Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/China- and Chinese-related articles/Archive 2

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Template

The Korean template (such as can be seen at Sujeonggwa) is much nicer visually than the new one: Template:Chinese; could we please use one that's comparable to the Korean one (but with a different color) -- an example of this template can be seen at Zhajiang mian, and the original template at Template:Chinesename? It can be adapted according to what other things people want in it. Thanks for your consideration. Badagnani 09:16, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Template:Chinese

User:Alanmak has been converting the in-line Chinese/Chinese Romanization to a right floating box using Template:Chinese. Template:Chinese is currently not sanctioned by this MoS, which prescribes a slightly different formatting. I think the box is useful when there are many romanizations, but obtrusive when there are not. The box should be used sparingly as it pushes images further down the page and clogs up the horizontal whitespace in pages where another infobox already exists. Basically, it's hideous.

I propose the following:
Template:Chinese should only be used if

1. There are more than four items to be listed;
2. An image does not already occupy the upper right hand corner; and
3. Another box does not already occupy the upper right hand corner.

If (1) is true and (2) or (3) are not, then the image or box should into a box containing the characters/romanization.

Comments? --Jiang 09:20, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

See the box at Shiing-Shen Chern (Template:Chinesename). I think it fits visually with the article better than the bright blue one. All it needs is Postal System Pinyin (if that's necessary) and space for a photo caption, which I'm not sure how to do. Badagnani 09:41, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for bring up the box in the article Zhajiang mian. Actually, when I first started editing Template:Chinese, I deliberately decreased the font size, because some people liked to complain that info boxes were bulky. I would prefer changing Template:Chinese into the color scheme of the new box that you made, and making it more visually attractive. :-) I would also suggest adding a space in Template:Chinese for putting photograph(s). - Alan 09:48, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

I have no objections to the mass implementation of Template:Chinesename to biographies. It works much better than Template:Chinese in incorporating images. The portrait of the person should always occupy the corner space in a biography. And the hue of blue/gray is much better-looking.--Jiang 09:46, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

• The manual of style encourages the display of Chinese names using info box (See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (China-related articles)#Box format).
• I don't think that a box should not be used when there is already an image on the right hand side of the article. I don't see any problem for the name in the orginal language to come before an image. Even if you use in-line style, the name in the original language would also come before an image.
• If most people like an image to come first, I would suggest modifying the template, and put an image between the blue area and the white area.
• If there is already another info box in an article, the Chinese name(s) and the romanization(s) can be absorbed into the box that is already in the article. If it is not possible to do so, I would suggest keeping Template:Chinese in the article.
• It seems that your motive is to minimize the use of a template made by somebody who had an edit-war with you before. But this is not how things work here in Wikipedia. - Alan 09:32, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Regarding the last point: absolutely not. If the box were visually attractive, fitting in well with the pages, and in line visually with Template:Koreanname, I would have no problem with it at all. Check Zhajiang mian and see this box. Badagnani 09:39, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

1 - the current MoS is not Template:Chinese. It is fine to have the image incorporated into the box. Having the image pushed down by the box is not okay and is nowhere part of the original design. The MoS box was also intended to be applied on a case-by-case basis, not wholesale to every article using Chinese characters.

2- It is consistent througout wikipedia to have the image placed to the upper right hand corner and to have non-English languages provided in-line in parenthesis. What is being implemented without proposal here is very different. It is not about the language appearing first; it is about the box itself pushing useful content down the page or cluttering the page.

3- I agree to such a modification. I also think the color should be lightened to be consistent with the box in the MoS.

4- I also agree to incoporating the language into existing boxes. But if it is not possible, then having a blue box floating around is plain hideous. I don't see the benefit if the romanizations dont clutter the lead section.

5- See Wikipedia:Assume good faith and Wikipedia:No personal attacks.

Please elaborate on the benefits of Template:Chinese over in-line templates. --Jiang 09:44, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't like Template:Chinese. Template:zh (inline format) is much more elegant in appearance and in usage. I can see the value of Template:Chinese if there are many items, but for the standard Traditional-Simplified-Pinyin format, template:zh is better. --Sumple (Talk) 09:55, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

What's a page that uses Template:zh? Badagnani 09:57, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

He's referring to these. The Chinese is presented in parenthesis, inline. This is cleaner and takes up less space when dont have to deal with a lot of items. --Jiang 09:59, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

It looks like Template:Chinese and Template:Chinesename serve the same purpose and should be merged. I prefer the color scheme of Template:Chinesename. I also don't think it is necessary to list the Chinese variant from which the romanizations were derived - it is non-vital information that unnecessarily clogs up the box. People who find the romanizations useful should already know; those wishing to find out need only click on the links once. --Jiang 09:58, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

I am now trying to figure out how to make the trad. and simplified hanzi go into tiny grids like at the Koreanname template (see Nokdumuk for an example; it's very nice). Also, I'm trying to allow for a photo caption, as in the taxoboxes. Badagnani 09:59, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

OK, I figured out the grids. See Zhajiang mian. All it needs is Postal System Pinyin (if that's necessary) and a way to get a photo caption, as in the taxoboxes. Badagnani 10:15, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

OK, I've now also figured out making a small photo caption. See the finished box at Baijiu. Badagnani 10:30, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Given the current proliferation of right-hand-side infoboxes, I think that if we are to adopt a standardised right-hand-side Chinese name box, it should be able to fit harmoniously atop (or even within the additional infobox's title parameter). I'm not a code monkey so I'm not too confident of making such a template myself, but if you feel it can be plausibly considered, feel free to expand upon my idea. -- Миборовский 00:59, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand these specifications; would you look at the new template at Baijiu (which is imitative of the one that's been used in Korean articles for some time, though with different colored bars and say what about it you would like to see changed? Badagnani 01:42, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

I mean that we shouldn't add even more boxes to the ubiquitous infoboxes found on all sorts of articles. Actually, forget what I said in my previous post. What would REALLY be cool is a mouse-over display box with wg/py, simp/trad that shows up when one hovers the mouse over a term. That way we have more stuff, with less clutter. -- Миборовский 01:11, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't mind your box, but I still prefer the in-line parenthesis style in presenting Chinese characters/romanizations when there are not many items to list because boxes create clutter. I see youve applied the box to some articles that previously did not have one: it's not necessary to list the Chinese twice (in the first line and in the box) - only one or the other is necessary--Jiang 02:39, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for comments. Which one has that? Regarding "mouse-over," Wikipedia usually avoids that because not all computers can deal with that kind of css or java code, and it's hard to print that sort of thing. The code is kept as simple as possible. Badagnani 03:08, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Template:Chinese continued

• There is the current Template:Chinese which can do Chinese names but not Japanese or any other names. But it can do multiple names.
• There is Template:Chinesename which can do simple language names, but not multiple names. It can switch between traditional or simplified displays.
• There is Template:cjk which can do Chinese, Japanese etc. But not multiple names.

It would be best to just combine the best feature of all three. Benjwong 19:51, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

I am afraid that is not entirely correct.

• Template:Chinese can actually display names in Japanese and a lot of other languages. For example, the parameter "jpn" is for Japanese, "kor" for Korean, "por" for Portuguese, "rus" for Russian, etc. Notice that the three-letter name of the parameter is simply the ISO 639 code for the language, instead of some random, arbitary names.
• Template:Chinesename can display the names in both traditional Chinese characters and simplified Chinese characters, but so can Template:Chinese and Template:cjk.
• Template:cjk cannot do multiple names in one language. But the template is intended for displaying multiple languages. As long as there are already many languages in the list, I am afraid that it would make the list too long if we enable it to display many names for each of those many languages.

Alan 22:32, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

The color scheme of cjk doesn't look very good, though it might have potential. Chinesename and Chinese are similar; I support adding extra languages to "Chinesename" rather than using "Chinese" (the colors and layout of this one are strange too). Badagnani 20:27, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

On one hand you said that "the colors and layout of this one [the "Chinese" template] are strange"; on the other hand you said that "Chinesename and Chinese are similar". In that regard, the two templates - "Chinesename" and "Chinese" - are equally strange. :-P - Alan 22:57, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

I apologize that I have nothing overly constructive to contribute, but I would definitely support the creation of an effective template for this. The more features in a single template, the better. It compartmentalizes things nicely, and avoids the problem of multiple templates vying for the same space. (I rather like Template:Cjk, if the colors were changed, and the ability to do multiple names were added.) LordAmeth 21:07, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

I am glad that you like Template:Cjk. However, I believe that we should worry more about whether the templates are informative, clear and systematic at this point, instead of putting too much attention on the colour scheme. Aesthetic is something subjective and arbitary. While some people would like colour scheme A better, some people would like colour scheme B better. It would be an endless discussion to talk about which colour "looks nice". But overall, the color scheme is something that can easily be modified in the program code. Perhaps we can ask around and find out the colour that most people like, and then switch to the new colour scheme. That shouldn't be too big of a problem to worry about. Alan 22:32, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

One very serious problem is that the template syntax of cjk and Chinese are extremely complicated, something that is not true of "Chinesename." And cjk takes up a lot more space, being less economical in that regard.Badagnani 21:10, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

In terms of the template syntax, I don't think "Chinese" and "cjk" are a lot more complicated than "Chinesename". All three templates make use of tables. Their codes have similar formats. I would say that the three templates are more or less equally complicated.

If you want a template to be able to do lots of different things, you can't avoid the complexity in its syntax. This is the price that you have to pay. :-) Fortunately, a lot of Wikipedians know programming. As long as the source codes are well organized, a lot of folks should be able to understand.

But at the end of the day, it doesn't matter, because it is a template. As long as whoever writes the code makes it simple for people to apply the template to articles, who cares how complicated the code is. :-) I beleive this is also a very important purpose for having a template. With the template, we only have to write the complicate code once, and make our life easier when we apply the template to articles.

You also mentioned that "cjk" takes up a lot more space. I am afraid I don't entirely with that. The "cjk" template initially hides all the transliterations. It doesn't display the information (namely the transliterations) that most readers don't care unless the readers ask for them (by clicking on the "[show]" button). By hiding some information, "cjk" actually takes up a lot less space than "Chinesename".

Alan 22:49, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Ah, well, I have very little experience in coding, so whatever others think is good should be fine. I think the key thing is to make sure the template is flexible to represent as many different languages and different scripts as may be needed on any given article. LordAmeth 22:05, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Well I am ok with changing to Template:Chinese if it can do the Japanese and the many languages like Template:Cjk. The problem is that I am not much of a wiki coder. Let me do a comparison chart. I will print result here. Hang on. Benjwong 22:41, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, we are not really "changing to Template:Chinese". Notice thatTemplate:Chinese has been existing, and has been widely used, BEFORE another Wikipedian wrote the additional template, Template:Chinesename. Also, as I mentioned above, Template:Chinese can display names in Japanese and many other languages. - Alan 22:57, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Template:Chinese still looks very strange. Better than when it had the dark blue highlighting on top, but still strange, non-standard. Badagnani 22:44, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

As a mentioned above, aesthetic is something subjective and arbitary. You think Template:Chinese is strange. But a lot of other Wikipedians might actually it. I think Template:Chinese is actually pretty colourful and attractive, while Template:Chinesename is rather dull and unattractive. Alan 22:57, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

It's not just the color, but the design (such as the fact that Chinesename is more economical of space). And the syntax of the template is very, very complex. Any number of new languages can be added to the Chinese name template, so that's not a problem. Badagnani 23:18, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Also, I don't believe the transliteration should be hidden, as in Template:Chinese. Badagnani 23:21, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

The idea of hiding the transliteration was a consensus of a long discussion started by Hong Kong Wikipedians long ago. But no one figured out how to write codes that does that until recently. The rationale behind hiding the transliteration was that there are just too many transliterations to be shown (e.g. Hanyu Pinyin, Tongyong Pinyin, Wades-Giles, Jyutping, Yale, POJ, and a lot more...). These transliterations take up a lot of space and are not something that most readers would be interested in. You were complaining that the template took up a lot of space, but now the transliterations are displayed "on demand", and the template now takes up a lot less space than "Chinesename". I don't think the complain "translierations hould be hidden" makes much sense. - Alan 23:40, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Comparison charts are coming. Hang on. Benjwong 23:22, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

User:Alanmak has been forcing the implementation of Template:Chinese without prior consultation. While I assume his edits are made in good faith, the templete is completely unneccessary and irrelevent to the subject in most of the articles he added. Basically he inserting lots of brand new romanizations that are not relevent to the article just so he can move everything into a box. Most of the articles were fine before with one or two romanizations in the inline format and surely the box is not needed in every Chinese-related article. And Alanmak seems to be the only editor that is inserting this template. There should be a consensus before the templete gets implemented everywhere, and as far as I know there is no consensus yet. — Kelw (talk) 20:14, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

