Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Martial arts/archive 2

Capitalization

Quote from article: "Capitalization - Should the names of martial arts be capitalized in running text? Is it "Kung Fu", "Kung fu", or "kung fu" when in the middle of a sentence?"

I don't know Chinese very well, but I have based my writings in the Chinese martial arts articles on a comment in talk:kung fu by Menchi:

"Why did you capitalize gong and fu? It's used as a common noun in Chinese, not a proper noun. Also, both Merriam-Webster Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary use lowercase for kung fu. I know that there are a lot of popular use of capitals out there on the net, but that doesn't make it right."

- Wintran 11:57, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Neither Chinese nor Japanese use capital letters, as their writing mainly consists of ideograms. I do agree that the names of different arts should be spelled in lower case. However, organisation names are spelled with a capital letter, and as Wing Tsun is an organisation this leaves us with the question if it should be wing chun in lower case, but Wing Tsun with capital letters. Habj 14:11, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)

This is a tricky one. It feels more natural for me to write specific styles/systems capitalized, as I tend to treat these as names. Some systems are even based on names of places, such as Shaolin, or certain people, such as Wing Chun. I prefer to write them capitalized, even though Pinyin romanization rules might not always agree.

What I feel most confused about is terms like kung fu and wushu because these have such a variety of meanings. Wushu literally means "martial arts" in Chinese, and as we don't capitalize "martial arts" in English I think the same should go with this term. However, wushu is also used as the official name on the modern styles of Chinese martial arts, giving it a reason to be capitalized, though I personally prefer to call these styles modern/contemporary wushu to avoid confusion.

As with wushu, kung fu is a term often used when referring to Chinese martial arts in general. Many use this as a name of all Chinese martial arts, and logically that could very well mean it should be capitalized. If you go deeper behind the meaning and usage of this term in China, however, you will notice that it is not only centered around martial arts, as explained in kung fu. Based on this information it would suddenly feel strange to capitalize it.

All these different uses make these two terms very confusing, and is the reason to why I chose to separate them from the actual information on Chinese martial arts.

- Wintran 19:43, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Currently in the article it says 'Proper names of individual martial arts should be capitalized ("Cabales Serrada Escrima"). Use of martial arts terms as words should not be capitalized ("eskrima").'

How did we end up with that? What is an individual martial art? I thought eskrima/escrima was an art. "Cabales Serrada Escrima" sounde more like a shool/style to me. The reason I bring it up is, I am very much against writing Aikido in running text. Habj 10:25, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Personally, I think the text needs elaboration. My own personal preference is that, if they're a proper noun, then the name is capitalised. If used merely as a term, then it is not.

For instance, if I were talking about 'Karate' as in the empty-handed style broken down into schools such as Shotokan Karate or Shukokai Karate, then 'Karate' would be capitalised, as I have shown. If I were using the word 'karate' as 'empty-handed' to differentiate with the weapons work in a style such as the Bujinkan, then I would not.

-- Sasuke Sarutobi 13:44, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm in agreement with that, I started changing Eskrima/Arnis/Kali to lowercase, but it just looks bad to my eye. -Objectivist-C 04:12, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm a bit confused with respect to wing chun - why is it different from karate, judo or any other arts. The term seems to cover multiple styles ie no longer a proper name. Inquiring minds want to know.Peter Rehse 06:21, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

It's the name of an actual art/style (and according to some histories an actual person), where said art has (very recently, as it's a young art) branched to multiple branches/families, not a generic term applied on to a grouping of seperate styles to categorize them. General categorical terms are more like "kung fu", "wushu", "nanquan", "shaolin" (as opposed to Shaolin, the actual location, which would be capitalized) etc. Or (as per your example in the message on my talk page)for another example Kali, Arnis, Escrima), where they are regional words/descriptives applied to describe specific arts. A single art developing to have multiple branches is not the same as a categorical word to cover multiple individual arts/styles. Branch does not equal style. --Marty Goldberg 06:30, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable - it just begs the question when does branch become a style (ie are they all under one head master) and where does judo fit in. Cheers.Peter Rehse 06:41, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, I'd consider Judo (and your own art Aikido) to fall under the same idea (unlike escrima/arnis/kali as I mentioned above). Both are specific styles/arts that have over time spread out to have multiple branches, all with ties to the same root. I.e. Judo founded by Dr. Jigoro Kano, and Aikido by Morihei Ueshiba. Their students and their student's students have simply gone on to teach their own interpretations of his material, which themselves have become branches in their own right. Its not like Aikido started as a "term" to denote a group of loosely related seperate arts, nor did Judo. They were words given by the respective founders to title their art. --Marty Goldberg 06:49, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

In the interests of the larger question (ie I'm not sweating about Wing Chun) aikido has branched into specific styles although judo (with the possilbe exception of Kosen Judo) has not. However, in both these cases the word/name has worked itself into the venacular and I think the general consensus is that these two should not be capitalized.Peter Rehse 06:58, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

While the branches may consider themselves specific styles, from a hopological and genealogical standpoint, they are still simply branches of the same art. There are branches of Wing Chun that when compared may look as different as night and day, yet both contain the same core material from the same root. As far as an art's name working its way in to the vernaciular, I'm assuming you're refering to the generalization of a term due to popularity - i.e. how "Kleenex" started as an actual brand, whose name went on to become synonymous with any tissue paper in the popular vernacular. I don't see that as being the case with Judo and Aikido, certainly with something like "Karate" (which is often used by people with no or little martial arts experience as a buzz word for all martial arts in discussion). Can you provide a concrete example as to how Judo and Aikido as names have become generalized in popular vernacular? --Marty Goldberg 16:22, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Japanese, Chinese titles etc.

