Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/China- and Chinese-related articles/Archive 6

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Citations

I think it would be wise if we formulate a section giving direction on proper formatting of citations, seeing as there has recently arisen some surprising criticism of the current methods. My suggestion is the standard:

Author 作者 (year). Title 书名 (English translation of title if needed). Location: Publisher, pages.

That's basically what I learned in graduate school and it seems the general standard in the field. If anyone wishes to comment or suggest changes, please go ahead.  White Whirlwind  咨  06:02, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

I should also add, I was taught that in romanized Chinese titles only the first word is capitalized (unless a proper noun is involved) and spacing is done at word boundaries, such as: Zhongguo yuqi dacidian 中国玉器大辞典.  White Whirlwind  咨  06:10, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

This reflects what I've seen in bibliography sections mostly, but some books just skip the Chinese characters altogether. Would be great if there is a reference manual somewhere that covers this situation though. Also a question: Is there a comma behind the surname for Chinese authors? ie. Chen, Shou or Chen Shou? _dk (talk) 06:48, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

All sounds good, but I believe that policy encourages the use of citation templates where possible. These have the (IMHO) useful "trans-title" parameter, while the {{no italic}} template prevents a breach of style guide rules on italicized Chinese characters. If there is anything not in the cite templates/modules that is required, it can be requested. @Underbar dk: AFAIK, no comma in the Chinese name. Cheers,  Philg88 ^♦talk 08:36, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

I like citation templates myself, but WP:CITEVAR says citation style is an editorial choice at each article. The documentation for {{no italic}} says it should not be used inside citation templates. I'm in two minds about the comma – specialist publications would write Chen Shou (which can be achieved with |author-name-separator=), but then Wikipedia should cater for a general readership, be consistent, etc. Kanguole 09:08, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Except that in terms of cultural convention, the name is written surname first with no comma. That would be kind of a CHINESEVAR thing, which we don't have :) I didn't know that {{no italics}} shouldn't be used in CS1/CS2 citations so thank you for that. If there is a workaround we should pursue it as use of italics contradicts WP:MOS-ZH (Although people would probably argue that the guideline only applies to body text).  Philg88 ^♦talk 10:22, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Regarding the post-surname comma: I was taught that it was not used for East Asian names (so "Chen Shou", per Kanguole, and not "Shin, Sukju") – however, I'm of the opinion that such usage confuses the general Wikipedia readership, and I have begun using the post-surname comma universally and don't seem to have lost any of my immortal soul.

Regarding template usage: Kanguole's point that {{no italic}} isn't supposed to be used in citation templates is a real wrench in the works, I think. I personally have been very spotty in my usage of citation templates – I sort of thought they just made pages load faster or something. They also let one use the {{harvcoltxt}} template to link footnotes to the bibliographic listing, but after using that a few times I felt that it was a lot of effort for relatively little reward. Would there be any other drawbacks or dangers to us not using templates in China-related articles?  White Whirlwind  咨  03:35, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Citation templates exist for very good reasons: to make citations consistent; to make it easier for editors to produce consistent citations; to enable many checks (such as for missing titles in web citations, missing dates, incorrectly formatted dates) and feature (ISBN linking, DOI lookup and linking, COinS data); to enable various performance optimisations. So it would I think be a bad idea to start making references without using templates. Apart from all the problem with consistency, formatting, linking properly etc. many would probably be 'fixed' by other editors changing them to use templates, probably doing a worse job than if such a template had been used from the start.

The only way to do it I think would be to come up with a new template, i.e. one that implemented the new format and any variations that are needed. This could have most or all of the benefits of the regular citation templates; if not immediately then things like checking, linking, COinS data could be added. As such improvements are made all articles using the template would benefit, something that definitely won't happen with just inline text. It would also mean the format could be properly documented, with examples and justification.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 03:59, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

That's an excellent idea. Such a template (module?) doesn't need much extra functionality - just the no italic support for the title plus a "trans-publisher" field. Others may think of parameters that I haven't considered. Presumably it would be useful across the CJK board.  Philg88 ^♦talk 04:30, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

The existing citation templates do a lot of work – it would be wasteful to start again from scratch. I think it would be better to ask the CS1 folk for an extra field for an original title in a non-Latin script that shouldn't be italicized (and maybe for "trans-publisher" too). That would be in addition to |title= (which could be used for a romanization of the original title) and |trans_title= (for a translation).

@White whirlwind: I like the way the templates fairly easily give a consistent format (even if it's not always what I'd prefer). However for me the big win comes from {{sfn}}/{{sfnp}} in large articles: you get a minimal intrusion in the wikitext where you're writing about the subject, you don't have to manually combine repeated refs and make up ref names, and there's a script that checks you got the names and year right. But I recognize that CITEVAR says we shouldn't impose a new citation style on an established and consistently styled article without discusion. Kanguole 07:16, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

This is an enlightening discussion. I also didn't know not to use no-ital in a template. Do I assume correctly that the same is true of bold? The journal article template for some reason bolds the volume number, which I have tried to defeat.

I agree with @Kanguole:'s comments on the usefulness of the sfnb form, though it took me a while to get used to it. To make it easier, I created an output style in my EndNote program to generate a reference in the proper form -- what a headache! I'd be happy to share it with anyone who wants it, though no guarantee. ch (talk) 20:06, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

So the discussion seems to have reached consensus on the following points: the style as I described at the outset, with the additional points that we should be using {{cite}} variants in the Works Cited sections and {{sfnp}} or similar for inline citations. We also need someone to liaise with a proficient template programmer to sort out a workaround for non-italicization of CJKV characters without using the no-ital tags. Unless anyone objects, I will create the initial section in the MoS in the next day or two.  White Whirlwind  咨  04:30, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

While I personally prefer {{citation}}+{{sfnp}} for longer articles, I don't think we can require it (per CITEVAR). We could recommend it, though. I've made a request at Module talk:Citation/CS1/Archive 11#non-italic titles for a new parameter for non-italic titles. Kanguole 11:03, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

On further thought, short citations are probably out of scope for MOS-ZH; it's mainly the formatting of the full citations that touches on Chinese text issues. Kanguole 11:34, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

There is a discussion on possible changes to the formatting of titles in citation templates at Module talk:Citation/CS1/Archive 11#non-italic titles. People may wish to explain there what we need for Chinese works. Kanguole 15:26, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Sitelinks: Classical Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Chinese, and Simplified Chinese - which one is which?

Greetings! I was trying to check some terms both in Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese by using the sitelinks located in the left-hand toolbar when I ran into the following problem with respect to the consistency of terminology used here at Wikipedia. My question could be formated like this:

Why do we first use the term Traditional Chinese in language tags within the text, and then suddenly use the term Classical Chinese in the sitelinks at the toolbar on the left? Moreover, we use the term Simplified Chinese in the language tags within the text, but in the sitelinks we simply use the term Chinese. By intuition, "Traditional Chinese" could easily get mixed up with plain "Chinese", whereas "Classical Chinese" and "Simplified Chinese" could be easily expected to make a different case and have their own sitelinks.

Therefore, I think it'd be more consistent if both terms used in the text would correspond the terms used in the sitelinks at the left-hand toolbar. What do you think? =P Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 16:38, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Formatting sentences with multilingual terms

Greetings! I ran into article (Fuji and noticed that there are some inconsistencies with the formatting of sentences that include both Chinese and English terms. Let me give an example in order to clarify myself a little bit. In the article, it is said that (numerations added):

Beginning around the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 CE), the fuji method and written characters changed from (2) 扶箕 (1) "support the sieve" (4) (spirit-writing using a suspended sieve or winnowing tray)

So in a nutshell, we have (1) the English translation (support the sieve), (2) hanzi (扶箕), (3) romanization of the word (not present in the aforementioned quote), and (4) an explanation for the English term ((spirit-writing using a suspended sieve or winnowing tray)). See, in the Japan-related articles there is already a practice on how to deal with this kind of sentences, and the formatting of sentences follows the exact structure as mentioned above ((1) - (2) - (3) - (4)). This is handled by a language tag {{nihongo}}. For example, in the Shinnyo-en article, a similar piece of text is handled like this:

Joyful donations (歓喜 kangi, monetary contribution to the organization)

In plain code, this would appear as: {{nihongo|Joyful donations|歓喜|kangi|monetary contribution to the organization}}

Therefore, I'd like to suggest that we will adapt the same practice as the China-related articles. Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 17:45, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Pruned subsection

I've removed the "Jiedushi" subsection. The rest of the guide is routine stuff. This on the other hand was extremely specific. I can't see it comes up enough to justify its inclusion. On a search for ~jiedushi, almost all of the 500 or so occurences—besides the "Jiedushi" article itself—consist of "military governor (jiedushi)", and are articles on specific individual people (jiedushi) or year articles that wikilink to the main "Jiedushi" article. (The other listed ways to use the term are even less likely to come up.) Anyone who uses it can easily see how it's used in other pages if needed. The vast majority editing China-related articles will probably never need to.

The addition was originally proposed by Nlu (pinged) in Jan 2008 for the Naming conventions (Chinese) guideline and inserted [1] there. A few years later it was merged into here [2] as it didn't fit that page. If anyone wants to restore it feel free. –146.199.151.33 (talk) 23:23, 23 May 2015 (UTC)

I've wondered about this for a long time and have no problem with pruning on the grounds cited.ch (talk) 20:50, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

Direct dynastic histories citations

Hi all,

There's an issue I'd like to bring up for discussion. I have noticed that a couple of editors have adopted a practice of adding information to articles (mostly on people from the Warring States and Three Kingdoms periods, but probably more) and citing as their references the dynastic histories, in particular the Shiji and the San guo zhi. This, I believe, is problematic. I strongly believe that these sources should be treated as primary sources—notwithstanding the fact that they were of course originally secondary or tertiary sources, albeit at a time many long centuries in the past—that for Wikipedia articles we should avoid using, and that we instead should stick to the modern biographical dictionaries and encyclopedias edited by Sinologists, of which there are now several of quite high quality. I would like any and all to please share their thoughts.  White Whirlwind  咨  22:43, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

I agree about the old histories, but this style page probably isn't the place to discuss it. Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chinese history needs waking up. Kanguole 23:00, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Agreed we shouldn't be using primary sources when alternatives are available. As Kanguole says, this would be better discussed elsewhere - for now Wikiproject China is probably the best place to flag it.  Philg88 ^♦talk 05:06, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

I'll move this over there.  White Whirlwind  咨  05:16, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

Chinese equivalent for Template:Nihongo and Template:Nihongo2?

