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::I think the ] example does not answer the concern above. Is it a problem if you refer to NYC by ''any of the names'' mentioned in your comment? Does using one of these makes the other cities' names look strange? ::I think the ] example does not answer the concern above. Is it a problem if you refer to NYC by ''any of the names'' mentioned in your comment? Does using one of these makes the other cities' names look strange?
::Here is an example regarding tennis (with the Anglicised name of the player): "Agnes Szavay's trainers are József Bocskay and Zoltán Kuhárszky". A bit confusing for an English reader maybe? Looks like an encyclopedia? ] (]) 03:38, 7 June 2008 (UTC) ::Here is an example regarding tennis (with the Anglicised name of the player): "Agnes Szavay's trainers are József Bocskay and Zoltán Kuhárszky". A bit confusing for an English reader maybe? Looks like an encyclopedia? ] (]) 03:38, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

:::The New York City reference was an exemplification regarding a point about making a standardizing choice. I used it to show that such examples do exist: in the case of NYC, we were looking into usage, and it turned out that more than one was equally ''verifiable'' &mdash; not a question of looking or sounding "strange" &mdash; and since they were both verifiable, we would need an extra criterion to decide which title would be preferred. In ''that'' case, we were able to make a standardizing choice per the formula already used in Misplaced Pages for US cities. And NYC was already in the English-speaking world, thus eliminating the "need" to verify a different spelling in the English-speaking world.<br>Here, we are not discussing a place, but people. And people whose names have a different spelling in the English-speaking world. So if we can verify that the spelling exists and is indeed adopted widely, then we have no choice. We need to reflect verifiable facts, not decide on our own that the facts can be ignored or "bent" because it would look better on our pages. ''That'' is exactly how the encyclopedia is built, as reflected by the relevant policies and guidelines, already mentioned multiple times. ] (]) 17:34, 7 June 2008 (UTC)


*While I '''Support''' the idea of the moves in general (I have not looked at each case) providing English usage can be proven, this should be moved to a subpage or somesuch. This is getting disruptive to RM. ] (]) 21:14, 6 June 2008 (UTC) (Now done, obviously.)--] (]) 22:04, 6 June 2008 (UTC) *While I '''Support''' the idea of the moves in general (I have not looked at each case) providing English usage can be proven, this should be moved to a subpage or somesuch. This is getting disruptive to RM. ] (]) 21:14, 6 June 2008 (UTC) (Now done, obviously.)--] (]) 22:04, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
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*'''Oppose''' per my evidence presented above and Order in Chaos, Piotrus et al. I would like to add that I extensively edit tennis on Pl Wiki and En Wiki as wells as ], ] and airports or thing such as today's addition of ]. I am not a one trick pony. Regards, --] <sup>]</sup> 10:37, 7 June 2008 (UTC) *'''Oppose''' per my evidence presented above and Order in Chaos, Piotrus et al. I would like to add that I extensively edit tennis on Pl Wiki and En Wiki as wells as ], ] and airports or thing such as today's addition of ]. I am not a one trick pony. Regards, --] <sup>]</sup> 10:37, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

That page, as quoted by Mareklug himself on the talk page of the Hantuchova article, is a "how to say" page. That means it is a page meant to show people how to pronounce names in their original language. It would be applicable if we were discussing the absurd possibility of "erradicating" any mention to diacritics from the entire Misplaced Pages. Since we are discussing article titles, where the spelling is defined by verification that the English-speaking world adopts and recognizes a different spelling widely, a website explaining the existence of the native spelling and the fact that in those languages diacritics are essential to defining how they are pronounced does not vacate the fact (assuming verification, of course) that the English-speaking world adopts a different spelling &mdash; <u>spelling</u>, not ''pronounciation''. Misplaced Pages is covering that, since in the ''article'', which is not the article <u>title</u>, we not only use diacritics in the first sentence of the first paragraph, but we also provide pronounciation guides to make sure readers are informed of what the diacritics mean and how they affect the pronounciation of a word. As a matter of fact, the fact that that person seems to be protesting against the fact that the names are used in English without diacritics serves to actually make the point of widely used in the English-speaking world. A individual who thinks it's wrong does not change that fact, which is what we do need to verify.<br>You are confusing the article itself with the article ''title'', and assuming that pieces of information that need to be in the article are somehow supposed to be conveyed in the title. It is not the case. The title is defined by verifed usage in English for each subject. I've also mentioned the difference between the title and actual content of the article in my response to Kotniski's post, a little further above. ] (]) 17:34, 7 June 2008 (UTC)


::Mareklug found and mentioned above a page which I think merits more attention: ::Mareklug found and mentioned above a page which I think merits more attention:
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:: Which was basically my point all along. ] 11:32, 7 June 2008 (UTC) :: Which was basically my point all along. ] 11:32, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

I take it you didn't notice Kotniski's post and my response above, or you would not be making the exact same point again. So again, but more briefly (for more detail, please read the relevant posts above): article titles are not pronunciation guides; in fact, Misplaced Pages is not a pronunciation guide. That notwithstanding, we do include information, which is relevant, on how any given word or name might be pronounced. That information, however, is given in the <u>article</u>. It is not, by any measure, the scope of the article's title to provide a pronunciation guide. Sustaining that the diacritics should be in the article, in spite of the fact that, if so verified (as explained multiple times), they are not to be for the reason that otherwise readers will mispronounce the person's name is absolutely not in keeping with how the encyclopedia is organized in terms of article titles. Titles are decided according to parameters that have absolutely nothing to do with making sure that when the reader sees the title, s/he will know exactly how the name or word is pronounced. Again, please read the post above on that regard. ] (]) 17:34, 7 June 2008 (UTC)


*'''Oppose'''. Ivanovic is pronounced as IvanoviK while Ivanović as it should be IvanoviCH.--] (]) 14:26, 7 June 2008 (UTC) *'''Oppose'''. Ivanovic is pronounced as IvanoviK while Ivanović as it should be IvanoviCH.--] (]) 14:26, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
: Your point being? (We always write pronounciation in the lead, so that is a non argument imo.)--''']''', '']'' 16:24, 7 June 2008 (UTC) : Your point being? (We always write pronounciation in the lead, so that is a non argument imo.)--''']''', '']'' 16:24, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

::Please read my post immediately above, as well as my response to Kotniski's post, a little further above. ] (]) 17:34, 7 June 2008 (UTC)


*'''Oppose''' and revert the out of process moves already done. Diatrics are used everywhere in Misplaced Pages there is simply no reason why tennis articles should be any different. In any case wasn't there some centralized discussion about diatrics? This will come up in more areas not just tennis. ] (]) 14:27, 7 June 2008 (UTC) *'''Oppose''' and revert the out of process moves already done. Diatrics are used everywhere in Misplaced Pages there is simply no reason why tennis articles should be any different. In any case wasn't there some centralized discussion about diatrics? This will come up in more areas not just tennis. ] (]) 14:27, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
: "No reasons" is wrong. Many reasons are given above. --''']''', '']'' 16:24, 7 June 2008 (UTC) : "No reasons" is wrong. Many reasons are given above. --''']''', '']'' 16:24, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

::Clearly, this was posted without any consideration or reading anything that has been said so far. The only possible response is plainly: please read the discussion. ] (]) 17:34, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Revision as of 17:34, 7 June 2008

This is a subpage of Misplaced Pages:Requested moves, from which a set of proposals and long discussion on them have been moved in order to reduce traffic on that page.