Students tend to mention their teachers, and other wellknown teachers in their style, as X sensei, Y shihan, Z sifu etc. For non budo / martial arts people, this looks very strange. For a more encyclopedic look people should IMO generally be mantioned ~in articles by their name. / Habj 02:56, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree that the name suffices. The title might be mentioned once as a note. Shawnc 14:56, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I'm pretty sure that Japanese usage of titles actually dictates that title-suffixes are used contextually and appropriate to those who are being spoken to.

For instance, 先生 ('-sensei') is only used when talking to other students, being that it is the literal equivalent of 'teacher', so is meaningless talking about 'Yamada-sensei' to someone who doesn't have the same teacher.

I definately read this somewhere on Wikimedia, so I'll see about tracking down the rule to give proper clarification.

-- Sasuke Sarutobi 13:26, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Hybrid martial arts

For clarity, a new category has been created. "Mixed martial arts" is commonly used to refer to mixed martial arts competition, where competitors from many arts can compete against eachother with minimal rules. People who train "mixed martial arts" can train in multiple styles, hence providing them with a personal fighting style. Hybrid martial arts however emphasize that a martial art specifically incorporates techniques and/or strategies from other martial arts. ---Marcus- 13:38, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Articles for the Wikipedia 1.0 project

Hi, I'm a member of the Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team, which is looking to identify quality articles in Wikipedia for future publication on CD or paper. We recently began assessing using these criteria, and we are looking for A-class, B-class, and Good articles, with no POV or copyright problems. Can you recommend any suitable articles? Please post your suggestions here. Thanks a lot! Gflores ^Talk 17:40, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

i feel that all martial are hybrids my experiences with capoeira is that it is formed of many other martial arts now ie the martelo (high kick) is from kick boxing and often use jiu jitsu tactics such as take downs i have the beleif that martial arts are always evolving like when dekker went to thailand apparently many thais changed their outward facing hands to inward facing. may be it is best avoid such a general term, but just recognise the term mixed martial art.

Joining the project

How does one join this project?

-- Sasuke Sarutobi 02:54, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Just add your name to the list of participants and start editing! This is a wiki afterall! I spend perhaps 5% of my time editing MA-related articles so I can tell that adding your username here does not create your any new obligations, it just tells others you are interested in this topic. I don't think this project is very active anymore so new blood would be most welcome. jni 07:34, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

For those of us who prefer using our real names instead of our aliases, are we alphabetizing by given name or surname? -Erik Harris 01:06, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Revision of stub template

Whilst browsing Wikipedia, I came across the following:

This progressive rock album-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it, and please consider joining Wikipedia's WikiProject on Albums.

Perhaps it would be beneficial to the group to redraft the Martial Arts stub template in a similar manner? It is a simple enough task, but I thought that I'd get general opinion rather than just going ahead with it myself.

-- Sasuke Sarutobi 10:25, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

go ahead.--Dangerous-Boy 22:15, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I've revised both {{martialart-stub}} and {{martialartbio-stub}} to include a link to the project. Hopefully, this should raise some awareness.

-- Sasuke Sarutobi 09:45, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Hong Kong action cinema

hi, you might be interested that the Hong Kong action cinema article is looking v. good right now and is being prepared to go to WP:FAC status. please help by adding your comments in the peer review currently running at Wikipedia:Peer review/Hong Kong action cinema/archive1. you can list anything that you feel might prevent it from being featured. thx! Zzzzz 20:43, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

fyi, the article is now featured! rgs, Zzzzz 11:01, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Some comments

Hi, I've just joined this project. I created a page on Kokondo, the martial art I practice, and I've done some editing on other martial arts pages. I would like to mention a few things to the other folks in this project. First of all, I think it's very problematic that there are very few people on here who have a depth of cross-martial arts knowledge. This leads to problems; for example karate kata is heavily based on Shotokan, as are the articles from many individual kata. Bassai, for instance, is also a Kokondo kata, and therefore probably a kata used in Kyokushin or Sankata or Isshin-ryu, since those are the main influences on Kokondo. Which leads me to a basic proposal that articles on techniques or kata not describe those techniques as "belonging" to a specific martial art, but rather attempt to be inclusive of their use in other arts.

Second, I have noticed (as I'm sure many of you have) the tendency of spam links to appear in martial arts articles. I removed the entire external links section from both Martial arts and Chinese martial arts; most of them are not useful or informative outside sources. I hope you fellow project members can help me fight this kind of spam in martial arts articles.

Third, I was surprised to find that there isn't an article on martial arts tournaments; the closest I could find was mention of tournament rules in articles on Taekwondo and Judo, and Kumite (tournament). This is surprising; we should surely be able to manage an article on martial arts tournaments; it's a very important and notable phenomenon... it's just, I think, that many editors are so focussed on their own art that they can't write an article like this neutrally.

Finally, I just reverted a whole BUNCH of pages that User:JustSomeKid had made into redirects to generic pages like Karate Kata. I don't know if there's a consensus for having done that, but I certainly strongly disagree with it; there's too much information about the various different kata to have them mashed into one monolithic article. Mangojuice 04:43, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree. If the same/similar kata exists in multiple styles, then all of those styles need to be mentioned in the article, with the article itself being as neutrally written as possible. And yes, to integrate all kata into one article will make it far too long. It's appropriate for katas that have a long history or that occur in many styles to have their own articles. --Marcus 09:28, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

To follow up on the redirecting of pages to Karate kata, there's a discussion on the issue at Talk:Shotokan#Kata instruction, which others might be interested in participating in. Mangojuice 12:51, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Martial arts notability

Discussion on criteria

I'd like experienced editors familiar with the Wikipedia standard of notability to express their opinions on "what makes a martial art notable enough to be included in Wikipedia". The aim is to establish some guidelines as to what is notable, and what is not. There are several trademarked "martial arts" listed in Wikipedia that I personally think started as vanity and marketing ploys of small clubs with a self-proclaimed black belt, and that are largely original research. --Marcus 09:06, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Your first step is to follow the verifiability chain, that will determine original research. Hiding talk 09:36, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

After scrutinizing other subject specific guidelines for notability I've written a similar one for martial arts/combat sports. The guidelines are similar to guidelines established by consensus in other areas such as companies, people, or music.

