That's what redirects are for. -- Modemac
Yes, but it should work the opposite way, with Dien Bien Phu being the target. It seems senseless to discuss. Lir does whatever she wants, and despite discussing the topic for several weeks on the mailing lists, nobody stops her. I won't begin a new edit war on this. -- Cordyph Is this REALLY serious ??? user:anthere
Serious troll who contributes useful articles intermixed with worthless junk and look-at-me-I'm-horrible ploys like this. Leftist who does not know the difference between proletarian and proletariat. Ortolan88
(Note to Martians who one day find the remains of Jimbo's server in the ruins of civilization: I'm pretty sure Orto means Lir.)
Sure, let's go all the way. Of course, it will now have to be Viêt Nam for consistency's sake. You work on that, while I change all articles mentioning Egypt to al-Misr. Danny
Im down with that. Lir 00:07 Nov 21, 2002 (UTC)
How do you refer to placenames as an outsider? This has always been a problem for style guides, never solved, rather compromised in various situations depending on the technology and the audience. The trend in the UK, but less so in the USA, has been to try hard to place the right accents on Western European words: French, German and Spanish do very well. Computer keyboards and fonts are partly to blame. Polish and Czech accents are sometimes available in fonts, and when they are it seems right to use them even though it might be tricky to input the characters. Since Wikipedia allows use of full Unicode, since it presumably aims at a world-wide English-speaking audience, and since its English readers are not expected to know how to pronounce even European words (for which accents are seemingly encouraged), it seems unjustifiably Eurocentric for Wikipedia to discourage Vietnamese accents. Hotlorp
Of course, terms like Vietnam, Sao Paolo, Munich, etc. have well-established unaccented spellings in English, so it would be wrong to change those. Dien Bien Phu is also mentioned, unaccented, in so many English books that this might not be the best place to fight this particular battle. But let's have the full Vietnamese spelling back, in brackets. --Hotlorp
When there is a common English term, use the common English term and tell them what the indigenous term is in that article. What's so hard about this? --GABaker
You're treating this subject too strictly: it's not black and white. DBP is not *that* common an English term, and the Vietnamese spelling is not *that* "indigenous" (i.e. incomprehensible). Indeed, it's the type of spelling an international English encyclopedia might well try to move towards. --Hotlorp
There's nothing wrong with putting the diacritical marks in the body of the article, but let's not use them in the page title. -- Zoe
Agreed. Any idea why Ed Poor's accents are different from Lir's? -- Hotlorp
I also agree with Zoe's sugestion. Danny
Sounds good to me. As long as people can find it in the search, then diacriticals are useful. --GABaker
Sos what's Diên Biên Phú? -- Zoe
Explain to me why we shouldn't use the diacritical marks in the page title? Lir 05:47 Nov 21, 2002 (UTC)
So? I speak English as my native language and yet I clearly understand that Dien Bien Phu is a mis-spelled word. Perhaps I speak English better than some of you and thus recognize that English speaking people are expected to know certain words like kindergarten, which although not technically English are most certainly part of the English language and should only be banned in times of great national racism against the barbarians who don't think we should rule the world. Lir 05:59 Nov 21, 2002 (UTC)
Technical issues. Don't use diacriticals in the English Wikipedia BECAUSE IT MAKES IT IMPOSSIBLE TO SEARCH. Most people don't know how to type them in, so they will skip them. We don't have special collations on the database backend to make up for these omissions. Insisting on original language correctness here makes the Wikipedia far less useful to the people that will use it the most. If you are concerned about the mispelling, just put a clause at the top of the article saying "Proper spelled as (version with diacriticals)". --Clutch
Clutch, that argument is invalidated by #REDIRECT ! Lir 07:38 Nov 21, 2002 (UTC)
No, it isn't. You don't understand the database internals. ASCII is the standard for English on the internet, and it's important that we stick with it where we can. Doing anything else gets very messy. Are you prepared to rewrite the Wiki software underlying the Wikipedia? Did you get bored with the phileleutherian article? --Clutch
Are you saying that REDIRECT isn't working? Seems to work to me. 129.186.80.130[?] 08:22 Nov 21, 2002 (UTC)
By Golly, this is the ENGLISH wikipedia, and I want to see correct ENGLISH spelling used. I don't give a flying fuck if we borrowed the word from another language; we have a correct ENGLISH spelling, even if it looks almost exactly the same as the spelling in the other language. Just because there are some similarities, don't assume that English is merely an amalgam of other languages, and not a language in it's own right. --Clutch
Another addition to this debate from someone with to much time on his hands: I support the use of the dialectics in the article titles because it can be seen as a gesture of respect for the Vietnamese language and its users; also, quite frankly, the lines and slashes look cool. :) -- Modemac (And besides, I've added dialectics to the Tolkien entries here as well, such as the entry for palantir.)
http://membres.lycos.fr/dienbienphu/
I question the truth of this sentence "It also had historical significance as the first major military victory in modern times of a ruled people against a colonial power." It would be nice to know what "modern times" means in this sentence. I suggest "post WWII" - thoughts? - reboot
I agree that this statement seems questionable. I would suggest just removing the sentence altogether if ruled people in "modern times" have won military victories against colonial rulers before Dien Bien Phu; and if so, then I don't really see the "historical significance" associated with the fact of a victory of this nature. soulpatch
Not true. Adowa in 1896
It does appear to have been a signifcant event For french colonialism and lead into a particular french political psyche which lead to a particular handling of algeria (and indirectly to the return of DeGaulle to political life). However I've been unable to find sources which note further such ties. The main historical implications seem to be limited to french colonialism and the involvement of the United States. As for winning millitary victories before Dien Bien Phu, its probably going to depend on your definition of "modern times" humm? If you trace it to 1900, yes. If you start at WWII, its questionable. If no one comes up with a better rewording I'll give it a go. However even if no earlier events are found I fear asserting Dien Bien Phu (without references to prove otherwise) is the root of the fall of post-mdoern collonialism might be a [[http://m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?va=post%20hoc|post hoc]] fallacy. reboot
Do you have a reference proving that it did? Thats the thing, I don't see any reference material that show that it meant anyone outside of the French sphere of influence. I'm not sure characterizing countries as having emotion is a good thing. I think expanding and mentioning its effect on French Algeria, the return of DeGaullle and the rest makes a lot of sense. I'm not saying that it didn't inspire other peoples, just I can't find anything saying it did. Reboot
So "I don't have a reference or any proof but I'm sure it was?" -- Umm. isn't that the very essence of PointOfView? The facts. Prove it and of course it should be in there, otherwise its just your opinion. I searched for a good 30 minutes or so and couldn't find anything saying that.
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