Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Japan-related articles/Romanization

message: What's our policy on putting a link to Japanese language in the first paragraph of any Japan-related article {eg: Geisha (芸者 geisha)}?  
Whisper to me seems to think it's essential, and he cites various city names and articles on things whose names are in foreign languages as precedent.  I'm suspicious on two counts, firstly that he himself has apparently gone on an editing spree on such pages (type any Japanese topic or major European capital into the search box and Whisper to me's name comes up in the edit history), and secondly because many of the pages he cites are China-related, and there you're dealing with Wade-Giles and Pin-Yin.  
My other objection is that it's counterintuitive to have, for example, 芸者 redirect to an English article on Japanese language -- one would expect it to link to the Japanese Wikipedia article on geisha.  Exploding Boy 23:31, May 25, 2004 (UTC)
I can see where you are coming from on the "link" thing - but the link would appear green if linking to the Japanese wikipedia, as it is another server.
Also, to verify what I am saying, one should look at all of my edits and see what I added. (This applies to European cities) - Or one could look at the article right before my first edit.
E.G.
*Wikibot added the "Italian" and "Latin" labels to Rome: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Rome&diff=2024432&oldid=1935154 - *Here, Infrogmation first "links" the Italian and Latin for Milan: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Milan&diff=895794&oldid=895745,  while the 2nd edit ever to the article stated that its Italian name was "Milano", but it didn't "link" to the language article. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Milan&diff=5894&oldid=4710
*For Geneva, the link was made by GC http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Geneva&diff=595050&oldid=594296, and the languages were first mentioned in this edit: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Geneva&diff=151338&oldid=151337
*In Moscow, Russian added http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Moscow&diff=124611&oldid=94325, English transcription was added http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Moscow&diff=94315&oldid=94282
WhisperToMe, 23:48, 25 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that it's counterintuitive.  What is the standard in other languages?  (I mean agreed-upon standard, not examples of entries where it is done one way or another). Mdchachi|Talk 20:32, 26 May 2004 (UTC)

text: I don't know if there are any Manual of style articles that talk about standards set for each language. WhisperToMe 20:58, 26 May 2004 (UTC)

text: I have listed this debate on RFC. WhisperToMe 04:19, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

text: My opinion is that linking is unnecessary when the article clearly establishes a Japanese context ("Samurai (侍) were the warrior class in feudal Japan", "Kyoto (京都) was the historical capital of Japan"...). I think linking would be a good idea when it isn't obvious that the subject was originally Japanese (say, for some random Pokémon character), in which case spelling out the full word "Japanese: " would be best. If the reader can guess the language from a kanji link (which I also find counterintuitive), then it's probably too obvious to need a link. DopefishJustin (・∀・) 15:53, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Linking to [[Japanese language]]