User talk:Jimbo Wales

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Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(use_English)#Specific_proposals_to_change_the_wording_of_the_policy

I believe this page could attract the attention to the discussion about a proposed change in an important Wikipedia guideline. Thanks for any suggestions. --Vejvančický (talk | contribs) 14:46, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

I am very strongly opposed to this, as it is a move in the wrong direction. We should be strongly moving away from using excessive diacritics, as they are unhelpful and confusing for English readers. I see people saying "that the public doesn't understand them doesn't matter" - that's 100% wrong. We are here to write for the public, in English. Article titles should be in English and while some deviation from that can be a good thing, it should always be undertaken with caution.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:56, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your opinion. What about the proper names of people who are not English? --Vejvančický (talk | contribs) 15:06, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Jimbo has answered your query with a clear and concise response. Asking the same question in a different way will not change his initial answer. The policy as spelled out at Wikipedia:Article titles requires that the article title is to use the name that is most frequently used to refer to the subject in English-language reliable sources. This applies to the title of the article – but within the text of the article, pursuant to WP:MOSBIO, the person's legal name should usually appear first in the article. I trust that explains the current Wikipedia policy as it relates to this issue. Dolovis (talk) 15:32, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

You know copying and pasting the exact same statement over and over isn't useful either. His question was a valid question to ask as a follow up. He is asking about people where there aren't English sources, which happens a lot. -DJSasso (talk) 15:39, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Um, have you looked into Britannica or Encarta recently, with this question in mind? The current debate is about proposed page moves such as Julia Görges -> Julia Goerges. There is a wide range of practices concerning diacritics, ranging from the tabloid press and sites that publish sports tables (no diacritics at all), via the quality press (typically diacritics for a small, explicitly listed number of European languages) to academic publishing (all diacritics). Should we really move Gerhard Schröder to Gerhard Schroeder (Britannica), Selma Lagerlöf to Selma Lagerlof (Britannica) and Søren Kierkegaard to Soren Kierkegaard (Britannica)? (Note how ö, ö, ø becomes oe, o, o.) Do we really want to move François Mitterrand to Francois Mitterrand even though façade is the most common spelling of a normal English word of French origin?

So far we have had a de facto consensus that among the many alternative English spellings for foreign names (in Latin-based alphabets) we almost always use the original one, as it is the most 'correct' one and the one with the most prestige. Recently a small number of people have started to fight vehemently against this based on the theory that one can translate names into English simply by dropping diacritics. These disputes are often about the kind of names (French, Spanish, German) which newpapers such as the New York Times or the Guardian routinely spell with diacritics, even if they get their news via newswires that drop or transcribe them as a matter of policy.

When you read English newspaper manuals of style you generally find the following four concerns:

• Names should be spelled as 'correctly' as possible, and that includes diacritics.
• Can we get the name right? (It's easier in French or Spanish than in Vietnamese.)
• Are there technical problems? (More likely with Đặng Hữu Phúc than with Gérard Depardieu)
• Consistency. (For the same language, either drop all diacritics always, or never drop any diacritics.)

Basically the only points where they differ is in the lists of English words that are spelled with or without diacritics (some spell façade but nee, others facade but née, reflecting similar variations in which spelling comes first in the various dictionaries) and in the lists of languages for which they preserve diacritics. We have the time and qualifications to get all diacritics right, and technically we are limited only by Windows Glyph List 4 as the greatest common denominator of reasonable modern computer environments. Hans Adler 16:12, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

(response to Jimmy Wales). Bless you Jimbo, bless you. I too agree, the pro-diacritics side has hijacked English Wikipedia (via their numbers) & are hell bend on not loosening their control. GoodDay (talk) 18:46, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

To answer a bunch of specific questions above in one go: yes, all of those renamings to use English rather than foreign languages should happen immediately. I don't care what Britannica and Encarta do; they are resources for the 20th century, which is behind us now. I think moderation is in order, but I think we are very far from moderation. Đặng Hữu Phúc is a brilliant example: this is an absolutely ridiculous thing to have in an English encyclopedia as a title. What appalls me about this most is the weirdness of assuming that if something sort of looks like an English letter, we should have it, while if it doesn't sort of look like an English letter, we shouldn't. Shall we move Japan to 日本? Of course not, no one disagrees. But we have somehow, wrongly in my view, gotten to the point that Đặng Hữu Phúc is remotely plausible, since it sort of kind of in some weird way looks a little bit like English.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:11, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

What makes matters worst is a majority of editors want the diacritics in the article titles. Some of the pro-dios crowd accuse myself & others of being basically simple minded & sorta xenopohobic 'cuz of our opposition. Of course, I see many of them as pushing dios, due to 'old country' pride. GoodDay (talk) 19:17, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Agree. Which part of en.wikipedia.org is so complex? There is nothing racist or xenophobic about the practice of anglicising terms - if maintained consistently it's a methodology that alows people to easily search and navigate the enyclopedia - thus finding out information... which I assume is the point of the work after all. Pedro :  Chat  19:36, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Yup, include me in the 'anti-diacritics' crowd too. I think the 'pro' crowd are forgetting that Wikipedia is supposed to assist its readers, not cater to the predilections of editors. AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:47, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

(ec) There are actually two important differences between 日本 and Đặng Hữu Phúc:

• 日本 is a Japanese name for a country that has an English name. Đặng Hữu Phúc is a Vietnamese name for a Vietnamese pianist and composer who has no English name and apparently no direct connection to an English-speaking country.
• 日本 is written in Chinese script. If we wanted to use the name here in its original form, we would transcribe or transliterate it. Until recently, Vietnamese was written in a variant of Chinese script, but nowadays they only use a Latin orthography that was first introduced by Catholic missionaries in the 17th century. Đặng Hữu Phúc is already the transcription/transliteration.

