Talk:Li (surname meaning "profit")/Archive 1

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Archive 1 Archive 2

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: no consensus to no move. There is insufficient consensus to perform this move, and the arguments regarding the use of English are quite compelling. I can understand why one might desire to have individual articles on each of the surnames transliterated in English as "Li" (or "Lee"), but it hasn't been adequately demonstrated that there is no way to disambiguate them without resorting to Chinese characters. There seem to be some ideas presented here (e.g. Li (Chinese surname meaning X)) that could resolve this issue for at least some of the surnames, and those should be explored for where they are possible before turning to this approach. -- tariqabjotu 16:32, 29 June 2013 (UTC)


Lì (chinese surname) → Lì (利) – Page was moved from Lì (利) to this clearly problematic name without discussion. Besides the capitalization error, the current title does not provide an adequate disambiguation, and most importantly: the original page title was a result of a long discussion here a few years ago which also has drew the input of Jimbo Wales himself. Any move to these pages must be thoroughly discussed, and even so, the current page title is undesirable. The offending user also made many problematic moves (of the cut and paste sort) that I'll presently get into. Sigh. _dk (talk) 16:49, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

  • Question – Is this encyclopedia designed to be used only by bilingual readers, or are English-only readers just supposed to guess what the disambiguator (利) means? To me, it just means Li (Chinese character) or Li (Chinese something). Actually, I'm not sure that it couldn't be Japanese or some other Far East language. If Li (Chinese surname) is not adequate disambiguation (actually that just redirects to Li (surname)), then why not use English and parenthetical disambiguation that I can understand? Wbm1058 (talk) 22:04, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
Trust me, this has been discussed to death in the discussion I linked above. Basically, if not 利, then what can we use? Generally 利 means profits, and I guess we could translate it to Li (Chinese surname that means profit), though that would be cumbersome and lead to problems regarding original translations, right in the title no less. _dk (talk) 01:11, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
To an English reader's eye, the meaning (or nationality for that matter) of a Chinese surname is unfamiliar and irrelevant. They are all just surnames, so the articles should be merged and titled as such. --Rob Sinden (talk) 09:14, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
Yes, thanks, it's interesting to see Jimbo Wales' comments from 2006. I share his sentiment, but, sigh, as I recall from past debates I've had with In ictu oculi (who supports this below) over diacritics, that horse has already long since left the barn. So just trying to understand. Would a good analogy be to say that Jones, Johnson, Johnston, and Johnstone all translated to 利 in Chinese, so Chinese Wikipedia would then need to disambiguate them as 利 (Jones), 利 (Johnson), 利 (Johnston), and 利 (Johnstone)? Wbm1058 (talk) 13:39, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
They are new articles created by Bmotbmot (talk · contribs), who made the original move from Lì (利) to here and got all this started. He also took the liberty to move Lí (黎) to Li (family name) via cut and paste. Is a rollback appropriate here? _dk (talk) 01:59, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
Is there any evidence of this User communicating? There is no own Talk on his/her talk page. I can see someone placing a block warning if continuing to do this with no communication. In ictu oculi (talk) 02:41, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Rename all using Traditional Chinese glyphs as disambiguators. Too many different surnames/family names become "Li", even using the Pinyin versions, several share the same accent. Li (surname), Li (family name), Li (Chinese surname), Li (Chinese family name), Lee (surname), Lee (family name), Lee (Chinese family name), Lee (Chinese surname), Lee (name), Li (name), Lee (Chinese), Li (Chinese) should all redirect to the same disambiguation page. And note, that there are cognates in other East Asian languages for Li/Lee as a family name, as well as an Anglo-Saxon one. And the Chinese Li is also spelled as Lee; not counting the various other non-Mandarin spellings of other surnames, that also are found in English, because of Hokkien, Cantonese, Hakka, Fujian pronounciations finding their way into English through people who emigrated and used phonetic spellings based on their dialects. -- 65.94.79.6 (talk) 04:09, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Strong speedy oppose - this is quite simply ridiculous. We cannot disambiguate with non-roman characters that are not in English. See WP:EN. Also WP:NC for recognisability and naturalness. Differences in meaning can be discussed at the dab page. How is anyone supposed to find the article or link to it? --Rob Sinden (talk) 08:46, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
How is anyone supposed to find the right name now? All of them are "Li"/"Lee"/"Ly", but in Chinese they're all different. Do you propose using their origin stories as disambiguators? -- 65.94.79.6 (talk) 08:56, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
Lì (chinese surname), Li (chinese family name), Li (family name), and Li (last name) should all be merged to Li (surname) (or Li (family name) if you prefer) and the differences explained in the article. As it currently stands you need expert knowledge of the origin of the names before you even start. --Rob Sinden (talk) 08:57, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
As the various variant spelling of these surnames includes "Lee", if we were to apply the case to Lee, for example, you would end up with Robert E. Lee in the same article as Bruce Lee, for sharing a surname. That is what your suggestion amounts to. While an overview article is all well and fine, why would you cover multiple independent topics in the same article? (prior to the widespread establishment of Pinyin, they were spelled as "Lee") -- 65.94.79.6 (talk) 00:10, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
I'd be happy with that actually. After a few generations, the origin of a surname is not always clear. I've got a mate whose surname is "Wing". I don't know if his name is of Eastern or Western origin. You could have (for example) a Chinese-American who spells their surname "Li" with no Chinese equivalent as they are 5th generation or whatever. Where would you group them? --Rob Sinden (talk) 11:10, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
That would be irrelevant to the articles at hand, which are discussing the surnames of people that are known to be either 李 or whatever. I wouldn't group them anywhere, because your example is a small deviation from the larger group. There are tens of millions of people that do know that their surname is certainly 李, and this is a figure magnitudes larger than the few Americans that have whatever Chinese-origin surname. These articles document the surname of the former, not the latter. I don't see why we should be making concessions because a few Americans (that's right, if you're born in America, and pledge allegiance to the American flag, you're an American) don't know something that they don't care about. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 13:00, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
李 (Li) and 黎 (Li) are completely different surnames, and doing so is counterproductive. It would be like saying that "John" and "Paul" are the same given name, because they both have 4 letters, and should be merged together - this is essentially what your proposal amounts to, so you may as well go do that, despite how silly and anti-intellectual it actually is. It's silly to make assumptions or to lump unrelated surnames together into one arbitrary grouping. You wouldn't do that for Anglo surnames, so why do it for Chinese ones? -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 02:43, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
WP:CIVIL. It's not "silly" or "anti-intellectual". I'd say there is a benefit of explaining the differences to an English-language reader on a page based on the English spelling of the surname(s). There will be cases (5th generation Chinese-Americans maybe) where you are not sure of the origin of the surname. --Rob Sinden (talk) 11:13, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
It might be a controversial way to put it, not to mention blunt and straightforward, but it certainly isn't incorrect. Furthermore, if you read carefully, I was referring to lumping "John" and "Paul" together as being anti-intellectual; is my labeling of such an act incorrect? I'm sure that you, too, would agree. I believe that it is counter-productive to do lump everything into an arbitrary mess. I have not directed anything towards yourself as a person, right? If you'd rather take it from the other side of the coin, then that is fine too - explain how dumbing down everything is intellectual? -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 12:54, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
That is quite anglocentric, and, might I add regretfully, anti-intellectual. These are all different topics in their own right. Sure, merge them now and there probably isn't any problem, but as all these different surnames with different origins and different demographical distributions, we are going to have to split the merged article anyways. Why not discuss ways to disambiguate right here right now? Also, this RM is only suggesting to move this page back to the previous concensus. _dk (talk) 09:41, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
Umm, anglocentric? This is the English language Wikipedia after all, and why we have the guideline WP:EN. By all means, on the Chinese language Wikipedia do what is right there, but we have to assume that English language readers know nothing about chinese symbols. And the origin of a surname of any nationality is not immediately apparent. In this case it's just a surname and we shouldn't need to disambiguate further. --Rob Sinden (talk) 09:44, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
By "anglocentric" I am referring to the view that lumps all these different genealogies together based on the fact that they only happened to be transliterated in the same way, ignoring the vast differences these surnames have just because from a monolingual English speaker's point of view, these differences can't be seen. Just because they sound the same doesn't mean that they are the same. I am of the opinion that these surnames all deserve separate treatment; under what name or what sort of disambiguation, I care not. _dk (talk) 11:56, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
We shouldn't be thinking of this as a special case. I'm trying to think of an example, but we wouldn't give separate pages to a surname that meant one thing in, say, German, and another in, say, Spanish. --Rob Sinden (talk) 12:07, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
Also Fisher and Fischer mean the same thing, but they don't have the same article. The important thing here is how they are spelled in English. --Rob Sinden (talk) 12:13, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
Would you lump Iron Chloride (FeCl2) and Iron Chloride (FeCl3) together, then? They're both written identically in English (their English common names, used for centuries and centuries, that is), it's just that in the modern era you now have IUPAC breathing down your neck and forcing you to use the (II) notation to disambiguate the two. Given your previous arguments, you'd want these two to be merged together, because they're both "the same", right? -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 02:59, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
Personally, I'd prefer to see those at Ferric chloride and Ferrous chloride for recognisability. --Rob Sinden (talk) 11:04, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
What, names that nobody uses? But then they wouldn't be the WP:COMMONNAME. Nobody uses those alternative terms apart from a small bunch of wrinkly old nerds from centuries past. The common name used in English for both cases is Iron Chloride. It's also the case that a bunch of people from Switzerland decided that Iron Chloride would be the standardized form for both, with the two disambiguated by the (II) notation based on the number of electrons shared in the ionic bond. This standardization, though forced upon by this Swiss organization and isn't anything based on how the English language naturally developed its vocabulary, has largely gained widespread usage worldwide, and this is why we're using these titles on Wikipedia. It's systematic and logical.
We don't necessarily do things based on recognisability here, and it's better if things had a logical organization. Clumping all these unrelated surnames altogether is counter-productive. Again, I refer to WP:SYSTEMIC - none of these surnames are in any way related (they aren't even pronounced the same, in some cases), and you're trying to bunch them together based on your own assumptions, explain to me how this isn't a problem. Think hypothetically if someone told you that "Jones" and "Smith" should be considered the same thing, and needed to be bunched together - you would feel perplexed, would you not? This is the same vibe that I am getting from you, I cannot comprehend how you are so adamantly opposed to a logical system, and instead would like a chaotic mess (lumping unrelated topics together) that would look a bit prettier to native English speakers. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 12:54, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
What, names that nobody uses? bzzt! Wrong answer. These are the common names and would be the title of the articles if not for IUPAC standardization. older ≠ wiser 14:10, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
Maybe if it were the 1920s. Today, that does not hold true. Compare publications made 2000-2013, and publications made from the 16th century up to 1940. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 14:16, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
No, these are still commonly used names for the compounds. older ≠ wiser 14:22, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
The Wiley online library and other various databases show a steady decrease of usage for the older terms. There are fewer scientific journals and publications created in recent years which use the non-standard terms. Not to mention, even reference books and educational materials published in recent years are beginning to omit the older terms in preference for the IUPAC standardized terms. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 14:28, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
Of course specialist publications are going to follow IUPAC standard. The terms are still in common use in generalist publications. And in any case, the synonymy is prominently described even where the IUPAC form is preferred. older ≠ wiser 15:04, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
I was quoting the guideline WP:EN, but your WP:UE is policy that states "Names not originally in a Latin alphabet, such as Greek, Chinese, or Russian names, must be transliterated." --Rob Sinden (talk) 10:03, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
And that requirement is met (Li). The problem is the disambiguation itself. _dk (talk) 11:56, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
I don't think we need to disambiguate further than "(surname)", nor would there be a benefit to the English-speaking world if we did as no-one would know which one they were looking for. We can include all variations and explanations on the same page (see Jiang (surname)), and maybe readers will learn something they didn't know! --Rob Sinden (talk) 12:07, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
