Swmirsky

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May 2014

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• which eventually became part of the modern Korean combat sport of [[Taekwondo]] or "Foot Fist Way"). Trained in the classical Korean system of <em>Yun Mu Kwan</em>, Pai began teaching it in the

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• his contact with the then still secretive Chinese martial arts community in New York City. (Chinese martial arts, often called [[Kung Fu]] and sometimes [[Wu Shu]] or [[Ch'uan Fa]], are

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Separate Paragraph Under "History" Section for Yun Mu Kwan

Stuart,

I was thinking of putting most of the Yun Mu Kwan info into a separate paragraph (within the existing "History" section), so that all the Yun Mu Kwan info you've been adding will remain, but the flow of the article - the basic history of Min Pai's creation of Nabi Su, will be more coherent, and the overall narration will be clearer.

I think this will improve the narration of the Yun Mu Kwan story as well.

If this sounds good to you, I'll start the new paragraph and the clean up the ones above it, then, once I set it up, you will finish it off.

It would be great if we can work as a team, and coordinate our edits on this, so that we don't accidentally overwrite what the other is doing.

Tell me what you think.

Thanks, Mary Vaccaro (talk) 03:31, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

It would be beneficial to do this in a coordinated way. The changes I made reflected my effort to be consistent with what you'd already written. Perhaps some consolidation will improve things. There are usually any number of ways to write something well. No single way is ever going to be "the best" as in the ONLY right way to write it. That said, I was pretty happy with how the history section came out and am a little leery about meddling further with it unless it's a matter of making a factual correction.

I think it's important to put Min Pai's historical background, especially the role of Korean karate in that history, in perspective which is why I put so much time in refining the history section. (Since I am a veteran of the school during the seventies, I'm not qualified to add to the sections on Nabi Su per se). I have also been kicking around the idea of setting up a separate page for Min. Unfortunately, I'm not as well informed about his personal background as I am about the karate history.

As you probably know by now, I am a former student of Min's from the early days of his changeover, from when he first replaced the old Shotokan forms with the flower and five animals. I was there for the transition (though he had already moved away from the old hard style to the tai chi before I'd even walked in the door). I'll continue to work on the history as I know it where I can and to beef up the links and footnotes where I think it can help.

Give my regards to Carolyn. I remember her as a green belt so I guess a lot of water has passed under this bridge since then!

SWM

Stuart, I agree with everything you said above. When I make any edits to consolidate the info, I will use a gentle hand, because the article is much better with everything you have added. And I appreciate the gentle hand you have been using as well. It is great to know someone from those early days! Thank you for stepping in. I told Carolyn you have been helping out, and I'll send her your regards. Mary Vaccaro (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 12:17, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

I added new paragraph titles to Nabi Su

Stuart, As discussed, I added new paragraph sub-titles to Nabi Su. I don't believe I changed any of your content. I just changed a few sentance connectors to make the moved paragraphs fit appropriately under the new sub-sections. I also added a few more internal links to other Wikipedia articles, plus I added mention of William Cheung. I'm finished with paragraph/title rearrangements, so now it's your turn.... Thanks! Mary Vaccaro (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 22:38, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Mary,

Not sure the breaking out you've done improves it. Seems to make the text more complex to read. While it's important to capture as much of the complexity of the story we want to tell as we can, it's possible to overdo it and I fear that may be what's begun to happen. The newer format looks harder to read, harder to follow the line of thought. I'd go back to the simpler version if I were you.

Also, are you sure about William Cheung? Min never referred to him in my day (unlike his constant references to Cheng Man-Ching whom he acknowledged as his teacher). And we already had sticking hands as well as the three Wing Chun forms (siu lim tao, chum que and biu tze) in our practice repertoire when I was there.

I always understood that Min had picked these up from Wing Chun exponents he used to work out with, in and around Chinatown, but not that he had been a formal student or even associate of any particular kung fu master (other than Cheng Man-Ching, that is). He certainly didn't teach us the Wing Chun moves in the classic way peculiar to that style. Our way of doing sticking hands was looser and more informal and relied more on the natural positioning and stances and sensitivity of tai chi. When Wing Chun students came down occasionally to test themselves against us you could see the sharp difference between their approach and ours. I remember when Min had me do sticking hands with a senior student from a local Wing Chun school. I was quite surprised at the much more precise, technical method he used and the body shifting, which was not in our repertoire. (Still, I did alright against him so I guess Min knew what he was doing.)

