Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Japan-related articles/VGGL2

Consulting other projects
I do not think it is a good idea to change policy in the absence of these other projects. The fact that they are not contributing to the discussion does not mean VG or anyone else gets to represent them, it just means we need to work harder at obtaining their participation before changing policy that will affect all of them. Let's say two people on the project preferred Kunrei-shiki romanization. They could talk to each other here while everyone else happens to be away, change policy here (e.g. switch from Hepburn to Kunrei-shiki), then call it "consensus" - the rest of the project would be rather miffed. Isn't that rather similar to VG's point to begin with, that consensus here wasn't reflecting their project? And won't the other projects be able to say the same? The scenario I would wish to avoid is that a project wakes up one day to find the policy has changed without their input and they can no longer edit articles in the way that they feel is appropriate; a plight which VG might be able to empathize with. Policies should not be changed without active input from major projects affected by it, so we need to get wider participation in this discussion. Any thoughts on how we could do this? Perhaps going to the user talk pages of major contributors to other projects and asking them to come here? -- Joren (talk) 14:45, 29 July 2010 (UTC)
 * True words. The problem is to find out who the "big cheeses" in all the projects are. Number of edits? Important contributors to featured articles? History of helping in discussions to form a consensus on project guidelines? Tricky subject... Prime Blue (talk) 15:09, 29 July 2010 (UTC)
 * That's not really what I said though. My main points are that the argument "Project X, Y and Z agree with this MOS guideline and this shows it has consensus" is not in itself valid and that "The editors arguing against this guideline are all from WP:VG" does not negate those arguments to any extent. Again, I'm not saying other Wikiprojects cannot have an opinion or that we shouldn't await further opinions from whatever quarter. Not to get into semantics but we're not talking about anything so serious as a policy here, merely a style guideline. bridies (talk) 16:10, 29 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Bridies brings up a point I agree with completely. This should not be such a big deal. Flexibility among those involved (those currently as well as those that may join later) will help bring this to a resolution.
 * If more editors are sought, then hit up the projects again. Let them know that this will affect how they write the leads of their articles. If that doesn't work again, then there is the village pump. (Guyinblack25 talk 16:35, 29 July 2010 (UTC))
 * Sorry if it seems like changing the subject then, but I do believe this to be important. I think it would be in everyone's interests if the other projects actively participated instead of having their assumed agreement with the existing guideline.  Certainly those in favor of the existing guideline do not want these projects to be left out, either.  Everyone agrees that their opinions are valid and needed, but I do believe we need to be more proactive about soliciting them.  So, how can we better do this?
 * -- Joren (talk) 16:37, 29 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Ryulong left notes at the talk pages of WikiProject Japan, WikiProject Anime and manga, WikiProject Hello! Project, WikiProject Pokémon, WikiProject Trains in Japan, and WikiProject Tokusatsu (are there any other projects affected by this?). But that was two days ago and nothing (I think) has happened since. As Guyinblack25 said, a more attention-grabbing notice could help. Some bold text here and there, and a better explanation on how a clear-cut consensus would prevent edit wars and affect many, many articles on a large scale. If that doesn't work, there's also your suggestion of notifying individual users, though as I said, I have no idea how to determine the projects' key people.
 * ...or we simply redirect all project pages to this section here. ;-) Prime Blue (talk) 19:24, 29 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Those projects (other than the defunct Final Fantasy project and the Square Enix project) are the only projects I could think of that are fairly independent that would be affected by this.— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙 ) 00:45, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Regarding this comment from Ryulong:
 * "I have yet to see anyone, other than Golbez, Honjamaka, and Thibbs that is not involved with this page or WP:VG."
 * It should be noted that we have yet to see anyone from WP:JA either, apart from Ryulong and Nihonjoe. Megata Sanshiro (talk) 19:03, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Why was Squenix omitted? If nothing else, Final Fantasy has been used as an example. —Ost (talk) 20:48, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I thought it was a daughter project of VG.— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙 ) 21:11, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
 * No more than Pokemon or Anime and Manga is a daughter project of WP:Japan. 陣 内 Jinnai 23:04, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

I have an idea on how to inform individual users of the projects: grab the names of important articles (like this or this) and guideline articles (like this) and run it through the Wikipedia page history statistics tool. "User statistics" will show the contributors with the most edits, of which we can inform those who are still active on Wikipedia. It might not be the best way to determine who is an "important" editor or who does the most work, but it may show the users that care. And, as mentioned before, we cannot simply bring them over here and demand a simple "yes" or "no", but we will have to encourage them instead to think about solutions that will satisfy everyone. Prime Blue (talk) 12:06, 3 August 2010 (UTC)
 * This is a good idea, and that is an extremely useful tool. Thanks for the link.
 * -- Joren (talk) 19:37, 3 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Well we definitely need more input than just the few opinions being expressed here, so far.— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙 ) 00:35, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

As has been said, mere "include/do not include" opinions (with or without arguments to back them up) will not convince either side to change their point of view by 180° (or else the mediative comments would have succeeded by now). The previous discussion on the issue failed because not enough users involved collaborated on establishing consensus and instead insisted on their opinion. This time, we will have to find a satisfying compromise or this will go on forever.

I am currently compiling a list of users from the individual affected projects using the statistics tool and will uniformly invite them over in a few days to provide feedback on the first suggested compromise and, in case of disagreement, to provide additional suggestions for compromises.

To Ryūlóng: you already commented and did not agree with the first suggestion. Please give your reasons and an alternative compromise, so people have more options.

Lastly, this will probably be the final attempt at establishing consensus (if anyone has another idea, again leave a comment). If the new comments from the invited users cannot help decide a compromise, the matter might be best forwarded to the Arbitration Committee, as I feel we have taken every reasonable step before. Prime Blue (talk) 17:09, 4 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I do not like the use of the tooltip. To me it feels a bit invasive, and all it does is put an underline. I've been reading that WP:VG thinks that adding the romaji for titles parsed in Katakana but can be directly translated into English (Final Fantasy, Fire Emblem, Metal Gear, etc.) is redundant and they feel that they could use the space "taken up" by what they feel is redundant romaji for whatever other information they feel can be put in the lead paragraph/first line. Regardless, this is still in opposition to the practices of other projects that deal with Japanese text, and projects that deal with other non-Latin texts. The WikiProjects that cover don't seem to have this issue, and on my computer the first line is entirely taken up by language-specific text. And before we move onto arbitration (which would probably be wholly unnecessary and just drag this out for another few months), the community at large could probably provide some input, as the WP:ENGLISH guideline is tied in with this as well.— Ryūlóng  ( 竜龙 ) 01:27, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I have to admit that I had hoped for more constructive criticism on my proposal. If your dislike of it is solely based on the missing explanation, I feel that this is sufficiently addressed in my reply to Joren below. If you still feel something has to be improved, leave a comment, and if you strongly object to it, give an alternate suggestion.
 * It will probably be easier to explain why a compromise is needed by posing a question: Would you be ready to drop your point of view and exclude such romanizations in all cases? You will see that you are unable to answer this question with a simple yes. Just as much, the other party will be unable to answer the opposite question (replace "exclude" with "include") with a simple yes. And both parties have to respect each other's views on the issue, thus making both the extremes "include/exclude in all cases" not a viable solution.
 * If someone of the exclude-party has a problem with the Zeus article, they can bring the issue to the attention of the project. We will continue with trying to achieve consensus on our issue here.
 * If that last resort of inviting other users fails to be conclusive, I will have to admit that I'd much rather have the ArbCom take months and finally rule out a decision on what to do, than to see me back here in six months after being witness to plenty of edit warring, again wasting precious life time over mediating a discussion that, to be quite frank, (although the outcome will affect thousands of articles) is rather trivial to the overall goal of writing a good article.
 * Prime Blue (talk) 05:14, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
 * This is not and should not be an Arbcom issue. They deal with editor misconduct, not disagreements on manual of style issues. The MOS must be the result of consensus, not something decided by a few people who mostly have no clue about the topic in question. At this point, I see no problem with some sort of compromise using the tooltip. If it can get rid of all this stupid posturing by some (not all) on both sides, it would be worth it. People digging in and refusing any sort of compromise is not acceptable. And compromise doesn't mean one or the other side "lost", either; rather it shows a willingness to work together to come to a solution which (while not necessarily optimal for either side) is workable and acceptable. While I prefer the nihongo template, I can see merit in using the tooltip version for extremely long titles. I think the nihongo tag is more effective for shorter titles, though. Perhaps we could come up with something incorporating both? ··· 日本穣 ? · 投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe ·  Join WikiProject Japan ! 05:49, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
 * From what I am reading, they do not want to use the tooltip just for long titles, but rather for any titles they want to that they feel takes up space for what is being perceived as being redundant. Perhaps there could be some sort of hide/expand feature for long titles, but using it just so "Fainaru Fantajii" or "Suupaa Mario Gyarakushii" doesn't take up space in the first line seems unnecessary.— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙 ) 06:06, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Ryūlóng: It was Jinnai only who suggested to widen the use of the template to all Japanese text, but that was turned down pretty quickly by Megata Sanshiro and me, as that suggestion has nothing to do with the issue at hand and is also highly controversial to say the least (no one so far has suggested they have a problem with kanji pronunciations). And how to handle especially long foreign titles that could hinder the readability of an article is still the problem of individual projects – at least I think it should be kept separate unless we want to introduce even more trees. This also seems to be the first time where the exclusion is mentioned to be based on space issues and readability. The overall discussion is more about if the inclusion is redundant, or if the exclusion is a disservice, or if these are Japanese or English words, etc. etc.


 * Nihonjoe: It was just an idea if that last thing fails. I don't know if the ArbCom would even consider the case (given that this seems to be unprecedented), but their members sure suggest some...charming ways to ensure that consensus is built. For the rest, see my reply to Ryūlóng above.


 * I will notify the users in the list below in three days. That way, Ryūlóng has time to think of an alternate compromise if he still disagrees. Otherwise, I will invite them over to give feedback and improvements on the first suggested compromise, and to provide alternate ideas in case of disagreement. Prime Blue (talk) 11:50, 5 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Was there any reason given that demonstrates why it is important to put the romaji in for English users? I am under the impression that having the original Japanese is already going too far (by having it in the lead), but the only reason I would hesitate about not having it there is just because of the scenario where other variants of a title are mentioned in various parts of the article and there is no good place to put the translations/originals. I don't see why the tooltip can't simply contain every title that isn't English (or the original English) unless it goes against policy, nor do I see why the romaji is there and being forced into our faces when we're not trying to learn how to read Japanese by phonetics. Frankly all I have been seeing is some guidelines being quoted and thrown back at everyone (along with forceful editing practices). - Odokee (talk) 23:24, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Giving pronunciations of kanji/hiragana that describe Japanese words or expressions is under no circumstances redundant. If you do not agree with the inclusion of foreign names on the English Wikipedia, you should bring it up on the appropriate talk page. Prime Blue (talk) 23:50, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Neither of those things were relevant to the issues brought up. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Odokee (talk • contribs) 04:20, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I think they addressed them directly, unless you meant something different and I didn't understand it. Prime Blue (talk) 12:38, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

I invited them over, so at least the problem of too few user input is now solved. Prime Blue (talk) 11:42, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your hard work trying to achieve consensus here and bring more users into the process. I'm sure this must be a time-consuming process.
 * -- Joren (talk) 19:41, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

List of users to notify
Okay, I am done with the list.

