Talk:Abdul Majid al-Qa′ud

Request to purge OR from the title

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: Not moved. The proposal is to move the article to a new title that replaces the prime symbol with Modifier letter left half ring, as the romanization of the Arabic letter ayin in the article title. The decision would apply at least in this case and presumably could imply future use as well. I did not see enough evidence of project consensus to justify overriding the title blacklist, given the uncertainties about current practice. Romanization of Arabic in page titles ought to be governed by Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Arabic). It seems that a draft of this convention was created back in 2007 but the discussion never reached a conclusion, so the page was marked historical. Lacking an agreed-to standard, we have to go by whatever past discussions can be easily located. Traditionally, editors have been reluctant to use special characters in page titles without good reason. For example, see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (standard letters with diacritics)#Printability. If we check WP:MOS-AR#Transliteration we see the advice to romanize the letter ayin with a grave accent symbol. Our article on Romanization of Arabic is not specifically about Wikipedia but about publishing practices generally, and it gives three different special characters including modifier letter apostrophe that have been used for ayin. If this move proposal were done, it would imply a new practice on how Arabic-based titles ought to be spelled and this should require a broader consensus than a single move discussion. In practice, if User:Incnis Mrsi were to propose using apostrophe for ayin here (rather than the fairly exotic Modifier letter left half ring) it's likely that few people would object. In fact, using the apostrophe was the suggestion of User:AnonMoos below. The example he gave was Ta'awwudh. EdJohnston (talk) 04:45, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

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Abdul Majid al-Qa′ud → Abdul Majid al-Qaʿud – The use of ʿ (and similarly looking symbols such as ʻ) for transliteration of ﻉ is well documented. The use of prime (symbol) in this rôle seems to be a blatant WP:OR and even not a poor man’s approximation: they are far from homoglyphic. I’d moved the page myself unless MediaWiki:Titleblacklist. “ʿ” is used in titles of several Wikipedia articles such as ʿAbd al‐Wājid and Nastaʿlīq script. --Relisted. -- tariqabjotu 02:36, 27 August 2013 (UTC) Relisted. BDD (talk) 16:26, 15 August 2013 (UTC) Incnis Mrsi (talk) 07:44, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

BTW I was enraged when saw [1] that reverted my correction (a partial one, to the extent of my technical possibilities) and certainly would undo it in my other time. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 07:44, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

• Comment - it isn't good to be enraged by such a revert, though I'd be interested to hear why User:Joefromrandb considers that WP:FULLNAME has to match the title? Does WP:Naming conventions (Arabic) have anything to say? In ictu oculi (talk) 09:34, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
  • It doesn't have to match the title. But if the edit is in fact correct, what's wrong with moving the page so that they're both correct? Joefromrandb (talk) 09:41, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

User:Joefromrandb, User:Incnis Mrsi. Well that's the question isn't it? WP:OPENPARA shows we very often have more complete names in leads than in titles (which are governed by WP:COMMONNAME). But in this case al-Qaʿud is more correct, and yet ʿ is Titleblacklisted. I have noted strict transliteration in lead, and simple transliteration in title in many Arabic titles. See Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(Arabic)#Transliteration. What is the rule for Arabic titles? I know it isn't that they must be the same. In ictu oculi (talk) 16:22, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

I think that's an apples-to-oranges comparison. In any case, I self-reverted for the moment. Any idea as to why the title is blacklisted? Joefromrandb (talk) 18:35, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

I don't think the issue of whether or not to use strict transcriptions in titles has been fully settled. It's common for articles to have titles like Ta'awwudh, though ' = ع is discouraged in the text of articles whenever there's any attempt at a strict or scientific transcription (and in fact in article text, ' would usually be more likely to represent ء than ع)... AnonMoos (talk) 01:53, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

• Not sure why this was relisted, as there seems to be consensus to move. Apparently we just need an admin who can override the blacklist. Joefromrandb (talk) 22:43, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

• Comment: I was going to close this, but the appearance of the proposed letter in the title blacklist suggests to me there is a consensus *somewhere* to be cautious in using the letter in titles. I left a couple of questions for various people who may know about this issue, but any other admin can close this if they don't share my concern. I should otherwise be back here to close (or not) in a couple of days. Thanks, EdJohnston (talk) 04:17, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

The proponent, User:Incnis Mrsi, has been away from Wikipedia for a few days. I left a note for him, mentioning the policy issues that I found and suggesting we use an apostrophe here for ayin. See the precedent of List of Islamic terms in Arabic, where the article itself uses many special characters but the titles of the cited pages are spelled conventionally. EdJohnston (talk) 15:31, 26 August 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.