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Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2012 March 27

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Lembit Staan (talk | contribs) at 01:51, 30 March 2012 (→Imre River). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

March 27

This is a list of redirects that have been proposed for deletion or other action on March 27, 2012

Imre River

Delete. No such river (neither "Imre River" nor "Râul Imre", in Romanian). Staszek Lem (talk) 19:46, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  • The second link provided when that title was first created expands to a detailed topo map showing many small streams, many but not all of which are labeled. I have not yet been able to definitively confirm the existence of a waterbody named "Imre" feeding that watershed but I can't disprove it yet either. I do suspect that if it exists, it will be more a creek than a river. Contradicting that hypothesis is the fact that "Imre" is a common male first-name in that area. I notice that no one has yet notified the creator of this discussion. Abstain pending confirmation. Rossami (talk) 23:49, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • Regarding the case of the Imre River, Staszek Lem is definitely wrong in his statement that there is no such river. Maybe he didn't find any reference, which is definitely different. As proof, the river is indicated in the Russian military maps scale 1:50.000 Map 050k L34-060-3. There are other maps too, but this seems to be the only one which can be accessed through the internet.
      However, the issue is more complicated, because other rivers have been deleted too. When I started writing the articles about the rivers, there was a discussion within the Wikiproject Rivers to define which rivers qualified for articles for Wikipedia. The conclusion of the wikipedians who participated in the Wikiproject was that there are no limits of size for rivers and any river regardless of size qualifies for an article. Once this rule had been accepted, i started to write articles on various rivers. After having completed over 10000 such articles, some of these articles were deleted (such as the Văleni River) without any justification. I found out the hard way that in Wikipedia it doesn't matter if we have rules or not. They are not applied and a small group of two or three people can decide that they can delete articles regardless of the rules. This happened not only for rivers but also for villages and other geographic information which was deleted, even if the subjects did comply to rules.
      I tried to make maps indicating the location of rivers though this is a very laborious exercise. But it was much more difficult to fight the people who objected to these maps - even though eventually I was able to prove that they did not violate any copyright and have them eventually accepted. But geographic information is mostly graphic and articles without appropriate maps are less useful.
      No administrator or bureaucrat - even those contacted - have taken any decision on how such matters should be dealt with. Therefore, it doesn't really matter if you delete or not the Imre River. Wikipedia was a place where people who were interested could at least find information about practically all the rivers of Romania and I intended to expand it to other countries. But if - consistently with the rules accepted by the Wikiproject Rivers - articles are deleted, it doesn't make sense to continue. We simply have to accept the reality that in the present setup, Wikipedia is not the place where people who seek this type of information can find it.
      The issue is not the Imre River - which exists and is represented on maps. The issue is Wikipedia intends to have extensive geographic information - part of which might be interesting just for a few people - or prefers to concentrate on information only on items which can be found in any other places. There are many places where you can find information about the Arieş river - you really do not need Wikipedia if you are interested in it. But there are very few where a person who is interested can find anything about the Pietroasa, Văleni or Imre Rivers.
      I am sorry I had the illusion that if a rule was accepted it would be applied. I am sorry that because I had this illusion I spent several years to compile hydrographic information which is not readily available. And I am sorry that I believed that Wikipedia was about compiling knowledge and making it available to those who might be interested in it. Afil (talk) 01:10, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
      • Afil, you need to assume good faith. Most of us don't know nearly as much about Romanian Rivers as you do, so there was no active effort to destroy stuff. Just a bunch of people who don't know there was a river in Romania with that name. It might make sense to take some of those articles up for deletion review (deleted pages are archived, just not visible to the public) to point out to admins what the original voters missed. D O N D E groovily Talk to me 05:13, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
      • Also, there is no discussion to delete an article on Imre River - just a redirect at Imre River that points to a different river. The issue is not whether there should be an article on Imre River, but whether someone typing it in the search box will see Arieș River (Mureș) instead of Imre. D O N D E groovily Talk to me 05:15, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
      • Based on the comment above, I am prepared to assume good faith and keep the redirect. No opinion on whether it should be reverted back to a prior version holding stub content. Rossami (talk) 15:51, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I am sorry I was incorrect to say "no such river" Of course one cannot make such claim. There are millions of streams and there may be Imre River, Gyorgy River, and Lajos River and Staszek River and Rossami river, who knows. The point is wikipedia policies of notability and verifiability. A redirect is to an article which has no information about the subject whatsoever. How on Earth you are voting to keep? It is not even among tributaries of Aries River! On the other hand, I can understand fructration of user:Afil, whose work was ruthlessly deleted. Here is the suggested solution: create an article, Watershed of Arieș River (Mureș) and list in the tree form all rivulets he collected from the maps, and retarget all these minor redirects there. Then the person who looks for Czaba River, will find a good information:
    • Aries River
      • Tamas River, left tributary
      • ...
      • Zoltan River, right tributary
Because I doubt there is much more information available for these, other than coordinates; which would be of great help. Otherwise I still cannot find "Imre" in the ref map provided. Staszek Lem (talk) 01:49, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Portalpar