A martial art or combat sport is notable if it meets any one of the following criteria:

• It has been the subject of a non-trivial published work who's source is independent of the people involved in the martial art or combat sport. This includes major media news media, a book, or a peer-reviewed article in a reputable magazine such as Black Belt Magazine. This excludes advertising and trivial converage such as mentions in martial arts club directories.
• It has had considerable influence on any notable entity such as a notable person, event, or another notable martial art or combat sport.
• It has had more than 5000 long-time practitioners.

The number 5000 is quite arbitrary, but was selected because 5000 was (in Wikipedia:Notability (people)), a threshold for the notability of a musician selling that number of records. Feel free to comment or develop on these ideas. --Marcus 11:04, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't like this idea very much. Martial arts tend to be obscure, and in some cases their practice is supposedly secret: the difficult thing is whether or not the information about them is verifiable. I don't think it would be in the interests of Wikipedia or WikiProject Martial Arts to start removing articles on Martial Arts with good verifiable information on the basis, essentially, of them not being very popular. Thus, I think the 5000 long-time practitioners goes way too far (and besides, how would you back that up in an article?). 200 would be good enough for me; that could translate to as many as 40 dojos (though probably more like 20). Mangojuice 12:18, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

I too would advise caution and recommend you stick to the verifiability chain. That would mean removing the latter two criteria, if you insist on having criteria. Hiding talk 12:47, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Alright, in that case, i'd be interested in elaborating on where the line of verifiability goes. I came across the article Sun kune do, and after a superficial google search I came up quite empty handed. I was unable to find reputable sources with coverage of Sun kune do, but yet there is quite extensive information on the Sune kune do homepages, and it is trivially mentioned on other sites. What's your opinion about the verifiability in this case? --Marcus 15:05, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

With individual articles you can place the {{Unreferenced}} tag upon it, discuss the issue of references upon the talk page, and after a reasonable period, if none are forthcoming you can remove unreferenced text. You can also check the guidance on WP:VANITY and see if you feel an individual article falls foul of that. Looking at the article in question, if a source can be found for the claim that it is used by the Met, then it's probably notable enough to have an article, just one that reads like an article. Hope that helps. Hiding talk 15:58, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

This is a tough nut to crack. Martial Arts often have more in common with folklore than military history, despite its history often being military in nature. Lots of martial arts history is preserved through oral tradition, and until very recently, many systems weren't open to sharing their information with the public. Even now, many arts heavily limit what they share with the public. Because of this, peer review is a difficult thing, and many things "slip through the cracks" because the peers are giving the author the benefit of the doubt. Most martial arts magazines will pretty much publish anything that's written reasonably well and seems to be more or less valid. So just as a lack of public information makes it hard to discount an art as valid, the presence of public does little to verify its validity. Influence is often hard to verify as well. It's somewhat commonly accepted that Bruce Lee sought out Willem Reeders, of Liu Seong Kuntao to learn a bit about his art. I've heard this verified by multiple people outside the Liu Seong family of arts, but you'll have a hard time finding any documented evidence of that, and you'll have an even harder time finding agreement among various people just how much the two men trained together. And regarding the number of practitioners, there are a number of completely valid systems that have remained very small (like the one mentioned in this paragraph), while there have been a number of completely invalid systems that have grown to very large sizes, the most obvious and least controversial of which are the various high-profile cases of people forming martial arts related cults for malicious and criminal purposes. Unfortunately, I think martial arts notability is questionably useful for the many of the same reason that broad martial arts standardization and regulation doesn't work (where it has been done, it's watered down or destroyed the heritage of the arts it has sought to unite). There are too many vastly differing opinions on what's "right" and too many people whose tunnel vision prohibits them from seeing that their way isn't the only right way. And back to the independent published work - since much of this stuff is pre-internet and is relatively obscure, how does one verify whether something has actually been published? -Erik Harris 13:29, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Notability for martial artists?

Where should we set the bar for individuals? -Objectivist-C 03:21, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Notability request

Could I request that some members of the WikiProject take a look at Paul Gale (which I found while looking through uncategorised articles) and give some indication as to his notability? Cheers --Pak21 19:13, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Request for input, opinions, dispute resolution

There have been ongoing disputed edits at Jung Sin Yuk-Do and to a lesser extent at Choi Kwang-Do. As I know very little about martial Arts I thought I would ask some of the people involved in this wikiproject to take a look at these articles and provide comments/advice.

Some background: Links to Jung Sin Yuk-Do and Rod Cook were added by user 202.173.179.152 on 15 October 2005 to the article about Cairns (a regional city in Australia). (See: 202.173.179.152 User contributions). At the time the articles were poorly written and the article about Rod Cook appeared to be self promotion. (See: wikipedia guideling on autobiographies and self promotion and Wikipedia:Vanity). Rod Cook has since been deleted (see:Special:Undelete/Rod_Cook).

Edits have since been made which suggested that Rod Cook, the creator of Jung Sin Yuk Do, was expelled from another martial arts academy before establishing Jung Sin Yuk Do. These edits have been continually reverted by the creator of the original article who has labelled them as vandalism. Neither editors have engaged in any meaningful discussion on the subject although 220.235.249.146 has made some attempt. The edits by the original creator (202.173.179.152) appear to be POV. The editor keeps insisting that Rod Cook is a Master instructor, while 220.235.249.146 keeps insisting that he is a 2nd grade blackbelt who was expelled from another academy. There definitely seems to be some bias somewhere. It looks like Rod Cook or a student of his is writing about himself.

