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Proposal for amendment to rule on municipality article-titles

I posted the below comment on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Japan and a number of users responded. Before it turns into a full blown MOS-amendment debate, I decided to move it here. Basically, we are discussing whether the rules for naming articles on Japanese municipalities should be changed. elvenscout742 (talk) 00:54, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

The Manual of Style says that we should For cities, use the form [[{city-name}, {prefecture-name}]]; for example, Otaru, Hokkaidō. Exception: For designated cities, use [[{city-name}]] without appending the prefecture unless disambiguation from another city or prefecture is necessary.

I can understand the exception for designated cities, although I think it would be better if we made the exception for cities that have the same name as their prefectures and used, say, Okinawa (city).

However, a more significant issue is one I recently raised in the current move request at Talk:Kamakura. We have a huge number of articles on Japanese municipalities where either they are the only usage of their name, or they are the clear primary topic, and so we have [[Name of city]] redirecting to [[Name of city, name of prefecture]]. This seems somewhat counter-intuitive, since the only reason we need the prefecture name is for disambiguation. Other countries' municipalities don't seem to follow this convention (Tubbercurry, Huludao, etc.), so why do we? Having a redirect from a simple form to a complex one just seems wrong...

elvenscout742 (talk) 01:15, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Doesn't a similar issue happen with the names of several United States municipalities? For example, the city of Orlando in Florida is clearly the primary usage of "Orlando", but the article is still located at Orlando, Florida, because of some weird pre-existing standard on when you only refer to a city by its name in the American press. I don't see why Japan should be treated any different.—Ryulong (琉竜) 02:47, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
Well, Japan isn't America. The Chinese and Irish examples I gave demonstrate that this is not some Wikipedia-wide thing (or at least it doesn't appear to be), so why should we apply the weird pre-existing standard on when you only refer to a city by its name in the American press to articles on Japan? I'm not sure where that American standard comes from, but mightn't it have something to do with America's status as a federation of what were originally independent states? Japanese prefectures have never really worked that way, anyway. elvenscout742 (talk) 06:13, 17 January 2013 (UTC)
With U.S. cities, there is often another town somewhere in the world with the same name. In particular, there are British editors who feel that the "original" town in England should be primary, for example Boston, Lincolnshire as opposed to the one in Massachusetts. With Japanese cities, I don't think we have to deal with any of that kind of nonsense. Kauffner (talk) 04:46, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
I agree wholeheartedly on this one. There's no good excuse for applying U.S. geographical terminology outside the U.S.
Peter Isotalo 12:39, 19 January 2013 (UTC)
Before I continue, Elvenscout may I ask why you brough this discussion here instead of WT:MOS-JA in the first place? This seems to be an issue with the manual of style rather than one that needs some sort of pre-argument with the WikiProject. And secondly, I never said that the standard exists and is because of the American MOS. I'm saying that a similar issue happens with American cities. For whatever reason, it was decided (at the MOS page) that only the cities that fall under the umbra of City designated by government ordinance need only be referred to by their singular names, unless there is some need for disambiguation from other topics (although I don't know why we have Shizuoka, Shizuoka and Saitama, Saitama). The example you give for Okinawa, Okinawa might be suitable, as might be removing the prefecture names from other prefectural capital articles, unless, again, there might be other article that there's disambiguation needed (eg. Matsuyama, Ehime). I am not sure the same can be said for all the smaller cities and towns dotting Japan (eg. Ginowan).—Ryulong (琉竜) 02:32, 20 January 2013 (UTC)
We have Shizuoka, Shizuoka because you moved it there less than a week ago.[1] Lord knows why, though, since Shizuoka City seems much more logical. Unless you're from the U.S., I suppose.
Ryulong, you seem to be at least somewhat familiar with the dealings here. Why doesn't the MOS-JA simply say "use <place name> for unambiguous place names and disambiguate in other cases according to the following stnadard"? What's the point of names like Shibuya, Tokyo, Moriyama-ku, Nagoya, Kōhoku-ku, Yokohama, etc?
Peter Isotalo 15:46, 20 January 2013 (UTC)
I brought this here rather than to WT:MOS-JA because I was not proposing a change to the MOS. I wanted to ask members of the project why the rule is this way in the first place. elvenscout742 (talk) 04:33, 21 January 2013 (UTC)
Also, we shouldn't be using disambiguators just because there is possible ambiguity. Where there is ambiguity, we should establish if there is a WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. I think since Matsuyama, Ehime is a prefectural capital, it is likely a primary topic and would be moved to Matsuyama if the guideline were to be changed. elvenscout742 (talk) 04:40, 21 January 2013 (UTC)
"Matsuyama" is a common Japanese surname.—Ryulong (琉竜) 04:52, 21 January 2013 (UTC)
Yes, but it's unlikely that any one person named Matsuyama is a more primary topic than the city. In fact, I just noticed that right now Matsuyama redirects to Matsuyama, Ehime, which just seems bizarre to me. English Wikipedia also apparently only has three articles on people named Matsuyama at the moment. elvenscout742 (talk) 05:19, 21 January 2013 (UTC)
You know, you're right about all of this. It's unnecessary to have disambiguators for unique city names. The wards that Peter Isotalo points out are a different story (although arguably "Shibuya" is the primary topic).—Ryulong (琉竜) 06:52, 21 January 2013 (UTC)
We probably should take into account, though, that when there are "wards" in a Japanese "city", that "city" is in some ways run like a prefecture, and those wards are effectively run like municipalities. In fact, Shibuya (and Shinjuku, etc.) is officially designated as a "city" in English.[2] (The ku also all function similarly to municipalities, in that alien registration and numerous other functions are performed at the "ward office", or in Tokyo the "city office", rather than the shiyakusho.) elvenscout742 (talk) 03:41, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Oppose. Summary: a renaming project would achieve conformity to various MOS, but it would be a misguided use of time and resources.

The project would require careful research and evaluation of a very large number of articles in order to rename, disambiguate, and provide data clean-up to all the articles which contain a link to a municipality. This would indeed achieve conformity to the Wikipedia standards.

However, the larger issue with Japanese municipality articles is that they're a big collection of stubs. Articles on municipalities often consist of only a few sentences and typically have outdated statistics. These articles also have the crappy situation of high readership statistics, but little useful content for the reader. There are few editors expanding content on municipality articles outside of the tourist cities (Kamakura, Kyoto, etc.). The rest are in sorry condition, and the time required to rename most of the municipalities would be better spent on article expansion.

Question: what's more important to English-language readers of Wikipedia: renaming articles, or actually discovering content in those articles?

Expanding these article is what I'm going back to this morning. I wish others would do the same. ---> Prburley (talk) 14:39, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Ironically, the article for the city of Okinawa mentioned in this discussion is a stub article. As is the article for the Okinawa Islands. The article for Okinawa Island is brief, and the article for Okinawa Prefecture hasn't had any expansion of content beyond a few sentences in years. All have a high readership. In lieu of a renaming project and discussion thereof, would anyone care to expand these articles? ---> Prburley (talk) 14:50, 21 January 2013 (UTC)
While I do agree with everything you have said, I have to point out that "we have better things to be doing with our time" is not a good reason for fixing the MOS. The only immediately necessary concerns if we were to amend the MOS would be moving the actual pages, which I can't believe would number more than around 1,000. Fixing redirects can be worked on later. Additionally, having the MOS say something is different from immediately forcing everyone on Wikipedia to stop what they are doing and fix a bunch of MOS violations. Anyway: I'm moving this discussion over to WPT:MOS-JA as per Ryulong. elvenscout742 (talk) 00:54, 22 January 2013 (UTC)
"We have better things to do" is kinda self-defeating. It would be like arguing that anyone opposing the suggestion should go fix articles instead of debating the issue.
Peter Isotalo 11:25, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose If we amend the MoS, there would be a lot of exceptions. As far as I know, there is no exception with the current MoS. It is very reasonable. Possible exceptions are Fuchū, Tokyo and Fuchū, Hiroshima, Date, Hokkaidō and Date, Fukushima, Izumi, Osaka and Izumi, Kagoshima, etc. See ja:同一名称の市区町村一覧. As for the city and the prefecture of Shizuoka, they should be like Hiroshima and Hiroshima Prefecture. Oda Mari (talk) 06:02, 22 January 2013 (UTC)
    • We already have exceptions for designated cities, which is really a pretty arbitrary choice when you think of it. The only thing we would need to do is to add a general rule along the lines of "use just <place name> if the name is unambiguous or a primary topic, in other cases, see the disambiguation rules". Where do you foresee problems with that kind of rule? Peter Isotalo 11:22, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose I do not feel that there is anything wrong with the current MOS, and the "city name, prefecture name" is clear and unambiguous. If anything, I would support doing away with the arbitrary designated cities exception, and standardize the format on "city name, prefecture name" in all instances for consistency. Making exceptions based on what individual editors consider "primary usage" is opening the door to POV --MChew (talk) 07:10, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
    So you suggest moves of Tokyo to Tokyo, Tokyo and Kobe to Kobe, Hyōgo? At least with the designated cities we know that these are the primary usages of these names.—Ryulong (琉竜) 08:06, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
    Primary meaning has to be decided in all cases. It's not a matter of "POV" but practicality. If naming has any bearing on the issue, it's like to influence doubt in clear-cut cases like Tokyo or Kobe. Peter Isotalo 11:16, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Question to those opposing. I browsed through Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names) and noted that there are really only two countries listed there that don't use the common-sense rule of "use <placename> unless disambiguation is needed": the United States and Japan. We all know that "<placename>, <state>" is the standard in the U.S. It's not the standard for Japan, however, and Japan doesn't differ very much from other countries. I would really like to know why the U.S. formula is being forced here. Peter Isotalo 11:16, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
    • I think that there is some confusion between WP:PRIMARY with WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. But why object to the current MOS simply because it parrots the style of the US formula? What difference does that make? The Japanese addressing system per Japan Post is based on <prefecture name>, <municipalty name>, <locality address> with the order typically reversed when writing roman letters to suit Western convention, so this format "City, Prefecture" is common in Japan. I still do not see argument that changing the MOS will result in any benefit. Under the present system, there is continuity for all municipality articles and no possibility for disambiguity, with any potential issues over WP:PRIMARYTOPIC easily handled through a disambiguation page. --MChew (talk) 16:27, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
Yes, and so is the same for the postal system of every other country in the world as far as I know. So what? In Ireland the postal system goes <locality address>, <municipality name>, <county name>, but Irish articles don't include the county name for every municipality article. The current system is not a "problem", per se, but it also isn't standard on Wikipedia, and there still doesn't seem to be a decent rationale for why. Having the simplest form redirect to a page with a disambiguator is counter-intuitive. The exceptions Oda Mari brought up above are a valid concern: we can discuss what to do about them in order to disambiguate them later -- parenthetical "(city)", parenthetical "(city in Hokkaido)", parenthetical "(Hokkaido)", or even keeping the current formatting. But for now we should be addressing the large number (majority? I'm not even sure...) of municipalities like Morioka that have this extremely silly problem. elvenscout742 (talk) 07:14, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Use of "no" in the names of historical figures?

I couldn't find this guideline specifically mentioned here: am I missing something? There appears to be overwhelming consensus on this convention, so can we just add it in? It was recently brought up[3] that a page with "Sugawara no Takasue" in its title should remove the "no" because Britannica doesn't use it. I wanted to point out the relevant guideline here, before noticing that it wasn't here. Should we include it? Or should we start work on moving Sugawara no Michizane, Kakinomoto no Hitomaro, Fujiwara no Michinaga, Minamoto no Yoritomo, Kamo no Mabuchi, ... ? elvenscout742 (talk) 07:49, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Seriously, anyone have a problem with me adding "For the names of historical figures who are conventionally referred to as A no B, follow this convention." to the page? elvenscout742 (talk) 01:11, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Britannica seems to be the only "reliable" source that changes the transliterations of the Japanese names, but because only Britannica does it doesn't necessarily make it correct. Is there a problem with leaving them at the correct transliterations?
  • Google reliable sources for " Sugawara no Michizane"
  • For historical figures it's surely best to research usage in books.
I don't know why the clan name without "no" is common in English Encycropeadias (third source). However "no" following Uji (the clan name given by the emperor) before the Edo era is general in English sources. "Myoji" + "Name" (personal name) reads "Myoji Name", but "Uji" (+ "Kabane") + "Name" generally reads "Uji no (Kabane) Name" (Exeption: Toyotomi - Toyotomi Hideyoshi without "no" is in general use). For example, "菅原孝標" is the following:
--Mujaki (talk) 19:36, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Britannica may be the only reliable source that routinely does this for all people who are conventionally known as "X no Y", but many other sources (Donald Keene's Seeds in the Heart: A History of Japanese Literature to 1600 is probably my favourite) place an arbitrary date on when they stop giving "no", so for people who flourished after 1189 we get Minamoto Sanetomo, Fujiwara Teika, etc. This is problematic because both Keene and Britannica are very widely used sources, and if someone were to create an article without "no" based on one of them, we need to be able to move it and say 'the MOS says we should use "no"'. Additionally, a few users have a tendency to bring Britannica into RMs and attempt to shift the RM to be more like Britannica -- as long as the MOS isn't clear on this that is a problem.

Apart from the issue with article titles, the subtitles on Kuroneko refer to Minamoto no Raikō as Raiko Minamoto, and I have seen other such instances: it's therefore possible the articles on these films will use awkward, non-standard naming conventions, so we should specify in the MOS that this is not good.

I don't think it's a good idea to rely on a broad examination of English-language books (maybe Japanese-language books?) because for obscure figures there are likely to be only a few mentions of the person in English-language sources, and if those sources just happen to prefer non-standard nomenclature...

Re Mujaki's concerns: We don't need to worry about the "[family name]-[given name]" order for other pre-modern individuals, as the MOS already specifies the rule here and no one is ever going to challenge it. I am only concerned with cases where (as with the vast majority of notable pre-Kamakura figures, and a few later ones) the convention is to say "X no Y", but the MOS doesn't currently mention that. I am also not concerned with very well-known people, because the reliable sources will unquestionably back us up. The problem is with relatively obscure figures where a GBooks search won't immediately support "X no Y".

For clarity, this is basically what I would like to add the following sentence to the end of the "Names of historical figures" section:

For historical figures conventionally known as [X] no [Y] (Fujiwara no Michinaga, Minamoto no Yoritomo, Kamo no Mabuchi, etc.), include the no.