Unused redirect. The "par" extension offers nothing. Nowadays "Portal" is well-established and well-known name as is. Magioladitis (talk) 18:17, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep. While it's true that it's just been a redirect for several years, it's still getting a good number of hits on a regular basis (63 last month for example), showing that it still has value. If it's only just been orphaned then wait a couple of months to see if the usage dies off - it probably will but might not. Thryduulf (talk) 19:33, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Indeed, per Thryduulf. Why bother deleting this which is still in use. I found this today because my User Page was suddenly "broken" for no good reason. After fruitlessly clicking the non-working "this redirect's entry" on the banner notice, a 10 minutes or so of "WTF" cursing and much more I finally found the page here. Why on earth do people nominate working pages such as this without good reason? The nominators reason that it's" unused" is patently wrong, and causes unneccessary grief to Users who still rely on it. If you are going to nominate stuff for deletion Magioladitis, at least get your facts correct and do the users of such a page the courtesy of a notification at least (although some proper discussion beforehand would be preferable). --Cactus.man ✍ 21:30, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Tai chi

We have dozens of redirects on this subject - variations on language form, capitalisation, apostrophes etc - each redirecting to either Taiji or T'ai chi ch'uan. Taiji is about a concept, T'ai chi ch'uan the martial art, but it gets more confusing because the two terms we are using are in different romanization methods of Chinese. In Pinyin, tàijí or taiji means the concept and tàijíquán or taijiquan means the martial art. In Wade-Giles romanization, t'ai chi means the concept and t'ai chi ch'üan or t'ai chi ch'uan means the martial art. But in the Western world we use the terms tai chi or t'ai chi to mean the martial art! Aargh!

I can't figure out why some of the redirects were created, but they do no harm so I'm only nominating the potentially confusing ones. There is also Tai chi chih, a less common modern exercise form practised in a few countries. We do have a dab page at Taiji (disambiguation) but the only redirects pointing to it are Tai Chi (disambiguation) and Tai Ji (disambiguation).

This has been discussed at Talk:T'ai chi ch'uan. There is an older, long summary of most alternate spellings at the top of the same talk page. Nø tried to create some consistency by directing all spelling variations of taiji and t'ai chi to Taiji and all spelling variations of taijiquan and t'ai chi ch'uan to T'ai chi ch'uan. But it hasn't held up due to the Western usage ambiguity, and now we have a mess. In some cases (eg. Tai-chi / Tai-Chi) simply capitalising the C will land you at a different article.

