Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Korea (2024 Rewrite & Proposal)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Establishing MOS:DATETIES

Something that's bugged me over time is that we previously didn't have a recommended MOS:DATEFORMAT per MOS:DATETIES. I just realized I think I can prove that SK/NK have one; to my understanding it's Month, Day, Year.

Below is a quick survey of various Korea-related English-language sources below, mostly from WP:KO/RS#R. Surprisingly all of the ones I looked at use MDY formatting.

• Korea.net ([1])
• Seoul Metropolitan Government ([2])
• The Chosun Ilbo ([3])
• The Dong-A Ilbo ([4])
• The Hankyoreh ([5])
• KBS World ([6])
• The Korea Herald ([7])
• Korea JoongAng Daily ([8])
• The Korea Times ([9])
• The Korea Economic Daily ([10])
• Yonhap News Agency ([11])

I checked 2-3 articles from each source, and they all used MDY.

This seems to hold even for these North Korean sources:

• The Pyongyang Times ([12])
• KCNA ([13])
• Rodong Sinmun ([14])

I think there's a reasonably compelling case that we should recommend MDY. I'll add it to the MOS for now, if you dispute it please post here. 104.232.119.107 (talk) 11:26, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

I'm sorry to say that I think the MDY proposal as currently formulated seems to be WP:OR. As you already highlighted, Korean dates typically written in the format YYYY-MM-DD. To recommend MDY as a standard for English-language sources related to Korea, we would need reliable secondary sources that explicitly instruct Koreans to use the MDY format when writing in English. Are there any? The list of websites using MDY could be considered primary sources or data points: to claim that Korean sources prefer MDY format when writing in English, one would ideally need secondary sources that analyze and discuss this preference explicitly, rather than inferring it from a collection of examples.

MDY is very much a US-only thing. When doing a very quick search on Naver I could see recommendations on writing MDY for English when the audience was American, and DMY for European audiences. Though I didn't spend long looking, I don't think we're in a position to make the recommendation for MDY. By contrast, YYYY-MM-DD is an acceptable format in the wider MOS for references, so could recommend that I think.

Great that we've included a section on lunar calendar too. I've been struggling to find a site that will convert old (pre-1900) dates to Gregorian calendar or explains how to do it. Is anyone aware of one?Nonabelian (talk) 22:23, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

Lunar calendar converter I linked on WP:KOREA's resources section seefooddiet (talk) 07:20, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

MDY works because it is the observed status quo in the majority of South Korean-related articles. DMY usage is minimal and mostly observed in BLP articles, often due to the subject originating from UK-related countries or because the article was already written in British English, both of which fall under strong ties. Another observation for DMY usage is when the article was already using that format, so it was retained. While YYYY-MM-DD is an acceptable format for citations only, when an article is using either MDY or DMY, it is also tagged with {{Use mdy dates}} or {{Use dmy dates}}. These templates automatically render dates [in citations] in the specified format, regardless of the format they are entered in the wikitext. For consistency and maintainability, we should stick to a single style, which, as mentioned at the beginning, should be MDY, as per the nomination. — Paper9oll (🔔 • 📝) 06:09, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

For these kinds of policies there will always be degrees of OR in proposals in creating and evaluating them. But I think the argument that the evidence is not strong enough is reasonable. However, I suspect there's a reason MDY is being used so consistently in English-language sources from both Koreas. After 30 mins of searching I can't find any guidance on it (not even sure which govt ministry would produce this guidance, if any). seefooddiet (talk) 07:20, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

As a heads up, I'm going to retract the strong recommendation to use MDY dates by default, and replace it with a softer recommendation based on common practice. seefooddiet (talk) 00:36, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

I would argue that the MOS should direct editors to use American English and date formats, unless the subject has strong ties to a country that uses other variants of English, like Son Heung-min. There's The dominance of American English by The Korea Herald that supports this position. Additional support: Experiences of non-North American teachers of English in American English-dominant Korean ELT and Complex perceptions of Korean English-speakers. Anecdotally, having lived in South Korea for over eight years myself, American English is the standard. I work with and know nationals from countries that use other variants of English, and they all have the same experience: they must use American English. I don't see a particularly strong reason to encourage editors to use a neutral stance on the topic when South Korea clearly has a preference. ✗plicit 14:39, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

I feel the same way. The only entities I know of in South Korea that may use non-American English are international schools that follow British curricula. Everything else I've interacted with in South Korea has used American English. @98Tigerius @00101984hjw do you have any thoughts on this? Otherwise the only opposing voice so far is Nonabelian, and they've largely stopped contributing to Wikipedia in the last month. May be able to get this passed. seefooddiet (talk) 19:55, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

I think it’s safe to say MDY is the better option here. It appears to me as well that Korean sources prefer the format in English articles, and Korea definitely has had a stronger American influence throughout its history. — 00101984hjw (talk) 21:16, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

Oh hm wait. Forgot about North Korea. I don't know how prevalent non-American English is there, but at the very least we may be able to get a MDY recommendation passed for both Koreas given evidence in my original post. We'd have to demonstrate prevalence of non-American English in NK before we'd be able to recommend English variety guidance for NK-related articles. seefooddiet (talk) 19:59, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

It appears that both KCNA Watch and The Pyongyang Times prefer the MDY format.([15]https://kcnawatch.org/) — 00101984hjw (talk) 21:27, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

Yes, mentioned in original post seefooddiet (talk) 21:39, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

I did a quick Google search and found Ask a North Korean: What is English-language education like in the DPRK?, which reads, "If North Korea hates the U.S. so much, why would its citizens study English? It’s true that North Korea describes the U.S. as a mortal enemy, as invaders and wild dogs with whom it cannot live under one sky. Perhaps that’s why people in North Korea are taught British English, not American English." Unseen part of North Korea [VIDEO] also states, "Except the English we learn is British English, not American English." ✗plicit 00:14, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

Yeah makes sense. The use of MDY on their sites is odd. Does anyone have a VPN or live outside the US? Can you tell us if the date format changes to DMY? seefooddiet (talk) 00:25, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

I got hold of a VPN and gave it a try. It seems like they genuinely seem to prefer MDY. Also [16] This link uses "humor" instead of the British "humour".

I think we should ask for MDY for both Koreas. I think we can recommend American English for South Korea-related articles, but abstain from commenting on North Korea–related ones for now (until more evidence is gathered). Does this sound good? @00101984hjw @Explicit seefooddiet (talk) 09:45, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

Sounds good to me — 00101984hjw (talk) 12:13, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

I guess so. For now, articles about South Korean subjects should use MDY format, while articles about North Korean subjects should remain status quo. ✗plicit 08:14, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

Article naming conventions vs romanization in body

One thing that's difficult to understand in the MOS is what to use in the body: names per the naming convention or romanization guidelines.

For example, do we use Gyeonggi Province (as recommended in NCKO) or Gyeonggi-do (RR)? Currently we provide no guidance for that. It's implied elsewhere in the transliteration section that common name has weight for how we spell things in the body, but it's not explicit.

I like how MOS:JACOM handles it. It clearly applies for both body and article title. I think it should be possible for us to do similar. I may take a go at it.

@Nonabelian let me know if any thoughts. 104.232.119.107 (talk) 04:04, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

I agree. I think this is the biggest issue we need to think through how to fix. I also like how others have tried to address for instance MOS:IRELAND and WP:HEBREW have guidance for Article names and In-line use explicitly. I think we might need a "Article Name" section, if only to say follow the convention as laid out in names for people for biographies, places for geography etc.

Agree the transliteration guidance should be the fallback option to the explicit guidance for names, places. --Nonabelian (talk) 22:29, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

Still actively brainstorming. Given the things I want to receive consensus on (namely the romanization section), I think how we rule on that may need to come before this reorg. seefooddiet (talk) 14:42, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

Edit: I suspect we don't need a separate article title section; suspect our guidance will be the same for both title and body. This matches the common practice in academic writing on Korea; just use common names for spelling. seefooddiet (talk) 07:33, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

I take this comment back; I may advocate for splitting off WP:NCKO again from MOS:KO 😥 I couldn't figure out a good way to merge these two seamlessly seefooddiet (talk) 05:14, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

MR hyphenation

Hey all, this is 104.232.119.107; I decided to just make an account again.

This post is primarily meant for @Nonabelian. This post is about MR romanization practices. Unfortunately this is the first of a series of major questions that I'd like to discuss before the MOS gets approved. I'll take these one at a time, for clarity. As a heads up because you've been developing code that implicitly accepts the current What Korean romanization to use section, my next discussion thread will be on that section.

I wanted to get your thoughts on whether we should hyphenate people names in MR. Previously, I (211.43.120.242), another IP user (172...), and @CountHacker had a discussion on this: Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Korean)#Clarify hyphenization MR spelling.

Tl;dr of the thread is that the IP user and I are skeptical of hyphenation. We're not sure why it's recommended; it's a practice from South Korean MR, it's not a common practice in academia (most style guidelines I've seen recommend against it), and if we did recommend it, we should recommend in the MOS how to voice the particle after the hyphen. seefooddiet (talk) 16:27, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

Sea of Japan and Liancourt Rocks

I'm going to rewrite the Sea of Japan section to also be inclusive of the Liancourt Rocks. I'm going to propose that our guidance be to use whatever the title of each of those articles are in the body, and will also warn people against haphazardly trying to edit war or drive-by criticize the terms. seefooddiet (talk) 01:07, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

Hopefully this wording is strong enough. God the talkpages for the Liancourt Rocks and Sea of Japan are such trainwrecks... seefooddiet (talk) 01:48, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

Actually nvm. I need to go through and read both their archives to understand the situation better. I'll try to do this in the near future. seefooddiet (talk) 06:06, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

@Freedom4U I had written this section before seeing your argument on Talk:Liancourt Rocks/Archive 22#Requested move 15 March 2023. Your argument sounds pretty compelling to me, and I'm dissatisfied with the quality of counterarguments others made, as well as how the move was closed (see talk page of the user that closed the move). Do you think we should reopen this discussion at some point, while highlighting these irregularities in the previous discussion?