Now that I think about it, no one actually seems to have a problem, and so I guess I should just go ahead. WP:BRD will apply if anyone has a problem with this.

elvenscout742 (talk) 04:11, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Microsoft Windows/Multilingual support RfC

may be of interest. LittleBen (talk) 04:38, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

General guidelines - Syllabic "n"

In items 4 and 5, "Syllabic n ん is generally written ... as n' (with an apostrophe) before vowels and y" has surely not applied for a long time. LittleBen (talk) 14:17, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Like...? Apart from super-notable people named "Junichiro" or "Shinichiro", I honestly can't think of a single example of where we don't apply this rule. elvenscout742 (talk) 14:38, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
禁煙 is kin'en. 万有 is ban'yū. I'm fairly certain there's a page at "Shin'ichi" or "Ken'ichi" somewhere.—Ryulong (琉竜) 14:51, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Could it be that both versions are generally considered acceptable usage (apart from the official, passport issue)? It would be useful to add those examples. Like the macron, it has its uses for explaining to foreigners how to pronounce words, even though it is not acceptable in passport names. LittleBen (talk) 05:03, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
My point exactly, as expressed below (and on your talk page since I didn't notice you had already posted here). I'm frankly sick of seeing people (one person...) going around RMing every single article on a Japanese person with a long "o" or "u" in their names, just because some Wikipedians have a personal preference for one acceptable style over another acceptable style. But in the case of the apostrophe (unlike the macron) I'm pretty sure there is no official rule against using the apostrophe anywhere, and treating the lack of an apostrophe as a legitimate variant (i.e., not having this mentioned in the MOS) would prevent us from fixing legitimately problematic cases. elvenscout742 (talk) 05:20, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
Because common name (romaji spelling) in English and/or romaji sources does not always follow strict modified Hepburn. If we want to follow WP:COMMONNAME, we will often disregard the modified Hepburn.-Mujaki (talk) 20:21, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
We don't need to follow WP:COMMONNAME when there is no common name. Most Japanese people, places, concepts etc. are not commonly known in the English-speaking world. They will appear in specialist sources and be written according to the romanization conventions of those specialist sources. They're not being commonly known doesn't mean they are not notable, and those of us who live in Japan and have only limited access to English-language reliable sources are free to write articles on Wikipedia based on Japanese sources. When we do this, we need a standard way of romanizing the Japanese names, etc. that come into it. Changing the current MOS solely because a few articles on super-well-known modern people are currently exceptions to the MOS is silly.
As a related aside, not here, but recently the Japan Times has been brought up a few times in RMs. The Japan Times is a good newspaper -- I read it myself -- but it doesn't have a broad (paper) circulation outside Japan, and within Japan hardly anyone other than resident foreigners read it; this is why I think it can't be used as a source for the "common spelling" of anything. Hypothetically, if we had an article on the Shōmonki first, and then in 2014 a new translation of the work came out that used "The Tale of Masakado" as its title, the Japan Times might print a book review of the new translation and say "The Tale of Masakado is a translation of the classical Japanese work, the Shomonki, which tells the story of Taira Masakado." I know someone would then come along and try to move the page on the Shōmonki because the Japan Times called it "Shomonki", and they would probably try to take the "no" out of Taira no Masakado, even though both ways of writing both of these names are acceptable.
elvenscout742 (talk) 02:32, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
Would you mind revealing why you are so hung up on the fact that we do not follow the Hepburn romanization system in every single instance? It seems like every single complaint you have made on this page is in regards to the exceptions we allow because Hepburn looks ugly?—Ryulong (琉竜) 03:27, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
I already did just above: those of us who live in Japan and have only limited access to English-language reliable sources are free to write articles on Wikipedia based on Japanese sources. When we do this, we need a standard way of romanizing the Japanese names, etc. that come into it. Constantly RMing every single page that was written based on Japanese sources, just because someone somewhere left out the macron, is ridiculous. I have said numerous times now that I would accept a blanket rule against using macrons in article titles (at least on modern individuals, similar to the current naming-order thing) if such were imposed. Basically, I would be happy if we had an MOS similar to the Japan Times one. My problem with the current system is that it leaves the door open to disruptive users who simply want to go around removing macrons for the hell of it. And the leader of those disruptive users (actually, I think he's the only one) has been hounding me across dozens of articles over the last two months and has made real-world threats against me. elvenscout742 (talk) 03:44, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
Ignore him. The system we have is fine because otherwise we would be ignoring the blatant proper forms of the names of individuals like Romi Park (article was at "Romi Paku" for the longest time), Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, etc. The sources we have should be sufficient because spending your time battling one persistant annoyance is only getting in the way of improving the project.—Ryulong (琉竜) 04:03, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
Of the two examples you name, Mr. Tomonaga is an obvious quirky exception and one I quite approve of, while Ms. Park falls into MOS:KOREA territory as well as here, so using the systematic romanization of Korean names makes perfect sense. Additionally, both of these people have a clear preference for one style over another, rather than their names just having to have appeared in a simplified form one place, and a less-simplified form in other places. For every one exception like these, there are a thousand others whose names can be adequately written one of a number of ways, and who clearly don't have a personal preference, but whose names are listed somewhere without a macron, and probably somewhere else with a macron, solely based on the stylistic choices (or technical limitations) of other external organizations. I have also said a few times that it would be nice if we accepted either style, and treated attempts to go around changing thousands of articles from one acceptable spelling to another, based on the personal preferences of Wikipedians, the same way we treat attempts to replace British spelling with American and vice versa. Similar to WP:RETAIN. Non-Japan-oriented Wikipedians who dislike the macron actually appear to agree with me on this issue.[12][13] elvenscout742 (talk) 04:24, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
Park is a Japanese citizen of Korean descent. And bringing the WP:ENGVAR stuff is just going to cause more problems. The best we can do is to examine the reliable sources that we have access to. If they write their name a particular way, and if that particular way lacks a macron, then by all means we should use that way and not enforce an the use of what is already an unpopular romanization style on our articles.—Ryulong (琉竜) 06:00, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
Her surname is still Korean. And are you saying we should change the MOS so that it doesn't say "Wikipedia uses the version of Modified Hepburn described below because it is generally accepted by scholars and it gives a fair indication of Japanese pronunciation to the intended audience of English speakers"? If the initial proposal for this section that we drop the apostrophes were to go through, we would have to change this line anyway as it would be factually inaccurate. It's not just people either -- you can find official and/or reliable websites for temples and shrines that give no macron. In the aforementioned Hiraizumi case UNESCO uses circumflexes. Every single Japanese person, place, book, song, whatever that has ever been discussed anywhere in the roman alphabet was subject to the style choices of the source that discussed it. Donald Keene wrote a 4,000-page history of Japanese literature that name-checked just about every notable poet and author in Japan between Emperor Yūryaku and Mishima Yukio, and he's probably the most reliable source available for most of them, and used macrons everywhere he could. I'm sure there are comparable works on Japanese film, politics, etc. that do the same, but there will always be a whole lot of websites that either choose not to use the macron for anyone. elvenscout742 (talk) 06:41, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

I can't tell what the hell we're talking about anymore. I'm saying we stop trying to change everything just because JoshuSasori is being a pain in the ass to you.—Ryulong (琉竜) 07:34, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

I'll drop the macron thing then. As far as I can tell (and I've pointed this out already[14]) JoshuSasori has absolutely nothing to do with the other issues being raised. The issues of concern to me (and the other people posting here) at the moment are:
  1. hyphens
  2. apostrophes
  3. naming order for modern individuals whose pseudonyms are meaningless if they are put in western order
  4. the use of no in the names of historical individuals
  5. the disambiguators used for municipality-names
(The islands thing, judging by Jpatokal's comment, appears to be solved, but I really don't know.)
Of the above: 1. applies a general rule across the board without regard to RSs or common sense; 2. you gotta ask LittleBen, because I don't have any problem with the status quo; 3. you and I are in agreement, and convention agrees with us too, so all that needs to be done is to change the wording of the MOS to reflect this convention; 4. overwhelming consensus/convention is already on my side, and all I want to do is include a mention of this in the MOS so this doesn't happen again and potentially lead to very weird/unintentional exceptions; 5. this is actually a controversial issue and one I'm prepared to compromise and/or drop if need be. elvenscout742 (talk) 08:04, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
  • I only asked about item 2 (apostrophes); Ryulong suggested that there are still cases where they are used (though they are probably in a minority, because—like macrons—apostrophes do not seem to be acceptable in Japanese passports). However, macrons and apostrophes are surely both acceptable in the Hepburnish explanation of pronunciation in the lede, even though they no longer seem to be widely used in English (of course, majority usage—backed by reliable sources—should be taken into account; for WP:BLP the decision should not be based just on one instance of the person's possible personal preference or style dated 20 or 30 years ago). LittleBen (talk) 23:06, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
Wikipedia is not based on passport guidelines. Please stop taking my comments out of context. If you dislike the apostrophe please vote against me (and JoshuSasori) on Talk:Kanami#Requested move. I'm sure you will be able to convince the Wikipedia community with you brilliant arguments that the slight minority of reliable English sources are right on this issue. elvenscout742 (talk) 15:07, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Homard - invalid examples

What's with the examples in the second part of "general guidelines" section 2? One example (Homard) is on the french WP, not this one. The other example is an article related to China, not Japan. So both the examples are ones to which this policy actually doesn't apply. Cesiumfrog (talk) 09:59, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Names of modern figures proposal: use macrons

The guideline currently forces us to find out if the person has (or had, if they have passed on) a personal preference (most Japanese don't); then check "encyclopedias" (most have their own spelling conventions, that don't necessarily jive with ours); then check if there is a form "publicly used on behalf" of that person (again, freelance translators and the like have their own preferences); and only if none of these apply are we allowed use our systematic spelling convention. This policy is excessively vague, and in the fast few months has been interpreted in all sorts of ways leading to a large number of ridiculous move requests.

I propose we alter it to say "Unless the person has publicly stated that they prefer the non-macronned spelling, use the macronned spelling."

This would allow us to avoid excessively elaborate interpretations of the people's "personal preferences", etc. as seen here and here, and would allow us to be internally consistent. Additionally, the mention of "encyclopedias" in the MOS, and "reliable sources" in numerous move discussions, seems irrelevant here, as this is not a case where we are dealing with a danger of OR or the like -- we are merely writing Japanese words in the roman alphabet, and we need to decide whether we want a systematic, accurate romanization, or to rely on "reliable English sources".

elvenscout742 (talk) 04:22, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

This is completely useless. If their official site has them using "O" or "Ou" or "Oh" or "Ow" we use that spelling first. There is no reason to completely throw out an entry in this manual of style because you personally think that it is difficult to determine what is and what is not in use. If the use changes, or if the use is not clear, then the pages should not be moved. But if it is all that is used, that is what Wikipedia should use. Macrons should always be the last resort because they are generally unprintworthy.—Ryulong (琉竜) 04:52, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
But what about when their official page is entirely in Japanese and they just chose to use a particular spelling in the URL because they can't use Japanese text (or macrons)? Also, what if there is a blatant contradiction between one official source and another? It seems perfectly clear to me that the majority of Japanese people don't care one way or the other, and their names get spelled based on the priorities of freelance translators, web designers, book publishers, newspapers etc. We can never have a clear-cut "this person obviously prefers the macron" (except in cases where we have photos of their signature), because their official homepage will always have a non-macronned URL. Additionally, why should we apply a different standard to people than we do for places? Most Japanese municipalities have official websites that give at least the name of the city/town/village in roman letters, but they almost never use the macron. elvenscout742 (talk) 05:23, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
If there's no English, go with WP:COMMONNAME. If there are contradictions, go with the macron. It's that easy. And we use the same criterion for places. If a city is solely known as "Kobe" when its Hepburn form is "Kōbe", then "Kobe" should be used.—Ryulong (琉竜) 05:27, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
But these Japanese people don't have "English names"; they are just romanized Japanese names that all use the same romanization system, and are spelled either with or without the macron according to style preferences. The romanization system itself, though, uses macrons as a rule. WP:COMMONNAME clearly doesn't apply here because, as the examples make clear, that rule is for cases where there is an overwhelmingly common English name that differs from the accurate/official name. Most Japanese people are not discussed extensively enough in English sources to qualify for this, and when we use Japanese-language sources we are still supposed to use the macron for accuracy anyway. Your "Kobe" example is flawed, since it is discussed in probably millions of English sources; try Ōshū, Iwate or Ōtsuchi, Iwate, both of which have official websites that spell their names with no macron[15][16], but both of which have a macron on Wikipedia because there aren't enough sources in English that don't use the macron (and the websites aren't in English either way). elvenscout742 (talk) 05:40, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
Any English text that occurs in conjunction with their name is the best that we can do. I've seen people's names written with macrons. I've seen them without. I've seen "Syu" over "Shu" and "ow" over "ou", "oh", or "o". All that matters is that we have reliable sources that show this usage. If they don't exist, then we cannot make the determination ourselves and go with the macron form. Why does this need to be changed other than the fact that you are disagreeing with the outcome of two requested moves? If it's not broken, don't fix it. Because they are modern figures they clearly have romanized names in usage in some form and therefore we do not need to use the Hepburn romanization system, a form used by scholars of the Japanese language, to refer to them. And we go beyond a single URL to determine usage, and in the cases of those cities then we should probably move to the non-macron forms just as we've done for all of the Hokkaido pages.—Ryulong (琉竜) 05:58, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
Sorry for being late. I was delayed. Anyway, if that is the rule (use whatever English text occurs in official sources) then why don't we follow it except for people? The basic guideline as defined in the MOS is to use Hepburn (which includes macrons), and "modern people" and "companies, products, and organizations" are listed as exceptions. But what about place-names? Why does Kobe have no macron but Hyōgo Prefecture, despite the latter's official website not using it? The fact is that almost all Japanese words that include long os and us can be found in some reliable source that spells it with and macron, and more that spell it without. But WP:RS doesn't need to apply here, because reliability is not the issue; this is solely about our choice of style. Sorry to go back to the Neighbourhood example, but the results speak for themselves: 14,800,000 < 49,200,000, but Wikipedia doesn't make style choices based on numbers reliable sources. Anyway, I have indicated elsewhere[17] that I would not mind editing Wikipedia under a "no macrons in titles rule", but having one rule for people/organizations and another rule for places just seems weird. elvenscout742 (talk) 04:34, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
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  • Your neighbourhood example is former-British-Commonwealth English vs. US English: I believe that the rule is to use whichever is appropriate for the subject matter.
  • As Ryulong says, there have been previous discussions like this and this. I believe that Japanese are allowed quite a bit of leeway as to how they write the romaji version of their name in their passport, but I think it's fair to say that few people use macrons. Stations are another matter: JR writes Tokyo station with a macron, but the Marunouchi subway doesn't. LittleBen (talk) 03:39, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
The neighbourhood example was for article titles. There is only one article called Neighbourhood, and its title doesn't seem to be affected by subject matter.
As far as I know, Japanese aren't allowed use macrons on their passports. However, very few Japanese seem to care about how their name is spelled in roman letters, since 99.999 times out of 100 they write their names in kanji, hiragana or (god help them) katakana. Accurate romanization of those names, according to a standardized system, should be a priority for us. The general Wikipedia policy on this is at MOS:FOREIGN: Use a systematically transliterated or otherwise romanized name (Aleksandr Tymoczko, Wang Yanhong); but if there is a common English form of the name (Tchaikovsky, Chiang Kai-shek), use that form instead.
elvenscout742 (talk) 04:42, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
A couple of observations:
(1) A macron is a diacritic mark. What is a diacritic mark?
(2) The sock-cluster and associated issues probably needs to be out of the way before settling this.
(3) Elvenscout's comment about "a large number of ridiculous move requests" is quite reasonable. A look at WP:RM shows about 10. The most recent of them today, Yūji Oda → Yuji Oda where there is indeed 1 decorative use of Romaji on what is otherwise an entirely Japanese official website, but where the only substantial Google Books source mention (West, Scandal 2008) actually marks the long vowel. (not clear to me whether WP:JTITLE, "Use the form personally or professionally used by the person (such as on their official website or official social media profile)" includes "...or CD artwork". Yūji Oda, and several of the other current RMs, do not come in the Tchaikovsky, Chiang Kai-shek category of super-notables who have their own non-systematic exceptions to "a systematically transliterated or otherwise romanized name"... but they may still appear in English media. In ictu oculi (talk) 23:40, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
I have placed my !vote on Talk:Yūji Oda based on IIO's excellent analysis above (and collapsed another sock !vote while doing it). We really shouldn't be making exceptions to the general Wikipedia rules for relatively minor Japanese actors, writers, etc. elvenscout742 (talk) 01:24, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
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Note: The above is a sock of the indef-blocked User:JoshuSasori (see Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/JoshuSasori/Archive#20 February 2013). I knew that JoshuSasori would de-rail any attempt I made to change the MOS (he was derailing just about everything else I tried to do) and so I waited until he got himself blocked. He re-appeared above not long after several editors noticed he was probably a sockpuppet. elvenscout742 (talk) 05:09, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
That's ridiculous. Most of the moves you have made recently over this have been based on websites and the like that were likely produced by freelance translators or web designers without any concern for the choices of the people themselves. I have never seen any evidence that real-world Japanese people care about whether their names are spelled according to Hepburn or not. And it's easier to not use a macron, so why would they? elvenscout742 (talk) 01:15, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
It's better to use a form that has been used at some point than to just use an internal romanization style.—Ryulong (琉竜) 01:39, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
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with
Research it in the Japan Times as well, if you like:
LittleBen (talk) 02:09, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Support. It's also worth reminding our gentle readers that Ryulong's assertion that "If their official site has them using "O" or "Ou" or "Oh" or "Ow" we use that spelling first" is not backed up by the MOS, which requires reliable sources, not self-published ones. Jpatokal (talk) 04:32, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
    Jpatokal, you are citing the entirely wrong part of the policies and guidelines here. WP:SPS concerns creators of content not related to the subject, such as someone publishing some sort of tell-all book or some fringe theory shit on their blog. What we are discussing instead is the leeway allowed in WP:SELFSOURCE, as we are using information put forward by the subject or their representatives as a means to simply substantiate the way they write their name in the Latin alphabet.—Ryulong (琉竜) 04:34, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
    Nope: the MOS says "use reliable sources". Your contentions, which are absent from the MOS, are that a) self-sources should be considered reliable sources for determining correct spelling, which is dubious, and that b) self-sources should even override other reliable sources, which is even more dubious.
    I think the core of Elvenscout's proposal is eminently sensible: instead of the endless inconsistency introduced by the impossibility of trying to ferret out somebody's "personal preference" with only a fallback to a consistent scheme (Hepburn), cluttering half our leads with useless spot-the-macron crap like Tanaka Taro (田中太郎 Tanaka Tarō), we default to Hepburn unless there's good RS evidence that another form is the common usage. Ta-dah: Tanaka Tarō (田中太郎). Or can you tell me with a straight face that the duplicated version adds some actual value or utility? Jpatokal (talk)
  • We should have own consistent style for Romanizing Japanese, and not depend on personal web sites. These sites are produced by agencies, and rarely represent "personal preference." In fact, they are often in Japanese and may included only a few Romanized or English-language words. Since macrons aren't part of the Latin-1 character set, they confuse search engines and are hard to type. So they should avoided unless they actually do represent common use. We already have guidelines for Romanizing Chinese and Korean names that specify no diacritics. If that approach doesn't fly, my second choice is to follow the RS. A lot of these disputes involve actors and directors. For these, there are English-language film references, both international and Japan-specific, which can be consulted. Kauffner (talk) 07:13, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
    So you are saying we should ignore all idiosyncratic forms even if they are what constitutes the WP:COMMONNAME? And even if the websites are produced by representation agencies, the name that they use is still the name that is used on behalf of the person professionally, which is how we have also defined the "personal usage" criterion. So long as some sort of Latin alphabet form exists (be it primary, secondary, or tertiary reliable sources) then that is the form Wikipedia should use.—Ryulong (琉竜) 07:25, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
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  • As I mentioned earlier, I believe that Japanese are allowed quite a bit of leeway as to how they write the romaji version of their name in their passport. Maybe the guidelines are published online. So some idiosyncratic forms may be justifiable—and they will appear, the same as on the passport, in reliable sources that care about accuracy. LittleBen (talk) 07:34, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
  • <Quote>Maybe the guidelines are published online.<Unquote> I found guidelines from Kanagawa prefecture, Hyogo, and JTB (don't you love the way they suggest "Lico"—in the examples—may be an acceptable variant for "Riko" ;-). I guess that "Lie" might also be an acceptable romanization of a young lady's first name ;-). LittleBen (talk) 09:01, 20 February 2013 (UTC)  These documents confirm that macrons are NOT acceptable in romanized Japanese names on Japanese passports. They also list some acceptable alternative romanizations, briefly mentioned here. LittleBen (talk) 23:24, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
  • For reference LittleBenW has linked his discussion of diacritics here as part of his discussion of diactritics at one of Joshu Sasori's RMs. I think those discussing here should be aware, since I don't believe that the representation of this discussion there is accurate. And FWIW Beyoncé Knowles passport doesn't have an é on it. Neither do ATMs recognise diacritics. None of that is a good reason for encouraging more daily sock-generated RMs. In ictu oculi (talk) 03:04, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
  • I linked here for the "legal Japanese name" Japanese passport naming requirement links. Goodness, are you saying that Beyoncé Knowles is a Japanese citizen—or does your comment have nothing to do with Japanese names at all? LittleBen (talk) 05:00, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
LittleBenW, my concern relates to "Surely everybody is aware that we just had a discussion here that established that macrons are NOT ACCEPTABLE in romanized names on Japanese passports." unquote. I remind you that a macron is a diacritic mark: What is a diacritic mark? In ictu oculi (talk) 14:34, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
LittleBenW, you have now insinuated that the way Japanese people choose to sign their own names when they do so in roman letters is irrelevant, and the orthography rules which one branch of the Japanese government apply to one type of Japanese legal document are more important than the personal choices of those people. Give it up already. elvenscout742 (talk) 15:16, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
And for the record: apparently the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has no problem with either macrons or apostrophes.[18] Nor do the Mie International Exchange Foundation.[19] Nor do East Japan Railway Company.[20] Nor do the Iwate International Association.[21] Note I am not claiming that it is actually the policy of various branches of Japanese government (and/or private organizations that are so prevalent they might as well be the government) to use macrons. I am only pointing out that they have in recent years published documents that contain them. There is nothing "wrong" with macrons, despite what LittleBenW, JoshuSasori and the latter's various sockpuppets seem to think. elvenscout742 (talk) 15:48, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
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  • You are misquoting me. I said that—in BLP—a single photo taken maybe 20 or 30 years ago when a person was a young kid (or one CD from the same era) is surely not a reliable guide to how the person thinks now, or currently-accepted practice as demonstrated by all the other later CD covers. I pointed to the rules on characters currently permitted in Japanese passports. Regarding personal preference, I also said that if you were to claim that a Japanese person's personal preference was to write his or her name using Chinese characters that the Japanese government does not permit to be registered in Japanese names, and all the reliable sources showed the name as being written using a government-approved character, you can surely guess what my opinion would be. LittleBen (talk) 15:53, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
The two separate photos are recent and I already pointed that out to you. One of them is on the Kayama Yuzo Museum's website. They both appear to have been taken with digital cameras. What's the deal?? Additionally, what are you talking about the Japanese government not allowing Chinese characters to be registered in people's names? Passports are for travel abroad, so having them written in kanji would be meaningless. I now have no idea what you're talking about. The above sources are all government-approved and all use diacritics that you are claiming with no references that the Japanese government doesn't allow. Even the passport guideline was cited by JoshuSasori in December and I quoted it back to you. You appear to have taken my word for it but taken my word completely out-of-context to say that the Japanese government officially avoids macrons because they in some way violate the wishes of living people. elvenscout742 (talk) 17:35, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Do you have any proof that the photo is recent and that it was taken by a digital camera? It looks to be a photo of him when he was at least 20 years younger. The cover photo on the one CD that you cite (as evidence of current usage of his name) was obviously taken when he was at least 20 or 30 years younger.
  • <Quote>what are you talking about the Japanese government not allowing Chinese characters to be registered in people's names?<Unquote> English Wikipedia as well as Japanese Wikipedia carry Japanese people's names, written in kanji. Japanese passports also carry Japanese people's names, written in kanji. If you were to claim that a Japanese person's personal preference was to write his or her name using Chinese characters that the Japanese government does not permit to be registered in Japanese names, and so Wikipedia should do the same, but all the reliable sources showed the name as being written using a government-approved character, you can surely guess what my opinion would be. LittleBen (talk) 02:49, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

