Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Vietnam/Archive 5

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Thanks for your notice, I'll take a look at that article. Grenouille vert (talk) 01:45, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

YellowMonkey has just restored the old version of Dang Thai Son, which is relatively short. If someone has time, please expand the article. Grenouille vert (talk) 02:06, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

These two articles are a bit of a mess and really should be

If you don't already have Cleanup listings, Cleanup listings is a bot which collects all tagged unreferenced biographies of living people, plus other lists onto one page in your project.

It is very easy to add to your project: simply add a template to a page of your project! Instructions

A list of examples is here Okip (formerly Ikip) 04:56, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the alert. I added one reference to

Nguyen Thi Binh, and since she was at one time one of the most famous people in the world, it should not be hard to find more references. I will have a look at your suggestion for adding the cleanup lists into the project. Itsmejudith (talk

) 15:23, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

I see that the cleanup template has already been added. Itsmejudith (talk) 20:41, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Just a note to call attention to the merge tag on the Religious freedom section of Religion in Vietnam into the Freedom of religion in Vietnam. The former has been tagged to merge since March 2008, with no discussion of the issue at all. I've added my two cents against a merge, and would like to invite other contributors to make their own views heard as well. Overall, the Freedom of religion in Vietnam article is in desperate need of an overhaul, especially since it's been tagged with {{USgovtPOV}} since March 2008 as well. (Maybe that was the reason behind the merge tags on Religion in Vietnam in the first place—to call for improvements to the Freedom of religion article?) --dragfyre (talk 19:26, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

The unreferenced articles related to your project can be found at >>>Wikipedia:WikiProject Vietnam/Archive 5/Unreferenced BLPs<<<

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Hello everyone, can someone just pop into the article for Vietnam Airlines, have a read of it, and leave some feedbacks and comments at Wikipedia:Peer review/Vietnam Airlines/archive1‎; any input, no matter how small, is greatly appreciated. I'm doing this to give it a bit of cleanup. Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sp33dyphil (talk • contribs) 22:06, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Will do. --dragfyre (talk 22:57, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

A new peer review for Vietnam Airlines has been set up at Wikipedia:Peer review/Vietnam Airlines/archive2. Comments are urgently needed, no matter how small. Please add to the discussion. Thanks Sp33dyphil ^{(Talk) (Contributions)} 10:42, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2010 April 15

As some Vietnamese topics use Han Tu, I think some of them may also get deleted in such a manner.

70.29.208.247 (talk) 05:02, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

I am currently working on many various articles for which I require photos from around the world. I am currently requiring photos from Vietnam for these articles, and I was hoping that this message would reach a photographer who can take the photos for me. The photos I currently require are listed at

I'm preparing Gia Lam Airport for submission as a DYK in the next couple of days; can anyone help bring it up to snuff? Thanks! --dragfyre (talk 14:40, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, everyone. The article got 2,500 views :) --dragfyre_ʞןɐʇc 04:37, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

FYI, {{Vietnamese}} has been nominated for deletion. 70.29.208.247 (talk) 03:42, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, please comment here if the discussion is still open. Thanks! Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 13:47, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

FYI, there is a notice on

Your Project's list can be found at Wikipedia:WikiProject Vietnam/Unreferenced BLPs. As of May 17 you have approximately 57 articles to be referenced. The list of all other WikiProject UBLPs can be found at Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons/WikiProjects.

Your assistance in reviewing and referencing these articles is greatly appreciated. If you have any questions, please don't hestitate to ask either at

Hello, I was wondering when Vietnam Airlines will enter SkyTeam this year? Thanks Sp33dyphil ^{(Talk) (Contributions)} 07:20, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

SkyTeam#Future members says 10 June 2010. --dragfyre_ʞןɐʇc 11:45, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

FYI, there is a proposal for a WikiProject on East Asia, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/East Asia

