Langbahn Team – Weltmeisterschaft

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/南山 (2nd nomination)

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was no consensus. Secret account 19:37, 18 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

南山

AfDs for this article:
南山 (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

per policy WP:UE we do not have article titles that use Chinese characters. Disambiguation is adequately covered by Nanshan and Namsan. Rob Sinden (talk) 22:14, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • Delete - per WP:UE and WP:NOT#DICTIONARY... I am not sure if this is supposed to be an article about an oriental language character (南山), a dictionary definition of that character, or a disambiguation page about several different words that use the same non-english character when written in oriental languages. If the first, then we need reliable sources (in English) that discuss it to show that it is notable. If the second... that is not our job. If the third, there are better ways to disambiguate the topics.... This seems to be written for specialist level Chinese and Korean readers... but our audience here on en.WP is the typical English speaker... who will neither look for nor understand these characters. Blueboar (talk) 23:35, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
How is WP:NOT#DICTIONARY relevant here? None of the items listed are dictionary definitions, but most are place names. They belong in an encyclopedia, not a dictionary. -Zanhe (talk) 17:16, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The entire purpose of the page is to inform the reader what the different meanings of the symbol 南山 are... that means the page is acting as a dictionary. Blueboar (talk) 20:14, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That's a terrible misinterpretation of WP:NOT#DICTIONARY. By that logic all dab pages act as a dictionary. -Zanhe (talk) 20:23, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep: Imagine an English speaker who finds a Chinese/Japanese/Korean name on a website and wants to know what it refers to, but has no idea how to transliterate it into English. He or she copy-and-pastes the name into WP, and finds all possible answers. And what do we gain by deleting this article? I fail to see any. BTW, the page just had a spike of 47 page views two days ago. -Zanhe (talk) 23:39, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I seriously doubt an English speaker would come to Wikipedia for that. Surely the correct place to go would be a Chinese-to-English dictionary. More to the point, even if someone did come to wikipeida hoping to find the translation, how would he go about it? How would an English speaking user be able to search en.WP for this oriental character? It isn't on any standard English language keyboard... so what would he type into the search box? Blueboar (talk) 01:41, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Copy/paste! Heimstern Läufer (talk) 02:22, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
And how is a Chinese-to-English dictionary the correct place to go when the name could be Japanese or Korean? -Zanhe (talk) 15:19, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment As I speak the language, clearly this reads to me as Nanshan, in the transliteration that I learned. I can also usually tell the difference between Japanese and Korean despite having zero knowledge of the language. On the other hand, I cannot tell the difference between many European languages, and therefore I would go to Google Translate's detect language system, not Wikipedia. WP is neither a dictionary nor a translator. However, reading responses below, I support redirect to Nanshan. Nanshan itself already has the Chinese characters; readers would therefore be able to understand. --kikichugirl (talk) 04:37, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm afraid that your sinocentric view is not shared by the vast majority of Wikipedians. -Zanhe (talk) 08:25, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
In my imaginings, an English speaker would come across the name on an English language website and the name would be displayed primarily as a romanized transliteration. If the English speaker would like to know what a Chinese character refers to, he/she should go to a Chinese dictionary; a Japanese character, a Japanese dictionary; and so on. That a reader would come across a character with no context to tell him/her the language and no clue as to the language seems far fetched to me, and also irrelevant - Google Translate can automatically select the language, and translation is not the job of Wikipedia.--Wikimedes (talk) 18:18, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Again, 南山 is a proper name that means South Mountain, not a word. Dictionaries will not tell you what it refers to. And fortunately Wikipedia is far smarter than Google Translate, which automatically selects Chinese and ignores other languages. -Zanhe (talk) 19:45, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. We regularly use non-English namings for redirects: Firenze, München etc. This is basically the same thing, except we can't use a redirect because 南山 has multiple meanings. This is the what we can do then. And I must disagree with the notion that Wikipedia is for "typical" English speakers: It is for English speakers of all types, including learners, who may not know the English name of such names but want to find them and read about them. And by the way, I'm against the use of Chinese characters in article titles. This isn't an article, it's a disambiguation. