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Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3Archive 4Archive 5Archive 6

Deconstruction of POV/SYNTH use of sources and re geographical contexts

1884 Burrard Inlet geography and comments on missing context re 1884 riots
  • Burrard Inlet was a postal address, not an 'area', port communities were linked by steamer mail included Granville (Gastown), Moodyville, Barnet, and Hastings/New Brighton and, I think, Port Moody though it may have had its own at this point would have been the name of the census subdivision used for the stat; originally I think it was where the mail came from via North Road from New West until the Hastings Road got built, then the Westminster Highway (Kingsway to Main); this reference wasn't just Vancouver (which hadn't been named that yet, or incorporated) but as far as the Chinese go, yes, they were mostly in Granville, now the Downtown Eastside/Gastown and the community was fully integrated until the winter riots; the 1885 riots ended that as recounted in Morley, Mathews, MacDonald and various others; there's a specific passage about Joe Fortes, the Barbadian lifeguard, being told, with regret, by friends, that because of the [new Canadian] element in the city, Gastown would be henceforth white and he would have to move, though part of the community as he very much was; he moved to the beach at English Bay; the Kanakas moved to the Kanaka Rancherie at this point, and other settled areas (e.g. Brockton Point) and various mixed-race and non-"white-at-the-time" ethnicities e.g. Portuguese likewise were already out there; the portrayal in Chinese-oriented/biased sources paints a "White"/Chinese equation when there were far more than whites, and differing kinds of whites, in the equation; "British Columbians" gets used to include those just moved from "Canada" and elsewhere in contexts where histories with local context and not ethno-bias would stipulate the distinctions; which included the different kinds of Britons and also Canadians and Maritimers (mostly Britons and Maritimers, Canadians more came with the railway construction and after), in the city at the time, and their different sentiments about Chinese, and about race in general, vs the completely generalized negativity of the Chinese sources, and the construct that has been built on them, and on much more useful sources than how they have been so far filtered, when included at all. That this section leaps from 1884 to 1886 with no mention of the Winter Riot and its consequences or the different ethnic milieu of those two very different years is yet another symptom of a lack of familiarity with the subject or its geographic context that this article was launched with, from whence its SYNTH/POV edifice has been (over) built.
Baldness of original lede and distorted generalization re land-clearing
  • The city of Vancouver incorporated in April 1886 and at the time the city had a pre-existing Chinese population and many Chinese worked in logging camps, mills, and in forest-clearing crews. Property owners hired Chinese to clear forests because the Chinese were the cheapest laborers available.
  • As with all of this material, this sounds very one-dimensional given that it's the clearing of the West End that led to the 1885 riots that's about; and that was one company - not property owners in general; men of many ethnicities did that work throughout the Inlet and on the upland south and east of Gastown/Granville and beyond; whether out lumbering or clearing land and most of all that was done by them, not Chinese, and for real wages not labour contractor wages; men got paid what they were worth, and that included Natives and Kanakas (Hawaiians) as well as Scandinavians and others whose hard work earn them more than regular pay for all others, but the Chinese; What's not here, which is in all other sources named above and many others, are the Chinese merchants who were among the first on Water Street from 1867 onwards; as before, lack of any real familiarity with the subject and the area/history omits huge background based purely on a chosen geographic context without any knowledge of reference to all that transpired before or after or at the same time; and the wording is just clunky; "had a pre-existing Chinese population"; natural English would go
  • "When the City of Vancouver was incorporated [note the capital-C for the institution, not the place as such] in April 1886, there were around n Chinese, mostly men, of a population of total population y, with many working in logging camps and mills and clearing land of the thick forests for real estate". Apparently they teach a lot about formal style in university nowadays but it seems they don't teach writing editing at the same time; I do this professionally and would have failed any paper that crossed my desk written in such a bald and repetitive tone, even without the drumbeat of its thesis, aka SYNTHesis.