76.66.193.224 (talk) 04:58, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

I wikified this, and perhaps someone else would like to look it through and see if any improvements can easily be made. It is rated start class and high importance, so could do with attention. It could also do with some more critical sources - the current ones are either government "we're doing all the right things" or WTO and similar "please keep on doing the right things". Itsmejudith (talk) 21:07, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Awesome. I set the assessment to high the other day, but to honour the current WP:Vietnam assessment guidelines, it should really be set to Top since it's listed in {{Vietnam topics}}. I'm planning on reassessing all these articles according to this guideline soon, and will take a look at the Economy article as well. Thanks for your effort! --dragfyre_ʞןɐʇc 21:15, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. There's still quite a bit to do, so thanks also to anyone who will be able to help with the article. If we had a collaboration of the month (we tried but didn't keep up the effort) then this would be a good candidate. Itsmejudith (talk) 22:17, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

FYI, Category:Disambiguation pages with Chinese character titles has been nominated for deletion. 70.29.212.131 (talk) 04:26, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Newly-created article on a South Vietnamese politician. I think the subject is probably notable and have brought the article into the project. It needs a fair bit of work. Itsmejudith (talk) 14:56, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks—wow, some of those section headings are really a mouthful. o_O Looks notable, though I notice several links to blogs/forums. Besides that, most of the other references are in Vietnamese, so I won't be able to verify them ;____; In any case, thanks for posting. --dragfyre_ʞןɐʇc 15:16, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

I've done another chunk of clean-up - and have got rid of the long section heads - but any help much appreciated. Itsmejudith (talk) 15:49, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Does anyone object to setting this talk page up for automatic archiving, with, say, a 90-day expiry? --dragfyre_ʞןɐʇc 15:36, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

In a nutshell

• There seems to be a consensus for the use of diacritics in the following circumstances:

In article titles—when the article refers to a subject (place, person, thing) that does not have an alternate English name in common use, and on biographical articles where the subject spells their own name with diacritics

In article leads—at the very beginning, using the {{lang-vi}} template

• There seems to be a consensus against the use of diacritics in the following circumstances:

In article titles—when the article refers to a subject (place, person, thing) with an alternate English name in common use (such as Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh, etc), and on biographical articles where the subject spells their own name without diacritics

• Further, there seems to be consensus on the following items:

Articles with diacritics in their titles should have a mandatory redirect from a title without diacritics.

• There seems to be no consensus (yet) on the following items:

Should diacritics be used throughout articles? Throughout a lead only? As an inital gloss only?

Should diacritics be used in category titles, following the style for article titles?

What constitutes "common use"? How commonly used does an English spelling (i.e. omitting diacritics) have to be used for us to use it in an article title?

Discussion

The last discussion on this subject seems to have petered out about two years ago without reaching any clear conclusion. The Vietnam-related articles are now in the unsatisfactory position of using or not using diacritics according to no discernible pattern. For example, some of the provinces in

• All geographic article titles to use diacritics (except perhaps for Hanoi and Saigon, as these are well known in that form in the English-speaking world)
• All biographical article titles to use diacritics, except for those people in the Vietnamese diaspora to choose not to use them
• All articles that are titled using diacritics to have a redirect from a non-diacritic'd version of the title
• References in all articles to use the form that matches the article title (e.g. using the diacritic when referring to Vĩnh Long, but not using it when referring to Janet Nguyen.

Comments please. Colonies Chris (talk) 18:44, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

I wasn't part of the discussion on this topic, but I'm glad to see it revived here (of course, I'm glad whenever I see a new topic here, hehe). I've been reviewing the tasks list and it really wasn't clear to me whether or not there had been a consensus. I can see that there hasn't been much discussion on the topic lately, and most of what I see is archived on Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Vietnamese) and the associated talk page. Are you basing the above points on this?

In any case, for my two cents: I agree that proper names that are well known in the English-speaking world should use the most commonly used English spelling, so like you said, Hanoi, Danang, etc. Saigon of course has its own naming issues (see Names of Ho Chi Minh City, and an archive of naming debates on the Ho Chi Minh City article). I also agree with the idea of making redirects to diacritic'd articles; similar spellings with different diacritics could be handled via dab pages or hatnotes.--dragfyre_ʞןɐʇc 19:05, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

I think that your suggestions are reasonable and have no objections to them. DHN (talk) 21:41, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

I think we shouldn't use diacritics in whole article because of two reasons:

Most English speakers don't care about diacritics and they tend to ignore them while reading. So diacritics won't help much. Using diacritics in titles of respective articles is enough.

