User talk:Remsense

Cultural Revolution

Your recent edits at Cultural Revolution are very good.

You templated the background section as needing further context. I'm willing to help here if I can. What do you suggest lay readers need more context for? I generally see the section as too long (consistent with your templating of the article overall). It strikes me, for example, that the amount of Great Leap Forward material could be shortened. This is only one view of course, and we might develop some context and trim others. JArthur1984 (talk) 15:47, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

Honestly, I think a really brutally sharp, quick history of social revolution would really help. maybe i could cram it into a paragraph. i feel like the CR can be viewed as springing out of nowhere, and starting with the GLF is not quite enough. so like, touching on the idea of this all-encompassing social and cultural revolution developing out of the political revolutions archetypal in europe, say french → russian → xinhai → 1949 would really help guide the reader, in my mind. i *do* realize i tagged the article as being too long, but maybe it should be too long. :). thank you for the interest! Remsense聊 15:56, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

I like your idea and encourage it!

I tend to agree that the article is too long overall. But I do not view these ideas as inconsistent. Part of the reason I believe the article is too long is that there is too much focus on personalities or visceral incidents and not enough on broader trends and forces. JArthur1984 (talk) 16:11, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

There's a lot of factors to this, but the way China and its history is talked about and understood in the Anglophone sphere is so alienating so often, and I think a lot of it has to do with the way the languages are different, e.g. The Big Scary Calques that crop up everywhere, that are not strange or overly reifying in Chinese but come off often as stilted, robotic, or alien in English (if I can indulge some lazy adjectives), especially when they pass on to people who aren't familiar with Chinese—it certainly takes two to tango here, as it were. I think there's a lot of work I can do on here that's just taking either work done by knowledgeable people for whom English does not happen to be their first language, and giving it a copyedit or two, or intent fully working to remedy the patterns people often get into when talking about China. :) and integrating it like it deserves into the grand history of revolution and entering modernity really helps with that i think Remsense聊 17:14, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

An excellent perspective. JArthur1984 (talk) 18:20, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

This is still on my to-do list, but I've been daunted by the task. I don't want to leave the tag there forever, so I'm going to double down and try to draft it tonight. Remsense留 02:06, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

Rapid tagging

Hi, I keep seeing your name pop up on my watchlist tagging pages with {{cleanup-lang}} without like doing any cleanup on the articles. I've seen you a lot in the Chinese history topic area, so I know you can help. I think it would be kind of you to do some of the cleanup if you feel like it's an issue.

Fifteen or twenty years ago, we didn't have the templates to call out specific scripts, or there was no guideline to place them consistently, so older articles are usually going to need language tagging cleanup, and I hope it's not your intent to find them all this weekend. Kindly, Folly Mox (talk) 20:19, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Oh, this is at least half for my own collation so I can circle back around to them at some point! I've already chewed through tagging a lot of important articles in this vein (i.e. Chinese characters, Chinese language, Yue Chinese, Hokkien), and I'm trying to rig AutoWikibrowser to use the categories to help automate the tagging process. I hope it didn't come off as performative in any way, I'm just trying to be smart about being able to get this accomplished, and if anyone else wants to help out that's great too :)

But no, I'm not going to tag all of them, I just figured I'd create a medium sized batch to chew through next! 💚

Remsense聊 20:26, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Ok that's a relief. I was hoping the project was for something like that. Thanks for being responsible about it ☺️ Folly Mox (talk) 21:51, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Large monolithic edits

Hi Remsense. I appreciate your enthusiasm, but I really wish you wouldn't bundle up huge edits like this – it makes it extremely difficult for other editors to see what's going on. I'd encourage you to make incremental edits to the target article (with edit summaries for each part) instead of batching them up elsewhere. Kanguole 23:45, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Oh, I apologize. If anything, I started doing such because I felt bad about spamming peoples' watchlists, plus being self-conscious about errors I make in the process of editing—but I realize I've very much over-corrected. Thanks for letting me know! Remsense聊 23:48, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. I get lots of spam on my watchlist from bots and people fiddling with spaces, capitalization of templates and so on, but I don't think of content edits, like you do, as spam. Kanguole 23:59, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

I appreciate it. If you want, I can revert the monolith and re-add it in chunks explaining what I did for each section. Remsense聊 00:02, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

No need. I'm happy to look forward. Kanguole 00:33, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Xian Y-7 etc.

