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RfC: Which romanization system should be used for pre-division Korean topics?

Moved to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style § RfC: Which romanization system should be used for pre-division Korean topics?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Procedural close; issue has been re-opened in a higher profile venue, after this RfC expired with insufficient input for anyone to close it, even after about two months.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  21:37, 8 July 2016 (UTC) – NAC.

---

Should the wording

In general, use the Revised Romanization system for articles with topics about South Korea and topics about Korea before the division. Use McCune–Reischauer (not the DPRK's official variant) for topics about North Korea.

be replaced with

In general, use the Revised Romanization system for articles with topics about South Korea. Use McCune–Reischauer (not the DPRK's official variant) for topics about North Korea and topics about Korea before the division.

?

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 03:12, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

Threaded discussion

With only 52 edits to the talk page and 76 edits to the main guideline page over ten years, I didn't anticipate this getting much traction as a simple thread without an RFC. With no prior discussion, my rationale for the proposal is necessary. However, naturally, my rationale is an expression of my own opinion and is not neutral, so it is collapsed below.

Statement by Hijiri88

English-language reliable sources discussing topics such as Korean Buddhism, Korean literature and Korean history prior to the Japanese occupation (or even the Korean War) still tend to use McCune–Reischauer, so I have no idea how the current guideline came about. See, for example, Routledge's 2007/2010 Enclyclopedia of Buddhism, as well as .edu Google hits for various different romanizations of historical terms: 5,490, 4,110 vs. 3,660, etc. etc. See also these N-grams: [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 03:14, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

According to the discussion that began at the Kim Jong Un page in December, the guideline was arrived at in an arbitrary way. See the follow-on discussion about North Korean names above. I think it would be a good idea to broaden this RfC to cover romanisation in general if possible. On this particular topic, I agree MR makes more sense, as that is what the sources use.--Jack Upland (talk) 05:59, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

@Jack Upland: MOS:KOREA doesn't apply to Kim Jong-un (if it did the title would be either Kim Chŏngŭn or Kim Chongun without diacritics). For him, his father and grandfather -- and quite possibly no one else in the entire history of the Korean peninsula, frankly -- WP:COMMONNAME trumps this guideline.

I should also specify that I would not be opposed to an MOS:CHINA-style ruling where diacritics are not allowed in article titles but should appear at least once in the article. (Although if I tried to say that since the majority of English-language reliable sources on pre-Republic China still favour Wade-Giles we should do so too, I would probably be eaten alive.)

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 12:15, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

@Hijiri 88: In North Korea Kim Jong-Un is actually Kim Jong Un, Kim Il-sung is Kim Il Sung. I'm not sure how the "common name" is arrived at.--Jack Upland (talk) 02:38, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

@Jack Upland: Do you mean you aren't sure how the "English names" used on Wikipedia were established, or how I came to the conclusion that COMMONNAME applies to the three dictators of North Korea and no one else? If the former, I have no earthly idea, but I would guess they were hyphenated so their "first name" would be obvious as a single word. If the latter, then it's simple: they are the only three Korean people, north or south, whom virtually everyone in the English-speaking world has heard of. Everyone else is only known to fans of Korean movies, pop music and TV dramas (a very small sub-culture in English-speaking countries), scholars of Korean history (an even small sub-culture) and taekwondo practitioners (probably the largest of the three groups, but still a tiny minority). When only a tiny minority of English Wikipedia's target audience have heard of someone or some thing, COMMONNAME does not apply, and we revert to our style guidelines like the one presently under discussion. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 05:43, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

There are exactly two authoritative instances about romanization of Korean. So what ? Pldx1 (talk) 19:24, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

@Pldx1: Umm ... what? Could you be more clear about what you mean? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 23:08, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

For some reasons from the past, there are two authoritative instances about romanization of Korean. One of them are the state & academia authorities form North Korea. One of them are the state & academia authorities form South Korea. End of the list. One can regret that both instances aren't speaking from an unique voice and enforce a Korean romanization of Korean, as China has enforced a Chinese romanization of Chinese. But it seems strange to try to construct another authority. That is what I mean. When searching and sorting, a paramount requirement is the uniqueness of the search key. Having a twofold key is already a burden, that reflects the burden of the separation of the families. We don't need another one. Pldx1 (talk) 07:46, 4 May 2016 (UTC).

You don't seem to have read my proposal, as your response appears to indicate (I think?) that you believe I am trying to create a singular standar for romanization of Korean on English Wikipedia, and that this somehow has something to do with post-1945 North Korea and South Korea. This simply is not the case: my proposal would only affect topics from before 1945, like what I have recently been writing in Chinese influence on Korean culture. All the sources I have been consulting are in English (because I do not speak Korean, and there's no point citing Japanese sources on a non-Japanese topic) and all of them use McCune-Reischauer exclusively, with at least one explicitly stating that McCune-Reischauer is the near-universal standard employed in western academic literature.

My proposal is simply to take the arbitrary requirement that pre-1945 topics should use Revised Romanization, and make it a (less arbitrary) requirement pre-1945 topics should use McCune-Reischauer. This has nothing whatsoever to do with North and South Korea -- my motivation is to make it easier for people like me to write articles using the same romanization system used in the sources we cite.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:08, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

Dear User:Hijiri88. We, the readers and writers, are not living before 1945, but after 2015. And therefore, many sources about pre-1945 events have been written largely after 1945. I trust you that, probably, each of the older sources were saying that their romanization was the best in the world for their time, and surely better than the romanization used by other academics. And the result is here, pitiful to the point that Korean authorities had to step in and make some order. Standardization is required, and no one proposes to use the Shakespeare's spelling for writing the old British history. Pldx1 (talk) 16:10, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

@Pldx1: Please try to understand this. Wikipedia deals with historical material from before 1945. In fact, Wikipedia deals with material going back as far as the Big Bang, so 1945 is relatively recent. I am not talking about using old, pre-1945 sources. I am talking about using up-to-date, top-quality academic sources to write about the history of Korea before 1945. We need a standard for how to romanize Korean proper names and cultural terms from before 1945, and using modern "South Korean" or "North Korean" romanization systems because these modern political entities have close ties to these romanization systems is anachronistic and silly. We should be using up-to-date, top-quality academic sources to write about the history of Korea before 1945. If you can provide some evidence that such sources use "Revised Romanization", then please do so; I have already cited a reputable, scholarly, recent (2010) text that explicitly calls McCune-Reischauer the "standard convention for transcription into English", so the burden is now on you if you actually oppose my proposal.

Of course, I still think it's highly possible this is just a misunderstanding and you actually don't oppose my proposal. Please clarify this.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 16:26, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

This reminders me of how, in the old ancient times, the litterati strongly opposed the usage of 한굴. You are ashamed of all these fans of Korean movies, pop music and TV dramas, taekwondo practitioners and even kids from Korea that refuse to recognize how better the world was when all these diacritics were trying to mimic the complexity of the ideograms. Yes, all these people are writing Jeongjo, Hwaseong and even Jeong Yak-yong. Because they have an US keyboard in front of them. And they want something simple to write 정조, 화성 and 정약용. The very idea to rewrite each an any article here because some old-minded people dislike the Korean regulations is surprising. Pldx1 (talk) 17:16, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

So you are opposed to following the standards laid out in high-quality academic sources because you feel it is elitist like the aristocratic literati in pre-modern Japan and Korea who insisted on writing everything in Chinese? That logic doesn't really hold up, as McCune-Resichauer is easier for English-speakers to read than Revised Romanization (the use of es in Revised clearly has nothing whatsoever to do with English phonology). Plus, it is rather Americocentric of you to assume we all have "an US keyboard in front of" us. Also, calling me "old-minded" because I want to write words the way I read them in English-language sources rather than doing a whole load of mental gymnastics to make up spellings of these words to match arbitrary South Korean government regulations really doesn't make any sense. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:23, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

• Support in principle, but it needs better data. The rationale is plausible, but its N-gram backing is faulty, since it includes everything since 1800. Nom has since done this: Constrain it to, say, 1990 onward so we can see what modern usage actually is. No one did anything consistently with Asian-language material in English back in the Victorian era to mid-late 20th century. I support the general gist of this if there's better backing for it, and we need to revisit the same kind of issue with Chinese. It's completely ridiculous that we have articles at Laozi, Gaozi, Mozi, Xunzi, and Wang Fuzhi, instead of the spellings most English-language philosophy works use for these philosophers. At least Tao Te Ching has not been moved to "Daodejing".  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  05:53, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish: Wait, I already addressed your concern by making the N-grams only cover 1990-2008 and adding a whole bunch more to indicate that the results weren't cherry-picked. Literally every word I checked was more common in MR than RR. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 10:35, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

Noted. I revised accordingly.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  10:44, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

Well, don't get me started on MOS:CHINA. Most sources on Chinese topics at least acknowledge the existence of pinyin and recent ones that prefer WG tend to give some apology for this, rather than simply saying "we use the standard way of writing Chinese words in English". There are also a lot more users of en.wiki capable of making and motivated to make a coherent (if wrong) argument against using WG; I suspect most of the en.wiki users who strongly believe we should be using Revised Romanization on all Korean history articles are South Korean nationalist SPAs, to whom we don't have to pay much attention.