Assuming that we don't want to delete anything now, I propose:

An alternative solution is to retarget all the commonly-used variations of t'ai chi to the dab page, but then almost anyone searching for the globally-practised martial art by its common Western name will have to go through the dab. ~ Kimelea (talk) 02:36, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  • Opposed to mass delete and redirects: they're cheep and there's no reason to break existing links. This appears to forum shopping as the consensus was not in favor of redirecting the concept (T'ai chi/Taiji) to the martial art, see the discussion at T'ai chi ch'uan. Thanks.—Machine Elf 1735 03:16, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Um?? I haven't nominated anything for deletion. I've nominated the ambiguous ones for discussion, with suggestions to keep some where they are and redirect others. As for forum shopping, there was no consensus on the talk page, not enough participants for a consensus, that's why I brought it here. It was a completely friendly and civil discussion with one other editor (Nø). We both agreed that it's a mess the way it is, and are working together. I'm a little stunned by your accusation. ~ Kimelea (talk) 03:30, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Comment It's a euphemism for deletion ("keep/delete"). Once again, they were being discussed, and User:Nø was not in favor of your proposed redirects. Now it's 2 to 1 opposed and make no pretense of it, this is not working together, this is circumventing. I didn't imply that it was uncivil, did I? Choose to be "stunned" if you wish but there's 208 links to those redirects and you you've chosen to include none that go to your desired location, despite the lack of consensus (or rather none that would go to your desired location, per User:Nø's recommendation).—Machine Elf 1735 03:57, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I don't understand what's led you to assume bad faith so completely, but I'm going to take it back to Talk:T'ai chi ch'uan. I hope Nø will weigh in here, as you seem to have claimed a hostile !vote on his behalf. ~ Kimelea (talk) 11:43, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
LOL, you're accusing me of bad faith? You're the one claiming that I've accused you incivility, telling me to calm down, (take your own advice). You're the one pretending that you're not explicitly trying to get redirects pointed to your preferred article, (not that you couldn't have just edited them yourself without all the subterfuge). It's perfectly obvious you've been fibbing, as I've had to point at Talk:T'ai chi ch'uan; and it's perfectly obvious that you've left out the "MANY" (per your hollering) examples of the exact same problem for the redirects to your preferred page; and it's perfectly obvious that you've nominated these redirects for a little something more than discussion (apparently, discussion wasn't working out the way you wanted). I take it what's not perfectly obvious is that your "detailed recommendations" are bogus: the best choices for Taiji are the ones most editors have been using, (who would have thunk it)
The alternate capitalizations look like perfectly helpful redirects to me, I disagree they should be deleted… No one is talking about etymology, and there is nothing confusing about them. That's not a "mess", that's 70% of the links right there, as opposed to 16%. This is not the forum to discuss moving one the two articles to Taiji (concept). It's not an unreasonable suggestion that the martial art is WP:PRIMARY in English; too bad you're not getting there from here.—Machine Elf 1735 16:21, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Endorse Kimelea's detailed recommendations, they represent the most likely targets of all searches. What matters is how the terms are used in English, not what their etymology is. Also, "discussion" in RfD is not a euphemism for "deletion". Thryduulf (talk) 09:47, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think that in the interests of maintaining accuracy in the articles/searches while not disregarding usual usage, spellings in the short form "Taiji/T'ai chi" should redirect to the respective disambiguation pages, or if not, then to the Taiji article page, with hatnotes to the T'ai chi ch'uan page the disambiguation page(s). Honestly, I'm undecided about the matter, but in a way think the disambiguation pages should be consolidated (I won't pursue that though). Additionally, I agree on deletion of redirects based on variations in capitalisation, with only one of each respective variant left, since the search engine compensates, but have no comment on deletion of spelling variations as I'm not aware of much of the WP guidelines regarding such. — Preceding unsigned comment added by InferKNOX (talk • contribs) 12:26, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • While the internal search function is case insensitive, there are many other ways that people use to search and find articles on Wikipedia and many of them are case sensitive. For this reason we tend to keep redirects from other capitalisations. Thryduulf (talk) 18:15, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