I have given you this name as an example of where we may be overdoing it. We seem to be handling Vietnamese names inconsistently, and I can see why. On the other hand, given that English dictionaries contain several words with French accents (often as an alternative spelling, but in some cases such as exposé, resumé and façade usually as the preferred spelling), it would be absurd to drop accents from French names – and then in the (rare) worst case use them in English words in the same text!

Also, in many fields it's just standard for high-quality typesetting to use diacritics as appropriate. As a mathematical logician I am used to reading English texts that mention Gödel's incompleteness theorems and Łoś's theorem. While Łoś looks a bit unusual, most people who are exposed to the theorem know that the name is pronounced wash, and to these Los's theorem would look very jarring. I really cannot agree with the notion that English is so xenophobic that the use of diacritics is automatically un-English. This is a misconception that I have found debunked in various style manuals and in the Oxford Companion to the English language. Hans Adler 19:53, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a specialist encyclopedia. Do you know how "Ł" is pronounced? It sort of looks like an "L" in English, but it isn't. Addendum: Jerzy Łoś is a perfect example of how we are not appropriately serving our readers on this issue. Nowhere in the article do I learn how to pronounce the man's name. Yes, we do have the (incomprehensible to 99.99% of all readers) IPA pronounciation guide. What we should do is have an appropriate and user-friendly explanation of his name *in Polish* (as we would for a Chinese name, for example) with an explanation of how it is Anglicized and how to pronounce it. Instead, we have a pseudo-intellectual snobbishness that we refuse (at least implicitly, I am not accusing the authors of this article of anything, just pointing out the consequences of weak policy o this point) to explain the main thing that a math student might need to know for class, i.e. how to say the man's name to talk to friends about his ideas.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:01, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

You're aware that "Los" is pronounced nothing like "Łoś" right? This'd be a bit like having an article on a Iimbo Valęz on Polish Wikipedia (pronounced as you think it'd be pronounced), whoever that may be. Or maybe Dzimbuś Waleski or something (ok that one is made up). You would have people under names which are nothing like their actual names, which have only a superficial relationship to English and which would probably end up confusing a lot of people. It's really omitting relevant diacritics that does a disservice to the reader, not vice versa. Same goes for place names of course too.Volunteer Marek (talk)

• For the record, I used to be opposed to the use of diacritics. I now believe that 26 letters are simply not enough.

  I'm sure it's not out of "pseudo-intellectual snobbery" that a pronunciation of 'Łoś' isn't offered in the article, but more likely oversight because it's something the assembled authors may have taken for granted. As Wikipedia is a work in progress, that is surely an issue that can and will be addressed by the authors, now that this has been pointed out. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 07:11, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Did you know that Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia, and the answer is just a Ł away? Thanks to hyperlinks, Wikipedia needs less dumbing down than other encyclopedias. For those who need it dumbed down, there is the simple English Wikipedia. —Kusma (t·c) 20:06, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Except, see above, we don't do that, we don't explain at all, and frankly, you are simply wrong about something important: using English in an English encyclopedia is not "dumbing down" - that's an anti-reader attitude that we should kick to the curb as quickly and strongly as possible. Our job is to educate the reader, not to be snobby pseudo-intellectual obscurantists.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:13, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Precisely: we educate the reader by giving Polish names in their correct spelling, and then teach them how to pronounce that correctly using IPA plus ideally a sound file. And the entire text can be in English even if foreign words are not horribly misspelled. —Kusma (t·c) 20:27, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Currently in Wikipedia, many foreign words are horribly misspelled - in English - by including things that aren't even remotely close to English letters, but which happen to be shaped similar to English letters. There is no problem with "giving Polish names in their correct (Polish) spelling" as long as we also give the correct English spelling - particularly in the title. What we do today is the worst possible choice: we spell things wrongly in English, misleading and confusing the reader, with no explanation other than the indecipherable IPA. That's just not helpful. I advocate that we use English primarily in titles, making exceptions in a handful of cases when there are good reasons, and that we give the local representation (whether it is Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Polish, etc.) and explain it to the reader. Giving people something completely wrong and misleading because Unicode allows us to be snobbish is just wrong.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:33, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Most high-quality modern English-language scholarly sources about foreign people and affairs use diacritics. That you suggest to deviate from good scholarly practice is quite disturbing to me, but fortunately you don't make the rules around here. —Kusma (t·c) 20:49, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

For the vast majority of Polish names the most correct English spelling is the correct Polish spelling, because no English version of the name exists. Other than the stupid method of just dropping them, there is no systematic procedure for getting rid of diacritics. Because none is needed, since everyone who cares about spelling foreign names correctly simply uses the diacritics. Hans Adler 19:49, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

But you are right that Wikipedia is not a specialist encyclopedia. It is many specialist encyclopedias all in one, combined with a general purpose encyclopedia. —Kusma (t·c) 20:11, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

No, you are mistaken. Wikipedia is not at all any specialist encyclopedia, at all. It is an encyclopedia for everyone.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:13, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Did Jimbo really mean move them all to"English"? Quite frankly, François Mitterrand is more familiar than Francois Mitterrand, the latter really would confuse because you just don't see it anywhere. Surely, WP:COMMONNAME has got to apply. DeCausa (talk) 19:57, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I think all should be moved to English. I disagree with you completely with respect to Francois Mitterand, it's an empirical question though, and I'm willing to be proven wrong. An important point here is that I don't know how to type "ç" and I bet 99.99% of English speakers don't either. That's relevant. Why? Because "ç" is not a letter in English. And this is the English Wikipedia.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:59, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

That's not true. As you can easily verify by taking any English dictionary and looking up the words façade and soupçon, ç is a letter that does occur in English words. They are loanwords that come from French, but now they are English. Hans Adler 23:34, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Well, that's what I mean by WP:COMMONNAME. It is an empirical question, and if it's provably more common to see diacritics in French names used in English (and some other languages eg Spanish), which I suspect it is, then there shouldn't be a diktat saying they can't be used. DeCausa (talk) 20:07, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