Your point on the N-grams is noted. I'll fix it. I actually don't use N-grams often, and didn't know how to generate them. I remember that on an RM for the Emperor Jimmu article two years ago User:Curly Turkey cited N-grams, and I basically just copied what I found there and switched out the search terms.

But if you look at the graphs, you'll notice that at no point in history have the lines intersected -- MR has been more common than Revised every single year.

And even though I cited N-gram data, I don't actually put much stock in it or in GBooks search results, as most GBooks hits are probably garbage anyway. I think the scholarly literature that directly states that scholarly literature tends to use MR is a much better reason for updating the guideline.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 09:57, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

Has it been two years since that Jinmmnmnnmnmnmu RfC? Maybe it's time to stir that pot again. NGrams are great, but like all statistics, you have to be careful how they're used. It's unfortunately not obvious how to use it, but easy to use once you've figured it out. It's too bad it doesn't do books from after 2008—it's been stuck at that cutoff for years. I have nothing intelligent to say on the actual subject of this RfC. Curly Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 11:04, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

• Comment Another cause for concern is that, even though English-language sources tend overwhelmingly to favour McCune-Reischauer, apparently no effort has been made on the part of WikiProject Korea and its contributors to create redirects. This is extremely for both our readers and editors. Mandating the moving of all of these articles to their better-attested English names would have the positive side-effect of forcing our editors to solve this problem. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 02:26, 7 May 2016 (UTC)
  • I agree it's quite extremely. Curly Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 10:15, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

I was worried I would get blocked for battleground behaviour and personal attacks if I accused WikiProject Korea of making things "extremely inconvenient" for our readers. So I censored myself, and it wound up like the North American televised English version of the Pokemon anime where the censorship introduced plot-holes later on. :P Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 10:35, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

I wouldn't blame WP:KOREA for anything; just like most projects - it is a discussion board for the few (<10) individuals who are more or less active in Korean topics. Its members hadn't addressed it because a) they were too busy doing other stuff b) it slipped their minds. Keep in mind that Wikipedia is less popular in Korea then in many other countries, and this translates to relatively lack of development/activity/interest in Korean topics on en Wikipedia. Bottom line, there are just too few editors active in this area to pay attention to this. Now, hopefully, we will fix it, but please, let's not blame anyone except 99.9999% of world population who is wasting time on Facebook/etc. rather then giving a damn about Wikipedia gnome's work that needs to be done. Anyway. Creating those redirects is very important. Perhaps part of this task could be automated, see an interesting template at Talk:Mudeungsan. Further discussion on that should probably take place at WT:KOREA as it is uncontroversial and not that related to what we discuss here.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 06:04, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

Technically, if my proposal passes then the only redirects that will need to be made are from the less common spellings to new articles, as almost all the current articles would need to be moved, and redirects from the current titles would be created automatically. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 13:27, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

• Weak support. I am not very familiar with the details of spelling Korean, other then I realize there are numerous way to do so. Given no other argument has been presented, I tentatively support Hijiri's one. While statistics are imperfect, he has presented the only ones here, so until someone presents opposite ones, his argument seems to win. If there are new counter arguments, please ping me so I can revise my vote. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 06:10, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
• snow. Two people at MOS aren't a consensus to modify a huge quantity of articles. The NK and SK romanizations are the de facto standards. And the very idea of romanizing 세종 differently in different articles, according to the time centering of each article seems weird (having NK and SK is already weird, better reunite the families). Pldx1 (talk) 08:20, 19 May 2016 (UTC)

We do not use the NK romanisation.--Jack Upland (talk) 10:13, 19 May 2016 (UTC)

This is an RFC, to which a lot more than two people have shown up, and so far everyone except Pldx1 is in agreement with the proposed change -- I don't think Pldx1 has read and/or understood WP:SNOW. Furthermore, the "we should use the official South Korean romanization for all Korea-related topics because South Korea is better than North Korea" argument is a non-starter (and something of a strawman), because everyone here is arguing for use of the romanization system used in English-language reliable sources, not the "officially sanctioned" one of one of the two non-Anglophone modern states in which Korean is the primary language. I am sure many member of WP:KOREA have a deep personal connection to the ROK, but if WP:KOREA members (many of whom have fairly poor English skills and have written a large number of very messy articles) prefer one style over another for non-policy reasons, that is a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS. The broader consensus on English Wikipedia has always been that we should follow the majority of English-language reliable sources. Pldx's other argument (that we shouldn't romanize the same word differently depending on the time period under discussion) is also nonsense, because this would not be the case under the proposed wording any more than under the present wording: specifically South Korean topics (including, presumably, the majority of place names in the southern half of the peninsula) would remain the same, as would specifically North Korean topics; everything else would be spelled according to English-language reliable sources. 세종 would not be affected as, according to our article on the subject his name is spelled the same way in both MR and RR; these gross inconsistencies and bizarre non-arguments in Pldx1's above post make me wonder whether this person should be editing Wikipedia at all, much less dictating how the rest of us should edit. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 09:35, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

This RfC has been closed

As stated by User:Legobot at 04:01, 2 June 2016, this RfC was closed as "Removing expired RFC template". Pldx1 (talk) 09:53, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

The guideline should reflect consensus as expressed in the RMs. I changed it back to the earlier wording based on this recently closed RM: Talk:Baekje#Requested_move_7_June 2016. Using Baekje as test case seems dubious anyway. Perhaps the nom can propose an RM at a higher profile article like Joseon. Gulangyu (talk) 08:17, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

Just for the record, the consensus in the Baekje RM was not "the current title is fine, and should not be changed". It was "We should be consistent one way or the other, and the RFC didn't have enough participation". Of the users opposed to the move, only two were actively in favour of the current title and the current MOS wording; the others were just being careful about implementing changes that they weren't necessarily opposed to in too radical a fashion. Using RMs as a way to propose changes to the MOS is doing things the wrong way around. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 09:04, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

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

Hangul and Hanja

In the two bulleted examples, there are two parentheses. Are they supposed to be there? Hangfromthefloor 22:24, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Good catch. I don't think so. Wikipeditor 03:09, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

A quick check of the [Wikipedia] shows that Hanja is extensively used for identifying proper names. It is also frequently used in newspapers for disambiguation. "South Koreans rarely use it, even for place names or personal names." should be changed to "South Koreans use it extensively in written communication when initially identifying place names and personal names."

"For Hangul, the basic rule of thumb is that there are spaces between words that are each 2 or more syllables in length, while there is no space between 2 one-character words or between a one-character word and a 2-or-more-character word. (The rules are of course actually much more complicated than this and depend upon the grammatical categories of the words in question, but this rule of thumb generally holds for nouns, which constitute most of the words in article titles." This is inaccurate and confusing. Syllables and characters are not the same thing. Is the author addressing Chinese (Hanja) characters or individual letters in Hangul? This paragraph should be deleted.