Tennis-player-related proposals

Please read User talk:Tennis expert#Mass page moves before even starting to deal with these. Squash Racket (talk) 10:54, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
Please also read Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Massive tennis page moves. Thank you. Squash Racket (talk) 11:16, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
Can Tennis expert point to examples on the websites mentioned above where diacritics are used? Angus McLellan (Talk) 23:07, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
With respect to any person listed above, I am not aware of any source listed for that person as having used diacritics when referring to that person. Tennis expert (talk) 02:36, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
Oppose This will be long - sadly, it'll be my only opportunity to contribute, as I have exams for three days. These are part of a WikiProject's attempt (Tennis, I believe) to move away from well-established norms in the use of diacritics. Part of, as over the last 2 weeks, 82 of them were renamed unexpectedly - 68 of them in one day alone a few days ago. I and other admins saw these and reverted them accordingly. I am curious to know if the nominator intends to create sections for all of the others, and if so, why it cannot be addressed as a group nomination - if there's one thing this debate doesn't need more of, it's fragmentation.
These articles had been named accordingly either for about 2 years in most instances, and most of them (especially those of French and Spanish origin, which have contained common diacritics) have never even been controversial. The unexpected mass page moves caused some disquiet, especially since discussion which has proceeded for some eight months (and got absolutely nowhere, as each side is resolute in their views) has been fragmented on the topic and this particular discussion, which resulted in a "consensus" to move, was in contradiction to other discussions where this was the view only of a loud minority, and none of them were informed of this one until the mass move began.
Much of it rests on an overenthusiastic interpretation of WP:UE, which is a style guideline and not policy, and ignores the need to establish a widespread consensus on a topic, and also ignores the fact we are an international community and our first aim should be to be correct wherever possible. In conversations with non-English-native editors, particularly from Eastern Europe, some months ago I came to the conclusion that there is an ethnocentric streak to the moves - every one of the current names is the correct name of the players, there is no controversy as to that, just that some argue we should be using the ATP site to determine "correct". In many cases, the diacritics mark pronunciation, and the so-called "correct" ATP versions (which are from any linguistic sense totally incorrect as a result) are a large part of the reason for mispronunciation of tennis players' names in the media. For example "STEP-a-neck" instead of "shteh-PAH-nek" (the latter is obvious from the correct spelling). Navrátilová is a fantastic example where the spelling tells you how to pronounce it but the omission of them ends up with "nav-ratty-LOW-va" instead of "nav-RAT-ill-oh-VAH" (the correct pronunciation, as any Czech can tell you). Countering systemic bias therefore not only makes sense in community-building on this issue, but also meets my common sense test.
Two other related points - when I type "cafe" or "resume" into Word, it assumes they are errors and fixes them to "café" and "résumé". And Britannica's article for Björn Borg, one of the tennis players, as was pointed out to me the other day, contains the diacritic not only in the title but throughout the article - in complete violation of the supposed ATP standard . What certain commonly used websites in the English-speaking world choose to do as part of their style guide is their business, but we should not blindly follow for no apparent reason - I remember cases of this in unrelated examples elsewhere. They're not responsible for our content, just as we are not for theirs.
Redirects are very cheap indeed and I am not against their use one bit - we use them elsewhere to link common or erroneous spellings to their correct subject. Additionally, as various people from the affected countries have commented, why should we have one standard for tennis players and another for everything else from the region? Unless Misplaced Pages (and I mean a proper discussion, not just a few people on some project) decides to remove diacritics entirely from Misplaced Pages and enshrine it in policy, I and no doubt many others will not support this. Orderinchaos 12:54, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
You are not addressing why the English-language usage of the Olympics, International Tennis Federation, the Association of Tennis Professionals, the Women's Tennis Association, the Davis Cup, Fed Cup, Wimbledon, the French Open, the US Open, and the International Tennis Hall of Fame (among many others) should be ignored in favor of the usage of a general purpose encyclopedia like Britannica or, more troubling, to avoid disquiet among some Misplaced Pages editors and labels of ethnocentrism.
I currently intend to nominate articles here for renaming one-by-one, as others have recommended. The links to support renaming for each article are unique, as you can see by clicking on them. By the way, we already tried the group discussion thing. That discussion ran its course, with consensus among participants to rename the articles. The renaming was done, only to have late comers object and then unilaterally revert the renamings with incivility, name calling, and promises of blocks to anyone who resisted: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that this page is not where the debate (if any) should occur. Rather, the debate should be on the discussion page of each article proposed for renaming. Tennis expert (talk) 16:50, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
Oppose per Order in chaos. I wouldn't say it better - Darwinek (talk) 13:20, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
Support per nomination. It is not because I oppose diacritics, but because I believe that on the English wiki, one should use names that are commonly used in English sources (per WP:Verify). So café is fine with me, if that is established usage. Note that lenghty discussions about Novak Djokovic lead to the adoption of the English spelling (which the tennis player also uses on his own web page). These can be found here and here. We should use recognizable names, not names that are intended to educate or used because they are "correct" (we use Vienna instead of Wien; an example shoving that this is not particularly about diacritics). So what spelling various web pages and other organizations use, are by no means irrelevant. Are random wiki editors' personal wishes a better metric? I think not. --HJensen, talk 13:36, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
Vienna/Wien's a bit of a red herring, as are most European city names, as there was 4 centuries of English language literature referring to them prior to the development of a popular media. Tennis players - not quite the same situation. The names are recognisable, and like I said, redirects are cheap. Birth names, by the way, are not "random wiki editors' personal wishes" - they're as factual as any other name, having been certified in their home country. Re Djoković, that was in every way a classic example of how not to conduct a rational debate - it nearly went to ArbCom at one point. In the end it was debated over and over to an extent that wore down most neutral editors and the smaller group got their way. Orderinchaos 13:55, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
No it is not. It is a valid example. But what you are saying is then that you are content with "Djokovic" in 400 years? Finally, your representation of the debate on that page appears rather derogatory. Could you please back up your claim that it was "a smaller group" that "got their way"? If you look at the talk page archives you will see that whenever there was a vast majority for English spelling, one or two editors popped up from nowhere and disrupted the process (overturning admins' page moves etc.) accusing other editors for being oppressive and imperialistic and other incivil stuff. (And when speaking of "random wiki editors' personal wishes", I, of course, did not mean their wishes about native spellings, but their wishes on which spelling to use on the English[REDACTED] — sorry if that didn't come out clear.) --HJensen, talk 19:35, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
Oppose per Order in Chaos. Some further reasons:
  • their friends, family members and trainers are NOT listed at ATP/WTA, the articles would look quite awkward with different spellings from the same country/language region
  • some players really moved to the United States/Great Britain and have an Anglicised name after becoming naturalized citizens. After leaving diacritics it would be more difficult to identify who is American and who is not.
Squash Racket (talk) 14:01, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
Oppose, per Orderinchaos, but request that the nominations be withdrawn as an mass nomination which didn't set up a centralized discussion area, which should not be here. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 14:13, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

