Wikipedia talk:Requests for mediation/Senkaku Islands

After consulting the Committee, I am choosing to archive all material not directly related to the primary issue under mediation. As of this moment, the "safe zone" will be considered to encompass this entire page, and off topic discussion will be speedily archived or removed.

Note that this specifically includes discussion of this new format, as well as discussion of which material has been removed. Comments or complaints must go through email or user talk pages.

Finally, let me state that I do not undertake this lightly. This is a considered response that we feel will be beneficial to the continued success of this mediation. If sufficient time passes without a serious violation, these new restrictions will be lifted. Feezo (send a signal | watch the sky) 13:24, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

A link to archived diffs is needed -- see Wikipedia talk:Requests for mediation/Senkaku Islands/Archive here. --Tenmei (talk) 21:02, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Mediation safe zone

Feezo, would it be most beneficial to re-explain all of the detailed arguments and data presented before, along with relevant policies/guidelines, or is it better to simply provide links to discussion archives that contain the information? I'm happy to do either. Qwyrxian (talk) 21:57, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

I've read the discussions, so I'm familiar with the arguments. However, I think it would be helpful if participants could select the portions of the arguments they most agree with, or feel are most relevant to the discussion, and either summarize or quote them here. There's no need to reproduce all the statistical data, a link or a summary would be fine. Feezo (send a signal | watch the sky) 22:18, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Do you want to have subsections with a list of "pro" and "anti" arguments (signed by endorsers, if that's appropriate)? --Bobthefish2 (talk) 01:42, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

There is also a long-standing issue with reference usage and interpretation that may benefit from this mediation. All sides of the arguments are basically represented in [NPOV noticeboard entry]. --Bobthefish2 (talk) 01:42, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Summary statement from Qwyrxian

For me, the starting point should be determining the guidance given to us by the relevant policies and guidelines. I went through a very detailed discussion of this at Talk:Senkaku Islands/Archive 5#What does policy say?, citing the four relevant rules: WP:Article titles paying particular attention to Considering title changes; WP:NPOV, paying particular attention to the discussion of neutrality in article titles which is found in WP:NPOV#Achieving neutrality, and finally Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names), looking specifically at to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names)#Widely accepted name. To me, these policies, as a whole, explain that neutrality matters, but even WP:NPOV points out that, for article titles, it is not the sole determining factor. Rather, our primary question is always “What is the name used for this group of islands, in general, in high quality, English language sources”, where “high quality” focuses on academic work, really good news work, encyclopedias, almanacs, etc. We can consider other works (i.e., GHITS), but only secondarily. Additionally, the guidelines state that, while it is not strictly forbidden, dual names (i.e., Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands) are a bad idea because they don’t actually solve anything, since the discussion just shifts from “what should the name be” to “which name should come first”. Finally, the guidelines do point out that, in extraordinary cases, it may be necessary to find some other method for determining the names of articles when there isn't a single, clear main "English" name and there are multiple local names; the two examples most frequently cited are Liancourt Rocks (choosing the basically never used name because it was impossible to figure out from the data which other name was more common and the fighting was never-ending), and the Derry/Londonderry compromise (which I don’t understand and am not even sure why it occurred, other than to know its associated with general UK/Ireland problems).

Thus, our job is to try to interpret the data and determine whether or not there is actually a common English name. My interpretation of the data is that, in fact, there is a common English name, and that that name is “Senkaku Islands”, although the treatment given in news sources is such that there may be a shift in the future (maybe 20, 30, 50 years from now) to always use a dual name. This was based on Google News, Scholar, and book searches, along with an attempt at some very close looking at news articles (that is, an article that says “Senkaku/Diaoyu” throughout is clearly choosing the dual name, while one that says “Senkaku Islands (called Diaoyu in China)” and then using Senkaku through the rest of the article is clearly favoring Senkaku, even though on a simple search it shows up in both categories). It was based on the limited online encyclopedias seeming to prefer Senkaku, although I have asked many many times for someone with access to a university library to take a closer look at what other, contemporary print encyclopedias use. But the key deciding factor for me was when I had a short time to spend at a university library in the US, and looked in the almanac section, I found that, of the 5 atlases I found that mentioned the islands at all (3 US, 1 UK, 1 Italian), all 5 used only the name “Senkaku” or “Senkaku-shoto”, and only one of them even listed “Diaoyu” in the index. See Talk:Senkaku Islands/Archive 7#Almanacs for the full details. To me, this seemed like the key piece of evidence that showed that, even though it may change in the future, the current name for the islands in English is Senkaku Islands, and thus that is the name we should use on Wikipedia. I still hold this position today: I believe that it is, in fact "neutral" (based on WP:NPOV itself) to use the name "Senkaku Islands", and that this is the best name to use for English Wikipedia. If this is all still too long, or without enough links, let me know and I'll revise it Qwyrxian (talk) 02:34, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

One metric which I haven't seen brought up (although it may have been) is measuring the search results for particular top level domains. For instance, site:*.gov "senkaku islands" -diaoyu gives 57 results, while site:*.gov "diaoyu islands" -senkaku gives only 2. For *.edu, the numbers are 175 to 71 in favor of Senkaku. Has this disparity been addressed? Feezo (send a signal | watch the sky) 18:38, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

I'd recommend you to read my block of test if you haven't already. It directly addresses why your recommendation is not good. For example, the objective of this research project is to assess which of the names are more commonly used in the English language. In your case, your goal is rather to assess the opinions of governments and educational institutes. I can already quite easily shoot down your search results on ".gov" because the far majority of them are U.S. government pages (with an enrichment of Alaskan government pages). Since government documents tend to be coherent in their choice of geographic names, these data points are hence highly correlated with one another and not even remotely close to being independent (which is a core requirement/preference for good sampling practices).

Since you are a computer scientist yourself, I'd assume I don't need to explain to you the basic principles of statistics. In addition to your choice of sampling, I'd also comment that your choice of query is quite suboptimal because there are a number of Chinese and Japanese name variants that are quite commonly used.

Again, I'd encourage you to read through my section and not ignore it. Thanks. --Bobthefish2 (talk) 02:10, 2 June 2011 (UTC).

I'm following your line of reasoning below, and will respond shortly. I'd like to get the claims made by STSC settled first if that's alright with you. This is just an observation that could be useful in coming up with a more fine grained picture of the distribution the names. Feezo (send a signal | watch the sky) 07:17, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

No problem. To clarify, information retrieval (IR) is mostly about the mining of documents based on a set of queries. So it's importance in our problem lies in the assessment of search engine results, search parameters, and search heuristics. The content I wrote is mostly focused on statistical linguistics, which has a more generic emphasis. --Bobthefish2 (talk) 07:26, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Feezo, it is because the United States defined "Senkaku Islands" as an official term. See Senkaku Islands at Library of Congress Subject Headings. It is also one of the method to determine the widely accepted name in Wikipedia. See no.3 in WP:NCGN#Widely accepted name. ―― Phoenix7777 (talk) 08:16, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

This is an important enough point that I think it deserves its own subsection; see below.

Other criteria

We've been focusing most of our efforts so far on interpreting search engine results (#2 on NCGN). However, there has been relatively little work done on the other criteria. Although Bobthefish has criticized the use of encyclopedias, they are, after all, part of the NCGN guideline. Different editors here have expressed different preferences for how closely we should follow the guidelines; this may be an "occasional exception". For now, looking at some of the other criteria—

• For #3, the LCSH uses Senkaku, as does the Library of Congress Country Studies. The Oxford Reference Online doesn't have an entry for any of the four names we're considering. I don't have access to the Cambridge Histories at the moment, although their online search gives five results for Senkaku vs. one for Diaoyu. In any case, we can't completely fill the letter of #3.

• For #1, I can go to my library and check the suggested encyclopedias. As noted, Bobthefish has objected to using encyclopedias. I think it may have been slightly hasty to rule them out altogether (even if we end up doing this) so I'd like to see some discussion on whether this is justified. Feezo (send a signal | watch the sky) 18:39, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

For Encyclopedia Britannica, there is no entry for Senkaku and Diaoyu. For The Columbia Encyclopedia, There is an entry for Senkaku Islands, but Diaoyu leads to Senkaku Islands as a redirect. For Encarta, there is no encyclopedia available online. ―― Phoenix7777 (talk) 20:28, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Encarta did not have an entry for the islands but had a map that used Senkaku Islands, as I commented at Talk:Senkaku Islands/Archive 2#This article should be entitled "Pinnacle Islands" or... in 2006. The url was http://encarta.msn.com/map_701577363/Senkaku_Islands.html . I don't know if it is still verifiable online. --Kusunose 02:54, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Currently only Dictionary/Thesaurus/translations are available online.[1] So, my result above is a dictionary entry. Formerly Encyclopedia/Atlas were also available.[2] We need an offline DVD version to confirm that. ―― Phoenix7777 (talk) 09:37, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Going back to the other criteria, I'd like input from other editors if they feel that the almanacs results have any relevance. Do these fall under point 1 (are they types of encyclopedias?) under point 3 (are they historic or scientific studies?) or are they not relevant at all? My opinion is that they fall under point 3, but, of course, since the data from those almanacs supports my position, my argument is highly suspect, even to myself. I mean, yes, we all know that almanacs are as much a product of politics as they are of science, but, really, so are encyclopedias, news sources, and everything else. Qwyrxian (talk) 02:34, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

I don't think that's a very relevant concern. Our main focus is the English language and an important secondary task is to sample the web in a way that is reflective of the language. To respond to your question, I'd ask if there's any reason to think the library of congress or encyclopedias adopt relatively the same frequency of word usage as the entire English language itself? --Bobthefish2 (talk) 02:40, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

You're asking the wrong question. Our job is to use the tools provided to us in NCGN to determine the most common English term in high quality reliable sources. It's not to determine the most common word across the English language--for a location term, such a task is impossible. As has come up before, we actually don't care which word pops up more often in blogs. "Normal" writing is not the same as the style of language we aim for in Wikipedia. By that logic, we would call the country "America" instead of "The United States of America", because "America" is more frequent in everyday writing. We check encyclopedias, the library of congress, etc., because those sources match the level of writing we're shooting for, and because it's what the guideline tells us to do. As we've discussed before, it's fine to propose changes to guidelines; it's even fine to say the guideline doesn't apply here. But you (by you I mean any one single editor, or even just one single "side") can't by fiat overrule what the guideline tells us to do in this instance without first getting consensus that the guideline doesn't apply in this case. Qwyrxian (talk) 05:48, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Since you have fallen so madly in love with the NCGN guidelines despite their lack of quality control, here's a couple of excerpts from WP:NCGN:

• When a widely accepted English name, in a modern context, exists for a place, we should use it
• These are advice, intended to guide, not force, consensus; but they are the consensus of actual experience in move discussions.

In reference to the first point, the concept of wide-acceptance is not restricted only to authoritative sources. This is especially true when we consider the problem linguistically. For example, even though "United States of America" is the canonical name of the country and is also extremely widely used, "United States" somehow prevailed as the country's name. Personally, I don't know the statistics. While it's possible that "United States" is more widely used in reliable sources, it still doesn't sound right don't you think?

In reference to the second point, it's simply my little friendly reminder to you that the guideliens you've fallen in love with are simply advice that worked in similar situations and not something we are obliged to follow (sorry to break it to you). Consequently, your self-defined objectives, defined as followed:

• Our job is to use the tools provided to us in NCGN to determine the most common English term in high quality reliable sources.
• It's not to determine the most common word across the English language--for a location term, such a task is impossible.
• As has come up before, we actually don't care which word pops up more often in blogs.

... are really your own definition of our agenda and your personal characterization of the edicts of NCGN.

Now, with all of this said. I would like to clarify that I've never said it is ever possible to find the true usage statistics in the English language (nor is it possible to do that in the space of all the subjectively-defined reliable sources). However, this doesn't mean we can't try to come up with a way to do analyses on some good samplings. --Bobthefish2 (talk) 06:39, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Hmmm...i don't have much time to look right today, but my first glance is that the numbers themselves, in all of the above searches, need to be highly scrutinized (the point BobtheFish2 raised early on in mediation). I just ran a whole bevy of searches, but when I started looking closer, started seeing a problem. As an example: I searched Google Books, English only, Jan 2009 - May 2011, with /Diaoyutai -Guesthouse/, 10 results per page. Try that search; currently, when I get 92 results. But I wanted to look at the results, so I started skimming through. Click on page two. Now, the number of results has dropped down to 89 results. Click on page 3. Now the number of results has dropped to 28, and there are no more pages. My guess (and I am just guessing) is that there only are 28 distinct books, but that the term appears multiple times in some books, and so is being recounted by Google. I wonder if, when we do the searches, rather than looking at the numerical results on the first page, we need to go to the last page and check there for a more accurate count. For example, if I follow the same procedure searching for /Senkaku/, paging to the end, I get only 56 results; similarly 41 for Diaoyu. Or did I make a mistake? I'm not being accusing here, I really do want to understand how we can usefully use these results. Qwyrxian (talk) 23:54, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

You normally get the actual hit count when you reach the last page (but the final results are capped at 1000). STSC (talk) 02:36, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

That's a good point and I didn't realize it. It appears there may also be a difference in the date parameter. Personally, I don't use the months and I set the time interval to be 2010 - 2012. Apparently, there's a difference. Anyhow, I redid the search by counting the number of hits at the very last page:

• "Senkaku": 78 hits
• "Diaoyu" and no "Diaoyutai": 54 hits
• "Diaoyutai" and no "Guesthouse": 42 hits; Total 96 Diaoyu/Diaoyutai hits vs. 78 Senkaku hits

Oh, and don't worry about "sounding accusing". I gave Feezo a chewing because he annotated his post as "conclusion" (backed by bad reasoning) and not because he scrutinized my results. --Bobthefish2 (talk) 02:40, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

And when I run the search differently, I get even more different results...about "Diaoyu OR Diaoyutai -Guesthouse -Senkaku" (52 results); and "Senkaku -Diaoyu -Diaoyutai", (40 results). To me, that seems to count all of the books that use either of the two Chinese spellings, but not Senkaku vs. the Senkaku without either of the Chinese spellings. However, if we repeat the search for 2000-2012, "D or D -G -S" gets 378 and "S -D -D" gets 405. So it depends on how we choose our dates. And thus we come back to arbitrary decisions....note, of course, that NCGN doesn't give any implication we should only consider recent sources; at the same time, though, I do agree we shouldn't go back indiscriminately....uglier and uglier.... Qwyrxian (talk) 03:58, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

This is not unexpected, because we've already made a point in the past that older books have a tendency of using "Senkaku" (likely due to less awareness of the dispute). Since our emphasis is on the present, it is justifiable to use more recent data criteria. Aside from this, your analysis also ignores books with both names, which is not necessarily appropriate. But even from looking at your results, the counts are pretty close. --Bobthefish2 (talk) 04:56, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Quickly (must get back to work): agree that we shouldn't go too far back; disagree that 2000 is too far (we're not the news, shouldn't restrict to 2 years); agree that dual names may be a problem; need to look again at search; agree the counts are close. Need moar data. Qwyrxian (talk)

Unfortunately, this is not an acceptable excuse. News is generally very updated (i.e. at most one week after event). In this case, we are talking about 2 years, which is a pretty long time span. Now, even if we are expanding the scope to 2006 for Google Books (5 year span, which is a very long time), that's:

• "Senkaku": 406 hits
• "Diaoyu" and no "Diaoyutai": 328 hits
• "Diaoyutai" and no "Guesthouse": 221 hits; Total 539 Diaoyu/Diaoyutai hits vs. 406 Senkaku hits --Bobthefish2 (talk) 08:09, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

I suggest that it is a Google book's characteristics. Please see "Microsoft" 2,870,000[3] became only 465[4]. Comparing "Senkaku Islands"'s 8,550, which do you think is feasible figure 2,870,000 or 465 for "Microsoft"? ―― Phoenix7777 (talk) 10:46, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Does this imply, then, that Google results, even Google Book results, are not very useful for our purposes? An alternative would be to do a Google Book or Scholar search, but then actually look inside of, say, the top 50 results, and see what's listed. That's probably not feasible for the books, but anyone with JTSOR (or similar) access can probably do the search in the Scholar results. Not necessarily a good suggestion, but searching for alternatives here. Qwyrxian (talk) 23:39, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

We can add any reliable search to #Other tests not described in WP:NCGN. I added JSTOR and HathiTrust. The Google Book's figures are still feasible considering the volumes for Google's 15 million and HathiTrust's 8.8 million. We should determine the widely accepted name by examining overall evidences. ―― Phoenix7777 (talk) 00:06, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Well, I thought we've already decided to use the hit count on the last page as our metric for Google Books. What's the problem? --Bobthefish2 (talk) 02:17, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Maybe some people find it difficult to accept the truth of the actual hit count; they cannot reply on their fantasy data (estimated data) anymore. STSC (talk) 03:07, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

The problem was the last point raised by Phoenix, based on a search of Microsoft--there is no way that there were only 465 books that mentioned "Microsoft" that are indexed on Google Books. That means that looking at the hit count on the last page can't possibly be accurate, for any search. Qwyrxian (talk) 03:13, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes. The accuracy of the hits in the last page was already denied by above example of "Microsoft". 465 hits in the last page is clearly wrong. HathiTrust shows 131,536 hits. Also "United States" is 238 hits in the last page. HathiTrust shows 3,527,028 hits. And even if Google book search employs estimated hit, the trend shown by the search is valid. ―― Phoenix7777 (talk) 03:24, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

There's nothing new in the "Microsoft" search, it's a well known example of Google's way of processing the relevancy of documents. See WP:Search_engine_test#Google_unique_page_count_issues. STSC (talk) 03:57, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Well, just to make this clear:

• The Google Book searches were done because you guys advocated it as a good standard.
• Our search results have shown that the Chinese name usage were at least as frequent (if not more) as the Japanese name usage.

Now, I accept the fact that the Microsoft example raised some red flags, but I also want to make sure the two of you understand that all I've been doing so far is verifying the data that was generated from the methodologies you guys devised.

As for the other repository you guys suggested, I am not exactly sure how to use it. It appears the standard search option does not allow filtering (i.e. excluding the gigantic collection of Japanese books) so I went to the help pages to see how advanced searches can be done. Apparently, there's this (http://hathitrust.worldcat.org/advancedsearch) Worldcat-style that we should be using, but then a search for English language materials published between 2006-2012 only yielded 2 items for "senkaku" and 1 item for each of the Chinese names. If you want to use hathitrust, then you better show us why it is a better choice than Google Books. --Bobthefish2 (talk) 04:03, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

You are doing a "Keyword Search". What I showed above is a "Full-text Search" which is not available from WorldCat site. The "Catalog Search" in HathiTrust shows "Senkaku Islands" 33 and "Diaoyu Islands" 2. Also note that Chinese language Books (228,599) are more "Gigantic" than Japanese (178,953).[5] ―― Phoenix7777 (talk) 04:31, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Small reminder to Phoenix: There is a filter panel on the left. Tell me what happens when you click "English".