I picked users (whose last edits were pretty recent) with the most edits on project pages and randomly selected "important" articles. I don't want either side to accuse me of compiling this list in a biased way, so if you feel a project or "important" article was underrepresented, just add some users the tool gives you – as long as they are not added in a biased way.

I will inform those 80 users above with a uniform message in a few days. Prime Blue (talk) 21:28, 4 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Added 2 more for anime and manga. The one major character article and One Piece (to round out something from the current 3 cash-cow titles). Except for one person, I think that is all the major members in that project. 陣 内 Jinnai 18:34, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Okay, thank you. Prime Blue (talk) 20:30, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Hmm, you notified the non-existent User:Dinoguy. Perhaps you meant User:Dinoguy1000?  Good raise  11:53, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Good raise. ;-) That was one of the users added by Jinnai. Guess he meant Dinoguy1000, so I notified him. Prime Blue (talk) 12:17, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

A compromise?
Okay, I've got an...idea for a compromise that could satisfy both parties. Following up on Ost316's suggestion and my earlier mockups, we could actually have a new nihongo template created that employs tooltips for that specific issue. Bottom line, the idea is: 
 * Enforce employment of the following suggested template everywhere on the English Wikipedia, no exceptions for projects.
 * It should be used in a few specific cases (for examples, see further down):
 * 1. When the Japanese part of a nihongo template is all katakana and/or numbers and special characters pronounced as words of English origin, such as 2 [tsū/two]). Applies to titles, character names, etc.
 * 2. When the Japanese (NOT the English) title in Roman letters was already given and the only difference in the Hepburn romanization is the pronunciation of katakana words and/or numbers and special characters pronounced as words of English origin.


 * For these cases, this new template is created. Some name proposals are Template:Nihongo tip (I like that one best), Template:Engnihongo, Template:Romanihongo. Possibly also a second "Template:...title" version to complement Template:Nihongo title.
 * The actual code for the template is exactly the same (save for the template call, of course).
 * But the result is different. Here's the actual examples for the two usage cases described above (this is what the new template code would produce). The numbers describe which of the two cases applies:
 * 1a) Final Fantasy VI (ファイナルファンタジーVI? )
 * 1b) Jill Valentine (ジル・バレンタイン? )
 * 2a) Zelda no Densetsu: Yume o Miru Shima (ゼルダの伝説 夢をみる島,? lit. "The Legend of Zelda: The Dreaming Island")
 * 2b) Bishōjo Senshi Sailor Moon (美少女戦士セーラームーン,? officially translated Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon)

This is not the actual guideline, of course, but just a general explanation of the method. What do you think, ladies and gentlemen? I'm open to answering questions, so feel free to ask if something is unclear. Prime Blue (talk) 17:29, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
 * That way, we don't provide a disservice for the reader by deleting the actual pronunciation, while those opposing the inclusion of the pronunciation should not be disturbed by it anymore.
 * Modifying the templates does not really help anything. Hiding romaji in a tooltip doesn't solve the issue when romaji should or should not be included.— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙 ) 21:33, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm not suggesting to modify the templates, I'm suggesting to create a new one. And by now, after all these statements from both parties, it should be apparent that the problem can't be solved with a simple "include" or "do not include". You won't simply accept "do not include", just as the other party will not simply accept "include". If that is what you all are still arguing for, then this is a lost cause. Prime Blue (talk) 21:57, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Making a new template so the one project that does not like including something is not a compromise. It's still treating them as different when it comes to text that several other projects include.— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙 ) 22:04, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Can you suggest a compromise that will satisfy the editors from WP:VG? Prime Blue (talk) 22:14, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Probably not, because they want to remove anything that they feel is redundant from the first line, which would of course be any Japanese language text or romaji that resembles the English language name.— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙 ) 22:16, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Come on, they haven't even answered yet. This seems like a tad biased. Prime Blue (talk) 22:20, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
 * What's been done with the romaji then? If it's there but hidden I guess I'm fine with it, whether it's a footnote or whatever, anywhere but the first line. bridies (talk) 03:41, 31 July 2010 (UTC)
 * See the examples: The rōmaji appear when you hover the mouse over the Japanese text. Prime Blue (talk) 04:28, 31 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah I see now. For me it's an acceptable compromise. bridies (talk) 06:37, 31 July 2010 (UTC)
 * This is exactly what I would want to have happen, if such a thing is possible. Then people can still read the article like a normal person would, instead of something comparable to what it'd be like if all the references weren't hidden into numbered superscript footnote links. Although, I still think it is silly to put all that stuff in when it's not English or even the original foreign name. - Odokee (talk) 05:15, 1 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Everyone is entitled to their opinion, as long as they decide to step back a bit from it to meet a middle ground that satisfies both parties – which you proved to collaborate on. Prime Blue (talk) 17:48, 1 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Two members of WP:VG have now shown to be open to compromises, so if you have another idea for a compromise, Ryulong, this is the best time for alternate suggestions. Prime Blue (talk) 17:48, 1 August 2010 (UTC)
 * it gets around problems of read problems (especially with long titles), footnotes just for the sake of title pronunciation, and is acceptable form of redundancy as its made much more clear with the romaji is for as it is linked to the rollover of the katakana. I actually like the rollover better overall and would like to see it used even outside WP:VG as an option for any Japanese text instead of the traditional titles. The only problem I have is if this will work with extremely long titles in a readable fashion. Test: School Rumble: 2nd Semester – Summer Training Camp (of fear?)!! Ghost's Appearing in the Western-styled Building!? Fighting Over the Treasure!!! 陣  内 Jinnai 03:31, 3 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Just to clarify, again, as I and Guyinblack said above, this discussion is about "the romanization of English loanwords in the Japanese language", not just "the romanization of English loanwords in the Japanese language in video game titles" or "the romanization of English loanwords in the Japanese language in anime and manga titles" or anything else. There is no need to say "even outside WP:VG" as this was never about the WP:VG in particular. Megata Sanshiro (talk) 06:45, 3 August 2010 (UTC)
 * How articles handle especially long titles is up to the individual projects – right here, we only decide a site-wide standard on how to handle the issue discussed above. Prime Blue (talk) 11:47, 3 August 2010 (UTC)
 * It was more about whether it could handle extremely long titles and ifso, how well. 陣 内 Jinnai 12:44, 3 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, there's one way to find out...
 * -- Joren (talk) 19:33, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

'''Also, a heads-up once more: It is the liability of everyone who does not agree to the present proposal to give alternate suggestions on an acceptable compromise for both parties – if they desire to be heard and take part, that is. If this finds support, members cannot just filibuster the discussion without participating in the consensus-building. Everyone is encouraged to have their own opinion and disagree, but state your reasons if you do, and most of all, help everyone to find an alternate satisfying solution.''' Prime Blue (talk) 11:47, 3 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Ok, so I'm still trying to make up my mind about this proposal. On the one hand, the tooltip isn't such a bad idea.  Of course, I might be worried how it would work for mobile browsing/browsers with slim feature sets, but the concept isn't bad.  However, I still have trouble with the fact that this solution, while it would indeed be applied across all projects, still breaks apart how we handle Japanese text by creating an exception for titles consisting entirely of katakana loan words.  Well, maybe that's ok.  But is lack of space in the lede really the only reason for not including Romaji?  Seems like there were other important reasons why this got brought up...
 * One of the arguments raised against the inclusion of Romaji early in the discussion is that the average reader has no context in which to interpret Romaji. This is a valid criticism and also one we can address without breaking apart how we treat Japanese text - modify the question mark to point to a page that actually clues the reader in on what Romaji is.  I suggested modifying Help:Japanese and using that, Ryulong pointed out that the page has a lot of things wrong with it.  Ok, but can you help make it right?  Nihonjoe made some proposed changes to Help:Installing Japanese character sets; I also started a worksheet for modifying Help:Japanese.  Could we perhaps put our heads together and come up with the best way possible to explain Romaji to the average reader?  That would at least address what to me is the only real drawback of having Romaji.
 * Jinnai also raised a concern that to get articles up to Feature Article status, they might want the literal translation to go first. Anyone have some clarification on this issue?  Is this something that could be remedied with a  ?
 * If we were to address these issues, how would that be? At a bare minimum, we do need an informative, friendly help page for that question mark.
 * -- Joren (talk) 02:37, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
 * That is something that might be better off answered by those who oppose the inclusion of such romanizations. Personally, I just felt this new template was a good solution if both parties sticked to their point of view. One of the problems this discussion is plagued by is that the sub-arguments (even the good ones) brought up by one party to support their view are just not accepted by the other party ("people will only be convinced if they want to be"), thus creating a situation in which no one can see the wood for the trees.
 * Partly answered to in the first point. Corollary: As mentioned below, I'm all for making the question mark link to a general explanation page on all-things nihongo. I think this is also the place where the underlined text in this potential new template should be explained: To me, it seems, people who will not know what text they are confronted with will naturally hover the mouse over the text and/or click on the question mark.
 * The problem with using literal translations first is to find a factually accurate ("released as [...] in Japan...") and/or verifiable ("known as [...] in Japan...") wording to include them that way. I explained that in this edit over here (we're talking about official translations given independently from the work itself there, but the issue is identical to that with literal translations).
 * Prime Blue (talk) 05:14, 5 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Looks good to me: It keeps the romanji available for those who think it is necessary, while not uselessly showing it when it is redundant to the English text. It may be beneficial to do this for all romanji transliterations rather than just redundant instances, but I have no strong feelings either way on that issue and hope that wouldn't stand in the way of the compromise on redundant instances. Anomie⚔ 20:51, 5 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Joren does raise a couple issues of importance. This would go against WP:Acess for having a tooltip usage, but it does seem to be the only item that has support on both sides.
 * The other, with literal translations, I think needs to be addressed by coming up with phrasing that doesn't make it sound like a literal translation was the version released. 陣 内 Jinnai 21:17, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I think WP:ACCESS prohibits use of tooltips for prose text. If it meant that tooltips should not be used at all, the template would not exist or be in use, I guess. And because I already see someone bringing it up: "Provide a transliteration for all text in a non-Latin writing system. Screen readers without Unicode support will read a character outside Latin-1 as a question mark, and even in the latest version of JAWS, the most popular screen reader, Unicode characters are very difficult to read." It again comes down to the redundancy/disservice issue both parties argue so much about. The one party thinks we already gave the text to be spoken by screen readers (first segment of the nihongo template), the other thinks a second (Hepburn romanization) pronunciation should be given. ...just to prevent all involved from wasting time and energy. Prime Blue (talk) 23:07, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I really don't think this is going to work. There have already been two discoveries of two guidelines that supercede both this one and WP:VG/GL that prohibit omission of romanizations (WP:ENGLISH) and prohibit the use of tooltips (WP:ACCESS). There is very likely not going to be an actual compromise that works with the higher guidelines.
 * The literal translation thing is another issue. In my opinion, it definitely would save room to write it as rather than the current practice of . I doubt that the GA reviewer/FA reviewers will have an issue with the "Fainaru Fantajī Sebun" part of "Final Fantasy VII (ファイナルファンタジーVII)" that would prevent it from being promoted to FA or cause it to be demoted from GA.
 * The only option I can think of would be rather than hiding it in a tooltip would be having an option to hide it similarly to navboxes, but I think that may still cause an issue when it comes to the screen readers.— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙 ) 01:30, 7 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Guidelines don't prohibit anything. bridies (talk) 01:40, 7 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Those are very good points. Ryulong appears to be correct; it seems we have already been superseded by these two guidelines.  But as far as what we can do, would it be possible to agree on a standardized format for titles in the lede similar to what Ryulong is proposing?  E.g. in accordance with the needs of the article, choose ONE OF the following for the first parameter:  an official translation, a literal translation, or a romanization.  (This gives editors the freedom to have the literal translation appear first)   As normal, the second parameter is Japanese, the third parameter is Romaji.  Finally, although left to editor's discretion, strongly discourage use of the nihongo template's extra tags in the lede paragraph, and move whatever info would go in the extra tags to a footnote instead.  That could save a bundle of space, and I don't believe this will run afoul of either of those guidelines.
 * -- Joren (talk) 06:15, 7 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Why not just put "official translation" or "English translation is literal" in the = parameter?— Ryūlóng  ( 竜龙 ) 06:27, 7 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Again, WP:ACCESS comes down to the exact issue both parties have already discussed until the cows come home: "Why do we have to give a pronunciation a second time? Screen readers already read the first part of the nihongo template." "Because this is not a repeat of the earlier spelling." "But why would readers want to hear it a second time?" "It does not matter because WP:ACCESS prohibits the use of tooltips." "No you are wrong." "No you are wrong." "No, see this guideline here." "Irrelevant, see this guideline here.", and so on. You can all hang yourselves up on discussing WP:ACCESS, or you can work towards a common goal. To put it bluntly: If tooltips were prohibited in all cases, they would not be there. And if they are prohibited in this special case is another endless discussion. Prime Blue (talk) 12:03, 7 August 2010 (UTC)