There has already been a discussion on the move of those pages based on our policy and guidelines (here). It was open for + 8 days and there were links on talk pages of most, if not all, articles to be affected. This is an attempt to circumvent what was decided there. Second of all, the points being made here are the exact same-old quite appropriately listed on Misplaced Pages:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions, which apply entirely, namely "I don't like it", "Misplaced Pages should be about everything", "just a guideline" and "it doesn't do any harm ". None of which is valid to justify superseding the English language on the English-language Misplaced Pages. We have a widely used, different-from-native spelling used throughout the English speaking world, and that is verifiable. Whether those people's families, fellow countrymen or,least of all, Wikipedians think about it personally is of absolutely no consequence in making this determination. We need something verifiable that indicates that, in the English-speaking world — and not in Serbia, Croatia, Russia or China — there is no spelling different-from-native that is preferred and widely used. In the case of tennis players, that would be difficult to imagine, for obvious reasons. Redux (talk) 16:23, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

I still maintain that a WikiProject discussion can't really circumvent or short-circuit a wider debate on policy. As far as I know, none of the people involved in the debates late last year on this topic were contacted, and the debate was certainly not brought into any public forum for discussion. (And the point re Russia and China is completely irrelevant, as neither uses a Latin alphabet, so an ISO or Pinyin transliteration is used, and these do not use diacritics as they were designed for use in English.) Orderinchaos 16:37, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
Firstly, it wasn't a "WikiProject discussion". It was an open, public discussion for all-who-wanted-to to participate. That is precisely why links were posted on numerous articles' talk pages. The talk page of WikiProject:Tennis is as public as any other page on Misplaced Pages, and the numerous links spreaded over numerous articles' talk pages were meant to make sure that as many people as possible would be made aware of it via ethical means. Contacting people personally and "drafting" them to participate in a consensus-building discussion is canvassing and it is something we should not actually be doing, which is why it wasn't done. There is no "obligatory presence" for a discussion to be valid.
Secondly, you missed my point entirely regarding the China/Russia example (which is all those two really even were: examples of a situation applicable to any other country in the world that does not have English as its national language). The point refers to the English-speaking world, which is an objective term, and the fact that it is irrelevant to verify that a different spelling is preferred in other parts of the world for the purpose of determining the spelling to be used on the English-language Misplaced Pages. Redux (talk) 17:13, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
English is, probably alongside French, the only major language where a majority of fluent or competent speakers are not first-language speakers and do not live in a country or region where it is a majority language. The "English-speaking world", therefore, is quite a wide place with a bizarre array of norms and a surprising amount of flexibility. I'm all for that, personally - it gives the English Misplaced Pages and sister projects the scope to become the most diverse and inclusive environment within the Wikimedia sphere of operation. I think also that normative statements should be avoided in this discussion, especially due to the risk of unintentional ethnocentrism. Orderinchaos 18:43, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
But the number of English speakers whose native language is any given one of these languages is much smaller than that, and smaller than those whose native language is English. Our principal mission is, and must be, to serve monoglot anglophones, who have no other Misplaced Pages; readers who can profit from cs:Jana Novotná and so on should feel free to do so. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:29, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but you are overreaching. "English-speaking world" refers to the parts of the world where English is either a native language or an official language — in the very Misplaced Pages article I linked, you will even find a map indicating what, in the mapa mundi, is the "English-speaking world". The term was not invented on Misplaced Pages, but rather it is an established expression. It is irrelevant to assume that foreigners tend to know grammar or even the basics of the language better than natives. Claiming "ethnocentrism" to justify why the English language should be superseded on the English-langage Misplaced Pages, in this context, holds as much merit as claiming that this article on the Hungarian-language Misplaced Pages should be titled "William II of England" — being that a regnal name is also the "official" name by which this person is known in his native language/country. And most especially because it not us, on Misplaced Pages, who decided or created the different spelling in English, we merely verify that it exists and abide by it. If the very act of coming up with a alternate spelling is right or wrong, it is not for us to say. That would be original research and a point of view. The fact remains that the preferred spelling exists, it is widely used and it is verifiable. For more commentary on this topic, please refer to the already-mentioned discussion on the tennis biographies, and especially to the page Misplaced Pages:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions (notably, "Misplaced Pages should be about everything"), which, again, apply exactly here. Redux (talk) 20:29, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Precisely. These should properly be considered case by case; some of Tennisexpert's evidence is fairly weak; but we should not be swayed by any ethnocentrism, including the ethnocentrism of members of a non-English language group who would prefer to misrepresent what English usage is. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:35, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
Just in case there is any confusion, I am Anglo-Australian and can't speak any other language but English beyond the sort of level you'd expect from one of those travel books, although I have been told my pronunciation of written Serbian is pretty good and I can almost do the ř thing in Czech. Orderinchaos 20:59, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
I'm glad to hear it; I can almost pronounce Dvořák myself. I am also glad to see this unfortunate discussion end in the admission that admin powers should not be used to enforce substantive decisions. Now can we turn to what our naming policy deems the most important consideration: what the greatest number of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature. This will be best done on separate articles. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:09, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
If naming conventions were a universally accepted policy, they wouldn't keep changing all the time, and they wouldn't end up at ArbCom more than any other single policy or guideline on Misplaced Pages. I refer to them only when there is an established consensus on an issue. For me, the clincher is that these are the people's real names, and that much is easily verifiable. To use a bastardised version of their names just because they play tennis, and for no other reason, is just silly. We have redirects to handle that situation and I've always supported their use in these sorts of situations. Orderinchaos 04:20, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
How ironic that you start being incivil and call English names for "bastardised". Well, you should then quickly go edit this English[REDACTED] convention which say "If a native name has a common English-language equivalent, the English version takes precedence" to "If a native name has a common English-language equivalent, this bastardised name shoulod not be used". See for how long that will stay unchallenged. But I guess you will just call an eventual revert of such a change for a "stuff you" against you? Cheers :-) --HJensen, talk 17:16, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

In the case of tennis-related biographies, we determined that a widely-used version in the English-speaking world exists and is verifiable on official websites of the sport's governing bodies. They use English as their working language, and all material published in the English-speaking world, as well as material from those parts of the world that are online or televised follow that exact spelling. Not once have I, and I suspect anyone else, seen any pattern of spelling of a player such as "Radek Stepanek" differently than the version adopted officially by the ATP in English. And I say pattern, taken into account televized events, news channels both online and printed etc., in the English-speaking world (so please, don't link a a Czech newspaper article to make the point that other spellings exist).
Following our Manual of Style (naming conventions) and policies (verifiability, etc.) and plus using simply common sense, this determination is applicable to all biographies related to tennis. And I say that because tennis happens to be a sport that is widely popular in the English-speaking world, which is why is could happen (I don't know, this is for the sake of example) that the same cannot be said about, say, Cricket, which is only popular in a handful of countries, and not even throughtout the entire English-speaking world (in terms of population percentages, etc.). This is not because tennis receives some kind of "special treatment", but rather because in relation to it, and perhaps not other modalities, we are able to answer positively the 2 main questions: a)is there a different-from-native spelling preferred and used widely in the English-speaking world? and b) is that verifiable?
That said, we still need to make this verification case by case. I've been doing that. In the article Lili de Alvarez, for example, I was unable to find a profile on the official WTA website; that plus the fact that this is a player from the 1940s caused me to acknowledge that, in that case, I was unable to verify (key word) the state of any given spelling as being preferred and used widely in the English-speaking world, which causes the article title to default to the native spelling. At least until a time when evidence could be presented to that effect, which it was.
I regret immensily the treatment dispensed to Tennis expert. He started moving articles only after the discussion had concluded, and using the same parameters I was using to move articles. He did nothing wrong. In fact he helped me post the numerous notes and links to that discussion in order to let people know it was ongoing. What I see in his talk page is a post from a user who was unaware of the discussions that had taken place, and assumed, wrongly, that he was doing something out of his own, personal conviction. That was then followed by posts from a single user who happened to disagree with the decision made, and who, apparently, was also unaware of the discussions, the naming conventions and the entire situation of the case. That led to other misunderstandings and even to Tennis expert being threatened with a block for implementing policies and guidelines while backed by a previous, public discussion with consensus to move the articles.
The only truly wrong action was the personal requests to administrators, such as this, to circumvent the discussion because there "was no real consensus, at least not among administrators", which is completely wrong and highly inappropriate to have been granted. Redux (talk) 22:58, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

