Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (hockey)/Archive 1

This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Objection to this policy

I want to express my objection to this policy. Based on discussion on Village pump and onWP:HOCKEY I do not feel there is a consensus about this. Until recently many ice hockey articles were naturally created with diacritics, but under the non-diacritics policy of WP:HOCKEY, objected by some editors, from the mid January 2006 these articles were renamed in the end of January and the begging of February. This document does not reflect how ice hockey articles are dealt by majority editors but just by editors grouped in WikiProject ice hockey. --Jan Smolik 23:51, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

I too want to object to this convention. As a Swede, seeing the article titles of Hakan Loob (Håkan), Markus Naslund (Näslund) and Daniel Tjarnqvist (Tjärnqvist) really makes my eyes hurt. -- Elisson • Talk 13:59, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

I feel for your objection as a "Swede" but this is the english language section of wikipedia, not the Swedish language of wikipeida. Simply because "your eyes hurt" doesn't mean that the entire english language should change its practices. Hockey wikipedia is merely following the standard practices of virtually all the major hockey English publications. I am sorry that almost the entire english language offends you. Masterhatch 01:37, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

I do not know any English language rule, saying that the diacritics has to be dropped off the words taken from other languages (see e.g. both correct possibilities of "cafe" and "café" - does anybody need any consensus, which of them should be used?), and especially not from foreign names. And I have never heard about any English language rule, saying that names of hockey-players should be treated differently to names of other people, as it is done in Wikipedia. Major hockey English publications are written for English readers and they do not want to bother them with the diacritics, but English Wikipedia is being written for international audience.

By the way, people writing e.g. Czech Wikipedia would consider really ridiculous if English names were rewritten to "suit" better Czech pronunciation, e.g. George Bush into "Džódž Buš" :-)) Just kidding, but I really do not understand the anti-diacritical opposition. If it was just because some people do not want to bother with using these special letters, why do they bother with reverting them, when somebody else uses them? Jan.Kamenicek 23:34, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

I, too, object to this proposed policy. We should not create any exceptions for hockey, nor should we exempt Czechs and Swedes from any such proposed policies. Just because there is a strong Czech or Swedish lobby does not mean that the same applies to Polish or Norwegian names. We should follow the general tradition of English Wikipedia to render names precisely, and if that means employing Unicode letters not found in English, so be it. In fact, it is strictly technical limitations that have caused the omission of native glyphs in the first place. Wikipedia, in its richness, may well be the one place among popularly accessible references that fixes the problem of "dumbed down" foreign names. Let's continue writing with the diacritics, hockey or no hockey. -- Mareklug ^talk 16:23, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Also I object to this proposed policy. 1. There is no need for a special guidline for hockey players, the same principles should apply as for other wikipedia articles. 2. Using latin letters with diacritics doesn't hurt the readability for English readers, but it makes the names look more correct for us that know other languages as well. By the way, Jonsson and Jönsson are two different Swedish surnames. I don't mind if American writers are not bothered to find the right letters, probably someone else will correct the text later. --Boivie 08:35, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

I would feel considerably more comfortable if more of those objecting to the policy were genuinely interested in hockey. A perusal of Main space edits over the last six months is illuminating; three have a combined two edits to any hockey article, while a fourth has no hockey-related edits other than inserting diacriticals into names. While some of the objectors are demonstrably active on WikiHockey, this should be taken into consideration for any determination of consensus, in the same fashion that I hope would happen if a flood of nativist partisans barged in to shout the opposition down. RGTraynor 15:25, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

I am interrested in hockey, mainly Swedish hockey. But my primary, and overwhelming interrest is football (real football), thus the few contributions to the "hockey namespace", and the lack of interrest in the hockey project. I still do feel that I am entitled to give my opinion on a matter that to a large degree is about Sweden. To finish this of, the discussion isn't even mainly about hockey, but about how Wikipedia in general should treat umlauts, or in some cases (including the Swedish å, ä and ö) completely separate letters. – Elisson • Talk 20:10, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

The English language Wikipedia should follow English-language conventions. The Czech should follow Czech. The Swahili should follow Swahili. English articles should not be forced to follow non-English conventions. BoojiBoy 23:52, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Swedish exception

I have just found out that there is an exception to naming conventions, saying that Swedish names should be spelled in English in the same way as they are in Swedish. Does anybody understand why this is acceptable for Swedish and non-acceptable for names from other languages? Jan.Kamenicek 23:56, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

I think Swedes (and, admittedly: I assisted them) built a good case presented at wikipedia:naming conventions (Swedish). Compare to, for example, Wikipedia:Naming policy (Czech) (which btw, I also started): in that case there's no evidence presented that diacritics are generally used for sportspeople too. See also wikipedia:naming conventions (standard letters with diacritics), intended to give some general perspective on the issue. And, of course, wikipedia:village pump (policy)/Using diacritics (or national alphabet) in the name of the article where all this was discussed at large. --Francis Schonken 09:43, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Anyway, I inserted a copy of the mentioned village pump discussion below --Francis Schonken 07:47, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Using diacritics (or national alphabet) in the name of the article

The discussion below has been copied from Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Using diacritics (or national alphabet) in the name of the article - 07:41, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

I came to the problem with national alphabet letters in article name. They are commonly used but I have found no mention about them in naming coventions (WP:NAME). The only convention related is to use English name, but it probable does not apply to the names of people. National alphabet is widely used in wikipedia. Examples are Luís de Camões Auguste and Louis Lumière or Karel Čapek. There are redirects from english spelling (Camoes, Lumiere, Capek).

On the other hand, wikiproject ice hockey WP:HOCKEY states rule for ice hockey players that their names should be written in English spelling. Currently some articles are being moved from Czech spelling to the english spelling (for example Patrik Eliáš to Patrick Elias). I object to this as I do not see genaral consensus and it will only lead to moving back and forth. WP:HOCKEY is not wikipedia policy nor guideline. In addition I do not see any reason why ice hockey players should be treated differently than other people.

There is a mention about using the most recognized name in the naming conventions policy. But this does not help in the case of many ice hockey players. It is very likely that for American and Canadian NHL fans the most recognised versions are Jagr, Hasek or Patrick ELias. But these people also played for the Czech republic in the Olympics and there they are known like Jágr, Hašek or Patrik Eliáš.