"While Hangul and mixed script (Hangul and Hanja together) use spaces between words, text written only in Hanja is usually written without spaces. Thus, gosok doro ("freeway" or "motorway") is written as 고속 도로 (with a space) in Hangul, but as 高速道路 (without a space) in Hanja." This is also incorrect. Hanja is only used to clarify the meaning behind the specific syllable being used because the phonetic Hangul alphabet can create confusion; a given spelling may have multiple meanings--think read and read in English, as in, "I will read the book," and "I have read the book." It is always possible to spell anything in Korean using solely Hangul. Only words with a Chinese origin have Hanja equivalents and gosok doro is not 'spelled' with a space in Hangul anymore than it is when the Hanja characters are substituted for the Hangul syllables. It could be "go sok do ro", or "gosokdoro", or "go sokdo ro" for all the difference it makes. However, "gosok doro" provides a non-Korean speaker a guide to the approximate cadence of the term in English. Therefore, the rule of thumb--for article titles--should be to place a space in between four or more romanized syllables or as necessary to facilitate the pronunciation in English. Christopher North (talk) 19:21, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

I realize this point was made almost exactly 10 years ago, but I just stumbled on it, and I concur that the "rule of thumb" about Hangul in the Manual of Style is incorrect, and calling syllables "characters" is also incorrect and confusing. Does anyone object to revisions being made to the Manual of Style on this point? Lenoresm (talk) 20:44, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

Romanization of North Korean names

We have had a discussion about this at Talk:Kim Jong-un. It was pointed out that the official romanization in North Korea is "Kim Jong Un". It was also pointed out that the convention was arrived at in an arbitrary way without a full discussion. To me, the convention is odd: "Use McCune–Reischauer (not the DPRK's official variant) for topics about North Korea." Why? I could understand using RR for everything for the sake of consistency, but this? The Naming Convention for given names says: "If there is no personal preference, and no established English spelling, hyphenate the syllables, with only the first syllable capitalized." It was argued that official romanization does not equate to personal preference. This seems odd, especially in the case of Kim Il Sung. Can we really believe in all the time that he was leader of North Korea, he preferred a different spelling of his name? The other issue is what is the common English spelling. Surely the English-language publications of North Korea must constitute a significant amount of sources for the spelling of North Korean names. Other sources use a variety of spellings. Checking books that I have to hand, Don Oberdorfer and Bruce Cumings use "Kim Il Sung". Sheila Miyoshi Jager uses "Kim Il Sung" and "Kim Jong Il", but "Kim Chong-un" (in Brothers at War). Helen-Louise Hunter uses "Kim Il-song" (in KIS's North Korea). Barbara Demick uses "Kim Il-sung". Looking online, there is similar variety. But Time, NYT, the Economist, CNN, and Bloomberg all seem to use "Kim Il Sung". Then consider, for example, "Kim Il Sung University". Surely, as an institution it has declared its own preference for romanization.--Jack Upland (talk) 00:02, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Agree Where there is no clear personal preference, the Manual of Style must reflect “dominant practice in the North (Kim Jong Il) and South (Kim Dae-jung)”. The time has come for a two-style solution. Where there is no information on personal preference, readers must be entitled to access articles that reflect reality. To shoehorn all Korean Romanization according to the preferences of only South Korea, not only mocks Wikipedia’s policy of providing a neutral point of view, but is also obfuscatory and disrespectful. Let’s change this. —LLarson (said & done) 15:35, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

 Disagree The current practice is sound and is founded upon two simple principles: use RR for South Korean names and MR for North Korean names (reflecting a consensus that reaches far beyond Wikipedia), and keep the typographic elements (hyphenation, capitalization) consistent among these two.

Both South and North Korean names are further subject to two exceptions: personal preference (which, I maintain, is not the same as everyone agreeing with strict observance of their country's official variant, let alone inferring this from the person's high status within the country; we can establish that Kim Il-sung preferred that name over his other guerilla names and his birth name Kim Sŏng-ju, but any particular combination of hyphenation and capitalization is not there), and spellings that go against the rules but are overwhelmingly preferred in reliable sources (eg. "Kim Jong-il", not "Kim Chong-il") are used.

The whole point of transliteration is to provide consistent outcomes and I regard that our current policy balances consistency across many divides: North and South names are consistent between each other (in terms of typography) and each are consistent between uses in their respective contexts: North names are more recognizable in MR renditions and South names in RR. This also pertains to the argument about neutrality: transliteration is about using Latin alphabet in lieu of the original. The aim is precisely not to faithfully reproduce the name; it's to produce consistent outcomes for our purposes. As is known, the original Korean doesn't even use hyphens or capitalization ("김정일" and "김대중" for the two statemen Kims). We don't omit them out of respect; we add them to introduce clarity to the fact that these are three-syllable family name given name combinations. (@Sawol: pinging an expert on the topic) – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 16:42, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

I don't think anyone is arguing against consistent transliteration, but who else follows this particular convention ( the "consensus that reaches far beyond Wikipedia")?--Jack Upland (talk) 04:19, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

MR is "the Romanization method preferred by academics", and "remains the standard for scholarly work [on North Korea] in English", indeed "American specialists in Korean Studies continue to use a modified version of the McCune-Reischauer". Virtually all academic sources on North Korea written in English begin with a note on romanization, and they tend to pursue an all-out MR, or a MR for NK and RR for SK result. The notable example are sources that originate from South Korea (usually as translations from Korean) that prefer RR exclusively. I never said that others follow our convention on hyphenation and capitalization (they don't, at least consistently). – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 05:14, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

And NK itself uses a version of MR. This doesn't explain why Wikipedia uses its own particular version of MR. It would be far simpler if we used the NK version. It's notable that we use NK spelling for Juche and Rodong.--Jack Upland (talk) 06:45, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

The only "particularity" of our MR is the practice of hyphenation and capitalization. I've explained above why I think we are using, and should keep using, MR this way. Both Juche and Rodong are spelled that way because of WP:COMMONNAME and how it's implemented here Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Korea-related articles#Romanization: "There are cases in which the romanization differs from the common name used in English sources. As this is the English-speaking Wikipedia, use the name most common in English sources." Exceptions like this are okay, but we don't use them because NK does, we use them because the majority of reliable sources do. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 06:47, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

And no answer on Kim Il Sung University???--Jack Upland (talk) 10:47, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Kim Il Sung University is not a person and so doesn't have a personal preference, Jack Upland. Personal preference is only discussed in the context of people's (given) names in WP:NCKO. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 12:24, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

So what about Peking University???--Jack Upland (talk) 10:31, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

WP:COMMONNAME. Twice as many hits on Google Books for "Peking". – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 10:34, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

References

Naming convention for "Hangul"

Cross-link to a discussion I posted at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Korean)#Why are we calling Hangul "Chosŏn'gŭl" in North-Korea-related articles? Please discuss there. – Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:30, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

Proposed MoS addition on optional stress marking in Korean, Japanese, Russian, Ukrainian, etc.

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#RfC?, for a proposal relating to optional characters/marks for indicating vocal stress, used in some foreign languages, include "ruby" characters for Japanese and Korean, and znaki udareniya marks in Ukrainian and Russian. The short version is that, based on a rule already long found in MOS:JAPAN and consonant with WP:NOTDICT policy, MoS would instruct (in MOS:FOREIGN) not to use these marks (primarily intended for pedagogical purposes) except in unusual circumstances, like direct quotation, or discussion of the marks themselves. Target date for implementation is April 21. PS: This does not relate to Vietnamese tone marks.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:32, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

Proposal: add option to use a footnote rather than a hatnote for surname clarification

I recently introduced a template, {{Chinese name 2}}, that uses an inline footnote rather than a hatnote to clarify surname ordering. It has now been adopted in the China-related articles MOS and is in use on articles like Mao Zedong. The argument for the change is that hatnotes are supposed to be used for disambiguation, and that moving the clarification to a footnote declutters the top of an article and gives more appropriate weight to what is essentially trivia. I propose that a similar template, {{Korean name 2}}, be created, added to this MOS alongside {{Korean name}}, and implemented at a handful of high-profile Korean biographies. Thoughts? Sdkb (talk) 23:02, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

This seems like a pretty sparsely monitored page, so seeing no comments, I'm going to act boldly and implement the change. Sdkb (talk) 00:54, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

@Sdkb: That's backward reasoning. If this page is sparsely monitored (and it is), that means any lack of feedback is completely meaningless and does not mean you have established consensus. Changes like this should be proposed at a relevant page that is heavily watchlisted, such as WT:MOS (and I would suggest doing so, since this is a proposal likely to gain widespread support; I think there's a general sense that we have too many hatnotes).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:37, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

SMcCandlish, in the year since I dipped my toes into the water this, I broadened the proposal and presented it at more heavily watched pages. See Wikipedia_talk:Hatnote/Archive 7#Planning for the future of surname clarification for the most recent discussion. At some point when I have the mental capacity I'll be bringing it to WP:VPR for full discussion. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 19:47, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

. When you do, please post notices widely, including to the top-of-page "mini-noticeboard" at WT:MOS, probably also at WT:LANG, WT:LING, WT:ANTHROPONYMY, and talk pages of the culture/country wikiprojects that pertain to languages that would be affected (I think the list of such templates is pretty short - CJR, Germanic for the von/van names, etc. I really wish people would take more time (it's just a few minutes) to post RfC/proposal notices more broadly. It helps ensure that the result is strong against "I'm not sure that wasn't a WP:FALSECONSENSUS due to the few participants" sorts of troublemaking that often comes up after thinly attended RfCs.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:21, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

MRR guideline?

