actually be that we use them in most cases. And the part your quote is in regards to team pages and league pages. In otherwords we leave off the diacritics in a north-american team article that mentions the player and we leave them in for european team pages mentioning the player. And the player article itself keeps them as is convention throughout most of the wiki. -DJSasso (talk) 15:27, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

  Please link to these discussions if you wish this convention to carry any weight here. But in any case, you seem to be suggesting that the current text of this (proposed, draft or under discussion) convention doesn't apply to player articles at all, and if that's the case then it's irrelevant to this discussion anyway. And if it does apply, then my reading of it is still that the diacritics should be dropped in this case. Andrewa (talk) 19:17, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

  I will find you the link to the other discussion I mentioned. But I was talking about the specific part of the notice that you quoted. The notice has been in use by the hockey project for years its not a draft convention. Its been in effect for a number of years now, its nothing new. The first bullet covers player articles and the second two bullets cover non-player articles. -DJSasso (talk) 19:38, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

  Hmmm, OK, I see how you're reading it, and that does make sense of an otherwise rather baffling convention. But I still query whether this convention carries any weight. It doesn't even have a section of its own on the project page, and doesn't seem to be linked, either directly or indirectly, from Template:Naming conventions. Andrewa (talk) 20:08, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

  Still waiting for a link to the discussion. I'd also make the point that, if it shows that this convention has not been accepted by consensus and discussion has dwindled to nothing, then it's not a convention at all, but simply a failed proposal. I'm not saying that this is what has happened, but just that the discussion is important, as without it this convention carries no weight at all. Andrewa (talk) 01:37, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

  Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(use_English)#Use_of_diacritics_in_biographical_article_titles -DJSasso (talk) 11:50, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose, proposal goes against normal well-established practice and serves no good purpose - Wikipedia regularly uses original diacritics in cases like this, and including them makes him no less recognizable to those who know him without them, and implies (to those who are familiar with our practices) that he has no diacritics in his name or no longer goes by that version of his name (e.g. because of naturalization in the US), neither of which seems to be true here.--Kotniski (talk) 12:01, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Comment - The well-established policy is WP:VERIFY. There are NO sources shown to support the use of diacritics. ALL the sources in the article show name without diacritics. Where did this form of name come from? Is it original research? Or is it just made up? Dolovis (talk) 12:27, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

You can find numerous sources by googling Czech sites.--Kotniski (talk) 12:53, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Suggest you provide a wikilink to either such a search or specific hits. English language ones, of course. Andrewa (talk) 01:29, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

They aren't required to be in english if there are no reliable sources in english. Any source that drops diacritics are spelling the name wrong and thus aren't reliable for how to spell a name. In most cases this means that a switch to non-english sources is required. -DJSasso (talk) 11:50, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

This is one of the best examples of circular argument that I have seen in more than forty years of serious study of such things. Andrewa (talk) 03:31, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

To de-circularize it, I think the argument is that we don't have any reliable English sources to answer (explicitly) the question of how his name would be spelt by an English-language work (such as Wikipedia) whose style is to retain original diacritics on the names of foreigners. So we have to use our common sense - this guy is not another Napoleon. --Kotniski (talk) 10:08, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

The part of the argument that you have paraphrased was not circular. The circular argument is the attempt to disqualify any source that drops diacritics as ipso facto not reliable. You may even have introduced a new circularity by claiming Wikipedia's style is to retain original diacritics on the names of foreigners. I think that's sweeping enough in scope to include some of the issues under discussion. Andrewa (talk) 12:37, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Whether you think its circular or not, it is a fact. In order to be a reliable source on a given bit of information you have to have a history of fact checking and correct information. Since it is not true that diacritics are not used in English it is wrong to remove them from names. So sources that remove them have either not done the research to use the proper name or are willfully ignoring the proper name. Either of which leads you down the road of being an unreliable source when it comes to spelling names. Now if we were talking about Munich and München I would agree with you as Munich is an anglicized name. But just removing diacritics does not anglicize a name. -DJSasso (talk) 12:46, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

I wouldn't say that it's wrong to remove them, just that it isn't Wikipedia's style and practice to remove them. I don't really see anything circular about this argument - we can see by examining many categories of articles what the practice is; it's been explained why it's good practice for an encyclopedia (Britannica does pretty much the same thing); no reason has been given either for changing the practice or for making this person an exception. There are sources (which happen not to be English ones, but that doesn't matter) which leave no doubt as to how his name is spelt with original diacritics, i.e. in our style. --Kotniski (talk) 14:54, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