Also, what are your thoughts on how to word this section in the MOS/NCKO. I think the section's meat could probably stay ("use current titles, avoid mentioning alternate terms"), but considering wording it emotionally softer to avoid harming future move discussions. Maybe better to keep the section sparse? seefooddiet (talk) 22:20, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

I wouldn't reopen discussion myself, though I probably would have phrased my comment quite differently had I made it today. You're welcome to if you'd like to, though I don't particularly care about the discussion. What the MOS is supposed to be in the end is just documentation of consensus/convention, so it should state that you shouldn't mention alternate terms unless you're discussing the naming conflict. That's especially true with the Sea of Japan, which imo has a much stronger case for the current consensus. ~ F4U (talk • they/it) 22:39, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

I'm loathe to open the discussion myself, but I think someone eventually should. Dealing with the nationalists and dismissive people who'll make poor arguments is a headache.

I'll word the section softer in near future. seefooddiet (talk) 22:47, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

Length of the MOS

I just made some section deletions (sorry 😥) due to concerns over the MOS's length. Even after the deletions, it's longer than the Chinese and Japanese manuals. Granted, our romanization is more complicated than theirs, but still think we should continuously push for concision. Please feel free to undo or edit anything I write as well; I don't take it personally. Just want to make this draft as robust as possible; such total rewrites are a rare opportunity. seefooddiet (talk) 06:10, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

I just trimmed much of the family name hatnote/footnote section; sorry again... It strongly overlaps with the Template:Family name explanation, so I just decided to just link to the template in lieu of repeating the explanation. The examples also add length to the article; people can click on the template doc pages to see examples. seefooddiet (talk) 06:40, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

Mountains

@Seefooddiet For the most part I agree with your suggestion at Talk:Namsan#Question; I think we should follow Wikipedia:WikiProject Mountains#Naming conventions for mountain names. I would personally use a comma to disambiguate for WP:NATURAL but for the sake of consistency we should do what they do already. I’m not sure how unencyclopedic the slash is though; nothing in the naming conventions at WP:MOUNTAINS seemed to suggest it was, but we should definitely stick with something consistent, whether it be "and" or slash. Dantus21 (talk) 07:22, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

My first instinct was the same as yours; the comma feels better to me. I got the mountain idea from WP:NCPLACE#Natural features, which recommends that WikiProject guideline.

For the slash, I once tried a RMT for a mountain that had a slash in it (I was changing an unrelated part of the name; left the slash as is), and someone overrode it with "and". Just looked into it; I think WP:DISAMBIG#Format may be loosely interpreted to express a preference for "and", as we're supposed to format the term in parentheses as any other part of a title. I've yet to see a slash used like that in a regular title. seefooddiet (talk) 07:46, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Maybe I should just post a question on the talk page for the disambig page seefooddiet (talk) 07:50, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation#Question: "/" in parenthetical disambig?

I'm thinking of recommending 1. try to disambiguate by mountain range first 2. then disambiguate by location, with "and" instead of "/" seefooddiet (talk) 18:15, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Having taken a quick look at the mountains in the Taebaek and Sobaek categories (two major mountains ranges), imo it didn’t seem like disambiguating by mountain range would be helpful (or at the least used a lot), so I feel it’d be excessive to list that one. I think that your second provision ("disambiguate by location…") would be the way to go. Dantus21 (talk) 18:52, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Hmm yeah maybe you're right. I recommended range first strictly to try and adhere to the WP Mountains guideline, but it's just a guideline, and this just adds bureaucracy and more thinking for little gain. seefooddiet (talk) 18:57, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Side note: for a mountain like Gayasan (North Gyeongsang/South Gyeongsang), should we rename it to Gayasan (North and South Gyeongsang) or Gayasan (North Gyeongsang and South Gyeongsang? I think that "North and South" is a whole lot more logical (and can also be seen at North and South Brother Islands (New York City)), but I’m not sure what the usual approach is. Dantus21 (talk) 18:56, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

North and South; think justification is also concision. I can write all this in the mountains guideline btw; currently rewriting it. seefooddiet (talk) 18:59, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Sounds good 👍 Dantus21 (talk) 19:03, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Needs to explicitly state that people should not get hanja from Chinese-language sources

In Wikipedia, these are sometimes found in hanja names of people:

• Chinese-language transcription (whose Korean reading does not match the hangul name)
• Simplified Chinese characters

Chinese-language sources are unreliable for Korean hanja names because they "make up" one when the actual hanja is not known.

Another issue is that some people think the hanja parameter of a Korean-related template must consist of hanja only, even though some names do not have hanja. Such people get hanja from Chinese-language sources and blindly replace the hangul in the hanja parameter.

This page should state at least the following:

Do not get hanja from Chinese-language sources.

1. Chinese-language sources are unreliable for Korean hanja names because they "make up" one when the actual hanja is not known.
2. Some names do not have hanja (hanja is not a requirement in names). In such cases, only the surname is written in hanja (e.g. hangul: 김빛나, hanja: 金빛나). Do not blindly replace the hangul in the hanja parameter of a Korean-related template.

172.56.232.61 (talk) 08:53, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

The rule sounds good to me. Side note, but I'm a little worried about the word "blindly"; it typically reads a little harsh in English. If you'd like, you can just write comfortably without worrying about tone, and I can go and edit the addition later.

I've been meaning to rewrite much of the MOS anyway, due to #Article naming conventions vs romanization in body. seefooddiet (talk) 17:35, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

About "blindly": I tried to say "don't do that without thinking".

You can simply revise what I wrote above and add it to the page. 172.56.232.109 (talk) 18:33, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for bringing this issue to light. I went ahead and added it to a new subsection called "Sourcing Hanja"; this should probably be resectioned at some point. I slightly reworded your second provision, and I think that the first provision could also be edited (particularly the "make up"), but I don't know how to approach it. Dantus21 (talk) 19:34, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

I may rewrite the guidance for Hanja altogether today; the main ideas will be preserved but I will change the ordering and placement of the information seefooddiet (talk) 20:07, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

I just saw your Hanja MOS rewrite and I gotta say it looks great! Dantus21 (talk) 00:19, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, your rewrite looks great! Thank you. 172.56.232.253 (talk) 20:05, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

Recent changes, Aug 7 (UTC)

Hello, I've recently made some significant changes so want to slow down and give a high-level summary of them.

• Rewrote lead
• Shortened prose for explanations/policies that exist on other pages. I tried to display prominent links to those pages instead.
• Completely rewrote the Hanja section.
  • Mostly kept existing logic, made some additions
• Mostly rewrote Article layout section.
  • Added significant amount of guidelines; I don't suspect they are/hope they aren't controversial. They're already common practice for our articles.
• Created a Naming guidelines section
  • Rules that apply to all Naming conventions, unless overridden in the Naming conventions section.
  • Check out the Avoid redundant English names section. I'm not sure we should keep this; it's more just a pet peeve.
• Overhauled Naming conventions other than the people name section
  • People name section is pending discussion.
  • Logic should mostly be the same, except for province names. I'll make a separate post about that.
  • Moved formatting titles of works into this section from Romanization section.
• Rewrote Wiktionary links section with help of the original author (172 IP user)

I recommend you reread the sections I described above to understand what has changed. I tried to make everything uncontroversial. If you see anything you disagree with, please let me know ASAP so we can address it or potentially revert to an earlier version. I'm trying hard to balance not stepping on any toes while still writing quickly.

TODO:

• Templates section
• Misc copyediting
• Discuss Romanization conventions and people naming conventions
• Copyedit or revise both those sections depending on discussion

Sorry for my disorganized editing style; just kind of the way I write 😓 seefooddiet (talk) 07:16, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

Nonabelian Dantus21 Paper9oll. Paper9oll, as you edit a lot on pop culture, I'd appreciate some of your insights on the article layout section. To my understanding it should be mostly what's already practiced right now. seefooddiet (talk) 07:38, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

@Seefooddiet Is there a particular aspect you feel is missing and would like to see improved? I couldn't think of any at the moment, but I can add more if there is a direction provided. Otherwise, I have no objection to the current state of the Article Layout section. — Paper9oll (🔔 • 📝) 09:24, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

Not particularly, the goal was actually to be minimally intrusive and reflect current practice, so hearing that you think it's acceptable is a relief! seefooddiet (talk) 17:59, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

Having did a readthrough of most of it, here's what I have to say.

• English word section looks good, but maybe make a more explicit guideline for what words should be italicized (or not) as I feel this could be a slippery slope for interpretation. For example, you could specify dictionaries to check (like Cambridge or Oxford) and specifying a ratio of dictionaries with the word (like 3:2) that could indicate to not italicize. Perhaps I'm overcomplicating stuff
  • Added guidance seefooddiet (talk) 20:09, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
• Merge use korean language terms section to english words section
  • Will think through how to regroup, article layout still needs work overall. seefooddiet (talk) 20:09, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
• What does "topics related to korea as a whole" mean for RR? Does it mean for names like Joseon? Why single out personal names for MR?
  • I was not the primary author of this section, and haven't touched it much. Pending discussion as I'm also uncertain about parts of it. seefooddiet (talk) 20:09, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
• By the romanization template, does that mean that an article will have a consistent romanization throughout (I think I might not understand the extent of it)?
  • Likewise with above; has complicated implications. Like in a MR article, should we write "Soŭl" for Seoul? Is that desirable? seefooddiet (talk) 20:09, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

    • I’m still unsure what to do here (I might make a post about romanizations soon), but whatever it is Seoul should be the exception, because according to this ngrams Soul was/is almost never used, even in cases before RR existed. Dantus21 (talk) 05:45, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

      The situation is quite complicated; I'm currently researching the situation and discussing it actively with the IP user. I'm currently working on Romanization of Korean to share what I've learned with others.

      I'm considering publishing an WP:ESSAY on the situation for future readers. Still doing the background research though.