There are currently three templates in use. Not one of them has all the advantage. We need to figure out if we can combine all three into 1 good template. Benjwong 23:58, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Base on the comments of all of you, I added some new features to the"Chinese" template, to make it more powerful. Please check it out. - Alan 06:02, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Template	Cjk	Chinese	Chinesename
Picture	pic	pic	image
Picture caption	piccap	piccap	image_caption
Switching the order of Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese shown in the list		order=st	context=s
Traditional/Simplified	c	c, c2	st
Traditional Chinese	t	t, t2	traditional
Simplified Chinese	s	s, s2	simplified
Literal meaning	l	l, l2	lm
A second title for the alternative Chinese name		altname
Chinese postal map	psp	psp, psp2
IPA	i	i, i2	ipa
Cantonese Jyutping	j	j, j2	ca
Cantonese Yale	y	y, y2	cay
Mandarin Yale		my, my2	may
Hakka	h	h, h2
Hanyu Pinyin	p	p, p2	py
Gwoyeu Romatzyh	gr	gr, gr2	gr
Tongyong pinyin	tp	tp, tp2
Wade Giles	w	w, w2	wg
Taiwanese POJ/Min nan	poj	poj, poj2	poj
Latin phonetic Shanghainese	lmz	lmz, lmz2	sh
Teochew	teo	teo, teo2
Korean Hangul	hangul	hangul	kng
Korean Hanja	hanja	hanja	knj
Revised Romanization of Korean	rr	rr
McCune-Reischauer	mr	mr
Japanese Kanji	kanji	kanji	jpkanj
Japanese Kana	kana	kana	jpkana
Japanese Hiragana		hiragana	jphiri
Romaji	romaji	romaji	jprom
Filipino / Tagalog language	tgl	tgl	fi
Hindi language		hin
Malay language	msa	msa	ma
Manchu language	mnc	mnc
Mongolian language	mon	mon
Portugese language	por	por
Russian language	rus	rus
Tamil language		tam
Thai language	tha	tha
Tibetan language	tib	tib
Uyghur language	uig	uig
Vietnamese language (generic)	vie	vie	vi
Vietnamese in Quoc Ngu script		qn
Vietnamese in Han Tu script		hantu
Zhung language	zha	zha
Additional language 1	lang1	lang1
Additional language 2	lang2	lang2
Additional language 3	lang3	lang3
To make the transliteration NOT hidden		hide=no
Remarks		1. The parameters with a "2" at the end are for the alternative Chinese name. 2. The parameters "t", "s", "p", "w" etc. stand for the same thing as in inline-style Chinese-language templates like Template:zh-tspw. 3. The parameters for most languages are the ISO 639 codes for the respective languages. For example, the parameter for Russian is "rus", the parameter for Portuguese is "por", etc.

Personally I am fine with using Chinese template if someone can move the remaining features from cjk or Chinesename over. I don't mind the hiding feature. It is only 1 click. But the info is important. It is easier to discontinue Chinesename now, before 100+ articles use it. Benjwong 00:06, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

IPA should be an option for each language.— HenryLi (Talk) 16:01, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

I think there are two distinct issues here:

• Whether or not to merge the three existing Chinese template into one;
• Whether to use the inline display format vs. the box-style format used by these templates.

For the first point, yes I agree the three templates should be merged. However, I strongly believe the vast majority of Chinese-related articles do not require this template. It might be useful on articles that directly relate to linguistics, but we do not need every form on romanization on every article. — Kelw (talk) 00:20, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

I have come across a number of food articles that could have used multiple names and multiple romanizations. But yes I agree no one article could possibly use them all. The current Chinese template do have issues. Look at Tsing Ma Bridge which does not have simplified characters and are showing up with the "s". Also I am not sure what you mean by inline display format? The old version was also a box. Benjwong 01:15, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Please look at the earlier discussion on this page. The inline style is the display of characters and romanizations inline with text, as in the first paragraph of the Fenghuang article for example. This is currently the most common way to display Chinese text and romanizations in Wikipedia. For the vast majority of articles this inline format is the cleanest and best approach. The box format is useful in some cases, but most of the time it is just too much information and clutter. User:Alanmak replaced the inline format with his template on thousands of articles before there was any consensus. The box format is good if there are many valid forms of romanizations, but most articles do not require that many. (Edit: Also please see the relevant discussion on this page under heading When should "box-style" format be used?)— Kelw (talk) 01:46, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

The reason why I stayed away from template:Chinese before is because it could not incorporate images before. Which I believe is why template:Chinesename came about. As of today, most of the issues I have with template:Chinese appear to be completely fixed. Now I know what you mean by inline reference. We should try to do the following.

1. Template:Chinese is only missing Japanese Hiragana and Mandarin yale. It has far more features than all the other templates. If we can add these two, we can safely move everything from Template:Chinesename over to Template:Chinese
2. We should delete Template:cjk. It does nothing more than Template:Chinese.
3. Yes. I agree Inline-style like Template:zh-cp is a separate discussion. It does not necessarily save more room, now that template:Chinese can hide in a box, which seems to be the key feature missing before. Try Sino-British Joint Declaration with Template:Chinesename or Template:zh-cp.
4. I think the best scenario is two templates for all articles. Template:zh-cp or Template:Chinese.

Benjwong 16:46, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Sure, I think we're agreed that the box should be used if there are several romanizations (including Cantonese, Hokkien, etc.). But it still doesn't solve the fact that the template syntax of "Chinese" is extremely complex such that only one editor can figure it out, while "Chinesename" is easy enough that we can all go in and make fixes, add languages, etc. when necessary. Badagnani 16:57, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

I still don't agree that the romanizations should be hidden. In fact, they're very important and should *not* be hidden. In no case, even food items with several names in different languages, with "Chinesename" it doesn't take up too much space. But with "Chinese" it takes up a lot of space. Badagnani 17:00, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes the syntax of Template:Chinese is complex. But it is practically finished. It only needs two more fields, Japanese Hiragana and Mandarin yale. Template:Chinesename is missing way too many fields now that it is compared. It also cannot do alternate names at all. There is not enough reason to go on with Template:Chinesename when Template:Chinese has been changed so much the past few days. About the "hiding" feature, is there anyway to add a flag into Template:Chinese to make everything visible and nothing hides? Maybe that can be an optional feature?? Benjwong 19:06, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments, Benjwong. I have added the parameters for Japanese Hiragana and Mandarin Yale Romanization to the "Chinese" template. I have also added a parameter called "hide". When the value is set to "hide=no", the function for hiding the transliterations will then be disabled. These features are now listed in the comparison chart above.

Besides that, I am afraid I still don't agree with Badagnani's comment that the "Chinese" template has much more complicated syntax than the "Chinesename" template. Both templates consist of tables and "if-then" statements. If the programming techniques used in the two templates are so similar, there's nothing that would make "Chinese" more complicated than "Chinesename". It might be true that the code for "Chinese" is several lines longer, but that's because "Chinese" has more powerful functions than "Chinesename". In contrast, I think that "Chinesename" is actually more complicated than "Chinese", because it has a longer name. :-P - Alan 20:05, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Please keep in mind that romanizations are only important and relevent if it is actually found in mainstream literature. For example, dim sum and dian xin are both commonly found in English texts and should be included in the Dim Sum article. But it is wrong to insert Xiānggǎng Tàikōng Guǎn in Hong Kong Space Museum because that romanization never used anywhere. Please don't create a romanization just because you can; it's very easy to get carried away. Another ridiculous case is Victoria City, which includes Wéiduōlìyà Chéng despite the fact that it is an English name to begin with and the Chinese name is actually the transliteration. You will never find the phrase Wéiduōlìyà Chéng used anywhere.

I don't mind unhiding the romanizations, but first we should first get rid of these unneeded romanizations and only keep the relevent ones. After that, most articles will be fine simply with the inline format, and we can use the box format in exceptional cases. — Kelw (talk) 20:10, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

I think we have to keep in mind that a romanization is not necessarily the same thing as the common name used in the English language. One of the very important functions of a romanization is that it also serve as a pronunciation guide. Since Chinese is a language that is not written in Roman alphabets, it is important to provide the romanizations so that English-speaking readers can have a better sense of how the Chinese name is pronounced. - Alan 20:25, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't completely agree with that. Romanization is not the same as pronounciation guide. The main job of romanization systems (like Pinyin and Wade-Giles) is not to serve as a pronunciation guide, but to allow non-Latin words to be represented in Latin form. In other words, pinyin and Wade-Giles are mainly to help with writing, not speaking. Systems like International Phonetic Alphabet is used to define pronunciation. Anyway, pronunciation is primarily the concern of dictionaries (like Wiktionary), not encyclopedias. For Wiipedia, the most important priority is to mention any alternate romanizations (alternate names) that a reader is may encounter in other texts. Yes, I agree it's sometimes nice to have a pronunciation guides (maybe for more common Chinese phrases), but they are not always needed (especially when the page is already cluttered). — Kelw (talk) 21:10, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

It is really tough to say what is "necessary". If a person knows Chinese by sound but cannot read every character then jyutping and pinyin is a must have. Whether it counts as romanization or pronounciation guide, this is entirely up for opinions. There is no harm having as many romanizations as possible. The template currently auto-hides, so 1 romanization versus 50 romanizations is only 1 click away. Benjwong 00:36, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

In my impression, it has been a usual practice in the English Wikipedia that the romanizations for Chinese and Korean are provided in the articles even when the romanizations are not the common names in the English language. I believe that the romanizations are useful to some readers. The "Chinese" template can hide all the romanizations until the reader clicks the "show" button. It doesn't take up as much space as the "Chinesename" template does. There is no harm providing the romanizations. I guess we can be more generous in providing romanizations. If you really hate the romanizations so much, just don't click on the "show" button. :-) - Alan 05:24, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

At least for food, objects and items the Template:Chinese can solve many problems the Template:Chinesename could not. Like the multi names and image bracket in Zin_dou. I am looking at Hong Kong Space Museum, the Chinese, Jyutping and mandarin are useful to me. The IPA is not. For short names the inline-style is more than good enough. For long names, Template:Chinese is highly preferred. Benjwong 00:49, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Ok I just tested some of the new features and it works fine. I would like to move stuff over from template:cjk and template:Chinesename. Then flag those two for deletion as 2 templates with less features is not worth keeping. Anyone object? Benjwong 01:15, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

It sounds like a good idea to merge all the three templates in question - namely Template:Chinese, Template:cjk and Template:Chinesename - into Template:Chinese. I welcome this decision. Go for it. But according to the comparison chart above, it seems that Template:Chinese already includes all the features that the two other templates have. So, that shouldn't take too much work. -Alan 05:24, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

IPA is more useful for translation. Don't forget there are hundreds of languages in the world. Romanisation is good for typing only. Latin alphabet is highly overloaded with diverse pronunciation. For example, how do you expect alphabet "z" sound like? English, Pinyin, Jyutping will give you completely different answers. It is hard for other languages to translate in better pronunciation. Also there should be an indicator for native language among various language transcription. — HenryLi (Talk) 04:01, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Notice that in the template, whenever any romanization is provided, there is always a link on the left hand side that links to the article about that particular type of romanization. The readers might read that article to figure out how a "z" is pronounced in that particular type of romanization. - Alan 05:24, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Sorry when I said "move stuff over" I mean move articles that use Template:Chinesename to Template:Chinese. I really don't have much wikicoding to contribute. I just use templates. Benjwong 05:47, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Is Henry suggesting there should be more than 1 IPA flag? Is anyone going to object if Template:Chinesename and Template:cjk gets deleted? Benjwong 05:44, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Please noted that WP:PRON states that "Pronunciation in Wikipedia is indicated using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)", and "If a language is not normally written using the Latin alphabet, an official Romanisation may exist. For example pinyin for Mandarin Chinese or the Royal Thai General System of Transcription. In that case both this romanisation and the IPA rendering may be given." There is no reason to exclude IPA from pronunciation. The current templates are not conformed to Manual of Style. There ought to be one IPA pronunciation for each language. — HenryLi (Talk) 14:19, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Alan, do you mean others have to learn the all romanisation schemes? Learn one romanisation is like acquiring a new language. Do you think it is so ridiculous? Furthermore, using IPA is the guideline. — HenryLi (Talk) 14:29, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

I'd object to such a deletion, because I pointed out several deficiencies with the "Chinese" template which haven't yet been addressed. Regarding pinyin, I don't see a problem with including pinyin for articles on Hong Kong-related words (in the case of Cantonese-language terms), just so we have both for reference. Further, I don't believe that IPA should be a substitute for any of the Chinese romanization systems. Badagnani 08:00, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

I guess the "deficiencies with the Chinese template" refers to three main things that you have repeated for many times, namely (1) you think that the "Chinese" template "takes up a lot more space" than the "Chinesename" template, (2) you think that the "Chinese" template has "more complicated" syntax than the "Chinesename" template, and (3) you personally don't like the colour scheme used in the "Chinese" template. They were all addressed for many times in the discussion above. According to the comparison chart, the "Chinese" template already has all the features that the other two templates have, while the other two templates don't have all the powerful features that "Chinese" has. Also, regarding whether romanizations should be hidden, the "Chinese" template now allows the user to choose whether the romanizations are hidden. This is something that the other two templates cannot do. From the discussion above, it seems that almost all Wikipedians like the "Chinese" template better. (You are actually the only one who said you don't like it, and the reasons why you don't like it have already been addressed.) Therefore, I think we should go ahead and start merging the three templates into the "Chinese" template. - Alan 08:46, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Please don't argue over old features. All three of these are no longer an issue.

