ORIENTED and MODERATING

The matter concerning ABCguy is of old news, please continue the disucssion which I started earlier concerning the organization of the Living in Taiwan Forum.

Thanks,

Jeff
jeff@oriented.org

Seriously, who cares about how the romanization of Chinese is represented? I go by the Directory of Taiwan for names, which is supposed to have checked with the individual as to how he or she would like to Romanize their name.
As for other words: Junghsio, Chungsiao, Jungshiow or whatever. No one here is saying that there is a form of Romanization that they simply cannot understand; they are saying that this or that style is better or more preferred.
This issue is not important. I have my preferences too, but the CONTENT of what the moderators need to vet is really the focus of this thread, isn’t it?
When Bruce Lee points at the sky in “Enter the Dragon,” he scolds the acolyte for looking at the finger, rather than what it is pointing at.
Let’s stop looking at the finger, shall we?
(Pretty deep, eh Grasshopper?)

Although I haven’t foolowed this issue tooo closely, I do know this - Most Chinese reckon that anything that comes from Mainland China must be bad. I vote hanyu pinyin. What seems to be the problem? and who’s causing all the problems?

Back to the original question:

Do the moderators do something more than edit posts for badness and kick people off if they are awful? I am personally not a fan of the Hanyu Pinyin re-edit (you like the system? Fine! Use it in your own goddamn posts!) and I don’t need to be rescued from naughty words, so what else have you done for me lately? (I guess kick off ABC guy, that was sweet…) Maybe forums would be best if not moderated. If that horrifies you, maybe you could have ONE not be moderated. It’s not like civilization is going to grind to a halt is it?

I do love the site, just think you don’t need to kill yourself to “clean up” the posts. The Pinyin thing in particular is irritating, even though I support Pinyin. Can you concive that spelling itself is part of a person’s expression and not your business? Pinyin has become widely used not through people being given no other alternative, but because it worked well, keep that in mind. If someone wants to use another system - and often for place names and names of people in Taiwan, Pinyin is NOT the standard - then you have to accept that ultimately you will never be able to make that decision for them, it’s up to them!

Sung Cheung Road!
Sung Chiang Road!
Jen Ai Road!
Kwang Fu South Road!
Ha ha ha ha ha!

Come on edit me daddy.

I believe the correct romanization is…

Kung Fu South Road.

I do not agree with editing the poster’s original text. Whilst I am a firm advocate of Hanyu Pinyin, the Hanyu Pinyin should be inserted in brackets after the original spelling if at all. As in Dan’s post earlier, the editing out of his deliberately strange romanisation made a nonsense of his post. Please put the Hanyu Pinyin in brackets, not the original text.

If I post the sentence

“I think Mao Tse-tung should be spelt Mao Zedong”

and you change it to

"I think Mao Zedong [Mao Tse-tung - ed.] should be spelt Mao Zedong "

then you make gibberish of my post.

It should be edited to show

“I think Mao Tse-tung [Mao Zedong - ed.] should be spelt Mao Zedong”

in which case my original text is obvious and sensible, and your editing is clear.

What are we going to do about Cantonese names like Chiang Kai-shek ?

(I need to get out more…)

Don’t forget if you really aren’t sure of the romanization you can add the Chinese characters to make things clear in the same way as the newspapers, for example:

Chen Shui-bian (陳水&#25153)

It’s quite unambiguous!