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2010 Chinese fishing boat incident in the East China Sea

The diplomatic situation that started as an incident between a Chinese fishing boat and several Japanese patrol boats on 9 September 2010, near three way disputed islands in the East China Sea named Diaoyu Islands (Chinese) or Senkaku Islands (Japanese). There are sufficient mainstream article references, three in the NY Times alone, as well as in others. High level ministerial communications between the two countries were broken off at one point, and may still be. This situation at least deserves a separate section in this article, and maybe a separate article should the situation become more prominent. — Becksguy (talk) 09:50, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

I agree, a separate article should be created. STSC (talk) 10:08, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

I concur, Spratly Islands and Spratly Islands Dispute is a good example of how a situation like this can (hopefully) be managed to everyone's satisfaction. Philg88 (talk) 11:53, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

I asking myself, this just very normal event if compare to Spratly Islands and Paracel Islands, where every day countries around capture or even shoot fishing boats of each other like dinner and make same action like this event every time, this event well know just because media made it so hot that all, if make separate article then you can make hundreds or thousands more article with same situation.Tnt1984 (talk) 12:26, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

This does not appear just a normal event. If the dispute is getting worse, the PLAN (People's Liberation Army Navy) may just send in the warships. A separate article would monitor the whole event closely. STSC (talk) 18:59, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

I agree, the situation is no longer just a fishing boat incident, as it has escalated into a diplomatic, political, and economic dispute between the countries. I'm working off-line to write the new article, and doing my best to keep it as neutral as I can. Does "2010 China-Japan fishing boat dispute" sound good as a title for the new article. I avoided the use of the islands in the title, as that would either result in an impossibly long title, or inherently favor on side or the other (Diaoyu vs. Senkaku). Or maybe the "2010 East China Sea fishing boat dispute". Or "2010 China-Japan East China Sea dispute"? Any thoughts on a title? — Becksguy (talk) 19:09, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Becksguy - How about "Chinese fishing boat incident in East China Sea, September 2010". STSC (talk) 20:44, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

That works also, except stylistically I would prefer the year first: 2010 Chinese fishing boat incident in East China Sea, or as an example, 2009 Singapore Romanian diplomat incident. I've seen more articles that start with the year, although sometimes the year trails, as in United Kingdom general election, 2010. I searched for name conflicts and there are none, either way. I wish there was a memorable tag that goes with the incident, like the 2010 Suzhou workers riot (not to imply any equating of seriousness for any incident). But the most important thing is to keep any POV out of the title. No one disputes that the fishing boat is Chinese, no one seriously disputes that the waters are called the East China Sea, and no one disputes that the incident took place, and in this year, and it implies nothing about the territoriality of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands, or the immediate surrounding waters. So it should be considered a neutral title, either way. I will post a link here to the article when created. — Becksguy (talk) 04:38, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

The title is fine. We look forward to the article then. STSC (talk) 05:25, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

If you're going for a separate article based on the incident, you might find this useful. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 06:45, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

If you are going to create the article can it be 2010 Chinese fishing boat incident in the East China Sea please, so that the grammar is correct. Philg88 (talk) 21:17, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

It seems that the above site has been running slow in the past few days; I should have properly formatted the link.

• Tanaka Sakai, "Rekindling China-Japan Conflict: The Senkaku/Diaoyutai Islands Clash," The Asia-Pacific Journal, 39-3-10, September 27, 2010. (English translation by Kyoko Selden)

The translation hosted at Japanfocus.org is based on the original article at 日中対立の再燃 (September 17, 2010, Tanaka News), with follow-ups from Sept 21 and Oct 1. There are also various additional links from within that article as well which are of relevance:

• • Sept 17, 2010, EDITORIAL : The KMT, CCP’s Third United Front, Taipei Times
  • Shih Hsiu-chuan, Sept 14, 2010, Activists scale down Diaoyutais plan, Taipei Times
  • AFP, Sept 17, 2010, Cross-strait maritime exercise held, Taipei Times
  • William Lowther, Sept 15, 2010, US, Japan to hold exercise to recapture disputed isles, Taipei Times
  • (plus a few more non-English media reports, mostly in Japanese)

Also related to the fishing boat incident and dispute:

• Fan Cheng-hsiang, Oct 04, 2010, Japan worried over ROC interpretation, Taipei Times

Regards, -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 08:00, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

another reference for this event can be found at east asian forum article San9663 (talk) 17:19, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Who is Sourabh Gupta? John Smith's (talk) 17:22, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Not so hard to find with google these days? http://samuelsinternationalassociates.com/about_us. Are you just curious or trying to challenge the credibility? :) San9663 (talk) 08:27, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Historical events section

Eventually, this article will want to switch from use a bullet pointed chronology and instead get all of that information to prose (per Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style (embedded lists)). Yes, I know that the detailed list is better than just a list of links, but prose is still preferable whenever possible. I'm not sure if you all would prefer to do this now, since you're in the middle of hashing out the details anyway, or if you would rather wait until the details themselves are more stable and convert to prose then. Technically speaking, the whole first half of the list should go anyway since it's unverified by reliable sources. So maybe you want to get a better sense of what can be salvaged and what can't be, then make the move to prose. Anyway, I just thought I'd bring that up now so that way we don't get to some future point where people say "But we can't change to prose because it took so long to agree on the list as written, so we just need to leave in this way." Qwyrxian (talk) 12:26, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

chronological list looks fine and is easy to read. almost all the events are sourced well or discussed in previous sections. Not sure what you meant by "unverifiable source" San9663 (talk) 03:41, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

To: San

While some of your recent addition is well sourced , you seemed to copy and paste a big paragraphy of other articles into this one and ignored what have been mentioned in other paragraphies. This by effect brought the redundancy of the article a new level. I've tried to keep everything you added but merged them into different paragraphy to avoid redundancy. --Winstonlighter (talk) 12:35, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

needs citations for this paragraphy

From 1624 until 1662, Taiwan and some of the surrounding islands, though not the Senkaku Islands, were controlled by the Dutch as a base for commerce. In 1662, the Dutch were driven out by ex-Ming Dynasty general Zheng Chenggong. Zheng Chenggong and his successors established the Kingdom of Tungning and controlled the area until 1683. In the same year, Zheng's grandson Zheng Keshuang was defeated by Qing Dynasty forces led by Admiral Shi Lang. From then on, Qing Dynasty China gained effective control over Taiwan and its surrounding islands, including the islands in dispute today.

After some efforts on looking for proper sources, I couldn't find out any proper sources for this paragraphy. Could anyone help? --Winstonlighter (talk) 18:29, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

how relevant is this whole paragraph really to the topic? 222.166.181.195 (talk) 17:02, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Latest deletion by John Smith as of Oct 9, 2010 4:22 pm EST

Hi John Smith,

I notice that you deleted two citations in a recent edit. While I agree that the second reference deserves to be deleted, I'd like to ask why you deleted the first, which appears to be a reference to a published text dated back to the Ming Dynasty. Bobthefish2 (talk) 20:25, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

It's because it was referring to a Wiki source, which as pointed about above is not valid. I was also concerned because there was no indication as to where the text is held (i.e. what institution), what page number it might have been, etc. In this case, given that we're dealing with an old historical source, it might be better to have a secondary source from an academic publication that refers to it. Then it will be easier to go back and check it. Otherwise we're asking interested people to accept either a source that some unknown person reproduced, or hunt for a primary source amongst China's various museums and universities. John Smith's (talk) 09:53, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Or a scanned version of the text might help. John Smith's (talk) 10:18, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Your explanation does not seem acceptable

This is the reference in question:

Title: Liang zhong hai dao zhen jing / .Imprint: Beijing : Zhonghua shu ju : Xin hua shu dian Beijing fa xing suo fa xing, 2000 reprint edition. Contents: Shun feng xiang song--Zhi nan zheng fa. (順風相送--指南正法). ISBN: ISBN 7-101-02025-9. pp96 and pp253. The full text is available on wikisource.

The page numbers are clearly listed as 96 and 253. An ISBN number is also provided. A search on Google returned dozens of places that have this book. The wikisource in question is simply a free instance of the book (which could be removed if there is reason to believe it is not the original text).