Greetings! Is anyone here capable to create a similar template for Chinese as there already exists for the Japan-related articles (Template:Nihongo and [Template:Nihongo2]])? A concrete example where to utilize such would be at the Yiguandao article, we we have:

1. Traditional Chinese: 無生老母
2. Pinyin: Wúshēng Lǎomǔ
3. English: The Eternal Venerable Mother

Thanks! Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 19:04, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

template {{zh}} ? It has a number of differences but they make it more flexible. E.g. it does not include the English and brackets so you need to do

'''The Eternal Venerable Mother''' ({{zh|t=無生老母|p=Wúshēng Lǎomǔ}})

The Eternal Venerable Mother (Chinese: 無生老母; pinyin: Wúshēng Lǎomǔ)

This lets you include other things, such as non-Chinese languages, in the same brackets. Other options such as suppressing labels and links are available in {{zh}}; see its documentation.

The one thing {{Nihongo}} has that {{zh}} does not is the link to Help:Installing Japanese character sets. But I think that is redundant; any modern OS includes Japanese (and Chinese) fonts and character support by default, and this has been true for many years. The last time I had to install Asian support on a PC was with Windows XP. But it has been a feature of {{Nihongo}} for so long I can’t see it being changed.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 01:50, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

A comment on the "English" parameter above: please do not copy the Nihongo template! The reason is that "English" can mean at least three things: a literal translation of the basic meaning of the characters, some sort of "official" English (or pseudo-English) name used for something, or an English explanation of what it actually means. I am not sure how common this sort of problem is with Chinese, but I think it is important to define exactly what parameters are supposed to refer to. (Also second John Blackburne's comment about "installing character sets") Imaginatorium (talk) 08:09, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi there, Imaginatorium! You tackled the problem perfectly. For example, in the Fuji article there are some inconsistencies with the formatting of sentences that include both Chinese and English terms. In the article, it is said that (numerations added):

Beginning around the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 CE), the fuji method and written characters changed from (2) 扶箕 (1) "support the sieve" (4) (spirit-writing using a suspended sieve or winnowing tray)

So in a nutshell, we have (1) the English translation (support the sieve), (2) hanzi (扶箕), (3) romanization of the word (not present in the aforementioned quote), and (4) an explanation for the English term ((spirit-writing using a suspended sieve or winnowing tray)). See, in the Japan-related articles there is already a practice on how to deal with this kind of sentences, and the formatting of sentences follows the exact structure as mentioned above ((1) - (2) - (3) - (4)). This is handled by a language tag {{nihongo}}. For example, in the Shinnyo-en article, a similar piece of text is handled like this:

Joyful donations (歓喜 kangi, monetary contribution to the organization)

In plain code, this would appear as: {{nihongo|Joyful donations|歓喜|kangi|monetary contribution to the organization}}

So the {{nihongo}} already distinguishes between the "literal English translation" and "an English explanation". Therefore, I'd like to suggest that we will adapt the same practice as the China-related articles. Cheers! Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 19:19, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Here’s how you do that with {{zh}}:

China ({{zh|c=中国|p=Zhōngguó|l=Middle Kingdom}})

China (Chinese: 中国; pinyin: Zhōngguó; lit. 'Middle Kingdom')

The literal translation is put in quotes to emphasise that fact. That field is not often used though, as generally it is unnecessary. Again, doing it this way is more flexible as it e.g. lets you include other things in the brackets or omit them if it is appropriate.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 19:38, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, JohnBlackburne! I actually wonder if this could be added to the current MOS. At the moment, it doesn't really discuss these issues, and clarifying MOS would be in-line with the current state of the Japan-related articles MOS. Cheers! Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 22:56, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

A comment: I generally avoid the {{Zh}} template except in leads because of its bulky and clunky output. The standard formatting in Sinological literature for a Chinese term is basically thus: "English term/translation" (pinyin 漢字), where the quotation marks around the English term are used only when necessary. An example could be: "often known as 'Chairman Mao' (Máo zhǔxí 毛主席)", or "was promoted to gentleman of the household (zhōngláng 中郎)." The {{nihongo}} template inverts the romanization and characters, which is why I avoid it, too, when Japanese terms arise.  White Whirlwind  咨  23:18, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

FYI, the Nihongo templates are technologically deprecated. The HTML <head> of every WP page says, <meta charset="UTF-8"/>, which includes 70,000 Unihan CJKV characters, automatically viewable in the major browsers. All these outdated language templates need to be removed from Wikipedia. Keahapana (talk) 23:15, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi there, Keahapana! I wasn't actually thinking how the characters are displayed by different browsers, but more of a "manual of style" approach, i.e. some sort of standard to clarify how and in which order the all the different concepts should be written out. That's what the Japanese {{nihongo}} templates are all about, as they provided a standardized model for this. Moreover, I think a similar model would cut down a lot of repetitive linking, something the current zh= and p= templates do cause (the same language link on every occasion when the specific language is mentioned).

There are currently four {{nihongo}} templates, where the Template:Nihongo4 does not display the Help:Installing Japanese character sets box. I agree with you, such should not be included. Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 20:06, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Keahapana, before it says that it says <html lang="en" dir="ltr" class="client-nojs">. This is a message to browsers that the page is in English, and that it should use appropriate fonts and styles for English. So when there is Chinese we need a way to describe it to the browser. There is HTML that does this, and the template inserts the correct HTML. This can be used by browsers to display the characters differently, either automatically or under user control (e.g. via custom CSS on WP). It can be used by screen readers to use the correct language to read text. It is also one way pages are categorised, as the template adds the page to one or more categories, such as category:Articles containing simplified Chinese-language text.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 20:20, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

• Comment Template:Nihongo is in my experience a hell of a lot easier to use than Template:zh. It inserts the parentheses and everything for you, and the first parameter is the bit before the parentheses. That said, a hypothetical direct equivalent would still be more difficult to use than Template:Nihongo because it would require more parameters by default, and given that with some Chinese topics it's preferable to give priority to simplified characters and traditional with others, I don't even know if it's feasible to create a direct equivalent. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 05:57, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Ongoing discussion at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Chinese)

I started a discussion, still ongoing, about the China/Taiwan naming issue: Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Chinese)#China and Taiwan naming issue. I invite you to comment there. --George Ho (talk) 21:37, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Dates?

The monk Xuanzang apparently died on '5 February 664'. My Japanese 電子辞書 tells me that he died in '麟徳1 (664)', so I assume by '5 February' we mean the fifth day of the second month of the Chinese calendar, but should we have a definitive guideline on this point? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 06:05, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

User:Hijiri88 zh.wiki zh:玄奘 says he died on 7 March 664, so (without checking sources myself) I believe your assumption is correct. "the fifth day of the second month" should never be translated to "5 February" but some editors do it either out of negligence or incompetence. Timmyshin (talk) 05:45, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

Scope of this project

Does this project cover articles related to Taiwan and overseas Chinese? If so this needs to be made clear in the lead. The title would be unfit and should be changed to "Chinese-related". Szqecs (talk) 10:17, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Capitalization of romanized titles

Not sure where the misapprehension came from that "only the first word is capitalized" but leaving aside that's not what we usually do; leaving aside that it's not what we should do, since it's non-obvious to English-language editors and will—for the duration of the policy—produce constant makework removing corrections and moving pages around since such a policy violates basic English-language title formatting and our own usual MOS policy; it appears to be simply wrong. Google doesn't make this easy to see but the go-to guide on proper use of Pinyin capitalizes each word of book titles (as e.g. Honglou Meng) where it doesn't just combine them (as Chunqiu). Pending some very powerful citation from one of these native authoritative sources (and note the standard capitalization being observed by the citation from the people who are actually quoting them), we need to scrap that rule and its LOCALCONSENSUS and fix the mistaken formatting that's been used in the infoboxes of various book pages around the encyclopedia. — LlywelynII 22:52, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

Tone marks?

At the risk of reigniting an old discussion, I have a few questions about the use of pinyin tone marks in the body of articles.

When I'm working on Chinese-related articles, I find myself wondering how/whether to include pinyin tone marks. The Manual of Style says they should only be included in parentheses (using the "zh" template) or in infoboxes, but that could lead to awkward constructions like the following: "The city of Nanjing (Chinese: 南京; pinyin: Nánjīng) ...," where the same word is repeated twice ("Nanjing," "Nánjīng").

Wouldn't the following flow much better in such situations? "The city of Nánjīng (Chinese: 南京) ..." Someone who doesn't understand tone markings is likely to ignore them, and someone who does understand them will want them to be there (especially if they don't know the tones beforehand). For people who know Chinese, seeing a new word without tone markings is jarring, because one can't pronounce a Chinese word without the tones, but for people who don't know Chinese, there's little harm in the tone markings being there. In any case, it seems to me that sentence flow is inhibited more by long parentheses than by tone markings in the text.