LittleBenW, I'm sorry to have to point this out more obviously than the 2 warnings above but since it continues: (1) in the last 48 hours you have made something like 60 edits in violation of the topic ban is enacted as described: "LittleBenW is indefinitely prohibited from making any edits concerning diacritics, or participating in any discussions about the same, anywhere on the English Wikipedia. ..." Jayron32 19:59, 1 December 2012 (UTC). (2) during the last 48 hours you have repeatedly violated WP:NPA. In ictu oculi (talk) 03:06, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

(EDIT CONFLICT -- I had to go refill my kerosene stove) Regarding the photo I linked to above, I have no evidence apart from the fact that he looks like he's in his sixties. This one, however, clearly is written on a wine bottle that is marked as commemorating his 50th anniversary as an artist. Additionally, I should point out that your beloved JoshuSasori actually dug up that one himself, yet continued to brazenly "violate the subject's wishes" despite knowing that he spells his name with macrons regardless.[22][23]
Why would Japanese passports carry names in kanji?[24] Wouldn't that defeat the purpose of a passport?? The only kanji name I see on this woman's information page is her signature. You have been arguing throughout that people's personal preferences for how they write their names in roman letters should dictate how we write their names. I have been saying that the overwhelming majority write their names in kanji, and the remainder all use hiragana or katakana, and since we obviously can't use any of these in English Wikipedia article titles. Therefore, we need to use some form of romanization. elvenscout742 (talk) 04:04, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
Holy ****! I didn't even know LBW was under such a ban. STOP IT NOW. You have been making personal attacks against me, defending JoshuSasori's sockpuppetry/personal threats, and specifically violating a topic ban?? WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING!? elvenscout742 (talk) 04:11, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Place Names: Islands

Would it be possible to clarify the policy concerning place names, notably those of islands? I ask because there were a few moves back in October which seem odd to me, but there don't seem to be rules here governing their written names. Consider the following:

For the first, I'd be prone to use "Ōnohara Islands" (and strangely, the user who made this move also changed Sakurajima to "Sakura Island"), but I'm split on the other two because they contain genitive morphemes: hyphens, no hyphens or anglicization? — Io Katai ᵀᵃˡᵏ 03:10, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

I agree that we need clarity on this, but my preference would generally be to retain the Japanese names, with a hyphen if and only if the suffix is optional. That is, "Ishigaki-jima" since it's called Ishigaki as well, but not "Miya-jima" since Miyajima is always Miyajima.) Sakurajima falls clearly in the latter camp, and there's no way the most common English name is "Sakura Island", unless Hiroshima's now "Hiro Island" as well. Jpatokal (talk) 11:00, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
This is my preference as well. -shima, -jima, can usually be considered part of the proper noun forming the name of the island. i.e. "Ōshima" is never "Ō Island" - it would be as ridiculous to rename "Fukushima Prefecture" as "Fuku Island Prefecture". Japanese anglicizations, official or otherwise, are often inconsistent. Perhaps whether or not to use hypenization can be settled by consensus, but in any event I do not feel that "Sakura Island" is acceptable from either a common usage standpoint or from the MOS. --MChew (talk) 06:57, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
Unfortunately, that's what the article was renamed (see Sakura Island). I personally feel that it's strange and that such literal translations should only be noted in parentheses, perhaps beside the Kanji as is done on the Tokyo article. — Io Katai ᵀᵃˡᵏ 00:34, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
A problem I'm seeing with any consistent policy regarding "islands" in Japan is that the Japanese word 島(shima, -jima) is used a lot for places that in English we can't reasonably call "islands", at least as a title. See for instance Okinotorishima. elvenscout742 (talk) 05:59, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
As long as -shima, -jima are regarded as part of the proper noun, this should not make a difference. The article can simply be named Okinotorishima, without translating a portion of the name to English, and comment made in the article that it is official considered an island by the Japanese government, but that the designation is disputed by other parties. No need to use "Okinotori Island" or "Okinotori Rock".--MChew (talk) 07:54, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
But the article already does say "Okinotori Island" in its body: the title doesn't, but would you suggest we change the body of the article? elvenscout742 (talk) 11:30, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
Yes. And this avoids the dispute over whether it is actually an island, an atoll, a rock, etc. --MChew (talk) 14:19, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

I think we've got something close to consensus here! How's this for wording? Jpatokal (talk) 22:27, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Islands should be named X Island if common usage does not require appending -shima/jima/tō (島): Okinawa Island, Ōnohara Island, Rebun Island. However, use the Japanese name complete with -shima/jima if the suffix forms an inseparable part of the name: Ōshima, Miyajima, Sakurajima. Do not use hyphens or spaces to separate particles or suffixes: Tokunoshima, Okinotorishima, Chiringashima. Notable exception: Iwo Jima, which has a well-established spelling in English.
What is meant by "common usage"? Some English sources say Okinotorishima and some say Okinotori Islands, and very few of the examples you list are "widely-known" outside Japan, so your wording would acutally require us to move these pages. elvenscout742 (talk) 04:08, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
Just go by how the Japanese refer to the location. I know none of my colleagues refer to Sesoko as Sesokojima when they're talking to each other in English.—Ryulong (琉竜) 04:43, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
→ WP:COMMONNAME. On Google, Okinotorishima gets about 500k results, vs a mere 12k for Okinotori Islands, so the winner is pretty clear. And yes, the line is fuzzy and there will be debates, but I think that's preferable to having no policy at all and ending up with Sakura Island etc. Jpatokal (talk) 23:43, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
The only problem, especially for lesser-known places, is that the results will be heavily based on Wikipedia. Though otherwise I do agree with the common name rule, as this resolves cases like Fukushima, Ōshima and Okinawa Island. If, however, there are two forms in competition, then it may be preferable to mention both in the lead, and choose one to unify the name within the article.
As for the hyphens used in some names, I assume we should opt to remove them (especially so in cases with internal morphemes like Tokunoshima)? But what do we do about articles seemingly using the translation "Island", as in Hisaka Island or Kashiko Island? Should we impose the English word if the island is really not that known in English literature? Or should we do the opposite, and impose the usage of, say, Hisakajima? — Io Katai ᵀᵃˡᵏ 02:11, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
Wikipedia influencing itself is a general problem and WP:COMMONNAME has suggestions for working around it (namely use Google Books and Scholar, not the net at wide). For Kashikojima, I'm pretty sure the -shima is integral; for Hisaka, not sure. And as always, if we opt for X Island, the Japanese name should be in the lead. Jpatokal (talk) 04:34, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Bump -- any more comments, or is this good to go? Jpatokal (talk) 00:43, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

You might find Template:Google RS (and related templates) useful for researching majority usage in reliable and widely-respected English-language sources (but not Wikipedia). It would be quite easy to create a template that searches Japanese government and semi-governmental English-language sources like the JNTO, plus the Japan Times. There's also a tutorial on doing searches that exclude Wikipedia, for example. LittleBen (talk) 03:24, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Thing about that (and this is in reply to your drawing my attention to it on your talk page, too) is that with obscure topics that aren't discussed a lot in English sources, it will either come up with no results (as with Yūkichi Takeda) or so few results that they hardly constitute an academic consensus or a common name. However, if they came up with five results, and all five went one way, we should not be using that as an excuse to make an exception to the general rule. elvenscout742 (talk) 07:54, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Final call, I'm going to move the wording above into the MOS if there are no objections. Jpatokal (talk) 00:34, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Went ahead and did this. Please chip in and help make the messy reality at Category:Islands of Japan conform to theory. Jpatokal (talk) 05:40, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Proposal regarding shrines with "東照宮" or "天満宮"

I might be missing one here, but I think the current guideline to use hyphens before gū kind of screws over these particular classes of shrine. "Tōshōgū" and "Tenmangū" are each one word, and hyphenating them just looks awkward. I am fairly sure the reliable sources will agree with me on this, but I am still trying to figure out how to limit my GBooks and GScholar searches to English...