Anyhow, I used the keywords without "islands" because of things like "Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands" which will be come false negatives when I use your "Diaoyu Islands" keyword. When I restricted the books to be English language only, there are 6 for Senkaku Islands and 4 for Tiaoyu/Diaoyu/Diaoyutai. And of course, if we apply a requirement for recent publication, we should get the results that I described earlier. Again, I believe my assessment is fair --Bobthefish2 (talk) 06:52, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Question re:STSH's point above: as you seem to know more about search engines/information retrieval, would you say, then, that given these searches and the link you point to, that using a Google book search doesn't give us useful information in this case? Or are you saying that we need to do something differently to be sure that the information we are using is useful? I see that the how-to guide specifically notes the Microsoft example, but I can't figure out if that means that any number we get is ultimately unreliable, or if it means something else. Help?! Qwyrxian (talk) 00:25, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

As I stated above, "United States" produces the same result. It only proves that Google Book search doesn't list more than 200 or 300 results. If you set your "Search Setting" to " Do not use Google Instant" and "Display 100 results per page" and see "United States", the bottom of the page shows only 4 pages. It doesn't affect the credibility of the hit count except for the last page. ―― Phoenix7777 (talk) 00:52, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

The principles of IR do not limit to Google Search and, in fact, should apply to the far majority of searchable databases. Regarding the results on Microsoft and America, one thing I am unsure of is the size of the Google Book database and the distribution of books it has. It's possible that it simply doesn't have that many books or that the topics of the books are biased (possibly due to availability). --Bobthefish2 (talk) 00:54, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Google has 129 million books as of August 2010.[6] ―― Phoenix7777 (talk) 01:16, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Google Book/Scholar hits

I updated my past discussion.

• "Senkaku Islands": Book 8,550, Scholar 1,560
• "Diaoyu Islands": Book 3,020, Scholar 798
• "Pinnacle Islands": Book 443, Scholar 68

collapsed detailed verifications

Please see further research below. These results prove the Google Book Search is stable. "Senkaku Islands" -"Diaoyu" 6,500 "Senkaku Islands" without any mention of "Diaoyu" "Senkaku Islands" "Diaoyu" 2,240 "Senkaku Islands" with any mention of "Diaoyu" 6,500 + 2,240 = 8,740 ≈ 8,550 "Senkaku Islands" -"Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands" 7,280 without any mention of "Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands" "Senkaku Islands" "Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands" 1,450 with any mention of "Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands" 7,280 + 1,450 =8,790 ≈ 8,550 "Senkaku Islands" -"Diaoyu Islands" 7,680 without any mention of "Diaoyu Islands" "Senkaku Islands" "Diaoyu Islands" 930 with any mention of "Diaoyu Islands" 7,680 + 930 = 8,610 ≈ 8,550 "Diaoyu Islands" -"Senkaku" 1,350 "Diaoyu Islands" without any mention of "Senkaku" "Diaoyu Islands" "Senkaku" 1,640 "Diaoyu Islands" with any mention of "Senkaku" 1,350 + 1,640 = 2,990 ≈ 3,020 "Diaoyu Islands" -"Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands" 2,390 without any mention of "Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands" "Diaoyu Islands" "Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands" 616 with any mention of "Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands" 2,390 + 616 = 3,006 ≈ 3,020 "Diaoyu Islands" -"Senkaku Islands" 2,070 without any mention of "Senkaku Islands" "Diaoyu Islands" "Senkaku Islands" 929 with any mention of "Senkaku Islands" 2,070 + 929 =2,999 ≈ 3,020

―― Phoenix7777 (talk) 23:41, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Your data are all wrong. I thought you might have read my other comments on Google hit counts. The hit counts you got there were just estimates. STSC (talk) 11:32, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

This is not useful at all. We already know these things are estimates and that it is impossible to get a completely perfect sampling. If you read my re-assessment of Phoenix's results below (and above in the thread with Qwyrxian), you will find much more convincing reasons of why Phoenix's results are not good at all. Since Phoenix already knows what I am refering to, I will not elaborate further other than (again) point you to the threads that have explicitly discussed these results. --Bobthefish2 (talk) 19:55, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

It's misleading that he presented the data as if they were the actual hit counts. I had to point that out to other readers. STSC (talk) 20:12, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

If a search also includes the terms "tiaoyutai", "tiaoyutais", "diaoyutai" and "diayutai", it would retrieve more relevant documents. STSC (talk) 00:26, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I notice that. But I don't want to bother with the others since I've already gotten my message across. --Bobthefish2 (talk) 04:05, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Other tests not described in WP:NCGN

Full text search

• HathiTrust
  • "Senkaku Islands" 3,006
  • "Diaoyu Islands" 759

Catalog search

• Library of Congress Online Catalog
  • "Senkaku Islands" 80
  • "Diaoyu Islands" 4

• WorldCat (English language only)
  • "Senkaku Islands" 97
  • "Diaoyu Islands" 51

• JSTOR
  • "Senkaku Islands" 212
  • "Diaoyu Islands" 77

―― Phoenix7777 (talk) 22:18, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

I clicked on the first link and browsed around. It appears there are duplicate records and non-English documents. I thought we've already talked about these issues. --Bobthefish2 (talk) 20:41, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

It's another set of misleading data. As Bob mentioned, the "senkaku islands" search included many duplicate publications like Year Books, Daily Reports, etc. It also included entries from catalogs which should not be counted. STSC (talk) 23:58, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

I've spent a little time just looking at the WorldCat results. What I observed is consistent to my little speculation that results can be cooked up to render them appear seemingly impressive but while they truly are not. One of the most obvious issues I noticed is that a very large portion of these hits are written in Japanese. Another element I noticed is that many of these books are outdated. In the interest of carefully examining Phoenix7777's (seemingly) very significant results, I did an advanced search with two criteria:

• English language only
• Published at or after 2005

Then lo and behold, we have these following results (verified to have no false positive hits):

• "Senkaku": 47 hits (44 unique)
• "Diaoyu": 42 hits (36 unique)
• "Diaoyutai": 9 hits (8 unique); Total 43 unique non-overlapping Diaoyu/Diaoyutai hits vs. 44 unique Senkaku hits

Now, let's suppose I increase the stringency in time and detect only articles published at or after 2009, then I have even more interesting results:

• "Senkaku": 19 hits (19 unique)
• "Diaoyu": 17 hits (16 unique)
• "Diaoyutai": 5 hits (5 unique); Total 21 unique non-overlapping Diaoyu/Diaoyutai hits vs. 19 unique Senkaku hits

In the future, I'd strongly suggest people reading my little cautionary note about unscientific research practices before engaging in some potentially phony analyses.

I am still busy IRL so I wouldn't do a comprehensive analysis on the rest until later next week. --Bobthefish2 (talk) 23:17, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Good point. I updated above with English language only. I didn't add any restrictions to date of publishing because such argument leads to never-ending dispute. ―― Phoenix7777 (talk) 00:02, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

It's up to you to apply your own filters, but you should bear in mind that data generated as a result of bad procedural practices and parameters can attract significant scrutiny. --Bobthefish2 (talk) 00:10, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Actually, I changed my mind and decided to do another reassessment of User:Phoenix7777's results for the lulz. This time, I decided to look at Google Book Search!! My search parameters this time are:

• English language only
• Published at or after 2010

The results are:

• "Senkaku": 292 hits
• "Diaoyu" and no "Diaoyutai": 194 hits
• "Diaoyutai" and no "Guesthouse": 105 hits; Total 299 Diaoyu/Diaoyutai hits vs. 292 Senkaku hits

I didn't check for the occurrence of duplicate articles (at a short glance, I didn't see any) because Google doesn't support categorization by author (someone can do that if he has the time). I did a filtering on the word "Guesthouse" because I got some contamination from a Diaoyutai Guesthouse hotel, which appears to be totally cleared of after I disallowed that particular word. I used 2010 instead of 2009 for the time filter because I wanted a more finite list for manual verification. It's still within bounds of acceptance since we are more interested in the most recent usage. -- Bobthefish2 (talk) 23:43, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Are these numbers right? I tried testing it and I didn't get them. For comparision, I'm seeing 268 hits for Senkaku from Jan 1 2009 to today and 208 hits for Diaoyu for the same period. Feezo (send a signal | watch the sky) 00:10, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

The general conclusions are the same, however: in every two year period this century, "Senkaku Islands" has a clear advantage in Google Books results over "Diaoyu Islands". The results are similar for a sampling of time periods from the 20th century, as well. Feezo (send a signal | watch the sky) 00:17, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

My, my... Feezo. You should read my posts a bit more carefully. For example, you did not appear to have parsed my search parameters correctly. Secondly, "Diaoyutai" and "Diaoyu" refer to the same entity in Chinese with "Diaoyu" being the "short form" of Diaoyutai. You are welcomed to express whatever views or questions you like, but you should keep in mind that unhelpful "questions" and ill-formed "conclusions" can sometimes be a drag, productivity-wise.

However, you did raise a notable point. I checked over the Google Books search results a little and it appears there are very minor fluctuations (+/-3) in terms of counts when I repeated the process a few times. The overall message is still quite clear though. --Bobthefish2 (talk) 00:41, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm glad you recognized this, at least—what do the other participants make of it? Feezo (send a signal | watch the sky) 01:01, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Using Japanese name would imply Wikipedia endorsing the Japanese claim

There are two local names for the islands - the Chinese name Diaoyutai and the Japanese name Senkaku. The PRC, ROC and Japan are the participants in the territorial dispute on the islands. By choosing the Japanese local name as the title would obviously give the impression that Wikipedia has endorsed the Japanese claim for the islands. Most English media nowadays is using the dual name for the islands to maintain their neutrality. My proposed solution is to use the existing English alternative name for the islands - the Pinnacle Islands.
STSC (talk) 04:54, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

This would be a practical course of action if not for the fact that as previously discussed, Pinnacle Islands is one of the least common names for them, in contravention of WP:POVTITLE. I won't rule it out as possible solution, but this does need to be addressed. Feezo (send a signal | watch the sky) 08:22, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Feezo , before you comment the post, please learn a relevant Policies/Guideline. STSC's proposal is explicitly rejected by WP:NCGN#Multiple local names. It only applies to "There are cases in which the local authority recognizes equally two or more names from different languages, but English discussion of the place is so limited that none of the above tests indicate which of them is widely used in English; so there is no single local name, and English usage is hard to determine." In the case of Liancourt Rocks, the Google Book hits are below a hundred at that time (May 2007). See Talk:Liancourt Rocks/Archive 10#Google Book search. Over 10,000 hits in this case are quite reliable to judge which is widely accepted, so the description is not applicable here. ―― Phoenix7777 (talk) 09:36, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

I am aware of NCGN. However, we are not obligated to use any name given by a local authority unless it is also the most common English name (see Qwyrxian's summary above). Although English discussion in this case is not "limited", the Japanese name enjoys a moderate but not overwhelming lead in terms of general web usage. The more serious issue is the potential for claims of nationalism if either the Japanese or Chinese names are used. It is my impression that the translation would avoid this issue in a way that transliteration does not. It therefore seems reasonable to consider this as an alternative solution even if it contravenes NCGN (which is simply a guideline, while POVTITLE, is policy). Note that I am not specifically endorsing Pinnacle, but am deliberately leaving the door open for others to comment on it. Feezo (send a signal | watch the sky) 10:05, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia shall not be forced to take side when involving international territory dispute

Wikipedia shall not be forced to take side when naming its articles involving a fierce international dispute about an unsolved territory issue. "Not to take side" is one of the core spirit of wiki's NPOV. STSC's comment above is very important. Regarding these islands and the articles/pages in en-wiki, if en-wiki only uses the Japanese name "Senkaku ~" which represents Japanese claim and Japanese point of view (POV) on this territory dispute, en-wiki will take side on Japan. And vice versa, if en-wiki only uses the Chinese Name "Diaoyu ~" which represents Chinese claim and Chinese point of view (POV) on this dispute, en-wiki will take side on Chinese parties (including both sides across Taiwan Strait). Because this international territory dispute has not been solved, as a reflection neither of usages of these local names in English has overwhelmingly outnumbered its rival, no matter what kind searching engines or methods are applied. Even if one local name's usage can outnumber its rival local one, like the case of "Liancourt Rocks", our en-wiki should choose and has already chosen a real neutral or NPOV one, in fact without using Google or other search engines as a metric. I am grateful that our mediator Feezo has noticed that "The more serious issue is the potential for claims of nationalism if either the Japanese or Chinese names are used." If a place has multiple local names but without involving in international territory dispute at all, using search engines as a metric will be fine for wiki. I appeal again that we should avoid being "penny-wise and pound-foolish", and also avoid going to "Wikilawyering". It is very bad for some attempt to force or make en-wiki take side and endorse one party's claim about this international territory dispute by making Wikipedia pay its cost of NPOV, its important spirit, and its reputation. --Lvhis (talk) 19:12, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Lvhis -- Your analysis embraces some conflation of issues -- compare "Conflated issues" below. Also, please consider:

• A. As you may recall, your familiar argument is a logical fallacy. Your prose succeeds only in begging the question, which means that you attempt to prove a conclusion by means of premises which assume that conclusion. As you know, this critical observation is not novel -- compare here.
  
• B. Let me refresh your memory: In February 2011, Qwyrxian developed a line of inquiry which remains inadequately addressed:

Question for Lvhis: Can you please explain where you don't see consensus for the current name? ... Several previously uninvolved editors commented that the name as it stands is the correct English name (note, that is what we are looking for--not the "neutral" name, but the name that is most commonly used in English). Note that consensus does ... doesn't mean 100% agreement ...." [italics and bold added for emphasis]

This critical question is not novel -- compare here.

• C. Although I cannot readily locate the precise diff, I do recall Qwyrxian's use of Kuril Islands as an illustrative counterargument which is on-point here. Summarising his analysis: Kuril Islands is a Wikipedia article name, but it is not construed as an endorsement of a Russia point-of-view in the unresolved dispute with Japan about the return of land which was taken at the end of World War Two. Kuril Islands is only the common name in English; and any attempt to construe more is understood as dubious.

Perhaps today is a good time to acknowledge these and other points raised by your colleagues in this collaborative editing mediation venue? --Tenmei (talk) 21:22, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

• Re your A and those words above the A - shall be overlooked.
• Re your B - I don't understand why you cannot construe the current ongoing discussion here participated by many editors including me, and what I have already stated before. Anyway, check my conclusion "you can only say 'The Japanese name Senkaku may, probably, somewhat, and in certain point of view, be little bit more used in English' when compared with the use of the Chinese name. Therefore, the Japanese name just has same credit and privilege as the Chinese name has when you consider to use as the name/title in en-WP pages" in my section below. Also you can say "The Chinese name Diaoyu may, probably, somewhat, and in certain point of view, be little bit more used in English" when compared with the use of the Japanese name.
• Re your C - Does "Kuril Islands" have any English name independently generated from English language per se? If your answer is "yes", list out the reliable sources. If your answer is "no", go and ask Qwyrxian if Xe is still willing to use this one as analogy or a precedent. (There happened "edit conflict" when I was inputting the above while Qwyrxian was inputting on 03:30, 7 June 2011 UTC). --Lvhis (talk) 03:57, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Of course Wikipedia takes sides (in the way that you mean); we do it all of the time. Kuril Islands is one obvious one, but, heck, people have even taken sides here, in this article, by asserting that we don't need to worry about Tiaoyu/Tiaoyutai. Wikipedia takes sides every time we decide that a certain topic deserves the majority of weight in a topic, because that's the weight it carries in real life; heck, Wikipedia takes sides by labelling certain beliefs as WP:FRINGE, and thus not deserving of discussion in any given article. The way we do so and yet remain neutral is exactly what we have to do here: we must, must, must, follow the sources. If the sources tell us one name is the common English name, we must use that name. If the sources are sufficiently muddled, then maybe our name should also be sufficiently muddled (the S/D approach); and if we really can't tell at all, then maybe we need to follow the punting approach ("Pinnacle"). But we have to start with the sources. We just do. In the same way that we call the person Jack the Ripper, because that's what the sources call him even though the name is obviously non-neutral, we must choose the name used by reliable sources. This isn't wikilawyering at all--it's following WP:V and WP:NPOV exactly as they are written, taking the specific guidance of some guidelines like WP:NCGN to help us with the details. Qwyrxian (talk) 03:30, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Sorry I should ask you: "Does 'Kuril Islands' have any English name independently generated from English language per se"? And do you have any reliable sources saying "SI is the common English name"? --Lvhis (talk) 04:02, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

There are major differences in the Kuril Islands dispute: Only 4 out of 56 islands are in dispute, and the name "Kuril" is originated from the original islanders, not Russian or Japanese. The name "Kuril Islands" would not trigger any neutrality issue. STSC (talk) 04:38, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

So forget that example: look at the three examples given in NPOV itself: Boston massacre, Tea Pot Dome scandal and Jack the Ripper; then look at the entire WP:FRINGE] guideline. NPOV does not say that any time there is a dispute about something that we describe in terms that don't take a side; in fact, what it says is that we neutrally describe the dispute, using terminology and information in due weight to the use of those terms in real world sources. Qwyrxian (talk) 05:24, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Those examples are different scenarios from our case. Taking the case of Jack the Ripper, it's a widely used name which does not have a competing name from an opposition (maybe something like "Jack the Saint"). In our case, there are two competing local names representing the opposing groups in the territorial dispute, namely "Diaoyu Islands" and "Senkaku Islands". I would regard both names as widely acceptable names in modern English media (not out-of-date maps and old documents). Furthermore, the political climate does change over time - a newspaper editor who used the term "Senkaku Islands" yesterday may decide to use "Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands" tomorrow. I have noticed in the media that there's a trend in using a dual name for the islands since the fishing boat collision incident.

Regarding the "FRINGE", I cannot see any relevancy to our case. Maybe it's guidelines apply to "Pinnacle Islands" then. STSC (talk) 12:46, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Lvhis -- please re-write or strike out

• your diff here which created a new section heading "Wikipedia shall not be forced to take side when involving international territory dispute"

According to the project page, the "primary issue" is described in open-ended words:

"Constant disruption of talk page by running around in circles discussing whether or not the title represents a neutral point of view."

Grammatical analysis shows that the subject of the "primary issue", as written, is a noun modified by one adjective and two prepositional phrases which are modified by two participial phrases.