I am inclined to believe you are intentionally trying to commit an act of sabotage, since these details are hard to miss. In addition, you deleted this along with another obviously dubious reference which appears to be an attempt to mask the other deletion. And as with many of your other controversial deletes and reverts, you don't consult with other editors or provide adequate reasoning. Bobthefish2 (talk) 20:39, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

A few days have passed and I have yet to see a convincing reply coming from you. Considering that you have been active on Misplaced Pages and had been making edits related to this topic, I'd take this a refusal of reply as a result of lack of valid counter-arguments. It's a pity that reputable editors can make the simple act of adding legitimate content so bothersome. Time to revert your deletion. Bobthefish2 (talk) 05:04, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Suggest to add the picture of the location of Diaoyu Island

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/Diaoyu_island_Argument.png

I suggest to add the picture that describes the exact location of Diaoyu Island, and its relative position to China mainland, China continental shelf, Taiwan island, and Japan Ryukyu Island. It will help readers to understand the argument, particularly the China's claiming about the "Diaoyu Island locate at China's continental shelf".

I have no privilege to edit the page. So hereby I request that the editor add the picture on the page, as a part of "Geography" or "Arguments from PRC and ROC" —Preceding unsigned comment added by Xijunw (talk • contribs) 00:09, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't think that image is marked with the correct copyright, but I found another image that also shows the islands relative to the East Asian region as a whole, and I have added it as part of the infobox. For a picture that illustrates China's continental shelf argument, you need to add some shaded line that shows the boundaries of the countries' respective continental shelves . Quigley (talk) 01:24, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Bump! Request for comment regarding an alleged WP:SYN violation

I have requested a comment regarding my disagreement with John Smith, Oda Mari, and Qwyrxian about whether or not an old deletion event was legitimate. They argued that the deleted section violated WP:SYN and WP:NOR standards and I posted a number of counter arguments. However, even after posting an RFC on numerous boards, I still got no additional input from anyone else. And of course, none of the 3 editor I mentioned replied to my comments any further. As a result, I'd very much like the rest of you to offer your view on the matter. Bobthefish2 (talk) 03:02, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I thought I had WP:NORN on my watchlist. I added a full explanation of my argument there, as well as a response to the one other person explaining why I believe their analysis is wrong. Qwyrxian (talk) 10:16, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

It appears that a more thorough reading of the Japanese indicates this may not be SYN. If that is the case (I still need clarification from one of the readers of Japanese about what exactly the article says), then I recommend we remove the picture. Having a picture of the newspaper does not add to the understand of the vast majority of our readers (that is, English speakers), and we need a much fuller explanation than we can easily provide in a caption. Instead, I recommend we just turn this into a full explanation in text, and just cite the article as we would any print newspaper. Qwyrxian (talk) 00:59, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Images nominated for deletion

Winstonlighter has nominated all of the images in the Japan claims section for deletion. Note that he did not notify anyone of this, he has not tagged the articles and he has not tagged them as used in this article either.

You can leave your comments here and here. John Smith's (talk) 17:55, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Where is the deletion discussion for the Commons image ()? The closed discussion after the above 2 indicate that he made a deletion discussion on Commons, but I have no idea how to find it.

Also, Winstonlighter, as I mentioned there, it is extremely difficult to assume good faith when you explicitly nominated only the Japanese pictures, and did so under extremely specious reasons. The second one especially was entirely hypothetical--you assumed that the Washington Times somehow modified the image from the original to establish a new copyright. I guess I can just assume that you are unaware that the Foundation itself (I don't recall where this is, but it came up in connection to museums claiming copyright over photographs of public domain artwork) has stated that they do not accept that simple reproductions of public domain works can ever be copyrighted. There is nothing in those pictures to indicate that they were in any way altered from the original. Qwyrxian (talk) 01:13, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

What are the criteria for which paper can be sourced and which cannot (e.g. Washington Post, NYT, vs Washington Time,Global Time, New Epoch)? what are the copyright rules here (e.g. can wiki simply port a picture owned by an external media company? is this map dated over a hundred year so that the copyright expired?)? you guys probably know more about these rule. anyway, if in doubt, we can also use a link pointing there instead of uploading them to wiki's domain? tot he readers this makes no substantial difference anyway. San9663 (talk) 03:58, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

The maps themselves are indisuptably old enough to be in the public domain. The claim that Winstonlighter was making is that when the Washington Times (and other examples) copied those maps and republished them, that they must have made modifications (despite the fact that we can't see any modifications), and that the new work must be copyrighted. I guess I should assume Winstonlighter just doesn't understand the issue of copies of public domain works--only changes that themselves involve creative work become copyrighted. For instance, if the map were displayed under particularly special lighting conditions, or put into a new frame, or had additions (say, an English translation), reproductions of those changes may (although aren't certainly) copyrightable. None of that applies to these pictures, as far as I can see. Qwyrxian (talk) 04:03, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't understand the whole copyright argument either. Why should that even be a point to argue. Bobthefish2 (talk) 04:24, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

I am just raising the point that whether wiki should copy a figure directly on to wiki's domain, given that there may be copyright issue. As far as I know, copyright rule goes back to 75 years or more, depending on the country and also type of materials. (although that does not exclude you from seeking explicit non-commerical permission to use in wiki). The map qouted by washington time, according to that paper, was published in 1950s. I am not sure if that is "old enough". To this, I would like Qwyrxian to link us to the source which confirms his "old enough" statement (assuming, as he said, no significant modification has been made on the original map). San9663 (talk) 08:11, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

My second question, which remains unanswered, is how do we differentiate small publisher such as Washington Time, Epoch Time from well known and more credible publishers such as NYT or WSJ? A couple days ago I suggested a link from a think tank and someone challenged me who the writer is instead of who the publisher is, for just suggesting a reference to be considered. I thought wiki should have guidelines regarding this issue and would appreciate if you guys could show where such guidelines are.San9663 (talk) 08:18, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Sangoku map

A 1785 Japanese map, the Sangoku Tsūran Zusetsu (三国通覧図説) by Hayashi Shihei adopted the Chinese kanji (釣魚臺 Diaoyutai) to annotate the Senkaku Islands, which were painted in the same color as China.

This uses the Unryu Suganuma book as a reference, but across eight pages (89–97). Can someone point me to the correct page where it makes/supports the above statement? Thanks. The citation is much too vague at the moment, and as far as I can see it doesn't support that statement. John Smith's (talk) 17:59, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

I glanced through the HTML version of the maps from the referenced site. I can't read Japanese. You can check the page number yourself: http://archive.wul.waseda.ac.jp/kosho/ru03/ru03_01547/ru03_01547_0004/ru03_01547_0004_p0005.jpg. Please let other editors comment before deleting the reference. Bobthefish2 (talk) 20:55, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Please re-read my comments. I'm talking about the book reference. John Smith's (talk) 21:47, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Ok, I see. I was hasty in my assumption that you were referring to the Sangoku Tsūran Zusetsu (三国通覧図説). In this case, I agree that a better reference will be preferable. In fact, do we even need this reference at all to illustrate the point? Bobthefish2 (talk) 22:49, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

1. you can see from the map the coloring of each island, very clearly. a magnified picture is found here http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_WzN3JMZpmGA/TJoPQofRCgI/AAAAAAAAAyI/o6YfxRSG6Do/s1600/1786%E5%B9%B4%E4%B8%AD%E5%9B%BD%E5%BE%80%E7%90%89%E7%90%83%E6%B5%B7%E8%B7%AF%E5%9B%BE2.jpg or here http://www.mahoroba.ne.jp/~tatsumi/dinoue16.html

2. source from, e.g. Kiyoshi Inoue, http://www.mahoroba.ne.jp/~tatsumi/dinoue0.html , 彼はこの傳信録中の琉球三十六島の図と航海図を合作して、三国通覧図説を作成いたしました。このさい三十六島の図に琉球領として記載されていない釣魚台、黄尾嶼などを、機械的に中国領として色分けしています。

would this satisfy you? John Smith? I think what we should try to do here is to provide a balanced view and list of facts, not trying to push POV one way or another. San9663 (talk) 03:37, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Content Copied/Awaiting Removal

I finally got to copying two sections from here to the Senkaku Islands dispute page. That means most of the dispute-related contents here will be removed. There are a few things we might want to think about:

Do we need a separate summary of the dispute? If so, how detailed? The intro has already summarized the gist of it, and to be honest, I'm sick of seeing the actual points of arguments being listed out here.

