Talk:History of gunpowder

message: I removed the image from this article, which clearly from another website created in year 2000 http://homepages.ihug.com.au/~dispater/handgonnes.htm. Eiorgiomugini 05:53, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi Eiorgiomugini. Reproductions of ancient paintings are free of copyright in the United States. This is called PD-Art on Wikipedia. This image is therefore Public Domain. Thank you to restore it. Here is the PD-Art tag for your information:
Arlight, fine, but I think the caption of the image needs some source. Eiorgiomugini 06:06, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Image

message: The current text contains a reference which seems to me to have a misinterpretation. It might be a terminology problem. Gunpowder cannot be made properly without liquid in order to generate sufficient contact between the saltpetre and charcoal. This occurred very early, perhaps from the invention. Corning, as usually understood, came considerably later.
Uncorned powder was called serpentine and was still used in guns in the mid 16th century. The current text confuses two issues.91.111.99.98 (talk) 16:45, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: CORNING

message: I can not find this: Ahmad Y Hassan (1987), "Chemical Technology in Arabic Military Treatises", Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences (New York Academy of Sciences): does someone have a volume number?J8079s (talk) 01:23, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: No sorry. However, Ahmad Y Hassan is a Professor of the History of Arabic Science and has published other books which cover part of this history, for example: Hassan, Ahmad Y and Hill, Donald R. [1986] (1992). Islamic Technology: An illustrated history. Paris: UNESCO -6 and Cambridge, New York and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, . The use of the {self published} flag is inappropriate since there is no evidence that Ahmad Y Hassan added the material himself; neither is the use of the {primary source} flag. The web site that you object to is (or is stated to be) part of a UNESCO project.Pyrotec (talk) 20:08, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Found it myself vol. 500  maybe someone with access to the ""Annals"" could check and see if could be used to replace the self- published stuff.--J8079s (talk) 00:27, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  sources 

message: The claims made on the web site cited in the article are contradicted by all the reliable sources. See: A History of Greek Fire and Gunpowder Partington  and: Chase, Kenneth (2003), Firearms: A Global History to 1700, Cambridge University Press, . Thank you J8079s (talk) 20:28, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: So what. The appropriate response is to quote all three sources and to highlight that there is a difference. al-Hassan has three books published by UNESCO (one of which, see above, was also published by Cambridge University Press); he was Director of the Institute for the History of the Arabic Science, University of Aleppo and more recently at the Department of Middle Eastern Studies, University of Toronto. He appears to meet the criteria of a reliable source. Please do not use flags such as primary sources or self published just because you disagree with the content.Pyrotec (talk) 20:46, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry, upon rereading it my reply above seems to be somewhat harsh; it was not intend to be so.Pyrotec (talk) 21:32, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I guess this has been discussed before Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 18 I just read this stuff to be more informed. I think that there is room for more mainstream info.J8079s (talk) 01:36, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

text: The discussion indicates that 1) He is a reliable person (although biased) and 2) His website is self-published. I think the tags should stay.J8079s (talk) 21:17, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Self-published 

