Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Traditional Chinese star names

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 07:14, 9 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Traditional Chinese star names

Traditional Chinese star names (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (delete) – (View log)

Per Wikipedia:NOT#Wikipedia_is_not_a_directory and Wikipedia:NOT#Wikipedia_is_not_an_indiscriminate_collection_of_information this is a table of the Chinese names of all stars. There isn't any commentary or history to the names. MBisanz talk 21:22, 4 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Delete What a disappointment. The article was apparently written for a limited audience of people who happen to be fluent in both Chinese and English. Even then, you have to be somewhat familiar with the Greek alphabet to spot that 九州殊口三 (九州) ξ Eridani is referring to Epsilon Eridani. "Traditional" names has no meaning here, and the nominator is right-- this is nothing more than a directory, and a rather useless one at that. Mandsford (talk) 01:57, 5 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. This entry actually refers to Xi Eridani, which we don't have an article on. Spacepotato (talk) 22:41, 7 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I agree totally, and I would love to know more about Chinese astronomy from someone who cared to tell us something about it. But this article does not add to our understanding of the topic of traditional Chinese star names. Somebody who is able to read Chinese characters might say "What an excellent list!" -- I'll take his word for it -- but for those of us who can't, it's more of a case of "What a mediocre cut and paste job!" I don't suppose anyone in this discussion would be able to transliterate any of the Chinese characters. Mandsford (talk) 15:33, 5 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
That would be problematic, considering that transliteration depends on scheme and dialect. Since various books on the subject most likely use Wade-Giles, while the People's Republic of China prescribes usage of Hanyu Pinyin, they will look very different. And the large Cantonese diaspora in the world (particularly those using the Hoisan diaelct, for North America, historically) also have different transliterations and multiple schemes, there are several possible values. I think that the transliterations to be listed should be Pinyin, WG, some Cantonese scheme, some Hoisan scheme. Also, some stars may be better noted by the Japanese pronounciation of their name (which uses the same Chinese character) in some English contexts. So the transliterations should also include Romaji (Hepburn and Wapuro), Korean and Vietnamese. (US soldiers in Korea, Vietnam and Japan will have brought home some of those native renderings.) 76.66.193.69 (talk) 07:18, 6 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It hasn't been changed since January 2006, and the original author appears to have stopped contributing to Wikipedia. Mandsford (talk) 18:29, 5 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Well, seeing as this is a wiki, that shouldn't be a problem. There are literally millions of other editors around, and at least some of them should be able to help. :) ···日本穣? · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:19, 6 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note: This debate has been included in the list of Japan-related deletion discussions. —···日本穣? · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:43, 5 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note: This debate has been included in the list of China-related deletion discussions. —···日本穣? · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:43, 5 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note: This debate has been included in the list of Taiwan-related deletion discussions. —···日本穣? · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:43, 5 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. —···日本穣? · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:43, 5 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note: This debate has been included in the list of Religion-related deletion discussions. —···日本穣? · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:43, 5 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep and cleanup. This article should be improved, not wiped out. ···日本穣? · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:43, 5 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Clearly notable, and no more indiscriminate than any other list of visible stars would be (which is a well-defined, naturally limited set). Needs romanized names STAT. —Quasirandom (talk) 20:43, 5 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete wikipedia is not a chinese-to-engilsh dictionary, and that's what this is.Bali ultimate (talk) 19:51, 6 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • This is a bad article. It is, however, a start on a useful article (one that actually talks about Chinese stargazing). Keep. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 22:57, 6 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • It's a bit of a shame that it seems to take a deletion discussion to get attention to various articles (and I'm not saying I haven't used deletion discussions to achieve this effect in the past). I'm generally of the opinion that it is better to present no information than wrong/misleading information (e.g. categorising transliterations of Bayer designations as traditional star names, as appears to have happened), but rescue is certainly better than deletion. It would be better to have this article have some discussion of origin/etymology than just be a plain list - if that can be achieved so much the better, as a list would probably fall foul of the WP:NOT recommendations cited above. Since the rescue flag has been put there, I'll say qualified keep to see what can be done. Icalanise (talk) 19:58, 7 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. These are not transliterations but are, as the article says, traditional names. These names are constructed by appending a serial number to the name of the traditional Chinese asterism to which the star belongs. For example, the name 河鼓二 for α Aquilae is constructed from the asterism name 河鼓 (Hé Gŭ, River Drum), followed by 二 (èr, 2), which indicates that it is the second star in this asterism. The other two stars in the asterism, β and γ Aquilae, are named 河鼓一 and 河鼓三. Spacepotato (talk) 22:22, 7 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep as it's a useful, informative list. Spacepotato (talk) 22:22, 7 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep, but expand. I agree that Wikipedia is not a dictionary or a list or whatever else along those lines, and that this article could be categorized as such. However, the article does present informational and useful data, which should be kept within Wikipedia. A translitteration is primordial, and an explanation of the origin of the terms would be very important as well. CielProfond (talk) 23:34, 7 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep and clean-up. Lists are important and this one shows potential and is hardly indiscriminate. -- Banjeboi 09:11, 8 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It's in chinese for goodness sakes. How many editors here are qualified to deal with this at all? For all I know the characters claiming to be betelgeuse are the characters for pork fried rice. To someone who isn't bilingual, this is worthless. To someone who is bilingual, there are already translation dictionaries that serve their purpose much better than wikipedia could be or should be.Bali ultimate (talk) 22:56, 8 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]


The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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