There is no concensus not even among administrators, so I described the situation pretty well, thanks for pointing that out. I left that message after a number of pages had been moved back to their original title to ask an admin to move these too, not to "circumvent a discussion". What I find highly inappropriate and completely wrong is an edit like that suddenly becoming vandalism. And it could be foreseen that mass page moves will lead to that.
Leaving the diacritics distort the Hungarian names' pronunciation seriously, having an Anglicised name and a number of names with original spelling (friends, family members, trainers) would make look European players Americans. ATP has lists about players with their results, not encyclopedia articles mentioning people who may also have diacritics in their names. Squash Racket (talk) 04:53, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Respectfully, you are misrepresenting the information included on the website of the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP). For example, I would not call this information about Roger Federer on the ATP website to be merely a list of his results. Looks encyclopedic to me. Tennis expert (talk) 05:34, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Respectfully, you are misrepresenting the way the website of the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) works when we are talking about someone who is not number one. Does not look encyclopedic to me. Squash Racket (talk) 05:43, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Concerning the Gael Monfils example you cited, you are clearly mistaken. Tennis expert (talk) 05:53, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
True, there is something about the player, I clicked on player profile. I just don't know how to trust that "encyclopedic" information when I see this (Hungarian example from WTA site, easier to check for me): József Bocskay becomes Jozsef Bolskay and Zoltán Kuhárszky becomes Zoltan Kuharsky. These are not even Anglicised names, simply plain wrong ones.
And about other players mentioned above there still don't seem be much information at the ATP page. Squash Racket (talk) 06:16, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
I'm not going to provide an ongoing list because you should be able to find the information yourself at the ATP website. But, see, e.g.: Stepanek, Taroczy, Borg (1), Borg (2), Borg (3), Ivanisevic, Nystrom (1), Nystrom (2), Tipsarevic. Tennis expert (talk) 07:13, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
The link I provided for Balázs Taróczy's bio (encyclopedic information) is empty, you provided a list of titles. For Nystrom also.
As I pointed out above, the official WTA site provided two names as the trainers of Ágnes Szávay, but these were not even Anglicised, simply wrong. Squash Racket (talk) 07:48, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
In response to that, I was responding to an AN/I post - the first I heard of any of this in this particular round (I already have a watchlist of 3,500+, I can't watchlist *every* page I've ever communicated on or had an opinion on). I knew how controversial the topic was, and how unwise it was to move 68 articles in one go without a wider consensus. I quickly investigated the situation, was completely puzzled by how someone could call a WikiProject discussion a consensus for anything with such immense ramifications, and issued a warning. I was later to find that the situation had in fact been instigated by others and that Tennis expert had been left in a somewhat awkward situation of implementing this by himself and without backing. It didn't make his actions any more right (in a universal sense), but his good faith, his desisting from making further moves and his appeal to what he thought was higher authority (yourself) convinced me that he personally was not in the wrong per WP:DE, and I apologised to him both on his talk page and on AN/I. That being said, I had to spend a fair chunk of my Saturday afternoon, in between studying for exams, fixing this mess. Orderinchaos 04:18, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm not really "blaming" anyone for not being aware of the discussions held previously, it happens. Moving those pages back originally was inappropriate, but other people can and did get caught in the wake of that. And I do recognize what Orderinchaos is talking about regarding Tennis expert: there was a misunderstanding concerning Tennis expert's actions, and Orderinchaos apologized for it generously. That would appear to be no problem at all.
However, there was consensus previously reached. You might not have been aware of it, like I said, but there was. I won't simply repeat myself concerning the discussion held and why it pertains to tennis biographies, this has been explained here (in previous comments), in the original discussion and in the AN. Especially considering that the discussion was meant to get consensus for the implementation of previously-existing policies (verifiability, etc.), guidelines (MoS, notably Naming Conventions) and, if I might add, plain logical application of said policies and guidelines, a claim that the discussion held is somehow "not valid" or "insufficient" is completely without merit. It has been explained time and again why this is in reference to tennis biographies. It pertains to tennis (ok, here we go yet again) because the situation relating to tennis is of the nature I have just now explained for the 10th time. That it wouldn't apply to, say, hockey, cricket or spearfishing is exactly why discussions of that nature need to be held for each concrete situation — which should be in line with what people keep saying about case-by-case verification. So claiming that there was no consensus in not correct.
Mentioning consensus among administrators is, I'm afraid, even more wrong. Administrators are not high arbitrators of consensus. If consensus is reached in discussions — and regarding that, see my previous comment above about how the original discussion was conducted — an administrator's job is to abide by it, not decide to either sanction or overturn it.
What all of this ends up looking like, which does not mean that it is of course, and I hope that I'm completely wrong in that regard, is that when one end result is not as expected, the solution found is to discredit it and call for a "higher" or "broader" arena, where the result can be overturned. I am especialy concerned with a comment made previously in this very discussion, about people "not having been contacted" about the original discussion. What that is sounding like to me is "we should have an opportunity to call everyone who agrees with this or that point of view, and see how many heads there are on each side". Misplaced Pages is not a democracy, that is not how it works. There is no requirement to call any given people personally to a discussion; in fact, that is canvassing and should not, under no circumstance and under pain of voiding the very consensus reached, be done. Talk pages are meant for discussions on how to improve the project. Since we were having a centralized discussion that would affect a number of articles, notes with links were spreaded throughtout those articles, but without canvassing, which is how discussions are supposed to be held in the first place. Redux (talk) 05:46, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Quote from WP:CANVAS: messages that are written to influence the outcome rather than to improve the quality of a discussion compromise the consensus building process and are generally considered disruptive. Squash Racket (talk) 06:24, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Like this? The user explicitly states that s/he will use e-mail lists, so it is non-transparent, and also clearly partisan. So it fits into at least two categories defining "disruptive canvassing".--HJensen, talk 17:25, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
No, I was only reflecting to that part of the comment:

