Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Singapore-related articles

message: I believe Wikipedia MOS requires that the English name goes first, but the order of other languages in infoboxes, leads or wherever is AFAIK undefined.  A few options:
# Alphabetical by language name in English (and, coincidentally, number of speakers in Sg): English, Chinese, Malay, Tamil
# Alphabetical by ISO language code: English, Malay (ms), Tamil (ta), Chinese (zh)
# English, national language of Singapore, other official languages: English, Malay, Chinese, Tamil
I, personally, don't really give a shit and would be happy with any of those. Jpatokal (talk) 20:41, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Why not delete the entire article? Then it will all be solved. People using the airport who speak English have no business reading about it anyway. Maybe there should only be articles on Wikipedia in the official languages to show proper respect for the official languages. English is a disrespectful unofficial language after all. It is probably offensive to many to have an article in the offensive language of English about such an important cultural icon.--Filll (talk) 01:46, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  I have no idea what that rant was about, but FYI, English is one of Singapore's official languages. Jpatokal (talk) 08:07, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Order of languages

message: While editing the article "Choor Singh", it occurred to me that the following points should be added to this guideline:
*If a Sikh person's surname is "Singh" or "Kaur", the article about the person should be sorted by the person's first name. For instance, the article "Choor Singh" should be sorted according to "Choor" and not "Singh".
*If a Sikh person has a surname in addition to "Singh" or "Kaur", the article about the person should be sorted according to that surname. For instance, the article "Choor Singh Sidhu" should be sorted according to "Sidhu".
Thoughts? — Cheers, JackLee –talk–</span> 17:56, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sorting of articles about Sikh people 

message: For the longest time, having all four official languages represented in the lead paragraph of Singapore-related articles has been there, primary in accordance to similar initiatives in numerous other articles relevant to other countries where they exist official languages other than English. While arguments to maintain this format has been generally well argued and taken for granted, the arguments against it is usually based purely on personal aesthetics preferences.
The wording of the template is as such, because while it is expected that all four languages should be presented in the article, they need not necessarily be in the lead paragraph if there exists a template to present this information. It has no relation to the content or context of the article, as the above discussion seem to be skewed towards.
Allow me to address some of the pertinent issues:
*Some users above has attempted to associate items according to race to justify inclusion of specific languages. This is a contrived and even dangerous path to take, the very thing the Singapore government is trying to guard against, and which happens to align also to Wikipedia's NPOV policy. Wikipedia is not an exercise for any one race to claim ownership over any entity, and it is worrisome to see people trying to associate national-level institutions (such as a public hospital like Tan Tock Seng) with a particular race just because the founder was Chinese and that it was first built to serve the Chinese community, nevermind that it has since grown to serve Singaporeans from all walks of life. Or that of Dhoby Ghaut, as if it should be Indianised because of its name, even thou it was an area equally significant (if not more so) to non Indian Singaporeans, especially with the area's rich history of schools and churches, all of which are not exactly and specifically Indian. Wikipedia is not paper, and it is a perfect avenue to represent names in all four languages as they are intended in major institutions around Singapore. Just look at the entrance of each school in Singapore for evidence. It is not there for nothing.
*I further contend the notion that "using native spelling of names on Wikipedia was used to aid the translation of a place that was not an English-speaking location". First, those names are there not to "aid translation", but simply to present the name of a location as the locals may call it. Second, English may be the current lingua franca amongst the younger and more educated Singaporeans, but it is by no means a common language for large segments of the heartlanders, neither is it ever a native language for over 95% of Singaporeans. Calling Singapore a "English-speaking location" assumes we are comparable to the UK, US, Australia, Canada or NZ, but we simply do not belong to that exclusive club. Singapore is more akin to countries like India and the Philippines, where English is widely spoken but does not supplant local languages and dialects. The significance of this, is that Singapore, for most part of its history, has not been English-speaking, and much of its placenames and institutions has had far richer histories ingrained in languages other than English, and it is certainly of value to researchers, academics, social scientists, and just about the general public to know how they may be known in other languages.
*Finally, the logistical and technical issues raised. I see some saying this is the English wikipedia, thus names in other languages should be reserved for articles in respective non-English articles. I now realistically ask: do we have equivalent articles for all our English language sg-related articles in the three other languages for this to happen? Second, of using extreme examples like South Africa to speak against listing all four official Singaporean languages. Realistically, it is not wise to do so, and the current solution has been to only list the language most dominant or official in the said locality of a geographical location, for instance. Hence this is why Johannesburg has only the Afrikaans pronunciation, and Mumbai only has Marathi script because Marathi is official in the state of Maharashtra where Mumbai is located. In Singapore, we do not have official location-specific language statuses, nor do we have officially-recognised language-dominant areas on a national level. Listing four languages is not logistically or technically impossible, nor will it necessarily present a horrifying long sundry list of names.
I write the above obviously to support my view of keeping the status quo, but I do recognise there is room for improvement especially in terms of wording to minimise ambiguities. I would urge other contributors above to consider the contexts of and reasoning for the current situation before attempting to bring about changes for the sake of it, especially when I sense that some of those advocating changes does not appear to fully appreciate or condone the diverse multi-cultural characteristic of this country when trying to roll out a one-size-fits-all solution. Lets not let good intentions be eroded in favour of convenience.--Huaiwei (talk) 21:51, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Concerns

message: There is currently an ongoing discussion about the future of this and others MoS naming style. Please consider the issues raised in the discussion and vote if you wish GnevinAWB (talk) 20:58, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: MoS naming style

message: It has been proposed this MOS be moved to Wikipedia:Subject style guide . Please comment at the RFC GnevinAWB (talk) 20:54, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: RFC which could affect this MOS

message: Editors may be interested in this RFC, along with the discussion of its implementation:
Should all subsidiary pages of the Manual of Style be made subpages of WP:MOS?
It's big; and it promises huge improvements. Great if everyone can be involved.  NoeticaTea? 00:49, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  RFC: restructuring of the Manual of Style 

message: Should we make explicit the sorting of Chinese names? Currently, in category pages, the names are not sorted in a standardised manner, i.e. in :Category:Singaporean television actresses. In Names of persons : national usages for entry in catalogue (PDF) as linked in Wikipedia:Categorization_of_people#Bibliography, the official sorting for Chinese names (as provided by NLB) is the Westernised is placed before the rest of the names: <surname>, <rest of the name>. i.e. Tan, Jennifer Pei Yi. It also made a comparison with the sorting style in Hong Kong, which it would have read as <surname>, <personal name>, <additional name(s)>. i.e. Tan, Pei Yi, Jennifer. I suggest putting NLB's version as a guideline for easier reference for anyone who edits the sorting of Chinese Singaporeans' names.
robertsky (talk) 04:22, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sorting of Chinese names 

message: I propose that an article on the most common naming customs used by Singaporean citizens to be made, so that in the future, readers can refer to it from a hatnote (template:Singaporean name) to explain how Singaporeans names work, without the need to reference the person's ethnicity, unless a consensus cannot be reached. Gandalfett (talk) 15:28, 9 August 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Creation of article Singaporean name