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Romanization of Chinese word "Tao/Dao" Q: Why is this word romanized as "Tao" in this article when Wikipedia and the scholarly community both normally prefer the use of pinyin for Chinese loanwords, and "Dao" is a better phonetic transcription of the Chinese concept?
A: Because there is a very long tradition in English of writing the word as "Tao" (while still pronouncing it "dow"), and because the English Wikipedia prefers the longstanding historical form of this English word more than it prefers the use of pinyin Chinese for the Chinese word. Please visit the talk page archives for lengthy discussions of this issue. |
 | Taoism was one of the Philosophy and religion good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake. | |||||||||||||||||||||
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 | This  level-3 vital article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.It is of interest to multiple WikiProjects. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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 | This article has previously been nominated to be moved. Please review the prior discussions if you are considering re-nomination.
Discussions:
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GA Reassessment
editThe following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
- Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • • GAN review not found
- Result: Delisted. Real4jyy (talk) 13:04, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
This article has been expanded a lot in the past year with a lot of useful information, but also a lot of fancruft, a lot of messy inconsistent style usage, and ultimately all this information in presented in subpar prose that does very little to actually inform the average reader. tens of hours would likely be required to get this back to a GA status. I might even start with a revert to a previous version of the article and readd information as justified, but I don't have the time for that right now. Remsense留 15:18, 30 December 2023 (UTC)
- Delist A few notes: The "Scriptures" section has been vastly expanded into the current "Texts" section. A lot of this expansion is written in a way that does not provide a clear understanding of the significance or relationship between the texts mentioned. Some of them seem irrelevant just based on the article's own writing. The "Chinese classics" subsection begins "
Taoism draws on numerous Chinese classics that are not themselves "Taoist" texts but that remain important sources for Taoists.
" and ends with an embedded list of seemingly non-Taoist writing.
- A brief note from old GA version about pronunciation (
The character Tao 道 (or Dao, depending on the romanisation scheme)
) has been expanded into an entire section that is not clear and seems to indicate the pronunciation provided on the first line of the article is incorrect. - I started looking at the "Classification" section initially because of prose issues. The two bullets about translation would be so much clearer if they began with the words "dàojiào" and "dàojiā", rather than phrasing like "Firstly, a term encompassing a family of". I checked the first source online[1] and I don't see those quotes ("religion proper", "the teachings of the Tao") within the cited text. Also, that first cited text really deemphasizes the division noted in the Wikipedia article (
The same quandary surrounds the related issue of daojia versus daojiao, the two terms to which the first entries in this book are devoted. Even though the origins of these terms may lie in mere bibliographic categories, Taoists have sometimes used them interchangeably to denote what we call “Taoism,” and sometimes separately to distinguish the teachings of the Daode jing (and a few other works including the Zhuangzi) from “all the rest.” While these terms do not seem to have raised major issues at any time in the history of Taoism, the questions that they have generated in the scholarly realm are largely products of their early flawed translation, or rather interpretation, as “philosophical Taoism” and “religious Taoism,” respectively. Based on the way of seeing outlined above, Taoism is not exactly either a philosophy or a religion, but rather a set of consistent doctrinal notions that have taken many forms and given rise to a large variety of individual and collective practices throughout the history of the tradition.
) That division is highlighted again in the next prose section, "The distinction between Taoist philosophy and Taoist religion is an ancient, deeply-rooted one.
" and again cited to a source that does not seem to put weight on it (‘Taoism’ encompasses thought and practice as a ‘philosophy’, ‘religion’, or a combination of both.
[2]). Rjjiii (talk) 13:23, 6 January 2024 (UTC)- Do you think it may be viable to revert the article to an early 2023 revision? Remsense留 06:33, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
- I pulled up the first version from 2023[3] and checked to see how the issues I noted looked a year ago:
- Chinese classics: This is just the I Ching at this point and the connection to Taoism is more clear.
- Classification/Categorization: More of an issue than the prose, is that the dichotomy expressed in the article wasn't backed up by the sources. I think that religion v. philosophy view is even more present here.