to call any given people personally to a discussion; in fact, that is canvassing

Squash Racket (talk) 03:56, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
That is a quintessential example of inappropriateness and how things are not supposed to be conducted, especially since it makes it clear the intent to use an inappropriate method (canvassing via e-mail) to set in motion a process that is not even how Misplaced Pages works — getting people who share a point of view to increase the headcount in a vote because there is a clear personal feeling, not based on any valid criterion regarding how Misplaced Pages works, on the subject. Redux (talk) 20:05, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Piotrus, with all due respect, the rationale you used in your comment is exactly what I have been talking about. There is simply no valid point made there. Especially since, for the 100th time, nobody is talking about "eliminating" diacritics or "hiding" away the fact that native spelling uses them. That is given in the article's opening paragraph, in the first sentence if possible. This is concerning article titles, and the situation has already been explained many times. Please refer to the original discussion, my comments above and in your own talk page. Redux (talk) 20:05, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
  • Oppose. With the exception of Marko Đ/Djoković, these are all cases of "simple" diacritics. The majority of the community has always supported using those whenever the most common spelling in English sources is simply the person's name with diacritics omitted, and our article titles reflect this practice. Similarly, we never decided to sort interwiki tags alphabetically based on the local names of the languages, but through time this became the de facto consensus. Moving, for example, Björn Borg and Joakim Nyström to diacritic-less titles when possibly all other articles about Nordic people use the letters ä, ö and å (if applicable) makes no sense to me. Departing from usual practice very rarely helps the project (Misplaced Pages, not WikiProject Tennis), and I can't see any convincing argument to do so in the case of tennis players either. Prolog (talk) 23:55, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Okay, a quick run-though of the arguments you used: 1) "it's a simple diacritics", in other words, "it doesn't really do any harm"; 2) Pertaining to the fact that Misplaced Pages is not a democracy, yet again: the community cannot decide to ignore verifiable facts that determine how the encyclopedia, because it is an encyclopedia, is written, as well as the fact that this particular version of Misplaced Pages is the English-language Misplaced Pages, where it is established that, if there exists a different version in English (that is, used in the English-speaking world) that is widely used, that version will take precedence. We don't take votes to overturn that, and especially not based on arguments such as "doesn't do any harm" or "we need to respect x culture" (again, read above comments on policies, guidelines and applicability). And especially, never ever "the sources don't say exactly that, but we decide to do it differently to accomodate certain personal opinions". I don't think I could myself come up with a more complete example of a blatant violation of WP:NPOV, and voting on it does not validate it by any stretch of the imagination; 3) That part seems like a non sequitur: "it's not done on other projects I know of, so it shouldn't be done here as well". That is simply not the case, not to mention that this is an all-or-nothing type of reasoning, which is also not the case. It is not even the case on this exact Misplaced Pages itself. We are only talking about people whose names have widely used, different-from-native spellings in the English-speaking world. Those are usually people of particular historical noteworthiness (e.g. Erik the Red, not Erik den Røde) or people of international fame, as it is the general case of international-level athletes in sports that are highly popular in the English-speaking world (such as tennis, the case at hand). It does not apply to other people, even if they are notable and included in this Misplaced Pages and even well-known only in their native country, such as Ove Høegh-Guldberg. Redux (talk) 03:37, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
So "Bjorn Borg" is more recognizable to English speakers than Björn Borg just because ATP listed him like that? Squash Racket (talk) 03:48, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
That is, of course, just one source. There are many others. I may insert this link again: Misplaced Pages:Naming conflicts - section on proper nouns, where it is written that "If a native name has a common English-language equivalent, the English version takes precedence . All those "opposing" then means everything written there is just wrong? Or? --HJensen, talk 21:12, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

"Bjorn Borg" is the spelling in English that is widely used and preferred in the English-speaking world. That is why our article needs to be at this title. The ATP website is a verifiable source to that effect. In other words, we don't title the article "Bjorn Borg" because the "all-mighty" ATP used that spelling, we do it because the English-speaking world uses that overwhelmingly and this fact is verifiable. Maybe the ATP was the one to introduce that spelling in the first place. Doing the research to identify that is not our job, although we can quote a trustworthy, previously-published source that might make that statement. It is definitely, never ever our job to decide that the act of having come up with a different spelling, omitting the diacritic mark, was philosophically, socially or culturally wrong and take it upon ourselves to "correct the mistake" by ignoring the usage in English on the English-language Misplaced Pages. That is a point of view and original work, which is not allowed in Misplaced Pages. Redux (talk) 04:02, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

1) A straw man? I thought it would be obvious from my comment that by "simple" I meant the set of diacritics that the community has supported and continues to support, for many reasons; accuracy, pronunciation issues, encyclopedic value, etc. 2) Exactly, this is an encyclopedia, and not a tennis federation, a news site or a TV channel. Most sources might not use the word "fuck" when quoting someone, but when we use a source that says "f**king hell", we still write "fucking hell" due to our standards. Your arguments seem to be based on your personal opinion and your interpretation of our guidelines and policies being the absolute truth and the current practice and majority of editors getting it all wrong. Most policies and guidelines are descriptive, not prescriptive, so you can't just ignore the majority interpretation and years of actual practice by linking to "Misplaced Pages is not a democracy". Actually, your position seems to be in the extreme minority, since you even claim that using a verified actual name of a person over a more popular spelling with no diacritics would violate NPOV. We then have featured articles, such as yesterday's TFA Émile Lemoine and Dominik Hašek, that might "blatantly violate" NPOV. Prolog (talk) 06:39, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

At this point, I actually don't know if you are misunderstanding or overreaching. It is quite simple: on the English-language Misplaced Pages we use the variation in English if it exists and can be verified. This topic is in referrence to tennis players, so you are using a logical fallacy by linking articles on a hockey player and a politician. I've said time and again that we are discussing specific circumstances and that it does not apply to individuals in different circumstances — in fact it's just 2 comments above your own. Yet another fallacy by equating expletive deletions in texts with deciding on our own that what sources are saying is "not what they really mean" because "we all know that the 'actual' spelling is the native spelling". That is original research and a point of view, as I explained above. What you are saying is that we can and should get a "majority" to decide that WP:NPOV can be relativized because we, the community, decided on the correctness of using the spelling adopted in the English-speaking world. Absolutely not the case. There are certain parts of the working of Misplaced Pages that cannot be relativized: NPOV, WP:OR and verifiability are some of them.
Further, you are assuming, as an example, that when the English-speaking world says "Radek Stepanek" they actually mean "Radek Štěpánek". That's a point of view and original research. We don't assume, we don't infer. We verify. There is no such thing as we deciding that when the sources say "this" they actually mean "that" .
You are using a straw-man comment by stating something like "using a verified actual name of a person over a more popular spelling with no diacritics would violate NPOV". First, because the spelling used in the English-speaking world can only be used if verified. It is not a question of it being "more popular", it is a question of it being the spelling adopted in the English-speaking world and the fact that this is the English-language Misplaced Pages, where content is written in English and must default to spellings in English if those exist and are verifiable. Second, because you are implying that the native spelling is the one and true "real" one. There is no such thing in linguistics. To return to the example I gave above, "Erik the Red" is not wrong while "Erik den Røde" is the correct one. A spelling is accurate if it is recognized and adopted by those who speak the language. We are an encyclopedia, we don't get to decide that this is "wrong and shouldn't be done". Redux (talk) 13:11, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Should the discussion take place here? Orderinchaos already asked this on the talk page. Also a neutral message could be written and sent to parties possibly interested (pro or contra). That is not a requirement, but I think it would be advisable. Squash Racket (talk) 04:13, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
That would be canvassing. Canvassing is not necessarily a blatant message of "go here and support our side/oppose the proposal". It can be a subtle message of "have you seen this? You might be interested.". I'm sure this is not what you meant, but I trust you can see how easily this is construed as "we need to let certain people know what they are trying to do and get 100 'opposes' in that discussion"; even if you don't really mean that, which nobody here does, that would not prevent the end result from being just that. And frankly, it is immaterial that 100 people come here if what they are going to do boils down to taking a vote to set aside verifiable sources and the neutral-point-of-view imperative. Not a democracy, therefore not the case of a simple "show of hands". What people should be doing, but so far they are not, is presenting arguments, most likely for specific cases, along the lines (but not necessarily limited to) of: "for this or that instance, we can't verify a preferred usage because there are no valid sources to that effect"; or more generally, something like: "actually, in tennis we can't really verify a overwhelming usage of any given spelling to begin with", but never "the sources do show that this usage is overwhelming in the English-speaking world, but that is just wrong on the philosophical level, and since having the diacritics doesn't do any harm, we should keep them". What we are doing here is I keep explaining to people how we are not taking a vote to put aside such things as WP:NPOV and Misplaced Pages:Verifiability.
Further, and curiously, when consensus was already clear in the original discussion, someone tried to make the point that the discussion was "invalid" because it was not at WP:RM, which is simply not the case and it was explained there. Still, we are now taking the time to go through this here as well. Redux (talk) 04:46, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
That would NOT be canvassing. I quote myself:

neutral message could be written and sent to parties possibly interested (pro or contra).

