Talk:Jelena Janković/Archive 1

The name of this article should be changed to "Jelena Jankovic" because that is the name used on the English-language websites of the official governing bodies of tennis, which are the Women's Tennis Association and the International Tennis Federation. That also is the name used on the English-language websites of Fed Cup, the US Open, Wimbledon, the French Open (Roland Garros), and the Australian Open. Tennis expert (talk) 07:48, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

When asked for relevant policies to this discussion, after the two sentence statement listed above, editors cited a number of policies, including but not limited to WP:UE, WP:AT, WP:OPENPARA, as well as discussions such as the one noted below at WT:TENNISNAMES. What no editor thought to bring to this discussion was the policy on edit warring, which is the precise issue that the article was protected for. First, is this an edit war? Let's look at the definition.

An edit war occurs when editors who disagree about the content of a page repeatedly override each other's contributions, rather than trying to resolve the disagreement by discussion.

I think it's indisputable that, across a substantial number of biographies, there is a specific war (which is part of a larger accent-driven war) over the question of including alternate un-diacritic'd forms of the name, along with the diacritic'd form, as a "significant alternate title."

WP:EW provides a limited number of exceptions to the types of edits that are considered edit wars. Most of the exceptions are inapplicable here, perhaps the closest exception to the current situation is this: "Reverting to enforce certain overriding policies is not considered edit warring. For example, under the policy on biographies of living persons, where negative unsourced content is being introduced, the risk of harm is such that removal is required."

So, what policies are we disrupting the encyclopedia over? Are they as overriding as WP:BLP?

The warring I specifically indicated regarded the "alternate undiacritic'd title. WP:UE doesn't seem to apply. WP:OPENPARA's examples suggest (very strongly) a treatment but don't explicitly address the narrow question, WP:AT comes close but not close enough, ditto the consensus RfC. Barely, the "alternate forms" treatment is not unambiguously in violation of policy.

More importantly, none of these policies gives any reason to imagine that they are an overriding concern, none is within a light-year of being an exception to WP:EW.

My initial judgment, which I've taken nearly a week to reconsider, appears correct. This is an edit war, and doesn't meet any recognized exception to WP:EW. Moreover, it's an egregious edit war. Editors here have warned each other of this risk, it's hard to plead ignorance. I doubt any significant, intelligent participant in the full-scale Great Battle of Diacritics was unaware of the risks. Neither were participants unaware of how contentious the Great Battle of Diacritics has proven on all fronts. As near as I can tell, editors had the perception that they could continue this behavior and continue to disrupt the functioning of the editing community with impunity. That perception must end to protect the encyclopedia and the editing community. a few blocks will be issued toward that end.

As a result, my "close" is that I'll be blocking a few editors participating broadly in this the edit war shortly. I'll explain my specific rationales to the editors so blocked.

As multiple editors asked how to address the underlying diacritic question, I'll attempt an answer, but this answer is not an official closure, merely advice:

1. Don't edit war, and at this point, leave a margin between yourself and the edit warring. At this point, you may be wise to consider, at *most*, a WP:1RR on diacritic-related issues if you've had any involvement at all in this Great Battle of Diacritics.
2. Get a clean policy consensus with an RfC on this narrow question: "Should unaccented forms of accented names be included as significant alternate names with respect to the language at WP:AT?" Do this at WT:AT. (Or, better yet, Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biographies.) I suspect an RFC will find consensus there. Many intelligent, pragmatic arguments were made here, but it's not my role here, today, to decide WP style policy where it has not yet gained a broad consensus.
3. Recognize that the majority of Wikipedia editors care more about the edit warring policy and having a functional editing community than they do about which way we handle accents in names. --j⚛e decker^talk 02:10, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