For the time being, Feezo's mediation plan invites us to comply with a structured narrowing of focus. We need to identify "material not directly related to the primary issue under mediation." As you can see for yourself, this phrase is explicit and highlighted in bold font at the top of this page:

• 13:24, 4 June 2011 Feezo (74,969 bytes) (New mediation policy; see top. Page history may be found here)

At this point in the development of Senkaku Islands, Senkaku Islands dispute and Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/Senkaku Islands, we are heavily invested in proceeding from particular facts to a general conclusion. Our exhaustive investment in a process of inductive reasoning has adduced what Qwyrxian is calling our "statistical/lexical/factual common ground." [40 words]

Feezo's words at the top of this page become both fulcrum and mantra: In passive compliance with Feezo's mandate, our roles are simplified. [23 words]

In rejecting "material not directly related to the primary issue under mediation" in this thread, our marriage to mediation here is re-affirmed and strengthened. [24 words]

You confirm your commitment to mediation by re-writing. The prospects for mediation will be enhanced by striking through your off-topic words. [21 words] --Tenmei (talk) 17:14, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

What are you on about now? You just sound like a badly programmed humanoid. The programmer that programmed you must be playing a practical joke on Wiki, and you're really getting out of control. STSC (talk) 17:29, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

It is called a "broken recorder", if you don't know the term, my British friend. Yes, he appears to be getting out of control. --Bobthefish2 (talk) 18:01, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

--Thank STSC for several comments above which are very meaningful. As for Tenmei's one just beyond, it should be overlooked unless he/she is entitled as a mediator by en-wiki. As for Qwyrxian's that wiki can take side in our current case, if Qwyrxian does not have reliable (and neutral, as mediator Feezo mentioned) sources stating "SI is the common English name", I, and other editors, will change our mind and force en-wiki to take our side by only using a single name/title "Diaoyu Islands" for these articles/pages. This is very logic and reasonable. --Lvhis (talk) 18:25, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure this mediation is going to work, STSC, if you suggest that Tenmei is less than human. Personal attacks are unnecessary and unhelpful. As for Lvhis' original comment, Wikipedia tries to be neutral, but it cannot always please everyone. In regards to titles, some have been discussed already. Then there's the Falkland Islands. I don't know whether there's an alternative to that and the Argentine name, but the point remains that Wikipedia has taken a "side" with the article title. John Smith's (talk) 18:41, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

My British friend, STSC was simply joking that Tenmei's behaving like a robot (i.e. for repeating the same things over and over again without listening). Also, the differences w.r.t. Falkland Islands is quite significant, as we've discussed in the distant past. As a result, this isn't a good comparison. --Bobthefish2 (talk) 18:46, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

--Re John Smiith's: besides the reason Bob gave you as above, "Falkland Islands" is the very English name or British English name, and here is en-wiki. If you go español-wiki, it is called "Islas Malvinas". --Lvhis (talk) 18:53, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

That's a fair point, Lvhis. But it is also true that Wikipedia generally takes sides in disputes simply by including or excluding material. And one can point to other article titles like Armenian Genocide. Declaring that what happened was genocide is greatly taking a side. John Smith's (talk) 19:10, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Please don't go out-of-topic. We are discussing naming some pages involving international territory dispute. The bottom line is, if the title Armenian Genocide is not generated in way of Original Research by wikipedians and it is a English title, it does not mean the en-wiki has taken side there. Wiki just follows Reliable Sources for this title. Is or was there any dispute on that title? Coming back to our case, there is a very English name here. If you cannot provide any neutral and reliable sources claiming that the Japanese name is the common English name, you will be wrong at forcing en-wiki to take side, you will have no reason to reject using the single Chinese name. I wonder why you and your fellows do not want to face the closest analogy and precedent case "Liancourt Rocks" by ignoring it and bypassing it with some quite far cases? --Lvhis (talk) 20:25, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Lvhis, the examples I raise are very valid. You can't suggest that it is bad for Wikipedia to "take sides" over international territorial disputes, yet it's ok over everything else. Why are international territory disputes different from everything else? If you want to you can withdraw your earlier comments that one of Wikipedia's core points is not to take sides. As I have said, it takes sides all the time. John Smith's (talk) 20:53, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

John Smith's, okay, let us make great efforts to make en-wiki take side on China by naming the pages about these islands as "Diaoyu Islands"! Hope you can explain what is POV and what is NPOV much better than what wiki does. --Lvhis (talk) 21:57, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

At least, Qwyrxian and John Smith's have acknowledged that the title "Senkaku Islands" is biased. It is a significant position they take in this mediation. STSC (talk) 01:53, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

I did not said that "Senkaku Islands" is a biased title. The point I have made is that Wikipedia takes sides over disputed matters all the time. This is inevitable. John Smith's (talk) 20:53, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Do you have any neutral and reliable resources saying "Senkaku Islands" is a neutral or non-biased name for the disputed islands? Let us have an alternative way: The view that "Senkaku Islands" is a non-biased title is a point of view (POV). Will this be better? --Lvhis (talk) 22:10, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

I don't think "Senkaku Islands" is biased, and neither are "Diaoyu Islands" nor "Diaoyutai Islands". They are only en translated local islands names. If you cannot provide RS saying those names are biased, it's your personal opinion. Please clarify. I don't think "WP does take side". WP:Common name is simple and clear NPOV and there is no scope for "taking side". Oda Mari (talk) 08:53, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

The title "Senkaku Islands" would be fine if there was no territorial dispute on the islands. Please refer to my original comments under my main heading. I don't accept your strange theory: common-name = NPOV. Besides, "Diaoyu Islands" is also a common name. STSC (talk) 10:21, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Whether or not "common name" = NPOV is irrelevant (I think it does, but it's really a semantics game), because NPOV explicitly says that neutrality is not our only concern for article titles. If Senkaku is the common name (which we're trying to determine in other sections), then its the name policy tells us to use, regardless of any of our personal feelings. Qwyrxian (talk) 23:42, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Likewise, common name is not our only concern. In the end:

Neutrality trumps popularity.

STSC (talk) 00:42, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

What STSC said is very correct: "Diaoyu Islands" is also a common name. Qwyrxian, you have been wrong when you said SI was "the name mostly used in English" quite before while you are now still "trying to determine" if it is or not. That was/is your Original Research. You used a wrong base to support your stand of insisting on using "SI" as the name/title, then you are finally wrong. BTW, could you use your same principles to explain the case "Liancourt Rocks"?--Lvhis (talk) 00:55, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

I believe someone once said "United States" trumps "America" even though the latter is more used. So what trumps that popularity in this case? --Bobthefish2 (talk) 02:33, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Clarity, I guess. STSC (talk) 02:46, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Well, I am all confused now. What takes precedence over what? These Wikipedia rules can be all so confusing at times (and in the event that some people consider my tone to be sarcastic, I am in fact very truly confused). --Bobthefish2 (talk) 04:08, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

However, there's no neutrality issue involved in such case. Anyway, it's slightly off-topic now. STSC (talk) 04:30, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

(ec)@Lvhis, current searches imply that it is not so clear what the common name is. Encyclopedias and almanacs imply the common name is SI (by a large, almost unanmimous margin, in what we've found so far; some of the internet searches imply Diaoyu or an even split. Note, though, that this is a new development--previous searches tended to show slight to large results in favor of SI. Either we made errors before, or something has changed (I accept both as possible); so while I was previously certain that SI was the common name, now I see that either due to changes or due to errors, that may (but also may not) be incorrect. At some point we have to decide how to handle the differences in results between different media; for now, we need to keep working at the searches to make sure we're doing them correctly. If you read the Liancourt Rocks talk archives, you'll see that that solution was, in fact, a failure of dispute resolution. It was only undertaken because neutral editors (i.e., those who don't give a rat's patootie about some tiny rocks in the middle of the Sea of Japan) were sick of the insane fighting and edit warring going on. It's not a good precedent to rely on. Also, there's a clear, substantial difference: Liancourt was, essentially, almost never mentioned in the English world outside of people specifically talking about the dispute, and even that was rare. Senkaku, on the other hand, received a lot more international press (specifically, I'm thinking of the 2010 boat collision incident), as well as being of more interest scientifically (see Senkaku mole), and having been specifically discussed in US historical discussions as a result of the US Occupation. Thus, we can get better results for Senkaku, and should continue to try to do so. If it turns out that we absolutely cannot determine a Common name, then, yes, we should explore a dual name or Pinnacle; I do not believe we are at that point yet.

@STSC & Btf2: I think that was me, and I think the message I meant to convey wasn't expressed well; my point was that the most common name for the country, as used in "everyday English" is, I would wager (although I don't actually have data), "America". The formal short form is "United States", and the formal long form is "United States of America." My guess, though, is that, when high quality sources are looked at (encyclopedias, academic publications, etc.), it's the short formal form that is preferred, and thus used on Wikipedia. My point in bringing that up (if I remember my own thinking correctly) was to point to the types of sources we should primarily be looking at when we consider what name Wikipedia should use. Qwyrxian (talk) 04:42, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Qwyrxian, it has been better that you almost accept admit at least for the time being that claiming "SI is the name mostly used in English" is an error or due to out-of-date. From your threads above and your section "Summary statement from Qwyrxian" my sense is that your main lesson is you have not taken WP:NPOV serious enough. Otherwise, you would not make such conclusion so indiscreetly just by looking at several almanacs, etc. but ignoring the huge fact that how to name these islands stands for feast international territory dispute, or you knew this fact but you don't want to face it. WP:NPOV claims that "Neutral point of view" is one of Wikipedia's three core content policies. ... The principles upon which this policy is based cannot be superseded by other policies or guidelines, or by editors' consensus. " While you think your so called "common use" or popularity can trump NPOV or neutrality. If you do not want to change this, the dispute on this name/title issue cannot be solved. Liancourt Rocks is a good example. If using your principle, you should support using the Korean name there. Even the usage of the Japanese name there is less common than the usage of the Korean one, according to WP:NPOV's "Due and undue weight", "If a viewpoint is held by a significant minority, then it should be easy to name prominent adherents", and considering wp should not take side in this territory dispute, the minority of using Japanese name there is a significant minority, and use dual name or "Liancourt Rocks" will get both sides compromised. As a consequence, the dispute there has been ceased, at least for now. If you and your guys still persist that wp can take side in our current situation, I believe STSC and Bob along with me will be happy to use the small favorite margin towards the Chinese name in Google Book/Scholar and the big favorite margin towards the Chinese name in Google (general) Search making en-WP take side only using "Diaoyu Island", no dual name, no "Pinnacle Islands", and no ""Senkaku Islands". Will you be happy with this? WP takes side only when some view is really a main stream. As for the Diaoyu/Senkaku/Pinnacle Islands, the main stream of international society has not taken side, why WP should be forced to take side? Also hope that you can keep your principles consistent. --Lvhis (talk) 00:59, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Lvhis, just like I tell everyone else, please stop claiming I don't understand policy or don't take it seriously. I take policy unbelievably seriously; that's why I'm one of the few editors on this article/subject who moves back and forth (between the "Japanese" POV and the "Chinese" POV) on different issues (for example, I fully support Btf2's position regarding that the Remin Ribao article is not described in an NPOV way). With regards suggestion that the edge in the Book search means we immediately choose one name...we won't take just one survey of any type and declare a winner. However, ifevery single search we performed showed that "Diaoyu" was more common, I would, in fact, support that for the name of this article, because that's what WP:NPOV and WP:NCGN tell us to do. If you somehow thought I believed differently, my apologies for not expressing myself clearly enough. Let me express this very clearly: WP:NPOV says that for article titles, neutrality is not the only concern--we must also consider clarity. Furthermore, this policy is interpreted through WP:Article titles and WP:NCGN, which tell us that we must choose the most common English name; where this is difficult due to multiple local names, we have to do hard work to try and figure out, over all, which one is most common. That includes looking at Google searches (although their usefulness for this issue is in doubt, based on comments farther down the page), looking at scholarly sources, looking in encyclopedias, almanacs, news sources...It is not just about saying "Hey, two countries disagree about this, so we automatically can't use the name of either country"--that approach is, in fact, the approach that runs counter to policy. If there is a common name, by definition, that is the neutral name. That's what the policy says. That's what the guidelines say. Most importantly, that's what our practice says across many articles with many different disputed titles. Once we find the common name, we're done, whatever that name is. If we can't find the common name...then life sucks and we have to negotiate a compromise. Qwyrxian (talk) 13:03, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Qwyrxian, as I said yesterday I just stopped there. As you said "if every single search we performed showed that 'Diaoyu' was more common", you would choose it. Unfortunately you did not treat the "Senkaku" in this way. So we should learn the lesson together to do this more discreetly. And based on what search or research you did and other editors did, my conclusion can still stand there: The Chinese name "Diaoyu" (or the Japanese name "Senkaku") may, probably, somewhat, and in certain point of view, be little bit more used in English" when compared with the use of its rival; and the Chinese name (or the Japanese name) just has same credit and privilege as its rival name has when you consider to use as the name/title in these en-WP pages. As for neutrality (NPOV) vs other standards, I still say NPOV trumps others when they conflict one another, particularly in such feast territory dispute. We should avoid going to "Wikilawyering". The realistic experience and consequence of the case "Liancourt Rocks" has shown this to us very well. Again, "penny" or "pound", hope we could finally unanimously understand that.--Lvhis (talk) 19:55, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

The Practice of Unscientific Research

This is largely a direct response to Qwyrxian's little (big) block.

I would like to stress (as I did before) that the relative usage of names falls into the domain of linguistic research. In the pursuit of the most common name of an entity, one has to consider a number of issues. First of all, there's the matter of deciding what collection of text (also known as corpus) should be representative to the true distribution of English words in real life. In choosing an appropriate corpus one needs to consider the following in regards to the constituent documents:

• Publish date
• Publish locations
• Genres (fiction, newspaper, encyclopedia, blog posts, e-mails, government documents, etc)
• Authors
• Sources

While the use of encyclopedia may sound appropriate, it is in fact a rather bad choice because the number of authors involved is very small (for those who have a basic understanding of statistics, this type of small sampling is usually frowned upon). An additional concern is the time stamps of these encyclopedias. Since encyclopedias found in libraries are often quite dated, they may not be of much use for our situation (i.e. to examine the relative usage frequency of words in present time). Finally, it may sometimes escape an individual that encyclopedias are far from accurate representations of the English language. Despite their relative authority on some facts, the text within are not more "English" than the text found in other genres (such as blog posts, personal letters, CNN/BBC/Al-Jazeera articles and such) and thus should not be granted disproportionate emphasis.

For those who have some training in linguistics, they may think "Hey, let's use the American Brown corpus then! This solves all problems". Now, while the use established corpora is a standard in linguistic research, it is not applicable to this circumstance. The reason being the outdatedness of many documents in these established corpora.

This leaves the "web-corpus" (a.k.a search engine results) being the only remaining easily-accessible corpus and the one endorsed by Wikipedia. The advantage of using is that it contains many documents from a vast distribution of genres (thus many types of data points). On the other hand, it is still not fool-proof due to a number of factors:

• Blackbox search engine heuristics
• Different search parameters yield different results
• Potential unpredictability of search engine hits
• Duplicate documents (thus over-representation of some data points)
• Genre bias (i.e. scarcity of personal letters)

With this said, I'd point out that there isn't a perfect way of finding an answer to our problem and that we should be mindful of these issues when making decisions.

Now, let's talk about something different: How do we actually decide which is the more common name? While an everyday person may say "Let's choose the term with the most frequent hits!", the problem is that it doesn't work when there exists a set of appropriate analyses (in relative terms) with conflicting results. For such cases, the identity of this most common term can be ambiguous. A potential solution is to formulate some sort of statistical test to assess whether or not there is a statistically significant enrichment of one term over all others (Fisher's exact test comes to mind). However, a compounding issue with our data is that both Diaoyu and Senkaku often have very close number of hits. As a result, most statistical tests would probably not deem the difference between their observed frequencies of usage to be statistically significant.

Now, suppose we actually can't decide which name prevails over the other in terms of frequency of usage, there's always the option of using dual names. While this solution is vehemently opposed by User:Qwyrxian, the philosophy behind his disagreement can be reasonably disputed. He said "Dual names (i.e., Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands) are a bad idea because they don’t actually solve anything, since the discussion just shifts from “what should the name be” to “which name should come first”. ". This statement neglects one of the central dogmas of Wikipedia that is to move content as close to NPOV as possible (although what is NPOV is really subjected to our subjective interpretations). So while he can be right about the possibility of continual disputes on the ordering of name, it appears he has overlooked the net-benefits of adopting a dual-name solution.

And of course, my personal inclination is that it's preferable to let two kids share the TV than allowing one to monopolize it. Sure, they can still fight over who uses it first, but at least it is better than holding an undeserving bias against any of them. --Bobthefish2 (talk) 08:08, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

In case people would start accusing me of calling User:Qwyrxian unscientific (by making one of infinite interpretations of the sub-title), I'd pre-emptively deny this seemingly potential message that exists in the realm of infinite possibilities. Thanks. --Bobthefish2 (talk) 08:18, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

If a dual name is practicable on Wikipedia, I would suggest the local names to be placed in alphabetic order of the languages (Chinese/Japanese), so the dual name would be "Diaoyutai Islands/Senkaku Islands". STSC (talk) 14:37, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

If we had to go this route (which I don't support, because of the reasons mentioned in the guideline), I would say we still have to do the hard work of figuring out which order is most common in sources. Just because we're switching to a non-preferred style doesn't mean we can ignore the overall requirement that we go with what the sources say, not with what we prefer/want. I can think of a dozen other reasons to choose one order or the other (Senkaku first since Japan currently controls the Islands, Diaoyu first because China is the first recorded country to have spotted them, Senkaku first because Japan was the first country to inhabit them, Diaoyu first because D comes before S, etc., etc.). This is not to say that these are all good reasons, but that choosing a dual name isn't a simple solution, and I also believe that it simply prolongs the conflict for when the next group of new editors shows up. Ugh, and I just realized something I need to bring up in a new section. (Diaoyu vs. Dioayutai) Qwyrxian (talk) 02:17, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

I find it difficult to understand your perspective. Suppose the two names have a difference in usage that is not statistically significant, then how is it going to improve the situation by strictly favouring one of the two names? Sure, you can cite technicalities from Wikipedia and attempt to suppress further dissent through that, but conceptually, it's worse and will no doubt still be a source of future conflicts and edit-wars. As for name-ordering, it's a much less contentious matter because in such a case both names are feature in an almost equivalent manner (personally, I don't think it matters at all to me).

If you still fail to understand the advantage of adopting a dual name, I'd encourage you to think of our problem as a line fitting problem. Suppose the relative frequencies of the Japanese names are ~0.5 and the relative frequencies of Chinese names are ~0.5, then what's the line of best fit (with the lowest least square error)? Will it be the vector (0,0) -> (1,1) a.k.a. Japanese name solution? Or will it be the vector (0,0.5) -> (1,0.5) a.k.a. dual-name solution? I doubt you'd have trouble understanding this because this is just high school algebra. --Bobthefish2 (talk) 02:30, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

If we could show that the difference in usage (and this includes all measurements of usage--scholar/news searches, encyclopedias, whatever else we deem relevant under NCGN) is not stastically significant, then yes, in that case, there is a good sense in using either a dual name or "Pinnacle". The problem, of course, is that I'm not sure how we'd measure "statistically significant", given that we can't even figure out how to do the original measurements, the different criteria vary so widely, and some of the populations are so small (you can't show, for example, whether having, hypothetically, 2 out of 3 major encyclopedias use only one name is statistically significant), that I'm not sure we could determine that. In other words, what I'm saying is that we have to be careful when we suddenly start to apply specific statistical/scientific concepts (chi-squared tests, confidence intervals, etc.) to guidelines that are intentionally unscientific and vague? That is, I'm saying that, in my opinion, we can never have enough confidence that the difference is insignificant to override the (what seems to me to be very reasonable) suggestion to not have dual names. But, to clarify, this is not a line of thinking that I consider closed; however, I think it's one that we should turn to only after we've exhaustively shown that data and policies aren't getting us where we need to go. Qwyrxian (talk) 02:43, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Statistical tests are pretty standard ways to show something's very unlikely arise due to noise, so you should not perceive them as some sort of "fringe" philosophy that is meant to be vague or something. And you are right about the need to use them properly, which is something I advocated. For example, a statistical test on your favourite encyclopedia results is useless. And of course, if there isn't enough confidence to rule that the different is insignificant, chances are we don't have enough confidence to rule the converse either. In the face of such uncertainty, is it right to so casually allow only one of the two names. --Bobthefish2 (talk) 04:31, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

"Senkaku Islands" is NOT a English name but a POV name/title

Sorry for my delayed input as I am really badly busy. Qwyrxian in his/he summary statement listed several relevant WP policies and guidelines including WP:Article titles and its Considering title changes; WP:NPOV and its WP:NPOV#Achieving neutrality and its Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names). I of course agree on these. The problem is not here. The problem is how to apply these policies and guidelines on the name you like to choose. Here I make a brief summary for Qwyrxian's points as his/her rational to choose "Senkaku Islands" as a so called NPOV name/title:

1. "Senkaku Islands" is a English name for these Islands;
2. "Senkaku Islands" is the name mostly used in English;
3. Based on the 1 and 2 above, then following listed WP policies and guidelines,"Senkaku Islands" should be the name/title chosen for those pages in en:Wikipedia.