The Oil drilling dispute section will have to go somewhere else. It's not about the islands at all. It's not an actual event or anything, but an ongoing state of relationship. If you want to, perhaps make a stub article out of it.

Some people thought we should still have a section for historical events. I don't really care as long as it's not about the dispute again. It will probably be quite short and factual. We can add it later.

Scroll up to see my original proposal along with the responses. You might have to search the page archive if it gets archived soon.

DXDanl (talk) 21:35, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

A summary of the dispute is certainly needed here. John Smith's (talk) 21:47, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

• I reverted your edits. The copy should be syncronized with deletion. Actually my edit was lost. ―― Phoenix7777 (talk) 22:04, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Except there is no reason for your to revert the edit. You could have simply added yours now or later.DXDanl (talk) 22:08, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

You didn't respond to my indication. If the copy is not synchronized with deletion, someone will edit this article. If you wish to move the content, please synchronize the copy and deletion. And please copy the newest version.―― Phoenix7777 (talk) 22:19, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Copying the content will lose all the edit histories. So please move the article and remove unnecessary content. Please undo them again ―― Phoenix7777 (talk) 22:28, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

How do we keep the edit history for this article then?DXDanl (talk) 22:34, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Please follow the instruction of WP:MOVE. ―― Phoenix7777 (talk) 22:37, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Anyway, Senkaku Islands dispute has edit history, we can not move Senkaku Islands to it. We need to follow these procedures.

1. Move Senkaku Islands dispute to Senkaku Islands\temp
2. Ask admin to delete Senkaku Islands dispute.
3. move Senkaku Islands to Senkaku Islands dispute
4. delete necessary content of Senkaku Islands
5. copy/paste necessary content of Senkaku Islands dispute.

So it will take time. Please restore all of your move attempt until move is available. ―― Phoenix7777 (talk) 22:58, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Done. See procedures here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by DXDanl (talk • contribs) 23:12, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

• I failed to restore the edit history by swapping the article. Senkaku Islands dispute is now Senkaku Islands dispute temp. Please be patient untill admin restore the article. Sorry for the inconvenience. ―― Phoenix7777 (talk) 01:07, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

• The history section, maybe should stay here? "Supposedly" this should only be a list of facts -- regardless of the disputes associated with it?San9663 (talk) 03:22, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
• I also feel the "oil dispute" section should belong to the East China Sea entry. Perhaps a link from here not a whole section San9663 (talk) 03:46, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

I've moved Senkaku Islands dispute temp back to

Agree I'm not sure what Phoenix7777 was trying to do with the "... dispute/temp" page and the "... dispute temp" page. There's no way I know of to automatically keep edit history in both articles. Moving, even by an admin, would replace the current article on the islands themselves with a redirect. There was something written about manually fixing history, but I didn't look into it too much since there are already separate instructions for splitting an article.DXDanl (talk) 21:44, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Comment on a recent revert of Phoenix7777

On October 10, 2010, you made this revert claiming that the original caption contained information (namely Okinawa was administered by the U.S.) that was not mentioned in the source. But then in your next revert, you added a source said Remin Ribao "criticized the occupation of the Ryukyu Island (or Okinawa Prefecture) by the United States)". If I don't see a reasonable argument from your end, I'd assume this is a sabotage and undo your revert. Bobthefish2 (talk) 23:07, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

I like it when some editors here make their POV-pushing edits and then refuse to justify themselves. But since this matter is again brought up in a later thread, it's not going to make a differenceBobthefish2 (talk) 05:16, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Move oil dispute section away

1. The description there has nothing to do with the islands

2. Even if there is, this should probably just be a pointer to this entry http://en.wikipedia.org/East_China_Sea#EEZ_disputes San9663 (talk) 17:14, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Agree with Comments Someone willing to perform another split? :D I actually don't agree with leaving even a redirect. The oil drilling dispute is centered around the East Sea in general and the Chunxiao field. They have nothing to do with this article yet in terms of secondary sources. Including them would be synthesis/original research. However, there could be a link under "See also".DXDanl (talk) 06:01, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

"See also" seems good enough. It seems people are more interested in the 'dispute' and not many return to this page now. :) San9663 (talk) 08:22, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

San9663 -- Yes, it is demonstrable that "not many return to this page now;" however, this puts emphasis on the wrong point. Please let me re-introduce another point-of-view. Recall that DXDanl suggested that an article split can "... help readers better understand what information is being disputed and what is not."

In that slightly re-focused context, I wonder about the possible usefulness of delay? In the phrase "nothing to do with this article yet in terms of secondary sources," I wonder what DXDanl meant by the word "yet"? Should there be a section which identifies the islands as a "proxy"?

• Google news search, Senkaku and proxy?

• Tisdall, Simon. "China's global quarrels; The forces driving China's disputes with Japan, south-east Asia and the US remain poorly understood in the west," The Guardian (London). 11 October 2010?
• Horn, Heather. "Why a Fisherman Is Causing So Much Trouble Between China and Japan," The Atlantic (New York). ‎September 22, 2010?
• Chellaney, Brahma. "India-China: Let facts speak for themselves," The Economic Times (Mumbai). 17 September 2010?

• Google books search, Senkaku and proxy?

• Tow, William T. (2001) Asia-Pacific strategic relations: seeking convergent security, p. 68., p. 68, at Google Books; excerpt, " argues that Japan is acting as a US proxy in seeking to 'contain' a fictitious 'China threat'...."

I suppose this short section could remain as an illustrative example. I understand how this can be construed as a valid aspect of our subject, but maintaining non-controversial neutrality is probably beyond my personal writing skills. --Tenmei (talk) 16:14, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

My comments was meant to explain the fact that Dxdanl's comment received little feedback now. Anyway, Chunxiao is more than 200 nautical miles away from the islands, and it just does not belong to here. The only thing that may be related is perhaps to mention the island is related to the resources in the surrounding seabed, which we have in previous sections already. San9663 (talk) 00:37, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

I have brought up the removal of the oil dispute section before, but we can start anew, since the recent edits to that section have changed things a bit. The main body of the oil dispute itself should not be a part of either this article or the Senkaku dispute article. Are they related in real life? Yes, but 99% of all Misplaced Pages articles are related to some other article. We make separate articles exactly because we don't want to include multiple topics in one article. Right now, it seems we have a nice intro/summary paragraph in that section, so a link could be created from there. The main body, however, is still the same info as before and should go to a separate article--options include the one on the East Sea dispute or a stub-article. The procedure should be similar to a split, since we don't want to disturb the histories of the established articles. Btw, when I wrote "yet", I simply anticipated that eventually there will be someone who would find some secondary source that ties in Senkaku with other issues; that was all.DXDanl (talk) 07:10, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Endorse the neutral analysis and editing strategy of DXDanl in this diff --Tenmei (talk) 20:41, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Could DXDanl do the clean up removal work? Though the suspension of talk in East Sea may be linked to the recent skipper arrest incidence, there is no direct indication (China neither admitted nor denied the link, and it may just be a general result of suspending all communication as a gesture of protest by China), so even with the recent edit the link is rather weak. But I do not have a strong opinion either way. San9663 (talk) 11:19, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

I should be able to do that on Sunday/Monday.DXDanl (talk) 20:12, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I won't have time until maybe Thursday. Anyone else, feel free to give it a shot.DXDanl (talk) 07:58, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

There is no harm leaving it here for a few more days :) San9663 (talk) 08:56, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Controversy and Request for change of name

There has always been controversy as to whether this entry (and the related dispute entry) should be named senkaku or diaoyu or pinnacles, or senkaku/diaoyu or diaoyutai/senkaku, etc. One way to resolve is to rely on some external and neutral verdict. Unfortunately there is no ICJ ruling yet, while many editors here pointed to google.

http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/Asia/Story/STIStory_590598.html Recently, there is a dispute filed on google earth, and the verdict is not out yet (link above). Can we agree to use whatever name google has finally decided? i.e. if it will drop the "diaoyu" name and call it "senkaku" alone that is what this entry will be named, and if it decides to call it senkaku/diaoyu then this entry should be named so.