END OF CLOSING STATEMENT

JD, I'm unhappy that two articles have both been frozen at the same point with the long-time information removed as opposed to in place. This particular problem is not about diacritics, it's about policy and censorship. I've asked advise from administrators, I've re-written the structure 4 or 5 times, it's been at ani where my point was agreed to by the sole replier who gave his opinion, I've asked for page protections. It's required by UE#Treatment_of_alternative_names and we've talked on my talkpage. I'm not sure where else to go with this stalemate but advise is certainly welcome. Pages have gone from title: common name, lead: common name > title: common name, lead: common name, and I added an extra lead: foreign name. That wasn't good enough. It then went to title: common name, lead: foreign name, extra lead: common name. Not good enough. Then article: foreign name, lead: foreign name, extra lead: common name... still not good enough. And now a handful of editors want article: foreign name, lead: foreign name and no mention of the fact that the governing bodies of tennis, almost all English sourcing, and players own registrations have an alternate spelling. You'll note that even Encyclopedia Britannica makes sure it add the alternate spellings in Ilie Nastase... and they use the Common English spelling as the title. Now to a degree we work by consensus here and titles and lead placement have been going the rounds lately by voting. You haven't seen me reverting those diacritics even though I believe they are dead wrong in this English encyclopedia with regards to tennis players. I haven't read up on governing bodies of music or painters so I leave them alone. But tennis I've followed and written about for multiple decades.

This isn't about one article or it would really just be a content dispute. This is about the complete censoring out of any mention of authoritatively recognized alternate spellings of tennis players. Why, for our readers sake would we ever want to do that? It's not like the information isn't sourced. It is and others agree with me. At the ani an admin? wrote: "Hang on - the tennis player in question IS also known by the accentless form of her name, as can be very quickly seen by following the WTA and ITF external links (and the French language link from the French Open). It seems sensible to at least mention this spelling of her name..." Other admins and editors have said the same thing, plus it's policy that if there is another commonly used spelling, to have it listed in or near the lead. It's one thing to prefer diacritics or no diacritics but to censor out the English spelling as if it doesn't exist is not acceptable at all. That's why I've tried several versions that would hopefully find some compromise. I've tried different placement, different wording (alternate spelling:, known professionally as:, English spelling is:, registered tennis name is:) but the answer from a handful of editors is to eliminate everything. It seems this handful wants to back me into the tiniest of corners so wikipedia is forced to take action. If you look at steps taken throughout this process I feel I'm the one who has tried to be reasonable. There's only one editor who I have nothing to do with after all the exchanges due to personal attacks, but the others we've conversed with... want the complete elimination of all English name versions for every tennis player. I've nowhere else to go other than to agree to that redacting of English spelling... I can't do that. So please tell me the next step because I can see the same thing happening for many many other tennis articles. Fyunck(click) (talk) 23:16, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Fyunck, as part of WP:TENNISNAMES having been overwhelmingly rejected by RfC, you should accept the follow the following guidelines as part of that conclusion:

Consensus is that the answer to the question posed in the title of this RfC is "no". Additionally, a great majority of participants express a preference for retaining diacritics in the title of articles, either generally or as applied to tennis players in particular.  Sandstein  18:00, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

For reference, paste WP:AT section: Treatment of alternative names

By the design of Wikipedia's software, an article can only have one title. When this title is a name, significant alternative names for the topic should be mentioned in the article, usually in the first sentence or paragraph. If there are at least three alternative names, or there is something notable about the names themselves, a separate name section is recommended. (see Lead section). These may include alternative spellings, longer or shorter forms, historical names, significant names in other languages, etc. There is also no reason why alternative names cannot be used in article text, in contexts where they are more appropriate than the name used as the title of the article. For example, the city now called Gdańsk is referred to as Danzig in historical contexts to which that name is more suited (e.g. when it was part of Germany or a Free City).

All significant alternative titles, names, or forms of names that apply to a specific article should be made to redirect to that article. If they are ambiguous, it should be ensured that the article can at least be reached from a disambiguation page for the alternative term. Note that the exact capitalization of the article's title does not affect Wikipedia search, so it is not necessary to create redirects from alternative capitalizations unless these are likely to be used in links; see Naming conventions (capitalization).

Piped links are often used in article text to allow a subject with a lengthy article title to be referred to using a more concise term where this does not produce ambiguity.

Note that "Gdańsk is referred to as Danzig", not "Gdańsk is referred to as Danzig and Gdansk." Evidently the guideline does not consider that newspapers which represent Gdańsk as "Gdansk" create a new name. The same goes for sports websites or Wimbledon scoreboards unable to represent René Lacoste or Björn Borg.

