User:DownUnder555/sandbox

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Currently trying to fix the mess that are the Taiwan/ROC and associated history articles. I welcome friendly help from anyone that is familiar with these topics. If your political POV makes this project unpalatable, I suggest you work on the actual articles themselves and not my proposed alternate versions.

The goal at the end of this reorganization and clean up is to bring the revised versions up to a vote from a large set of wikipedians (avoiding people that have strong political feelings on Taiwan) and hopefully get them accepted.

The current mess is:

  • Republic of China -- pre-1949 it is the history of a government of China. post-1949 it is the history of a government of Taiwan (but claims to be the government of China for a while). We have an economic section that pre-1949 is the economy of China and post-1949 is the economy of Taiwan. This is madness. The article is also too long...
  • Taiwan -- is said to be an article only on Taiwan Island but in reality, it covers all sorts of stuff that is about the state of Taiwan (officially the ROC).

My plan is to fix the articles by using their common names and the :

  • Taiwan - User:DownUnder555/sandbox/Taiwan - This is the common name of the state Republic of China, and we'll stick with it. I do wish to include that some people feel very strongly that Taiwan is the continuation of the ROC on China however and appropriate links should be made to the new Republican China article.
Alternate names: Republic of China on Taiwan, Republic of China (Taiwan), Republic of China Taiwan
Disambiguation: Republic of China will show links to both Republican China and Taiwan.
  • Taiwan Island - User:DownUnder555/sandbox/Taiwan_Island - This article, unlike the current Taiwan article, will really, truly, actually, be about JUST the geographical island. Stuff that starts including things about the other islands or is about the government etc., will not be included. The focus should be on geographical info, environmental info, and migrations of different peoples. Some basic political information could be included, but not stuff that will overlap with Taiwan (state).
Alternate name: Someone looking for information on the Republic of China may mean just this Republican period of Chinese history or they may be looking for information that falls into the Republic of China on Taiwan/Taiwan article).
  • History of the Republic of China on Taiwan - User:DownUnder555/sandbox/History_of_the_Republic of China_on_Taiwan - I'm not particularly fond of this name, but it's the best I could come up with. There's a ton of information on 1949-present Taiwan so we couldn't just stuff it in into the History of Taiwan article. Plus, this way, we can be neutral about whether it is continuous with the ROC on China.
  • History of the Republic of China - Like Republic of China, this will be a disambiguation page that leads to either Republican China or History of the Republic of China on Taiwan.

[edit] Comments

Hello, I agree with your idea. And I think Nationalist China would be a better name than Republican China.--Jerrypp772000 00:25, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Also, the History of the Republic of China on Taiwan can be renamed to Taiwan post-war era.--Jerry 13:23, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Comments2

Hy, I basicly also agree with your idea and proposals but I honestly think that your proposals won't work without two more moves/merges at the same time. Noone can clear the mess you noticed in regards of "Taiwan" if the mess with "China" isn't corrected/improved at the same time. One can't work properly without the other working aswell.

The mess is far greater:

Wikipedia has an article with the title "China" which isn't about China (the country) at all. It is officially about the Chinese civilization (one can only wonder why it doesn't have exactly that title ("Chinese civilization") which would be correct and proper).

Basicly some users are using the NPOV-excuse to deny the PRC the name "China". They don't want that if someone types "China" (in the search-field) the PRC appears. Their excuse is that "China" (the meaning of the word itself) is controversial. I fully accepted that it might be the case in some languages but not in English (or in German, French, and Portuguese). If one compares this with other country-articles one can see that the overhelming majority of these articles simply use common sense and use the "commonly accepted name" as the title for the country in question (Germany instead of Federal Republic of Germany, France instead of the French Republic, etc).

So what is the current situation? You type "China" you end up with an article about the Chinese civilization (and not the state/nation/country). You type "Taiwan" you end up with the island (and not the state/nation/country). If you want to find China you are forced to use "People's Republic of China" and if your are looking for Taiwan you are forced to use "Republic of China". This is reflected in many articles which deal with one and/or the other country (others simply bypass this stupidity by making direct "softlinks" to the countries). What an unbelievable mess and officialy all in the name of NPOV. They even created a extra special NPOVpolicy which has been controversial right from the start.

To cut things short, IMHO you should add to you list above the following.

  • Move the current "China"-article towards "Chinese civilization"
  • Move the "People's Republic of China"-article towards "China" (with proper and unavoidable improvements)

At least this is MHO. Please tell me if you agree or not (by all means feel free to disargee) Flamarande 10:10, 28 October 2007 (UTC)