If you send a neutral message to all parties who might be interested, it is not canvassing. Before sending the messages we could agree on the text. And I'm not talking about the vote, but that more people should voice their opinions on the matter to avoid future edit warring.
And I repeat, it would be advisable, because last time reports were made on various noticeboards after a number of page moves and move backs had been done. Squash Racket (talk) 05:35, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
Oh but it is. Here is why: First, contacting people personally to join a discussion when you already know which "side" or position they will be taking is canvassing. Using more explicit words in the invite, such as "come help us approve/nuke this proposal" only makes it easier to identify it. That is not to say that we could never ask someone for help in a discussion that has hit a standstill. But one thing is if we asked for a neutral mediator to read both sides and give us perspective, or if we were discussing a topic such as history as asked a user who we know is a historian by profession so that s/he could provide us with an informed perspective on the topic to help us reach a conclusion. That connects with the second reason: it is a different thing entirely to go to people's talk pages, or send them e-mail, only to let them know that a discussion in which "they might be interested" is taking place. If we do that with people who we already known, as you said it yourself, to be "pro or contra", then what we are really doing is calling people whose position — albeit in a more general theme, and this is a more case-specific discussion — is already known, and we are simply getting them to show up and show hands in a vote. That, to use words closer to those used on WP:CANVAS, which you yourself quoted above, is attempting to influence the outcome, rather than improving the quality of discussion (which would be more the examples I gave), and that is a textbook definition of canvassing. See? Redux (talk) 21:37, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
That is NOT canvassing (repeating myself). I also urge you to read WP:CANVAS as you don't seem to understand it. So you are perfectly OK with having some new revert wars/reports on noticeboards (as we already seen what had happened) after the moves instead of sending a neutral message to potentially interested parties to avoid these. Neutral messages don't influence the outcome, only inform others of the ongoing discussion. Don't you think others will feel left out again and then edits like that will be likely again?
This is the talk page of WP:RM, how should interested parties know about it? See? Squash Racket (talk) 03:27, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
FTR this is not the place for the debate - it's only here because there isn't a clear and obvious place for it. It doesn't easily fit in any existing location. As for NPOV and V, it is easily verifiable and completely uncontroversial what their birth names are - they have birth certificates and birth registrars and local media and in some cases biographies, no less than we have for any other notable person. The only times it changes is when they actually adopt a different name upon naturalisation or by some other means - which some have done, and then it is their name and there's no objection to using it. But simply deciding to play tennis for a living does not mean they cease to have a national identity, and in fact it's POV to assert that the ATP or anyone else has the right to change someone's name. They presumably work to an internal style guide, ours is silent on the issue of diacritics and indeed, we have many, many articles in English with them. Orderinchaos 12:06, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
If this discussion is still ongoing, then oppose. Of course I understand the strong arguments for and against, I'll just try and summarize my own thoughts. Which are thus: primarily WP is here to inform. I expect maximum information from an encyclopedia. I know that WP is one of those sources that accommodate and use diacritics on Roman letters where appropriate (unlike some other sources which don't). So when I see an article titled "Bjorn Borg" I think that means his name has no diacritics, and am thus misled. If I see Björn Borg, I know the truth. And of course I can still deduce that his name spelt in diacritic-less contexts will be Bjorn Borg. That deduction would not work in reverse, obviously. So taking diacritics away seems to mean making WP less valuable as an encyclopedia just to make a point about conforming to some policy (which is open to varying interpretation in any case).--Kotniski (talk) 19:45, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
You do know that we are required to write the name with diacritics in the lead? This is a proposal about the name of the articles. --HJensen, talk 21:00, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
Yes I realise that, but this just makes the issue a bit less significant, it doesn't make either side any more right or wrong. Since we argue about article names, presumably we think they matter somewhat. One reason they matter quite a lot, I suspect, is that editors of other articles have a tendency to prefer direct links over redirects. Hence naming the article Bjorn Borg is going to cause the name to be written without diacritics in other articles and templates (where the full version is not visible), leading to the information leakage alluded to in my previous comment.--Kotniski (talk) 21:20, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
I'm sorry, but, first, you appear to be starting under a wrong premise: that the article title "Bjorn Borg" (sticking to the example) is wrong and could only be tolerated on the article itself because the opening paragraph cites the native spelling. That is simply not the case. Please read my post after MTC's comment uderneath. Secondly, as explained here, the appropriate form for linking internally is to follow the naming conventions. The name "Bjorn Borg" follows the naming conventions for the English-language Misplaced Pages. Not because I think so or because I prefer it, but rather because we will have verified that this spelling is the one adopted and recognized widely in the English-speaking world, which makes it the correct spelling to be used on this version of Misplaced Pages. So when you present the situation of linking the name "Bjorn Borg" in other articles as spreading misinformation, you are attributing the characteristic of it being wrong and not being tolerable on other articles because, unlike in the main article, there will be no "complete information" to correct the "mistake". Since it is not a mistake to begin with, that is a logical fallacy, I'm afraid. Redux (talk) 22:17, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
I don't say that the diacriticless form is "wrong" or "intolerable", just that much worse for the encyclopedia. I don't believe there is one correct form for someone's name in English. Where the original name is spelt in Roman letters with diacritics, there are always going to be at least two acceptable forms (with/without). And I expect WP readers to know this as well. So: reader sees name with diacritics -> reader knows both forms. Reader sees name without diacritics -> reader knows one form only, or worse, believes that he knows both forms but has one of them wrong.--Kotniski (talk) 22:40, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

As I mentioned on another comment underneath, it's not the point of an article title to assume that people will not read the article and draw conclusions from it. The relevant information needs to be in the article, which is the actual source of information. The title is supposed to be accurate in English, according to certain parameters we adopt. Assuming a logic based on a chaos theory, it would be possible to make an equally valid point that, if we were to link using the native form, the reader would be unaware that there is a spelling in English, that this spelling in English is the one that is actually adopted and recognized in the English-speaking world. As well as that by depriving the reader of such information, we would be doing him or her a disservice. You see? That is clearly reading too much into what a link means. In fact, the very point of hypertexting is exactly to make it possible for the reader to get information on related topics, information which will not be available in the main text s/he is reading at the moment. We are not supposed to convey the entire information in the link, we are supposed to provide the link so that the reader will find the information. Any more than that, and we are speculating and using the speculation to justify superseding the English language, which is something we cannot do.Redux (talk) 01:05, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

