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Continuing with M-R standardisation.

At the risk of arousing disagreements, I have decided to continue standardising the McCune-Reischauer trasliterations on Korean articles. Basically, I am enforcing the following rules:

  1. ㅅ is "s" in initial position except 쉬, which is transcribed shwi;
  2. Aspirated consonants due to adjacent consonants are not transcribed. Example, Chikhalsi, not Chik'alshi;
  3. Pronunciation takes precedence over M-R spelling rules (i.e. that table of rules). Example: Hancha, not Hanja, even though looking up the table would tell you Hanja;
  4. However, -북도 designations are an exception to the above, transcribed -pukto instead of -bukto, even though that is how it is pronounced;
  5. Hyphen use: use hyphen to separate name from administrative divisions only, not to geographical features such as Kŭmgangsan. (This also applies to Revised Romanisation.) With names ending in 남도 or 북도, the hyphen is put before 남/북, not before 도 (as is the case with Revised Romanisation);
  6. Where an M-R transliteration specifically refers to old South Korean transcriptions, I have not touched them, for example when mentioning a South Korean city that used to be called Chik'alshi;
  7. Apostrophe is used in M-R for separating syllables where in RR the hyphen is used. -ng+vowel combination means ㅇ+ vowel; -n'g+vowel means ㄴㄱ+vowel.

The above are clearly stated in both McCune and Reischauer's original paper (1939) and the recent Library of Congress guidelines. The Library of Congress guidelines also mention using ’ for separating ambiguous syllables and ‘ for aspirated consonants; however I have not seen this rule in the original M-R paper and I am leaving this alone. -- KittySaturn 22:07, 2005 Mar 5 (UTC)

Disputed names

This discussion has been moved to Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Korean)/Disputed names. -- Visviva 03:27, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Republic of Korea vs. slang/inaccurate South Korea

Clearly the Wikipedia articles have to start using the accepted name of the Republic of Korea and the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea rather than the slang Americanisms "South Korea" and "North Korea" which are in common usage, but are not the real names of either of these countries.

Any almanac, fact book, encyclopaedia, or atlas has no citation whatsoever of the nation of Republic of Korea appearing as South Korea other than as a short form, and while we all know what we are talking about, it makes sense to make the Wikipedia more accurate as soon as we can.

Entries often include USA, US, America, United States, or even the US of A - but technically it is "United States of America". And we should give the same respect to both the Koreas. The Koreans also call their country by other names, which can be used within the next wikipedia if it moves into the Korean language.

Could we start tidying up the entries throughout the Wikipedia to reflect the real country names - otherwise we will start setting a bad precedent, and lead to massive mislabelling of other countries according to slang or unconventional names.

Can we get some sort of agreement to correct this before the Wikipedia gets larger and more inaccurate?

For those of you who intend to argue: look at the entry here:

United States Embassy, Seoul, Republic of Korea. http://seoul.usembassy.gov/

We do not see the country called "South Korea" on the official website, or on the ambassador's credentials at the UN.

Are you trying to say we should write the United States of America every time we talk about the US as a matter of respect? I doubt that any American would feel that the name US lacks respect so much as that they would prefer others always call them by the United States of America.
Additionally, that very official web site you mentioned actually has lots and lots of places where it calls the ROK "South Korea". See for example [1]. (There are over a hundred pages with "South Korea" in it.) I would not call "South Korea" an Americanism. Even in the UK or in Australia, it is "South Korea", in Hong Kong it is 南韓, even on the Korean peninsula there are such names as 남한 (south Han) (in the south) and 남조선 (south Joseon/Chosŏn)) (in the north). When the context is clear, it is called Korea, 韓國, 한국. It is just an accepted short form; it is not "inaccurate". Even the Encarta mentions the ROK name one single time (under the article titled "Korea, South") and proceeds to use "South Korea" in the rest of the article. In any case, the names in Wikipedia in general are mentioned by what people commonly call it, not official names. We aren't about to write "Commonwealth of Australia" every time we talk about Australia or "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" every time we talk about the UK. South Korea is a short name for Republic of Korea, so we will use it. -- KittySaturn 00:24, 2005 Mar 22 (UTC)

Well, South Korea (etc.) is in accordance to the Manual of Style (use most common form). Nothing else to say. Kokiri 28 June 2005 23:23 (UTC)

Chosŏn'gŭl and Hangul

I am proposing that "Hangul" be replaced with "Chosongul" in all name tables relating to North Korean subjects. Would this be feasible? --68.194.108.16 02:23, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks to the template system, that would be quite easy to do, at least for most North Koreans. I'm not entirely sure it's a good idea, but I can't think of any good arguments against it right now. I will post a link to this proposal on the Wikipedia:Korea-related topics notice board. -- Visviva 02:54, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Sounds like a reasonable suggestion, but really should be Chosŏn'gŭl ;) Kokiri 28 June 2005 23:09 (UTC)
Done. See Template:Koreanname north and Template:Koreanname north image. -- Visviva 13:19, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

Hi. I apologize in advance for my completely ingnorant intrusion on a discussion between people who are clearly expert. I simply cannot find an answer to my question anywhere else.

I am exploring the history of the Korean alphabet for a paper I am writing on Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Dictee , and I want to know the literal definition of Chosŏn'gŭl. I can see that it must mean something like "Korean script" simply by looking at the spelling, but I was wondering if the word carried any other meaning or connotation, like Hangul. (It is my understanding (a la wikipedia, and likely your work) that Hangul means "Great script" in archaic Korean and "Korean script" in the modern.)

Also, when did North Korea begin using the name Chosŏn'gŭl? Also, are there any other names by which the alphabet is called, for instance casual or affectionate names?

Thank you. And again, sorry for butting in.

Afaik, NK never started using Chosŏn'gŭl, that was the name of the language before (some old people still use it in the south). Cf. Joseon (Chosŏn). Kokiri 09:13, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

How can we at the same time write "Chosŏn'gŭl" in NK articles and refuse to write "Hangeul" in SK articles, claiming that the Korean alphabet is called "Hangul" in English? Please post replies to Template talk:Koreanname north, not here. – Wikipeditor 04:07, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Well, since this (potentially) affects several/all name tables, it's probably best to discuss it here. I think the principal reason is that the decisions were made several years apart, under different considerations. But they are not entirely incompatible. We use the common English spelling where one exists, and otherwise default to the official Romanization: this means that we use hangul to represent 한글, because that is the most common spelling, but Chosŏn'gŭl to represent 조선글, because there is no common spelling.
As a firm advocate of contextually-appropriate naming, I think that Chosongul and Hangul should be used in their appropriate countries. However, I wouldn't much care about changing Hangul to Hangeul, or Chosŏn'gŭl to Chosongul; I suppose consistency is generally a good thing. -- Visviva 02:11, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
Sounds right, I should've thought of that.—Wikipeditor 14:27, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Alphabetizing South Korean Wikipedians

Would it be a good idea to re-order the (few at this point) S.K. Wiks? I know there are always difficulties with alphabetizing Korean and Western names, but maybe it might be of use when the list gets bigger. By the way, at the top of the South Korean Wikipedians page, there is a note to also add to the gen. Wik'n page - but when I link thither, the only place I see to list is the SKW page that I just came from. 211.225.34.177 01:27, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

Historical Periods: Colonialization

The article for the period between about 1900 and 1950 was changed into History of Korea (1900-1950), since (afaik) colonialization was not NPOV enough. Should we update the convention here accordingly? Kokiri 28 June 2005 23:13 (UTC)

Can we have an open discussion about this section? Most of the convention came into existence by observing how we Wikipedians do things. Some of the issues have been discussed at some length, but there are three sections that have just stood here unchallenged. I hope we can discuss these sections in the light that Wikipedia:Naming convention is now official Pedia policy. Kokiri 16:25, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Historical divisions as used by

  • Korean Cultural Insights by the KNTO: Old Joseon (Bronze Age) - Buyeo (Iron Age) - Samhan - Three Kingdoms (Silla, Goguryeo, Baekje; Gaya) - Unified Silla - Goryeo Dynasty - Joseon Dynasty - Daehan Empire (proclaimed; overlap with Joseon) - Japanese colonial rule - SK/NK
  • {{History of Korea template: Gojoseon - Samhan - Three Kingdoms (Goguryeo, Baekje, Silla) - Unified Silla and Balhae - Later Three Kingdoms - Goryeo - Joseon - 1900-1950 - Divided Korea
The change to 1900-1950 is a problematic one, particularly since it obviously overlaps with the Korean Empire and Divided Korea periods. I'd like to see us discuss that further. The move was well-intentioned, but the Talk page suggests that those who did it didn't really know what they were getting into. -- Visviva 23:39, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Names of monarchs

This is another section that was never really discussed, afaik. I believe it is modelled after articles on monarchs elsewhere in the world? Kokiri 16:25, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Yes. See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (monarchs). Originally the two were in disagreement, with this page calling for (title) (name) of (kingdom), but this was changed a while back to be in compliance with the general standard. This change was proposed, although not really discussed, on this page -- see the first archive. -- Visviva 23:26, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Korean article template

Another such section. Do we really need the standard link See also List of Korea-related topics, now that we have categories? Kokiri 16:25, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

I like it, and would like to keep it, although I guess we don't really need it. AFAICT, we had categories when the template was created, hence the Category:Korea link, but I wouldn't really know about that.  ;-) Basically the link is just a reciprocal one; since all KRT's should be linked from the LKRT, a reciprocal link to the LKRT seems reasonable. -- Visviva 23:32, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Re-evaluating the Revised Romanisation policy

It has been quite a while since the policy to adopt South Korea's Revised Romanisation (RR) for Korean names (apart from North Korean names) was introduced. I recognise that to change policy now would be cataclismic, but I find it surprising that there seems to have been little discussion about the apropriateness of the policy all these years. My guess is that relief about having a set policy and a set convention and the fear of opening a can of worms again won out. Well, at the risk of opening that proverbial can, I claim that we should at least stop at think whether it was a good idea to adopt the RR.

I have my own issues with both RR and McCune-Reischauer (MR), and so do most people, it seems, that care about the topic of Korean romanisation. Neither of the two is inherently superior to the other in my opinion. So the considerations should be that of convention and usefulness.

The inescapable fact is that the vast majority of existing scholarly work on Korea uses MR. This includes encyclopaedias, library catalogues, the US Library of Congress... Universities continue to use MR, and I personally have consistently used MR for academic papers all my life, not because of my personal preference, but because that was the accepted academic standard. Koreanists dealing primarily with English-language material are going to be much more familiar with MR.

On the other hand, many native Korean speakers today find RR generally more natural and easy-to-use than MR—it's the reason it was developed in the first place. Sceptics doubted RR would take hold outside of South Korea, though, which is why the policy decision to use RR on Wikipedia was so significant. I assume native South Korean Wikipedians played a large part in the adoption of RR as Wikipedia policy, and doubtless many of them were motivated by a certain zeal to spread RR outside of Korea. I initially dismissed the attempt to replace MR with RR a quixotic quest destined to meet a lot of resistance from most scholars of Korea.