      • Understood. Thus I recant what I said regarding deletion on the grounds of variation by capitalisation. I do, however, propose that pages based on gross misspellings/misinterpretations (e.g. "Tai qi", "Thai chi", etc) and/or hybridisation of Wade-Giles & Pinyin (e.g. "T'ai ji") for both the informal short and formal long form of taijiquan, be deleted. I say this because I believe their very existence serves to mystify what the proper spellings are, "taiji" & "taijiquan", or "t'ai chi" & "t'ai chi ch'uan". I may be wrong in that they may serve some other purpose & am willing to hear what it could be. Foremost, I propose that all variations of the shortened forms "t'ai chi" & "taiji" redirect to Taiji (disambiguation). Doing so will serve to both inform the reader that the commonly used shortened form of taijiquan/t'ai chi ch'uan is actually the spelling for and thus is technically the concept, whilst not forcing them to the concept page itself, and allowing them to see that it's shortened use is, in fact, informal, not actual, before allowing them to proceed to the martial art page. In my view, such use is a major point of a redirect's relevance. InferKNOX (talk) 21:44, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
        • Agreed regarding the weird hybrids. However, Taiji is an article and what you're proposing would be to demote it from WP:PRIMARY would it not? It would need to be renamed something like Taiji (concept) in order for Taiji to become the dab. At the very least that discussion should happen on Talk:Taiji, not here or at Talk:T'ai chi ch'uan. But for wider participation, it would probably be best to submit a move request.—Machine Elf 1735 22:08, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
          • I see what you mean. I do believe that the properly spelt "T'ai chi" & "Taiji" themselves aught to point at Taiji, however the honest situation is that the variants could be searched for in hope of finding either Taiji or Taijiquan, thus pointing them at Taiji would be disregarding the common informal use. At the very least pointing the variants at the dab, would inform the reader of the proper spellings and the alternate uses of the term. After all, Taijiquan is not necessarily a subset of Taiji, but rather is a merger between it's principles & martial arts, while otherwise would be suggested if all the variants pointed to Taiji with merely a Taijiquan hatnote. Ultimately the most honest measure is to have proper short spellings (T'ai chi & Taiji) point to Taiji, improper short spellings point to the dab, and all proper & improper long spellings point to T'ai chi ch'uan. Not particularly ideal, but true to the reality, I believe. InferKNOX (talk) 22:47, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
            • I don't understand why searches for the concept Taiji/T'ai chi would tend be spelled correctly but variants (without a third syllable) would be ambiguous. FWIW, I think almost all of them will be looking for the martial art, either way. I'm sure it would come as no surprise to English speakers if a search for T'ai chi went to directly to T'ai chi ch'uan (the hat note's there for anyone who wants the concept). A dab page isn't about subsets. No one looks for a dab page: it's better to go directly to one of the two articles. Spelling variants of Taiji/T'ai chi should go to the WP:PRIMARY topic, otherwise it's hit or miss (mostly miss) for people who only vaguely know how to spell it, e.g., English speakers.—Machine Elf 1735 00:07, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
              • It is not about ambiguity, it's about acknowledging the necessity to compromise for the sake of both usage and accuracy. By pointing redirects to Taiji, which is what the short variants essentially spell, it would disregard the informal usage for the martial art. If it points to the martial art, it's ignoring the fact that taiji/t'ai chi & all the misspelled variants thereof are in actuality a concept, whilst taijiquan/t'ai chi ch'uan and their misspelled variants are a martial art. I believe the proper spelling taiji & it's Wade-Giles form t'ai chi should of course point the page whose name they have (Taiji) and likewise for Taijiquan/T'ai chi ch'uan, however, it would also create a middle ground if the misspelled variants are pointed at the dab, thereby recognising both informal usage and actual fact. The dab would simply serve to inform the reader, not undermine Taiji or T'ai chi ch'uan. The ambiguity would be to continue pointing taiji one way & t'ai chi the other when they are different transliterations of the same thing. That is the very reason for this discussion & a failure to reunify their direction, or directing them to only one thing when they also mean the other would be a disservice to the topics themselves & the readers they're meant to inform. InferKNOX (talk) 09:57, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