Barring the fact that you just helped yourself to move all Jiangs into one article, how do we reconcile the fact these different Chinese characters for Jiang can have different romanizations? 蔣 can be "Jiang", "Chiang", etc; 江 can be "Jiang", "Kong", etc. Do we want identical content over all the possible romanisations of a Chinese surname? (ie. Ending up with Jiang (surname) and Chiang (surname)), in addition to having those articles covering several Chinese surnames themselves? For the present article, the case would be: 李 can be transliterated as "Li", "Lee", "Ly", and "Lie"; 黎 can be "Li", "Lai", "Lei", "Ly", 利 can be "Lee", "Li", "Lai", and so on. _dk (talk) 12:27, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
Actually, all four were already at the article. I just merged the one with the inappropriate character in the article title and expanded the existing section. The different romanizations could each have their own page, based on the common spelling in English of the person involved, with "see also" links in the article to alternate romanizations. That is what would be recognisable to the English-speaking reader, and what should be followed. --Rob Sinden (talk) 12:33, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
Unless more than one variation could only mean the same thing, then they could be on the same page. i.e. if "Chiang" and "Jiang" were exact synonyms of each other, with no variation. Look at how the Korean "Kang"/"Gang" is dealt with, even though it can be represented by five different characters. --Rob Sinden (talk) 12:40, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Strong speedy oppose per Rob Sinden, this is not a character we use in the English language. End of. I strongly urge !voters here to read WP:EN and WP:NC and base comments on guidelines and policies. Widefox; talk 09:36, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment one day it'd be nice to see a sentence beginning "This is the English wikipedia..." without something following that is exactly the opposite of what English books do. How does anyone think English books dealing with Chinese families / family names handle this problem? ... please folks look at what's on sale at Amazon.com.
    However have been having offpage conversation with Robsinden and conclude this isn't an either or. We can serve both sets of readers. Unless there's a rule that says we should chose one set of readers. Does anyone here know of such a rule? In ictu oculi (talk) 14:36, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
As no disambiguation is served by Lì (chinese surname), Li (chinese family name), Li (family name), Li (last name) and Li (surname), as they all essentially mean the same thing, these should all point to an "umbrella" article at Li (surname) which discusses the differences between the surnames. We could then have an article called List of people with surname Li (or similar) and then show all the people with the surname, again broken down by different Chinese character. However, we absolutely cannot have articles disambiguated by Chinese character. --Rob Sinden (talk) 14:51, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
Which is why I've left a 2nd warning on the user's page who did that.
"However, we absolutely cannot have articles disambiguated by Chinese character." Why? We have done so quite happily until this one disruptive editor came along.
Alternatively I'm looking now at a very old Chinese name book which has the written names of each surname. What we could do is have Lǐ (李 “plum tree”), that would provide a service to both learners of Chinese and those not at that stage. Though that won't satisfy the sort of reader who is incensed by seeing something that helps others but not them. Are we here to serve only that sort of reader. Personally I'm not. In ictu oculi (talk) 15:03, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
Per policy: "Names not originally in a Latin alphabet, such as Greek, Chinese, or Russian names, must be transliterated." How is a user of English-language Wikipedia supposed to find these characters on their keyboard? More importantly, how will they know which article they are looking for. They should not be expected to know Chinese. All the more reason for one article for all variants. --Rob Sinden (talk) 15:07, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
Lǐ is transliterated; Lǐ is pinyin. Lǐ (李 “plum tree”) is there to help. And Lǐ (李 “plum tree”) does not expect anyone to know Chinese. In ictu oculi (talk) 15:10, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
The "article title" would include any disambiguation parameter, so any disambiguation paramater must also be transliterated and thus should not have a glyph in it. And if I'm looking for information on the Chinese surname "Li", neither Lǐ (李 "plum tree") nor Li (厲 "bubblegum, whatever") helps. It doesn't mean anything to me, or to the vast majority of readers of English-language Wikipedia... --Rob Sinden (talk) 15:14, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
Well yes but simply put, the article isn't only for you. An article like this I'd guess the majority of users/reader will be learners of Chinese, or interested in Chinese names enough to be familiar with the main characters. Those readers could learn to tolerate the help being given to you by "plum tree", and likewise those interested in Chinese character-names, but not interested enough to want to actually see them could learn to tolerate 李 help being given to other readers. It's a unique situation, one where no WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS applies, and where we're playing on the fringe of wiktionary (where there is no "plum tree" help) and we can help both sets of users, without choosing. What's the problem? In ictu oculi (talk) 15:20, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
We can't make any assumptions on the level of Chinese known by prospective readers. No, it's not only for me, neither is it only for people who can recognise Chinese characters. It is English-language Wikipedia, and we have to assume that English is the only language known by any reader. It's actually more helpful to the English reader with all the variations on one page as they won't need to be a Chinese expert to work out which page they are looking for - and maybe with them all on one page people can be educated about the difference. --Rob Sinden (talk) 15:31, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
(ec) To reinforce my comment above, as using English WP:UE "Names not originally in a Latin alphabet, such as Greek, Chinese, or Russian names, must be transliterated." is a policy (inside or outside brackets), be aware that the (solely the issue of characters) will take some persuasive argument (not yet seen), else may be seen as disruptive - see WP:DEADHORSE. Now, saying that, there is a valid issue of "chinese" -> "Chinese", and there may be a valid case for disambiguation (I have not looked into it), which may be aided by the (already posted comments at) Wikipedia:WikiProject Anthroponymy. As for sets of readers, as WP is not a howto (learn a foreign language) manual, please take that up at the appropriate policy location. Widefox; talk 15:33, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose This is the English version of Wikipedia. Requiring readers to understand Chinese for something as simple as disambiguation is ridiculous. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 15:55, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Support move to Lì (利 + {quick origin in english}), for all of them. I don't know enough about all of these to know how those would look, but this is clearly the best path. Expert help is needed in creating the plum tree or whatever. I basically agree with In ictu oculi here. If there is an unambiguous diacritic then redirect Lì (Chinese surname) to this one. I'm going to invoke WP:IAR here. Yes, our guidance say we must transliterate foreign characters, and in the many diacritic-debates I've been in, I've often said that chinese/cyrllic characters are the bright line we shouldn't cross. But this is a special case - we have multiple articles with colliding titles, and the only rapid/easy/simple way to disambiguate them is via the relevant chinese character, which will immediately, for those who know Chinese or can recognize characters, bring them here - being able to type it is, frankly, irrelevant, as most people can't type diacritics either. I am invoking IAR because I do think this makes the encyclopedia better, and we are dumbing it down by deleting the chinese character - in this one, particular, and very special edge case. We haven't harmed any users in showing the chinese character, and we've also taught them an important lesson, which is that, yes, virginia, there are a lot of Lees in the phone book, but in Chinese, that's actually not all the same name. I am also explicitly recognizing that those arguing to remove the chinese character have titling guidance on their side, but I'm asking us to IGNORE it, in this one particular case, because for those readers who are most likely to be looking here, the chinese character will likely serve them best, and for the other readers, we can provide some sort of brief english description of whatever that particular Li means.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 16:56, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
We can teach the lesson by writing a merged article on the different variations of the surname. We base surname articles on spelling, not the origin. In English, all these surnames are spelled the same, regardless of origin. Whilst I personally think disambiguation between the different versions of the Chinese surname "Li" is not only unnecessary, but unhelpful to the English reader, I may be proved wrong on this. However, utilising Chinese symbols is completely unacceptable. Frankly I'm amazed we're even having this discussion, as policy is 100% clear on this. There are alternative solutions, so no reason to WP:IAR in this case. --Rob Sinden (talk) 17:04, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
I would agree, if it could be demonstrated that a single article would suffice. This, however, does not seem fair, nor reasonable.They are all DIFFERENT names, they just happen to be transliterated/romanized in the same way in our language - but that doesn't make then encyclopedically equivalent. We have to be careful to avoid issues of systemic bias, even if we are an english-language encyclopedia, so we will likely run into other issues of this same ilk in other countries. But, english is a global language, and we are a global resource, so we should be slightly more accepting of the bleeding-around-the-edges of other languages into our own. Like I said, I'm invoking IAR becuase this is for now a special, edge, case. We should not go around renaming Chinese towns and so on with chinese characters, but in this particular case, it doesn't HARM the user, and it may help a certain number of them. The current disambiguations (family name, surname, chinese name) are completely unhelpful.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 17:14, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
I agree that the current disambiguations are useless, but I also think using the Chinese characters do actually harm the user. Say I wanted to read about the surname "Li" in relation to, say, Jet Li. How would I know which one I was looking for unless there was some kind of umbrella article. Now, maybe it can be proved that splinter articles are necessary. If that were the case, then some examples should still be at the umbrella article, and any disambiguation should be written in English. I'm yet to be convinced of their necessity, and still think they are best presented together on one article (we don't have two articles for the same surname spelling in roman alphabets which have different meanings, after all) but maybe Li (name meaning plum tree) would be a compromise. Definitely a no on the Chinese symbols though. --Rob Sinden (talk) 18:02, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
we already have such a page: Li_(surname). It is generally agreed that each surname merits an article - especially when you're talking about surnames shared by millions of people, each. The fact that it transliterates into a single spelling in english is a terrible argument for combining into one article.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 18:38, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
It is generally agreed that each surname merits an article -- since when? Surname articles are a curiosity -- lists of surname holders generally pass scrutiny, but articles about a surname should meet requirements for notability and references. In English, the surname-holders are all "Li" and there is no way for English speakers to know whether the name derives from one source or another. AS such, the list would have to be centralized for usability's sake if nothing else. If there is sufficient encyclopedic content that is reliably sources (not copied from a baidu.com copy of a wikipedia article), then there might be basis for having separate articles for each surname. But at present, I see no indication of that, and feel English readers would be best served by a combined article that elucidates the distinctions between these names. older ≠ wiser 18:46, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
Well, since such a large number of people have a particular surname, how wouldn't it be notable? There are more people with the 李 (Li) surname alone than people named "Smith" or "Ngyuen", and more people with the 黎 (Li) surname than people named "Jones", and these two are both separate, unrelated surnames. Hence, both 李 and 黎 are much more notable than many English surnames considered "heavily in circulation" by a long stretch. Hence, this all comes back to WP:SYSTEMIC - if it's not Anglo, you tend to miscalculate how notable something actually is. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 02:35, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
Notability is not directly related to the number of people having the surname, but rather to what encyclopedic content is available from reliable sources. I am completely fine with a standalone article, provided there is verifiable and reliably sourced content. older ≠ wiser 11:17, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
There are plenty of reliable sources on the topic. Just because they're not written in the article doesn't mean they exist, it just means that contributors, including me, you, and everyone else here, has been too lazy to expand the article properly. Give it time, and it will grow. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 13:06, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
WP:SOFIXIT. It is the responsibility of those wanting to keep articles or information to ensure that they are properly sourced. older ≠ wiser 14:07, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose move as proposed. I think English readers are best served by a single article that describes the distinctions between each of these. Especially considering that all of these are currently unreferenced stubs. If it turns out that any of these can be further expanded, they can be spun out and we can revisit how to disambiguate at that time. older ≠ wiser 18:06, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
Several of them are NOT stubs, and references could easily be found; it's not a reason to merge! Several of these have extant pages on other wikis, and I'm sure some of them could be linked even better to the chinese wikipedia. -obi
  • comment My ideal list would look like this:
    • Li (李 'plum')
    • Lì (利 'favorable')
    • Lí (黎 'dark')
    • Li (栗 'chestnut')
    • Li (厲 'grind')

Useful for those who speak chinese, and useful for those who don't.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 18:46, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