Well, a few years on, we already have a considerable body of knowledge accumulated on Wikipedia about Korea following the RR convention. It's too early to say if RR will keep gaining momentum. I cannot think of any large-scale, well-known English-language reference source besides Wikipedia (and those sites) that uses RR. Thinking that the decision of a handful of Wikipedians is going to bring about the international acceptance of RR is obviously somewhat delusional. But it's clear that we bear a certain responsibility in setting standards of usage, so at the risk of sounding like I'm anti-RR, I urge people to stop and deliberate on the pros and cons of the current policy informed by the past few years of experience and on whether there is any justification now for revising the policy. --Iceager 07:55, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

Hmm... Well, personally I like RR because it's easy to use, even though I'm not a native speaker. If you can read Korean, you can write in RR. That's certainly not the case for MR, which has all sorts of arcane rules and exceptions, as well as a maddening number of diacritics. One consequence of this is that it's almost never used consistently -- in fact I've read pretty widely and have yet to find a work that doesn't have glaring inconsistencies in its use of MR... Another consequence is that it's a real pain to type. I wouldn't relish writing an article and having to scroll down for diacritics several times in each paragraph.
RR hasn't yet overcome the inertia of the KS community, but I don't really think that needs to concern us. Our work should reflect scholarship and research, but Wikipedia's goal is to make information available, not to participate directly in the academic discourse. Of course, that isn't an argument for RR per se, just an argument against accepting MR on academic-usage grounds.
There are some creditable reference works out there now that use RR; presumably there will be more in the future. These include Korea Annual, the Handbook of Korea, and Korean philosophy: Its tradition and modern transformation (possibly all volumes of the Anthology of Korean Studies). All such works I'm aware of originate in South Korea, but they shouldn't be rejected out-of-hand on that basis.
In sum, I think the existing policy works well. It's not perfect, but I can't think of any good reason to change it. Thanks for bringing this up, however. -- Visviva 13:19, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
I agree that neither MR nor RR is superior to the other - and I tend to think that there really can be no romanisation that people have nothing to complain about.
MR is seriously hard to use, though. It's firstly difficult to type, and secondly difficult to get it right. For me, when neither system is better than the other in terms of how they are transcribing Korean, I tend to go for the easier-to-use RR. How difficult it is to type MR is probably less of an issue with academic papers, but I have the thought that if Wikipedia's policy were to use MR, people would be less willing to contribute, simply because there are so many lazy people, you know :P "Damn, if I correct that bit in the article, I have to somehow dig the o and u out with the weird thingies above them, so I can't be bothered. I can't be bothered figuring out what the complicated MR is for this mess either. I think I'll just leave it." -- KittySaturn 14:26, July 18, 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for bringing this issue up, and also thanks for the way you did so. I remember the debate over how to spell 한글 some time ago (we agreed that it was an English word and thus did not have this discussion before). The reason we settled for RR, I believe, was largely/purely its ease our familiarity with RR. It is quite important to have a convention in terms of avoiding duplicate articles (I believe we did root these out just over a year ago), but whatever the convention, we'll always need redirects. Korean romanizations are a mess, and its not our task to resolve this. However, we do need some form of platform to work on. Kokiri 15:28, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

Just as a thought: The Oxford Manual of Style (2002) suggests the use of McR, but without ' and ŏ, thus Pyongyang rather than P'yŏngyang(; and as a consequence no difference between North and South Korea). Kokiri 10:01, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

I'll contribute my two-cents' worth. When I started editing Korea-related articles in 2003, the practice of using Revised Romanization was already in place. The reasoning was that that is the official system in use in South Korea, so at the very least for articles on South Korean topics, that system should be used. Now, there are arguments both for and against such a line of reasoning, and I personally feel that McCune-Reischauer probably does a marginally better job than the Revised system of representing the Korean sound system to non-Korean (at least English-speaking) readers in such a way that they can produce a plausible approximation of the Korean pronunciation of words and names. So from a point of view of authentically representing the Korean sound system, McCune-Reischauer might be a better way to go. But there are at least two reasons to stick with the Revised system:

  1. It's the system used to spell South Korean place names. Switching, say, all articles on SK place names to McCune-Reischauer would needlessly introduce a fair amount of confusion.
  2. As Kokiri pointed out, it is very easy to screw up McCune-Reischauer. I agree with Sewing.Even papers and articles written by KS scholars are often rife with M-R spelling errors, such is the rigour and meticulousness demanded of people using the system. The Revised system has the advantage that it is probably marginally more difficult to screw up, and easier to get right. This is a consideration for Wikipedia, since anyone can edit any article, and going through and fixing romanizations is painful (believe me, I've done it).

All that said, please keep in mind that Korea-related articles already show the article title rendered in both romanization systems in the Korean name table. When reading article A, if the user sees B mentioned and a Wikilink to article B and clicks on the link, the user can then see the M-R romanization for B. -Sewing - talk 23:38, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

From my experiance the RR is used by new books in the west, too. My tour guide "Moons Handbook South Korea" (from January 2004) uses it and so does my German Korean language book "Koreanisch für Anfänger" (from 2005). -- IGEL 00:20, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

I agree with what Sewing has written and would like to add a few arguments against giving MR precedence over RR.

If you want a tradeoff between simplicity and accurate reflection of pronunciation, either Yale or RR seems better than MR to me. As far as I see, while MR might have been widely used in many areas before RR was devised, Yale rather than the other two seems to establish itself as the romanisation of choice for linguists.

South Koreans always used their own romanisations made to resemble English spelling ("Hankook") for names. MR's awkwardness to learn and use hasn't been helping much with this. If we don't allow RR some time to gain popularity, chances are high this won't ever change.

While I find RR's official definition a bit vague and – concerning hyphen usage – too lenient, at least there is one authority for it. With MR, you have not one but many romanisation traditions in different institutions each calling theirs MR and all with slight differences, e.g. whether to soften the consonant after a hyphen.

If I'm not mistaken, you are fairly free in deciding where to set hyphens or even spaces in words, which renders it less usable for search. Is the spacing in "Chosŏn Minjujuŭi Inmin Konghwaguk" arbitrary? Are "Chosŏn Minjujuŭi Inmingonghwaguk" or "Chosŏn Minju-juŭi Inmin Konghwa-guk" allowed? As soon as you decide to insert a space, the letter after it also changes, e.g. g→k, which might confuse some.

As long as MR was the only thing in town, the majority of publications didn't care to use it and made up their own romanisations, or got McR wrong. The worst thing about it is that when there's no diacritics on vowels, e.g. in a newspaper, you must guess whether there weren't supposed to be any, or whether they have been dropped. This won't happen with RR. Likewise, if a newsreader who does not know how to pronounce Korean reads RR eo, o, u or eu, it's easier to guess what he meant compared to his reading MR o or u. – Wikipeditor 17:50, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

hanja in placenames

how about reconsidering the need for hanja in korean templates? for royalty, i think hanja is relevant, since they are historic figures & historical records are in hanja. present-day personal names, i think could go either way, since they are still sometimes used in south korea, although fading away.

for south korean city and district, & especially university names, i don't think hanja is helpful for english readers, as they are generally not used anymore. in north korea, hanja is not used, so i don't see why it would belong in wikipedia. if hanja is relevant (in disambiguation or some history contexts) they foboxes for 2 or more names) for those rulers whose birth names are not known? for some korean ruler articles that used the generic infobox, hanja is relevant but will be lost. i was going to replace them with the ruler infobox, but there isn't one i can use, & i'm a relative newbie. it's a lot of work, but i feel strongly that we should use hanja only when relevant, not as a default in all korean templates.. if nobody else does it, i will learn to make the needed templates. Appleby 05:34, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Where Hanja is remotely used (like romanization), then I think it should be included. The decision has already been made to push this off to a box on the side, so I don't see the cost of adding it in. Hanja should be included in the very least for historical figures, South Koreans, and historical places and events. (note: I'm Chinese so I'm biased. I personally find the Chinese characters very useful when reading about Korea-related topics.) For royalty, you can take a look at what's been done at Template_talk:Zh-tsp#Like Templates--Jiang 07:51, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
Although infrequently used daily, Hanjas are on the official records of names of people in South Korea. Place names have their roots in Hanjas too. — Instantnood 08:39, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
I also support to include hanja in the infobox. -- ChongDae 12:18, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

1. this is the english wikipedia, not an "international", nor "official korean" version. wikipedia policy is to use the most common english names or npov name, so dokdo is called liancourt rocks, republic of korea is called south korea, etc., so what's important is not what's in official records in korea, but what english speakers recognize as useful.

most encyclopedias don't include local language non-latin scripts at all. it's a minor footnote acknowledgement of local practice. in local usage, very little hanja is used. most koreans don't know the hanja for entertainers, sports figures, or other modern public figures. just look at korean web pages, street signs, etc. nor do most korean generally refer to cities, placenames, & universities by hanja. these may be helpful for chinese-readers, but are not appropriate for the english wikipedia.

2. we're talking about the basic default infobox, & infoboxes that specifically don't need hanja. it's silly to have to search for hanja names of popular modern comedians, or korean universities, or to include the recently official chinese characters for seoul when no other country's local spelling is included. i've often wanted to add an infobox but didn't because i couldn't find the hanja, even on korean websites. take a look at List of Korea-related topics: hanja isn't really relevant to anything north korea, entertainment/cinema/contemporary culture/modern entertainers, sports/olympics/sports figures, buildings/towers/airports, industries/companies, etc.

3. i'm all for leaving hanja in royalty names or historic/traditional arts figures with pen or courtesy names, or topics related to china. but they already have infoboxes with hanja & i didn't delete the hanja there. i've often added hanja in historical articles (within the body text), in the specific context of discussing its pronunciation or etymology or identifying ancient tribes. changing the default is by no means banishing hanja, hanja is always available in the hanja infobox, or can be explained in the article if relevant.

again, my point is that it shouldn't be the default for all korean infoboxes, but we should make specific hanja-inclusive templates in appropriate subcategories. Appleby 15:38, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

since i didn't get any responses to above, i did go ahead & make the default without hanja, created a new template for use with hanja, & also created the basic rulername, which is the same as the hanja infobox. i also changed all (i think) of the royalty or historic period infoboxes that used the basic koreanname infobox (most already used the ruler infobox, & i didn't remove the hanja from them), to use the hanja one. if anyone can think of any other groups of articles that currently use the basic infobox, that should be changed to the one with hanja, please discuss here, & if necessary, i'm willing to do the grunt work. again, please remember this is the english wikipedia, & hanja infoboxes are available for whenever it's appropriate. Appleby 05:14, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

Added after edit conflict:

I don't know how many templates you have changed, but I think you should at least have left a comment at Template talk:Koreanname noimage when you took the hanja row out of it, as a whole lot of pages now look different; and if a template only consists of a few rows, the deletion of a row is a change that IMHO deserves a mention in the edit summary so it's easier for others to see what happened in the template's history.

Besides, I think you should have waited a tad longer before editing the rows out. Most people probably aren't even aware of this discussion yet, and it took me some time to find out what happened and that it is supposed to be discussed here. I actually reverted your change to Template:Koreanname noimage because it was hard to see whether it wasn't a deliberate act without discussion (I haven't reverted your edit of Template:Infobox Korean city). Please allow more time for a discussion to begin before making such important changes the next time.

As for my opinion on it, I feel that hanja belong into most if not all Korean infoboxes.

  • I could live without them for e.g. names of Korean TV shows, but there are articles that wouldn't feel complete without hanja. (Besides, how could you delete them from ALL Korean city infoboxes just because nobody replied to you after 14½ hours? And, as I said, you haven't even left a note – let alone waited for a discussion – about Template:Koreanname noimage!)
  • If you don't know the hanja of something, you can just leave the field blank, and somebody else will fill it in later.
  • The Korean Wikipedia can do as it pleases, but I don't think hanja confuse, irritate or otherwise bother anybody on the English WP as long as they stay in their boxes.
  • If people cannot turn to an encyclopedia for a Korean name's hanja, where else?
    Wikipeditor 05:52, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

i had first noticed someone added the chinese name to the seoul article. the chinese language word, not the historical derivation of the korean word or something that is used locally in korea (except aimed at chinese toursists). since no other country's local language name was included in the infobox, that just didn't make any sense.