My disagreement or dispute is:

1. "Senkaku Islands" is NOT a English name for these Islands;
2. "Senkaku Islands" is NOT the name mostly used in English;
3. Therefore, "Senkaku Islands" is NOT a NPOV name/title being suitable for these pages in en:Wikipedia.

I agree with Bobthefish2 on his main points in his "the Practice of Unscientific Research". Here I present the results I got from online search (done on June 1, 2011, 20:47 UTC, at a location where English is the official language): Table1

Original Language	Name/Title	Name Form in Original Language	Google Search	Google Scholar	Google Book	Google News	Year when name generated	Selected Reliable Sources
	Diaoyu Islands	钓鱼岛群岛	344,000	1,501	5,370	25
	Diaoyutai Islands	釣魚台列嶼	64,100	779	2,420	7
Chinese	(Subtotal)	(as above)	408,100	2,289	7,790	32	as early as 1403
Japanese	Senkaku Islands	尖閣諸島	221,000	2,660	12,100	34	1900
English	Pinnacle Islands	Pinnacle Islands	750,000,000	22,200	27,800	27	1843

The Chinese name or names and the English name were independently generated on their own languages per se. The Japanese name was derived from English name "Pinnacle Islands" by the Japanese explorer Tsune Kuroiwa in 1990 who translated the British English name with its meaning, not its phonetic pronunciation, into Japanese language “尖閣諸島”. “Senkaku Islands” is this Japanese name expressed in the way with English (or Roman spelling) alphabetic letters, with only changing "Shoto" for "諸島" into "Islands", like Chinese name "Diaoyu Islands" instead of "Diaoyu Qundao". Since then, “Senkaku Islands” has been a Japanese name but expressed in English way. It is absolutely NOT a English name at all. When you go any serious and reliable sources, this name “Senkaku Islands” is always noted as "the Japanese name" or said "Japan calls these islands as ...". This is for my point 1.
For my point 2, I ever said in my input here that If this Japanese name cannot pass any one of those challenges like listed in the above table, this name cannot deserve "the name mostly used in English". Qwyrxian did not answer this in his/her summary.
Then my point 3: agreed with STSC, Bobthefish2, and Phead128, and based on my above two points, it can be concluded that the "Senkaku Islands" is absolutely a POV name/title. It shall definitely NOT be used as the name/title for those pages in en:Wikipedia.
The next question is: what we should choose for a NPOV name for these pages? I originally only considered to use dual name. But with my participating in more discussions and did more researches, now I think the suggestion Phead128 raised and STSC supported shall not be rule out indiscreetly. (to be continued, sorry too busy) --Lvhis (talk) 00:07, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

I'd have to object your analysis (just as I brought scrutiny to User:Feezo and User:Qwyrxian). You obviously have not used quotations in getting your Google search results. For example, the 7 million hits you got for Pinnacle Islands is inaccurate because the absence of quotations sensitizes Google to irrelevant pages (such as "Pinnacle Rock" ... [lots of words] ... "Fernandina Island"). When I redid your search with quotations, I instead received 17500 hits, which is less than either of the names.

I'd also have to add that having the most count does not necessarily mean a name is most commonly used. Rather it just implies that name most commonly occurred in the small sample of documents chosen for analysis. With enough noise , the result can in fact be quite insignificant in a statistical sense. Hence, we should be careful about adopting a first pass in such cases. --Bobthefish2 (talk) 02:01, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

I have to concur with Bobthefish2 on this, and admit that this is the problem with all Google searches: unless they are done very carefully, the results are flawed. You need to search for "Senkaku Islands", "Diaoyu Islands", and "Pinnacle Islands", including the quotation marks, not Senkaku Islands, etc. You also need to use Advanced options to set "english" as your language, because lots of foreign language websites include English keywords, even though they have no actual English text. Then, you actually need to look at your results, especially for the third result; for instance, when I just a straight Google Search for "Pinnacle Islands", the 7th result is [7], which is about the Pinnacle Islands in Canada, not the ones in the East China Sea. I'm sure I can find our most recent results somewhere in the archives, which were done with a fair amount of precision. Alternatively, I am willing to complete new careful searches as well. One issue we have to deal with on news sources, for example, is the fact that even though you do a Google News Search in English, many of the hits you get will be for English language newspapers in China and Japan, which, not surprisingly, tend to use the term preferred by the nation-state they represent. Final note on Google searches--one thing you need to not do with Google searches is to use the "NOT" search marker, because it completely alters the results (usually, you get more results by adding a "NOT" than without one, which, if Google were a pure, simple search of all online materials, wouldn't happen). And finally, I would call, one more time, for anyone with access to an English library to try looking at English print encyclopedias, something we are specifically told to do by the guidelines. Qwyrxian (talk) 02:11, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Qwyrixan, you're not in a position to advise people not to use "NOT" just because you don't know how to use the search terms correctly on Google; you obviously have very limited knowledge in Information Retrieval, therefore, most of your finding in Google hits would be quite unreliable. STSC (talk) 04:44, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

I did use the terms correctly, although I didn't explain it as well here as I should have. Do a search for "Senkaku Islands". I currently got 206,000 hits. Then, go to advanced search, and add "Diaoyu" in the section that says, "But don't show pages that have...any of these unwanted words". That produces 305,000 hits. It cannot actually be the case that there are more pages that include "Senkaku Islands" but not "Diaoyu" than simply include "Senkaku Islands", since the former is a subset of the latter. If Google actual produced "true" results, any search of "A" should always produce more hits than "A -B". As an analogy, just to make this clear: lets say I look around the room I'm in, and count "The number of men". That number must always be equal to or less than "The number of men older than 40" or "the number of men not older than 40." Any time you add more specific criteria, you must produce fewer results (or equal), not more. That shows that the Google is not actually producing a complete/common sense set of results. Google Books and Google Scholar seem to work better in this regard (my guess is that it has to do with the way page ranking works on normal Google, which I don't think works in the same way on the specialized engines, but I'm not actually sure). Qwyrxian (talk) 04:58, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

IR is not like arithmetics, that's why I said you really have very limited knowledge in IR. This is off-topic now so I shall not continue. STSC (talk) 05:07, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

If it's not the same, you need to explain it to us, because a large portion of our discussion hinges on how we use search results. I suppose we could agree not to use search results, but, if so, then we need another way to determine the most common English name in high quality, encyclopedic sources. I am, of course, happy with using the results found from the almanacs, but I assume that won't work for y'all. The policies in question require us to determine the most common name; we cannot shirk that responsibility, nor can we simply assert "Modern sources now use X" without evidence. Qwyrxian (talk) 05:36, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

The policy in question can be written by anyone and with or without "consensus". Most likely, the few who wrote or last edited these relevant sections have absolutely no backgrounds in linguistics, natural language processing, and information retrieval. As for explanation on how IR works, I guess STSC can offer you a few pointers. However, the block of text I wrote in my section is also relevant. --Bobthefish2 (talk) 06:08, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

My point is Qwyrxian should not advise other editors not to use "NOT" in Google search when he has limited knowledge in IR. STSC (talk) 06:37, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

I only have a very basic understanding of IR (well, mostly theoretical). What's wrong with using NOT? --Bobthefish2 (talk) 07:10, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

I agree, we're hitting a brick wall here. STSC, will you please explain what is wrong with Qwyrxian's results beyond saying "you obviously have very limited knowledge in Information Retrieval"? Feezo (send a signal | watch the sky) 07:12, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

If the "Senkaku Islands" is NOT an English name for these Islands, the "Diaoyu Islands" and the "Diaoyutai Islands" are also NOT English names. So are the most of place names of China and Japan. Are they not NPOV names? I'd like to point out this thread is based on a wrong premise and I'm afraid it's worthless to me. Oda Mari (talk) 08:00, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

See WP: Article titles#Foreign names and anglicization. It says "Names not originally in a Latin alphabet, such as Greek, Chinese, or Russian names, must be transliterated. Established systematic transliterations, such as Hanyu Pinyin, are preferred. However, if there is a common English-language form of the name, then use it,..". It is irrelevant whether it is a pure English name or not.―― Phoenix7777 (talk) 08:32, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

--(Continuing that on 00:07, 2 June 2011 UTC) There have been so many comments above already. Per these comments, including Qwyrxian's ones, I think I can draw a conclusion from these that we both sides have reached one consensus here: the name "Senkaku Islands" is not a English name. I have provided reliable sources to support this per what one of our WP guideline WP:RS requires. If any one still want to say "Senkaku Islands" is the English name for these islands, that for sure comes from his/her original research which our WP cannot accept. For responding Oda Mari, I'd like to repeat what I have said, Neither the Japanese name "Senkaku Islands" nor the Chinese name "Diaoyu Islands" for these disputed islands is a NPOV name/title in en:Wikipedia. Now I go next one again, Is "Senkaku Islands" the name mostly used in English for these islands? I presented my search results in the table above. The numbers there are raw data, rather than an analysis yet. I know the limitations of such searches but I believe these still have meaningful significance. I also agree that it is quite reasonable for what Bobthefish2 and Qwyrxian challenged against the numbers for "Pinnacle Islands". Let us put the raw data about "Pinnacle Islands" aside temporarily. Compared with the Chinese name, if you want to define the Japanese name as "the name mostly used in English", you still have to have that name pass through or over all of challenges, including such raw searches. Qwyrxian once ever mentioned me an example or precedent in en:Wikipedia, the name/title for Italian city Florence. Let us see the raw data for this Italian city (done on June 2, 2011, 22:17 UTC): Table2

Original Language	Name/Title	Google Search	Google Scholar	Google Book	Google News
Italian	Firenze	96,500,000	646,000	2,430,000	9,380
English	Florence	168,000,000	1,120,000	6,560,000	11,900

See, it is no doubt here the name "Florence" is "the name mostly used in English"! No matter how raw the search ways are, this is a good example for us. Now come back to our case the Japanese name vs the Chinese name, If use of the Japanese name really outnumbers use of the Chinese name, in English, you will not need bother to find and use more complicated or sophisticated ways or methods to pinpoint the so called accurate difference between them. The real objective fact here is: the usage of these two single names in English is very, very close, or roughly I would say it is same. We are working on this Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia which is not an official document of USA government. So I agree with Bobthefish2, the usage of the name in .gov and Library of Congress Subject Headings is just one of the many usages, though quite official, which still cannot kill the popularity of any one of these two names. Using single name "Senkaku Islands" is same to using single name "Diaoyu Islands" here, which is a POV name/title. (to be continued) --Lvhis (talk) 00:52, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Except for the fact that the guidelines specifically tell us not to look at sources in general, but to look at "neutral and reliable sources". This is the value in looking, not only at popularity, but also at reliability and neutrality (i.e., the quality of sources) as we consider which name is more common. Also, while I fully accept that Florence/Firenze is a good analogy, I believe it is not acceptable for you to define it as the standard by which we measure the current naming issue. If that were the case, then the guidelines would say that in all cases where its even somewhat close, we should choose some random "English translation" or use a dual name; but, in fact, the guidelines tell us that we should do almost everything possible to find the most common English name; Instead, the guideline explicitly says, "We recommend choosing a single name, by some objective criterion, even a somewhat arbitrary one" when choosing between multiple local names. Qwyrxian (talk) 02:49, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Also, I want to follow up on a point Oda Mari raised earlier, again, quoting from NCGN: "When a widely accepted English name, in a modern context, exists for a place, we should use it. This often will be a local name, or one of them; but not always." In other words, we cannot reject Senkaku as the name simply because it is a transliteration of the Japanese name; we must, as always, focus on whether that transliteration is the most common English name. Qwyrxian (talk) 02:52, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

As for the "Firenze/Florence" search, it's too rough. See Florence (disambiguation). They are all included in the search. As for the "Pinnacle Islands" search, it's also too rough. Here are other results. "Pinnacle Islands" China -Wikipedia hit 11,400. "Pinnacle Islands" Japan -Wikipedia hit 15500. But they include Diaoyu and Senkaku. "Pinnacle Islands" China Japan -Wikipedia -Senkaku -Diaoyu -Diaoyutais -Senkakus hit only 487. I think "Pinnacle Islands" is inappropriate as the article name of the islands per common names and Non-neutral but common names. I suggest you to change the thread title as "Neither "Diaoyu Islands" nor "Senkaku Islands" is an English name but a POV name/title" if it is what you mean. Oda Mari (talk) 10:02, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

--(Continuing that on 00:52, 3 June 2011 UTC) Firstly I am responding Oda Mari's suggestion. The reason I use that title for this section is because that Qwyrxian's "Summary statement ..." in fact implied that the Japanese name "Senkaku Islands" is a English name and may mislead audience here to believe so. No one here ever mentioned the Chinese Name "Diaoyu Islands" was a English name or a NPOV one. And what has led us to come here for mediation is whether the current name/title for those pages is POV one or NPOV one. I am on the side arguing for and proving that it is POV one. Before I gave my revised raw searches on these islands per critiques from Bobthefish2, Qwyrxian, and you Oda Mari, I would like to clarify that I neither use the results from this kind of search to finally determine the name/title, as STSC warned, nor treat these just as a bunch of junk. I almost 100% agree with Bobthefish2 on his section "The Practice of Unscientific Research" after completely reading it. Now here is the revised table (done on June 3, 2011, 18:23 UTC, using Google Advanced Search by adding East China Sea in "one or more of these words" and choosing English in "Language" option): Table3

Original Language	Name/Title	Name Form in Original Language	Google Search	Google Scholar	Google Book	Google News	Year when name generated	Selected Reliable Sources
	Diaoyu Islands	钓鱼岛群岛	108,000	626	1,310	7
	Diaoyutai Islands	釣魚台列嶼	21,700	797	427	0
Chinese	(Subtotal)	(as above)	129,700	1,423	1,737	7	as early as 1403
Japanese	Senkaku Islands	尖閣諸島	89,700	989	3,110	8	1900
English	Pinnacle Islands	Pinnacle Islands	2,160	23	10	0	1843

And also I have a table for another precedent many editors mentioned, the "Liancourt Rocks" (done on June 3, 2011, 17:26 UTC, adding Shimane after Takeshima Islands as disambiguation because there are five different groups of Islands called this same name in Japan): Table4

Original Language	Name/Title	Name Form in Original Language	Google Search	Google Scholar	Google Book	Google News	Year when name generated
	Dokdo Islands		108,000	2,030	1,540	36
	Tokdo Islands		108,000	308	1320	1
Korean	(Subtotal)	독도/獨島	216,000	2,338	2,860	37	?
Japanese	Takeshima Islands, Shimane	たけしま/竹島	131,000	290	929	1	?
Franco-English	Liancourt Rocks	Le Liancourt	126,000	1,160	2,500	0	1849

Per the revised table regarding the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands, it will be more unreasonable if you call the Japanese name as "the name mostly used in English" for these islands. The true fact behind this is the difference between these two names in English usage is very, very small. As Bobthefish2 said in his section "As a result, most statistical tests would probably not deem the difference between their observed frequencies of usage to be statistically significant." Alternatively speaking in statistical term, the observed difference is due to sampling error, and of course it cannot overcome searching engines errors. If you really want to say which one is used more, you can only say "The Japanese name Senkaku may, probably, somewhat, and in certain point of view, be little bit more used in English" when compared with the use of the Chinese name. Therefore, the Japanese name just has same credit and privilege as the Chinese name has when you consider to use as the name/title in en-WP pages.

The last, what name should we choose as a NPOV one? My suggestion is that depends on what kind of consensus we can reach. If the editors in one side love the Japanese name very much, and so much that they feel very uncomfortable if the name/title does not include it, then we have to go dual name, Diaoyu/Senkaku or Senkaku/Diaoyu, although I like the D/S one as STSC proposed very reasonably, but I can compromise as Bobthefish2 said. If those of that side dislike the Chinese name very much, and so much that they cannot tolerate the Chinese name appearing on the title, and they like to emphasis that the guideline discourages using dual name, then we have to go the real English name, "Pinnacle Islands", as what has been applied for "Liancourt Rocks" shown in Table 4 above. Anyway, my another suggestion is we shall avoid being "penny-wise and pound-foolish" when we deal this name/title issue in respect of WP:NPOV. (done) --Lvhis (talk) 23:28, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Lvhis, the figures on Liancourt rocks searches above are incorrect. If you want other users to talk more on this thread, use correct figures and the links. None of your posts based on the searches on this thread are convincing. BTW, I don't think the names D and S are not NPOV. Oda Mari (talk) 16:45, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Oda Mari, that you don't think D and S are not NPOV is fine if this is just your personal thought, but if you want to apply this idea into this en-wiki, that will be your Original Research which wiki will not buy. If you are living in Japan you should have heard that the ex-Foreign-Minister Maehara ever filed a complaint against Google, demanding it remove the Chinese names from its maps of the islands, but Google refused this attempt to censor the international media (go this link). As for the data or figures, I said those were raw data. You shall feel free to generate your own ones whatever you think are correct or in a way that you believe is correct. My thought is very clear and has been stated in some above sessions. The figures have not been that important anymore. While to fulfill your complaint, I am posting a revised table regarding Florence City as below (done on June 5, 2011, 01:34 UTC; using Google Advanced Search, English language): Table5

Original Language	Name/Title	Google Search	Google Scholar	Google Book	Google News
Italian	Firenze City Italy -Florence	9,870,000	9,560	141,000	9
English	Florence City Italy -Firenze	42,700,000	111,000	642,000	451

Although the figures were changed but the conclusion is still same as that from table2: this is what a name called as "the name mostly used in English" should be! If one tries to use small margin only in some searching ways to make a non-English POV name involving international territory dispute as "the name mostly used in English" without any neutral and reliable sources, that will be 100% Original Research.--Lvhis (talk) 18:28, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

It seems to me that you don't realize your mistake. As for the table 4, you doubled the figure of the search results for "Dokdo Islands" instead of adding the actual results for Tokdo. When I googled "Tokdo Islands", the page Google showed me said "Showing results for Dokdo Islands". If you want to see the results for Tokdo Islands, you have to click the linked word "Tokdo Islands" in the next sentence "Search instead for Tokdo Islands". See this page. Please check it yourself. Oda Mari (talk) 14:43, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

I knew the Google problem in table4 when I did that. Again these only are RAW data and that Google problem was a "penny thing", so I just ignored it. Can you change the overall outcome that the English usage of the Korean name significantly outnumbers that of the Japanese name when you did your way? The more import point or "pound" thing here is: what shall we learn from this examples or precedent in order to solve our current dispute? --Lvhis (talk) 18:04, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

You knew? You just ignored it? I thought it was a careless mistake. Do not excuse "It was raw data as I said before and I created the table 4 as a bad example of google search". If it was your intention, you should have clarified it when you created the table 4. Because you can easily get the actual results for "Tokdo Islands" and the results are fewer. You used the wrong figure deliberately in favor of your claim, misleading other editors. Who could take seriously such an editor? Who could AGF in such an editor? Sorry, but I have to say that your talk on this page is only disruptive and only wasting other editors' time. Oda Mari (talk) 09:14, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Lvhis, if you acknowledge that you didn't do the search properly then it's a moot point, really. Perhaps we should move on from this and look to see if there is anything to add to your initial claim that Senkaku Islands is POV.