They might not be marked as stubs, but if it quacks like a stub, and waddles like a stub, there's not much reason not to call them stubs. Even worse, though, most of these are(unlike most stubs) completely unreferenced. At present they are simply a source of confusion. older ≠ wiser 18:49, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
  • I would say, instead:
    • Li (surname, 李 'plum')
    • Lì (surname, 利 'favorable')
    • Lí (surname, 黎 'dark')
    • Li (surname, 栗 'chestnut')
    • Li (surname, 厲 'grind')
-- 65.94.79.6 (talk) 00:03, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
You can have as many wishlists as you like - this will never happen per WP:UE. --Rob Sinden (talk) 00:12, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
As already pointed out, that is a misreading of WP:UE. In ictu oculi (talk) 03:14, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
I wish we'd actually use English for European articles as well, instead of non-English. -- 65.94.79.6 (talk) 02:02, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
We do! For European film articles, for example, we use the name that it was released under in the English-speaking world for recognizability. Chinese characters are not recognizable to English-language readers. That's the point here. --Rob Sinden (talk) 11:17, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
Chinese characters are not recognizable to English-language readers, but old English graphemes like the one used in Æthelred are? Pull a 20 year old off the street, and chances are he doesn't know how to pronounce Æ. So, what's with the double standard? -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 13:34, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
There's no double standard. This is the English-language Wikipedia, so we use the English language. It really is that simple. --Rob Sinden (talk) 13:57, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
You're moving the goal posts. First, you say that certain characters are not recognizable to the main audience of this encyclopedia. When I point out that the large majority of people who understand the modern English language don't recognize certain characters, you then move the goal posts to the other side of the field. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 14:21, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
Not at all. Stop using WP:STRAWMAN arguments. The issue here is about Chinese characters. I haven't commented about old English letters - that is an argument for elsewhere. --Rob Sinden (talk) 15:05, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
Incidentally, the use of "Æ" is explicitly supported at policy WP:UE. --Rob Sinden (talk) 09:20, 28 June 2013 (UTC)
See also Gothenburg and Munich. --Rob Sinden (talk) 11:38, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
One thing you're forgetting is that WP:IAR exists so that policy policing doesn't go out of hand in cases when exceptions are needed. Whether our case here qualifies is up for discussion, but please don't just go "here's a policy link, this is the end, goodbye" like you just have. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 02:49, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
completely concur. Rob, you are right, the policy is clear on this point - we must transliterate. But what happens when we transliterate 5 things, and they all end up at the same place? How do we disambiguate? Jimmy Wales has been a strong critic of the use of diacritics, non-ascii-lettes, etc, but even HE basically invoked WP:IAR back in 2006, you can read his argument above. I'm not invoking argumentum-ad-jimbonem or whatever, but just noting that the history of IAR for these goes back a way, and I think we need to bring it back. This was a random, undiscussed move away by an editor who isn't talking to anyone, from titles which had been stable for years. I completely agree with you on WP:UE, and I've always thought that is a bright line, and yet, I'm arguing to cross it, in this one case (and similar naming/chinese-character/type situations).--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 02:56, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
If we need to disambiguate (and I'm still to be convinced of this), then we can do so effectively in English - "Li (surname meaning plum)", etc. The Chinese characters mean nothing to the majority of English-language readers. --Rob Sinden (talk) 11:01, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
"The Chinese characters mean nothing to the majority of English-language readers" - Yes, absolutely correct, but is there a better alternative that is both logical and practical? Translations like "plum" open up another can of worms, as people will always disagree on how to properly translate something. Is there a better way to disambiguate them? As for the need to disambiguate, remember that Wikipedia is WP:NOT a paper encyclopedia, and we can afford to be a bit more technical. Paper encyclopedias would not go into the amount of detail that we have in articles such as C++ and Lisp (programming language). There is no harm in including more detailed information; there is harm, however, in mixing everything up into an illogical mess just for convenience. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 13:11, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Support: Yes, USEENG is important, however so is being able to accurately and effectively disambiguate different titles. "Li", "Li" and "Li" are all different surnames which are homographs (but not necessarily homophones) in English, and each different surname has different alternative spellings and romanizations (e.g. one might be Li and Lee, another might be Li and Ly only, but not Lee). "Li" is the standardized spelling for all of them, and the common name for all of them, but they all have various alternate spellings that do not interlink with one another. The only way to effectively disambiguate these is to have the relevant character in parentheses. This is a limitation of the English language, just like the words "free" and "free" - like many similar cases, the only option is to disambiguate each meaning, and in our case, we can only do it using non-English characters. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 02:28, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
I'd just like to point out that all surnames transliterated as "Li" are, in fact, homophones in English; as English is not a tonal language, they are all read as the IPA /li/ for, I think, practically any monolingual native English speaker.  — TORTOISEWRATH 00:14, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
Sometimes "Li" is pronounced "Lee" in English, and sometimes it is pronounced as "lie" (as in, "not truth"). If you look at samples of what news announcers say, people such as Jet Li and Li Hongzhi get the "Lee" pronunciation in English, whilst Li Guangyu is pronounced as "lie" in English. Often, people make note of how they would like other people to pronounce their name, and this is echoed on television in the examples I've seen. Though, this usage might vary regionally, and I've noticed that Australian news announcers follow this trend of pronouncing "Li" based on how the person wishes it to be pronounced. (Same thing with "Jean"; Americanized Jeans would prefer the Anglicized "jheen", whilst native Francophone Jeans would prefer the "zhhooohhhnnee" or however you say it.) -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 01:53, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
User talk:TortoiseWrath it's been pointed out already but to be clear, these aren't all homophones in "English" - yes the pinyin names resemble homophones in English when stripped of accents, but the real names in "English" in a British/American/Australian phone directory will not be homophones because of all the various Cantonese etc spellings vary for each name. The fact that they coincide in Beijing pinyin (or detoned "dumb" pinyin) doesn't make them homophones in English. Does everyone understand this difference? In ictu oculi (talk) 01:32, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict) The other pronunciations, in my likely-invalid opinion, are merely a result of linguistic corruption; though they should all be pronounced the same way (I genuinely mean no offense to those who pronounce it in any particular way), I now know that they are not, and that my argument above (though not necessarily mine below, though it is in its original, idiotic wording) is void.  — TORTOISEWRATH 03:38, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Support. This is the best disambiguation. They are all separate topics (with seperate backgrounds and separate histories), even if they are all transliterated the same. Anything else would be a dictionary entry, since it's not about the word but about the topic (unlike at wiktionary). I should note that I'm not in favor of using diacritics though. --Cold Season (talk) 20:52, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
I'm confused. You're against diacritics, but for Chinese symbols? --Rob Sinden (talk) 00:02, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
You can read. I'm for the best-fitting disambiguation, which are the Chinese characters considering that all other options are even lesser than ideal as raised above. And, no, I never said that I'm against diacritics (but they don't generally get used in these names). --Cold Season (talk) 00:54, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I really don't think this works. I can't see any other occasion when we would even consider using a Chinese character for disambiguation. I also think that some mergers are called for; if the articles are then sufficient developed then sub-articles can be broken out again. Itsmejudith (talk) 21:16, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
User:Itsmejudith Hi, this should have been a WP:BRD due to an undiscussed move by an editor whose refusal to Talk/stop/slowdown is inevitably going to end in a block. But since it has come to WP:RM, first question: do you really think this article isn't sufficiently developed? If we click through to the zh.wp (something which people seem to have forgotten about in this discussion = the interwiki convenience aspect) the current Lì (利) article has 50% of the content of the zh.wp article and is already (even without the remaining content on the Chinese page being translated) as well developed as the best English surname articles like Johnson. To merge 7 or 8 "sound the same without the pinyin tones in modern Beijing dialect" articles is going to create a long unweildy article - and for what, to restrict benefit only to hypothetical readers who aren't interested in Chinese name characters but will still read the article? If such readers even exist.
Second question: How would you view Lì (利 profit) as a compromise? In ictu oculi (talk) 03:07, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
  • I don't even know if this is a support or an oppose anymore, but I completely agree with Rob Sinden's position. To be a bit harsh, considering that the guy who's arguing with him's name is Lǐ and they identify identifies as Chinese, I somehow doubt that he can form a rational opinion on how we should handle his name transliteration and disambiguation one of his native languages on the English Wikipedia, which is written in English, not Chinese, the language whose structure he's claiming concerns with, without his argument involving an extreme level of some bias. Sorry.  — TORTOISEWRATH 21:42, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
Do you also agree that Robert E. Lee and Bruce Lee are both covered as "Lee" as one article on the name? (afterall, they are both spelled "Lee", so clearly the same surname) -- 65.94.79.6 (talk) 23:40, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Yes. That article should make note of the etymologies of the surnames, but they are the same surname, as far as English orthography and phonology and, thus, a vast majority of speakers are concerned.  — TORTOISEWRATH 00:11, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
Topics are not the same just because they are homonyms in English; otherwise disambiguation pages would be pointless. These separate topics have separate histories and seperate backgrounds. Wikipedia is not a place for dictionary entries, and articles are about topics and not words. --Cold Season (talk) 00:54, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
Ah yes - if i recognised Chinese symbols, I may have spotted that clear WP:COI earlier ;) --Rob Sinden (talk) 00:09, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
Stay on the top of this pyramid when making your points, if you want me to take you seriously. Sincerely, Benlisquare.
You can go shove your personal attacks where they belong. Address the argument, not the person, that goes for the both of you. What my name is has nothing to do with how valid my opinion is, and it does not negate anything at all. The COI argument is also stupid, there are millions of people with this surname. There are more people with this surname than there are people living in California. There isn't a COI if an American edits United States, or if a human edits the human article. It's a dishonest, underhanded tactic that you're trying, and I'll take none of that bullshit. You hear me? -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 02:01, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
It would be best if one comments on the content, rather than state something speculative about an user (WP:TPYES). --Cold Season (talk) 00:54, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
I find the assertion that just because some guy is named Li, he has a COI on this page to be the lamest and most petty arguments put forth in a long while. I'd suggest TortoiseWrath seriously consider striking that offensive comment. I for one am quite glad there's a chinese person here who knows how to speak Chinese and knows the difference between these names in Chinese. --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 02:44, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict) My comment was not in the assertion that Mr. Li has a COI here because of his name, though looking back, it certainly seems as though it came out that way; I've edited it (openly) to remove the language I used. I was merely trying to draw attention to the fact that as himself a native speaker of Chinese, he has a bit of a COI (one that is at the same time helpful to others' understanding of the topic) in determining how that language's semantics should be rendered in another language.
In this matter, it is important to consider the primary demographic of the English Wikipedia—people who speak English, many (most?) of whom speak only English. To them, the "disambiguation" that has been proposed, in my humblest opinion as a monolingual English speaker, would likely just lead to more confusion. As a linguist, however, I think that it is necessary to note the differences between these surnames, because they are different etymologically. I think that they should stay in the same article, to avoid undue confusion. We don't have rules against breaking articles into sections about related topics.
The connection to his name was meant jokingly as a parallel to the actual COI, which I think Rob understood; however, many others have taken it the wrong way, and I do apologize for any offense that comment may have caused. I was just taken aback when I noticed that that was his name, and I quickly subconsciously synthesized that there was some valid connection here, which there was not, a fact that I gladly accept and admit.
Back to the matter of the proposed move, I think that we ought to welcome anyone's input here, including Li's, but that we need to try to convert the original Chinese (with which Li is familiar, which is helpful) into a format that us humble English speakers can understand with minimal hesitation.
I'd also like to point out that, in English, surnames aren't generally considered to carry any meaning beyond that of a family, regardless of etymology. As such, it is best to try to devise a solution that will meet the needs of all readers. Though I'm not interested in Chinese names, I have found myself reading articles on them, in search of whether there's a connection between, say, Li and Lee. From an article, as I and Rob have proposed, which informs about all the names, I would learn that there is not. This would be much more confusing as a series of disambiguation pages with titles containing bizarre foreign ideographs and phrases like "meaning plum" that I frankly wouldn't, in this scenario, care about.
At this point, however, I feel like all of us (myself included) have started just acting immaturely here with personal attacks and things that look like personal attacks that aren't and people arguing over whether something means plum or not. I think we're all sick of this and I really don't think anyone wants this to lead to an RfC or even arbitration.
If there's still any chance of my being respected here, I'd like to suggest that we move on to a categorized !vote, now that we've established a broad range of possibilities, each of which exactly two of us agree on. We're also all taking this far too seriously, considering that this page was getting only about 150-200 hits per month before someone decided to start an argument over how we should handle surnames. It was fine before, really. Can we just stop this now?
With all due respect to everyone involved,  — TORTOISEWRATH 03:38, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
Looking back, I do have to admit that I probably shouldn't have gotten so angry. As for a categorical !vote, we probably haven't gotten enough people involved yet for any such !vote to be relied upon. Since the RM was only started on 20 June, I'd say give it at least two more days for people to discuss what options we have, before we make a straw poll of sorts for each category (those who prefer a merge, those who prefer using Chinese characters, those who prefer translations, and any others that I have missed). Since only three days have passed, I feel that we'd be moving on too soon, and there might be points that we have potentially missed. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 05:11, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
Wow, it's only been three days. I mean, we've generated over 10,000 words. Someone should start an RfC about something extremely controversial and submit the result for NaNoWriMo. ;-)  — TORTOISEWRATH 05:32, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Question Rob you prefer Li (surname meaning plum) to Lǐ (李 "plum") on the argument that "The Chinese characters mean nothing to the majority of English-language readers" - but do you mean "the Chinese characters mean nothing to the majority of English-language readers who aren't interested in and won't read articles on Chinese names, or who are interested in and will read articles on Chinese names? Can you really argue that Lǐ (李 "plum") isn't more helpful to the likely audience for these specific articles. For example, have you yourself ever read any of these articles? In ictu oculi (talk) 01:32, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
We shouldn't be making assumptions as to who or who is not likely to read up on Chinese surnames called "Li" and their language skills. It's about accessibility and recognisability. This is why WP:UE is policy. We have to assume zero knowledge of other languages. --Rob Sinden (talk) 11:57, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
+1. It's best to recognize and outline the differences between the names while also keeping the articles accessible and understandable to English-only readers, who believe it or not, actually exist.  — TORTOISEWRATH 19:02, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
  • comment I'm going back to Jimbo's original argument, where he said something like "This article is essentially about the character". Again, based on my WP:IAR premise here, we have articles on "concepts", like Water, or Iron, we have articles on places, like Beijing, we have articles on people, like Jet Li, and then we have a very special set of articles, which are articles on NAMES. Now, in the case of Chinese, it seems each name is basically one character, and there are several characters that, when translated to english, end up with basically the same spelling. Thus, we need to disambiguate. My argument is, invoking IAR, that even though NORMALLY one should not use Chinese characters in a title, if the article itself is LITERALLY about a Chinese character, then using said character to disambiguate is perfectly relevant and acceptable.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 02:44, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict)This seems quite rational when stated in this manner.  — TORTOISEWRATH 03:38, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
  • I predict this is going to end up with 65.94.79.6's wishlist. In ictu oculi (talk) 03:14, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
    • Li (surname, 李 'plum')
    • Lì (surname, 利 'favorable')
    • Lí (surname, 黎 'dark')
    • Li (surname, 栗 'chestnut')
    • Li (surname, 厲 'grind')