Is the provision that McCune–Reischauer be preferred for pre-division articles actually being enforced anywhere? It's one thing for longstanding articles not to change title, but I don't think I've seen MRR being used for new ones either. I commented on an AfD for the new article Princess Gyeongchang just recently, even this guide itself refers to "Goguryeo" as an example, and when I open up Category:17th-century Korean people as a random example I can't see a single one with MRR (quite a few of those are recent creations too).

I don't have a dog in the fight but it would be good to have some clarity on this either way, since it comes off as a dead letter right now that doesn't reflect actual practice—I was about to link this page for info to a new editor before I noticed the wording of the actual guideline. Pinging @SMcCandlish, AjaxSmack, and Cheol, Hijiri is on break and the others above seem to be inactive. —Nizolan ^{(talk · c.)} 19:38, 6 June 2021 (UTC) — @Ryuch: fixed broken ping. —Nizolan ^{(talk · c.)} 19:39, 6 June 2021 (UTC)

Hmm. If a guideline is pretty much never being followed, then it's not really a guideline and should be removed. It would probably be better to have a "do what the majority of RS in English are doing, for the subject in question" rule. That's how we treat most thing, when there's not a WP-intrinsic reason to favor one option over another.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:19, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

The rule is a bit more nuanced than that. If a topic is better known in English-language sources under a romanization not prescribed by our rule, then use that. I don't know about Princess Gyeongchang. The only English-language source cited in the article uses McCune–Reischauer, but that source predates the introduction of Revised Romanization by a good three decades. To me, the rule seems okay. Use it as your starting point. If you keep running into differing romaniztions in sources, then take a minute to consider if one of them is more prevalent than the others. Goguryeo is certainly more common than Koguryo, for instance. – Finnusertop (talk⋅ contribs) 21:58, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

How do we spell the Diamond Mountain? Theoretically, we have the choice between Geumgang (SK) and Kŭmgang (NK). But Wikipedia says: Kumgang. This is yet another proof of the RR. Ordinary people don't care about all these diacritics, and our romanization falsely says 굼강, when it should say 금강. But, instead of abiding to the new rule, some of the old beards of some Western Asian Studies Departments dissented. They were to old to change... and they were infuriated to see the SK government acting as if Korea was a sovereign state. They adopted an "WASD little Korea" stance, a pale copy of the old "Joseon little (Ming) China" stance. But the academic rule is "publish or perish", and the result has been perish. After all, the times of Roze and Sherman are past and gone. Going back to the discussion: don't change anything to the MoS. The rule is surely as absurd as possible, since NK doesn't care either about the WASD, see the Pyongyang article for an example. It only remains the main point: don't edit-war about your preferred romanization and let the time erode what is to be eroded. Pldx1 (talk) 08:20, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

I missed to say that the choice was between Goguryeo and Koguryŏ, while Koguryo would have been as wrong as possible. Pldx1 (talk) 08:32, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

Koguryo instead of Koguryŏ and Kumgang instead of Kŭmgang is not wrong. Even some of the Koreans who use MR consistently omit diacritics. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 23:39, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

Dear User:Finnusertop. You are right when saying even some of the Koreans who use MR consistently omit diacritics. This was the top rationale for creating the RR. Since McC-Kumgang = RR-Gumgang = 굼강. The point is: where is the comma in your sentence? Should it be read as "(some of the Koreans who use MR) (consistently omit diacritics)" or should it be read as "(some of the Koreans who use MR consistently) (omit diacritics)" ? Pldx1 (talk) 09:43, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

IMO this guideline is really hairy and needs to be rethought and/or better enforced.

Examples of how it's complicated:

1. Mostly for people names, majority of Koreans use a "modified" RR that uses some MR (e.g. Kim Gu should really be Gim Gu in RR).

2. Many Koreans now retroactively apply "modified" RR to names that should be MR under Wikipedia's policy (e.g. Lee Bong-chang should be "Yi Pongch'ang" in MR)

3. We're supposed to use whichever spelling is most common, but as more Koreans adopt the "modified" RR, common spellings will change over time, meaning we may need to constantly revise spelling to adhere to the rule.

Such a headache. Not sure if there's any good rule changes possible... any ideas? Part of this seems to be caused by RR being awful for names (no way in hell I'll have my kid's last name be recorded as the letter "I", maybe "Yi"; RR for names should have specific rules...)

Regardless, I'd argue we really should use automatic scripts to enforce known spellings across articles. toobigtokale (talk) 20:59, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

Changing policy on the transliteration of Korean names

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Korean) § Changing of naming conventions. :3 F4U (they/it) 01:34, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

Date format standards?

As far as I can tell, the Korean MoS doesn't specify which date standard we use. I think it then defaults to the general Wiki MoS. I think most relevant section is MOS:DATETIES.

Based on the above, my interpretation of the style is this: Articles should use DMY unless the article has strong ties to MDY countries such as the United States. Does this sound right?

My main concern is that this rule is hard to figure out. You have to go digging and then infer it yourself. Case in point, I've found that many smaller articles have a ~50% chance of being either, while the bigger ones are consistent to the rule I described above.

I think it'd be nice to clarify the formatting standards in our own MoS, to help make it clearer. toobigtokale (talk) 03:25, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

Based on my observations and long time working with Korean's entertainment-related (person/group/band, album, single, label/company, etc) articles, MDY is the preferred formatting for majority of well maintained articles in those category. As for the non-well maintained ones, they are a salad of either:

1. MDY (hatnoted as one) + DMY
2. MDY (hatnoted as one) + yyyy-mm-dd
3. MDY (hatnoted as one) + DMY + yyyy-mm-dd
4. just outright yyyy-mm-dd (once in a blue moon)

DMY is less common and only when the creator originated from countries that uses that format, and could also be because they're aware. However, there also occurrence where the editors' couldn't be bothered seeing what's the article's hatnotes hence they just used DMY which their originating country uses. — Paper9oll (🔔 • 📝) 05:55, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

I see, thanks for the reply. I mostly work on Korean history or politics topics, where the majority of them use DMY. E.g. Kim Il Sung and Park Chung Hee.

I’m torn on what we should do. If your observation that Kpop articles use MDY is true, then maybe we should stick to that format for just kpop/culture articles and not for history/politics.

On the other hand, kpop does have global reach and has arguably way more fans in DMY countries than MDY countries; maybe it wouldn’t be too late to switch to DMY.

The overall MoS does seem to suggest DMY is what we should use though, but precedent and what future editors are likely to use does matter… I’m at a loss.

I think I lean towards the policy I originally outlined in bold. But on the fence about allowing MDY for culture. toobigtokale (talk) 10:36, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure for the historic/political articles, however both for your examples actually started as MDY when created however for unknown reason which I'm not interested in digging nor particular on such, it was non-MOS:STYLERET to the current DMY, just saying. I would support MOS:STYLERET as long as there's consistency within the article itself and inline with MOS:DATEFORMAT guidelines, however I would !vote oppose the change to DMY. I would also object your bolded interpretation above as South Korea is not a predominantly English-first speaking country. As for strong ties, universities there, they would ask to format as MDY for English writings but YMD for Korean writings, SK official strong ties date formatting is YMD in which the closest, we have here is yyyy-mm-dd. As for whatever future editors uses, should as always be following whatever is stated on MOS:DATEFORMAT so nothing much to actually worry about. — Paper9oll (🔔 • 📝) 11:27, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

I agree with Paper9oll, there's no need for consistency across Korean articles, the only thing that matters is that there's consistency within such articles. However, I would also point out that MOS:DATEFORMAT outright states that YYYY-MM-DD format is unacceptable in prose, so if you do see that in prose, its perfectly fine to correct it. :3 F4U (they/it) 18:44, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

I can happily accept that MDY may be preferred for those articles; I'm not particularly attached. I'll keep an eye out in future for articles that began with a certain standard, wasn't aware of the policy.