message: The organization of the article, I believe is equally as important as the quality of information given in the article. The article begins by giving a statement of what Gunpowder is and the chemicals used to create it in the second half of the 19th century. The article then discusses the origins of gunpowder and its development and spread from “Chinese alchemy” to 17th Century Europe. 
After a brief introduction to the topic of gunpowder, the “Contents” box is listed and breaks down links of information on the Wikipedia page into sub-categories. 1. Original Development, 2. Medieval history, 3. Early Modern history, 4. See Also, 5. Notes, 6. References. Topics 4, 5, and 6, while important don’t really offer much in terms of subject matter to the history of gunpowder topic. Part 2 is broken down into 4 subcategories; China, Islamic world, India, and Europe, while Part 3 is broken down into 2 subcategories; Mughai India, and Early Modern Europe. The “Early Modern Europe” subcategory additionally has four more sub-sub-categories; Military, Mining, Canals, and Tunnel Construction. This organization is very important to me as a reader, because it lets me know exactly what the page is about before I even begin reading.
I know the subject is about gunpowder, and I know the article will discuss origin, culture/ country history of gunpowder in the medieval period, early modern gunpowder history in India and Europe, and uses for gunpowder in military, mining, canal building and tunnel construction. 
The sources and illustrations are useful because of the organization of the article page. Since the page is laid out chronologically, the sources are also in a chronological order, which allows me to skim through them quickly to get the information I want out of it. The illustrations which accompany the chronological development of Gunpowder are very interesting, however completely useless at the same time. Some of the early illustrations of “original development” subcategory show pictures of the formula for gunpowder on 1044BC. While interesting, since I cant read Chinese, the pictures are relatively useless to me. Also, a picture of an early “handgun” from the Yuan Chinese Dynasty around 1300 is shown and helps illustrate the uses and applications of the gunpowder material. The majority of pictures do not even show gunpowder, rather they show pictures of cannons and explosive inventions like dynamite to illustrate the uses of gunpowder. I like the idea of focusing on the results of the subject (gunpowder) in addition to the history and development of itself. 
The thoroughness of the article is rather weak in my opinion. The article gives a broad depiction of gunpowder, its uses, and the development. In two short paragraphs under Early Modern warfare, the article discusses the advancement in metallurgy and weapons and its relationship to gunpowder, while completely missing the development of more sophisticated gunpowder like we have today. I assume the article wanted to focus on early history of gunpowder, however, gunpowder’s history is much longer than 11th Century to mid 19th Century. Therefore, the article failed to include the History of Gunpowder in more modern times, leaving out crucial details of the History of Gunpowder. I would suggest lengthening the article until at least World War II with the development/ evolution of new gunpowder/ cordite or possibly combining the article on cordite, even if it is just a brief 3-4 paragraph insert on the origins of modern gunpowder. 
The treatment of Wikipedia has always been of having a lesser credibility to that of another “more official” encyclopedia. I was always told never to quote or use Wikipedia as a reference, since anyone can write anything about the subject. However, the article on the History of Gunpowder offered a good generalized and well supported amount of information and appears to be very credible with the sources mentioned at the bottom of the page. Wikipedia is extremely easy to navigate and is a great starting point for articles and information on the internet when doing a research assignment. One source leads to another which leads to another which leads to another and eventually you end up finding extremely accurate primary sources, all thanks to the starting point of Wikipedia.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by HIST406-11dalthoff (talk • contribs) 18:17, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Critique of "History of Gunpowder" 

message: Strike "Zhenyuan miaodao yuolüe" and replace with "Zhenyuan Miaodao Yaolüe (真元妙道要略)".
"Zhenyuan miaodao yuolüe" seems to be a Pinyin rendering, but I don't believe Pinyin contains a "yuo".
I haven't found any reliable sources, not to imply I'm in any way qualified to search.  As a possible lead, a purported soft copy of Zhenyuan Miaodao Yaolüe can be found here.
Chouhouzi (talk) 13:43, 7 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggested edit 

message: Why does article need to stand alone? Why shouldn't it part of the article on gun powder? --Scalhotrod - Just your average banjo playing, drag racing, cowboy... (talk) 00:08, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps you should familiarize yourself with Wikipedia:Summary style, a Wiki guideline that specifies that certain articles should have their own sub-articles if they are too large. The topic of gunpowder is a rather large one, so to have its own history sub-article comes as no surprise. That being said, it appears that someone has recently tagged this article as being too large to navigate, meaning that this one might be broken up into further sub-articles in the near future! I find that to be just fine, since the history of gunpowder is a huge topic in its own right that spans virtually the entire globe and developed at different paces in different regions of the world. --Pericles of AthensTalk 16:17, 6 November 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggest merge with [[gunpowder]] article 