      We're joining into a debate that has lasted over a century, and how we rule on may have a significant impact on how others spell Korean terms. Complicated situation, but fun given the real impact we may have seefooddiet (talk) 05:56, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

      By any chance where are you discussing this with the IP (if you want to share)? I’d be interested in helping out too, although my Korean is admittedly not too great. Dantus21 (talk) 06:15, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

      Via email; we're discussing in a mix of Korean and English. Most things of substance we discuss on Wiki directly for public viewing; it's usually questions about Wiki policy that we discuss privately. This talk page and links to other discussions match our current understanding of romanization. seefooddiet (talk) 06:44, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

      Interesting disclosure here. I'm concerned on the statement it's usually questions about Wiki policy that we discuss privately. For transparency and accountability, could you please elaborate on the types of policy discussions that occur privately? Are these primarily clarifications, or do they involve substantive (regardless of depthness) discussion about changes to Wikipedia's policy? Do they align with the Wikipedia's policy on consensus pertaining to off-wiki discussions? — Paper9oll (🔔 • 📝) 07:14, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

      Yes they do. It's usually questions about how policies work. They're usually shallow questions; when there's anything of substance we go to wiki. I would hope there's no reason to be suspicious; you know me and intentions here are clearly good seefooddiet (talk) 07:33, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

      I'm a little saddened by your comment. What even would either of us have to gain by conspiring here? Neither of us benefit from these policy changes and I've welcomed disagreement, and I've disagreed with the IP user both publicly and privately. I disclose my process as much as needed out of good faith. There's no "gotcha aha" moment here to be found. I'm remarkably boring; I'm reading 90 year old papers about linguistics. seefooddiet (talk) 07:41, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

      I'm just caught off-guard by such disclosure hence raising some alarms. Don't worry, this is all good-faith. Thanks for the clarification. — Paper9oll (🔔 • 📝) 07:49, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

• Hangul section looks good
• Already commented on Hanja section
• Article layout section looks good
• Template section looks good; maybe say something about not putting in context=old? Hunminjeongeum is barely used anyway and imo that name will cause more confusion; perhaps it might just be a pet peeve of mine
  • I need to expand guidelines around this infobox, will look into this and more. seefooddiet (talk) 20:09, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
• Naming guidelines look good; We should definitely keep the avoid redundant English names; most of the names are so uncommon that we should avoid tautologies when we can.
  • I'm still a little on the fence about it; I visited Gyeongbukgung a few weeks ago and they put "Gyeongbukgung Palace" all over the place. "Namsan Mountain" is also reasonably common. However, maybe this just falls under common name and are exceptions rather than a trend. seefooddiet (talk) 20:09, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
• Possible to break up naming conventions section or maybe even make a separate page?
  • I'm thinking the same thing; we originally intentionally tried to merge WP:NCKO into MOS:KO, but it's becoming so long that maybe unmerging is best. For now will keep on the same article, likely will split off later. seefooddiet (talk) 20:09, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
• Do common modified romanizations apply to ancient people and North Koreans?
  • Not primary author, I'm not sure about this part too. seefooddiet (talk) 20:09, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
    • Fair enough. FWIW I would support modified for South Koreans, but not for ancient people or North Koreans since I don’t think they generally use those modified spellings. Dantus21 (talk) 04:28, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
• I haven’t looked at administrative divisions yet, will look at soon.
• Geographic features, temples, and works in naming conventions section look good.
• I am ambivalent to the dates, wiktionary, and references section, but they generally look good.

I'll admit I didn't look at your specifications before rereading, so forgive me if I accidentally addressed something that you already planned to! Dantus21 (talk) 09:00, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback 🙂 I'll edit your comment with subbullet responses seefooddiet (talk) 20:03, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

Provinces titles

Per above, I rewrote the province naming convention section, and while doing so realized that our guidance is based on shaky ground. I ended up changing it to just be prescriptivist ("Here are the current titles, use them").

The reason for this is because it's hard to explain/justify our title formats otherwise. Look at Provinces of South Korea#List of provinces, "Official English name" column. There's so much inconsistency with official names, and I'm not sure WP:COMMONNAME has been established for all the provinces. I have a gut feeling that people just decided to weigh WP:TITLECON and WP:USEENGLISH higher.

Making things more confusing, the NK titles don't use diacritics (ŏ), which likely means some flavor of WP:COMMONNAME is being applied.

And to make matters 100x worse, what do we do about historical provinces? See Provinces of Korea; I just have no clue. There's so many unknowns here. How do we handle the "-mok" provinces of Goryeo? How do we spell the provinces of Joseon? What about the 1895–1896 provinces, where they redid all the provinces then reverted them? What about the provinces of colonial Korea? Should we refer to them using their Japanese names? Should we include parenthetical glosses for their current or Joseon-era analogues?

I honestly have no clue; each one of these issues merits a long conversation. If anyone's brave enough to discuss this with me I'll join you, but I suspect people won't want to. I've already thought about these questions for hours and am still struggling. seefooddiet (talk) 07:26, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

Romanization guideline for titles

Right now, the guideline for article titles seemingly suggests MR (McCune-Reischauer) for North Korean stuff and pre-1945 people, while it suggests RR (Revised Romanization) for South Korean stuff and everything else pre-1945. While this guideline is technically "stable", I feel that having the pre-1945 people be MR while everything else pre-1945 be RR seems fairly arbitrary; why have names for people be MR but everything else RR? I will note that scholarly precedent is to use MR for everything pre-1945 (as far as I’m aware). However, most of the pre-1945 articles (for instance state names) still use RR. I think there are 3 options here for how this guideline can go forward.

• A. All pre-1945 articles (including people) titled with MR. Consistent and follows scholarly precedent, although such a massive upheaval in moving makes me a little nervous.
• B. All pre-1945 articles (including people) titled with RR. Does not follow scholarly precedent, but would be much more stable Wikipedia-wise (less moving than MR) while also being consistent.
• C. Status-quo guideline. Most stable, as it requires the least moving, but inconsistent as singling out people's names seems relatively arbitrary.

What do you think of this? Dantus21 (talk) 00:03, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

P.S. Concerning ngrams (which goes up to 2022 now), MR still seems to win for most pre-1945 topics, such as Buyeo, Balhae, Baekje, Goguryeo, and Joseon. However, back in March of this year, Britannica changed their pre-1945 Korean articles to fit RR, as seen here, here, and here, and while Wikipedia isn’t obligated to follow Britannica, it might be something to consider. Dantus21 (talk) 00:07, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

Seefooddiet Paper9oll Nonabelian courtesy ping (feel free to ping others who might be interested too) Dantus21 (talk) 00:09, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping, I will abstain on this. — Paper9oll (🔔 • 📝) 07:07, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

I'm still heavily brainstorming what to do; I think about it a lot each day, and I'm still not sure. I'd like more time to think if others will allow it, I plan on reading a bunch of papers about the romanization debate. Complicated and lengthy history that should be explained with rigor on Wikipedia, not just for this MOS, but also for public viewing so readers understand why the romanization situation is complicated.

For whether academic literature uses MR or RR, the vast majority of academic journals use MR. I think a couple of South Korean journals use RR (off the top of my head, [17], but I think there's more). For books, in my experience (I've read around 30ish books about mostly 19th century and onwards history, a couple of broad histories too) is that most books about pre-1945 history use MR.

I'm currently considering if there are more options than just the A, B, and C that you listed. One idea I'm still developing is that just as there is flexibility for choosing what MOS:DATEFORMAT to use for when there are no strong MOS:DATETIES, we could consider allowing Wikipedia article authors to use whichever format they prefer for pre-1945 articles (not for NK or SK articles). However, I'm still working on developing this idea; need to weigh consistency vs flexibility. I feel that there's maybe other alternatives too, and want to continue thinking about those. seefooddiet (talk) 00:27, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

Others might support it, but I strongly disagree with the idea of allowing others to pick and choose romanizations. While stable within the article, I feel it'd be super haphazard for stability across Wikipedia (emphasis for clarity). Why should one article use MR and another use RR? I get that MOS:DATEFORMAT basically does the same thing but I'm not a fan for bringing it here as it also affects article titles, which would be more apparent to readers. Dantus21 (talk) 00:33, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

Also, what are some themes you've noticed in the romanization debate? Clearly your work isn't done over there but I think that if I and other users can get a general grasp it might be helpful in considering how to move forward. I've heard some themes of Koreans not liking MR but foreigners liking it but that is probably an oversimplification. Dantus21 (talk) 00:36, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

If it's ok, I'd rather not discuss my ideas before I'm done thinking of them. It's easy to reject half-baked ideas, but good ideas sometimes start half-baked, and it takes time to develop them into something viable. If you'd like you can dive into the literature yourself as well; I'll likely be reading the same things you find.

I feel like this MOS may possibly take two to three months more before it gets put into action; considering this is arguably the most important part of the MOS I think we should take our time on it. seefooddiet (talk) 00:43, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

I don’t really see any issues with discussing so-called "half baked" ideas; outside input can help develop them, but if you don’t want to share them now you don’t have to. Dantus21 (talk) 00:55, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

Personally, I am dead-set against Option B. Common name should trump consistency. Another problem is that in many cases the MR and RR romanizations are not visually similar. Most people end up finding the common MR romanization, search for the subject in Wikipedia and not get a result. Someone without the knowledge of converting between MR and RR, would not realize that Koryŏ general Chŏng Chung-bu that they read about in a book would be the same person titled as Jeong Jung-bu via Option B. I do think the status-quo is somewhat ridiculous only pertaining to people's names, there's definitely room for expansion for other topics besides people names. MR should be used for other historical subjects such as historical texts like the Jewang ungi, historical government positions such as sang changgun (supreme general), and historical government offices such as the Seungjeongwon or the Hongmungwan. Based on the NGrams, I think that there is an argument for moving historical states to MR as well. I'm not sure yet if Option A would be the best bet so far, due to the ramifications of moving countless articles. My current worry is that there could potentially be pre-1945 topics commonly well-known in RR that could be overlooked. ⁂CountHacker (talk) 01:00, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

A couple of running thoughts:

• I'm leaning towards A, although still need to think about implications and read more into the debate.
• I'm not sure if ngrams also consumes academic papers, which overwhelmingly use MR.
• If we do end up approving A, I can build up a log of moves, and once enough occur I can use WP:AWB to change all WP:KOREA articles to use the same MR spellings. We should probably do this in batches to minimize the quantity of edits made.

seefooddiet (talk) 01:09, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

Ngrams does not search through academic journals, only books. For academic works, use google scholar to look for usage. I agree that the guideline should be A, but I disagree with mass moving articles. Each article should still be discussed on a case by case basis (or in small batches) before they are moved. ~ F4U (talk • they/it) 18:56, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

Writing in case I forget: we should mention how to handle Korean diaspora names as well. Think in general it should follow standard ordering of common name, personal pref, then romanization.