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 02:22, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Since I suspect I may get a parade of horribles for this argument: No, I don't think we need to cater to English learners by using simple English (we have Simple for that very reason) in articles. But I do think it's appropriate to have interlingual navigational aids, whether for learners of English, for English-speakers using other languages, or any other kind of people who might find them useful. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 06:33, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Disambiguations-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 03:15, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
There is only one Japanese name on the list: Nanzan, which (in English) is distinct and does not need disambiguation. I will raise one final point... The main justification for keeping this page seems to this: that readers who come across this symbol can look it up and find out what the symbol means in different languages. However, that is what a dictionary is for... and Wikipedia is not a Dictionary. Disambiguating the transliterations is fine... creating a page about the symbol that apparently only exists to define what the symbol means in various languages is not. I question whether this is really a dab page... I think the purpose is really to be a dictionary definition. Blueboar (talk) 12:16, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No, the purpose is not so you can look up the term and find out what it means in a different language. It's so you can look up a word you didn't know in a different language and read an encyclopedia article about it. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 14:04, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
"There is only one Japanese name on the list." But did you even bother to read the page to see how many Korean names are on the list? And explain why it should redirect to the Chinese transliteration? -Zanhe (talk) 15:23, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, there's not just one; another Japanese one is hiding a ways down the page under "other uses". I can actually see a case for deprioritizing the Korean names, as 南山 is no longer the usual way to write it in Korean (rather, than hangul version is). The Japanese ones, by contrast, are, I believe, still typically written in kanji. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 14:32, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, but did you even bother to look at the entries listed in the page before voting? They're all place names, not dictionary definitions. In fact, Wiktionary has no entry for 南山. -Zanhe (talk) 18:35, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The English language version of Wiktionary doesn't (not surprising since 南山 isn't an English word... but it looks like the Chinese language version of Wiktionary does. Blueboar (talk) 20:21, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That only shows your inexperience with Wiktionary. The English version of Wiktionary is full of foreign words along with their English meanings. Just try looking up 南 and 山 separately. And the Chinese Wiktionary entry is empty with no definitions. -Zanhe (talk) 20:29, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Actually I had looked at the entries, why would you assume otherwise? As I see it, the page translates 南山 into several possible English language equivalents. You may have noticed that I mentioned "translation dictionary", in this case Chinese/Korean/Japanese --> English.--Wikimedes (talk) 21:13, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I made the assumption (and I apologize if it was wrong) because this page does not meet any criterion of WP:NOT#DICTIONARY. However, I disagree with your view that this page is a translation dictionary. A translation dictionary would simply say "南山 means Southern Mountain(s) in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean", without listing the various places that share the name. -Zanhe (talk) 22:59, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • It turns out the Wikipedia does have a limited function as a translation dictionary. Guidelines for usage of redirects as a navigation aid to speakers of other languages are outlined at Template:R from alternative language and WP:FORRED (both mentioned already by others). These guidelines seem reasonable and well thought out and disambiguation pages are a natural extension.
  • JHunterJ has said that even a large number of such disambiguation pages would not be a burden on Wikipedia, and this particular page is certainly not interfering with anything as there are still disambiguation pages at Nansan and Namsan.
  • The use of characters as disambiguation pages was discussed pretty well in January at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/松山.