                • You say “it would also create a middle ground if the misspelled variants are pointed at the dab, thereby recognising both informal usage and actual fact.”, however it's unclear how that creates a middle ground: By informal usage do you mean misspelled? By actual fact, do you mean something in particular? A dab serves to help readers navigate, it's the articles themselves that are informative. I don't think anyone has suggested dab pages undermine those two articles but I'll take your word for it regarding “the very reason for this discussion”. As they're the same word, it's certainly reasonable to point Taiji and T'ai chi to the same WP:PRIME article on that topic, as well as misspellings of that word. What do you mean by “& a failure to reunify their direction, or directing them to only one thing when they also mean the other would be a disservice to the topics themselves & the readers they're meant to inform.”, it seems to suggest an impasse or self-contradiction? Machine Elf 1735 20:55, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
                  • Before I continue, let me just say that unless I specify otherwise, or it's obviously not the case, take it that I'm simply using the term taiji to refer to all it's variants, correctly spelt or not. Now, answering you: I mean it creates a middle ground by not pointing to any article in particular, since the intended search could be for either Taiji or Taijiquan. By informal usage, I mean referring to taijiquan as the shortened "taiji". By "actual fact", I mean that the fact is that taiji is in actuality the name of the concept, not the martial art. The dab would be informative by making the reader aware that taiji could mean either the concept or martial art. Lastly I mean that pointing misspelled variants of t'ai chi to t'ai chi ch'uan, while pointing misspelled variants of taiji at Taiji would be creating/maintaining a division where there shouldn't be one, whilst pointing both at either t'ai chi ch'uan or Taiji, would be disregarding the topic they aren't pointing to, bringing me back to the dab page being a "middle ground" of sorts. InferKNOX (talk) 22:52, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I understand your points InferKNOX. It's a tough one. I think you're saying if we had Wade-Giles spellings (t'ai chi etc) pointing at the martial art and Pinyin spellings (tai ji etc) pointing at the concept, we'd create a double standard by drawing a line that is only a bit less arbitrary than it is currently. And I think you're saying that redirecting t'ai chi etc to the dab page (compromise) would serve part of the educational process by informing readers of the actual meaning of "t'ai chi" before they are allowed to move on to the martial art article. Have I got this right?
The trouble is, the sole purpose of a redirect or a dab page is to help readers find the article they are looking for. It might pain us all to think about it, given the trouble we are taking to serve them, but not all readers care about this. If an English speaker wants to quickly check whether the 'slow' martial art they're thinking of is t'ai chi or tae kwon do, they will not appreciate Wikipedia trying to teach them the proper use of the words "t'ai chi". They just want to look up something about the martial art that everyone calls t'ai chi. I really sympathise with your position InferKNOX, but in my understanding, redirs and dabs are navigation tools only - they are not intended as learning tools in themselves. See WP:PRIMARYTOPIC - it is usage, not correctness, that decides where they should point. Even misspellings and misconceptions (like our Thai Chi, for example) are deliberately kept as redirects because they help people who use them to find what they actually wanted.
The question for us to answer together is: what is the Primary Topic - most likely desired article - of each one of the Wade-Giles-ish spellings.
  1. In my nom I suggested that the primary topic for Wade-Giles-ish searches is the martial art, as Thryduulf deftly illustrated in the section below. Exception being the confused typos, which are too weird to have an established primary topic, thus a nudge towards the dab might be the gentlest way for us to say "um, what?"