As this is English Wikipedia and all articles are written in English, using diacritics would make the article look odds and they will be big obstructions for all English speakers who want to edit the article but don't know how to type diacritics properly.--AM ^(talk) 03:07, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

It's probably true that most English speakers don't care about diacritics, but there are several reasons we should use them anyway:

• We're an encyclopaedia: that means we prioritise accuracy
• the readership of Vietnam-related articles is, by definition, likely to have an interest in Vietnam, so the use of diacritics, which is a normal part of life, shouldn't put them off, any more than English-speaking readers are put off by references to
  Braşov
  .
• respect for the actual spelling - not treating something unfamiliar as unimportant

Diacritics are used when articles refer to people and places in all the European languages. See Gerhard Schröder, Lübeck, Finistère or Lech Wałęsa, for example. Why should Vietnamese, which uses essentially the same alphabet, be any different?

Certainly not many people know how to type Vietnamese diacritics, but those with enough interest in Vietnam to contribute new content certainly will, and everyone can cut and paste existing names. (Is there a guide somewhere on these pages to methods for entering Vietnamese diacritics?) Colonies Chris (talk) 08:59, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Just to add two more cents, I'm one of those English speakers who would prefer to use diacritics throughout an article, mainly for the reasons stated above—improved accuracy, and the fact that Unicode is pretty much standard by now means that most people will be able to read them without problems anyway. I suppose keyboard input would be a hassle to most—I don't have VNI enabled on my PC, for example, so I often end up copying and pasting, but maybe more casual editors wouldn't. Still, that's something that can be fixed regularly with a bot.--dragfyre_ʞןɐʇc 16:43, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

"that means we prioritise accuracy" - Agree. But how accuracy we have to prioritise? If we use diacritic Vietnamese words in a whole article, we should diacritize them all or partially. For example, in the article

AWB

couldn't help much except we have more editor and more time to to this task. So I agree with you partially, we should change the title and the bolded texts to help people but I don't support using diacritics in the whole article.

Vietnamese words with no diacritics are being used widely in English-speaking world and even the current government seem to accept this trend (you could see state media always add a letter "Z" to the name of the current prime minister

Nguyen Tan Dzung every time they broadcast his speech to make it different from the English word Dung rather than using diacritics). That is the reason why Vietnamese be treated a bit different than German or Polish although they use same alphabet.--AM ^(talk

) 10:12, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

There are two articles about Vietnamese input methods:

Telex (IME). DHN (talk

) 09:16, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

The use of 'Dzung' is comparable to the way that German names are sometimes written with ue in place of the umlaut (

Novak Đoković). It's an alternative that ought to be noted, but the name we should use ought to be the subject's actual name, I think, unless you could make a strong case that he's now better known as Dzung in the English-speaking world (as is the case with Novak Djokovic). I agree that converting the articles would be a large task, but that's a reason to start on it before the task gets even larger. It's possible to generate in a semi-automated way a list of redirects from non-diacritic'd titles to titles with diacritics, and use that as a basis for an AWB Find/Replace list, and once that's set up, the task of going through the articles is not so daunting. Colonies Chris (talk

) 11:55, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Doesn't "Dzung" specifically reflect Northern pronunciation? I mention that since, having learnt Vietnamese with Southern pronunciation, I would pronounce Dung's name as "Yung", not "Zung". I guess most media use Northern pronunciation anyway, but... enh. --dragfyre_ʞןɐʇc 16:32, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

I've tagged this discussion with a link to Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Vietnamese), since that's where most of the early discussion took place, and a lot of the same points are coming up here as were brought up there. --dragfyre_ʞןɐʇc 14:06, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