None of us knows how google will decide at this moment, so if we could agree on this before the verdict is out, this should be NPOV decision. San9663 (talk) 05:29, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Possession is nine tenths of the Devil's work. If the Chinese want to name it, they gotta own it first. Hcobb (talk) 05:44, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

No we, cannot rely on Google Earth--their "decision" would be but one part of the puzzle. Nor can we rely on "possession" as Hcobb mentions, since that's not the criteria we use (note that we use Florence as our title for the city, even though Florence's "possessor", Italy, uses Firenze). Misplaced Pages actually has a very complex policy involved, which you can read at Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (geographic names). Note that even if the UN "ruled" on a name (which it doesn't do, but just imagine it did), that wouldn't be enough to satisfy the guideline. We must use the most common name used in English (which can be equal to one of the local names).

Because of the split, I ended up starting a discussion over at Talk:Senkaku Islands dispute about this issue. But it makes more sense to discuss that issue here. Here's the discussion so far:

And when I look at that, I see that you were already aware of this discussion, San9663. In any event, let's continue it here. As far as I'm concerned, the actual evidence I've seen so far implies that Senkaku Islands is the standard English name, and so should be used in the title. I'd like to see evidence from other sides (support either Daioyu or Pinnacle Islands). Also, I'm wondering if anyone has access to some print English language maps, atlases, or encyclopedia sources and could tell us what they use? Qwyrxian (talk) 06:22, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Let's look at the examples.

1) Possession/control. Explain to me why the wiki entry for Liancourt is not Dokto. This example demonstrates that current possession is not the prevailing factor. IF each of you here is willing to post an objection to the Liancourt Discussion page of this same reasoning, I will stop here and believe you are genuine.

2) English sources. Let's look at the news story of MAJOR English media in the past year. Most, if not all, that I have seen listed Diaoyu together with Senkaku side by side. (Chinese or Japanese papers do not count)

WSJ: http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Talk:Senkaku_Islands&action=edit&section=37 "a cluster of islands known as Diaoyutai in Chinese and Senkaku in Japanese"

BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11341139 "a group of islands, known as the Senkaku islands in Japan and the Diaoyu islands in China" "The Senkaku/Diaoyu issue complicates efforts by Japan and China to resolve a dispute over oil and gas fields in the East China Sea that both claim."

The Economist: http://www.economist.com/node/17101152?story_id=17101152&fsrc=rss "The Senkaku/Diaoyu issue complicates efforts by Japan and China to resolve a dispute over oil and gas fields in the East China Sea that both claim."

Arguing for "senkaku" alone is clearly POV. If you can show me that more than 1/3 (I am not even asking for 50%+ or 80%+ for overwhelming majority) of the major English media in the past year have used Senkaku alone without mentioning Diaoyu, I will stop here. I am not arguing to use Diaoyu, becausse that would be POV, too. I am merely saying it should be Senkaky/Diaoyu or Diaoyu/Senkaku (and i do not mind the ordering) San9663 (talk) 10:15, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

The title of the article cannot include a slash--Misplaced Pages articles have to have a single, unambiguous title per WP:MOS. Furthermore, we couldn't use a slash anyway for technical reasons, because that distinguishes pages from sub-pages. We have to choose the one, single, most used name. If we can't establish either Senkaku or Diaoyu as more common, we should use Pinnacle Islands. As a side note, I whole-heartedly agree that we cannot argue based on "possession" (I'm not even certain its accurate to say Japan possesses the islands in any real sense right now anyway, but that's a discussion for another place). I do see that the 3 you listed above use the joint naming approach. I'll take a look later and see what other sources are doing. I don't believe that we can limit the search to the last year, as that's too short to establish standards; I'd say last 3-5 years would be a better measurement. Qwyrxian (talk) 21:59, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

There was a discussion on this only a matter of weeks ago. It's ridiculous to keep proposing name changes until people come up with the "right" answer. Keep the current name and leave it at that. John Smith's (talk) 22:18, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for that link, John Smith--though only a few weeks ago, that's before I started watching the page. Looking at the results, especially the search results Phoenix provided with over 3 times using Senkaku Islands implies a pretty clear standard in the English language press. Even if a number of the ones using Senkaku Islands also use the Chinese name, that would still leave a large majority using only Senkaku Islands. Alright, I'm done with this debate, unless another user can show a fundamental defect in the previous analysis of both search results and policy. Qwyrxian (talk) 22:29, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

So the repsonse is by ignoring the two challenges I wrote earlier? Because you are afraid of facing these reasonable challenges? The previous discussion have not even reached a consensus and it was still extremely controversial. Unless this is settled in a NPOV way, this will only come back from time to time in the future. I am not sure which google site you to search, the convention should be the main English site "google.com", not .jp, not .cn. This is what i found from the main English site.

Diaoyu: About 3,460,000 results (0.12 seconds)

Senkaku: About 842,000 results (0.19 seconds) San9663 (talk) 03:37, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

No, the point is that Phoenix didn't search Google at all--xe searched Google News and Google Scholar. Plain Google searches actually provide very little use to us, because we want to know what reliable sources are saying, not what blogs and other SPS are saying (since the vast majority of those will be partisans writing for one side or the other from within one or the other of the relevant countries).

In any event, even if you want to use a straight Google search, your results are misleading anyway. First, you must restrict all search results to English only (you can do that at the "Advanced Search" setting), as those are the only results that matter for determining the name on en.wiki (presumably other country's wikis use their own language as well). Next, let's make sure we're searching only for posts about the islands, and not some other meaning for that word. If you search for "Diaoyu" and "islands", you only get 72,200 hits, while "Senkaku" and "Islands" gets 83,000 hits. Alternatively, "Diaoyu" and "Island" gets 66,200 hits, while "Senkaku" and "Island" gets 74,200 hits. Also, just for completeness, if you search for them as a single phrase, "Diaoyu Islands" gets 64,000, while "Senkaku Islands" gets 72,800; "Diaoyu Island" gets 27,600, while "Senkaku Island" gets 2,470. My guess on the last result is that this occurs, if I understand correctly, because China calls the main island "Diaoyu Island", while Japan does not call any one island "Senkaku Island" (i.e., the Japanese results only occur as grammatical errors, while the Chinese results refer to the main island, surrounded by islets). Oh, wait, just one more completeness: "Pinnacle Islands" gets 3590; "Pinnacle Island" 5450, but event small number is actually over-inflated because there appear to be small islands named "Pinnacle Island" in New Zealand, Canada, and the UK.

So, Google hits show a slightly larger number of Senkaku mentions, while Google News shows an overwhelmingly larger number of Senkaku mentions. I still see no compelling reason to change the title to the exceedingly rare "Pinnacle Islands". Qwyrxian (talk) 04:17, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

I did I search on a few major search enginers and here are some results:

"Diaoyu" on Google News - 1570 hits

"Senkaku" on Google News - 1710 hits

"Diaoyu" on Yahoo News - 2224 hits

"Senkaku" on Yahoo News - 2367 hits

"Diaoyu" on Bing News - 2230 hits

"Senkaku" on Bing News - 2220 hits

The differences don't appear as overwhelming as you indicated. To be fair, I'd say the article itself should be "Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands", but I doubt this is going to come to pass since since some editors will guard the current pro-Japanese tilt with their teeth. Bobthefish2 (talk) 04:38, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Bob, if you want to start accusing unnamed editors (though we know who you're talking about) of being "pro-Japanese", don't be surprised if you get accused of being "pro-Chinese". You have two choices, either work with other people here and stop accusing them of this and that, or leave the page and find some people you can work with. John Smith's (talk) 07:22, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

There's a distinction between opposing a trend of fanatic pro-Japanese POV-pushing and being pro-Chinese. Up to now, all of my edits fall into the former category. Even so, my edits still suffer from relentless sabotage by certain editors. In many cases, I'd open up a thread to discuss the rationales behind the changes. But of course, that doesn't always work because some editors like to selectively ignore arguments that don't favour their actions and positions. So you see, it can be quite a chore to work with such uncooperative editors.