However, official sources linked to the most famous tōshōgū and tenmangū generally don't use hyphens before the gū.[25][26][27][28]

elvenscout742 (talk) 02:33, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Since my concern is specifically with the hyphen and not about whether to translate, etc., I searched the archives for "hyphen" before posting here. The link you provide shows both you and Dekimasuよ! apparently indicating a distaste for the hyphen, and no one supporting it. So can we change this guideline? elvenscout742 (talk) 04:33, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
  • I think the issue is essentially the same as the Island one above. It's surely best to follow the majority of reliable sources rather than try to create rules (that there will inevitably be exceptions to). Few people seem to have the time or energy to try to bring the guidelines up to date (User:JoshuSasori seemed to have the experience and energy, but...).   LittleBen (talk) 04:45, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
I agree that reliable sources are good. However, when it comes to spelling, I think we as Wikipedians are free to elect any of the possible romanization methods. Finding "the majority of reliable sources" is problematic because both GBooks and GScholar list Japanese-language sources that they have romanized according to their preferred style. This is why the non-hyphenated spelling appears to be overwhelming more accepted on GBooks.[29][30] And since both variations are acceptable and easily verified, WP:V doesn't necessarily apply here, so we don't need reliable sources to back us up.
On a side-note about bringing guidelines up-to-date: what the hell is up with this page not mentioning the exceptions to the given name-family name order for modern individuals!? 笑 elvenscout742 (talk) 06:41, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
What do you think the "pseudonym" section is for?—Ryulong (琉竜) 14:23, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
I noticed that. It reads as though we are supposed to put the pseudonym in western order. Especially the second paragraph, where it says we should make a redirect for the pseudonym in Japanese order. elvenscout742 (talk) 15:06, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
I was under the impression that it says "Write the synonym in the order that it appears in Japanese usage", which is why we have Neko Hiroshi and Papaya Suzuki instead of "Hiroshi Neko" and "Suzuki Papaya".—Ryulong (琉竜) 04:52, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
It doesn't. Check for yourself: it says "If the individual is more well known by family name + given name, a redirect for that should be used as well, and the article should note the multiple ways the name is used.", which seems to be the opposite of what I want, you want, and makes sense. Can we fix it?
Although an exception for "pseudonyms" in general is problematic. Tadanobu Asano is a pseudonym, too. I suggest rather an exception for cases like the examples you and I have mentioned, where there is some "meaning" to the pseudonym in Japanese order that would be lost if we changed it to western order.
elvenscout742 (talk) 15:07, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
I was under the impression that was how it was treated, particularly after "Kumi Koda" was moved to Koda Kumi.—Ryulong (琉竜) 15:19, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
Scratch that, that was just people harping on "common name" because her name is written as "Koda Kumi" on CDs.—Ryulong (琉竜) 15:25, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
  • <Quote>both GBooks and GScholar list Japanese-language sources that they have romanized according to their preferred style.<Unquote> The Template:Google RS that I mentioned is surely a much better guide to how things are done now (current-day styles), rather than how things were done historically in books many years ago. I'd think a site search of the Japan Times and JNTO (in addition to the reliable sources in the template) would provide a sanity check of the template's results. Also, Google ranks search results by perceived reliability and authority: Note that (in the template examples) if you use the template to search for the Sydney Opera House then Australia-based sites come out on top. LittleBen (talk) 12:58, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
  • It's probably worth looking at the MOS-J on other Wiki projects like Wiktionary About Japanese/Transliteration and Transliteration and romanization. Note that Ryulong has contributed to the former. LittleBen (talk) 13:28, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

(undent) How would people feel about just dropping the hyphens entirely for temples/shrines? They're awkward and not in line with our conventions for naming anything else. Jpatokal (talk) 22:43, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

I like that, but given that my last five or six attempts to alter the MOS in tiny ways (like clarifying the wording so that it says what it actually means) have all met with harsh opposition, so I don't want to be the one to suggest a major change like that. (Also, my posting about just these two types of shrines appears to have earned me the enmity of LittleBenW, a fact with which I am not pleased.)
If you have any idea how to build a consensus about this, I would definitely be on board with your proposal.
elvenscout742 (talk) 01:11, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
The loudness of a single editor's opposing opinions does not mean there is no support for your proposals. Jpatokal (talk) 04:34, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
How about a concrete proposal? I don't think anybody is opposing removing hyphens. But it's wise to do adequate research of previous discussions and of common usage before proposing changes. Maybe the lede should explain that the "gu" on the end means shrine, or the "tera" or "dera" means temple. One way might be the "lit" option in the template. Another might be linktext linking the gu or tera/dera kanji to Wiktionary. How to handle other common suffixes is a related issue—I'm not sure if there's a "one size fits all" way: 山 is a related example (but two readings), and 橋 is another (but Shimbashi is now more an area than a bridge). Likewise Roppongi no longer has anything to do with trees. LittleBen (talk) 04:59, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
When I was in Kansai this past December, I can recall the tour guide using "temple" or "shrine" in place of "dera" or "gu" within Japanese. "Kiyomizu Temple" stuck out.—Ryulong (琉竜) 05:15, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Maybe short names, and names that would be ambiguous without their suffix, generally never lose their suffix—examples are Yamadera and Yodobashi (can't quickly find the bridge—there is one, isn't there?—on English Wikipedia)—but well-known, longer names like the four-syllable "Kiyomizu", that are not ambiguous without the suffix, can safely lose it. LittleBen (talk) 07:23, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
We can get tour guides who say just about anything. Translating into English is good in some cases, but then we wind up with "Yama Temple" and "Nikkō Tōshō Shrine", neither of which is backed up by a majority of reliable sources. I occasionally work on translations relating to the Historic Monuments and Sites of Hiraizumi, and if I'm doing it for a general non-Japanese-speaking audience I'll say "Chusonji Temple". Since "Chusonji" is its full, proper name, but "Temple" tells the reader what it is, this is good for tourist pamphlets and business presentations to promote foreign direct investment in Iwate. However, in an encyclopedia article, regardless of what the title is the first line is going to be some variant of "XYZ is a Buddhist temple in Japan.", so we don't need the title to have "Temple" in English. "Chūson-ji" and "Chūsonji" are both acceptable as far as I am concerned, but "Chūson Temple" is bad because it cuts off the last part of the Japanese name (which readers will see in other reliable sources), and "Chūsonji Temple" is redundant.
My main problem with the current guideline though is that it doesn't acknowledge exceptions like the above-mentioned 東照宮 and 天満宮 (and 八幡宮, which I forgot). The current convention gives the impression that "Nikkō Tōshō" is the name, and "gū" means shrine, which is technically incorrect (a "Tōshōgū" is a particular classification of shrine).
elvenscout742 (talk) 15:07, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

(undent) Baby steps, people. So is there anybody who opposes a first step of simply dropping hyphens? Going once, going twice...? Jpatokal (talk) 00:28, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Mixed Names Orders?

In an article including a number of both post-1868 and pre-1868 born individuals, I'm supposed to mix name orders? Really? That strikes me as a "worst of all worlds" take on things, practically guaranteed to cause misunderstandings. Cckerberos (talk) 15:02, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Use the full names once and then solely use the family names after. Problem solved.—Ryulong (琉竜) 15:08, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
In most cases, you're probably right. In this case the article includes a list of names, though. That's how I noticed. Cckerberos (talk) 21:05, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
Solely using the family names is not necessarily a good idea because so many Japanese people have the same names and a lot of people are primarily referred to by their given names in reliable sources, but I agree with Ryulong on the principle here. It's not really a problem for the reader anyway: it feels awkward for me too, but Japanese-speaking readers are likely to think it's kinda weird and quirky, and everyone else is probably not going to be bothered by it. elvenscout742 (talk) 01:08, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Can someone take a look at this discussion of Japanese to English translation of name forms, for a broader perspective and hopefully get this as a discussed topic. KirtZJ 13:42, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

I have commented on this discussion as it seems you two are not communicating clearly.—Ryulong (琉竜) 16:00, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Macrons in names of modern figures

Some time ago on this talk page, there was a discussion to modify MOS:JA#Names of modern figures to state that the modified Hepburn form of the subject's name be used first and foremost before any idiosyncratic forms that may have been used by the subject. There was no real clear outcome of the debate due to banned users violating their bans, but that has not stopped someone recently from enforcing what he believes to be a possible amendment.

Upon retrospect, I see that both versions have their problems, as neither of them really cite any other policy or guideline, and considering that there was want for a change, I believe a middle ground can be met instead.

I would like to propose the following amendment as such a middle ground:

When spelling the names of modern figures, it is best to seek out the common name of the individual in reliable sources. The subject's own publications, print or online, may be used to make this determination (see WP:ABOUTSELF and WP:SELFSOURCE). If there are no reliable sources mentioning the subject's name in English, or if common usage is not clear, then follow the rules described above under "Romanization".

—Ryulong (琉竜) 07:24, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

As I pointed out before, the problem is Romanization in RSs is not necessarily reliable. Oda Mari (talk) 08:18, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
Well if you have several dozen sources saying someone's name is spelled "Taroh Tanaka" why should we have the article at "Tarō Tanaka"? This guideline still has to abide by the general policies and other guidelines that the English Wikipedia has. Coming up with our own version of something just because "Romanization in RSs is not necessarily reliable" is a bit WP:CREEPy.—Ryulong (琉竜) 11:15, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
Why should we have the article at "Tarō Tanaka"? Because "Tarō Tanaka" is the correct Hepburn Romanized name and "Taroh Tanaka" is a Romanized Japanese name by a different Romanaization system. It's not the matter of spelling. What if we have several dozen sources saying someone's name is romanized in Kunrei "Tarou Tanaka"? What would you do if you are asked to romanize "ウィキペディアへようこそ ウィキペディアは誰でも編集できるフリー百科事典です"? I think you select what system you use at first, then romanize it by the system you selected. Sources are not needed. As long as we use the Hepburn, we should follow the Hepburn for consistency. "Hirohito" vs "Emperor Shōwa" is a matter of common name, but "Taroh Tanaka" vs "Tarō Tanaka" is a matter of differences of Romanization system. Oda Mari (talk) 10:00, 7 June 2013 (UTC)
So you're saying we should ignore reliable sources just in case they may have a different romanization style? What if this man wrote his name as "Tharoh Tanaka"? Would we still ignore it then?—Ryulong (琉竜) 15:35, 7 June 2013 (UTC)
Yes, I am. A lot of Japanese are sloppy about Romanization, including myself in private life. I think most of the macronless cases in RSs are sloppy Romanization, the result of ignorance/tiresomeness of typing macroned letter, or just because macrons look unattractive. Do those RSs clarify their Romanization policy? If not, even the information in them are reliable and correct, the Romanization in the RSs are not reliable. Yes, IMHO, we would. Using RSs could create a family name inconsistency. A pre-meiji man's family name would be Satō, but his great-grandchild's name should be Satoh just because the child wrote so? Isn't it weird? What do you explain/solve the inconsistency problem? I consider this matter is "do we use the Hepburn or not?". Or "what we define Romanization". I think I answered your questions. Would you please answer my questions? Oda Mari (talk) 07:53, 8 June 2013 (UTC)
I'm not quire sure what you've asked other than asking me to transliterate some Wikipedia welcome phrase from the Japanese project first. And if the surname is the same in Japanese, it does not really matter what differences may appear in the English alphabet. Surnames have been known to change spelling anyway.—Ryulong (琉竜) 08:09, 8 June 2013 (UTC)
I don't understand your rationale. I think if the surname is the same in Japanese, it should be the same in the English alphabet. It's simpler and understandable. Dfferences in the English alphabet are ambiguous to readers. Think about the purpose of MoS. Our MoS says "The Manual of Style documents Wikipedia's house style. It helps editors write articles with consistent, clear, and precise language, layout, and formatting. The goal is to make Wikipedia easier and more intuitive to use. Consistency in language, style, and formatting promotes clarity and cohesion." Why should the Romanization at WP/our house style be swayed by outside world's non-Hepburn Romanization? Why should only the names of modern figures are needed RSs? How they Romanize personal names in what system are their own business, not ours. "Shojo" "girl" -"Shōjo" hit about 348,110 results and "Shōjo" "girl" -"Shojo" hit about 41,251 results. Why do we use less common "Shōjo"? It is simply because we use the Hepburn, isn't it? As I told you before, if you know the correct reading of names/words in ja and the Romanization system, you can Romanize Japanese without any sources. Oda Mari (talk) 09:11, 9 June 2013 (UTC)
Because there are plenty of instances where modern individuals, particularly those who appear in the media, have unique ways of romanizing their name that does not match with the Hepburn romanization and there is no reason we should stick to a strick house style when everything out there has their name written differently. We have Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, Kow Otani, etc. Do you really suggest we should just throw out those names and have the articles located at "Shin'ichirō Tominaga" and "Kō Ōtani"? When we have an obvious English language form we should utilize it. It's not our fault that there are so many competing methods of romanizing the ō, ū, and n' sounds. And you are really comparing apples to oranges here with your sudden interjection of something that isn't a personal name.—Ryulong (琉竜) 09:17, 9 June 2013 (UTC)
Ryulong, you and Oda Mari appear to be working on different wavelengths. Hrht vs. Shōwa Tennō is a matter of common name, as is Sin-Itiro (even if he isn't well-known in the English speaking world, reliable sources invariably refer to him by that name), but "Taroh Tanaka" clearly isn't. How about amending the wording to specify that this only applies to individuals who are widely-covered in English-language media and for whom there is a specific "reason" (as in the Sin-Itiro example) why their name is spelled that way? I actually agree entirely with Oda Mari that just because some guy decided to romanize the name 田中太郎 as "Taroh Tanaka" (a non-standard variation of Hepburn), it doesn't mean we can't decide to use "Tarō Tanaka" (the same Hepburn romanization system, but more correctly applied). No need for us to ban the effective use of Japanese reliable sources when English ones are not available (which is most of the time, really), and effective use of Japanese sources means giving Japanese names according to a standard romanization system as per WP:ROMANIZATION. 13:38, 9 June 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tamuramaro on Top of the Hill (talk • contribs)
If "Taroh Tanaka" shows up all the time in regards to "田中太郎" for a person in the media then that's going to be the common name.—Ryulong (琉竜) 00:32, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

I like this wording overall, but I think "If there are no sources" should be "If there are insufficient sources": there's no need for us to neglect our guidelines just because one obscure book published decades ago, or a couple of quasi-notable fansites, do something different. Also, more reliable sources say "Joji Iida", so we should also keep my exception note, I think. 182.249.241.23 (talk) 12:46, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

"Insufficient" is good. And how would something along the lines of this work?

If the subject is known to have a preferred idiosyncratic means of spelling his or her name in English, the article title should utilize that form (ex. "Sin-Itiro Tomonaga", not "Shin'ichirō Tomonaga"; "Joe Odagiri", not "Jō Odagiri").

—Ryulong (琉竜) 12:54, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
That works. :) 182.249.241.6 (talk) 13:06, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
Gonna add a "compared to the Hepburn romanization style" to that sentence once everyone's happy with the wording.—Ryulong (琉竜) 13:30, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

For the record, I am the anon above (got tired of my IP switching).

The current policy, upon some rather extensive research, seems to have been implemented hastily, without any reasoning provided, and with no discussion.

  • A Mediation case over wording of the "Romanization" section of this guideline resulted from one user agreeing that macrons are preferable in article bodies but problematic in titles on a purely technical basis.
  • The discussion was long and veered off-topic a couple of times. Since there was fundamentally no disagreement over whether macrons should be used at all the mediator, User:Pschemp, pointed out that the requirement to create redirects was not a valid argument against the use of macrons in titles, because numerous other policies require the same.[31]
  • User:Endroit, who appears to have been wiki-retired for over three years, proposed a number of changes completely out-of-the-blue as a condition to his/her agreement.[32] This was actually a contradiction of his/her previous suggestion, and was repeatedly criticized by the mediator for being even more off-topic.[33][34]
  • The addenda were removed for the purpose of clarity, but were re-added on the request of one other user solely for the purpose of getting that user to agree to close the mediation.[35]
  • Endroit again requested that his/her suggestions be discussed on the mediation page, even though they had nothing to do with the case at hand.[36]
  • Nihonjoe tried to get back on course by proposing a final solution to the initial problem of titles and redirects, and specifically prescribing that macrons should be used in body text.[37]
  • User:Neier pointed out that one of the questionable suggestions should be discussed on MoS talk page.[38]
  • The mediator asked once more that Endroit focus on the topic at hand and wait until afterward to discuss unrelated minor issues.[39]
  • Endroit continued to effectively hold the mediation hostage, apparently in order to push through unrelated amendments.[40]
  • Nihonjoe reiterated that this was irrelevant.[41] But also implemented all of Endroit's proposals anyway.[42][43] It's possible (I doubt Nihonjoe remembers what happened SEVEN YEARS AGO) that this was done solely in order to end a months-long dispute as quickly and smoothly as possible, without much consideration of the eventual consequences.

There you have my (as-complete-as-possible) representation of the rather bizarre history of how the MoS came to say what it does at the moment: one user brought an irrelevant suggestion up in a dispute-resolution forum, and a series of misunderstandings resulted in a situation where in order get the dispute resolved, the suggestion had to be implemented as proposed immediately. It is also worth noting that almost all of the parties in this story have been inactive on Wikipedia for several years, so their "consensus" does not need to apply to present-day Wikipedia policies as long as current editors disagree. Additionally, one editor forced this wording into the MoS with absolutely no discussion (I didn't provide the diffs, but you can check -- everyone ignored this part of the suggestion entirely), so there shouldn't really have been any problem with removing the wording without discussion. (The policy was also never consistently applied, so the current proposal's "descriptive" natures -- "this is how we tend to do things" -- is much better.)