(1) It does not take more space now that it auto hides. A problem of the past.

(2) The syntax is not complicated if we can finalize it so that it never has to be modified again.

(3) TemplateChinese is now the same color as TemplateChinesename.

Benjwong 15:55, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Agree. Badagnani pointed out these "deficiencies" over and over in the discussion above. But we already dealed with all of these. So, there are no such "deficiencies" any more. Now that every body (perhaps only except Badagnani) agrees that the "Chinese" template already includes all the features that the two other templates have, the other two templates are redundant. We should start merging them into the "Chinese" template. - Alan 18:04, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

• Comment - Please don't reduce my comments, leaving some out. I also believe, strongly, that the romanizations should *not* be hidden. There is no need to do so. The other deficiencies have not been corrected. Badagnani 06:45, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

About the IPA, I was curious to know as to whether there is a different IPA that we should add. I do not claim to know much about IPA. Benjwong 15:55, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Also there is an article Cantonese opera that has three chinese names. Is there anyway we can add another set of flags. Like c3, t3, s3, l3, anotheraltname, psp3, i3, j3, y3, my3, h3, p3, gr3, tp3, w3, poj3, lmz3, teo3. Is this possible? This might be the last major change need. Benjwong 15:55, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

For articles like Cantonese opera, in which there are three or more Chinese names, we might display the Chinese names and the romanizations in the way we did for the Victoria Peak article. If we add the c3, t3, s3 parameters to the "Chinese" template, some people might complain that the syntax of the template is "too complicated". :-) - Alan 18:04, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

(1) I think there is a strong case for merging the three templates. I support that because I don't think we should have three templates that do the same thing.

(2) I really want to stress: please, please don't get carried away with romanizations! If we start inserting romanizations that are not actually used in common text, there is nothing keeping us from having dozens of romanizations on every article. Most people do not use encyclopedias for pronunciations, and romanizations mean nothing to them if they are not used at all in common text. Keep in mind we are not here to teach English readers to speak Chinese; the focus here is on the subject of the article. That's why WP:PRON says we should include pronounciation guides only if a foriegn word has a special pronunciation in English. If we really want to include the a pronunciation guide, then one uniform IPA guide is better than six or seven different romanizations (or better yet, use an audio file like this: listen^ⓘ).

(3) Don't get me wrong though, I like Template:Chinese and I think it's useful in exceptional cases or for articles about Chinese linguistics. I just don't think it's needed in most articles. In general I think we should use Template:zh templates if possible. And I want to make sure we follow WP:PRON.

(4) This is a minor thing: If Template:Chinese can handle Japanese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese and other languages, then should it really be called a Chinese template? Wouldn't that be biased? — Kelw (talk) 00:51, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

(2) This depends. So many Chinese items have informal english names, romanizations is a must. While for cultural reasons I am not in favor of always having traditional and simplified characters, I am a big supporter of having romanizations. Benjwong 01:54, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

(4) There is no way to rename this something other than template:Chinese. There are thousands of articles using the template. Unless you have a wiki bot there is no way to do it. Benjwong 01:54, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

(2) I actually agree with what you said. Let me clarify this: I support romanization because there isn't always a proper English name for Chinese words. For example, Dim sum is a romanization that appear in English text to refer to the Chinese phrase. I support using dim sum in the article, that's fine. But we should not be using romanizations that are not used in common text just to define pronunciation. Romanization is not the same as pronunciation. The only thing I'm against is using romanizations for pronunciation purposes. Dim sum and dian xin are both valid English names for dim sum. Lots of books use dian xin to refer to dim sum. But Xiānggǎng Tàikōng Guǎn is not a proper English name for Hong Kong Science Museum. Someone added Xiānggǎng Tàikōng Guǎn just to "show the Chinese pronunciation", it doesn't mean anything to an English reader. Hong Kong Science Museum is the proper name for Hong Kong Science Museum. Do you see the difference? So to summarize: I support romanizations. I am against romanizations that are inserted purely for pronunciation guidance. There are hundreds of Chinese romanizations. If we don't limit ourselves ones that are actually used in text, there's nothing stopping us from having dozens of romanizations that mean nothing on every article. So I actually agree with what you said above. Does that make sense? — Kelw (talk) 02:32, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree that in English Wikipedia we should not add romanisation like Xiānggǎng Tàikōng Guǎn as it is spoken by neither native nor English speaker. If it is Chinese Wikipedia, adding Xiānggǎng Tàikōng Guǎn is appropriate. — HenryLi (Talk) 03:08, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Template:Chinese continued 2

Technically, renaming of template name is easy. Redirection will take care of the rest. If one really want to clean up articles, a bot can handle these tedious tasks. — HenryLi (Talk) 02:55, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Ok I need at least a concensus that we should limit to one template first. I have a way to manually convert the flags in Template:Chinesename to Template:Chinese. It is not robotic but its managable. User:Badagnani still have concerns about the new features added to Template:Chinese. Until at least that part is decided, we can't move further. Currently there is no consistency at all with two templates floating around. Everytime an article is created we have to decide which one to use. Benjwong 07:01, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

• Comment - If the new, single template was 1) simple enough in code that any of us may easily make small changes when necessary, 2) doesn't have a clashing color scheme mixing blue, yellow and green, 3) shows the romanizations without hiding them (hiding them is a bad idea, and in fact is needless since in the "Chinesename" template the romanizations don't take up much space, each being on a single line in the grid), I would support a single template. As it stands now, other than these issues the templates are visually quite similar. The former version of "Chinese," with its dark blue color scheme and strange, non-standard design, was much worse visually than the current version, but these issues do need to be addressed, and they have not been. Badagnani 07:06, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
• Comment -

(1)Simple template = simple features. Complex template = many features. The dual names and many romanizations are useful. Not all, but many of them.

• Comment - Not correct. The "Chinesename" template, which is equivalent in style exactly to the "Koreanname" template, is not complex and has many features. The comment above is thus incorrect. Badagnani 07:13, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

(2)Color is easy to fix anytime. We can change it even after the contents are converted over.

• Comment - It hasn't been, and the bad sign is that in fact the editor who put in the colors refuses to even consider this change, preferring instead, against consensus, to impose his template *as is* without any changes being considered to reach consensus. Badagnani 07:13, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

(3)There is a "hide=no" flag already added. Would you like this to be the default when we convert it? Benjwong 07:11, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

• Comment - I've stated already that the romanization/pronunciation is very important and should not be hidden at all. It is unnecessary to hide if the languages are given on a single line, in a grid as in "Chinesename." Badagnani 07:14, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

• Comment - The color issue is minor. We can have a new color every week, it is one flag. There might be people preferring pink. It is purely opinionated. About Template:Koreanname it does 4 flags literally. That won't cut it on existing articles right now. Benjwong 07:18, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

• Comment - As stated above (I suppose I need to reiterate), it's a very bad sign that the editor attempting to impose this template *as is* will not address the color issues, instead preferring to install his template in place of "Chinesename" *before* such issues have been worked out. The color issue is not the most important issue among the as yet unresolved issues, it is simply indicative of this editor's practice, which shows itself to be entirely unresponsive to other editors' concerns. Let's handle all the concerns, then develop consensus, before the template agreed upon--that would be greatly appreciated. Badagnani 07:23, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

• Comment - If User:Alanmak was imposing changes that were bad, it would be vandalism. I think his changes were there to help. Whether he forced the templates in or not, I wasn't even in the very first conversation to begin with. When I brought this up, I was hoping to standardizing on 1 template for the sake of consistency. I would say that if Template:Chinesename can be enhanced to match every feature in Template:Chinese, then we have a real tug-of-war. But right now the comparison chart suggest Template:Chinese has far more flags. Benjwong 07:30, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

• Comment - Your comment is appreciated but does fail to address the remaining deficiencies. The editor has now attempted to impose the template, *as is*, in nearly 100 articles. This is unfortunately a practice we have seen from this editor before; s/he was similarly unresponsive/unwilling to address good-faith comments about his/her template approximately 1 year ago, when it had a dark blue bar on top and does need to build consensus here before engaging on a premature replacement campaign such as s/he is currently engaged in. Badagnani 07:34, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
• Comment - Further, such replacement is premature as there are many more editors active on Chinese topics who have not contributed here, and it has only been 3 or so days since the beginning of this push to replace "Chinesename" with "Chinese." Let's build an actual consensus rather than simply claiming that one exists, failing to address legitimate comments about the current design of the template, then attempting to replace templates in nearly 100 articles. This is not good editing practice at all. Badagnani 07:40, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

• Comment - Also as Henry was saying. There is the possibility that this template is good enough to be renamed to something universally used and not just Chinese. Benjwong 07:19, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

• Comment - I think I will come back tomorrow to talk this one out. For now I hope User:Alanmak and a few more people have opinions. This conversation can go either way cause Template:Chinese has been used way before Template:Chinesename. He can say that we forced Template:Chinesename in. The only thing I am concerned with is the articles which are split in half at the moment with both styles. Unless we can match the features in Template:Chinesename somehow, it seems to be a disadvantage if we keep using it. As articles like Zin Dou has multiple names. Dried shredded squid could have used multiple names. etc etc etc. Remember that the longer we wait, the more massive the changes to come. I'd rather convert 100 now, then 10000 a few months later. Then we are stuck really bad. Benjwong 07:46, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

• Comment - Yes, it is good to give this more than just a couple of days' time. Yet the campaign of replacement (and the assertion of consensus) continues unabated. "Chinese" (in its original form, with dark blue header) was always non-standard in appearance and "Chinesename" matches well with the "Koreanname" template which was already widely used (and in fact which "Chinesename" is based on). Whatever consensus decision we agree on should not be rushed into and we need to be responsive to one another's concerns. I am very serious about this. Badagnani 07:49, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

• Comment - My concern is that this never settles. And the number of templates used just multiply. If you look at the actor/people templates. Eventually those reached a concensus. Because this is a Chinese-only-related template. Don't expect 50 people to chip in. That is unlikely going to happen. And I am equally serious when I say... the longer we wait, the harder it will be to fix this later. Maybe we should have a set time frame. Anyways I'll continue this tomorrow. Benjwong 07:56, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

• Comment - It would certainly settle if we were responsive to one another's concerns. This is getting very serious because the editor is still attempting, via reversion after reversion, to unilaterally impose his/her template, claiming consensus, while refusing to address the concerns raised here. This is very bad editing practice. Badagnani 07:59, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

• Comment - Also, consider that scenario with Zin Dou. I thought one name was good until someone gave it the name "Matuan". Now we have to flip templates to accomodate multiple names. It is better to go with the most feature-packed template the first time around. Benjwong 07:49, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

• Comment - That sounds good on the surface, but when one sees the extreme complexity of the code of "Chinese," this does not allow for other skilled editors to go in and make small changes from time to time, when necessary. It basically allows only the editor who wrote the code (who is currently showing extremely bad faith by his/her massive imposition of his/her template) to control it. As we see, currently s/he remains unresponsive to any comments about it, so it remains a very bad sign. I'm always hopeful, however. It is worth it to take the time to get the template as good as possible, taking into consideration all of our concerns. Having an alternate name shouldn't be difficult to do using simpler/more transparent code. Badagnani 08:13, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
• Comment - This is getting worse and worse. Rather than address the concerns raised here in order to build a consensus, the editor in question continues to make literally hundreds of edits such as this one, at first claiming that consensus to remove "Chinesename" and impose "Chinese" has been reached, then instead launching an abusive tirade claiming that "You are the only one opposed," and reverting again and again to delete the "Chinesename" template and impose his/her template. This discussion has taken place only for a few days and the editor all the while continues to fail to address the remaining issues that have been raised regarding the template "Chinese." This shows bad faith on the part of the editor in question, and I'm not certain how I would even be able to build consensus with an editor who behaves in such a manner. Badagnani 08:24, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Cleanup

I have moved the few articles using Template:cjk over to Template:Chinese. Template:cjk has been flagged for deletion. Benjwong 02:04, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