Despite you being a reputable editor based on how you presented yourself to Magog the Ogre, I have to respectfully decline considering the options you've presented. My conduct here has been reasonable and there isn't a necessity to assist efforts intended for POV-pushing. Bobthefish2 (talk) 20:40, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

If we take Qwyrxian's results, the difference is not significant. 10-20% more for Senkaku+island vs Diaoyu+island. I agree with Bobthefish2 that the entry should be called senkaku_diaoyu, with senkaku appearing before diaoyu for its small (but statistically insignificant) edge. This should be NPOV for such a disputed item. As you also know, there are variations in how to spell the Chinese names, such as Diaoyutai, and Tiaoyutai, if you are adding these, the results will be even closer. BTW, it seems no one responded to the Liancourt analogy I posted earlier, I would assume we are closed on that topic, and we come to agree that different standard has been applied and the defenders for Actual Control Precedence are not willing to apply the same standard to Liancourt. San9663 (talk) 10:29, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

There's a discussion on name-ordering earlier. I believe someone suggested that names should be ordered alphabetically if in doubt. However, I am not certain that's necessarily the case (someone can go check). At the same time, I'd caution that the small differences in results may fall well into the margin of error. After all, search engines are not necessarily even close to representing the real distribution of term frequencies in authoritative sources. The way the comparisons have been done also ignore the relative importance of the documents retrieved. Obviously, government documents should take precedence over say... People's magazine articles. Bobthefish2 (talk) 20:49, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

One more note: Calling this Senkaku_Diaoyu helps to reduce the POV accusation on this entry, and makes the whole wiki entry appear more trustworthy to many who also read the 45% of other literature. The name Diaoyu itself, as some of you here noted, are also used by the Japanese for the main island, sort of, as Yudiao/Uotsuri/鱼钓, and the Japanese people over the last century did not feel the need to change the name of that main island/rock. It really makes little impact to the dispute from the Japanese perspective. The Senkaku name only appeared in 1900, which was a few years after Japan incorporated it in 1895. i.e. Even under Japan's control, the name has been used by Japan for a few years for the whole group of islands. San9663 (talk) 10:41, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Alright, I tried the "google scholar" search. links attached for you to verify.

For all items since 1991

• (Diaoyu OR Diaoyutai OR Tiaoyutai OR Tiaoyu) AND islands: Results 1 - 10 of about 1,700. (0.11 sec)
• http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=(Diaoyu+OR+Diaoyutai+OR+Tiaoyutai+OR+Tiaoyu)+AND+islands&btnG=Search&as_sdt=2000&as_ylo=1991&as_vis=0
• Senkaku AND islands: Results 1 - 10 of about 1,820. (0.09 sec)
• http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=Senkaku+AND+islands&btnG=Search&as_sdt=2000&as_ylo=1991&as_vis=0

I used "OR" instead of simply adding the results to avoid double counting. Search individually the results = 609+1140+41+140=1930 which would be double-counting. The articles where more than 2 names are cited are 1930-1700=230.

For all items since 2000:

• (Diaoyu OR Diaoyutai OR Tiaoyutai OR Tiaoyu) AND islands: Results 1 - 10 of about 1,270. (0.05 sec)
• http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=(Diaoyu+OR+Diaoyutai+OR+Tiaoyutai+OR+Tiaoyu)+AND+islands&as_sdt=2000&as_ylo=2000&as_vis=0
• Diaoyu OR Diaoyutai: Results 1 - 10 of about 1,220. (0.05 sec)
• http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=(diaoyu+OR+diaoyutai)+AND+islands&btnG=Search&as_sdt=2000&as_ylo=2000&as_vis=0
• (this demonstrated that Tiaoyutai was used between 1991-1999 but more or less only appeared together with Diaoyutai since 2000)
• Senkaku AND islands: Results 1 - 10 of about 1,270. (0.06 sec)

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=Senkaku+AND+islands&btnG=Search&as_sdt=2000&as_ylo=2000&as_vis=0

So, for google scholar results published since 2000, the numbers are exactly the same, 1270. for publication since 1991, Senkaku has a small edge, (1820-1700)/1820=6.6%

If I use "anytime" period, the difference is 2400 vs 2060, i.e. (2400-2060)/2400==14%, close to qwyrxian's results above, but still not a really significant difference. and you see the time trend of the scholars.

You are welcome to do your own search and post your links here.San9663 (talk) 12:49, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, but a dual name is not an option. Please see Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (geographic names)#Multiple local names--it makes the key point that agreeing to use a dual name ultimately just switches the argument to "which one goes first", solving nothing. The guideline explicitly states that we need to make a choice, even if it is by arbitrary criteria (like search results). As much as I hate to say it, if we cannot agree on either Senkaku or Diaoyu, I think we must choose Pinnacle Islands. I don't have the brain power at the moment to look more carefully at the search results, but I'd like to determine why the google scholar/news counts that were done 2 weeks ago should a 3 to 1 dominance for Senkaku, but now they're showing roughly equal numbers--presumably the criteria were set up differently, but I don't know which one is more reliable.

One thing that I just noticed--WP:PLACE recommends using the United States Board on Geographic Names GeoNames search as one indicator, at least for the U.S. name; that database uses Senkaku, with Pinnacle as an alternate, with no mention of Diaoyu. Now, again, please don't think that I'm saying this is definitive--I'd like to know what similar boards in the UK and India (the next two most influential/largest English speaking countries) use, at a minimum. Again, still wondering--anyone have access to paper atlases or encyclopedia? Qwyrxian (talk) 13:23, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Qwyrxian, this is quite close to your simple google search restricted to English sites. The difference may be, in the previous search, they use "name islands" as a strict criteria, hence ignoring the mention of just the names. For example, an article mentioning "islands of diaoyu" or "diaoyu tai islands" would not show up on the previous search. Even in Phoenix777's search, it was 1420 vs 711+259=970, not 3 times more often as he claimed. :)San9663 (talk) 14:23, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Ad hominem tu quoque --Tenmei (talk) 14:40, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Right from the start I proposed us to agree to accept a result that none of us could predict (google official verdict), but it was rejected -- if that is what you are referring to. San9663 (talk) 14:52, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Qwyrxian, I followed phoenix' link, his first (top) three results. (1) Sino-Japanese Dispute over the Tiao-yu-tai (Senkaku) Islands and the Law of Territorial Acquisition by T Cheng (2) Sovereign rights and territorial space in Sino-Japanese relations: irredentism and the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands by U Suganuma. (3) The US role in the Sino-Japanese dispute over the Diaoyu (Senkaku) Islands, 1945–1971 by JMF Blanchard. They won't show up in "Diaoyu islands" search, because Cheng spelled Tiao-yu with hyphens and with a "T", and Suganuma and Blanchard had placed Diaoyu ahead of Senkaku (so that you won't find "Diaoyu Islands" together. This is why the results were different. BTW, there are 131 results with the "tiao-yu-tai" spelling, which could make the result of Chinese name more than that of Japanese name. San9663 (talk) 14:59, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Logical fallacy

Post hoc ergo propter hoc — not "a fundamental defect in the previous analysis of both search results and policy."Review threads which developed from here through here.QED. --Tenmei (talk) 14:35, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Apologies--I have no idea what that meant. Was that saying I committed a logical fallacy by assuming that X followed Y, therefore X caused Y? If so, what are X and Y? I may well have made a logical fallacy, but I don't understand what it is, and would happily like to have the defect pointed out. Qwyrxian (talk) 14:39, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Qwyrxian -- In a discussion thread, active and passive participation is encouraged. The hallmark of your effectiveness is revealed in the way you take in the opinions expressed by others. You only began to stray into a logical fallacy when you began to take in San9663's over-reaching. In this instance, your demonstrated commitment to the principle of collaborative editing led you astray.

San9663's parsed argument here and here and here devolved into a post hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy. It does not present "a fundamental defect in the previous analysis of both search results and policy."

You identified the pivot but you did not recognize it here. On one hand, I guess you should have stopped when you said you were done. On the other hand, thank you. I learned from the process of struggling to understand the mistakes which unfolded next. This became an extended teachable moment.

