Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Japan-related articles/Archive 3

message: Discussion continued from Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style for Japan-related articles/Cities
::I am not so sure about what I might accomplish here but I want to try to write about some historical background and sort out things. (I have been following the debate but has been distracted by a snap election in Japan :) I was hoping to see some consensus to emerge but it didn't happen very unfortunately.
::Among issues we have here, one is about the procedure; that's how to come up with a convention and enforce it. I am the who started this page with a hope to ensure the consistency in style and, more importantly, gives a quick guideline to those who contribute to Japan-related articles. In other words, I believe the manual of style must both be consistent about style and reflect the views of the majority of contributors. I don't suppose that there is a correct style and an incorrect one but one that is preferred by many and and one that is preferred by few. To reflect the preferences of contributors, we, however, should look at not just the sheer numbers of contributors but those who do actual many contributions to many articles. In this case, the likes of Rick Block do a lot of tedious but very invaluable edits, and we must agree that we can't ignore the voices of those and the manual of style, if any, needs to be something preferred by such people. They may appear to be authority figure policing articles, but that's something we badly need in wikipedia. I have seen so many valuable contributors leaving wikipedia because they think the editing process here is not functioning, and we all should agree that 
::In any rate, we are probably all aware of problems so I don't have to repeat here. Instead, I started a new page Explanatory note for Japan-related articles. Some people (i.e., User:WhisperToMe and Jefu) have suggested to put a footnote at each article to inform readers about the conventions. So I thought we can put a link to this page at each article in the form of footnote, and we can prevent disparity from arising between those who follow this manual of style and those who are unaware of it and obliviously create inconsistency when they try to fix a problem. -- Taku 01:11, August 26, 2005 (UTC)
:::Sounds like a good idea.  I think part of the problem is, as you said, many people are unaware of the conventions and why they arose.  I commented a little more on the footnote idea below. CES 02:26, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  City names 

message: I and others have been thinking of putting in each article about a Japanese person a footnote or a link near the article title to inform readers about the name order. There was also a talk about dates started by Jefu (good work, Jefu) There are many options to do these things, and I would love to know what people prefer. Here are options I am aware of; please add it if you know one.
-- Taku 01:53, August 26, 2005 (UTC)
# Tokugawa Ieyasu[1] (徳川 家康; January 31, 1543 (December 26, Tenbun 11) – June 1, 1616 (June 1, Genwa 2)) was a Japanese ruler.Junichiro Koizumi[1] (小泉 純一郎; born January 8, 1942) is a Prime Minister of Japan.
#:[1] is put by . [1] links to a footnote and the footnote talks about name order or date convention, if needed, and links to a longer note. See Template talk:Ref for how to use this footnote method.
# Tokugawa Ieyasu[1] (徳川 家康; January 31, 1543 – June 1, 1616) was a Japanese ruler.Junichiro Koizumi[1] (小泉 純一郎; born January 8, 1942) is a Prime Minister of Japan.
#: Like the above, but dates in the old calendar are put in a footnote.
Put you comments below:
I prefer (2). -- Taku 01:56, August 26, 2005 (UTC)
I agree, #2 looks good ... I still wonder about which date should be given priority (Western vs. Japanese).  I think in an ideal world it would be Western (which is the form the vast majority of users expect), but if the Western date is not always known/calculable (which seems to be the case?) then we might have to go with Japanese.  Either way, it probably would be a good idea to explain the Western/Japanese calendar date issue in the Explanatory Note footnote you are working on.  My only comment is that the Explanatory "Note" looks like it will inevitably be as long as the Japanese Manual of Style itself, which might kind of defeat the purpose (maybe a link to the J-MoS might work instead?).  Or, should each main topic (Japanese names, Japanese dates, Japanese place names, etc.) get its own "explanatory note" for simplicity's sake?  Just a few thoughts. CES 02:21, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree we don't want to simply duplicate MoS, but we could make a short page which gives a quick summary of each point, and links to the appropriate reference; e.g. the line about names would just say something like "Japanese names were historically given with the family name first", and link to Japanese names, etc, etc. Noel (talk) 20:47, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Footnote, template or something