For every other language that uses diacriticals, the diacriticals are used in the article titles. This is true even for languages like Polish where the diacriticals are considered too complex to be published in dead tree references. Scholarly practice is to use diacriticals as long as there are no technical barriers. We don't need to follow official usage. But for those who care about such things, official usage is established by the daily Việt Nam News. This newspaper uses diacriticals in a very consistent way, at least in the paper version. Kauffner (talk) 16:33, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

The proposal of using diacritic in article's title has no objection. The thing we should solve here is that should we put diacritics in the whole article (which is now has objections from YellowMonkey and me). Even the Việt Nam News don't use diacritics in their articles (including titles).--AM ^(talk) 17:36, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

I assume you looked at the Web edition, but in the paper version of Việt Nam News it is all diacriticaled and spaced, i.e. Hanoi is "Hà Nội" and so forth. (No "z" in the prime minister's name in either version.) Kauffner (talk) 04:46, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm generally pro diacritics, with the exceptions already mentioned. We should encourage editors to use them wherever possible in Vietnamese names and words. I don't think it's a high priority to change all the existing articles. But if an editor adds diacritics then it should be our policy to ensure that they aren't reverted. Unless they are wrong, of course! Or if they are names better known in English without, like Hanoi etc. There should always be a redirect. Itsmejudith (talk) 18:16, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Given that they don't make the words unreadable I think diatrics should generally be used (but Hanoi etc sound like sensible exceptions). -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 22:21, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

We seem to have consensus to use diacritics in titles, so that's the first priority. As for using them in articles, most people seem to like the idea but there is significant disagreement from User:AM and - by report - User:YellowMonkey, who hasn't taken any direct part in this discussion, though I had previously understood that his objection was to the inconsistency of using diacritics for some references in an article and not others, rather than to the overall principle of using diacritics in articles. (However, I may be misrepresenting his views.) In any case, a decision on whether to use diacritics in the body of articles is lower priority and can wait until the titles are consistent.

There's one other area that I should have mentioned above - categories. Should, for example, Category:People from Thanh Hoa Province become Category:People from Thanh Hóa Province? I think if we're agreed on article titles, then category titles should be pretty uncontroversial too. Are there differing opinions? Colonies Chris (talk) 12:22, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Agree.--AM ^(talk) 12:45, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Applying this rule to categories makes sense to me too.

At the risk of digressing, I've been wondering about things like province names, etc. At first I thought it would be best to omit diacritics in combined titles, where Vietnamese and English are mixed (e.g.

Thanh Hoa Province, but use them in regular titles (e.g. Thanh Hóa). After reading the discussion, though, I think we should be using them even when "Province" or "District" is added, simply for consistency's sake. --dragfyre_ʞןɐʇc

16:32, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Technically we should be using diaretics and redirecting the plain english titles. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 20:16, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

I am against the use of diacritics except as an initial gloss. For the record, I will repeat here what I said a year ago:

Quite honestly, I see no place for diacritics at all in any of the articles in English Wikipedia except as a gloss to illustrate the Vietnamese spelling of a place name or proper name after the first occurrence of the name in its normal, unaccented English spelling. This is not a question of political correctness (respect for how others spell names), it's a question of simple convenience for the vast majority of readers who neither know nor care about how Vietnamese names are accented and are not interested in obtaining the fancy software to be able to type in Vietnamese. I find it difficult to locate the articles I wrote recently on the 1860s

Cochinchina Campaign

because place names like Vinh Long and Bien Hoa (their normal spelling in English) have been given accents. This is supposed to be an encyclopedia written in English, not Vietnamese. Having said that, we should gloss all Vietnamese place and personal names with their accented versions on their first appearance in an article.

This is how I personally have been dealing with the problem, in the lead sentence of my articles:

The Capture of Bien Hoa (Vietnamese: Biên Hòa) on 16 December 1861 was an important allied victory in the Cochinchina campaign (1858–62).