& by extension, other city names' hanja are not generally used by koreans, nor relevant in english unless discussed in the context of the historical etymology, which is rarely relevant enough for the article, let alone the infobox, which is a summary of basic essential data at the top of the page. so i changed the koreancity template after leaving a comment at that template page & at the korean naming convention page a full week ago. [2]. i've also commented on chongdae's talk page in english & korean pages later, & fully explained my reasons above. you can see nobody's responded or reverted since my response 3 days ago.

i think some people feel an article feels more complete with hanja only because we know hanja. i think most english readers, even the small fraction that might be able to read hangul & find it useful, wouldn't miss hanja. having it in the default infobox gives the wrong impression that chinese characters are in common local usage & unnecessarily makes infoboxes difficult to complete. i don't think people turn to the english wikipedia for the korean name's hanja; if they are that interested, they can look in the korean wikipedia (which often don't have hanja), but do you think that's a significant enough population to include hanja in the basic default infobox for all korean topics?

please read my original reasons above. obviously, if the consensus is against my position, that's that, but i really think this is the logical, proper, & practical format for articles in english. Appleby 06:33, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

I am also in support of Wikipedia displaying the hanja information, at least for personal names, place names and such. Besides the many reasons given by others above, let me add that hanja, kanji, and Chinese characters are important points of reference in English-language academic literature dealing with East Asia. In several English-language journals specialising in Korea and East Asia, such as the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, the hanja (and not hangul) for Korean terms, personal names, and place names are given next to their English transliterations. This might be mildly annoying for Korean readers, but it serves the purpose well for many Asia specialists or other readers familiar with Chinese characters. English is very much an international language and especially the language of scholarly exchange. By declaring the hanja information irrelevant for "English" users one unintentionally renders irrelevant the significant portion of the readership of the English Wikipedia for whom the hanja information would be helpful. I imagine, for example, Japanese readers who might know Korean historical terms by the kanji but not by the current Korean pronunciation would be helped by the inclusion of the hanja.
You say those who are interested can look in the Korean Wikipedia. This assumes that those who are interested is familiar with Korean and that the Korean Wikipedia is a complete resource for hanja (which it is not, as you point out). Well, I've had similar experiences of trying to find out for example Belarusian versions of historical place names in the Belarusian Wikipedia, which was a grueling search both because of my unfamiliarity with the language and the incompleteness of the Belarusian Wikipedia (a problem shared by the Korean Wikipedia, as you point out). Users of Wikipedia who don't read Korean will face similar difficulties trying to find the correct hanja for Korean terms, and the English Wikipedia is probably the only English-language encyclopedic online source to turn to. You may dismiss Belarusian versions of historical place names as information that "English" users won't miss, whose inclusion would be an unnecessary bit of courtesy to "local" users, but there are people interested in that stuff who are not fortunate enough to read Belarusian. I for one would have been spared what seemed like hours of searching and trying to contact Belarusian users if the English Wikipedia contained that little bit of info. This is one line in an infobox placed to the side that we are talking about.
I have a hunch you are worried more about the implications the inclusion of hanja has for readers unfamiliar with the language situation in Korea than these reasons. I share these reservations, but is that a reason to remove that piece of information altogether? Finally, there are confusions about Korean names that can be cleared up by the inclusion of hanja, as in the Nodong-1 and Nodong-2 missiles, which many people mistakenly think derive their names from the Korean word for "labour". --Iceager 03:23, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

let me repeat that i wholeheartedly agree hanja is relevant & helpful in historical or china-related topics, & have attempted to preserve it in those cases. & for disambiguation, it certainly does belong in the article body. an especially knowledgeable english reader or a japanese reader reading about "korean historical terms" would see the hanja, because the relevant hanja would remain in the infobox or be in the article. of course, more information could always help someone out there, but it's a matter of balance. if hanja is in the default korean infobox, it discourages the use of that infobox for the whole universe of popular entertainment & modern culture, & yes, does give the wrong impression of hanja's usage in korea today. it's not a question of whether to use hanja or not, nobody's arguing for its elimination. i just think hanja should be used wherever hanja is helpful, not everywhere a korean infobox is helpful. Appleby 04:08, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps we should create hanja/no hanja versions of all Korean infoboxes so that whoever adds them to Korea-related articles can choose whether hanja is relevant or not. I could be mistaken, but wasn't this the case already, except that the infoboxes had hanja by default with the option of removing them? I see it is now changed to have no hanja by default with the option of adding them (although not for North Korean infoboxes, I see). So this looks like an argument over what the default setting should be. The Korea-related articles I view and edit are almost exclusively ones where hanja would be helpful, but I guess there are users who view mostly popular-entertainment-related articles where hanja is less relevant. Personally I don't mind what the default is, but it bothers me that by just changing the default setting, the Korean infoboxes that already existed have suddenly had their hanja information suppressed. You could go through all the articles affected and manually change them to templates with the hanja add-on, but wouldn't it be more economical and make more sense to set the default back to hanja added in, and manually change the templates for articles requiring no hanja? The latter method helps preserve the hanja info that articles already had. --Iceager 07:54, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

if you peruse my contrib list, i'm actually doing the conversion work now. i converted all remaining korean ruler names to include hanja, & am using "what links here" to convert any historical topics i recognized. i know there's more to go, but i think a good percentage has already been done, it's not as bad as i feared (the slow wikipedia servers were the major impediment). give me a few more days (well, after thanksgiving holidays). & no, i created the hanja-added basic infoboxes. there was no hanja-less one. Appleby 08:02, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Iceager. Hanja can be very useful for disambiguation, and also be informative to users who are familiar with Chinese characters and curious of word etymologies. For instance, people literate in Chinese or Japanese can find cognates in Korean words which they might not otherwise have recognized because they were obscured by phonetic changes over time. I can see cases where a no-hanja template might be useful, such as for native names and vocabulary, but considering how many Korean names and places, and technical terms are Sino-Korean, these must be the exception rather than the norm. Regarding whether the data does belong in an English encyclopedia, it has already been common practice to include foreign names and terms in their native orthography for Greek, Russian, Chinese, and Hebrew, just to name a few languages. In any case, this is a major change affecting ~160 articles (nearly 1,000 more when you throw in the "Korean noimage" template). It is too far reaching for one user to determine alone, and should be voted on before moving ahead further. Even if we ultimately do decide to delete hanja from most of the articles, I believe the hanja should be removed on a case-by-case basis (and when doing so, specific reasons should be cited in the edit summary and possibly the talk page as well). The hanja field was unobtrusive where it was, and providing hanja adds only a trivial amount of extra text to an article. Furthermore, considering all the time countless users put into contributing hanja information, why should we now be hiding it by default? -- Calcwatch 09:12, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

ok, ok, i do apologize for changing the default without more consensus. i would like to hear back from the others who commented above, to see if they stopped responding because they were somewhat persuaged by my responses, or they just stopped talking to me cuz i was an a-hole.
i feel like i'm defending a strawman, because everyone seems to be arguing that hanja is sometimes useful, & often useful in historical, etymological, china-related, & disambiguation areas. i emphatically agree with all these points, so i feel silly repeating myself in every response.
i didn't prohibit hanja or say it was not useful. i just changed the basic infobox, & then specifically created the hanja-added infobox for use whenever people find useful. i left the hanja in infoboxes for royalty, pennames, stagenames, china-related, etc. additionally, hanja is, & will be, in the article body wherever the writer feels the etymology, pronunciation, or history is worth discussion. i've added them myself often.
it is common practice in wikipedia to include common local orthography, which is hangul for north & south korea, but it is not common to take that one step further, to include the etymological precursor orthography unfamiliar to many locals in the default infobox, however helpful it may be to readers of other regional languages or etymologists.
& i am willing to change hundreds of articles, & already have changed about a hundred infoboxes in history articles, to change "koreanname" to "koreanname hanja" or other more appropriate hanja-added infobox., because i do feel strongly about the principle that it should not be in the default, but should be used whenever it is helpful.
if people who have commented so far, after reading my full explanation (& i do ask that you distinguish what i actually did from a broad-brush generalization about hanja use in general), still feel hanja should be in the default basic infobox instead of hanja-specific infoboxes, well, then, i'll change it back myself.
specifically, i strongly disagree with the inclusion of hanja in north korean infoboxes, as north korea does not use hanja locally, pretty much since its founding. Appleby 15:35, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
I have only looked into a few North Korean books so far (although there must be hundreds in our uni's library), so I can't say what is the norm. As far as I remember, however, quite a few books from the 1950s to recent publications used Hanja. I guess the difference of Hanja usage in North and South Korea is overestimated, perhaps due to hearsay in the case of North Korea North, and using sources from the 60s or 70s in the case of South Korea. Wikipeditor 19:18, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

한편, 탈북자들의 한자 수준도 상당히 낮은 것으로 드러났습니다. 탈북자들의 반 이상이 한자를 읽고 해석하는 능력이 전혀 없거나, 별로 없는 것으로 설문조사결과 밝혀졌다고 연합뉴스는 전했습니다. 이에 대해 고영환 씨는 실제로 북한에서 한자교육은 천자문을 배우는 수준으로 이뤄지고 있지만 실제생활에서 사용을 하는 일이 없기 때문에 금세 다 잊게 된다고 지적했습니다. from radio free asia [3] Appleby 19:50, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for the quote. I don't understand everything, but doesn't especially the last sentence also apply to most Southerners with average education? I think hanja literacy has become fairly arcane a skill, judging from a couple of experiences with younger South Koreans. Wikipeditor 04:40, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

well, i guess that's that. i think it's unfortunate that the vast majority of english readers of korean articles who would find hangul, rr, & mr useful will end up seeing fewer of the infoboxes, as editors of virtually all modern korean topics will be discouraged from adding infoboxes. at least create a hanja-less infobox, & add it to the list of templates, & make it easier for the unwashed masses who don't possess your l33t hanja skilz. Appleby 01:23, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

You make it sound more dramatic than it probably is. The solution should be to remind all the editors that they don't need every single bit of information for the infobox in order to create one; people who know the hanja will fill them in if the hanja is missing. And then they will go back to indulging in their l33tizm. --Iceager 16:50, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Hanja characters give the meaning and flavour to place names that don't have a meaning of their own like "Seoul". I think they are an important piece of information for any article about a Korean place that has a Hanja name. With the infoboxes, when articles are created where the creator does not know the Hanja for the place name, they simply leave the Hanja box blank. It is not a problem, and besides, it encourages someone to fill it in. As for North Korea and Hanja, they do not use it in daily life, but it definitely still pops up in their artistic works, those I've seen that were created only these few years. -- KittySaturn 01:00, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

it is not common to take that one step further, to include the etymological precursor orthography unfamiliar to many locals in the default infobox, however helpful it may be to readers of other regional languages or etymologists.

Is there anything comparable to Hangeul and Hanja, i.e. writing systems totally different from each other and where you can't tell from one how it is in the other? A number of Vietnamese articles give chữ nôm readings for non-native words.

I wouldn't mind if all hanja for proper names were deleted from en-WP iff they are given in the corresponding ko-WP article, in an easy-to-find place (i.e. a name box in the upper part of the page).

Hanja for all words that are not proper names should be deleted from en-WP iff they are given in the corresponding ko-WP article, in an easy-to-find place (i.e. a name box in the upper part of the page).