Also, is there any chance we could delete or strike through some of the above given it's now a bit of a red-herring? John Smith's (talk) 09:21, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Oda, so what there's a minor mistake in the data. Why making a big fuss about it? Shouldn't you assume good faith? STSC (talk) 11:51, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

I haven't followed this thread closely, so I don't really know what's going on. But if the numbers for Torku was incorrect, it should be fixed. However, I wouldn't recommend Miss Oda Mari to be so angry over this, since there have been other results posted in this page that have similar mistakes. It wouldn't be quite appropriate to have an aneurysm just over this one. --Bobthefish2 (talk) 13:00, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

@Oda Mari and @John Smith's: The raw data means it may not that accurate precise, but will not mislead audience to get a totally opposite outcomes. I said and say it again that you can get data in your way which you believe it is correct. You have not answered my question Oda: Can you change the overall outcome that the English usage of the Korean name significantly outnumbers that of the Japanese name when you did your way? What Bob mentioned is also true: did you (Oda & John) notice the data of Google Book search showing that the Chinese name was outnumbered by the Japanese name (1,737 vs 3,110; Table3) has been overturned by other editors searching in other ways.? Why did you not angry on me about this? --Lvhis (talk) 19:13, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Oh no, it's not just "searched in other ways", but rather removing tonnes of Japanese documents that contaminated the results (as well as other things). --Bobthefish2 (talk) 19:39, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Thank Bob for your correction.:-) --Lvhis (talk) 20:00, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

No, I can't. I'm not your mother nor a servant. I have just pointed out the sloppiness of this thread for other editors. It's the creator who is responsible. I'm not angry. I'm amazed at the unconvincing claim. Oda Mari (talk) 06:05, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

In the interest of moving forward, would it be possible for us all to drop any discussion of research results relating to a totally different location and fairly different concerns? Then we can focus on determining search results for our own particular problem (including determining how much to value potentially flawed results). Qwyrxian (talk) 07:28, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

I guess some may still consider that relevant? I don't know. However, all these non-responses about mothers and servants should be refrained unless one decides to do a systematic assessment of sloppiness across all sets of data. --Bobthefish2 (talk) 18:52, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Oda Mari (Miss?), your words of "mother and servant" have been out of line from the points of Wikipedia:Civility. Using data from certain search is a way or part of the discussion/debating/arguments in this mediation. Bob and other editors think my data were not precise enough, then they did in their way and got their data. That was/is not for me, but for this mediation. If you don't buy the data I got, you should follow what they did and got your data to convince other editors including me. As for mentioning the case "Liancourt Rocks" here, it is a closest precedent for our current case. I or we have been referred to quite a few precedents such as "Kuril Islands", "Florence", etc. If you have read and understood Bob's section "The Practice of Unscientific Research" above, you might have understood this section better and might not have been angry or amazed on any data I presented. This section has played a role like primer and played not bad.--Lvhis (talk) 04:28, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Diaoyu vs. Diaoyutai

I have consistently, when doing searches, looking for both Diaoyu and Diaoyutai, and often including other spellings as well (Xiaoyutai? I'd have to look at the archives to be sure). My understanding, and please correct me if I am wrong, is that the PRC prefers "Diaoyu" and ROC prefers "Diaoyutai". I had thought that Diaoyu is the more common term when considering Chinese variants, but I see STSC consistently using Diaoyutai. Is this a personal preference? Do we need to account for Diaoyutai? That is, is this a "three-way" consideration (or even more)? Or is it "Chinese name vs. Japanese name vs. dual name vs. Pinnacle", and then after we figure that out, then we figure out Diaoyu or Diaoyutai? Note that if others think that this is an issue that we would be better off putting off discussing until we make more headway on the main issue, that is fine by me; it just suddenly occurred to me when I responded to STSC above. Qwyrxian (talk) 02:21, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

The difference between Diaoyu and Diaoyutai is like the difference between U.S. and U.S.A. The other variants exist due to a non-conformity in phonetic translation of Chinese words. But in the end, they all point to the same Chinese words (+/- the "tai") --Bobthefish2 (talk) 02:44, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

This is absolutely a non-issue. I would use "Diaoyu" just to please Qwyrxian. STSC (talk) 04:10, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

That's fine, I was simply confused as to whether this was a distinct, relevant issue or, as Btf2 puts it, simply one of transliteration. Thanks. Qwyrxian (talk) 04:52, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Then may we exclude "Diaoyutai" for the forthcoming discussion for simplicity? Aren't any of you believing the sum of "Diaoyu" and "Diaoyutai" make sense? ―― Phoenix7777 (talk) 08:52, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

I haven't seen any arguments here for Diaoyutai, so I don't believe any party would be marginalized by excluding it. If this is wrong, please let me know. Otherwise, I agree with Qwyrxian that the debate encompasses "Chinese name vs. Japanese name vs. dual name vs. Pinnacle" with Diaoyu as the Chinese name. Feezo (send a signal | watch the sky) 09:21, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

As I've said, Diaoyutai is the same as Diaoyu just as United States is the same as United States of America (unless there is another United States of Something in this world). So, I think Diaoyutai or Diaoyu will not make a difference. --Bobthefish2 (talk) 17:38, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

By the way, the Taiwanese use "Tiaoyutai Islands", "Tiaoyutais", "Tiao Yu Tai" or "Tiao-Yu-Tai". STSC (talk) 01:32, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Google search

I have set up this separate heading out of respect for Lvhis' section above.
First of all, I'm absolutely not happy with Qwyrxian giving silly advise like this,"one thing you need to not do with Google searches is to use the "NOT" search marker..." just because he has had difficulties in using Google search. I would presume good faith but I hope it is not his tactic trying to dismiss other editors' search data which uses the NOT operation (as he has done so in the past). So please Qwyrxian give us a search example so that we can work out why you're not getting a logical result by using the NOT operation. STSC (talk) 04:14, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

I don't think Qwyrxian has really said anything to deserve personal attacks, so you don't really need to go overboard with your descriptors. As for his advice about not using "NOT", there was an example he has made in the past that I've been able to reproduce where using the NOT descriptor yielded more hits than not using the NOT descriptor. Personally, I don't know enough about Google's search mechanism to understand the rationale behind this phenomenon. If you do, then perhaps you should indulge us on why this is the case. --Bobthefish2 (talk) 04:40, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

There's no "personal attack" at all. STSC (talk) 04:55, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

If someone plays with matches and gets his fingers burnt, he cannot go on to tell everyone stop using matches. STSC (talk) 05:21, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

That's not the point. While there are significant issues with the way he naively draws his conclusions, he did raise a legitimate point on this which is backed by evidence that shows this search parameter does not behave as expected. If you would like to show he is wrong, then you should demonstrate why (which I assume you have the expertise to). Otherwise, this is not going to convince anyone of your position. --Bobthefish2 (talk) 05:46, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

STSC, if you can enlighten us about how to properly use "unwanted words" on the Google advanced search in a way that produces proper results, I would be more than happy to amend my statement, and also to include such types of data in our analysis. I've given a bunch of examples so far, but I'll give one more totally unrelated to this subject. Search for "online game" (using quotation marks); I get 47.7 million hits. Search for "online game" -multiple (or go to the advanced options and put multiple into the unwanted words box); I get 124 million hits. It simply cannot be that there are more pages with "online game" but not "multiple" than there are pages with "online game". Something is amiss. Now, if there is a way to fix this, we should do so. One thing I note is that the same problem does not occur when the positive search string is only a single word (so, "love" gets, as it should, far more hits than "love" -hate). But that doesn't tell me how to fix it. Please understand, I am not using this as a tactic; in fact, I really wanted this to work in the first place because it would have saved be, literally, hours worth of work when I first tried to separate articles that mentioned both names from those that mentioned only one. If we could get this search result to work reliably, I think it would definitely help us (not definitively, but it would be a step in the right direction). Qwyrxian (talk) 05:59, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

According to Wikipedia:Article titles#Common names: "Search engine results are subject to certain biases and technical limitations; for detailed advice in the use of search engines and the interpretation of their results, see Wikipedia:Search engine test" --Tenmei (talk) 06:25, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes, we already know and even discussed a bit on that. Thanks for pointing out. --Bobthefish2 (talk) 06:57, 3 June 2011 (UTC) 06:56, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

The result count of a Google search is only a quick estimate and often very unreliable (and wrong) particularly for large results, so we should not read too much in it. The search engine's priority is to retrieve the relevant results quickly, and a normal user is likely only interested in the first few pages anyway. The hit counts in Qwyrxian's case are either underestimated or overestimated. That's why I myself have never supported the use of Google search to determine the title. STSC (talk) 09:12, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

I have no qualms with that analysis or that plan, at least for regular Google. Maybe it's just my feeling, but it seems like I/we get better (more accurate?) results with Google News, and even better Google Scholar, and Google Books. One possibility is simply that the smaller number of objects to be searched decreases the volatility. Another possibility (perhaps a bit more likely) is that Google uses a simpler search for Scholar and Books, since ranking and advertising aren't as relevant there. Qwyrxian (talk) 09:20, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

These are all search engines. The principles of IR applies to them just as well. --Bobthefish2 (talk) 15:05, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

I think a new format might help direct this discussion a bit. We all know that measuring search engine results is a flawed metric that relies on a black box; but at the same time we've seen valid criticism of using encyclopedias, almanacs, and similar references. Both are recognized by NCGN, so we have a degree of freedom here. We can discuss ways to perform and refine these two options, but I think it would be helpful to first sort out which are acceptable in general to the participants here. To that end, I'd like to have a mini RFC-style discussion on the merits of the major options and sub-options available. For anyone who's not familiar with the format, editors write statements under section headings, which are then endorsed by other editors, who may also elaborate on them. You can endorse as many positions as you like. Disagreement shouldn't be voiced under those headings, but should be placed under new headings which other editors may then endorse. Discussion and clarification may of course continue outside this format. Here are some headings which may be used "as is", or rewritten. If you don't want to repeat your position, just note that your reasons are given above. Again, the objective here is to decide which of the NCGN widely accepted name criteria we should use, and to determine the general scope of the one we select (e.g., which encyclopedias, or which search engines. Details like how to properly perform a NOT search should be avoided here, if possible). Feezo (send a signal | watch the sky) 19:00, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Feezo. Are you going to ignore the guideline and try to change the criteria among limited participants here without discussing at the talk page of the guideline? The guideline is a wisdom as a result of many dispute resolutions. If anyone object the current criteria of the guideline, he/she should discuss at the talk page of the guideline. Please withdraw the polling below. ―― Phoenix7777 (talk) 20:41, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Not at all. Quoting from the linked guideline:

A name can be considered as widely accepted if a neutral and reliable source states: "X is the name most often used for this entity". Without such an assertion, the following methods (not listed in any particular order) may be helpful in establishing a widely accepted name (period will be the modern era for current names; the relevant historical period for historical names):

Do we currently have a neutral, reliable source that says "X is the name most often used for these islands"? If not, we are free to develop a consensus on how to use the six methods given in the guideline. Feezo (send a signal | watch the sky) 20:52, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

The quote doesn't refer anything about changing the criteria. It just says "the following methods (not listed in any particular order) may be helpful in establishing a widely accepted name". Yes we can free to develop a consensus, however it is unlikely to build consensus among disputed participants. Otherwise, this mediation will never end. Please stop bringing the polling all of sudden. ―― Phoenix7777 (talk) 21:18, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Can you explain what you mean by saying that I'm trying to change the criteria? What is your reading of Wikipedia:NCGN#Widely accepted name? Also, can you please explain what you mean "it is unlikely to build consensus among disputed participants"? Feezo (send a signal | watch the sky) 21:31, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

The polling below actually is proposing the change of current criteria described in the guideline. You would understand how it is difficult to become a consensus, by just considering this long standing dispute. ―― Phoenix7777 (talk) 21:39, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

I disagree with Phoenix7777; the polling is not an attempt to change the guideline. The guideline itself says that there are a variety of ways, that these are not the only ways, and that you needn't use all of them or any one in particular. In other words, the guidelines are (like many of our guidelines) intentionally vague. Feezo isn't trying to change the guideline, he's trying to figure out how to apply the guideline to our particular case. Now, it's perfectly fine for someone to say "Apply the guideline as written, in order, looking at all of the criteria", but it's also acceptable to find a balance in how we use the different criteria. I'm going to hold off on giving my opinion at the moment (I'm disappearing soon for a 2 day wikibreak, and want to think about it a bit). Qwyrxian (talk) 21:47, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Disagree. "Do not support using Google as a metric" is clearly against the guideline. And I don't want to discuss here how Google web search is unreliable. This mediation is not the place to discuss such an issue. Such an issue was already discussed at the guideline and as a result of the consensus current searching criteria (Book, Scholar) is described. However I agree to discuss something like addition of some encyclopedia such as "Encyclopedia Americana" or almanacs to the criteria. ―― Phoenix7777 (talk) 21:55, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

It is not against the guideline. I quote, "The following methods...may be helpful..." (emphasis added.) The key word is "may". It gives us a choice. Feezo (send a signal | watch the sky) 22:42, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes, you are right. However, are you sure this option is practical idea? ―― Phoenix7777 (talk) 22:50, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

We have not examined all the criteria listed in the guideline yet, especially the correct Google Book/Scholar test. It is too early to make this kind of polling without discussing the result of such an important test. ―― Phoenix7777 (talk) 23:06, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

It's not really a poll; the section headings are just examples. You can take one and modify it, or write your own. I'm starting with the first three criteria, since they've already had the most discussion. You can write your own section, as long as it addresses Wikipedia:NCGN#Widely accepted name. The section statements should be fairly short; I'm thinking around one hundred words. The purpose isn't necessarily to convince people, but simply to establish the positions. If there isn't a clear consensus, we can then explore the arguments in depth. If there isn't any activity here in the next day or so, I'll write the statements myself, summarizing the arguments from all sides as I understand them. Feezo (send a signal | watch the sky) 23:42, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

I don't argue with you on this anymore. I will be watching this discussion. My only hope is this discussion will not be a divergence of discussion but a convergence of discussion as I explained my concern above. And actually this discussion became a divergence of discussion as my concern. Please discuss completely the use of Google search issue here from the beginning without any consideration of the past discussion of the guidelines. If any result will come out of this discussion, I will not agree with that unless the relevant guideline is amended. In other words, there will not be a consensus.―― Phoenix7777 (talk) 11:44, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Freezo removed my edit above and I restored it. This is not an off topic discussion but I contested the proposal of poll because such a poll is only recurrence of discussion of the guideline. ―― Phoenix7777 (talk) 12:29, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Discussion moved here with input from WJBscribe here. Feezo (send a signal | watch the sky) 15:55, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

---

Support using Google or other search engines as a metric, but not necessarily using any type of search

Search engines have the largest collection of English documents in the world. While they are not close to being a perfect source of information, it is probably the best option available. Aside: I will not be active in the next few days, since there are deadlines to meet IRL. --Bobthefish2 (talk) 03:23, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

I would guess that Wikipedia:Article titles#Common names + Wikipedia:Search engine test are relevant in this aspect of the poll proposed by Feezo's diff here, especially Wikipedia:Search engine test#Search engine limitations – technical notes -- compare Conflated issues section below. --Tenmei (talk) 23:36, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

If I understand this correctly, this section is meant to say that we may use searches, but that we have to take care in how they are both performed (what terms, what order, etc.), and well as in how we interpret them. This makes sense to me and matches the essays on Search Engine hits we've repeatedly linked to. Qwyrxian (talk) 01:47, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

• Endorse In passive compliance with Feezo's mandate, our roles are simplified. --Tenmei (talk) 15:03, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Support using Google or other search engines as a metric, using any type of search

I would guess that Wikipedia:Article titles#Common names + Wikipedia:Search engine test are relevant in this aspect of the poll proposed by Feezo's diff here, especially Wikipedia:Search engine test#Google unique page count issues -- compare Conflated issues section below. --Tenmei (talk) 23:35, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

• Endorse In passive compliance with Feezo's mandate, our roles are simplified. --Tenmei (talk) 15:05, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Do not support using Google as a metric (to determine a widely acceptable name)

My reasons for not supporting the use of Google search to decide the article's title :-

• Unreliable hit counts - can be underestimated or overestimated, and the actual counts are capped at 1000.
• Limitation of indexing - e.g. deep web; and Google can be blocked by web sites.
• Erratic results - may include duplicate sites, clone sites, spam sites, redirections, etc.
• Difficult task to check contents - almost impossible to check site by site to include neutral sites and eliminate biased sites with large results.

STSC (talk) 01:36, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

I have no comment about the bullet points which have been provided by STSC.

I would guess that this section topic is a non-issue.As stated, this proposed poll topic is unhelpful because settled wiki-consensus rejects any scheme which provides a wikt:blanket exclusion of data from reliable sources, including conventional Internet sources such as Google -- compare Conflated issues section below. --Tenmei (talk) 00:39, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Apples and oranges ≠ Conflation. The development of arguments/counterarguments in our mediation context has thus far conflated (a) disputing what is the English-language common name for our articles about disputed islands in the East China Sea; and (b) disputing what is a "neutral" name. These are conceptually distinct subjects which must be parsed accordingly.