So, to sum up: when should I include pinyin (with tones) in the "zh" template, and would it be useful to revisit the policy on tone marks in the body of articles? Thanks, -Thucydides411 (talk) 02:28, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Note that MOS:CHINA counsels that the characters and full pinyin should not be given when the term has an article (which will give this information in {{zh}} and/or {{infobox Chinese}}), so the duplication mentioned above will only happen in the opening sentence of the Nanjing article. In the Nanjing case, I see that only {{infobox Chinese}} is used, so it is not even in the lead. The bodies of articles will just say "Nanjing", with a link at the first use in other articles. Kanguole 09:53, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Okay, that rule will limit duplication. It is still jarring to see words without tone marks, though. One simply doesn't know how to read them. They're probably ignored by people who don't speak Chinese, so it would seem reasonable to use them in the body of an article. -Thucydides411 (talk) 17:59, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

The tone marks are present, but only once. One may have to click on a link to get them. It's a compromise between having the information and preserving the flow of English text. Kanguole 18:12, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

I understand the importance of preserving the flow of English text. It's just that the flow doesn't seem inhibited by tone marks to any great degree, since readers who don't speak Chinese will likely ignore them (similar to how they might ignore accents on French, German or Spanish names). It's a trade-off between preserving the flow of the text for different readers - those who are familiar with tones and those who aren't. I understand that different people might evaluate the trade-off differently, based on how much of an impact they believe tones will have on readers who don't speak Chinese, or what percentage of readers are likely to speak Chinese. I just think it might be worthwhile considering the question again. Thanks for your replies. -Thucydides411 (talk) 18:25, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

There are a few publications/publishers who are now using diacritics throughout their text, but I think the majority of Sinological literature still does not, and that's enough for me.

From a personal viewpoint, I feel like there are three types of readers: 1) ones who don't know Chinese and won't really get much from the diacritics; 2) readers who know Chinese and thus do not need the diacritics (if the tone is not already known, a glance at the characters for a name/term is sufficient); and 3) readers who are learning Chinese and for whom the diacritics are helpful. The third group is (unfortunately) in the great minority, and in any case it's trivial for them to check the {{Infobox Chinese}} template or just use the lookup tool of their choice.  White Whirlwind  咨  19:27, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

That's reasonable. Personally, I prefer diacritics, because they're the technically correct way of transliterating Chinese and because I don't know the tone of every character (especially names, which often use more obscure characters). I know there are many names that native speakers will not necessarily be able to pronounce from the characters. -Thucydides411 (talk) 21:14, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

It's helpful to remember that for native speakers and otherwise advanced learners, the tone is part and parcel of the word itself. From this standpoint, if one "knows" a character, one almost certainly knows its tone. Conversely, if one does not know a word's tone, it's probably because one does not "know" (or has forgotten) the entire word itself, and the lookup tool of one's choice is thus used anyway. I think that this, and the difficulty of doing superscripts and diacritics in the pre-computer days, is why Sinological literature—whose readers tend to be among the aforementioned native speakers or advanced learners—has been slow to adopt diacritics. I would guess that their use in the regular flow of text will become standard at some point in the future.  White Whirlwind  咨  21:43, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

I agree about truly "knowing" a character, but also point out that one can often guess likely pronunciation (without tone) from the radical. Regardless, there are still many names that native speakers (or advanced second-language speakers) won't be able to pronounce from the characters, and pinyin tone marks would be helpful for them as well. I really do hope it becomes standard in Sinological literature, especially now that pinyin input is trivial on modern computers. Is your thinking that we should wait for greater adoption in Sinological literature before switching over, and what level of adoption are we looking for? -Thucydides411 (talk) 22:11, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

I agree with White_whirlwind's comment before last, about the three types of readers. I would make it even simpler: the vast majority of readers have no understanding of the tone marks and will at best ignore them, at worst be confused by them thinking they mean something else. It’s especially problematic as the marks are used for other things: they look like accents from European languages, or short/long vowel markers. You really have to study Chinese to appreciate tones, as they are alien to a speaker of English, with the English language having nothing equivalent. The form without tones is often the one English speakers use in English, as fitting the proper tones into an English sentence can sound very odd.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 22:25, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

@Thucydides411: Yes, guessing pronunciation from xiesheng series is of course possible, but is often a vexing task in Mandarin due to factors such as the tone split in the ping tone from devoicing and, more importantly, the contacts between the qu and ru tones dating from the Old Chinese period, to say nothing of Simplified characters. Much the safest way is to consult a reliable dictionary. I think you might be overestimating the difficulties of looking things up: it's now almost trivial to look up a character nearly instantaneously both on desktop or mobile computers, and most of the unusual cases are well-known enough that people easily avoid pronunciation faux pas like "Jin Ridan (金日磾)" or "Zhuti (朱提)". I certainly think that no change ought to be made at the present time, and that no change should be made until the majority of the major publications in the field begin consistently using diacritics throughout their texts.

@JohnBlackburne: I think you're probably right, and it's a shame, really, because pinyin's diacritics are so darn convenient, as their shapes are (more or less) the exact pitch changes of each tone.  White Whirlwind  咨  23:42, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Indeed the three-way segmentation of the the readership is a useful way of thinking about this. There shouldn't be any need for external lookup tools – I think everyone agrees that Wikipedia should contain both the characters and tone-marked pinyin for every term, the only question is how much these should be repeated.

The suggestion that readers unfamiliar with the marks can disregard them is true, but doing so requires the reader to interrupt the flow of their reading. Consider for example an article like Đại Việt sử ký toàn thư. If the reader knows Vietnamese, all those marks will be very useful, but if not, they are quite the obstacle course. Even more so if the article included tone marks on the Chinese names used.

And that raises another point: Wikipedia aims to be a general-purpose encyclopedia, not a specialist in Vietnamese literature, Chinese history or a thousand other topics. Usage in Sinological texts (or studies of Vietnam, etc) might not be the appropriate standard. Kanguole 00:07, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

@Kanguole (I like the username - but is it "already saw," "watched the pot" or "chopped down"? ☺): Reading the Vietnamese article, what interrupts the flow of my reading is simply that I don't know how to pronounce "Dai Viet su ky toan thu," regardless of the diacritics. Vietnamese doesn't exactly roll off my tongue, with or without diacritics. I doubt I would have an easier time without the diacritics, and the presence of diacritics might even help in one way: it immediately alerts me to the fact that the word is foreign.

I've been thinking about this issue a bit more, and what I've realized is that I'm more bothered by the lack of pinyin tone marks in the flow of the article - not just when a character / toneless pinyin combo is shown. Take this example from the article on the Yongle emperor:

He initially accepted his father's appointment of his eldest brother Zhu Biao and then his nephew Zhu Yunwen as crown prince, but when Zhu Yunwen ascended the throne as the Jianwen Emperor and began executing and demoting his powerful uncles, Zhu Di found pretext for rising in rebellion against his nephew.

I could click through to see the pronunciation of "Zhu Biao," "Zhu Yunwen" and "Jianwen," but that's a bit of a hassle. If pinyin tone marks are included, that obviously solves the problem (optimally, in my opinion). If the characters are there, I'll either know the pronunciation or be able to look it up easily (thanks to a browser extension). But as the Yongle Emperor article is written, my only option is to open up the linked articles, which really breaks the flow of my reading.

I actually really like the policy in Vietnamese articles of including diacritics. It doesn't bother me (even though I have no idea what the diacritics mean) any more than, say, the Lech Wałęsa article bothers me (even though I have no idea how the weird "l" and "e" are pronounced). It's probably helpful to people who know something about Vietnamese or Polish to have those diacritics there, and I can overlook them and read them as standard Latin characters. My personal opinion is that it's best to err on the side of correctness - pinyin with tone marks. -Thucydides411 (talk) 03:50, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

(Butting in here) – I've always assumed Kanguole's name was a funny linguistic joke, as kànguò le 看過了 is grammatically incorrect in Mandarin. Anne Yue-Hashimoto used to use it in her advanced grammar course at the University of Washington as an example of the limitations on combining guo and le, in any case. Maybe it's something else, though.  White Whirlwind  咨  08:48, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

(off-topic aside): I'm fairly certain 看过了 is perfectly grammatical Mandarin. My native-speaker friends use it, Google n-grams shows it at 10% the rate of 看过, and the Chinese grammar wiki explicitly gives it as a correct example of using 过+了 to emphasize a completed action. Maybe I'm missing something? -Thucydides411 (talk) 13:22, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

(more off-topic): Yeah, you do hear people increasingly use it, sort of like English speakers saying "I'm doing good". It's still technically ungrammatical: it's either kan le or kan guo depending on meaning, but not both.  White Whirlwind  咨  18:51, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

• According to Li & Thompson Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar p237, 这篇文章我看过了 is allowed, but 我看过了这篇文章 is not, showing that le 了 here is the sentence-final particle, not the aspect particle. Kanguole 21:27, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
• Indeed. Linguistically, there are two uses for the "了" character, referred to as Le1 and Le2. Le1 is an aspectual particle found directly after the verb to denote the completion of the action described by the verb. Le2, the terminal particle, is usually found at the end of a phrase or sentence and is a bit like an anchor, and it does not have the same temporal meaning. 过 is used here to demote the completion of the action in the place of Le1, and the 了 can be seen effectlvely as a Le2. It is, for example, like the second Le in 我去了外吃飯了 (He already went out for dinner). This is perfectly natural and grammatically correct, although one would never use "看了了" (verb+Le1+Le2) -- Ohc ^¡digame! 09:59, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Okay, but returning from the grammatical interlude, isn't the policy in Vietnamese and Polish articles (and probably many other languages with diacritics) on en.wikipedia a reasonable one? They seem to use diacritics correctly, and trust that readers who don't understand them will simply ignore them. I think there is something to be said for using pinyin according to the technical standard, especially since limited software support for diacritics is a thing of the past. -Thucydides411 (talk) 05:04, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

I've already made my opinion clear, but I'll wrap it up with one last summation. The display of and ease of adding diacritics is, of course, much greater today than in years past. However, I don't really care in this instance, because the use of pinyin diacritics in the flow of text is still uncommon in both Sinological literature and the reliable source literature as a whole, and so it's ultimately irrelevant. Someday that will probably change, and Thucydides411 and Victor Mair will rejoice, but that day is not today. Perhaps we can lay odds as to which will come first: that day or the day when Kanguole decides it's time to update the Baxter (1992) reconstructions at Old Chinese.  White Whirlwind  咨  08:19, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

You made a good point when describing your reading experience, but it is not a matter of correctness: we are supposed to be writing in English, and the norms of other languages do not apply. Nor should we assume that English-language publishers are omitting tone marks purely for technical reasons. As mentioned above, we have to balance the needs of different types of readers of this English-language encyclopedia, and while unfamiliar annotations can be disregarded, they do slow down reading. I thought that the Đại Việt sử ký toàn thư article, showing a complete disregard for most English-speaking readers, was a reductio ad absurdum, but you say you like it, so I guess we have very different viewpoints.