I would like to find out what is the current consensus about this. -- Jan Smolik 18:53, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

The only convention related is to use English name, but it probable does not apply to the names of people - incorrect. "Use the most common name of a person or thing that does not conflict with the names of other people or things" - Wikipedia:Naming :conventions (common names). Raul654 18:54, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

I mentioned this in the third article but it does not solve the problem. Americans are familiar with different spelling than Czechs. --Jan Smolik 19:11, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, since this is the English Wikipedia, really we should use the name most familiar to English speakers. The policy doesn't say this explicitly, but I believe this is how it's usually interpreted. This is the form that English speakers will recognize most easily. Deco 19:02, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Well it is wikipedia in English but it is read and edited by people from the whole world. --Jan Smolik 19:11, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

There was a straw poll about this with regard to place names: Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (use English)/Archive 3#Proposal and straw poll regarding place names with diacritical marks. The proposal was that "whenever the most common English spelling is simply the native spelling with diacritical marks omitted, the native spelling should be used". It was close, but those who supported the proposal had more votes. Since, articles like Yaoundé have remained in place with no uproar. I would support a similar convention with regard to personal names. — BrianSmithson 19:17, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm the user who initiated the WP:HOCKEY-based renaming with Alf. The project Player Pages Format Talk page has the discussion we had along with my reasoning, pasted below:

OK, team, it's simple. This is en-wiki. We don't have non-English characters on our keyboards, and people likely to come to en-wiki are mostly going to have ISO-EN keyboards, whether they're US, UK, or Aussie (to name a few) it doesn't matter. I set up a page at User:RasputinAXP/DMRwT for double move redirects with twist and started in on the Czech players that need to be reanglicized.

Myself and others interpret the policy just the same as Deco and BrianSmithson do: the familiar form in English is Jaromir Jagr, not Jaromír Jágr; we can't even type that. Attempting to avoid redirects is pretty tough as well. Is there a better way to build consensus regarding this? RasputinAXP _{talk contribs} 19:36, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

I think you misread my statement above. My stance is that if the native spelling of the name varies from the English spelling only in the use of diacritics, use the native spelling. Thus, the article title should be Yaoundé and not Yaounde. Likewise, use Jōchō, not Jocho. Redirection makes any arguments about accessibility moot, and not using the diacritics makes us look lazy or ignorant. — BrianSmithson 16:34, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Tentative overview (no cut-and-paste solutions, however):

• Article names for names of people: wikipedia:naming conventions (people) - there's nothing specific about diacritics there (just mentioning this guideline because it is a naming conventions guideline, while there are no "hockey" naming conventions mentioned at wikipedia:naming conventions).
• wikipedia:naming conventions (names and titles) is about royal & noble people: this is guideline, and *explicitly* mentions that wikipedia:naming conventions (common names) does NOT apply for these kind of people. But makes no difference: doesn't mention anything about diacritics.
• Wikipedia talk:naming conventions (Polish rulers): here we're trying to solve the issue for Polish monarchs (some of which have diacritics in their Polish name): but don't expect to find answers there yet, talks are still going on. Anyway we need to come to a conclusion there too, hopefully soon (but not rushing).
• Wikipedia:Naming conventions (standard letters with diacritics), early stages of a guideline proposal, I started this on a "blue monday" about a week ago. No guideline yet: the page contains merely a "scope" definition, and a tentative "rationale" section. What the basic principles of the guideline proposal will become I don't know yet (sort of waiting till after the "Polish rulers" issue gets sorted out I suppose...). But if any of you feel like being able to contribute, ultimately it will answer Jan Smolik's question (but I'd definitely advise not to hold your breath on it yet).
• Other:
  • Some people articles with and without diacritics are mentioned at wikipedia talk:naming conventions (use English)#Diacritics, South Slavic languages - some of these after undergoing a WP:RM, but note that isolated examples are *not* the same as a guideline... (if I'd know a formulation of a guideline proposal that could be agreeable to the large majority of Wikipedians, I'd have written it down already...)
  • Talking about Lumiere/Lumière: there's a planet with that name: at a certain moment a few months ago it seemed as if the issue was settled to use the name with accent, but I don't know how that ended, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Astronomical objects, Andrewa said she was going to take the issue there. Didn't check whether they have a final conclusion yet.

Well, that's all I know about (unless you also want to involve non-standard characters, then there's still the wikipedia:naming conventions (þ) guideline proposal) --Francis Schonken 19:58, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Note that I do not believe no En article should contain diacritics in its title. There are topics for which most English speakers are used to names containing diacritics, such as El Niño. Then there are topics for which the name without diacritics is widely disseminated throughout the English speaking world, like Celine Dion (most English speakers would be confused or surprised to see the proper "Céline Dion"). (Ironically enough, the articles for these don't support my point very well.) Deco 20:42, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Sticking diacritics, particularly the Polish Ł is highly annoying, esp. when applied to Polish monarchs. It just gives editors much more work, and unless you're in Poland or know the code, you will be unable to type the name in the article. - Calgacus (ΚΑΛΓΑΚΟΣ) File:UW Logo-secondary.gif 20:45, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Redirects make the issue of difficulty in visiting or linking to the article immaterial (I know we like to skip redirects, but as long as you watch out for double redirects you're fine). The limitations of our keyboards are not, by themselves, a good reason to exclude any article title. Deco 20:50, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Deco, I should rephrase what I said. I agree with you that some English articles do require diacritics, like El Niño. Articles like Jaromir Jagr that are lacking diacritics in their English spellings should remain without diacritics because you're only going to find the name printed in any English-speaking paper without diacritics. RasputinAXP _{talk contribs} 21:20, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

I checked articles about Czech people and in 90 % of cases (rough guess) they are with diacritics in the name of the article. This includes soccer players playing in England (like Vladimír Šmicer, Petr Čech, Milan Baroš). And no one actualy complains. So this seems to be a consensus. The only exception are extremely short stubs that did not receive much input. Articles with Czech diacritics are readable in English, you only need a redirect becouse of problems with typing. This is an international project written in English. It should not fulfill only needs of native English speakers but of all people of the world. --Jan Smolik 22:33, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Very many names need diacritics to make sense. Petr Cech instead of Petr Čech makes a different impression as a name, does not look half as Czech and is much more likely to be totally mispronounced when you see it. Names with diacritics are also not IMHO such a big problem to use for editors because you can usually go through the redirect in an extra tab and cut and paste the correct title. I also don't see a problem at all in linking through redirects (that's part of what they are there for). Leaving out diacritics only where they are "not particularly useful" would be rather inconsequent. Kusma (討論) 22:48, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