  • Oppose - Reasons for sources omitting diacritics can be brought down to ignorance, laziness or technical restrictions. All these players have names that are correctly spelled with diacritics and it would be wrong to move them to incorrect titles for any reason. If there are policies which state that these articles shouldn't have diacritics then those policies need changing. - MTC (talk) 20:23, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
Very thin arguments that can be brouht down to a few insults like "ignorance" or "laziness" and "I don't like it" (you are directly stating that if this proposal is in accordance with policies, you would still oppose it).--HJensen, talk 21:00, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Relating to the two "oppose" posts above, although we are not holding a vote, I'm sorry, but none of you seem to have read a single word of what has been said, repeatedly, above. "Misled into believing that the name has no diacritics"? So you didn't read any of the several times I explained that this has no merit for simple reasons: article titles are not supposed to convey all the information. Not having diacritics on the article title does not mean "hide the fact that the native spelling uses them". That is given in the opening paragraph of the article, in the first sentence if possible. That's not to mention a point in Linguistics, since you are assuming, and this has also been mentioned before, that the native spelling is the only "true" one, which is not the case. If a person's name has a spelling in English that is the one adopted in the English speaking world ("Erik the Red", for maybe the 4th time) than the information "Erik the Red" within the context of the English language — and this is the English-language Misplaced Pages — is accurate information. The existence of a native spelling that is not the one adopted in English is information that must be in the article, which is what, to use your words, will inform you, not in the article title. The title of the article itself needs to be correct in accordance with certain parameters, which are given by a combination of the Manual of Style (which only follows logic) and certain policies, none of it includes an assumption that people won't read the article and thus we need to convey other bits of information in the title, thus sacrificing the very English language as verified by external sources.
"Reasons for sources omitting diacritics can be brought down to ignorance, laziness or technical restrictions." I explained that yet again earlier today. This is an encyclopedia, we don't get to decide that the reason why the English-speaking world uses a different spelling is "laziness" or anything else. We certainly don't take it upon ourselves to correct the alleged "mistake". That is original research and a point of view. Maybe the English-speaking world is indeed lazy and has come up with diacritic-less spellings for foreigners that happen to become well-known in those countries because they don't want to make new keyboards with keys for the diacritics. That is not our problem. And it is not up to us to assume that this is what took place. Why? Because it is original research. That would be what we, Wikipedian, are assuming heppened; and if that's not bad enough, not only are we speculating on a historical reason for a different spelling, we are also taking the initiative to "correct" the perceived mistake. That makes us a primary source, and that cannot happen. That is not up for interpretation or vote, Misplaced Pages cannot be a primary source, carrying original work. And certainly not work that Wikipedians came up with themselves by passing judgement on the verified sources. This is, again, ignoring Misplaced Pages:Verifiability on the basis of our own understanding of what ought to be, which cannot happen. Redux (talk) 21:37, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Points taken, but your arguments seem to apply only where there is one form of the name unambiguously established in English (Rome rather than Roma, to take an extreme example). If not, we can and do make a call - we don't have to go with the majority, but we take the more encyclopedic form (Faeces rather than Shit, if you want another extreme example). I've tried to explain above why forms with diacritics are generally speaking more encyclopedic. And why the fact that all the information is in the article anyway is not a valid argument one way or the other.--Kotniski (talk) 21:59, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
Except that we need to remember that we are dealing specifically with tennis-related biographies. That means Proper names — considering, of course, that nicknames can never be the title of articles (although they perhaps could be redirects, if they are specific enough). That being the case, to stay with an example already used, we need to be able to verify that "Radek Stepanek" is the spelling that has been adopted and is recognized and used in the English-speaking world to identify that person. The English-speaking world, so forms used in the, say, Spanish-speaking world, if they even exist (I don't think there's such a thing, this is just an example), don't weigh in this equation. As I mentioned before, such a verification may not be possible when it comes to say, politicians from any given country, or even sportsmen that are not known in the English-speaking world. Tennis people, however, are different, also because this sport happens to be tremendously popular in the English-speaking world: every single instance of rendition of their names on sources from the English-speaking world follows that exact spelling which can be found on that person's official profile on the ATP/WTA website. By cross-referencing those sources, for tennis biographies, this verification is usually possible and even easy to be made. Will there be exceptions? Of course. We might be unable to verify certain names, especially players from the early 20th century. In that case, obviously, we won't move the article, because that we might be "sure" that a rendition of the name in English would exclude diacritics if it were to be made is also irrelevant. What we assume cannot be included as fact in the encyclopedia in any form. The principle works both ways. That is why I asked people to present such evidence, if they know of any. But so far, nobody has. Redux (talk) 22:17, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
You exaggerate I trust with "every single instance" (here's Francoise Durr both with and without a cedilla, for instance), though I admit the diacriticless forms are going to dominate on the search engines. However, are we really helping anyone by leaving the diacritics off? We could do it with tennis players, but then we get inconsistencies when those people are mentioned alongside others in different lines of work who are allowed to retain their diacritics. For readers' sake, we should be trying to keep to the same standard throughout the encyclopedia, and the standard that seems (very reasonably, at least for the reasons I gave above) to have been adopted on WP is to prefer diacritics.--Kotniski (talk) 23:06, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

You are right, I tripped on the "generalization rock" by stating "every single source", when what need to verify is that a rendition is widely used and the recognizable one in the English-speaking world, and not that nothing else was ever written. But of course, if we look hard enough, we could find references to the native spelling, which is also part of the mostly journalitic nature of the sources we can use to verify facts; for example if we were to find an online story on Novak Djokovic that read something like "Novak Djokovic, whose name is spelled 'Novak Đoković' in his native Serbia(...)". Obviously, that would not be proof that the English-speaking world does not adopt the rendition "Novak Djokovic", which it does, to the point of it being almost empirical.
Concerning the point you just made, if it was a simple question of style, I would agree. But in this case, it is not. We can't chose to ignore established facts because it would be convenient for our article-building process. A similar argument was presented, validly, when people were deciding if the article on the city of New York should be at "New York, New York" or simply "New York". Although the article is now at New York City, for some time it was at "New York, New York". The argument used was that, although saying just "New York" commonly evokes the city, and not the state of New York, "New York, New York" is also consistent with valid sources, especially US government sources, which consistently use the formula "city name, state name" to refer to cities in the United States; that meant that it was equally valid, which in turn meant that the criteria that would be needed to decide would lie more in a style-based decision. And then, we had the point that when it comes to cities in the US, Misplaced Pages follows the general standard of "city name, state name", so for consistency, since both forms were equally verifiable, the article could duely be at "New York, New York". That argumentation was perfect. I myself used to think that it was a bit weird having the article at "New York, New York", but I had to accede to that argumentation.
Here, however, it is different. In addition to the fact that New York is a city, and one that is already within the English-speaking world, whereas here we are talking about people, who are not from the English-speaking world but whose names are routinely used in multiple sources, following a specific spelling, the sources — pending individual verification, of course — will normally show that there will be a clear preferred and adopted rendition in English that is different from the native spelling. When that happens, it is no longer really our choice. The English language (again, on the English-language Misplaced Pages) and, far more importantly, Verifiability take precedence over our convenience. We need to reflect what the verified sources are telling us, and since circumstances tend to vary (like I said: tennis players and mathematicians are clearly very different instances, so we will not be able to afford both the same treatment) that will necessarily be reflected in the process of building the encyclopedia, which means that, while our string of articles on, for example, slav scientists and politicians will normally, and correctly, include diacritics in their titles, other circumstances exist where we will need to adopt a different pattern. Not one that we created, nor because we wanted to, but rather because we verified that such were the facts in pre-published material. Redux (talk) 01:05, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Interesting, in that regard, is the fact that our Naming conventions regarding article titles on subjects-not-originally-from-the English-speaking-world does indeed account for what I've just explained: it says that if a version in English exists that is widely used and recognized, that is the one that is to be used. Reversely, it is saying that when there is no such thing, we use the native/original form. When we combine this with what has been said about choices for consistency, what that means is that iff we have options to choose from (as it was the case in the example of New York I gave above), we need to make consistent choices throughtout the project, so as to maintain consistency. When the sources take the choice out of our hands, however, we are obliged to reflect what is verifiable fact. Redux (talk) 01:28, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
I think the New York City example does not answer the concern above. Is it a problem if you refer to NYC by any of the names mentioned in your comment? Does using one of these makes the other cities' names look strange?
Here is an example regarding tennis (with the Anglicised name of the player): "Agnes Szavay's trainers are József Bocskay and Zoltán Kuhárszky". A bit confusing for an English reader maybe? Looks like an encyclopedia? Squash Racket (talk) 03:38, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
The New York City reference was an exemplification regarding a point about making a standardizing choice. I used it to show that such examples do exist: in the case of NYC, we were looking into usage, and it turned out that more than one was equally verifiable — not a question of looking or sounding "strange" — and since they were both verifiable, we would need an extra criterion to decide which title would be preferred. In that case, we were able to make a standardizing choice per the formula already used in Misplaced Pages for US cities. And NYC was already in the English-speaking world, thus eliminating the "need" to verify a different spelling in the English-speaking world.
Here, we are not discussing a place, but people. And people whose names have a different spelling in the English-speaking world. So if we can verify that the spelling exists and is indeed adopted widely, then we have no choice. We need to reflect verifiable facts, not decide on our own that the facts can be ignored or "bent" because it would look better on our pages. That is exactly how the encyclopedia is built, as reflected by the relevant policies and guidelines, already mentioned multiple times. Redux (talk) 17:34, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
  • While I Support the idea of the moves in general (I have not looked at each case) providing English usage can be proven, this should be moved to a subpage or somesuch. This is getting disruptive to RM. Narson (talk) 21:14, 6 June 2008 (UTC) (Now done, obviously.)--Kotniski (talk) 22:04, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Comment Someone seems to have made a decision all by himself, so it would be nice to send a message to all parties who may possibly be interested in this discussion. Squash Racket (talk) 03:49, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