In other words, "Google (and other search systems) do not aim for a neutral point of view ... [and] Google is specifically not a source of neutral titles" according to Wikipedia:Search engine test#Neutrality. --Tenmei (talk) 20:43, 5 June 2011

Moved discussion to Tenmei's talk page; feel free to continue there. Feezo (send a signal | watch the sky) 21:24, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

No. This single bold edit by Feezo is insufficiently explained. This one example of a mediator's discretionary judgment is inadequately justified. This contribution is salient, worthy of note, pertinent, relevant., not off-topic. --Tenmei (talk) 23:26, 5 June 2011 This diff is strikenthrough because of Feezo's edit here. --Tenmei (talk) 00:52, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Tenmei, you either endorse or keep quiet. STSC (talk) 02:40, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Support using encyclopedias and almanacs as a metric

I would guess that this is a non-issue As stated, this proposed poll topic is unhelpful because settled wiki-consensus rejects any scheme which provides a wikt:blanket exclusion of data from reliable sources, especially conventional (non-Internet) sources such as these. --Tenmei (talk) 20:55, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

I support this approach. In general, Wikipedia asks us to look to scholarly sources when possible for anything. Furthermore, NCGN, Widely Accepted Names, #1 & #3, explicitly tells us to look at encyclopedias and (to me) implies that we should look at almanacs or other similar tertiary sources. I think it would be wrong for us to be the one encyclopedia to be using a different name--Wikipedia is supposed to follow, not lead. Qwyrxian (talk) 01:45, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

• Endorse In passive compliance with Feezo's mandate, our roles are simplified. --Tenmei (talk) 15:06, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Support using library searches

The problem with normal search engine results is that they do not necessarily reflect usage in the real world. For example, there is a major incentive for people to try to manipulate them, and a strong counter-incentive for the search engines to thwart this through elaborate algorithms. The result is a complicated and impenetrable black box that is very useful for finding things, but not necessarily useful for any kind of objective measurement. I propose that we explore a new criteria for evaluating usage: library searches. I'm thinking of resources like WorldCat, catalog.loc.gov, and university libraries. We can determine the exact criteria later, but I believe this is a good starting point. Feezo (send a signal | watch the sky) 21:12, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Endorse - STSC (talk) 03:08, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

As I said above, I didn't object to show other tests as a supplementary to WP:NCGN. However I don't agree to discuss a new criteria here. It should be discussed at relevant guidelines. ―― Phoenix7777 (talk) 22:16, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

This idea is interesting; I'm unclear as to how exactly it would work (WorldCat, for instance, is essentially just an attempt at providing a single catalog of all library contents worldwide, so I'm not clear how searching it is relevant in this case). But I support, in general, the idea of using other additional means of trying to pin down frequency of use. Qwyrxian (talk) 01:36, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

• Endorse In passive compliance with Feezo's mandate, our roles are simplified. --Tenmei (talk) 15:07, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

---

The hit counts

I answer Qwyrxian's questions regarding Google hit counts:
As I mentioned before, Google's main task is to retrieve relevant documents (with the contents most related to the search terms), e.g., the books that are really about "Microsoft" and don't just happen to have the word "Microsoft" randomly in the content. To compute the unique hit counts, Google only considers the top 1000 most relevant documents, it then removes any duplicate entries to give the final unique hit count on the last page of the results. As we can see, Google just ignores any results beyond the top 1000 results.
We can't change the way Google operates. And whether their hit counts would serve the purpose to find the commonly used words in books is debatable. STSC (talk) 13:52, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

I, too, am beginning to worry whether or not the numbers themselves provide us with any clear indication about the common name. I still think its worth it for us to do/have done the searches, but we need to not lean too heavily on them as being definitive, one way or the other. I would, though, consider using the search results, followed by a more careful look at those results (that is, actually reading the articles). I did that once, but gave up part of the way through. Still, I could consider doing it again. That only works, for me, for News, though. I don't suppose anyone has full JSTOR access that could do the work on the scholarly articles? That's a lot of work, though, for not very much gain. Still, at least a small sampling would be worth doing, just to see if we find anything truly surprising, like if we suddenly found that 9 out of the top ten articles all use one particular means--that would at least indicate to us that searching more deeply would be worthwhile. Qwyrxian (talk) 13:30, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Conflated issues

The development of arguments and counterarguments at Talk:Senkaku Islands and Talk:Senkaku Islands dispute and here in our mediation venue have thus far conflated

(a) disputing what is the English-language common name for our articles about disputed islands in the East China Sea; and

(b) disputing what is a "neutral" name.

These are conceptually distinct subjects which must be parsed accordingly.

For example, "Google (and other search systems) do not aim for a neutral point of view ... [and] Google is specifically not a source of neutral titles" according to Wikipedia:Search engine test#Neutrality. --Tenmei (talk) 23:09, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

While Tenmei hasn't put this exactly the way I would, xe does raise an important point. If one "side" is bound and determined to reject one name because it will always be POV, no matter what mechanisms we use to determine the common name, then we have a problem. While neutrality should concern us, it cannot be the only issue we use in determining the article titles. Furthermore, we cannot use the argument that there is some alleged (unproven) non-neutrality in one name or another to duck our responsibility to determine what the common name is. If, in fact, we were to determine that there really is no common English name, then we could, conceivably, fall back to a simpler "POV/NPOV" discussion only. But we cannot do so until we are first reasonably certain that our various search results, library searches, examination of print sources, and whatever other means we use have resulted in a clear demonstration that one name is not more common than another. Qwyrxian (talk) 01:42, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

It appears that Feezo bought a pig in a poke, beginning here. Our problems which predate mediation are made secondary or moot because of whatever Feezo has in mind. We need to know what is "material not directly related to the primary issue under mediation."

According to the project page, the "primary issue" is described in open-ended wording:

Constant disruption of talk page by running around in circles discussing whether or not the title represents a neutral point of view.

The "unstated premises in the 'primary issue'" were also identified using open-ended language, including

• Issue #1, Domino effect. This article title is complicated by the anticipated "domino effect" which flows from every step of its development. It is counter-productive to pretend otherwise.
• Issue #2, Looking backward. This article title -- and this subject -- is a battleground. It is impractical to pretend that it is not.
• Issue #3, Looking forward. A structural premise of mediation is that all necessary parties have agreed to participate; but this is not the case here.

  The scope of "primary issues" which frame this case does also include future contributors who have not yet caused us to run around the mulberry bush. In the future as in the past, this article title will attract the participation of editors whose single-purpose perspective will skew our collaborative editing process.

• Issue #4, Fact vs. factoid. Our conventional processes for discerning the threshold requirements for inclusion in Wikipedia -- our core concepts, policies and procedures -- were construed as tangential in talk page threads; but they are not irrelevant or dispensable. It is unacceptable to pretend otherwise.
• Issue #5, the artificial stumbling block which arises with a false dilemma or situation in which only two alternatives are considered, when in fact there are additional options or factors.Characterising the participants as "both sides pretty much entrenched and non-collaborative" is a self-fulfilling prophesy. This tactic presumes that there are only two sides to every issue.

For example, as a practical matter which needs expanded attention,

• there appears to be a perceived hierarchy of issues which has become a focal point in our mediation venue
• there appears to be an unperceived conflation of issues in our mediation venue If there is a perceived hierarchy of issues in mediation, this needs to be made clear. Also, if some issues are arguably conflated, this needs to be explained again in different words. --Tenmei 06:43, 6 June 2011 --Tenmei (talk) 13:13, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

No, that is the "primary issue" you added, and which the mediating clerk attempted to remove (you edit warred to re-add it). As far as I know, no one else endorsed such a substantial addition; I for one, don't even understand half of what you said, because it's too heavy on metaphors and links and too light on specifics. Qwyrxian (talk) 09:02, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Absolutely!... Just you wait, he's gonna tell you "Think again" and put that pyramid on here. STSC (talk) 09:28, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Reply to Qwyrxian and STSC -- Aha, an unstated hierarchy + an unstated conflation of issues.

QED. --Tenmei (talk) 13:13, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Off-topic sequence of diffs -- collapsed by Tenmei per Feezo's model

I don't understand any of this philosophical English. --Bobthefish2 (talk) 14:45, 6 June 2011 (UTC) In order to follow Feezo's leadership, we need to know what is "material not directly related to the primary issue under mediation." For the time being, Feezo's mediation plan invites us to comply with a structured narrowing of focus; however, no good reasons justify any attempt to feign tolerance for Bobthefish2's provocation. As I explained to Feezo in an already archived diff: Zero tolerance for WP:Baiting is just one of many lessons learned the hard way. There is a difference between WP:Don't take the bait and pretending that there is no provocation. We have already stretched pretense beyond the limit of its elasticity. In the boxed exchange below, Bobthefish2 and Qwyrxian expressly create the context in which the phrase "philosophical English" is a red flag. How "philosophical English" is established as a red flag 1st diff; excerpt, By the way, it's a shame that User:Tenmei's writing in engrish again. After all, he was just making those big steps towards writing like a normal person. Bobthefish2 (talk) 05:10, 6 February 2011 2nd diff; excerpt, Now you need to stop. First, it's not engrish (which I work with every day in Japan). In fact, it's highly refined English, philosophical English.... And, in any event, this is an example of you being uncivil--your part of the problem .... Qwyrxian (talk) 05:14, 6 February 2011 3rd diff; excerpt, You should be a bit careful about throwing terms around. As far as I know, there is no such thing as "philosophical English".... Anyway, I will try to refrain from remarking about User:Tenmei's English for a short while. Bobthefish2 (talk) 06:41, 6 February 2011 This is a problem-which-did-not-need-to-be-a-problem. Simply trying to overlook poking by Bobthefish2 and others has proven unworkable. Is there an alternative or more constructive way to mitigate or avert this kind of impasse? What? --Tenmei (talk) 17:16, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Off-topic sequence of diffs -- collapsed by Tenmei per Feezo's model

Stay in the top three sections of this pyramid. Tenmei -- did you forget anything to say?... "Think again. WP:DR explains that some argumentative strategies are unhelpful, e.g., contradiction, responding to tone, ad hominem. In contrast, WP:DR helps us to recognize categories of comments which are constructive, such as refutation and counterargument. In the parsed context WP:DR offers in graphic form (see pyramid at right), the facile accusation is categorised as a variant form of ad hominem. In order to be very, very clear, I reproduce this pyramid, including the caption which urges us to Stay in the top three sections of this pyramid." STSC (talk) 16:24, 6 June 2011 The rationale for STSC's decision to re-post a graphic image + my words about it here are obscure; but our understand of intent is sharpened here -- "I'm in the mood for dancing". STSC's provocation is arguably trivial; but in our context, Zero tolerance for WP:Baiting is just one of many lessons learned the hard way. There is a difference between WP:Don't take the bait and pretending that there is no provocation. We have already stretched pretense too far. In the boxed exchange below, STSC and Bobthefish2 discuss the context in which this is treated as if it were a red flag. How my words + "pyramid" graphic are established as a red flag 1st diff; excerpt, You should be careful about tinkering with his posts and edit-warring with John Smith's, Tenmei, and Phoenix7777 over it. Technically, it violates a common etiquette and can get you into trouble .... --Bobthefish2 09:36, 6 June 2011 2nd diff; excerpt, I was in the mood to confront those edit-warlords in the absence of the mediator ...." STSC 10:00, 6 June 2011 3rd diff; excerpt, Alrighty... Just make sure you don't cross the line! But I do understand the thrill ...." -- Bobthefish2 (talk) 10:36, 6 June 2011 4th diff; excerpt, You should really refrain from openly targeting Tenmei ...." --Bobthefish2 (talk) 16:56, 6 June 2011 Can we not agree that in the working together to parse the argument, refutation, and counterargument which have unfolded in collaborative editing, we indirectly succeed in defining areas of agreement? For the time being, I acknowledge what seems to be a rhetorical question. More practical questions have to do with figuring out how to comply with Feezo's leadership guidance and structured mediation plans. --Tenmei (talk) 18:22, 6 June 2011 (UTC) This is a problem-which-did-not-need-to-be-a-problem. Simply trying to overlook poking by STSC and others has proven unworkable. Is there an alternative or more constructive way to mitigate or avert this kind of impasse? What? --Tenmei (talk) 19:24, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

In order to follow Feezo's leadership, we need to know what is "material not directly related to the primary issue under mediation." For the time being, Feezo's mediation plan invites us to comply with a structured narrowing of focus.

Can we not agree that, in the process of identifying an unstated hierarchy + an unstated conflation of issues, our work together is constructive?

Like the structured parsing exerecise at Google searches above, these are practical wikt:nuts and bolts questions which are part of figuring out how to comply with Feezo's leadership guidance and structured mediation plans. --Tenmei (talk) 19:24, 6 June 2011
{{collapse top|[[Off-topic]] sequence of diffs -- collapsed by Tenmei per Feezo's model}}

Tenmei, you like to take exception from basically everything and yet refuse to communicate with others in a productive way. Do you not think you should do something about that other than whining over and over again about the same issues? --Bobthefish2 (talk) 22:31, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

This is a problem-which-did-not-need-to-be-a-problem. Simply trying to overlook poking by Bobthefish2 is a failed strategy. This collapsed excerpt represents an arguably constructive way to mitigate a recurring pattern?

It is perhaps timely to recall my observation here -- referencing Qwyrxian's argument from February that a mediator like Feezo "can help us by structuring the discussions." Perhaps this is slightly better than the other options which have been tried already? --Tenmei (talk) 00:27, 7 June 2011

{{collapse bottom}} Responsive collapse was reverted by Bobthefish2; and the investment this diff represented is stricken. --Tenmei (talk) 03:10, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Relentless complaints are unproductive, don't you think? All that was ask of you is to communicate in a clear and concise manner. Your refusal to comply presents a significant obstacle. --Bobthefish2 (talk) 00:32, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Tenmei, however you choose to communicate, you can't assert that the topic you think is important must become the focus of this mediation, when there is no consensus to do so. Maybe, someday in the future, you'll get a chance to work through those things; I don't know. But we need to focus on just the title right now. If we show any hope of progress on that, then we can move on to other things (raised by you and Btf2). Qwyrxian (talk) 03:23, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Qwyrxian -- please re-write or strike out the diff above.

According to the project page, the "primary issue" is described in open-ended words:

"Constant disruption of talk page by running around in circles discussing whether or not the title represents a neutral point of view."

Grammatical analysis shows that the subject of the "primary issue", as written, is a noun modified by one adjective and two prepositional phrases which are modified by two participial phrases.

What next? For the time being, Feezo's mediation plan invites us to comply with a structured narrowing of focus. We need to identify "material not directly related to the primary issue under mediation."

The problem of conflated issues resists marginalising because conflation is directly related to the core of our mediation goals." --Tenmei (talk) 06:52, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, but I decline. You added topics to the mediation. I see no consensus to include those topics in the discussion. In any event, we must deal with the primary issue first. Rather than wasting time arguing about whether this is relevant, how about we focus on the primary issue? I have a proposal for doing so; I'll try to write it up tomorrow. The short version is: how about we first gather as much evidence of any type as possible, see what the evidence tells us, then figure out how that different evidence interacts, which is more relevant, which is not, etc.? In other words, maybe if we started from data, rather than starting from philosophical arguments about neutrality, we might at least be able to establish some sort of statistical/lexical/factual common ground from which to work (note that this is not me blaming you, but rather saying that all of us might function better if we focused on data rather than focusing on other issues, at least at first). Qwyrxian (talk) 07:01, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Qwyrxian -- please re-write or strike out

• your diff here including especially the edit summary "let's focus on one issue at a time, please"; and
• your diff here including especially the edit summary "i decline; quick summary of a proposal for moving forward"

We are heavily invested in proceeding from particular facts to a general conclusion. Our exhaustive investment in a process of inductive reasoning has adduced recurring patterns in what you are calling our "statistical/lexical/factual common ground." [32 words]

Feezo's words become both fulcrum and mantra: In passive compliance with Feezo's mandate, our roles are simplified. [17 words]

In rejecting "material not directly related to the primary issue under mediation" in the Google search section above and in this Conflated issues section, my marriage to mediation here is re-affirmed and strengthened. [31 words] --Tenmei (talk) 14:46, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Good, I think (hope?) we agree: we focus on only the primary issue under mediation, which is the title of the article. I'll write up that more formal approach tomorrow; people are free to reject, of course; ideally, coming up with another plan to tackle this primary issue. Qwyrxian (talk) 14:31, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

No -- passive compliance with Feezo's leadership permits no opportunity for forks. --Tenmei (talk) 14:46, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Again, I don't really understand what Tenmei's saying. My impression is that he objects? However, it seems clear that he'd like to persist in using his very obstructive style of communication despite repeated requests for him to stop doing that. --Bobthefish2 (talk) 17:13, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Bobthefish2 -- please re-write or strike out

• your diff here

This is "material not directly related to the primary issue under mediation." As you can see for yourself, this phrase is explicit and highlighted in bold font at the top of this page:

• [ diff] 13:24, 4 June 2011 Feezo (74,969 bytes) (New mediation policy; see top. Page history may be found here)

You show a commitment to the mediation process by re-writing or striking off-topic words. --Tenmei (talk) 17:33, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Again, I don't understand what you are saying. --Bobthefish2 (talk) 17:38, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Structural "tools to work this out"

Feezo is explicit in mentioning that the mediation plan here includes "the tools to work this out." The creation of a so-called "safe zone" and collapsing "off-topic sequences of diffs" are structural interventions which I construed to be "tools". [39 words]

Feezo's innovations in Google search section above offer guidance -- see excerpt, [10 words]

My objectives in moderating here are to keep debate in the safe zone on topic, and to lessen tensions between editors ...."

Tangential lines of reasoning follow the model established by Feezo's words and actions. Attending to the consequences of parsing conflated issues is a structure-based development. It follows Feezo's questions here and here. [29 words]

In fact, problems which flow from conflation do impair our ability to work together constructively. [15 words]

There is structural confusion in the "primary issue" to be mediated; and this difficult flaw is mirrored in structural issues affecting more than one of the threads in mediation. [27 words] --Tenmei (talk) 20:40, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Conflation in "primary issue"

The primary issue under mediation is "disruption" according to the explicit words with which this process began. Does a diagram help make this clear? [24 words]

   Constant [adjective]
     /
    Disruption [noun]
       \    \
        \   by running around in circles [prepositional phrase] 
         \         \
          \        discussing ... NPOV [participial phrase]
           \
           of talk page [prepositional phrase] 

Qwyrxian asserts that the primary issue has something to do with the word "title" in the participial phrase. If Qwyrxian is not off-topic, then the primary issue of mediation is muddied or muddled by a conflation of "disruption" and "title" -- which is precisely what happened again and again at Talk:Senkaku Islands and Talk:Senkaku Islands dispute. This continues to plague our mediation talk threads. [60 words]

Despite the words to which we agreed at the outset, if I interpret Qwyrxian's viewpoint correctly, the subject of mediation is

NOT THIS:

>disruption of talk page by running around in circles discussing whether or not the title represents a neutral point of view.

RATHER, SOMETHING ELSE:

>Constant disruption of talk page by running around in circles discussing whether or not the title represents a neutral point of view.

This analysis focuses attention on a recurring problem which appears to be unacknowledged. [13 words]

In mediation Feezo's words become both fulcrum and mantra: In passive compliance with Feezo's mandate, our roles are simplified. The question becomes in part, What does Feezo construe as the "primary issue" to be mediated? [33 words] --Tenmei (talk) 19:10, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Conflation in specific threads

The marginalizing an misdirection problems above are exacerbated in our talk page threads and in this mediation venue because the explicit words which we accepted are conflated with other unstated issues having to do with WP:Common name. [34 words]

Frequently, when a discussion about Senkaku Islands as a WP:Common name develops towards constructive engagement, the movement is thwarted by changing the focus to something about WP:NPOV ... and vice versa. The patterns of bait and switch in threads have frustrated incremental progress and the ultimate goals of collaborative editing. [37 words]

This is an long-standing hazard. This is stumbling block which collaborative scrutiny has been unable to mitigate in our mediation venue. [19 words]

In passive compliance with Feezo's mandate, our roles are simplified. The question becomes: What can Feezo do to ameliorate the petty bait and switch patterns which frustrate collaborative discussions? [27 words] --Tenmei (talk) 18:55, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Now he's counting the words of every paragraph. How is that relevant? Similarly, how are these two new "conflation" topics relevant? --Bobthefish2 (talk) 19:05, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

JSTOR search

I decided to redo the JSTOR searches, as Phoenix7777's search didn't include Diaoyutai, didn't attempt to check for overlaps and (I don't think) searched for English only results. First, a search with no date limitations (if you copy and paste the search strings into the JSTOR search box, you should get the same results):

• ((Senkaku) NOT (Diaoyu) NOT (Diaoyutai) NOT (Tiaoyu) NOT (Tiaoyutai)) AND la:(eng) — 176 (only S)
• (((Diaoyu) OR (Diaoyutai) OR (Tiaoyu) OR (Tiaoyutai)) NOT (Senkaku)) AND la:(eng) — 81 (any of the D/T w/o S)
• ((Senkaku) AND ((Diaoyu) OR (Dioyutai) OR (Tiaoyu) OR (Tioayutai))) AND la:(eng) — 138 (any overlapping)

Now, for the life of me, I can't get the dates to work (like, when I start adding dates, I only get 5 or less results, even if I set the range from 1925-2010). So, I just sorted the article by date order, and counted. Here's what I get:

2009-2012

• Only S: 3
• Only D/T: 2
• Overlapping: 0

2005-2012

• Only S: 15
• Only D/T: 14
• Overlapping: 18

2000-2012

• Only S: 30
• Only D/T: 35
• Overlapping: 52

1990-2012

• Only S: 76
• Only D/T: 65
• Overlappping: 85

So, these results seem to indicate a lack of common name, at least since 1990, in articles referenced in JSTOR. One problem with this (and all of the other search only results) is, of course, the overlap section. The problem is, as always, that we can't differentiate between a journal article that uses Senkaku throughout and only mentions Diaoyu once, or vice versa. NCGN does direct us to, where we can, actually look at sources, not just rely on the searches. Unfortunately, I don't work at a university, so I don't have full text JSTOR access; plus, of course, that's a huge pain.