@White whirlwind: (off-topic again) Have you read the reviews of Baxter & Sagart listed at Reconstructions of Old Chinese#Book reviews, especially the last two? I think it's clear that their new reconstruction hasn't achieved the acceptance that Baxter's has. But maybe we should discuss this over there. Kanguole 08:52, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

My take: Vietnamese and Polish are different from Chinese pinyin because the two former languages use roman scripts natively with diacritics. Chinese has a non-roman script, and Pinyin was invented to aid literacy by codifying pronunciation. The addition of pinyin into articles in-line and inside infoboxes is I feel already a great aid to students of Chinese, but is not really mainstream. There are much better resources on the internet than WP that people can use to study pronunciation in Chinese. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 09:38, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

It's not a question of using articles to study Chinese pronunciation, but rather knowing the names of the people mentioned in an article. If the name "Puyi" is given, one has incomplete information about the person's name. Pǔyí gives the full pronunciation, and is the technical standard for rendering the name in the Latin script. As for the diacritics hindering reading, I think that especially in pinyin, they're not much of a problem. Polish or Vietnamese diacritics are much more involved than pinyin diacritics (e.g., "ử " "Đ" and "ł" are harder to parse than "ǎ" or "ù"), but we use Polish and Vietnamese diacritics throughout the English-language articles on Wikipedia. I get that this is contentious, but that's my take. -Thucydides411 (talk) 07:35, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

"or in an infobox clearly visible" should be specified, as this is already standard practice

@JohnBlackburne: Regarding this edit.

It's not a "significant change" to a "long-established guideline". I fixed the wording to accurately reflect how the guideline is applied in articles, and to be more in accord with more authoritative guidelines that (appear to) directly contradict the wording before my edit. MOS:FORLANG, for instance, forbids the use of more than one foreign equivalent in the lead sentence, to prevent cluttering between "Topic X ... is Y." Admittedly, all four of Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Hanyu Pinyin and Wade-Giles could be taken as just one foreign equivalent, but that would really contradict the spirit of FORLANG, if not the letter, as four between two and four different ways of writing the Mandarin equivalent of the topic's name is more cluttersome than two foreign equivalents that are both written in the same writing system as English.

And I literally can't recall ever seeing a Wikipedia guideline that gave a specific instruction, and linked to an "example" article that had, for as long as I can remember, contradicted said instruction. Seriously, look at the Li Bai article and tell me where in the first sentence are both the Chinese characters and the Hanyu Pinyin representation for [his name].

The burden is actually on you to find where the previous wording was supported by a consensus, because otherwise the guideline should be worded descriptively, to reflect how articles on Chinese topics are actually written, and most of the best articles with the most watchers do not conform to your wording. Mao Zedong, for example, has 972 watchers, and I find it hard to believe that none of them have ever read MOS:CHINA if your wording is actually a "long-established guideline".

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:39, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Guidelines are established by consensus, i.e. by discussion such as here, so here we are. Your first point is incorrect. WP:LEAD does not override this guideline, instead it is the other way round. This guideline provides language-specific guidelines which are not covered by the general guideline. At times that means it will seem at odds with general guidelines, such as WP:LEAD. But that means we should not use WP:LEAD to rewrite this guideline. We should look for other evidence, or other arguments.

Having both Chinese and pinyin is normal and in line with MOS:FORLANG which has an example with Ukrainian and the Romanisation of it. Having both Traditional and Simplified is unusual and is only done when appropriate. The same is true of other Romanisations, such as for Cantonese. I agree that having multiple Romanisations for Mandarin is normally redundant; pinyin is overwhelmingly used today, and any other adds nothing. There may be particular cases though when it is useful, such as when an older Romanisation is the basis for the name of the person/place in English. As with providing traditional with simplified Chinese it should be left to editors judgement.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 01:00, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

I guess the argument is that if all this information (and more) is there in {{infobox Chinese}}, it's redundant clutter to repeat it in the opening sentence, and breaks the flow of the text. I have some sympathy for that, especially where people are insisting on additional forms of a name. Kanguole 01:37, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

@JohnBlackburne: Guidelines are established by consensus, i.e. by discussion such as here, so here we are. Ideally, yes, but in this case, if you cannot point to a prior consensus for your wording, the default position should be to describe how the majority of prominent articles already are written. That is the de facto consensus when no prior discussion has taken place. Perhaps a large number of obscure articles with one significant contributor each are in accordance with your wording, but the ones that have been pored over by a lot of long-term contributors generally don't seem to be so. WP:LEAD does not override this guideline, instead it is the other way round. Please read WP:LOCALCONSENSUS. If a small group of editors on the Chinese WikiProject or on this talk page (I'm not sure how much overlap there is there) take the view that Chinese articles should be written one way, and the overwhelming community consensus that led to the current wording of MOS:LEAD says otherwise, the latter takes precedence over the former. The one exception is if there are some special arguments to be made for an exception to the general rule which, like I said a few weeks ago on the LEAD talk page, I am open to. But I don't even think the local consensus is against my wording here: the guideline as you reverted it contradicts itself, by citing an article on a well-known Tang poet as an example of the guideline, but the article in question actually contradicts the guideline. It's not like the Li Bai article is overrun with editors who have no understanding of the Chinese language and are enforcing a general guideline that isn't working for Chinese articles; if it wasn't working for Chinese articles, then Chinese articles wouldn't already be overwhelmingly in line with it.

Having both Chinese and pinyin is normal and in line with MOS:FORLANG which has an example with Ukrainian and the Romanisation of it. Except that Ukrainian and the romanization of it are small and generally don't clutter the lead sentence a whole lot; this is not really the same as Chinese articles, of which quite a few have good reason to give two different native script equivalents and some even two or more romanizations. Having both Traditional and Simplified is unusual and is only done when appropriate. The same is true of other Romanisations, such as for Cantonese. Now we're talking! That's an interesting argument and I might be inclined to agree with it, but the guideline here still should account for such problems. Let's say we rewrote it to say that, if it seems appropriate to provide more than one Mandarin romanization or a romanized form of a topolect pronunciation, then only one romanized form should be provided in the lead sentence and the rest should be included in an infobox. We're in quick sand when it comes to, say, removing pinyin romanizations from the lead sentences of Taiwanese articles or all Mandarin romanizations from the lead sentences of Hong Kong articles, but that's another question. I agree that having multiple Romanisations for Mandarin is normally redundant; pinyin is overwhelmingly used today, and any other adds nothing. Hold on, I didn't say that. When it comes to reliable sources on classical Chinese literature written in English and published by university presses, Wade-Giles still appears to be the preferred system, so cutting WG completely from articles like the aforementioned Li Bai is unacceptable (although I have no problem limiting it to inclusion in the infobox, since Wikipedia is entitled to an in-house style). As with providing traditional with simplified Chinese it should be left to editors judgement. I don't know. Again, in most articles only one is really relevant, except to people who are very interested in gaining a deep knowledge of the topic. For the average reader, simplified characters are little more than off-topic window-dressing in articles on Tang poets, and the same is true of traditional characters in articles on the films of Zhang Yimou. Even if we are leaving it to editors' judgement, shouldn't we provide this kind of advice for them?

@Kanguole: No, that's the argument for having the information in the infobox as opposed to the lead sentence, which is not what my first comment was really about (although it is what most of the preceding paragraph is about). I don't actually have an opinion on whether it should be one way or the other, and that wasn't what motivated me to make the edit that was reverted. I think that, whether consensus is that we should go one way or that we should go the other, the wording of this guideline should accurately reflect that. I don't see anywhere on this talk page that the current wording was established by consensus, so all we have is articles that have been edited a lot of times by a lot of different editors. Historically, I've edited a lot more articles on Japanese topics than Chinese, and MOS:JAPAN also contravenes the letter, if not necessarily the spirit, of MOS:FORLANG, and I have never had a problem with that. The problem is that, with Chinese topics, the preponderance of articles that require three or four parenthesized foreign equivalents is quite large, which I had always assumed was why Infobox Chinese works the way it does and why so many prominent Chinese articles don't give Chinese equivalents in the first sentence. As I said, I don't actually have a strong opinion on this (see my recent edits to WT:MOSLEAD where I was arguing the opposite case), but the wording of the guideline should accurately reflect, if not a clear community consensus, common practice as indicated by the status quo of the affected articles; it should not reflect an artificial ideal that runs contrary to common practice.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 02:28, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Comment: I've long felt that our leads' opening lines need a good de-cluttering, but I'm also a fan of including linguistic information in an accessible form. I think the best option would be to specify that the opening line should have one set of characters (either S or T, as appropriate), with pinyin being included only if the article's topic is known primarily as a translated term (for example, Communist Party of China), and I don't think it's needed (in the opening line) even for cases like Tsien Tsuen-hsuin; all the other character, dialect, and other linguistic information could then go in a nice {{Infobox Chinese}}. This seems the cleanest and most robust solution to me. It's about time we discuss this, as the original doctrine on the opening sentence–infobox issue was created in this edit, which, as one can see, dates to July 2004 (12½ years ago), back in Wikipedia's infancy.  White Whirlwind  咨  02:42, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

@White Whirlwind: That solution is also fine by me, but I'd probably add that if we are using the pinyin (without tone marks) for a proper name that's usually written in WG in English we should also include the WG. If we are going to call the articles Laozi and Bai Juyi then hiding the more common English spellings in the "Transcriptions" tab in the infobox is silly.

It's also not entirely clear what you mean by "accessible form"; I agree with you on that point, but I had always assumed that the reason a lot of articles don't include this information in the opening sentence is because Infobox Chinese makes it redundant (indeed, there's no point including the Simplified, Traditional and various romanizations in an infobox, if they are already in the opening sentence).

Then there's the problem that I'm largely responsible for, that this started as a discussion of MOS:FORLANG and its relationship to this page, but actually if the title of the article is a Chinese proper name (as the examples I gave about) it's not really the same as if it's a translation. If we are using the pinyin spelling without tone marks as the title, then should the tone-marked pinyin be deprecated to the infobox?

