Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Japan/Archive/January 2015

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Help save an article?

Hey, the article for Doraemon (character) is up for deletion via AfD. This seems like a pretty notable character (I've been told that he's pretty much the Japanese Mickey Mouse as far as popularity goes) and there should be sourcing, but it'd likely be predominantly in Japanese, which I can neither speak nor read. Can any of you help look for sourcing? I'd hate to see this get deleted because of a language barrier. I'm going to post this in WP:ANIME, but I wanted to get as much help as possible. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 04:15, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

(I nominated this for AfD.) I apologise for not handling this the best way, but once again, this is not a fair representation. There is an article Doraemon, about, well, Doraemon. Admittedly the lead starts by saying "Doraemon is a Japanese manga series", rather than "Doraemon is the character of the eponymous Japanese manga series", but it is principally about the character. It's not very good, and includes a particularly wonky, improperly sourced "explanation" of the name. A few days ago, someone copied this one (1) wonky paragraph about the name, added one (1) sentence about a (fairly ridiculous) Chinese complaint that Doraemon was subversive, and a list of transcriptions of "Doraemon" into various languages and scripts, which was neither particularly significant nor accurate (Italian was just garbled, comparing with WP:it), and which was already derivable from the list of foreign versions of Doraemon, and made these into the new article Doraemon (character). Since the total possibly significant new material was one (1) sentence from China, which might or might not have been added to the Doraemon article, it seemed (to me) obvious that the best thing was to delete this derived article. I have not been able to understand many of the arguments for keeping this derivative article: sourcing is not an issue, because it's all there already in the Doraemon article. And since one of the arguments seems to be that "Doraemon is the Mickey Mouse of Japan" (which is at least a defensible position), I have pointed out that Mickey Mouse is at Mickey Mouse, so I would expect Doraemon to be at Doraemon. Imaginatorium (talk) 07:36, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
Ah, but there is an article Macbeth (character), and to say that Macbeth (character) merits an article whereas Doraemon (character) does not would of course be clear evidence of dead-white-European-male idolatry or Japan-bashing, or both, or something. I'd have thought that Macbeth (character) would have had accrued lots of Serious Cogno-Intellectual Articles ripe for the summarizing and quoting; but it turns out that the central part of the article Macbeth (character) cites zero (0) sources. However, yes, WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS is no "keep" rationale (plus the article Macbeth (character), though seriously defective, isn't crap). ¶ I happen to think that the AfD nomination was entirely right and I still think that the article should be deleted, of course not because of any notion that Doraemon (character) doesn't merit an article (I don't think this), but because it's still little more than a (well-intended) content fork (there's also List of Doraemon characters) and a great improvement seems unlikely. But I have an open mind and in the past I've changed my "!vote" in the course of an AfD. ¶ Unlike most of the people who "!voted" to keep the article, User:Tokyogirl79 has actually worked to improve it. She should be applauded for that. And above, she has not suggested that the article Doraemon is imperilled or indeed accused anybody of anything. The representation above is incomplete but fair enough, and it seems to me that her attempt to persuade people here to help her improve the article is entirely proper. Indeed, I hope that she succeeds. -- Hoary (talk) 08:05, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

matcha

Today I looked at the article matcha for the first time in a long while. (I'd noticed that a surprisingly large wodge had been removed from it -- and rightly so, as it turned out.)

It's not one of en:WP's best articles.

A minor surprise was the conspicuousness of the spelling "maccha". Now, from my personal POV, Hepburn romanization is a crock and "maccha" is no sillier than "matcha". But that's by the way. We don't clog up articles with alternative romanizations, unless there's good reason. (And yes there sometimes is, e.g. "(Y)ebisu".) Anyway, I perpetrated this edit on the article. I hope that no calm person objects. -- Hoary (talk) 06:51, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Well, try Bocchi (Japanese) and the associated AfD discussion. Should these things just be Boldly Moved? There is a Big Problem here: there is (as you and I know, and no doubt some other people, but not apparently writers of proper printed "sources") essentially no concept in Japan of systematic romanisation. People tap away in the Roman alphabet (crazy, really, since a kana keyboard would halve the keystrokes), and know what works. But no Japanese input system designed in Japan (to my knowledge anyway) accepts any standard romanisation. So it is not surprising that no-one knows how to do it. Note that so-called wapuroo-shiki is not a romanisation system, because it is a many-to-one mapping (not an injection) from keystrokes to kana, and therefore does not have an inverse. Imaginatorium (talk) 07:50, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
Urgh, I'd never seen that before. It's grotesque, and its spelling is but a minor factor. I like the way that it sports an impressive looking link to ja:ぼっち, which, er, turns out to be almost completely unrelated. The creator of that article also created this. Words fail me, so I can only express myself physically, so I'm a Japan basher, QED. -- Hoary (talk) 08:16, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
Sorry, forgot to mention: this is one of a batch of (actual) student essays submitted by this "editor". Many have gone. Imaginatorium (talk) 08:26, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
Well well, this is all very ... educational. Try this. (Only for admins, sorry.) -- Hoary (talk) 09:15, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
I moved it to botchi but we need to get rid of it. That AFD was garbage.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 08:54, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Reijin

I've created Reijin as a redirect to the MV Reijin page. I note it is linked from Wikipedia:WikiProject Japan/Shinto task force/Encyclopedic articles, which may indicate that it either needs converting to a dab page, or that the Reijin article needs to be written and a hatnote added to point those looking for the ship to the correct article. Shinto is well outside my area of expertise, so will leave it up to members of this TF to deal with. Mjroots (talk) 23:53, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Japanese new religions

In the article about Japanese new religions there is a table with statistics on the membership of various groups. The data is by now 25 years old, any means to update that information? Maybe by inserting data published by the Agency for Cultural Affairs? --Catflap08 (talk) 19:40, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Done, though the sourcing information for the other data in that chart is very vague. I also removed the division of the religions into periods in the chart as there was no supporting information in the article itself. --Cckerberos (talk) 23:51, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

@ CckerberosActually the source was mentioned. I agree however, that the division into periods was a bit all over the place or not explained. Maybe be at least the source should be reinserted as part of the bibliography. (Shimazono, Susumu (2004): From Salvation to Spirituality: Popular Religious Movements in Modern Japan. Trans Pacific Press. pp. 234-235). As mentioned in the article’s talk page it might be a good idea to base all numbers on the source you mentioned – that’s whenever you may have time to do so.--Catflap08 (talk) 09:11, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X is live!