This is very similar to style and language registers. Some practices are OK and in fact perfectly standard when you are writing emails or technical documents at work, but are not OK for prestigious, professionally typeset publications. Concerning practicalities: About 3 years ago I got rid of all my German keyboards. Since then I am using British and US keyboards exclusively because I can type German umlauts and ß with them almost as easily, and it's much easier to type the diacritics in the most important other languages. I just have to switch my keyboard layout from US to US-International. I have never had a problem with that on any operating system, or any language version. Hans Adler 20:14, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

(ec) I think it's also worth noting that for Vietnamese names our usage is so far divided, while for names in (non-Cyrilic, non-Greek) European languages we almost universally use the diacritics. I am pretty sure that if we were going to change this we would have to rename hundreds of thousands of articles, and we would sometimes have to take non-obvious decisions such as whether to transcribe a Swedish person with the German last name Müller as Mueller (German style transcription) or as Muller (Swedish style transcription). We would also get thousands of new name clashes that would require the rethinking of many disambiguation pages. I just clicked Special:Random 20 times and got 2 articles with diacritics. If we are really talking about 10% of our articles, then this should certainly not be decided on a whim.

Oh, and as just one example of the problems we would face: Do you want to rename Fianna Fáil to Fianna Fail? Hans Adler 20:07, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

I think there can be a case to be made in some cases for including diacritics. My point is that this case does need to be made, and we've gone completely off the rails in terms of making the case. We have proposals that are absolutely wrong, to default to including diacritics in all cases: that's just wrong, a serious disservice to readers. I do agree that for a handful of English words, and a handful of names in a handful of languages, including some diacritics is the right thing to do. But we should always subject this to very strict scrutiny, particularly considering how badly wrong we have it today in so many areas.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:16, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

But those accent marks don't help me in anyways & they're just annoying. GoodDay (talk) 20:11, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Jimbo, I agree with that. You seemed to be going further with the "move them all to English". Just to be annoyingly repetitive, if we stick with WP:COMMONNAME on this it should deliver a reasonable solution on a case-by-case basis. DeCausa (talk) 20:19, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes, to be clear, I meant the examples that I had seen up above. I do think in some (relatively rare) cases, WP:COMMONNAME and common sense will drive us to accept the diacritic. However, I think that even in cases where WP:COMMONNAME via some simple metrics (google news searches, etc.) sends us in one direction, clarity and our sincere desire to connect with an educate our readers (rather than look down on them) may suggest a different course. Thoughtfulness is always required. My primary concern tonight is to strongly object to the suggestion, which I regard as disastrous, that we should have a default starting point of using non-English letters. That's a really bad idea.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:24, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

I fear that English-language Wikipedia will be pushed to morph into Multiple-language Wikipedia. GoodDay (talk) 20:30, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Well Jimbo isn't going to rule by decree on this, so those "pro-dios" who have "hijacked" Wikipedia can sleep easy. GoodDay, your fears are unfounded and are a hysterical flying leap from the use of diacritics. Jimbo, we do make mountains out of molehills and this debate is no exception - is the use of diacritics in article titles really "disastrous"? That's hard to believe, it's easy to get entrenched in minutiae. I fear that we are deciding the colour of the bike sheds here. Can anyone point to a discussion outside Wikipedia of the use of diacritics on Wikipedia? (other than our Metal umlaut article). We offer redirects for people searching with unadorned lettering and any English speaker can readily read Latin letters even if they've got funny twiddly bits on them. And if we do go down the path of not including twiddly bits in titles we can still include the foreign spelling in brackets as is common practice for non-English alphabets so all is not lost if the heathens win :)

If you think we need to do better in explaining pronunciation than the frankly impenetrable IPA then what should we use? Spelling out phonetically is clumsy and misses varying pronunciation across English dialects. Fences&Windows 20:56, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

If feasible, it would be nice to have a MediaWiki extension that automatically turns IPA into audio files. Hans Adler 21:01, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Apparently the Google Translate text-to-speech uses eSpeak, which is open source. Could use that? Fences&Windows 23:39, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

I think I can sum up my frustration as follows. When I see this name: Đặng Hữu Phúc I have no idea how to pronounce it. Up above, it was argued that I can just look up these symbols. Well, they aren't linked, but let's imagine that I am energetic enough to do so. My favorite unpronounceable symbol that I have never seen before in this name is ữ. What is that? It looks like a 'u' but it has a tilde on top and a bit of last nights dinner stuck to the side of his face. Fine. Let's look him up. ữ. Neat, it turns out that: "It is pronounced [ɨ].". Wow, one unpronounceable character that I have never seen turns out to be pronounced as another unpronounceable character that I have never seen. What's worse is that now my confidence is even more shattered. It looks sort of like a 'u' with some stuff stuck on it, but it turns out to be pronounced like an 'i' with some slash through it. Great. So, being more diligent than anyone could be reasonably expected, I click on that... and I get this article: Close central unrounded vowel. This tells me some stuff about how my tongue should be positioned... "the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel."

Suffice to say, this is an insult to the reader, incredibly pretentious and of zero value. What I really need is a straightforward anglicization of the name according to some standard and comprehensible rules, preferably ones used by media that I know about and understand.