Tamuramaro on Top of the Hill (talk) 05:58, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Clarification

The beginning of the section currently reads:

For a modern figure—a person born after the beginning of the Meiji period (January 1, 1868 onward for our purposes)—always use the Western order of given name + family name in Latin script, and Japanese style family name+<space>+given name in Japanese script. For example:

Junichiro Koizumi (小泉 純一郎 Koizumi Jun'ichirō, born January 8, 1942) is a Japanese politician …

Spelling, including macron usage, of the name of a modern figure should adhere to the following, in order of preference:

  1. Use the form personally or professionally used by the person (such as on their official website or official social media profile), if available in the English/Latin alphabet;
  2. Use the form found in an encyclopedia entry from a generally accepted English encyclopedia;
  3. Use the form publicly used on behalf of the person in the English-speaking world;
  4. Use the form publicly used on behalf of the person in any other popular Latin-alphabet-using language (French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German, and Dutch, or variations); or
  5. If none of the above is available, use the macronned form.

Going through point by point:

  1. The form used by the person, especially in a professional setting, will likely be the most common usage simply because most reliable sources tend to use what the person uses, especially with modern figures.
  2. The same thing applies for encyclopedias, especially reliable ones.
  3. This one is generally going to match the usage in #1, and therefore #2. Not always, but generally.
  4. Ditto.
  5. This is the default to use if there are none of the above. It was implemented so there was guidance regardless of the situation.

This order is intended to fit in exactly with WP:COMMONNAME. If there is a minor clarification to be made, we can definitely do it, but this should pretty much cover all the bases. Perhaps the wording can be clarified to something like this to try to avoid the constant back-and-forth bickering that seems to plague this page:

For a modern figure—a person born after the beginning of the Meiji period (January 1, 1868 onward for our purposes)—always use the Western order of given name + family name in Latin script, and Japanese style family name+<space>+given name in Japanese script. For example:

Junichiro Koizumi (小泉 純一郎 Koizumi Jun'ichirō, born January 8, 1942) is a Japanese politician …

Spelling, including macron usage, of the name of a modern figure should adhere to WP:COMMONNAME, which is generally determined by using the following guidelines in order:

  1. Use the form personally or professionally used by the person (such as on their official website or official social media profile), if available in the English/Latin alphabet. This will usually be the one used in most reliable sources;
  2. Use the form found in an encyclopedia entry from a generally accepted and reliable English encyclopedia;
  3. Use the form publicly used on behalf of the person in the English-speaking world;
  4. Use the form publicly used on behalf of the person in any other popular Latin-alphabet-using language (French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German, and Dutch, or variations); or
  5. If none of the above is available, and a most common form is unable to be determined, use the macronned form (if applicable).

Thoughts? ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 23:02, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

I think we need to point to more policies and guidelines but that looks fine overall.—Ryulong (琉竜) 00:32, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

All caps in templates

Again, Aspects, after having discovered I made this edit to {{Kamen Rider}}, reverted it while citing this manual of style as the reason, obviously the "Capitalization of words in Roman script" section. The articles in question can clearly be seen as not being located at these deleterious titles. However, this has not prevented Aspects from enforcing this part of the MOS for this simple stylization within a template.

Is this valid? The last time he and I got into this argument, I started a similar thread but no one participated. I am hoping not for another repeat of that level of no discussion whatsoever. Does this manual of style prevent the use of simple stylization of piped links in a template?—Ryulong (琉竜) 05:01, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

I thought this discussion was over a year and a half ago when you reverted back to the non-all caps, [44], and then I noticed last month that you changed the links back to all caps without an edit summary, [45]. I will quote from my original talk page message since I think this is the best way I can phrase this, "Under the section, Capitalization of words in Roman script, it states "However, these names and name elements are not excluded from the guidance provided by the main manuals of style for English-language Wikipedia, listed above. Words should not be written in all caps in the English Wikipedia." Templates are part of Wikipedia and should also follow the guidance. Also in my experience piped links should not use a different style than the title of the article being linked to." A diffferent example is the change I just made to another template, [46], that has the incorrect stylizations of the song titles that are also against this manual of style. Aspects (talk) 20:46, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
No one ever participated in that discussion other than you or I. And that part of the MOS governs article titles and article content. There is nothing anywhere in any manual of style that states piped links within a template should also be subject to this rule or anywhere that stylizations cannot be used in templates.—Ryulong (琉竜) 20:56, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
I honestly thought you had changed your opinion when you made that edit back in November 2011, so I was surprised that you changed the capitalizations back last month. "Words should not be written in all caps in the English Wikipedia." That means all parts of English Wikipedia, which would include template space. Aspects (talk) 21:17, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
Then why should "W-B-X ~W-Boiled Extreme~" and "Love Wars" with the heart that I don't feel like copy pasting be forbidden?—Ryulong (琉竜) 21:20, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
You can type &hearts; instead of copying and pasting a ♥ character. —Frungi (talk) 07:18, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
Yeah but it's the black-outlined only heart and not the solid black one.—Ryulong (琉竜) 08:14, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Tildes in place of the wave dash

Since 2010, I have been trying to restore W-B-X (W-Boiled Extreme) to the article's original title as the song's title is parsed on its cover and in all media, as I currently cite at my current move request where the IP who constantly posts on WT:JAPAN and Frungi have proposed even more unnecessary name changes due to their lack of understanding of how song titles are formatted elsewhere.

In Japan, this song's title is written entirely in English as "W-B-X～W Boiled Extreme～" (ex. Oricon, Billboard, iTunes. Aside from the two full-width tildes, tildes, or wave dashes, as it seems that particular websites will choose different forms of the symbol when printing it, the general form is always the same.

Now why should this song title be changed from its original form, simply because the origin is Japan? WP:UE is covered because the title has no Japanese text in it. MOS:ABBR and MOS:TM do not govern song or album titles. The only thing is that this project for whatever reason banned the use of tildes in the translations of such things. Now there is even more confusion at the requested move because "[using] parentheses makes it look like disambiguation". — Ryulong (05:38, 31 July 2013 (UTC)) — (continues after insertion below)

When the parenthetical phrase is at the end of the title and serves to clarify the abbreviation used in the title. —Frungi (talk) 19:10, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

When I have argued this and other issues concerning the treatment of the titles of Japanese-related pages in the past, I have pointed out that if this was a release by an Anglophone musician then there would be no confusion. The tilde would be included if that was all that was seen in the print media. But because "W-B-X～W Boiled Extreme～" is a Japanese song, and because there is no English usage, it is apparently up to the English Wikipedia to make up a form that conforms to our internal standards because there's nothing outside Wikipedia to base it on. This is wrong. This manual of style should stop forbidding the wave dash/tilde or other forms of denoting subtitles and making up our own internal titles for songs that have never been used outside of the English Wikipedia unless WP:UE is the issue at hand.—Ryulong (琉竜) 05:38, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

Here’s my personal view on this practice, but I’ll leave it to the regulars here to hash out: The use of the wave dash/tilde in titles is an Asian thing. It’s not done in English. Wave dashes should be converted to parentheses, dashes, colons, or whatever equivalent is deemed appropriate, just as kana and kanji are converted to romaji. —Frungi (talk) 19:10, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
But this particular song title is written in English aside from the use of ～. Why should we have to translate for this one character when ~ is on everyone's keyboard?—Ryulong (琉竜) 19:33, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
I agree with Frungi that this is a Asian stylization that is not used in English and therefore should not be used in titles for English wikipedia. I tried searching for some albums or songs that currently use either the wave dash or the tilde and could not find any, which leads me to believe that the current consensus is with this manual of style not to use them. I do not see how you can bring up hypothetical releases by an Anglophone musician and then claim you would know how the title article would be. I would think there would be a debate bringing up what this manual of style states and possibly taking into account, but I would have no idea how this hypothetical discussion would end up as a consensus. Aspects (talk) 20:59, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
What exactly did you search for Aspects? Because I know Google disregards all punctuation outside of the hyphen in searches. And this Asian stylization would only be used on articles of Asian origin. I know that issues can arise within these articles as I had pointed out in previous discussions. For example, the album Kokoro no Hoshi has a song titled "～The STAR Bridge～". Because of previous strict readings of the MOS, this song's title is formatted as "The Star Bridge". Why? Megumi Hayashibara recorded a song titled "～それから～". What would its title be on Wikipedia? Flow released a song recently titled "HERO ～希望の歌～" and its instrumental version is titled "HERO ～希望の歌～ -Instrumental-" What do we do with this? Two parentheticals in a row? There are mutiple albums and songs that are just written in the English alphabet but they include the wave dash. How is changing the way they are written helping people who are searching for that album? Why does it need to be changed?—Ryulong (琉竜) 21:12, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
I searched popular Japanese singers'/groups' articles, discography articles, album categories and song categories searching for articles for any article with wave dash or tilde in the title. While I admit it was not a complete search of all of these articles or categories, I thought I would find a few examples. Aspects (talk) 21:20, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
I see no problem with the “strict” formatting of “The Star Bridge”. Am I missing something? And to one of your other examples, why would we have an article devoted to the instrumental version of a song? If you mean in prose, then yes, two parentheticals would be appropriate if we call the original song “Hero (Kibou no Uta)” (assuming Kotoeri correctly converted that text), where “the instrumental version of …” would not be appropriate. —Frungi (talk) 01:45, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
But why should the wave dashes be eliminated entirely from "~The STAR Bridge~"? That's how the title was written. That's how it's presented in the liner notes. The artist is part-British. Why are we to change what she says her song is titled? And there wouldn't be an article on the instrumental. This is an issue with style within articles as well. "Hero ~Kibou no Uta~ (Instrumental)" seems to provide more information than "Hero (Kibou no Uta) (Instrumental)". You yourself pointed out the problems of having the subtitles presented as parentheticals, even if it is the standard practice on Wikipedia and within Anglosphere music. Why is it necessary to extend this for a language that has presented its own unique way of designating the subtitle?—Ryulong (琉竜) 05:10, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
Same reason we don’t put “Star” in all caps. —Frungi (talk) 07:15, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
That doesn't answer why "~The Star Bridge~" should not be allowed, though.—Ryulong (琉竜) 08:15, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
Like I said, it’s for the same reason: standardization. —Frungi (talk) 08:45, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
But what standard is there for this format?—Ryulong (琉竜) 08:48, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
The one that community consensus has set for this encyclopedia, no doubt influenced in part by the fact that tildes are never used for this purpose (and wave dashes never used at all) in written English. Sorry, I thought my meaning here was clear. (NB: By “written English”, I mean prose.) —Frungi (talk) 07:18, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
Previous discussions here showed that only a single editor added the current "no tildes" rule to this manual of style years ago, and before that they were certainly allowed. Only after the last time I approached this was consensus even vaguely reached that nothing was going to change, but this appears to be an issue greater than this page so I will have to start some sort of actual discusison at WP:VPP rather than continuously and only arguing with you, Frungi.—Ryulong (琉竜) 15:07, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
I wasn't intending to argue with you, let alone be the only one discussing it with you. I was simply giving my view of how things sit, and I'm frankly disappointed and distressed that this page doesn't have more active watchers. But good luck at VPP. —Frungi (talk) 17:30, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Japanese song and album titles has been open for a while.—Ryulong (琉竜) 17:53, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

Swung dash vs "fullwidth tilde"

I reverted the addition of "fullwidth tildes" after "swung dashes", because after all we are listing examples, and two is enough. Furthermore, the whole "fullwidth tilde" idea is wonky: there is indeed a separate Unicode character with this name, but it is accomodating some quirk of the JIS character set, hence the "fullwidth" (which is a purely Japanese notion). In my browser at least the character shown as a "swung dash" is *identical* to that shown as a "fullwidth tilde", so it promotes confusion -- I had to look in a text editor, which happens to use a different font, in which the two wavy lines are very very slightly different. So I am sure you are right that when a wavy line appears in a Japanese title, sometimes it will be the result of entering the Unicode value for "swung dash" and other times for "fullwidth tilde", but it will not in general be possible to tell which, unless you are an expert on the particular font. Note also that normally in English the word "tilde" refers to the diacritic over certain letters in Portuguese etc. ... Although I said "two is enough" above, I think I will add an "etc" note, since nothing here is exhaustive. Imaginatorium (talk) 07:53, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

The guideline never states "fullwidth tildes". It simply says "tilde", which reflects practice in Japanese media. And no, the swung dash and the tilde are not the same character. The wave dash 〜 in my UI at least goes down then up while the tildes ～ and ~ go up then down. And the use of 〜 exists only at the Japanese Wikipedia as far as I can ever tell. Every other reliable source I come across uses either form of the tilde, which in the case of musical compositions includes the record labels and the bands. I've never seen 〜 outside of Wikipedia. And stop changing the guideline after you've been reverted for fucks sake. Does no one fucking know about WP:BRD but me?—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 07:59, 12 January 2014 (UTC)
For what it's worth, 〜, ～ and ~ all look similar to me: up -> down -> up. Erigu (talk) 12:05, 12 January 2014 (UTC)
This is what I got.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 12:24, 12 January 2014 (UTC)
nami-dasshu
So-called "Wave dash"

That's a surprising image, Ryulong (and your first twiddle looks a bit pixellated, too). I don't recall seeing a down-up nami-dash; the thumbnail on the right and the following image are both up-down: http://dist.joshinweb.jp/cdshop/img/jacket/org/rzcd/rzcd-45254.jpg

The evidence seems to be strongly against the claim that "tilde" and "swung dash" (or "wave dash" etc) are totally distinct characters. I think the problem is actually even worse than I originally thought: there appears to be an unending supply of Unicode values representing different flavours of these things -- here's a useful list of just some: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/dashes.html

As Korpela says, originally "tilde" meant the diacritic in Spanish etc; I guess it was used as the name for the ASCII character (because "twiddles", its real name, didn't sound posh enough), and in days long gone, ASCII ~ still generally sat near the top of the character position, making it look awkard when used to mean "approximately equals". But anyway, the point is not really about Unicode values, it's about marks appearing on CD covers and in images, and what to call them. I think "swung dash" is the most normal English term for this -- e.g. p. 12a of my Collegiate Webster: "A boldface swung dash ～ is used to stand for the main entry...". I do not think it helps to show more than one of these symbols, because inevitably some different Unicode variants will be indistinguishable to many viewers, but I do think it helps to include an "etc" clause. That is why I edited as I did. But of course it could say "swung dash (aka tilde, wave dash etc)" or whatever if anyone feels strongly about it.

