Hello there, welcome to the 'pedia! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. If you need pointers on how we title pages visit Wikipedia:Naming conventions or how to format them visit our manual of style. If you have any other questions about the project then check out Wikipedia:Help or add a question to the Village pump. Cheers! --maveric149
Good work, but remember to follow Wikipedia:Naming conventions (names and titles) for royal titles. Because there are so many people from different linguistic and cultural groups on wiki, and readers from many cultures, a compromise had to be worked out in this area to create naming formats that could be universally applicable. So sometimes if you see a title that isn't 100% accurate in terms of how it was used at the time, there many be practical problems in using the correct native format that required a slightly different title to be used in an international sourcebook. Don't change without doublechecking first. User Deb and I are usually good sources of info on titles, so feel free to check out anything with either or both of us. ÉÍREman 10:26 Apr 28, 2003 (UTC)
I just read the article, and it generally seems sensible. What particular misuses of naming conventions did I make? I haven't generally been naming new articles, just expanding or editing already existing ones. Sometimes I've named the links different (and non-standard) things, but I didn't know that was a problem. In any event, I don't want to rock the boat, I just didn't realize I was doing anything wrong. In terms of ruler names, the convention seems rather inconsistent. Some names are anglicised, and some are kept in their native language. Wouldn't it be more consistent (and international) to use the foreign names. As far as inaccurate titles (at the time), the only one I can remember changing is a few references to the Hohenzollerns as "Emperors of Germany", which they were not. They were "German Emperors", and there was a big row between Wilhelm I and Bismarck about that very fact. I don't see why the term "German Emperor" would be offensive to anybody. (And I didn't change any article titles for that, either). Anyway, don't want to rock the boat, just trying to help out a bit. john 23:33 Apr 28, 2003 (UTC)
Where were you five months ago when I needed you!!! :-) Thank God someone with a knowledge and an interest in accuracy in titles is on wiki. There a couple of us (Deb is one of main ones, I the other) who came on here and were sickened by all the amateurish POV names used; Charles Windsor for the Prince of Wales, Harry Windsor for his son, and the incredible [[Edward VIII, Duke of Windsor]] (but that was from a complete nutter who has been banned a number of times but keeps re-appearing under false names - if you see big edit wars erupting and people being accused of being Adam, that's the guy! I think that time he was pretending to be Susan Mason, or was it Dietary Fiber, or maybe Shino Baku. I'm losing track of all his phoney names and identities and when he was which person!). I decided to stage a naming revolution, and with the help of Deb, Zoe and Mav and some others drafted major changes to the names and titles conventions and fought WWIII to get them accepted. We then spent weeks and weeks tracking down every royal and imperial name on wiki and changing their name to follow the standard.
So sorry if I scared you above. We regularly have new users who appear on and promptly change all the names to their own pet (and crap) versions. What I simply meant was that in using names, please follow the agreed convention which cost me weeks of work and a massive phone bill to fix. (or with one or two users, don't you bloody dare introduce Charles Windsor again!!!) But I can see you are someone who knows the correct names and wants to see them followed, which is like a dream come true for the handful of us who put so much work into trying to get things right. And you were 100% correct on the German Emperor thing. That is one I missed. I've just devoted ages to correcting some Russian names that were all over the place. But a word of advice: avoid Japanese emperors. We thought we had agreed a system, then one Japanese guy insisted on changing it to his way. Another changed them all back (and my God is there a lot!) only to have them all changed back again. I almost gave up on wiki on that issue. At this stage, someone seems to change each Japanese emperor's name on wiki on a weekly basis. This week, someone is changing them to [[{name}, Emperor of Japan]]. Next week Taku may decide to change the all again to [[{name}]] or [[Emperor {name}]] and the following week someone will come up with yet another version, maybe [[{name}, emperor]]. Compared with solving the Japanese naming issue, bringing peace to Iraq is cheesecake. So unless you want to experience the wiki equivalent of going 10 rounds with Mike Tyson, that is one mess to avoid. At this stage, the whole area of Japanese emperors is one unfathomable mess, the Bermuda triangle of wiki.
