Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Daoism–Taoism romanization issue (2nd nomination)


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

The result was merge‎__EXPECTED_UNCONNECTED_PAGE__ to Romanization of Chinese. Clear consensus as to a merger, less clear consensus as to the target. The one I've chosen has marginally more support, but this does not preclude merging content to both places and/or retargeting later. Vanamonde93 (talk) 11:40, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

Daoism–Taoism romanization issue
AfDs for this article:


 * – ( View AfD View log | edits since nomination)

Not a standalone encyclopedia topic; fails WP:GNG. Should be merged into Romanization of Chinese and Taoism. The entire article could be written in one sentence: "Tao" is the Wade–Giles (1892) spelling and "Dao" is the Pinyin (1950s); Wade-Giles was once the pre-eminent romanization method, but has mostly given way to the Pinyin as the government's official method.

As a talk page comment from 2008 states, the existence of this article is simply "an outgrowth of several-year-old arguments here on Wikipedia". In other words, this was a move-war over the article Taoism, using the same arguments now set out at WP:TRANSLITERATE, which says Established systematic romanizations, such as Hanyu Pinyin, are preferred. However, if there is a common English-language form of the name, then use it, even if it is unsystematic (as with Tchaikovsky and Chiang Kai-shek). We don't have articles called "Tchaikovsky – Čajkovskij romanization issue" and "Chiang Kai-shek – Jiang Jieshi romanization issue" for good reason, but if we did they would look like this one. Onceinawhile (talk) 09:33, 22 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Language and China. Onceinawhile (talk) 09:33, 22 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Merge to Romanization of Chinese -- I find nothing in this article or its sourcing that sets Tao v Dao apart from every other Romanisation discussion. There is no policy basis for this to be a standalone article. For policy rationale on delete/merge, I'd use WP:GNG via WP:CONTENTFORK (and a very stale one at that). Note for closer: If merge is not the consensus, please consider these as my reasons supporting deletion. Cheers, Last1in (talk) 14:53, 22 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Merge to Tao – This is an article I feel like we have purely so that a footnote on Taoism isn't too long, yes. I would recommend merging with Tao because that article already has an extensive etymology/orthography section, and I doubt there's even any material here that should be here that shouldn't be there. Remsense  留  15:34, 22 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Merge to Romanization of Chinese. No WP:GNG. The only source that comes somewhat close to covering the topic of this essay-like article is Carr (1990). That's obviously not enough for a standalone article. Most parts of the article are about general transliteration issues and simply exemplify them with what happens to 道. The last paragraph of the section "§Romanizations" has two sources where the authors/editors explain why they prefer "Daoism" over "Taoism". This content could be merged to Taoism. –Austronesier (talk) 20:39, 22 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Keep. Yes, the present article was partially a WP:SPINOFF, archived at "Done; I've moved the diatribe for now to Daoism versus Taoism. --Brion 22:41 Sep 3, 2002 (PDT)"; but it wasn’t "a move-war over the article Taoism". According to the page Diffs, anonymous IPs started both articles in the same month (in the first WP-year of low-hanging articles). The Daoism versus Taoism page originated on "18:10, 1 October 2001‎ 157.178.1.xxx:" and the Taoism one on "00:11, 20 October 2001‎ 63.192.137.xxx:" It's understandable why some readers might think this article is "pointless" while others may disagree. In my admittedly subjective opinion, there's no constructive advantage in merging. Haven't researched the Daoism/Taoism debate in years and will look for some new references. Best wishes, Keahapana (talk) 02:27, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Is this really a "strong keep", then? How many independent sources are there specifically discussing the romanization issue for this specific word? Specific sourcing seems scant on the article as is, and a few quick Google searches solely return what seem to be offhand parenthetical mentions of the discrepancy. There's no "debate", it's just a bit of confusion over two distinct Chinese romanization schemes. Articles shouldn't be kept because their existence is useful to some clique of editors, they should be kept because their subjects are in themselves notable. Remsense  留  02:32, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Strong keep. What clique? Inclusionist? Keahapana (talk) 21:06, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Keahapana, apologies, "clique" in the loosest sense of "those who feel they have to keep gesturing to it"/"those who find it has utility specifically among Wikipedia editors, rather than the article having its own encyclopedic merit". Remsense  留  17:55, 27 December 2023 (UTC)
 * You appear to have !voted twice, which is against the rules. Please change to a comment. Imaginatorium (talk) 09:24, 28 December 2023 (UTC)
 * (I see how it could look that way, but I think their intent was to clarify for me, who was confused by the original edit summary.) Remsense  留  09:26, 28 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Merge to Tao. The article suffers from extensive original research, probably a side effect of the lack of substantial secondary coverage of the issue, though there seems to be some (e.g. Carr 1990). I can't think of a compelling reason to spin it off rather than keep it as at most one or two paragraphs in the Tao article. (I don't think a merger to Romanization of Chinese would make as much sense, since this is about how Tao specifically is romanized, not about romanization per se.) WhinyTheYounger ※ Talk 15:38, 26 December 2023 (UTC)


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