Jung Sin Yuk Do does not attract many Google hits and appears onlt to be practiced in a regional city in Australia. Few references are provided, other than Rod Cook's webpage. The martial art does not appear very notable.

I'm not necessarilly suggesting that the article should be deleted, but it would be good to get some advice on the following:

• Is Jung Sin Yuk Do is an accepted and credible martial art?
• Is Rod Cook is at all notable?
• Is the fact that he was (allegedly) expelled from an Academy significant? and should this should be reflected in the article?
• Is it fair to assume that the article is self promotion? Shoudl a POV tag to that effect be posted on the article?
• Should teh article be deleted?

Your comments and input would be appreciated because it would mean that I can stop keeping an eye on this article which I don't know anything about. Thanks -- Adz 01:34, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

delete it --Dangerous-Boy 12:47, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

I can't offer any information regarding the martial art. Regarding conduct and presenting information, either tangible proof or vague language would be necessary for this. For example, you might say that "while Cook states he is a master sensei, others assert he is only a 2nd degree black belt" etc. I believe that people can write about themselves or their own websites/schools/etc. as long as they follow instructions and accept the fact that they may open themselves up to legitimate criticism. Speaking as a representative for bullshido.com, as part of our McDojo article we helped create, we have a critical article as a link at the bottom.

Admins should keep an eye on the article to keep it from becoming an edit war. Maybe it can be semi-protected or the users temp-banned from edits.

im just wondering if it would be possibly to kind of have some sort of a geneology(hope i spelt it write) of martial arts like for example brazilian jiu jitsu came from japanese jiu jitsu. ving tsun (note the spelling) i heard is a derivative of crane style kung fu.

Problems over at Red Warrior

Hey I was just browsing through the list of marital arts and came across the red warrior system. However when i clicked the link all i found was some guys ranting about how he thought the system was a fraud so i reverted the page but the guy is consistantly rediting the post. i have put a warning tag on his talk page but i am really at a loss of what to do. Anyone have any ideas?

Kushindo

The user who created the Kushindo article also created a lot of seemingly dodgy articles in other subjects. Can somebody please confirm that this is a real martial art and not just bogus like all his other articles. Thanks! rxnd ( t | € | c ) 23:04, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Looks like crap. speedy delete!--Dangerous-Boy 04:47, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

"Looks like" seems to mean you don't know about the subject and you guess. Let me see the article and I will tell you, I train Kushindo since 1971. Please people lets be accurate and fair ! Jennylen Aug 2007 €

Formal Peer Review Process

Would it be possible to get a formal peer review forum going for martial arts articles? The military peer review forum works well. Thus, the military articles are showing general improvement. If we have enough volunteers to be peer reviewers, it could work. A lot of the MA articles really need some help. Cla68 15:38, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

You need to get a lot people involved for that. that's just not here.--Dangerous-Boy 04:50, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Improving set-up and knowledge of WikiProject Martial Arts

I'm looking to make some changes and such along the lines of the format of the Military history WikiProject. Given the closeness of martial arts and military history, I might also see if we can encourage some further collaboration between the two towards a larger 'WikiProject Hoplology' or somesuch.

Of course, the hoplology article would need to be expanded as a pre-requisite, but I'm working on that.

First few points:

1. I've numbered the list of participants, so that we can see how many people we have. I'm considering re-ordering it alphabetically (for ease of reading later), and possibly following the system of annotation of specific areas as shown here.
2. I'm looking to redraft the current project infobox more along the lines of the Military History infobox (see {{WPMILHIST Navigation}}). Any suggestions for addition would be appreciated.
3. I'm also considering the possibility of having a shortcut for the project (i.e. 'WP:xxx', where 'xxx' is a few characters; see WP:WARS). 'MA' is taken, so are there any other suggestions?
4. Finally, as mentioned above, I wonder if we can collaborate with WikiProjects such as 'Military history', 'Buddhism', 'Shinto' and such, given the similar scope. Perhaps even listing them under 'Similar WikiProjects' on the Main page.

I'll be looking into the organisation and awareness-building methods of some of the other WikiProjects to see what we can add here, but this is it for now.

Replies to numbered points in new sub-headings, all other replies under this sub-heading, please. ^^

-- Sasuke Sarutobi 02:24, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

1. I can see the reordering working. I don't see many people on the project talk page though so I don't know how active it is.

1. The mil history box looks to amibitous. You're probably better off with a noticeboard or to do bulletin.
2. Shortcut MART is my suggestion.
3. best to collaborate with country projects ex: korea, india, japan, china.

--Dangerous-Boy 09:03, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Just a reminder...

...to use {{martialartbio-stub}} rather than {{martialart-stub}} when creating stubs about martial artists. I just finished going through the martial arts stubs weeding out people. -Objectivist-C 00:06, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Templates section

I merged the project templates into one section, not sure where it should be on the page, though. -Objectivist-C 00:18, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Categories section

Someone else care to flesh out the list? Use this search link to save yourself some time. -Objectivist-C 01:18, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

• Don't forget the sub-categories, and try to maintain alphabetical order. -Objectivist-C 01:47, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Why was the categories section removed as a "waste of space"? It seems to me that the martial arts project page is an ideal place to index the categories that the project covers, if for no other reason to give people creating pages an easy place to find established categories that are appropriate for their articles. -Erik Harris 00:28, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Articles in need of improvement section

Anyone else think this is useful? Should it be moved to a sub-page? -Objectivist-C 01:27, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Make a noticeboard or to do for it. --Dangerous-Boy 21:32, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Wikiproject Mixed Martial Arts active again

A few of us in Wikiproject Mixed Martial Arts are active once more, and I thought I'd let the mother project :-) know of this, and of my personal intent to replace the Martial arts stubs with Mixed martial arts stubs where appropriate. I consider this to be important at the very least in order to direct more people towards the Wikiproject MMA, as the Martial arts stubs direct them here. I intend to be as judicious as possible in determining whether an article should be an MMA-stub or an MA-stub - mostly I'll be tagging MMA fighters, teams and events, as in my mind the styles, traditions and techniques lie almost universally in the realm of MA.