Hi, as per my comment on WP:RMTR, just wanted to discuss the close at Talk:Xian Y-7. The proposed move doesn't seem to conform to WP:COMMONNAME, I can hardly see it in any sources, so IMHO it should not go ahead. Please could you relist or otherwise give a rationale for the decision to move? Thanks  — Amakuru (talk) 19:49, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

I've done so. Remsense聊 19:51, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

History of printing

By any chance do you have

• Shelagh Vainker in Anne Farrer (ed), "Caves of the Thousand Buddhas", 1990, British Museum publications, ISBN 0-7141-1447-2

as it seems likely to be more authoritative than the Cunningham book I cited? 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 20:38, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

I have tracked down a few sources for this book, including a copy you can borrow on the Open Library. If you would like another full copy of this book, please feel free to email me. Remsense聊 20:53, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

TYVM, don't know why that didn't occur to me as I've used the Open Library so heavily for other articles. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 14:23, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

It doesn't help, unfortunately, it is just a catalogue of the cave discoveries.

History of printing in East Asia also says 220 BCE but without any citation. The next sentence cites

• Tsien, Tsuen-Hsuin (1985). Paper and Printing. Needham, Joseph Science and Civilization in China. Vol. 5 part 1. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-08690-6.
• Suarez, Michael F.; Woudhuysen, H. R., eds. (2013). The Book: A Global History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 574–576. ISBN 9780191668746.

but the OL doesn't have either. Google has the cited pages from Suarez & Woudhuysen, which gives the earliest date as 6th century. It doesn't have Tsien. I'll just have to hope that Cunningham used a reliable source, not Wikipedia, but I have to say I'm concerned. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 15:09, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

User:JMF, Internet Archive have a copy of Science and Civilization in China 5.I at here (free registration required). Page 8 talks about "taking inked rubbings from stone" inscriptions, but dates it to the 6th century CE, not 220 BCE, suspiciously equivalent to the Qin unification (which I suppose is non-suspiciously the terminus ante quem non of the Qin Stone Drums, a known target of transmitted rubbings). I haven't gone farther in depth trying to verify the sentence in the lead of the linked article, but I'm wondering why taking rubbings from inscriptions on durable materials is considered "printing" but making inked markings using inscribed seal-stamps isn't? Anyway good luck. Folly Mox (talk) 17:34, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

thank you Folly! If you need anything more JMF, lmk Remsense聊 17:52, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

thank you Folly from me too! I must have asked Archive.org the wrong question as it denied having that volume.

It is certainly arguable that a rubbing is a kind of printing in that there is a single master and multiple copies can be taken from it. As But it is not printing as is generally understood, where the master is inked and pressed onto the receiving material. As Tsien explains

(iv) Inked squeezes and stencil duplication
Rubbing is a process of making inked squeezes on paper from inscriptions on stone, metal, bone, or other hard-surfaced materials. The process of stone rubbing is very similar to that of block printing; the difference lies only in the methods of engraving and of duplicating. Except for very few cases, inscriptions on stone are always cut into the surface in intaglio with characters in the normal positive form. When a rubbing is made, the paper is laid on the stone and squeezed against the surface. Ink is applied to the surface of the paper, thus producing a white text on black background. The wood block, on the other hand, is always cut in relief with characters as a mirror image. When a print is made, ink is applied to the block, the paper is placed on it, and the back of the paper is brushed to obtain a black text on white background. Although the basic materials for engraving and the end products are different, the purpose of making duplications and the use of ink and paper as media are the same.
The technique of rubbing involves the processes of laying the paper on stone, tamping the paper into the intaglio, applying ink to the paper, and removing the paper from the surface after completion." The whole process is much more complicated and slower than that of printing.

— Tsien, page 143

See also lithograph.