Djwilms (talk) 01:04, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

I see your concerns, but everyone who has supported diacritics in article titles has also argued for a redirect from the non-accented form. Itsmejudith (talk) 07:04, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Does anyone know of a facility that can change things eg 1st of the 12th lunar month of 1225 to a Solar date? I wanted to get this so that some dates about Vietnamese history could be added to WP:SA YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars and White Ferns supermodel photo poll) 06:34, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

http://www.informatik.uni-leipzig.de/~duc/amlich/amlich.exe <-Try this (need java to run). Or online version. They are all accuracy.--AM ^(talk) 09:26, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm not so sure about the accuracy of this converter for dates prior to 1967. In 1967, the DRV (North Vietnam) government changed the base time of the calendar to use Hanoi time instead of Beijing time as it was before. This change resulted in Tet 1968 occuring on January 29 in the North and January 30 in the South (due to this difference, some attacks during the Tet offensive happened a day too early due to miscommunication). This calendar seems to use Hanoi time for dates prior to 1967 to calculate the date. DHN (talk) 17:54, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

I tested these programs by finding out the solar dates of 15/1/1762 and 19/12/1820 (birth and death dates of Gia Long) and then comparing with the solar dates which given by PhD Tran Duc Anh Son, a famous figure in Nguyen Dynasty's history. The result are same and I assume these tools are accuracy because Tran Duc Anh Son said that he found these solar dates by using traditional hand calculating method, not a date calculating software.--AM ^(talk) 05:14, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

Other online version of the .exe tool abrove.--AM ^(talk) 05:29, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

Ok, since everyone's watching this page now, I'd like to bring up the issue of the huge locator maps on Vietnam geography articles (see Figure 1, at right). We all know Vietnam is a loooooooooong country, and that means that putting a map of the country in an infobox results in a very looooooooooooooong infobox. I've had a particular beef about this on the Hanoi article, where the combination of top image, logo and locator maps takes up over 75% of the infobox height, which currently stands at 1756 pixels (in Firefox 3.6, WinXP Pro). Don't get me wrong, the maps we're using are beautiful, they're just so huge. This also means we have many articles where the dominant content seen on the page is a big locator map (like Hà Tĩnh, or the above-mentioned Vĩnh Long).

I don't really know what's the best way to deal with this. One alternative might be to make the default map width shorter, as we see on

250px is fine I think. The problem is that the old maps were conssiderably shorter and were set at 300px. Now with this map 300px is way too big and even 250 is pushing it. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 20:14, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

I suppose the location map would be nicer and more well-proportioned if we incorporate the Spratly and Paracel Islands into the current loooong map. Nguyễn Thanh Quang (talk) 07:02, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

Could I suggest something similar to the United Kingdom maps, an example of which is at Lancaster, Lancashire. A small inset of the whole country pinpoints the region (or province), which is then presented in some detail. It would need a lot of work from someone good at producing maps (I know the British series took months to produce), but it would be worthwhile. Skinsmoke (talk) 05:41, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

That's pretty much what I was thinking of—an inset of the country with a close-up of the province in question. I've added an example to illustrate the concept (forgive the poor quality). Thoughts? --dragfyre_ʞןɐʇc 17:29, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

It needs work (a relief map isn't ideal for this sort of purpose), but the principal seems right. Skinsmoke (talk) 03:11, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Are appreciated if anyone has access to them. It's up at GAN. So are

• Commercial Import Program
• Ngo Dinh Diem presidential visit to the United States

YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars and White Ferns supermodel photo poll) 02:02, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

The thing about Annam being taken over in 1874 is wrong isn't it?? And the part about Cochinchina is also wrong as the first half went in 1862, and then 1867. It's on a lot of templates, the image is YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars and White Ferns supermodel photo poll) 05:00, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Hi. Could you give some good online references for the actual dates for Annam and Cochinchina? I will be glad to modify the map accordingly. Cheers Per Honor et Gloria ✍ 05:41, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

They are in Chapuis, a book you used when you wrote

Phan Thanh Gian which also has the 1862/67 thing. The Annam part in 1883-4 per the first chunk of the book YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars and White Ferns supermodel photo poll