I intend to start work on this in the next day or two, and wanted to give time for some comments here. If any of you would like to help us in WP:MMA, please come over and sign up. Cheers. — Estarriol ^talk 12:55, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Guidelines for creating articles about techniques

Judo alone has 67 official throws. Is not really reasonable to describe all throws in a single "Throws" article meant to discuss throws in general. People with a passion for a particular throw can easily write a book on a single technique. See suplex, for example.

--Pereza 17:56, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

• On a related note, is there a general category for techniques that span multiple disciplines (for instance, the foot sweep or the kip-up)? It might be useful for people looking for the name of a particular maneuver but only have a general idea of the name. Virogtheconq 04:01, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

indian martial arts

any readers here would like to discuss the indian martial arts... we have an ongoing discussion and the page has been locked.. prior to my and another user's arrival the Indian martial arts page stated that the martial arts of southeast asia along with china and japan owe their arts to india either through the legend of bodhidharma (which the article suggested was true), that bodhidharma trained in varma kalai or some other indian martial art and that through the beliefs of this alex doss character... see august 13 2006 04:53. along with that the article claimed that the british were instrumental in destroying indian martial arts... and it also used religious textbooks to claim that there was an indian martial arts and that various gods and kings in the religious texts practiced martial arts without any citation... i've been trying to get some neutrality back into the article but am haveing difficulty talking to one user who wrote the original POV article... Kennethtennyson 23:18, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

New Leitai platform article

I recently wrote an article for the Leitai fighting platform and would like some feedback on it. I remember there used to be a stub on it, but it was deleted. I added the dimensions and even famous fighters of the leitai. I'll take all criticisms--good or bad. (!Mi luchador nombre es amoladora de la carne y traigo el dolor! 09:44, 10 September 2006 (UTC))

Macrons

As per WP:MOS - Japanese-related articles, macrons are now allowed in article titles. I believe it is about time that we begin to place macrons everywhere they are appropriate. I have done some of this work myself, and have placed similar notices on other WikiProjects pages in order to recruit some help. I invite and encourage all of you to help in this grand scale project. As it pertains to martial arts, all mentions of "-ryu", in content, wikilinks, and article titles needs to be changed to "-ryū"; there are a number of other places that macrons belong as well. Thank you for your help. LordAmeth 18:07, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Article classification

In order to improve the quality of the articles, and to move more articlPeter Rehse 10:57, 9 October 2006 (UTC)es towards FA potential, we should probably start assessing articles against a class scale. Many of the larger projects have a class scale of (Stub, Start, B-Class, Good Article class (passed a GA review), A-class (with a review process), FA-class (passed full FA review) ). Beginning such a process would give us a better idea of the state of the articles that the project is interested in, as well as encouraging peer review to improve those articles. We'd also be able to easily recommend articles for Wikipedia1.0 status -- Medains 08:54, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm trying to get through a few each day (sometimes more, sometimes less) but with a little help I think the unassesed could be ground to nothing pretty quick. I find that most of them are obvious Stubs. I do have one question though - will martial art biographies be a seperate class or under the same? So far I've included them as the same.Peter Rehse 10:57, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Article promotion

How do articles move up in the classification scheme. For instance how would one move the Aikido article from B to GA.Peter Rehse 02:28, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

I've just submitted Sumo for Featured Article (FA) status - its already been Good Article (GA) for some time and I promoted it to A class. I've also submitted Aikido and Tai Chi Chuan for GA status and if passed I think they can go right away to the FA process. I'ld promote directly to A and aim for FA status but believe both should get some sort of intermediate step. Judo is also really close to being submitted as a GA article but I've outlined a few problems on its Talk page. It there are any Judo guys out there - please do the right thing. My feeling is that there are a number of articles exactly like Judo vis a vis the amount of work (relatively minor) needed to up that class and that martial arts in general is totally underpopulated (unjustly so) in the higher levels. And I've demoted Steven Seagal back to B. He was promoted to A by a fanboy that well frankly is primarily responsible for keeping that article below par.Peter Rehse 06:00, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Little activity on the MA front

Both this project and the more specific Asian Martial Arts project seem to have ground to a relative halt in recent months - what can we do to revitalise them? -- Medains 08:32, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

As you already know, I'm writing the Leitai article. I'm sure there are others out there that are currently writing and or researching to write articles about new subjects. I'm guessing the project slowed to a crawl because all pages pertaining to the more recognized forms of martial arts had been edited to near perfection. There are plenty of articles out there that still need work, but other members alone may not have the knowledge necessary to expand them.

Maybe we can pool our knowledge together as a whole and work on just a small handful of articles at a time. After completing these articles in turn, we can vote on the next batch to be worked on. With all of us cooperating, I really doubt it would take very long to expand a large number of articles in a short amount of time. This would definitely bring new life to the project. What do you think? (!Mi luchador nombre es amoladora de la carne y traigo el dolor! 09:47, 26 September 2006 (UTC))

It's more about reviving interest in the project - collaboration, assessment and peer review are the main functions that benefit from a focused project, so long as there are enough interested participants. This project maybe needs a coordinator, and enough participants to get project activities going... Strangely the Mixed Martial Arts project is going relatively well. -- Medains 10:49, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

I haven't had a lot of time to play on Wikipedia, but I've been keeping an eye on my watchlist, which includes a number of martial arts pages, and making corrections, fixing vandalism attempts, etc, all along. Just because I'm not modifying the martial arts project page itself doesn't mean I'm not remaining active in the project (which, if I understand correctly, is about trying to keep Wikipedia's martial arts pages accurate and of high quality). -Erik Harris 15:45, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