  • Hastings Mill was already established 13 years before, but again, this article's limited geographic and temporal with no knowledge of the city's, or the province's history, and relying only on third-party academic critiques and only on a certain agenda, is why this shortcoming in this passage, which is the original version of Chinese in Vancouver's opening line, as I recall.
  • so much lack of historical and geographic context and focus on negativity throughout it's boggling to try to fix given overall POV content/tone of the entire passage, which is analytical and critical, not narrative, and completely one-sided and without adequate geographic context, or social either; Chinese in mills is already elsewhere, and the "at the time the city had a pre-existing Chinese population" is just out of context; though true that's as I recall the opening line of the first version of this article and has remained unchanged because of the....ongoing issues....
  • again this should be historical narrative, not readings from only one author esp when this matter is already in the historical narrative of the article ready, here repeated from one source in a biased manner, as per too much of all this sort of thing, and as here vague geography while major and very well-known local histories some best-sellers like the Historical Geography of Vancouver (or is it "'Historical Atlas" not sure) by MacDonald and various others of quality and without bias and lots of ethnic detail, not just ethnic diatribe as too many of the sources used to build this article really are, as is the mode in which non-biased sources (including Morton, see below) are used selectively to further the ongoing ethno-POV. Those other sources actually name them.
Selective abuse of neutral source re Camp 37
  • footnote: Morton, p. 101. "The most brutal encounter between whites and Chinese occurred on May 10, 1883."
  • Yes, and what else does Morton say there? Seems to me it's the opening of the narrative and here is used to validate data that is part of ongoing data/SYNTH-POV overall tone/content, here used out of context, and to make a SYNTH date-construct/critique, again also already elsewhere in the article as :
On May 10, 1883, 20 whites set a Chinese-occupied log house on fire, killing one Chinese man and injuring about 7 or 8 Chinese. The incident occurred at Camp 37 near Lytton. This occurred in the aftermath of a Chinese gang attack on several administrators of the camp in which a foreman had been murdered in retaliation for a foreman refusing to pay two Chinese persons. These persons had been previously fired but a Chinese boss convinced the foreman to allow them to work again. The newspaper The Colonist criticized White doctors who refused to treat the injured, and it also criticized the attack itself, calling it "the most unmanly and cowardly affair" that happened in Canada. This was the deadliest anti-Chinese action of the era.
That's so baldly put...and un-natural, vs natural, which would would be:
The deadliest anti-Chinese action of the era happened on May 10, 1883 at CPR construction Camp 37, near Lytton when, after a Chinese worker who had been reinstated after previous violence and led a gang to attack and kill the white foreman who had been persuaded by a Chinese boss to rehire him. In retaliation for the killing, a group of irate 20 white railway workers attacked the Chinese part of the camp, setting a house on fire in a riot that left one Chinese dead and injuring several others.
Again, I do this professionally - fixing bad writing and making it readable; into in this case narrative not clunky grammar/composition forming an academic data-diatribe which is "not in the interests of the general readership" but only in the interests as expounded on by the so-far-principal author of this article. But to see a well-written and not-biased author like Morton mangled into clunkiness and a tub-thump is just not suitable for encyclopedic practice or "NPOV and honesty in use of citations", which really should be in policy somewhere if it's not.
comments on distorting unbiased sources to advance SYNTH
Unlike the person who created that pastiche, I don't have the source in my hands, but remember it well, like much in that book (Morton), if not their page-numbers or direct quotes (close in many cases, though). The distorted and out-of-context non-narrative is just not good history writing. Social analysis it may be, but it's not encyclopedic and that's also resulting from selective use of a source in the advancement of a blatant SYNTH/POV, here "filtering" the source so as to continue the bias of the theme desired; and you know what, this isn't in any of the biased sources that have been so touted as being superior here despite their many flaws and missing/omitted facts and lack of neutrality. Why is that? Politics, and also about who funds academic research and why.