As a matter of fact, "Petr Sykora" and "Jaromir Jagr" are not alternate spellings; they are incorrect ones which are only used for technical reasons. Since all other articles about Czech people use proper Czech diacritics, I don't know of any justification for making an exception in case of hockey players. - Mike Rosoft 01:13, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Man, I feel like the bottom man in a dogpile. Reviewing Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names), there'sWhat word would the average user of the Wikipedia put into the search engine? Making the name of the article include diacritics goes against the Use English guideline. The most common input into the search box over here onthe left, for en-wiki, is going to be Jaromir Jagr. Yes, we're supposed to avoid redirects. Yes, in Czech it's not correct. In English, it is correct. I guess I'm done with the discussion. There's no consensus in either direction, but it's going to be pushed back to the diacritic version anyhow. Go ahead and switch them back. I'mnot dead-set against it, but I was trying to follow guidelines. RasputinAXP _{talk contribs} 15:48, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

There are many names, and even words, in dominant English usage that use diacritics. Whether or not these will ever be typed in a search engine, they're still the proper title. However, if English language media presentations of a topic overwhelmingly omit diacritics, then clearly English speakers would be most familiar with the form without diacritics and it should be used as the title on this Wikipedia. This is just common sense, even if it goes against the ad hoc conventions that have arisen. Deco 18:30, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Czech names: almost all names with diacritics use it also in the title (and all of them have redirect). Adding missing diacritics is automatic behavior of Czech editors when they spot it. So for all practical purposes the policy is set de-facto (for Cz names) and you can't change it. Pavel Vozenilek 03:18, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Naming policy (Czech) --Francis Schonken 11:01, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

and: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (hockey) --Francis Schonken 17:41, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

There are those among us trying to pull the ignorant North American card. I mentioned the following over at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ice Hockey/Player pages format...

Here's the Czech hockey team in English compliments of the Torino Italy Olympic Committee [1] Here they are in Italian: [2], French: [3]. Here are the rosters from the IIHF (INTERNATIONAL Ice Hockey Federation) based in Switzerland: [4].'

Those examples are straight from 2 international organizations (one based in Italy, one in Switzerland). I'm hard pressed to find any english publication that uses diacritics in hockey player names. I don't see why en.wiki should be setting a precedent otherwise. ccwaters 02:19, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Over at WP:HOCKEY we have/had 3 forces promoting non-English characters in en.wiki hockey articles: native Finns demanding native spellings of Finnish players, native Czechs demanding native spellings of Czech players, and American stalkers of certain Finnish goaltenders. I did a little research and here are my findings:

Here's a Finnish site profiling NHL players. Here's an "incorrectly" spelt Jagr, but the Finnish and German alphabets both happen to have umlauts so here's a "correct" Olaf Kölzig. Who is Aleksei Jashin?

Here's a Czech article about the recent Montreal-Philadelphia game [5] Good luck finding any Finnish players names spelt "correctly"... here's a snippet from the MON-PHI article:

Flyers však do utkání nastoupili značně oslabeni. K zraněným oporám Peteru Forsbergovi, Keithu Primeauovi, Ericu Desjardinsovi a Kimu Johnssonovi totiž po posledním zápase přibyli také Petr Nedvěd a zadák Chris Therrien.

Well...I recognize Petr Nedvěd, he was born in Czechoslovakia. Who did the Flyers have in goal??? Oh its the Finnish guy, "Antero Niitymakiho".

My point? Different languages spell name differently. I found those sites just by searching yahoo in the respective languages. I admit I don't speak either and therefore I couldn't search thoroughly. If someone with backgrounds in either language can demonstrate patterns of Finnish publications acknowledging Czech characters and visa versa than I may change my stance. ccwaters 03:45, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

I support every word Ccwater said, albeit with not as much conviction. There is a reason why we have Wikipedia in different languages, and although there are few instances in the English uses some sort of extra-curricular lettering (i.e. café), most English speaking people do not use those. Croat Canuck 04:25, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

I must make a strong point that seems to be over-looked: this is not the international English language wikipedia. It is the English language wikipedia. It just so happens that the international communty contributes. There is a reason that there are other language sections to wikipedia, and this is one of them. The finnish section of wikipedia should spell names the Finnish way and the English wikipedia should spell names the English way. The vast majority of english publications drop the foreign characters and diacritics. Why? because they aren't part of the English language, hence the term "foreign characters". Masterhatch 04:32, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree in every particular with Masterhatch. The NHL's own website and publications do not use diacriticals, nor does any other known English-language source. The absurdity of the racist card is breathtaking: in the same fashion as the Finnish and Czech language Wikipedias follow their own national conventions for nomenclature (the name of the country in which I live is called the "United States" on neither ... should I feel insulted?), the English language Wikipedia reflects the conventions of the various English-speaking nations. In none are diacriticals commonly used. I imagine the natives of the Finnish or Czech language Wikipedias would go berserk if some peeved Anglos barge in and demand they change their customary linguistic usages. I see no reason to change the English language to suit in a similar situation. RGTraynor 06:46, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

People like Jagr, Rucinsky or Elias are not only NHL players but also members of Czech team for winter olympics. Therefore I do not see any reason why spelling of their name in NHL publications should be prioritized. I intentionaly wrote the names without diacritics. I accept the fact that foreigners do that because they cannot write those letters properly and use them correctly. There are also technical restrictions. I also accepted fact that my US social security card bears name Jan Smolik instead of Jan Smolík. I do not have problem with this. I even sign my posts Jan Smolik. But Wikipedia does not have technical restrictions. I can even type wierd letters as Æ. And it has plenty of editors who are able to write names with diacritics correctly. The name without diacritics is sufficient for normal information but I still think it is wrong. I think that removing diacritics is a step back. Anyway it is true that I am not able to use diacritics in Finish names. But somebody can fix that for me.

