Template talk:Aikido

Categorization

Is there some sort of objective criteria for dividing these into "major" and "minor" styles? It seems like it's bound to piss somebody off. — Gwalla | Talk 06:55, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

I took the classification from the article on Aikido styles.

• The way it defines a "major" style is one that has it's own headquarters (honbu dōjō) in Japan, has an international breadth, and was founded by a direct student of Morihei Ueshiba.

• For "minor" styles it says "[a] number of organizations independent from the major styles of aikido have developed some of which are notable in their own right through their size or historical association. These "minor styles" are distinct from independent dojos or small dojo clusters."

• It defines an "other" style as one that uses the name "aikido" in one way or another, but doesn't have a direct lineage back to Morihei Ueshiba.

The distinction seems reasonable to me, but I've been wondering if there are better words to use than "major" and "minor". (I study one of the styles classified as "minor," so I certainly have no personal interest minimizing their importance.) What would you think about using the headings "Styles founded by direct students of O'Sensei," "Other styles descended from O'Sensei," "Styles unrelated to O'Sensei"? Those might not be the right words, but you get the idea - try to describe the distinction without implying any distinction in importance. My primary hesitation is that it may make for a very cluttered looking template.

What do you think? EastTN (talk) 14:01, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

I think those are reasonable. It certainly makes the purpose of the divisions clearer (and it does seem like a reasonable standard of categorization). I should point out that the apostrophe should be replaced by a hyphen (and, technically, the O should have a macron over it). Another possibility it to categorize by lineage (so, for example, one heading could be "Tomiki styles", which would include Shodokan and Fugakukai). Related topics like Daito-ryu and aikijujutsu could go in a footer. — Gwalla | Talk 16:27, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

I've taken a stab at revising the category headings. They don't look as bad as I'd thought they might. If another approach makes more sense - like categorizing styles by lineage - I'm all for it. But maybe this will keep us out of trouble for now. Thanks for flagging the potential problem - and please feel free to fix any new problems I've created! (I have very little pride of authorship.) EastTN (talk) 18:53, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

That's a great step in the right direction. A couple of suggestions are that wikipedia prefers not using titles or honorifics, so it should be "Ueshiba" instead of "Osensei," and it would also be great if the categories were less wordy, but that will be difficult. Keep up the good work, though, now that it's focused on lineage this has become a really infomative template. Bradford44 (talk) 21:09, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

O.k., I've change "Osensei" to "Ueshiba" in the headings. I'm going to let it sit for a while before making any more changes myself. EastTN (talk) 06:45, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

I've moved Morihei Ueshiba up to the top of the template under the heading "founder." That should make the headings for the different styles a bit clearer for readers who aren't familiar with aikido. EastTN (talk) 22:37, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Thoughts on clarity; template documentation page

First, let me reiterate that I like the idea behind this template, so the following thoughts, where critical, are in the interest of improving the template. First, the current 'style' categories are:

• Styles founded by direct students of Ueshiba
• Other styles descended from Ueshiba
• Styles not descended from Ueshiba

If what we're really getting at here is lineage to Ueshiba, maybe these concepts could be expressed in fewer words. Perhaps the language of lineage would be useful here. The categories could be:

• 1st generation styles
• 2nd and later generation styles
• Unrelated styles

or something along those lines. In fact, the template might be more useful with an extra layer to separate 2nd generation from 3rd and later generation styles. If you're concerned about an explanation for the meaning of 'generation' within the context of this template, a disclaimer-like line could be included in smaller text just below template header, just like in the {{Martial arts}} template.

The other two things I wanted to suggest are 1), that the full link to Morihei Ueshiba next to the heading "founder" seems a little redundant and not that useful; and 2) I foresee some problems with drawing limits on the content of the template in the "concepts" section and the unlabelled bottom section, and for that reason there should be a documentation page with guidelines for the template. I'm going to create the documentation page with some categories for guidelines now, but I'm going to leave them blank, as well as refrain from making any changes to the template itself until there has been some discussion on my suggestions. Please let me know what you think. Bradford44 (talk) 22:03, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm fine with different language for the "style" groupings - especially if there's somewhere people can go to easily get more complete definitions. "Generations" makes as much sense as any to me. Could you do an explanation of what "generation" means? I'm assuming we're talking about the number of generations away from Osensei for the founder of a style - so Tohei sensei would be generation one, a style founded by a direct student of Tohei sensei would be generation two, and a style founded by a student of Tohei's student would be third generation? That makes sense to me (assuming we can figure out the lineages for all of the styles). If we can come up with a better approach, we might want to bring the language in the Aikido styles article in line with it. Right now it's still categorizing styles as "major," "minor" and "other" - which seems more likely to generate controversy than anything we're talking about doing here.

On Morihei Ueshiba, I put that line there primarily to make the current headings for the "style" categories make sense. I figured that if someone wasn't familiar with aikido, "Styles founded by direct students of Ueshiba" might make more sense if they'd just seen that Morihei Ueshiba was the founder. Right now, we have links to the article on Ueshiba both on the "founder" line and in the style headings. It seems to me that a general template on aikido should have one link to that article, and should indicate that he's the founder. What do you think - if we change the style headings to be more "generational" or "depth of lineage" based, does the "founder" line then make more sense?

I agree with your point about the "concepts" category and the miscellaneous line at the bottom. The later seems particularly likely to become a grab bag of miscellaneous links. One thing that might help would be to think about the kinds of things that might go at the bottom, and then create specific categories for them. For instance, we have Daitō-ryū Aiki-jūjutsu. We could create a "Parenthood" category or a "Related martial arts" category and include everything shown under "Parenthood" in the info box at the top of the aikido article. If we want to include a link to Aikidogi, perhaps we could have an "Equipment" category and include links to bokken and Jō. This would make the template longer, but would help maintain its value as an organizational tool.

I don't know how one would decide which concepts to include, and which to exclude. Would there be any way to make it a list of unique, characteristic or defining concepts? EastTN (talk) 15:24, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

I just noticed that the Template:Karate has an "Origin" section and a "Techniques" section. EastTN (talk) 20:24, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

I took a shot at reorganizing the template here. Let me know what you think. Bradford44 (talk) 21:57, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

That looks very good to me - I'd go live with it. It's clearer than the current version. EastTN (talk) 13:32, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Looks good to me too. — Gwalla | Talk 15:41, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Others

Might we want to fit in Principle of least effort or Path of least resistance somewhere? Heroeswithmetaphors (talk) 05:42, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Modern Period (1980 - Present)

We need to establish a consensus about which few to include there, otherwise it will be a mess of every sensei who decided to be independent after a political dispute. Heroeswithmetaphors (talk) 17:00, 8 September 2010 (UTC)