Imaginatorium (talk) 16:52, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

All of this discussion about what is and is not a tilde is really pointless. All I know is that when I copy song or album titles from the Oricon, Billboard Japan, Mora, Barks, Natalie, etc. they use ～ and not 〜.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 18:59, 12 January 2014 (UTC)
Here is a copy of how your message above appears in my browser. Do you not see any problem with this? [47]
I can't quite understand what you are claiming: you seem to have a system which makes "wave dash" appear as "down-up", but this does not agree with the images I have pointed to above. Do you accept this? Can you tell me how I would understand your comment by looking at this image of it?? If you tell me something about how things appear on your screen I believe you -- can you not do the same for me? FWIW, here's an article (in Japanese) about confusing "nami-dasshu" with "tilde", pointing out the important difference in languages (not English!) which use vertical writing that dashes should be rotated 90 degrees; this of course is how the wavy ornamentation is used in vertical Japanese. But I'm not really that bothered about the name, as much as the puzzlement from having two copies of essentially the same symbol, at least as viewed on computers other than yours. Imaginatorium (talk) 04:24, 13 January 2014 (UTC)
Ha! A lot of this is explained by this bit: Tilde#Unicode_and_Shift_JIS_encoding_of_wave_dash (it's a Windows problem) Imaginatorium (talk) 04:39, 13 January 2014 (UTC)
Okay, but even then I don't see the wavedash in use on my end on any websites.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 07:29, 13 January 2014 (UTC)
From what I understand (it is a bit of a mess and I'm not too familiar with all this Unicode business), Japanese people only use the tilde instead of the wave dash because of that inverted wave dash error (apparently caused by someone who wasn't familiar with the Japanese language and went "here's the vertical form of the character, so we just have to rotate this thing 90°, easy peasy..."). It's a quick fix, a band aid. Ideally, the correct wave dash (up -> down -> up, like the tilde) would be used. And it seems the inverted wave dash was actually corrected from Windows Vista on? What's your OS, Ryulong, if you don't mind telling us? Japanese Windows? Older than Vista? Erigu (talk) 07:54, 13 January 2014 (UTC)
Vista, but when I first got the computer I copied over all of my fonts from XP so Meiryo isn't the preferred Japanese font for some reason.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 11:53, 13 January 2014 (UTC)
Or Firefox went with MS PGothic for my settings and now the two characters look identical.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 12:02, 13 January 2014 (UTC)
Anyway, I think we now understand the problem. Unicode screwed up, and what was meant to be a normal swung dash (波ダッシュ in Japanese) got turned upside down, sometimes. We see different things, which is why communication was a bit difficult. The answer seems to be not to use the U:WAVE_DASH code, but the U:FULLWIDTH_TILDE code. However, this does not mean it should necessarily be described as a tilde -- as the article I forgot to link above says ( http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~wq6k-yn/code/wavedash.html ) this is a sort of dash, because it is rotated for vertical writing. There ought to be a note about this (coding problem) in the MOS too -- I will look at it when I have a bit more time. Imaginatorium (talk) 18:17, 13 January 2014 (UTC)
That doesn't really explain why I experience the full width tilde character universally off of Wikipedia, even if it is meant to be the wave dash or why we can't explain that character exists in use.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 19:28, 13 January 2014 (UTC)
I think that if you read the cited references carefully, it explains _exactly_ why you see what you see. Look, in real life those wavy dashes on CD jackets etc are called 波ダッシュ (nami-dasshu / lit. "wave-dash"). (But if you ask the average Japanese speaker what that symbol is called they almost certainly won't know, or will say something like から？ (kara / 'from') because entering 'kara' in an IME will usually get you the wavy dash.) In the JIS character set this character is there as a "full-width" (i.e. zenkaku) wavy dash, and somewhere someone decided that the Japanese-English expression for this was WAVE DASH (since 波ダッシュ isn't in J-E dictionaries, but the separate words are). The Unicode people screwed importing this, and got the picture of the symbol upside down in at least some version of their standard; and they called this U:WAVE DASH. There are therefore two ways of handling this Unicode character: use a font which displays the (obviously wrong) upside down version (following the spec), or display what is obviously the intended version in JIS. It seems that versions of Windows up to XP do the former -- and this is why you see U:WAVE DASH displayed as an upside down nami-dasshu, which of course you do not see on CD jackets etc. (at least, until you see one, of course!) While there is this problem with U:WAVE DASH, one workaround is to use U:FULLWIDTH_TILDE, which is (more or less) identical in form to the correct version, and should appear correctly on just about anyone's computer. (This is the Microsoft version, as mentioned in the asahi.net page cited above, which explains why this workaround isn't really the right way to do it, because of vertical writing, which we do not have to worry about, because the en:WP styleguide explicitly says we use English typographical conventions.) So I will remove the U:WAVE_DASH version of the character. Imaginatorium (talk) 17:38, 15 January 2014 (UTC)
Not to mention I still really want to get rid of that part of the MOS because it really gets in the way of what shouldn't be a problematic title if we just converted the character to a tilde.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 19:31, 13 January 2014 (UTC)
I'm afraid this suggests that you have entirely missed the point the MOS is making. Japanese uses decorative marks (not just dashes, also square brackets etc) to mark off headings, subtitles and so on. (It's easy to see why: in the days of mechanical typesetting, with a small character set like the Roman alphabet, it's easy to have variant fonts like bold, italic faces etc, but with a large character set this luxury is impracticable.) The section on subtitles says that we indicate subtitles with English typographical conventions, not Japanese ones. This is not restricted to wavy dashes in particular, but includes any such decorative marks. I feel that I am making the same points I started with, but I learned about something on the way. I think we should also draw attention to the U:WAVE_DASH problem in the MOS, and probably replace any other occurrences with U:FULLWIDTH_TILDE. Because as already observed, these marks really are a kind of dash (they rotate for vertical writing: you have surely seen this?) I still think they are optimally referred to by their English name, which is "swung dash", but I agree it may be a good idea to add 'aka'. Imaginatorium (talk) 17:50, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

It's not a decorative mark if it is used universally through the Japanese media to demarcate the subtitle and they are used in conjunction with English punctuation. There is no reason that a song whose title is written in Japan as "W-B-X～W-Boiled Extreme～" should have its article located at W-B-X (W-Boiled Extreme).—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 18:40, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes there is -- it's exactly the point the MOS is making. We write English WP in English, using English typographical conventions: we do not use blackletter type to write 'Mein Kampf', and we do not use French guillemets for quoting French titles. In the same way, we do not use dashes (of any sort) as paired bracketing devices, as they are used in Japanese, because in English dashes are separators. (I don't really understand what you mean by "in conjunction with English punctuation"; English punctuation is not normally used in Japanese.) Imaginatorium (talk) 16:17, 16 January 2014 (UTC)
It makes no sense. Why would a title like "W-B-X ～W-Boiled Extreme～", "Regret nothing ～Tighten Up～", or "～interlude～「Detox」" have to be changed to such an extent? Why do we have to waste a sentence describing the original form as a "stylization" when those characters can be substituted for their closest approximation on the QWERTY keyboard? How do you deal with a song titled "REAL LOVE ～魂に火をつけて～ feat. 飛蘭" or "牙狼～僕が愛を伝えてゆく～ (インストゥルメンタル)"? Or instances where a song only has a single such character in its title rather than a pair like with "Round ZERO～BLADE BRAVE"? This decision to completely forbid this usage causes so many more problems than it should.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 18:52, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

No standards, only deliberate differentiation

I removed the following subsection because it is utter nonsense only supported by the original proposer Ryulong (talk · contribs).

===Other languages that use the Japanese writing systems=== Several other languages, such as [[Ainu language|Ainu]] and [[Ryukyuan languages|Ryukyuan]], use one or more of the Japanese writing systems (usually [[katakana]]) to transcribe the language. When writing about subjects in these languages, use the accepted standard transliteration for the language if one exists. If no standard transliteration method exists, use a direct kana to rōmaji transcription (use the standard modified Hepburn romanization scheme except when it comes to {{nihongo3||オウ|ou}}, {{nihongo3||オオ|oo}}, and {{nihongo3||ウウ|uu}}, rather than {{nihongo3||オウ|ō}}, {{nihongo3||オオ|ō}}, and {{nihongo3||ウウ|ū}}) and doubling vowels extended by {{nihongo2|ー}} instead of using a macron over the vowel. ;Examples *{{lang|ain|アィヌ・モシ<small>リ</small>}} is the name for the island of [[Hokkaido]] in Ainu. As described at [[Ainu language]], a standard transliteration method exists, showing that the transliterated name should be ''Aynu Mosir'' and not ''Ainu Moshiri''. *{{lang|ryu|ウチナー}} is the name for [[Okinawa]] in the Ryukyuan languages. No standard transliteration method exists for the Ryukyuan languages, so the name would be parsed as ''Uchinaa'' and not ''Uchinā''.

One might ask two questions. Why doesn't this make sense? And why has such a nonsense survived for a long time?

The answer to the first question is twofold:

  • The Ainu language has two separate (not mixed) writing systems: Katakana and the Latin alphabet. We should not transliterate Katakana into another romanization system. Perhaps, the sole exception would be an article that explains the Katakana writing system itself. This subsection was written by the guy who was incapable of understanding what transliteration was even though he was given a short lecture about it.
  • The second part reads: "Even though I admit there are no standards, I want to deliberately differentiate the Ryukyuan languages from Standard Japanese by enforcing a strange exception regarding long vowels." The amateurish-sounding direct kana to rōmaji transcription does not make sense. The original proposer does not justify the exception. So its sole purpose must be his personal desire. "Why the fuck should we use a Japanese romanization system to romanize it[Ryukyuan (singular!)]?"[48]

The answer to the second question is, again, twofold:

  • This subsection has simply been ignored because the topics concerned rarely receive attention.
  • This section has been owned by one guy. No sound logic. No proper process of consensus building. He just edits Wikipedia far more often than anyone else here (see also the revision history). Because this subsection sounds silly to anyone who has taken Linguistics 101, it has encountered clear opposition at least once. Take a look at the archive (2). You would be surprised at how unproductive the discussion was. Anyone possessing a minimum knowledge of linguistics would agree with Jpatokal. He has already pointed out why this subsection does not make sense. Also, he kindly explained what transliteration was. However, Ryulong repeated the same thing like a parrot and the nonsense remains the same today. Unfortunately this has proven to be an effective strategy here in Wikipedia. Although I am reluctant to repeat the old unconstructive discussion, I believe that for the future of English Wikipedia, we need to change the situation.

--Nanshu (talk) 14:04, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

No standards outside Wikipedia, no standards in Wikipedia

Because the current subsection is utter nonsense that failed to gain consensus, it would be more productive to restart from scratch. To keep the discussion constructive, I would like to require participants to know what transliteration is. I'm sorry if you feel insulted. This sounds obvious as we are talking about romanization! But unfortunately, this is not the case here.

For the Ainu language, the solution is trivial. Just follow the Latin orthography and put Katakana separately. Do not transliterate Katakana. Because this is obvious to anyone who know what transliteration is, I see no need in mentioning it in MoS.

For the Ryukyuan languages (plural), my proposal is to leave things unstandardized. We need to get back to basics. If there are no standards outside Wikipedia, why should we force a standardization through MoS? It's getting more like original research.

In the following, I give a brief sketch of the linguistic situation outside Wikipedia because I think the past discussion was out of touch with the reality. We should base our decision on facts, not on someone's personal desire.

The most important fact to keep in mind is that Ryukyuan is an umbrella term (confusingly, it also refers to a language spoken in Shuri). Each traditional community or shima has its own spoken language. There are literally hundreds of languages. They would be clustered into 5, 6 or more groups with the inherently vague criterion of mutual intelligibility. But this does not mean there are 5 or 6 standard languages. There are no serious attempts of standardization, not to mention the creation of written languages. There is no lingua franca other than Standard Japanese. Speakers of these languages use Written Japanese in writing.

We have to deal with spoken languages. This is an important point. Normally, romanization is the process of converting a written language to the Latin alphabet. Such a standardized written language may have numerous spoken varieties behind it (see the example of Fukushima below), but we can safely ignore them. But for Ryukyuan, we have to tackle numerous spoken languages. Although almost all sources we rely on are written materials, they are in fact transcriptions of spoken languages in some unstandardized ways. Standardizing the conversion from unstandardized materials is like "garbage in, garbage out."
Also, the linguistic diversity means that Okinawan is not a representative of the Ryukyuan languages. Rather it is exceptional in many points. For example, it is relatively easy to write Okinawan in Kana although the phonetic glottal stop is usually ignored. The language of Shodon, Kakeroma Island (Amami) has 7 vowels: [i], [ɪ], [u], [e], [ɛ], [o] and [a] while the language of Yonaguni has only three. In fact, what characterizes the Ryukyuan languages is phonetic innovativeness, which matters a lot to romanization. A sweeping generalization is simply harmful.

With that said, I find it convenient to separate articles into linguistic and non-linguistic topics.

And as far as I know, linguistic descriptions (e.g., phonology and example sentences) are out of scope of MoS. Anyway, it is technically impossible to specify a standard way of transcription that can be applied to all languages concerned. External sources use their own ways of transcription with varying degrees of accuracy. The choice of transcription greatly depends on purposes: phonology or morphology/syntax, descriptive or comparative, or synchronic or diachronic. Fully descriptive approaches have been taken only recently (e.g., Shimoji Michinori's 2008 work on the Irabu language). There are some locally compiled dictionaries but they often present inaccurate and/or inconsistent data. Considerable difficulty would be experienced in integrating different sources. Also, for the reasons I explained above, reporting the informant's home community is a must.

For non-linguistic topics, most sources are written (1) by non-linguists and (2) in Written Japanese. English sources are scarce and some of them (e.g., George H. Kerr's "Okinawa: the History of an Island People" (1958)) are seriously outdated. In most cases, we end up consulting Kazari Eikichi (Amami Ōshima), Inamura Kenpu (Miyako) and Kishaba Eijun (Yaeyama), just to name a few.

This leads to two things. One is that data provided are linguistically inaccurate. The writer may not have fully understand the phonology of the language he spoke, and he had considerable difficulty choosing a proper sequence of Kana characters. The other is that the distinction between Standard Japanese and the writer's own language often blurs. What we read is Written Japanese borrowing some terms from local languages. The correspondence between the two is often regular and transparent.

If a word or phrase is written in the logograph Kanji, it means that its pronunciation is left to readers. In that case, we would choose a "standardized" form for Wikipedia. The Futori family would write its name as 太 while it is pronounced something like "huθori" in Yamatohama, Amami Ōshima. In fact, such a conversion is done throughout Japan. "ɸɯɡɯsɯma" (this may not be so accurate) is what we know as Fukushima (福島).

When Katakana is chosen, it is a sign of attempting to transcribe a local language. Here I use カムィヤキ (Kamuiyaki) for a case study. Kamuiyaki was named after a pond in Isen Town, Tokunoshima of the Amami Islands. It is interesting to note that we cannot technically apply the (modified) Hepburn to カムィヤキ. The sequence "ui" represents not a diphthong but a central vowel. I think the name may be better transcribed as Kamïyaki. However, since this is about archaeology, no one in the field dare to choose such a complicated form. As far as I know, all archaeological reports transcribe カムィヤキ as Kamuiyaki. For your information, Okinawa-based archaeologist Asato Susumu refused to accept the name of カムィヤキ and used 亀焼 instead although no one follows him. If we adopted his proposal, the article title would have been Kameyaki.

If you want to cover a broad region, it complicates things even further. Ryukyu in a broad sense is an aggregate of numerous, traditionally isolated communities. It is by no means a monolithic entity. What you have to do is a comparative study. 童名 (lit. childhood name) is a good example. In my opinion, it deserves comparative studies because it is the only name component shared across various subregions. The problem is the linguistic diversity. The term in question reads "warabena" in Standard Japanese, "warabïnaː" in the language of Yamatohama, Amami Ōshima, "warabinaː" in the language of Shuri, Okinawa Island, and "yarabinaː" in both the languages of Shika, Ishigaki Island (Yaeyama) and Hirara, Miyako Island (this is a rare coincidence). Given the fact that no local language has a status of lingua franca, I think Standard Japanese is a reasonable choice.

Incorporating historical documents would be a nightmare. Again, Kanji leaves its pronunciation to readers. The problem is that Okinawa has some documents and inscriptions written predominantly in Hiragana. The language used in these resources are considerably different from the modern languages. It is partly because the set of sound changes that characterizes the modern Okinawan languages happened relatively recently. But it is presumably different from the language spoken at that time too. No one attempted to faithfully transcribe a spoken language. After all, the written language was in Japanese literary tradition. Take おもろさうし for example. I am not sure if vowel raising (o > u) completed at the time of the compilation of the book, but おもろ (omoro) certainly corresponds to modern "umuru." さうし (saushi) is a obsolete spelling of そうし. And we name its article Omoro Sōshi.

To sum up, we need to realize the complicated situation before we try to create some kind of standardization. I think inconsistencies are inevitable but better than an unreasonable standardization. --Nanshu (talk) 14:04, 15 February 2014 (UTC); Last Update: 12:01, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Another case study. Angama is a cultural practice of many communities of the Yaeyama Islands. Fortunately, it has an English source, Ouwehand's Hateruma (1985). As the title suggests, however, he limited his scope to Hateruma Island. What is worse, the performance associated with angama in Ishigaki Island is known as mushāma in Hateruma. So, for the most part of the article, I had to rely on Kishaba Eijun's articles written in Japanese. I am still unsure if I successfully merged the totally different sources.

Ouwehand was a cultural anthropologist. While he used the modified Hepburn system for Standard Japanese, he added several rules to it to transcribe Hateruma speech in a not so accurate but easily readable way. Examples include mushāma, angama, tĒku (taiko in Standard Japanese), and uguru p'sïn (okuru hi). Corresponding terms found in Kishaba's Japanese text are ムシャーマ, アンガマ, 太鼓 and 精霊送. The first two are in Katakana, presumably reflecting Ishigaki speech. And yes, the macron indicates a long vowel as in Hepburn. The third one (drum) is written in Kanji and we are expected to read it taiko as in Standard Japanese. The correspondence between Hateruma Ē ([æː]) and Standard Japanese ai is regular and transparent. Kishaba did not consider drum as a technical term requiring special treatment. The last pair represents the same concept but different wording was employed.