My concern is that there is a recent Chinese nationalist tendency to claim prior art for anything, evidence and world-wide-view be damned (see nine dashed line, for example). Cunningham is co-published in China, so I'm wary. WP:VNT has its limits.

• Cunningham, James (2021). The Chinese Invent Printing. Crazy cool China. New York, Beijing: Rosen Publishing, Sinolingua. ISBN 9781499469233.

But Tsien gives the detail that was probably wrangled to support the Han Dyasty claim

The use of stencils was another pre-printing method for duplication. The stencil was usually made of a sheet of thick paper perforated with needles to form the designs to be reproduced. The stencil was laid on the surface and the design was transferred by applying ink to the perforations. The date of the earliest use of the stencil is unknown, but the recent discovery of silk fabrics printed in coloured patterns from the Han tomb at Ma-Wang-Tui, Chhangsha, indicates that the technique can be traced back to the —2nd century. Animal skin or thin silk fabric treated with varnish or some other tree sap may have been used at this time, and certainly such a use of skin and paper was common in the Thang and Sung. Several paper stencils with perforated designs of Buddhist figures have been found in Tunhuang, together with finished stencilled pictures on paper, silk and on plastered walls (Fig. 1109); other paper stencils of later dates already in museums were used for the reproduction of designs on textiles.

— Tsien, page 146

and that is definitely not printing. So I believe that the problem is solved! Thank you again both. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 20:43, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

Your signature

Your signature is quite disruptive. In forums such as Wikipedia:Teahouse it stands out, catches the eye, draws attention. These are all unwelcome things for other users. Just as wikipedia does not carry adverts, wikipedia users should not change their signatures into what is, in effect, an advert. Please consider changing your signature back to a normal sized signature. --Tagishsimon (talk) 18:30, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

My apologies. I've attempted to be within what I perceived to be acceptable norms as detailed on WP:SIG. I'll either figure out how to make it acceptable to more people, or I'll stay out of places like the Teahouse where it's causing a disruption. It is exactly a normal size for a signature, but I understand what you mean.
I think it's silly to call it an advert, though, and I'll stand up for myself there. Remsense聊 19:55, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

WP:Other stuff exists but I can't see what caused Tagishsimon to pick your sig for denunciation and ignore the rather more lurid example in WP:Teahouse#Sub heading problem a little earlier on the page. And neither would figure in the Signatures Hall of Infamy, there are many more eyeball-threatening examples.

Furthermore, Wikipedia:Signatures#Customizing how you see your signature has an example that looks like yours (though rather less restrained than yours). I guess that what Tagishsimon is the guidance at WP:CUSTOMSIG/P, which says A distracting, confusing, or otherwise unsuitable signature may adversely affect other users. For example, some editors find that long formatting disrupts discourse on talk pages, or makes working in the edit window more difficult but as the guidance stands at present, it is not obvious that yours contravenes it. Unless it is visually disturbing to a class of readers (for example, red on green), when it would violate MOS:ACCESS but if so, it is not one I've come across. (BTW, I see no advertisement either.) --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 13:13, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

The custom sig is hardly "disruptive". Custom sigs with racecars and flags and nationalist mottos and three long separate links for talk, contribs, and etc, or exhortations to lend a hand at the editor's pet project, or cannot be typed except by cooypaste, or don't represent the editor's username in any fashion: those are disruptive. I'd include sigs set in Comic Sans or Papyrus if I had either of those typefaces installed. Remsense's is fine, and Tagishsimon is overstating their case. If one or two more people complain, then it's worth changing. Folly Mox (talk) 14:58, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

For the record, I have slimmed the vertical height of the signature down a pixel, because the way it interrupted line height did bother me, but I've decided not to otherwise alter it, per above. Remsense聊 20:58, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

ArbCom 2023 Elections voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2023 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 11 December 2023. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2023 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:44, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

October: The Story of the Russian Revolution moved to draftspace

Thanks for your contributions to October: The Story of the Russian Revolution. Unfortunately, I do not think it is ready for publishing at this time because it has no sources. I have converted your article to a draft which you can improve, undisturbed for a while.

