Talk:Cui Qun

Discuss please
Repeated reversion, both violating WP:3RR and running off to various noticeboards without any real attempts to discuss the matter is a disgrace from both sides. I've protected the article, but if the silliness keeps up I'm mindful to start issuing blocks instead. Come on, you've both been here long enough to know that this is not how we do things. henrik • talk  05:20, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I still disagree that reverting blanket removals of unresolved issue tags is a 3RR offense. &mdash; The Little Blue Frog ( ribbit ) 05:47, 16 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Only obvious vandalism reversion is exempt from WP:3RR, that was not the case here. Good faith edits are never vandalism, even if you disagree with them. It even says this very clearly right in the middle of the page: Legitimate content changes, adding or removing tags, edits against consensus, and similar actions are not exempt. henrik  • talk  05:56, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

I express no opinion about the citations missing and lead too short tags. As the person who wrote this article initially, I think I am not in a good position to critique my own work stylistically or substantively, for that matter. However, I believe that the primary sources tag to be completely inappropriate. Under established policy (WP:PSTS) the sources I cited are not primary sources. If someone wants to change policy to have the sources I cited be considered primary sources, a policy discussion should be started. Until and unless the policy is changed to consider those sources to be primary sources, the tag is incorrect, misleading, and inappropriate. --Nlu (talk) 07:25, 16 April 2009 (UTC)


 * It really depends on the context of how the sources are used. If someone referenced Romeo was doing something with Juliet, and the shakespeare source is used.  Primary source is preferred.  Same with Cui Qun with the book of Tang, it is just translating what the people are doing.  A bunch of 3rd party sources cannot substitute a primary source in this cases.  In criticism of wikipedia, there are already complains about the over reliance of 3rd party source and purposely avoid primary ones.  The using of the book of Tang should be more than enough for an article of this type.  It is a transfer of info from one historical encyclopedia to another. I personally have issues with the citations missing tags.  It appears as editor harassment.  Benjwong (talk) 21:00, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Your logic is wrong. The literature largely based on writer's imagination is not compared with "historical events and figures". --Caspian blue 23:58, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
 * That is not true. Mickey Mouse doesn't even exist and it uses Disney directly as a reference.  I don't see anyone saying that Primary source is no good. Benjwong (talk) 00:05, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
 * You're still wrong and evading the main issue about "historical facts" and "sourcing". Mickey Mouse "existed" in Disney's imagination, and he made a fortune with the character. And the animations have remained as visible references and left a big step in American animation history. Critics analogize them. Can I ask you what relation between Mickey Mouse and Shakespeare?--Caspian blue 00:18, 17 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Ok I am merely using Mickey mouse the article reference format as an example. I am not trying to compare shakespeare with disney characters. Let me change example.  If the outcome of the opium war was documented in the British military records, and the Draft History of Qing.  Then both should be able to regurgitate and explain its contents as a primary source. Benjwong (talk) 00:35, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

I am having a difficult time understanding just how this discussion is contributing to improving the encyclopedia, let alone this article. This is a fairly new article -- less than two weeks old -- so it's not going to measure up to Wikipedia standards in many ways; what we should be concerned here is finding the best ways to improve this article as fast as possible, not to determine who is right.

First, there is extensive use of primary sources here -- which in itself is not necessarily a bad thing. The Book of Tang, The New Book of Tang, & Zizhi Tongjian are all primary sources in the same way that Suetonius, Tacitus, & Herodian are primary sources: they are as close to the events they describe as we can get. Now, as long as they are cited as the ultimate source for falsifiable statements -- so-&-so was born here, had a given office, married this person, etc. -- there is no problem. It is when they are cited to prove some novel thesis -- that is, violate the rules on original research -- there is a problem.

On the other hand, the use of secondary sources -- works written by experts on the subject which discuss the value of the primary sources -- help to address the concern of readers that the subject is notable. If no scholar has bothered to discuss a given subject or a historical person, why should we then assume this subject or person is worthy of an article in Wikipedia? This is where the fact that this article is less than two weeks old comes into consideration: it can be more difficult to find secondary works on a historical subject -- even very important ones -- than primary ones. Libraries have finite budgets, & when faced with a choice are more likely to buy a primary source than a secondary one -- especially if the primary source is presented in a praiseworthy manner, while the secondary source is a monograph written by an expert for other experts. I would expect Chinese history falls into this situation, & why so many historical articles rely overmuch on primary sources.

So far, all I am doing is explaining what I think is the problem, not proposing a solution.

I would think that if Little Blue Frog is concerned about the lack of secondary sources here, a far more effective solution here would not be to add tags, but to find & add those secondary sources. Some of these tags are overkill: in the fifth paragraph of the section "During Emperor Xianzong's reign", for example, I believe the single footnote at the end indicates that all of the information in that paragraph comes from that source; adding tags at the end of each sentence is unnecessary & distracting. On the other hand, their presence doesn't clearly harm the article. There was no good reason for either party to edit-war over them. A mature Wikipedian would have stopped long before 3RR was effective, & either addressed the problem (i.e., looked for secondary sources) or moved on to another article.