Hello everyone!

You may have received a message from me earlier asking you to comment on my WikiProject X proposal. The good news is that WikiProject X is now live! In our first phase, we are focusing on research. At this time, we are looking for people to share their experiences with WikiProjects: good, bad, or neutral. We are also looking for WikiProjects that may be interested in trying out new tools and layouts that will make participating easier and projects easier to maintain. If you or your WikiProject are interested, check us out! Note that this is an opt-in program; no WikiProject will be required to change anything against its wishes. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you!

Note: To receive additional notifications about WikiProject X on this talk page, please add this page to Wikipedia:WikiProject X/Newsletter. Otherwise, this will be the last notification sent about WikiProject X.

Harej (talk) 16:57, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Quick discussion on Nihongo template

Should the Question Mark in the Nihongo template be included only in the lead=yes parameter? (Template discussion link) DragonZero (Talk · Contribs) 23:10, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Qualifications to Join

I would like 2 join dis project. Qualifications? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alrighttanktopboy63965414 (talk • contribs) 13:05, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Are you interested in Japan? Want to help improve articles related to Japan here on Wikipedia? If you answered "Yes" to both of those, then you are qualified to join. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 05:54, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

Redirects for Japanese Era name years. Proposed change

Right now the Japanese Era Years redirect to the Gregorian Year. I think it might make more sense for them to redirect to that year in Japan. For example Showa 52 (and Shōwa 52) redirect to 1977. I think it might make more sense to redirect them to 1977 in Japan. I know they don't all exist, for example Meiji 32 redirects to 1899, but 1899 in Japan doesn't currently exist. I thought I'd post here and will only post to WP:RFD if I have support here.01:08, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

If there is an applicable "XXXX in Japan", then yes, the era year should redirect to it. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 05:52, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
And there's really no reason to go to the hassle of a full RFD as this is not even controversial. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 05:53, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
Seems a good idea to me, and as Nihonjoe says, it should be uncontroversial. It's hard to see how anyone would end up at Showa 52, but if they did, the chances are that they don't know what it means, and 1977 wouldn't help much. I don't know how easy it is to automate these things, but a script could generate the list, and where "Year n in Japan" doesn't exist, create it as a stub, which lists the regnal year. Imaginatorium (talk) 06:46, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

Request for Comment

There is currently an RfC at Talk:Ryukyu Kingdom#RfC: Infobox concerning the infobox. Thank you. ミーラー強斗武 (StG88ぬ会話) 19:54, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Assistance requested

For the past several years, I have been dealing with low-speed vandalism regarding the official trademarked spellings for several television shows because the online fandoms for these TV shows disagree with how the trademarks were filed and prefer alternate versions that appear in no reliable sources. The articles are as follows:

The words on these pages that cause issues are "Buddyloid", "Metaloid", and "Vaglass". At Talk:Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters#Final statement on Vaglass, Buddyloid, and Metaloid, I have gone over the evidence as to why the L spellings are used on Wikipedia, as they are the only spellings in use in reliable sources (outside of the exactly one instance of an alternate spelling appearing on screen briefly extremely early into the TV show's broadcast).

The word in contention on this page is "Tajadol". The proof for this spelling comes from these officially licensed products' packaging as well as the TV show's official website. I had not attempted to get this onto a talk page until now.

There are also peripheral issues with the titling of Himitsu Sentai Gorenger where people prefer "Goranger" over what was recently found to be the official trademarked name now in use on the article, but it has been covered at Talk:Himitsu Sentai Gorenger#Proper title translation? where people have been ignorant of the spelling for years despite blatant usage on props in the show.

With the pending arbitration sanctions against me, I fear that my ability to prevent vandalism to these pages to bad-faith change the spellings against consensus will be hampered or willfully exploited by people to spite me. This has already recently happened at Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters and has happened in the past at Kamen Rider OOO (character). I would just like more eyes on these pages to watch for these bad faith changes.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 20:47, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

I added those pages to my watchlist. ミーラー強斗武 (StG88ぬ会話) 21:36, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
There was also the issue of vandalism to add a joke to List of Ressha Sentai ToQger characters (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views). However, this TV show will be over in 2 weeks and a new page will have to be created.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 22:27, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
A new page for what? ミーラー強斗武 (StG88ぬ会話) 03:09, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

Eponymous ensemble name order

There's a man called Ittetsu Gen (弦一徹) with a string ensemble called 弦一徹ストリングス. Should I leave it in the original Japanese order (Gen Ittetsu Strings), or switch it to [given][surname] style (Ittetsu Gen Strings)? I know for album titles we keep the original name order (e.g. Utada Hikaru Single Collection Vol. 1), but what is the policy on musical groups featuring somebody's name? English language websites don't seem to have a consistent name order way to describe the group. --Prosperosity (talk) 02:46, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

For names of groups, companies, etc., the order is not changed from the Japanese. So, it would be left as "Gen Ittetsu Strings". ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 19:06, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
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