I do not care which version will win. But I just felt there was not a clear consensus for the non-diacritics side and this discussion has proven me to be right. As for the notice of Czechs writing names incorectly. We use Inflection of names so that makes writing even more dificult (my name is Smolík but when you want to say we gave it to Smolík you will use form we gave it Smolíkovi). One last argument for diacritics, before I retire from this discussion as I think I said all I wanted to say. Without diacritics you cannot distinguish some names. For example Czech surnames Čapek and Cápek are both Capek. Anyway we also have language purists in the Czech republic. I am not one of them. --Jan Smolik 19:11, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

People like Jagr, Rucinsky or Elias are not only NHL players but also members of Czech team for winter olympics. Therefore I do not see any reason why spelling of their name in NHL publications should be prioritized -Fine we'll use the spellings used by the IIHF, IOC, NHLPA, AHL, OHL, WHL, ESPN, TSN, The Hockey News, Sports Illustrated, etc, etc, etc.

This isn't about laziness. Its about using the alphabet afforded to the respective language. We don't refer to Алексей Яшин because the English language doesn't use the Cyrillic alphabet. So why should we subject language A to the version of the Latin alphabet used by language B? Especially when B modifies proper names from languages C & D.

My main beef here is that that the use of such characters in en.wiki is a precedent, and not a common practice. If you think the English hockey world should start spelling Czech names natively, than start a campaign amongst Czech hockey players demanding so. It may work: languages constantly infiltrate and influence each other. Wikipedia should take a passive role in such things, and not be an active forum for them. ccwaters 20:09, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

People like Jagr, Rucinsky or Elias are not only NHL players but also members of Czech team for winter olympics. Therefore I do not see any reason why spelling of their name in NHL publications should be prioritized Great, in which case for Czech Olympic pages, especially on the Czech Wikipedia, spell them as they are done in the Czech Republic. Meanwhile, in the NHL-related articles, we'll spell them as per customary English-language usage. RGTraynor 08:05, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I wish I understood why User:ccwaters has to be rude in his posts on this subject. "Stalkers of Finnish goaltenders" isn't the way I'd describe a Wikipedia contributor. Also, since you asked, Aleksei Jashin is the Finnish translitteration of Alexei Yashin. Russian transliterates differently into Finnish than into English. Of course you must know this, since you have such a habit of lecturing to us on languages. As for diacritics, I object to the idea of dumbing down Wikipedia. There are no technical limitations that stop us from writing Antero Niittymäki instead of Antero Niittymaki. The reason so many hockey publications all over the world don't use Finnish-Scandinavian letters or diacritics is simple laziness, and Wikipedia can do much better. Besides, it isn't accepted translation practice to change the spelling of proper names if they can be easily reproduced and understood, so in my opinion it's simply wrong to do so. Since it seems to be obvious there isn't a consensus on this matter, I think a vote would be in order. Elrith 16:40, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Alas, a Finnish guy lecturing native English speakers on how they have to write Czech names in English (not to mention the lecturing regarding the laziness) is but a variation on the same theme of rudishness.

So, Elrith, or whomever reads this, if the lecturing is finished, could you maybe devote some attention to the Dvořák/Dvorak problem I mentioned below? I mean, whomever one asks this would not be problematic - but nobody volunteered thus far to get it solved. Am I the only one who experiences this as problematic inconsistency? --Francis Schonken 21:05, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

So is "Jagr" the Finnish transliteration of "Jágr"??? On that note, the Finnish "Ä" is not an "A" with "funny things" on top (that's an umlaut), its a completely separate letter nonexistent in the English language and is translated to "Æ". "Niittymaki" would be the English transliteration. "Nittymeki" or (more traditionally "Nittymӕki") would be the English transcription.

In the past I've said our friend's contributions were "thorough." I'll leave it at that. There will be nothing else about it from me unless asked. ccwaters 21:02, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

My opinion on the Dvořák/Dvorak issue is that his name is spelled Dvořák, and that's how the articles should be titled, along with redirects from Dvorak. Similarly, the article on Antero Niittymäki should be called just that, with a redirect from Niittymaki. You're right that it is a problematic inconsistency, and it needs to be fixed.

The only reason I may sound like I'm lecturing is that there are several people contributing to these discussions who don't understand the subject at all. Ccwaters's remarks on transliteration are

one example. It isn't customary or even acceptable to transliterate or transcribe Finnish letters into English; the accepted translation practice is to reproduce them, which is perfectly possible, for example, in Wikipedia. Niittymaki or anything else that isn't Niittymäki isn't a technically correct "translation". The reason North American, or for that matter, Finnish, hockey publications write Jagr instead of Jágr is ignorance and/or laziness. Wikipedia can do better that that.

However, since this discussion has, at least to me, established that there is no consensus on Wikipedia on diacritics and national letters, apart from a previous vote on diacritics, I'm going to continue my hockey edits and use Finnish/Scandinavian letters unless the matter is otherwise resolved. Elrith 04:32, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Hi Elrith, your new batch of patronising declarations simply doesn't work. Your insights in language (and how language works) seem very limited, resuming all what you don't like about a language to "laziness" and "ignorance".

Seems like we might need an RfC on you, if you continue to oracle like this, especially when your technique seems to consist in calling anyone who doesn't agree with you incompetent.

Re. consensus, I think you would be surprised to see how much things have evolved since the archived poll you speak about. --Francis Schonken 23:14, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

My 2 cents:

1) This should NOT be setteld as a local consensus for hockey players, this is about how we name persons in the english wikipedia. It is wrong to have a local consensus for hockey players only.

2) I have tried to do some findings on how names are represented, it is wrong to say that since these names are spelled like this normally they should be spelled like this, many wrongs does not make it right. So I did a few checks,

If I look at the online version of Encyclopædia Britannica I get a hit on both Björn Borg and Bjorn Borg, but in the article it is spelled with swedish characters, same for Selma Lagerlöf and Dag Hammarskjöld, I could not find any more swedes in EB :-) (I did not check all..)

I also check for as many swedes as I could think of in wikipedia to see how it is done for none hockey swedes, I found the following swedes by looking at list of swedish ... and adding a few more that I could think of, ALL had their articles spelled with the swedish characters (I'm sure you can find a few that is spelled without the swedish characters but the majority for sure seams to be spelled the same way as in their births certificates). So IF you are proposing that we should 'rename' the swedish hockey players I think we must rename all other swedes also. Do we really think that is correct? I can not check this as easily for other countries but I would guess that it is the same.