 * I hoped that this "long titles" and "official/non official titles" discussion would be held somewhere else as this has nothing to do with the original WP:MOSJA issue brought up here :( I'll just reply to the comment about WP:ACCESS and WP:ENGLISH:
 * WP:ACCESS says: "Provide a transliteration for all text in a non-Latin writing system."
 * WP:ENGLISH says: "Names not originally in a Latin alphabet, as with Greek, Chinese or Russian, must be transliterated into characters generally intelligible to literate speakers of English. [ . . . ] Established systematic transliterations (e.g. Hanyu Pinyin and IAST) are preferred. Nonetheless, do not substitute a systematically transliterated name for the common English form of the name, if there is one"
 * I put the important parts in bold. The last sentence, in particular, states that the common English forms should be used when existent; in the case of ファイナルファンタジー, the common English form is Final Fantasy. Megata Sanshiro (talk) 12:40, 7 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Guys...please...don't. :-( Prime Blue (talk) 15:26, 7 August 2010 (UTC)
 * @Megata Sanshiro: "Final Fantasy" is not the transliteration for "ファイナルファンタジー". That's a translation. So WP:ACCESS basically is telling us to use romaji. And like Prime Blue, I am getting tired of this. So this guideline does not need to be modified in any way. Rather WP:VG/GL should be brought in line with WP:ACCESS, WP:ENGLISH, and MOS:JA (which was my initial intention).— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙 ) 18:30, 7 August 2010 (UTC)
 * It is a transliteration (not to mention ファイナルファンタジー is itself a transliteration of Final Fantasy). WP:ACCESS is telling us to use one transliteration and WP:ENGLISH is telling us that "Nonetheless, do not substitute a systematically transliterated name for the common English form of the name, if there is one". The systematically transliterated name is Fainaru Fantajī and the commong English form of this transliterated name is Final Fantasy. That is, WP:ACCESS and WP:ENGLISH do not tell us more than both sides had already been assuming or not assuming when this discussion started. We are at the same point as before WP:ACCESS and WP:ENGLISH were brought up. As for WP:MOSJA, it is precisely what is being discussed. Megata Sanshiro (talk) 18:38, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

The part of WP:ENGLISH you are quoting is telling you not to use "Fainaru Fantajī" as the article title and not to omit "Fainaru Fantajī" from the text of any page. And stop mixing up what is a translation ("Final Fantasy") from what is a transliteration ("Fainaru Fantajī"). "ファイナルファンタジー" is not a transliteration of "Final Fantasy". It is a translation.— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙 ) 20:19, 7 August 2010 (UTC)
 * "The native spelling of a name should generally be included in the first line of the article, with a transliteration if the Anglicization isn't identical." You cannot deny that the Anglicization of "ファイナルファンタジー" is Final Fantasy. Megata Sanshiro (talk) 23:24, 7 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah, and the transliteration of "ファイナルファンタジー" is "Fainaru Fantajī", which is not identical to the translation/anglicization "Final Fantasy".— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙 ) 23:40, 7 August 2010 (UTC)
 * So just because they don't use the same sounds within characters and thus create an approximation when spoken, this to you is a totally new word to address in the article, as if it magically turned important to the reader. That argument appears to be based on insanity. Your logic completely negates the reason for stating it to begin with, as a word would NEVER be identical. - Odokee (talk) 02:11, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry that you find it redundant. The issue is that this is a written encyclopedia, and in the written language, "Final Fantasy", "ファイナルファンタジー", and "Fainaru Fantajī" are all unique. The first is the English name (official and literally translated), the second is the Japanese name, and the third is the transliteration of that Japanese name into a standarized method of romanizing Japanese text. To be blunt, deal with it.— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙 ) 02:15, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
 * And so we hit the crux of the issue. Is "Fainaru Fantajī" identical to "Final Fantasy", or not?  I tend to say not, based both on the fact that the writing is different and so is the pronounciation.  I understand there are reasons why others would say yes, because they are both based on the same word.  For what it's worth, I'd also point out that I believe I recall seeing cases on Wikipedia where the Anglicization actually does match the Romaji letter for letter; in that case, of course it would be identical and therefore redundant to include it twice.
 * But... if we could set this neverending merry-go-round aside for a second, are there other ways we can bridge this gap? For example, are there ways we can make it take less space?  Can we make the template more helpful?  Can we have guidance encouraging users to use footnotes for certain info in the lede (e.g. specify translation source in a footnote instead of parens)?  I've been trying to suggest ideas that would appeal to both sides but apparently my ideas aren't very helpful :) so if you have better ideas about how we can improve this situation, please advise.
 * -- Joren (talk) 02:31, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
 * About that first paragraph..... the thing is, people like Ryulong are behaving fanatical to the point where it still won't be identical, no matter what anyone says. There will always be something insignificant, like an O with a line on top of it, that will preclude it from being considered the same in their minds. - Odokee (talk) 22:08, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