Then there's other ambiguities, like which language version of their name to use (Russian etc for Koryo-saram? Japanese for Zainichi Koreans?). Also complicated due to alignment with NK/SK; for Zainichi Koreans who support the SK-aligned Mindan, should probably prefer RR. And for Zainichis who support the NK-aligned Chongryon should probably prefer MR. seefooddiet (talk) 21:20, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Option B should not be considered. It's not in line with reliable sourcing. MR should be used in pre-1945 (and potentially even later) topics unless the WP:COMMONNAME is found to be different. ~ F4U (talk • they/it) 18:26, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

Re-naming on Joseon grand princes

(I also posted on the WP:KOREA talk page.)
Any thoughts on changing the MoS for Grand Princes from <Grand Prince (title)> to <(birth name), Grand Prince (title)>?

For example:
Grand Prince Yeongchang --> Yi Ui, Grand Prince Yeongchang
Grand Prince Uian --> Yi Hwa, Grand Prince Uian
Grand Prince Neungwon --> Yi Bo, Grand Prince Neungwon

Btw, the titles(작호) of Joseon grand princes (unlike Europe) were not passed down to the next prince, they were given by the king himself and were unique.

Currently WP:NCKO's #Novelty section does not specify on how the names of nobility other than monarchs should be titled. It seems like there aren't much English sources on how the names of Joseon grand princes should be formatted, but the changes will surely make them more consistent with European royalties per WP:NCROY. Korean sources seem to use both styles, but more of the status quo. -- 00101984hjw (talk) 04:16, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

Still thinking. Do the specific 호 (Yeongchang, etc) count as "substantive titles" per NCROY? I think the "Grand Prince" part probably counts. Per the Royals with substantive titles section. Because these seem to just be names given to people rather than specific titles (which also exist in the West; not sure of how those kinds of names are handled for Westerners on Wikipedia).

If we did align Korean titles with NCROY, not sure how we'd do it.

Also, I have a gut feeling that part of the reason NCROY recommends titles like this is because some of the names are quite generic and overlap a lot, so maybe disambiguation is coming into play here. Do these 작호 names overlap to a notable degree? seefooddiet (talk) 05:10, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

Another question; how commonly-used are the personal names of these people? If they rarely go by their personal names, maybe it'd be better to stick with just their titles? seefooddiet (talk) 09:01, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

The specific titles (작호) are definitely substantive, as that is how they were addressed in formal situations and in historical texts. Birth names (휘, also called true names) were avoided when addressing a person posthumously, and were used in limited ways.

In many Korean-language sources both styles are used (i.e. 영창대군 vs 영창대군 이의), but title-only is used more than title and birth name, as it's more succinct.

I'm not sure how many 작호 names overlap, though.

I don't really support this change. My original rationale was that it may help with WP:CONCISE as English-speaking readers may not be familiar with Asian titles. rn I'm really just curious on what other editors might think of this since I'm no expert on Joseon Korea either. Nevertheless, we should still decide on a single format and specify it in the #Novelty section. Various titles such as Gong, Hu, or Baek, which are often translated as Duke, Marquess, or Count in English, were used since the Korean Three Kingdoms period, until they were all united into Daegun (Grand Prince) in the early 1400s according to EKC, so those titles should follow the same style as well. 00101984hjw (talk) 02:28, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

Hm now that I read Substantive title closer, is this even an analogue to that system? I think it's different.

And I agree, we should develop broad guidance for these misc. royal names. Do you think you could develop a ruleset? Even in the worst case, you could just describe the most common current practice (if you think it's acceptable), and that can pass as our guidance. seefooddiet (talk) 02:42, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

Ughh...

As a disclaimer, my background knowledge on Korean history mostly stems from highschool history class, so I probably wouldn't be the best person for the job. Do you know any prominent editors from WP:CHINA? Since many of these titles were uniform throughout the sinosphere (I think Daegun was unique to Korea) they might be able to provide some guidance.

I'll try looking into Korean sources and think of something when I have the time. -- 00101984hjw (talk) 03:02, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

I don't really know many Wikipedian Chinese history experts personally; we could post on WT:CHINA for advice, but I suspect many will not be sure about the intricacies of Korea's titles.

But it's probably better that we abstain from creating guidance until we have someone who is a subject matter expert. seefooddiet (talk) 03:16, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

If you want to follow the Chinese example, then via looking at Category:Chinese princes, most of the Chinese princes are titled only via their names, and in the case of the Manchu Qing, only their personal names. However, we should not follow their example for Korean princes, as most English language sources seem to only refer to Korean princes by just their titles. It is Prince Suyang that steals the throne from his nephew, Crown Prince Sohyŏn that died suddenly from returning from the Qing, and Prince Yeongchang that was murdered by his kingly half-brother. I agree with @Seefooddiet that the Korean princely titles aren't exactly the equivalent of a substantive title from the UK. ⁂CountHacker (talk) 23:09, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Much thanks for the input. I updated the draft with a broad guideline on article names. However, there is one last issue.

What should be do with deposed princes and queens? Current article names seem to suggest that royalties who died with their deposed status have "deposed" in their articles (Example: Deposed Queen Shin and Deposed Crown Prince Yi Hwang) while previously deposed monarchs whose status were recovered don't (Example: Princess Hwisin). Some of these articles seem to follow the WP:COMMONNAME in Korean sources, while others aren't even consistent with their corresponding articles in the kowiki. -- 00101984hjw (talk) 23:47, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Article names on queens seem pretty consistent ("Queen Posthumous Name" for most queens / "Deposed Queen surname" for queens who were deposed, as deposed queens did not receive a posthumous title). But according to the Deposed Queen Yun article apparently Western references are rather using Deposed Lady Yun as in. --- 00101984hjw (talk) 23:55, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Using your example of Deposed Queen Yun, there's definitely some English sources that use Deposed Queen Yun as well, such as The Lives and Legacy of Kim Sisŭp (1435–1493) and "An Annotated Translation of Daily Records of King Yeonsangun, Chapter One (the 25th Day to the 29th Day of the 12th Month of 1494)". I would say more English sources simply omit the adjective of "deposed" and simply refer to her as Queen or Lady Yun. However, since you would need to disambiguate her from the other queens and consorts surnamed Yun, you might as well keep the adjective "deposed" as a form of WP:NATDIS. Regarding the deposed crown princes, I don't recall any mentions of them in English. We could potentially just keep the status quo, and revise later when a more common name arises in English. ⁂CountHacker (talk) 04:05, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

Districts?

Does anyone know the reason we translate "-gu" to "District" for autonomous districts, but not for non-autonomous districts? Only discussion I could find is this one, but it doesn't explain the rationale.

Thoughts: I know autonomous districts are a level above non-autonomous; if the intent is to differentiate the two, this seems to be a little arbitrary of a method to do so. I haven't verified, but my impression is that the WP:COMMONNAME practice is to use "-gu" in both scenarios. If we wanted to make a WP:NCCS/WP:USEENGLISH argument, we should be consistent about the use of "District" in both scenarios. I'm trying to brainstorm alternate methods of differentiating the two types of districts (and whether we need to differentiate at all).

But I feel like maybe I'm missing something? @Sawol @Kanguole or anyone else, any thoughts? As a heads up we're currently working on rewriting both MOS:KO and WP:NCKO. seefooddiet (talk) 23:22, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Translating "-gu" as "District" in all cases would be more helpful to the English-speaking readership of this wiki. It seems particularly counter-intuitive to use partial translation to mark a distinction that, though real enough, is not made in the Korean names. The use of a hyphen indicates that "gu" is being treated as a separate element, so handling it separately from the main name seems appropriate. The distinction should be made in the opening sentence of each article. Kanguole 09:48, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the comment, I think I agree with your take. Will wait for more participation before moving to change it. seefooddiet (talk) 20:31, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

@Kanguole one additional question; what's your thoughts on North Korean districts? Those are a bit of a mess; we ask them to use "-guyok", but not to use "-ku" (equivalent to SK's "-gu") or "-chigu" at all. On the other hand, we ask them to use " County" for NK's "-kun"/"-gun", so clearly some level of WP:NCCS/WP:USEENGLISH is being applied.

I admittedly don't know much about administrative divisions in NK, though. I don't know if these are truly at the same admin level as each other, nor what the common name convention is for these. seefooddiet (talk) 22:06, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

I think it would be helpful if there's a hatnote that describe the native name, something like

In this article, the native name of this place is Jeju-do, and the place should be referred to as Jeju Island. The word -do means Island

might need rephrasing but that's all I can suggest 27.125.249.50 (talk) 15:50, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. See Template:Family name explanation#Footnotes vs. hatnotes for a related discussion. I think some people believe that hatnotes should be reserved for navigation purposes, and not article title explanations. I don't necessarily have a stance on this debate, just noting why some might argue no hatnote is better.

I think this section (Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Korea (2024 Rewrite & Proposal)#First parentheses) should be reasonably clear enough. E.g. South Jeolla Province (Korean: 전라남도; RR: Jeollanam-do) is a province of ... Once this MOS passes I can go ahead and try to standardize this for all the provinces. seefooddiet (talk) 17:27, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Surnames

Hi, I'm very happy there's an effort to modernize and improve the MOS guidelines for Korean articles. I'll add a few comments as I see fit here.

If the author presents their family name first (e.g. "Hong Gil-dong"), this should be preserved using an author-mask parameter.