I think it would be best to keep hanja in ALL templates and then gradually replace them with new, hanja-less templates checking each case, instead of the other way round (taking hanja away from some templates and gradually replacing them with hanja-templates where appropriate). This way, we'd never have a gap with hanja lacking where they might be needed. But it seems that is what is being done now, so I'd like to thank Appleby for having changed templates back. I hope you don't mind I've reverted another template as well. I was busy this week, so I wasn't always aware of what was going on. – Wikipeditor 04:40, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

wikipeditor, i didn't revert it, someone else did & i gave up trying to change people's minds. it still seems to me that people who responded hanja is sometimes useful do not understand that i'm saying hanja should be used whenever it is helpful or relevant, but it shouldn't be the default for the generic korean infobox. of course there are examples of hanja in south korea, & even north korea (just like latin roots are taught in the u.s. high schools, major universities have latin mottos, latin terms abound in legal, medical & scholarly literature, & latin is on u.s. currency), but it is pretty safe to generalize that north koreans do not use hanja, & that hanja is not a part of local custom in korea either, except for historical & other specific contexts. & in those cases, of course hanja belongs in a hanja-inclusive infobox and/or article body. i still don't understand why it needs to be in the default korean infobox, especially since i was willing to do the grunt work to change the infoboxes on hundreds of hanja-relevant articles to make sure they kept the hanja. but i give up, for now.Appleby 03:35, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
Actually, I believe Appleby has a narrower definition than some other editors for cases where hanja is helpful or relevant. Appleby has deleted the hanja from Korean Peninsula, for instance; others could argue that the hanja would be helpful there. I think many people will take exception to the statement that the hanja for South Korean cities, districts, and even names of universities is unnecessary. That is probably why several editors were alarmed by the template changes. Seeing as this the place of hanja is a controversial topic in contemporary Korea, I know some people have really strong opinions about this. But in these contentious matters, I think Wikipedia should try to err on the side of being more inclusionary. --Iceager 05:30, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
I also think that all Hanja should be left alone (don't delete them!), as a general rule. If there's a mistake, just correct the Hanja. On the other hand, if Hanja does not exist in the first place, then you can delete it. Or if anyone can build a concensus to delete it, then you can delete the Hanja. Appleby certainly hasn't built any concensus before deleting most of the Hanja. Correct me if I'm wrong.... It seems Appleby continues to delete other people's work (Hanja insertion) without concensus.--Endroit 06:12, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
i don't think we need or can build a consensus for every single edit in wikipedia. we're supposed to "be bold." some editors feel hanja is helpful in a certain sentence, some others feel it is not, & editors will follow their best judgments, if there is consensus in discussion, i will follow it as i have here with the templates. i will not systematically delete hanja everywhere i see, i have not deleted more than a few instances of hanja in articles in my entire wikiediting career, & will be even more selective after this discussion; in fact i've added hanja where i felt they were useful (e.g. Names of Korea that i edited extensively). Appleby 07:24, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

more on hanja in infoboxes

[moved to new subsection per Wikipedia:refactoring by Appleby 19:12, 30 November 2005 (UTC)]

The templates were OK as they were before. There's no need to change them further. Appleby's step 2 is totally unnecessary.
Also, in step 3, I suggest that Appleby submit a full list of templates he plans to replace before actually replacing them. Also, a list of templates he already replaced will be nice. That way, there shouldn't be any more surprises. In general, the concensus seems to be that most of the Hanja's for names (people and places) don't need to be removed, even if they are North Korean.--Endroit 04:10, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

endroit, please chill with your personal vendetta, & let people respond. it should be easy to track what changes i have made, i don't see a specific discussion, much less a consensus, on north korean names per se. let's start a reasonable discussion, give us your reason or argument for including hanja with north korean names. thanks. Appleby 06:51, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm really sorry if it sounds like vendetta, but I'm merely trying to protect the use of Hanja, and there's nothing really personal against the North Korean governmental policies or anyone in particular. Since you've asked me for my reasoning, here's my response....
I'm just saying that it's unnatural to have separate Korean language conventions for North Korea only. Appleby is probably in the minority, when trying to make a distinction for North Korea. Usually when people make a comment about the Korean language, it is inclusive of North Korea, even in this entire discussion. People have repeated in this discussion, that the Hanja cannot hurt by being there. (I'm curious to see if anybody reading this agrees or disagrees with me on this point, regarding North Korea.)
When the same language is used in multiple countries, Wikipedia tends to use any dialect or writing methods understandable to most language users. Australian English does not take precedence over Standard English in Wikipedia's Australian articles. Swiss German users do not dictate any Wikipedia policies for Standard German users. And BOTH Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese characters are used in the People's Republic of China articles (in English Wikipedia). Likewise, the use of Hanja helps clarify the North Korean articles for Korean language users throughout the world. The Korean language is not sanctioned by the North Korean government, and this is not the North Korean Wikipedia. The Infobox with Hanja is a very valuable Rosetta stone...a jewel...of the Korean language for English Wikipedia users.... There's no need to change the templates.--Endroit 15:39, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

there is already a distinct north korea infobox, due to the different romanization system, & i don't see why it could not be further customized for accuracy & ease of use. how would having hanja of north korean names help korean language users around the world, even if we grant that that should be the purpose of english wikipedia? the north koreans themselves rarely, if ever, use it, & korean speakers generally know them by the hangul, not hanja (except in rare cases like kim il sung & kim jong il). north korea doesn't dictate wikipedia policy, wikipedia users do, & i'm saying wikipedia users would generally not find hanja useful in the basic north korea infoboxes, having hanja there would give the wrong impression that it is a part of north korean local usage, it would discourage the inclusion of the infobox for the vast majority of korean-speaking wikipedians who know the hangul but not hanja, & in cases where they would be helped, hanja would be included in the article anyway. no doubt hanja always helps chinese-readers, but is that the purpose of english wikipedia & does that outweigh the negatives for articles on north korea? Appleby 16:57, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

First of all, we are discussing Korean language conventions, and not North Korean local language usage. The title of this article is Naming conventions (Korean). This concerns ALL Korean language users, not just users of the North Korean dialect or rules.
Although not commonly used in daily conversation, MOST North Korean place names have Hanja. North Korean place names already shown in the English Wikipedia include.... Pyongyang (평양/平壤), Hamgyong (함경/咸鏡), Hwanghae (황해/黃海), Pyongan (평안/平安), Chagang (자강/慈江), Kangwon (강원/江原), Ryanggang (량강/兩江), and mostly all provinces (도/道), cities (시/市), counties (군/郡), wards (구역/區域) have Hanja. These are authentic Korean Hanja's (rather than Chinese or Japanese). Somebody spent a lot of time entering these North Korean place names, and it would be a shame to delete them, just because of some North Korean government policy. On the other hand, as for contemporary people names, as you say, North Korean people may not have Hanja. And the matter may be debated whether to delete any Hanja there for North Korean people names (if any).
Also, in the Korean language, Hanja is used to distinguish between similar sounding names. Somebody mentioned Nodong earlier in this discussion. In (South) Korean, that is 노동/勞動 for labor, and 노동/蘆洞 for the North Korean missile. In this argument, the Hanja acts as a Korean language etymology source (a mini-dictionary, if you will), and helps Korean language users worldwide, even if it is the English Wikipedia.
As for your concern about scaring away non-Hanja users, as many people have already mentioned in this discussion, they can simply leave the Hanja blank. Maybe, just put an explanation in the beginning of this article that Hanja is not necessary to create a new Infobox, and the non-Hanja version may be used (for NEW Infobox only), or the Hanja can be left blank. There's no need to change the existing templates.--Endroit 18:44, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

please, let's try to discuss the details, one at a time, rather than return to the generic pro-hanja, anti-hanja stances. please take the time to browse the templates on the project page.

first of all, i AM talking about north korean local usage, not generally about korean language conventions, because i was asking about the north korean basic templates. i'm not talking about the existing north korean geographic name templates but specifically Template:Koreanname north & Template:Koreanname north image. changes to these would not affect the north korean city or district templates.

& in the rare cases of disambiguation, of course hanja would be useful. but again, i'm talking about the basic north korean name template. there are two ways to resolve the discouraged use resulting from a relatively obscure entry in a template. we can have an infobox without the impediment & let the information be used whenever appropriate in the article, or leave a note saying ignore the impediment that is not even intended to help english speakers. why would the latter be the preferred solution?

again, i am talking specifically about north korean usage, i'm not going to change the existing geographic hanja templates, & nothing prevents hanja for phonetic disambiguation, which i'm sure you will agree is the exception rather than the rule. please try to distinguish the details of my current proposal. thanks for taking the time to avoid confusing & diluting the discussion. Appleby 18:58, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

In step 2, you have proposed to 'change the name of "template:koreanname nohanja" to "template:korean" & call it the basic infobox on the project page list'. (care to change this?)
Please don't change "template:koreanname nohanja", as it is very helpful. (You may, however, want to change the descriptive headings for "template:koreanname" just a little bit, so that one says "with Hanja" and the other says "without Hanja".)
In step 3, where you replace templates in the individual articles.... Please let us know when you do that.
Other than that, your proposal should be okay as long as you're talking about "Template:Koreanname north", "Template:Koreanname north image", or any other "Template:Koreanname north" variations not relating to North Korean place names and historical things. Thank you very much for your hard work.--Endroit 20:00, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

another try on hanja

[moved from previous section per Wikipedia:refactoring by Appleby 19:17, 30 November 2005 (UTC). please see above for Endroit's comments on geographic templates & disambiguation]


I don't think I misunderstood you at all. I gather you think that hanja are useful in some situations and templates, but that they should not be included in the default template, because this particular template is mostly used for words where hanja are pretty useless. Have I understood you right so far? I'm not sure, but I think you originally planned to 1. take out hanja from the default template, 2. make new templates containing hanja and 3. replace the (hanja-less) default template with a (hanja) template on all pages where it seems like a good idea to include hanja information. Right? As opposed to that, I was going to suggest going the other way: 1. leave the current default template as it is, 2. create a new default template that do not include hanja, 3. discourage further use of the old (hanja) default template, 4. look at every page that has the old default template, decide whether hanja are actually useful for this word, 5. a) if you decide that the page does not need hanja, replace it with the new (hanja-less) default template OR b) replace it with a hanja template (e.g. States of Korean history template, whatever). If we simply took out hanja from the default template, not only would it affect articles that don't need hanja, but it would also take hanja away from the occasional article where hanja belong but that for some reason uses the default template. I think there are many such articles. The obvious disadvantage of my suggestion is that users might not feel the need to update all templates. If we simply removed hanja from the existing default template, people might be quicker to replace it with templates that include hanja for special purposes. Wikipeditor 01:04, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

wikipeditor, you are exactly right, & there may be hope something reasonable comes out of this after all. you are right about my position & original plan. i had actually changed over 100 infoboxes to the new hanja infobox, & was going to continue, until the basic infobox was reverted. so how about something like this:
1. leave the current "template:koreanname" as is.
2. change the name of "template:koreanname nohanja" to "template:korean" & call it the basic infobox on the project page list.
3. people (i suspect mostly me) will change existing "template:koreanname" to "template:korean" where hanja is inappropriate.
problems to be resolved are all the existing templates other than "template:koreanname," and in step 3, determining where hanja is inappropriate. as iceager said, i think i have a narrower definition of where hanja is appropriate than some others.
  • i feel strongly that it does not belong in the north korea template (remember this would be by definition modern topics & people) nor in the university template.
  • i feel, albeit less strongly, that they do not belong in geographical templates, except in historical or china/japan contexts, which should be rare.
  • i also think, albeit with mixed feelings, that they do not belong in modern south korean people names. hanja should remain in korean, i.e. pre-1948 people, but generally not post-1950, except some artists/writers/poets with pennames, which will keep hanja.
but these details can be discussed further later, i would first like some reaction on the above three-step proposal (step 3 would not be implemented until later separate discussion about that step), & removing hanja from the north korea & university templates. Appleby 01:44, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
Your three steps seem good to me. There might be some confusion among users about the existence of a "template:korean" and a "template:koreanname" at the same time, but it's ok if there's no better solution. Perhaps the problem should be explained close to the instructions for using the templates. When step 3 is implemented, please always indicate template changes in the "edit summary" field to ease any necessary reverts.
Personally, I think a hanja field should be included in ALL templates for Korean placenames.
Concerning recent Korean persons, I don't have a strong opinion. While including a hanja field by default seems a good idea for persons until around 1900, I think hanja can stay out of the default template for later persons so editors won't feel required to look them up; it should nevertheless be allowed to individually replace this with a hanja-including template as soons as somebody finds out about a person's hanja. For example, people should not be prevented from adding a hanja template to the 박정희 article, even though he's not pre-1950. President's names will often appear in hanja in texts of their time written long after 1950, so why shut them out?
While there seem to be different opinions on the detail of where hanja should be and not be, I don't object at all to the three steps in general. I'd however like to make clear that I don't call for it either. I'm fine with the way things are now. – Wikipeditor 09:43, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
I don't really see the point in step 2, as long as the uses for the various templates are well documented. (A message along the lines of "See the 'nohanja' template if you don't know the hanja, or hanja are inappropriate" on the koreanname template would do the trick, in my opinion.) Still, I don't have any strong objections to that change as long as the original template remains unaltered, as your step 1 indicates.
I disagree that Hanja would generally be inappropriate for post-1950 people (and just to clarify, do you mean born after or alive after 1950?), and would like to point out that hanja appear to still be in use (albeit less frequently than in the past) in current publications, such as Donga Ilbo and KBS News. So they aren't as obscure or obsolete as, say, Vietnamese Chữ nôm just yet.
Regardless, I would also like to propose a slight change to the current plan. In cases where hanja are deemed inappropriate, I think we should at least leave the hanja and hangul equivalents at the top of the article, but commented out. That way, they'd be hidden from the general public, but those of us who really want them for whatever reason would still be able to find them quickly. Plus, it would be clear to editors that the hanja had been there, but had been removed for a reason, so no one would accidentally put them back in, thinking they were contributing new information. — Calcwatch 03:05, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Page moves