WP:ENGLISH, aside from being (like other guidelines) "best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply" is littered with "should" this and "generally" that, which implies there will be exceptions. This guideline was not written up with something like "Sūpā Mario Āru Pī Jī" in mind. I also agree with what I think Prime Blue said in that we are not at all precluded from using a tooltip to hide otherwise redundant parenthesis if we can get consensus to make an exception. Nevertheless I am just about fine with the use of a footnote, as long as we do not keep these useless transliterations in the lead. As I see it we already have consensus not to include these romanisations, and this is more than generous a concession as ought to be made. bridies (talk) 04:52, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
 * A majority is not a consensus. And while you may find "Sūpā Mario Āru Pī Jī" redundant, not every editor does. Omitting it is pointless. And it is important to use the Japanese pronunciations of the English letters because in some instances they are not read the same.— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙 ) 05:04, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
 * A large majority does not automatically equate to consensus, no, but it is still very much significant. bridies (talk) 06:53, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
 * There's still no consensus to omit romaji, especially when it now is against at least two other guidelines in addition to this one.— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙 ) 07:20, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
 * You're wrong, and repeating the same impotent arguments about following guidelines for the sake of it isn't going to get you anywhere. You also seem to be labouring under the delusion that your agreement is actually needed for there to be a consensus. It is plain that the romaji will not be included "as is" in the lead as you wish. If you want to refuse the compromise, fine, but the only point you have which is too subjective to be proved wrong outright is "this is useful information and should not be removed" and if it comes down to it I'd wager a sizeable majority thinking otherwise will be enough to render that invalid too. bridies (talk) 07:32, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm also baffled as to why you can argue that numbers don't count for anything while simultaneously insisting that we get more editors to the page, especially when they're probably not going to say anything that hasn't already been said. Suppose a load of editors turn up and agree with you, will you then cite not-a-democracy against your own position? bridies (talk) 07:41, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
 * (edit conflict) As said above, WP:ENGLISH is littered with "should generally", especially in the sentence quoted above, so it is incorrect to say that it is in contradiction with the proposed solutions; it simply is not conclusive. As for WP:ACCESS, it prevents using tooltips to provide information, and the whole point of the current discussion is/was to determine whether transliteration of English loanwords IS "information" (or a redundant text, or an alternative text for screen readers with no Unicode support, etc.). Besides, and again, an English loanword in Japanese is already a transliteration of an English word; ファイナルファンタジー is a transliteration of Final Fantasy. Also you keep branding the "not every editor does" card but apart from Nihonjoe I don't see anyone on your side of the arguments. Megata Sanshiro (talk) 07:48, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
 * @Bridies: I keep requesting input from other people because everyone here but Nihonjoe and I are editors of WP:VG who already have a preference for their own guideline. Getting editors from other aspects of the project who deal with Japanese text will get other opinions other than the ones constantly being stated on this page. I'm tired of seeing the same people (myself included) say the same shit over and over again to try and prove a point.
 * @Megata Sanshiro: Fine. "ファイナルファンタジー" is a transliteration of "Final Fantasy". But how is "Fainaru Fantajī", the phonetic transcription/transliteration/whatever of the Japanese text, not valid information that would preclude it from being used on the page and instead being shunted into a tooltip, a function barely used on the project as it stands?— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙 ) 10:46, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I and others have already proved why this argument about Wikiprojects is garbage, time and time again. If you're sick of "seeing the same people say the same shit", maybe you shouldn't categorically ignore arguments you can't answer. Even if other editors did turn up, and those editors agreed with you, what then? It won't be enough for you to include the romaji by your own argument, and you don't seem willing to accept a compromise whereby the romaji is hidden. bridies (talk) 11:08, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I just want to see more opinions rather than being beaten over the head with the "romaji is useless" arguments from the VG people. I'm not ignoring anything. I just have not seen any sort of amazing new idea or opinion being expressed here, other than exasperation towards me.— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙 ) 11:17, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
 * "everyone here but Nihonjoe and I are editors of WP:VG who already have a preference for their own guideline"
 * Assuming bad faith now? Editors of WP:VG could also claim that you "already have a preference for [your] own guideline". Notice how they didn't. Why? Because they assume good faith, unlike you. Megata Sanshiro (talk) 11:56, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm not assuming any sort of bad faith here. I am merely stating my opinion that the WP:VG editors have had their say on their guideline, and Nihonjoe and I have had our say on this one.— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙 ) 19:03, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Hello. First of all thank you for the message on my talk page, I have a strong opinion on the matter. I understand the reasons for the opinions expressed against including romaji for loan words as I have spent an hour having a thorough read of this entire talk page. I would like to describe why I would like to continue to see romaji being included for loan words as the WP:JAPAN guideline in its current version supports. It's a matter of context. I don't think I have seen anyone give a reason why a reader would need such information but such a reason exists - for I use this information several times every week.
 * A few people have stated words to the effect that the romaji is redundant or even trivial. Why would such information be needed in such an important position in the article? Well the first reason is external to the article. References. If a game (or anime in my case) was created in Japan then one would expect to find the official Japanese site in the external links and one could expect one or several references to be to a Japanese website. I frequent such sites and you will come across the romanji on these sites, sometimes even mixed in with English though sadly I don't have an example. Also, sometimes the romanji will be in a url or an image name. Let's assume that there exists a person who does not have any idea that romaji is. Would the romaji confuse such a person to believe that it is unrelated to the article if it was not explicitly stated on that wikipedia page? For example, a person searches google images, comes across Fainaru_Fantajī.jpg and does not make the connection that it is Final Fantasy.
 * I personally copy and paste the romaji from wikipedia articles for such image searches (and also copy romaji from other sites to search on wikipedia, so the reverse applies). It is easily identifiable where it currently resides, next to the kanji which I also use to search in the same way. There should be others that do the same. I'm sure someone will argue that the romaji could be displayed elsewhere such as in an infobox as the romaji is impossible to copy-paste in a mouseover tooltip.
 * I hope that this different point of view affects the thinking in how this information should be displayed. The romanji isn't soley there for pronounciation or completeness. It may clarify references in the article or confirm the link between information external to wikipedia to that material. Finally, it can and is used as a tool to gather further information such as when I perform my image search engine requests. For it to be hidden or moved would be an oversight in my view.--Squilibob (talk) 14:03, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Facilitating google image searches really isn't Wikipedia's job, and it is a massive, massive stretch to propose that someone isn't going to be able to tell Final Fantasy from Fainaru Fantaji. bridies (talk) 14:30, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Actually, in a way, facilitating searches is one of the missions here. Wikipedia is meant to be a springboard from which someone can do research on a topic (we constantly tell people doing research to do that rather than use Wikipedia as their source), and including the romaji in addition to the original Japanese and the English helps in that regard. Additionally, it' really is a stretch to assume that someone is going to be able to tell that Fainaru Fantaji is the same thing as "Final Fantasy" as they don't even look the same. Yes, it's simple and obvious to people like you and me who are familiar with Japanese pronunciation and know how an English word would be changed to Japanese pronunciation, but to the vast majority of people out there, the connection will not be made. Those people are the main main audience of Wikipedia. We should be making the article useful to them, not to us. Therefore, including someplace in the article the full romanization as well as the full original Japanese title, in addition the English title, is important, and it should be included in such a way as to make it require very little work on their part to determine that all three are just different ways of writing the same title. This is why tooltips are less than ideal, and why including them as a footnote is even less ideal than tooltips. Yes, longer titles are an issue, but most titles are not that long. I think exceptions can be made for exceptionally long titles, but for the majority of titles, including the Japanese and romaji is not going to be a huge burden and is not going to take up an inordinate amount of space. ··· 日本穣 ? · 投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe ·  Join WikiProject Japan ! 16:21, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
 * The way I see it, the addition actually does more harm than good. Most people won't know what the heck it is, and if nothing else it will cause the reader to stop understanding what he is looking at and then he has to force himself to forget what he just saw to move on. Because of this, your argument is reversed in that only to people like "us" will these additions make any sense. The original Japanese is fairly obvious, and it has that question mark thing to provide further clues, but the romaji is just sitting there, like some ignorant editor didn't know what to do and just wrote it down in the wrong spot. The template doesn't make any differentiation as to what you are looking at and the text just starts right from where the Japanese words left off. If anything, a tooltip or maybe even a footnote would be much more obvious as to what is going on. - Odokee (talk) 17:15, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Odokee, how does the addition of romaji cause harm? And how is the original Japanese "fairly obvious"? Not everyone knows how to read Japanese, so omitting a(n alternate) method by which to read Japanese does more harm than good. And the template makes plenty of differentiation you have "English (日本語)". The only way the template does not differentiate is that it does not label the Japanese texts as "Japanese" and the romanized texts as "Rōmaji" or "Hepburn".— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙 ) 19:03, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I pretty much just explained this and you are asking a question in reference to the part where I just explained it. I'm going to assume that this is one of your cheap tactics to feign ignorance and continue an argument over a matter that has been previously discussed. - Odokee (talk) 19:43, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I think most of us would prefer that you assume something better instead. This is a big discussion and it's easy to lose track and/or misunderstand what others may have said.  From what I understand, the "harm" comes in the form of using more space in the lede and possible confusion of what the Romaji means.  Are there other areas of potential harm which I'm not aware of?  Thanks,
 * -- Joren (talk) 19:59, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Also the problem secondly named issue bleeds into, which Ryulong even seems to note, of how the romaji can further confuse people by not being differentiated at all in the space provided for it. I don't see any reason at all why everything is CSV but the romaji right next to the original Japanese. That is partly why I suggest tooltips/footnotes would be better, because then there would be indication of something happening there that isn't being indicated currently. - Odokee (talk) 22:18, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Clarification - CSV as in comma-separated? Or something else?
 * -- Joren (talk) 01:43, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

To Squilibob: I totally agree with you and Nihonjoe on copying and pasting kanji/kana from Wikipedia articles to Google, as I do that very frequently. But I'll have to admit I did not understand when you use the Hepburn romanization for searches. Using Google with "Final Fantasy" and "ファイナルファンタジー" sounds totally reasonable as that's where the results are at, but using "Fainaru Fantajī"? And for the reverse example, the point with Fainaru_Fantajī.jpg: Articles with Hepburn romanizations in tooltips still turn up if you use the search, for example see a "Chirāmii" search. The references case with the Hepburn romanization on Japanese sites you will have to elaborate on, as I did not grasp that one at all. :/ Prime Blue (talk) 19:16, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Bit late here, but in reply to Nihonjoe also, Wikipedia's purpose is not to facilitate google searches. If there is further useful external information which cannot fit in the article, it goes in the references, external links or further reading section. I also don't understand why someone would use the romaji, as Prime Blue said. If one is savvy enough to search through Japanese media, one would use the kana. bridies (talk) 05:20, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

To Odokee: Tooltips or not, everyone who does not know what they are confronted with will click the small question mark (? ) in the template, and once we did this here, there will be no more understandability issues. Prime Blue (talk) 19:16, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
 * If there are proposed changes, then fine, fight for it and hopefully improve something. But... if the discussions at hand are about the current system, then they don't make any sense. Some people still don't seem to think anything is wrong. And if you mean a little, extra explanation in a linked article, then no I don't think that does much of anything. - Odokee (talk) 19:43, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

A compromise? #2
I propose the following compromise:  This way the Japanese text is both accessible and not intrusive thanks to  tags around the romaji. Additionally, there should be a comma between the kana and the romaji. (Apparently people chose to omit the comma because "it's ugly", which is a very weak argument IMO. WP:MOSJA shouldn't be in contradiction with basic grammar rules.) Thoughts? Megata Sanshiro (talk) 22:23, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Format: English (日本語, rōmaji  ? , Miscellany)
 * Example: Jill Valentine (<span class="t_nihongo_kanji" lang="ja" xml:lang="ja">ジル・バレンタイン, Jiru Barentain  <span class="t_nihongo_help noprint"><span class="t_nihongo_icon" style="color: #00e; font: bold 80% sans-serif; text-decoration: none; padding: 0 .1em;">? )
 * I'm not sure if making the romaji smaller is really going to help anything. The IPA pronunciations all over the project are full size text. And all in all, " Jiru Barentain " takes up almost as much space as "Jiru Barentain". Maybe it's 75% the original.— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙 ) 23:51, 8 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Actually, I recommend removing the question mark also as WP:ACCESS prohibits using mouse hover. This is also echoed by WP:LINK. So here is the previous proposal with no question mark:

<div style="overflow:auto; border: 1px solid Blue; background:white; margin: 1em; padding: 4px;margin-left: 5em;" white-space: -moz-pre-wrap; white-space:  -o-pre-wrap; white-space:    -pre-wrap; white-space:     pre-wrap">
 * Format: English (<span class="t_nihongo_kanji" lang="ja" xml:lang="ja">日本語, rōmaji  , Miscellany)
 * Example: Jill Valentine (<span class="t_nihongo_kanji" lang="ja" xml:lang="ja">ジル・バレンタイン, Jiru Barentain  )
 * The question mark should be replaced with a note at the bottom of infoboxes, as in Infobox language. If the article has no infobox, which is rare, use Contains Japanese text. Thoughts? Megata Sanshiro (talk) 23:54, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Woops, edit conflict. Ryulong: I don't know why you're bringing up IPA pronunciations all of a sudden; transliterations have nothing to do with IPA pronunciations (which are much more useful). Moreover, this is a compromise, you have to be more willing to accept it than that. 25% shorter is better than 0%. (And if it took, like, 1% of space you'd obviously be disagreeing anyway, right?) Besides, Jill Valentine is a short name. The gain in space is more evident on longer names or titles. Megata Sanshiro (talk) 00:00, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Moreover, one of the arguments for the editors against romanization (of loanwords) was that the romaji affects the readability of the lead. Using a smaller font, even though it doesn't outright remove the romaji, makes reading easier because people who don't want to read it can avoid it at a glance and even for people who "need" it the different font size is still useful on very long titles. The smaller font makes the romaji both less visible and more visible for both sides of the discussion. Megata Sanshiro (talk) 00:17, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
 * It does not seem worth it to use the small tags if it's not changing that much in space taken up, which is not really a technical matter. And I'm bringing up IPA because the romaji entry is effectively taking the place of the IPA trans-whatever, which is used on many articles for which the subject is from a non-English language. Romaji is the phonetic alphabet we are using instead. Avoiding that tangent, there's really no need for the visibility of romaji to be changed in either way. For one thing, why would all romaji required to be shrunken down? It's, again, just something that the WP:VG people want because including it clutters up the first line. Making the text take up 25% less space is not going to make the lead paragraph any less cluttered. Also, that question mark (or a similar link) should remain there to provide information on what the romaji is there for or how it should be read or how to install Japanese character sets.— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙 ) 01:49, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Seems like you're grasping at straws.
 * Up until now you've been very technical about romaji, and now all of a sudden you claim romaji and IPA are similar. They are not. Romaji have nothing to do with IPA. It isn't taking the place of anything IPA related. An entry can have both transliteration and IPA pronunciation if there is a need for both; see for instance Mikhail Gorbachev. And I see you're still assuming bad faith by claiming that my compromise proposal doesn't count because I supposedly am from the "WP:VG people". What a shallow argument.
 * I already explained why it makes the lead less cluttered. That you had to estimate and put a percentage on this when it is not even the point says a lot about the strength of your argument; clutter isn't just about size. Different formats can also improve readability; this is why we have things like bold text, italics, (parentheses), small font, and probably other things too. Using a small font for romaji makes it easier to see at a glance where it starts and where it ends, just like the bold font makes the main title more obvious. One could also claim the bold font is not worth it, since it is technically not absolutely necessary, but it does improve readability, which is why it is used and why everybody see it is convenient to use. The difference in formatting for romaji, with small font, should be a win-win situation since this means people who don't care about the romaji can easily ignore it, while people who do care about it can easily see it.
 * The question mark is probably the most obvious thing that should absolutely be removed in all of this. There have been two discoveries of two guidelines that supercede both this one and WP:VG/GL that prohibit mouse hover (WP:ACCESS) and prohibit links that don't describe their destination explicitly (WP:LINK). The link to install Japanese character sets can easily go at the bottom of infoboxes or in Template:Contains Japanese text as I said above, as that's where there is room to properly describe the link, as opposed to a question mark which is the antithesis of clarity.
 * But anyway, I would like to hear other opinions since the sentence "there's really no need for the visibility of romaji to be changed in either way." shows that you clearly are not willing to consider any compromise unlike me and the other people here. Megata Sanshiro (talk) 09:27, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Um... sorry if I don't follow but what does the question mark have to do with mouse hover? There's no tooltip here (that I'm aware of anyway, perhaps my prefs are too customized to show it?)
 * -- Joren (talk) 17:01, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
 * The question mark is meaningless until you mouse-hover it to see that it is actually a link to Help:Installing Japanese character sets. This is in violation of WP:ACCESS which prohibits mouse-hover and WP:LINK which requires that wikilinks describe their destination explicitly. Having a link to Help:Installing Japanese character sets is fine but that link should be more obvious than a small, mysterious question mark. Megata Sanshiro (talk) 17:33, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
 * So you're saying that "?" does not readily associate itself with a Help: link? Perhaps we could rename it "Help"?
 * -- Joren (talk) 18:36, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
 * @Megata Sanshiro: Shrinking the text does not give enough room in the title for it to be of any use. Doing any sort of action that prevents the immediate readability of this text is against WP:ACCESS. I'm sorry if I'm in the "don't fix it if it ain't broke" camp, but in my opinion, this guideline and nihongo are perfectly fine. It is the conflicting guideline at WP:VG/GL that has always been the issue. Want to solve this? Remove the sentence over there that essentially says "Don't put romaji for video game titles that can be directly translated from katakana into English".— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙 ) 20:00, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Seriously? I can see how everyone could disagree with that suggestion, but going against all possible compromises with WP:ACCESS now, even in this particular case where it is clearly irrelevant? And bringing that old non-existent conflict up again, Ryūlóng, basically giving the WP:VG members the finger by saying "your guidelines are the problem, change them and everything is fine"? I've been around here long enough now to get the impression that you are simply unable to accept anything that goes against your personal opinion. Prime Blue (talk) 20:25, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
 * The WP:VG/GL guideline has been shown to be incompatible with this guideline as well as WP:ENGLISH throughout the discussions on this page. That is the conflict. How can you not see that? I've been trying to come up with something that would work for both parties, but nothing really works here. People like Odokee would be fine with there being no Japanese text at all. People like Jinnai don't want romaji. People like me want the text to be visible. I just do not think that modifying the coding of templates is going to solve anything. You have to have the text accessible. The only reason this is happening is because I was informed by a member of WP:VG (Jinnai) that romaji should not be used if it resembles the "English" name. That is now how things work at all. I tried bringing up IPA/romaji because the romaji is effectively a pronunciation tool, and on multiple other articles on this project for which the subject is based in a language that doesn't use English, we still provide the pronunciation. Be it IPA for Russian and Greek or the various romanization schema for Korean and Chinese, it is a service that we should provide to the reader to be as thorough in providing information. Removing things because one group of editors find it redundant or taking up space does not solve anything.— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙 ) 21:14, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
 * You seem to be confused. Very confused. Not only do you try to belittle the people you disagree with, you get the facts wrong. Trying to pin such a tale on me is a naive attempt to mount your high horse. Not only did you previously try to be an internet bully by citing some policy against me that didn't even really apply to your petty zealotry, you can't get your ducks in a line about whether you are trying to follow policy or just furthering some wacky agenda that you don't seem to ever have a decent chance of getting consensus about. From the last couple paragraphs here, it is obvious that you are sticking to whatever suits your side while consciously ignoring relevant facts, which is extremely hypocritical and thoroughly dishonest. Basically, nothing about your characterization of myself has been appropriate, but I expect you will continue to label me as a xenophobic VG person.
 * Also: shove it all into footnotes. Problem solved. - Odokee (talk) 03:19, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Can all of us please avoid making this about each other?
 * -- Joren (talk) 04:12, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Trying not to. I was merely using Odokee and Jinnai as examples on the spectrum of people as to what should and should not be included in the lead paragraph (or as it seems from the lack of any romanizations at List of Metal Gear characters prior to my editing of the page) or wherever it is on the page. My discussions with Jinnai early on raised light that he holds the opinion as the majority of the users at WP:VG as to not including romaji of katakana of words of English origin. Odokee on the other hand, from as far as I can tell through the discussions here, prefers that both the words of English origin written in katakana and romaji of these same words be omitted, and as he states, pushed off into the footnotes where they do not belong.— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙 ) 04:24, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
 * That link is not even applicable and certainly does not say anything about footnotes. And still you are continuing to make baseless disparaging remarks toward WP:VG. bridies (talk) 05:26, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
 * How is WP:UEIA not applicable when (I believe) some users have suggested to remove all Japanese text from the lead? And where the hell are you pulling these disparaging remarks from, particularly in the last comment I made which I believe you are referring to? All I have been saying is what I believe is being said on this page by other editors, that some think the romaji is redundant and some who think that the katakana itself is unnecessary and redundant.— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙 ) 06:27, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
 * The way I see it (and obviously not the way specific others would see it), that link helps create the groundwork to have only the English name and the original Japanese name, then any derivatives or variants would be referenced discretely. - Odokee (talk) 06:37, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
 * The question of removal of katakana entirely is beside the point, there is no chance of that happening. But the guideline says nothing about footnotes and does not preclude removing a transliteration, this has been gone over time and time again. Yet still you tried to tenuously link that guideline to the actual issue. I am referring to the various remarks about "the VG people" which you continue to make. This argument has been discredited several times; each time you have ignored the counterpoint. When confronted about this you made an oh-I-didn't-mean-it-really remark before resuming such attacks at the first opportunity. If you really need me to link all the various diffs I will. What we are supposed to be discussing here is a compromise; all you are doing is providing further evidence of incivility and bad faith. bridies (talk) 07:05, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
 * To Ryūlóng: I counted how many times I asked you to explain this alleged conflict between WP:VG and MOS:JP. Once you explained what you meant, I explained to you that this "conflict" you stress is based on a shaky presumption about the sentence "Revised Hepburn romanization (described below) should be used in all cases", but you simply did not reply. WP:ENGLISH was also addressed many times above. If there was a single guideline that was so strong the solution to this problem was obvious, either party would be easily convinced by it. And if you think the majority of WP:VG members are unable to compromise and just want to remove anything, then I simply can't help you anymore: This issue has become too much of a nuisance for me to point things out over and over. I was trying my best to mediate between all parties, but if all help is consistently refused, you just lose your will over time. Prime Blue (talk) 13:59, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
 * To Ryūlóng: I counted how many times I asked you to explain this alleged conflict between WP:VG and MOS:JP. Once you explained what you meant, I explained to you that this "conflict" you stress is based on a shaky presumption about the sentence "Revised Hepburn romanization (described below) should be used in all cases", but you simply did not reply. WP:ENGLISH was also addressed many times above. If there was a single guideline that was so strong the solution to this problem was obvious, either party would be easily convinced by it. And if you think the majority of WP:VG members are unable to compromise and just want to remove anything, then I simply can't help you anymore: This issue has become too much of a nuisance for me to point things out over and over. I was trying my best to mediate between all parties, but if all help is consistently refused, you just lose your will over time. Prime Blue (talk) 13:59, 10 August 2010 (UTC)


 * The conflict is tenuous, fine. I do not think that the majority of WP:VG members are unable to compromise. I have merely been mistakenly assuming that some members would prefer to remove some of the content, and others would prefer to remove all of the content. I also apologize for my attempts to bring the comparisons between IPA and romaji, which have apparently confused other members of this discussion.— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙 ) 19:28, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

The main proposal of smaller Hepburn romanizations could only be used for the issue at hand, as I really wouldn't want it to affect the completely obvious needs, like Hiroshima-ken in Hiroshima Prefecture. Prime Blue (talk) 10:03, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
 * What's the issue with Hiroshima-ken? Megata Sanshiro (talk) 10:21, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
 * That for terms which are not "repeated" at all, we don't have to take any action. That would be just stepping on the toes of those far removed from the issue here. Prime Blue (talk) 13:04, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Ugh, lot's of tangents in this section... Let's keep it focused on the "compromise #2" (other compromises like the footnote can go in revelant sections): Megata Sanshiro (talk) 08:44, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) Adding a comma between the kana and the romaji: Who's for? Who's against?
 * 2) Putting the romaji between tags: Who's for? Who's against? And should it be done for all phrases or only for phrases that contain loanwords (this includes phrases completely made up of loanwords and phrases that are made up of a combination of loanwords and native words)?
 * 3) Changing the question mark: Who's for? Who's against? And should it be replaced with a note at the bottom of infoboxes as in Infobox language (or if there is no infobox, replaced with Contains Japanese text) or should it be renamed "Help"?
 * Responses
 * Comma is good.
 * Romaji shrinking does not really help because a) it would possibly affect all articles resulting in, b) either nihongo would have to be recoded to add a modifier to shrink the romaji in select instances, or c) there would have to be an entirely new template made for simply shrinking the text when it is only ever used by specific groups in articles where they feel that the romaji for words of English origin written with katakana. Also, all in all, it does not free up that much space (I will attempt to show a comparison in size shortly).
 * The question mark should be changed to "Help". Replacing the question mark with a link to another section would in fact mean that on every article this particular template family is used, that particular footnote section would have to be added, which would result in a lot of work.
 * Also, as Joren has attempted to do, the Help page that this links to should be amended to include the pronunciation schema, much like the various Help:IPA for [Insert language] pages do, in addition to instructing users how to install the proper fonts to read the characters on their computers.— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙 ) 19:28, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Alright, everyone seems to agree with 1. and 3. Should we edit the template? As for 2., you're still ignoring some already stated points (as usual); this is not just about space and size. I said the different format makes it easier to read. Compare...