As I said above, the distinction between Standard Japanese and the writer's own language blurs. And since the latter has no written standard, each author had to invent his/her own method of transcription. No standards outside Wikipedia. --Nanshu (talk) 15:00, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

Break

Don't unilaterally change the MOS without consensus. I've reverted your edits to the page for this reason.
That said, there is an existing consensus to use the established method for romanization of the Ainu language and just not using the Hepburn romanization for the Ryukyuan languages as it is common practice (as far as I have seen) to use romanization styles such as "uchinaaguchi" and "saataa andaagii" if at least for Okinawan. In your massive essay I see no compelling reason to change either of these practices on the project, considering the use of the languages on this project are limited. Also, no one in their right mind is going to read your treatise (I certainly haven't done so in full), so please summarize your main points and maybe then users such as myself can be swayed.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 14:16, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
Also, don't write up two sections when they're about the same damn thing.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 14:17, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
And I find your ad hominem attack against me extremely unprofessional. My activity on this project should not in any way be a reason to dismiss my opinion.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 14:19, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

Request for a third opinion

I would like to seek a third opinion. We have two things to discuss, the dark past and a bright future. I want to keep them separate. Otherwise the latter will become unconstructive too. For the latter, see the subsection above. In this subsection, I focus on the former.

  • The assertion that Ryulong's version is a consensus is plainly wrong. It's clear if you take a look at the archive (2). He simply devastated the discussion to the point that no one was willing to continue. As a result, he effectively owns this page.
  • Ryulong's version still explains "transliteration for the language." This is evidence for his ownership. He was taught that transliteration is the process of changing from one script to another (and thus one cannot transliterate a language)[49]. But it's still here.
  • This also demonstrates the unconstructiveness of the discussion with Ryulong. If a discussion does not make things better at all, it's just a waste of time. That's the very reason why a third opinion is needed.
  • This time Ryulong declared refusal to join the constructive, fact-based discussion by blatantly labeling my proposal as "treatise." This is a very important point to note. With this situation, how can we make things better?

--Nanshu (talk) 17:10, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

You posted a page and a half worth of text. No one should be expected to read all of that. And consensus still exists. Simply because you currently do not agree with it and Jpatokal did not agree with it does not change anything. And stop making these claims and ad hominem attacks against me. And the "Other languages that use the Japanese writing systems, last call" thread established the consensus that you claim does not exist. And oh my god if your problem is the use of the word "transliteration" just fix the terminology to "romanization". This is the same semantic garbage you pulled at Talk:Hokkaido, Talk:Ryukyu Islands, and Talk:New Ishigaki Airport.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 17:36, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
FWIW, I support the english wikipedia using whatever form is most widespread in english-language sources (however few) for the particular topic. (Isn't there already a guideline to that effect?) The problem with standardised transliteration rules is that we then end up with some editors self-proclaiming that all the verifiable sources about a series of subjects are "wrong" (IMO using wikipedia as a vehicle for their personal agenda of language prescriptivism) and changing article titles to a string which isn't used in any reliable sources (written in either language by subject experts). I don't see who that benefits; it creates a disconnect between wikipedia and all the other literature that the readers will be moving between. (Aside, anyone read WP:DRNC?) Cesiumfrog (talk) 20:57, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
Hijiri88's phone here. Cesiumfrog, who never edits Japan/Okinawa/Ainu-related articles, is here referring to two incidents on Talk:Tenjin Shin'yō-ryū. He there made the samebaseless strawman argument he does above, that I was claiming one romanization system to be "right" and the others to be wrong. He seems to believe that any and all English sources, including self-published ones, are superior to romanization of Japanese sources. IMO, for articles on Yamato-language topics (perhaps excluding Ainu and Okinawa topics), Japanese sources should obviously be used when there are few or no English (reliable) sources. As for the issue at hand, I am neutral because (like, presumably, Cesiumfrog) I don't know squat about Okinawan or Ainu. I think it's unlikely that the only reliable sources on a topic will be in katakana-fied Ainu, though Nanshu's comments, as far as I can see, are the most sensible. 182.249.48.171 (talk) 03:50, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
That said, Nanshu, to be fair, the one who wrote the section was not [ [User:Ryulong|Ryulong]] but Nihonjoe.[50] I personally can't stand Ryulong's unilaterally declaring him/herself the "owner" of this guideline page even though he/she hardly ever edits the majority of articles that are affected by it (probably 90+% of Ryulong's article edits are to topics not even covered under WikiProject Japan). But we should be fair: Ryulong would have probably reverted Nanshu whether he/she agreed with the proposal or not. "Consensus" isn't necessary to overrule a guideline that was not implemented according to consensus in the first place, however, and Ryulong is clearly in the wrong here. This appears to be a recurring habit, as it was last summer when Ryulong reverted my inclusion of a proviso that just so happens to have in fact been supported by a broad, multilateral consensus.[51] ~ 182.249.48.171 (talk)
How is reverting undiscussed changes a violation of WP:OWN? And last I checked, my preferred editing area deals with this MOS, which does not just deal with WP:JAPAN (that's why it's called "Japan-related articles" and not the MOS for WP:JAPAN). I may not have to deal with non-Yamato languages fairly often but it does happen. And please, that text was never agreed upon which is why I corrected my initial revert and started this thread.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 11:44, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
I'm sorry Ryulong, but can you point me to where the current text was upheld by consensus at any point in the last seven years? Or the guideline that says removal of not-backed-by-consensus guideline content should be reverted? Otherwise, WP:PGBOLD supports Nanshu's right to remove this text, and also supports your initial reversion of it. However, since then Nanshu has provided a well-reasoned and thought-out argument in favour of the removal, and all you have done is said WP:TLDR and continued to oppose the removal without providing a reason. That kind of comment may be valid on ANI, but if you are going to participate in the construction of style guides, you need to be willing to consider complex proposals. An average of 80 edits/day over the last eight years implies you "don't have time" for such things, but then you should probably reconsider whether guideline talk pages are the right place for you. (I'm currently getting flashbacks to my first interaction with you...) Also, your regularly referring to Nanshu as an "asshole"[52] or the like, combined with your failure to present any reasoning for your opposition, implies to me you may not have the most honourable of intentions in opposing this proposal. 182.249.46.16 (talk) 09:00, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
The consensus is that no one except for Nanshu and Jpatokal have raised any problems with this. And most of his argument is railing against me. And how is one time "regularly"?
The section's intent is simple: don't use Hepburn romanization for the Ainu language or the Ryukyuan languages because Hepburn is only for standard Japanese. The only reason it's being argued against is because it says "don't use macrons for for long vowels in Okinawan et al because there's no standardized use, instead double vowels or use ou". Why is this so problematic that Nanshu felt the need to remove the entire section? What is so wrong with me reverting his bold move?—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 09:48, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
Pointing out on the talk page of a guideline that one user has inappropriately claimed ownership of said guideline is not "railing against you". It's basically the same as pointing out the same problem on an article talk page and there seems to be no shortage of people doing t hat. Also, you missed the part where I said "or the like": I consider your consistent aggressive tone (as seen when you accused me, in the middle of a peaceful discussion, of using fighting words, and, without even reading the discussion, accused me of being at the root of the problem here) to be a hindrance to constructive debate. And again, like in the Darling Foreigner example, you have admitted above to not bothering to read Nanshu 's reasoning; it's possible that you have since got around to reading it, but the fact you keep insisting that "most of his argument is railing against you" indicates that you actually have not. I see three mentions of you in his post: the first is speculating that you don't understand the issue (I don't know your qualifications either way, but by relying exclusively on ad hominem arguments you're not helping my perception of you); the second is him giving a quotation from you that (1) shows you dropping an F-bomb and (2) implies that, yes, you don't know what you're talking about; the third is an accusation that you are trying to OWN this page, something that is objectively true and fully verifiable (reinstating a non-consensus-backed clause that has been removed, and claiming that "consensus is needed" to remove such a clause is clear OWN; removing a consensus-backed clause that was supported by everyone except you is as well). Being generous, these three "extremely unprofessional ad hominem attacks" (made against a user who not long ago called the attacker an "asshole") account for around 250 words. They are followed by a 1,400-word argument based on linguistic reasoning, in which you are not mentioned once. How can you continue to claim that "most of Nanshu's argument is railing against you"? Clearly you have not actually bothered to read the argument and are making assumptions. You now say the section's intent is not to use Hepburn when romanizing Ainu or Okinawan languages, but Nanshu's argument is that it enforces a completely arbitrary original romanization system created by Wikipedians. Looking at the wording of the guideline itself, rather than your representation of it, it certainly seems that way. 182.249.53.159 (talk) 08:38, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
He's talking down to me and using parts of his argument as ad hominem attacks. I'm not going to read through 14k of text. No one should. It has been pointed out in the sockfest at ANI that profanity when it is not directed at anyone is not an issue. I was wrong however for referring to Nanshu as an "asshole", but it is only because I have had years of him talking down to me and filling his arguments in disputes with ad hominem attacks. And finally, reverting undiscussed changes to this guideline is not an example of WP:OWN. Drastic changes such as completely deleting a section because he disagrees with it on a semantic level need discussion.
I fail to see how the current proviso violates WP:OR. This is a style guide. There are plenty of other style guides on this website that are worded contra to common sense. I continue to try to get this one changed because of tildes but nothing ever comes out of it. Am I still violating WP:OWN there?
The disputed section discusses what to do with text that is not nihongo Japanese, which is basically "don't use Hepburn". Perhaps the part on the Ainu language needs to be worded differently considering written Ainu uses katakana variably with Latin, and sometimes Cyrillic. The majority of these sources are in Japanese, resulting in the use of katakana. So we should use this page to point out that a standard romanized form exists.
And for the Ryukyuan languages, I have not denied that there is no standardization. But because this is a style guide we need to define a standardization for use within the English Wikipedia. Nanshu is just as guilty of making up his own style that is not supported by reliable sources as he repeatedly falsely claims I've done on this page. Most of his argument is based on the use of Okinawan as the example on this page, and it appears that he assumes that the MOS dictates that all Ryukyuan language topics should use the Shuri-Naha Okinawan form rather than any local forms if they can be identified, otherwise he would not spend that much time on explaining the different dialectical pronunciations of 童名. Practice is different. I've posted a multitude of different transcriptions of the same thing's name at Ryukyuan languages because of the five different sets of dialects and languages being described.
But when it comes down to things, we here at Wikipedia have to make a choice. Is ウチナーンチュ to be romanized as "Uchinanchu", "Uchinaanchu", or "Uchinānchu"? Is カムィヤキ "kamuiyaki" or "kamwiyaki"? Is ソーキ "soki", "souki", "sooki", or "sōki"? My argument in the quote where I "drop an f-bomb" is simple. Because this is not Japanese, it should be differentiated in some form and not use Hepburn or Kunrei-siki or whatever. Omniglot goes with the form that is currently described on this page. For the very very very few cases where we have words romanized from Okinawan or Amamian or Yonagunese, the style set out at Omniglot (long vowels are not indicated by macrons but by doubling) works. I don't even know if there are words in any of the languages that have an O syllable followed by U that's not turning to+little u into tu like in "kutuba" or "dunan".
And for someone talking down to me about violating policy, your claim here in the edit summary (and higher up on this page) is pretty much a threat of resorting to WP:POINT violations just because I disagreed with Nanshu on this matter.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 09:49, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

How is pointing out that you are violating WP:POINT (opposing a proposal you haven't actually read, just because you don't like the proposer, is the very definition of POINT) itself a violation of POINT? 182.249.240.5 (talk) 08:54, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Clearly the 4k worth of text I wrote shows that I've read the god damn thing now. And me having gone "tl;dr" is not violating WP:POINT.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 10:29, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
I think it's evident to all that Nanshu has a far deeper understanding of this issue than the rest of us combined, and I obviously continue to support removing the "direct kana to romaji transcription" bit of the MOS and following WP:COMMONNAME instead.
I would also like to gently if probably futilely plead that we resist the temptation to make this personal, and instead focus on the actual issue. Jpatokal (talk) 21:40, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
WP:COMMONNAME is going to be hard to find considering that there is no standard usage between "Uchinaaguchi", "Uchinaguchi", or "Uchināguchi". Going with wāpuro is the best option as there is no standardized romanization scheme (and most of Nanshu's opposition is because I used "transliteration" instead of "romanization"). And Nanshu's driveby nature of debate does not demonstrate that he knows what he's talking about. If so, he would have provided an alternative other than simply removing it completely and spending 10k worth of text talking down to me.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 03:56, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
I don't know these languages enough to give a very intelligent comment, but I'll give a general opinion. It may seem strange to have different rominization methods for different languages or regions, but it is sometimes done that way. I would support using the one most English reliable sources use, even on a case-by-case basis. Though standardization is preferable, I don't know that we should try to enforce standards where a language has none. Just my thoughts. —PC-XT+ 11:38, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
  • The repeat-a-lie-often-enough strategy does not work here. There was no consensus and Ryulong's version does not deserve special status. If someone wants to keep the nonsense, he/she is required to make a convincing argument for it.
  • The transliteration stuff was used as an example that demonstrated the unconstructiveness of the discussion with Ryulong. A lengthy discussion brought no improvement. The reason why Ryulong's version does not make sense was explained elsewhere. I don't see why he is unable to understand such a simple logic.
  • Signs of devastation here. Ryulong will probably repeat the same thing like a parrot until everyone else gets sick and tired of it. For a bright future of Wikipedia, we must not make it work.

--Nanshu (talk)

It's not my version. Nihonjoe wrote it up originally. I made it clearer. Stop blaming me for this. Stop saying you don't think I'm intelligent. Stop blaming me for everything.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 16:00, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
And why can't we come up with our own standard form of romanizing these languages in the rare instances that they show up? That's what the manual of style is for. What exactly is wrong with saying "for Ainu and the Ryukyuan languages don't use Hepburn"? You do nothing but demand that the section be removed because you claim that I have some lack of knowledge in this area when I am not the one who created it in the first place. You suggest no alternative text. You simply demand its removal because it apparently stands in opposition to the handful of articles you've created on topics in this area, like Kamuiyaki and Angama (dance) (moved from "Angama (Yaeyama)" because that's not really the best title). You spend half of these articles delving into the etymology rather than the subject, as well.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 16:03, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
  • Blaming others doesn't make any progress. There are just different points of view, and standards are hard to find in positions like this. As I said, standards would be preferable. I am leaning towards keeping the standard, because it is a direction, even though, as far as I can tell, it may be somewhat arbitrary. I still question whether standards should really be enforced, but don't want to just throw what we have away, if it can be helped. —PC-XT+ 07:12, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
Putting weak guidelines or best practices, but not standards, is a good choice. After removing personal advocacy, we need to tackle technical problems. We need to help fellow Wikipedians who want to edit articles related to history, culture among others but are unfamiliar with the languages involved. They would be something like:
Use commonly recognizable names if there are (e.g., Kamuiyaki). If your sources provide romanized forms (e.g., Ouwehand's Hateruma), just use them. If your sources are written in Japanese and the term in question is in Katakana (e.g., ムシャーマ), use the modified Hepburn system (i.e., mushāma). If the term in question is written in Kanji (e.g., 太) and you have no idea how to pronounce it in the target languages, follow Standard Japanese (i.e., Futori), which is what the sources expect you to read in.
--Nanshu (talk) 12:01, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
If the Ryukyuan languages are not Japanese, then why should a system used for romanization of Japanese be used for them? That's why we should use the system used by Omniglot and several other sources when dealing with the long vowels (unless a common name exists), which is all that the section is directing people to do.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 13:06, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Ryulong (talk · contribs) unilaterally closed the straw poll below even though he is clearly involved in the dispute. Yet another instance of Ryulong's misbehavior. To be fair, I do not think the poll result is binding. But given that Ryulong is trying hard to stick to a past consensus, which actually did not exist, it is illogical to obstruct our fellow Wikipedian's quick poll aimed to "see how much actual consensus we have here." So Ryulong must have given up making his version take precedence. A small step forward.