Please see more information at Help:Unreviewed new page. When the article is ready for publication, please click on the "Submit your draft for review!" button at the top of the page OR move the page back. microbiologyMarcus ^{(petri dish•growths)} 14:08, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

The only reason it was in mainspace is because Wiki policy does not allow non-free images to be used in other namespaces. Could you please undo the move? I cannot, and there is a list of sources I was going to use on the associated talk page. Remsense留 16:08, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

What is your rush to have an image on the draft? The article as it exists now is not suitable for mainspace, and would be better at home in a user sandbox or draft space. Currently, you have 4 empty sections on the article. microbiologyMarcus ^{(petri dish·growths)} 20:01, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

I just wanted to get it out of the way so I could check the infobox off. I wouldn't make an article in mainspace to let it linger in an unacceptable state for any period outside my direct attention. Articles are often briefly in unacceptable states, it should be acceptable shortly. I appreciate the new page patrol work of course, I'll be more careful in the future to make it more clear that the article is going to be rapidly put into place, like by adding the list of citations. Remsense留 20:08, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

I was going to draftify this, but saw it had already been draftified. However, why did you move it back mainspace? You could have actually made it fit for mainspace by, you know, making it verifiable, but instead you reverted the draftification with no changes to the state of the "article". Building an article is what draftspace is for. Edward-Woodrow (talk) 21:31, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

It is due to the non-free image. But my choices at the moment are to potentially create copyright problems, or otherwise spend more time fussing with the infobox rather than drafting the rest of the article.

Having this experience now, I will wait to add them to new articles so these issues don't crop up. Keeping in mind I don't expect people from new page patrol to implicitly trust me specifically to not leave it in this state, but everyone who's viewed the page in its present state has been from new page patrol. It does not seem like a more significant problem than the copyright one to me. Remsense留 21:38, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Edward-Woodrow, this is not a rhetorical barb, I'm genuinely curious what I should think. What utility does the {{under construction}} template have if articles such as these that it is attached to should be immediately removed from mainspace? I think "creating" should be omitted from that template if I'm understanding the norm. Remsense留 21:53, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

I was actually just thinking about that. The template is useful for restructurings, major edits or rewrites that might leave parts dangling or poorly-organized, or creating an article in chunks – it's sourced fine, but all the information isn't there, one still needs to get the infobox error sorted out, and all those other little problems. It isn't for drafting an article. I think that leaving completely unsourced articles with empty section headers around in mainspace is unduly disruptive to the reader's experience. Edward-Woodrow (talk) 22:00, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

I agree, my point is just a pragmatic one, as you know. Remsense留 22:20, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Personally, I think this is a matter of the order of operations then. If non free use imagery can’t be used in draft space, simply add that image then once the rest of the article is done. There’s no need for that to be the first and only thing completed on a main space article. microbiologyMarcus ^{(petri dish·growths)} 12:03, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Aye. Live and learn! Remsense留 15:06, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Editor experience invitation

Hi Remsense. :) I'm looking for people to interview here. Feel free to pass if you're not interested. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 02:10, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

thanks

thanks. want to be friends? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cheesemaster12 (talk • contribs) 05:12, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Cheesemaster12, I'm everybody's friend!
I also looked at all the edits you've made so far, and just so you know: it is usually not helpful to say an article is too long, we have rules about length and generally make sure articles are as long as their subject requires and not too long. Those rules are here, if you'd like to read them.
Also: if something really big is missing or present on an important article, it is probably (though not always) backed up by a lot of reliable sources, so I would look at those if you are wondering about something like the Billy Goat Curse, or whether Einstein struggled in elementary school. They're the little numbers like ^[1] that you can click on, they tell you where a piece of information was referenced from when the sentence was written. Wikipedia does not allow people to make stuff up or do original research, everything has to be said in some reliable source. Remsense留 05:19, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

November 2023 GOCE drive award

		The Modest Barnstar
		This barnstar is awarded to Remsense for copy edits totaling over 4,000 words (including bonus and rollover words) during the GOCE November 2023 Backlog Elimination Drive. Congratulations, and thank you for your contributions! Dhtwiki (talk) 09:23, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

DYK for History of Qing (People's Republic)

On 8 December 2023, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article History of Qing (People's Republic), which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that the Chinese government began compiling an official history of the Qing dynasty in 2002, but as of 2023 a protracted political review is forestalling its publication? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/History of Qing (People's Republic). You are welcome to check how many pageviews the nominated article or articles got while on the front page (here's how, History of Qing (People's Republic)), and the hook may be added to the statistics page after its run on the Main Page has completed. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.