I have made conribtutions to martial arts stuff, but is there anything specific I can do for the project? --Mista-X 17:05, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Colloboration, review and assessment to improve overall article quality - see my comment below about perhaps kicking this process off. -- Medains 09:16, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

The problem (not problem) is that the Project page is pretty mature - not really that much more to add. I've been using it as a guideline to fix up pages in my area of interest.Peter Rehse 07:18, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

The point is that the project page has ceased to be a point of communication and collaboration, and participants are (quite rightly) continuing to edit articles and improve them. In the interests of improving the communications - I've come up with (based on the Military History project) an assessment page and a revised banner which includes assessed class and categorization based on class. This will make finding articles that have been tagged, but need attention, much easier. If I get a little support here, then I'll make these changes and create the categories - all currently tagged articles will then appear in the unassessed category. -- Medains 09:16, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

You have my full support on those ideas. Hopefully this will allow the project page to become a more communication and information based entity, not just the latter.

Thanks, making these changes... hopefully partipants will use the classification system... -- Medains 08:18, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Lists

On the main page there is a guideline that Lists should link to acutal articles. This makes a lot of sense to me especially since creating a stub is so easy. At the moment there is so much unverifiable names that it has gotten pretty ugly. I've already trimmed the Japanese sections but before I go overboard - I just thought I'ld check.Peter Rehse 07:39, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Banner tagging

After making the changes to allow assessment via the banner, I've discovered that only 88 real articles (I classified the non-articles as NA class already) are tagged by the project banner! So the first thing to do to turn this project around is to tag talk pages of MA articles with the banner! -- Medains 08:42, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

I've been on a tagging frenzy... the unassessed category is now filled with articles for us to make assessments on and improve! Interestingly I came across the "needs citation/reference" banner on many of these pages, a common problem methinks. -- Medains 16:10, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

All the descriptions for the subcategories of Category:Martial Arts articles by quality are the same. I think that has to get sorted out quickly. I have no idea what the different criteria are. CheersPeter Rehse 00:20, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

They do look very similar... "A-Class" and "GA-Class" are obviously only one character apart. I didn't want to have to add exact details of what each classification meant. Check out the Assessment page for the detail of what separates the classifications. (These are Wikipedia standard classifications, so they are pretty well set up) -- Medains 08:56, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Kung Fu Magazine Article

I recently corresponded via email with Mr. Gene Ching, Associate Publisher of Kung Fu Tai Chi Magazine, about a separate article I am writing on the Chicken-Saber Sickle ( 鷄刀鐮) and, its cousin, the Chicken-Claw Sickle ( 鷄爪鐮). Anyway, I mentioned the Leitai article to him and he told me that the magazine publishes stuff from amateur writers and compensates them for their work. Unfortunately, they don’t publish works that have appeared in prior venues, like Wikipedia for instance. I wrote him back and said that it would be a GREAT idea for a Leitai article to appear in the magazine since Fearless (2006) came out in American theaters. I said that it sparked many peoples’ interest in the Leitai, including my own when I first saw it on dvd several months ago. I had heard of and done some research on the fighting stage prior to seeing this movie. But it was the movie that inspired me to write this article. I suggested to Mr. Ching that maybe an intern uses my article as a “beginning” for some REAL in-depth research. I hope he takes my advise.(!Mi luchador nombre es amoladora de la carne y traigo el dolor! 23:26, 2 October 2006 (UTC))

Big Tae Kwon Do cleanup

As I can I plan to stage a major assault on the mess that is the link's section of the Tae Kwon Do article (as indicated here and start creating stubs of the various individual styles listed in it's link section, moving those links, creating stubs for the national organizations, creating stubs for notable martial arts individuals (such as National Collegiate Taekwondo Association[1] President 1986-present Grandmaster Yong Chin Pak (8th Dan) [2]) Lordkazan 15:02, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

HUGE changes to Zhou Tong article

I recently updated my article on Yue Fei's archery teacher Zhou Tong. Its still a work-in-progress and some other people have made small edits. Check it out and tell me what you think.(!Mi luchador nombre es amoladora de la carne y traigo el dolor! 00:12, 10 October 2006 (UTC))

Multiple changes

I've noticed a user this morning making a lot of additions/changes/links in Karate articles. Knowing little (i.e. nothing) of the subject, I dn't know if they're valid, or self-promotional or pure spam. Someone with more knowledge might want to take a look at the contribs of Jmhayes83 (talk · contribs). Fan-1967 16:10, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Not sure whether the major change made to Gojushiho dai is correct or not - the previous version didn't read all that well either, if there are verifiable facts that have been cut they need to be added. Mostly the rest of the edits seem to be adding links to "The National Akari-ki Karate Kobudo Association" website, or setting the category to something sensible (Kata articles to Kata category instead of Karate category, maybe should be both?). Having said that - I had a quick check and the Gojushiho dai article change is a complete cut and paste from the Association website and therefore should be reverted as a copyvio. I'll contact an administrator for advice. -- Medains 08:40, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Link farm pages

Where is the line drawn between legitimate external links and link farms? It seems to me like an article such as Shorin-Ryu goes way overboard, almost serving as a directory of schools for this relatively common Karate system. But it seems that there might be instances where it would be relevant to list links to given martial arts schools (maybe on a page about an organization, or a page about a more rare system taught at few schools in the world)... Is there a consensus on where the line is drawn? (i.e. are all schools in a widespread system really notable? If not, what determines which ones are?) - Erik Harris 19:56, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

I see that someone else also follows my opinion on school link farms. (and has removed all external links from Shorin-Ryu). Unless the website of a school contains significant information about a subject (perhaps there are good descriptions of all of the kata in an art) then adding it as a link is just advertising for the school. The only exceptions would be sizable national/international organizations (particularly those that hold tournaments or competitions) and a school run by the founder or the current "head of the art". I'm even more against using schools as references, but we're limited in our reference material. -- Medains 08:43, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Wong Shun Leung