message: "Despite this the mongols were heavy in numbers and conqured China" - incongruous.. removed (20040302 (talk) 12:19, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Despite this the mongols were heavy in numbers and conqured China 

message: This text seems overly detailed for an article on the world history of gunpowder. Maybe an article on Confederate munitions industry would be the right place for it. Rezin (talk) 18:10, 2 February 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  American Civil War 

message: hello. You tagged this article back in January as being too long to read comfortably. I share the same opinion, but you need to be a little more constructive than to just place a tag and a little editing here and there. You need to inform the editors here on the talk page about your concerns. It would be helpful if you could point out which areas need to be parsed down and split off into new sub-articles where necessary. It would be a shame to lose any of this information, so new sub-articles all around sounds like a good solution. Those new sub-articles could also be linked into the main article on gunpowder, as well as in other articles related to gunpowder warfare. Pericles of AthensTalk 16:23, 6 November 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Good to see you, . I agree, and I've tried splitting off some information into new articles (eg. at Siege of De'an) before getting distracted by other matters, so for that I apologize. Personallyh, I think the article at its current state mixes both historical narrative and historical analysis, and goes into both rather too deeply for what should be a general article. I would try to cut down on the blow-by-blow accounts of the wars and battles, so I think sections like "Jin-Song Wars" and "Mongol Wars" are good candidates to move, perhaps in a "Gunpowder" section in their respective articles. There are also repeated content that has already been split off but is somehow still on this article (like the "Volley fire" section is already covered by the Volley fire article), so those could be pared down. We can also split the Chinese dynastic history of gunpowder into a series of articles, so that the Song is not the only dynasty to get an article dedicated to their gunpowder artillery. Also pinging the major contributor to the relevant sections . _dk (talk) 18:27, 6 November 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the speedy reply, Underbar dk! I agree that excessive detail about individual battles can be moved to articles about those specific wars. However, I'd be careful about removing too much information on volley fire. Just because it has its own article doesn't mean it shouldn't be prominently featured in this one with its own section or sub-section; information in several articles are allowed to overlap to a certain degree. In this case we could still retain a moderately large section devoted to it, but shortened per Wikipedia:Summary style, with a prominently-displayed "main article" link for "Volley fire" at the top of that section. --Pericles of AthensTalk 19:15, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

text: Splitting the article is an excellent idea. In the style of the "Science and technology of the X dynasty" articles, I suggest naming the articles as "Gunpowder technology of the X dynasty" or something similar. We should probably also consider splitting parts of the article to a dedicated Historiography of gunpowder article.--Khanate General ☪ talk project mongol conquests 01:37, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article tagged for being too long to comfortably navigate 

message: I see that most editors have voiced issues about vagueness and problems with the article and I agree. To start with, looking at other discoveries and inventions, Wikipedia correctly uses the term "discovered" for discoveries made inadvertently as is is the case with gunpowder's discovery.N34B2 (talk) 16:35, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Discovery, not invention 

message: Not clear to me what this means. Was there some other sort of non-physical explosive before? - Snori (talk) 09:53, 12 September 2019 (UTC)
thread_title: The first ''physical'' explosive?

