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A note on this page's history
I am adding this note for posterity, and to explain why the article shifted dramatically in September 2012.
This article as it exists now was mostly built by me in September 2012. While looking for the Misplaced Pages article on tanka, I found that it was at that time a disambiguation page. I eventually requested a double-move so that right now "Tanka" is an article about Japanese poetry and the disambig page is located at Tanka (disambiguation). Before that, though, I noticed that there was a very curious statement on the disambiguation page that:
Tanka prose, a literary genre which combines tanka poems and prose
Having never heard of this "tanka prose", despite years of studying Japanese literature, I looked at the article. I found it lacking in any reputable sources on Japanese literature, despite the introduction and "History" sections claiming that "tanka prose" existed in the Heian period. I assumed that "tanka prose" was an obscure English translation of uta monogatari ("tanka" apparently being used on English Misplaced Pages as a general term for both modern tanka and classical waka, the word uta meaning essentially the same thing in most cases, and monogatari being a prose narrative, my assumption seemed justified). I thought that some misguided users who did not speak Japanese had created this page based on online sources, with the intention of creating a proper article on uta monogatari, which they believed was known as "tanka prose". I posted a comment on the talk page asking for clarification, and when after a day I received no further comment, I decided to, in good faith, move the page to uta monogatari and rewrite much of the article to fit this description.
Upon doing this, within 9 hours I was reverted, rather rudely, by the creator of the original page. He still refused to cite any reliable sources or justify his claims relating to classical Japanese literature, so I reverted him back and posted a further comment on the talk page asking the user not to add unreliable material based on primary sources to Misplaced Pages. He replied with a very lengthy tirade in which he demonstrated that he knew very little about the Japanese language in general and Japanese literature in particular, as well as a complete lack of respect for Misplaced Pages's rules regarding the presentation of opinions as facts (I didn't know that if I kept something the article stated as fact, but removed the source because the author seemed unreliable, I was committing "plagiarism" of that author's ideas).
This sparked a very long dispute in which I decided it wasn't worth fighting with him and suggested he go and create an article on his "modern English tanka prose" and refrain from making ridiculous statements about Japanese literature, and base his article on secondary sources where possible.. He pretended to agree to my compromise, and then went to "Tanka prose" and created an article that made the same ridiculous claims, and relied on the same online/Lulu-published primary sources as before, and our dispute continued until the article was ultimately removed and the page made into a redirect to Tanka in English. But the rest of the user's history of posting spam and personal attacks against me and other users is not relevant to this article.
The above is an account of why this page's history from its creation in August 2008 to September 2012 appears to be about a completely different subject. I am not sure if the original history is worth keeping for posterity, or if Misplaced Pages policy favours deleting the history in cases like this, where some Wikipedians accidentally took AGF too far and instead of creating a new article moved an already existing article that actually should have been deleted in the first place. I have added this note here so that users who come across the history and are confused can consult the talk page to find a summarized answer. :D
elvenscout742 (talk) 02:54, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
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