I got a way to convert safely all the articles using Template:Chinesename. But I have talked to User:Badagnani who does not agree with the conversion. At least earlier I thought we had issues with certain features, of which all of them were addressed. What is needed to convert Template:Chinesename over to Template:Chinese? Benjwong 06:51, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Originally, the merger of the three templates - "Chinese", "Chinesename" and "cjk" - was already settled in the section "Template:Chinese continued 1". In the discussion, every body agreed that "Chinese" can do all the fuctions that the other two redundant templates can do, and can even do a lot of functions that the two redundant ones can't do; and every body supported merging all the templates into "Chinese". But now a new discussion "Template:Chinese continued 2" was somehow opened, and Badagnani keeps on repeating the points that he already repeated over and over in "Template:Chinese continued 1", and tries to confuse other people that the issue has not been settled. The points that he has been repeating over and over are: (1) he thinks that the "Chinese" template "takes up a lot more space" than the "Chinesename" template, (2) he thinks that the "Chinese" template has "far more complicated" syntax than the "Chinesename" template, and (3) he personally doesn't like the colour scheme used in the "Chinese" template. They were all addressed for many times in the discussion above. These points have been responsed to for many times. I find these repetitive arguments very boring. But thank you for staying up so late and pushing so much time in invoking edit wars on me. You are giving me a lot of "mian zi". :-) After doing the same action repetitively for so many articles, it gets boring. It is now the nice summer time. There are a lot of other more meaningful activities than the repetitive stuff. I think I am going to take a break, and come back later. Hopefully at the time I come back, we will have fun doing some non-repetitive stuff. By the way, feel free to revert stuff after 24 hours. I probably won't revert again in a few days. - Alan 09:44, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

There was no consensus, because the issues were never addressed nor resolved. I'm happy to develop consensus together but what you tried to do this evening (push through the change from one template to another in a sweeping way without first addressing the issues) was wrong. Badagnani 09:49, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Stop playing editwars. This is ridiculous. If this is the way things go down, there is nothing preventing another a 3rd or 4th user creating another template and flagging it all for their own use. Can we come up with a clear definition of "WHAT WOULD IT TAKE" for template:Chinese to be deployed widely? At first I thought this was technical issues, but those seem to be solved. This is now entirely a flamewar between Badagnani and Alanmak that go way back. So far back most users who just want to use a template will not care. Benjwong 16:03, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

My objection is that a massive attempt to impose the template which took place yesterday was made, without any of the issues I raised having first been addressed. That was wrong. I've spelled these few issues out several times, yet the responses fail to address them, or say something like "that could possibly be done," but the thing is, it's impossible for anyone else to make those changes because the template is coded in such a complex manner. This lack of transparency in the template is a serious problem. If you wish, I can spell out again the issues that should be addressed and fixed before we reach consensus, or you can simply look above and address/fix them. I do believe your own input to be valuable here. Badagnani 17:03, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Let me try to see the current issues.

• (1) Pinyin should come before Jyutping
• (2) Alanmak is the only person who can fix any code issue on the template
• (3) You don't want to use a template made by Alanmak
• (4) You have a history of editwar problems with Alanmak
• (5) The chinese templates were being forced to use without enough consensus.

Benjwong 19:24, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

No, I'm afraid you're completely mischaracterizing the issues I have raised about the template. It's very strange, because I've stated them above, several times. #1 I have not raised, #3 is not correct, #4 is not correct, and you've left out about 4 others that I've raised several times above. I ask that you delete the above points because they mischaracterize the points I have raised above, read what I have read above (which I guess you still haven't done?), and redo it. Thanks for your consideration. Badagnani 19:27, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

OK, I've found it. It's just a few inches above, so I still can't believe you would make up points that I didn't raise, and leave out the most important ones.

• Comment - If the new, single template was 1) simple enough in code that any of us may easily make small changes when necessary, 2) doesn't have a clashing color scheme mixing blue, yellow and green, 3) shows the romanizations without hiding them (hiding them is a bad idea, and in fact is needless since in the "Chinesename" template the romanizations don't take up much space, each being on a single line in the grid), I would support a single template. As it stands now, other than these issues the templates are visually quite similar. The former version of "Chinese," with its dark blue color scheme and strange, non-standard design, was much worse visually than the current version, but these issues do need to be addressed, and they have not been. Badagnani 07:06, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

(1) Remember I have talked to other users to some degree about enhancing template:Chinesename to do dual names and other features. The only person to have voluntarily done any major fixing up recently was Alanmak on template:Chinese. The fact is, if we enhanced Template:Chinesename to do as many things as Template:Chinese, the code will be the same. The only reason why Template:Chinesename seems simple at the moment is because it does not have half as many flags.

(2) There are exactly 4 colors used.

f7f8ff

B0C4DE

F9FFBC

DCFFC9

Instead of saying you don't like it. Can you tell us what colors you prefer?

(3) I have made a temporary variation of the sandbox in User_talk:Benjwong/Sandboxtest. You can go there and mess around until you find the spacing and color of your choice. To call it, just replace Chinesename with User_talk:Benjwong/Sandboxtest. Benjwong 20:33, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

• Comment - Benjwong, your input is greatly appreciated. User:Alanmak's assiduous edits to improve the "Chinese" template are admirable but s/he continues not to address my comments. Regarding colors, I don't think the yellow or green colors are necessary, as the grid with a single line for each language (not hidden, but appearing for all users to see) seems most efficient. In any case, the yellow and green both clash with the light gray/blue of the top bar. I think we are moving toward agreement but I would certainly like to hear more contributions from editors active in Chinese articles. There are at least a half dozen other active ones who haven't commented here yet. Badagnani 21:49, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

• Comment - I think most of the other contributors are horrified by the length of this debate and have completely stayed away. I would prefer changing the green. I don't mind the yellow at all. But that's me. The grided lines are used in table-like templates. It has never been part of this one. Look at the old style with dark blue + white, there was no grids before either. Benjwong 22:23, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

• Comment - The grid works fine at the "Koreanname" template (as seen, for example, at Soju) and did also work fine (and minimized space, unlike the current version of "Chinese") at "Chinesename," as seen, for example, at Har gau. The whole idea of colorful hidden romanizations, each taking up two lines rather than one, really is unnecessary and not desirable in the first place. Badagnani 22:39, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Can someone, anyone, kindly summarise this entire debate in a few short sentences before I attempt to offer my comments? Been reading bits and pieces, and it seems to me even active participants arent exactly listening to each other...--Huaiwei 23:11, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

If you want a summary. We are basically stuck between two templates. Template:Chinese which has all the features and Template:Chinesename, which has grids and the appeal that User:Badagnani prefers. Everything talked about so far is either revert-wars or cosmetic issues. Both of which IMHO are a waste of time. I highly prefer converting the articles sooner the better. Benjwong 00:34, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

I fail to see what is the rush, if both parties refrain from attempting to mass impliment templates prematurely. Would deeply appreciate if anyone may provide a link to the latest version of each respective template, since this is a cosmetic issue (unless there are other deep-seated underlying concerns as well)? Thanks!--Huaiwei 02:06, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

See Ci fan tuan for the "Chinesename" template and Buddha's delight for the "Chinese" template. Or you can simply go to either template and click "what links here" to see more examples of how each appear. The Korean equivalent of "Chinesename," "Koreanname," can be seen at Soju (the main difference being the color; "Koreanname" is a lightish purple while "Chinesename" is a grayish blue (the "Chinese" template now has this color for the top bar as well). I prefer to keep things visually consistent with that template (i.e. romanizations not hidden and not taking up two lines each). Badagnani 02:23, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Everyone is concerned with the looks. All of that can be dealt with later. The appearance absolutely doesn't matter as long as we can standardize on 1 template and set all the flags to be the same. When all the articles call the same flag and same template, you can make it look however you like. I'd rather set the flag now with a couple hundred articles than some unmanagable number later. Benjwong 03:33, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Consensus should be built first, not later. The recent attempt to impose the template without addressing the remaining concerns was very bad and at this point it's not too much to ask to get the template so that we have a consensus among active editors at Chinese-related articles regarding the template or templates that we are all satisfied with. Badagnani 03:37, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Template:Chinese vs Chinesename - ordering of romanisations

Call me a mainlander, but the way Template:Chinese orders the transliterations is not satisfactory. While it is true that Hanyu pinyin is used only for Mandarin, there is no escaping the fact that it is the international standard in transliterating Chinese words. As it stands, the template puts Jyut ping ahead of pinyin, which is confusing and misleading for non-Chinese (and Chinese) readers who may not know all the intricacies in terms of varieties of Chinese - e.g. a schoolkid doing his project. --PalaceGuard008 08:45, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps they're listed alphabetically. This is what happened about a year ago at the English Wiktionary, where those promoting Chinese dialects separated all the dialects from the "Chinese" heading and listed them all alphabetically, interspersed with all the other world languages. So of course "Cantonese" always comes before "Mandarin." Badagnani 08:53, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

I have to agree with PalaceGuard008. Jyut ping itself is not well-known as a transliteration system (even for Cantonese speakers), and trails far behind Pinyin in terms of notability and usage. To place it that high on the template does appear to be pushing it a tad too far.--Huaiwei 16:15, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Ok. The mandarin pinyin displaying ahead of cantonese jyutping is easily fixable. This is minor and can be addressed anytime. Benjwong 15:55, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Can we get a vote

Can we get a vote and get this over with once in for all. Please vote Template:Chinese or Template:Chinesename? This is never ending and is wasting far too much time.

*Template:Chinese: Benjwong 17:01, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

• Comment - No, it's simply premature to "vote" because the issues about template "Chinese" haven't been addressed. Please take the time to address the issues first, thanks. Badagnani 17:05, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
• Comment - Kindly be reminded that wikipedia is not a democracy, and simple voting should not be used as a tool of last resort.--Huaiwei 23:03, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
• Comment - Last time when several people had an edit war over a template that was applied in the United Nations article, the administrator also used vote to "solve the problem". At that time, I also told him that "Wikipedia is not a democracy". But he didn't care, and insisted that a vote was the best way to "solve the problem". I really don't know when we should vote, and when we should not vote. - Alan 23:33, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment - I do not think it wise to take someone's personal approach in dispute resolution as an indication of accepted practises here. The intent of WP:DEMOCRACY is clear, and that is the majority is not always right, which, afterall, is also intrinsically linked to the essense of WP:NPOV, where majority views are not given undue weight in content articles. See Wikipedia:Resolving disputes if you are sincere about finding an amicable solution for all (which, by the way, also stresses the same thing).--Huaiwei 01:59, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
• Comment - WP:DEMOCRACY does not fully apply for templates awaiting deletion. Either you come to an agreement here or you do it here like template:cjk yesterday at the deletion page. So you have to vote somewhere. Benjwong 00:44, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment - Kindly state which policy supports your claim that WP:DEMOCRACY has limited applicability in the example you cite above. Voting is not final. Period.--Huaiwei 01:59, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment - You are welcome to flag either template for deletion. You don't have to come to a concensus here. Some admin will ask you to come to an agreement via voting automatically. Benjwong 03:39, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

*Template:Chinese - Man, I mentioned above that I am going to take a break from Wikipedia. If you do the voting at this time, I might have easily missed the voting. But anyway, I am voting for the "Chinese" template. - Alan 23:33, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

• Both - There shouldn't be any systematic cross-conversions, at least until problems with Template:Chinese or Template:Chinesename are fixed. Currently, there are deficiencies with both systems, and so either can be used depending on editor preference and suitability for an article - e.g. I would hesitate to use Template:Chinese where a Cantonese name is involved unless it is actually a Cantonese subject matter - and the same goes for almost every other dialect. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 01:15, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
• Comment - I've stated before I support merging the templates. But a vote is not the best at this time considering many editors still have doubts. I also want to say the way User:Alanmak forcefully inserts with his own template into hundreds of articles is unacceptable. He is invoking edit wars everywhere and he clearly knows this discussion is still ongoing. And he has a history of forcing through his way before there is any consensus. He should be reported if he continues doing this. — Kelw (talk) 02:33, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
• Comment - As discussed above. There is no more deficiencies left as Alanmak has fixed the remaining issues the other day. If he is forcing the templates he shouldn't be. But that is a separate issue. Now if someone can suggest why we should use a template with far less features, I am listening. Benjwong 03:44, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

• Comment - This is nothing more than wishful thinking. The issues/problems clearly remain (as you have acknowledged at least 3 or 4 times in the past two days). Badagnani 03:45, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
• Comment - Yes cosmetic issues. Benjwong 03:49, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
• Comment - This is now at least the third time you've misconstrued other editors' comments. Is the lack of transparency in the code of template "Chinese" cosmetic? No, it is not. Badagnani 03:55, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
• Comment - If the flags are the same, you can even wipe out all the codes to make Template:Chinese look identical to Template:Chinesename later. It's that simple. Benjwong 03:57, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