  • This page is not the sort of “only a non-Roman script can be used to disambiguate an article title on the English Wikipedia” nonsense going on at WP:Article titles, Li (surname), et. al.Wikimedes (talk) 19:12, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep: WP:POINTy nomination; nominator is currently in a deep and controversial discussion at WP:UE and other places regarding a similar issue. As for why this page should be keeped, I would like to give an example of how important non-English search terms might be on the English Wikipedia. Following the days immediately after Roh Moo-hyun's death, the 노무현 redirect got more than 1000 hits. Non-native English speakers may use foreign scripts to search for things, and I think don't fix what ain't broke applies here. We have many non-English redirects like these, and these redirects don't seem to be hurting anybody so far, and do have their beneficial uses (from what I'm aware of, WP:UE does not dictate what can and can't be done with redirects). Now, in the case of 南山, what do we redirect to? Redirecting to Nanshan would clearly neglect Japan and be biased towards China; redirecting to Nanzan would give a similar problem. Is the answer to this really to delete this page? Or, should it be to not fix what isn't broken? The English Wikipedia does not have a sole audience of native English speakers: as the largest Wikipedia project, many non-native English speakers also use this project, and cases such as 노무현 and 南山 are beneficial in that it helps people who use these search terms. Keep in mind that English is the global language, and if a native Japanese speaker can't find what he is searching for on the Japanese Wikipedia, he might go looking for it on the English Wikipedia next (but may not know the proper things to search for). -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 17:41, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per WP:FORRED and the line of reasoning in other !votes. And I suggest a total moratorium on any AFDs or PRODs unless there is centralised discussion somewhere to rid these dab pages. GotR Talk 02:41, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • That's only an essay, not policy, but it supports making it into a redirect as this satisfies the first criteria – this is an original/official name. As it's the name of a few places it should be a redirect to a disambiguation page, one of which already exists.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 11:13, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • Actually, more than one disambiguation page exists for which a redirect named "南山" would be appropriate. (so this again leads to the problem of needing a disambiguation page called "南山" to lead to the multiple disambiguation pages for the various transcriptions of "南山" into latin characters (and other articles that don't appear on disambiguation pages, because for those transcriptions there aren't enough articles to create a disambiguation page for them)) -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 08:48, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - WP arguments aside, the only way anyone would find is (and there could be more possibilities, but my humble cognitive capacities only caught two of them): 1. A native Chinese speaker finding it by mistake when looking it up. 2. A native English speaker genuinely interested in the meaning. We need not concern ourselves with the former case. For the latter, they other resources to figure it out. WP is not made for that. Cheers, Λuα (Operibus anteire) 06:30, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
These are good arguments, no doubt, but Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. When was the last time you flipped through an encyclopedia, reached Z, and then started with Chinese characters? English-only speakers of English Wikipedia should be able to read the English titles of all English articles (including non-English names/words if they are in common usage in the English-speaking world a la Søren Kierkegaard). WP:UE is a good thing to consult in these situations.
Cheers, Λuα (Operibus anteire) 01:53, 13 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding flipping through an encyclopedia to Z and finding moonrunes, this brings us back to Wikipedia not being a paper reference. Britannica and Encarta don't do this due to their own constraints, and we don't have these constraints. Yes, a large number of our readers are native English speakers, however that does not mean that there will never be exceptions. If I were a Japanese person with limited English ability, and for some reason wanted to consult an English text for information regarding 小泉 純一郎, but wasn't really sure on how to properly romanize his name or spell his name in the English language, I would type in "小泉 純一郎" and pray that it would take me to the place that I want to end up at (Junichiro Koizumi). This is how non-English redirects can help these people, who are neither the majority of our readers (i.e. native/fluent English speakers), nor readers that do not exist (because they definitely do exist). Now, in the case of 南山, we can potentially have Chinese speakers who want to research Nanshan but don't know how to properly write it in English, or Japanese speakers who want to look up Nanzan. This is where we get an ambigious situation, and this is why we need a disambiguation page, that covers both Nanshan and Nanzan, which are written exactly identically in Chinese and Japanese. The only people who would ever end up at a place like 南山 would be someone who actively searches for it, such as the examples that I have mentioned earlier; this wouldn't concern native English speakers who cannot understand the title, because we wouldn't have such people looking up such a keyword. We don't link to disambiguation pages in articles (and in cases where links do go there, they should be fixed up by other editors). Even if they somehow accidentally end up at the page by some kind of witchcraft, they would either one be uninterested in the topic, and leave, or two read the description in the lead sentence of the page. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 07:02, 13 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly- these are just that: redirects. What we can do is have the Chinese title redirect to an English disambiguation page- that would be analogous to your examples. It's not exactly the first time we have a Chinese title refer to multiple things.
Cheers, Λuα (Operibus anteire) 22:33, 12 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
How would you determine whether the redirect target should be "Minamiyama", "Nanzan", "Nanshan", "Namsan" or "Nam Sơn", when you don't know which of the transcriptions the user is looking for? --Stefan2 (talk) 22:37, 12 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I would vote for "Southern Mountain (East Asia)," or the like. In the lead, explain the different ways this can be understood.