I think we should make a list of the problems that need addressing:

1. If the title is a Chinese proper name written in pinyin (without tone marks) and the article includes an infobox, should the Chinese text be included the opening sentence?
2. If the title is a Chinese proper name written in pinyin (without tone marks) and the article includes an infobox, should the tone-marked pinyin be included the opening sentence?
3. If the answer to (1) is "Yes", should it be only one of Simplified or Traditional?
4. If the answer to (3) is "Yes", which form for which articles?
5. Should the maximum limit on the number of Chinese forms of a name included in the lead sentence be set at two, and if it is necessary to go over then all Chinese forms except the name of the article be in the infobox rather than the opening sentence?
6. Do any of the above deserve to be considered but ultimately not addressed specifically on this MOS page?
7. If the article title is not in pinyin, should non-tone-marked pinyin be discouraged?

Have I missed anything?

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 05:57, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

By the way, I hadn't actually noticed until "Ctrl+F"ing WP:LEAD for "Chinese" just now, but actually most instances of it are under WP:LEADCLUTTER, where a mostly-Mongolia-related-but-also-China-related article was explicitly called out. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 06:05, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Replying to this: Ideally, yes, but in this case, if you cannot point to a prior consensus for your wording, the default position should be to describe how the majority of prominent articles already are written. No, that is not how it works. At the top of this guideline, as on most others, it has Any substantive edit to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page. If you therefore want to change the guideline you should first seek consensus, perhaps with a RFC on the particular change you want to make. As White whirlwind noted this has been a long established guideline, one probably thousands of editors have referred to and not had a problem with. It might be time to change it, but it should not be changed lightly.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 18:56, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

At the top of this guideline, as on most others, it has [...] Again, the text you quoted and I cut assumes guidelines are authoritative and already have been formed by consensus. In this case, the clear consensus was already in favour of my wording, as it didn't change an authoritative guideline to say what I wanted it to say; it changed the wording to match how the guideline is already being implemented and apparently has been for a long time. The wording as you restored it is self-contradictory, and you still haven't accounted for this. If you therefore want to change the guideline you should first seek consensus, perhaps with a RFC on the particular change you want to make. Again, this isn't about what I "want". I don't really care which style we go with (although I lean slightly toward the one in use in the example article over the one prescribed in the text). I would be happy to open an RFC to determine whether we should go with the style prescribed in the current text of the guideline or the style employed in the cited example, but you need to help me figure out exactly what else, if anything, the RFC should be about. (Please read the list of questions above and tell me if I missed anything!) this has been a long established guideline, one probably thousands of editors have referred to and not had a problem with Then tell me why none of our articles except the stubs no one has edited and very few people have read actually follow it! Admittedly, your "thousands of editors" is likely an exaggeration (the page has 96 watchers, presumably almost all of them among the 373 members of WP:CHINA, and the number of editors who have read and understood the sentence in question and implemented it in writing articles is probably no more than three or four times that number), but I really can't imagine thousands of people have read the guideline carefully enough to be taken as approving of it, but not have read it carefully enough to notice that it contradicts itself. It might be time to change it, but it should not be changed lightly. It already has been changed. You may not realize it, but the majority of our well-established and frequently-viewed China articles already follow a new, apparently unwritten, version of the guideline. All I did was update the wording to match how it is implemented in articles, including in the Li Bai article. Yes, I admit that I do remember an old version of Wikipedia some years ago that did in fact include both the Chinese characters and the Hanyu Pinyin representation for [the names of articles on Chinese topics] in [their] first sentence[s], but it is no longer the case. At the very least, if you think the wording should not be updated to match the current trend, then you need to find another example to link to because, currently, the example contradicts the wording of the guideline itself. Personally I would much rather open an RFC to resolve this definitively, but if you are not going to help in forming the RFC question then I can't be held responsible. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 05:33, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

@JohnBlackburne: I actually hadn't checked until just now, but the diff White whirlwind provided above actually showed that wording similar to my edit was put in place back in 2004. At some point since 2004, the text , or in a box to the right in the introduction. was removed. Can you point me to the consensus discussion that decided it should be removed? It seems a significant proportion of our articles, including the example linked, already follow the convention that was established in 2004 as opposed to the more recent wording. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 05:38, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

@JohnBlackburne: I really need to be more careful. My change did not change the nature of this guideline in any way. It was a cosmetic alteration. Currently, the first sentence of MOS:CHINA#Introductory sentences reads Any encyclopedia entry with a title that is a Chinese proper name should include both the Chinese characters and the Hanyu Pinyin representation for their names in the first sentence. This appears to contradict the example of the Li Bai article and several others, but actually three paragraphs down we get Where there is more than one parameter in use in a given article a Infobox Chinese box can be used instead of zh. This removes the characters, romanization and pronunciations from the opening sentence, thus making it more readable[.] This means that the wording is on its face self-contradictory. The first sentence of the section should be changed to fix this. the a before Infobox Chinese should be changed to "an" as well, which is English grammar my Japanese 7th graders know. I'll implement the latter change now, and wait for your approval on the former since you already reverted it once and seem to be still under the impression that it was a substantive change to the nature of the guideline. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 05:49, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

• @JohnBlackburne: I have reverted back per the above. That said, I looked at the page history a bit, and it turns out the above grammatical error was inserted by you a couple years back, when you made a significant edit to the guideline and in your edit summary misleadingly called it a "copy edit".[3] I cannot find any discussion on this talk page about how editors can "consider" adding both simplified and traditional characters, but you removed the statement that editors "should" add both. I'm sorry if I'm missing some context, and I'm sorry to nitpick, but it's something of a pet peeve of mine to have my minor stylistic fixes to PAG pages described as "significant changes" by users who themselves are (apparently) guilty of just that. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 05:16, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

• Why go against the normative method used for articles about every other nation and language on Earth (excepting Japanese)? Peter the Great has like three iterations of his name plus the Russian and Russian Romanization in the first line. Every other article about a topic concerning a non-Roman alphabet language topic first gives the normative English spelling, then the non-Roman alphabet spelling and then a pronunciation guide for the foreign word. Shanghai has the characters right after the first word. Guangzhou Hong Kong and Hu Jintao do too. All four of these articles go on to have boxes with some specialized pronunciation info; something in the lead plus the box with specialized info seems perfect to me! Check out Seoul, Tehran, Isfahan, St. Petersburg, Vladivostok, Yangon, Mandalay, Yerevan, Medina, etc. Why go against the normative method for every other nation and language on Earth (excepting Japanese)? The real consensus that I see is to give some characters and a pronunciation guide in the lead and at the same time use the box for some of the more obscure info, like Wade Giles, Postal spelling, Pre-Wade Giles, Local pronunciations, Yitizi, literal translations, etc. I feel there is no need to hide the Chinese characters and Pinyin tone marks. Having that in the lead while simultaneously giving us a little side box with the specialized info seems perfect. I say, instead of saying either in the style guide, it should say and/or. Here's my change: Any encyclopedia entry with a title that is a Chinese proper name should include both the Chinese characters and the Hanyu Pinyin representation for their names in the first sentence and/or in an infobox clearly visible in the lead. Geographyinitiative (talk) 11:17, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

Traditional and simplified Chinese markup

This needs to cover proper {{lang}}, {{lang|xx}}, and {{zh}} markup for distinguishing between traditional and simplified Chinese (generally) as well as different Chinese languages and dialects. An informal overview of this can be found here; we may need additional template work to be able to handle this. E.g. {{lang-zh_HANS}} does not exist, etc.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  22:21, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

Yes, this is probably a good idea.  White Whirlwind  咨  14:23, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Any encyclopedia entry with a title that is a Chinese proper name should include both the Chinese characters and the Hanyu Pinyin representation for their names in either the first sentence or in an infobox clearly visible in the lead. The article title i

"Any encyclopedia entry with a title that is a Chinese proper name should include both the Chinese characters and the Hanyu Pinyin representation for their names in either the first sentence or in an infobox clearly visible in the lead. The article title itself is normally the pinyin representation with the tone marks omitted: "Mao Zedong", not "Máo Zédōng", unless another spelling is common (see below)."

This policy is absurd. Every article about a foreign language topic on Wikipedia has a little something about the relevant foreign word right after the English word in the article.

Why can't Chinese be normal too?

The decade of debates on the subject which I imagine you must have had to come to this ridiculous policy really makes no difference: it was the wrong conclusion.

This should be changed immediately. You can't see the characters for Li Bai's name when you open the page.

I love having the language box off to the side when you need it to explain some of the complicated aspects of a name or some of the rarer transcriptions, but's that's no reason to make it seem like there are no Chinese characters for the name Li Bai.

Every other langauge (except maybe Japanese?) doesn't do it this way.

"in either the first sentence or in an infobox" should be "in the first sentence and/or in an infobox"

Wake up. Geographyinitiative (talk) 14:29, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

Agreed. This is an old issue here that dates to an arbitrary (wasn't discussed) addition back in 2007. It has come up a few times since but there's never been enough consensus to change it, if memory serves.  White Whirlwind  咨  20:42, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

I would support including the characters and pinyin (with tone markers) in the lede, as a policy. -Thucydides411 (talk) 22:20, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

Merger proposal

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

I propose that Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Chinese) be merged into Wikipedia:Manual of Style/China and Chinese-related articles. The two have large overlaps and are both of reasonable sizes that the merging will not cause any problems as far as article size or undue weight is concerned. Szqecs (talk) 08:45, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

How does this merger make sense when MoS pertains to article content and Naming Conventions article titles? CaradhrasAiguo (leave language) 14:09, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

The MOS pages for Canada, Ireland, Malaysia, France, Poland and Singapore all deal with titles. Szqecs (talk) 14:56, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Should the Chinese infobox display both Simplified and Traditional Chinese for all Greater China and/or Sinosphere-related subjects, or should it only display the relevant ones per territory/area?

A per these discussions User_talk:Kdm852#Chinese_infobox and User_talk:WhisperToMe#Chinese Naming: There is a question on whether the Template:Chinese infobox should display both Traditional and Simplified Chinese for all relevant subjects, or whether it should omit Simplified or Traditional Chinese depending upon the subject.