Anyway, it's too obvious that no one can persuade Ryulong. And of course, it is not requisite for our decision. Any suggestions? --Nanshu (talk) 12:01, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

The straw poll should not have been opened in the first place. Whatever comes out of this should be the result of this discussion and only this discussion. And I am not an "involved admin". Stop talking down to me in this whole thing.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 13:06, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
WP:RFC/U NE Ent 13:10, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
Whose conduct? Mine? Because I've reverted bold changes to this guideline that were undiscussed? Or Nanshu for being verbose and impossible to work with due to his ad hominem attacks?—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 13:14, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
For the time being, I would like to focus on resolving the content dispute.
Yes, I realize that the user's misbehavior is the main obstacle to resolving the content dispute. We probably need to turn off the tap at the source. But I took a look at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/User conduct and was horrified by bureaucratic procedures. Does anyone help me file the case at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/User conduct? --Nanshu (talk) 15:07, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

Now the discussion seems almost over. It's clear that Ryulong's version is not supported. So I've removed the section. Let's move to the next step, a creative reconstruction. --Nanshu (talk) 15:07, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

You do not get to make that decision yourself. You cannot just delete the section because you think that "my version" (originally written by Nihonjoe, modified by myself years later) is not good.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 16:04, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

The new consensus straw poll

See WP:NOTDEMOCRACY and WP:POLL—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 16:05, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Let's see how much actual consensus we have here. The crux of Nanshu's proposal boils down to removing this sentence from the MOS:

If no standard romanization method exists, use a direct kana to rōmaji transcription (use the standard modified Hepburn romanization scheme except when it comes to ou (オウ?), oo (オオ?), and uu (ウウ?), rather than ō (オウ?), ō (オオ?), and ū (ウウ?)) and doubling vowels extended by ー instead of using a macron over the vowel.

So sign below if you want to remove it (support), or want to keep it (oppose).

(And yes, I realize Nanshu actually proposes removing the whole "Other languages that use the Japanese writing systems" section, which I also support, but we'd need to work out some new wording first.)

Support removal
Oppose removal

Ainu

The principle is simple:

Just follow the Latin orthography and put Katakana separately.

However, things are not so straightforward. Katakana is used (1) to write fully Ainu text, which is far from abundant, and (2) to embed Ainu terms in Japanese text, which might be your only source available. For example, Yukar is often written as ユーカラ although ユカㇻ is more accurate.

We have learned how a knowledgeless control freak is harmful to the knowledge-oriented project. I think it's better to just wait until real Ainu experts join the discussion. We don't need to rush into conclusions. --Nanshu (talk) 15:07, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

I'd actually agree with you on this if you hadn't baselessly attacked me, again.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 16:11, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
There's nothing baseless about Nanshu's attack. Ryulong has not demonstrated any level of knowledge of this subject, and continues to insist on exerting control over this guideline. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:44, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
There is plenty baseless about his attacks. The only "control" is preventing you and Nanshu from changing things before it's discussed.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 14:20, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Ryukyuan

Let me clarify the most important point again: Ryukyuan is an umbrella term that encompasses numerous, diversified spoken languages. A sweeping generalization is dangerous.

We have learned how a knowledgeless control freak is harmful to the knowledge-oriented project. If someone makes a proposal for standardization, he/she should clarify its scope (e.g., Miyako Islands) and give sufficient evidence to prove that it does not go against verifiable sources.

I have wrote and drastically rewrote articles about this topic while reading hundreds of external sources. This experience led me to a pessimistic view about standardization because I can find no standard in these sources. I have provided some concrete examples above.

We might need to help fellow Wikipedians who want to edit articles related to history, culture among others but are unfamiliar with the languages involved. Given the current situation, I think putting weak guidelines or best practices, but not standards, might help. But, again, we don't need to hurry. --Nanshu (talk) 15:07, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

Stop baselessly attacking me. You seem to have gladly ignored the lengthy response I posted above that explains my stance on at least Okinawan.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 16:11, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
I haven't really followed any of this discussion, but I thought I'd share my thoughts. At present, there aren't enough linguistic sources or other works dealing with each of the Ryukyuan languages to create proper transliterations for each of them, so most sources disagree on the transliteration used, even in Japanese. That said, Central Okinawan is phonologically very similar to standard Japanese and most English works follow the transliteration method set out in the Okinawan-English Wordbook, by Mitsugu Sakihara and edited by Stewart Curry. So if there was a standard to follow for Central/Standard Okinawan, I would strongly recommend it, and I believe it served as the basis for the Omniglot article mentioned somewhere here.
For the other Ryukyuan languages, we can really only rely on ad hoc transcriptions, unless a reliable linguistic source exists. We also have to be careful with providing romanizations, because it's possible to make mistakes. For example, in カムィヤキ, is it really [kamwi-] or is it something more like [kamɨ-]? Given the word is 甕/亀, I'm inclined to believe it's the second since I'm not aware of a sound change where [e] becomes [wi] in Ryukyuan, which would mean kamwi- is incorrect. In either case, I'm not supportive of the spelling kamui-, but if there are several reputable sources that use it, I can't complain. That said, there are some recurring themes in the works I've read. To provide an example, long vowels are dealt with by doubling the vowel <aa> or by using a long dash in Japanese <あー/アー>. And centralized vowels, such as [ɨ] or [ʉ], are often romanized as <ï> (and typically marked with a small ぃ/ィ in Japanese).
Anyway, that's my take. Given the disputes here, it might be useful to create some sort of guideline to help other users. — Io Katai ᵀᵃˡᵏ 00:32, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
Regarding カムィ, I believe it's closer to [kamʷi].—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 05:19, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

Rewrite

All I've really gathered from this debate is that Nanshu despises me and Hijiri88 is ready to violate WP:POINT because I've reverted Nanshu's unilateral actions to change this guideline. Based on Nanshu's various posts, despite his constant attacks on my character now and in the past, I've rewritten the section to remove the various issues that Nanshu seems to have over the semantics of the wording. This still leaves us with no general practices for the Japanese approximations of the Ryukyuan language family. As far as I have seen (as posted a few days ago), general practice is some form of Hepburn but without macrons for long vowels, but there's no name for this anywhere.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 16:24, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

I'm a bit leery of wading in here now that I see what's gone on on the talk page, but the rewrite looks all right to me. I think it's a bit of an oversimplification to argue that Okinawan dialects/languages are simply spoken, as has been argued a bit here. There are several other things I might take issue with about the scope of a Wikipedia MOS, but I'd just like to make a few other points. (1) Even though exclusion of the macrons is not strictly universal in reliable sources, I do agree that the distinct nature of the Okinawan/Ryukyuan vowels shouldn't be glossed over in the MOS. Perhaps "use the most commonly romanized form found in reliable sources" should be amended to state explicitly that the sources should refer to Okinawan usage and not Japanese usage. To use a basic example, we would be more likely to find references to ゴーヤー that are dealing with the Japanese use of the Okinawan term than to find references that are specifically referencing the Okinawan term. Would we then accept the romanized Japanese term or would we choose a version of romanized Ryukyuan (without standards, according to the current MOS)? And should we really limit ourselves to those sources that have already chosen a romanized spelling--something we don't do for terms in Japanese? (2) "The Ainu language has its own Latin orthography, and that form should be used in articles" is not very useful in the context of a manual of style without further explication of the standards of that orthography. Dekimasuよ! 20:03, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
From the extensive essays that Nanshu has written here, I was under the impression that there is no native writing system used for Okinawan, Miyako, et al., and the Japanese kanji and kana are used because of the fact that they're "dialects" as far as the Japanese government is concerned. His extensive discussion of his production of Angama (dance) and Kamuiyaki (I would still think this page should be "Kamwiyaki") seemed to hint at that. And regarding your two points, I've attempted to rewrite what I had done to reflect the arguments risen about wording. And I'd rather we pick a romanization for the Ryukyuan family, still obviously preferring the "double long vowels" method because it only ever comes up in words like ゴーヤー and ソーキ rather than in words like 玉陵 and 宮良殿内 where the furigana reading どぅん had been transcribed as "dōn" rather than "dun".—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 20:52, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
I can understand this rewrite better than the previous version. Maybe we can improve the ambiguities as time goes on, but this is a good foundation. —PC-XT+ 03:16, 25 February 2014 (UTC)
Ryulong, stop baselessly attacking me. You are the one who violated POINT here, by deliberately and openly insisting several times that you actually agree with Nanshu on the substance but are opposing him because he pointed out that you are behaving like an ignorant control-freak. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:48, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
I did not violate POINT. However, you clearly have threatened to violate POINT because I initially stated I did not bother to read the massive essay peppered with ad hominem attacks directed towards me that Nanshu initially posted on this page and continued to do so despite my protests. After I finally did read his comments, I do find myself agreeing with his concerns. However, just straight out removing the content from this page and then engaging in discussion on it is not how things work on Wikipedia. You and he cannot claim that because there was no explicit discussion regarding the creation of the text that there was no consensus for its creation and therefore you are allowed to remove it. When something has been implicitly followed by the handful of people who edit articles regarding Ainu or Ryukyuan topics, it has consensus. What doesn't have consensus is yours and his removals of text from this page without any discussion preceeding it or any clear consensus that you or he are in the right in your removals. THis does not mean I am violating WP:OWN on this page. It just means that you two are disrupting to make a point. Also what doesn't have consensus is Nanshu's repeated use of ï in romanizing Yaeyaman or Amamian or whatever critically endangered language/dialect that is included on an article he decides to edit. Ï is found nowhere in the IPA to account for its use that has been parroted by Wikipedia mirrors after he used it on kamuiyaki.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 14:18, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Syllabic n

Hijiri88 has raised issues with the previous wording of the section, which directed people to use Google as a metric for determining whether or not the archaic use of "M" before the bilabial nasal m, voiceless bilabial stop p, and voiced bilabial stop b morae. After discussion on his talk page and my own, I rewrote the section to refer to WP:COMMONNAME, but he has issues with this as well, claiming that the guideline suddenly contradicts itself without fully explaining what is the contradiction. The previous wording, excluding the Google statement Hijiri88 removed, is as follows:

The original version of Hepburn used m when syllabic n ん preceded b, m, or p. While generally deprecated, this is still allowed in titles for cases where the official anglicized name continues to use m (examples: Asahi Shimbun, Namba Station). In the modified Hepburn romanization system, unlike the standard system, the "n" is maintained even when followed by homorganic consonants (e.g., shinbun, not shimbun).

My attempt at a rewrite to be more in line with site wide policies and guidelines is the following:

In previous forms of the Hepburn romanization, the syllabic n (ん) was parsed as m when before b, m, or p sounds. This form has been deprecated, but remains in use in some official anglicized names. On the English Wikipedia, always follow the modified Hepburn style of using n in these situations, unless the common name uses the m variant.

followed by a few examples. I still do not see the contradiction, but maybe this section should be rewritten further.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 14:44, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

I'm not going to discuss or recognize radical changes to this portion of MOS until the RM on Talk:Emperor Jimmu closes. I deliberately limited myself to removing a reference to Google, but you have now gone and introduced far more radical changes. Once the RM closes I will revert back to the previous wording again, and then we will discuss the relevant changes. Since, as User:In ictu oculi already pointed out, it concerns all WPJAPAN users, we will have the discussion on WT:JAPAN and get the participation of as many users as possible. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 15:36, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
There are no "radical changes". I've made it clearer to the original intent and actual practice while linking to other existant policy.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 16:26, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
I think the new version is quite good, but I didn't see a major problem with the old one either. Including examples in the MOS is generally helpful and I would like to see the references to the Asahi Shimbun and Namba Station reinserted. It's unfortunate that this would probably lead to more arguments over the common name, but there have always been disputes over common names on Wikipedia and Wikipedia hasn't died yet. Separately, I know I have disagreed with Ryulong at various times in the past, but in general "I intend to revert X at some point in the future" doesn't seem like a productive style of discussion. If you want to initiate a discussion, that's fine. If you want to do that at some future point instead of right now, that's fine; Wikipedia is not a job. But it's not very useful to bring the legitimacy of the standing MOS into question without being willing to perform the revert you want or have the discussion. And last, the discussion really should be here, because it's about this page. Putting a link to the discussion here on the WikiProject's talk page is fine, but there are lots of people who are affected by changes to the MOS, and these are not limited to "all WP:JAPAN users." They include people who don't work on the WikiProject but do work on Japan-related articles, and people who are interested in integration of the various MsOS. I don't understand the purpose of ordaining a separate venue. Dekimasuよ! 18:25, 8 March 2014 (UTC)
I just moved the examples into a list below the paragraph and searched for a couple others.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 19:53, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

Is city disambiguation necessary?

For cities, use the form [[{city-name}, {prefecture-name}]]; for example, Otaru, Hokkaido. Exception: For designated cities, use [[{city-name}]] without appending the prefecture unless disambiguation from another city or prefecture is necessary.

Does this require, say, Yuza being moved to Yuza, Yamagata, even when there is no other Yuza (as MChew has just done)? In fact, Yuza redirects to Yuza, Yamagata! This seems to be in violation of normal titling guidelines—normally we don't disambiguate unless necessary. Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 06:21, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

Every of the several hundred Japanese municipality, former municipality, district, former district articles use the [[{city-name}, {prefecture-name}]] format, with the sole exception of designated cities. This was settled through consensus several years ago, and is now regarded as the standard MOS. --MChew (talk) 00:56, 13 July 2014 (UTC)
@MChew: Can you link to the discussion? I have trouble believing that the project would require unnecessary disambiguation, and even if it did, a WikiProject can't override sitewide guidelines without just cause. I suspect the disambiguation scheme was decided on only for those municipalities that require it. Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 01:20, 13 July 2014 (UTC)
Isn't it the same situation for every single American city though?—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 02:03, 13 July 2014 (UTC)
Nope: Boston, Chicago, Toronto, Los Angeles... Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 04:05, 13 July 2014 (UTC)
Cambridge, Massachusetts, Waukegan, Illinois, (Toronto is Canadian), San Jose, California.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 04:12, 13 July 2014 (UTC)
And why do you think Cambridge is disambiguated? Have you read the guidelines and understood why disambiguation is done? Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 04:19, 13 July 2014 (UTC)
There's still all those Hawaiian locations that I posted at WT:JAPAN and probably plenty of other locations throughout the U.S. that have disambiguation when there's feasibly no reason to have it.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 04:25, 13 July 2014 (UTC)
Yeah, all without any discernible purpose and contravening the guidelines that say not to disambiguate without reason. I'll ask again: have you read & understood the guidelines? Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 04:39, 13 July 2014 (UTC)
The sitewide guidelines acknowledge that the naming convention for US cities can include the state name, even if not necessary for disambiguation purposes. Please see [Disambiguation]: “In some cases, including most towns in the United States, the most appropriate title includes the non-parenthesized State name as a tag, even when it is not needed for disambiguation”. The same site-wide convention states: “If specific disambiguation conventions apply to places of a particular type or in a particular country, then it is important to follow these.” The specific convention mentioned is under: [Region-specific guidance]. Thus, sitewide guidelines on disambiguation defer to the WikiProject in the case of Japanese municipality naming conventions. --MChew (talk) 08:24, 13 July 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, but I asked for links to the MOS:JAPAN-specific discussion you said took place Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 09:35, 13 July 2014 (UTC).
The format “city, prefecture” dates from the start of the MOS. There have been a number of discussions on changing the MOS to “city” over the years, including [53] in 2005, and [54] in 2006 in which a compromise consensus was reached to keep the existing MOS, with the exception of the designated cities of Japan, which were changed to the “city” format.
This incidentally is similar to WP:USPLACE, also given in the wiki-wide convention [Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names)(section United States)]; “Cities listed in the AP Stylebook as not requiring the state modifier in newspaper articles have their articles named “City” unless they are not the primary or only topic for that name. In other cases, this guideline recommends following the "comma convention" as described above.” --MChew (talk) 14:07, 13 July 2014 (UTC)
I think you're probably aware of just how contentious USPLACES is, so that's not a particularly strong argument, especially since the rationale behind USPLACES is irrelevant to Japanese places. Anyways, I've opened an RfC. Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 21:24, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

Ruby

you say that "most browsers cannot display ruby properly" and therefore ruby shouldnt be used. a question on that. on what is that based.chrome and IE 2 of the 4 most usd browsers can do ruby natively, tested myself and the other 2 on that list, FF and Opera can do it with a plugin. and also there should be no problem when using the {{Ruby}} Template I created since it also has the proper rp tags inside (ruby browsers wont read this so it's used to get compatibility with non-ruby browsers by adding () or alike) or is the MOS related to that just talking about the standalone use of the ruby tag where people have to check and add the rp tags?
My1 01:53, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

For years the ruby tags have not been supported by browsers. There are very few instances where a furigana reading will be needed for Japanese text, so we don't really need ruby when the other templates suffice. AFAIK—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 07:30, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
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