Z1720 (talk) 00:02, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

transformed characters

Since the stupid encryption protocol upgrade of December 2019, the only way I can view or edit Wikipedia at all from home is by a circuitous and indirect route which involves using a non-fully-Unicode-compliant tool. When I edited the Language Ref. Desk recently to fix a typo in the word "realization", using public WiFi, I saw the Chinese charcter in your signature then, but it was completely invisible to me when I was editing Talk:Sinosphere from home (and I had no control over what the non-fully-Unicode-compliant tool would do to it). I often take measures to avoid foreseeable problems this might cause, but if I have no idea that there is a problem, then I don't know to try to avert it... AnonMoos (talk) 07:04, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

It's no significant issue, I really was just curious if you knew why, and thank you for letting me know! Don't worry about it at all: if I'm talking to someone that might want to click on it, I can simply readd it quickly. Cheers! Remsense留 10:16, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Hello

Hello, you have taken some interest in the past, since my page under construction is considered too detailed, do you know how to make notes easily, I can offload some details into notes for verifiability and the more interested reader. FourLights (talk) 17:14, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

List of non-standard dates

I just wanted to add that what I removed also wasn't a specific date. It isn't consistent at all with the other entries. Knowledgekid87 (talk) 06:27, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Goguryeo maintenance template

Could you specify the possible issues regarding language sections? Thanks in advance. There's some errors afloat like the spelling notation of 고ᇢ롕〮, which would be something akin to kwòwólyéng (Yale) and goworyeong in Modern Korean rather than the concurrent gowoyeori Other than that the language parts have been maintained, reviewed and rereviewed regarding academic sources by a number of contributors, including myself, thus tend to be fleshed out more than the rest.

FingonFindekáno (talk) 10:20, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Again, as I said in the template itself, there is an overabundance of foreign language text generally in the article that is unhelpful to the vast majority of readers; in specific, there are often Chinese characters accompanying linked concepts, which is proscribed in MOS:ZH. Remsense留 02:57, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Naming convention about Taiwan/ROC(Taiwan)

Regarding naming convention about either Taiwan/ROC(Taiwan), per the discussion in Talk:Alexander Yui, and also I had looked about WP:DRN#Republic of China (Taiwan),
User:CCL2023 is fine with Republic of China (Taiwan) about nationality/citzenship, I would like to ask if this is Ok. if this is feasible? Thanks. --- Cat12zu3 (talk) 12:42, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

@Cat12zu3

Thanks so much for your help. CCL2023 (talk) 12:50, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Hi all. Just want to point out that this is an unneeded and potentially confusing reference. Ultimately, Republic of China (Taiwan) links to Taiwan, and the main article is named so due to years of discussion and deliberation. You wouldn’t reference William Jefferson Clinton in other articles if you’re just mentioning Bill Clinton. So per MOS and WP:COMMONNAME, think it’s most appropriate to keep references to Taiwan as-is, and use ROC only to distinguish from Empire of Japan or PRC when there was overlapping history. Butterdiplomat (talk) 13:05, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

@Butterdiplomat

You are very good when you mention about this case “Empire of Japan or PRC”. I hope one day you can visit Taiwan, a beautiful island in east Pacific Ocean. For me, I will go for the official name from the official government link “https://english.president.gov.tw/Default.aspx”. If the country name is changed, I would change or update my information accordingly.

Again, thanks the help from @Cat12zu3. CCL2023 (talk) 13:22, 12 December 2023 (UTC)