- I wouldn't say that a revert to this version would fix all the issues, Rjjiii (talk) 01:12, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
- Rjjiii, would it be a good start, in your mind? One that would turn this from probably just delisting, to a project that one or two people (including me, likely) could tackle to keep that from happening? Remsense留 06:19, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
- It'll depend on the section. Reverting Chinese classics back to I Ching resolves the "fancruft" issue there. The classification section had problems with writing against its cited sources earlier than 2023.[4] Good luck with the article, and if you ping me as you make progress, I'll strike my notes above, Rjjiii (talk) 07:00, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
- Rjjiii, would it be a good start, in your mind? One that would turn this from probably just delisting, to a project that one or two people (including me, likely) could tackle to keep that from happening? Remsense留 06:19, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
- I pulled up the first version from 2023[3] and checked to see how the issues I noted looked a year ago:
- Do you think it may be viable to revert the article to an early 2023 revision? Remsense留 06:33, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
- Remsense, is there a specific version that you find still meets the criteria? If you link to one, I'll take a look and respond back here. Rjjiii (talk) 03:17, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
- AirshipJungleman29, Rjjiii, I won't be able to look at this until Thursday, my apologies for starting something and not being able to finish it promptly. If someone else wants to take action in that time, it's within their right to do so. — Remsense诉 02:49, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
- No worries, take your time. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 03:41, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
- AirshipJungleman29, I am back—apologies. I will provide a substantive assessment shortly. — Remsense诉 00:29, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
- Okay! I think I have a plan.
- Splitting. Taoist ethics, and maybe Taoist schools and Taoist texts should be their own articles, which should be related summary-style in this article. §History is far too in-depth—shuffle to History of Taoism, and summary-style further. I think if any glossary page on the site is justified, we should have a Glossary of Taoism.
- Partial reversion (反) – with the early 2023 revision as a baseline, this can now be done section-by-section.
- At that point, we can start to tackle some of the (I would say perennial) issues with clarity and definitions brought up by @Rjjiii.
- Okay! I think I have a plan.
- AirshipJungleman29, I am back—apologies. I will provide a substantive assessment shortly. — Remsense诉 00:29, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
- No worries, take your time. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 03:41, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
- AirshipJungleman29, Rjjiii, I won't be able to look at this until Thursday, my apologies for starting something and not being able to finish it promptly. If someone else wants to take action in that time, it's within their right to do so. — Remsense诉 02:49, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
- Delist - there are too many problems with this article in its current state; it's too long, devotes too much attention to certain areas at the expense of others, has inconsistent referencing styles, includes un-cited material etc. It isn't Good Article quality. Midnightblueowl (talk) 09:31, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
Daoism–Taoism romanization issue
editThe recent AfD nomination closed with consensus to merge, but the non-Tao/Dao-specific content seems redundant at Romanization of Chinese, while Taoism should probably not expend that much text on the English word for it per WP:NOTDICT. Hence blanking and redirecting here instead. Felix QW (talk) 20:55, 17 August 2024 (UTC)
article cleaning
edit"The distinction between Taoism in philosophy and Taoist religion is an ancient, deeply-rooted one. Taoism is a positive philosophy that aims for the holistic unification of an individual's reality with everything that is not only real but also valuable, encompassing both the natural world and society." This is non-sequitorial.FourLights (talk) 16:57, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
I tried to make this more coherent to what I think it was trying to say. But I don't have access to this source.FourLights (talk) 00:39, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
the dao companion
editAlthough I'd have to look at the article more, I'd like to incorporate dao companion to chinese philosophy as a source some time. I believe the Dao Companion is considered a good source. But I may be busier moving. You can voice objection to this effort.FourLights (talk) 00:44, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
This would be aimed more at tidying up existing material that may have old sources like A.C. Graham 1989. He's (often good early theory) but maybe some extra sourcing.FourLights (talk) 00:45, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
Tao & Te Decoded
editTao: A Mathematical Representation of Tao
Te: The Paradigm of Tao-Based Approaches Exemplified in the Tao Te Ching
The decoding is based on Tao Te Ching (Mawangdui Silk Texts). LiweiZhang2050 (talk) 03:06, 9 May 2025 (UTC)
Pinyin vs. Wade–Giles
editWas there any consensus reached about whether we should change the article name to its pinyin variant? I'm in favor of changing it as well as for the article on the Daodejing. I went through the archives here but all the discussions are from over ten years ago, and I'd assume pinyin versions of these names have become much more common since then. It would also help to standardize the articles under MOS:ZH. I'd like to get a sense of where things stand before I try to pull a Be bold. Thanks! SanKanshi (talk) 18:13, 19 July 2025 (UTC)