(random break for length)

  • Support strongly on procedural grounds. Undiscussed controversial page moves (that are so crappy that "Chinese" is not capitalised) should not be rewarded. Also support on the merits. The article is about a Chinese surname with one particular character and several Romanisations, not the term "Li" which applies more commonly to other surnames. —  AjaxSmack  03:43, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment I'm probably going to get slapped several more times for saying this (please don't hurt me...), but there is a policy (yes, an actual, official policy) stating, verbatim: "Names not originally in a Latin alphabet, such as Greek, Chinese, or Russian names, must be transliterated." (emphasis mine) I'm trying to go with the spirit of the law here, but that sentence seems pretty cut and dried to me in suggesting that using Chinese characters is not acceptable here.  — TORTOISEWRATH 03:49, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
We are playing the IAR trump card here, no need to continue quoting policy, we KNOW
No, but you might get a minnow for quoting something that has already been extensively quoted. I fully, totally, and absolutely concede that on THAT policy, we should never have a chinese character in a title. So at least from me, consider that policy as having kicked the sh*t out of this RM, as in, OPEN-SHUT case. In fact, I've been in many diacritics discussions, and have always considered that a bright line. But this discussion has convinced me that this is a quintessential WP:IAR case - literally the exception that proves the rule. The nice thing about IAR is, it's like a trump card. If you have it in your pocket, and you play it wisely, you can trump any other rule. I, and others, are explicitly PLAYING THE IAR card. So future discussants, we don't need cites or quotes of WP:UE. We know, we accept, we concede. But the trump card has been played, so now you have to tell US, why you think we aren't making the wiki better by helping users find the right name quickly and easily, when the best, clearest, shortest, most obvious way to disambiguate the name is the character itself.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 04:07, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Even policies are not absolute. WP:IAR exists as one of the Five Pillars, for cases such as this. We should not rule out a good compromise (like 65.94.79.6's wishlist) because it is technically against the "rules". _dk (talk) 04:10, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict × 2) Hmm. See our other comments above, then. ;-)  — TORTOISEWRATH 04:12, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
Someone else can decide which fish to slap with. But User talk:TortoiseWrath what exactly is different from you saying this again and the several previous times it has been said already, and already had repeatedly pointed out that it is transliterated... it was transliterated... it will still be transliterated. Please look at the previous stable titles and 65.94.79.6's proposals, they are all transliterated
    • Li (surname, 李 'plum')
    • Lì (surname, 利 'favorable')
    • Lí (surname, 黎 'dark')
    • Li (surname, 栗 'chestnut')
    • Li (surname, 厲 'grind')
User talk:TortoiseWrath sorry but in view of your "In this matter, it is important to consider the primary demographic of the English Wikipedia" comment, I have to ask this, have you ever contributed to, or read, an article about a Chinese family name? Do you really believe that the primary demographic of the English Wikipedia—readers who actually will read articles on Chinese names wouldn't benefit from not having to hunt through Li (which is only one dialect) surname? In ictu oculi (talk) 04:14, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict × ∞) I have (as I think I mentioned above somewhere), and I've already self-trouted, and though I don't speak it, I happen to be fairly familiar with Chinese semantics and especially romanization. What I'm suggesting is that, for the mutual benefit of those of us who read articles on Chinese names but don't speak Chinese (it's an OCD thing) and those you're thinking of, there's no reason that, for example, those five names couldn't be second-level headers in a single article.
If you (I shouldn't be writing this in the second-person, but I am) speak Chinese and you want to know more about the intricacies of the Chinese language, which seems to be the reason for coming here you're thinking of, frankly, you're probably better off looking for that in the Chinese Wikipedia.  — TORTOISEWRATH 04:22, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
Sure, put all the names under second-level headings for now. There's no problem now, but when each section grows to the size of, say, Yuan (surname) (which only covers one Chinese surname 袁 and deliberately avoids this issue by not containing information on the other Yuans), then we'd have a very big problem. There are people above saying that we'll deal with that when it happens, but I think it's important that we have this discussion now since this affects all Chinese surname articles, both current and future ones. _dk (talk) 04:52, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
I'll have to dwell on that. I agree with your point, but I really don't think using "Li (surname, 栗 'chestnut')" as a page title is favorable to anything. Either way, I'm definitely glad we decided to capitalize "Into". (I hope you got that reference, because otherwise I look like I have no idea whatsoever what we're talking about.)  — TORTOISEWRATH 05:04, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
User:Underbar dk in general maybe, but one problem with "for now" is that the bytes that have been expended already here could have properly sourced most of these articles. If we want a WP:Merge discussion it should be carried out after per WP:BRD the disruptive move has been restored. I found no difficulty in sourcing up this Lì (Chinese surname) ie. "Li (profit)", and it's a rare one. Each of the others which are more common would only be 10-20 min work. In ictu oculi (talk) 05:08, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
I should have put a small </sarcasm> note after that first sentence. Also, in the interest of transparency, I am the same User:Deadkid dk who nominated this page move, I just had a username change. Also, User:TortoiseWrath, nope, doesn't ring a bell =p _dk (talk) 08:08, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
Talk:Star Trek Into Darkness, archives 1-11. Eleven months and 160,000+ words arguing about whether to capitalize "Into" in the title.  — TORTOISEWRATH 18:59, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
User:TortoiseWrath. First question: you don't see a contradiction between your statement (a) "mutual benefit" and your statement (b) "you're probably better off looking for that in the Chinese Wikipedia."?
My second question would be: should an argument effectively based on "go away please and read zh.wp" be given any weight in a RM discussion? You seem to be ignoring the existence of overseas Chinese, foreigners learning Chinese. Agnes Weiyun He, Yun Xiao Chinese as a Heritage Language: Fostering Rooted World Citizenry 2008 p89 states "In the past two decades, changes in U.S. demographics and market opportunities in China have generated great interest in Mandarin Chinese as a foreign language in the United States. Based on the 2000 U.S. census, the Asian American population has increased to 10.2 million" Without starting to count Australia, Canada, Britain, or foreigners worldwide learning a little Chinese that's an audience of 10.2 million, the ones who actually have Chinese family names - including 100,000s of Li/Lee/Lai, who you're saying "you're probably better off looking for that in the Chinese Wikipedia." - except that these are native English speakers who don't fluently read Chinese. Why should those 10.2 million plus audience's convenience be ignored, at no cost whatsoever to totally monoglott readers? And some monoglott readers of Chinese name articles can visually distinguish Li (surname, 李 'plum') and Li (surname, 栗 'chestnut') even if they couldn't say them/write them/recognise them in other contexts. In ictu oculi (talk) 05:08, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
As I've said, I'm all in favor of disambiguating these names; I just think we need to do it in a way that will confuse neither of these groups. Visually distinguishing things isn't helpful when one's trying to look something up (suppose someone wanted to know about the surname of someone whose surname was Li, and they had no clue whether it meant plum or chestnut, they just knew that it was spelled Li).
We can argue the details of what the problem is for years without coming up with a satisfying resolution; what matters is that there is definitely a problem that needs fixing and nobody's figured out how to adequately fix it.
That said, I have an idea. It's fairly vague, but an idea nonetheless: I don't know how one would go about sourcing this... but do these surnames happen to originate in different periods in Chinese history? If so, we could go with "Li (Shang Dynasty surname)", "Li (Tang Dynasty surname)", etc. or whatever the cases may be. Alternatively, if all these names are listed in the Baijiaxing, perhaps we could go with "Li (Baijiaxing surname 364)" etc.? The latter is a clumsy solution, but methinks it looks less clumsy within an English encyclopedia than Chinese characters or vague definitions.
We're obviously never going to please everyone here, but we can certainly try to please as many as we can.  — TORTOISEWRATH 05:25, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
"Visually distinguishing things isn't helpful when one's trying to look something up" - in my opinion, I don't think that people necessarily have to find the exact page using the search function in order to look something up. A disambiguation page located at, say, "Li (disambiguation)" would solve that issue, as they would select the link for the relevant article from that page. Also, people might be linked to the exact page from external sites (such as an internet forum), or can reach the specific page via Google based on the keywords that they use (e.g. "wikipedia li plum surname"). Nevertheless, I'm still open to other disambiguation options. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 05:41, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
User:TortoiseWrath firstly you didn't answer the question re the contradiction in your statements (a) "mutual benefit" and your statement (b) "you're probably better off looking for that in the Chinese Wikipedia."?.
Secondly "Visually distinguishing things isn't helpful when one's trying to look something up" - is now irrelevant, we are not talking about ONLY visually distinguishing things, we are now talking about ADDITIONALLY visually distinguishing things.
Thirdly, "nobody's figured out how to adequately fix it" that's the point, we have all figured out a way of helping everyone, 65.94.79.6's proposals are the perfect solution. We just have 1 or 2 users, yourself mainly saying "you're probably better off looking for that in the Chinese Wikipedia." - in effect, Asian Americans and Chinese learners go to zh.wp - though of course I realise that isn't the intention.
"Li (Tang Dynasty surname)" won't work and even if it did, why should we be so damned determined to make life difficult for the very group who are the readers for these articles. In ictu oculi (talk) 07:30, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
  1. Yes, I did. I was saying that we should have the information in the articles at the English Wikipedia, but we shouldn't use it in the title of articles here to avoid alienation of our English readers.
  2. Sorry.
  3. Except that we evidently haven't figured out a solution, because we're still having this discussion.
  4. To make life less difficult for those of us who can't read Chinese. Am I the only one of those here? If so, that might explain where your perceived problem with my presence is coming from.  — TORTOISEWRATH 18:59, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