Hi, are the moves done by this user done in a correct manner? I understand the names can be romanized in different ways, but some of these just seem odd, since they aren't used anywhere else. Kang Wusok gets no hits on google, while "Kang Woo-suk" gets over 18000, which would indicate that it's the most commonly used romanization of the name. And I've also been under the impression that putting a hyphen between the syllables of a person's name was the preferred way, as listed on the project page here. I decided to ask about this, since I'd need an admin to revert some of the page moves and would like a clear concensus on the issue. - Bobet 01:11, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

contemporary koreans generally have their own preferred romanization, & wikipedia should reflect that spelling. this is almost always the google top result. Woo-Suk is also how it's spelled by imdb.com & nytimes.com.
separately, i think there's a problem Wu of Goryeo, incorrectly moved from U of Goryeo, a historical figure with no well-known or personally preferred english spelling, which should follow rr. Appleby 01:25, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Hanja vs. No Hanja

Please see Talk:Daewoo first, as some of the discussion started there.User Appleby has been systematically deleting Hanja on many pages and templates. Most of this seems to be very good, for cases where the Hanja didn't exist or is irrelevant in the first place. However, there are items where we need to build concensus, whether the Hanja is relevant or not. Please, please, please, discuss and/or vote here first! See below, and add items as you see fit.--Endroit 22:14, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

also, please address specific issues listed by endroit, & avoid broad pro-hanja/anti-hanja generalizations. history/royalty/pen name/historical places/historical people/china or japan-related articles WILL continue to have hanja in the infobox. other specific categories WILL NOT have hanja in the infobox. hanja can always be used in the article BODY. the discussion is about infobox sub-types. Appleby 00:22, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

for those not already familiar: Hanja is what koreans call Chinese characters that have been borrowed into Korean language. koreans have used hanja extensively historically, but the native korean script Hangul now predominates, and hanja is uncommon in south korea, & virtually nonexistent in north korea. hanja is still the basis of most korean personal names, although the hanja for contemporary popular figures are not widely known in korea (they are better known to chinese & even japanese, who use kanji more extensively). hanja is sometimes used in newspapers for disambiguation or as abbreviations in headlines, & in some scholarly fields, much as latin is used in the u.s. in law, medicine, etc. Appleby 00:32, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Complete elimination of Hanja from Korean Universities & Schools

I Oppose. Hanja should not be eliminated for Korean university pages and templates without some reasoning or discussion in each case.--Endroit 22:14, 16 December 2005 (UTC) I think Google counts are pointless and quite unreliable for Hangul/Hanja comparisons. But because I saw the Appleby POV Google counts below, here are my Endroit POV Google counts for Yonsei University.... 연세대학교(Hangul): 544,000 延世大學(Hanja): 707,000.--Endroit 18:38, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

[with the change in the wording of the question, this becomes a straw man, since nobody proposed "complete elimination of hanja." i also oppose complete elimination but the discussion is about infoboxes, which this poll does not resolveAppleby 01:20, 21 December 2005 (UTC)] i support. hanja can always be used in the article whenever necessary for disambiguation, although i don't know of any cases for universities. no korean college or university is better known to koreans by its hanja than its hangul. most koreans don't know the hanja for most universities, except for the top 5 oldest schools, maybe. infoboxes are not intended to help chinese readers (endroit's google results including mostly chinese results is irrelevant here, as there are TWO korean and NO english pages in the first 300 hits, after which i gave up looking), this is the english wikipedia, & even the local language script (by far dominantly hangul) is quite peripheral here.
e.g., the top korean university, Seoul National University, cannot be written in hanja, because "seoul" is not based on hanja. the 2nd top university, Yonsei University, returns the following korean language results in google:
  • hangul results: 연세대: 1,110,000, 연세대학교: 571,000
  • hanja results: 延世大: 261, 延世大學校:199
neither uses any hanja on their websites [4] [5], nor did anyone think hanja was useful in their wikipedia articles. Appleby 23:57, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

I oppose. We can make exceptions for universities like Seoul National University (which, incidentally, doesn't use any of the Korean templates) where the only part you could write in hanja is the word 大學校 (university), but I still think that they'd be appropriate in general. If they're named after historical places, then why not share the history of their names? Plus, hanja tend to be used more in academic environments, which universities undoubtably include. Calcwatch 02:52, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Oppose. Sure it's English Wikipedia but if you've got hangeul, why not hanja? It's like saying that you should write "thirty-five" but not "35" in the 35 (number) article. (Even for Seoul National, "서울大學校" can be written in the Hanja Box.) LuiKhuntek 07:54, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Oppose. Hanja often have historical and etymology value and info. One may be able to research into 50 years old newspaper in archive if you know the original hanja writing. Hangul alone cut a major source of material (namely the pre-Internet material) from one's research. Kowloonese 00:14, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Complete elimination of Hanja from International Corporations or Entities of Korea

I Strongly oppose. For cases where such big entity or corporation has an authentic Hanja name, they use this Hanja to market throughout Asia. Take Hyundai and Choson Ilbo for example; they even have Hanja on their logomarks! Other International entities include Korean Air and Samsung. We shouldn't delete Hanja in such cases! Also, please see the discussion that took place in Talk:Daewoo.--Endroit 22:14, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

[with the change in the wording of the question, this becomes a straw man, since nobody proposed "complete elimination of hanja." i also oppose complete elimination but the discussion is about infoboxes, which this poll does not resolveAppleby 01:20, 21 December 2005 (UTC)] i support. hyundai's logo with hanja is long outdated, not used by the company since i was a kid. see [6] & [7] for current logos.
again, we're talking about korea-related articles in the english wikipedia. the english name is the only one strictly relevant, and the native language script is already peripheral. & the native name, if you must include it, is, by far, known by hangul, not hanja. for very rare exceptions (such as traditional newspapers) that still use hanja in combination with hangul, we can always put it in the article body if necessary.
an international company's promotional materials directed to china or asia are not relevant here; coca cola has chinese language logo & website, but we don't put chinese characters in the coca cola article. our audience is not chinese-readers, we should focus on what is relevant for english wikipedia readers interested in korea-related articles. Appleby 00:06, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

I oppose. As Endroit said, they are "authentic Korean" names; they just happen to be written in a script that originated outside of Korea. The comparison to Coca-Cola is irrelevant, since Coca-Cola was founded by English speakers in the US, English was never written using a hanzi-based script, and the term Coca-Cola is not even a Chinese-derived English word. The Chinese equivalent, "可口可樂" (kě kǒu kě lè), is just meant to convey a pleasant meaning, while still sounding vaguely like "Coca-Cola"; it's not the same thing as a word based on common morphemes in two different languages that share a non-alphabetic writing system. The facts that Hyundai used a logo with Chinese characters in recent decades, and that some companies such as the newspaper Dong-a Ilbo[[8]] still do, show that hanja are not quite gone and forgotten yet. -- Calcwatch 02:52, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Oppose. Hanja often have historical and etymology value and info. One may be able to research into 50 years old newspaper in archive if you know the original hanja writing. Hangul alone cut a major source of material (namely the pre-Internet material) from one's research. Kowloonese 00:15, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Complete elimination of Hanja for Parallel Korea/Japan terms (20th century & beyond)

Manhwa(K,漫畵) vs. Manga(J,漫画); Soju(K,燒酒) vs. Shochu(J,焼酎); Gayo(K,歌謠) vs. Kayokyoku(J,歌謡曲)....

I somewhat support, with a few reservations. It seems like I'm in twilight zone, getting caught between Korea & Japan, trying to believe that these are to be considered COMPLETELY different things. But I don't mind deleting Hanja for these.--Endroit 22:14, 16 December 2005 (UTC) I remove my vote for this particular item, to show my respect and support for Wikipedia editors who have spent countless number of hours providing the useful Hanja information.--Endroit 20:14, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

[with the change in the wording of the question, this becomes a straw man, since nobody proposed "complete elimination of hanja." i also oppose complete elimination but the discussion is about infoboxes, which this poll does not resolveAppleby 01:20, 21 December 2005 (UTC)] i support, noting that where hanja is relevant for comparative language or historic reasons, they can be and are (Manhwa) explained in the article. the connection would have to be explained anyway in text. also please remember than hanja is remaining in history-related and other articles actually related to china/japan/asia (Sea of Japan, Korean wave). Appleby 00:11, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

I oppose. While it can be confusing if terms have effectively the same representation in hanja and kanji, but slightly different meanings, I think we could just treat them as faux amis, and make sure any confusion about them is dispelled in the text of the article. (By the way, it appears that although 酒 and 酎 are similiar in meaning, radicals and sound, one isn't a simplified form of the other(?)) -- Calcwatch 02:52, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Oppose. Hanja often have historical and etymology value and info. One may be able to research into 50 years old newspaper in archive if you know the original hanja writing. Hangul alone cut a major source of material (namely the pre-Internet material) from one's research. Kowloonese 00:15, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Complete elimination of Hanja for [infoboxes of] People of the 20th Century & Beyond

I strongly opppose. While the argument has been made that young North Koreans might be named without hanja in mind, I think that for everyone else (excluding people with native names that have no hanja), it should be fine to keep them. I've seen hanja names for people in recent news publications, and even saw one on a business card recently. Korean celebrities that are popular in Japan and China often use their name in hanja, and I've seen hanja for names appear in Korean music videos intended for domestic consumption, possibly for aesthetic purposes. This hanja information can thus be considered a part of a person's profile, along with other trivia that such articles often include. As for the argument that these hanja might not be known to most Koreans, people use Wikipedia to learn something new; little-known facts in a handy table can be a great contribution, even if Google doesn't return many hits about them. Any ambiguities in the utility/prevelance/recognition of hanja in modern times should be discussed on the hanja article, which the template references. -- Calcwatch 02:52, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

i also oppose, because the category is too broad for "complete elimination." calc, may i suggest you subdivide this section. apparently we agree that north korean names, in general, shouldn't have hanja, although i wouldn't oppose hanja in infoboxes for kim il sung & kim jong il. for south koreans, i'm not sure we can formulate specific enough & practical rules, but i'm thinking something like if korean language google results for hanja:hangul is more than 1:3 or something. the relevance of hanja name would be different for an early 20th century scholar & today's korean-american rapper.
i think we fundamentally disagree about whether the purpose of an infobox is for basic facts or for trivia. if you look at other infoboxes, i think they are generally used for basic, useful, identifying facts that uniformly apply to members of a category. having trivia in the infobox makes it more difficult to complete, discourages its use, & gives an incorrect sense of local usage. trivia belongs in the body text, when appropriate.Appleby 03:46, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Oppose. Most Korean names derive from Sinitic/Sinic (I didn't say Chinese) written forms and these forms should be given. Names, even surnames, are prone to ambiguity if only given in hangeul. This is fundamental info -- hardly trivial. Google hits are a lame way of determining encyclopedic usage. (Try Googling "virus" or check out the "fart" vs. "flatulence" debate at Talk:Flatulence) LuiKhuntek 08:01, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