Anyone who says that Wikipedia should look down on me for not really wanting to spend a few hours studying linguistics to get a basic idea of how to say this name in English is mistaken.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:52, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

I have the same problem with this name. But I guess anyone who looks up a Vietnamese pianist and composer who is mostly unknown outside Vietnam is much more likely to have a rough idea what to do with these diacritics than you and me. Hans Adler 20:57, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Some food for thought
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
English may or may not keep the accentuation in such words as élite, café, pâté, fête, gîte, rôle, pied à terre, pièce de résistance. They are often dropped for typographic convenience, especially in AmE, even when they offer strong visual contrast: pâté may be shown as paté or even pate, despite possible confusion with pate (head). – Oxford Companion to the English Language, under "Accent as diacritic" Exposé has been used in English since the early 19th century. [...] Exposé can be written either with or without an acute accent: [...] Both forms are widely used. The accented form is the more common of the two, possibly because it clearly indicates how the word is pronounced [...]. – Webster's Dictionary of English Usage You may also have noted that the unaccented cliche is sometimes used but the accented cliché is much more common. – Webster's Dictionary of English Usage Template:Blockquotebottom And the following, from the Economist Style Guide: Template:Blockquotetop accents On words now accepted as English, use accents only when they make a crucial difference to pronunciation: café cliché communiqué exposé façade soupçon But: chateau decor elite feted naive If you use one accent (except the tilde - strictly, a diacritical sign), use all: émigré mêlée protégé résumé Put the accents and diacritical signs on French, German, Spanish and Portuguese names and words: José Manuel Barroso Federico Peña Françoise de Panafieu Wolfgang Schäuble Leave accents and diacritical signs off other foreign names. Any foreign word in italics should, however, be given its proper accents. names As with all names, spell them the way the person has requested, if a preference has been expressed. Here are some names that cause spelling difficulties. [The following is an excerpt, including only accented names] Joaquín Almunia José María Aznar José Manuel Barroso (no need to include his third name, Durão) Cuauhtémoc Cardenas Jean-Pierre Chevènement José Cutileiro Valéry Giscard d'Estaing (Mr Giscard d'Estaing) Felipe González Juan José Ibarretxe Franz Müntefering Karl Otto Pöhl Wolfgang Schäuble Gerhard Schröder José Sócrates Adolfo Suárez (Spain) Tabaré Vázquez (Dr) José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero placenames Use English forms when they are in common use. [following list originally with 36 entries] Zurich without an umlaut [...] some spellings [again shortened drastically] Baden-Württemberg Côte d'Ivoire, Ivorian Dusseldorf (not Düsseldorf) Guantánamo Quebec, Quebecker (but Parti Québécois) São Paolo (Brazilian city) detente (not détente) mêlée Template:Blockquotebottom Hans Adler 20:57, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

"Straightforward anglicizations" won't tell you how to pronounce it either, so your preferred option is not a solution to your problem. Fences&Windows 20:58, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Precisely. Let's compare Łoś and Los. For most people both spellings carry more or less the same amount of information, except the first also tells them it's from some Eastern European language while the second leaves that open. But those who have once seen the correct spelling will recognise it, may even know it's pronounced wash, and will be glad that they don't have to guess whether we are talking about the Polish guy they have heard of or a German whose name really happens to be Los. (3 hits in the phone book of Berlin, all with German first names.) Hans Adler 21:11, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

I appreciate the marks here, because without them I might pronounce it like the first word in "Los Angeles" and sound like an idiot. At least with the marks I have a clue that I need to figure out how it is pronounced. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 17:51, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Why do you want to say this name in English? It isn't English, and saying it "in English" will mean pronouncing it wrong. Many of the sounds used in the name do not exist in English, so no "straightforward" system can give you the answer. As Vietnamese is tonal, it is probably impossible to convey the sound of the name without really listening to it (or really studying about the linguistics). That does not mean Wikipedia looks down on you: it just means that the world is complicated. Wikipedia isn't looking down on you when you don't understand intersection homology either. —Kusma (t·c) 21:04, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Why do I want to say this name in English? Because I speak English. The point is, I want to say the name out loud, and Wikipedia not only gives me no guidance on it, it insults me by writing the name in a character set that is not English. You might just as well tell me that the capital of 日本 is 東京. Why might a person want to say a word from another language? There are dozens of reasons. Possibly I have seen the film A Far Time Past and I really enjoyed the score. I want to ask my friend who knows a lot about music about this composer, but I feel a little shy. He's sooooo knowledgeable, and I want to not embarrass myself by butchering the name. I'm a worldly guy, I travel the world, I'm comfortable with appoximations. The point is: Wikipedia doesn't even give me anything close to a usable approximation. I can't even type the name, I have to cut and paste it.

In reality what I'm likely to do is to go to the only source in the article, IMDB, and find the name there, and conclude that Wikipedia is written by wonky jackasses rather than people who care about the reader.

We could do better. Intersection homology is an entirely different kind of case. Even in this case, I argue that we do our readers a disservice when we don't include a basic explanation that more people could understand. But that's not why I say it is an entirely different kind of case.

Our composer friend here, however his name is spelled or pronounced, writes music for movies. One need not be an expert in linguistics (or the complex IPA system) to hear some music and like it and want to learn more. Arguably, one simply cannot grasp intersection homology without a lot of background. But I totally understand what this guy does: he writes music for movies. Asking me to learn Vietnamese, or IPA, just to be able to casually say to my friend, oh, hey, I heard this music in a movie the other day and I really liked it, I remember you know a lot about Asian music, do you know about <>?

The argument here is that we could give better explanations of how to say things. I say we should make that mandatory by insisting that outside of some clearly defined and highly limited exceptions, we absolutely ought not to be using characters that English readers will not understand.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:50, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

OK, we call him (or her?) Đặng Hữu Phúc, and IMDB calls him Huu Phuc Dang. We are putting the family name first as seems to be the custom in Vietnam, and the given name last. Which makes sense because where we would just say the family name, they just say the given name. IMDB puts the family name last. Both schemes make sense. As far as orthography is concerned, they have merely stripped off the diacritics. The result may look a bit more familiar, but surely you can do that in your mind as well? Of course when you are doing it yourself you are aware that you are doing something dubious. But it's not really better if someone else does it for you. It's the difference between a sausage whose composition and production process you know, and one where you are just trusting the butcher.