• Comment - This is immaterial, as this has not happened. Instead of pushing through a "vote" in just three days' time, consensus needs to be developed for such a merge, if such a merge is supported by the community of editors active in articles related to China/Chinese culture. Further, colors are cosmetic but hiding of romanizations is not cosmetic, and having romanizations on two lines instead of one is not cosmetic. I do not appreciate your continual incorrect "boiling down," reducing, and misconstruing of other editors' comments. Badagnani 04:00, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
• Comment - With the exception of User:PalaceGuard008 everyone is already in favor of 1 standard template long ago. Let's set the flags before the articles multiply and become unmanagable. If you are against setting the flags, you basically agree to two templates. You can change the template to your preferred color later. And romanization to 1 line, 3 lines, 5 lines doesn't matter. Benjwong 04:09, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
• Comment - No, as I've said before, that is highly unsatisfactory. If there is a consensus to merge templates to a single one (which there is not), the issues need to be addressed. Nothing is unmanageable except for User:Alanmak's out-of-control, unilateral rampage (I'm not sure what other word would best describe it) last evening. No, with the current coding I would not be able to make those changes. But "Chinesename," as it is comparable to "Koreanname," does allow for such changes as it's easier to understand. The issues need to be addressed before consensus is attained. Badagnani 04:12, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
• Comment - So are you "for" or "against" have 1 standardize template? Like I said you can wipe the code clean 100% and start your own as long as the flags are all in place. Benjwong 04:14, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
• Comment - I was previously leaning toward one standardized template (for items identified with China, Hong Kong, or Macau--not ones identified primarily with Japan or Korea), but the events of yesterday (the massive, unilateral attempt to impose a single template without consensus, as well as your failure to do anything about that), and the attempt to push through a vote in just a few days, without consideration of the issues raised or wide contributions and consensus among editors active here) have prevented me from placing my support behind this at this time. As I stated just above (did you miss it?), the code of "Chinese" is impenetrable and does not allow for other editors to manipulate or change it as necessary, as is possible with "Koreanname" and "Chinesename." Badagnani 04:18, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
• Comment - What Alan did with the massive push was not right. I am in full support of your comment regarding that. But that has nothing to do with whether we should standardize. In fact, if you leave this unsolved, you and him are going to revert war for a long long time. I already know it. About the impenetrable code, maybe our wiki-coding skills just aren't good enough at the moment. Benjwong 04:26, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

• Result of the straw poll is no consensus. Let's move on, please. Instead of trying to force a consensus, we should be identifying and solving the problems. Saying "your objection is immaterial, now vote" is not a productive approach. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 09:36, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
• Comment - Ok let's not standardize. I'll go back and flag all the articles I started with Template:Chinese and use Template:Chinese on all future articles. But don't convert my stuff please as that would be forcing it without a consensus. Benjwong 13:35, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
• Comment - That's already been done 2 days ago by User:Alanmak without consensus (which you did not help revert). How is that any different? Badagnani 16:45, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
• Comment - Last I checked I sent Alan a message to invite him to come down and talk. In fact I left him two messages. Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy, so let's just pick the other template, Template:Chinesename. We'll add a couple flags and standardize on at least 1. Doesn't matter which one. Benjwong 21:16, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Need input about whether Trad. or Simplified should come first in template

This seems like a current/active discussion and thus I'm not sure it should have been archived. We're still discussing the order of languages and I think this is a related issue. Badagnani 05:44, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

This has not been an issue for sometime. As there is a "order=st" flag in Template:Chinese and "context=s" in Template:Chinesename. Benjwong 05:47, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

But didn't you say that for some articles you'd prefer "ts" over "st"? Badagnani 05:57, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

By default both are set for traditional display. When called with the appropriate flags, both will switch to simplified display. I tried both out yesterday. Benjwong 06:11, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Can you be slightly more clear about what you mean (we don't all know the programming terminology you're using about "flags"). Badagnani 06:17, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Go to article Five-spice powder add "order=st" into the template. Go to Sweet bean paste add "context=s" into the template. These will change to simplified chinese display. Benjwong 06:31, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry, your last comment made this even less clear. Can you be clear in your description? I would appreciate it very much. Badagnani 06:44, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

By default both templates show Traditional chinese text first. If you add those flags into the template as described above, it will change to display Simplified chinese text first. Go to Five-spice powder, add "order=st" into the Template:Chinese. Benjwong 06:49, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

That makes sense, but where in the template would one put that piece of code? Just anywhere, surrounded by | bars? If this is the case, it should be added to the Manual of Style so everyone knows that this is now available. Your expertise and work on these sorts of things is greatly appreciated. Badagnani 06:52, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

I just added the line in Five-spice powder. You can see "order=st". If you compare the old history, it used to say Traditional first. Benjwong 06:56, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Archiving

This edit has archived too much very recent/important discussion. Badagnani 07:18, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

I strongly object to this blanking as it was discussion that just took place today, and which is very important, useful information for other editors active here. Badagnani 07:20, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Compare the templates

Okay, here's my proposal for how to proceed from here:

• Identify deficiencies with either template.
• Fix these deficiencies or identify ways to fix them.
• Assess which one is better, or which one would be most easily perfected.
• Standardise to that template.

If youse are all with me so far, I'll get the ball rolling by identifying the key objections to each template. Let's first work these out, then we can proceed to talk about how and whether they can be fixed. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 03:26, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Comparing the Templates

Anything highlighted in Green should no longer be an issue.

Template:Chinesename:

1. Does not support some less common languages compared with Template:Chinese. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 03:26, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment It is missing quite a number of flags. Benjwong 05:27, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment Would this be difficult to fix? --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 11:23, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment There is the short way of inserting it in. I can do it, except on estimate the template will triple in length. There is the long way of using autohide, which only Alan can do. I am almost certain he does not want to bother with this template. Benjwong 15:58, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment This issue is resolvable with grunt work (inserting it in). Flagging green. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 05:19, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

2. Less support for alternative names. --PalaceGuard008(Talk) 03:26, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment I actually tried implementing the code in my test sandbox at one time but never got it to work. Benjwong 05:27, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

3. Less display options, such as hide transliterations. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 03:26, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment Alternative names might be the hardest to re-code. Benjwong 05:27, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment So is the absence of hide transliteration option actually a problem? If not, I'll flag this green. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 05:19, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

4. Less standard code names for languages. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 03:26, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment As mentioned earlier, this turns out to not match ISO standards. Benjwong 05:27, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment If necessary, we could do a mass-switchover to ISO names. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 11:23, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment ISO name switch is possible if done sooner. Once the article numbers surpass 1000 or higher it will be insanely time consuming to do without other people's help. Benjwong 15:58, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment It isn't causing too much problems in implementation, and can be fixed with grunt work. I'm flagging it green. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 05:19, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

5. The names in multiple language are arranged in a very unorganized manner.

Comment All the names in different languages are just randomly stacked together, without proper organization. This format is inconsistent with the info box in Spratly Islands, Thousand Character Classic and Tofu infobox . These info boxes can be replaced by the better template (Template:Chinese) without changing any layout. The better template (Template:Chinese) is consistent with this standard layout, which has been adopted in Wikipedia for a long time. - Alan 00:18, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment It shouldn't be too hard to get a stacked format, as in Template:Koreanname Chinesename. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 05:19, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Template:Chinese

1. Poor maintainability - code apparently maintainable only by Alanmak.--PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 03:26, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment If you look at Template:Koreanname history, it is practically managed by 2 people. So please don't use that as an example. As long as Alanmak was willing to volunteer again, it might be ok. Templates should not require daily maintainance anyway. Benjwong 05:27, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Question The question is not whether it is maintained by one or two people, but whether it is maintainable by other people. I had a look and I can't, and I know Badagnani said he couldn't - can you? The risk of standardising to a non-maintainable template is that should Alanmak leave the project (God forbid) we'd have to start from scratch and probably resurrect a deleted alternative. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 11:22, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment Complex features will always require complex code. What is even more unattainable is to get Template:Chinesename to the current state of Template:Chinese. As this is the #1 reason why I am in favor of Template:Chinese at the moment. Benjwong 15:58, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment I am putting myself on the list to maintain this. I have been staring at the code for days. I will run down this list and try to fix up every request until there is none. Benjwong 14:37, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment Another argument that has been repeated over and over...boring. - Alan 00:25, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

2. Poor ordering of transliterations/languages, resulting in unsuitability for dialectical terms. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 03:26, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment It is in alphabetical order. People really took this the wrong way. Benjwong 05:27, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment It doesn't really matter why it is so - I can see that it is alphabetical. Nevertheless, alphabetical ordering is misleading and inappropriate for some articles, as I pointed out earlier. The more important question for us now is how (and with how much difficulty) this can be fixed to allow different (?arbitrary?) ordering. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 11:07, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment I propose a fixed order of display. Such as pinyin first, jyutping second. Benjwong 15:58, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment See List of Chinese dialects, which lists all main dialect groups using a single romanisation system - in this case pinyin. I would personally prefer this ordering.--Huaiwei 17:21, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - In the "Chinesename" template we just put Simplified and Traditional (or vice versa, depending on the subject matter), then pinyin, then Wade-Giles if relevant, then do the dialects in order of importance. This means usually Cantonese first, then Min Nan, then Shanghainese (leaving one or more out if they're irrelevant). Badagnani 17:23, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - After Pinyin (and WG if relevant), dialects should be listed in order of relevance, and thus would vary from article to article. E.g. for Xiaolongbao you would natually have Wu first. But in Kowloon, you would have Cantonese first. The dialect ordering has to be customisable. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 07:28, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - Both templates can switch order between simplified and traditional text. If you want totally customisable dialect, you are looking at a new flag. For example, a "region flag". This can be done somewhat in Template:Chinese since all the variables are already there. But I thought everyone wants the template to be simple? I recommend showing pinyin and jyutping permanently that's it. Benjwong 18:07, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - IMO we haven't had a problem with ordering of the dialects, as usually we don't need to have all of the following: Cantonese, Min Nan, Shanghainese. Badagnani 18:31, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - I strongly suggest having pinyin and jyutping show up permanently. Everything else should hide. Look at the code, this can be fixed. Benjwong 20:31, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - Having pinyin + jyutping displayed would only be useful (and appropriate) for Cantonese articles. Also, there are articles where it might be appropriate to have multiple dialects in different orders. Romanisation order needs to be able to be called in any order to suit the myriad different situations we encounter. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 05:11, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - There's nothing that says we can't have different (very similar) templates with different orders of languages, with all the templates following the same style. Yes, pinyin + jyutping would only be useful (and appropriate) for Cantonese-themed articles but there are a vast number of these. For ones with multiple romanizations, I think the ordering we've been using has been working fine. Badagnani 05:28, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - I am sorry, but I fail to see why Cantonese in particular should be assumed to take greater precedence over other Chinese dialects, particularly on topics which are relevant to most Chinese. I can understand pinyin being a permanent fixture, but not jyutping. This website is already heavily slanted in coverage as it is, and to do this simply worsens systemic bias.--Huaiwei 14:25, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - Maybe you're right, but it seems to me that the number of articles we've got that require Cantonese is several times the number that require Min Nan (or other Min languages). The other dialects (like Shanghainese) are used about the same ratio less. Maybe if we get more editors skilled in Min Nan who make articles about Min Nan-related subjects that would change. In any case, most articles wouldn't require both Cantonese and Min Nan so I don't think there's a very big problem of which order to put them in, in many articles. Badagnani 16:42, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - We need to standardize on 1 template. We're not going to keep a second template because it displays better order. Also this is English wikipedia not zh.wikipedia, so pinyin is just as good as jyutping. Currently there is no precedence, is just alphabetical order. But I have agreed to make whatever changes. Benjwong 17:18, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - Formulating wikipedia templates based on the number of wikipedia articles would be a grave mistake. Notability is clearly not established by its coverage in wikipedia, and again accentuates the problem of systemic bias I pointed out earlier. I personally see two possible solutions: List them by alphabetical order, or list them by the number of speakers. While these two methods of display have their own issues to be ironed out (which I will detail later), attempting to establish "relevance" can be a major headache in grey-areas, especially non-geographically specific articles. And I dont see why we must stick to just a few dialects. By all means, list transliterations for all seven major Chinese dialect groups as per List of Chinese dialects.--Huaiwei 18:06, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - Displaying all relevant dialects in order of number of speakers could work, I guess, but I still think a fully customisable order is the best. And pinyin is not "as good as" jyutping. Pinyin is the international standard for standard Chinese. Jyutping is not even the most commonly used method of transliteration for Cantonese, and neither is Cantonese the largest or even the second largest dialect by population. Maybe the best solution would be to have two templates: 1) Pinyin + Jyutping by default for Cantonese-related articles, and 2) Pinyin with all other dialects hidden. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 23:26, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - If you only wanted pinyin + jyutping for a particular article, you could just just a template with all the other dialects, and just not use any of the other dialects. Badagnani 02:07, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - Looking at the list of dialects there are Gan, Guan, Hakka, Min, Wu, Xiang, Yue. It maybe best if you guys add whatever else field is needed in the sample list below. Let's get all the right languages in first before we discuss the order any further. Benjwong 04:41, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Notes - removed "Latin phonetic method" from Shanghainese: a 6-year-old scheme with limited online presence and by no means widespread. In the absence of an accepted standard, no single method of romanisation should be specified. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 04:50, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - Sorry the comments after the semicolon were copied as comments from below. Let me delete them to avoid confusion. I readded back Gwoyeu Romatzyh. Currently 19 lines will show when you click unhide. I am interested in what User:Huaiwei suggest we add to the list. I am fine with the order actually. Benjwong 05:28, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - Ok this last problem is now addressed. I have asked User:Huaiwei and he does not have any input. It currently displays mandarin languages exactly as shown above. I think it is time to standardize on 1 template and delete Template:Chinesename. Benjwong 21:26, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - I have un-greened this: it still doesn't have the other major dialects. Dialect categorisation is still unsystematic. You still cannot call the dialects at any order.

a. Unsystematic dialect categorisation

Comment - From his comments above, it seems that Alanmak's key objection to Template:Chinesenames is its "unorganised" [sic] display of languages. As far as varieties of Chiense are concerned, Template:Chinese has similar problems. Some specific examples, just from the list above:

Teochow should be a subset of Min Nan.