And when a neutral source like Morton gets used, it's filtered and out of context; same with the tidbit from Berton. And doesn't give a proper account of the event in question, just one presented to advance relentless POV SYNTH in the article so far; hopefully informed Vancouverites and others who own the better histories and sources mentioned come along to diversify its content away from its current theme of race-politics and its overall lack of context and pointillistic use of data to advance a biased agenda, rather than tell a complete narrative and account of the Chinese Canadian community and its history in British Columbia within the context of the whole of British Columbian society and history; given the POV abuse of Morton I'm seeing, and the more I see how Yee was used to repeat in diatribe fashion facts already present in other passages of the article, I see little hope that the author of these contributions and so much more beyond the article has any sense of neutral or fair coverage of a subject; for me to fix it all by myself is quite impossible, but in time those less biased and either open to locate, get and read/use the sources available who come when I am gone will read all this and continue to fix and/or monitor and comment upon when needed.

Chinese society in British Columbia is an important part of modern British Columbia and has very significant political contexts - and sensitivities, especially given China's mounting economic and political role within Canada, not just re China-FIPA and various megaprojects and property investments and so on, but in the context of what is in print in the way of histories; it should not be solo-written by anyone not familiar with the local frame of reference and sense of DUE and UNDUE and who thinks "there is no POV", when there most certainly is.

re Morton usage re methodology and honest use of sources

And re Morton again the passage reconstituted from the original is not just selectively incomplete, as an honest rendering of Morton would read; it omits significant detail; part of which is that it was one of the men who had been hired back who led and incited the gang and he'd been a troublemaker before and there was a grudge; and it would be better to quote the Colonist fully than POV-filter it. I've commented often on the rescue of the abandoned Chinese at Spences Bridge and how "Whites" but see no effort to look for it; though I do see constant one-sided, out of context bits of Morton along the same SYNTH/POV. Unlike someone who reads books only to take notes of one-liners and page-cite them, when I read books I understand and remember what I read, and digest it with other readings in the same area or even, then render them as natural English...being fair and honest as well as complete is how I was taught, and to integrate sources into readable and worth-reading text, not slice'n'dice them into mind-numbing out-of-context and not very readable social criticism; but it appears education has changed, and the old way of understanding and thinking and learning to express oneself properly gone by the wayside and things are different now: state a question/premise, then go look only for evidence that supports your foregone conclusion.

No kidding, that's exactly what methodology covers course writings in the Simon Fraser history department, it's even in their printed handouts. 20-22 years ago it was the reverse; premises of essays were more like inquiries, not jerry-rigged selection of only sources that advance a stated conclusion. A question period where all allowed onto the floor of the debate supports the verdict, and nothing else.

"Whites"
  • "Whites" - gawd that just ain't right nowadays, not with that capital-W especially; conventional usage for "Caucasians" now is "European Canadian", notably officially, or "Europeans" even when including British and (white) Americans and Aussies it seems; but such is race politics and the particularities of language; "White", if used, should only be within quotes as used by sources, the Wiki-standard is either lower case or preferably European Canadian or more specific as British, American, German etc. The insensitivity displayed towards this by SYNTH arguments seeking to justify the now-"out" usage, based no less on analysis of a biased source(s) is truly remarkable as being being out of bounds as a rationale; against established wiki conventions and {{Canadian English}} modern norms. Neutral it's not especially when it's used repetitively, as if a drumbeat hammering in the message, which is all negative.
further comments about writing quality
  • the ongoing drone of data presented in the paragraphs containing these paragraphs is purely critical and data-analysis/recount manner withouth geographic or other context, much of which is already covered in other parts of the article; this is not narrative history it is POV stumping and ethno-politics, when only one author is used and many others as well-known cover far more. Also the same phrasing and constant repetition of Chinese in each sentence is just not good writing....and not reader-friendly. That it is so biased makes that all the worse; it's commentary, not history, and much lacking in neutrality as well as detail.

All this is just a first pass on certain sections but there's lots more could be deconstructed and commented on; again, part of my motive here is that more informed editors about Vancouver, and Vancouverites who have the books mentioned, may one day come to make this article more fair than its principal author has shown any sign of wanting. For those monitoring my activity, all said here is about POV and is far more important than page-citing arguments to keep information being added i.e. information that would give balance and fairness to this article; its framework is so awkward and full of UNDUE and dross that's going to take a lot of work and far more than for me alone; deluging information is part of the tactic I'm all too familiar with, as explained and alluded to elsewhere re a number of fronts with such POV issues in Wikipedia.Skookum1 (talk) 18:07, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Caveat re "WoT" vs informed commentary/deconstruction vs POV

Not a "wall of text" and comments re that
If someone dumps on the above as a "wall of text", if you're not willing to be educated about the subject and its context and understand about the POV problems partly laid out in this section, and respect the detail and effort I have put into doing this tonight, and therefore don't care about NPOV, the subject, or quality content and good writing, then you shouldn't be commenting at all since you have nothing either constructive or informative to add here; these sections are not presented for discussion but explanation/deconstruction, which is why I haven't subheaded each part nor signed each section. This is an analysis of examples of what is wrong with this page. Those who may wish to use my detailed and as "concise as possible" (esp given geographical and historical context) material above to assert something is wrong with me and assert O should be punished for it either don't care about the issues, or care enough about them from the biased side of things who do not want the article to be fair and its content properly complete, and only care about me and guidelines not content. All is verifiable in all that I've said; challenging that is rank AGF given how much I've read, and how much valuable content I'm known for having contributed to Wikipedia.
That the article needs to be more readable is obvious to anyone who reads more than academic literature; I have provided some examples above; the article needs a rewrite, and purge of its junk content, biased slant and sourcing and awkward writing and focus on data rather than narrative. This should have been the focus of discussion here; not me, or the silly business about un-needed-by-guideines page cites, which has been entirely a technicalist red herring and deflection; I have little energy left, I'm an old man with little food and overdue rent, but care enough about fairness in Wikipedia, and proper and honest content concerning my home province, though I'm thousands of miles from it now, to stay up on an an empty stomach and work all this out, and wondering if I'll get sleep from the pangs, after adding just a few of the bits from sources I offered long ago, which were ignored while demands for page-cites for books I'm told I should go buy and discussions about my behaviour and not the content have only, and deliberately, added to the exhaustion of energy that psychological warfare is all about, and propaganda whether conscious or unconscious; I'm hoping a friend will be able to buy me breakfast and have a news show to do in the morning (unpaid like too much else I haev done in my life, including Wikipedia)... if I am able. Must be nice to be a WMFer or on grant/scholarship, but I'm not; but even so I care about this matter very muchand also about my own dignity, given the atrocious way I've been treated and dissed by various parties who don't care about the subject, or NPOV, but only about picayune guidelines, near-entirely about "behaviour" and fiddly technical matters not good content. @Viriditas: @Moonriddengirl: @The Interior:. Skookum1 (talk) 18:07, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Sources for Kelowna's Chinatown