message: There has recently been a slew of disruptive editing by Gun Powder Ma. Behavior includes mass deletion of content including several sources. The reason for doing so cited by him includes misrepresentation of just one of the deleted sources by Agoston. However the direct quote is never given by the user in the talk page, nor did the user address the fact that doubt over the use of arquebuses is directly stated in the content he deleted. The entire passage the user did not cite is given below:
Here it can be clearly seen that Agoston does not deny the usage of arquebuses in the first half of the 15th century, and in fact directly supports the claim. However he says it is disputable in regards to the earliest years  and in fact could have been small cannons as late as 1448. However he also notes that tufeks were listed as a separate item aside from cannons in support of his claim. Instead of adding further material supporting Agoston, Gun Powder Ma simply mass deleted not only the sourced material citing Agoston, but also several other sources including Needham, Saidel and Nicolle on several other pages. This is actually what is called misrepresentation of sources. When questioned over this, Gun Powder Ma did not address these concerns and engaged in circular reasoning asking for a negative, when he is the one who should be justifying the deletion of content. The user also did not address the fact that it is already addressed in the source that they may have been small cannons. Qiushufang (talk) 00:14, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Exactly, all these references are "disputable" according to Agoston himself. Therefore, they should not be stated as fact. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 00:20, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Done. Problem solved. Qiushufang (talk) 00:22, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: No, the problem is that you are blindly restoring sources that you have evidently not read. You also restored the Saidel reference that does not make such a claim. Or could you provide the exact page number? Gun Powder Ma (talk) 01:35, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: The Nicolle reference that you wildy restored is not correctly cited, either. What Nicolle really says is that the Janissaries only gradually accepted the arquebus after witnessing it against the Hungarians in 1440-1443. That makes you wrong on all three sources. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 01:46, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: What claim exactly did I make about these sources? I stated that you did not give an appropriate reason for deleting content sourced using these sources. "Wild restored" seems rather dramatic when all I did was revert unspecified changes to citations for which no reasons were given. Neither Saidel or Nicolle were mentioned. You quoted Agoston using a single word, "disputable", which I have since proven is a misrepresentation of the source material. If you had actually read the entire paragraph as you had claimed, you would have known this, and improved upon the article rather than opting for mass deletion. It was even already stated in the content you deleted, as I have mentioned many times and you have chosen to ignore, that they may have been small cannons instead. I have improved on the material to make it more apparent as you should have done from the start. This is what an editor is supposed to do, not mass deletion of content based on a personal nitpick.Qiushufang (talk) 04:47, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: I have been removing falsely sourced contents that failed verification, and said so in the edit summaries, while you restored them without bothering to read them. This is disruptive.  Gun Powder Ma (talk) 06:43, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Disruptive deletion of content by Gun Powder Ma

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message: You can't be serious right? If all items are listed in alphabetical order, then why are all the history pages categorized in chronological order? Please stop being facetious, you know this is not how wikipedia works.Qiushufang (talk) 23:29, 17 October 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Changes to chronological order to alphabetical?

message: "the sources were added by a now banned account,...." you are wrong, it was now blocked and not killed in "real" life, the sources weren't originally from that specific "account" as you call it, they were older and added from another article by that I.P. if you had cared to notice, by the way it's an I.P. and not an account
"....because they caused disruptive editing,...." you are lying as usual and that's your "excuse", that I.P. was blocked because it was from an I.P. proxy server and not for some sources that "caused" "destructive" editing
"....and also added primarily non-English sourced texts...." and also other articles have primarily non-English sourced texts because they are very difficult to be found in other languages
"....with barely any citations" with "barely" any citations? are you looking with your eyes open? you expecting it to be a pot pourri or something, find them your own self to their specific language if they are easy then and don't expect it all from others, they are not your slaves after all
:The solution to all of this is to simply make an account. Do not resort to insults. Inundating with 10 references for a single line of text does not leave anybody with confidence and suggests you do not have a good understanding of the subject material. If you did, you wouldn't need 10 references for anything, it just suggests you found them after being called out. Qiushufang (talk) 18:42, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  a reply to problematic user Qiushufang from the view history page 

message: the fire arrows are not rockets, they are rocket arrows  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 185.73.240.234 (talk) 20:04, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  a notice 

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message: ″Then everything changed when the Jin dynasty attacked″ LOL, cute. Gotta' tip my cap to you, fellow avatard. 2600:1700:DA90:2AB0:B809:A944:A2AA:BA84 (talk) 10:32, 10 November 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: AtLA ref

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message: "which contains a collection of factoids on Chinese weaponry."
So these were plausible but incorrect statements about Chinese weaponry ?
146.198.42.246 (talk) 09:37, 12 August 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gunpowder formula