Talk:Taiji

Page move and cleanup

I agreed with the page move of Taiji (which was a philosophy article) to Taiji (philosophy), which was executed by JHunterJ and I feel was done according to the consensus there. But what JHunterJ missed was a long, looooooong discussion on the meanings of taiji, taijiquan, t'ai chi and t'ai chi ch'uan and I'm sure everyone involved in that discussion (in all our rainbow of opinions) would agree with Nø that calling the martial art "Taiji or T'ai chi ch'uan" in the dab page is very, very misleading. (The discussion is on Talk:T'ai chi ch'uan and WP:Redirects_for_discussion#Tai_chi.) Unlike the term t'ai chi, which usually means the martial art in English despite its Chinese meaning, taiji does not have such a clear primary topic in English. In the pinyin romanization of Chinese, which the spelling taiji is in, the term both widely a nd correctly used for the martial art is taijiquan.

We can fix the Taiji redirect in good time, when the RfD eventually gets closed. But if the dab page does nothing else, it REALLY should directly address the rampant confusion surrounding these spellings - in other words, it should disambiguate. I have made an alternative edit that restores the lost content, and that I think conforms to dab page guidelines while addressing the ambiguity directly. Please comment. ~ Kimelea (talk) 21:12, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Taiji has a primary topic. WP:MOSDAB illustrates how to reflect a primary topic on a disambiguation page (since disambiguation pages are not articles). If the primary topic of "Taiji" is not T'ai chi ch'uan, then the primary topic should be changed to the actual primary topic. If the primary topic of "Taiji" is the martial art (as concluded in the move request), then "Taiji" is (one of the things that) the martial art is referred to as. I have no opinion of which is correct; I edited based on my understanding of the move discussion; if I was wrong about the conclusion of the primary topic, either this page should be moved to the base name (no primary topic) or the primary topic article (the philosophy?) should be. If yet a different topic is primary, and that topic has a title other than "Taiji (qualifier)", then Taiji should redirect to it, but Taiji should not redirect to an article at "Taiji (qualifier)". (and any rampant confusion should be addressed in the article space, however, not in a navigational aid.) -- JHunterJ (talk) 21:52, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

OK, thanks for your reply. In my opinion, your assessment of consensus on the requested move was correct, but you saw a primary topic where I don't see one. From where I'm standing, the point we agreed on in the discussion of the requested move is that there IS no primary topic for taiji in English. It is an ambiguous term, used as the main or even only spelling for the philosophy concept (as you can see from the large number of links to Taiji that relate to Chinese history and philosophy) but also occasionally as a shortening of taijiquan. Therefore in my opinion Taiji, and its related spellings Tai Ji, Tàijí and similar, should redirect to this dab page. But redirects and their targets are the subject of the tai chi RfD.

As primary topics relate to this dab page: out of all the four related terms that are sometimes used for the martial art, taiji is the least common by a long way. T'ai chi ch'uan and taijiquan are correct in Chinese, t'ai chi commonly used in English, but taiji for the martial art is rarer (because it is the normal term for the related concept) and having it listed as the first name for the martial art on the dab page would cause a whole lot of confusion.

Are you saying that if there is no primary topic for taiji, then the dab page should be at Taiji not Taiji (disambiguation)? Aaargh.... could this maybe be a case of ignoring all rules? These terms are so full of confusion that it seems the best thing to do is give completely unambiguous titles to all related pages (Taiji (philosophy), Taiji (disambiguation), T'ai chi ch'uan) and make all the ambiguous titles like Taiji and Tai chi redirects. That's why I supported the move of the philosophy article away from an ambiguous title. ~ Kimelea (talk) 22:22, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

If there's no primary topic, there's nothing gained by leaving the disambiguation page here -- WP:IAR is for when the encyclopedia is improved by breaking the rules. But InferKNOX, RJFF, and MachineElf all appeared to indicate the primaryness of the martial art. If the actual consensus if for no primary topic, moving the disambiguation page to the base name will fix the confusion without ignoring any rules. -- JHunterJ (talk) 22:51, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Fair enough. I've taken it back to the RfD, where the question of primary topics was first raised and which still continues. Honestly I don't much care where Taiji and its pinyin-ish friends redirect at this point, so long as a hatnote exists to correct misdirections, and I'm more than open to consensus changing. (It would be a significant change in this case though - I don't think anyone suggested that the martial art was taiji's primary topic in that discussion.) But I do care if the dab page misleads and confuses people because of our interpretation of the Manual of Style. Just because the primary topic of taiji is the martial art (if that is what is decided) does not mean the primary name for the martial art is taiji. I hope you see where I'm coming from. ~ Kimelea (talk) 23:21, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

I think so. But I'm not suggesting moving the article on the martial art. It should remain at its WP:COMMONNAME. I'm only looking at the question of what is the primary topic of the title "Taiji", not what is the best title for the topic of the martial art. -- JHunterJ (talk) 00:12, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Ah, no I must not have explained well enough. Before my most recent edit, the wording was "Taiji or T'ai chi ch'uan is Chinese martial art." I understand that you chose this wording according to the MOS:DAB instruction to place a sentence at the top of a dab page briefly defining the ambiguous term and linking to the primary topic. But I find this wording very misleading as the martial art is correctly called t'ai chi ch'uan or taijiquan, very often called t'ai chi, and less often called taiji. This page disambiguates meanings of taiji and tai chi but neither is actually the name of the martial art, so we should not say "Taiji or T'ai chi ch'uan is a martial art" as if those are its names. The dab should state the accurate names for the martial art while acknowledging common usage.

If consensus is that taiji has no primary topic, and the dab page has to be moved to Taiji, this shouldn't be an issue anyway. ~ Kimelea (talk) 00:52, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

(Edit Conflict). We should sweep through and redirect existing links to the philosophical concept Taiji (philosophy) pending a consensus on what to do now that the situation has been improved by JHunterJ's close of the Talk:Taiji (philosophy)#Requested move. That WP articles (mostly) link to the philosophical article using "Taiji" merely reflects the fact that the philosophical article has always been located there. However, as Google Books will attest, a search on "taiji" only returns references to the philosophical concept in 15% of the results. The majority refer to the martial art/exercise, (often qualified as "taiji qigong" in reference to the exercise). Excluding "quan" from the results doesn't significantly alter them. The contention that "taiji" is not used to refer to martial art/exercise is patently wrong and a clear consensus has yet to be achieved that "Taiji", as opposed to "Taiji (disambiguation)" should be the disambiguation page. Ether way, the existing links for "Taiji" need to be edited to point to Taiji (philosophy), they cannot link to a dab page, which was the counter proposal maintained at both the RM and the ongoing RfD.—Machine Elf ¹⁷³⁵ 00:24, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

"Taiji" is indeed used to refer to the martial art, Machine Elf, it's just not the name of it, and the dab should call it by its right name. I think discussion on the redirect target (primary topic) of taiji should stay on the RfD if you wouldn't mind, and as I've said, if it's the martial art then fine. Here, we just need to make sure that readers who end up at the dab are given a clear, brief and intuitive explanation for the ambiguity. ~ Kimelea (talk) 00:52, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

"Taiji" wasn't up for discussion at the broken down RfD and I'm not the one who brought it up here.—Machine Elf ¹⁷³⁵ 05:13, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps a wording like "Taiji is a shortened name of T'ai chi ch'uan, a Chinese martial art." at the top of the dab? (Or move the dab page to the base name if there's no primary topic.) -- JHunterJ (talk) 11:36, 16 April 2012 (UTC)