However I'm still a bit skeptical of a lack of recommended standard for Korean articles. For instance, the article for Assassination of Park Chung Hee was MDY before I recently changed it to DMY. The reason I changed it was to be consistent with Park Chung Hee, which was then DMY. Should I have not changed it, and had two different standards for articles about the same person? Or should I have changed Park Chung Hee back to its original MDY?

Feels simpler to just have a single standard (potentially MDY). toobigtokale (talk) 20:29, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

tbh i think changing the article from MDY to DMY without first getting consensus on the talk page is not a good move. this isn't any statement on whether or not the change would be good, but i think the change definitely needs consensus to do. :3 F4U (they/it) 20:38, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

Fair, but the other concerns? toobigtokale (talk) 21:10, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

Hangeul on media-related pages, such as Dramas for Character names

So I've been struggling with the Reply 1997 article where people keep adding the wrong name back to the article because popular belief is wrong, and I'd like to add hangeul to the page for all characters on the page so the wrong edit doesn't happen. His name is Yoon Yoon Je. I cited it well. I read hangeul.

There's 2 options I propose with this: Either I'm allowed to use hangeul on the page to spell out the names of all of the characters from the official spellings.

OR I'm allowed to add a controversy line to the page about the spelling of the character's name. I've added to the talk page, did citations, but people keep trying to revert the name *despite this* Since there is a clarity issue, I believe something needs to be done to clarify the correct name on the page. Including, but not limited to, calling out the subbers for getting it wrong in the first place.

So I'm asking what's allowed according to the Manual of style. Personally, I'd like the more elegant choice of being able to add the hangeul to character names without a whole section about it. I also believe it would be useful on Japanese and Chinese dramas pages, as often the spellings of the character names and their meanings helps the average consumer understand the media better. (And it takes sometimes forever to find the spelling, having to travel through the language, which may be inaccessible for the average English speaker, but an English speaker may be able to use wikitionary to find it.--KimYunmi (talk) 15:02, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

As this is the English Wikipedia, the article should follow the spelling used by independent reliable English-language sources. On the first instance of each name, you should use the {{Korean}} template to indicate the Korean spellings of each name, in addition to the English spelling. Since the name is being disputed, you also need to add a citation to a reliable source (screenshots don't count as subtitles can be inconsistent depending on the streaming platform).

For example:

• Kim Jong Un (Korean: 김정은)
• Moon Jae-in (Korean: 문재인)
• Syngman Rhee (Korean: 이승만)
• Park Chung Hee (Korean: 박정희)

When discussing disputes on things like names, always be aware of certain Wikipedia policies and procedures, including WP:BRD and WP:EW. There is no deadline for Wikipedia articles to be finished by, so please do discuss any disputed edits with other editors in a civil manner. :3 F4U (they/it) 17:56, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

@KimYunmi: One thing to note is that in reality there is no strict one-to-one correspondence between a hangul name and a romanized Korean name. For example,

• Hangul to Latin: 윤 – "yoon" in Chung Yoon-hoi, "yun" in Yunjin Kim
• Latin to Hangul: "jung" – 중 in Kim Dae-jung, 정 in Youn Yuh-jung

So the fact that it is originally 제 in hangul does not necessarily mean that its romanized form must be "je". 2607:FB91:8815:D4B7:E41F:50E2:96CE:EB2A (talk) 06:30, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

About adding a link to each hangul syllable using Template:Linktext

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Discussion closed. MOS change and bot request made. 172.56.232.157 (talk) 15:25, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

---

Discussion closed. 172.56.232.167 (talk) 00:10, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Notice: Unless something unusual happens, this discussion will be closed at 23:59, 1 February 2024 (UTC), and what I wrote below will be added to the MOS page and a bot request will be made. 172.56.232.187 (talk) 03:51, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Note:

• Before reading this, having some knowledge of the Korean language would be helpful.
• This is not to entirely prohibit using Linktext in hangul text.
• If what I wrote below is too long or unclear, see #Summary.

I sometimes see Template:Linktext used to add a link to each hangul syllable. For example,

• {{linktext|국|립|중|앙|도|서|관}} in National Library of Korea
• {{linktext|이|화|여|자|대|학|교}} in Ewha Womans University
• {{Linktext|수|도|권|제|1|순|환|고|속|도|로}} in Capital Region First Ring Expressway
• {{linktext|나|쁜}} {{linktext|영|화}} in Bad Movie
• {{linktext|아|내|가}} {{linktext|결|혼|했|다}} in My Wife Got Married
• {{linktext|간|통|을| 기|다|리|는| 남|자|}} in The Scent
• {{linktext|구|름|은}} {{linktext|흘|러|가|도}} in Even the Clouds Are Drifting
• {{linktext|유|감|스|러|운}} {{linktext|도|시}} in City of Damnation
• {{linktext|새|터|데|이| 나|이|트| 라|이|브| 코|리|아|}} in Saturday Night Live Korea
• {{linktext|윤|석|열}} in Yoon Suk Yeol
• {{linktext|김|하|늘}} in Kim Ha-nul (figure skater)
• {{linktext|이|엘|리|야}} in Lee Elijah
• For more cases, see this (6376 cases as of 03:43, 19 January 2024 (UTC)).

But this should not be done. Adding a link to each hangul syllable does not help readers. It is sometimes even misleading.

1. A word or morpheme in Korean is not always one syllable long. A syllable in Korean is not something special; it is just like a syllable in many other languages. In Korean, like many other languages, there are lots of single words or single morphemes consisting of multiple syllables. For example,
   • 구름 (cloud) is a two-syllable word consisting of a single morpheme; the individual syllables 구 and 름 do not mean anything. So dividing 구름 into 구 and 름 is meaningless.
   • 기다리는 is 기다리- (verb stem) + -는 (ending), but 기다리- is a three-syllable single morpheme and cannot be broken further.
2. Blindly adding a link to each syllable in a word can even make readers misunderstand the meaning of the word. For example,
   • Wiktionary currently gives that 하 is "last, lowest" and 늘 is "always, forever". So if someone encounters {{linktext|하|늘}} and clicks the individual links, they might think 하늘 means something like "always the lowest", which is completely wrong. (하늘 means "sky".)
   • The entries 기, 다, and 리 do not give any idea what 기다리- actually means. Readers will be confused. (기다리다 means "to wait for".)
3. Even in a word consisting of multiple morphemes,
   1. adding a link to an entire "word" is much more helpful than adding a link to each morpheme in a word. (And it is not Wikipedia's job to break down a word – that is what Wiktionary is for.)
      • For example, adding a link to 도서관 (library) is more helpful than separately adding links to 도 (picture), 서 (writing), and 관 (building).
   2. a morpheme boundary does not always correspond to a syllable boundary. For example,
      • 나래 (wing (literary); sometimes used as personal names) consists of two morphemes which are not 나 and 래. Instead, it is actually 날- (verb stem) + -애 (suffix), so separating it as 나 and 래 is incorrect.
      • 나쁜 (bad (modifier form)) is not 나 + 쁜, but 나쁘- (adjective stem) + -ㄴ (ending; yes, a single consonant). So separating it as 나 and 쁜 is incorrect.
      1. There are also irregular verbs/adjectives. For example,
         • 흘러 is not 흘 + 러, but 흐르- (verb stem) + -어 (ending).
         • -스러운 is not 스 + 러 + 운, but 스럽- (adjective stem) + -은 (ending). (-스럽다 is an adjective-creating suffix; any word that ends in 스럽다 is an adjective irregularly conjugated like this)
4. Korean verbs and adjectives are conjugated.
   1. Linktext does not support a piped link. For example, something like [[나쁘다|나쁜]] cannot be done by Linktext.
   2. Wiktionary sometimes redirects a conjugated form to its basic form, but does not (and very likely will not) have all conjugated forms as redirects.
5. For loanwords or hangul transcriptions of words of non-Korean origin (like 새터데이 나이트 라이브 코리아 and 엘리야 above), it makes no sense at all to separate each hangul syllable.
6. For personal names (including pseudonyms such as pen names, stage names, etc.), no links should be added.
   • This includes not just 가|나|다 but also other forms of segmentations such as 가|나다 and 가나|다, and also the unsegmented 가나다. That is, do not add any kind of link to a personal name.
   1. Koreans do not have culturally common names like John or Muhammad. A Korean personal name can literally be a combination of pretty much any hangul and/or hanja (as long as it does not mean/sound something negative). In other words, Korean personal names are usually made-up words and thus semantically opaque.
      • For example, it is not possible to figure out what the given name 석열 (or the individual syllables 석 and 열) means solely from the hangul spelling. So adding a link to 석열 or 석 or 열 does not give much benefit.
   2. Even when the meaning of a personal name is absolutely semantically transparent (i.e. can be clearly understood without any doubt at all), there is still no need for links. The meaning of a personal name could be something that some people may find "interesting", but it is not really something useful or helpful. It does not really have practical value.
      1. It does not help understand what kind of person they are.
         • For example, people named "Jesús" in the Spanish-speaking culture sphere are not actually Jesus. Likewise, people named 하늘 are not actually the sky; people named 나래 are not wings, nor do they have wings.
      2. Understanding the meaning of a name is not even necessary.
         • For example, we do not even have to know what "Jack" means in order to call or mention someone named Jack. Likewise, we do not even have to know what 석열 means in order to call or mention someone named 석열.
   3. Wiktionary cannot have entries for all Korean personal names (to reiterate, they are usually made-up words). Even if it can, it usually cannot really give a definition other than "a personal name", which is what readers already know even before clicking a link on Wikipedia. (In other words, readers will not find anything beyond what they can figure out on Wikipedia.)
7. A link to Wiktionary is not a requirement.
   1. Wikipedia does not have to provide a link for every single non-English term.
   2. If the meaning of a certain Korean term must be explained in a Wikipedia article for some reason (such as for a better understanding of the topic), the explanation can be simply given within that article without Linktext.
   3. While it is not a requirement, this does not mean that creating any kind of link is okay. Links should be helpful and not be misleading. Giving misleading or wrong information is worse than not giving any information.
8. Wiktionary is a different website with different policies. It does not have to (and may not always) meet Wikipedia's needs.
   1. In fact, Wiktionary used to allow "hangul syllable" entries with no lexical content, but they were deleted in 2021 and are no longer allowed (for the relevant discussion, see wikt:Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2021/August#Deleting "Hangul syllable" entries). So, even if Wikipedia keeps having a link for each hangul syllable, it is certain that Wiktionary will not always have an entry for it. For example, Wiktionary will not have entries like 쁜 or 했, which are not lexical units in Korean.
9. Also, terms that are not suitable for dictionary entries (e.g. 새터데이 – merely a transcription of English "Saturday" and is not used as a word in Korean) should not have links. They do not appear in a dictionary, so adding links to such terms is meaningless.
   • This includes not just 가|나|다|라 but also other forms of segmentations (가나|다라, 가|나다라, 가나다|라, 가|나다|라, etc.), and also the unsegmented 가나다라. That is, do not add any kind of link to a term that is not suitable for a dictionary entry.

