On Wednesday 20 November 2002 07:29 pm, you wrote:
Daniel Mayer wrote in part:
A Wikipedia that uses the some pedantic, more
scholarly "correct" system
of naming articles gives me the creeps. This is one of the reasons why I
have moved so many organism articles from the Latin to common English
forms.
I don't think that this is analogous.
"mammal" is an English common noun (as is "angstrom"),
while "Munich" is an Anglicisation of a German proper name
(as "München" is the German proper name in question).
I would treat these different situations differently.
But it's not like there's no analogy whatsoever,
But Munich /is/ also a common English noun since usage, not a centralized
committee, decides just what is and is not an English noun. The origin or a
word is just that, the origin. Anglicization just happens to be a common way
new words enter the English language. The reason why words are Anglicized is
due to the fact that over time foreign words mutate to be easier for English
speakers to pronounce and spell and also to make them look similar to other
English words. This is part of the evolution of the English language. Now
instead of inserting our POV that this is wrong, how about we report widest
usage by using what most English speakers use? Under the proposed plan we
would have to delve into linguistic usage wars. How is this useful at all?
BTW, mammal comes from the Latin mammalis (which in turn probably comes from
other languages). Back in the Middle Ages this was mutated via an early form
of Anglicization to mammal. Therefore it is only logical to use mammalis
under the proposed plan. Or is there some cut-off date past which
Anglicization of a term is bad and should not be accepted? You still haven't
addressed my point that the proposed plan in needlessly complicated since it
absolutely requires redirects.
so let's look at your observations:
Under
the Latin people have tended to write to a more technical audience but now
under the common English forms people tend to write in more inclusive
language.
That's interesting. So do you think that people would write
for a German-speaking audience if we titled an article [[München]]?
That doesn't seem likely to me -- the predominant English text
would keep people using that language.
Perhaps 'technical writing' part of the organism analogy wasn't the greatest
but is was my understanding that this convention would also effect those
pages (and probably would since many people may not get your distinction).
Wait a minute, this does touch on an important point: What if an animal has
an English name but exists in a non-English country? Should we use the
Swahili for Thompson's Gazelle? And if so, which transliteration? How is this
useful to the reader and the person trying to link to the article? Oh that's
right, the person would also need to make a redirect for the poor lame minded
people expecting to find the article at the English title. There is also
article rankings by Google to take into consideration: Articles that have the
searched-for name in the title are ranked higher. Why should we purposely
reduce article rankings and therefore reduce the reach of our content? Why is
it necessary to make things more difficult than they already are?
There have also
been more edits (many people were probably put-off
by the foreign titles).
This datum would carry over better to the present discussion.
If [[Munich]] attracts more editors than [[München]], then that's
important. Were there jumps in editing frequency when you moved each
article, or is the increase matched by a general increase in editing all of
Wikipedia?
See Google argument above. Yes if the article is at [[Munich]] it will get
more hits than if it is at the German.
pedantic
adj : marked by a narrow focus on or display of learning
especially its trivial aspects
I don't see how this applies.
It's not like everybody agrees that "München" is correct,
but some people want to be lax and use the more common "Munich"
while others are pedantic and insist on "München".
The disagreement is more basic; you're claiming that
"München" is *not* correct but "Munich" is.
So both sides are striving for correctness.
-- Toby
No, I am claiming that in /English/ we use Munich and this the /most/ correct.
Therefore this is what we should use. Choosing to use München shows a POV
bias for using German in an English encyclopedia. Whereas going with the most
common usage is what is most useful to English speakers and inherently NPOV.
I see you didn't bother to answer several of my points that relate to what is
most useful for readers and users. There is also the fact that the proposed
change absolutely requires the use of a technological fix to work (namely
redirects). Google's language tools can be used as an objective measure of
widest usage whereas the proposed plan depends on subjective choices between
different transliterations and language sets. So again, please explain how
the proposed plan is better the current one? How is it less complicated when
redirects are absolutely required? How is it more NPOV when it shuns widest
English usage for a minority naming scheme? What about the audience: How is
it more useful for them to use words they can't pronounce, spell or are
familiar with? What about the writers: How is it more useful for them to have
articles that they can't link to directly (or at all when redirects are not
made)? Which transliterations should we use? How about native non-English
fonts? How would the proposed system not cause a chilling effect by favoring
titles that most English speakers don't know? Remember: "Otherwise somebody
will come by later and move the article and probably chide the original
author for their Anglo-centric based ignorance." Double burr
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)