Talk:Manga/Archive 4

message: When I added the etymology section with it's references, Timothy Perper put  tags to all sentences that have already their references. What should I refer any further? Please tell me. --Kasuga 13:54, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry, Kasuga, but most of your statements are not referenced. You need specific references to the works of the authors you mention. You cite Kern's 2007 book, apparently without noticing that we have already cited it and his 2006 IJOCA symposium on kibyoshi. You need page references to Kern if you if you intended to use him to support your statements. Moreover, Kern barely discusses Hokusai; if you look at the new bibliography we added in our revision, you'll find a convenient reference to Hokusai's manga. Those are the kinds of citation you need, and I, for one, would like to see some more references to the Japanese literature. Timothy Perper 14:39, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for your quick reply, Timothy Perper. I rewrote the sentences and the reference's information based on the material that I own. I deleted the Mankaku Zuihitsu because the material doesn't refer to the book. Are you satisfied in it? If something is insufficient, please tell me in this talkpage before putting tags to all my sentences. --Kasuga 15:31, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Citation needed

message: God be with you, folks, and I mean that sincerely.
I can no longer take any responsibility for the content or structure of the manga article. Kasuga just inserted some changes, in obvious genuine good faith and with every intention of helping. His contribution lacks citations for a number of statements, and he cites Adam Kern's book apparently without knowing that it has already been cited in the revision (he added a new reference). That leads to some musing.
Wikipedians seem very proud that "anyone can edit Wikipedia." In one sense, they should be proud, but in another sense, Wikipedia is -- or should be -- cause for considerable, shall I say, modesty. One cannot build a coherent building simply by putting bricks and planks wherever one wants; one needs a  plan. That's what artchitects are for. But this article, and a great many articles on Wikipedia, have neither architects nor architecture: they are more or less random and incoherent jumbles of facts, opinions, information and misinformation all heaped together and fiercely protected by their amateur carpenters and brick-layers.
I have years of experience on the internet and have rarely seen flame wars as vicious and as hate-filled as the edit wars on Wikipedia. These are not about content, not in the sense of what the article says, but about ego, turf wars, and ownership. Right below this editing box it says "Encyclopedic content must be verifiable." Well, not really, because the norm on Wikipedia is not to use citations at all, but to insert "original research," and half-complete ideas all felt to be True by someone. The result is not merely an incoherent jumble, but an incoherent jumble of half-truths and opinions.
When I began editing and revising the manga article about a month ago, I had hoped to reshape it into a useful architecture. With the invaluable help of Peregrine Fisher, we were able to get fairly far -- up to the history of shojo manga, and, over on my user Sandbox Timothy Perper/Sandbox5, a first draft of the sections on shonen manga, gekiga, and the role of women in shonen manga. We put in nearly 100 references, and the three sections I just mentioned would have added more -- with the result that our contributions were throroughly referenced. 
That would have finished the section on the History of Manga After World War II, to be followed by the next section, about the History of Manga Before World War 2. That then would have ended the history sections, and we were planning next to insert sections on Manga Genres and Their Stylistics. It would have introduced another 50 or so references.
What I had not anticipated was the egotism, turf warring, and claims of ownership (though not in that word) that descended on the article. You'll have to forgive my naivete -- I work, and have worked for some 40 years, in professional print scholarship, where the rules are very different. Some of things I've seen and read on Wikipedia, especially about turf warring, would get people fired from a job within minutes if they tried it in the real world out here -- but Wikipedia isn't the real world out here. It's more like a high school playground, with angry and hostile kids screaming and pushing and shoving. It's no wonder that out here -- in the real world, I mean -- Wikipedia is treated like a high school newspaper: a great source of not quite trustworthy news about pop culch and not quite trustworthy summaries of somebody's coursework in something or other. Wikipedia has many miles and years to go to overcome that, and it might never.
A harsh judgment? No, not really. Wikipedia lacks the structure to become anything else. As long as you allow egotism, turf wars, and ownership battles to rule the roost, you will have only amateur work. As long as you do not recognize the need for planning an article rather than throwing bricks in a pile and hoping they will magically become a castle, you will have only jumbles of incoherent stuff, none of it referenced, all of it defended ferociously by various people against who I do not know.
I will make one further change to the manga article. A while ago, I promised Kasuga that I would replace some material temporarily removed about the history of manga before World War II. I am going to do that next, creating a new subsection to receive it. I can't vouch for its accuracy or verifiability; you'll have to take that up with Kasuga. But I did promise him I would do it, and so I will.
In any event, sayonara. God be with you, and I mean that sincerely.
Timothy Perper 14:39, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, there's a reason why we do have guidelines.  Unfortunately, sometimes, even those guidelines become disregarded by many users simply because they do not know about them or forget about them.  Plenty of this kind of in-fighting occur in 9/11 articles in particular.  So, while, all that occurs, it's all a matter of handling it. KyuuA4 06:43, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sayonara 