The umbrella article, while providing summaries for each surname, should make sure everyone is on the same page by "(surname that means 'plum')" we mean the surname 李. By having all readers go through the umbrella article, whether we put a Chinese character in the title would be a moot point. Also we can have other umbrella articles under Lee (surname) and Lie (surname) that serves the same purpose. _dk (talk) 08:36, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

I would go with the first set per 65.94.79.6. I don't feel inclined to go with the second set given that there's a clear majority for retaining both forms of disambiguation assistance, and we haven't yet seen a single reason for removing help for Chinese learners.
Anyway, I just spent the last hour trying to disentangle the mess left by our unresponding new User. Everything except this article should now redirect to a section under surnames in Li, however the umbrella page is at Li (surname). In ictu oculi (talk) 10:06, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
"unresponding new User" being whom? Just curious.  — TORTOISEWRATH 18:59, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
Ahh, I see—User:Bmotbmot. In my typical, pessimistic fashion, I had assumed you meant me, and I was like "What are you accusing me of now?"  — TORTOISEWRATH 02:17, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Find something resembling English. Right now the article is barely start length, but if it gets too long, the sub sections can go into Li (plum) etc. Apteva (talk) 01:25, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

Li#Surnames and Li (surname)#Separate articles both currently look like this

In modern pinyin romanization of the Northern Chinese putonghua dialect Li may stand for several Chinese surnames:

First tone Lī
  • No names with first tone
Second tone Lí
Third tone Lǐ
Fourth tone Lì
Perhaps we could do something like this? I'm just putting this out there; this idea has its fair share of problems.
with redirects from 黎, Li (surname meaning plum), etc.  — TORTOISEWRATH 19:37, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
This is getting drastically overcomplicated. As an editor above pointed out earlier, are these surnames even notable in their own right to warrant individual articles? There isn't even an article for Lee (surname), it's a redirect to a list of names. The simplest way, which avoids any disambiguation at all and is useful for everyone, is to have a single article at Li (surname) describing the origins of and differences between all the different surnames which are anglicised as "Li". As an editor below points out, there are (apparently) a dozen different surnames. We can't have over a dozen different articles. If we present the information on a single article, scholars of Chinese and English-only readers alike can find the information easily without struggling through a dozen different articles trying to find the right one. At the same time, we have a directory list of all the people called "Li". I know I'm repeating myself, but this is a clear and simple solution. --Rob Sinden (talk) 20:49, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
That would be my first choice too, but in case you haven't noticed, that's apparently not satisfactory. I agree with you; I'm just trying to come up with a solution we can all agree on to some degree.  — TORTOISEWRATH 22:44, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
In ictu oculi has made clear that numbering surnames by Baijiaxing is a temporary solution to untangle an unresponsive user's unimpressive edits, only to last until the conclusion of this RM. I think we can agree that numbering surnames is needlessly complicated, not to mention that it is an even worse option than using Chinese characters since even Chinese people don't know which surname is numbered what in a thousand-year-old document. _dk (talk) 01:58, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
As dk say, as per my edit summary says, I moved Li (last name) and Li (family name) to Li (Chinese surname 249) Li (Chinese surname 247) inorder to aid myself while adding refs, and sorting out the mess that User:Bmotbmot is still making. No one who knows anything about the Baijiaxing will for a moment consider these temporary placements a suitable or remotely possible title. In ictu oculi (talk) 02:02, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose per Rob Sinden, et al. WP:EN seems pretty clear that "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". I know very few such individuals who would understand or appreciate the difference between 李 and 黎. If clarification is necessary, either disambiguate in a form more readily understood by English speakers or else simply address the variations in the text of the article. ╠╣uw [talk] 13:23, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
If you have a better suggestion on how to disambiguate, then let's hear it. _dk (talk) 14:26, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Support. While I agree that English should be used in article titles whenever possible, in this case it's simply not possible. There are at least a dozen different Chinese surnames that transliterate as Li in English, including 李, 利, 黎, 栗, 厲, 里, 理, 丽, 历, 礼, 郦, etc. The only possible way to distinguish them is by the Chinese character. For people who say that they should be lumped together in one article simply because they are spelled the same way in English, they are probably not aware that these names all had different provenance, thousands of years of divergent history, and many had different pronunciations in ancient Chinese. It's like suggesting to merge Georgia (U.S. state) and Georgia (country) into one article because they have the same spelling in English. -Zanhe (talk) 19:01, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
It's nothing like that at all - what we are talking about here are all a variety of surname, which are not differentiated between in Everyday working English. Consider a directory of names. Say a phone book. Are all the "Li"'s in an English-language phone book grouped under the different origins? No - they're all in alphabetical order under "Li". This means that the English speakers reading the phone book can find them. --Rob Sinden (talk) 19:10, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
Well, shouldn't an encyclopedia be a bit smarter than a phone book? A phone book won't tell you that Robert E Lee and Bruce Lee have completely different ancestries. Besides, we're still using the phonebook order by using the English spelling, and only adding a disambiguator to differentiate the completely unrelated names that happen to share the same spelling in English. -Zanhe (talk) 19:21, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
"what we are talking about here are all a variety of surname" - No, they're not a variety of surname, they're different, separate surnames, with separate and unrelated etymologies that do not intertwine with one another. This has been repeated ad nauseam. Your assumption is merely a result of your own lack of awareness on the topic. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 02:57, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
In Chinese, YES. In English, NO. As far as any English-only speaker is concerned, they are all a variety of the same surname. Yes, they are different surnames etymologically, and we must make this clear. However, all foreign surnames are effectively loanwords. We, the English speakers, get to choose how they're used in English, much as meerkat can refer to either a mongoose or a monkey, depending on language. This is the English Wikipedia; our article titles are in English and designed to appeal to people who speak English and want to know about a topic that they heard about in English.  — TORTOISEWRATH 03:07, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
This is an English Wikipedia article, written in English, about a Chinese topic. These are not English surnames. These are Chinese surnames, being documented in English on the English Wikipedia. This is the prime difference. If someone wants to write an article about how Chinese (or non-Chinese) surnames are used in the English language, feel free to create an article on that. However, that isn't what these articles are supposed to be about. And no, we can't just "use the Chinese Wikipedia instead", because the Chinese Wikipedia is written in Chinese, and that doesn't help non-Chinese speaking English speakers who would like to learn more about Chinese surnames, using articles that are written in English, and thus are understandable by English speakers. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 03:29, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
Worded alternatively: These articles are not about English loanword surnames that originate from Chinese. These articles are articles that are written in English, about Chinese surnames that are used in China and the rest of the Chinese-speaking world (Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, et cetera). -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 03:33, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Question. Would it be a safe assumption that the majority of the supporters of the usage of Chinese symbols have a working knowledge of Chinese? --Rob Sinden (talk) 19:13, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
Interesting idea. User:Obiwankenobi's UP says English and French, not Chinese; User:Benlisquare is a native Chinese speaker; User:Zanhe doesn't say, but he's very focused on Chinese-related articles; and User:Underbar_dk and User:In ictu oculi don't specify.
Oh, and User talk:65.94.79.6 geolocates to Montréal if that's relevant in any way.  — TORTOISEWRATH 19:29, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
I don't like having multiple topics in the same article. Overview/disambig/set index articles are all fine as the front foyer, but they should lead to separate articles for each topic. People keep conflating topics that share the same spelling into the same article, and I don't just mean Chinese names, it also occurs with military projects, aviation projects, etc. There's no practical limit on the number of articles on Wikipedia, so there's no need to make Wiktionary pages instead of disambiguated pages -- 65.94.79.6 (talk) 22:38, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
The problem Rob and I are seeing is that in English, surnames aren't considered to carry any meaning; they're merely groups of pronounceable letters meant to differentiate between persons with the same given name. We (especially Rob) don't think that variations on what is in English (I recognize this is not the case in Chinese, because their culture is different in regards to names' meaning) effectively the same surname necessarily warrant separate articles, if that makes sense.  — TORTOISEWRATH 22:44, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
One does not make one article for x number of topics, just because they are spelled the same. The topics aren't destinct on its meaning alone anyway, so it does not apply even if it was true that "surnames aren't considered to carry any meaning" in English. The spelling is the common characteristic that they share; beyond that, the rest is almost all distinct. --Cold Season (talk) 23:51, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
I hate to break it to you, but in English, they are not distinct. Think of the names as foreign words, spelled the same way (they are in English, but not in Chinese). Suppose, for a fictional example, that these names were all "Zorbgoat," and Zorbgoat would be a word in Zorbgotian that could mean either the Zorbgotian language or an apple tree. We would not have an article "Zorbgoat (language)" and an article "Zorbgoat (tree)"—we would have an article on "Zorbgoat" which would cover the language, and mention that it also means "apple tree," with a link to that article. In English, only the former function of this word would be prominent, much as in English, only the function of Li, Li, Li, Li, Li, Li, Li, and Li as surnames is prominent.  — TORTOISEWRATH 00:45, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
Wow, this is really tragic. Tortoise, would you like to combine Lee (Korean name) with Lee (English name)? After all, they're both spelled the same, they both end up in the phonebook in the same place, so let's merge those articles, right? If not, why not? We have thousands, upon THOUSANDS, of disambiguation pages here, that help us distinguish between words that are spelled the same in english, but represent different concepts. There are many names that have the same spelling, but completely different origins. We could also combine Mäki (finnish) and Maki_(name) (japanese) - after all, the only difference is those fiddly dots, and a few thousand miles, and years of history, but whatever, they're spelled the same in ENGLISH, so stick 'em together. --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 03:26, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Though the difference between, as you said, Lee and Lee or Mäki and Maki is less negligible to an English speaker (the names originating in substantially different parts of the world), I wouldn't necessarily be averse to those articles' merging, believe it or not, and you're currently reading something written by someone claiming a passion for global and historical linguistics. As you said, disambiguation pages are for distinguishing English words that represent different concepts. As English "words," names do not represent different concepts. They're just names. If you took an American guy and a Korean guy named Lee and an English guy named Lee and put them in a room together and said, "OK, American guy, do these people have the same name?", I can almost guarantee he would say "Yes," because from the perspective of how names are used in English, and only in English, they are the same. If, on the other hand, you took an American guy and a bird and a large industrial machine and asked "Are these the same thing?", he would say "No." I know this isn't what you want to hear, but it's the truth. I'm saying that it is important to acknowledge the different potential etymologies of the names, but not necessarily to disambiguate them fully. I urge you to think also of, say, a fifth-generation Chinese-American with the surname Lee. They probably have no idea that that surname is any different from that of Robert E. Lee, because for all intents and purposes in their life as an American, it's not.  — TORTOISEWRATH 04:03, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
No, I will not see names as words rather than separate topics per context of wikipedia and not wiktionary; articles are about topics and nothing else. Also, your theoretical situation about "Zorbgoat" is faulty, because one uses hatnotes and/or disambiguation pages instead of providing information of similar-spelled toipics. --Cold Season (talk) 16:00, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
No. No, it is not relevant in any way. None of it is (the comments on any user). --Cold Season (talk) 23:54, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
That IP geolocation was relevant merely because it didn't geolocate to China, so the chances are less that they speak Chinese (though still present). This matters because Chinese-speaking individuals have a COI in determining how English-only-speaking individuals will process information. We have to appease both those who do and do not speak Chinese, and there are examples of both of those types of people who would read a page on a Chinese surname.  — TORTOISEWRATH 00:45, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
TortoiseWrath, you have already gone over the line once. Please leave this ad hominem and COI talk. In ictu oculi (talk) 01:11, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
First off, stating a basic fact in response to another user's question directly asking for that question is hardly ad hominem on my part. Second, there is a conflict of interest here. Chinese-speaking people may (not will, but may) think first about how they would handle this matter at zh.wp, which is not necessarily relevant here. The input is certainly welcome, but the encyclopedias are written in different languages with different audiences in different cultures. Finally, the last time I "went over the line" was a mere misunderstanding, as I explained in great (and apologetic) detail above, leading to the closure of that discussion with minimal harm done. I'm sorry if this sounds harsh, but frankly, you're seeming a bit defensive about accepting others' equally-valid opinions and thoughts on the matter. Until writing this comment just now, I wasn't accusing anyone of anything.  — TORTOISEWRATH 02:15, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
"but frankly, you're seeming a bit defensive about accepting others' equally-valid opinions and thoughts on the matter." This also is an adhominem. You have been warned I count four times above for trying to leverage your own opinions on other editors location/knowledge/background/COI into this discussion. This is the last warning you will receive. In ictu oculi (talk) 04:19, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
Yes. Yes, it is. Ad hominem reasoning is not always fallacious. This is me warning you for the same thing. Could you please sleep on this and take a look back on your comments here in the morning? (I don't know if it's night yet where you are, but it sure is here.) I'll do the same. However, I would like to point out that COI is a real thing. It seems to me, and I suspect this isn't the case, that you're trying to suggest that conflicts of interest do not matter. "You have been warned [...] for trying to leverage your own opinions on other editors' [...] [conflicts of interest] [...]" Yes, that is what I am doing. I suspect that the other editors may have a conflict of interest, and I understand that you do not suspect this. I was asking there for others' input on whether they think they may.  — TORTOISEWRATH 04:28, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
This holds no value other than shit-slinging. Also, you are warning In ictu oculi for the same thing while said user hasn't stoop that far to make an ad hominem to further a stance. --Cold Season (talk) 16:00, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