This does not seem to match best practices by academic sources and style guides. Most Korean academic sources with English translations go by the format Moon, Jae-in, not Moon Jae-in, when listing authors (Koreascience does this, for example). This is also the case in the major style guides which all add a comma after the surname. See this guide on citing Korean surnames according to the Chicago, MLA, and APA style guides [18] which all retain the comma after the surname. ~ F4U (talk • they/it) 16:09, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

MLA is more complicated, recommending a comma if the name appears on the title page of the source with the surname last and not otherwise. Still, I agree: Wikipedia is a generalist publication, and should, like such generalist publications as Science and Nature, mark author surnames in citation lists in a uniform way, which the comma does. Not in prose of course. After all, we don't write Western names in citation lists in the same way we do in prose. We certaily shouldn't be mandating |author-mask=. Kanguole 17:39, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

It's nice to have you here editing the MOS, thank you!

I think I align with no comma. But for Kanguole's suggestion, I want to provide some nuance on |author-mask. While I don't think we necessarily need to mandate it all the time, I think we should recommend its use when the author's name was originally in Korean (particulary if it was in Hanja) and has been romanized, in order to show the original Korean text. seefooddiet (talk) 21:57, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

"Avoid redundant English names"

This section appears to suggest that Gyeongbokgung Palace or Bulguksa Temple are incorrect because they are tautologies. That's not how language works. Both of these see very high levels of usage if you check ngrams, and they follow hundreds of different examples in the English language - (River Avon, La Brea Tar Pits, Mount Maunganui, etc.). The guide shouldn't recommend removing these tautologies as a default, when they are very frequently the common name. ~ F4U (talk • they/it) 16:17, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

It should be made clear that common English-language takes precedence. If a name isn't found in English there might be a case for this guidance. Kanguole 17:41, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

Common English-language names taking precedence is the current guideline.

I think F4U makes a compelling case that the practice is probably common enough that maybe we remove the section altogether. However, I'll note that in practice, our current naming conventions de facto follow this guidance. Unless those naming conventions are altered, effectively nothing will change I think. The section was previously just providing a foundation for the rest of the naming conventions. But I think F4U makes a good argument that the foundation is probably incorrect. seefooddiet (talk) 22:02, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

You are right about tautologies not necessarily being "incorrect" and also being used frequently, but I’d still support keeping the redundancy section on the grounds of WP:CONCISE.

Also, would you say "Gyeongbokgung Palace" and "Bulguksa Temple" are used much more frequently than "Gyeongbokgung" and "Bulguksa" alone? Dantus21 (talk) 02:01, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

I think one could argue that because of Wikipedia's general preference for reflecting common practice, if the common practice was to do something long we should follow the common practice regardless of concision considerations. Granted, we haven't rigorously established that this kind of partial redundancy is truly the common practice.

For "Gyeongbokgung Palace" etc, those need to be researched and decided on a case-by-case basis; but I wouldn't be surprised if a reasonable number of places use that kind of partial redundancy. Again, I visited Gyeongbokgung last month and that phrasing was used in the signage of a number of places (although I recall there being inconsistency). seefooddiet (talk) 05:38, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

I probably wasn’t clear enough, but I wasn’t trying to contradict concision with WP:COMMONNAME, which your first paragraph seemed to addresss (forgive me if my interpretation was wrong). Dantus21 (talk) 05:46, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

I think I wasn't clear enough either lol. I meant the step after WP:COMMONNAME. I.e. assuming no known common name exists, if in general people tend to render names in a lengthy manner... etc seefooddiet (talk) 05:55, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Oh, that’s what you meant. My fault for the misunderstanding 😅 Dantus21 (talk) 06:21, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Korean article template

I'm aware it's always been linked in the MOS, but I think we should stop. Unlike other article templates, this one doesn't really provide any utility. ~ F4U (talk • they/it) 19:04, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

Agreed. Will remove. seefooddiet (talk) 01:18, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Names hyphenation

Hi Freedom4U, could you give rationale/evidence for no hyphenation for North Korean names? seefooddiet (talk) 06:05, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

That's what the AP style guide recommends and I haven't seen anything to contradict that guidance. It's also the style that North Korean English-language publications use. ~ F4U (talk • they/it) 06:06, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

Confirmed that's the AP's recommendation, may try to look into NK's official recommendation to confirm. But also hm. Looking at the 2022 edition AP style guide I can get access to, it says The style and spelling of names in North Korea and South Korea follow each government’s standard policy for transliterations unless the subject has a personal preference.

I need to do more research, but to my knowledge SK actually officially recommendations against hyphenation for personal names. [19] As a rule, syllables in given names are not seperated by hyphen, but it is admitted to use a hyphen between syllables.

It may not matter that AP may be technically incorrect in this, as so many English-language publications hyphenate regardless. seefooddiet (talk) 06:41, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

Ooh yeah I'm aware of the South Korean government's recommendation not to hyphenate, honestly don't know what's up with that. But I can confidently say that the majority of news outlets I'm aware of spell North Korean names like that (without the hyphen). As for North Korean publications, you can pretty quickly confirm that's the case looking at KCNA Watch—a North Korean news aggregator run by NK News ~ F4U (talk • they/it) 06:54, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

Right, I think probably safe to accept NK no hyphen, although finding the govt's recommendations would be a nice bonus. I may research the SK situation further. seefooddiet (talk) 07:08, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

@F4U As a heads up, NK's situation is, at least officially, more complicated than we just discussed [20]. Someone had pointed this out to me before, but it slipped my mind.

If names are Sino-Korean, then they are spaced, else no spaces. Needlessly complicated rule... I'm not sure whether we should ask people to do this too. I'm not sure if this rule is enforced in NK. May try looking into it now, but may be hard to verify.

Edit:I'm leaning towards not asking them to do it. It's too complicated for such little marginal gain. seefooddiet (talk) 03:22, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Ack, thank you for finding that! Did you mean that they are not spaced? The examples they give are

1. 김꽃분이 Kim KKotpuni

2. 박동구 Pak Tong Gu

3. 안복철 An Pok Chŏl

None of which are hyphenated. Still, I think by their spelling conventions basically no names used in North Korea are spelled without a space (since basically all given names seem to be composed of hanja). You can look through some of these [21] [22], I couldn't find any examples otherwise. ~ F4U (talk • they/it) 03:48, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I edited my comment afterwards but you probably didn't see. And I agree, functionally most two-char personal names are rendered with spaces in them.

Side note, the KKotpuni example is illustrative of >2 char given names not using spaces (and their weird double capitalization rule), so that's something. The >2 rule and double capitalization aren't hard to do/understand, so may include in guideline to just do that. seefooddiet (talk) 03:59, 27 August 2024 (UTC) Edit: This part of the comment was incorrect and I no longer agree with it. seefooddiet (talk) 07:21, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

People name section

My proposed version:

1. WP:COMMONNAME
2. Personal preference
3. Split based on pre-1945+NK, post-1945 SK, and diaspora.
   • If pre-1945 or North Korea, use MR with no hyphenation or spaces between syllables in given name, assimilate spelling of personal name (한복남 -> Han Pongnam, not Han Poknam), do not assimilate between surname and given name (백락준 -> Paek Nakchun, not Paeng Nakchun), and do not convert surname to modern common modified transliteration. Recommend (but not mandate) that 이 -> "Yi" and not "I" for surnames.
   • If SK, use RR. Hyphenate given name, do not assimilate spelling of given name (e.g. 김복남 -> "Kim Bok-nam", not "Kim Bong-nam"), and also convert surname to South Korean common spelling (currently given in the table; I may prune the table to only include the names with unambiguous common spellings).
   • For diaspora, determine which language name is most appropriate (Russian, English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc) based on primary nationality/where most notable. If non-Korean language name is most appropriate, romanize per those language guidelines. If their notability is strongly tied to Korea, determine which of the above two options they are most tied to, and follow the option's guidance.

For explanations, see this WIP essay. seefooddiet (talk) 07:52, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

As an update, this section is pending a decision on NK romanization. seefooddiet (talk) 06:53, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

@Seefooddiet, for MR romanization, I think there might be a good case for hyphenation for personal names. The no hyphenation rule for MR seems to come from the 1961 guide, however, there are more modern revisions of McCune–Reischauer (2009 Library of Congress version) that do use hyphenation. From what I've seem most Western Korea Studies programs and academic libraries also use the ALA/LC revision of MR. Examples: [23][24][25][26][27]. I would also point out that romanization of North Korean names tend to either have a hyphen or a space, having neither is pretty rare. For example, most media romanized 장성택 as either Jang Song-thaek or Jang Song Thaek, but not Jang Songthaek. ⁂CountHacker (talk) 09:38, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

We may need to more thoroughly research what version of MR is most commonly applied in practice. Hard to do, given that I've spotted papers with romanization mistakes in them and people almost never specify what version of MR they follow. Anecdotally I think the books and papers I've read that used MR didn't tend to use hyphens in names.

For NK names, while that is true, my main concern was the consistent application of some MR version. If we decide that 1961 is most common, I would be skeptical of (but would not completely rule out) ad-hoc modifications to 1961 to resemble more common NK practices.

You're welcome to research the topic; I'll try to work on it too. seefooddiet (talk) 09:55, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

The ALA-LC (Library of Congress) system is just yet another separate romanization system. It is not appropriate to treat that as MR. (In fact, the ALA-LC system does things that the original MR explicitly prohibits/discourages.)

Anyone can come up with a new romanization system by modifying an existing system, but that should not be regarded as a newer version of that existing system.

For North Korean names, following North Korea's official romanization system (NKR) might be an option, but this idea is already discarded. 172.56.232.137 (talk) 05:25, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

Whether it's a version of MR or not has little impact on what we do. We just need something to use. If that version/system ends up being the most commonly used, we should consider following it. Either way, the Library of Congress itself considers it a version of MR ("The Library of Congress will continue to follow the McCune-Reischauer system to romanize Korean with the exceptions noted in this document."), and other sources seem to call it a version. seefooddiet (talk) 05:47, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

Ok, now that we've decided not to use NKR, this proposal is ready.

The broad strokes of it are very similar to what is currently done; I'm hoping this won't be surprising. seefooddiet (talk) 06:43, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

@Dantus21 @Freedom4U @CountHacker @00101984hjw Sorry for tags; looking for feedback on the proposal so we can keep this moving. Nearing the finish line. seefooddiet (talk) 20:30, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

Overall the proposal looks good. Although I did fix up the common surname spelling to be SK only, I'm a little skeptical about it now since I'm not sure how often it is used in reliable sources. If other users like it though I'm okay with it.