Cheers, Λuα (Operibus anteire) 01:44, 13 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Good solution.--Wikimedes (talk) 15:43, 13 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That would be an WP:Incomplete disambiguation. If it were needed (and it's not, the 南山 is perfectly fine for a CKJV disambiguation page), it would be simply Southern Mountain. And this is not a vote. -- JHunterJ (talk) 16:44, 13 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see a need to change the page (nor to change my !vote again), but in case there is a need there are other solutions, such as some variation of Aua's suggestion, looking up the name in the native language and following the language link to the English article, or searching in the English WP and finding the native name that appears in the first line of an article (would names in an info box show up?).--Wikimedes (talk) 02:06, 14 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Just curious, but how does your reading of WP:UE support using this name?
"Names not originally in a Latin alphabet, as with Greek, Chinese or Russian, must be transliterated into characters generally intelligible to literate speakers of English."
Users of English Wikipedia shouldn't, all of sudden, find themselves on a page whose title they cannot read. I am confused how is that even an issue. If there are multiple meanings, then disambiguate.
Let's imagine for a second that we go ahead and leave it there- before you know it, people will start switching place names into their native tongues/alphabet and WP will be rendered useless (reductio ad absurdum? Maybe, but I cannot be the only one who sees this). Keep English Wikipedia..well..english.
Cheers, Λuα (Operibus anteire) 22:29, 12 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Dab pages are not articles. They are non-article pages that are located in article namespace, just like how redirects are non-article pages located in article namespace. Their purpose is for navigation, not for education. Hence, it can be argued that WP:AT does not apply to the case at hand. There is also currently discussion at WP:AT as to whether the contents of disambiguating parentheses counts as part of the article title, e.g. "Article title (brief disambiguator)", however this isn't relevant to our current AfD discussion. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 07:10, 13 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That strikes me as WP:LETTER, but I'll entertain that thought for a second. Under WP:DABNAME, you have:
English spelling is preferred to that of non-English languages.
Moreover, under DABNAME, you have See also: Wikipedia:Article titles. Take that as you will.
Cheers, Λuα (Operibus anteire) 16:06, 13 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That would be "take is as a "See also", not directly relevant." Yes, English spelling is preferred. When English spelling is not possible (as in this case, where the topics do not share a single English spelling), we fall back to the non-English spelling, since the preferred spelling is impossible. Unless you are suggesting the English title Nánshān, Minamiyama, Nanzan, or Namsan or Chinese characters read as Nánshān, Minamiyama, Nanzan, or Namsan or somesuch clunky approach. -- JHunterJ (talk) 16:44, 13 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
...or Southern Mountain.
Cheers, Λuα (Operibus anteire) 20:02, 13 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, even the clunky approach is infinitely more preferable for me personally. A title I, and 95-99% of en.WP users, can understand is better than 南山.
Cheers, Λuα (Operibus anteire) 20:10, 13 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
南山, as the official name of the many places, is at least useful to 1-5% of en WP users. A chunky title like Chinese characters read as Nánshān, Minamiyama, Nanzan, or Namsan is pretty much useless to anybody. -Zanhe (talk) 20:39, 13 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Disambiguation pages aren't written for those who won't reach them. In the case of 南山, why would you or 95-99% of the en.WP users who can't understand it even reach it? No, the readers who would reach it are the 1%-5% who can understand it, and the page is written to disambiguate their ambiguous title. -- JHunterJ (talk) 11:07, 14 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
"Southern Mountain" falls afoul of the disambiguation page guidelines. Since none of the pages would be "Southern Mountain (xyz)" form -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 05:30, 14 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed, "Southern Mountain may refer to: <this list>" isn't true, so that's a bad name for the dab page. -- JHunterJ (talk) 11:07, 14 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'd like that to actually be applied to Western European languages, where it is clearly not the case, when we have the majority of English language reliable sources spell and style it one way, and our articles insist on using the non-English native forms that even use non-English letters (such as eszett, eth, or thorn, which aren't even English letters modified by accents, they are purely non-English letters) If we don't bother applying that rule to Western Europe, I see no reason to not have disambiguation pages with titles that are not typable, since they are disambiguating the term that is not typable either, so are functioning in the correct manner, unlike all these eth/thorn/eszett articles which clearly have English-lettered transcriptions that could be used but don't, which are articles and not disambiguation pages. -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 05:30, 14 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


I'm not sure how WP:AT can actually be applicable to dab pages. WP:AT goes into lengthy discussions on exactly how a subject matter would determine the article name. Dab pages do not even have individual subjects. They function only to direct readers to other articles. If anything, on the contrary, trying to use WP:AT as a reason to delete this and other similar dab pages is what runs afoul of WP:LETTER. The common thread in WP:AT is to use the common recognisable name of the subject of the article. That's simply not applicable to dab pages. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 04:50, 15 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
HongQiGong: oops! I totally misread your original !vote as you using AT and UE to defend keeping this DAB. My apologies. I missed the "not" part. That said, I still think we shouldn't have a page whose title cannot be read by the overwhelming majority of en.Wikipedia users.
