Wikipedia:Featured list removal candidates/List of Chinese inventions/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured list nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The list was kept by PresN via FACBot (talk) 00:25, 15 April 2020 (UTC) [1].[reply]

List of Chinese inventions[edit]

List of Chinese inventions (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Notified: PericlesofAthens, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chinese history, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Technology, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Invention, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Lists

The list was well-researched when it was nominated a dozen years ago (how time flies) but since then too many low-quality additions have been made. On the surface the listing may still look polished but when you check the cited sources more closely that are meant to support the claim of a Chinese invention there are too many inexcusable misreadings and misrepresentations. I will limit myself to a few examples:

  • Parachute: A jump with a pair of bamboo hats described by an ancient Chinese historian is supposed to amount to the invention of the parachute. Even if we accept for a moment that the awareness of air resistance slowing down a fall is a sufficient criteria, the entry ignores that the jump never happened but was part of an ancient legend that the writer recounted, a fictitious non-event. By this criteria we could also ascribe Daedalus the invention of heavier-than-air flight and not Otto Lilienthal or the Wright brothers.
  • Umbrella: Typical in that it is doubly misleading. The entry claims the invention of the umbrella as such but then concerns itself solely with collapsible umbrellas. But even these turn out not to be introduced first by the Chinese. The cited source merely opines that in Greece and Rome umbrellas "were not generally collapsible" (Joseph Needham pp. 70). From this, so it seems, the inference was made that collapsible umbrellas were completely unknown to the Greeks and Romans and by extension everywhere else too outside of China.
  • Moveable sails: Here it is — falsely — claimed on the basis of some blog, a feng shui guidebook and a children's book that Chinese sailors were the first to acquire the capability to sail against the wind.
  • Hand fan: The invention of the hand fan is referenced to a décor site that does not even make that claim.

For more examples, check my edit summaries. I had to remove now around twenty entries, about ten percent of the total listed, and I have not even checked the majority of them.