Please let me know if I've performed these searches incorrectly—I did them to the best of my ability, but fully admit that I'm no expert in the subject matter. Finally, I'm not 100% certain what this is searching; I believe that JSTOR is always a full-text search, not a keyword search (it's definitely not a title search), as I don't think that academic articles usually get keywords in that fashion; but, I don't see a specific statement that it's a full text search, either. Qwyrxian (talk) 02:13, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

2005-2012

• S: 34 (33 unique)
• D -Guest house: 34 (33 unique)

2006-2012

• S: 18 (17 unique)
• D -Guest house: 19 (18 unique)

2009-2012

• S: 3 (2 unique)
• D -Guest house: 2 (1 unique)

--Bobthefish2 (talk) 03:15, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Your basic fault is to add all the counts of Chinese names and compare it with "Senkaku". Then if Chinese name exceed to Senkaku, what Chinese name (which is less than Senkaku) are you going to choose? You are comparing which origin of the name (Chinese or Japanese) is widely accepted instead of which English name is widely accepted. It is not a proper way to find a widely accepted name. If you would like to compare other names, they should be compared independently. As I said before,[8] "United States" and "United States of America" are deferent names and editors of the article have a longstanding dispute over the title. ―― Phoenix7777 (talk) 03:34, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

What happens in United States and United States of America is a different issue. In the end, there will always be people fighting over very minor things but that doesn't mean they should be considered a cause of discouragement. --Bobthefish2 (talk) 03:58, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Support Bob. "Penny-wise" can never make up "pound-foolish".--Lvhis (talk) 04:10, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Phoenix7777, you are actually correct in that I'm comparing the wrong things, but it may not matter. The question is--in order to be the "common name" does a name need a clear "majority", or simply a "plurality"? In other words, even if we show that "Senkaku" is "more common" than any other single name, I'm not sure that that makes it the "common" name. I'm going to inquire at Wikipedia Talk:NCGN. If you are correct, though, then all of our searches of all types should be separated out. Qwyrxian (talk) 04:23, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

You didn't answer my question "Then if Chinese name exceed to Senkaku, what Chinese name (which is less than Senkaku) are you going to choose?" Diaoyu/Diaoyutai/Tiaoyu/Tiaoyutai?―― Phoenix7777 (talk) 04:34, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I'll clarify. If we need a majority, then obviously no name will get it, and we can't rely on the idea of a "common English name". If we need a plurality (that is, if we're trying to find the one most common name), then we should redo the searches and compare them all separately.

There's a whole bunch of implied questions here; that is, are "Diaoyu/Tiaoyu" all the "same name" for purposes of this discussion, or are they separate names that need to be evaluated separate? If they are a collective, and we determine that the collective is the most common, does that mean that we then do a second round of analysis (a run-off, so to speak) to figure out which of the Chinese-origin names are most common? That certainly sounds unfair when I put it that way, doesn't it. For the first part (plurality versus majority), I've opened the discussion at WT:NCGN; I'm primarily interested in what editors outside of the current mediation think, as we all know we're all biased on the issue, and there really is a more general issue than just this one group of islands. Qwyrxian (talk) 05:20, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

1st round: Chinese language vs Japanese language.

2nd round: Most common within the language.

STSC (talk) 17:53, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Admin Golbez has given Qwyrxian a wonderful explanation about the Chinese name expressed in English in WT:NCGN#Widely_accepted_name. STSC and Bob have explained this in Qwyrxian's section "Diaoyu vs Diaoyutai" here. Qwyrxian, I'd rather make an AGF saying that you and your guys are better to improve your thinking way away from "penny-wise, pound-foolish", than guess that you guys are in purpose to badger with such "penny" stuff again and again. And also, if our wikipedian badger with some tinny margin to determine which one is the "common name" over another one, this seems that our wikipedian are doing OR way to generate a "common name" here, which WP cannot accept per its another important policy No original research. --Lvhis (talk) 18:45, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

And, in fact, that explanation was very helpful. And either you're misusing English or you're misunderstanding what AGF means. AGF means that you assume I was asking the question in good faith, which, in fact, I was. I honestly did not know if we were comparing the right things. So I asked. Also, you're misunderstanding OR: in fact, it is our responsibility to figure out if there is a common name, as that is exactly what NCGN tells us to do. I get that you want to say "Its NPOV, that's it, end of discussion." But that's not what policy tells us: we must discover if there is a single common name; if there is not, we must still come to some sort of an agreement as to what the name should be. To do that, we have to work extremely carefully and at an extremely fine level of detail, doing all sorts of searches, library research, etc., to see what the common name is in English. If you don't agree with that, then I actually don't understand how we can proceed successfully through mediation. The several relevant guidelines tell us, in this case, that we must be "penny-wise" and "pound-wise" (if I understand your metaphor properly). Let me try to use my personal experience to explain what I mean: in the English news sources I read, either the term Senkaku is used alone, is used as the primary name (as in, they use Senkaku throughout the article, but mention the Diaoyu/etc. name once), or they use a dual name once and thereafter try to avoid using any name. To me, it's "obvious" that Senkaku is the common English name. However, I fully admit that I read only a certain selection of news sources, and that those sources may well not be representative of the whole. That's why I know that I can't just declare "It's obvious," and know that our only recourse is to look to as much data as we can generate. I hope that you accept this course--I hope that we can, in the end, agree to do whatever our data tells us; and, if our data is ambiguous or inconclusive, I hope we can peacefully negotiate a compromise solution. That has always been my hope. Qwyrxian (talk) 01:49, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

When I suggested that you are better to improve your thinking way, it is truly based on AGF. If you honestly applied AGF on me (my table), STSC, and Bob, you could have already understood that the Chinese name should collectively treated from its variants when compared with the Japanese name. If you took a way "pound-wise", you would not conclude that wiki should of course take side --well, now you can still oppose my point. If your way of "penny-wise" is truly as important as "pound-wise", you can apply it on the case of "Liancourt Rocks", and overturn the current result of the name there by using the Koren name without resuming the already ceased dispute from your friends. This has been little bit out-of-topic. I stop here.--Lvhis (talk) 05:12, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Diaoyu/Diaoyutai/Tiayo/Tiaoyutai revisited

Currently, the discussion at WT:NCGN favors treating Diaoyu and Dioyutai as the same name; the issue isn't settled, but I don't see how it can be any more settled, so absent better information, I'm willing to count Diaoyu and Diaoyutai as the same name. But, after thinking about it more, I believe that we cannot consider Tiaoyu and Diaoyu to be the same English name. They have the same underlying Chinese ideographs, but that is 100% irrelevant--we are only concerned with the names as represented in English. And since there is a clear distinction between the two, and since those two names correspond to two fundamentally different political perspectives, they are not the same English name. This is, essentially, a four way race: Senkaku, Diaoyu/Diaoyutai, Tiaoyu/Tiaoyutai, and Pinnacle Islands (and possibly a joint version of one or more of those names). Saying that Tiaoyu and Diaoyu are the same English name is like saying that John and Jon are the same English name, because they both derive from the same Latin origin. Thus, while I think it's fine (assuming no sudden revelation from a Chinese-speaker) that we should combine counts for Diaoyu and Diaoyutai, we cannot combine all four "Chinese-origin" names into one, because they are fundamentally different. Qwyrxian (talk) 04:24, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Without addressing the rest of your post, how about "Labor Party" vs. "Labour Party"? --Bobthefish2 (talk) 04:49, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the example doesn't help, as the answer to that is already clearly covered under regional variations of English per WP:ENGVAR. Qwyrxian (talk) 04:58, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

What about interpreting the PRC/ROC romantiziation as regional variants of a subset of English (more precisely, English words generated from the phonetics of Chinese words)? --Bobthefish2 (talk) 05:06, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

If you want; that would mean that they have to be treated separately, just as I'm saying. If they are distinct, regional variants, then they are distinct, different names. Qwyrxian (talk) 05:11, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

My interpretation of WP:ENGVAR is that they should be treated as equal, unless you would like to argue that "Labour" and "Labor" should compete (which would be silly, IMO).— Preceding unsigned comment added by Bobthefish2 (talk • contribs)

They do, in fact, compete: in cases where there is no particular allegiance to the US or to UK spelling, then we generally just keep the article in the variant it was originally, although editors are allowed to discuss the issue on the talk page. So, if for example, someone went to Talk:Independent Labor Party (about a political party in Burundi), and made an argument that said, "Hey, yeah, y'all used "Labor" from the beginning, but according to the party's own English website, the spelling is "Labour", and plus that's what most of the newspapers say, even the few US ones that mention them), then, in fact, Common Name kicks in.

Maybe I should ask the question differently: is the /t/ vs. /d/ phoneme shift between Taiwanese and mainland Chinese pronunciation a common one? That is, if it was regularly the case that a hypothetical island spelled "Dvvcv" (v= vowel, c=consonant) in PRC would be called "Tvvcv" in Taiwan, then they may well just be spelling variants. If this is not a common spelling difference, and especially if its unique to these islands, it implies that the names are actually different. Qwyrxian (talk) 05:29, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Suppose we are to choose between "Labour" and "Labor", then it'd make sense for them to compete. But what if now a third and distinctively different term is added into the mix? Should the two still compete or be treated as one?

Addressing your second paragraph, I'd say I don't really know if there is a shift in phoneme across the strait, but it is unlikely (Benlisquare might know more about this). However, what I can tell for certain is that they are exactly the same name because they map to exactly the same Chinese words. --Bobthefish2 (talk) 05:52, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

There are two local names: "釣魚台群島" in Chinese and "尖閣諸島" in Japanese. Since this is an English site, we need to romanize "釣魚台" and "尖閣". ("群島" and "諸島" are translated as "Islands".) It's just common sense that all romanized variants of "釣魚台" would be counted for "釣魚台群島". STSC (talk) 06:15, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

First, the ideographs underlying the English transliterations are irrelevant--we only care about the terms used in English sources. Second, your point seems to forget that there isn't a "Chinese" side to this debate and a "Japanese" side--there is a clear distinction in the position put forward by the PRC and the position put forward by the ROC. Minor note: though I am defending this position vigorously right now, please don't misunderstand that this represents a single, unwavering position on my part; someone needs to clearly defend this point as a means of use argument to find the "right" (in the sense of most matching Wikipedia's practices) perspective. Qwyrxian (talk) 07:12, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Basically you just deny Diaoyutai and Tiaoyutai are pointing at the same thing. This debate is just academic to me because I don't believe search engines are the right tool to determine the "common name". STSC (talk) 07:53, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Which brings us back to the "poll" on determining what to use. This is a good example of the way one discussion (PRC vs. ROC) can easily spill into another (how we should use to determine the common name). Although both are valid issues, one of the reasons for the code of conduct is to keep the discussion in each section strictly on the topic for that section. I'm not criticizing you, STSC, since we haven't adopted the code yet, but it's something to be aware of. Actually, since even bringing this up here counts as off-topic, I'll add that none of the search engine poll options have gotten any endorsements (apart from Tenmei, who endorsed almost everything), while there does seem to be interest in using some combination of libraries, encyclopedias, and almanacs. Feezo (send a signal | watch the sky) 08:37, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Well, the same issue would underlie any search--if, for example, one encylopedia had "Diaoyu", and another had "Tiaoyu", and another had "Senkaku", then we still have to decide if that shows a clear advantage for "the Chinese name" or it shows an even split between three different names. But, I'm willing to table this issue for now and only re-raise it if it actually becomes relevant (as in, if it actually results in a different interpretation of whether or not there is a common name). Qwyrxian (talk) 09:09, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

OK. I have struck out the sentence in compliance with the provisional code. I rest my case under this heading. STSC (talk) 09:25, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Qwyrxian, I thought you could have stopped tangling this "penny" thing(s) a day before, but I was wrong. Now I make a try to join this badgering with the Chinese name expressed in a few ways in English. (1) Historic reason: Do you know Canton/Guangzhou? That is the province capital of Guangdong Province of China. Before early 1970s, you might be very difficult to find "Guangzhou" from reliable sources in English, while nowadays you may have less and less chances to find "Canton" from reliable sources in English. When you do certain quite scientific and historic search for reliable sources about this city in English, you definitely need to collectively use Canton/Guangzhou, otherwise the data you get will far from intact and complete. Peking/Beijing is another example. So is the case of "Diaoyutai/Diaoyu Islands". (2) Dialect Chinese reason: You may have known there are tons of different dialects in Chinese language. English authors are not always using the one from Chinese official mandarin, particularly when use a name for some place located in Southern part of China (no matter whether you call it PRC of ROC). Diaoyu Islands was firstly discovered by Chinese fishers and officials who were from Southern China, per Chinese history sources or from the point of Chinese historic view (don't argue with me as would-be-out-of-topic, I am just talking the Chinese names here), the Islands were under administration of Fujian (previously Fukian, oh, another example) province during Ming Dynasty (明朝). During Qing Dynasty (清朝), these Islands were under administration of Taiwan when Taiwan was no longer under administration of Fujian Province. "Tiaoyutai Islands" were most likely from Fukian dialect or "Min Nan Hua (闽南话)", instead of the mandarin "Diaoyu/Diaoyutai Islands". So the reason (1) above and (2) here are the main causes that there are different Romanized spelling for the Chinese name of these Islands. And nowadays the one "Diaoyu Islands" has been used more and more often, but still NOT ALWAYS in English. Even in some document or sources in Chinese language, in a same article sometimes "釣魚台群島" (Diaoyutai ~ in Chinese Pinyin) and sometimes "釣魚島群島" (Diaoyudao ~ in Pinyin) was alternatively used. (3) Qwyrxian emphasized "there is a clear distinction" between PRC (mainland China) and ROC (Taiwan). Unfortunately, there is no reliable sources, reliable OFFICIAL sources from BOTH sides across the Taiwan Strait to support what Qwyrxian emphasized. There is a particular section in Chinese wiki (zh-wiki) titled "台海兩岸觀點" means "The views (towards Diaoyu/Diaoyutai Islands) from both sides across the Taiwan Strait" in English, in the Chinese counterpart article of "S~ Islands dispute" "釣魚台列嶼主權問題". A summery sentence at its beginning is "目前中國大陸（中华人民共和国）观点与台灣（中華民國）观点約略一致。", which in English means "Up to date the view points (towards these islands) are approximately or roughly same from Mainland China (PRC) and Taiwan (ROC)". This summery sentence can sustain a quit long time edit history there because it is followed by this section supported by very plenty of reliable sources mainly from historic scholars and official documents from BOTH sides of the Taiwan Strait, that almost each single sentence there has been noted with supportive reliable sources. Why? Of course ROC claims these islands belong to Taiwan per a part of reason from the history of the whole China, and PRC also claims these islands shall be under Taiwan's administration and belongs to whole China. There are lot distinctions between PRC and ROC, but at this point regarding these Islands, they almost have no distinction. Do you have any reliable sources showing there was/is fighting regarding the English/Romanizing name of the Chinese name on these islands? Please do not make OR mistake again and again in the wiki. It has been so well known that there is mad dispute between the Chinese name and the Japan name, but please don't CREATE some dispute within the variant Romanized forms of the Chinese name in an OR way. Be a good senior wikipedian. (4) This side of the current dispute including me have stated many times that both the Japanese name and the Chinese name expressed in English are "common names". If you for your purpose try to pick up only one from them, the "Senkaku Islands" your favor, you need let it sustain every single search, as you said "if every single search we performed showed that 'Diaoyu' was more common, ...". This every single search shall include to compare the "SI" with each romanized form of the Chinese name individually, and of course shall also include to compare it with all romanized forms of Chinese name collectively. If Japanese name had two or more romanized forms, say, "Senkaku" and "Sengaku", we should have to use them collectively too. Even if you would be lucky to be able to say your favored one was the "only common name", you still have to face a "pound" issue. You have referred us many precedents, like "Kuril Islands", "Florence", and now you have "Sea of Japan". Please face the closest precedent "Liancourt Rocks". Please do not bypass it. Because our goal for this mediation is to solve our dispute, not for letting the dispute keep forever. --Lvhis (talk) 00:15, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

This is a very very very very very big wall of text. Please refrain from learning this very bad American habit from Qwyrxian. But I do agree... if discussions on Liancourt Rocks is relevant, then don't discourage it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bobthefish2 (talk • contribs) --02:07, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Lvhis, your comments, especially points (1) and (2), do actually help me understand better. Remember, I know absolutely nothing about the Chinese language, and only a tiny bit about the Japanese language. I am not 100% convinced, but at least I have more facts at my disposal. As I said before, though, I think that the best approach for now is to drop this point and only return to it if we have to. That would only be if 1) we do accept the use of search engine results and 2) there are significantly different results depending upon how we sort the names. And, no matter what you (all) say, Liancourt Rocks is not precedent--it, in fact, is a failure, an example of Wikipedians giving up in the face of intransigent nationalists on both sides who couldn't agree on anything and who manipulated data endlessly. It's a precedent only in that it tells us what to do if we can't do what we're actually supposed to, which is to determine the common name. Plus, it was done at a different time, and in different circumstances (LR had significantly less coverage in English sources that SI/D/T/P have now). Calling LR similar to this is like saying "Palestine/Israel issues are so contentious that the whole topic is on General Sanctions, so we should apply General Sanctions to any political/geographical/religious dispute." Please, drop it. Qwyrxian (talk) 03:50, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

All parties accepted mediation for what?

My purpose here is to focus on the primary issue that all parties have accepted mediation for. Disruption is conflated with other issues and we cannot move forward without disentangling them. --Tenmei (talk) 21:07, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Tenmei, that link (the one that reads "focus on the primary issue..." points only to Feezo's talk page. Is that perhaps a mistake? Or, more simply, can you state if you agree that the "primary issue that all parties have accepted mediation for" is "the proper title of a few articles"? If not, feel free to use a different link/diff to point to what you think others agreed to mediate. Qwyrxian (talk) 21:33, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes, thank you for pointing out my mistake. The correct link should have led to Feezo's diff here:

"... My purpose here is to focus the discussion in Wikipedia talk:Requests for mediation/Senkaku Islands exclusively on the primary issue that all parties have accepted mediation for. For the time being, all side issues are considered to be off topic. Once we resolve the core issue, we may proceed to deal with them ...." Feezo 09:21, 5 June 2011

No, the "primary issue" is explicitly not "the proper title of a few articles"

With regret, this question reveals the extent to which you appear to want to try to marginalize the impact of bait and switch.

In fact, as you will know, these words which were an explicit pre-condition for my agreement and the agreement of others

"Constant disruption of talk page by running around in circles discussing whether or not the title represents a neutral point of view."