I propose that

1. existing Linktext templates adding a link to each hangul syllable be removed (this can be done by a bot; each parameter containing nothing more than [ ]?[0-9가-힣][ ]?);
   • Note that, as I wrote above, this is not to entirely prohibit using Linktext in hangul text. The Linktext templates removed at this moment can be re-added (except for personal names and terms unsuitable for dictionary entries), but it must be added with the correct or appropriate links. For example, once Linktext is removed from {{linktext|국|립|중|앙|도|서|관}} and becomes 국립중앙도서관, someone can re-add Linktext (if they want to; re-adding is not a requirement), but it must be {{linktext|국립|중앙|도서관}}.
2. existing Linktext templates in personal names and in terms unsuitable for dictionary entries be removed (some of these can be done by a bot, but some of them need to be removed manually (because there are cases in which a single parameter contains two or more hangul syllables, like {{linktext|가|나다}})); and
3. the following be added right before Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Korea-related articles#Categorization.

===Adding links to hangul text===
When using {{Linktext}} to hangul text, do not blindly add a link to each hangul syllable. A word or morpheme in Korean is not always one syllable long (e.g. 기다리다 is a single word, not four words). Also, hangul is not a logographic writing system, so there is no point of emphasizing or focusing on each hangul character.
* Add links to meaningful lexical items in Korean. Prioritize words. For example, {{linktext|국립|중앙|도서관}}, not {{linktext|국|립|중|앙|도|서|관}}.
** Incorrect links are also not allowed. For example, {{linktext|대학생|선교회}}, not {{linktext|대학|생선|교회}} (unless the term really means "college, fish, church").
** Circumventing this by using other ways of linking (e.g. [[wikt:국|국]][[wikt:립|립]]..., [[wikt:대학|대학]][[wikt:생선|생선]][[wikt:교회|교회]], etc.) is also not allowed.
* For personal names (including pseudonyms such as pen names, stage names, etc.), do not add any links. The meaning of a name does not describe a person, and the definition of a personal name is usually nothing more than "a personal name".
* Do not add Linktext to terms that are not suitable for dictionary entries (e.g. 새터데이 – merely a transcription of English "Saturday" and is not used as a word in Korean).
* Using Linktext is not a requirement.
** If you do not have enough knowledge of Korean vocabulary to determine meaningful lexical items or whether a term is suitable for a dictionary entry or not, do not add any links. Do not attempt to segment hangul text either (you may end up adding incorrect links).
** If the meaning of a Korean term must be explained in an article, the explanation can be simply given within that article without the Linktext template.
** When there is any dispute about using Linktext, the burden lies with the editor who wants to add/retain the Linktext template. But any instance of the Linktext template should be in compliance with the rule above (i.e. should not add a link to each syllable, should not have incorrect links, etc.).
* Note that Linktext does not support a piped link, which means it is not suitable for conjugated forms of verbs/adjectives. For example, it is not possible to create links like [[예쁘다|예쁜]] using Linktext.

172.56.232.220 (talk) 17:47, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Summary

If what I wrote above is too long or unclear, here is a summary.

1. What this is about
   • This is mainly and basically to ensure that Korean hangul text gets links that actually make sense in Korean. The existing practice—blindly adding a link to each hangul syllable—is unhelpful and misleading. This needs to stop.
2. What this will prohibit
   • Blindly adding a link to each hangul syllable (e.g. {{linktext|국|립|중|앙|도|서|관}})
   • Adding links to personal names and to terms not suitable for dictionary entries (e.g. 윤석열, 새터데이)
3. What this will not prohibit
   • Linktext with correct/appropriate links (e.g. {{linktext|국립|중앙|도서관}})
     • But using Linktext is not a requirement. It is perfectly fine to not add the template (e.g. 국립중앙도서관 without Linktext is perfectly fine).

172.56.232.205 (talk) 19:05, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Support I've also noticed this issue and have been bothered by it. You've thought of a lot of edge cases that I hadn't considered before; I've been digesting them since you posted and I think I agree. I'm on the fence about removing all previous linktexts; I don't know the technical details of how using bots to perform this action looks like, but I lean towards support pending other opinions. toobigtokale (talk) 00:34, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for supporting.

I am fine with removing all existing Linktext containing hangul (i.e. even removing Linktext in cases like {{linktext|국립|중앙|도서관}}), but I did not propose that because that could be perceived as something too extreme. But if others think removing all existing Linktext containing hangul is better, then I will not oppose.

For the bot request regarding what I wrote above (removing existing Linktext adding a link to each hangul syllable), I actually asked a question last month and got a reply saying that it is possible. See Wikipedia:Bot requests#Question (link as of this writing). 172.56.232.83 (talk) 01:47, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

Ah I misspoke, I support removing all single char hangul linktexts, and am more skeptical towards removing all linktexts but also lean support. toobigtokale (talk) 05:38, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

172.56.232.205, In general, I think the mass wiktionary linking of words and glyphs in Korean, Chinese, and Japanese as seen on many articles is indiscriminate and doesn't help the vast majority of readers. I think as a rule, literally all of it should be removed when the passage isn't MOS:WAW, or when the term has its own {{Infobox Chinese}} etc. — Remsense诉 22:09, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

This discussion is about Linktext being used to create unhelpful and misleading links in Korean hangul text. This is not about the general use of Linktext throughout Wikipedia.

Personally, I am even fine with removing every single instance of Linktext regardless of its location (even the ones in infoboxes) and language/script (I would not complain even if the Linktext template itself does not exist, or even if Wikipedia does not provide any link to Wiktionary at all), but I am not proposing that here because that is not specific to Korean and could be way too extreme.

