Talk:Meissen porcelain

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the debate was move, although I'm personally strongly against this move and don't think it follows policy. Whatever. —Nightstallion (?) ^{Seen this already?} 13:59, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Move discussion and vote

• Talk:Meißen porcelain — Meißen porcelain → Meissen porcelain – reason: consistent with official name

Clearly it should be Meissen as the official name of the company is: Staatliche Porzellan-Manufaktur Meissen GmbH. Request site to be moved to:Meissen porcelain. Ekem 14:50, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

• Support Naming articles in the English Wikipedia in foreign languages is clearly inappropriate. Piccadilly 22:51, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
• Speedy rename per nom only. --日本穣 Nihonjoe 22:57, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment: I can't find any discussion about this move anywhere. It also appears that the move doesn't need to be requested because there's nothing other than a redirect at Meissen porcelain (the talk page is blank, too). As the official site clearly states "Meissen" is the name of the company (the logo bears this up, too), then there doesn't need to be a vote on it. Be Bold!. --日本穣 Nihonjoe 23:02, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
• Support WP should use English forms for English articles. Both mean the exact same thing but Meissen is used in English. Charles 01:17, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose (see discussion). Olessi 16:57, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
• Support 70.51.9.199 02:55, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
• Strong Oppose The name of the city is Meißen not "Meissen", and if the porcelain is from there then it needs to be in compliance. Gryffindor 09:51, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
• Support, the company's webpage at http://www.meissen.de/ shows they use the spelling "Meissen" even in German. However, it should be at Meissen Porcelain Inc. per the English webpage at http://www.meissenusa.com/. (The article on the town, on the other hand, is properly at Meißen.) Angr (talk • contribs) 15:17, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
• Strong support English name for the kind of porcelain. (I would oppose moving to a company name, however.)Septentrionalis 01:35, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
• Support The Oxford Dictionary of English lists the porcelain as "Meissen" (not "Meissen porcelain"), describing it as "fine hard-paste porcelain produced in Meissen". Langenscheidt Muret-Sanders translates "Meißener Porzellan" as "Dresden china, fachsprachlich auch Meissen (china)". —Preceding unsigned comment added by Saintswithin (talk • contribs) [1]
• Support, also per Webster's 1981 printed edition (that exclusively has the ss variant). Note that for a quasi-synonym of Meissen ware, Böttger ware, I'd have the variant with umlauted o, while in this case the printed Webster's has only that variant. See also "Rationale" section of the Wikipedia:Naming conventions (standard letters with diacritics) proposal --Francis Schonken 09:33, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
• Support. Use of non-English characters in article titles in the English-language Wikipedia is indeed widespread, but it should be corrected. JamesMLane t c 10:53, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
• Support: use English-language letters in titles, per policy. Jonathunder 15:09, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
• Support. per Webster's dictionary spelling. Joelito 22:12, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion

Add any additional comments

Is this article about porcelain from Meißen or the company that produces it? If it is about the style of porcelain from Meißen, it should remain at "Meißen porcelain" as long as the city's article is at "Meißen" (as opposed to "Meissen"). If this article is about the company, it should be at "Meissen Porcelain Inc." or "Staatliche Porzellan-Manufaktur Meissen GmbH". Olessi 16:57, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

It does not matter. "ß" is an illegal character in the English language. It's not even a latin character. Supporting a special exemption for Germans because they are voiciferous in their objections to using English letters in English would be biased. As the nominator states, to be unbiased, Chinese characters should be allowed, or else it is racist against people do don't use Western European alphabets. 70.51.9.199 02:55, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

There is a huge difference between Chinese characters and the ligature ß, that's part of the extended Latin alphabet. About the porcelain, I'm not sure. The term is commonly used in English, and written as Meissen porcelain (see Cambridge dictionary and Merriam-Webster dictionary). The town is something different, I think that should stay at Meißen. Markussep 08:47, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Oh dear, are we back to these intolerant arguments from anonymous editors again? No, there's nothing wrong with ß per se in article titles; it is used widely across the English Wikipedia without problems. "Illegal" it is clearly not. That aside, the term "Meissen porcelain" does indeed seem to be widespread in English and to have a long tradition. There seem to be very few hits on the web for "Meißen porcelain" apart from Wikipedia clones, too much so for us to argue around it by saying that de-teutonised spellings tend to predominate even when wrong (although that is clearly the case). Let me make it clear, though: we would not be changing this title just through a dislike of "ß", but rather because of widespread use by authoritative sources. For similar reasons, I think Olessi's suggestions of moving it to the company name should not be followed. This is a case where common usage takes precedence. The decision made here would not, however, affect the title of the town's article, there being no reason for it not to be at Meißen. A little bit of inconsistency never hurt. --Stemonitis 15:11, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Stremonitis's arguments (except that I would extend them to the town too). Septentrionalis 18:07, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

I will venture to say that when talking about places that have "English" spellings for the names, those names should be used. Few people in English would probably search for Meißen or even use the ß. They would use Meissen instead. I will go further to say that, except in a few, few cases, only standard Latin characters should be used, with modifications if necessary. That is, abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz. I don't think WP uses the thorn in any titles (other than redirects to the page about the letter) and I think this should extend to include the eszett, which is totally foreign to English eyes. Charles 01:51, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Regarding Thorn, Stemonitis is right (below): this is not the place to discuss that. If you're looking for the place, here it is: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (thorn). --Francis Schonken 18:25, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

It was only support for my argument. Charles 19:04, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, WP does use thorn, although it shouldn't. Thorn also has a nationalist constituency who ignore English usage and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (thorn). The English name for the town is also long-established. There is a case for leaving eszett in the names of villages, on the grounds that they have no English name at all. Septentrionalis 01:56, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

On the matter of "having" an English name, a process of Anglification is to covert the eszett to ss. It's used in German even where the means of using the eszett are absent. Charles 02:00, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Any general debate over the use of ß (also ä, ð, etc.) is misplaced here; this page should only be used to discuss the specifics of "Meissen procelain" / "Meißen porcelain". --Stemonitis 07:31, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

This is not the first discussion about ß in article titles, there was also one for Weißenburg in Bayern, and probably more will follow, e.g. for Gießen. If we want to stop wasting Wikipedians' time, we should solve the general question: is ß an allowed character for article titles. For now, even though some users claim different, there's no consensus, see Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(use_English)#Disputed_issues. I hope we can solve this without big and misplaced words like racism, xenophobia and nationalism. An argument for the ß: wikipedias for other languages (French, Polish, Dutch, Norwegian, Esperanto, Spanish, Portuguese) without ß also use ß in German names. Markussep 19:25, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.