For reference Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Biographies

While the article title should generally be the name by which the subject is most commonly known, the subject's full name should be given in the lead paragraph, if known. Many cultures have a tradition of not using the full name of a person in everyday reference, but the article should start with the complete version. For example:

• (from Fidel Castro): Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (born August 13, 1926) ...
• (from François Mitterrand): François Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand (October 26, 1916 – January 8, 1996) ...
• (from Brian Jones): Lewis Brian Hopkin Jones (28 February 1942 – 3 July 1969) ...

In some cases, subjects have legally changed their names at some point after birth. In these cases the birth name should be given as well:

• (from Bill Clinton): William Jefferson Clinton (born William Jefferson Blythe III on August 19, 1946) ...

Note no "known as Francois" in example above, as per tennis players François Jauffret (1942-), Jean-François Caujolle (1952-), François Blanchy (1886-1960), Françoise Durr (1942-), Jean-François Bachelot (1977-). In ictu oculi (talk) 06:41, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

First, thank you both for your detailed responses. Let me summarize what I've read so far, see if I have it right, and ask a couple questions, if I might.

• Questions for everyone:
  1. First, I've a list of discussions referred to that folks have asked me to review. Are there other policies, guidelines or discussions that you feel are important before I move forward?

     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:MakeSense64/Tennis_names

     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/IncidentArchive758#Disruptive_editing_by_Fyunck.28click.29

     WP:UE#Treatment_of_alternative_names

     WP:AT

     Wikipedia:Lead_section#Alternative_names

     WP:BIRTHNAME

  2. Besides this article and Sophie Lefèvre, where else has this dispute been active?

• Questions for User:Fyunck(click):
  1. I was somewhat taken aback by your use of the word censorship in this discussion. When I hear that word, I hear an implication of a subtext, a political motive, etc. As you attempting to suggest an ulterior motive beyond "good editing"? If so, can you tell me what that is, in your view? Is there a nationalist, religious, or political overtone to the use or non-use of diacritics and the like that I am unfamiliar with?
  2. Would it be more or less correct to say that it is your view that "Jelena Jankovic" deserves to be treated as we describe "significant alternative names" in our policies?

• Questions for In ictu oculi:
  1. Would it be more or less correct to say that it is your view that "Jelena Jankovic" is a trivial re-rendering of "Jelena Janković" as opposed to a significant alternative name, and that your example of Gdańsk demonstrates that by example?

Finally, two comments:

• I note that my use of "diacritic" or "accent" in this discussion may be imprecise here. If that is the case, my apologies, and I hope that my meaning remains clear despite this imprecision. (I had thought, by the way, that that distinction might be pertinent here, however, the fact that this same discussion has essentially been replicated at Lefèvre leads me to believe that the dispute does not resolve against subtle linguistic issues.)

• Fyunck(click): I note your unhappiness that in both of the two cases I've been involved in I've protected the Wrong Version. In both cases, I protected the version as I came to what appears to be an edit war, and protected at the current version as is our policies in such cases. Luck of the draw, if you believe I have acted in any inappropriate way, you are welcome to bring the issue to ANI, or what have you.

Thank you for your patience as I review this. Best regards, --j⚛e decker^talk 18:28, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

See Toni Androic, Miljan Zekic, Frederic Fontang, Germán López, André Miele, Tomislav Brkić, Juan-Sebastian Vivanco, Roberto Maytín, Saša Hiršzon, César Ramírez (tennis), Óscar Burrieza, Roberto Argüello, Nikola Čačić, György Balázs, Manuel Sánchez (tennis) and probably many, many more. In all of these, Fyunck(click) has insisted on adding the non-diacritic version in the first sentence of the lede (in the form of a parenthetical "also" or "professionally known as"). The objection to this is that it adds no information to the article: everyone already knows that diacritics are omitted by some sources, especially non-scholarly media, and anyone can easily "see through" the diacritics to figure out the ASCII version without requiring it to be spelled out. This is about as useful as writing "(also Roger FEDERER)" simply because the Wimbledon scoreboard writes players' last names in all caps. It seems a bit petty and the cries of "censorship" seem a bit battlegroundish. — P.T. Aufrette (talk) 22:45, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Hi Joe

Yes it be correct to say that that "Jelena Jankovic" is a trivial re-rendering (due to typographical/manpower limitations) of "Jelena Janković" as opposed to a significant alternative name, and that your example of Gdańsk demonstrates that by example. Danzig is an exonym, see List of German exonyms for places in Poland, English however has no exonym for Gdańsk - the Lonely Planet uses Gdańsk.

