Talk:Three Hundred Tang Poems

List of poets

I think this article has a potential to grow into a significantly better article; however, it seems to be stifled/overwhelmed by the list of poets, some of whom seem to be little known or even unknown, other than by a surviving bit of poetry: therefore, I am planning to replace the list section with a section which focuses more on general topics and/or focuses more on some of the individual and more famous and renowned poets, and to move the list of poets to a stand-alone article with the list as sortable table. Dcattell (talk) 16:05, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

That seemed like a good idea to me. However, User:Hijiri88 merged the list back into the article. I wonder what the justification for that was. --Kai Carver (talk) 08:51, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

Okay, a notification of this probably would have been more helpful than just asking what my motivation was. For whatever reason, the above ping didn't work.

The fact that the "running prose" of the article is overwhelmed by the list of poets is precisely why the merge was a good thing. If the topic (and both the "article" and "list" were on the same topic) does not have a single article more than a certain length, it should not be split for purely aesthetic reasons, especially when expansion would be the better solution and would not be difficult. I don't know an exact figure (and I don't think it would be helpful anyway), but 900 words, of which about 600 are two lists and almost everything else in the lead (contrary to the guidelines for writing article leads), is scarcely more than a stub.

Anyway, I'd be happy to expand the article (once WAM is over and I don't have other stuff to deal with) to address User:Dcattell's concerns, but I assume I wouldn't be the only one who is capable of doing that in the mean time.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 20:58, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

Oh, son of a ... This talk page is completely inactive and the above comment by Dcattell is from six years ago. I hardly think prior consensus should be required for bold actions on an article that no one is watching, and my change has been the status quo for more than a year now. If User:Kaicarver actually agrees with the substance of Dcattell's long ago argument, or if Dcattell stills holds this view, then I would still be happy to address it, but I don't think the burden should be on me if only one user has expressed disagreement and that came more than a year late and the PAG were already on my side to begin with. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 21:05, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

I do think the list is useful, although the listing of the multiple columns of the Chinese renditions of poets' names is tedious and detracts from the article. -Zanhe (talk) 00:33, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

Normally I would agree, but that would mean we have to find a compromise between common English usage (and WG is still overwhelmingly more popular among western scholarship of this topic, from what I can tell) and the "official" spellings of the Chinese government. I would say cut the tone-marked pinyin and the simplified Chinese first, and then if anything else needs to go I would say it's the dates. Many of them are in dispute among scholars (read: they should not be quoted without citations of reliable sources), and in an ideal world would be redundant with the links to our articles on those poets. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 03:33, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

Sorry about the confusion User:Hijiri88, it was just an honest question. I came to the talk page wondering why the list had been re-merged, and didn't find any explanation for what seemed like a pretty major change. So I asked you. Now that you have given an explanation, I'd say I still slightly favor keeping the list separate, mostly to avoid the concerns brought up above by Zanhe. The list with all its detail seems rather unique and useful in a deep dive, data-centric way, but most people who want to know about 300 Tang Poems won't want to know all that nitty-gritty sortable and partly questionable detail. So I don't think the split was done just for "aesthetic" reasons. But you probably know more about the topic and about Wikipedia editing than I do, so I'll defer to your judgment. Maybe such a detailed list has no place in Wikipedia, dunno. I'm not super experienced in Wikipedia -- I don't know what WAM or PAG mean, nor how to ping someone except by writing on their page. --Kai Carver (talk) 04:34, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

Thing is, this is a very important topic in Chinese literary history, and the list, even in its current, very "heavy" form, should only be a small part of the article rather than completely overshadowing everything else. Arguments that the list should be split off because the rest of the article is too short and it looks unbalanced (which is how I read Dcattell's original comment) don't really stand up as a reason to split the page, since the normal way to deal with those kind of problems would be to expand the article, and only then discuss splitting it.

Anyway, "WAM" is Wikipedia:Wikipedia Asian Month, which I assumed editors watching this page would be familiar with, not least because of the advertisements appearing project-wide and apparently drawing no end of non-Asia-oriented trolls; editors with this page on their watchlists would surely be more likely to know about the event than said random trolls. "PAG" is Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines, which is something I would expect most long-term Wikipedia editors to be familiar with. Pinging is what normally happens when you link someone's userpage as you did mine above. Specifically, the PAG I was referring to above are the ones summarized at WP:WHENSPLIT: the two main reasons to split an article are length and content relevance; the length of the article with the list included is not only less than 40kB ("Length alone does not justify division"), but less than half that much; the second reason can't possibly apply because the content in question is definitely topic-relevant It doesn't work sometimes for a variety of reasons, such as your adding it after signing your comment, or my having accidentally turned off pings in my preferences.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 06:28, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

Just for the record, I do not think it unreasonable both to have the detailed list as it exists or as improved by expansion in a separate List article and also to develop a simplified version in the Main Tang 300 article. The details of the list are of encyclopedic value for those finding such to be interesting or useful to consult. However, the average English-reading user may find it easier to peruse a list simplified by omission, for example of Chinese characters. Retaining some modern form of the name in the main article and the "Wade-Giles" is essential, preferably as alphabetically sortable both ways. The list article could be expanded, to include, for example, Yale romanization. In other words, the separate list would be as complete as possible, and the one in the main article could be less distracting for a quick glance; for example, to correlate a name in one transcription system to another version or to see one of the poets' vital dates. Dcattell (talk) 16:36, 26 August 2018 (UTC)