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King, known in Japan as Chiisana Ōsama to Yakusoku no Kuni: Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles (小さな王様と約束の国 ファイナルファンタジー・クリスタルクロニクル) is a video game developed for the WiiWare service of the Nintendo Wii console by Square Enix. Square Enix decided to make a game for the WiiWare service that would be high profile, and it was decided that the game would be a simulation game and, later in development, a Final Fantasy title.

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King, known in Japan as Chiisana Ōsama to Yakusoku no Kuni: Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles (小さな王様と約束の国 ファイナルファンタジー・クリスタルクロニクル) is a video game developed for the WiiWare service of the Nintendo Wii console by Square Enix. Square Enix decided to make a game for the WiiWare service that would be high profile, and it was decided that the game would be a simulation game and, later in development, a Final Fantasy title.

...In which paragraph is it easier to immediately find the romaji at a glance? Megata Sanshiro (talk) 11:54, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
 * You should use a different example, as that three-line-spanning foreign title is to be put in a footnote per the new WP:VG. Prime Blue (talk) 15:09, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Why not use "Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King (小さな王様と約束の国 ファイナルファンタジー・クリスタルクロニクル)" instead? Saves space.— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙 ) 18:36, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Four problems:
 * 1. Without a descriptor link like "Japanese" (as other language templates have) or wordings like "known/released as [...] in Japan", the foreign title is useless to readers as they are oblivious to the origin.
 * 2. Readability issues would not be solved in extreme cases.
 * 3. The ability to include official English release titles in the first nihongo field, like The Legend of Zelda: Takt of Wind and It's a Wonderful World, would be lost.
 * 4. The issue was not centered around the space used up, but the alleged redundancy of such romanizations (which would not be addressed with this solution).
 * Prime Blue (talk) 19:46, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Revised nihongo templates

 * Broke this reply to Megata Sanshiro off as it does not directly address the RfC's topic. Prime Blue (talk) 17:27, 26 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Re: point 2, the utility of non-Hepburn romanizations has been extensively discussed in the past, and the current consensus is that they are not necessary: they add no information, and (unlike the various flavors of China) there are no political dimensions that require pinyin/Tongyong/Wade-Giles/etc. For this same reason, tagging every single Japanese romanization with "romanization", much less "Hepburn romanization" is also unnecessary. Jpatokal (talk) 09:51, 21 July 2010 (UTC)


 * My main problem with the second point is, ironically, the same problem many of the VG-ers had with including Romaji for loanwords - it takes too much real estate. Having the labels Japanese:  Romanization:  etc. takes up space and makes it take longer to read the same content.  As a general rule, I believe templates should draw as little attention to themselves and take up as little space as possible.  That said, templates should also (unobtrusively) provide guidance where needed.  To that end, I would suggest that the question mark in the Nihongo templates link to a page that not only teaches the user how to install character support (as the current link does), but also very clearly explains that the first reading is Japanese, the second one is Romaji, and here's what it means.  It seems pretty natural for a user to assume that clicking q question mark is going to lead to an explanation of what it means.  The present question mark, while helpful in its own capacity, does not do this.
 * -- Joren (talk) 10:31, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
 * How about what I've added at Help:Installing Japanese character sets? ··· 日本穣 ? · 投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe ·  Join WikiProject Japan ! 15:40, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
 * That's a good start! My first impressions are that we might need to slim it down a bit and make it user-friendly, but either way it is good to have.  I wonder if we could craft a sort of landing page, which would branch off into other links?  First, have a brief explanation of what English (Kanji Romaji) is.  We could then say "For more information on how to use the Nihongo templates, see Template:Nihongo/doc." and then have something like " あ  should look similar to Japanese_Hiragana_kyokashotai_A.svg.  If you see a box or a question mark instead, please see Help:Installing Japanese character sets."  Then we could link to something like what Help:Japanese has for a brief pronounciation guide.  For that matter, I notice there aren't very many things that link to Help:Japanese.  Could we make that the landing page?  But anyway, what we have now is helpful, thank you for taking the time to put it together.
 * -- Joren (talk) 16:45, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Following this train of thought, I threw something together: User:Joren/Help:Japanese.  This would be intended as an augmentation of the existing Help:Japanese with the intention of making it the landing page for users that click on the question mark in the nihongo templates.  It is severely lacking polish, but feel free to use/not use anything you want.
 * -- Joren (talk) 17:33, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Clarification - anyone is free to edit this page. Also, I'm not the author of most of its content; it is essentially Help:Japanese with a couple new sections at the top.  I didn't want to experiment on Help:Japanese directly, so that's why I made a subpage.  Feel free to improve it and if we like it, perhaps we can use it to replace Help:Japanese.
 * -- Joren (talk) 03:15, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Another possibility might be to make it up to the editor whether or not to specify the language or romanization. This could be done with optional parameters, or the user could simply add a note to the text being passed to the template.  It is true that since this very MOS specifies which romanization to use, and since there aren't competing sets of kanji like there are in Chinese (traditional/simplified, etc), there generally isn't much ambiguity what language is being used in Japan-related articles.  However, there are some situations that are ambiguous; e.g. if Beijing were to include the Japanese reading of 北京(ぺきん), then it would be necessary to specify the language (but not the romanization).   Or in an article comparing systems of romanization in use for street signs in Japan, etc, it would be necessary to specify the romanization (but not the language).  Of course, there's nothing that would prevent the editor from clarifying the language or romanization in use outside of the template, too, but at least we could make it look pretty as an optional parameter.
 * -- Joren (talk) 11:08, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Definitely agree that the question mark in the nihongo templates should lead to a page that, first and foremost, explains the Japanese characters – with some installation instructions further down. Prime Blue (talk) 17:27, 26 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Can someone explain why romanization used for pronunciation instead of IPA—and maybe include it on the help page. I can probably better guess pronunciation from romanization than IPA, but I thought the assumption was that IPA was most useful for pronunciation on Wikipedia. I'd also like to propose my suggestion from WP:VG/GL; I think that it would improve readability if something like tooltips were used such as ゼルダの伝説 夢をみる島.—Ost (talk) 17:14, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Because romanization is merely easier to write and convey than the International Phonetic Alphabet when it comes to languages that don't use a Roman alphabet. Greek, Russian, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese all have standardized systems for romanization, which are based on phonetic pronunciation anyway. Also, I'm not even sure where tooltips are used.— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙 ) 20:45, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, they're used in the list that I identified above, but I think I came up with the idea independently. I'm unsure where else tooltips are used, but I don't think lack of use is reason not to use them unless they are not used for a reason. There may be accessibility or other issues that I am unaware of, but I find it much less obtrusive to see a name and hover to get the translation if I want it. It's just a suggestion and one of my preferred methods, but perhaps both my thoughts would be better meant for dealing with all foreign languages. I just find it frustrating that wikipedia not only wants me to learn IPA, but also romanizations for different languages. And for Hepburn, I also apparently have to know how vowels are pronounced in Spanish. Though I'm occasionally weighing in on style and accept that others have more experience in this than me, I'm still trying to understand the need for unofficial romanization to an average English reader. —Ost (talk) 21:41, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Ah, now I understand what you meant. So, basically, that would mean that the nihongo template is modified so the rōmaji shows up on hovering the mouse over the kanji and kana. It would basically look like this (note that these are mockups and not actual test templates):
 * Zelda no Densetsu (ゼルダの伝説 夢をみる島,<span class="t_nihongo_help noprint"><span class="t_nihongo_icon" style="color: #00e; font: bold 80% sans-serif; text-decoration: none; padding: 0 .1em;">? lit. "The Legend of Zelda: The Dreaming Island")
 * Or with translations included in the tip:
 * Zelda no Densetsu (ゼルダの伝説 夢をみる島,<span class="t_nihongo_help noprint"><span class="t_nihongo_icon" style="color: #00e; font: bold 80% sans-serif; text-decoration: none; padding: 0 .1em;">? )
 * I kind of like that first one for work titles, but the issue still won't go away for very long (or multiple) titles like Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a Darklord that span several lines. And I absolutely hate how it would cause more "work" for readers in articles like Mount Fuji (having to mouse-over to see Fuji-san). That of course would not apply if a separate template is created solely for work titles. Prime Blue (talk) 22:08, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
 * @Ost316: There is no such thing as an "unofficial romanization". It is the romanization, and not an unofficial Anglicization. Hepburn romanization is a standardized method for transliterating Japanese, just like Pinyin is a standardized method for Mandarin Chinese and McCune–Reischauer is a standardized method for Korean. All are based on phonetic pronunciations, and it's better to defer to these and then to IPA (katakana, hiragana, and hangul all include the IPA pronunciations). And the tooltip thing really has no use outside of saving space when it comes to tables. The Oracle of... games page has the best solution for dealing with unwieldy titles.— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙 ) 22:27, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry if you misinterpreted my use of official, but I was using at was used in the above section essentially as a synonym for trademark, not as any slur against any other romanization. I also understand that you do not think there is much use for the tooltips, but I think that they are helpful if they improve readability by saving space while retaining information. But that's why I said that this was likely a broader issue than this venue since it would likely be an issue with all romanizations. Thank you and Prime for your explanations and weighing in. I don't expect an encyclopedia to explain how to pronounce a foreign word when encountered, but I can really only speak from my own perspective. I would guess that there are other readers like me that tend to skip over most unfamiliar foreign text and pronunciation to find the translation, but I understand that if they are useful and conventionally provided. —Ost (talk) 13:46, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Evening. I am no expert but I believe there is more than one romanji system, so as I see it even the Japanese can't always agree on these issues. My pennyworth is: include romanji if you wish, it can`t hurt.andycjp (talk) 11:50, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, there is more than one, but not on Wikipedia. We use revised Hepburn, as stated in the WP:MOS-JA. ··· 日本穣 ? · 投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe ·  Join WikiProject Japan ! 16:22, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Quick questions: would the layman know that, and if not then should we distinguish which version we use? (Guyinblack25 talk 16:05, 11 August 2010 (UTC))
 * We do specify that: WP:MOS-JA. ··· 日本穣 ? · 投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe ·  Join WikiProject Japan ! 16:15, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Could be wrong, but I think Guyinblack25 is talking about the reader rather than the editor perspective. If that is the case, then it would again be mentioned in that general help page the template will link to. Prime Blue (talk) 17:05, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you for reading my mind Prime. :-p
 * Yes, I was referring to the general reader that is unlikely to check project pages for editor guidelines. Specifically in the article itself if we add more distinguishing information to the romaji: "Hepburn romanization" instead of simply "Romanization". (Guyinblack25 talk 17:54, 11 August 2010 (UTC))
 * I would say that if the layperson doesn't realize what version it is then they are unlikely to know any other form of romanization and thus the point is moot. We can still mention on the help page which version it is, but its not critical info to such a layperson. Anyone who does realize what it is will not need that info. 陣 内 Jinnai 19:14, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