Another note: do Wikipedia essays typically use first person plural? I noticed a lot of use of "we" and it seemed a little jarring to me; granted if it is used in other essays I can let it be. Dantus21 (talk) 14:57, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm going to be almost entirely rewriting that section btw. The common surnames table needs to be trimmed to just names for which there's overwhelming consensus on the common spelling. These consensuses are shared in nearly all RS and even in passports; some evidence can be found here: Korean name#Romanization and pronunciation.

E.g. "Kim" easily should almost always be romanized that way. On the other hand, more ambiguous cases like 정/Jung/Jeong/Chung shouldn't.

I'll look into revising the use of "we"; was just a passive decision that I'm not attached to. Is the skepticism on sounding like it's speaking for the community? seefooddiet (talk) 19:47, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

By the way, this is what I wrote about that surname list:

this surname list may not be sufficient. What about surnames like 문 and 신, which are commonly written as "Moon" and "Shin" (instead of "Mun" and "Sin") in English-language text? 172.56.232.246 (talk) 00:54, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

I think we should be conservative about which names to add to the surname list. Before a spelling is included, evidence should be provided of a widespread acceptance of that spelling.

Examples (made-up numbers), if you can prove that 95% of people spell their surname "Kim", then we recommend that spelling. However, if the spelling is 60% "Kim" and 40% "Gim", we shouldn't recommend any spelling; too divided.

So far, I only have evidence for Kim, Lee, Park, and Choi, so that's all I'll include in the table for now. Do you have any evidence for "Moon"? seefooddiet (talk) 01:13, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Should we use this study as a reference? (the stats are at the end) It’s from 2007 but I don’t know how much it would’ve changed since then. The data from that has "Moon" at 73.5% Dantus21 (talk) 01:20, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

More recent studies are preferred; the ratios do indeed change. seefooddiet (talk) 02:00, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

I think I wrote that after seeing the 2011 South Korean passport statistics (see page 172 (207th page in PDF) of this document): MOON(14815) 70.28%, MUN(6158) 29.21%, ... 172.56.232.246 (talk) 01:29, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Arhg complicated... Is 70% enough? I'm not sure, but I think it is.

• If we accept 70% as enough, we can expect to be correct 70% of the time and incorrect 30%.
• If we don't accept, we get 70% incorrect. That's objectively worse.

A counterargument to the above is that defaulting to consistent romanization systems when there's uncertainty yields more recognizability. But if we want consistency, shouldn't we use pure RR, with no hyphens and surname modifications?

But if we went pure RR, I think "Bak" and "Gim" would be more confusing and obscure to the average person than "Park" and "Kim". It'd also be clearly more wrong: for "Bak" we'd be getting 99% of cases wrong for a small gain in recognizability for the few who actually know RR.

Summary: I think 70% is enough, and that we should keep modifying RR names using the hyphen and surname conversion. It feels the least confusing to the most amount of people. I don't know about 60% though. seefooddiet (talk) 02:28, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

I’m a little skeptical of 70% being the bar. While it is true that it would have less damage than 30%, by that logic anything that has above 50% (like Jung) would be the ideal choice, which we’ve all (or at least you) agreed would be too divided. I’d say that an 80%—90% (honestly 90% in my personal opinion, but I can compromise) should be the bar. These modified spelling should only be used when they are nearly unanimous. Dantus21 (talk) 12:37, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

What are your thoughts on the tradeoff between precision and recognizability of RR? I initially had the same opinion as you, but then I thought about it and realized few people even recognize strict RR in the first place, so recognizability is hardly there anyway. So then I weighed precision (probability of being correct with a surname) higher.

In other words, you could argue a 50.1% name is not enough to merit the sacrifice in recognizability. I'd argue a 70% name gets closer to meriting that sacrifice because of the high precision. I'm still on the fence though. seefooddiet (talk) 17:46, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Ok, I finished the surname table and the people names section. The surname table is a headache; there's too many possible names. A huge lookup table would too much bureaucracy for little gain, so I decided to limit the table to the top 12ish most common surnames and only those with a >80% common spelling. Also, I added "Oh" and "Woo"; otherwise these are single-char names that are hard to read. This covers around 70% of the 2015 population of South Korea. Evidence is provided at the romanization essay. seefooddiet (talk) 02:36, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

Romanization for North Korea articles...

Realizing the Romanization situation for North Korea is on shaky ground. I want to avoid discussion fatigue, but this bit is important.

The Romanization of Korean (North) ("NKR") differs from McCune–Reischauer in a number of ways. See [28]. Some examples:

• 전라도 NKR: Jŏlla-do vs MR: Chŏlla-do.
• 찔레골 NKR: JJilre-gol or Jilre-gol vs MR: Tchille-gol. Notice the second capital "J" and optional removal of second "J".
• 김꽃분이 NKR: Kim KKotpuni vs MR: Kim Kkotpuni. Notice the second capital "K".

Currently, we blanket recommend MR for all NK-related topics. Yet, as discussed in #Names hyphenation, we're considering borrowing elements of the official North Korean style for people names, and applying them to MR, when really those style elements are a part of NKR. I don't think this works.

I think these are our options:

1. Use NKR for all NK-related concepts.
2. Use pure MR for all NK-related concepts (i.e. for names, no spaces or hyphens between syllables by default).
3. Use MR for all NK-related concepts, borrow elements of NKR style rules (as proposed in #Names hyphenation) and apply them to MR.
4. Use NKR for people names only, use MR for everything else.

I think we should do either 1 or 2; think 3 and 4 are too confusing and arbitrary.

I'm leaning towards 2. 2 is closest to the current status quo, and is closest to international academic writings on Korea. It also is asking less of our users; we're already asking them to learn MR and RR, adding NKR is a lot.

But also arguments for 1: news articles on KCNA Watch use NKR (example). [Edit: also, I emailed NK News and confirmed that their style guide asks for NKR.] It also may seem like a political move to not use NK's preferred system (although SK's systems have long been ignored by the academic community and seemingly nobody's been bothered by our use of MR for NK thus far). seefooddiet (talk) 07:36, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Freedom4U Yue Kanguole Dantus21 CountHacker Tagging users who may care about this issue. If you know other people who edit on North Korea, please tag them too. Sorry for so many discussions, we're getting closer to finishing this, just a few major open questions. seefooddiet (talk) 07:40, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Relevant past discussions: 2003, 2004 pt 1, 2004 pt 2, 2006.

For NK, MR has been in place since the first version of the MOS/NCKO. I couldn't really find an adequate discussion of why NKR isn't used, but I'm maybe missing something. seefooddiet (talk) 18:05, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

One key detail in the AP Stylebook I just noticed is this: The style and spelling of names in North Korea and South Korea follow each government’s standard policy for transliterations unless the subject has a personal preference. Technically, the AP is asking its staff to use NKR for people's names. I'm not sure how closely they follow that guidance. For place names, it seems like NKR isn't being consistently applied: e.g. NKR and MR ("phyongan" and "pyongan"; 13 results for "Phyongan" vs 19 for "Pyongan"). You can observe similar for NKNews: 170 results for "Pyongan", 208 for "Phyongan".

I'm still leaning MR because of status quo and possible divided usage on MR/NKR. seefooddiet (talk) 07:16, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Sorry for my late response! I’m no expert, but I’d say Option 2 by a long shot, as it seems to be what the majority of reliable sources seem to use. I wouldn’t worry about it being a political statement, since we’re just following what the sources do. If someone has a different take I’d be interested in hearing it though. — Dantus21 (talk) 04:23, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm for option 2 too. --ChoHyeri (talk) 12:51, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

As an update I'm increasingly conflicted and need to do more research. I'm going to try and verify what other mainstream international newspapers use. So far I've verified that NK News and Associated Press both recommend NKR (with the latter recommending it for names). seefooddiet (talk) 08:17, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

I’m sure you already were thinking this, but also keep in mind what the newspapers actually practice too, as it seems like AP and NK didn’t strictly follow their own recommendations. Dantus21 (talk) 11:26, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Going to investigate that as well. My example given was a possible common name situation seefooddiet (talk) 18:08, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

I've been doing some more thinking. Our rules are already incredibly complicated, and we're already asking for knowledge of at least 2 romanization systems. I suspect NKR actually does see a good amount of usage, but I'm loathe to overload our rules even more. Complication drives people away, and we need more editors. seefooddiet (talk) 05:04, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

Honorary titles and government office

I've seen numerous articles on Joseon-era figures say stuff like "this person was a "jeong2pum ijopanseo"(정2품 이조판서) without elaborating on what that rank and office meant. That being said, should "정2품" be translated as "Senior 2" per styles and titles in Joseon, and ijopanseo as "Minister of Personnel" per Six Ministries of Joseon?

Currently the enwiki does not seem to have a comprehensive list of Joseon offices (관직) and ranks (품계). This might be a problem later on, especially when it comes to expanding articles like Yi Sun-sin.

Also, speaking of Yi Sun-sin, should honorary titles like Gong be translated into "duke"? (see "Duke_Chungmu") Titles of nobility in Korea and China were used in different ways from European ones. -- 00101984hjw (talk) 03:33, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

I think this should/could be handled by the current wording of this draft MOS, without the need to add anything to the draft.

It'd rely on #Translating non-people names to English. Essentially, the guidance would be "if you know with high confidence that there is a satisfactory English-language equivalent for a title, use the English-language equivalent. If you are not sure, do not translate." seefooddiet (talk) 03:50, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

We might want to provide some guidance on consistency with commonly-used English equivalents, like Yeonguijeong or Six Ministries of Joseon. I might consider creating a list on Joseon offices based on AKS's database ([29]) as well. -- 00101984hjw (talk) 04:14, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

That sounds good. We could potentially share a few relevant lists in the Naming guidelines section. seefooddiet (talk) 04:30, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Yale romanization

At present, our draft MOS discourages the use of Yale romanization of Korean, but I've become skeptical of this.