) 08:15, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

 Done Per Honor et Gloria ✍ 03:31, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars and White Ferns supermodel photo poll) 01:56, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Added to WP:VIET/Tasks. --dragfyre_ʞןɐʇc 19:29, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Added Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/September 1964 South Vietnamese coup attempt

For those of you in Hanoi, would someone mind photographing the head office of Vietnam Airlines? It is at 200 Nguyen Son Street, Long Bien, Hanoi, Vietnam. Thanks WhisperToMe (talk) 15:45, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

It may not be exactly the one you wanted, but I've just uploaded a pic of the Quang Trung Rd. office of Vietnam Airlines to Commons. Will that help? --dragfyre_ʞןɐʇc 04:09, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

I've read in the descriptions of certain files (for instance, this one) that works of the Vietnamese government are in the public domain, and I've got a few questions about that. First off, is there an online source that can confirm this? Not that I doubt it, but it'd be nice to satisfy my own curiosity on the issue. Second, does this mean that works created by all branches (i.e. Ministries, Departments, state-owned corporations) of the National government are in the public domain? Third, how far back in time does this rule apply? Since 1976? Since 1954? Should all government works created before the dissolution of French Indochina be considered works of the French government—and, in that case, are they considered public domain?

I found a reference on

First, I want to tell something about the government (current and formers) works' copyright. In general, it is in gray zone of Vietnam's law. The current government bans most of the former governments' works, which they called unorthodoxy or reactionary so they don't have a clear copy right status. Even the copyright status of current government's works is unclear. The only law which deal with this matter is the current Copyright Law (2005) which says "all published official document of the government is in public domain" but it never mention what 'published official document of the government' is. The main cause of this situation is that VNese people barely go to the court even if someone violate their copyrights so that the law marker only update the Copyright Law occasionally when some country ask VN to do so (in other words, most people don't respect copyright at all). In Vietnam, if you want to use a copyrighted works; just use it =D (you could see that there are many operational MP3.com copycats in Vietnam such as Zing Mp3, nhacso ...).

In regard to Phan Dinh Phung.jpg. I think this picture's license is wrong as I explain above. But this file's copyright status could be safely assume "public domain" because this is the worship picture of Phan Dinh Phung in his tomb.

In regard to the government's website's works. I don't think we can use them in Wikipedia because two thing: there is no clear copyright status in Vietnam and most of the government's websites usually use copyrighted works without proper permissions. Wikipedia is one of their victims; they often use Wikipedians' works but never attribute its authors like the work's license requests (you could ask Lưu Ly about that =D ).--AM ^(talk) 16:57, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Haha! I know what you mean, and I'm glad (sort of) to hear confirmation of what I suspected anyway. I know very well how fast and loose copyright is in Vietnam, and I've even fallen victim to the same wiki-poaching you've described: this map, depicting Line 1 of the currently-under-construction Ho Chi Minh City Metro, magically appeared on VietnamNet news not long after I created it and added it to the English wiki article. Not that I'm particularly broken up about it, of course; besides, at the very least, they added a "(Wikipedia)" tag to the image.

And yeah, regarding the photos on the Vietnamese government websites, I had a strong suspicion that most of them might be copyrighted, especially seeing as there was no attribution or copyright information visible anywhere. It's kind of a bitch, because it means I'll have to scrounge that much more if I want to get good pictures of railways in Vietnam and their history. Just about the only historical photos we have right now are from French-era postcards dated from the 1900s (so that copyright has most probably expired); I'm not sure about those either, of course, and I certainly wouldn't know enough to upload more. --dragfyre_ʞןɐʇc 18:21, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Another related question, to build on what you've said. Is this template accurate? --dragfyre_ʞןɐʇc 20:10, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes, this template is accuracy. But there is one thing you should notice, you should have to prove the work which you want to apply that template has been published for more than 50 years. You could use direct or indirect evidence (such as here). This is quite tricky because Vietnam is not stable long enough to let first-published works survive until today. Everytime a new government rises to power, they often ban and clear most of the old regime's cultural work regardless to the contents. This often result a total or near-total loss of many work. Regarding to the French colony's works, we could safely use them because most of them has been published for more than 50 yrs and most of their authors has died.