Slightly related to Link Farms but please take a look at Wong Shun Leung. I put a couple of tags in but they were promptly tossed and ignored. The whole page screams of fanboy gone amok which is a shame since the subject appears worth covering.Peter Rehse 08:34, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Waster Review

I have been working on this article (Waster) for some time, and now think it might be in need of some other people's edits. It is not done (feel welcome to contribute!) so I have not added it to a proper 'peer review' request. However, I invite you to make any changes you think worthwhile, or just leave a note or two on the talk page about what you think. Thanks! --Xiliquiern 04:12, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Translation

I need someone to translate the following paragraphs into a smooth English equivalent. I pretty much know what they mean, but I am not qualified to translate them properly:

鸡刀镰 - 属奇门兵械。俗称"梱花腰子"。为心意拳门器械之一。相传为形意拳创始人姬隆豐所创，长二尺六寸余，金属制 成，由镰身和镰柄组成，镰身包括鸡嘴、鸡冠、镰刃、镰脊；镰柄有镰格、镰首。技法有钩、拉、帶、挎、掛、啄 、纏等，以近战为主。套路有单练和对练。

(This is for my Chicken Sickles page).

----------------------------------------------------------------

如刘殿琛在其所著《形意拳术抉微》中云：“形意拳术一门为最合军用，盖该拳为岳武穆所发明。”然而，多数著作在述及岳飞或者周侗创心意时，均持谨慎态度，冠以“相传”二字。

and

二曰“心意拳为岳飞所创”。此说最早见于文字的是曹继武的“十法摘要”。曹氏云：“惟此六合拳者则出自宋朝岳武穆王。嗣后金元明数代，鲜有其技，至明末清初有蒲东诸冯姬隆风先生……遍访名师，至终南山，得岳武穆王拳经。”戴龙邦承其师曹继武之说，于乾隆十五年（1750）为“六合拳”作序云：“岳飞当童子时，受业于周侗师，精通枪法，以枪为拳，立法以教将佐，名曰意拳，神妙莫测，盖从古未有之技也。”以后，便有了“心意十二形为岳飞被困牛头山时所创”之说。此说顺应了人们对清王朝统治的不满和对民族英雄岳飞的敬仰心理，因而很快地被人们所认定，并广泛地传播开来。

(These two are about Zhou Tong’s connection with Xingyi. Some of it might be added to my Zhou Tong page.) Thank you in advance to whoever does it.

(!Mi luchador nombre es amoladora de la carne y traigo el dolor! 23:33, 23 October 2006 (UTC))

Hard and soft (martial arts) article

Greetings everyone. I'm soliciting opinions on how best to expand a recent stub article Hard and soft (martial arts). If anyone has some input into providing sources for documenting different uses of those terms, or opinions on how the article should be formatted, it will be most appreciated. --Fire Star 火星 15:29, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Swordsmanship

This article is currently undergoing heavy revision and construction as a WP:SS type article. I know very little of the Asian, Middle Eastern, and other martial techniques dealing with swordsmanship, so some input would be very desired. Thank you! -- Xiliquiern 05:24, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I've added some summary of China and Japan, other asian countries will need some text though. -- Medains 07:59, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Next Steps

With many thanks to Peter Rehse, who has been instrumental in assessing articles - we now have 556 assessed articles under our banner. Most of the articles are stub class, with some in start class and a handful B class (and just one GA, no A's or FA's).

Shall we set up a "hit list" of articles to get to GA, A or even the heady heights of FA? -- Medains 09:33, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Tae Jitsu is up for deletion

Somebody nominated the Tae Jitsu article for deletion; the defender of the article mentions two organizations that give a mention about this; The World Il-Do-Kwan Federation and the The International Journal of Combat Martial Arts and Sciences. But I don't know how credible either organization is, and would like some help. ColourBurst 21:52, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

I also mentioned two seperate Tae Jitsu schools that describe the art as well. Just wanted to throw that in to be accurate. MasterGreenLantern 22:32, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

This is why having encyclopedic information on martial arts is so difficult. Just as anyone can post anything to the web (mentioned on WP:RS), anyone can cobble together some moves and create a new martial art. Whether or not it's sound, or offers anything new, or muddles Japanese, Korean, and Chinese terminology while claiming to be some kind of new simplified scientific approach is pretty much irrelevant. Presumably, this system is "real." Do we want to put ourselves in the position of deciding whether a "real" art has any actual value or not, without having seen it? -Erik Harris 16:11, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

I put the article up for deletion mainly because of notability but also the dearth of information. Two lines that say basically that its a simple form of Tae kwon do. Its being discussed on the relevant page but generally speaking we have a problem with several martial arts pages many of which have been in my opinion correctly deleted. Sip Kwan Do is an example even though it was reasonably detailed and well written.

What makes something notable? A few clubs, usually in a relatively small area? I don't think so. What makes something unique? The ability to stand up and say I have created a new art? It seems that is not so unique either - everyones a martial art genius it appears.

Perhaps we should come up with guidelines on notability.Peter Rehse 06:38, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Mention in a reputable journalistic source should be a good starting point. I'm thinking Black Belt Magazine as a feature article (rather than a paid advertisement), a mention in a peer-reviewed journal or publication (encyclopedia), etc. --Scb steve 07:53, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Agreed - though I would broaden this to say that there must be at least one verifiable reference to the art (reputable journalistic source or published work). Although that reference does not necessarily have to be a) in the article yet (since the article may be a stub or work in progress) or b) in english (if a foreign language published work is available then it is notable enough). -- Medains 09:17, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Oh, and under those guidelines, Tae Jitsu gets only 2 matches on amazon - for Tae Kwon Do books! -- Medains 09:18, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

I also want to emphasize that the article itself should make the case. External links should act as sources, references or extra information.Peter Rehse 10:04, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Capitalization?