See Middle Korean; the Yale system is being used for this article. @Kanguole, have you seen if any writings on Middle Korean use MR instead of Yale? My impression is it's probably mostly Yale; if so we should reflect what the linguists are doing and not force MR into the situation.

I think we should allow Yale, but mention that its use should be limited to linguistics-related articles. seefooddiet (talk) 07:02, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

@Theo.phonchana @Malerisch @Remsense tagging some more users who may have relevant exposure to this topic. For context, we're currently working on rewriting MOS:KO. See the draft here. seefooddiet (talk) 07:07, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

It's standard practice in English-language works on Korean linguistics to use Yale for linguistic examples, e.g. Cho and Whitman Korean: A Linguistic Introduction, Lee and Ramsey A History of the Korean Language, Brown and Yeon (eds.) The Handbook of Korean Linguistics, Song The Korean Language, Sohn The Korean Language, Chang Korean. Kanguole 11:11, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Pending additional participation, I think it'll be relatively safe to assume Yale is going to be acceptable. I may modify the MOS to reflect this. seefooddiet (talk) 18:49, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure about "Use only when used by source being cited". If a linguistics article cites English-language sources and Korean-language sources, the former will presumably use Yale for their examples and the latter no romanization. But we would want to be consistent within the article. Yale is designed to correspond directly to the Hangul spelling, so generating it requires less expertise than MR or RR. Kanguole 20:57, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure about it either. Part of my worry is what do we do with non-linguistics text on linguistics articles? Like Hangul author names, for example. Do we write author names in Yale? seefooddiet (talk) 21:10, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

In the texts I listed above, the usual practice is Yale for the examples and MR for all the names. (Sohn is an exception, using Yale for everything, so Sinla, Seycong and Ceycwu.) Kanguole 21:25, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

I think it's acceptable to use Yale romanization in linguistics articles, but I'm hesitant to make the rule a strict "use only Yale for linguistics articles". Not many people besides Korean linguists would be familiar with Yale, and we should keep in mind WP:TECHNICAL—unlike Korean linguistics tomes, the main readership of Korean linguistics articles on Wikipedia is probably not Korean linguists. Choosing the more esoteric romanization option, especially when there is not much obvious benefit, doesn't seem to follow that guideline. (I don't think converting articles like Korean pronouns and Korean postpositions to Yale is particularly helpful—do you really want to tell people that "I" in Korean is "ce"?) Wiktionary also uses RR. That said, Yale romanization can sometimes be useful for e.g. morphology or historical linguistics, so it should still be used when appropriate.

It looks like the de facto standard for some Korean linguistics articles is a "why not both?" approach: see Korean grammar or Korean verbs, where Yale is bolded and RR is in italics; maybe that option is preferable for some articles? Otherwise, deciding on a per-article basis could be the simpler option. Using Yale in Middle Korean is fine, for example. Malerisch (talk) 10:13, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

My wording of the Yale guidance was unclear; what I meant to imply was that using Yale was acceptable for linguistics articles (particularly for linguistics examples), not that it should be the only system in use for such cases. I gave rewording it a shot, but still feeling meh about my wording.

@Kanguole makes a somewhat opposing point btw; they argued in favor of intra-article consistency.

I'm not sure what we should recommend. Maybe worth noting that the articles @Malerisch linked are all fairly poorly sourced; maybe we shouldn't be attached to the de facto current standards for such articles. But I do agree that Yale is inaccessible to most and that Wikipedia should be accessible. But I also agree that consistency is also nice. Difficult decision. Maybe should leave up to editors to decide on case-by-case basis, similar to WP:ENGVAR? But that also sounds bleh; three different potential romanization systems in use for a single topic, with no standards for what to use except for whatever individual editors prefer at the time??? At least for our other romanization guidelines it's reasonably clear what system to use; more difficult to figure out here. seefooddiet (talk) 17:38, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Another thought; we don't really have the opportunity to apply a MOS:CONSISTENT-like guideline (prescribing intra-article consistency) with romanization because we romanize on a term-by-term basis.

Maybe I lean towards Malerisch's argument then, but I'm still skeptical of just letting people decide which romanization system to use (potentially all three in the same article) based on mostly personal taste. seefooddiet (talk) 10:36, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Tentative thought: Yale for historical linguistics, RR for modern linguistics? seefooddiet (talk) 03:59, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Hmm, that could work. Malerisch (talk) 02:03, 27 September 2024 (UTC)

I think RR is not suitable for modern linguistics. Consider the following example:

• The word dongnip 'independence' is composed of dok 'alone' and rip 'to stand'.

Ordinary readers would have difficulty understanding this.

To get around this, you could use the RR letter-by-letter transliteration (doglib, dog, lib), but this system is functionally yet another separate romanization system. We shouldn't complicate things even more by introducing a fourth romanization system. I'd argue that for linguistics, we should only use Yale. 172.56.232.137 (talk) 07:52, 28 September 2024 (UTC)

I don't really agree with this. Yale romanization also has the flaw of leading readers to believe that 독립 is pronounced "toklip", as readers unfamiliar with Yale would naturally expect it to represent pronunciation rather than just the underlying morphology. Assuming that this is actually a linguistics example, adding a short explanation about Korean pronunciation changes would suffice to dispel any confusion.

Would you also argue that Hepburn romanization would similarly be unsuitable for Japanese, which has sound changes like rendaku?

• The word tegami 'letter' is composed of te 'hand' and kami 'paper'.

Malerisch (talk) 09:10, 28 September 2024 (UTC)

Furthermore, RR letter-by-letter transliteration, if it's needed, is explicitly allowed by the RR standard; it's technically not a separate system. Malerisch (talk) 09:46, 28 September 2024 (UTC)

I think the key word in the IP user's comment for RR letter-by-letter is functionally.

Note that in the current draft MOS we currently discourage its use at all (ctrl+f "letter-by-letter"). That is open to discussion btw; I agree with excluding it because it's so rarely used and because of the functionally argument. seefooddiet (talk) 09:52, 28 September 2024 (UTC)

Okay, fair enough on "functionally". I do agree that letter-by-letter romanization shouldn't normally be used. Malerisch (talk) 09:59, 28 September 2024 (UTC)

Well, the pronunciation-based RR has the flaw of leading readers to believe that 물고기 (mulgogi) is pronounced [물고기] (instead of [물꼬기]), as tensification is not reflected. The MR system indicates tensification by using the voiceless letter instead of the voiced letter (mulkogi; cf. 불고기 [불고기] pulgogi). So if you think showing pronunciation is important, we should probably use MR.

I think I can criticize more on RR, but I won't do that (at least for now).

For everthing else, I think you're right. I don't think I have a good counterargument to that.

(However, I personally don't think an orthography (including a romanization system) has to show pronunciation perfectly (in other words, personally I am okay with "toklip"), but I won't go into that.) 172.56.232.61 (talk) 03:46, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

While RR, MR, and Yale all have flaws, I think the use of RR is probably best for discussions of the contemporary Korean language mostly because it's the most recognizable system to the users of Wikipedia. Also, I imagine most people engage with the learning of Korean through books that use RR.

In short, I think I like Yale for examples of historical Korean and RR for contemporary Korean. seefooddiet (talk) 04:20, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

I went ahead and WP:BOLDly added recommendations to use Yale for historical linguistics and RR for contemporary linguistics. If you oppose this, please comment. seefooddiet (talk) 04:46, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

Well, personally I am still skeptical about this, but I am not going to argue about this (at least for now). 172.56.232.215 (talk) 07:41, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

I think it's unlikely there'll be significant changes to these linguistics articles quickly, so you have some time to develop an argument. seefooddiet (talk) 08:25, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

Infoboxes on Law

Should articles on South Korean laws use template:infobox Korean name like the kowiki, or template:infobox legislation like most other enwiki articles on laws and Shutdown law? 00101984hjw (talk) 03:51, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

I think you can/should have both infoboxes. Infobox legislation would go first, then infobox Korean name. It doesn't appear that Infobox legislation has a parameter for embedding a child template, so they'll likely need to be kept separate; otherwise we generally recommend the two infoboxes are combined, as is done here Maebongsan (Yeongwol). seefooddiet (talk) 04:00, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Romanization section

Gave this section a rewrite. Before and after.

Change log:

• Most of the logic is the same, optimized for concision.
• Added Yale romanization to what we use.
• Changed examples for romanizations; I'm still not happy with them though. The previous examples referred to province names that are governed by our naming conventions and used English words mixed in, so wasn't 100% clear. They also didn't illustrate the use of diacritics. Please feel free to swap them out again, I'll be thinking of better examples.
• Added rules about the use of MR/RR.
• Added a section to Naming guidelines on strict romanization vs naming conventions; this affects the romanization guidelines.

I will make more additions to this in near future. As a heads up, I'm currently writing a companion essay for romanizing Korean on Wikipedia. It provides more detailed explanations of our various choices. When I complete the first draft of the essay, I'll move it under the WikiProject Korea namespace, so that it belongs to the community and can continue to be updated. seefooddiet (talk) 06:14, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

Please add in observed WP:STATUSQUO also otherwise once this draft goes live, there may be unexpected misinterpretation causing issues, including but not limited to, article's content, moving of articles, etc. I'm not particular on anything unless concerning on South Korea BLP-related topics. — Paper9oll (🔔 • 📝) 08:29, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

Could you rephrase? Sorry, I don't understand what your message means. seefooddiet (talk) 08:41, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

@Seefooddiet I meant other than emphasizing on WP:COMMONNAME on RR. — Paper9oll (🔔 • 📝) 09:33, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm still confused, sorry. Btw I saw that you thanked me for an edit; I've since changed that text that you thanked me for. You may want to check the page again, RR no longer mentions WP:COMMONNAME.