As in Wikipedia, the best thing we could do here is avoid using the modern's work and assume license for the old one (prior to 1960) in good faith.--AM ^(talk) 01:14, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for this. One thing I've noticed is that many of the photos taken by French photographers seem to be copyrighted even today; working on an article related to the First Indochina War, for example, I've found that many official sources of military photos from that era demand written permission to use them (see here, for example). Another example is this file, by photographer Pierre Dieulefils. Even though he's probably been dead for over 50 years, this site, again, says don't use Dieulefils's photos without explicit permission. (I hate to bring it up, actually, since many of his photos are pretty useful for some of the articles I've been working on.) Is there any way around this, or should we seek written permission to keep these kinds of photos on Commons? --dragfyre_ʞןɐʇc 14:33, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that Vietnam is the successor of French Indochina. Therefore, all photos which was taken in French Indochina should follow VN copyright law.--AM ^(talk) 14:51, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Possibly, but what about Laos and Cambodia? Indochina was composed of territory from all three countries, and I doubt that photos taken in the Cambodian part of Indochina would fall under Vietnamese copyright law. Man, this is confusing. --dragfyre_ʞןɐʇc 18:35, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

I don't know anything about Cambodia and Laos' copyright law (if they do exist) but I don't think they are so different from Vietnam's one since Vietnam has a strong influence over these two contries. However, we can solve this problem by assumption (again), we could determine the location of the photos through its contents (places, people..). If they are taken in Vietnam, they should follow Vietnam's copyright law.--AM ^(talk) 01:34, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Even if French Indochina was part of the French Empire, copyright laws in France are life of author plus 70 years. A lot of the photos taken before 1940 should now be public domain. yellowtailshark (talk) 11:35, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Good point, and that's stated at Commons:Licensing. I find the whole "life of author plus 70 years" thing difficult to deal with though, since in a lot of these cases we're not sure. But then I guess when we're not sure, we can use the publication date (pre-1940) in good faith; if it turns out that copyright is still active, the image in question can just be removed from the Commons later on. Reading up on French copyright laws really gives me a headache, like the bit about images from Government sites.

Oooh, actually, life of author plus 70 means we count 70 years after the death of the author. So photos with expired copyrights are ones whose authors died pre-1940. That's a pretty tall order to figure out. yellowtailshark (talk) 10:48, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Back to the Dieulefils question, though, this page explains the copyright status of the works displayed on the abovementioned site, stating that they are protected by

moral rights. Obviously they want permission to be obtained before using the photos, but I'm confused as to what this means for their licensing status. Does this mean the photos are still copyrighted? Some form of limited public domain? Would seeking permission for the photos and archiving said permission in OTRS suffice? --dragfyre_ʞןɐʇc

14:17, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Looks like

French copyright law#Moral rights is a good read. I think in our case, usage on Wikipedia would be reasonable so long as we do not damage the reputation of the author. But what's not clear to me yet is if moral rights enforcement is transferable. Otherwise asking for permission from a deceased author is a bit of an impossibility. yellowtailshark (talk

) 00:44, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

I've been looking at the Hanoi article for the past little while and it just occurred to me: why don't we do a small- to medium-scale collab to bring the article up to, say, GA-class? I don't know much about assessment (I'm still not entirely sure how to check articles against B-class criteria), but it seems like it would be really nice to get that article to a respectable quality level, and with enough editors pitching in we might be able to do some good work. We could even do it to celebrate the '1000 years' festival coming up. Any thoughts? How many of us would be able to give some time to such a collab? --dragfyre_ʞןɐʇc 15:52, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

It's a wonderful idea but I can't guarantee to give it much attention. I'll be busy in real life and then on wikibreak all of August. Hope people do want to do it though. Itsmejudith (talk) 21:39, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

I have the "Hanoi:Biography of a City" by William S Logan which I can email to anyone YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars and White Ferns supermodel photo poll) 03:18, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