I Oppose. Hanja should not be eliminated for people names without some reasoning or discussion in each case, even for North Korean names. Exceptions should not be made based on whether the person lived in North Korea or elsewhere. But rather, exceptions should only be made if the Hanja does not exist or is unknown to begin with.--Endroit 10:39, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Oppose. Hanja often have historical and etymology value and info. One may be able to research into 50 years old newspaper in archive if you know the original hanja writing. Hangul alone cut a major source of material (namely the pre-Internet material) from one's research. Kowloonese 00:16, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Appleby's edits

It seems to me that Appleby (contribs) has been removing Hanja everywhere again despite opposition from fellow editors; please refrain from doing so without a concensus from others to do so. -- KittySaturn 08:49, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

I feel like I've been duped by Appleby again. I come up with this voting scheme above, Hanja vs. No Hanja to see if anybody reaches concensus on Appleby's behalf. Then Appleby changes my original headers around to insert "[infoboxes of]" above. Why? So that even if we reach concensus there, he can still delete Hanja from outside of Infoboxes? That's not fair. Come to think of it... I thought we reached concensus in previous discussions, although Appleby may claim that we were talking just about Infoboxes, or just about North Korea, or whatever. Let me return to my original position....
I MAKE IT CLEAR THAT I OPPOSE ANY DELETION OF HANJA IF THE HANJA WAS CORRECT IN THE FIRST PLACE, IN ANY KOREA RELATED ARTICLE, NORTH OR SOUTH KOREA, IN INFOBOX OR NOT, REGARDLESS OF GOOGLE COUNT, ESPECIALLY IF IT WERE SOME UNILATERAL ACTION BY ONE USER.--Endroit 10:13, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

i didn't delete hanja "everywhere." compare lists

  • linked to non-hanja infobox: [9] [10] [11]
  • linked to hanja infobox: [12] [13] plus all the other infoboxes for geography, pen names, rulers, etc.

and i added [infoboxes of] because i DIDN'T delete hanja from article bodies. NOBODY suggested COMPLETE ELIMINATION of hanja from any category. please don't put up straw men. we're talking about infoboxes. relax. Appleby 15:37, 17 December 2005 (UTC)


Removal of Hanja by Appleby, Other than Infoboxes

--Endroit 17:52, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

look at the articles.

  • Joseon is a disambiguation page, all of the daughter articles being identical hanja, so that it is not disambiguating.
  • Korean Peninsula first paragraph links to Names of Korea article, because the full explanation of hangul/hanja for different terms used by north/south would be too long, & that's what Names of Korea article is for.
  • South Korea was cleaned up for readability, hanja is there in cleaner prose. it also refers to th Names of Korea article.

please do not distort my views & actions. relax. Appleby 18:27, 17 December 2005 (UTC)


Appleby, the Hanja's for Han bando (韓半島) & Choson bando (朝鮮半島) are nowhere to be found, even in the Names of Korea article. So can you add them back into the Korean Peninsula article then? They weren't even in any Infobox to begin with. And don't delete them again, please. Thanks.--Endroit 19:18, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

as you must know, hanbando/chosonbando are compound words, han/choson being the korean words for korea, & bando simply meaning peninsula. han/choson is explained in the names of korea article. as the article says, "by its inhabitants, the korean peninsula" is NOT called 韓半島 or 朝鮮半島, but by its hangul. Appleby 22:14, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

No hangul, please

From what I've understood, the use of hanja has declined so drastically in Korean usage that it should be considered trivia in an English language encyclopedia. And, frankly, hangul is even more pointless. There is absolutely no point in keeping it other than to appeal to the very small minority of readers that can display it as well as read it. Romanizations serve the exact same purpose and doesn't pose display problems. The only exception should be articles where the hangul itself is the topic, such as articles on linguistics and typography. If people want to fill articles with lots of native Korean characters, they should do so at the Korean Wikipedia.

And, please, stop the voting and start trying to compromise. Especially when you make an utter mess out of everything by both suppporting and opposing various suggestions. Either vote for a suggestion or don't. If you're having a vote, then make sure you've discussed the issue before the vote. Discussion during is just a good way of polarizing opinions.

Peter Isotalo 16:01, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

thanks for your input, but the proposals are not alternatives, but separate proposals about different sub-issues, each of which need to be decided. i think we're on our way to mediation/arbitration, because this discussion is dominated by people with personal fluency in chinese characters. we need more opinions from people without personal investment in hangul or hanja, able to look at this impassionately. as i repeatedly said, i actually agree hangul is pretty tangential & unnecessary for english wikipedia generally, & etymological history of the hangul through obsolete hanja is beyond peripheral to put into the entire category of korea-related topics through basic infoboxes, & should be reserved for specific history/etymology articles where appropriate. Appleby 20:04, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

It is rarely questioned that foreign forms of personal or geographic names should appear in encyclopedias (after the English form of course). Britannica, etc have done this for years. The problem then appears to be with foreign scripts rather than foreign languages. In the past, limitations of space and typsetting made such additions inappropriate for an encyclopedia but Wikipedia has the space and Unicode delivers the ability to easily type and read such scripts.
That the issue is still so hotly debated points to conceptual or emotional rather than pragmatic concerns. There are few heated debates over whether foreign forms in Latin script should appear in articles (e.g., Scanian (linguistics)) Yet such forms present the English reader with something little different from a foreign script. Without knowldege of relevant foreign phonology and orthography, words such as "skånska" or Cēsis is largely unrenderable.
There are no suggestions that the titles of articles be in non-Latin scripts or that articles incorporate sentences of non-Latin text. The presence of non-Latin forms is (or should be) limited to an explanatory function -- always appended to an English, transcribed, or transliterated form. Such is the case with Hangeul and Hanja in dialog boxes. These appendages neither break the flow of reading the text nor require knowledge of another script -- they merely provide important additional information.
There are affirmative reasons why hangeul, hanja, and other non-Latin scripts are an important part of a modern English encyclopedia. These derive from the problems of transliteration and the subsequent problems of rendering the transliterations. For example, it is especially difficult for words in tonal languages such as the Chinese languages to be reproduced by English speakers. Furthermore, some (e.g., J. Marshall Unger, Wm. C. Hannas) argue that East Asia's long tradition of using characters has altered languages and allowed for the greater use of homophones. Thus, even in hangeul, there are ambiguities only resolved with reference to the root hanja. Without native script examples, Wikipedia entries exist in isolation from their subjects; many have no foreign language Wiki pages. One can approach Chinese with an English rendition of "kung hei fat choi" and get blank stares all day but a 恭喜發財 on the laptop screen or sent in an e-mail will work wonders.
Although those with knowledge of foreign scripts may be few as a proportion of total English Wikipedia readers, it is likely that a greater percentage of those reading about a particular region or language have knowledge of it. Even if the encyclopedia article reader has no knowledge of foreign scripts, the hanja and hangeul examples can be cut and pasted or otherwise reproduced as references, as tools to use to consult someone who does know these scripts, or to perform internet searches. In short, foreign scripts do nothing to detract from articles and add, not trivial, but important information. One of the great draws of Wikipedia over almost all other on- or off-line sources is its abundance of native forms given for entries. It is both mysterious and shameful that anyone would want to deliberately withold this information. LuiKhuntek 08:46, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
"Skånska" is a bad example, since the "unreadability" is limited to one measly umlaut, and "Scanian" certainly isn't a bad Anglification. The unreadability is not even remotely comparable to that of a completely foreign form of writing. The point is still that the foreign scripts are the problem, not the languages. It's also mainly a matter of overusage. Putting parenthasized translations of every relevant and irrelevant term, preferably more than once, does break flow of text, especially when it concerns information that isn't relevant to the article topic and especially when it appears as white boxes to those who don't have the script on their computers (this is especially a problem when accessing from shared terminals). Listing native renditions of very relevant and central terms once in a text is not something I'm opposed to, especially if its in the lead. But insisting on foreign phonetic scripts when there are fully accurate and satisfying romanizations (as for hangul and kana) smacks of a of elitism and disrespect for the overwhelming majority of readers that don't know these languages but still want to read about related topics.
As for hanja, I once more refer to its descent into relative disuse even in modern Korean as a very valid argument that it be used only sparingly and only where the topic itself makes it extremely relevant. That hanja exists for a term does not make it extremely relevant per se.
Peter Isotalo 12:55, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
I'm not sure when "relative disuse" begins to apply -- see my comments below. Otherwise, I agree that "parenthasized translations of every relevant and irrelevant term" are inappropriate. Once in the lead or in an infobox suffices and I'm not sure that many articles are in violation of this. However, neither Korean romanizations (MC-R, RR) nor romaji are "fully accurate" -- i.e., one cannot precisely reproduce hangeul or kana from them.
What you see as "elitism and disrespect" I see as informative. If I already knew the information, I wouldn't look it up in an encyclopedia. Encyclopedias are necessarily elite in that they present information unknown to the reader. Disrespect would only flow from an expectation that a prior knowldege of foreign scripts is required to read an article and this should never be the case. Calling the addition of supplemental foreign scripts elitist and disrespectful implies that readers are incapable of either dealing with new information or of avoiding (what is to them) irrelevant. LuiKhuntek 17:42, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

this debate is not really about including korean native script Hangul in korea-related articles. it's about whether to include nearly obsolete Hanja in certain general infobox templates. other encyclopedias generally use one system of romanization, & stop. here, we're listing two romanization systems and native script hangul, & since that became unwieldy in introductory sentences, these are put into infoboxes. now the question is whether to also include hanja in infobox templates for categories where native koreans don't use them, as indicated by korean language google searches. nobody opposes using hanja in specific historic/disambiguation/etymological contexts in article bodies. Appleby 15:36, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure when "obsolete" begins to apply but some hanja are still taught in (South) Korean schools, they are used on many road signs, and appear on some personal business cards to give a few examples. They are used in Korean texts, especially those with geographical or historical nomenclature. As I stated in another section above, names, including surnames, are prone to ambiguity if only given in hangeul. In this instance, it is fundamental info and hardly trivial.
Google hits are a very poor way of determining encyclopedic usage. For example, the Israel article gives the Arabic form of that country's name using vocalization, something almost never appearing in web searches but which has important encyclopedic usage. (Also, try Googling "virus" or check out the "fart" vs. "flatulence" debate at [[Talk:Flatulence]) LuiKhuntek 17:42, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

but do israel-related articles in general have arabic forms of the topic name in default infoboxes? nobody's opposed to specific historic/disambiguation uses, we're talking about default infoboxes, despite endroit's deceptively titled straw men in the above poll. Appleby 17:51, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

I strongly oppose. This section is basically proposing to eliminate foreign text from the English encyclopedia. I support using native text related to the title term of the article, but I don't support over-using random foreign text in the English encyclopedia. So my decision factor is based on whether the text being considered is native and strictly related to the main topic of the article. I don't object having foreign text as a place holder for a wiki-link that have not be created yet. As soon as an article is created for the link, the foreign text can be moved from the link to the article body. Native text is critical for researcher to further their research elsewhere on the internet. For example, you can cut a foreign text from an English article and paste into Google image search, you don't really need to understand the language to benefit from the image search result. So the native text is useful to everyone including people who don't know the language. I have more of my opinion on this topic on my user page. Kowloonese 00:10, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

kowloonese, i'm not "basically proposing to eliminate foreign text from the english encyclopedia." it's flat-out lies like that that keep this from becoming a reasonable discussion. i'm sick of repeating myself & being mischaracterized. i know we can be more reasonable than that. Appleby 18:37, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

actual proposal

if you're from rfc, please peruse the above poll for background info, but note that it has been made meaningless by the wording of the questions. nobody proposed "complete elimination" of hanja in any category.

i propose, in korea-related articles, to generally use an infobox without hanja, except that hanja will not be removed in following cases:

  1. hanja etymology of the word is relevant to the topic [by this, i originally meant the topic itself is about hanja etymology, such as Names of Korea, but i think #4 below should cover this area objectively, since if hanja is mentioned less than 1% of the time by koreans, it'd be safe to say it's not inherently germane to the topic]
  2. hanja is used for disambiguation
  3. names of people originally known by their hanja, (i.e. pre-1950ish), [including all infoboxes for kings/emperors]
  4. hanja is still used by koreans themselves today. unless someone offers a better, practical alternative method of determination of current local usage, i will use google korean language results, & if, say, hanja:hangul is more than 1:100, i will leave the hanja

i will not delete hanja in infoboxes or body text where ANY of the above conditions apply, & of course i will modify the plan depending on responses from unbiased parties from rfc.

please share your thoughts on this plan, as this discussion sorely needs to move beyond the clutches of a small group of people with personal investment in knowledge of chinese characters without regard for actual current korean usage. this will make korea-related infoboxes more inviting to use, easier to complete, & more accurately reflect local usage. i feel strongly enough about this that i have no problem continuing with mediation or arbitration to find neutral ground, & i will accept the consensus of those without vested interests. Appleby 21:06, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

I strongly oppose. I particularly disagree with your last sentence. By restricting your consensus to exclude those with "vested interests", it could be interpreted as, "we'll take a vote, but if you don't think like me, your vote won't count". It seems that no matter how many arguments we give, you are quick to reject them as irrelevant, or straw men, and then proceed to talk about which hanja you have removed, or will remove.
  • Although you will not consider arguments that discuss the general utility of hanja, English-speaking people from all over the world use the English Wikipedia, and I think, the more of them who benefit, the better. Any confusion on actual everyday uses of hanja can be covered in the hanja article (reachable from the template) or even a separate article that discusses any controversy their use may pose.
  • As we have already argued, having a hanja template in frequent use should not discourage people from using the Korean templates in general. Throughout this discussion, no one has brought forward a single case where someone was going to use a template, but decided not to, since he or she did not know the hanja. Back when we had only the hanja templates, if people did not know the hanja, they would use a template anyway, with the hanja field left blank. I can say this from experience, because I used to take the time to fill in hanja wherever it was lacking. If anything, seeing hanja removed unilaterally from hundreds of articles overnight, and without individual justification, will intimidate users like me, and discourage us from contributing.
  • I certainly would not consider myself someone with great "personal investment in knowledge of Chinese characters". I do not have thousands of them committed to memory, but I can look them up and verify their correctness just as well as anyone else. I am also not fluent in any language that uses them as a native script, so I'm not trying to impose my own native system on one where some think it has lost relevance. I'm just a common Wikipedian who finds them a useful resource, and doesn't want to see them disappear due to cultural sensitivities. From your past arguments, one could argue that you have a "vested interest" in locking hanja into history as a foreign or elitist script of the past, but whether you really think that or not, that doesn't make your own vote count any more or less than one of ours.
  • The first criterion is too vague, since we've already seen that what is "relevant" to a topic varies considerably among us.
  • Google results are heavily biased toward very recent publications. They don't account for 20-50 year-old texts that may be frequently cited by scholars, but not available in full text online.
  • I'm wary of any plan you propose at this point, since none of us gave full approval of the last one, but still saw it implemented rapidly, and without warning, a month later. Anything we do should be done gradually, made as conservative and inclusive of as many of our views as possible, and be fully documented -- especially when it involves deletion of others' contributions. -- Calcwatch 04:38, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Oppose - Reasons given in previous sections. What is a "vested interested"? LuiKhuntek 03:48, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

I Strongly Oppose, for reasons given here by Calcwatch. Please also note that nobody has yet to give any explanation for Appleby's Unilateral Modifications (on Dec. 15 & 16). I commend Appleby for some good modifications done there. However, there are too many controversial Hanja removals done there without concensus. If Appleby fails to reach concensus here, we need to revert some (or maybe most) of these. Let's wait a few days to see if anybody else makes a comment here, or if Appleby can gain concensus for his "actual proposal" (apparently for sweeping Hanja deletions).--Endroit 10:03, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
I Oppose. I especially don't agree with the view that seems to be taken by Appleby, that if Koreans themselves aren't really using the Hanja, then they shouldn't be in Wikipedia. This sounds like the mindset of the people behind China's Cultural Revolution, in my opinion. Suppose that the whole Korean peninsula has actually totally disposed of using Hanja - I would still think it is worthy to put the Hanja there. It would provide a link to past history, and it is in the same spirit that Chu Nom or Manchurian names would be added in appropriate Vietnamese and Chinese articles where they are known, even when such things existed only after when such scripts were in wide use, even though almost no one knows Chu Nom or Manchurian today.
On Korean Wikipedia, it is the norm to add Hanja corresponding to article names when they apply - one can see that they are still meaningful to Koreans. That applies even to North Korean articles. -- KittySaturn 22:42, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

let's just take it to mediation. is everyone ok with that? Appleby 15:34, 21 December 2005 (UTC). i have requested mediation. please indicate your acceptance WP:RFM Appleby 19:09, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Comments about Appleby's RFM description: Why must a particular user be singled out and an opinion be applied to him in such a description? Who is the small group of Chinese-fluent speakers Appleby speaks of (it does not appear to me that it is most of the people here discussing this with him - I am a Chinese speaker, and?)? In my opinion, I think this is tending towards a situation where Appleby trying to get his way while others involved in this discussion do not agree. I believe the fact that a piece of information is not known or used by others (quite obviously) does not mean that it should be deleted.
I appreciate that Appleby wishes Wikipedia to contain what he thinks is the best for it, but I really think that it is necessary to follow concensus. -- KittySaturn 22:54, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
If this is a poll (I can't really tell), I strongly oppose. I am not a Chinese speaker and can't even read hanja very well, but I recognize that they provide important information about Korean names, information which is not present in hangul or romanizations. It is not a coincidence that not only the Korean Wikipedia, but the Naver Encyclopedia. It's true that most Wikipedia users can't read them, but that is the reason that we put them in the name table, and not directly in the running text. -- Visviva 09:57, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
Endroit recently nominated me to represent our side in the mediation, if I think it's appropriate. No one else has come forward to lead, so I thought I’d check what others think first. Personally, I think we're beyond mediation here; it seems better suited to cases where people are more evenly divided on an issue. Plus, the description on the RFM page is biased and inaccurate (only some of us are Chinese speakers, and that’s irrelevant anyway).
We have expressed our views, and from the above discussions, we have eleven supporters for keeping hanja wherever they existed (me, Chongdae, Endroit, Iceager, Instantnood, Jiang, KittySaturn, Kowloonese, LuiKhuntek, Visviva, Wikipeditor) and only two who disagree (Appleby and PeterIsotalo), and on different grounds at that. (If I misclassified or forgot someone, let me know, and I’ll fix it.)
I believe 11 out of 13 is more than enough for us to begin reversing most of Appleby’s changes immediately. There’s still room for a little compromise, but given the split, there is no need for us to meet each other halfway. Below is what I suggest we do... -- Calcwatch 04:11, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
You classified me correctly in that I don't think there was need for a change, for reasons which Calcwatch, LuiKhuntek, Visviva, KittySaturn, and I have already stated above and below.
I am not fluent in hanja, much less a member of a “small group of Chinese-fluent wikipedians”. I am a European with no special involvement in the Chinese language(s).
I don't think anybody here is trying to revert the disappearance of hanja from the written language. Even if we say Hanja are a “foreign or elitist script of the past” (disclaimer: Appleby never used these words) used in less than 1 % of Google results, and even if they benefitted but a minority, those would not be reasons to exclude them from an online encyclopedia which – unlike hard copies – does not need to be stingy with space nor information. They are not used in normal modern texts, but can still benefit users in a number of ways.
However, I do not oppose mediation (if anybody deems it necessary or helpful), and I certainly don't think that Appleby is unable “to accept a different viewpoint from his”.
Thanks to Appleby for starting the debate, to all who contributed in a sensible way, and to Calcwatch for his appealing alternative proposal below.—Wikipeditor 18:16, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
I support this idea, I've read all things above and below, but many Westerners don't have the knowledge of hanja and Chinese, and many people think we're using Chinese or something. And if we display Chinese characters right next to the name it is almost confirming that information. We can make an etymology section if needed, instead of writing Chinese characters like right now.59.10.116.204 15:02, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

An Alternative Proposal

By the majority opinion:

  • If hanja existed in an article, and they were accurate, we put them back universally. (No regard to google counts, nation of origin, present day usage or otherwise.)
  • In the future, if hanja for a term are not mentioned in an infobox, anyone should feel welcome to add them.
  • As with any edits, these changes should be documented in the edit summaries.

But, to address concerns (still unproven) that the original setup may discourage use of the templates:

  • We list each hanja-less template above its hanja equivalent on Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Korean), and make it clear on that page that they are fine and even preferred if (1) you do not know the hanja or (2) hanja do not exist (because the word is not based on Sino-Korean roots).

And in a nod to concerns over misconceptions a reader may have on the present-day use of hanja:

  • We create a separate article on the state of hanja in recent years. We already have a wealth of information to start with, thanks to all the above discussions. We then can put an asterisk to the right of the word “hanja” in each of the hanja templates, and have it link to this article. In the North Korean templates, the asterisks can link to a subsection of the hanja-use article that discusses the elimination of hanja in North Korea. (Alternatively, we could have the word “hanja” in the templates link to these articles instead of an asterisk.)

Lastly, in an effort to clean things up:

  • We rename all hanja-less templates to end in “nohanja”. Currently the hanja-less templates are distinguishable from the original templates only by spacing or capitalization. (In most of the recent changes, hanja were removed by changing the template an article used from “koreanname” to “korean name”. Likewise, hanja were removed from university articles by changing the template from “Korean University” to “Korean university”.) This is needlessly confusing, and makes hanja removals much less obvious than they ought to have been.

Note that this plan is constructive, rather than destructive. It addresses Appleby’s concerns by providing more instead of taking away, and explains the controversy. It denies hanja equal footing with hangul, but doesn’t eliminate it anywhere for the many who want it.

This is just a draft, so suggestions for improvement are welcome, but I think the first part is supported by the majority of us, and can be carried out right away. Please let me know what you think. -- Calcwatch 04:11, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

This seems sensible to me. Certainly the idea for an article (or extensive section) about hanja today is a good one; these talk-page debates often produce great content. And I agree that hanja-less templates are a good idea, but should be clearly marked and shouldn't be preferred to templates with hanja. -- Visviva 04:49, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

i think 90% of the discussion so far has been about what this discussion is not about. this is not about preventing the use of hanja, or completely eliminating existing hanja, or interfering with etymology/disambiguation/historical discussions in any way. at least a couple of people listed by calcwatch clearly misunderstood the topic of the discussion, thanks primarily to endroit's poll wording.

most of those people have not objected to my last round of changes, which was far more conservative than my initial (admittedly hasty) changes over a month ago. not all 11 people agree about hanja for korean-american comedians, or north korean olympians, or tv drama titles, etc etc. my changes to non-hanja infoboxes are primarily here: [14] & [15]. i can't imagine more than a few of these changes being at all controversial, and many of them already didn't have any hanja, because nobody thought it useful, nobody could find it, or it didn't exist.

my point is that i've tried to have a discussion about the subtle degrees of relevance in various contexts, but instead this page just filled up with people fired up about supposed "elimination" of hanja, defending its use in specific contexts that i also actually support. i requested mediation because i wanted to have a reasonable discussion about these sub-issues, instead of being constantly mired in blanket, childish hanja everywhere/hanja nowhere false dichotomy.

at the very least, i don't think it's at all clear how many people actually want the the default basic infobox to be the hanja one, rather than vice versa--this cannot be divined from a vote against "complete elimination of hanja" because, frankly, i also vote against "complete elimination." also, i don't object but personally don't see the need for a separate article on current hanja usage, as the hanja article does a good job already.