At one point here, I envisaged Pinnacle Islands as an arguably appropriate name, but no longer. I would be remiss if I were to fail to thank San9663 for the time invested in constructive refutation and counterargument which helped me to learn a difficult lesson. --Tenmei (talk) 17:35, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

I have no idea what your not-fundamental defect means. (1) the previous searches had technically flaw. (2) the conlusion (3x more) did mot even match the original data. (3) the liancourt analogy was never addressed. There are ample reasons for review and revisit. BTW, are you accusing others of losing a POV? I am happy to change my mind if you can convince me so. I believe the spirit of wiki is to submit to objective reasoning with an open mind, instead of insisting on a POV, any POV.San9663 (talk) 02:24, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

comment It's obvious that either Japanese or Chinese names for the disputed islands aren't overwhelmingly more common than their counterparts, according to the previous search research on google scholars and google books. However, Misplaced Pages also states that when there is no consensus reached, it will hardly change anything. This means that even if 55% people agree to change the name with 45% strongly objecting to it, it won't change anything.

As long as the current title is kept, the discussions on the naming convention will never end and we'll end up in a dead loop. Following the example of Lioncourt islands, I think it's time to request Misplaced Pages:Arbitration. --Winstonlighter (talk) 20:05, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Arbitration resolves problems concerning editor behaviour. It does not make decisions about things like article titles and/or content. John Smith's (talk) 22:51, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

This entry is badly in need of some really neutral person to be involved, since reasoning seems to be ignored. Let the arbitrator or admin to decide what decision they would make and what they would not. If one has no POV, for me, there is nothing to be afraid of, and I would be happy if I am proved wrong. I also do not mind applying the same set of criteria to other entries (and post there) if asked to. San9663 (talk) 02:31, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

In reference to Winstonlighter above, I think what you mean is Mediation. To be honest, I think it's too soon for Mediation--I actually don't see massive disagreement. In fact, I would argue we've only just begun to gather the relevant data. Now, Mediation may be necessary in the future, but are we really at some sort of intractable impasse? I did come to this discussion late, but has it been so bad? Personally, my opinion is that we should keep gathering information (internet searches, government sites, international atlases and encyclopedias, etc.). Also, I think it's nice that there hasn't been an edit or move warring over the issue, which to me at least shows that we're still in a talking stage.

In reference to Tenmei above, I think San9663 is hitting on a key point--even though the previous discussion seemed definitive, it looks like there may have been mistakes in the way the search terms were set up. Whenever I have time, I'm going to try to do a bunch of searches to follow up on what's above. At the moment, my feeling is that the two terms are close to equal, which, of course, is the least helpful of results. However, I don't believe, like WinstonLighter said, that it's "obvious that either Japanese or Chinese names for the disputed islands aren't overwhelmingly more common than their counterparts." It's starting to look that way, but it's definitely not obvious to me yet--I think there's more work to be done. Qwyrxian (talk) 03:38, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

The name convention you suggested sounds reasonable enough. One way you can try to verify my finding/"claim" that the searches done a couple month to a month ago was problematic, is to see how many results you get with ("senkaku" OR "diaoyu"), i.e. entries that contain both words in the same article. I believe more than half of the results from "Senkaku Islands" search also contain the word "diaoyu" or a variation such as "daioyutai" or "Tiaoyutai".San9663 (talk) 14:51, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

There are full guidelines on search engine test: WP:SET. I also recall Misplaced Pages ruling that if consensus cannot be reached on the article's title, the first title named by the creator of the full article should be used. I believe it maybe 'Daioyutai Islands'? STSC (talk) 16:39, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

The Liancourt Rocks are named after the only notable event that ever almost happened there. The Senkaku Islands have no such distinction. But we are an English language project and so the primary name used by English speakers needs to apply. The Chinese and Japanese wikistans can have different titles for their pages. Hcobb (talk) 16:58, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

The graphic at the right was created to illustrate factors affecting trajectory. Does it adequately illustrate the analysis Qwyrxian proposes?

"... San9663 is hitting on a key point--even though the previous discussion seemed definitive, it looks like there may have been mistakes in the way the search terms were set up."

Can this graphic assist us going-foward? --Tenmei (talk) 17:14, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

How does that graphic help us? I don't understand what an animation about physics has to do with choosing a name for this article.

P.S.: I know I said I'd run more search terms, and really, I will, once I can muster the concentration and time for some (not very interesting) searches. One quick question: I'm having problems with excluding terms on Google searches. For example, when I search for "Diaoyu" and "island", I get (on normal Google, English only) I get 80,400 hits. When I try to exclude "Senkaku" (so my search reads 'Diaoyu island -Senkaku') I actually get more results: 142,000. That doesn't make any sense; any search with a subtracted words should always get the same or fewer hits. What am I doing wrong? Qwyrxian (talk) 08:38, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Actually, never mind that, because I just remembered about one of the problems with the Liancourt Rocks searches...it's not enough to just exclude one or the other. It was established (based on some policy somewhere), that we actually need to look at the way the articles use the terms. That is, if an article says "The Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands" or "The Senkaku Islands (Diaoyu Islands)," that counts as a "point" for neither side. However, if the article says, "There has been much debate recently about ownership of the Senkaku Islands. The Senkaku Islands (or, as they are known in Chinese, the Diaoyu Islands)..." then that actually indicates that the English term is Senkaku and Diaoyu is only be included for the Chinese form, thus a "point" for Senkaku. Ugh...I remember that one person did a random sampling of search results to try to determine how often it was used one way or another....ugh. Qwyrxian (talk) 09:15, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes, i ran into the same problem when i did the search. That is why I tried to compare the results of 2 searches -- not perfect, but close enough. I suspect the reason is google has an algorithm to include "Approximate" results (e.g. mis-spelled words) at the end of the list. If we agree on the fact that google results are page-ranked, sieving down from the top 50 results may be good enough, because the top 10 results should "weight" at least as much as the bottom 100 results. We can apply the % of the top 50 (or top 100) to the 80,400 but that is still a lot of work, and may generate controversy since the count is manual. San9663 (talk) 09:32, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

It is timely and relevant to introduce two targeted observations:

1. "... It's ridiculous to keep proposing changes until people come up with the 'right' answer." — John Smith's, see diff
2. "... he lead is not the place to try to work out all of the subtle details of the debate. Specifically, the lead is the place to summarize, in very broad strokes, the topic of the article." "... he lead is not the place to try to work out all of the subtle details of the debate. Specifically, the lead is the place to summarize, in very broad strokes, the topic of the article." — Qwyrxian, see diff

• Paraphrasing the words and format: he lead is not the place to try to work out all of the subtle details of the debate. Specifically, the lead is the place to summarize, in very broad strokes, the topic of the article."

This reasoning informs my guess that this thread is not a constructive investment of time. If not, why not? I will continue to ponder how to contribute effectively in a process of resolving problems like this one. --Tenmei (talk) 18:06, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

My first suggestion if you want to rejoin the conversation is to never, under any circumstances, misrepresent what another editor has said. The use of square brackets is done to clarify meaning, not to change it. For example, a common use is to replace a pronoun from a quote that was clear in context but whose meaning is unclear outside of that. But you fundamentally altered what I was saying, without indicating that you were doing so--my original text was discussing the lead section of a totally different article, not the title of this article. The policies and guidelines that underlie leads and article titles are fundamentally different. Please, in the future, never change my words to suit your own argument. Qwyrxian (talk) 23:27, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Credible "Storm in a teacup"?

Qwyrxian -- Your apparent dissatisfaction is now addressed with the more specific alternative text above. From your point of view, is this better? If not, please show me how you would have preferred to see this formatted.

No misrepresentation was intended nor likely to have been perceived. Please note that an hyperlink made it easy to confirm your words in their explicit context.

A quick Google search for "use of brackets in quotes" produces: "Square brackets have more specialized uses, like inserting information into quotes ....", "Brackets, or crotchets, are always used in pairs to mark off material inserted into a quotation which is not part of the original quotation", etc. Compare Google books search for "use of brackets in quotes".

Qwyrxian -- In my experience, brackets simply indicate something added; and the nature or purpose of the added text is to be determined on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes this is mere clarification; and sometimes the added text is a change. In my experience, strike out simply indicates a word or words to be noted and set aside; and the reasons for the strike-out are also variable depending on context. A quick search for an digitized illustration of "treaty text changes strike out and brackets" produces:

• Bulletin of the atomic scientists: Volumes 52-53 Educational Foundation for Nuclear Science (Chicago, Ill.), Atomic Scientists of Chicago, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (Organization) - 1996 - Snippet view Working groups and expert groups have come and gone, resulting in a revised 97-page "rolling text" that contains all the relevant elements of the treaty — with 1200 pairs of brackets indicating alternate language and/or ideas. ...