In short, Henrik has made the correct call here: both of you are more interested in scoring points off each other than improving the article. And if this edit war resumes when this article is unprotected, I will endorse his blocks. -- llywrch (talk) 19:12, 17 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm in a bit of a time crunch this weekend (especially since I overlooked that Previews is due by this Monday noon), so I shall be back later. I'll still drop a few notes about how to actually resolve most tags, which is not even a large or lenghty task, while making the article better:
 * (1) the current lead is incomplete and inapropriate: per WP:LEAD, it should be a self-contained summary of the whole article: an abstract of the subject's life, legacy, and notability – yet the current lead amounts only to "Cui Qun was a chancellor during the reign of a Chinese emperor" (which is even incomplete in itself since the article shows him in service of 3 more emperors). Please provide a lead that encapsulates this article – a task that the article's author was the best placed to draft, since it's not an issue of style but contents: surely Nlu knows best for what Cui Qun is most often cited or recalled, what's considered his greatness and/or failure, what summarizes his life, and why he's later been noted or notable. Providing that would clear the "lead too short" issue tag, as well as make a better introduction. &mdash; The Little Blue Frog ( ribbit ) 09:23, 18 April 2009 (UTC)
 * (1) There is NO requirement on lead size on a stub article. In fact I have taken many articles to the GA process, and the lead only matters during that time. This tag does nothing at this stage of the article. The lead tag should just be removed asap. The time you spend arguing about this tag could have been used to write the lead if you feel it is that necessary. Benjwong (talk) 02:14, 19 April 2009 (UTC)


 * (2) The article's system of mostly adding a single cite at the end of a whole paragraph isn't how it's done on en.WP, because it's not a journal article but a wiki: anyone can edit a sourced paragraph or sentence and insert some new claims not covered by the original cite, which is why a cite is considered applying only to the claim it follows, or at worst to one sentence. If the claims I tagged with "[citation needed]" are indeed already sourced by the current cites at the end of their paragraph, then clearing them is as quick and trivial as replacing them with a copy-paste of the paragraph's ref, explicitely asserting the source and ensuring proper contextual sourcing per Wikipedia's standards. This would clear the "citations missing" issue tag. &mdash; The Little Blue Frog ( ribbit ) 09:23, 18 April 2009 (UTC)


 * (2) I am looking at Featured-articles on en.wiki's main page today and not every sentence is tagged. In fact this aggressive "citation" tag has never been applied this way.  Why is this article held hostage to such tight citation requirements?  It has an edit history of 1 person, come on. Benjwong (talk) 02:14, 19 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Inline cites are not required on every sentence. The style of having a single inline reference at the end of a paragraph is a perfectly acceptable choice, though perhaps not the most common style. It is used on many articles, including several featured articles. In fact, it's my own preferred style: It avoids cluttering up text with tons of citation tags which makes the text hard to read for our viewers and the wikitext more cumbersome to edit. WP:V is important, but it should be applied with common sense and a mind to how controversial the specific material is. henrik  • talk  21:13, 19 April 2009 (UTC)


 * (3) It has always been asserted that neither Wikipedia nor Wikisource are considered sources for Wikipedia itself: for the Book of Tang, etc., please provide links to a reliable mirror not hosted on an open wiki (such as Project Gutenberg or others closed sites specialized in public domain content).
 * I do not believe any of those issues to be unreasonable since they follow en.Wikipedia's common policies and guidelines, and should be easy to clear. Some of them had already been discussed for weeks at DYK, including DYK's requirement for all articles that the hook be sourced with a direct inline cite right next to each part of the prose supporting it. Deleting these tags was not solving them.
 * As for the last tag and issue (using and relying exclusively on unfiltered 900-year-old sources in OR fashion, and not even from a modern critical/annotated edition of the Book of Tang but the raw original) I'll note that per WP:PROVEIT the burden is not on me to add the sources missing to comply with Wikipedia's requirements, but only to tag an article as needing something. If we allow tags to be removed and restoring them is called edit-warring, then the whole system becomes useless since all editors will simply remove tags and never address them. I also dispute the assertion that I was trying to "score points": it took me some significant time to read and tag claims, as well as annotate what the problems are and how to clear them, with a clear focus on improving it (people just trying to harass or troll only stick at spending 30 seconds dropping tags and don't invest any more time than that); not to mention that I was the third (and last) editor who tried to help this article pass DYK, something that was as close as Nlu adding a single copy of an already existing cite, yet was never done in 10+ days at DYK, until it expired and was deleted.
 * But the topic of Tang sources is also something else entirely that goes way beyond this single one article. I would however venture something: in a related debate, Nlu has sketched the nature and reliability status of the 24 Histories, Books of Tang, etc., but most of that stuff is not in the Wikipedia articles themselves: what about expanding these articles instead, including documentation of the opinions and criticism made about them by various authoritative modern scholars from across the world? Surely there has been modern critical editions and annotated editions of these sources, as well as monographies listing where they have been found wrong, or contradictory, or corroborated by archeology, etc. It is not directly related to this article's issue, but it would also help to develop scholarly and critically articles such as Book of Tang than fight for weeks about the Cui Qun article, especially when the latter depends largely on what can be established about the former. &mdash; The Little Blue Frog ( ribbit ) 09:23, 18 April 2009 (UTC)


 * (3) This is already in discussion over at Wikipedia talk:Did you know/TangTalk. If this was the generic Tang dynasty article, then there are plenty of sources.  If this is Cui Qun, you really are limited.  That needs to be considered. However please continue source discussion at that link. Benjwong (talk) 02:14, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Mediation request
There is a mediation request here. Anyone interested please join. Benjwong (talk) 02:53, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

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