If you want to restrict the use of Linktext throughout Wikipedia, then that should be discussed on a different page. 172.56.232.224 (talk) 00:04, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

172.56.232.224, I merely mentioned that it seems to be part of a broader, connected problem with the languages mentioned. — Remsense诉 01:07, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

It has been a week. Any more comments? It is a bit long, but please give it a read and leave a comment here. 172.56.232.26 (talk) 20:34, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Support MOS changes as sensible. {{linktext}} is beneficial if done correctly, but misleading if done incorrectly. Hold off on bot removal of single-syllable linktexts, as there exist cases where single syllables are complete morphemes (even unbound morphemes) and the link would be correct. For now I think it would be helpful to have a bot just list all pages where such links occur (and for the bot to update the list automatically on, e.g. a weekly basis based on the edits in the previous week), so we can assess the scale of the problem and see whether human review is even feasible or whether the best solution is to WP:TNT all the single-syllable links and start over. 59.149.117.119 (talk) 22:47, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

(For the benefit of anyone reading this discussion who doesn't know Korean, note that English has the exact same problem where multi-syllable words happen to be formed from single syllables with totally unrelated meanings: carpet, rugby, etc.) 59.149.117.119 (talk) 22:47, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

I suspect there are potentially thousands of pages where this occurs; there are around 47,000 pages in WikiProject Korea. Anecdotal, but I've personally reviewed around 10,000 of those pages so far, and in my experience the linktexts are rarely well-done. I think removing single-syllable at the very least is a good move. Rather than making this a multi-step process and creating more work for us to do, wiping the slate clean is better imo. toobigtokale (talk) 23:33, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Well, "there exist cases where single syllables are complete morphemes (even unbound morphemes) and the link would be correct" could be true, but I am still inclined to remove all existing single-syllable Linktext by a bot.

1. We cannot manually check all 6300+ existing cases (if you haven't, click on "this" in "For more cases, see this" above).
   • Don't forget that not everyone on Wikipedia can do this. This can only be done by a small number of people who have enough knowledge of Korean.
2. Linktext has never been a requirement, which means any instance of Linktext does not have to be there in the first place. That is, any existing instance of Linktext does not have to be retained.
3. For "cases where single syllables are complete morphemes (even unbound morphemes)", Linktext can be manually re-added later (after removed by a bot). 172.56.232.224 (talk) 23:39, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Oh the "this" link is nice. Nice regex, didn't even know that was possible on Wiki search.

I'm one of the most frequent editors on Korea-related articles, and I just can't manually look through and fix 6,300 instances of this. Scrolling through, few of these seem to be useful anyway. Hanja linktexts are occasionally helpful for me, but even then Wiktionary is missing a lot. toobigtokale (talk) 23:44, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Support MOS changes and would tentatively support bot removal in obvious cases where an editor simply piped each glyph (probably just following examples of other article ledes). However IP58 above makes the better point to run a bot gather data first -- might as well. Regardless, to minimize false positive examples discussed above, a bot could remove linktext and similar from only space-separted strings of at least two words of at least N glyphs. (So if I were showing a linguistics example where I intentionally separate the bound morphemes in English |un|block|ed, that kind of thing is less likely to get flagged.)

I echo IP172 that this is a concern for any CJK scripts -- and really, any linking done glyph-by-glyph of text of any script (apart from IPA and other such encodings, where it arguably (but not always) makes sense to link each glyph in transcriptions)).) Maybe in parallel take this up to the WikiProjects (WP:LANG seems empty, but WP:LING is active) and Pump? SamuelRiv (talk) 02:36, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

If anyone says anything about checking existing cases before removing them by a bot, I will just repeat this.

1. We cannot manually check all 6300+ existing cases (if you haven't, click on "this" in "For more cases, see this" above).
   • Don't forget that not everyone on Wikipedia can do this. This can only be done by a small number of people who have enough knowledge of Korean.
2. Linktext has never been a requirement, which means any instance of Linktext does not have to be there in the first place. That is, any existing instance of Linktext does not have to be retained. 172.56.232.172 (talk) 03:43, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

We cannot manually check all 6300+ existing cases That's really not that many, particularly given that WP:THEREISNODEADLINE. Get a bot to make a list of them and section the list into groups of a hundred; sign your name at the top of the section when you start reviewing it; remove the section when it's complete. This kind of simple mechanism has dealt with much bigger problems than 6300 pages. 59.149.117.119 (talk) 05:10, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

There's only like 1-3 regular contributors to WPK who can do this work. There really aren't that many regular Korean-speaking editors on WPK; this is even true historically, to my knowledge. In other words, even with "no deadline", given the number of "no deadline" critical projects that have been left undone on WPK, this may just collect dust. And based on what I'm seeing from scrolling through, I think like >90% of cases aren't good uses of linktext. I think I'd be able to get AWB to speed up the review, but I'd be unhappy doing it. The to-do list for WikiProject Korea is very long; this strikes me as mounds of busywork for very little gain. Do you speak Korean and can you help? toobigtokale (talk) 05:19, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Do you speak Korean and can you help? Yes; been working on this problem for years already. The main barrier was never the actual spent time fixing links, but finding instances of the problem in the first place. (I had no idea until this morning that Special:Search supported regexes.) Also, automated removal of {{linktext}} from infoboxes of biographies (which I assume is uncontroversial) will significantly cut down that list of 6300 articles. 59.149.117.119 (talk) 08:33, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Ok, if we do automatic removal for all people that'd help a lot. I still don't view the risk of removing all the linktexts on one-char hangul as very significant of a risk though. But I doubt we'll convince each other. If you're volunteering to work on addressing the problem then I'm willing to support your plan. toobigtokale (talk) 10:04, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Well, 59.149.117.119 neither brought any actual examples here, nor showed removing all single-syllable Linktext by a bot can cause a serious problem though. 172.56.232.38 (talk) 15:54, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

In the event that they don't reply again, I'd prefer we just delete all single-syllable linktexts. I've been editing lots of pages for mountains that suffer from this issue; people articles aren't the only culprit. toobigtokale (talk) 03:06, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Agree. We should just start with a bot removal. If someone wants to re-add Linktext with correct or appropriate links, they can do that after the bot removal. 172.56.232.24 (talk) 23:24, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

We're approaching one week since no reply from 59.149.117.119. Once we pass that mark, I think we're probably good to move forward with your proposed changes. toobigtokale (talk) 18:36, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Agree. The bot removal should not be delayed just because of manual work. 172.56.232.84 (talk) 20:13, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

By the way, it looks like this issue is found in various fields. Articles about movies and railway stations are also greatly suffering from this. 172.56.232.113 (talk) 23:27, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Did I not say this?

"Linktext has never been a requirement, which means any instance of Linktext does not have to be there in the first place. That is, any existing instance of Linktext does not have to be retained." (bold added)

Why should we spend time checking every single instance of something that is not even a requirement?

At least I am not going to manually check all those cases. 172.56.232.75 (talk) 05:33, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Did I not say this? Linktext has never been a requirement Yes, but it doesn't become any more convincing by repeating it or by prefixing it with rhetorical questions. The fact that {{linktext}} is "not required" does not mean you can go around removing them with no regard for collateral damage such as removal of correct and helpful links, or cases where human review would easily fix the problem. The actual guideline here is WP:SISTER: Wikipedia encourages links from Wikipedia articles to pages on sister projects when such links are likely to be useful to our readers.

Automated removal should be restricted to things which clearly violate the proposed guidelines, e.g. automated removal of {{linktext}} from infoboxes in biographies (i.e. articles in the Category:People tree), per For personal names (including pseudonyms such as pen names, stage names, etc.), do not add any links. (Worth noting that the overwhelming majority of the 6000 articles in the search link you posted are biographies.) 59.149.117.119 (talk) 08:33, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

You said that there exist cases where single syllables are complete morphemes (even unbound morphemes) and the link would be correct and that (there could be) collateral damage such as removal of correct and helpful links (when removing them), but can you bring some actual examples of such cases here? 172.56.232.141 (talk) 08:54, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

By the way, "there is no deadline" does not mean you can make others wait. As the person who started this discussion, I do not want this to take longer than a month (and a week has already passed).