Dag Hammarskjöld, Björn Borg, Annika Sörenstam, Björn Ulvaeus, Agnetha Fältskog, Selma Lagerlöf, Stellan Skarsgård,Gunnar Ekelöf, Gustaf Fröding, Pär Lagerkvist, Håkan Nesser, Bruno K. Öijer, Björn Ranelid, Fredrik Ström, Edith Södergran, Hjalmar Söderberg, Per Wahlöö, Gunnar Ekelöf, Gustaf Fröding, Pär Lagerkvist, Maj Sjöwall, Per Wästberg, Isaac Hirsche Grünewald, Tage Åsén, Gösta Bohman, Göran Persson, Björn von Sydow, Lasse Åberg, Helena Bergström, Victor Sjöström, Gunder Hägg, Sigfrid Edström, Anders Gärderud, Henrik Sjöberg, Patrik Sjöberg, Tore Sjöstrand, Arne Åhman, so there seams to be a consensus for non hockey playing swedes? Stefan 13:33, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

I also checked encarta for Björn Borg and Dag Hammarskjöld both have the Swedish characters as the main name of the articles, Selma Lagerlöf is not avaliable unless you pay so I can not check. I'm sure you can find example of the 'wrong' way also, but we can not say that there is consensus in the encyclopedic area of respelling foreign names the 'correct' english way. Stefan 14:16, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

This seems like a very constructive step to me. So I'll do the same as I did for Czech, i.e.:

1. start Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Swedish) as a proposal, starting off with the content you bring in here.
2. list that page in Wikipedia:Naming conventions#Conventions under consideration
3. also list it on wikipedia:current surveys#Discussions
4. list it in the guideline proposal Wikipedia:Naming conventions (standard letters with diacritics)#Specifics_according_to_language_of_origin

OK to work from there? --Francis Schonken 15:22, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Works for me :-) Stefan 00:26, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Tx for finetuning Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Swedish). I also contributed to further finetuning, but add a small note here to clarify what I did: page names in English wikipedia are in English per WP:UE. Making a Swedish name like Björn Borg English, means that the ö ("character" in Swedish language) is turned into an "o" character with a precombined diacritic mark (unicode: U+00F6, which is the same character used to write the last name of Johann Friedrich Böttger – note that böttger ware, named after this person, uses the same ö according to Webster's, and in that dictionary is sorted between "bottery tree" and "bottine"). Of course (in English!) the discussion whether it is a separate character or an "o" with a diacritic is rather futile *except* for alphabetical ordering: for alphabetical ordering in English wikipedia the ö is treated as if it were an o, hence the remark about the "category sort key" I added to the intro of the "Swedish NC" guideline proposal. In other words, you can't expect English wikipedians who try to find something in an alphabetic list to know in advance (a) what is the language or origin of a word, and (b) if any "special rules" for alphabetical ordering are applicable in that language. That would be putting things on their head. "Bö..." will always be sorted in the same way, whatever the language of origin.

What I mean is that "Björn Borg" (in Swedish) is transcribed/translated/transliterated to "Björn Borg" in English, the only (invisible!) difference being that in Swedish ö is a character, and in English ö is a letter o with a diacritic.

Or (still the same in other words): Ö is always treated the same as "O" in alphabetical ordering, whether it's a letter of Ötzi or of Öijer--Francis Schonken 10:56, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

For consistency with the rest of Wikipedia, hockey player articles should use non-English alphabet characters if the native spelling uses a Latin-based alphabet (with the exception of naturalized players like Petr Nedved). Why should Dominik Hasek be treated differently than Jaroslav Hašek? Olessi 20:48, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

If we are using other encyclopedias as litmus tests, we don't we look at a few hockey players: Dominik Hasek at Encarta Dominik Hasek at Britannica Jaromir Jagr at Encarta Teemu Selanne in Encarta list of top scorers

Last argument: We use the names that these players are overwhelming known as in the English language. We speak of Bobby Orr, not Robert Orr. Scotty Bowman, not William Scott Bowman. Ken Dryden not Kenneth Dryden. Tony Esposito, not Anthony Esposito. Gordie Howe not Gordon Howe... etc etc, etc. The NHL/NHLPA/media call these players by what they request to be called. Vyacheslav Kozlov used to go by Slava Kozlov. Evgeni Nabokov "americanized" himself for a season as "John Nabokov" but changed his mind again.

ccwaters 22:54, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Dvořák

Could someone clean this up:

Article/category name without diacritics

Category:Compositions by Antonin Dvorak

Category:Operas by Antonin Dvorak

Cello Concerto (Dvorak)

String Quartet No. 11 (Dvorak)

String Quartet No. 12 (Dvorak)

Symphony No. 6 (Dvorak)

Symphony No. 8 (Dvorak)

Symphony No. 9 (Dvorak)

Violin Concerto (Dvorak)

Page name with diacritics

Antonín Dvořák

List of compositions by Antonín Dvořák

Symphony No. 7 (Dvořák)

I'd do it myself if I only knew which way the wikipedia community wants it... --Francis Schonken 10:53, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I've been bold and renamed the articles to use diacritics in the title, since they already use them in the text. I've also slapped {{categoryredirect}} tags on the two categories: a bot should be along shortly to complete the job. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 14:54, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Tx!!! - I'll remove Dvořák as an exception from Wikipedia:Naming policy (Czech)#Exceptions --Francis Schonken 15:22, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

I have coloured the section above to show clearly that it is a copy from another page. --Philip Baird Shearer 09:46, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Applied the same as a generic solution, tx for the idea. --Francis Schonken 09:59, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Diacritics and non-English characters

This is a copy of the Text from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ice Hockey/Player pages format#Diacritics and non-English characters. It was copied here by Francis Schonken at 08:54 on 4 March 2006 (UTC). I have coloured it so that it is easy to see where the copy starts and ends. Please do not reply to any of the postings in the coloured section because the original authors may not see this copy and so will not be able to respond. --Philip Baird Shearer 10:04, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

OK, team, it's simple. This is en-wiki. We don't have non-English characters on our keyboards, and people likely to come to en-wiki are mostly going to have ISO-EN keyboards, whether they're US, UK, or Aussie (to name a few) it doesn't matter. I set up a page at User:RasputinAXP/DMRwT for double move redirects with twist and started in on the Czech players that need to be reanglicized. There's a justification on that page, but to repeat:

DMRwT is the term I use to describe when a page has been redirected and has a history on both the redirecting and redirected page. As an example, Petr Prucha started there, was moved to Petr Průcha, causing a redirect at Petr Prucha; after reviewing WP:HOCKEY policy (specifically use of diacritics and non-English), the article needed to be moved back to Petr Prucha with a redirect at Petr Průcha but couldn't because both the article and redirect were extant.