Min Nan should be a subset of Min. --02:02, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Keep in mind that we generally only need to use one or two dialects (if any) for a particular article, in any case, as the article is relevant to a particular region of China using that dialect. Badagnani 02:00, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

That's true, but some articles can overflow with dialects. It's better to be systematic, as Alanmak will no doubt agree. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 02:02, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - I am not sure what iso flags or romanizations should be listed for the others. I will say that there is only room for 1 level hierachy so poj and teochew will be under the same Min branch. Benjwong 03:52, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - So far 5 out of 7 of the linguistics are in. Unless there is real romanization with isos for Gan and Xiang, this might be as far as the template can go. Benjwong 05:25, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Gan

1. -Romanization (iso flag: gan???)

Xiang

1. -Romanization (???)

We can now use "showflag" to display a specific dialect or language outside the hide box for any article. This is no longer an issue. Every article can be customized differently. Benjwong 05:47, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

3. Presentation is inconsistent with other templates, e.g. Template:Koreanname. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 03:26, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment Is this a matter of table grids? Benjwong 05:27, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - That, and the use of yellow and green clashing with blue, and the fact that the template takes up too much needless horizontal space with each language taking up double the number of lines. Badagnani 05:41, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - I can change this in 5 minutes. Benjwong 05:56, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - I added grids to the temporary template below. It does take up less space. Benjwong 15:48, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - It's beautiful coding but the number of romanizations seems excessive, and I believe the romanizations (such as pinyin or Cantonese) should not be hidden, but immediately available to our users. Badagnani 17:04, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - I copied a temporary view of what Chinese template would look like if it had grids. SEE BELOW. I removed the green lines, blue lines and renamed the fields to fit 1 line. Given the temporary view I cannot say this is actually better. In fact trying this on a number of pages, it does not look smooth at all. The reason why Template:Chinesename looked smooth with the grids is because it goes single row all the way down. Benjwong 01:43, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - Something to consider is that only on a small minority of pages will there be the necessity to include non-Chinese names in the box (one example being Southeast Asian names for Chinese noodle dishes that are eaten there); on most pages we'll need only simplified, traditional, pinyin, and maybe Cantonese and/or Min Nan and/or Shanghainese. Despite Alanmak's implication that I'm prejudiced against the blue bars, I do see the logic behind having them, as they set off the languages from one another, but if there is an alternate name included in the box they wouldn't make as much sense. I still believe that romanizations shouldn't be hidden, and in fact all those romanizations (and languages/dialects) aren't needed in every page; following the practice we've specified since time immemorial, languages and dialects should only be included if culturally or historically specific to that particular article. Badagnani 01:49, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - Ok we are keeping the blue bars. About the grids, I don't think that works either after trying it out. SEE BELOW. I am about to flag this issue green since nobody else has showed any real demand/interest/reason why grids must absolutely be deployed. Benjwong 18:07, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - I think this should be greened. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 05:58, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

4. Seems like images default at size of 260px and cannot be changed. Benjwong 05:27, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - I assume this is easily fixable? (as it's normal, as in taxoboxes or other types of infoboxes, to be able to change a photo's size). Badagnani 06:19, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - I just added an optional picsize flag. This is no longer a problem. I also fixed another bug where my2 would show up on multiple columns if used. Benjwong 14:37, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

5. Takes up too much horizontal space (i.e. too many blue bars/each language takes up two lines rather than one). Badagnani 05:40, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - Where? "Japanese Romaji Japanese Romaji" for example is 1 line on both templates. Benjwong 05:51, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - There is an extra blue bar just above that says "Japanese name." I'm not sure a blue bar is necessary for every language included in the box (as it takes up a lot of space), although there does seem to be a logic to doing that. Badagnani 05:56, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment' - The blue bars are consistent with the standard, which has been adopted in many non-template old info boxes in Wikipedia long ago. Examples are the info box in Spratly Islands, Thousand Character Classic and Tofu infobox . These old info boxes can be replaced by the better template (Template:Chinese) without changing any layout or organization. Do you think that "Template:Chinesename" is better because it saves a little bit more space by removing the blue bars and making the multiple languages stacked together randomly? :-) - Alan 00:25, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - We should rename the line to "Japanese Hirigana", "Japanese kanji" in full and get rid of all the blue bars then. Benjwong 06:00, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - I'd like to hear what others think about it. My gut feeling is it's going to create a long template but in a way they do make sense as they distinguish each of the additional non-Chinese names. Badagnani 06:06, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - I have tried taking out the blue bars and the only language that end up looking standardized is Chinese. This defeat the purpose of a multi language box. It does not work. I am flagging this one as non-issue. Benjwong 18:07, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

6. Romanizations do not appear without clicking to see them, whereas this is important information that should not be hidden. Badagnani 05:40, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - One possibility is to remove the green bars to reduce more size. For example, is it really necessary to say Mandarin pinyin vs pinyin. Benjwong 06:18, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment Also, with languages like Japanese, there is really only one standard for romanisation, so hiding the Transliterations hides information without reducing the length of the template. Without hide, it would have been one line: Romaji. With the hide, it is still one line ("Transliterations") but with the actual information hidden. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 01:03, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment See the temporary template below with grids, no blue or green lines. I have to begin every romanization line with Japanese kana, Japanese kanji, Japanese romaji. I thought it would be better, but I am not so sure anymore after trying out the interface. Benjwong 01:51, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment There is only one kind of romanisation for Japanese: romaji. You don't need to lose the blue bars for this. Just get rid of the "transliteration [hide]" line and display romaji by default. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 05:11, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment I am ok with this line as long as there are other romanizations to add. Benjwong 17:18, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment But there are no other romanisations for Japanese which could conceivably be added. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 23:26, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment Just fixed this to make Romaji show whenever it is used. It no longer hides behind the hide-box utilizing that 1 line. Also there was a bug with vietname hantu, also fixed. Flagging green. Benjwong 05:18, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - The template still hides the Chinese pinyin, Cantonese, and other romanizaed names; this is primary information and should not be hidden. Badagnani 02:03, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - According to Huaiwei and wikipedia policy this is language biased. Believe me I thought this one over. Benjwong 03:11, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - The optional showflag now takes care of this. The most common romanizations can be shown without having the click on anything. Benjwong 05:47, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - I just looked at Chop suey and all the romanizations are automatically hidden. This has not been fixed. This is basic information that one should not have to click for. Badagnani 06:40, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - I just added showflag=pj into Chop suey. Now it shows up. You don't have to click for it. Benjwong 15:17, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - I notice at Tofu that the Korean names do not show up in romanizations without clicking to see them. I believe these romanizations should show up just as the other languages' romanizations show up. All of these problems need to be fixed before the template is implemented. Badagnani 02:09, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - Did you try replacing the tofu article with Template:Chinesename. It will bomb out on Tamil, Thai, Burmese, Khmer and Indonesian. That template can't even handle the languages. Template:Chinese is the only choice. Benjwong 14:03, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Time to standardize Template

Ok the last of the major problem is now fixed on Template:Chinese. I think it is time to delete Template:Chinesename and standardize on 1 graphical template. I am all for a new vote. Benjwong 21:31, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment: No, the issues have not been addressed. Romanizations remain hidden, and should not be, and the color scheme remains terrible. These problems with template "Chinese" are serious, and the "threat" to "vote" and "delete" template Chinesename are taken as a very bad precedent. If the issues had actually been addressed, I would be fine with all. Badagnani 01:39, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment: I think asthetics such as colour schemes can be tweaked fairly easily. I am however particularly concerned over the romanisation area, and as yet, a viable solution still seems elusive. As mentioned before, I am all for inclusion of all seven major dialect groups, but since not all have an established romanisation system, this makes it difficult to present the information in a coherent, logical way.--Huaiwei 02:11, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment: Does it help to know that usually only one or two dialects will be needed for a particular page? I don't believe we've had a problem with this in the past. Badagnani 02:28, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment:I need some cooperation please. Badagnani can you for once tell us what color you would like to replace the green with? If there is no preferred color, this is it. Huaiwei has pointed out that all 7 dialects be included with no bias toward singling any one of them out. We technically are missing:

Min (need to reorder)

Gan

Wu

Xiang

The problem is that I need to know the romanizations for those. Looking at List of Chinese dialects, Huawei can you please find the iso code and the dialects to be added under each branch? While I did agree with Badagnani on pinyin and jyutping showing permanently before, I think this cannot be done if you want to be un-biased. Btw this also renders 95% of the other templates biased. Benjwong 03:08, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

• Comment - Green doesn't fit with yellow and blue. The former version, with only blue, worked fine. Badagnani 18:26, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
• Comment - There are many colors here, and some of the so-called "white colors" would probably look better with the top blue bar than the yellow and green we currently have. Please take a look at these before completing implementation of the template, thanks. Badagnani 06:35, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Er...I arent sure about the ISO codes, but what I was thinking would be to have all seven being shown permanantly, while multiple romanisations for a specific dialect(s) may be included as and when appriopriate (for eg, a Cantonese-related dish can show more romanisations for Cantonese etc). This may mean showing one dominant romanisation per dialect group (Shanghainess representing Wu, Minnan representing Min, for example). If all of these sounds silly, is defaulting to only displaying Mandarin permanantly unacceptable? We may have to show pinyin, W-G, and TY permanantly as well then, since Pinyin is official in PRC and Singapore, TY is preferred in Taiwan (outside Taipei :D), and W-G is the historical romanisation system more familiar to Western users. This should effectively cover almost all Mandarin users.--Huaiwei 03:52, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

For Mandarin, I don't support having TY or W-G romanizations in the templates, unless the subject matter of the articles specifically require those or if the W-G romanization is historically important. Badagnani 04:05, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Before jumping ahead, I think I will need help with these two. The other ones are ok since there is at least 1 romanization. In fact, I am fixing the other ones right now. Benjwong 04:07, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

If we default to just one romansation, pinyin is enough. It is the international standard for romanisation Chinese (used by, for example, the Library of Congress, the UN, and the ISO, and is the default on Wikipedia as well. That alone, IMO, means we should default to pinyin only - Occam's razor, and all that.

Tongyong pinyin is frankly a political creation. It is basically not used outside Taiwan at all, and is not the standard even in Taiwan. It should be shown only for relevant subjects: e.g. ROC government, DPP personalities.

I am aware of the issues with Tongyong pinyin. Unfortunately, some may consider it a political issue to have Pinyin appear alone for every single article, including Taiwan-related ones. I sense that this conversation here hasent really involved the Taiwanese, who may have their own views on this. For myself, I am speaking from the overseas Chinese POV, and cant really speak for them.--Huaiwei 07:41, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

W-G is pretty much outdated now. It should be shown only for relevant subejcts, also: e.g. pre-1950s people.