Unless you can show that removing all single-syllable Linktext by a bot can cause a serious problem, I am not convinced. 172.56.232.38 (talk) 15:54, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

The only case in which I could think that someone would linktext individual syllables deliberately (and be ticked off at its removal) is if they were specifically discussing morphology in Korean. So simpler than coding the bot to ignore single short words would be just to review by hand articles the bot finds within Category:Linguistics and Category:Languages of Korea. SamuelRiv (talk) 07:01, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

I manually checked instances of Linktext containing only a single syllable, and noted that the following cases may be worth keeping.

• Chopsticks: {{linktext|저}}
• List of loanwords in Indonesian: {{linktext|원}}
• Megalia: 맘{{linktext|충}}

But this is not an issue because these can be manually re-added/reverted after a bot runs. 172.56.232.113 (talk) 23:28, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Good catch and due diligence. Agree that that can wait till post-bot run, but since you've already found it, consider adding a <!-- hidden token --> adjacent or nearby to such examples, or maybe better, just keep a list in a centralized location (maybe the bot talk page, or WT:KOREA) listing the examples that need looking at again after the bot runs. Mathglot (talk) 23:41, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

In fact, I have been making manual changes to existing instances of Linktext (merged adjacent instances, fixed segmentations, or just removed), and have come to the conclusion above. Since there are only three cases, I don't see the necessity of marking them.

Also, people who said something like "hold off on bot removal" or "manually check existing cases" are not bringing any actual examples here, so I don't see the necessity of waiting for more cases either. 172.56.232.152 (talk) 00:57, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

It has been two weeks. Any more comments? 172.56.232.84 (talk) 20:13, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Why is anybody linking like this? It's like writing chemistry ({{linktext|chem|i|stry}}) or chemistry ({{linktext|c|h|e|m|i|s|t|r|y}}). It doesn't even make sense for Chinese (except perhaps in a discussion of morphology) where most characters are, at least notionally, a word, but are often not functioning as those individual words but as part of long words consisting of two or more characters. For Hangul it's absurd. Largoplazo (talk) 23:13, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Obviously some people have no idea what they are doing, and that absurd practice is now found in 6300+ pages. It is surprising that no one raised an issue about that before this discussion. 172.56.232.202 (talk) 17:43, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

By the way, I originally thought of waiting for a month, but it looks like I don't even need to wait that long. Unless something unusual happens, on February 1 (that is three weeks since I opened this discussion), I will add what I wrote above to the MOS page and make a bot request. 172.56.232.202 (talk) 17:43, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Correction and clarification: (Unless something unusual happens,) I will close this discussion at 23:59, 1 February 2024 (UTC); the edit and the bot request will be made after that. 172.56.232.216 (talk) 04:36, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

• Remove it all – linking Hangul syllables is the rough equivalent of linking all legal trigrams in English found at syllabic initial boundaries. In this sentence, it would mean partitioning them like this, and then adding links to every segment: ([In] [thi]s [sen][ten]ce, [it] [wou]ld [mea]n [par][tit]ion[ing] [the]m [lik]e [thi]s, [and] [the]n [add][ing] [lin]ks [to] [eve]ry [seg][men]t). It is is arbitrary and pointless, because the trigrams have no linguistic information other than random phonotactic sequences that convey nothing useful to the reader. And neither do the Hangul links. Dump them. @Austronesier, Kwamikagami, and Lambiam: may have something to add about this. Mathglot (talk) 07:20, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
• Or like linking all the letters in a Cyrillic name, or the kana of Japanese.

If a hangul block is worth linking to at Wk, it's worth linking to directly. The first block I clicked on was 국. But is that 'soup', 'country', or something else? Without a link to the actual lemma, I don't see the point. And none of these are going to be linked to the actual lemma, except accidentally.

So it's pointless. Remove.

(Also, dividing a string of text into hangul blocks will not generally produce the constituent morphemes in native vocab.) — kwami (talk) 07:53, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

• Remove them all. Most of these links are pointless and also misleading with native vocabulary where the division into hangul blocks often doesn't match morpheme boundaries. And even if there is a one-to-one match in Sino-Korean words, the Wiktionary entries are often not helpful at all. Try e.g. 혼 for the second part of 결혼 which appears in a movie title listed above: the correct entry is "Etymology 2 — Korean reading of various Chinese characters". Our readers will be delightedly grateful for this pointer. –Austronesier (talk) 17:49, 28 January 2024 (UTC).
• Remove all. This is patently overlinking, in any but certain narrow linguistic-analaysis contexts. The proper thing to do is {{lang|ko|...}} around the Korean characters (as a group, not individually), or {{lang-ko|...}} if a "Korean: " introduction is wanted; and {{lang|ko-Latn|...}} around the transliteration, and a single-quoted 'literal translation' if that's needed. If we're giving an English-language name/term first, then don't single-quote it. This is already covered by MOS:FOREIGN and MOS:SINGLE, and there doesn't appear to be any reason to do anything different/unusual with Korean compared to any other language. There is no reason for any use of {{linktext}} at all in 99.999% of these cases, and it complies with neither MOS:FOREIGN nor MOS:LINK. PS: We do not need the huge block of WP:MOSBLOAT drafted about about using {{linktext}}; just don't use {{linktext}} to do anything like this. It appears to have one some particular editor's obsession, and it was then picked up in monkey-see-monkey-do fashion by some later ones, but is a terrible idea and needs to stop.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:51, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

  Minor, but I think Template:Korean is lately more commonly preferred over the lang variants. On a personal level, I like its features better. toobigtokale (talk) 21:52, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

  Since this is now found in 6000+ pages, I think MOS (at least MOS-KO) should directly say something about this.

  Also (I am just repeating what I already wrote above), this discussion is about Linktext being used to create unhelpful and misleading links in Korean hangul text. This is not about the general use of Linktext throughout Wikipedia.

  Personally, I am even fine with removing every single instance of Linktext regardless of its location (even the ones in infoboxes) and language/script (I would not complain even if the Linktext template itself does not exist, or even if Wikipedia does not provide any link to Wiktionary at all), but I am not proposing that here because that is not specific to Korean and could be way too extreme.

  If you want to restrict the use of Linktext throughout Wikipedia, then that should be discussed on a different page. 172.56.232.58 (talk) 22:35, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

  Agreed, removal of all linktext, even on Hanja, may be too extreme. I use the links for Hanja once in a blue moon but Wiktionary's Hanja dict is still not reliable. Maybe that'll change in future. I often use a separate Hanja dict. toobigtokale (talk) 00:00, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

About 24 hours left. Nothing unusual happened so far. 172.56.232.125 (talk) 23:49, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

IP 172, at the very top, you said that after the discussion closes later today, "what I wrote below will be added to the MOS page". Not sure if you meant the main MOS page or some other page, but please don't copy this discussion anywhere else as it's generally not good to fragment conversations as they can begin to diverge with different responders at each. You can briefly summarize it (a sentence or short paragraph) and then just add a link to this conversation for anyone who wants to see the details and the whole course of the conversation. (A valid, non-fragmentation alternative would be to move this whole conversation to the MOS page leaving only a short summary and a link here, but I think that would be a bad idea and wouldn't recommend that approach.) Mathglot (talk) 23:44, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

From the very beginning, I wrote "the following be added right before Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Korea-related articles#Categorization". So this has been clear.

If I wanted to discuss about the general use of Linktext throughout Wikipedia, then I would have started a discussion on a different page.

Also, I did not really copy the discussion. I posted notifications at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Korea. However, for some reason, some people decided to start a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style. I am not really responsible for the discussion started there. But still, I wrote this there: "if you want to discuss about the general use of Linktext throughout Wikipedia, I recommend that you start a new discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Linking". 172.56.232.167 (talk) 00:07, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. By the way, if you want to close the discussion in the standard way, have a look at template {{hat}} which collapses it with a title bar; alternatives are {{Discussion top}} and {{atop}} which don't collapse and add bakcground color and a closure message at the top. Mathglot (talk) 00:57, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

I put in {{archive top}} (a.k.a. {{atop}}) and {{archive bottom}}; {{hat}} and {{hab}} are used to collapse disruptive garbage, not constructive discussions. {{discussion top}} and {{discussion bottom}} explicitly say they are for when there's a summary by the closer, but this lacks one. That said, I don't see the actual point of closing this by an involved party at a particular date in the first place. Not really a normal practice. Could either have been left alone to archive away by the archiver bot, or be formally closed with a summary by an univolved party by request at WP:ANRFC. [shrug]  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:02, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Discussion closed. 172.56.232.167 (talk) 00:10, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

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