If necessary, I suppose I can find and upload a sample page which illustrates a usage which I consider conventional and unremarkable.

Summarizing: The important point is this: Your two sentences are crisp, clear and unambiguous. The power or force of the sentences is in the words themselves. --Tenmei (talk) 02:20, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

I have no interest in further discussing this issue, as it has no relevance to the important question of what to name this article. Qwyrxian (talk) 03:38, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

This is one of the rare few comical moments in this page. Bobthefish2 (talk) 19:07, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

New Numbers: Indian news articles

As a first test, I decided to try a very specific search, the idea for which was triggered by someone above (or on the other talk page) saying something to the effect of, “Diaoyu is widely known across Asia, while Senkaku is only known in Japan.” Since, of course, only English language results matter, my thought was that I would search (using Google News Search) for English news articles published in India, given that it is the largest English using country in Asia (well, to be accurate, the largest English using country in the world), to try to get a clearer handle on that detail. Here’s my results.

For brevity, D/S = places where the mention is “Diaoyu/Senkaku”; S/D = places where the mention is “Senkaku/Diaoyu”. I'm collapsing the results for ease of use, with a summary following.

Whew....okay, what does that tell us:

29 Distinct Sites from the two searches.

8 mention Senkaku only, although 3 of those may be SPS. 4 mention both, but put an emphasis on Senkaku

1 mentions Diaoyu only 3 mention both, but put an emphasis on Diaoyu

13 Mention both, approximately equally (6 put Diaoyu first, with 3 of those being D/S; while 7 put Senkaku first, with 1 of those being S/D)

So, we see a disparity of opinions. Approximately 41% mention Senkaku only or put extra emphasis on Senkaku, approximately 45% mention both about equally, and about 14% mention Diaoyu only.

For completeness, I checked “Diaoyutai,” “Tiaoyi”, and “Tiaoyutai”, and got a few hits, but all of them are represented in one of the lists above. Pinnacle Islands gets only 1 hit, and that’s a blog listed above.

Now, this is obviously an extremely limited search, but doing it and compiling the results took over an hour. I would love to do more, although I’m going to have to find some more efficient way to do it. I’ll consider random sampling; and if I do it again, I’ll record only results, not this long detailed list with all of the individual sites written out.

If I could somehow say that these results are representative of the whole, then I’d say we have the proper name right now, because, in articles that do emphasize or use only 1 name, Senkaku has a much larger share (3 times as many), and the only alternative (Pinnacle Islands) gets no reliable results. I’m not ready to say that yet, but I do think the results are...interesting?Qwyrxian (talk) 07:13, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for you efforts. But I wouldn't use India as the typical English speaking country (fine as an illustration of your methodology). As large as its population is more than half of them do not really speak English and still a significant number of illiterates. I think the wiki recommendation you (or others?) recommended, to use google scholar, sound fine to me, and acceptable/advocated by many people here. Since google results are arranged by page-rank and citation-rank. I think restricting to the top results should be fine (can start with top 50, then go further down if there is still controversy). Thre is one comment on your methodology though. Yours works if one is arguing to choose either Diaoyu or Senkaku - simple majority. But for the case of "no one is prevalent" or "compromise on a neutral one", the 45% is the majority. In addition, the overlaps represents vote for both names. i.e., Senkaku=45+41=96%, Diaoyu=45+14=59%. 96:59 should be the ratio to look at. And I think your search should really include the various difference spellings of D(T)iaoyu(tai) -- see my previous search of time trend. San9663 (talk) 09:31, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

I am not discounting India as a source. I am just trying to say India's weight is not to be taken as its population. e.g. Times of India has a circulation of 3.4m/day, as the largest newspaper in English, but only slightly higher than that of the Sun in UK's 3m/day (see wikilink of Times of India). Not sure how that weight turns out in your sampling though (in your sample counting a blog may carry the same weight as the Times of India). Google's ranking would solve this problem and the problem of different English source from India to Canada to Singapore, approximately. San9663 (talk) 11:26, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

One potential problem for your analysis above (for discussion only, I am not sure how to resolve this -- but supports the rationale of relying on google scholar instead of google news): your 1 and 33 both come from IBN. One is a direct copy from Kyodo (so it mentions Senkaku only), 33 quotes China's MoFA (so Diaoyu only). Neither of these represent Indian reporter's writing, though arguable the reporter in 33 did some paraphrasing and wrote the report herself. San9663 (talk) 10:25, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately, Google Scholar usually won't lead itself to this type of analysis. This is because most Google Scholar articles are behind a paywall--all I can actually look at is the abstract. So that means I have no way to actually look at the articles to determine whether or not it uses both names (and if so, how often); even if I could, none of us here has the time necessary to scan many through the entire text of journal articles.

On the alternate spelling, at the very end of my post I noted that I did check for all of those, and found no additional results (that's probably because these were recent search results rather than Archive).

As for your different math...well, I can understand where you're coming from, but the problem is that the more I look at this, the more obvious it becomes to me that Pinnacle Islands is not an acceptable alternative. Except for very old texts, the term simply isn't used in English. It almost never shows up except as the third choice in a list. This is different than the Liancourt Rocks example, where there were a reasonable number of somewhat current results using that term. I wish there were a 4th alternative...the only one I can think of is to use the Sea of Japan compromise, which you can read at Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (Korean)#Sea of Japan (East Sea), which basically says that the article title is Sea of Japan, all international and Japan only articles use Sea of Japan, and all Japanese-Korean articles as well as South Korean only articles use Sea of Japan (East Sea). And, in that case, East Sea is only used once in each article. This was based on a vote from 2005, here. I have no idea how such a vote on this issue would turn out....I'm really just rambling, trying to think of something else....Qwyrxian (talk) 11:21, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

For google scholar, i think you can see the abstract (which is practical enough) and also judge based on the two lines displayed in search results. We can establish a rule that you ignore those you cannot decide based on the few lines that were revealed -- after all, we are only doing sampling, and for articles which don't have the names in the Abstracts they probably are not about these islands and should carry less weight anyway. In fact, if the same article turns up in both searches, you will be able to see the two lines to compare how it treats each of the names. Makes sense? San9663 (talk) 11:34, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Can you elaborate on the comparison with Liancourt rock? I did a simple search restricted to "english", Dokdo has 750k results (not counting variations in spelling), Liancourt rocks has 11.8k, some 1.6%. "pinnacle islands" (as one word) has 3,580 results, "senkaku islands" 77,700 =>5%. (i tried without the quoation and pinnacle+islands have 1.77M results)San9663 (talk) 11:49, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

In South East Asia, "Diaoyutai Islands" is very often referred just as "Diaoyutai" or "Diaoyu". I used the Philippines Google(www.google.com.ph) in English to search these terms excluding Diaoyu Castle and any guesthouse or hotel (e.g., Diaoyutai State Guesthouse, Diaoyutai Hotel). I also searched "Senkaku" without the "Islands".

Search: diaoyutai OR diaoyu -diaoyu-castle -guesthouse -hotel

Hits: 2,110,000

Search: senkaku

Hits: 895,000

STSC (talk) 16:44, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

That has been discussed already. Bobthefish2 (talk) 19:01, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

I tried to demonstrate that "Diaoyutai" appeared more common in South East Asia. STSC (talk) 20:40, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Qwyxian, you have not taken into account of impact factor. If Times magazine names one thing A and 13 newspapers in Singapore names another thing B, then how would you opine on that? If we are to desperately skew the analysis and stretch logic, one can also say all Chinese-based English media strongly favour 'diaoyu' and that since China consists of 1/4 of the world's population, this should be weighed very favourably towards the Chinese end of the argument. I think, by now, it is obvious that both names deserve to be considered equal in weight. Unless there is a personal preference on your part to keep fighting this observation, then I'd suggest to just do the reasonable thing and agree that the article should have a dual-name. It's that simple. Bobthefish2 (talk) 19:01, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

@STSC: using NOT (minus) actually messes up Google searches--as I pointed out above "Diaoyu Islands -Senkaku" gets more results than "Diaoyu Islands" by itself.