Appleby 07:06, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree with and support Calcwatch 100%. "An Alternative Proposal" by Calcwatch is a very constructive proposal.
By contrast, Appleby's was a very destructive proposal. I'm glad we got rid of Appleby's "actual proposal" by a vote of 5 to 1, which is a clear Supermajority. By the way, Appleby claims "this is not about preventing the use of hanja". But then he goes ahead and resorts to this Edit War with Kowloonese on Dec. 15 & 16. This Edit War clearly shows Appleby's intent, and demonstrates one of the purposes of his Hanja-less Infobox templates.--Endroit 09:13, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
I support this alternative proposal. I strongly believe that Hanja should be mentioned for at least the title of an article wherever they exist and they are known, just like Korean Wikipedia, or Naver. How often the Hanja characters are actually used is pretty irrelevant to whether they should be included in the article or not (or else most of Wikipedia's information should be deleted!). I don't think any of the known Hanja should be removed at all. I also don't agree that we have been going on all about the "elimination" of Hanja - we have mostly been against the removal of pretty much any Hanja that we already know, not all of them.
The default infobox should be one with Hanja. During all this time I've been around Wikipedia, I've seen plenty of such infoboxes where the Hanja is left out because it wasn't known to the contributor, so to me it seems pretty clear that it has not been discouraging their use. On the contrary, these boxes tend to soon enough be completed with the actual Hanja, so that the infobox with Hanja actually encourages more information to be contributed, not less.
Appleby's unilateral modifications, many quite recent, despite others asking him not to make them before concensus is reached, do seem to me to mean that he is not quite ready to accept a different viewpoint from his, about which I am concerned. I'd like to encourage him to perhaps try to accept that since most of us here are not agreeing with his view, his suggestions are not suitable for being incorporated into the relevant articles. -- KittySaturn 14:56, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

merry xmas & what-not to everyone, i'll be trying my luck in vegas. have fun reverting if you must, but i'll be back in about a week & would like to see what a mediator who doesn't know hanja personally would say about at least some of the sub-issues. Appleby 18:01, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

i'm back, happy new year to all. i disagree with the reversals by calcwatch, some more strongly than others; & still feel very strongly that "korean name" infobox should be the default, with the hanja one being identified as such. i'm still having a hard time justifying hanja infoboxes for contemporary pop singers, north koreans, etc, in light of wikipedia treatment of other foreign language scripts. so even though i am obviously outnumbered here, i would still like mediation for an outsider view of the consistent rationale to be applied. Appleby 21:33, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree to this proposal. I've just read through most of the discussion (I think I have, don't know if i've missed anything), and I've looked at some of Appleby's edits. I can say that I saw relavant, factual information disappearing from an encyclopedia, and that gave me a very bad feeling. It wasn't like getting rid of NPOV propaganda and nonsensical vandalism, it was stuff that was actually relavant. Appleby's arguemnt is that the Hanja is obscure and obselete; well, the way I see it, if people can find the time and make the effort to put it on Wikipedia, it can't be THAT obselete. I think that more information is always better than less if it's accurate, even if it is obscure. Besides, what's the point of looking things up if you only ever find things that are common knowledge which everybody already knows? If Wikipedia seems to have more Hanja for Korean topics than other foreign topics have their native scripts, that's not a problem with the Hanja, that's a problem with the other topics lacking information. The whole point of an encyclopedia is to be comprehensive and in depth. That's what I think. Once again, I agree with this proposal as a constructive solution. -Sckchui 12:15, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Name table system cleanup

Although I'm not positive that the above discussion is complete, it does appear that the "Alternative proposal" has our general support. I'd like to move on and look at some related issues:

1. Most importantly, the naming system for these templates was already a mess, and is now a disaster. It seems that we are agreed that the basic template, whether we call it "koreanname" or "korean name" or whatever, should include hanja and should not include an image. If that's the case, can we figure out the names that each template should have? Then it's just a matter of cleaning up.
2. An anon user has created Template:Ko-hhrm and Template:Ko-hrm, which provide for inline Korean. Should these be included in the naming conventions, perhaps as an option where a name table cannot be used?
3. The naming conventions do not specify what should go in the "hanja" section. Mixed script or hanja only? Our general practice seems to be to use mixed script (Mungyeong Saejae: 聞慶새재). On the other hand, the usual practice in Korean dictionaries and encyclopedias is to mark non-hanja characters with a dash (Mungyeong Saejae: 聞慶--). Which is better?

Cheers, Visviva 00:35, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

As for #1, this needs to be done by necessity. As for #2, inline templates may be a nice thing to add. As for #3, I don't have a preference, but the mixed script (聞慶새재) should be fine if it's already popular.
If we get duplicate template names that should be consolidated (or if we need to change template names) later, we can probably request an admin to do it in Wikipedia:Requested moves. Thanks for cleaning things up.--Endroit 02:06, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
As for #3, I stronlgy support anything but dashes. As for #2, perhaps the templates are too long as they are now. What about:
  • For obviously Sinokorean words:
    1. Hanja plus either hangul or one romanization
    2. or only Hangul plus one romanization
  • For all others: Hangul plus one romanization
Wikipeditor

Possible table schema

How about this?

Korean name, Koreanname, also Koreanname north: (with hanja, no image)
Korean name image, Koreanname image, Koreanname north image: (with hanja, with image)
Korean name nohanja, Koreanname nohanja, Koreanname north nohanja: (no image, no hanja)
Korean name image nohanja, Koreanname image nohanja, Koreanname north image nohanja: (with image, no hanja)

I'm not sure if the more specialized templates need to adjusted or not. -- Visviva 00:44, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

For the 2nd item, did you mean....

Korean name image, Koreanname image, Koreanname north image: hanja, image
(with hanja, with image)? If so, this sounds good to me.This sounds good to me.--Endroit 01:36, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
Oops, yes. Thanks.-- Visviva 01:42, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
afaik, this specific issue was not up for a vote or extensive discussion, & only a few people expressed an opinion. the general issue is pending mediation & is the next item in the rfm queue. Appleby 02:22, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

I Support Visviva's "Name table system cleanup".
(just in case Appleby didn't understand our previous votes)--Endroit 02:50, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Based on revisions done at around Dec. 15, the following templates should also be checked/revised....
FYI: The original (archived) list of Korean templates is here. We have to go through this whole list too.--Endroit 07:15, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm sure anyone who reads this page can see that we do have a general support for our alternative proposal, so we should move on while awaiting the mediation that Appleby expects, because otherwise we might become stalled in making progress towards Korea-related articles. Also, I think mixed script where appropriate is fine, but dashes look a bit strange outside of dictionary definitions... -- KittySaturn 10:12, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

OK, I agree. We had a mess with template names that begin with "Koreanname". But I went ahead and created/recreated the following 4 templates according to Visviva's schema:
  1. Koreanname: (with hanja, no image)
  2. Koreanname image: (with hanja, with image)
  3. Koreanname nohanja: (no image, no hanja)
  4. Koreanname image nohanja: (with image, no hanja)
We also have the following 2 redirections:
  1. Koreanname noimage --> Koreanname
  2. Koreanname noimage nohanja --> Koreanname nohanja
I had to manually RENAME template names within individual articles for: Koreanname --> Koreanname image
I HAVE NOT YET RENAMED template names within individual articles for: Koreanname noimage --> Koreanname (Maybe we should).
Please check for accuracy as much as you could, and comment. If this change turned out OK, we can go ahead and modify the others in a similar fashion.
--Endroit 16:25, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for that -- it looks great from here. I also renamed the non-hanja Template:Korean name instances to Template:Korean name nohanja and redirected that name to Template:Koreanname.
However it may not be necessary to go to all this trouble. It seems we can use template syntax to make certain fields optional (who knew?)... I have been bold and made the hanja field optional for Template:Koreanname. That means that the hanja field will only display if hanja (or a blank) are provided. So far this seems to be working (please check).
If we also add an optional image field to our basic template, then neither the nohanja nor the noimage variants will be needed -- we can redirect all of them to Template:Koreanname. Then the only customized versions we will need are the truly customized ones, like Template:Korean district and Template:Infobox Korean company (that's a new one, BTW). Would've saved a lot of headaches if we'd realized we could do this in the first place, eh?-- Visviva 16:55, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
OK, sounds good. I'll follow your style & design, if I make any more changes in the future. Don't worry about the extra work I did. It's worth it knowing that we all worked together towards the same goal.... it's a good feeling. I know we can get this thing fixed together eventually.--Endroit 17:14, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

that's good news. with the hanja field optional, i have no complaints about the infobox design, since my concerns were that a blank hanja field would leave many incomplete & unsightly, appear to require hanja where it's not relevant, and discourage the use of infoboxes altogether.

as to actual inclusion of hanja, of course, i still don't understand how chinese characters are relevant to Samgyupsal & Summer Scent, but that's another story, awaiting mediation. Appleby 17:30, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

new matters

now that we've introduced ourselves, how about some more ideas:

  1. much of the content on this project page actually belongs in a "manual of style" page like Wikipedia:Manual of Style (China-related articles) & Wikipedia:Manual of Style (Japan-related articles). "naming conventions" are supposed to be about composing article titles.
  2. with the discovery of flexible infoboxes, life would be simpler if the royal infoboxes were combined into one, flexible enough to apply to various korean kingdoms/periods. maybe even combine reign dates & other fields from Template:Infobox Monarch or even combine the succession box like Template:Infobox Swedish monarchs ?
  3. although a pretty minor issue, in the monarch naming section, shouldn't kings of gaya be titled "X of Y Gaya" rather than "X of Gaya" since, i think, more than one gaya state had known lines of rulers? Appleby 23:09, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
1. Yes. We're a little behind the curve, I fear. China- and Japan-related articles have had their own MoS's for some time.
2. Excellent idea.
3. Good point. -- Visviva 08:43, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
  1. does anyone think we need separate naming & mos articles, or should i just rename this project page "Manual of Style (Korea-related articles)"?
  2. should the royal infobox actually include succession fields? this seems like a more elegant, easier-to-use solution, but succession boxes are pretty widely used. that swedish infobox looks good, but doesn't seem to be actually used.
  3. what happened to everyone so interested in korean article formats? 4 days after visviva proposed an apparent solution, nobody else is interested in discussing or implementing infoboxes, except to ensure hanja usage? Appleby 19:29, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
1. We should definitely have separate pages for each, also adding detail here on specific naming issues -- monarchs, railroads, cities, etc. See, for example, Wikipedia: Naming conventions (Chinese).
1a. I hesitate to bring it up, but ideally this page should address how to name people and things related to Buyeo (state), Malgal, Goguryeo, and Balhae. Precedent is fairly well-established for Goguryeo, but much less so for the others.
2. Can't say I care much one way or the other. However, I would hesitate to disrupt the existing practice of putting the succession box in the footer. Consistency is good, especially in layout.
3. Eh, they come and they go. Such is Wikipedia. Thanks for sticking around! Can't have been too easy, with the reception you got above.  :-) -- Visviva 04:04, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

i just thought since we have little content for actual naming, a single page would be easier to read (i think japan's mos combines naming conventions). i shudder to think of all the link-fixing with a brand new mos page. separate pages may eventually be needed, but maybe it can be put off for now?

so would you mind making one uber-box (or did you make one already?) for korean & one for royalty (w/o succession)? i can start implementing the royalty box.

afaict from reputable sources (admittedly not up to speed on the latest issue of Journal of Ancient Sino-Korean States), Goguryeo & Balhae are not really contested outside of china, Malgal is not seriously contested by Korea, & nobody gives a rat's ass about Buyeo.

oh, & my introduction to wikilife was the sea of japan dispute article, so i know adversity. but wikipedia is an encyclopedia first, & an experiment in democracy second. Appleby 19:06, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Paekchǒng

I don't know where else to suggest this, but I'd appreciate it if someone who has an understanding of Korean linguistics could add a box to Paekchǒng. Sarge Baldy 09:21, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

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