Template:Did you know nominations/Xiaoxing Xi


 * The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as |this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Allen3 talk 11:55, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

Xiaoxing Xi

 * ... that Professor Xiaoxing Xi was arrested for allegedly sending restricted technology to China, but the prosecutors dropped all charges when scientists found that they had misconstrued the evidence?
 * Reviewed: Residences of the Royal House of Savoy

Created by Zanhe (talk). Self-nominated at 02:27, 15 September 2015 (UTC).


 * God, I hate names like this. Prof, y're not Japanese! Anyway, on it. — Llywelyn II   05:15, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Symbol question.svg New enough at time of creation; long enough for purposes (~2400 elig. char.) with some sourced treatment of his personal life and publications to avoid  (i.e., singular) focus on the spy charges; Earwig detects massive copyvio but it's (a) just people copying your article and (b) you copying and pasting his papers instead of formatting them into our templates, something I was going to fix anyway; sourced to major and mostly NPOV news outlets. (If there was bias in this case of NYT reporting, people can address it on the talk page; they and the Guardian are both fairly even-handed when conservatives are not involved.) No image.

Minor issues: The lead is badly formatted: pinyin is not a language. It's not your fault, though. It's a known problem with the zh template which you used in good faith. (Especially with the number of Chinese-language articles you create, it'd be good if you cut it out but I know it's not really your problem. May I suggest the Chinese infobox as a much better formatted alternative, though?) There's also no call for a #Life and a #Personal section. (Fix'd.) #External links sections always use the plural even when there's only a single member. (Fix'd.) The standard name of such sections is #Works, not "#Selected publications". (Fix'd.)

Major issues: Given that this is a and a very touchy and high-profile subject, you cannot say "misconstrue" and leave it at that. Wiktionary and many free internet dictionaries treat "misconstrue" as a synonym of "misunderstand" but that's only partially true. It's really "take the wrong way" and can be intentional in a way that "misunderstand" never means. (The OED sensibly has the intentional sense as its first def.) None of the sourcing supports (or likely could support) the allegation that the DOJ was deliberately framing the guy. I emended the lead sentence to have both "misunderstand" and "misconstrue"; the hook needs to include both or use the more neutral "misunderstand" or "mistaken". The works cited were in a plagiarized (and needlessly verbose) form. (Fix'd: just don't unfix it.)

Minor issues, Part the Second: Similarly, we know the exact charges filed against him and we know that they were erroneous, so it's inappropriate (per the err-on-the-side-of-extreme-caution standards of ) to leave the word "alleged" in place despite its technical accuracy for the situation at the time. (Fix'd.) It's not as important as the "misconstrue" issue but I would suggest removing it from the hook as well and using something like "charged" and "released when prosecutors..." or "exonerated when scientists..." — Llywelyn II   10:22, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Can't fix the prof's name, although I actually find it pretty cool to be called Prof. XXX.
 * Yup, isn't your problem. Just complaining.
 * The zh template is not perfect, but I don't like the Chinese template either, takes too much space. Anyways, I usually don't even put pinyin in articles unless it's quite different from the person's English name or in different order (as in this case).
 * You can make it work if you've got some pics & it's an improvement over zh but I agree I like my way better than both. But then someone will come along in few days and think the others are "improvements" just because they're templates and back we go.
 * I disagree that "misconstrue" necessarily implies intention, see dictionary entries, and the word is used in the NYT article. But it's not a big deal for me, and I'll change it to "misunderstood".
 * It's fine to use it that way yourself but, if you're trying to claim it doesn't have that sense, naaah: it completely does. Not normally an issue but is much stricter than what we need to do for the third cousin of a 4th-century emperor.
 * Titles and authors of publications are not copyrighted (otherwise nobody can cite them), and copying bibliographic entries is routinely done. But thanks for formatting the entries and adding DOI links, they are much better now.
 * You'd think that's true but it really isn't, unless it's strictly adhering to a common style guide like MLA. It's the same reason you can't just cut-and-paste all the citations from the OED into Wiktionary. There's some rights people still have about the styling, choices, formatting, and code that can be an issue. In any case, the way I did it is best (you don't see any of the name clutter but it's all there for searches and the curious) but if you're not interested in doing it yourself, I understand: just cut out all the people except the one for your article and "& al." the other guys.
 * Incorporating all your suggestions, I'm proposing the revised hook:
 * ALT1 ... that Professor Xiaoxing Xi was arrested on charges of having sent restricted technology to China, but was exonerated when scientists found that the prosecutors had misunderstood the evidence?
 * -Zanhe (talk) 21:46, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Symbol confirmed.svg ALT1 is G2G. — Llywelyn II   07:53, 1 October 2015 (UTC)