Yet another section
Well, I've been invited to this discussion. Since this discussion is an absolute cluster to the point where I've no idea where to put this, I'm starting a new section. I have several reasons why this is a bad, bad idea: Please excuse the lack of actual kana in my post--I've yet to install SCIM on the machine I'm typing from, and I'd rather not spend ages copying and pasting from a kana table. jgp T  C  20:50, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Loanwords do not work that way. A word borrowed from Language X into Language Y is not a word in Language X. It is a word in Language Y of Language X origin.
 * Dictionaries will back this up. For example, both fainaru and fantajī are in Japanese dictionaries.
 * English itself has several loanwords. Anybody with half a brain considers them English words. Hell, the fourth word of this post, invited, is a loanword from Latin (from inuitaui, IIRC). It is not a Latin word. It is an English word of Latin origin.
 * Hell, English has several loanwords from Japanese itself. The English word "Tokyo" is not the Japanese word Tōkyō; it's just that the former was borrowed from the latter.
 * Japanese loanwords contain several doublets that should be treated as separate words. For example, the word for "energy" was borrowed twice, as enājī from English and as enerugī from German Energie. The word for "sabre" was also borrowed twice, as seibā from English and as sāberu from Dutch sabel.
 * Many loanwords that appear to be from English at first are actually borrowed from other Germanic languages. Aside from enerugī and sāberu above, we also have tēma for "theme" (from German Thema, not the English) among others. A scheme like the one proposed will confuse people who don't know the etymology of Japanese loanwords.
 * While most loanwords attempt to approximate the original pronunciation within the rules of Japanese phonotactics, others deviate from normal expected pronunciation. For example, I've seen "decade" borrowed as dikeido rather than the expected dekeido. Anglophones who cannot read katakana cannot be expected to know when the pronunciation deviates from a simple conversion to Japanese phonotactics.
 * Loanwords in all languages drift in pronunciation all the time. For example, pick any English loanword from Latin: no way in hell is the original Latin pronounced anything like the English loanword.
 * Also how do you mix native words and loanwords under this scheme? What, will you only transliterate half of titles like 美少女戦士セーラームーン? Will we see garbage like Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon (美少女戦士セーラームーン)? That's just absurd.
 * I already feared that people joining in would feel the need to justify include/exclude comments, so I'll try to explain the purpose of the invitation better: It is a given that such romanizations will be included, we are just trying to determine how to do it to be okay with those who feel they should not be included. One possible compromise was suggested (on which feedback is appreciated), other compromises are being looked for. Also, thank you for coming over! Prime Blue (talk) 21:02, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Looking at the rollover idea, it makes it too difficult to copy and paste. Nobody wants to have to hit the edit button just to copy text. I wonder if Wikipedia syntax supports something like the hottip functionality at TV Tropes, where you click on a * (or any other symbol of the editor's choice), and it displays the full text inline (and you can click the * again to re-collapse the text). jgp  T  C  21:29, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
 * See my answer here. Is there a specific case in which tooltips could be discouraged because the Hepburn romanization would have to be copied and pasted? The collapsible thing was also raised above, it sounds like a good alternative to me. Prime Blue (talk) 21:44, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
 * And about that; considering both the possible clutter involved and typical readability by English visitors, would it be shrewd to just put all translations into the tooltip/collapse location? Especially for long titles, this solves many problems and keeps things simple for English readers that just don't give a crap about what words translate into. Also imagine it as a footnote: a hypothetical section called "Not English" beneath the references, where we can see lists of variants of the original word from a foreign language, instead of forcing it all into often barely intelligible prose. - Odokee (talk) 22:38, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
 * No...see issues raised when articles would be brought to FLC/FAC where the English translation would be required to be easily accessible. Failure to do so would probably be cited if someone asked specifically as not being "well written". 陣 内 Jinnai 01:15, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Tooltips should never be used. Ever. Under any circumstances. They're an accessibility nightmare. Aside from the copy-and-paste issue, they fuck over users with text-based browsers (e.g. w3m) and screen readers. jgp  T  C  05:23, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
 * We are talking about titles consisting of loan words from English where the pronunciation difference is minimal. Or I suppose words from other Germanic languages where the pronunciation is much the same as English. So you probably needn't worry about mixed kanji/kana titles and whatever else. bridies (talk) 05:29, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

I am not reading all this as I honestly don't have the time. I'll assume that the suggestion is Basically removing most/all katakana (foreign/English words expressed in Japanese characters) either from the top portion of articles or articles as a whole. My main opposition is that this would have little benefit. The main gain for doing it is when I google search for titles partially in Katakana I will hit the English article. Also expressing something in the original language is something done all the time. For example Istanbul is written as İstanbul in the article. Despite looking redundant, this is what you would expect in an Encyclopedia. You want to have access to all notable information about the topic INCLUDING how it is exactly written in the foreign language. -- Cat chi? 02:45, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
 * This is about removing the romanization of the name written in katakana, if the katakana is a japonification of English words.— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙 ) 02:55, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

I received an invitation to join this discussion. If I am not mistaken, as I just skimmed over the discussion, this mostly concerns games/movies/etc that, although they were created in Japan, they have titles that use English/non-Japanese words in some way. I would generally be in favor of removing romaji of katakana of theses types of non-Japanese words in discussion, but the roll over compromise seems both fair and interesting. XinJeisan (talk) 16:55, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Big thing about that is if there would be enough against it because of WP:ACCESS problems, however some form of Japanese tooltip usage seems to have the largest support here. 陣 内 Jinnai 19:18, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Tooltips are the crux of the WP:ACCESS problems.— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙 ) 19:57, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Jinnai: To be sure if tooltips and collapsible text cannot be used in general, I asked over here. Prime Blue (talk) 20:12, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Nobody answered there, so I left some messages for the important FAC reviewers. Prime Blue (talk) 16:51, 14 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Are tooltips accessible from mobile browsers and apps? I think we should go to a solution that would be readable by everyone involved. If it is though, I'm completely on board-- an outstanding compromise, Prime Blue. Nomader (Talk) 02:10, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Can we see an example of this "collapsible text"? ··· 日本穣 ? · 投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe ·  Join WikiProject Japan ! 02:34, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Collapsible text would certainly be a lot harder to implement, as there is no template for it currently (as far as I know). For lack of being able to program this myself, I'll do another mockup. This here follows the concept Jgp described above, but it is a pretty lackluster example (imagine the uncollapsing "rom." without the link box, imagine the page loading gone, and imagine the recollapsing "hide" to be actually working, and then you kind of have it). Prime Blue (talk) 16:26, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Though for whatever reason, the FAC guys don't answer to explain if tooltips or collapsible text for templates would be allowed even – which is unfortunate as this is one of the more pressing issues in need of their expertise. Prime Blue (talk) 16:26, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I love the spirit of this proposal but... I'm really concerned about the viability of tooltips and getting the collapsing text to work. Because what "Rom" is won't be obvious to most people, I'd almost suggest that if we're going to include it, we shouldn't hide it. But then we start a vicious cycle again, because I'd then argue that it would just confuse readers and is unnecessary when it's the same as the English title and everything would start again. I really would love this proposal to work but we desperately need to hear from the FAC guys about this. Nobody's responded? Nomader (Talk) 16:37, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I left messages for the FAC delegates YellowMonkey, Raul654, Karanacs, Dana boomer, and SandyGeorgia. All but one have edited since then, though nobody responded. Prime Blue (talk)
 * I don't think they particularly care about a minor stylistic issue in video game articles, it's not a very big deal. Prime, I'm nervous about putting tooltips into all video game articles that started in Japan. That's a lot of articles with some unusual markup in them. I think the only real solution we'll be able to find hearkens back to the beginning of this debate-- we either should include the romanizations or we shouldn't. And I don't see this debate ending anytime soon. Nomader (Talk) 19:27, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
 * As it would directly affect featured articles if tooltips and collapsible text are absolutely forbidden in such a case, I think the FAC delegates should care. Anyone else got any idea how to get their attention/who else to ask about this? And Nomader, while a definite include/exclude on all accounts would certainly be the easiest solution, it will never be accepted by either side, not in a thousand years, not with the stubbornness going on here. Personally, at this point, I'd probably welcome just about any compromise suggested, as long as this discussion finally ends. This is the second or third time it is warmed up and I invested lots and lots of time in trying to help, yet again. The least thing I want to see is edit warring and bad blood over a largely insignificant issue like that – but that is exactly what will happen if there is no solution once more. Prime Blue (talk) 20:10, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Actually, my favorite of all the proposals that's been set out so far is one that you wrote back in July here at WP:VG. I think we should maybe bite the bullet and be bold and go ahead and implement this in the next week if we don't hear from anyone at WP:FAC and WP:FLC in the near future. Nomader (Talk) 20:20, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Whoa, I completely forgot about that. There were no more objections, so I moved that over to the actual VG/GL now, to finally standardize the articles. However, we must not use this VG/GL subsection to solve the issue with the romanizations on all other projects. The current form governs a rigorous "exclude" for such romanizations and would never find widespread acceptance (not by me, either): the deal was to find a solution here that would be used on all projects then. The first step now is to get a clarification on whether tooltips and collapsible text are impossible to use for the issue at hand – going bold on this issue would result in massive amounts of drama. Prime Blue (talk) 20:46, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

The "Phonetic transcriptions are, as a rule, not considered to be significantly different and thus do not warrant the inclusion of Japanese titles." is still an issue, though.— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙 ) 21:06, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
 * As I said. Prime Blue (talk) 21:23, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Okay, this is the reply I got to my inquiry – the only delegate who answered cleared up the FAC concerns for these tooltips, as long as they will be consistently used. With that solved, I think we can finally move forward now. Prime Blue (talk) 20:04, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I am putting together Template:Nihongo tip currently. It should not be too complicated to program as the first three fields are always required in these cases, with only the extra field for translations being optional. Prime Blue (talk) 11:28, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Template:Nihongo tip
Finished the work on the template now. The revised MOS:JP: <div style="overflow:auto; border: 1px solid DarkSeaGreen; background:white; margin: 1em; padding: 4px" white-space: -moz-pre-wrap; white-space:  -o-pre-wrap; white-space:    -pre-wrap; white-space:     pre-wrap"> Nihongo The Nihongo template helps standardize the entries for Japanese terms.

Usage example:


 * appears as
 * New Meikai Japanese Dictionary (新明解国語辞典)

The first entry appears before the brackets, the second is the Japanese term in kanji and kana, the last is the reading in modified Hepburn romanization described above. The question mark <span class=t_nihongo_icon style="color:#00e; font:bold 80% sans-serif;text-decoration:none; padding:0 .1em;">? is a link to Help:Installing Japanese character sets.

The template IPA-ja may be used to format Japanese in IPA transcription; it links the transcription to WP:IPA for Japanese. Nihongo tip The Nihongo tip template displays the Hepburn romanization in the third entry in a tooltip. It is used
 * when the second entry of the template consists solely of katakana whose Hepburn romanization differs from the first entry, and/or numerals and special characters pronounced as words of English origin (such as tsū (2)).
 * when the second entry consists of kanji and kana, but the sole difference between the first and third entry lies in the Hepburn romanization of katakana words, and/or numerals and special characters pronounced as words of English origin.

