Wikipedia:Peer review/Yuan (surname)/archive1

Yuan (surname)

I had some trouble writing this article to make it understandable to a general reader. Because there is extensive discussion of Chinese texts, regions and historical periods, I'm afraid someone without the necessary background knowledge won't be able to follow it. Without any other featured articles in the area to emulate, I could use advice on any aspect. Any suggestions would also be much appreciated.

Since articles on Chinese surnames (see for example Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Owyang) and surnames in general (see Wikipedia:Deletion policy/names and surnames) were subject of some controversy a while ago, I think they need to conform to a high scholarly standard. Hopefully this article can be a model for other articles on Chinese surnames. Eventually I'd like to get this article to featured article standard. Yu Ninjie 21:47, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

excellent article! a Wikipedia:WikiProject Chinese surnames needs to be started to cover all the major Chinese surnames in as much detail as you have done here. A couple minor suggestions: It is not immediately clear in the lead section whether we are discussing Yuan surnames in general (as would be implied from an English-centric pov) or just the most common Yuan surname in Chinese. It would be helpful to add explanations of transliterated names and phrases (e.g. "Qianfu lun" should be followed by a clause explaining what "Qianfu lun" is because someone with no knowledge of Chinese cannot be sure whether this "Qianfu lun" is a person or book, or for that matter, what kind of book). Redundancy is not a problem here as this article is already very dense. A literal translation of the book titles used in the references will be helpful. --Ji ang 10:20, 14 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The introduction was always a big problem. I've gone and simplified it somewhat, leaving the explanation about other surnames in the footnotes. The first two sentences still seem a bit awkward though. What do you think? Your advice about translating book titles was most useful. Since around half of the sources are standard histories or mainstream historical texts, I've just used the commonly accepted translations of their titles. --Yeu Ninje 12:43, 14 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The other Yuan surnames are deemed "statiscally insignificant". But how "statiscally insignificant"? Where should the cutoff be where we have to considering giving any of these surnames articles? Does the information exist in published form to write lengthy articles on these other surnames? --Jiang 07:58, 17 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

That's a fair enough objection. I went and did a search on google and found a few more surnames pronounced "yuan". Some of them are so obscure that I wouldn't think there'd be more than a few hundred people in the world who held them. According Yuan Yida's 中国姓氏, none of them make the top 100. This is basically what I meant by "statistically insignificant", but that is not to say that they don't have interesting histories. Of the 10 that's there, 2 were well known enough to be documented by Ouyang Xiu in Xin Tang shu (he recorded 103 surnames in total). Some of the more minor "Yuans" no doubt are verifiable through an obscure reference in an early dictionary or something. I'd say that only 元, and possibly 源 are worth mentioning in any detail (both have produced notable historical figures) because the others are just too remote. It seems a bit artificial though, to include them with 袁 since they don't have anything to do with each other other than a common pronunciation. But I guess we have to work with Western concepts here on English Wikipedia. This is what I propose: if there is one surname which is clearly much more populous (i.e. 20+ times more populous than another), then that one should take the lead, with the others as supplementary to the main topic (maybe included in notes or in a subtopic). This would apply to the Yuan (surname) article. Yeu Ninje 09:30, 17 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'd hate to see a page be cluttered up simply because the English written language lacks the complexity of Chinese characters. If they're a different surname, then I think they belong on a different page. They're not relevant, not even as a supplementary section. It would seem odd to have the lead section and most of the article discuss one surname and then have an extra section discussing another surname that is unrelated to the lead. There's no precedent for this, but how about using characters in the title for less common variations, e.g. Yuan (元), and adding a dablink at the top? I can't think of a better way to differentiate these in English. --Jiang 09:54, 17 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that it would be good to have a different surname on each page but the idea of using characters in titles seems very problematic. I don't think the English Wikipedia's ever had anything other than characters from a Latin alphabet in article titles. I tend to think that there are some irreconciable differences between the Chinese and English languages and accept that the solution will have to be a bit messy. But I personally can't support Chinese characters in titles. Even Chinese characters in titles of sections (for example in Li (surname)) look very repugnant to me. Yeu Ninje 11:25, 17 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion has been carried over to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chinese surnames. Please continue there. --Jiang 12:37, 18 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]