I hope that user gets a clear warning. That is definitely not the way of going. I think one should take each article at a time. Just citing the Djokovic article as a reason for a mass move is very weak (to say the least). Moving on: I repeat myself, and may be cofusing matters (sorry if I am) but what use is this again: Misplaced Pages:Naming conflicts - section on proper nouns, where it is written that "If a native name has a common English-language equivalent, the English version takes precedence"? Is that irrelevant for a diacritics discussion? Or can it be dismissed as it is "just" a convention, not a policy? I am just trying to learn this process which apperas a bit like ChaosinChaos. --HJensen, talk 09:21, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
That user is an administrator on the Serbian Misplaced Pages. He ought to know better. This is a case of WP:POINT. Please visit talk:Daniela Hantuchová#Requested move, where I managed to snag an authoritative BBC expert (tennis, broadcasting, and language use) source that advises to not drop diacritics on Czech/Slovak players. The source is a running RSS feed, and I invite you to subscribe to it, to ascertain that it is not a "mere blog", but a source that satisfies all Misplaced Pages criteria for sourcing main space text. Thank you. --Mareklug
Yes seems POINTy, these should be reverted. Hobartimus (talk) 14:30, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

That page, as quoted by Mareklug himself on the talk page of the Hantuchova article, is a "how to say" page. That means it is a page meant to show people how to pronounce names in their original language. It would be applicable if we were discussing the absurd possibility of "erradicating" any mention to diacritics from the entire Misplaced Pages. Since we are discussing article titles, where the spelling is defined by verification that the English-speaking world adopts and recognizes a different spelling widely, a website explaining the existence of the native spelling and the fact that in those languages diacritics are essential to defining how they are pronounced does not vacate the fact (assuming verification, of course) that the English-speaking world adopts a different spelling — spelling, not pronounciation. Misplaced Pages is covering that, since in the article, which is not the article title, we not only use diacritics in the first sentence of the first paragraph, but we also provide pronounciation guides to make sure readers are informed of what the diacritics mean and how they affect the pronounciation of a word. As a matter of fact, the fact that that person seems to be protesting against the fact that the names are used in English without diacritics serves to actually make the point of widely used in the English-speaking world. A individual who thinks it's wrong does not change that fact, which is what we do need to verify.
You are confusing the article itself with the article title, and assuming that pieces of information that need to be in the article are somehow supposed to be conveyed in the title. It is not the case. The title is defined by verifed usage in English for each subject. I've also mentioned the difference between the title and actual content of the article in my response to Kotniski's post, a little further above. Redux (talk) 17:34, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Mareklug found and mentioned above a page which I think merits more attention:
In Czech and Slovak (closely related West Slavic languages), primary stress is predictable: it falls almost invariably on the first syllable of a word. So, for instance, the Slovak tennis player Daniela Hantuchová’s name is pronounced DAN-yell-uh HAN-tuukh-ov-aa and the Czech player Iveta Benešová is IVV-ett-uh BEN-esh-ov-aa. The acute diacritic in Czech does not indicate stress; it actually indicates vowel length. Therefore, in the above surnames, the last vowel is a long but unstressed "a" sound (-aa as in "father"). It is important to retain the various diacritics in Czech and Slovak orthography as they represent a particular sound; loss of the appropriate diacritics results in incorrect pronunciations (e.g. Šafářová becomes Safarova, and is often incorrectly pronounced as saff-uh-ROH-vuh, instead of SHAFF-aar-zhov-aa, which is closer to the Czech pronunciation).
Which was basically my point all along. Orderinchaos 11:32, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

I take it you didn't notice Kotniski's post and my response above, or you would not be making the exact same point again. So again, but more briefly (for more detail, please read the relevant posts above): article titles are not pronunciation guides; in fact, Misplaced Pages is not a pronunciation guide. That notwithstanding, we do include information, which is relevant, on how any given word or name might be pronounced. That information, however, is given in the article. It is not, by any measure, the scope of the article's title to provide a pronunciation guide. Sustaining that the diacritics should be in the article, in spite of the fact that, if so verified (as explained multiple times), they are not to be for the reason that otherwise readers will mispronounce the person's name is absolutely not in keeping with how the encyclopedia is organized in terms of article titles. Titles are decided according to parameters that have absolutely nothing to do with making sure that when the reader sees the title, s/he will know exactly how the name or word is pronounced. Again, please read the post above on that regard. Redux (talk) 17:34, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Your point being? (We always write pronounciation in the lead, so that is a non argument imo.)--HJensen, talk 16:24, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
Please read my post immediately above, as well as my response to Kotniski's post, a little further above. Redux (talk) 17:34, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
  • Oppose and revert the out of process moves already done. Diatrics are used everywhere in Misplaced Pages there is simply no reason why tennis articles should be any different. In any case wasn't there some centralized discussion about diatrics? This will come up in more areas not just tennis. Hobartimus (talk) 14:27, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
"No reasons" is wrong. Many reasons are given above. --HJensen, talk 16:24, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
Clearly, this was posted without any consideration or reading anything that has been said so far. The only possible response is plainly: please read the discussion. Redux (talk) 17:34, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
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