I respect your opinions that there is no circularity in these arguments. Please respect my opinion that there is. Andrewa (talk) 01:09, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

• Support. To quote WP:COMMONNAME (a policy, as opposed to ice hockey project's essay), "Wikipedia does not necessarily use the subject's "official" name as an article title; it instead uses the name that is most frequently used to refer to the subject in English-language reliable sources" (my bolding). All the references in the article do not use diacritics and a google news archive search shows 557 results for "Tomas Kubalik", compared to only 198 for "Tomáš Kubalík". Jenks24 (talk) 13:01, 7 June 2011 (UTC)
• Support: Agreed with the line of reasoning of Jenks24 and per google hits which clearly point to the use in the English language. Divide et Impera (talk) 19:22, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

  I would note that WP:DIACRITICS specifically mentions that google hits are unreliable because of optical character recognition errors when it comes to diacritics in that OCR often fails to recognize them which causes google hit numbers to be deflated. -DJSasso (talk) 19:33, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

  Look, per Wikipedia:Article_titles#Foreign_names_and_anglicization, there should be a move. The very first sentence says The choice between anglicized and local spellings should follow English-language usage. Probably someone should go ahead and get consensus to change that policy first? Divide et Impera (talk) 22:10, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

  Right but the issue here is that removing diacritics is not anglicizing a name. WP:DIACRITICS is the guideline that is most applicable here and it says The use of modified letters (such as accents or other diacritics) in article titles is neither encouraged nor discouraged. Since the correct form has them then that is what should be used. -DJSasso (talk) 23:22, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

  Wikipedia:Article_titles#Foreign_names_and_anglicization clashes with WP:DIACRITICS, and there is no final clarity. Probably WP:Diacritics entered that last paragraph because of the Irish insistence, but that paragraph in that guideline contradicts the policy in wp:commonnames. Furthermore the problem is that Wikipedia:Article_titles#Foreign_names_and_anglicization is part of a policy, whereas WP:DIACRITICS is a guideline, and policies should, in general, supersede the guidelines, although this is not always true in wikipedia either. Can I declare neutral now? Divide et Impera (talk) 02:20, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose - The article is currently at the player's correct name. Introducing (or perpetuating) errors is not a good practice. Canada Hky (talk) 20:37, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

• Comment from an objective source: The New York Times Manual of Style states at page 6 that "accent marks are used for French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and German words and names. [...] Do not use accents in words or names from other languages (Slavic and Scandinavian ones, for example).” This authoritative reference is direct on point, and clearly states that modified letters should not be used for Czech names. Dolovis (talk) 03:38, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

  That is just one papers style guide. You have since been shown that a number of other style guides such as The Guardian, National Geographic etc all do the opposite. -DJSasso (talk) 15:14, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose. Editors may be interested in the policy vote at Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(use_English)#Specific_proposals_to_change_the_wording_of_the_policy. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 20:14, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

As you are well aware, the discussion you are referring to is still “going around in circles”, and it is abundantly clear no consensus to change policy will be reached, so the current policy of WP:EN and WP:COMMONNAME remain in effect. Dolovis (talk) 04:16, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

The policies you refer to do not discount the use of diacritics. You should probably check your sources before throwing nonsense around. – Nurmsook! ^talk... 21:31, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

You are calling the policy of Wikipedia:Article titles nonsense. It isn't, and its policy should be followed. Dolovis (talk) 12:47, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Once again you are showing your complete lack of "getting the point". I have not once referred to WP:AT as nonsense, and am highly offended that you would assume that sort of WP:BADFAITH of me. I have referred to your complete and utter misunderstanding of the policy as nonsense, not the policy itself. Show me where in the policy diacritics are discounted, and then I'll refrain from calling your assertions nonsense. Frankly, your disrespect towards other editors is getting beyond acceptable for Wikipedia. – Nurmsook! ^talk... 18:26, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

• Revert per WP:BRD. As this looks like it would never pass a WP:RM, so it should be reverted. 65.94.47.63 (talk) 03:55, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose, Other encyclopedias are valid usage models, per WP:DIACRITICS. I don't think any other encyclopedia has an article about this guy. But Britannica, Encarta, and Columbia all use diacritics for Czech names. It is Wiki's usual practice to retain diacritics when the person's native language uses them. This is the true, accurate name, the way he spells it in his own language, and isn't accuracy better than dumbing it down? Kauffner (talk) 14:46, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.