  2. There's a case for the primary topic for all Wade-Giles-ish searches including confused typos being the martial art, as Machine Elf said; then we'd use the dab in hatnotes only.
  3. There's a case for there being no primary topic for the Wade-Giles-ish spellings, in other words, searchers for "t'ai chi" etc are not more likely to be looking for T'ai chi ch'uan than all our other t'ai-chi-related articles, and therefore we should use the dab for all Wade-Giles-ish spellings.
  4. There's a case for there being no primary topic for ANY of the Wade-Giles-ish spellings OR the Pinyin-ish spellings, so ALL the nominated redirects should be retargeted to Taiji (disambiguation). The dab page would suddenly start getting a whole lot of hits, and I personally don't like forcing every searcher to go through the dab, but nobody could say we weren't consistent. ;)
I hope all that made some semblance of sense... ~ Kimelea (talk) 07:12, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Totally Kimelea, I agree 100%. And thanks InferKNOX, that helped a lot but please do correct me if I miss-objectify any of what you proposed. Which is to say, I don't mean to question the subjective merits, just the normative considerations in terms of guidelines.
  1. T'ai chi should be the one and only redirect targeting the concept article Taiji
  2. All duo-syllabic variants/misspellings (w/o ch'uan) should be re-targeted to Taiji (disambiguation)
  3. No change for any triple syllabic+ variants/misspellings targeting the martial arts article T'ai chi ch'uan
As Kimelea was saying, the dab page is merely a means to an end. Most searches will be for the martial art, (maybe even more than all the other subjects combined), however the Daoist/Taoist concept is currently WP:PRIME and Kimelea lists several viable alternates besides the either/or scenario. Due to English usage, it's effectively a name for both, thus the 2-syllable variants/misspellings are all ambiguous.
No doubt there's China-related political scenarios that warrant precautions against snubbing one topic in favor of another, but no such worries here as far as I know. Normally, if there's a WP:PRIME, all the variants/misspellings should target it. With a few exceptions, that seems to be what they're doing (2-syllable). That certainly disregards the primacy of the martial art over the philosophical concept in terms of English speakers, but it's almost never a good idea to link to a dab page. Normally, it's expected that when re-targeting a redirect from an article to a dab page, incoming links should be updated so they keep pointing to the actual article, (and maintain the same text via piping). It's a good idea to revisit the special exception made for T'ai chi, etc. from time to time, but indirectly retargeting hundred+ links to a dab instead of the WP:PRIME wouldn't be tenable, people would disambiguate them.—Machine Elf 1735 10:47, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I'm glad we're on the same page now Machine Elf. I'm confused about one thing though. I understand that you're supporting all nominated redirects to be sent to the dab except T'ai chi, which should go to the concept? T'ai chi is perhaps the most commonly used term for the martial art, whereas Tàijí for example is exactly the same word as Taiji but with the original diacriticals in place. I understand the case for forwarding the whole lot to the dab, but why single out T'ai chi either way? ~ Kimelea (talk) 15:52, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
That was an attempt to summarize InferKNOX. I don't support that, no.—Machine Elf 1735 16:28, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
My understanding of InferKNOX's personal preference was to direct all spellings to their Chinese meaning, as was Nø's original solution (t'ai chi, tàijí and similar to Taiji, taijiquan and similar to T'ai chi ch'uan; confused typos to be purged from existence), but that he accepted the need to compromise due to the common usage, so instead supported directing all the nominated Wade-Giles-ish spellings to the dab - option 3 in my previous post. I trust he'll correct either or both of us if we misunderstood. By the way I am calling both of you 'he' on no good basis - correct me if you're female please! ~ Kimelea (talk) 17:44, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment, I carried out a completely unscientific straw poll among people I interacted with today. I asked them what they would expect the Wikipedia article called "tai chi" to be about? (This was verbal so it doesn't impact spelling). The results were 5 martial art, 3 exercise, 1 dab page, 1 person who couldn't decide and one person who said "tea". Obviously you can't draw consensus from this, but it's another perspective. Thryduulf (talk) 01:54, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
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