As far as I'm concerned, I have no idea how Vietnamese phonetics works, but I just read it's tonal like Chinese, I see tone marks that look like those in Pinyin, and that allows me to at least make an educated guess at the tones of the syllables. (Which consists in making the pitch follow the curves of the diacritics on the letters.) Therefore even if I get the vowels and consonants mostly wrong otherwise, I would have a better chance of being unterstood by a Vietnamese speaker.

And that's with Vietnamese. I am not even sure that we want the diacritics for Vietnamese, necessarily. But dropping them in French names and writing "Francois Mitterrand" in a relatively formal context such as an encyclopedia would be a sign of relatively extreme anti-intellectualism – at least on this side of the pond, where English speakers are used to having neighbours who speak different languages. Hans Adler 23:43, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

...pronounced "Dang Who Fuck"...no problem. We have neighbors who speak different languages, too. Mexico, Quebec, New Jersey...
⋙–Berean–Hunter—► ((⊕)) 03:16, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Đặng Hữu Phúc is an article originally written in Vietnamese, including the name of the article. When the article was translated (and greatly shortened), the English-form name was in the lede, followed by the Vietnamese name in parentheses. Then the English-form name was dropped, and the Vietnamese name moved out of the parentheses. The IMDb template has a 'name' field, to be used when the IMDb name is different from the Wikipedia articles name. Well, that field was filled with the article's name, NOT the IMDb name (I've now changed it). So, no English-form name is available anywhere in the article - in the (purportedly) English language Wikipedia. iow, the writers do NOT want "ordinary readers" to read these articles, just the "enlightened ones". Except anyone vaguely "enlightened" would click on the Vietnamese language version, use Google Translate, and see a much more extensive article. So what exactly was achieved here? If we were discussing where the English-form name should be in the article, vs. where the original language form should be, that would make sense. Instead, the goal seems to be to 'cleanse' all articles of all English-format names, even though those are in common use elsewhere. Sounds like a STATUSRULES or IMBETTERTHANYOU argument. We're supposed to be the accessible and welcoming encyclopedia, so imo this makes no sense. Wild guess: the composer is more interested in people listening to his music than trying to say or spell his name. So let's make it easy for them. I've noticed the lists of alternate-language articles for various people, and those articles are 'translated' into each language, as one would expect. See Bashar al-Assad and Barack Obama. So, this discussion isn't really limited to the English language Wikipedia. Flatterworld (talk) 00:52, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

• Đặng Hữu Phúc as an example (above) seems to me to be used in 'tabloid' or 'scare' fashion. Let's not concern ourselves with diacritics use in scripts that use diacritics for intonation. As I pointed out at the centralised discussion, the über-colonial English language is, in this day and age of globalisation, showing its limitations. Despite its widespread use, English is highly idiosyncratic, pronunciation is irregular; there are numerous variants in use around the world – most notably the two versions on either side of 'the pond'. The 26 letters of our alphabet are woefully inadequate when trying to capture pronunciations of even many other languages with Romanised characters and standardised pronunciations, such as French and Czech, both of which I speak. English officially recognises hundreds if not thousands of new loan words each year, and it is time to welcome loan letters too. At least three have already made it into daily English usage – the e-acute, the u-umlaut and the c-cedilla – and are in widespread use. These, and other letters with diacritics have no substitute in English. Pity poor Jiří Novák, English people seeing the bare 'Jiri Novak' would undoubtedly call him "Jerry Novak" instead of pronouncing his name as it should be – "Yirzhi Novaak". I won't burden your talk page any more. You know where the centralised discussion is. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 06:51, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Own goal. That's why "Yirzhi Novaak" would be his English-form name. As I said before, look at what the Wikipedias in other languages do. If other sources have decided to use Jiri Novak, that's not Wikipedia's problem. otoh, many Wikipedia articles include both the pronunciation AND an audio recording of it. Example: (/bəˈrɑːk huːˈseɪn oʊˈbɑːmə/ Use those. As for Đặng Hữu Phúc, the problem is clearly that the article was purposely cleansed of all instances of the English-format name, including the External link. That's true of other articles as well, he was simply an example already used. Flatterworld (talk) 15:49, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
• Interestingly, I have my own to cent to offer here, completely 180° from Jimmy's: My given name is Marc-André. It's not "Marc-Andre", nor is it "Marc" and if I magically became notable, an article titled "Marc-Andre Pelletier" would be, simply, erroneous. I do not have a name in English, though I conventionally accept being called Marc for simplicity's sake, and I would be very much insulted at the suggestion that I should pretend that some random sequence of letters that resemble my name are my name to assuage some naming convention. "Marc-Andre" is no closer to my name than "Xarc-André" would be, and just as incorrect: in both cases you'd be randomly substituting some incorrect letter. — Coren ^(talk) 14:44, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Why do you think your position differs from mine? I think that "André" is a perfectly good example where the diacritic should be used.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 05:40, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
    • Perhaps this a diplomatic way out of an ideological position? or perhaps your opposition is to the intimidating rending of Vietnamese script, compared to the "more familiar" Latin-based scripts from European countries? --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 06:55, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Indeed. For the same reason I am Piotr, not Peter, even through I tell my American friends to call me Peter. We don't translate names in English, and my second name is Bronisław, not Bronislaw, just like Coren is Marc-André. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 18:52, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
  • If you don't or won't exist in English, even with your 'own' name in the lede, then your article would remain in the French Wikipedia and readers could use Google Translate. Flatterworld (talk) 15:49, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
    • None of these are 'wrong', imo, even though they don't match the native-language article. I wouldn't expect them to:

am:ባራክ ኦባማ

ab:Барақ Обама ar:باراك أوباما az:Barak Obama bn:বারাক ওবামা ba:Барак Обама be:Барак Абама be-x-old:Барак Абама bh:बराक ओबामा bi:Barak Obama bo:བ་རག་ཨོ་པྰ་མ། bg:Барак Обама ca:Barack Hussein Obama cv:Барак Обама dv:ބަރަކް އޮބާމާ nv:Hastiin alą́ąjįʼ dahsidáhígíí Barack Obama el:Μπαράκ Ομπάμα myv:Обамань Барак fa:باراک اوباما gan:奧巴馬 ko:버락 오바마 hy:Բարաք Օբամա hi:बराक ओबामा os:Обама, Барак he:ברק אובמה kn:ಬರಾಕ್ ಒಬಾಮ ka:ბარაკ ობამა kk:Барак Обама ky:Барак Хусеин Обама lo:ບາຣັກ ໂອບາມາ la:Baracus Obama lv:Baraks Obama jbo:byRAK.obamas mk:Барак Обама ml:ബറാക്ക് ഒബാമ mr:बराक ओबामा arz:باراك اوباما mzn:باراک اوباما mn:Барак Обама my:ဘာရတ်အိုဘားမား ne:बाराक ओबामा ja:バラク・オバマ mhr:Обама, Барак pnb:بارک اوبامہ ps:باراک حسين اوباما km:បារ៉ាក់ អូបាម៉ា crh:Barak Obama ru:Обама, Барак sah:Барак Обама si:බැරැක් ඔබාමා ckb:باراک ئۆباما sr:Барак Обама ta:பராக் ஒபாமா tt:Baraq Husseyın Obama II te:బరాక్ ఒబామా th:บารัก โอบามา tg:Барак Ҳусейн Обама tk:Barak Obama uk:Барак Обама ur:بارک اوبامہ ug:باراك ئوباما wuu:巴拉克·奥巴马 yi:באראק אבאמא zh-yue:奧巴馬] zh:贝拉克·奥巴马

Actually, almost all of those are wrong. Maybe there is a person named "Барак Ҳусейн Обама", but it's not the president of the United States. — Coren ^(talk) 16:19, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

(To be clear, I'm certain that all of those are reasonable transliterations of Obama's name in the respective languages, and it would make a very great deal of sense to have redirects from all of those to the president's article — but none of those are the president's name, and the articles should not be titled thus). — Coren ^(talk) 16:24, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

So what? The native language name is included in parentheses, as it should be, and I expect there's also a redirect - something for everyone (aka 'inclusive'), but the article name is as close to the local language as possible:

“ Барак Хусейн Обама (инглиз телендә Barack Hussein Obama) — Америка Ҡушма Штаттарының 44-се президенты. ”

But this is a most inappropriate place to discuss what the policy and the style guide should say about diacritics in names. Tony (talk) 16:26, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Jimmy, during the British Library Editathon on January 15, Wikipedians were privileged to be given a guided tour of the the Evolving English: One language, Many voices exhibition. The curator explained that the English language had evolved though absorbing thousands of loanwords. Sometimes these words retained their original diacritics in common usage, e.g. née, fiancée, façade, déjà vu. This practice goes back to Anglo Saxon times, so Modern English does indeed contain diacritics through these loanwords.

I personally believe that a great deal of useful information will be lost, or not be as accurate as it should, if we exclude diacritics from Wikipedia. -- Marek.69 ^talk 18:27, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

“ Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge.^* That’s what we’re doing. ” —  Jimmy Wales

^*exceptions include: diacritics, accents and any other unidentified squiggles

An excellent point. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 18:58, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Jimbo, if "diacritics, as they are unhelpful and confusing for English readers", could you explain to me then why are they used in Britannica ([1]) or Columbia ([2] - scroll down)? Are you saying that one of the "improvements" that Wikipedia is supposed to bring over them is to remove the diacritics? I am afraid this does not sound like helpful improvement to me, this smacks of dumbing down, or at the very list, of transforming English Wikipedia into the Simple English Wikipedia. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 18:58, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Are you assuming Britannica is consistent? ;-) (I didn't check Columbia.) Flatterworld (talk) 19:29, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

I am not sure what the above link is trying to prove, other than the fact that you don't know how to spell the name of the Polish president (which you could check in our article...). If you look for correct spelling (without diacritics, you added two extra "c"'s...), you end up [3], where you can see the diacritic in the title. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 20:04, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

The point was to show that Britannica uses two different spellings about the same person: 1 and 2. One article uses diatrics, one does not. Therefore, Britannica is not consistent. The point of the misspelling was to ensure only one example of each spelling was displayed, to make it easier for you to follow. Anything else you're confused about? 20:53, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

This is easily explained by the fact that the Lech Kaczyński article is part of the encyclopedia proper, and the "Jaroslaw Kaczynski and Lech Kaczynski" article, an essay starting with the unencyclopedic words "It was not exactly a surprise when" and ending with "Lech was the more outspoken, polarizing figure, capable of riling people with his blunt pronouncements, while Jaroslaw was considered more the calculating diplomat." is signed by "primary contributor" Robert Rauch. This explains what is going on. Reading between the lines: They are learning from us and let their readers contribute! Hans Adler 22:20, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Congratulations on your own goal. Flatterworld (talk) 22:27, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

I fail to see how having shown the difference between professional and amateur contribution, and which one prefers diacritics and which does not, supports your argument rather than ours. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 01:05, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Indeed. The more reliable, traditional expert-authored article, uses diacritics. The new wiki-britannica article doesn't. I hope we want to resemble the proper encyclopedia more than the amateurish essay-collection site. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 22:24, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Comment This discussion is not about excluding diacritics from articles in total, but their use in article names. Per the example of Barack Obama above (chosen because that article has been translated into just about every language Wikipedia offers), we respect both local and native languages. Flatterworld (talk) 19:38, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

