Template:Did you know nominations/Yamashiro ikki

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 Theleekycauldron (talk) 08:44, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

Yamashiro ikki

Created by Applodion (talk). Self-nominated at 19:55, 17 January 2022 (UTC).


General: Article is new enough and long enough
Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
QPQ: Done.

Overall: A fascinating and beautifully-written article about 15th-century warring in the Yamashiro Province. Thank you for creating this, Applodion. Two minor issues:

  • Re ALT0: The content of this hook is repeated in the article text and cited. It was the historian Miura Hiroyuki who described the Yamashiro ikki as such. Why hide his name in the hook?
  • The last sentence of the article is "Historians attribute the failure of the ikki to resist attacks in 1493 to the organization's unwieldiness". Readers these days are sophisticated enough to question sentences beginning, e.g. "Scientists say", and I think that "Historians attribute" falls in to the same category of perceived dubiousness. So can we change that bit of the sentence to tell us which historians? Or if not, can we name the writer who says that "historians attribute"?

If we can resolve these questionss, then this nomination should be good to go. Storye book (talk) 17:37, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

  • @Storye book: First of all, thank you for your kind words and the copyedit.
    In regards to your first issue: I was not trying to hide the name per se; it's just that I tend to not include names in hooks unless they have their own articles. Of course, we can change that:

    ALT1: ...that the Yamashiro ikki was described as the "people's parliament of the Warring States period" by historian Miura Hiroyuki? Source: Ikegami, Eiko (1997). The Taming of the Samurai: Honorific Individualism and the Making of Modern Japan, p. 133.

    In regards to the second issue, Tsang herself just says "historians". In the reference for the paragraph on page 43 she does not mention the unwieldiness at all. As a result, I have no idea which historians she is talking about, though they are presumably Japanese, as a substantial amount of articles & books was written about the Yamashiro ikki in Japanese. Applodion (talk) 18:31, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Thank you, Applodion, I'm approving ALT1. I see that you have added to the last paragraph of the article, which improves the neutrality. But I still think you need to say in that paragraph that "Tsang says that historians attribute ..." - otherwise (in the current popular understanding) it looks as if you are hiding behind the vagueness of "historians" to promote your own opinion as authoritative, which of course is not the case. Don't worry, I'm not trying to criticise your intentions here; I'm trying to protect you as a WP editor, from criticism. If there is vagueness, it's always worth naming the vague writer, to make clear that the vagueness is theirs, not yours. This is a fine article; let's make it (and you) as untouchable as we can. Storye book (talk) 18:55, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
  • @Storye book: Don't worry, I understand your point very well, and appreciate your reasoning. I have enough experience on Wikipedia to know that vagueness can cause disaster, but still make mistakes like this one on occasion. I will adjust the sentence as you suggested. Applodion (talk) 19:00, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
Modified ALT1 to T:DYK/P1