Talk:Sharaku

Toshusai Sharaku is by far and away not the name by which he is most commonly known in English. A Google check reveals:

Sharaku 3,510
Toshusai Sharaku 332

so I'm moving him back. Noel 04:30, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Isn't it pretty much inevitable that you'll get more hits with Sharaku than Toshusai Sharaku, given that Sharaku is a subset of of Toshusai Sharaku? Here's (http://schorlab.berkeley.edu/Lab/personnel/jim/Sharaku.html) one site that won't turn up with Toshusai Sharaku, but did show up with Sharaku -- note that it does actually say Toshusai on the page, but that it's part of the body of an image, and thus won't show up in the search engine. Next, do a search on google (http://www.google.com/search?as_q=sharaku&num=10&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&btnG=Google+Search&as_epq=&as_oq=woodblock&as_eq=&lr=lang_en&as_ft=i&as_filetype=&as_qdr=all&as_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=&safe=images) requiring that woodblock appear on the page (to eliminate sushi restaurants as appeared near the top of the search without 'woodblock'), and you'll find the Sharaku count reduced to 638 vs. 243 for 'toshusai sharaku'. Given that his name is quite properly 'Toshusai Sharaku', wouldn't it therefore make more sense to have him listed under 'Toshusai Sharaku' with a redirect from 'Sharaku'? -- Tlotoxl 04:44, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

To reply on a point-by-point basis:

Isn't it pretty much inevitable that you'll get more hits with Sharaku than Toshusai Sharaku, given that Sharaku is a subset of of Toshusai Sharaku?

Yes, but you can correct for that very simply by substracting the number of hits for "Toshusai Sharaku" from the count for "Sharaku" - leaving a still very large number.

Next, do a search on google requiring that woodblock appear on the page .. and you'll find the Sharaku count reduced to 638 vs. 243 for 'toshusai sharaku'.

"Sharaku AND print" is better, since not everyone calls them "woodblock"s. "Sharaku AND print" gets me 898, "Toshusai Sharaku AND print" gets me 164. (No idea why that's down so far - a quick scan of a couple of pages of Google shows me most of the entries on the first two pages are for our Sharaku.) Anyway, even 638 - 243 is still better than 2:1.

(to eliminate sushi restaurants as appeared near the top of the search without 'woodblock')

"Sharaku NOT (sushi OR restaurant)" gets me 3,170 pages in English. Seriously, I don't think there's a lot of cross-contamination from other Sharaku's, it's not a common Japanese name.

Given that his name is quite properly 'Toshusai Sharaku', wouldn't it therefore make more sense to have him listed under 'Toshusai Sharaku' with a redirect from 'Sharaku'?

No, because I doubt most English-speaking print people would even *know* his family name. I wouldn't, I'd have to look it up, and I'm a woodblock print expert. Everyone knows him simply as Sharaku.

Noel 05:03, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Ok, fair enough; I was confused when I made my post, anyway -- didn't realize that Noel and JNC were the same person, and thought that some guy Noel was messing with your articles :) -- Tlotoxl 05:37, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

No, that was User:Shimmin who was putting them under the full names. I actually sympathize with him in a way, because that's what I would like to do too, in general (in part so there's no chance of a conflict down the line), and then do a redirect from the short names. However, that's not the WikiWay, as I found out (somewhat painfully, with the Medici), so now my brain has been Borged into a good little Wiki-ite.

For no particularly good reason (and maybe I should stop, as it's clearly confusing) I sign my messages with my name, not my id (as you discovered :-). Noel 05:59, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Actually we (as in Wikipedia) generally do not like article titles that only consist of a person's first or last name. Common usage does give way in those cases (disambiguation is only part of the equation here; another part is professional presentation). But, as you suggest, we like full formal names that hardly anybody uses, even less. --mav 08:06, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)