Where did you hear about the alleged connection with William Cheung (who, if anything, was more of a competitor with Min than a teacher or colleague)? Can it be verified? If not, I'd be careful about inserting it. We can verify Min's training under Cheng Man-Ching because those of us who were there at the time knew about it and I even went up to Cheng's Shr Jung T'ai Chi Ch'uan Study Society once to watch. (Still, there was some hard feeling at the end between some of Cheng's senior students and Min and, of course, Min eventually broke with Cheng although he began training further in t'ai chi with T. T. Liang up in Boston, himself a disciple of Cheng Man-Ching.) Min always spoke of Cheng with great respect, even after he'd broken with him.

Min was, by the way, friendly with Richard Chin, a Chinese man who, with his brother, had taken up Shotokan karate and were teaching that style at 10 Great Jones Street near the NYU campus in those days. Chin gradually migrated to kung fu, however, presumably in keeping with his ethnic heritage and took up and began teaching Jo Ga Quan kung-fu. One of the advanced forms Min taught his black belts had that name so I'd guess he got it from Chin. (Chin sent his girlfriend, Laura Gaines, to Min to get her black belt since Chin told her he didn't wish to teach her himself and that Min was the best in the area to learn from -- after himself! I don't recall if Laura reached black belt status while I was there though. I think she might have left us after she got her brown belt. She got to be very good at sticking hands and the Wing Chun elements of the style.)

SWM

Stuart, William Cheung used to give special seminars at the Nabi Su school. I don't know much more than that. That's why I called him a "kung fu associate", not "teacher," etc. To be safe, I'll take Cheung's name out if it, and just mention the inclusion of the supplementary Wing Chun forms. Yes, I agree the article is sounding a bit too complicated. Let's let a few days go by with us trying to clean it up. If it still doesn't work, we'll take out the subsections. Mary Vaccaro (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 04:00, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

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Your submission at Articles for creation: Draft:Yun Mu Kwan (karate) (June 3)

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hewhoamareismyself 22:13, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Swmirsky. You have new messages at Hewhoamareismyself's talk page.
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The reason your article failed is that Wikipedia requires reliable sources, and a majority of your article's sources were deemed unreliable by Wikipedia's rules. In an attempt to be a scholarly encyclopedia, Wikipedia requires secondary sources (sources not written by those directly involved) that are from scholarly sources. YouTube links are considered reliable when coming from documentaries, news casts, and the like. Most of your youtube videos are amateur made, meaning they are not reliable sources. hewhoamareismyself 15:52, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. I think there's a difference between links used as "sources" (to cite a source of a claim) and links used to exemplify (to show, as in the case of those YouTube clips, what is being described or referenced). In the first case, the link says, in essence, 'this is where my information comes from, why I take it to be true.' In the second it says 'this is what I mean, what I am talking about,' on the principle that a picture, especially a moving one, is worth a thousand words!

I tried to use the YouTube clips ONLY to make the second kind of point, i.e., to give some examples. They were not intended as evidentiary for truth. I'm not sure the rule you cite captures that distinction though perhaps it isn't meant to.

There can also be a third reason for a citation link by the way, i.e., to amplify, as when one is introducing something not currently controversial and which goes beyond the scope of one's immediate point but which has a bearing and MIGHT be of interest to some readers. Examples of this include links such as those I included to other wiki pages which go into a level of detail on subjects I only glancingly reference in the text I was presenting.

Anyway, it is possible that some of what I meant as exemplifying or amplifying links were inadvertently presented as (or taken for) sourcing links so I'll take another look when I have the chance and try to fix them if I erred in that way. Perhaps, though, it's simply not possible in a mass forum like wiki to accommodate for the sort of distinction I'm drawing above. It might simply be too difficult to enforce such a fine point with so many posting or to adequately control for potential mistakes and misuse.

Although I joined wiki a long time ago I haven't really attempted to use it until this article, so I am fairly new to this game. Thanks again for taking the trouble to review and comment. If you can say, perhaps you could advise me whether the wiki rules accommodate the kind of distinction I make above. Thanks again for your time!

S. W. Mirsky 22:03, 4 June 2014 (UTC) SWM

Your submission at Articles for creation: Yun Mu Kwan (karate) (June 7)

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Zach Vega (talk to me) 14:48, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

Okay, I'm pulling the article. I don't have the time for this any longer.