If only Traditional or Simplified forms would be displayed, then this could happen:

• Several Mainland China/People's Republic of China-related topics post-1949 and those of Singapore and Malaysia would only have Simplified Chinese
• Hong Kong, Macau, and Republic of China (Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen, Matsu) topics would have Traditional Chinese

Thank you, WhisperToMe (talk) 17:02, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

• That introduces risk of conflict WRT things like diaspora articles. For that matter, the Traditional Chinese alphabet isn't the only alphabet in recorded Chinese history either. Should all articles between Zhou and Qin use only Seal Script? I'd say, no, let's keep both alphabets in infoboxes where possible. Simonm223 (talk) 17:07, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
• The infobox doesn't distract from the flow of the text, so having extra information there harms nobody. Therefore, there's no harm in including both Simplified & Traditional characters in the infobox. Phlar (talk) 20:08, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
• I see no reason not to have both.  White Whirlwind  咨  20:24, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
• I too see no reason to not have both. Nowadays with global media, internet and communications people are exposed to both routinely. Only a few places set down rules over which is to be preferred, elsewhere including all western countries there are no such rules and you see both. So for a topic if it has distinct simplified and traditional forms both are correct, neither is better, and the infobox is the ideal place for both and any Romanisations that make sense.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 21:10, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
• I disagree, but first, let me lay out what I tried to suggest to the OP in our previous discussion. It wasn't that we should include one or the other, but that in some instances, one may be irrelevant. For example, simplified is never used in Taiwan, and I would suggest that as such, articles which are solely related to Taiwan should not include simplified characters (eg Maokong Gondola). It is misleading to the reader as it suggests both are equally applicable in said context and they aren't. Likewise, articles on topics which are solely within the scope of the PRC after the introduction of the simplified script should not include traditional characters (eg CMG Headquarters, which, you'll notice, it currently does not). For a number of different articles, there is an obvious case to include both:

• Articles about Chinese historical topics which extend beyond the introduction of simplified Chinese (eg Tongmenghui), or
• Articles which apply to both a simplified literate jurisdiction as well as a traditional literate one (eg Hong Kong Basic Law), or where both are commonly used (eg Malaysian Chinese Association) which, to address a previous comment, would include diaspora issues.

It seems to me that wikipedia is not a translation dictionary, and the idea is to give the reader a clear indication of the actual situation and not just as much information as possible. After all, the argument could also be used to include Japanese or Tibetan in the infoboxes since this gives more information to readers, but it's a distraction, and often not actually relevant. Also, since wikipedia gives the ability to link to the Chinese language articles as well, which can be switched from traditional to simplified script, and reader familiar with those can still really access this information if they are interested.Kdm852 (talk) 00:14, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

• You mean what gets used in |c= is displayed in two fields with both typefaces, or are we talking about an auto-converter here? Szqecs (talk) 03:08, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

• I'm talking about both. The general use, or inclusion, of each particular script based on the relevance to the content of the article.Kdm852 (talk) 03:21, 10 October 2018 (UTC)
• So you are talking about how the template should be used, rather than to change the template? Szqecs (talk) 03:46, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

* Not just the template, just seeking consensus on a stylistic issue of when and where to use which script, both scripts, etc, since there are regional differences. In a similar way to why there would be little sense in including the Cantonese romanisation in an article that was about an issue that didn't have anything to do with it. The inclusion itself suggests that it is significant to the issue, as opposed to simply being a transliteration. Kdm852 (talk) 04:00, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

• Have both. The Chinese infobox takes little space, and the extra information adds value at little cost. Most foreigners studying Chinese learn simplified characters, so having them is useful on English wikipedia. -Zanhe (talk) 03:14, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

• I would argue that's irrelevant, wikipedia is not a language textbook. It should be about which is relevant to the topic at hand. If the students of Chinese want to know the simplified or traditional form when it isn't given, they can check the Chinese wiki themselves very easily. For those who aren't learning Chinese and just want the information relevant to the article, giving both is often misleading. Kdm852 (talk) 04:38, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

• It would be great to have both across all topics. I see no reason to prioritize either on different topics. Hayman30 (talk) 09:01, 10 October 2018 (UTC)
• I don't know about Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore and Malaysia, but there is no consensus to apply these guidelines to Taiwan-related topics. Given the controversial nature, I would say Taiwan-related articles should not have simplified. Szqecs (talk) 09:49, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

• I mean my Chinese reading comprehension isn't the greatest, but what I can read is in Simplified, fwiw. So if there's an article that lacks Simplified text and I want to read the Chinese phrasing, I'm probably running Traditional through Google translate, which imposes a risk of errors. I suspect that in the (admittedly small) category of English / Mandarin bilingual foreigners with limited Chinese literacy, I've a relatively normal experience here. The Simplified has value/ Simonm223 (talk) 11:48, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

• As I said above, in this case you can check the simplified Chinese wiki. The purpose of wikipedia is not to teach you Chinese. You could use this argument to support the inclusion of any language translation, even completely irrelevant ones. Kdm852 (talk) 01:05, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

• We should not rely on other websites, even the Chinese Wikipedia, in order to give relevant information we can easily give ourselves. The native names in the native scripts are relevant information; the name in other languages is not. —Kusma (t·c) 09:03, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

• That's sort of my point. The Simplified Chinese form is not an "native script" in Hong Kong, or in Taiwan, and therefore should not be included.Kdm852 (talk) 09:18, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

• We should keep both. It is difficult to determine exactly which articles should only have one of the scripts (Taiwanese singers that are big in mainland China? Taiwanese companies with factories in mainland China? Traditional Chinese is also widely used in calligraphy in all simplified-Chinese areas). We should only show just one if we don't know reliably what is correct for the other style (for example, both 台 and 臺 are frequently used in Taiwan-related traditional Chinese: Taiwan Beer is 台灣啤酒, the Taiwan Tobacco and Liquor Corporation is 臺灣菸酒公司). If there are possible variations, we shouldn't use our own, but stick with the sources. —Kusma (t·c) 09:03, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

• I don't see it as being all that difficult. For Taiwanese singers who are popular on the Mainland, there is a case to be made that both be used (it would be somewhat akin to adopting an English name when touring overseas, which would also be included in the article). For the municipal government in a small part of Taitung city, there is not any need to include Simplified since it is not used in that context. I made the same point above when speaking about diaspora issues, I don't see it as being any more difficult than, say, knowing when to give Chinese as well as Japanese names for things (for example Japanese occupation of Hong Kong or Momofuku Ando). It should be a fairly simple matter to establish a few clear set of criteria, as I tried to do above, and if they are understood, there should be very few instances of contention. I think there could also be a parallel drawn between this and the use of Commonwealth vs US standards of English. Usually one or the other is used, but in instances where there is variation, and both may be applied, this is quickly and easily identified in the article (I am not saying an entirely different script is the same as different spellings, but merely trying to find some sort of precedent for a situation that at the moment seems to have none). Also, your point about 台 vs 臺 kind of reinforces my point; usually there is one officially used variation (in company names, for example), but on other occasions both may be used (as is the case for 台灣/臺灣), and when both are relevant, both are given, when there is only one, only one is used. Kdm852 (talk) 09:27, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

• Comment This is starting to look like WP:SNOW and WP:1AM here. While I respect Kdm852's passion, they have not provided a compelling case for excluding useful information whereas several editors have pointed out the utility of inclusion. Simonm223 (talk) 12:35, 11 October 2018 (UTC)
• Support both styles for all Chinese world articles - While it is true Wikipedia isn't strictly speaking a Chinese dictionary/learning guide, it's important to know the Chinese characters to help find resources in Chinese about the subject. We do have automated converters and OCR readers, but sometimes those are inaccessible and it helps learning/memorizing both forms to find sources on either side of the strait. WhisperToMe (talk) 07:18, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

Sino-

Should the prefix "Sino-" be used for both China and Taiwan? For example, Sino-Mongolian relations. Kaldari (talk) 22:04, 16 October 2018 (UTC)

No. "Sino-" as a prefix means China, i.e. China. It’s not really a separate word, just the prefix form of "China", just like Anglo is the prefix form of "English". For the example you give just search for "Sino-Mongolian relations" on the internet, and all the items it finds are to do with Mongolia and China today, at least when I try it. Seems it’s a popular thing to write about.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 08:16, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

Agreed with above: No. This should only be used for topics as they relate to China. There's a list of national prefixes here [4] Kdm852 (talk) 08:47, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

Naming administrative divisions of China within articles

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

This RfC had two separate questions. There seemed to be a rough consensus that administrative level designations may be necessary for disambiguation depending on context. There wasn't consensus as to whether there is a specific administrative level cutoff above which disambiguation is always unnecessary, although there was agreement that major cities do not need administrative level disambiguators. For the second question of whether the administrative level descriptors should be capitalized, the raw vote was three editors who clearly support using lowercase letters (unless it's a proper name), two editors who appeared to support always using uppercase, and a remaining three editors who did not express clear opinions. Given a small numerical lead and that their arguments were more clearly rooted in existing guidelines (namely MOS:CAPS), I am going to close this as a weak consensus to use lowercase letters for administrative levels when the administrative level is not part of a proper name. I'll also note that if this question had been closed as "no consensus", the most relevant guideline to follow would be MOS:CAPS, leading to the exact same style recommendation. Finally, it wasn't explicitly discussed by most participants, but based on the examples of desired usage provided by various editors, it seems like there's an implicit consensus to not put administrative levels inside parentheses in article text. (non-admin closure) _signed, Rosguill ^talk 21:46, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

---

Recently the WP:ITN nomination of 2019 Xiangshui chemical plant explosion made me realize that we don't have a consistent style for administrative divisions of China. Here's the full example:

On 21 March 2019, a major explosion occurred at a chemical plant in Chenjiagang (Town), Xiangshui (County), Yancheng, Jiangsu (Province), China.