(Another random break)

  • More wasted bytes - these articles could be feature length by now. All this talk and still not one user-benefit related reason for rejecting 65.94.79.6's solution. User talk:Robsinden User:TortoiseWrath Would it be a safe assumption that the majority of readers of the article will benefit from Lǐ (surname, 李 "plum")? - please, what is your answer? In ictu oculi (talk) 01:08, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
No. Perhaps a small majority. The bits with the ǐ, 李, and plum will be meaningless to very many of the readers of the articles, and could prevent them from finding what they're looking for. They wouldn't be able to type it in a search box. Though I have begrudgingly come to support the use of a disambiguation page after _dk pointed out the length of the article on the surname 袁 Yuán, I retain my view. To quote from above: "It's best to recognize and outline the differences between the names while also keeping the articles accessible and understandable to English-only readers." <sarcasm> Yes, we're wasting bytes, but that's your fault, not mine, because I'm always right. </sarcasm>  — TORTOISEWRATH 01:16, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
Good you've admitted a large number of users will benefit from the additional disambiguation as previously provided, with Jimbo's blessing, and therefore there's no reason not to go with 65.94.79.6's serve-everyone compromise. End of discussion. In ictu oculi (talk) 01:42, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
Hardly. I've also admitted a large number of users will be impaired by that form of disambiguation.  — TORTOISEWRATH 02:08, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
User:TortoiseWrath, how exactly is anyone "impaired" by Lǐ (surname, 李 "plum") rather than Lǐ (surname, "plum")? Please spell out the exact form that this "impairment" takes. In ictu oculi (talk) 04:01, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
They're not. They're impaired by practically anything other than Li (surname) or Li (Chinese surname). We have no way of easily typing ǐ or 李 in a search box, nor of knowing which surname we're looking for. If we're led to a disambiguation page with a list comprising entries like Lǐ (surname, 李 "plum"), we still won't know which one we're looking for, or which one Li Guangyu or Li Zheng or Andrew Lih has.  — TORTOISEWRATH 04:22, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
Absolutely not. The vast majority of readers of the English-language Wikipedia will actually be hindered by Lǐ (surname, 李 "plum"), due to the usage of an unfamiliar diacritic, and an unfamiliar Chinese character. Now, if your argument was that the most common version of the surname "Li" was notable enough for a breakout article from the umbrella article Li (surname) and you wanted to call it "Li (common Chinese surname)" (or something akin to this), leaving the other 11 or so varieties at the umbrella article, then I could concede some benefit. --Rob Sinden (talk) 10:30, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
What would you call a second breakout article from the umbrella article? Li (less common Chinese surname)? And the third one Li (lesser common Chinese surname)? You seem not to understand that at least 李 and 黎 are very common surnames that can easily be expanded to full article size. _dk (talk) 11:11, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
Well, I'm not in favour of the breakout article in the first place, but if I was to be convinced, it would have to be with a disambiguator in English. --Rob Sinden (talk) 11:22, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
And if Lí (黎) is worthy of a breakout article, it needs a shitload an awful lot of work. --Rob Sinden (talk) 11:50, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
And here we come back to this original question, what would be a good disambiguator in English? _dk (talk) 13:19, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
  • I'm just going to bring this down here so it can get the attention it deserves—Rob said this buried in the discussion above, and it's an excellent, concise, and, I think, convincing summary of the view we both share.

If we present the information on a single article, scholars of Chinese and English-only readers alike can find the information easily without struggling through a dozen different articles trying to find the right one. At the same time, we have a directory list of all the people called "Li". I know I'm repeating myself, but this is a clear and simple solution.

This reasoning is crystal-clear. I do not see what the problem with it is, other than the article length problem that we don't yet have and that likely wouldn't be a terrible concern in the end.  — TORTOISEWRATH 03:13, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
That just shows that neither Rob nor yourself have grasped that Lai and Lei (to think in Cantonese rather than modern Mandarin for a second) are different names with different histories from different towns with different interlinks to Chinese wp. In ictu oculi (talk) 04:01, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
We have both acknowledged that, and I at least continue to stand by the position that it is important to note this. What I'm saying is that we need to keep the articles accessible and easily-comprehensible to people who speak English, not Chinese. I think that the article should be a single article, Li (surname), broken into sections detailing the individual, separate names. This way, it is easy for English speakers to find which article they're looking for (see my response to your other question above), and it is easy for Chinese scholars to see the history and stuff (the last three words not meant derogatorily, just me being too tired to come up with better ones) about each individual surname.
Also, sorry; we edit-conflict-ed and your text got deleted somehow; I had to add it back in, but you probably got about five notifications for that.  — TORTOISEWRATH 04:22, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
  • I would like you to restore the last version of my text in the format in which I had formatted my text. Thank you. In ictu oculi (talk) 04:25, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
  • It is very worrisome and disheartening that some editors refuse to see anything beyond the surface and say that all "Li"s are the same surname. But in the interest of not repeating ourselves ad nauseum and beating a dead horse into the ground, I urge people to look at my proposal above. The umbrella article (note I am not calling it a disambiguation article) should cover all the English romanization aspects of all surnames that happen to transliterate to "Li" (also US population distributions, etc.) while summarizing all the information so that an oblivious reader can select which Chinese "Li" article to click into to read about all the details of the origins and distributions of a certain "Li". "Lee" and "Lie" and "Ly" would also be structured the same way, but with links to the "Li" articles instead when appropriate. There can be a List of people with the surname Lee that does not differentiate between the English, Chinese, or Korean origins, but the specific surname articles (Li (surname , "plum")) will only contain names of people with that Chinese surname. Please, let's get some constructive discussion on how we can reconcile our differences instead of shouting NO NO NO at each other and accusing each other of COIs. _dk (talk) 05:19, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
As another editor has pointed out, is each Chinese rendering of a surname notable in its own right? Not every surname has an article. Mine doesn't for example, and, for that matter, neither does Lee (surname). However, an encyclopedic article noting the same transliteration of various Chinese surnames might be. One that starts "Li is the Anglicisation of several Chinese surnames..." is a good idea for now. --Rob Sinden (talk) 08:00, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
Scrub that - Lee (surname) was a misredirect. --Rob Sinden (talk) 08:02, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
Even if not every surname is notable, all it takes is two surnames that are spelled the same way in English to put us into this predicament. Let's not distract ourselves from the bigger issue at hand. _dk (talk) 09:02, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
There's no distraction intended, this is a solution to the "bigger issue at hand". We can make one encyclopedic article, or a muddle of stubs of dubious notability with confusing disambiguators. And as other editors have pointed out, all variations of the surname "Li" are treated the same way in English. I'm not saying we don't differentiate, I'm saying that we cover every one on a single article. What do we lose that way? If anything, we gain, because the ones that would not be notable in their own right, get coverage that they would not otherwise receive. --Rob Sinden (talk) 09:28, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
Rob: I think that's an excellent point; I entirely agree. ╠╣uw [talk] 15:24, 25 June 2013 (UTC)
Our decision here also affects how we deal with all single-syllable Chinese surnames, since almost every pinyin combination in the Chinese language has several surnames attached to it. I personally would like to see this discussion settled satisfactorily so that we don't have to come back to this quagmire in the future (the last discussion we had in 2006 ended in no-concensus and probably led to this mess). I personally believe that the surname articles certainly have the potential to grow to full length separately (Yuan (surname) is a good example), thus motions to the effect of "we will branch off when we need to and deal with the issue then" only delays the inevitable. I'd hate to be the hapless editor who will have to deal with this the next time. _dk (talk) 13:10, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
Good point. I see that there are also a couple of other examples where differences are only diacritics, Shen being one. But some of these articles are in an awful state. We should be embarrassed that Feng (family name) and Li Surname (莉) are even present. --Rob Sinden (talk) 13:21, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
Those articles, among many others, are recent works (< 1 week) by the elusive User:Bmotbmot, who you may have heard as the unresponsive editor who started the whole mess in this very article. S/he is probably still writing these monstrosities as we speak. Hence In ictu oculi's calls to block him/her. _dk (talk) 13:29, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
Ah! I thought that they were just responsible for the moves. Okay, so, aside from the fact that I personally support a merge, could you educate me as to whether each surname has a unique diacritic in English? --Rob Sinden (talk) 13:38, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
These monstrosities should be speedily redirected to the "umbrella" page so that we can have a clean base to start from. --Rob Sinden (talk) 13:45, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
Mandarin Chinese has four tones, those diacritics denote tone in the pinyin system. I'm not a fan of them myself, but it was one of the ideas that was floated to use as disambiguation back then. They are problematic since even with tones there are still multiple surnames under one title, and English speakers still have no idea which is which. _dk (talk) 14:18, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
Okay, so how "official" is the Hundred Family Surnames? Or the meanings at List of common Chinese surnames. What are the objections to this? If we do this, we really must avoid Chinese characters. --Rob Sinden (talk) 14:34, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
(And on a side note, I just stumbled upon this: Baixing and I'm none the wiser - maybe it needs a knowledgeable eye to take a look at it...) --Rob Sinden (talk) 14:35, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
Probably not very official...some guy a thousand years ago decides to put down all the surnames he's come across while reading history books, and for some reason people nowadays still know about it. But the order he places the surnames at are not relevant at all starting from the 2nd or the 3rd line on, and nobody should be expected to know which surname is ranked what in the document (it's like memorizing the digits of pi). I have no objections with the meanings on the surnames list, though surnames that's named after places might become problematic. Baixing probably doesn't deserve to be an article...it just means "the masses". _dk (talk) 16:44, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
I've tried to rationalise "Feng" by using diacritics as current disambiguation was useless, in the same way that "Shen" is rationalised. I understand that diactritcs maybe aren't the ideal solution, but I was trying to create a clean starting point. Maybe someone can take a look, as there were four articles, but only three diacritics, so I've reduced one to a mention at the (new) umbrella article "Feng (surname)". Again, I'd probably support a merge of these at "Feng (surname)" until such time as each different one warrants its own article - most of them are stubs just now. Category:Chinese-language surnames is looking a lot cleaner now, if it wasn't for these damned "Li"s ;) --Rob Sinden (talk) 08:07, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Why are we here?