message: On October 7, 2007, two anonymous users made a bunch of changes in the manga article. User 190.40.176.127 spent most of their time changing "American" into "U.S.A." regardless of grammar. I reverted many of these, but kept them when "American" seemed too broad -- then I made it into "US". Whereupon anonymous user 69.134.91.171 came along and added a sentence in the opening that said that manga means only Japanese manga. User 69.134.91.171 did not bother to read the article; no, they know it all without reading. So 69.134.91.171 simply ignored OEL manga, Amerimanga, la nouvelle manga... I took that out too. (sigh).They'll be back with their hobbyhorses and invincible ignorance.  
Timothy Perper 07:40, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reverted changes made by two anonymous users 

message: In the section "What to do with what we've been given", Kasuga-san has said that the material in the section "The History Before World War II" is copyrighted and that it was placed in the article in violation of copyright.
I have therefore removed it completely, together with the section heading. I am acting here with what I believe US law calls "due diligence," which means, again as I understand it, that mistakes like this must be rectified as soon as they are called to one's attention. Therefore DO NOT REVERT this deletion. It is not vandalism but is mandated by the Wikipedia policy, quoted immediately under this editing box, that "Content that violates any copyright will be deleted."
Kasuga-san's posting is dated "10:34, 12 October 2007" and my removal is dated "11:38, 12 October 2007" (both are UTC).The error was made in the good faith belief that there were no copyright impediments to including the material, and was made without malice or intention of causing harm. Moreover, the material was deleted in only a little more than an hour after Kasuga-san notified me about the copyright situation.
Once again, do not revert this change.
Timothy Perper 12:00, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removed Copyrighted Material 

message: Wikipe-tan just got pulled again by our watchdog of the Manga page, SeizureDog. OK with me; I don't care one way or the other. Timothy Perper 21:49, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: She keeps popping up both here and the anime article. It's just iritating to me since she's never been in a comic nor animated. I have no problem with her being in Moe anthropomorphism or Fan service, she's good examples there. I just hate how she's being forced into articles she doesn't belong just because she's free. --SeizureDog 03:14, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Forced?  There's nothing forced about Wikipe-tan.  If anything, she serves as a generic model for one type of anime/manga character.  It's difficult enough as it is to describe anime/manga in general.  Plus, the term "official" to anime/manga can be moot, especially when the manga article has reservations for a doujinshi section.  Regardless, in a similar fashion, inclusion or exclusion of Wikipe-tan is... either-or. KyuuA4 10:25, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  So we're back again to no picture. How about the idea of some time ago simply to put in the kanji for manga? I don't think Wikipe-tan is being included because she's free, but because she does typify one kind of manga/anime drawing style for depicting girls and women. I mean she's cute and harmless, unlike Motoko Kusanagi, who's gorgeous and deadly, or Cutey Honey, who's sexy and deadly, or Gardina, who's sexy and friendly, or -- and so on endlessly. Or we could use Lord Sesshōmaru, from Inu-Yasha. But -- we've been over this before -- no individual image is going to capture the essences of manga. So I still like using the kanji and nothing else.Timothy Perper 14:21, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, good to go with the kanji then; as it would be "objection free". KyuuA4 18:35, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps using a small Tezuka image, particularly Astro Boy, would be a good choice? It would use an image that could be generally agreed-upon as being iconic.--75.68.233.187 19:40, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

text: We put up the kanji image. It's from 1798, so it's in the public domain. Let's gather some comments about it, and see what happens. Timothy Perper (talk) 00:11, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  She comes; she goes 