In any case, welcome to wiki. Keep up the good work. There are some occasions with complex royal names where we have had to make a compromise that isnt 100% accurate, maybe only 70% or 80%. But it is better than the 5% there used to be! As to names, the standard approach is that if someone's name in the native language is close to a recognised english equivalent (eg., Wilhelm II) , or if there native language name is widely used by english speakers (eg, Nicholas II) , then it is left alone. If however it is in a form that is unknown unknown as such except his or her native tongue and there is a recognised and used english alternative, that is used, purely because there are numerous wikipedias in different languages, this one is in english and it is important for it to be in a form that english speakers can follow. As a purist I would like to use the exact name, but often that isn't possible, particularly if there are a couple of variations used by different linguistic groups within a state. Often people who know a lot about royal nomenclature tend instinctively to know the right name to use. You have no idea the fight I had to get Wilhelm II rather than William II, or more recently Nicholas II instead of Nicholai Alexandrovich Romanov; one user deeply pissed off when I went though he long list of Russian Tsars and renamed them (or those that I knew there was international equivalent for). Every Peter the Great he demanded be put in a Russian version that no-one outside Russia and a fair few inside Russia would not have recognised.
Anyway, enjoy the wiki experience. And thank God another accurate 'name-nut' has joined the show. Along with Deb, Zoe and a few others we'll get wiki to get these names right whether it likes to or not!!! (Except of course, that darn Japan!) ÉÍREman 01:18 Apr 29, 2003 (UTC)
Thanks for the welcome. I still find the whole concept of this place rather difficult to grasp. Don't crazy people come along and just delete stuff for fun? In any event, I've been messing about a lot, writing British politician bios and messing about anally with titles/names. The Japan issue seems even worse than you describe it, since some of the Emperors are known by their personal names, and some by their reign names... For the list of monarchs, at least, one would have hoped that some sort of compromise by which both the reign name and the personal name could be listed, but instead we go from "Taisho" to "Hirohito". Ba! john 07:20 Apr 29, 2003 (UTC)
In reality, vandalism is reversed in 99% of cases almost immediately. We all have our 'pet' pages and if someone changes anything we go in to check. And others do nothing to surf from pages to pages checking stuff. If they are suspicious, they check what changes were made and if someone was messing they revert it. I have frequently been astonished at the speed in which vandalism is reverted. (I think the record was something like 10 seconds). re Japan, I know *sigh*. I made a lot of enemies saying Taku's renaming was wrong, but Taku assumed the role of saying as a Japanese man, I know the correct information. You all don't and too many people accepted that or backed away. (Unfortunately Taku's poor standard of english in some areas also complicated matters, as did his constant renaming, which produced broken links all over the place - name Emperor of Japan linked to Name emperor linked to Name Emperor of Japan lnked to name linked to name emperor of Japan . . . you ended up tangled in an utter mess, with all the renaming breaking links or giving links that were just too long for the computer to cope with. ) At this point, wild horses would not drag me to touch the Japanese pages again. Taku and his friends made the complete mess, they ignored all my advice not to do it, they refused to fix links they had broken even when I and Deb and a few others pleaded with them to be careful. (All we got was 'your convention are not my convention' garbage back from some of those responsible) Other people have chosen to try to clean up the mess. Having spent weeks warning of what would be the result and being abused for it (and told that I was this nasty western trying to impose western imperialism!!!) that is one area I never ever will touch again. Those responsible for the mess can be responsible for cleaning it up. And usually when one person sorts out the names, another Japanese person appears and renames everything again back to the impossible to follow crap that Taku introduced and unfortunately was allowed to introduce. The bottom line for me is, if they want no-one outside Japan to be able to make head or tail of details of the Japanese monarchy, that is their stupid decision and they are going to have to live with it. ÉÍREman 15:16 Apr 29, 2003 (UTC)
I've put the stuff from "Kurfürsten/Electors" at the bottom of the Holy Roman Empire elector article, with a redirect there from "Kurfürsten". Do you want a first go at merging it and dumping the duplicated material, or shall I? -- Someone else 03:06 May 1, 2003 (UTC)
Eek, I just realized this is not your talk page. You may want to wipe it clean. -- Someone else 04:39 May 1, 2003 (UTC)
Jlk7e, just wanted to say hello and good to have a companion in working on medieval Germany. :-) Djmutex 22:44 May 2, 2003 (UTC)
The redirects for Disraeli all seem to be in place and working. Perhaps your browser was loading a cached version, leading to the confusing results you were getting? If it occurs again, try a forced "refresh" and see if that doesn't cure the problem. -- Someone else 03:33 May 9, 2003 (UTC)
Ah, thanks for the tip. Fortunately, it seems to be working now without the need for that, so all is well. john 03:52 May 9, 2003 (UTC)
You corrected the style of Prince Oscar Bernadotte, Count of Wisborg, but what about Folke Bernadotte himself?
Hi, John. Don't see it as capitulation, see it as cooperation. LOL Deb 19:12 21 May 2003 (UTC)