To be fair, Simple English Wikipedia does not dumb down spellings in this way. On Simple English Wikipedia, as on Afrikaans, Asturian, Bosnian, Breton, Catalan, Czech, Welsh, Danish, Estonian, Spanish, Esperanto, French, Irish Gaelic, Galician, Croatian, Ido, Indonesian, Icelandic, Italian, Kiswahili, Kurdish, Luxembourgish, Lithuanian, Limburgish, Hungarian, Malay, Dutch, Norwegian (both varieties), Occitan, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Albanian, Sicilian, Slovak, Slovenian, Finnish, Swedish, Tagalog, Turkish, Vietnamese, Navajo, Waray-Waray and Yoruba Wikipedia, Gerhard Schröder is "Gerhard Schröder". Apart from Wikipedias in non-Latin scripts, I only found the following conversions of his name: "Gerhard Şröder" (phonetic spelling on Azerbaijani Wikipedia), "Gerhard Schroder" (Basque), "Gerardus Schröder" (funny Latinisation with diacritic), "Gerhards Šrēders" (Latvian; I guess this is phonetic spelling plus Latvian inflections -s), "Schröderi Gerhard" (Võro language). The picture is very similar for other names such as simple:Halldór Ásgrímsson, simple:Raúl Castro and simple:Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. Hans Adler 19:43, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Jimbo here. This is the English Wikipedia. English uses an alphabet with 26 letters, and none of them are Ł or ß or any of those other characters. The "local" spelling can be used in the article, but it should not be in the title. I also think it is reasonable to consider "accents" in certain cases, possibly including the title. But dots and circles over letters and various curleycues have no meaning in English, and should not be used in article titles. Neutron (talk) 20:03, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

"Dots and circles over letters [...] have no meaning in English, and should not be used in article titles": so no more Motörhead, Eärendil, ... I'm glad you would at least accept Beyoncé Knowles, but what with Æthelred the Unready? It's too bad if even English kings can't stick your 26 letters of course... Fram (talk) 20:59, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

I have no problem with the Æthelred bit, but I wish I were able to do something about the Unready - it should more properly be "the ill readed" - understanding that "read" was a Saxon/Early English word meaning "advised" (and it probably had some squiggles around it, so it sounds neither like a symomym for red nor the riverside plant...) Somehow, though, I don't suppose there will ever be a redirect even for "Æthelred the Poorly Advised". LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:19, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Personally I would be fine with Ethelred, as it is in many sources. Or Aethelred. Those letters are all included in "my" 26, as Fram would have it. "My"? So I invented the modern English alphabet? I may be old, but I'm not that old. As for Beyonce, I don't care whether she gets an accent or not. I'm more interested in possibly allowing words like exposé and resumé, though I don't know whether they are really an issue when it comes to article names. However, if I had to choose between no diacritical marks at all, and the "open season" we seem to have now, I would choose none at all. I do not think it is necessary to make that either-or choice, but if that's how people want it, that's my opinion. Neutron (talk) 21:32, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

So why, exactly, is an é worth keeping, while an ö is not? That seems rather random to me. --Conti|✉ 22:44, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

• I see a lot of discussion about loanwords retaining accents and diacritics here, but that's a demonstrably deceptive debate point. I've used "resume" and "facade", for example, and I have several dictionaries that include them as I use them, without the accents and diacritics. Are you folks saying that I'm intellectually handicapped or something? This is ridiculous. As others have pointed out, the English alphabet includes 26 characters. That there are problems in translating non-English characters to an English equivalent is evident, but Wikipedia shouldn't be the battleground for this sort of fight on the preferred way to translate them (or whether to translate them at all).
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 04:26, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Chicago Manual of Style

De facto we use diacritics more or less consistently, with some exceptions such as Vietnamese (usage divided), pinyin (mostly without the tone marks) or Hawaiian (without diacritics per the special guideline for Hawaiian). The main argument for renaming almost 10% of our articles to get rid of them is therefore that it is somehow wrong or not English. I am not sure why simply pointing to the fact that other English-language encyclopedias which actually do use diacritics isn't enough to immediately convince everybody that this is false. There is also Merriam-Webster's Geographical Dictionary, which, as far as I know (I have no access to it) is full of names with diacritics.

And there is the Chicago Manual of Style, an immensely influential work that is often referred to when we discuss our own manual of style. I am not sure that it says explicitly, anywhere, that one should use diacritics or that it's OK to use them. But it is clear that it's written under the assumption that that's the case. Repeating myself from an earlier post [4]:

• Some example sentences speak for themselves: "He is a member of the Société d'entraide des membres de l'ordre national de la Légion d'honneur."
• But it gets more explicit elsewhere: "Any foreign words, phrases or titles that occur in an English-language work should be checked for special characters -- that is, letters with accents [...], diphthongs, ligatures, and other alphabetical forms that do not normally occur in English. Most accented letters used in European languages [...] can easily be reproduced in print from an author's software and need no coding. [...] If type is to be set from an author's hard copy, marginal clarifications may be needed for handwritten accents or special characters (e.g., 'oh with grave accent' or 'Polish crossed el'). If a file is being prepared for an automated typesetting system or for presentation in electronic form (or both), special characters must exist or be 'enabled' in the typesetting and conversion programs, and output must be carefully checked to ensure that the characters appear correctly."
• The following on typesetting French is particularly interesting: "Although French publishers often omit accents on capital letters [...] they should appear where needed in English works, especially in works whose readers may not be familiar with French typographic usage." (My italics.)
• And on romanization: "Nearly all systems of transliteration require diacritics [...]. Except in linguistic studies or other highly specialized works, a system using as few diacritics as are needed to aid pronunciation is easier to readers, publisher, and author. [e.g. Shiva not Śiva, Vishnu not Viṣṇu] Transliterated forms without diacritics that are listed in any of the Merriam-Webster dictionaries are acceptable in most contexts."