I asked User:Wiki_alf to help me out, as many of the Czech players have been shuffled around and he obliged me by performing a Double Move-Redirect with Twist on Petr Prucha.

As such, this is a fluid list of NHL players that need to be juggled as above. Please add players to the "needing" list as you see fit.

Thanks, and PLAY ON! RasputinAXP _{talk contribs} 15:36, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

I object to this conclusion. Previous debate clearly proved, that there is no clear consensus about using or not using diacritics. You should not be doing any mass renaming and mass moving. At this moment both variants are considered to be right by wikipedians (or both wrong - depending whether you are optimist ore pessimist). --Jan Smolik 11:18, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Jan, I understand you're upset. Let's settle things on the Village Pump before you go changing WP:HOCKEY policy. If both variants are considered right, and there's no clear consensus, then we have the right to go about doing things based on how our consensus has been reached in our particular project. RasputinAXP _{talk contribs} 15:39, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

RasputinAPX, I am not upset. I just see that WP:HOCKEY policy does not reflect clear consensus so I just want to fix it so that does not confuse anyone. Simply, it is POV. For example admin User:Wiki_alf took it as a clear guideline for renaming. I will not do any other editing of the policy today, but tomorrow I will add following warning to the start of the section: "This section does not reflect a clear consensus. Before applying these recommendations, please see objections on the talk page". I think it is neutral. You can improve this warning if you want to.

The diacritics section of WP:HOCKEY was added by Masterhatch on 19 January 2006. It is quite new and it should not be treated as set-in-stone rules. Anyway prior this additions users Hazelorb on January 15and Elrith January 16 objected to not using diacritics. On January 24 you summarized the discussion with words "OK, team, it's simple". Again not reflecting the objections and asked User:Wiki_alf to change naming based on the project policy. You did not add the "policy" is 5 days old and that there were objections to it.

I would not say a world if using diacritics on Wikipedia was not common or was forbidden. Czech people are quite used not to use it on Internet or in SMS messages as for a long time there was no single encoding table for Czech characters. But when I arrived to Wikipedia, I saw that diacritics is commonly used and thus I am also using it. Most names of Czech people is written with diacritics. I see it as a consensus.

I am glad you were bold and went on with proposal you thought is right. But as there are clearly expressed objections to this proposal you should not start edit war with mass renaming. For my person I can promise you I will not go to the ice hockey articles only for reason of renaming players. But if I write hockey article or add substantial part to it I will probably use diacritics as it is normal on Wikipedia. In the conclusion I repeat this is international project written in English and not project of Britons and Americans. --Jan Smolik 20:31, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm not touching another hockey article until this is over, and I'm not edit warring over it; We let the proposal sit for a while before we did it, and now that there's something to deal with we've stopped. I'm goign to stick to turning Wayne Gretzky into a FAC and then I'll probably leave WP:HOCKEY; I'll keep an eyeball on New York Rangers and their players and leave it at that. RasputinAXP _{talk contribs} 21:10, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Whatever happens though, it should be important that the non-diacratical version gets redirected into the diacratical version of the article. That is my only objection either way... the version many people are used to, myself included, has to redirect into the actual name (with diacratics, accents or whatever). This was not happening in a few cases which amounted to confusion. Croat Canuck 03:12, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

That is for sure. --Jan Smolik 12:06, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

More discussion here: Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Using diacritics (or national alphabet) in the name of the article. ccwaters 03:56, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Alright Jan, I've been watching the olympics and noticed that the Czech and Slovak uniforms drop the diacritics on the back of the jerseys. ccwaters 17:10, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

It was mentioned earlier that oficial IIHF documents do not use diacritics and jerseys only reflect that. But it does not mean that it is the correct spelling. I personally think that avoiding of diacritics is historicaly done from technical reasons. With Unicode these reasons are not valid anymore. On the other hand I also drop diacritics from my Wikipedia signiture (it should state Smolík). So I am not completely against avoiding diacritics, especially when the first line includes original spelling. But troughout WP I saw many articles that use diacritics even in the title. And they were in more important languages than in Czech. However, I feel that for encyclopedia it is more acurate to use diacritics. But there was an important argument (I think it was yours) that we should follow habits in the real world, rather than coining new ways of doing thinkgs. BTW: I checked Czech encyclopedias and they generaly try to use diacritics (non-czech one) but are very inconsistent.

Today I added "No consensus warning" to the diacritics section of Wikiproject Ice-Hockey. It is not to fight but to say that anybody using this policy will soon run into dispute. --Jan Smolik 17:53, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

That's only fair; plainly it's a contentious subject and likely to remain so. RGTraynor 21:01, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

So let's start moving the featured articles Karl Dönitz, IFK Göteborg and Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius to "Karl Donitz", "IFK Goteborg" and "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius", eh? Might as well move Åland to "Aland". Once we're at it, we could translate Antero Niitymäki into "Andrew Fieldhill" (compare Wien->Vienna, United States->Yhdysvallat, Sverige->Sweden). Just "kidding". Anyway, my point is, that we should try to continue using the style that most similar articles use in Wikipedia.

To me, the most commonly used style appears to be using ä, ö and ü in the article name. However, I only say this after looking around at categories about Finnish, Swedish, German, etc people, so I might not be entirely correct. Here's a few examples: Eemil Nestor Setälä, Anneli Jäätteenmäki, Kyösti Kallio, Kaarlo Juho Ståhlberg, Franz Gürtner, Andreas von Bülow, Melanie Oßwald, István Széchenyi, Zoltán Böszörmény, Leni Björklund (OK, enough, I think you can see the point...).

I think that the dots on 'em letters should be present in either all wikipedia biograpical articles or none (at present, both styles are used, which makes things even more confusing). Anyway, if it is decided that the ä's and ö's should go, then put the 'official' (ie passport) way of spelling the name in brackets in the first sentence. If, in turn, the 'real' (with ä, ö, ü) way of spelling is chosen, then have the 'American' spelling (ie Teemu Selanne way) redirect into the 'correctly' spelled article (ie Teemu Selänne). --HJV 03:02, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree. I have just received a "No consensus warning" so I have stopped rewriting hockey players' names into their correct diacritical forms, but I do not understand the point. I was doing so for the same reason, which was already mentioned above: Non-hockey articles usually respect the diacritical spelling of personal names (places, cities ...). Why should names of hockey players be treated differently, especially when redirects solve the problem in a very simple way which can be acceptable for everybody, no matter what sort of keyboards they use? Nobody has answered this question. And if somebody wants to start a new article and they do not want to bother with the diacritics, they can omit it. If the diacritics needs correction, somebody will do it.