Cheers, Λuα (Operibus anteire) 06:08, 15 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I understand your point of not being able to read it, but deleting these pages does a tremendous disservice to those who can read it. Even if you cannot read the characters in the title, you can still read the content of the page. While the deletion of this and similar pages would stop leading readers to the correct articles who happen to come to English WP via those Chinese characters. The latter, to me, is a worse scenario than the former. I also understand your fear that this is a slippery slope, but to the best of my knowledge, nobody in this particular discussion is proposing to stop using common English names as article titles. There might be other discussions going on elsewhere about this, but I have not been involved in them. The scope of this discussion as far as I'm concerned is the usage of Chinese characters in dab page titles. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 15:46, 15 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You and JHunter make really strong points, and had this been any other discussion, I would have conceded and changed my !vote. In this case though, my knee-jerk, gut reaction is to not vote to allow a precedent. Foreign language redirects I can understand, but this strikes me as being on a whole new level. I'd much rather see it deleted than to allow it to go forward. If you want to look up something in Chinese, you can go to the relevant Wikipedia. If you search in Chinese, I think you should get Chinese back. We are catering to English speakers, and having this page WILL benefit 1-5% who speak Chinese, but will confuse the 95-99% who don't. That risk is too much, especially when we are catering to English-speakers first and foremost. Heck, even Google thinks so- try to look up "南山," and all you'll get is Chinese.
I realize I am being somewhat inflexible, and for that, I apologize. Cheers, Λuα (Operibus anteire) 02:11, 17 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I see this as no different from a redirect. What is a disambiguation page, but a redirect with multiple destinations? (also why there's been pushes for a DfD or expanding RfD to handle disambiguation pages) And if I come across something on the net, but the term is in Korean/Japanese/Chinese (and not the entire page is, someone might type something in their home language while commenting on a thread on a blog, but mix it with English), and pop it into the searchbox, and the topic is originally East Asian, I expect that Wikipedia should return the proper article for it. The same reason that original language redirects exist. -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 08:05, 17 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
There are a few problems with your rationale. Firstly, these dab pages are a natural extension of Chinese-character redirects, because there are multiple articles that the Chinese terms can redirect to. Secondly, you ignore the fact that most of the world's population have at least a rudimentary understanding of a second language, with English being a very common second language. It is entirely possible that if a user looks up a Chinese term, he may be interested in reading an English article. Thirdly, there is nothing confusing or risky about this dab page. It is written in English, and explains what it translates to, and what it may refer to. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 17:51, 17 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Also, there's no precedent being set here. This page follows the fine precedent set by the pages in Category:Disambiguation pages with Chinese character titles. -- JHunterJ

(RI)Note to admin: there is an extremely relevant discussion at WP:AT. I suggest holding off doing anything until some solution emerges there that we probably adapt to this situation. For full disclosure, I already !voted above. Cheers, Λuα (Operibus anteire) 06:41, 14 July 2013 (UTC) (talk) 18:31, 17 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note to the closing admin: WP:AT doesn't apply to non-article disambiguation page titles. -- JHunterJ (talk) 11:09, 14 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
JHunterJ, the discussion there is more concerned with DAB than articles.
Cheers, Λuα (Operibus anteire) 16:25, 14 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, then the discussion is misplaced, and will still have no bearing on disambiguation page titles. Cheers, JHunterJ (talk) 19:16, 14 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
Quelle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/%E5%8D%97%E5%B1%B1_(2nd_nomination)