01:43, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

Your Article Had a Good Start

Dear Stuart,

I just saw the note that you stopped working on the Yun Mu Kwan article for submission. It is a good article. Getting approval can sometimes take very long and be frustrating. When I wrote the Nabi Su article, it took 6 months to get approval. I did constant rewrites to meet their guidelines. That's why I am now such a stickler that the ongoing edits to the article continue to follow Wikipedia guidelines. I originally included very few YouTube references in the article. I have found that too many YouTube references lead editors to disregard the more important third party references, and devalue the entire article. Therefore, to prevent future problems with editors, I took out most of the YouTube references in the Nabi Su article. If you decide to continue your Yun Mu Kwan article, you'll probably do better if you delete most of the YouTube links and instead incorporate references to published Martial arts books and magazines. An occasional website link is OK too, if it is highly relevant and shows that the public is discussing the subject. You are a good writer. Mary Vaccaro (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 18:54, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

Response

Thanks, Mary. I don't really have the time or patience to keep going back and forth with them. It seems to me that they have a rule book that they follow almost blindly. I understand why that may be necessary in an operation such as Wikipedia where so many people are busily inputting stuff of marked difference in quality, understanding and reliability but sometimes rules are wrong.

I tried to make the point to the two wiki editors I got that there is an important difference between sourcing (used to document one's claims of fact), giving examples, and amplifying (as in providing readers with further information not immediately incorporated in the article's text), but instead of feedback from either of them addressing this distinction and explaining why they accept or don't accept it, I just got the same perfunctory rejection citing the same rule. It started to feel like I was talking to an automaton. On my second submission I had actually radically reduced the number of YouTube links and only kept those which, I thought, served to illustrate my points most clearly, but apparently that wasn't enough for the second editor who just rejected the article with the same reason, as if I had done nothing to it!

My point was that some YouTube links are not about fact sourcing but involve the self-evident rule that a picture (or, in this case, a video) is worth a thousand words. Thus one can describe at great length, say, the differences between Japanese karate and Korean taekwondo, but links to a couple of clips showing practitioners of the two arts in action can be way more effective. Yet, because the links were on YouTube, my editors rejected them on the grounds that YouTube is not a reliable factual source. But, of course, it IS a reliable source of pictures of some of the things I was describing or explaining and I wasn't using it as a fact source! But that important distinction seemed to be lost on them.

Anyway, it just seemed to me that I was butting my head against the wall because there was no apparent recourse when the two editors I was dealing with rejected without any consideration of what I had explained to them. At that point I just figured I was going round in circles. I think wikipedia is a good on-line resource but I've actually seen a lot of crummy articles on it while the one I had written, which was full of well established facts about the history of karate from China to Korea and provided a comprehensive background of the original Yun Mu Kwan karate just couldn't make it to first base. Perhaps I'll find another venue for that article on-line where I can use my judgment rather than be run by an arbitrary rule book.

S. W. Mirsky 20:28, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

Stuart, If you write the Yun Mu Kwan article and publish it someplace else, let me know. I would love to read it! You are a good writer and you have so much history to offer about the martial arts. 72.225.231.127 (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 17:02, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Different Venue

Actually, I've been talking with Jason about just putting it up on his website for informational purposes. While most of it doesn't refer to his particular style (which is an artifact of Min Pai's development) its background history is very relevant to what we learned from Min Pai. What Min taught, however much it differed from classical Yun Mu Kwan, had its roots in that style and it was that style which shaped the Min Pai we came to know. For all the changes he made, in my time at least he never quite gave up the old karate format and from what I've seen on-line of Nabi Su it looks like that persists today. Therefore, the history and karate connection is highly relevant to the martial art Min Pai developed and left behind with a bunch of us.

S. W. Mirsky 19:23, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Your submission at Articles for creation: Yun Mu Kwan (karate) (June 27)

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Chris Troutman (talk) 21:35, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Hello! Swmirsky, I noticed your article was declined at Articles for Creation, and that can be disappointing. If you are wondering or curious about why your article submission was declined please post a question at the Articles for creation help desk. If you have any other questions about your editing experience, we'd love to help you at the Teahouse, a friendly space on Wikipedia where experienced editors lend a hand to help new editors like yourself! See you there! Chris Troutman (talk) 21:35, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

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Your submission at Articles for creation: Draft:Yun Mu Kwan (karate) (June 29)

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Bellerophon _{talk to me} 09:21, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

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Talkback

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Bellerophon _{talk to me} 10:12, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

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Yun Mu Kwan

Yo. I'm starting to rewrite the entry a bit, to make it easier to read. Some stuff I think I can leave and the stuff I've "removed" I've copy-pasted to Yun Mu Kwan's talk section. Talk:Yun_Mu_Kwan#Original_analysis
Cheers. --TrickShotFinn (talk) 21:50, 5 November 2020 (UTC)