Each of these parentheses represents an optional descriptor which can be seen in many English-language sources about China. (I have omitted the city level as it is very uncommon to append "city" or "prefecture" to the end of these.) For each level in question (town, county, province), we want to answer:

1. Should the administrative level descriptor be present?
2. If so, should it be written in uppercase (Chenjiagang Town) or lowercase (Chenjiagang town)?

Thanks, RfC relisted by Cunard (talk) at 05:29, 5 May 2019 (UTC). King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 06:09, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

• Comment: Adding RfC to increase participation. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 03:34, 9 April 2019 (UTC)
• Hm. Given the largely-static provincial boundaries, and the sheer size of China, I'd vote yes to the first question; and for the former (letters in majuscule) for the second. However, I'd argue that prefecture-level city is needed; taking the Xiangshui example, I'd advocate the following: "Chenjiagang Town, Xiangshui County, Yancheng City, Jiangsu, China". (I've left off the "province" descriptor, for consistency. We wouldn't say "Manitoba Province", now, would we?) —Javert2113 (Siarad.|¤) 04:21, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

  I think for the city we should just follow common usage, e.g. how its Wikipedia article does it. For big cities at least, something like Xihu District, Hangzhou City, Zhejiang, China just looks absolutely ridiculous. (By the way, on provinces, I think there is a big difference between English-speaking and non-English-speaking countries. Take for example, Gifu Prefecture, Japan, where prefecture is the first-level division in Japan. I'm not arguing that we should include "province", just that it is not obvious we shouldn't.) -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 04:50, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

  To my mind, adding the qualifiers in brackets every time seems needlessly tedious. I think it should suffice to use the names without the (town/city/province) since the format of the address should make it fairly obvious where the deliniation is, and if someone needs further clarification, they can follow the link. So, the above example would simply read: Chenjiagang, Xiangshui, Yancheng, Jiangsu, China. Kdm852 (talk) 05:29, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

• Comment In the circumstance that the locations are presented in successive words covering many administrative levels, then "Chenjiagang Town, Xiangshui County, Yancheng City, Jiangsu Province, China" would be useful to clearly establish what each entry in the short list is, ensure everything below the China level is presented consistently, and give a rough idea of the relationship of the entries. (No brackets needed, as it's not unusual to see Town/City/Province in sources.) However, outside of the situation where such a strict list is needed, and even in shorter lists of 2 or 3 levels, I wouldn't the descriptors by default. For the provinces certainly, there is plenty of usage in English sources without the word "Province", and I agree with above that for big cities it is unnecessary. CMD (talk) 09:10, 9 April 2019 (UTC)
• Include the labels only when necessary in the context; do not capitalize them per MOS:CAPS (they are not proper names or parts of proper names but clariciation/disambiguation labels, like "cat" in "Siamese cat", and "state" in "New York state", and "nation of and US state of" in "don't confuse the nation of Georgia with the US state of Georgia". In proper name cases, do capitalize (e.g. Terrebonne Parish, Lousiana; County Down, Ireland). Also, do not specify locations in this much detail when not necessary to do so, for the same reason we do not write "San Francisco (city), San Francisco County, California state, United States of America".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:00, 10 April 2019 (UTC)
• Yes, cities should not be appended with their administrative division, constitutionally, the administrative division is Province-County-Town, and prefecture is created after that, but for as long as I'm concerned, I don't think it would be necessary to append divisional rank above the county level, as most of those boundary rarely change. Viztor (talk) 02:15, 29 May 2019 (UTC)
• Include the labels only when needed in the context. Include a bit more "levels" info, but don't go overboard Agree with SMcCandlish's points which were the same ones I was going to make. To that I would add,due to the size of China, and the unfamiliarity of a typical English Wikipedia with internal Chinese geographical definitions, a bit more explanation or maybe info on one extra level is typically needed compared to, e.g. a place in the USA. North8000 (talk) 12:21, 29 May 2019 (UTC)
• Question 1 - Use administrative level descriptors when necessary for disambiguation, but not in other cases. Question 2 – Use lowercase.Naomi.piquette (talk) 00:40, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Citations of Chinese-language sources

A Following up the conversation here, there was a consensus that reliable academic sources on China do not use a post-surname comma in their citations but there seemed to be some confusion (and reluctance) about the difficulty involved in creating a new template to deal with the issue.

There's no such need. The existing default templates handle the formatting perfectly well, and how to use the |authormask= should simply be explained here.

B For people coming here to look at formatting for articles on China, we should repeat the rule at MOS:ROMANIZATION that the (in this case pinyin) romanization must be included for the English Wiki. It's the native name in characters and translation that are optional. (Personally, I've seen both: citations of Chinese sources that have only the characters—making it illegible to most readers without a cut/paste trip to Google Translate—and citations giving only translated names, making it difficult to find the intended source.)

C Whirlwind and specialist publications may follow Chicago Manual style of adding the Chinese characters immediately after the names of authors and titles but our house style is to put foreign text into parentheses. Seeing different formatting in the citations too often seems like it could start bleeding over into the articles; I'd think we should highlight that issue or have an optional citation example using parentheses for the foreign text.

That seems more contentious, though, so I won't emend that part of the guideline pending some discussion here. — LlywelynII 03:48, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Oh, D

...each word capitalized, the rest given in lowercase unless they are proper nouns...

is self-contradictory. Personally, I'm completely in favor of at least permitting use of Wikipedia's standard title case and capitalizations (e.g., Hànxué zhī Shū and Wenzi Gaige Chubanshe). I'm aware specialist publications avoid both (e.g., Hànxué zhī shū and Wenzi gaige chubanshe) but it seems like an eyesore unless the rest of the page follows French conventions as well.

If we're going to advise/mandate following pinyin's internal capitalization rules here, we should make that clearer, possibly link to the relevant article, and use it consistently. (The previous version of the guideline capitalized Hànyǔ Fāngyán Gàiyào but then wrote the publisher's name in the French style.) — LlywelynII 04:40, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

I didn't realize that |author-mask= could be used in this way, and it's certainly better than putting everything in the |author= field, but I still don't think this page should be promoting it.

It is true that names of East Asian authors are often written without the comma in citations in specialist publications on Chinese or Japanese topics, where the target audience all know the convention, but Wikipedia is supposed to be a general-purpose work, targeted at a broad audience. In addition, Chinese and Japanese authors often publish on other topics that are likely to have wider audiences. In publications in global topics like the sciences, it is common to mark all authors' family names in citations in a uniform manner. For example, Nature uses "Zhou, L. P." and "Clark, J. D.", while Science uses "L. P. Zhou" and "J. D. Clark". This allows readers to identify the surnames (which are a key identifier of citations, and also used in short citations), without assuming knowledge of regional name conventions.

By the way, I personally find the aliases |surname= and |given= less confusing than |last= and |first= when dealing with Chinese and Japanese names, and especially when mixed with Western names. Kanguole 13:12, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

It's always good to have a discussion. Regarding the preference to have foreign terms in parentheses, I think it's fine either way. I avoid consulting unvetted essay-type pages like WP:Writing better articles as a matter of course, though. In any case, the issue of what so-called "specialist publications" follow is thornier than one might think, because rather than being abstruse and erudite things no one pays attention to, such publications tend to be the defining publications of the field in question, and so their (ostensible) idiosyncrasies can't just be brushed aside. This problem plagues WP:WikiProject Law and WP:WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court cases, which insist on using the rather sui generis Bluebook style in their articles for all sources, not just cases (a policy I disagree with). Regarding Kanguole's use of surname/given fields, I agree that it's clearer, but old habits and inculcations die hard.  White Whirlwind  咨  05:20, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

I am inclined to agree with Kanguole's advocacy for usage of commas, a la Nature style, to make clear the surname ordering (I personally think those who don't know Chinese/Korean/Vietnamese surname ordering live under a rock). As to B in LlywelynII's OP, in some cases, due to the ambiguity of pinyin, strict-to-the-letter adherence of MOS:ROMANIZATION is impractical if one wants to "reverse engineer" the original title without clicking through multiple links; insistence on Mandarin pinyin romanization in Chinese-language sources is also an obvious non-starter for Hong Kong and Macau sources. CaradhrasAiguo (leave language) 06:32, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

@Carardhras: that's not my policy or even ours. It's MOS:ROMANIZATION, is already what this page says, and is universal across Wikipedia. You're welcome to propose changing that, but it's not where we are now.

As far as mistreating Chinese names as western ones needing a comma, at the very least the page should be explaining how to use |author-mask= and that the option exists to format them correctly (afaik every nation on Earth now defaults to pinyin romanization of Chinese names which are written in this order; as Caradhras admits, that should at this point be as well understood as Beijing and Guangzhou: President Xi/Xi Jinping is on the news every week even if they missed Mao; the template further clarifies exactly what went into each field for the curious), despite the western default of Wikipedia's templates. Using |surname= instead of |last= isn't a major issue but it is silly: Chinese people might misunderstand 最后的名字 when they aren't taught better but Americans and Brits know exactly that "last name" is simply the much more common way to say "family name".

Apparently the wording should be clearer about the optional nature of the translations, as well, although I'll obviously leave that to Kanguole to decide. — LlywelynII 03:00, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

I've given the argument for uniform treatment above, but I'll add that citations are different from running text, where one doesn't see "Smith, John" either. Kanguole 16:55, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

I thought LlywelynII's B went without saying. The policy mandates romanizations, and just having characters à la carte has always been a no-no. I would support a proposal to mandate including characters, as well.  White Whirlwind  咨  18:49, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau

@CaradhrasAiguo: Stop reverting already. This section makes future similar discussions unnecessary. It specifically refers to PRC, so maps of 200 years ago can still include Taiwan. It also says "indiscriminately", so using a different shade is still acceptable. It contains nothing against consensus. Ythlev (talk) 00:54, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

Request for comment: Do the traditional and simplified forms of Chinese count as the same name or different names in regards to eligibility of displaying characters?