message: Somehow -- maybe some random act of vandalism, of which there have been more than a few -- a reference got lost. It kept on producing a citation error message. I fixed it. Grrr. Timothy Perper 22:56, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fixed Reference 

message: Thanks for your careful editing of various details. Such corrections are always useful. I added a reference to Kern where it had been omitted, and removed the citation needed tag. But one change I changed back. Sesshomaru had taken the sentence "Tezuka never explained why Astro Boy had such a highly developed social conscience..." and had replaced "Astro Boy" with "the character," which is certainly well-intended but makes the sentence vague: What character does this refer to? Notice that we could make it read "Tezuka never explained why he had such a highly developed social conscience..." where "he" is meant to refer to Astro Boy, but given the sentence structure, it might also mean Tezuka! So I put back Astro Boy's name and now there is no doubt of what the sentence means. Timothy Perper (talk) 14:59, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh, and BTW -- it will help if you post comments/explanations for your edits here on the discussion page. It avoids miscommunication of all sorts. Timothy Perper (talk) 15:08, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I thought "Astro Boy" was being overused, I changed it to "the character" for that reason. Whatever seems best I suppose. Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 18:37, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I now have a tiny concern: can't quite figure out how to wiki-link "Japanese" once each section in the page; is it Japanese, Japanese or Japanese? Hope I made myself clear. Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 23:38, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  once each section? Japanese should only be wikilinked once—in the first instance—and that depends on the context of the sentence. Anything more would be considered overlinking. You may be able to get away if the context is different from the previous instances. And finally I would suggest Japanese literature as the most appropriate link in the first instance. --Farix (Talk) 23:49, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Strange, I've been told numerous times that it is perfectly acceptable to wiki-link the same word once each section. Farix, which "first instance" are you referring to? Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 23:56, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: For longer articles, it's acceptable to wikilink something farther down which was wikilinked a ways above. If the sections are very short, then there would be no reason to wikilink once per section, but if they were longer (perhaps needing to scroll a bit to see the whole thing unless you have a really high resolution monitor), then I could see wikilinking multiple times in one article. The whole point of that guideline is to make sure articles aren't over-wikilinked. As long as you keep it reasonable, it's fine to link more than one time. I generally only wikilink multiple times if there is a wide separation between the two wikilinks. ···日本穣? · Talk to Nihonjoe 20:51, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  New edits by Sesshomaru 

message: It seems that we've had a number of editors add the  banner to the top of the talk page. Not only does this banner only add to the cutter at the top of the talk page, it should only be added when it is really needed. That is why the banner is not automatically added by MediaWiki. Since we haven't had any significant problems with talk page behavior, the banner isn't needed and, per the banner's instructions, should not be added to this talk page. --Farix (Talk) 19:26, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Talkpage banner 

message: Way to go, KyuuA4! The article is tighter and better organized with your changes. Will you perhaps -- I hope -- be able to update some of the content as well? If I can help, please let me know.  Timothy Perper (talk) 21:31, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Considering consolidating International influence into the publications section.  Doing so reduces the "Japan only" POV. Somehow, this section needs to describe the entire system as a whole. KyuuA4 (talk) 22:31, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Sounds like a good idea. The opening sentence -- the one that defines the article as dealing only with Japanese manga -- can be changed easily enough. Then, as you suggest, you can unify the publications section. I especially like the idea of dealing with manga as a system of international exchanges of culture, art, goods, and trade. We the US see mostly the transpacific part of this system, but manga is very popular throughout Southeast Asia. Timothy Perper 13:55, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Hmmm... I see I wasn't too clear just now. I'm not recommending for or against changing the topic of the article -- the opening sentence. I'm saying instead that we could or might widen the scope a bit if we decide to. Or not, if we decide not to. I guess I'd like to hear more from KyuuA4 what he thinks about it. Timothy Perper 00:29, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Just an attempt to tone down the Japan-only POV by looking at manga as a global product.  Once that's done, then futher examination of manga as a Japanese product.  Basically, focus on how manga is made and distributed -- then worry about "who" makes it.  Reading a response here, it seems that attitudes towards OEL managed to tone down a bit. KyuuA4 07:27, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  New section on Manga Publications