Talk:Mao Zedong Thought

Personal Language Aesthetic is Encyclopaedically Irrelevant

You reverted my request for a page move because you, personally, do not find the term grammatical.

Your entirely personal, entirely subjective, opinion, was used as the rationale for the denial of a move absolutely required on completely solid, third-party sourced (see the lead, origins, and difference from MZT sections), grounds. This is unbelievable.

Googling "mao zedong thought" and "mao tse-tung thought" returns 185,000 and 169,000 results respectively (I recognise these aren't exact numbers). Mao Zedong Thought is an incredibly well-established english term now. This is undebatable. Although the term may have originated from Chinese, it refers to primarily to a Chinese concept.

"Maoism" may sound slightly more natural than "Mao Zedong Thought", of course I admit that, but this is entirely and absolutely irrelevant. They are different terms referring to different things, and do not need to be compared on aesthetic grounds. "Maoism" has historically referred to "Mao Zedong Thought", but now the meaning has shifted somewhat towards "Marxism-Leninism-Maoism". This requires Maoism to be a disambiguation page.

You are evidently an experienced wikipedia editor, being an admin, so I cannot come up with any reason for this denial of page move (for subjective aesthetics over encyclopedic integrity and third-party sources, which isn't a wikipedia policy) other than bias and ignorance concerning topics on the other end of the political spectrum to you.

Alyxr (talk) 16:50, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

Please see our WP:AGF policy: assuming good faith is standard here, so assuming bias is inappropriate. Here at Wikipedia, we have two types of page titles: specific titles, if a subject has a widely-used name, or descriptive titles, if it doesn't. See Great Chinese Famine and 1972 Nixon visit to China for one example of each. Now: I wasn't aware that anyone used "MZT" as a proper name. I thought you were suggesting MZT as a descriptive title, and I declined that because it's not grammatical; "Thoughts of MZ" or "Political philosophy of MZ" would be much better. Now that I see that it's an actual name, I won't object on those grounds. However, a page on a major topic, such as this ought to have discussion before it's moved (what you requested is better for lesser-known subjects or for obvious errors such as typos in page titles), and if you have trouble figuring out how to do that, I can help you. Please be aware, however, that I will oppose the request: "Maoism" appears frequently in what I've read, while I've never seen "MZT" at all. The latter name only appears a few times in the article; only one spot is cited at all, and that citation is to a very unreliable website, while the external link at the end of the article gives "MZT" as an alternative name for Maoism. Conversely, I see lots of sources using "Maoism" even in their titles, which leads me to believe that it's still the most common name for the subject. Nyttend (talk) 21:58, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

"ought to have discussion before it's moved" -- I made a section on the talk page for Talk:Maoism and it's been up for 20 days but nobody commented so I decided to go ahead.

"The latter name only appears a few times in the article" and ""Maoism" appears frequently in what I've read, while I've never seen "MZT" at all". There are three (possibly four) reasons for this:

1. people confuse MLM with MZT.

2. Maoism can thus refer to either concept for some people. Even for people aware of the distinction they very frequently use it to refer to either concept depending on the context (the only alternatives are "Mao Zedong Thought-ism" or "adherant of Mao Zedong Thought" or something equally horrific).

3. MZT is mostly politically irrelevant now so people don't really talk about it.

4. I'm not sure if you've read much modern revolutionary chinese history, but "Mao Zedong Thought" actually does frequently appear.

There are four ways of going forwards:

1. continue to conflate two separate terms with different histories and contexts, just leaving things as they are

2. make one huge article that has to go into the history of both and constantly has to explain "Marxist-Leninist-Maoists think X but Mao Zedong Thought actually says Y"

2. move Maoism to Mao Zedong Thought, and make Maoism a disambiguation page pointing to Mao Zedong Thought and Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, informing the reader that people commonly conflate both concepts. This would be my preference.

3. move Maoism to Mao Zedong Thought and Marxism-Leninism-Maoism to Maoism. This might be another option. Of the two, MLM is a now far more popular and and politically relevant ideology than MZT.

Have you read the lead paragraph, and the "Origins" and the "Difference from MZT" sections of the Marxism-Leninism-Maoism article? People do commonly conflate MZT and MLM, but they refer to different concepts so whether it's more common to think they are the same doesn't terribly matter. They *are* different concepts and we can't just pretend they aren't because some people don't understand that.

Alyxr (talk) 03:21, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

By "discussion", I meant the full requested move process, which is much broader than a simple note on the talk page, because RMs are listed at a central page; see WP:RM. You have to follow the process precisely (otherwise the software won't list it at the central page), which is why I offered to help. Anyway, we do not change names of articles from A to B if the current content talks almost exclusively about A; either you must get consensus for the content to be changed before the article's moved, or you'll need to get consensus for a proposal to change both pagename and contents. And no, I didn't read the M-L-M article, because your proposal was to move the Maoism article, which firmly disagrees with your conclusions. Nyttend (talk) 11:59, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

How dare you even offer an opinion on the subject when I have said AGAIN AND AGAIN that the sources and information explaining WHY THE MAOISM ARTICLE IS WRONG and WHY IT IS IN FACT MOSTLY TALKING ABOUT "B" and WHY TWO ARTICLES ARE NECESSARY are in the MLM article.

First you didn't even read the message accompanying the move, so you completely and utterly misunderstood my intent and denied it on aesthetic grounds. Then you go on and on and on saying that you disagree with the move when you haven't even read a single letter of backing evidence I have given. If the information absolutely required to offer even the most basic opinion on the matter in question has been handed to you on a plate, you don't go offering an opinion until you've read it. This is so disrespectful, you are wasting my time. You know absolutely nothing about the subject, yet you presume to offer opinions, ignoring everything I have given you. Alyxr (talk) 18:20, 18 June 2014 (UTC)