Pretense concerning these words is strained, e.g.,

• diff Unless #Issues to be mediated is properly filled, I withhold my intention to participate in. Basically if it is the NPOV of title, then we are not involved party, it should be discussed at either WP:NPOV, WP:NCGN or WP:Title. All these guidelines state NPOV title is not subject to change. ―― Phoenix7777 10:58, 25 April 2011
• diff I suspend my decision as per Phoenix7777. Oda Mari 14:52, 25 April 2011
• diff Unless #Issues to be mediated is properly filled, this is a kind of stepping stone to nowhere. --Tenmei 15:34, 25 April 2011

Don't embarrass us both by asking this question again.

• diff Request to filing party: Please specify what this dispute is about by completing the #Issues to be mediated section. Thank you. For the Mediation Committee, AGK 13:52, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Mistakes have converted mediation from an opportunity into a stepping stone to nowhere. --Tenmei (talk) 23:30, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

I don't know what to tell you, Tenmei. As far as I can see, no one other than you supports the primary focus of the mediation as anything other than the title of these articles. You're welcome to disagree, but unless other people are going to chime in and support some other focus, it does not seem like you have a consensus for that stance. I recommend that we just stop worrying about this right now and focus on the issue that everyone else is focusing on; specifically, the searches section (with searches down by Phoenix7777, Bobthefish2, Feezo, and myself) seems to be the most specifically on target and in need of assistance. Qwyrxian (talk) 01:25, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I forgot to clarify: unless someone else indicates that they support your position, that I'm wrong, and that something other than the title is the primary focus, then I'm done with this sub-topic; as you and Feezo have said, we need to focus. Qwyrxian (talk) 01:26, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

If you have to repost other people's quotes, please do not include their signatures. STSC (talk) 01:58, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

To be honest, I did come into this mediation thinking that it's all about user conduct, but to tell the truth, I am also fine with letting the article naming to be the primary topic. Of course, I am interested in talking about the disruptive editing you (Tenmei) and your friends have been engaging in, but I can always wait. By the way, if you (Tenmei) are not happy with this mediation, you are welcomed to forfeit your participation. After all, you haven't really made any substantial contribution whereas the rest of us (including Phoenix7777 and our British friend John Smith's) had actually been contributing to discussions on issues that are of much greater relevance. You've also persistently refused to communicate yourself in an easily comprehensible manner despite numerous requests. In fact, you've even decided to delete such requests [9], which is an act that illustrates a solid determination of making things hard for other people. --Bobthefish2 (talk) 03:44, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Feezo's "hands off" decision negates the concept of a "safe zone". This is made explicit in the following talk page exchange at Talk:Bobthefish2#"I'm in the mood for dancing"

I was in the mood to confront those edit-warlords in the absence of the mediator ... --STSC 10:00, 6 June 2011

Alrighty... Just make sure you don't cross the line! But I do understand the thrill of seeing our favourite reputable British editor .... --Bobthefish2 10:36, 6 June 2011

In this context, it is timely to notice that Bobthefish2 acknowledges and confirms the bait and switch ploy here --Tenmei (talk) 17:54, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

You really should take off signatures in your quotes, because this constitutes a source of confusion (i.e. it is presented as if the quotes were written directly in this location). With that said, what you quoted about me was simply a caution towards STSC about not getting out of line. Since I have no control over him, that's the best I could've done to encourage him not to break rules.

Another thing is that I don't really know how mediations are typically done. I thought it'd actually be okay for multiple issues to be discussed at the same time. So, it does sound a bit awkward when Feezo decided to forbid discussions on other matters. While it doesn't mean his handling is inappropriate, but the alternative he chose to discourage isn't inappropriate either. --Bobthefish2 (talk) 19:30, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Comment: "Feezo decided to forbid discussions on other matters" because those "other matters" are not what the (current) mediation is about. – AJL^talk 01:07, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

And Tenmei's argument is that the "other matters" are his pre-conditions of entering mediation (which aren't necessarily unfair, since they are also very major issues). You are coming back, I take it? --Bobthefish2 (talk) 01:11, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure if I wlll come back at this time... I have some important real-life events occurring right now; I just thought I would drop in and see how things are going. – AJL^talk 01:36, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

AJL, I will be happy if you are really able to come back. And I concur what you stated regarding the matter to be mediated in this mediation. Bob, when AJL suggested me to join this mediation, what I construed was this mediation would be only dealing the name/title issue. My time and energy cannot afford to deal more than this one. And now we have seen that only this one matter has already been messed up enough and made Freezo unhappy enough. --Lvhis (talk) 03:57, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

"Hands-off" mediation plan

'Hands-off' mediation is an oxymoron.

The prospects for a constructive outcome of this so-called "mediation" venue are diminished by our mediator's "hands on"/ "hands off" decision which renders the concept of "safe zone" meaningless.

I am persuaded that these must be the mediator's priorities:

• More awareness of a growing issue that is poisoning the very essence of collaborative editing that makes Wikipedia possible: real-world factions that vie for control over articles, turning them into polemical battlegrounds where surface civility is used to cover bias, tendentiousness and even harassment. The mediator needs to take a strong stance against that sort of "polite disruption" and those who use our rules of civility as weapons, recognize that long-term warriors are toxic, not vested, and investigate beyond surface behavior issues.

• Less timidity in addressing issues related to contents (POV warring, tag teams, academic dishonesty). The mediator should be more active at curtailing content disputes. Academic integrity should become a priority; unlike "simple" incivility, the damage caused by editors misquoting, plagiarizing and editorializing destroys the credibility of our encyclopedia.

• Increased transparency in the mediation process is needed. The mediator must explain decision-making in better detail, including reasons and justification. It is important that the participants in mediation and the wider community understand why the mediator decides to intervene -- or not to intervene, because this suggests a way to approach similar problems in other contexts.

If not, why not?

Collectively, we confront a problem which is persistent enough and intense enough to convince the mediator to withdraw AND more extreme examples of the same problem clutter the threads which preceded this. Who's kidding who?

I don't know what to do. If silence implies consent, I can at least be "non-silent".

In contrast, Feezo doesn't know what to do; and "hands off" is the silence which implies consent. --Tenmei (talk) 17:54, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

I will agree with the part of the last sentence before the semi-colon, albeit (and likely) for very different reasons than what Tenmei has in mind. I don't agree with the part after the semi-colon because "hands off" can mean a refusal to fulfill a role. In this context, he used it as a bargaining chip to gain an advantage over another party in an undeserving manner. --Bobthefish2 (talk) 18:25, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Planning for end of mediation

Paraphrasing NATO Secretary General Rasmussen speaking in Brussels yesterday:

• The time has come to plan for the day after the end of this mediation exercise
• The time to start planning is now, because this mediation is coming to an end at some point, and we must be prepared for when it is over, e.g., lessons learned the hard way include

1. Anticipating future mediation: Mediator functions are impaired when attempts to moderate the dispute are "met with edit warring and veiled personal attacks"
2. Future meditation: Decisions of the mediator "relate only to the structure of the case itself"

Planning and consequences are important but insufficiently explicit aspects of mediation and it is timely to acknowledge that we must be prepared for when it is over. --Tenmei (talk) 15:03, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, who said the mediation is coming to an end? Some mediations have run for more than a year. I went back and looked for relevant diffs, but I'm not seeing them. Qwyrxian (talk) 15:39, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

In response to your question, I have edited a modifying phrase:

"... because this mediation is coming to an end at some point ..."

This section concerns planning for post-mediation. It also begins to address both probable and unanticipated consequences which evolve as a result of our collaborative investment. This is timely.

This is not novel. Before mediation began, did you not expressly anticipate its end -- see here?

AJL projected a post-mediation scenario here and I tried to summarize AJL's projected plans and consequences in different words diff. This speculation was made explicit when I focused my agreement to participate by mentioning "[u]nstated premises in the "primary issue" and "reasonable hope for a constructive and lasting outcome", e.g.,

• Issue #3, Looking forward. A structural premise of mediation is that all necessary parties have agreed to participate; but this is not the case here.

  The scope of "primary issues" which frame this case does also include future contributors who have not yet caused us to run around the mulberry bush. In the future as in the past, this article title will attract the participation of editors whose single-purpose perspective will skew our collaborative editing process.

That said, the fact remains that mediation without a mediator is an oxymoron. Feezo's withdrawal is not insignificant. It can't be marginalized or down-played.

This section is a practical acknowledgment of a harsh reality. --Tenmei (talk) 19:01, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

But Tenmei, we are actually making progress in some of the other sections. In fact, there has been some very civil and productive discussions about relevant matters. Do you not think that's significant? --Bobthefish2 (talk) 19:20, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes, civil and productive discussions are good, but mediation stopped when the mediator withdrew. Whether this is merely a pause or a conclusion, who knows?

In other words, mediation has a structure, timetable and dynamics that "ordinary" negotiation lacks and the presence of a mediator is the key distinguishing feature of the process.

What happens now or next is beyond my control or ability to affect. Much is still unresolved; but this is not an investment with a promising yield.

Whatever comes after mediation ends -- whenever -- is worth considering with care. --Tenmei (talk) 21:34, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

I must say that I concur with Tenmei's remark immediately above. Mediation without the mediator is just a discussion, but if this is not what you all wanted then I'm unsure why you frustrated the mediator into leaving.

Role of the mediator

I will return when there is reason to believe that I will be able to function effectively as mediator. What this means is that the involved parties must accept that I will sometimes need to refactor, move, and possibly remove content from time to time, in order to focus discussion. So far, nearly every attempt to do this has been met with resistance. I think it's clear that since I've left, discussion here has quickly strayed off topic. However, I believe there is still hope for this case: if the seven active parties agree to let me fulfill my duties as I see them, then I will return to actively mediating once more. Feezo (send a signal | watch the sky) 00:32, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Addendum — I'm very encouraged by the level of support for this new approach. It looks like there is support for a code of conduct, which I agree is a very good idea. In fact, why not make writing it a collaborative effort? I've created a page at Wikipedia talk:Requests for mediation/Senkaku Islands/Code for this. Also, to comment on one idea, I think in general mediators should probably not block editors in their cases; however, one idea would be to retain a "bouncer", both to confirm my decisions (so that no party feels they are being unfairly singled out) and to take whatever technical measures are necessary to enforce them. The details can be worked out on the code of conduct page. Feezo (send a signal | watch the sky) 19:52, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Update — Just a reminder that the code of conduct is being actively worked on at Wikipedia talk:Requests for mediation/Senkaku Islands/Code. I have to say, I'm very pleased with the teamwork and collegiality being shown. Everyone is welcome to contribute during the discussion phase, but once the final version is agreed on, it will be more or less set in stone—so if you have something to you want to add or discuss, best do it soon. I haven't set a deadline for the Code other than "when we agree it's done", with perhaps an extra day or two for any final comments. Feezo (send a signal | watch the sky) 02:33, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Agree. - Maybe we should set up a Code of Conduct backed by 24-hr blocking orders (Like the sending-off in a football match). I would rather the offenders being temporarily blocked than the mediator frequently walking out. STSC (talk) 00:40, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Support. Actually, there's a great deal of productive discussion going on. The only off-topic threads are largely authored by one party regarding the inclusion/exclusion of side issues. As for your refactor, move, or removal of content, I did not have any problem with them. --Bobthefish2 (talk) 00:47, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Inactive Support. However, I don't believe it would be wise to let this continue any farther. Please see your talk page for my reasoning (you may have to use history search). – AJL^talk 01:10, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Agree & Support. - also agree what STSC and Bob said. --Lvhis (talk) 01:23, 10 June 2011 (UTC) (edit conflict) -P.S. What Qwyrxian said below is also reasonable to me, i.e. collapse or/and move those stuff first. --Lvhis (talk) 17:38, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Agree. The Code of Conduct sounds okay, but it seems like what will happen is that some people will get temporarily removed from mediation (possibly for longer and longer periods) and will end up coming back and either bombing the page in an attempt to get "caught up", or will grow more and more frustrated with being on the "outside" that eventually they will reject whatever result is mediated. Instead, I actually liked the way Feezo was working before--collapse and ignore (and, even, moving stuff to archive/sub-pages). However, if others think a Code would be helpful, I would support it. Qwyrxian (talk) 06:10, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Agree But I don't think blocking people is going to resolve anything. Better to get the mediation going again. John Smith's (talk) 07:34, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Disagree Feezo's paragraph here is a "polite fiction". The proposal is at odds with Feezo's axiomatic observation that "mediation requires honesty, but also a willingness to engage". In the contexts established on this talk page and here, this is shown to be an impractical plan because it marginalizes the need to help parties to develop a shared understanding of the conflict and to work toward building a practical and lasting resolution. This is one hand clapping.

Attempting to avoid disagreement, I sent e-mails to Feezo. The "brick wall" response was "I don't know what you expect me to do." The answer is easy. I expect Feezo to offer proposals to which I can gladly agree. Also, it can't be repeated too often: I expect the mediator to help parties to develop a shared understanding from which to build. --Tenmei (talk) 21:27, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Response to Tenmei: Then, with all due respect, you didn't read the guide to mediation. That's not how mediation works on Wikipedia. At this point, though, it looks like we're going to get consensus on the Code and a path forward; I suppose you'll eventually have to decide between participating in the mediation under those terms or withdrawing; that would be a shame, because you have something useful to offer. Qwyrxian (talk) 22:30, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Qwyxian -- Precisely. I did read carefully. This is one factor which sophistry cannot obscure.

1. Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/Guide offers us words which bring fine-focus to a dilemma which cannot be glossed over: "Requests which use the required format but do not provide all the required information are also considered malformatted."

   My diffs and those of Phoenix7777 are congruent with the "issues to be mediated" here, and any perceived incongruence is not resolved by reading the words themselves. Why is that?

   Bait and switch fails because the express words of our "primary issue" remain unedited; and the non-standard "code" does nothing to mitigate this. The short-term tactic of re-labeling and re-framing our diffs as "edit warring and veiled personal attacks" also undermines the imprimatur of mediation.

2. The language usage in your diff conflates WP:Consensus with WP:Straw polls. This language provides a timely context for responding to Feezo's words here: "...it would behoove you to stop wiki-linking common terms like argument and consensus in your posts. It's insulting, frankly...as if you expect that your audience needs to have these terms defined...."

   In fact, the definitions of the words "argument" and "consensus" change too frequently and too unpredictably in diffs having anything to do with the Senkaku Islands. The term "consensus" is not fungible. It is a demand for specific performance.

3. Damn with faint praise -- not good, not welcome, not unnoticed.

Bottom line. Mediation fails -- it has been short-circuited by unseemly tricks -- unless the "primary issue" of mediation is re-written.

NOT THIS (which was crucial for agreement to participate):

>Constant disruption of talk page by running around in circles discussing whether or not the title represents a neutral point of view.

RATHER, SOMETHING ELSE (which is Bait and switch):

>Constant disruption of talk page by running around in circles discussing whether or not the title redux represents a neutral point of view.

The term "off-topic" is not understood as long as the express issues to be mediated remain as they were at the outset. Simply declaring any diff "off-topic" without explanation achieves nothing. It does not encourage understanding or engagement, which are inextricable in a meaningful dialog. The re-framing is explicit here:

I find it interesting that Phoenix7777 and Tenmei has chosen to attack the mediator so early into the mediation process ... but as we can see, the current mediator was not even given a chance to deal with their objections before the missiles are fired. --Bobthefish2 (talk) 02:51, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

This remains an elephant in the room which the so-called "code" ignores. There was no "attack", no "missles fired". This was timely and "honest" and "engagement". Serial diffs were marginalized by defining the words as "off topic", but how and why were not explained.

The so-called "code" is a similar path to anywhere. --Tenmei (talk) 14:22, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Please look at the definition of "off topic" on Wiki. The code no.3 provides you the channels to air any concern (or missiles) you may have; it simply asks you not to do it in the safe zone. To be honest I'm still not quite sure what your main grievances are after reading the whole chunks of texts (with strange phrases and links) in your comments. STSC (talk) 15:23, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

I guess Tenmei should try to resolve this with AGK and Feezo if he has so much grievances with how this process is being conducted (or at least "planned to be conducted in the presumably near future"). --Bobthefish2 (talk) 21:25, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

STSC -- no. "Missiles" is Bobthefish2's term, a "spin" introduced to denigrate and marginalize in the same way as characterizations like "chunks of texts" and "strange phrases". No sale. --Tenmei (talk) 23:30, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Bobthefish -- no. Your open-ended "guess" is another diversion tactic. Not buying it. --Tenmei (talk) 23:30, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Again. Mediation fails -- and its anticipated imprimatur is debased -- unless the malformed "issues to be mediated" are re-written. The bait and switch is only cured by explicit language:

• CURRENT "primary issue"

Constant disruption of talk page by running around in circles discussing whether or not the title represents a neutral point of view.

• UNSTATED issue(s) -- the pig in a poke premise(s) which Feezo bought ... but without acknowledging the inevitable array of consequences, some of which have now ensued:

Constant disruption of talk page by running around in circles discussing whether or not the title redux represents a neutral point of view.?

Mediation needs to be a self-fulfilling exercise rather than a self-destructive one. --Tenmei (talk) 23:30, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Extended content

A friendly reminder: You forgot to count the number of words you used in each sentence [10]. --Bobthefish2 (talk) 23:46, 13 June 2011 (UTC) That's not a friendly reminder. You could call it mockery, sarcasm, baiting, or any number of equally unfriendly things, but it comes to the same thing. Please don't do it. Feezo (send a signal | watch the sky) 01:08, 14 June 2011 (UTC) Hmm... Feezo. What about the comments like "diversion tactics", "Missiles is Bobthefish2's term, a "spin" introduced to denigrate and marginalize"? Surely, these are much less friendly than my reminder. In fact, they appear to be very public denunciations. What do you think? --Bobthefish2 (talk) 01:58, 14 June 2011 (UTC) It wasn't a reminder. See my comments on the code sub page for my views on Tenmei's writing style. Feezo (send a signal | watch the sky) 02:14, 14 June 2011 (UTC) A reminder is an act that serves to notify someone of some concept that he may have forgotten about. You still have not replied to my question by the way. That's also a reminder. --Bobthefish2 (talk) 02:22, 14 June 2011 (UTC) I think both of you could stand to be a little nicer to each other. Feezo (send a signal | watch the sky) 02:29, 14 June 2011 (UTC) I do have pretty thick skin so I usually don't take exception to sharp things pointed at me. The same obviously doesn't hold true over at the other end though (and not like I point sharp things at people anyway)! --Bobthefish2 (talk) 02:33, 14 June 2011 (UTC) My apologies, I have crossed out those words. STSC (talk) 00:22, 14 June 2011 (UTC) Bobthefish2 -- Sarcasm does not address the substance of the my words. Zero tolerance for WP:Baiting is just one of many lessons learned the hard way. There is a difference between WP:Don't take the bait and pretending that there is no provocation. We have already stretched pretense beyond the limit of its elasticity.

Returning to the subject at hand: the mediation fails in its function unless a clear line is drawn between what Feezo construes to be "on-topic" or "off-topic."

In order to follow Feezo's leadership, we need to know what Feezo means by the phrase "material not directly related to the primary issue under mediation." For the time being, Feezo's mediation plan invites us to comply with what? That is the question from which sarcasm distracts.

Mediation needs to be a self-fulfilling exercise -- building from a solid foundation toward a constructive end point. --Tenmei (talk) 00:37, 14 June 2011 (UTC)