User talk:Colonies Chris/Archive/2014/Nov

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Reference Errors on 1 November
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Reasoning for sorting departments by country
Hi Chris I just wondered what was your reasoning behind sorting Australian Government departments by the word Australia as in [this edit]?

To me it makes the category pages hard to navigate, for an example see the Category:Ministries established in 1972 (sorry I couldn't work out how to link to this!). Perhaps there is a compelling reason you are doing this though? I couldn't find this in the Manual of Style, but perhaps also you could point me to where it is?

Many thanks, Clare. (talk) 03:49, 2 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Hi Clare - the underlying question is what the categories "Ministries established in xxxx" are used for. There are two possible natural ways to order the items in each category - either by country or by ministry title. Within a given year, is it more useful to group all ministries from one country together, or is it more useful to group all ministries with similar titles together? My impression from looking at these categories was that mostly, where a category sort key had been supplied, it was to force an ordering by country, so I've been continuing that process. Mostly, no category sort key is present, so the ordering is fairly random, given that ministries dealing with essentially the same area can have many different titles (e.g. Environment, Natural Resources, Planning etc.), and that they may be called Ministries or Departments or Offices, meaning that they don't naturally sort together even when they deal with the same area of interest. How do you feel these categories are used? Colonies Chris (talk) 09:49, 2 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Hi Chris-- good point that we should be thinking about the user. Maybe having the departments of a country together is useful, I will mull this over and for now let's go with status quo (which seems to be sorting by country. Thanks for writing back. Clare. (talk) 07:44, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Recent Vietnam War edits
Hello Colonies Chris. I think some discussion is required here at least. Recently you have partially added diacritics to a few Vietnam War articles, as you have done in the past, including if I recall correctly a few where I have previously reverted this addition. Since there has been no discussion since my previous objections I think that a note here is probably required. AFAIK there is no policy requiring the use of non-English characters on English wikipedia, while at any rate only using it in some areas and not others is inconsistent and seems to detract for the quality of the articles concerned (at least a few of which are GAs). Given that I have again reverted I request you provide the policy basis on which you are making this edit. Unless community consensus has changed WP:DIACRITIC is not sufficient by my reading. My objections go beyond a lack of policy though - ultimately I don't see the point of such text as the vast majority of our readers read English not Vietnamese (easily more than 99%) so to them it means nothing (it doesn't aid my pronunciation as I don't know what these characters mean), whilst I have no way of generating such characters without undue effort due to the limitations of my keyboard so when I edit these articles (other than finding it somewhere else on Wikipedia and copy / pasting it) I cannot add material to these articles and use diacritics consistently. Nor I suspect can the average punter / IP. Ultimately the project of changing the English presentations to Vietnamese is never going to be complete and will only result in inconsistent spelling on a grand scale. I also have concerns that it doesn't comply with WP:COMMONNAME, particular for well known battle names but also for places. Anyway I'm off to bed but will check in tomorrow sometime for your response. Regards. Anotherclown (talk) 14:16, 10 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi Anotherclown -
 * The relevant policy on placenames is here and links to the discussions on personal names is here. There was an RFC on placenames over a year ago, and by now virtually all placename aricles have at least had their title changed over to full diacritics, and most are fully converted. The general feeling was that whether or not a reader knows how to interpret the Vietnamese diacritics, they are a part of the name, just as with other lesser known languages such as Slovak or Lithuanian. I myself don't know Vietnamese and don't know how to type them on the keyboard, but I don't need to know because I make use of other people's knowledge by cut and paste. Some reasons that diacritics might not appear throughout are - (1) a few major Vietnamese cities that are normally known without diacritics, (e.g. Ho Chi Minh City) or as exonyms (Hanoi, Saigon) (2) some names dating from the Vietnam War such as such as US bases and names of battles, which are conventionally known without diacritics (even when the actual location does carry the diacritics - e.g. the Battle of Long Khanh which took place in Long Khánh Province), and (3) where the name doesn't have an entry on English or Vietnamese Wikipedia, so I simply don't know what the diacritics should be. Colonies Chris (talk) 17:20, 10 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Gday thanks for the comments. The problem is they aren't policy and haven't been accepted by the community, only a small number of editors interested in them as was pointed out in the RFC at the time if I recall. The MOS still applies so hence my comment that there is no basis in policy. Ultimately my main concern is inconsistency within an article (particularly GAs and above), and if you can only change some but not others and the majority of our editors and readers can neither type it or have no idea what it means what is the point? Anotherclown (talk) 02:28, 11 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Policy is made by the community - if consensus among editors involved in Vietnam-related articles is to use diacritics, then it's policy, as long as it doesn't directly contradict the MoS - and it doesn't, the MoS is neutral on the subject. You had the opportunity to participate in tnat RFC, and you have the option to raise the question again if you wish. Do you have any reason to believe that what you describe as 'inconsistent' spelling would disqualify an artice from becoming a GA? As I explained above, there are specific circumstances where spellings with and without diacritics may be used within an article. That's not inconsistency. Colonies Chris (talk) 14:03, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Curious about one of your edits
Hi Colonies Chris. I am trying to figure out what this edit is about, as I can't see any difference. Regards, Rui &#39;&#39;Gabriel&#39;&#39; Correia (talk) 12:06, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi Rui - just bringing the formatting into line with WP:DATERANGE; "A pure year–year range ... and the range's "end" year is usually abbreviated to two digits". Colonies Chris (talk) 13:53, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't believe it!!!!! I looked at it for a few minutes and I saw NO difference!!!! How could I miss that? I ended up looking at the hiphen, as I know there are hiphens/ dashes of different lenghts to see if that was what you had changed. How could I have missed that you changed the date format!!! Obviously I am not getting enough sleep!!! Thanks!, and my apologies for being asleep. ;-) Regards, Rui &#39;&#39;Gabriel&#39;&#39; Correia (talk) 20:10, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Reference Errors on 18 November
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