And that's from an American style guide. I believe Brits are actually more used to diacritics then Americans and use them more often. Hans Adler 06:31, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Concise version of wikipedia

Quite a few people I know are impressed with wikipedia as a resource but find most of its articles too time consuming to read and often find it difficult to plough through what are often very long tedious articles to extract the basic facts. I'd estimate that a high percentage of wikipedia users do not have the time to read the entire articles and are just looking for a typical old book encyclopedia summary with the basic facts and most important points. I know that the article introductions should effectively summarize an article but the majority of them do not. A lot of people use wikipedia for quick fact checking and oftne have to plough through articles to get what they are looking for. I wondered what people would think of a concise version of wikipedia in which the entries are each checked and cut down to a word minimum and assessed and then released as set article summaries which can't be edited and structured like a traditional book encyclopedia. That way the maintenance job may not be that big, even if the initial summary writing might be. Perhaps a concise wikipedia version with short article summary like a traditional book encyclopedia would be very useful to many people?♦ Dr. Blofeld 20:20, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

I have always thought it would be sort of fun to have a free encyclopedia where every entry is forcibly (by the software) limited to 500 words, or something similar. Maybe limited to the length of a twitter message, although that's a bit extreme. I don't think this is right for Wikipedia, but it's a fun idea.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:27, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

We also have WP:LEAD, which suggests we introduce and summarize the key points of an article. Maybe we could make a WikiProject Leads that just goes around and makes sure there is such an accessible synopsis at the head of each article. Ocaasi ^{t | c} 20:29, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Yeah I was thinking of short, snappy articles you get in the old book encyclopedias e.g

Aalborg, Danish port, 32km/20 mi inland from the Kattegat, on the south shore of the Limfjord. One of the oldest towns in Denmark, it has a castle and a fine Budolfi church. Population 197,426 (2010).

Aalto, Alvar (1898-1976), Finnish architect and designer. One of Finland's first modernists, he .....

etc. Yeah say a word limit of 500 words or something, preferably even less. Its just in general browsing I thinking its a wonderful way to learn generally by being presented with the most important point without have to read the waffle and lack of focus many wikipedia articles suffer from. If not wikipedia, then I think a separate Concise wikipedia would be a great idea. It would just be nice to read an even encyclopedia at times as you'd expect in a book or something and have every article in place, even if a short summary. Then each entry could be linked to the full wikipedia article.. I'd love to have a web encyclopedia which cuts the crap and every article is strongly focused and concise, even if short. I think it was especially be useful for kids reading wikipedia who find it hard to plough through big articles but just want to be presented with the basics. I know we have Simple English and WP:LEAD but the vast majority of articles do not provide an effective summary. ♦ Dr. Blofeld 20:47, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

• Qwiki seems to have met audience need for brief information generated in large parts from WP. Let's not cleave off another project. Pedro :  Chat  20:53, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Ah that's ultra modern though, I'm looking for a traditional set type summary type encyclopedia... ALmost like wikitionary but an encyclopedia version..♦ Dr. Blofeld 20:55, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Surely our leads can and should do this, as mentioned. Pop-ups serve as a mini-entry, and http://www.litesum.com and http://www.lexisum.com/ serve up leads too. http://www.wikisummarizer.com/ does something a bit different but maybe also useful for what you want? Fences&Windows 21:08, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Really the LEAD of every article should provide exactly the summary I'm looking for. The problem is that the LEAD is ignored in many articles and doesn't effectively summarize the article...♦ Dr. Blofeld 21:30, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

For FAs, the "summary" that appears on the front page for them would do the trick nicely. Looie496 (talk) 00:10, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

A request

Hi Jimbo, I'd ask that you kindly request or apply semi-protection to your user page, vandalism never ceases and it's a waste of time for users to revert unconstructive IP edits, this time could be spent on edits to the main body of content. While I'm sure we all appreciate the sentiment of you allowing everyone to edit the page to be one of the foremost examples of the nature of the encyclopedia, the amount of vandalism your user page gets has now gone beyond a joke. Please reconsider. —James ^{(Talk • Contribs)} • 6:16pm • 08:16, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

I don't think the page needs semi-protection. I think it is a helpful gesture for the founder to encourage people to use the open editing format on his user page. In any event vandalism actually appears to be fairly infrequent, with the last IP vandalism on the 15th. I don't think an inordinate amount of time is being wasted. --Daniel 15:30, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Over 80% of the edits to his user page are vandalism and the issue is ongoing. —James ^{(Talk • Contribs)} • 12:40pm • 02:40, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

WP:BOMB

Further to the recent controversy around campaign for "santorum" neologism here on this page, here is a new essay:

• WP:BOMB / WP:Wikibombing.

Editors are invited to review or improve it, leave comments etc. Cheers, --JN466 15:23, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

I did, including a reference to the existing Wikipedia:Search engine optimization. You may want that article to include a reference to your essay at some point. Flatterworld (talk) 15:44, 21 June 2011 (UTC) I no longer have any interest in this or anything else at Wikipedia. Write whatever you like under whatever name you like. I've had it. Flatterworld (talk) 19:10, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Also see Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#New_essay:_WP:BOMB; part of the ongoing discussion there focuses on the effect, if any, of navigation templates and other internal links on Google page rank. --JN466 00:52, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Offices Design

Sorry Jimbo, but do you know whose idea was to change the design of the boxes of the officeholders? I ask because the new design is very banal.--46.12.16.226 (talk) 16:37, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Trevor Marshall

Hello, Jimbo Wales. Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

Trevmar (talk) 23:23, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

New Top Level Domains

Might be cool to have .wiki as a new domain considering ICANN is going to let people pay to have customized top level domains. Of course, .sex will be a hot seller I'm sure. -- Avanu (talk) 02:56, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Note: It's wrong to abbreviate Wikipedia as "wiki," in my opinion. But, yes, if the WMF takes control of that, then I really would like it. At least it'll prevent Encyclopedia Dramatica and Wikipedia Review from gaining significance relevant to us :) .Jasper Deng (talk) 03:00, 22 June 2011 (UTC)