Before I get into a revert war in the silat article, I want to clarify something. Is there any reason to have article titles capitalized? I went through and fixed all of the "Pentjak Silat" and "Silat" references to not be capitalized (except at the beginning of sentences), per Wikipedia:WikiProject Martial Arts#Capitalization, but someone reverted the capitalization on the terms where they're bolded at the beginning of the article - but nowhere else. Should those be capitalized for non-proper nouns? -Erik Harris 23:29, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

You are correct - but not sure its worth the edit war.Peter Rehse 00:40, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Martial arts machines

Just came across this article, it needs serious work or deleting, I've done some but the topic is so broad I thought I'd bring it here. Nate1481 14:40, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

It appears to have been created to become an advertisement for "Martial Arm" (Martialarm) - the user has repeatedly added advertising links to many martial arts pages, been reprimanded for it, and continued. I'm not sure that it adds any value to the Wooden dummy article. -- Medains 16:57, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

I put it up for speedy delete and if that fails will put it up for afd.Peter Rehse 09:23, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

The article has been renamed Martial arts equipment and substantially edited. It could do with expansion & linking but is no longer an add or pointless. Nate1481 16:09, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Category Martial Arts

Small point - I don't think individual articles should be in the category martial arts since it is so broad. Untill this weekend it was effectively empty (except for a couple of lists) and of course a whole range of subdirectories. I will return it to that form.Peter Rehse 00:22, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Agreed, individual articles should be in subcategories (Martial arts of china, martial arts of japan, martial arts equipment, martial arts techniques and so on) - we should perhaps come to some agreement about the structure of categories. Anyone want to give a starter for 10? -- Medains 09:43, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Category:Muslim Martial Arts

Category:Muslim Martial Arts seriously! What the hell? What's next? Xtian MA?--D-Boy 16:26, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

We have it - its called Historical European martial arts. In the historical sense that was Christian. We have martial arts that originate from other areas of the world dominated by and influenced by a certain religious outlook and I also think the article Muslim Chinese martial arts is a good start. I fixed the categories a little bit (they were pointing at themselves) and I would prefer martial arts not be capitalized to fit in the nomenclature of the other categories (I don't know how to change that) but generally I think its a reasonable category to have.Peter Rehse 08:00, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

You have to go to to category rename. HACA was not xtian. There's nothing xtian. Xtianity is about peace and love. Not kill your neighbor with a broad sword. Maybe all the Japanese martial arts should be all called Buddhist martial arts. Maybe we should have a category called martial arts origin by religion? It's absurd.--D-Boy 08:25, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Well I don't see it becoming a major category and feel it has as much relevance as some of the other subcategories. I could not find category rename.Peter Rehse 08:40, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure about the usefulness of this category. It's not "Martial arts with muslim founders" or "Martial arts originating in muslim culture", it seems more "martial arts which have little link to muslim beliefs yet have significant figures in their history who are muslim". If there was some significance to the link of muslim faith to martial art (such and such created X within a framework based on Y and Z from muslim belief) then it would be a good category. "Martial Arts of the Middle East" would be a better category (though that's not actually whats covered here) - the Muslim Chinese martial arts article forms a better link to the relevant articles, though I'm worried that it is a bit of original research and thus not suitable as an article. Do we categorise any other martial arts against the faith of the founder? (Shaolin springs to mind, but that's more about the place than the faith) -- Medains 10:23, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

A category called 'Christian karate' would be next as I keep seeing adds for them around. Would a broader 'religion related MA' or something be better? Nate1481 11:53, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Leitai improvement

I've made some additions to my Lei tai article. I just recently got a Barnstar for it. I'm happy that I received one, but I'm sure there are other articles out there that are far superior to mine. Tell me what you guys think. (!Mi luchador nombre es amoladora de la carne y traigo el dolor!)

Leung Ting Controversy

Could use some help trying to keep this article neutral, thanks! --Mista-X 03:22, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Taken care of. Edited for NPOV, and references provided for other statements. --Marty Goldberg 19:58, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Moses Powell

Could someone take a stab at the Moses Powell article. The guy is pretty notable but the whole article reads like an over the top obituary. I'ld do it - but one of the last editors took exception to my exception to the overuse of titles in Kumite-ryu Jujutsu. Read fear of edit war.Peter Rehse 05:05, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm only vaguely familiar with Powell.. Does anyone know where his "Dr." title comes from? Use of established academic titles in martial arts has always been a bit of a peeve of mine (it's very misleading in that it strongly suggests that the person in question has a degree from an acredited educational institution), and IMHO doesn't belong in an encyclopedia unless it's specifically spelled out ("So-and-so was given the title of Doctor by his martial arts instructor, Such-and-such"). A quick Google search doesn't tell me anything about "Dr." Powell's title, except that everyone referred to him as "Dr." I'd just go ahead and edit the article, but for all I know, he may have had a doctorate from an acredited university. -Erik Harris 17:18, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

I also agree. Professor, Dr. mean something very specific and is quite annoying for those who actually worked hard for them. It would be like me running around work with a black belt. If they are going to use the title they should make very clear where it comes from.Peter Rehse 00:41, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

For the record, while I'm not a big fan of the terms being used in martial arts for reasons of potential confusion, the idea that a martial artist worked less for his accomplishments than a PhD, MD, etc did is unfair. If anything, the reverse is probably true, given the amounts of time required for each (assuming both a quality university and a quality martial arts instructor). -Erik Harris 21:56, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Well yes - I'm not sure what I worked harder for my Dan ranks or my university degrees but they are not interchangable.Peter Rehse 00:37, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

OK I did the clean-up. Moses Powell and related articles.Peter Rehse 09:53, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

New version looks good, as the use of Dr./Professor etc seems to be common would a broader check of MA individual articles be an idea, even if all that's added is a request on the talk page or a {{fact}} tag?