Come on, guys. This is getting ridiculous. We've spat out, well, that, in an argument about something that nobody seemed to care about a week ago, a month ago, or two years ago. Much of this argument has just devolved into accusations, name-calling, circular reasoning, ownership, and even ad Jimbonem.

As it is, this conversation isn't getting us any closer to resolving a problem; it's just getting more and more pointlessly heated and uncivil. None of us like it, and I'm sure we all just want it to be over.

It's obvious that we're deadlocked here; we haven't gotten any new editors involved, and it's fairly certain at this point that noöne here is going to change their position on this matter. I really don't think we have anywhere else to go at this point but an RfC. I don't like it either.  — TORTOISEWRATH 17:58, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Maybe we're getting somewhere, but I would love to see a few more eyes on this. --Rob Sinden (talk) 19:07, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
I'd like to think that Rob and I are beginning to see eye to eye. _dk (talk) 03:39, 25 June 2013 (UTC)
Gentlemen, please let it go. The RM already arrived at a workable consensus for titles the day it was listed, which now appears to only have two vocal opponents. Given that it is a WP:BRD either the consensus is followed or the original title restored. I would encourage all editors who have already said enough here to spend the time contributing to WP China or WP Anthroponymy with improving and sourcing these articles or with creating new articles. In ictu oculi (talk) 03:10, 25 June 2013 (UTC)
There are a lot more than two opponents to the usage of Chinese characters. If we can agree that these are unacceptable, I'd like to think we can move forward with a compromise regarding suitable disambiguation (to be used only when necessary, and without encouraging unnecessary articles). --Rob Sinden (talk) 07:53, 25 June 2013 (UTC)
There are only 2 editors above who are arguing that readers of articles of Chinese names will not benefit, or in fact be "impaired" by Lǐ (surname, 李 "plum") rather than Lǐ (surname, "plum"). You have yet to demonstrate that the readers of articles on Chinese names are going to object to the very characters which as Jimbo said are the subject. All the others above seem satisfied with the serve-all-readers approach, only 2 editors are objecting, without any demonstration of why. In ictu oculi (talk) 11:45, 25 June 2013 (UTC)
We may be the only two editors still active in our opposition, but we're not the only against it. I can count at least 6 others above, 2-3 specifically agreeing with me personally. However, we definitely need some more eyes on this. And stop interpreting the Jimbo quote as you see fit. I read it as: "I'm against it, maybe there's no other way, not up to me!" --Rob Sinden (talk) 11:48, 25 June 2013 (UTC)
Can you please clearly and coherently demonstrate how exactly any editor is disadvantaged by Lǐ (surname, 李 "plum") rather than Lǐ (surname, "plum"). In ictu oculi (talk) 11:54, 25 June 2013 (UTC)
Simple. It's not written in English. --Rob Sinden (talk) 11:59, 25 June 2013 (UTC)
Lǐ (surname, 李 "plum") have 3 components written in English, same as Lǐ (surname, "plum"). Can you please clearly and coherently demonstrate how exactly any editor is disadvantaged by the presence of a fourth component 李 which will benefit the majority of readers reading the article. How are your English-only but interested in Chinese names readers disadvantaged by the fourth component? In ictu oculi (talk) 12:07, 25 June 2013 (UTC)
The introduction of a non-familiar character will lead English-language readers to ponder its meaning. Also, article titles and disambiguation should be as concise as possible, so it is redundant by translation (in your example above - by no means decided that this is how we proceed when disambiguation is needed) --Rob Sinden (talk) 12:10, 25 June 2013 (UTC)
I think Rob, TortoiseWrath, et al describe things well. As regards getting other editors involved, I'll say for my own part that I've refrained from arguing at length on this subject since it seemed like others were already ably doing so – and since I felt that simply adding more volume to an already voluminous discussion would not be productive. However, I can say that I don't feel that the use of Chinese characters in titles (even as disambiguators) is best for the great majority of the encyclopedia's readers, nor consistent with our standards and policies, nor desirable for various reasons already elaborated. ╠╣uw [talk] 17:45, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Comment As someone not previously involved in this discussion, but interested in the issues involved (I used to be a member of a BSI subcommittee on standards for transcription and transliteration), perhaps I can add some comments.

  • The Chinese writing system cannot be either transliterated (mapped symbol for symbol) or transcribed (mapped to a more-or-less equivalent sound representation) into the Latin alphabet, with or without diacritics. It cannot be transliterated because its principles are entirely different. As a writing system it cannot be transcribed because each character may represent significantly different sounds in different dialects/languages which use that character. (When used to write a specified dialect/language, a not very accurate transcription into the English usage of the Latin alphabet is possible.)
  • Thus the requirement that Names not originally in a Latin alphabet, such as .. Chinese .. names, must be transliterated is incoherent. Such names as pronounced in, say, Mandarin, can be transcribed, but never transliterated.
  • In a literate, bureaucratic society, a person's name is the way it is written, not the way it is pronounced. The "o" in the first syllable of my surname (Coxhead) is pronounced very differently by me (and other speakers from England) and by most Americans and Canadians, but that doesn't make it a different surname. 蔣 is the same surname, whether or not this character is pronounced differently in different dialects or languages using the Chinese writing system.
  • This logic leads to the conclusion that surnames consisting of Chinese characters cannot be either transliterated or transcribed.
  • So how should they be disambiguated, assuming that there are to be articles on different Chinese surnames with the same Pinyin transcription?
  • I agree that Chinese characters should not be used in article titles, even for disambiguation. The reason is that there needs to be a redirect to every article title which is difficult to enter from a standard English keyboard, a redirect which takes the form of a sequence of easily typed characters which are clearly related to the target title. Examples may be clearer. The scientific names of hybrid plants contain the multiply symbol, e.g. Musa × paradisiaca. The × is difficult to enter from a standard English keyboard. But it's easy to type an "x" instead, so there's a redirect at Musa x paradisiaca. In the same way, Brontë family can be reached via the redirect at Bronte family. There's simply no equivalent for a Chinese character, so the great majority of readers could never type the title nor an obvious redirect.
  • The only disambiguator suggested above which makes any kind of sense to me seems to be the approximate English translation of the meaning of the character. It's not ideal, but it's the best there is.

Peter coxhead (talk) 21:44, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Regarding the redirect issue, I think it's possible that a title without a Chinese character can redirect to a page with one in the title, and still be systematic and unambiguous enough. For example, if "Li (surname, plum)" redirected to "Li (surname, 李 plum)" or however we decide on formatting the titles, and "Li (surname, profit)" redirected to the other one, then there would be no need for someone to type in these special characters when looking something up. As for the redirect not being "inclusive" or "precise" enough, redirects aren't supposed to be accurate or precise in the first place, they are there to bring people to the page that they want to see. WP:REDIRECTs do not necessarily have to be NPOV, correct or anything like that. Thus, for the same reason, Banky Moon redirects to Ban Ki-moon (it's a common mishearing/misspelling) and Poccnr redirects to Russia (people may mistake Cyrillic letters for stylized Latin ones). -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 03:48, 26 June 2013 (UTC)
I don't intend to continue responding here, but I would point out that these examples precisely support my point. To an English speaker using an English keyboard, "Banky Moon" and "Poccnr" are plausible inputs for "Ban Ki-Moon" and "Россия". There is no such plausible input for 李, so it shouldn't be used in an article title in the English Wikipedia. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:09, 26 June 2013 (UTC)
Peter's excellent response aside, wouldn't "Li (surname, 李 plum)" be redundant if we can translate as "Li (surname, plum)"? Especially seeing as we'd be having to ignore a policy to implement. --Rob Sinden (talk) 07:54, 26 June 2013 (UTC)
What my original point was, the purpose of the redirect would be so that people wouldn't need to type "李", the redirect would take them directly to the relevant article. This is precisely because many people would find it difficult to type in 李; otherwise, we wouldn't need such a redirect in the first place. The 李 in the title is there to disambiguate in a manner that is definitive. 李 can only be 李, whereas translations are subject to interpretation and vary based on the person translating; it may be beneficial to incorporate a definitive, systematic component within the title, alongside an interpretative component (hence character AND translation). This would make Google searches easier, for instance - regardless of whether people search for "plum" or "李", they all end up in the same place at the end, since both are used (keep in mind that people have different habits when it comes to searching, and catering to more is more beneficial to catering to a select group). I'm not exactly dead set on having characters in the title, though; this is one potential outcome out of many that can be considered, a suggestion of sorts. The rationale for having 李 in the title was mentioned by someone else a few paragraphs above. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 13:13, 26 June 2013 (UTC)
  • While I commend Peter for his sound and cool-headed analysis, the solution he proposes (using approximate translation as disambiguator) is not workable for the following reasons:
  1. Many characters are used exclusively as surnames and have no other meaning, such as the Li (酈) in Li Daoyuan
  2. Some names have acquired derogatory meanings in modern Chinese, and using them in article titles would be highly offensive. For example: Ji (姬), the royal surname of the Zhou Dynasty, means "concubine" in modern Chinese. And Diao (刁) means sly, crafty.
  3. Many Chinese characters have multiple meanings, and which one to use as the disambiguator would be a highly subjective and potentially contentious decision.
-Zanhe (talk) 00:32, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
  • I'm not sure where we are now, as I'm having difficulty parsing the above this early in the morning, but I've seen editors (especially [only?] User:In ictu oculi) asking for clarification as to exactly how someone could be hindered by the use of Chinese characters or non-detonalized pinyin. As I stated above (seems to have been lost in the sea of comments):

They're impaired by practically anything other than Li (surname) or Li (Chinese surname). We have no way of easily typing ǐ or 李 in a search box, nor of knowing which surname we're looking for. If we're led to a disambiguation page with a list comprising entries like Lǐ (surname, 李 "plum"), we still won't know which one we're looking for, or which one Li Guangyu or Li Zheng or Andrew Lih has.

I hope we figure something out soon.  — TORTOISEWRATH 17:12, 26 June 2013 (UTC)
Second point first, Li Guangyu or Li Zheng or Andrew Lih have that info in their articles. Surname articles don't list every person with a surname.
Re first point, again, "We have no way of easily typing ǐ or 李 in a search box" again, as said before, we don't type disambiguators in RH search boxes. That is what autocomplete is for. The autocomplete produces the options. Try it with [Li surn... ]. Now again please in what exact way is anyone disadvantaged by Lǐ (surname, 李 "plum")? In ictu oculi (talk) 22:49, 26 June 2013 (UTC)
I think what he means is that even though the information is readily available on the page, an English speaker who does not understand Chinese won't be able to make use of that information. Though, I don't think this is necessarily an issue - this might be a controversial thing for me to say, but I think Chinese isn't supposed to be "read" like English is read; the ideograms are more like pictures that you visually see. Even someone who doesn't understand Chinese must realise that 李 and 酈 look visually different, right? If the Andrew Lih article has "酈安治" in the lede or infobox, wouldn't it be a no-brainer to a non-Chinese speaker who is interested in Chinese surnames (you wouldn't be looking up Chinese surnames otherwise) that it is different to 李? Just like how a tree looks differently to a fish, 李 (a 木 tree and 子 child) visually looks different to 酈. This is essentially how we're disambiguating the articles - not specifically so you have to type something different, but you can visually see in th title bar that the characters are different, meaning that they are different surnames. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 03:18, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Time to move on?