What we need, as I've said quite a few times, is for the romanisations to be called and displayed (by default) as required by the article: e.g. to display Tongyong Pinyin first, then Hanyu Pinyin, and hide W-G; or to display Hanyu Pinyin and Jyutping, and hide anything else. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 04:10, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

But if this is not technically possible (which I suspect so), alternatives will have to be sought.--Huaiwei 07:44, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

As I requested earlier. Can someone find "any" template that can do custom order? We don't even have a model code for this feature. What we have now is a "fixed" custom order, where simplified or traditional can come first but it is going to be difficult to re-order at will the entire template. Benjwong 04:17, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

I'd assumed it was easy to do because inline templates like the "zh" templates allow customising order of display. Must be harder than I'd thought. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 04:47, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

I just fixed the Wu and Min, so you can LOOK BELOW with the new order. I can't put Gan and Xiang in unless there is actually some kind of romanization to put in. The order of display is simple for single-line/inline templates. For any template in a table or row structure, unless I can model after some proven code, I will assume it is not possible. Benjwong 05:20, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

So are we going to show pinyin permanently unhide? Is that the format we all agree on? Benjwong 05:21, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

I didn't specify that pinyin should be the only romanization "unhid." If it's an article on a Cantonese subject, the Cantonese pronunciation should also be "unhid," etc., because it's key and crucial to the article, such as Taro cake. The format that is there now shows all the relevant pronunciations/transliterations and works fine. The business with the hiding really did introduce a level of needless confusion. Badagnani 07:12, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

It is actually partly due to this potential problem of non-sortable templates that I proposed having permanent 7 dialects, all listed alphabetically or by number of articles consistently irrespective of article subject. It also addresses another related problem of establishing "relevance" for every single article, some of which are far less obvious and can become heavily contested if various dialect groups beging to claim relevance one after another. Meanwhile, can I propose that the dialect groups be named consistently, such that all have their Pinyin names appear first, and the common English name in brackets as per format in List of Chinese dialects?--Huaiwei 07:38, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Really--you suggest 7 permanent dialects? I've never heard anyone else recommend this. So for a subject that, for example, is specific to Fujian or Guangdong culture but with little relevance to other regions you'd also include Shanghainese and other dialects from other regions of China? I think this also introduces too much complexity. Badagnani 07:47, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes I am serious about it. I dont think in the contemporary world today can we still believe that the majority of things can be compartmentalised to be provincially-specific. If Dim sum can be found in many parts of the world and often referred to via translations/transliterations to local languages, why are we assuming that it cannot be found in the rest of China and referred to in the local dialect? Shanghai may be referred to as such in Mandarin, but why should we not list how its referred to in the other Chinese dialects? Relevance is subjective, and can become a subject of constant contention. Is China itself more relevant to any of the seven dialect groups concerned? Having a consistent list of seven primary dialects is far more simple than trying to develop a customised template for each specific possibility of relevancy, especially when we consider the fact that some articles may be relevant to more than one dialect group.--Huaiwei 13:04, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

The default should be alphabetical with no pinyin or any other romanizations showing. What I have looked into is the possibility of a "region" flag. For example if region=canto, then Traditional chinese first, jyutping should show permanently. The problem is that if we actually added 7 region flags, the code will multiply in crazy complexity. This practically go against the earlier proposal of keeping the code simple. Benjwong 14:01, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Also there is no perfect region order. There are places that speak cantonese, and use simplified chinese like southern China. So even a region="canto" is not exactly regional enough. Benjwong 14:06, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

I was going to suggest narrowing it down to 3 regions. Yes this will seem rather bias. Looking at the code, I am not sure how doable this is. Benjwong 14:13, 20 July 2007 (UTC) default = alphabetical order
hk = show traditional chinese, jyutping, everything else hide
prc= show simplified chinese, pinyin, everything else hide
china= show traditional chinese, simplified chinese, pinyin, everything else hide

Sorry, but can you kindly explain the rationale of these three regions, and if it is feasible for the global Chinese community to restrict themselves to this classification?--Huaiwei 14:55, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes as I mentioned earlier this was totally biased. I am doing more code experimentation. I am trying to shorten the code by calling templates within templates. Similar to how Template:lang has been used. This is probably the only way we can fit all 7 linguistics in whatever order. There is no guarantee on this at the moment. Benjwong 15:07, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Not only is it biased, but I am questioning if it is feasible to use geography as a form of classification. Please be mindful and at least respect the fact that the global Chinese speaking community is not restricted to those three places alone, and to force the entire world's communities to stick to any of those three classifications would smack as offensive to some, myself included.--Huaiwei 15:11, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes that is why I gave a warning, so hopefully everyone could see it coming. Please don't get too tied up on these proposals. Benjwong 15:22, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

What if we could have any romanization shown first. It still wouldn't please everyone. If you look at the earlier archived discussions, people were suggesting that the templates not be used as a pronounciation guide. Also if you can flag pinyin to show it as a standard, what keeps someone from saying wade giles should be the standard for a particular article? There is an infinite number of possibility. The more I think about it, alphabetical order is the only neutral choice. Who can argue about that? Benjwong 16:05, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Well I hope my concerns are unfounded then. ;) Anyway the points raised here are exactly what I preempted and touched on earlier. People arent gonna be happy over which dialect gets to appear, which appears to take priority, and so on. I suggested alphabetical order or via number of speakers, both of which are relatively objective, although they arent foolproof as I previously hinted. When we consider alphabetical, are we going to order them by their pinyin names, or a mixture of pinyin and common English names? Ordering by pinyin has the advantage of a relatively minor dialect group appear at the top of the list (Gan), helping to allay accusations of bias. I wonder how many Yue speakers will like seeing their dialect appearing at the bottom thou. Ordering by number of speakers helps to align it somewhat to the "common usage" clause, but these numbers may vary from source to source. As for the preference for pinyin as the sole permanant fixture as opposed to all other systems, the answer is pretty obvious, except perhaps to non-Mandarin speakers (who happen to be a minority).--Huaiwei 16:42, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

I think the 7 major dialects grouping should stay. Otherwise, how would someone know jyutping was cantonese and wade-giles was mandarin. If we do the 7 linguistics alphabetically according to List of Chinese dialects, the default will give the following.

1. Gan
2. Guan (Mandarin)
3. Kejia (Hakka)
4. Min
5. Wu
6. Xiang
7. Yue (Cantonese)

After this, all we have to do is implement a single flag, "dialect=flip". If this is called, everything will come in reverse order. This order work favorably for any southern China/HK/overseas chinese related article. For Badagnani's request, users will still need to have a "hide=no" to display all the romanizations without hiding. This is neutral and doable if everyone agrees. Benjwong 17:27, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - I don't understand what "For Badagnani's request, users will still need to have a "hide=no" to display all the romanizations without hiding." means. Badagnani 06:29, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

1. Yue (Cantonese)
2. Xiang
3. Wu
4. Min
5. Kejia (Hakka)
6. Guan (Mandarin)
7. Gan

• Comment - As this is the English Wikipedia, I do think it doesn't make sense to include all 7 dialects for every box of every China-related article. By this logic, we should include the languages of the other 55 ethnic groups as well (something I don't support for articles unrelated to these ethnic groups). It would be like having a box for Spain-related articles and always listing Catalan, Galician, Basque, and the other regional languages for an article related to only one or none of these regions. The 7-dialect plan for all articles doesn't seem to be a good one. Pinyin is the English-language standard for the national language spoken in the People's Republic of China and Singapore and isn't "just a region." Badagnani 18:22, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Nah. The 55 ethnic groups and the 7 Chinese dialects are distinct issues. As far as China is concerned, there is only one Chinese language, and those 55 ethnic groups either speak a particular Chinese dialect, or a different language altogether (the later of which is far more likely). I would say 7 is a manageable number. Also, it can be easily set such that only those dialects with an entry will appear, so unless we have specialised speakers here who are familiar with the 7 dialects, I doubt we will immediately see seven appearing in all articles overnight.--Huaiwei 23:59, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
• The Solution - Since we hide all 7 major dialects including all romanizations, it does not matter whether we have 1000 romanizations inside. What is debatable is what shows first. How about this, I think this would really work....

We should add one optional "showflag"

showflag=j - this will show jyutping first outside of the hide area. Then pinyin second.

showflag=h - this will show hakka first outside of the hide area. Then pinyin second.

showflag=poj - this will show poj first outside of the hide area. Then pinyin second.

default - this will show pinyin outside of the hide area.

(we can add as many showflag combo as needed. There is a way to keep this simple code.)...

Altogether this covers 7 major dialects in alphabetical order and hidden, while displaying the most commonly used romanization depending on whatever showflag parameter you pick. This has to be it. Benjwong 22:01, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Hmm...I would feel that we show one dominant transliteration method for each of the seven permanantly, and hide the rest. Otherwise, we shant show any at all, and only show the characters and transliteral meanings if need be.--Huaiwei 00:01, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't like the idea of showing all 7 permanently. The situation can arise where there are 4, 5 regional pronunciations in an article, but the subject matter really only relates to one, and so we only need to unhide one of them. I like Benjwong's solution. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 01:28, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

If the template can accomodate so many permanent names in numerous languages, I fail to see why Chinese dialects are not given priority. And that's just seven, in fact. I have mentioned before that a topic relevancy to specific dialect groups simply do not always work. Meanwhile, does Benjwong's solution include any ordering guidelines for multiple dialects which are unhidden? I would certainly like to know how this will work in the China article, for example!--Huaiwei 16:07, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

This does not seem like a discussion about the template at all. Even the inline reference template being used in the China article now could technically use all 7 linguistics and 55+ romanizations. Doesn't mean we should show all of it. Benjwong 17:39, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes unhiding no more than 1 or 2 worked easily into the code. It is all from the same switch statement so you can add any custom variation. Benjwong 01:38, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

All 7 dialects are in with alphabetical order. No longer an issue. Benjwong 05:49, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Why was this ungreened? Benjwong 15:21, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

No Romanizations

Gan - iso identifier gan

1. -No common/standard romanization

Wu - iso identifier wuu

1. -No common/standard romanization

Xiang - iso identifier hsn

1. -No common/standard romanization

Notes: See Documentation for ISO 639 identifier: zho for identifier codes and links to details on varieties of Chinese. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 01:23, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Comments: In cases where there isn't a set romanisation scheme for a dialect, can't we just call the dialect without displaying/linking to a romanisation scheme? Also, I've added Wu to the list. As I've said earlier, the only surviving Wu-Romanisation page on Wikipedia is about a scheme that is about 5 years old, with only a limited online presence. Wikipedia should not be prescribing it as the standard. My suggested treatment for Wu, Gan, and Xiang is just to say plain vanilla "Romanisation" without identifying the scheme.--PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 01:31, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Comments: Further to the above: After reading the zh.wiki version, I think I will be nominating The latin phonetic method of Shanghainese for deletion soon, as I think it fails in the notability stakes and is pretty much a rehash of the deleted Romazi article. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 01:34, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Comments: Now I am confused. So two questions. (1) Are we positive Gan (linguistics) is the same as Gan romanization? How is it possible a dialect have no romanization at all? (2) So Shanghainese doesn't exist as a real romanization under Min? Benjwong 01:44, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Comments: Is there a Gan romanization? I haven't come across one. When I say no romanization, what I mean is that there isn't a recognised, commonly accepted romanisation scheme, like pinyin for Standard Mandarin or the romanisation schemes for Cantonese. Shanghainese is a dialect of Wu, not Min -- and it doesn't really have a romanization scheme. Out of the major Chinese dialects, the only ones that have recognised, widely used romanisation schemes are (Standard) Mandarin, Cantonese, Hakka and Min-nan. This is explicable, because I think romanisation schemes follow the needs of education. Mandarin is the national standard, so efforts towards creating romansiation schemes are directed in that direction. Cantonese is a standard language in Hong Kong, and Hakka and Min-nan are subject of strong advocacy by localisation movements in Taiwan (and also used in other overseas communities) - hence there are major efforts to develop romanisation schemes for them. By contrast, Gan, Wu, and Xiang are more "internal" dialects, spoken in mainland China, where the only dialect systematically taught is Mandarin. Which is why there are no standard romanisation schemes for them.

It doesn't mean we can't romanise these dialects - but there isn't a standard method for doing so. For example, you might use IPA symbols, or you could use ad-hoc English approximations. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 02:00, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Comments: Can I doublecheck with everyone then that "Gan, Wu, Xiang" linguistics is going in as "gan, wuu, hsn". Actually I checked the iso codes for the previous languages. Depending on sources even the most simple pinyin "p" is not necessarily the universal iso code. So I guess the rule has already been broken before. Benjwong 14:37, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Comments: Well, the easiest way to settle it is if someone can cough up 132 swiss franks and buy a copy of theISO document. =D --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 01:01, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Added gan, wuu, hsn for Gan Romanization, Wu Romanization, Xiang Romanization. These are the iso flags, and has been added. Benjwong 05:50, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

This is it right?