I do not think that writing "Rucinsky" instead of "Ručínský" is an "English spelling" of his name, it is just omitting the diacritics in his Czech name. Despite the fact that non-Czech speaking people won't know how to pronounce his name correctly written both with or without diacritics, unless they have already heard it, for people who know the Czech alfabet it makes a difference.

Omitting the diacritics in the Slovak name "Šatan" may cause some amusement, but an encyclopedia should prefer accuracy. English ommitting the diacritics in the name of Croatian football player "Dado Pršo" used to cause even more amusement to Czech people, as the result meant "a tit" in Czech language (and, as far as I know, the same Croatian word is spelled also very similar). By the way, Dado Pršo is spelled correctly in Wikipedia, using the non-diacritical spelling as a redirect.

The fact, that players themselves drop the diacritics on their jerseys, is not an argument. They play hockey, that is what matters to them, they do not bother about spelling accuracy. But we write encyclopedia. Jan.Kamenicek 22:54, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

yes, we are writing an encyclopaedia, but guess what! this encyclopaedia reflects the current, most common forms of the English language. in english media and other publications, the removal of diacritics is the most common way of writing. Masterhatch 02:15, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Its "Jagr" and "Hasek" in worldbook.com, encarta.msn.com, and britannica.com. That's the 3 currently produced encyclopedias that I know of. I'm not sure why a Croatian surname translating to "tit" in Czech is any concern for an English publication?. There's Fucking, Austria, Nevermind the natively named Dick Trickle. ccwaters 02:41, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

I've decided to anglicize the names in the articles I've put together or made significant contributions to, something I now realize I should've done in the first place. The thought came to me recently when someone replaced "Selanne" with "Selänne" in the 1992-93 NHL season article. That gave me the idea to search for "Selanne" in the article, which returned zero results. And that tells me that the article is broken.

Wikipedia is an electronic resource, and one of the major benefits of that is that it is searchable. And if I'm prevented from finding any instances of a name I'm looking for because I didn't use characters my keyboard doesn't have, the article is broken. I don't care what the "ä" in his name is, because whether it's an a with an umlaut or a completely separate character, my keyboard doesn't have it, and nor do the keyboards of the overwhelming majority of native english speakers. And I can't be expected to remember every single diacritic/non-latin character in every language out there just so I can locate info at an english encyclopedia.

The place for "Selänne" is fi.wikipedia.org. Here, we speak and type in english. Aottley 01:58, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

So why should Selänne be treated differently from Gerhard Schröder who has his name spelled correctly in Wikipedia? You might wanna look at Category:Finnish_people, Category:German_people, Category:Swedish_people, Category:Estonian_people, for a start. If you do, you'll notice that pretty much 99% have their named spelled properly, as they are spelled in their passport. I bet if you counted, a large majority would have their names written with the ä's and the ö's (I did mention this up there already). Try searching for, say "Gerhard Schroder". It'll take you to the article, even though you replaced the ö with an o. The same goes for all the other similar articles, as long as there's a redirect from the umlautless version to the actual article. Therefore your argument that, say, Selänne couldn't be found by searching for "Selanne" is false. I repeat, you can find the article using search regardless of what characters your keyboard has as long as a redirect spelled without the umlauts exists (assuming your keyboard is not chinese or something). Type in Selanne in the box to the left and press search. His article is the first result on that page.

Some people say we need to misspell the names because that's how other publications spell them. If the common belief in the world was that the earth is flat, should we write that in wikipedia, even if we know that it's not flat but round. No, we should write that the world is round. One reason to the very existance of encyclopedias is to broaden people's view of the world. Not to narrow it, which we would be doing by telling them to spell the name in an incorrect way. --HJV 04:47, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

You clearly misunderstand what I mean by search. I mean search within the page using a browser's text search, i.e. ctrl-f. In fact, I made that quite clear by using the words "in the article". If someone is at the 1983 NHL Entry Draft article, knowing that Dominik Hasek was drafted that year and wants to know which selection Hasek was, he might press ctrl-f and type "Hasek" into the text box that appears. As the article is now, those perfectly logical steps would result in him successfully finding the info he wanted. But if the article spelled his name "Hašek", the find would be unsuccessful and the person would be left mistakenly believing that either he was wrong about Hasek's draft year or that the article was incomplete or incorrect, all because of a diacritic that isn't on his keyboard and that he probably has never even heard of.

So no, my argument is not at all false. The diacritics and non-english characters in the article titles are less concerning to me what with redirects and all, but those in the article bodies themselves are an impediment to text searching for people whose keyboards lack those letters. That so many articles have them is irrelevant. It doesn't necessarily make them right. And what's that about broadening people's views? There's nothing wrong with having the person's native spelling pointed out right at the beginning of a person's article (see Sergei Fedorov for one of a great many examples), so there's your broadening right there. But once every instance of a name everywhere on wikipedia gets replaced with something I can't easily type, then wikipedia articles become more difficult for me to search and therefore less useful.

Oh, and who are you to say that the names are being misspelled? By all means, show me some reference of authority that says that "Selänne" is the proper english spelling of his name. By the way, I don't see any explanation of "Antero Niitymakiho" as mentioned above. It's not exactly as his name is spelled in Finnish, so it must be incorrect, right? Someone misspelled Владисла́в Алекса́ндрович Третья́к as "Vladislav Tretiak". Should something be done about that? I eagerly await your answer.

Stop with this "incorrect" nonsense. Finnish is not English is not Czech is not Russian and so on, and peoples' names often look different between different languages. Aottley 07:17, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

... consensus --Francis Schonken 08:54, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Francis IMHO a simple redirect would have done. There is no need to cut and past text from one article to another.