@BobtheFish2: Apparently you missed it above, but the article naming guidelines explicitly and unambiguously state that we can't use dual names--it isn't an option. The simple reason is that all we'll end up doing is arguing whether it should be "Diaoyu-Senkaku" or "Senkaku-Diaoyu"--same argument, different terminology. And, no, it's not obvious to me they should be treated equally--I see lots of evidence that Senkaku is used more commonly in English than Diaoyu. However, I'm still willing to be convinced...and, unfortunately, it sounds like you're saying you already have all of the evidence you need, despite the fact that we haven't collected the key evidence yet (which requires actually looking at sources like I did above, not just running searches). If that's the case--if you or others have already made up your mind without the evidence required by the guidelines, then I guess me looking for the evidence is useless, and we should just jump to an RfC. Is that what you're saying? Qwyrxian (talk) 22:00, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

@BobtheFish2 again: And I can't believe I let you distract me...you say China is 1/4 of the world population...but for purposes of this discussion, well over 90% of those people are absolutely irrelevant--because they don't speak English. Naming guidelines are clear--we only care about the names that are used in English language sources, not about local names (as I've said again and again, consider Florence vs. Firenze, where the WP article is Florence despite the native name being Firenze). And no, we don't give "weight" to TIME over 13 writers in Singapore--we measure how the terms are commonly used in English. That's. It. That is the only consideration here. If Senkaku is used significantly more commonly than Diaoyu, we use Senkaku as the title. End of question. If they are used around equally (what exactly counts as around equally is of course debatable), then we find a compromise (which is probably Pinnacle Island...ugh). And anyway, how could I possibly measure impact rating anyways? These aren't academic journals where I can measure that...how do I decide if Happyville Times has more impact than Happyville Tribune? How do I measure the impact factor of a major national U.S. magazine versus a U.K. magazine? It cannot be done. We have to focus on the rules, here.Qwyrxian (talk) 22:10, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Of course you can know the difference in weight, if you care to, we all know how to distinguish NYT from my osbcure blog. Google solved that problem over 10 years ago. It used page-rank -- articles rank higher if more people read (link to) it. They also apply the same principle in Google Scholar, ranking with citation. your can follow the link in the wiki entry of "page rank" to know more. Brin/Page's original research is pretty easy to understand. This also solves your problem of having to count everyone -- counting the top 50 is enough. Please give a shot you will know why people use google to search. You can install "google toolbar" to your browser, it will show the "page rank" of the website when you read it. The indian articles you found mostly have 1 or 2 score in the pagerank. i.e. nobody links to these websites. San9663 (talk) 01:25, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

For inspiration on the title, just listen to a leading historian

"Proceeding from the Japanese people stand of opposition to militarism, one should reject the name Senkaku Islands, which was adopted by Japanese Militarism after seizing them from China. Use the only correct name in history, namely, the Tiaoyu (Diaoyutai) Islands"
- Kiyoshi Inoue (former professor at History department, Kyoto University, Japan)
STSC (talk) 17:03, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

This comment refers to a self-published online essay here and here by Kiyoshi Inoue. There was no discernable connection with a published citation.

Relying on WP:Verifiability#Self-published sources, I removed it from the "External links" section of our article. For the same reasons, STSC's suggestion can only be construed as unpersuasive at this time. --Tenmei (talk) 18:45, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

I didn't see the source myself, but if it is just a self-published essay of own opinions, then it's not something one should use. In fact, we should try to limit the amount of non-government opinions unless they raise some decent logical inference. Bobthefish2 (talk) 18:53, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

It's not an opinion. It's a conclusion based on academic finding in Diaoyutai history. STSC (talk) 19:36, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Professor Kiyoshi Inoue had written a whole book on the subject. Other people referring to his finding on their websites is not Kiyoshi's "self-published online essay". And I'm not introducing any encyclopedic material to publish.STSC (talk) 19:18, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Does the book say the exact same thing? If it is of the same level of reliability as the Japanese books cited, then I will change my opinion. Bobthefish2 (talk) 19:32, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

I believe Professor Kiyoshi had said that in his book. By the way, this is just a Talk page that does not have any encyclopedic content to publish. STSC (talk) 20:08, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

If you're not trying to introduce encyclopedic material, you're soap boxing. We don't make decisions about article titles based on real world issues--we follow Misplaced Pages guidelines. If we didn't follow guidelines (which are based in the frequency of various names appearing in English sources), then this whole talk page would just be "No, China is Better!" "No, I support Taiwan!" "Only a revisionist would disagree with Japan!" No one here should be supporting one name over the other because they agree with real-world arguments like Kiyoshi's--or, to say that more accurately, no one should be using such reasons as arguments to support one name or the other. Qwyrxian (talk) 21:51, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

：I don't think the opinion of one scholar (even from prestigious institutes such as Kyoto University or Harvard) is enough for our judgement. However, Tenmei needs to restore these links, and do not remove them before discussion here ends. The articles are on hosted sites. The links point to hosted sites because the origins are behind paywall/offline. (1) yes. the english translation is faithful. you can compare with the Japanese (2) The japanese site are original quotes. you can choose some of the quotes in scholarly publications to compare -- there are plenty of citation to Inoue's research in Google Scholar for you to compare quotes. San9663 (talk) 01:40, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Here are the links to the original articles (books). I don't know how wiki treat this, but I guess links to books as related readings are fine, the summary are in the hosted sites. (link to both for readers to verify themselves?) original in japanese, chinese translation. This is arguably the single most important reference where scholars from both sides debate on (just look at the citation of the top results form google scholar). There is no reason to leave it out in the reference list. I re-did the link in the reference section, please see if that works. San9663 (talk) 02:09, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

BTW, Tenmei, it seems you put a lot of efforts into fixing the links. Appreciate that. One question, I found some of the GIS links seem to be pointing ar the wrong location (i.e. wrong coordinate). Also, maybe we should add google maps (it also has a terrain version for altitude) because it is in English and easier to read for most readers (we can keep the Japanese GIS to provide more choices) San9663 (talk) 03:34, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Names in lead section

Five different titles in the lead section is far too much. It should be reduced to three (Japanese, most common Chinese and English). Alternative names can be added in the naming section. John Smith's (talk) 23:02, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Should have (1) English - Pinnacle (2) Japanese - Senkaku (3) PRC /simplified Chinese -Diaoyu or Diaoyutai (4) ROC / traditional Chinese - Tiaoyutai. Begin with English and put variation and original language inside bracket. Current presentation seems ok. San9663 (talk) 05:33, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

I note that while older ROC sources might list "Tiaoyutai", the ROC has adopted pinyin romanisation as of 2009 and so the official romanisation for the islands has changed to Diaoyu / Diaoyutai, i.e. the same as PRC usage. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 17:00, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

I see. Thanks. I tried to see this from a reader who has no background on the issue coming to wiki to seek information. I guess then we also have to consider that in a significant amount of literatures (esp though before mainland China opened up in 1980s), the names were spelled this way. For the benefits of wiki readers who have no background with the subject or language, and for people who search library/researches, it would be helpful to provide such a spelling? San9663 (talk) 17:10, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

My view tends towards that of John Smith's (surprising, I know) on this - that the lead should not be an exhaustive list but should keep to the most common references - one English name, one Chinese name, and one Japanese name. This is especially because there is a whole "Names" section which explain the origins of and subtle differences between all the different names. The two alternative Japanese formulations, which really just illustrate the different ways to phrase "Islands" in Japanese rather than illustrate substantively different names, is in my view excessive and unnecessarily clutters up the lead sentence. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 09:01, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

I also agree. The Taiwanese naming is highly redundant and unnecessary. It's not like the Chinese name of the island is different in Taiwan. However, the choice of traditional or simplified Chinese can be a tough one. I'd personally prefer traditional, but that's because I simply like the traditional characters more. Bobthefish2 (talk) 19:05, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Simplified is more common though, correct? We should use the most common version in use in the Chinese language. John Smith's (talk) 20:14, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

I agree. Or, alternatively, leave all non-English characters to the names section. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 21:47, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

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