Are you requesting we mention what used to be done? There's so many changes in this MOS that I think mentioning the previous standards may be cumbersome. Furthermore, the MOS is about reflecting current consensus, not necessarily what used to be done. seefooddiet (talk) 09:38, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

@Seefooddiet Oh ... didn't saw that changes. Saw that it's now pointing to "Strict romanization vs naming conventions" which included my intention above hence I don't think we need to mention as per observed status quo (within English Wikipedia) and/or current consensus. However, I still need thinks that mentioning WP:COMMONNAME may be beneficial ... then again, WP:RM often lumps together a bunch of policies hence mentioning COMMONNAME may be redundant. In case, I'm being confusing, my only concerns is including but not limited to, article titling, name in opening sentence, Infoboxes (including but not limited to |name=, |birth_name=, |other_names=. Excluding {{Infobox Korean name}}), name in list/list of. — Paper9oll (🔔 • 📝) 09:59, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

The romanization section is about romanization, not about English-language spellings. The two topics are separate; WP:COMMONNAME is more about English-language spellings.

To clarify, this is what the updated guidance is for South Korean people:

• Unless a WP:COMMONNAME or personal preference name is known, use RR (with hyphen in given name) for the article title, article body (including in the opening sentence), and infobox header (both in the header for {{infobox person}} and any of its variants, and the header for {{Infobox Korean name}}). For parameters like birth_name=, you should use this spelling too.
  • This is the English-language spelling I'm talking about.
• However, any time a template asks you for RR (namely {{Korean}} or {{Infobox Korean name}}), do not include the hyphen in the personal name. Only strictly apply RR, which normally discourages such hyphens.
  • This is just romanization.

It's unfortunately confusing. Romanizing Korean sucks. seefooddiet (talk) 10:08, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

@Seefooddiet Yes correct, your understanding (particularly point 1, not much concern on point 2) is aligned with my concerns. — Paper9oll (🔔 • 📝) 10:34, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

Romanization notice

@Nonabelian I just realized that by the current MOS, the romanization method notice may be counterproductive.

We currently determine which romanization system is used on a term-by-term basis, and not by entire articles. See also the "Same terms for article titles and in the body" section. For example, if we're writing about a Joseon-era cookbook (its title should use MR) and tteokbokki comes up, we should use the modern RR spelling for tteokbokki.

I propose we don't use the templates. We could possibly reword them to align with the MOS, but the explanation would be complicated enough (especially given that the naming conventions section modifies pure romanization) that it may be better to just point to the MOS itself. seefooddiet (talk) 04:30, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

It's been two weeks and Nonabelian hasn't been active for a while. I'm going to remove the template from the MOS. If you come back Nonabelian and would like to discuss this, please lmk. seefooddiet (talk) 11:21, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

Also Nonabelian, I'm sorry, I may remove the romanization help section altogether. My reasoning is this:

1. We're planning on adding an automatic romanization module in near future, which would make this obsolete.
2. The instructions are pretty lengthy, precise, and involve what is functionally coding. I have a gut feeling that few will ever follow these instructions; they're in a sea of a very long MOS. Furthermore, the people this section is meant for are possibly lazy; RR and Hangul are both fairly easy to learn (even if mistakes are made).

Again, if you disagree with this please let me know. seefooddiet (talk) 08:59, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

Addresses

To-do item, figure out a standard formatting for South Korean addresses. seefooddiet (talk) 06:35, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Actually maybe not, at least for now; maybe too precise. seefooddiet (talk) 08:37, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

Redoing references section

Now that the people naming section is rewritten, we're almost done with the first draft of the MOS. I think the last major thing left is the references section.

I want to give the section a rewrite. It's pretty lengthy and complicated; I doubt many will want to read or follow it at present. If this isn't executed well, even fewer people would be willing to write WP:GAs and WP:FAs because they'd need to digest these rules. seefooddiet (talk) 03:42, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

Oh and a reminder that I want to split off the naming conventions sections back into WP:NCKO. Otherwise the documents are way too long. seefooddiet (talk) 07:10, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

@00101984hjw @Dantus21 @Freedom4U @CountHacker

Would it bother anyone if we just deleted the current references section from the MOS altogether? I should have thought of this earlier before I sent out that RFC to write it... My mistake.

I think there's no real obligation on Wikipedia to romanize titles or author names; the Chicago Manual of Style asks for it but we don't have to follow that. Also, this level of precision in reference formatting is a lot of work for little gain; it only hurts people who are trying to get GA or FA by making them do all this. seefooddiet (talk) 02:13, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

I have complicated feelings about this.

While I believe articles adhering to the current ref section would be helpful for the general English speaking reader or article reviewers, it's definitely tedious to provide translated titles and names for every reference, especially considering that the use of the |mask1= parameter itself is pretty unorthodox. And to be fair, most Korean refs on the Enwiki don't even cite |newspaper= or |website= so I think it may be a little too early for such a scrupulous guideline.

Nevertheless, I think such practices should be encouraged, especially on sources for {{sfn}} references. Similarly to what we did for the Sejong the Great rewrite. -- 00101984hjw (talk) 02:39, 27 September 2024 (UTC)

I have more or less the same feelings.

However, my main concern is how few editors we have. Really the purpose of all our rules is to make editing easy by providing structure. Currently they're precise because they're meant to solve tedious debates that were boring and often reached divergent standards, which caused confusion. However, if the rules become tedious in themselves without significantly solving tedious confusions then I think they become harmful. Also, our main priority should be to maximize the amount of information in the bodies of articles. Ref format is a secondary priority imo. seefooddiet (talk) 03:19, 27 September 2024 (UTC)

Maybe we could just leave the tedious parts as recommendations for now? -- 00101984hjw (talk) 03:34, 27 September 2024 (UTC)

Hmm.. if we kept it I'd want to significantly simplify and condense it. I'll take a shot at it and tag you when I have something if that's ok. seefooddiet (talk) 04:12, 27 September 2024 (UTC)

@00101984hjw

This is my draft rewrite: User:Seefooddiet/MOS. My rationale for stripping it down so much:

• The general Wikipedia MOS is really sparse on how to handle the formatting of references. I suspect this is intentional.
  • Our present guidelines, even if all reworded to be optional, would be possibly the most restrictive and precise on the website by a wide margin.
  • If you think about it, all we need from a citation is being able to tell what is being referenced. Anything more is just bonus. That includes rendering Hangul names into Latin script; that may be helpful in discussions but doesn't necessarily strongly help people figure out what source is being referenced. They'll need the original Hangul for that.
  • I kept trans-title because there's already a clear parameter for that and clear consensus that using it is good practice. On the other hand, romanizing author names I haven't seen a consensus for.
• I don't really agree with a number of the choices in hindsight. E.g. providing both romanizations and translations. I'm not sure romanizations for titles should be put at all; they're not helpful to almost everybody, tedious to produce, and are a relic of academic practices (which we don't have to follow).
  • My perspective on the purpose of an MOS has also changed a lot over the course of writing this draft; I'm trying to simplify it.
• I'm too uncertain on what we should recommend for too many areas. Until we reach clear consensuses on things (unlike in the RfC done to produce this, which drew only a handful of people), I figure it's better to keep our guidance sparse, like the general MOS.

seefooddiet (talk) 06:50, 29 September 2024 (UTC)

I fully support the decision of keeping trans-title but deleting transliteration (although standardized referencing styles may prefer otherwise). I don’t see any reason why any reviewer would wish to know the pronunciation of a title rather than its translation.

Also, should usage of the author-mask1= parameter be mandatory? I haven’t seen a single non-Korean, non-sfn source reference that uses this parameter and I think this may be the biggest annoyance to many new editors. I guess it has inevitable roles for sources with the authors’ names in Hangul or Hanja, but would it really be necessary when the name is romanized in the source itself? We already know what transliteration the author prefers and I don’t think removing a single comma would make a big difference.

I wish citation templates had parameters like native-last= or native-author=… 00101984hjw (talk) 21:33, 29 September 2024 (UTC)

Per the wording in my draft, author-mask is regulated like this: rendering author names in English is optional -> if you do render author names in English, use author-mask. Thus, author-mask is optional.

However, I'm now second-guessing myself. I'm not sure how best to handle the format of the author masking and where to put Hangul or English. Check the draft again; I just modified it by deleting that regulation altogether. As per above, until we're certain I think it's better to just withhold guidance. seefooddiet (talk) 21:46, 29 September 2024 (UTC)

I WP:BOLDly went ahead and replaced the section. If anyone opposes this, please let me know.

With that, I think the first draft of the MOS is finished. seefooddiet (talk) 04:27, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

Wrapping up

I think the new MOS is ready for use. I'll probably continue editing it for clarity, but the major decisions I think have been made.

Next steps:

• I'll post a notice to WP:KO about this new MOS and will split this draft back into MOS:KO and WP:NCKO.
• I suspect many pages will be moved because of this new MOS. If you think a move will be uncontroversial, you can feel free to WP:BOLDly move it yourself; if there is any uncertainty I think you should open a move discussion instead.
• Any time a page gets moved, mentions of that page in other articles should be updated as well. For each successful move you make, I recommend you post a request on User:Seefooddiet/AWB requests. I'll then use WP:AWB to automatically update the spellings; this should reduce tedious work and the volume of edits that we have to make to update all these spellings.

Thanks for working on this, everyone! We've had the previous MOS, flaws and all, since 2004. I think this is the first time it received a complete overhaul; hopefully it should resolve confusions that we've had for decades. seefooddiet (talk) 04:53, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

I read the whole proposal once more, and I think we're set! The MoS can always be revised with consensus and the current draft seems to address all the major issues. I'm honestly surprised this thing hasn't gone through any major revamps for 20 years. It's somewhat disappointing, in a way. But anyways, excellent work! Cheers. -- 00101984hjw (talk) 04:51, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Move done, discuss on relevant pages, not here

Hello, I recently pushed the draft MOS into the official MOS:KO and WP:NCKO. Both need to be cleaned up after being split up again.

Please don't add more discussions on this draft talk page anymore. I split up this talk page and copied over the discussions onto the talk pages of either of those pages depending on what they're most relevant to. Most of the discussions are unique to either of those pages, however a few of them I copied onto both talk pages as they're relevant to both.

I'd recommend you avoid replying to old conversations on either of those talk pages; if you have new ideas, I recommend you start a new thread on those pages in order to make it less confusing. seefooddiet (talk) 08:34, 3 October 2024 (UTC)