  • Another serious issue that we are all forgetting is WP:ACCESS. It is quite clear that we do not have consensus for WP:IAR when it comes to ignoring policy WP:UE. Any "for" !vote for this seems to stem from a systemic bias - i.e. we are in two camps - Chinese speakers are pro usage of Chinese characters, non-Chinese speakers firmly against. Hence my misconstrued question earlier on. Systemic bias notwithstanding, we still have a rough 50/50 split on the use of Chinese characters.
The matter of whether each romanization of each surname should have its own page, or whether each should be merged aside (although it does solve the disambiguation problem!), we are spending too much time arguing about these Chinese characters. It really is time to take this option off the table - there is not enough support for WP:IAR here. --Rob Sinden (talk) 08:58, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
These discussions are finalised based on the quality of comments made, and not the number of votes. You should already be aware of that by now. You have yet to properly address many of the issues brought to you. Ignoring 70% of my replies to you doesn't mean that you've become top dog here, it just means that you're really good at ignoring things. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 11:48, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
And again stop trying to discredit me. 70%? Really? I think the only times I've ignored you is when you've been unreasonable. I even replied when you accused me of being incompetent, which I probably shouldn't have. Look - we're descending into this again. I wanted to put a stop to this kind of thing. --Rob Sinden (talk) 12:14, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
In that case, explain how the following points made by myself are unreasonable. If you can't, care to address them? All of these are from the above, and left unanswered by you:
  • That would be irrelevant to the articles at hand, which are discussing the surnames of people that are known to be either 李 or whatever. I wouldn't group them anywhere, because your example is a small deviation from the larger group. There are tens of millions of people that do know that their surname is certainly 李, and this is a figure magnitudes larger than the few Americans that have whatever Chinese-origin surname. These articles document the surname of the former, not the latter.
  • This is an English Wikipedia article, written in English, about a Chinese topic. These are not English surnames. These are Chinese surnames, being documented in English on the English Wikipedia. This is the prime difference. If someone wants to write an article about how Chinese (or non-Chinese) surnames are used in the English language, feel free to create an article on that. However, that isn't what these articles are supposed to be about.
  • The 李 in the title is there to disambiguate in a manner that is definitive. 李 can only be 李, whereas translations are subject to interpretation and vary based on the person translating; it may be beneficial to incorporate a definitive, systematic component within the title, alongside an interpretative component (hence character AND translation). This would make Google searches easier, for instance
  • As for the need to disambiguate, remember that Wikipedia is WP:NOT a paper encyclopedia, and we can afford to be a bit more technical. Paper encyclopedias would not go into the amount of detail that we have in articles such as C++ and Lisp (programming language). There is no harm in including more detailed information; there is harm, however, in mixing everything up into an illogical mess just for convenience.
How about it? -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 12:47, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
I didn't think the point of these discussions was to answer every point every editor ever makes (although that seems what I'm doing now). Going over old ground would not be beneficial at this point, especially seeing as it seems that the issues you raise above have already been covered. --Rob Sinden (talk) 12:52, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
Some are barely addressed, even by other editors. How can you assume that we haven't been making valid points if mine are plainly ignored? Remember, you said that "there is not enough support for WP:IAR here", and I'm saying that these discussions are quality based, not quantity based. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 12:56, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
I'm trying to bring this to some kind of conclusion that is most acceptable to everyone, rather than the endless circle of petty squabbles that this is quickly deteriorating into. Fact remains, we do not have any kind of a consensus to break policy and use Chinese characters here. In the absence of this consensus, and keeping within the boundaries of policies, guidelines and technical restrictions, we should all be trying to move forward here. The only way I can see this happening is if we take the Chinese character issue out of the equation. ---Rob Sinden (talk) 11:58, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
What was the original consensus? If I am not mistaken, you were the one who suggested a break from current conventions, and insisted on merges and the removal of Chinese character disambiguation from titles. The articles Li (李) and Lí (黎) have existed for many, many years prior to these recent events, and there were no issues brought up regarding these pages during this lengthy timespan. If there's any kind of change that does not have a clear majority consensus, it would be the removal of Chinese characters from titles, and the merger of Chinese surnames, both of which are related to your proposals. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 12:03, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
As I said, there is a systemic bias towards Chinese characters because of the editors involved being (I assume) Chinese speakers. However, even with this systemic bias, there is still no consensus to break from the policy, which is 100% clear that we do not use Chinese characters in our article titles. Until you can accept this, we're not going to get anywhere. --Rob Sinden (talk) 12:11, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
Please do not twist what kind of consensus needs to be established here. Use of Chinese characters to disambiguate surnames is the current status quo, removal of said characters would be a major change, and hence requires the proper establishment of WP:CONSENSUS. Whether a certain policy exists is another issue; once a new policy is introduced by the community, further discussion is to take place for each individual article. Just because a new policy exists doesn't mean that consensus has changed for that particular article. You need consensus that affirms that there is a procedural issue on a particular page, and that changes do need to be made to solve the procedural problem. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 12:16, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
One example of what I am trying to explain would be the fairly recent (2012?) article moves from People's Republic of China to China, and Republic of China to Taiwan (these moves also affected how WP:NC-TW was to be interpreted); even though both moves successfully passed, that did not mean that all articles containing either phrases automatically were altered as well; further discussion took place in individual articles such as Culture of Taiwan and President of the Republic of China on whether or not the new rules and procedures would take place there as well. Reason being: each individual case may have various factors to consider, hence the discussions. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 12:19, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
I think there's a hell of a difference between deciding which English-language title is more appropriate to use, and whether or not we break policy with the technical issue of using Chinese characters in our article titles. Hopefully someone from the WP:ACCESS Wikiproject will confirm - I've left a note. --Rob Sinden (talk) 12:27, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
And just so that you are aware, Li (李) and many other articles with Chinese characters in the article title predate the existence of WP:UE as it exists today. In order to break from the current convention of disambiguating Chinese surnames by using Chinese characters, you need to establish a clear majority consensus in support of such a motion. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 12:07, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
Not at all. If the article titles predate the policy, all the more reason to move them. They should have been moved uncontroversially when policy was rewritten. --Rob Sinden (talk) 12:11, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
WP:CONSENSUS is still policy, and consensus still needs to be firmly established. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 12:27, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
In the absence of WP:CONSENSUS against WP:POLICY, we should follow policy. --Rob Sinden (talk) 12:28, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
Is there a rule that says that? Because the existence of IAR kind of makes me doubt that; we only IAR if there is consensus to do so, and we can only IAR if we are allowed to ignore policy as long as consensus allows it. If there is no consensus to follow policy, then there is nothing that says that policy is absolute. Policy is only valid for a certain case if it is indisputably valid, and since we're having an argument over it, there is no agreement that this is so. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 12:31, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
Unless I'm misunderstanding you, I think we agree! We only WP:IAR if there is consensus to do so. Therefore, we only ignore policy if there is consensus to do so. --Rob Sinden (talk) 12:34, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
It works both ways. There is an ongoing dispute as to whether we should follow a certain policy. Hence, there is still a lack of consensus. Read number 5 of WP:PILLAR, especially about how things aren't carved in stone. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 12:37, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
People are too quick to play the WP:IAR card. The fifth pillar also says that the "principles and spirit matter more than their literal wording". I think the "princples and spirit" at play here are the ones regarding making article titles recognisable to English speakers. Per WP:CONPOL: "The ideal title for a Wikipedia article is recognizable to English speakers, easy to find, precise, concise, and consistent with other titles". --Rob Sinden (talk) 12:46, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
The fact that the usage of Chinese characters is not supported by 50% of the contributors here, in spite of the systemic bias is a clear reason not to break policy. And to turn round your last sentence, it's ignoring policy that is only valid for a certain case if it is indisputably valid, not following it. --Rob Sinden (talk) 12:41, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
  • I can confirm that screen readers read all Chinese characters as question marks unless specifically instructed otherwise (i.e. by the use of a Chinese-language speech synthesizer or by multi-megabyte pronunciation dictionaries which almost nobody uses), so for that reason alone, they should not be in article titles. I'd support any page move that does not involve Chinese characters in the titles of articles, so I therefore support the temporary solution mentioned below. Graham87 15:20, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Temporary solution

  • In order to get things moving, I'd propose a temporary solution that we rationalise all existing Chinese surname articles to "Foo ([Chinese] surname [meaning "aardvark"])" (square brackets denoting additional disambiguation only if required, the "Chinese" part only if it clashes with, say, a Korean surname, etc.), with "umbrella" pages at "Foo (surname)" where more than one option exists. Disambiguators and umbrella articles also to be used when the only difference in spelling is a diacritic. Recently created (and messy) stubs to be merged to the umbrella articles, with the umbrella articles expanded for options that do not yet have articles. Breakout articles from the "umbrella" articles to be judged individually on their own merit. --Rob Sinden (talk) 09:07, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
Additionally, we could have "List of people with surname Foo" articles parallel with the umbrella articles (top-level romanization only), broken down both alphabetically in English, and by character in Chinese. We can then have "see also" tags for each section to link to different romanizations of the same character. --Rob Sinden (talk) 09:11, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
  • This is not a workable solution. I responded to Peter above, but I guess it was lost in the sea of comments. So I'm going to repeat the reasons below:
  1. Many characters are used exclusively as surnames and have no other meaning, such as the Li (酈) in Li Daoyuan
  2. Some names have acquired derogatory meanings in modern Chinese, and using them in article titles would be highly offensive. For example: Ji (姬), the royal surname of the Zhou Dynasty, means "concubine" in modern Chinese. And Diao (刁) means sly, crafty.
  3. Many Chinese characters have multiple meanings, and which one to use as the disambiguator would be a highly subjective and potentially contentious decision.
-Zanhe (talk) 20:56, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for this - do you have an alternative preference or other suggestion for a disambiguator, seeing as Chinese characters are not acceptable per WP:UE, WP:ACCESS, WP:CONPOL, etc, etc.? --Rob Sinden (talk) 08:10, 28 June 2013 (UTC)
  • In my search of preexisting conventions on Wikipedia, I've come across the pages for the Kangxi radicals, which are unpronounceable radicals that Chinese characters are classified under. They are ranked by numbers on the English Wikipedia, eg. Radical 61 for the radical 心. Not too many people, Chinese speakers or otherwise, know that radical 61 is 心, but since the page is easily reachable by other pages, what the title of the article is isn't a big deal. That got me thinking: we can use a variety of existing codes to identify Chinese characters, like for 李 we can use the unicode number: Li (surname, U+674E); or continuing with Kangxi radicals: Li (surname, Kangxi radical 75+3). This way, if we're adamant on not having Chinese characters in the title, we can still have something roughly one-to-one and not have disputes over contentious translations. _dk (talk) 13:30, 28 June 2013 (UTC)
This sounds rather complicated and obscure. "The ideal title for a Wikipedia article is recognizable to English speakers, easy to find, precise, concise, and consistent with other titles." I think "precise" would be the only criteria that is met. --Rob Sinden (talk) 13:39, 28 June 2013 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Canvassing problem?

I am somewhat disappointed to find out today that despite good faith discussion of whether or not to notify beyond the RM, a one sided notification of editors at WT:AT was made twice on

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Lì (chinese surname)#Requested move. This discussion is relevant to the WP:UE section of this page as editors wish to re-introduce Chinese characters to the disambiguation parameter. --Rob Sinden (talk) 15:50, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Could use some more eyes on this one... --Rob Sinden (talk) 21:23, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

And yet no similar notification was placed on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject China. Whether or not this breaks the spirit of WP:CANVASSING it certainly puts the !votes above in a different context. In ictu oculi (talk) 01:35, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Going to a relevant and neutral project isn't canvassing. Please let's get in as many people as possible. All we have here is a slightly tricky situation, where there is no ideal solution, and we are looking together for a good compromise. Let's go to WP China as well. Itsmejudith (talk) 09:53, 30 June 2013 (UTC)
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