All 7 major dialect branches have been added. All the instructions have been updated at Template:Chinese discussion page. To my knowledge every major concern has been addressed. I think we can begin standardizing unless someone have any more technical concerns. Benjwong 05:37, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

• It is now compatible with List of Chinese dialects.
• Hide romanization and dialects in a non-controversial alphabetical order.
• Able to optionally display specific romanizations outside of the hide area with "showflag".

Comment - I like it! And we can add more showflag options as the need arises, right? --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 05:41, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - Yeah you can have as many showflag possibilities as you want. It's just one big switch statement. Benjwong 05:53, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - I just looked at Chop suey and I see, right at the top, the Gan language. This doesn't make sense, for this strictly Cantonese dish. If anything, we should see Teochew and Hakka rather than Gan. I think there are still bugs in this template and, as per the policy we've followed from time immemorial, don't support showing Han dialect romanizations for articles that are specific to another dialect region (such as, for example, northern dialect romanizations [other than Standard Mandarin] for Cantonese cuisine articles). Badagnani 06:26, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - Correct self. I see that it says "Guan," not "Gan." What the heck is "Guan"? Can't we just call it "Standard Mandarin" (the English name for "putonghua")? Even better, put "Cantonese" under "C" and "Mandarin" under "M." This helps the normal user, who would loook under "M" for mandarin (not G) and look under "C" for Cantonese (not "Y"). Badagnani 06:27, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

If you do not know what is Guan, then I suppose you dont know Mandarin. I would suggest Guan (Mandarin) and Yue (Cantonese) as per List of Chinese dialects. Reasons for these has been explained above, and you could have at least commented on this earlier.--Huaiwei 08:33, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

I'd wonder how much you know about the Chinese languages, though you appear to be a speaker of at least one of the Chinese languages. In Chinese, as in English, "Guānhuà" is called "Béifānghuà" or "Guānhuà". It is rarely if not never abbreviated to be called "Guān". This is more a linguistic classification. The dialects of Béifānghuà or Guānhuà aren't as close as Gàn or Cantonese. Béifānghuà or Guānhuà is rarely seen as one, and therefore not abbreviated to "Béifāng" or "Guān". Heimm Old 08:58, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - I second that. The new-fangled official name for Mandarin is "Guanhua", not just "Guan" - "Guanhua" means "Mandarin (bureaucrat) speech", so just having "Guan" isn't exactly right. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 11:34, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

For your information, any Chinese dialect may be refered to as "Hua"/"fangyan"/"yu", etc depending on context, not just Mandarin. What is this about "Guan" alone being "wrong", as thou "Min" is correct? This is common Chinese abbreviation for the purpose of linguistic classification, and is obvious in this context.--Huaiwei 08:33, 24 July 2007 (UTC) 11:42, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

No. Speakers of Cantonese dialects don't call their language "Yuèhuà". Speakers of Wú dialects don't call their language "Wúhuà". Heimm Old 08:58, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - This is the English Wikipedia, and thus I STRONGLY recommend placing Cantonese under "C" (not Y), Mandarin under "M" (not "G") Hakka under "H" (not K), Shanghainese under "S" (not W), and so on. Maximum usability for everyone in the world is very, very important. Badagnani 04:41, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - The term "Guan" is not generally known and our own Guan article doesn't mention anything about this meaning. Best to use "Mandarin" (under "M"). Badagnani 04:49, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - I have made the change. This is what we wanted originally because of the friendly names. I think Huaiwei suggested we use the major linguistics name. It is now going by Cantonese, Mandarin etc. This is understandable. Also I have added showflag to Chop suey and Char siu. Remember we haven't actually gone out to standardize the 1000+ articles. Benjwong 15:57, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - Oh, this has to be done for every article? That doesn't seem very efficient. For Chop suey, it's very strange that the yellow "click me" bar is still there, and then one gets the same romanizations (pinyin and Cantonese) that are already above. That doesn't seem logical. Badagnani 19:01, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - Yep I already warned you guys earlier. The sooner the articles are standardized, the easier it is to deal with this. I wasn't kidding when I pointed this out. There is no such thing as a one-size-fits all language sequence. Look at hakka cuisine, cantonese cuisine, Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China everything should be customized. This is why I felt it was a huge waste of time worrying about display issues. All that can be fixed later.

Comment - Right now I am running down the list of articles setting the proper showflag depending on the article subject. It would help if you guys jump in. Benjwong 19:32, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - I just looked at Sichuan Pepper. It's got pinyin on top, then a yellow bar, which one clicks and it has pinyin again. That doesn't seem good at all. I don't support putting in a template like this if it's going to do something strange like that. Badagnani 20:58, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - There are 2 discussions on this.

(1) I believe someone (maybe User:Kelw?) was suggesting earlier that whenever there are few transliterations or romanizations, you should avoid graphical templates altogether. There is no real reason to use Template:Chinese, Chinesename etc. Just use the inline reference templates.

(2) The other discussion is that this serves as a placeholder. Unless you are 100% positive there will never be any more romanizations added. In this case, I doubt it.

(3) I am also pretty sure this can be changed in the code later. There is no real justification for fixing it now. Most articles have more than 1 romanization. Benjwong 21:45, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Template:Chinesename contents to be moved

Ok, I am moving everything from template Chinesename over to template Chinese. There is officially no reason to keep Template:Chinesename. I am also considering moving the contents of template Chinesekoreanname over afterwards. Benjwong 01:44, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

• Strongly object to this. The problems under discussion for the past several weeks have not been fixed. I've seen the problems ignored, then the text turned green, several times. Actually solving the problem BEFORE "moving everything" is not the proper way to go about this. Badagnani 02:05, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
• Comment If you want to show all romanizations, use "hide=no" flag. End of story. Benjwong 02:17, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
• Hold on Let's hear/discuss and see if we can solve User:Badagnani's problems first. The Sichuan Pepper issues makes it appear that Template:Chinesename might be more useful in a case like that. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 02:25, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
• Comment - My criticism in this case is solely that one sees (unhidden) pinyin and jyutping, then one sees the yellow bar, and clicks it, and sees the same transliterations again, in duplicate. It doesn't make sense. In other regards, of course I would be amenable to standardizing templates, but if, and only if the issues are resolved and we arrive at a consensus. There are three or four issues that still have not been addressed, and this concerns me. (As a side note, specifically as regards Sichuan Pepper, we can add other languages as well, since it's used in the cuisines of several other Asian nations.) Badagnani 23:19, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
• Comment You guys do realize there is nobody managing Template:Chinesename anymore right? Benjwong 02:46, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
• Comment Excuse my unfamiliarity with the Templates arena, but what do you mean by "nobody managing"? I'm confused because most articles aren't "managed" by anyone either, and anyway the history of Template:Chinesename seems to indicate that User:Badagnani, for one, made a whole lot of edits. My position on this is that templates should not be systematically replaced while there are problems to be ironed out. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 03:33, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
• Comment If you wanted to add some language to Template:Chinesename, there is nobody to do it. Why would you want to keep a template with this many short comings, short on features and a lack of attention? I made the last 7 edits to that template, because it was missing quite a bit of languages. Benjwong 04:34, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
• Comment Interestingly enough. I went converting articles that I previously put up using Template:Chinesename. Afterwards there was only a small handful of articles, and 90% had no more than pinyin and jyutping. With the showflag feature used, I went converting those too. Afterwards almost all Template:Chinesename articles were replaced with Template:Chinese, and end up looking identical. There are only a few articles left that I haven't converted over. Those are music artists etc that perhaps should be using Template:Infobox musician. Benjwong 07:54, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

I was away for the past few days as I was hospitalised, so I couldnt comment till now. Kindly do not rush into this, Benjwong. There are still far too few comments from contributors here to force through a "concensus" with such speed.--Huaiwei 08:25, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

• Comment - It still doesn't make sense that, for example at Dim sum, one sees pinyin and jyutping, then there's a yellow bar (which still clashes horribly with the blue) which says "Click for transliterations," then one sees pinyin and jyutping again--the same romanizations as just above! This is no good. It's illogical and needs to be fixed BEFORE the template is implemented! If pinyin and jyutping are the only romanizations, and they're not shown, then the yellow "transliterations" bar does not need to appear at all. Badagnani 23:16, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Couple of content problems

• Issue 1 - Mandarin has now been converted to "Guan" in the hidden transliterations. This isn't right. The new-fangled Chinese name for Mandarin is "Guanhua", not "Guan" - "Guan" means Mandarin (bureaucrat); "Guanhua" means the language. It's a bit like writing "Canton" instead of "Cantonese".
• Issue 2 - "Guanhua" is not a suitable title for the group of romanisations included under it. All of those romanisations are for Standard Mandarin, or putonghua (mainland) /guoyu (eslewhere) in Chinese. Labelling them "Mandarin" is okay, but labelling them "Guanhua" is not right: in Chinese linguistics, Standard Mandarin or putonghua is related to but distinct from guanhua. It adopts much of its pronunciation from the Beijing dialect of guanhua, but it is not the same.
• Issue 3 - "Mandarin Pinyin" is displayed unhidden. That's a neologism, and plus is not precise. "Hanyu Pinyin" or just "pinyin" should suffice. As we have discussed before, pinyin is not just used to romanise Mandarin - it is also the (international) default for other dialects. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 00:18, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
• Comment - I am ok with the current conventions. Benjwong 04:15, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Please don't link to dab pages

Just as a comment from an uninvolved person who's part of the Disambiguation Repair team.... In Template:Chinese, Cantonese links to a dab page; please have it link to an actual page, I guess either Cantonese (linguistics) or Standard Cantonese. -- Hongooi 14:58, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Done. Benjwong 15:15, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

The new Showflag feature

• Comment: - Ok, I have inserted the code temporarily in my own sandbox. I haven't uploaded it to Template:Chinese yet, but this is how the option flag will work. These optional flags should cover 90% of the current articles if not better. I think this should cover the rest of the problems. Benjwong 01:25, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

default - this will show nothing outside the hide area.

showflag=j - this will show jyutping outside of the hide area.

showflag=h - this will show hakka outside of the hide area.

showflag=p - this will show pinyin outside of the hide area.

showflag=poj - this will show poj outside of the hide area.

showflag=pj - this will show pinyin then jyutping outside of the hide area.

showflag=jp - this will show jyutping then pinyin outside of the hide area.

Standardisation of Traditional/Simplified, Mandarin/Cantonese Articles

I originally posted my thoughts on the matter | here (before finding out this is where I should be posting it) but below is a (more neutral) summary of what I think would make Chinese articles in Wiki neater and more consistent.

1. No Simplified Chinese in Taiwan, HK, and Macao-related articles (places, companies, etc) and no Traditional Chinese in (mainland) China-related articles. TW/HK/Macao do not use simplified in an official capacity, and China does not use traditional in an official capacity. Why not make the articles neater and reflect each territory's differences by not including all variants? Adding Cantonese (Baak Ging) to Beijing's article is just as unnecessary as adding Mandarin (Jiu Long Tang) to Kowloon Tong's article.

2. No Mandarin pinyin in HK/Macao-related articles, using only Cantonese romanisation (Yale or others, but just one with consensus) in these articles. Cantonese (again, see my previous post on HK talk page) is the de facto official language, and Mandarin is not used in government or formal situations in these areas. It respects Macao/HK's history and status as SAR, and reflects place name and language differences between Mandarin and Cantonese. Plus, it's neater and unnecessary to include 2 sets of characters and 2 Chinese languages in each HK/Macao page.

3. Not sure about local langauges, e.g. Shanghainese. Cantonese is officially used in govt in HK, which in addition to HK and Macao's history makes this case unique, but in China and Taiwan, govt official usage is Mandarin.

4. Articles such as Pronunciation of Hong Kong are only a temporary solution. If readers are really curious about how to say Shanghai in Cantonese or how to say Kowloon Tong in Mandarin, I'm sure there are many Chinese (Mandarin/Cantonese/Taiwanese/etc) dictionaries online or in print. The main focus should be on the content of the article, and by minimising linguistic info. that is not applicable (e.g. Mandarin variants in HK articles, Cantonese variants in China articles), articles would be cleaner.

137.189.4.1 07:20, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

See my response to your suggestion in Talk:Hong_Kong#Traditional_and_Simplified_Characters.2C_Romanisation.2C_Etc.. Wikipedia isnt simply about replicating what the politicians want. If we consider language as strictly cultural, I do not see why we should banter to their desires to manipulate language for their political goals and aspirations.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Huaiwei (talk • contribs) 07:50, 26 July 2007 (UTC).

This is near impossible to reinforce. Benjwong 04:20, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, I would be happy to do it. I would feel more comfortable to do it if it were our consensus or policy, but this discussion has been rather inactive (on both pages). I think my guidelines above are fair enough, and barring any protest I'd like to see if it works on wiki. 137.189.4.1 05:18, 13 August 2007 (UTC)