DramaWiki DramaWiki

Yes, "Born" and "Date of Birth" are the same thing.

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LOL! Thank you for validating. Groink 16:21, 8 Dec 2005 (EST)

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I think it's safe to remove Zhang Ziyi off the list (read the discussion page) ---YtToshi 11:37, 24 Feb 2006 (EST)

Totally agree on the Zhang Ziyi artist removal. I think by now someone would have come up with at least one television drama for her, but I don't think she ever did one. Groink 15:25, 24 Feb 2006 (EST)

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About romanization

Could you clarify a bit the comment on this change? To the best of my knowledge [1] no variant of Hepburn prescribe to drop the double vowel without using the macron (ou->ō). I'm ok if the wiki is going to adopt the approach you used (it's probably a de facto standard) but in the case I'm right I think it should be stated clearly that it's not standard Hepburn. --Eej 08:36, 28 Apr 2006 (EDT)

I don't know what you mean. The use of the character "o" versus "ō" does not make it non-Hepburn. We're using the Hepburn rules to establish the lettering, but we're also dropping the special characters like "ō" in order for the letters to be search compatible with various web search engines like Google. If you do not believe me, try this exercise: Log onto Google and perform two searches: "NHK Kōhaku" and "NHK Kohaku". As of this writing, there are 143 hits for "NHK Kōhaku", while there are 17,500 hits for "NHK Kohaku". This is because characters like "ō" differ from "o" in the ASCII chart, which is what computers use in comparison or sorting routines. You also have to remember that until the early 1990's, computer keyboards could not even produce the "ō" character, which is why a great number of articles and such do not use it.

If you're comparing DramaWiki with Wikipedia, you're completely wrong. Wikpedia is based in the ideology that it is an encyclopedia, and that ALL content must be written in an encyclopedia format - including the choice of characters in words. DramaWiki is NOT an encyclopedia - it is basically a database of information. While Wikipedia does not care about searchability, DramaWiki DOES care because it allows for people to use 3rd-party search engines to perform searches against our database, not bogging down the server. And keeping all characters within the 26-letter alphabet keeps the searches accurate, with the DramaWiki content showing up.

One last thing... The reason we do not use "ou" in the situation of おう is that most people in the Japanese drama community leave out the "u". Again, this is to make text within DramaWiki search compatible. If someone was trying to search for "Koumyou ga Tsuji", they might not have found us. Or "Itou Misaki". You can create an Internet-wide campaign to correct this, but you're going to lose. Groink 14:56, 28 Apr 2006 (EDT)

None of the above. I was only saying that Kohaku, in your example, is not, according to the official specifications, 'standard Hepburn'. That said, I'm perfectly fine with using Kohaku (as I wrote earlier I believe it is a de facto standard), I just think that the rules that DramaWiki has to follow should be defined and clearly stated, to avoid (or to reduce) chances of error due to misunderstendings, for the editor as for the reader. (Ex. we use Hepburn with (some) long vowels collapsed for reasons of compatibility/search and this others kind of exceptions or whatever).

Again, I'm not contesting nor proposing any alternative. I just want to fully understand the rules I have (and want) to follow. If I gave another impression is probably because of my lack of English skills.

And a related question. What about creating (many) pages with the different transcriptions redirecting to the 'canonical' one? Thank you for your patience. --Eej 15:38, 28 Apr 2006 (EDT)

I would not recommend it. If for any specific reason, it is to keep the wiki database from becoming too bloated. Currently there are 3943 valid articles on DramaWiki. There are actually 9111 articles, but almost two-thirds of that number could be re-directs to the 3943 articles. If we said it was okay to do so, we could see literally tens of thousands of redirect pages generated, which IMHO isn't something we really need here. Remember that DramaWiki is a division of D-Addicts. And the DramaWiki, D-Addicts message board, and the tracker all use the same resources. So basically we just stick with the most popular spelling of words and go with that. I also noticed someone created a redirect page for a nickname. I want to avoid creating those as well. We really don't need multiple pages for every canonical page. Groink 16:38, 28 Apr 2006 (EDT)

Ok. Got it.--Eej 03:06, 29 Apr 2006 (EDT)

He's an actor

Hi Groink, just wanna inform that Inoue Charu http://wiki.d-addicts.com/Inoue_Charu is actually a J-actor, not J-actress.

Thanks, Darren