Likewise the List of English exonyms includes only a few personal names, like John Calvin (French "Jean Calvin").

There is no significant difference between "accents" and "diacritical marks": User:Prolog/Diacritical_marks.

The number of articles with these recent WP:TENNISNAMES ledes is 100+. But mainly non-famous players. In ictu oculi (talk) 00:17, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

• @Joe Decker. I'll do my best to answer your queries.

On the questions for me. 1. You have to remember where I'm coming from on this. In my opinion Jelena Jankovic is far more common, is her registered name in ITF tennis, is used by the ITF, WTA and Fed Cup. I have trouble comprehending how it is not the article title but it went through the RM process and failed to move. That's fair enough. Per other administrators comments to me when tennis articles were at the common English spelling I added the foreign spelling too right there in the lead. It seemed common sense and no one removed those additions. Now when articles are being listed and moved by a select few editors they are also demanding that there is no trace whatsoever of the fact that these players go by different spellings per the governing bodies of tennis etc... If it one or two articles where this was happening I would say we are having a content dispute and probably move on. And one editor in particular has probably made thousands of moves over many wikis to remove the common spelling, replace with the foreign spelling, and then left no trace whatsoever of the names used throughout Wimbledon, US Open, Australian Open, French Open, etc... That is censorship in my book. If there's an agenda you'd have to ask him. Now the alternate would also be true. If a group of editors tried to systematically remove from wikipedia, all traces of a player's foreign spelled name as though it doesn't exist... that would be censorship in my opinion also. Ana Ivanovic would be an example of a player who, in English, spells her name without diacritics (two of her own personal websites and signature). But it is spelled with diacritics in her homeland and there are foreign sources to back that up. So with her we must include that other significant spelling.

2. yes. And the advise I was given early on by an administrator.

Under questions for everyone: Wikipedia_talk:Biographies_of_living_persons/Archive_34

other guidelines: Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Biographies#Pseudonyms

I think that's about it. The tennisnames listing a few others talk about is an interesting beast all its own. A discussion on a Personal Essay about whether we should do away with all English sourcing and use ONLY ITF registration for all tennis naming. I never use it nor was I in favor of it. As for the luck of the draw comment... that's why I asked and I shall certainly take you at your word. Thanks for the clarity. Fyunck(click) (talk) 07:46, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Comment. To add a bit more perspective to this discussion you may want to read a few very recent discussions on Jimbo Wales' usertalk. Here he expresses the opinion that we are already overusing diacritics on WP: [3], and here is another interesting topic: [4], where he strongly agrees with the closing of RM that moved an article to Ivory Coast away from the official name of that country:[5]. The idea is that we try to serve our readers and rather use an anglicized name that everybody knows, instead of an official name that is difficult to spell for English language users (and editors).
A group of editors have been busy moving as much names as they can to native spelling titles (even when these foreign spellings hardly ever appear in English language sources). But when we now see articles being moved to Vietnamese spelling which almost no English reader can type or read, shouldn't we wonder: what is the purpose? And it would be one thing if articles are moved to native spelling titles when there is a concensus to do so, but some editors then proceed to remove all traces of English spelling of these names in the article. As if anglicized spellings of foreign names need to be hidden. Our guidelines and policies ask us to mention significant alternative names, including alternative spellings, in the lede of an article. But what we are doing in this case is mention the alternative names, except when it is an anglicized name. That's an interesting approach on the "English" wikipedia.
There is a very simple reason why we better mention anglicized names even if they differ in only one letter or diacritic. Not every person is equally famous and not every wp reader is an expert on the given topic. E.g. a reader finds an article on wp and the name is written with diacritics. He has seen the same name in newspaper or tv, but without diacritics. Is it the same person or not? How is the reader supposed to know if we do not mention it in the lede of the article? If two or more reliable sources for an article use an alternative rendering of a name, then it is better to mention that alternative name in the lede. We try to be accurate, but we also try to be complete for our various types of readers. MakeSense64 (talk) 10:20, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

I'll plan to close this discussion later tonight. (e.g., somewhere between three and seven hours from now.) Apologies for the delay. --j⚛e decker^talk 21:57, 22 July 2012 (UTC)