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

There is consensus to display both Simplified and Traditional. A few editors limited their support for displaying both to the infobox, and most editors noted that there is room for case-by-case exceptions. Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 23:04, 4 March 2020 (UTC) (non-admin closure)

---

@Geographyinitiative: The question is whether the Traditional Chinese or Simplified Chinese forms of Standard Mandarin count as the same name or as different names in regards to names of places or people. This determines whether both forms should be displayed in the Template:Chinese infobox, or whether only one or the other should. For example, would a simplified Chinese form of a name of a person in the Republic of China like leader Chiang Kai-shek be considered a "foreign language name" and therefore excluded from the template (see reasoning in this edit)?

(for people unfamiliar with Chinese history, the Republic of China controlled the Mainland until 1949, then moved to Taiwan, while Simplified Chinese was introduced in Mainland China by the People's Republic of China after that; Chiang never changed his allegiance from the ROC and remained on Taiwan)

This may affect multiple articles, including historical Chinese figures who lived before the advent of simplified Chinese characters so I believe it is necessary to do the RFC here.

For further info see:

• Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/China_and_Chinese-related_articles#Should_the_Chinese_infobox_display_both_Simplified_and_Traditional_Chinese_for_all_Greater_China_and/or_Sinosphere-related_subjects,_or_should_it_only_display_the_relevant_ones_per_territory/area? (previous discussion on whether articles related to Chinese should have both Traditional or Simplified forms)
• Talk:Chiang_Kai-shek#Simplified_character_names (discussion which triggered this particular RFC)

Pinging those involved in the first discussion and other interested parties:

• @Kdm852: @Szqecs: @Wefk423: @White whirlwind: @JohnBlackburne: @Simonm223: @Zanhe: @Hayman30: @Kusma:

WhisperToMe (talk) 19:04, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

• As I said before, Simplified and traditional should usually both be displayed. Which of the answers to the question implies that? —Kusma (t·c) 20:07, 29 December 2019 (UTC)
• Support displaying both Simplified and Traditional: Partly because trying to only do one or the other would lead to more talk page conflicts, partly due to neutrality over the question of "what is China", partly because a typical reader interested in China-related topics would want to see both (see previous discussion), and partly because the purpose of Template:Chinese is to show the reader various forms of Chinese. If the ROC gov't only considers certain forms authoritative, it would be interesting info, but this is best footnoted instead of being used as a reason to exclude Simplified Chinese from the Chinese template of ROC-related articles. WhisperToMe (talk) 20:20, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

• Support for including only relevant scripts I see the arguments listed above, particularly about starting a lot of arguments on talk pages about which script to include. However, as I have said before, I think it is inappropriate to include scripts on articles which aren't used locally, or relevant for some other specific reason. We don't include katakana or hangul on articles where it isn't relevant. And for those readers who are familiar enough in Chinese to want to know how to render the topic in the alternative script, it would be simple enough to check the Chinese version of the relevant page. If they aren't literate enough in Chinese to do that, I don't see how including both on everything could possibly benefit them. There are a great many articles where both will be relevant (such as important events in history, popstars, etc), but for topics which are only relevant in one context, it seems unnecessary at best and dismissive of the local context at worst. Kdm852 (talk) 06:37, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

Please see my following comment: I probably meet your "not literate in Chinese", and would be helped. Imaginatorium (talk) 13:28, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

• Support displaying both -- in general. Of course there may be exceptions, but I very strongly oppose the notion that because some bunch of people dislike this or that form, we should withhold information to avoid upsetting them. I am a (non-native) Japanese speaker, and not a Chinese speaker to any useful degree. In descriptions of Chinese topics the kanji (as I think of them) make the difference between total incomprehension and "aha!" understanding what is being talked about. In very many cases, given the "simplified" form only I am completely lost; occasionally the Chinese "simplified" form is more or less the same as the usual Japanese form , while the "traditional" form is hyperornate, and quite distant. (Example: trad: 體 simp/Japanse: 体) Imaginatorium (talk) 13:28, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

• I'm not sure why you said "because some bunch of people dislike this or that form", I don't recall using this as a justification at all, and it seems somewhat like an attempt to dismiss other people's arguments without engaging them. But, to your point about being a Japanese speaker who finds the inclusion of both scripts useful, I have a few quibbles. First, WP is not a language dictionary and I don't see why this argument applies here. If we are to consider this for Japanese, why not include all available scripts for all topics since it would help learners of XYZ language? Second, if this is the case, the you could check the Japanese version of the respective page; we wouldn't include Hangul for the benefit of people learning Korean. Also, the reverse isn't applied, Chinese scripts are not given for Japan-related articles (I am not including the overlap between Chinese scripts and kanji since the inclusion of the latter is as a form of Japanese, and not to give a Chinese rendering of the topic). The inclusion of Chinese text in WP articles is as a way to give the local rendering(s) of topics, and since there are places where Sinitic are spoken but do not use both scripts, the local variant should be the only one used. This is the way WP seems to work for every other language group I can think of (Ukraine articles do not always include Russian renderings, articles on India do not include renderings for languages which are not spoken locally, etc), so I don't see why the policy should be different for Chinese-related articles. Kdm852 (talk) 04:46, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

• Only primary script in general, secondary allowed. Same reason why British English should be used for British topics. The problem with including both is that the internet has a bias towards simplified. For example, {{Lang-zh}} displays simplified first unless you set the order. Or {{Lang}} uses simplified typeface (technically the browser) unless you set script to traditional. There are countless Taiwan-related articles edited by users who don't know what they're doing and have mostly simplified typeface. Therefore we should encourage people to use traditional, only including simplified if they know what they're doing. Ythlev (talk) 18:58, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

•  Comment: From my experience Chinese templates tend to use different templates, Template:Zh in the lead, and Template:Chinese as an infobox to the side. Many articles use both, with Zh only including the variety of Chinese used in that locale (Simplified Chinese for post-1949 Mainland, post-1969 Singapore, and recent Malaysia, while other topics often use Traditional) unless "Template:Chinese" is not used (if the character count is relatively short) while both varieties of Chinese (Simplified and Traditional) are recorded in Template:Chinese to the side. As for the analogy re: British and American English, ENwiki articles on subjects like Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, eggplant, and coriander typically note both forms. WhisperToMe (talk) 19:38, 1 January 2020 (UTC)
•  Comment: Also note that Template:Chinese by default displays Traditional Chinese first, and one needs to set a flag "order=st" to display Simplified first. WhisperToMe (talk) 09:10, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

• Support displaying both The RFC is about {{Infobox Chinese}}, not {{zh}} (or {{lang-zh}}) and per WhisperToMe's examples. CaradhrasAiguo (leave language) 20:11, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

• Support displaying both — this is a longstanding practice that is perfectly justified given the "fuzziness" of the boundaries between the two varieties' uses across the globe and the minimal intrusiveness of including both. As I've said before, this is much ado about nothing.  White Whirlwind  咨  06:40, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

• ROC exists The ROC has not been militarily conquered by the PRC and exists as a separate political entity that is about to have a Presidential election. The ROC just doesn't use PRC simplified forms in native-native communication in the ROC guys. It would be deceptive to the readers include the PRC's simplified forms in their pages without specific cause. Wiktionary, a dictionary of all languages, DOES include simplified forms for Taiwan locations etc. Why? Because it's a dictionary. But English Wikipedia must only include native langauge material on the relevant pages. Mandarin Chinese Wikipedia is justified in displaying all forms of all characters because they are an encyclopedia specifically made for Mandarin speakers. I would say specific justification for the inclusion of PRC forms in certain circumstances on English Wikipedia articles that are about Taiwan can be argued, for instance the 1992 Consensus page. Keep in mind that the PRC's 2013 linguistic standard [5], Xiandai Hanyu Cidian, and the historical usage in Mainland China justify inclusion of traditional character forms in the PRC. They are still using traditional characters in native-native communication in a limited capacity including road signs and elite academic work and in their connection with HK, Taiwan, etc. To say "we want all forms" in this box is like saying we need to teach creationism and evolution in the science classroom. Creationism has its place in a class on religion. Keep your creationism (PRC simplified forms) out of my science class (Free Area of the Republic of China). I have been banned once or twice for my opinions on this, so please don't directly respond to me. I am making a comment because of the good will conversations I had with another user who invited me to comment here. I do not want to continue participation. If you decide against this (which is literally impossible- you want minor geography in places that have nothing to do with the PRC and don't use the simplified character displaying non-native linguistic material???), then you are enforcing PRC policy on the ROC. Sounds dumb. That's my two cents; please don't get angry. Geographyinitiative (talk) 07:10, 8 January 2020 (UTC)
• Support displaying both - There is a reason why Wikipedia in Simplified Chinese merged with the Wikipedia in Traditional Chinese to form Wikipedia Chinese edition. - 祝好，Josephua^(聊天) 14:52, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

@WhisperToMe: @Zanhe: On another note, should we update the guidelines for the Template:Zh in introductory sentences? Articles such as Zhou Enlai, Hu Jintao, Xi Jinping, Lee Hsien Loong, and Chen Shui-bian have opted out to use only one form in the Template:Zh in introductory sentences. Ironically enough, the example that the manual of style gives us on how to use the Template:Zh in introductory sentences, Zeng Guofan, the Zeng Guofan article omits the Simplified Chinese entirely in its introductory sentence. Other articles such as Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Ma Ying-jeou, Tsai Ing-wen, Lee Kuan Yew, Chiang Kai-shek, and Sun Yat-sen have opted to rid the Template:Zh in introductory sentences entirely. In summary, can we update the Manual of Style system based on these changes? - 祝好，Josephua^(聊天) 15:18, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

• Support displaying both - I personally prefer traditional chars, but it's important to acknowledge that most Chinese-language publications today are printed in simplified chars. As a practical matter, people interested in topics about Greater China are likely to encounter simplified characters even for Taiwan/Hong Kong topics, and purging them from articles is not going to help readers. -Zanhe (talk) 18:51, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
• Support displaying both in the infobox {{Infobox Chinese}}, as topics are not mutually exclusive in relevance to difference areas of Greater China. --Cold Season (talk) 00:44, 25 January 2020 (UTC)
• Support displaying both but in the Info Box. As little distraction as possible. Most readers are general readers, and don't know any Chinese. Even my non-Chinese literate students would sometimes complain that the characters were daunting, even after my brilliant explanations. Sigh.ch (talk) 05:31, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.