Usage example:


 * appears as

Prime Blue (talk) 15:18, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I thought tooltips were a no go.— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙 ) 18:19, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
 * As verified above, they are allowed. Prime Blue (talk) 18:49, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I thought that WP:ACCESS said no and we never really decided as to whether that was the right course of action.— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙 ) 19:52, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
 * One has to keep the purpose of WP:ACCESS in mind: "Accessibility is the goal of making web pages easier to navigate and read. While this is primarily intended to assist those with disabilities, it can be helpful to all readers. Articles adhering to the following guidelines are easier to read and edit by those Wikipedians with and without disabilities." Knowing that the article will still be just as readable and editable by having the Hepburn romanization in a tooltip only in these special cases, with the first segment of the template still normally displayed, this limits the accessibility problems to people with devices that have problems with tooltips, and who at the same time come to an article to seek out the full Hepburn romanization of a particular term. And that is such an obscure niche case it does not render the solution unusable, especially considering that the help link for the nihongo segment is still there for the unknowing ones, and that the Hepburn romanization is also there to be copied in editing view (if, for whatever reason, someone would need it to copy and paste somewhere). Prime Blue (talk) 20:14, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I also thought that it didn't have consensus.— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙 ) 01:58, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I support this as an alternative. 陣 内 Jinnai 02:36, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
 * The tooltips had the largest following until the concerns were raised that are now cleared up. The other compromise that was considered as a viable alternative was the collapsed text, but as mentioned, it would be a lot harder to implement as we do not have a template functioning like that (it would probably not work with the site's current scripts either). Prime Blue (talk) 11:24, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Giving it a try with that now. For the present, all edit summaries for the additions of Template:Nihongo tip should contain a message linking to the respective MOS-JP section and this discussion. That way, people will know where it came from and have the possibility to raise their concerns here – if there are any new ones that could make this unusable. Prime Blue (talk) 22:50, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Regardless of what some FA reviewer says, this template is not necessary. There is no need to make or modify any of the templates just to satisfy one WikiProject who believes they're above all of these other guidelines and manuals of style.— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙 ) 23:00, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

The accessibility problems are still there. Tooltips are not acceptable, for several reasons: I will take this template to WP:TFD in a few days if these problems are not resolved. jgp T  C  23:15, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Mobile browsers (e.g., MicroB, Opera Mobile) do not display tooltips properly, if at all. Way to screw over mobile users, guys.
 * from personal experience, getting tooltips to appear in MicroB is exceedingly difficult, and long tooltips are truncated. In fact, I have only gotten MicroB to display tooltips at all when the tooltip comes from an image, not text.
 * from personal experience, Opera Mobile doesn't support tooltips at all
 * Command-line browsers (e.g., w3m, links) do not display tooltips at all.
 * from personal experience, neither w3m nor links support tooltips at all
 * Screen readers may not display tooltips.
 * It is impossible to copy-and-paste tooltip content.
 * In case I am not being crystal clear, I will say this: tooltips actively bring the project into disrepute. Tooltips send the message that Wikipedia is not for mobile users, the blind, or command-line users. Is this the reputation you want Wikipedia, and by extension the Wikimedia Foundation, to have? jgp  T  C  23:24, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Ryūlóng: We invited 80 users from all affected projects over, and possibilities and concerns were discussed for several weeks. Just let it flow for a while on a trial basis, if users notice and there really is a big outcry that brings up new issues, we can still remove it. Prime Blue (talk) 23:28, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
 * We still had barely any input from any of those 80 other people.— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙 ) 23:45, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
 * jgp: Note that these issues have been addressed on several occasions. See here, here, here, and here. Prime Blue (talk) 23:42, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
 * They are not addressed. You are misrepresenting facts, and you are actively trying to screw over mobile users, the blind, and command-line users. Accessibility is absolute and non-negotiable. In addition, given that you people in WP:VG are defying consensus and actively trying to bring the project in disrepute by screwing over everyone who doesn't use a graphical web browser on a desktop machine, I have come to the conclusion that WP:VG does more harm to the project than good. I will be putting WP:VG up for WP:MFD in addition to putting this disabled-user-screwing template on WP:TFD. jgp  T  C  01:35, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Hi Jgp. I see you feel passionately about the issue of tool tips and accessibility, but do you think you can tone it down a notch. I do not think anyone here wants to actively screw over anyone. What we have here are two groups who feel very passionately about the problem of the depiction of names in their projects, who have come close to a compromise. You correctly point out that this leads to a new problem for a subset of users. imars (talk) 06:08, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Ryūlóng: The people who did have an opinion on the matter showed up and gave their input. Again, if there really is an outcry over how it is handled, we will notice.
 * Jgp: I am not misrepresenting anything, or trying to "screw" anyone over – the fact that I have mediated here for a good month to find a middle ground should make that clear. I pointed out why accessibility concerns are not as much a problem as it seems: The articles are still readable, displayable, and editable by screen readers and on all devices and browsers (WP:ACCESS also addresses it in point 3), thus relieving the issue. On Wikipedia, there have been utilizations of collapsible lists that could be considered much more problematic due to accessibility, yet there have been no complaints. As I said, just let it flow for a while – if people find new issues, we will notice. In any case, threatening with a project's deletion on grounds of some of their members' opinions is not the right course of action. Prime Blue (talk) 11:50, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm going to have to agree against the tooltips: they do hamper access and quite frankly they just look very ugly in their respective articles. I'd rather we have more discussion before you start dropping it into other articles at this time.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 12:03, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I explained several times now why accessibility cannot be the primary concern. Which part exactly do you find ugly, though? Any suggestions on improving it? Prime Blue (talk) 12:51, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I disagree with the tooltips too due to the accessibility reasons. It is clear that the tooltips don't have consensus. However, User:jgp, if you want to put a whole wikiproject for deletion just because of this minor discussion that 99% of the wikiproject people are not involved with, feel free to. I'd love to see your arguments in such a deletion page. Megata Sanshiro (talk) 16:32, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I can't repeat myself again about accessibility, I've addressed it too often in this section already.
 * If people just refuse any sort of compromise based on accessibility, then the whole discussion we had above and below was in vain. It was clear from the get-go that this was about including/not including, so text size reduction is not the answer. The collapsible alternative never did get a template to show how it looks. Until we have some sort of decision on the matter, the edit warring will continue. And I see Ryulong is already back to business disregarding WP:VG/GL despite all the warnings he got in the past.
 * If no suitable alternative is presented, I'll refer the whole thing to the ArbCom – we'll see how that works. And if it doesn't, then it's just "no guideline" on WP:JP and case-by-case basis on projects other than WP:VG again. Prime Blue (talk) 17:08, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Compromising on one guideline does not mean flying in the face of another. And you're also encouraging edit warring by already implementing your new template everywhere despite it not having consensus. Megata Sanshiro (talk) 17:17, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
 * It seems to me that the original purpose of bringing the issue up here was overriding the guideline of WP:VG, so making a compromising guideline on MOS:JP was difficult anyway.
 * So far, I've implemented nihongotip only on video game articles where the romanizations would not have been desired anyway. I did this considering the support the template got from WP:VG members, and to give it a test run. Until now, there were no reverts either.
 * I have reverted the MOS:JP inclusion to make room for alternate suggestions before it gets picked up, but my hopes are dim that people will invest their time. Which is unfortunate as we would probably get somewhere faster if users other than you or me actually did create examples for a compromise. Prime Blue (talk) 17:43, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

@Prime Blue Re: the Metroid pages. I came across them and none of them had any romaji on them. Why is my adding them such a problem, especially when "Metroid" is a made up word? Also, as nihongotip has no consensus, I have reinstated the status quo on these pages. Especially for words that have been made up (characters in FF games).— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙 ) 17:56, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Should I really bother pointing it out to you for the sixth, tenth, twelfth time? Your whole behavior in the past two months has convinced me that you are too stubborn to recognize when you did something wrong, no matter how often people tell you. Prime Blue (talk) 20:28, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't know. How is ignoring a guideline that I think hampers the project rather than help it wrong?— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙 ) 20:39, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Let's see, Prime Blue. You are the one ignoring accessibility, which is absolute and non-negotiable. You are the one trying to enforce ideas that have no consensus. You are the one actively harming the experience of mobile users, the blind, and command-line users. It's damn obvious who's in the wrong. If you are willing to toss accessibility to the wind, you shouldn't be editing any Wikimedia project. jgp  T  C  20:44, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Ryulong: I already linked you twice to what "ignore all rules" does not mean. With the amount of warnings you have received for disregarding WP:VG/GL, I just don't know how you still get the feeling these edits are okay.
 * Jgp: I did not for a single moment ignore accessibility, I explained several times why it is less of a problem than people make it out to be – but no one seems to read what I write, or answer the questions I brought up. I also reverted the guideline when more complaints were raised (even though they were almost all based on accessibility), and to ensure alternate suggestions are heard. So I don't see how that could give you the impression I'm trying to enforce rules. Prime Blue (talk) 21:14, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

Just to reiterate that I support the template. bridies (talk) 19:11, 28 August 2010 (UTC)


 * In my opinion, this "Nihongo tip" template is hopelessly flawed by the superscript question mark, which resembles an IPA glottal stop ˀ. This unsightly mouseover link is too obscure/subtle for many users and unsuitable on mobile devices. Could someone create a new version something like the flexible and user-friendly Template:CJKV or Template:Zh? Keahapana (talk) 23:05, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Hi Keahapana. I agree with you on the superscript question mark but it seems this particular point is being met with opposition at Template talk:Nihongo, due to "I don't like it" arguments and despite established guidelines at WP:ACCESS and WP:LINK#Link clarity. Megata Sanshiro (talk) 13:25, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah, we have to be consistent about WP:ACCESS - it remains my major reason for concern about the tooltips along with the whole concept of having to hover over things in order to reveal information. I've been pondering the current proposal, and while I kind of want the tooltips to work, I can't really justify it over ACCESS and over concerns about inadvertently hiding information.  I'm also concerned about this question mark for the same reason.  I do understand and agree that generally, "?" is associated with the concept of needing help, and we do already use superscripts like [1] for references.  However, the intended meaning of the question mark doesn't always get through in actual implementation.  Is the ? too small to be apparent its a link?  Does it seem to blend in with the rest of the sentence?  Seems that an earlier proposal existed to replace the question mark with Help existed.  If this emerges as a proposal I'd likely support it so at least we could resolve one concern from all this discussion.  Or if we decide to keep it, then great, but "I don't like it" shouldn't stand in the way of consensus.
 * -- Joren (talk) 08:57, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Note: See also Requests for mediation/Video games developed in Japan. Megata Sanshiro (talk) 12:46, 14 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Anything new about the request for mediation? Megata Sanshiro (talk) 23:03, 12 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Someone was looking at it recently, but nothing has come of it yet.— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙 ) 23:31, 12 December 2010 (UTC)