"If you could see her throught my eyes..." I'm sorry Francis but I do not see a wide "authorized by consensus", in the the text you have pasted above, for "Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (hockey)" to proceed from a proposal to a guideline. I agree with the others who have posted to this talk page that there is not a clear true consensus or even a wikipedia:consensus for this proposal to become a guideline. --Philip Baird Shearer 10:31, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

No consensus (yet)

I do not see any from of Wikipedia:consensus for this guideline which does not seem to have a history of being a proposal. Only one person has edited the page and of those who have commented on this talk page not everyone was in favour of the proposal. See Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines:

• A guideline is something that is (1) actionable and (2) authorized by consensus.....
• A proposal is any suggested guideline or policy that is not yet authorized by consensus,...

So I am changing this from a guideline to a proposal. Please do not change it back until there is a clear consensus in favour of this becoming a guideline --Philip Baird Shearer 11:38, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Haukurth beat me to it. --Philip Baird Shearer 11:42, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

In fact, it appears that this proposal is mostly objected to, and that the people advancing it and supporting it are a niche minority (some members of the Wiki project for hockey). I certainly object to it. -- Mareklug ^talk 16:34, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, now there is a Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Wikipedia:Naming conventions (hockey) page with a vote, if anybody is interested. I though it would be relevant to link to it from this talk page. Stefán Ingi 18:08, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

The trouble is that the Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines clearly states that

• A guideline is something that is (1) actionable and (2) authorized by consensus. Guidelines are not set in stone and should be treated with common sense and the occasional exception. Amendments to a guideline should be discussed on its talk page, not on a new page - although it's generally acceptable to edit a guideline to improve it. (My Bolding)
• A proposal is any suggested guideline or policy that is not yet authorized by consensus, or any process not yet in use, as long as discussion is ongoing. Proposals should generally be advertised to get feedback and reach consensus. Proposals are NOT decided upon by voting on them.

So it seems to me that any such consensus building should take place on this page. --Philip Baird Shearer 19:19, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I was quite surpriced to find that the voting page was not even linked to from the conventions talk page. Although I would say that now there has been provided a link to it from this to the voting page that this setup is not completely unacceptable, it seems rather pointless to split it up. Perhaps we can merge the content of the voting page to here and make the voting page a redirect. Once the voting has concluded we can eventually move it to an archive page. Stefán Ingi 19:34, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

That would seem to be a good solution. What do others think --Philip Baird Shearer 20:00, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree that the merge of the voting page with this talk page, and leaving a redirect in place of the voting page would be a good thing to do. -- Mareklug ^talk 22:30, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

So I'm going ahead with that. Stefán Ingi 22:45, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Voting

Sorry, Philip Baird Shearer just made participating in this vote redundant by advocating Amendments to a guideline should be discussed on its talk page, not on a new page, which only applies to guidelines, not to proposals. The only work now is to improve the guideline according to the method quoted by Philip.

So, I moved the vote back to the place where it should've been if this were a proposal, and concluded the vote. --Francis Schonken 00:04, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Francis I did not write it I quoted Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines and what I thought were two revelvent points. You have chosen only to quote part of the two clauses I quoted here they are in full again:

• A guideline is something that is (1) actionable and (2) authorized by consensus. Guidelines are not set in stone and should be treated with common sense and the occasional exception. Amendments to a guideline should be discussed on its talk page, not on a new page - although it's generally acceptable to edit a guideline to improve it. (My Bolding)
• A proposal is any suggested guideline or policy that is not yet authorized by consensus, or any process not yet in use, as long as discussion is ongoing. Proposals should generally be advertised to get feedback and reach consensus. Proposals are NOT decided upon by voting on them.

Now it does not seem to me that there is a clear consensus for this proposal to become a guideline. If you think there is a clear consensus, I suggest we re-install the straw-poll you have removed and see if we can use it as a tool to build such a consensus. But until there is a consensus to authorize a change from proposal to guideline this proposal should remain just that. --00:28, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Please establish there is no consensus: that there was consensus was established at #Using diacritics (or national alphabet) in the name of the article and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ice Hockey/Player pages format#Diacritics and non-English characters - the only problem was that formally this hadn't gone through RfC yet. But it has in the mean while. --Francis Schonken 00:37, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't have to establish a no consensus. Even the retrospective Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Wikipedia:Naming conventions (hockey) which you have aborted was not showing a consensus for this page to be a guideline. I have read throught the comments of the various editors on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ice Hockey/Player pages format#Diacritics and non-English characters and there is not a clear consensus there either. Which was a point commented on by at least one contributer to that discussion. It is not up to me to show that there is a consensus for this to stop being a guideline you need to show that one existed to change it from a policy to a consensus. As you are aware I am not in favour of using diacritics in names, but riding rough shod over widely accepted procedures, is not the way for Wikipedians to work in harmony and develope stratagies that everyone can agree to work with. --Philip Baird Shearer 01:02, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Still proposed

Because this clearly does not have consensus among editors, I have amended {{proposed}} to the page. It is not a guideline or policy, at least not in this point in time.--Sean Black ^(talk) 03:59, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

This proposal is fatally flawed

This proposal rests on an untenable assumption, that what people do is a good criterion to decide how they should be called. While that assumption may be true in a limited number of cases (mainly for monarchs and people who have multiple names), the vast majority of people are known by their personal names from birth do death, before they go to school, while they're students, hockey players, coaches, politicians, media pundits, retired criminals, or whatever becomes of them.

There are two ways to read this proposal - (1) that the title of the article should be changed when a former hockey player becomes better known for something else, and (2) that the article title for anybody who has ever played hockey should follow this proposal, regardless of other things they do or did. Both sound like very bad ideas.

Naming conventions for personal names make sense when they need to deal with transliterations from a particular language, choice of which name to use when people have different names in different languages, or when somebody's name changes when they assume an office. None of those is the case here.

NB, although the proposal says "hockey articles", this proposal is clearly about hockey player articles. Obviously nobody thinks that i.e. a football club and a hockey club which have the same name (and are possibly two parts of the same sporting association) should be spelt differently.

There are legitimate concerns in naming conventions for hockey articles, but they extend to formats of club and competition article titles and similar things, not general linguistic and stylistic issues like diacritics, which have no hockey-specific properties whatsoever. Zocky | picture popups 15:34, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

I will propose this to be deleted in a couple of days, or at least to tag it as failed and remove from the list of proposed naming conventions. Zocky | picture popups 15:35, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good to me, your point that there are no hockey-specific properties that need to be taken into account is especially strong. Haukur 16:06, 22 June 2006 (UTC)