I understand that such lists of scientific discoveries and technological inventions have some intrinsic difficulties as one has to deal in the history of technology with competing definitions, compartmentalized scholarship, and a paucity of evidence the farther one goes back in time. But here too much of the research has been conducted too shoddily to warrant featured status. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 22:21, 12 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Gun Powder Ma: Hello. Thanks for contacting me on my talk page. It's been a while since I've taken a good look at the article, but you're right that a lot of new additions have been made since I nominated it in 2008. I've just taken a look at the edit summaries and to be honest it seems like you've already removed the majority of newer entries that were arguably quite spurious. I'll take a look at things, but if you could perhaps compile a quick list of further entries that you find to be questionable or cited poorly then I'll see what I can do about rewording or removing them as well. Another alternative, albeit a drastic one, would be to restore the article to its stable state around 2009 to 2010, perhaps as late as 2011-2012. I think that's a better option than simply removing the featured status of a list article that I personally spent at least a solid month working on and that met the high standards of featured status when nominated. Keep in mind that the article saw various improvements after its successful nomination, such as the splitting of material to form the new List of Chinese discoveries article. We also removed all citations by Robert K. G. Temple, as he is not a Wikipedia:Reliable source. I think restoring the article to around the time of the split and removal of Temple would be optimal. Pericles of AthensTalk 11:18, 13 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@PericlesofAthens: I don't think I removed already the majority of incorrect entries. I am spotting more of them at mere sight. If we are honest, and you acknowledge as much when you suggest to restore the list to some prior point of time, the list has been in a dubious state for a number of years. In 2008, when you successfully nominated the list it had 60 entries. Now it has accumulated over 300. But somewhere along that path it also lost its original quality that elevated it to featured status.
On the other hand, I don't deny that there have been made valid additions in the meantime. To eliminate them together with the spurious rest in order to save the FL star seems to be a drastic move indeed. But the real problem is what happens when this step has been taken but poor entries are added again? In the absence of somebody willing and knowledgable enough to oversee new additions – you say you are semi-retired – we will have the same situation sooner and later again.
My suggestion would be therefore to keep the list as it is now, but delist the article from FL AND put a tag on top of the list that points to the lack of source quality until all the issues are resolved. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 20:40, 20 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Gun Powder Ma: Hello. That solution would be more drastic than simply restoring the article to a previous state, especially since a statement exists on the talk page banner shell with the following: "A stable version of this article has been noted on 22 June 2013...As of 22 June 2013 this stable version met the criteria to be classed as a FL-class article." For more info on that, see Template:Stable version/doc. If that is the case, I think a solution that would satisfy everyone would be to restore the article to the state it existed in June 2013 when it was observed as still possessing FL quality material and sources. I had stopped contributing to the article by that point anyway. Delisting the article would be entirely unnecessary if a simple restoration was made instead. Pericles of AthensTalk 22:30, 20 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The only edit to the June 2013 version I would make, for that matter, would be the removal of citations and statements attributed to the unreliable source The Genius of China by Robert Temple (1986), as mentioned above. Pericles of AthensTalk 22:42, 20 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist is the better choice at this point. Perhaps it will spur editors to improve it. Khirurg (talk) 00:13, 21 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong keep. I think this article can easily be cleaned up and I would be willing to volunteer my time to do so over the next few weeks. Many (but not all) of the dubious entries were the work of a single editor and criticism of their contributions is already discussed at length in the talk page, so I would argue that even a surface-level cleanup should be trivial.--Khanate General ☪ talk project mongol conquests 02:01, 21 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Khanate General: Hello! Thanks for offering your help, it is sorely needed. I was honestly considering reverting everything back to the "stable" FL-quality version of the article noted in June 2013 as mentioned on the talk page banner shell. I will refrain from doing that if you put in the work to clean up the article and remove the more exaggerated or spurious claims. Once again, many thanks! Pericles of AthensTalk 02:07, 21 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep, with conditions: those being that User:Khanate General copyedits and improves the article in a timely manner per his comment above about volunteering his time in these next few weeks. The spurious and poorly sourced material added by a well-known sockpuppet account can easily be spotted and removed in that case. Thanks for all your hard work so far, General! Pericles of AthensTalk 15:45, 21 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment photos need to be removed or added to a gallery section. The egregious amount of white space between the See also and References section would alone make me vote to delist. « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 20:40, 21 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Gonzo fan2007: hello, thanks for bringing this up. I just deleted about 20 images that were arguably too generic, tangential, or in some cases far too similar or downright duplicative. There is now only a tiny amount of white space between the "See also" and "Reference" sections. I hope it's to your liking! We could put images into small galleries if necessary, but I think it looks okay for now. Regards, Pericles of AthensTalk 08:12, 24 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
PericlesofAthens, appreciate the removal, but any images past the article body are somewhat pointless. Images are supposed to be associated to the text and be close by the relevant text. On my screen set-up, it still requires three screens worth of scrolling to get past the white space (13 tota images with just white space next to them). I would recommend a gallery section or further removal of images. « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 17:32, 24 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The gallery proposal is a great idea.--Khanate General ☪ talk project mongol conquests 04:13, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Khanate General and Gonzo fan2007: hello again! I have recently edited the article to make all images "upright" and hence smaller, which seems to have drastically improved things as my monitor no longer shows any white space at all between "See also" and "References", with only one image hanging or pushed down into the "See also" section. Your monitor might display things differently, but I think this is an optimal solution, since a gallery also doesn't exactly align images up to the appropriate text where they are explained in full. Let me know what you think and if you still feel that a gallery or two would be necessary. Regards, Pericles of AthensTalk 10:36, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I still support a gallery. With 1920x1080 resolution (common widescreen set-up), there still is a significant amount of white space. Right now, 10 images fall below the see also section on the set-up. If we were talking just 1 or 2 images, I would probably right it off as minor. But this is significant. There are something like 60-70 photos in this article! Maybe just choose the top 30 and put the rest in a gallery? Also, the "Chinese geomantic compass" photos looks weird as the only left-aligned photo in the list. « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 15:54, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Gonzo fan2007: As you suggested, I moved the "Chinese geomantic compass" image over to the right. While I haven't created galleries yet and am not sure if it's entirely necessary, I have just deleted about five more images from the article, to the point where my monitor displays the last images hovering over the "W" letter sub-section of the main "Shang and later" section. For me, at least, that is located far above the "See also" section, with the entire "Modern (1912–present)" section between them. Surely that did the trick for you as well? Pericles of AthensTalk 20:22, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
It's getting better. This is what I see in my screen resolution: [2] « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 22:50, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Info: Is this removal discussion even still live? I opened up the sequel. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 19:12, 8 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Bit odd, but closing this nom in favor of its sequel. --PresN 14:14, 14 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

  • Closing note: This candidate has been kept, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please see WP:FLC/ar, and leave the {{featured list candidates}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through.
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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