There is a discussion concerning the name of Vietnam Oil and Gas Group (Petrovietnam) in English. The common name of this company is Petrovietnam, however there are two options for spelling, both options (Petrovietnam and PetroVietnam) in use. E.g. Reuters have used in different news different form ([1] and [2]). Same goes with other websites. The company's English website uses spelling Petrovietnam. I would like to ask your input which form should be used in the Petrovietnam's article. Beagel (talk) 04:32, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

You're right that the company is pretty consistent in their own usage throughout their website (with certain exceptions). I did a little review of some of the top sites showing up on Google and the breakdown looks like this: PetroVietnam is used by Reuters and its affiliates, Business Week, Bloomberg [3], and the English versions of Thanh Nien [4], Dan Tri [5], SGGP [6], VOVNews [7], VietnamNet (from Tuoi Tre) [8], Vietnam News [9], and even the Communist Party of VN's website [10]; Petrovietnam is used by the company itself and its subsidiaries, Oilvoice [11] (seems to be a notable industry site), Google Finance [12], and the English versions of a number of foreign (Russian, Japanese) news sites ([13],[14]) ; JBIC gets around the problem by using ALL CAPS [15]; and other companies, like Citibank, seem to be confused about the matter, using both styles on one page [16]. Usage doesn't really seem to have settled on one or the other, but we can see that many news sites tend to use PetroVietnam. I'd venture a guess that that's probably due to the influence of Reuters, which got emulated by the Vietnamese dailies on their English sites (or possibly the other way around). The reasoning is probably that they want to see the names of countries capitalized. Still, we can see that a number of sites (people who want to get it "right"?) used the non-caps version.

Any other thoughts? I could see it going either way; "Pv" is official, but "PV" is common. This is reminding me of our above discussion about diacritics, too... --dragfyre_ʞןɐʇc 14:21, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

I don't think that PVN itself care how to write its name. The only thing I see that they use the charater "V" to form up a fire which is their logo. However, VNese medias tend to captize the first words of names wherever they are.--AM ^(talk) 15:25, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

The article on Vietnamese musician

A few sundry links that might help:

• http://books.google.com/books?id=0bkEfqTlfIEC&lpg=PA162&ots=c2fXQ7xj2P&dq=%22Tr%E1%BA%A7n%20Thu%20H%C3%A0%22%20music%202002&pg=PA145#v=onepage&q=Tr%E1%BA%A7n%20Thu%20H%C3%A0&f=false (probably the best ref I found)
• http://books.google.com/books?id=K8B4N8GV2tsC&pg=PA47&dq=Tran+Thu+Ha&hl=en&ei=RBpbTMmIA8P58Ab63_XaAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=Tran%20Thu%20Ha&f=false
• http://books.google.com/books?id=C8MGRzQcfxIC&lpg=PR9&dq=Tran%20Thu%20Ha&pg=PA154#v=onepage&q=Tran%20Thu%20Ha&f=false
• http://books.google.com/books?id=0oeEpKDCmV4C&lpg=PA8&dq=%22Tran%20Thu%20Ha%22&pg=PA8#v=onepage&q=%22Tran%20Thu%20Ha%22&f=false

It's not easy to find English-language references that aren't blogs or forums... par for the course I guess. --dragfyre_ʞןɐʇc 20:17, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Saings on

Paris By Night semi-regularly YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars and White Ferns supermodel photo poll

) 00:24, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

FYI, List of railway lines in Vietnam has been listed for peer review with an aim to prepare it for Featured List submission. Please give it a look through if you have the chance. --dragfyre_ʞןɐʇc 19:25, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Hello, anyone can proofread this article please ? BTW, I think the title should be Hoa Lu (ancient capital). Thank you, Comte0 (talk) 14:04, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Hey—I left some comments on the article's talk page. --dragfyre_ʞןɐʇc 18:03, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Thank you. As Kien1980v has been the main writer of this article, I left a note on his talk page. Comte0 (talk) 21:58, 15 August 2010 (UTC)