Category talk:Astronauts from China

Move to "Astronauts from China"

There are several reasons for this proposed move to achieve coherence:

• Taikonauts is an invented term in English for Chinese astronauts. We do not take away their right to name their astronauts in Chinese language as they like. But the English term does nothing else but create a new term which means "Astronauts from China". Astronauts is also a neutral term, not connected to NASA or the US.
• This means that this is actually more a "branding" exercise, as if a private company / country called, lets say, their Formula 1 drivers something different to distinguish them. We would still sort them as "Formula 1 drivers of/from..."
• The Commons category collecting these is Category:Astronauts (and soon Category:Astronauts by country). To fit correctly into this, and to align with parallel cats like Category:Astronauts from the United States, it should be renamed. Taikonauts "dances out of line", so to speak, and has no "from China" qualifier.
• The last thing also becomes relevant in another way. Someone flying in the Chinese space program may not always be Chinese. He might be a guest, or foreign scientist. So creating an unambigious category like "Astronauts from China" is important.
  • If people are deeply opposed to the total removal of this category, we might use that distinction - i.e. all people who ever flew/will fly with the Category:Space program of China are sorted into Taikonauts, all "People from China" who ever flew into space are moved into "Astronauts from China". At the moment, those two groups are still the same, I think.
• Finally, Commons tries, where logical and possible, to follow Wikipedia conventions. Wikipedia's "en:Taikonaut" is simply a redirect to "en:Astronaut".

Okay, I hope I have not made this sound all too heavy-handed. But I thought this might be seen as a controversial move by some, and so wanted to clarify that there is nothing fishy about it. Cheers, Ingolfson (talk) 21:13, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

No objections at my side. You're doing a realy good job in realigning the whole category sheme space exploration. --myself488 (talk) 22:48, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Okay so I've come to this debate late and the move has been done, still I would like to point out that the wikipedia article notes that "This is the term used by Xinhua in the English version of the Chinese People's Daily since the advent of the Chinese space program" and provides a reference as such. So the term Taikonaut refers to a real world usage and is no more a branding exercise then the use of the term cosmonaut for Russian spacefarers is. By the same logic that Taikonaut redirects to astronaut on wikipedia the fact that cosmonaut also redirects to astronaut should mean that Category:Kosmonauts should be renamed Category:Astronauts from Russia and Soviet Union. KTo288 (talk) 08:57, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

KTo288, sorry for not notifying you directly. Would probably be best if the move template did that automatically... As for your comment - I WOULD probably move cosmonauts as you suggested, but I'd expect some fierce resistance, so don't. As I have suggested above, the best solution may be to have both, since there IS a difference (at least in the long run) between "Astronauts from China" and "Taikonauts" (people flying in the Chinese space program). So in this case, we could logically have both. Taikonauts would then be the Chinese equivalent of something like a "NASA astronauts" category. Ingolfson (talk) 09:32, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

I guess Cosmonauts has history behind it and people willing to fight its corner. Hopefully the Chinese space program will not be a flash in the pan and that future achievements will firmly establish Taikonaut in spaceflights lexicon.KTo288 (talk) 09:37, 18 April 2010 (UTC)