As with other BC Chinatowns, most of which are mentioned as sections in town articles, this should probably be a separate article Chinatown, Kelowna as there's so much available in the way of details. Note how the history of the community is closely tied to the Chinese communities in Vancouver and Victoria, another demonstration of why Vancouver should not be written up separately from the rest of Chinese history in BC as my ongoing opponent about this maintains so persistently based on his own OR claims/interpretations of his preferred sources and their absence of information on so very much in the province's history. I'd work these into the article and wil yet, since it's clear that there is no interest at all by that party as to content about anything that conflicts with his preferred range of sources and his SYNTH about what they define/mean, and he's more intent on getting me blocked than in being collaborative in any way:

While I've been researching this the person attempting to railroad this page is not even trying to look for more about the topic, never mind using the mass of sources I've compiled while the board-warring and censorship-attempt is ongoing elsewhere.Skookum1 (talk) 03:54, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

I haven't been able to get information out of the Okanagan Historical Society index listings since it seems to refer to the historical reports... and I can't access them right now. The other sources have been incorporated. WhisperToMe (talk) 20:33, 29 January 2015 (UTC)
I've read many of those and browsed others; what "seems to refer to the historical reports" is a strange way to put a famous compendium of local lore, personal recollections, essays by historians, poetry and more; if you can't access something, that doesn't mean that what's in it isn't verifiable; it just means you haven't read it and shouldn't comment about them, and should accept them as verifiable with or without page cites, as each volume is rather slim - and was fully peer-reviewed by the OHS and consulting historians and "informed locals" who belonged to that historical organization or who were interviewed/written about by its membership, which included people with lots of alphabet soup (degrees and diplomas) after their names.Skookum1 (talk) 16:55, 12 February 2015 (UTC)
That's not meant to re-engage discussion about this, but to observe it is much the same redundancy as the line I removed from the article that went "Victoria Chinatown is in Victoria" (and the natural English version and proper idiom there should be "Victoria's Chinatown" anyway).Skookum1 (talk) 16:57, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Willmot is *wrong* about Chinatowns

Per:

Communities that had Chinatowns and/or areas where Chinese were concentrated in the mid-20th Century, other than Vancouver and Victoria, are Ashcroft, Duncan, Kamloops, Kelowna, Nanaimo, Nelson, Port Alberni, Prince George, Prince Rupert, and Vernon.[1][2]

  • inline comment by WTM: Communities listed on Willmott BC Towns p. 28, Willmott BC Towns p. 29 says Quesnel and Trail did NOT have Chinatowns

Quesnel most certainly did historically, and into teh 20th Century, and places like Stanley, Antler, Wingdam and Quesnel Forks didn't have Chinatowns separately; they were mostly Chinese. Why is this listing limited to the 20th century anyways? = academicist blinkers and a lack of real knowledge of the province is why. Lillooet's Chinatown remained until the 40s or so when railway rerouting destroyed it. Penticton's lasted well into the 20th Century; to me this is shoddy history typical of academic writing; and relying on one obscure source like Willmot for this list when so many sources online and off are around, and naming him over and over in the article, is a waste of space.Skookum1 (talk) 09:09, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

There needs to be a reference saying that Quesnel had a Chinatown in 1965, otherwise Willmott is right. The source is clearly talking about the 1960s so the source is limited to that. If you want to mention other Chinatowns get another source and state XX towns had Chinatowns in whatever time period. WhisperToMe (talk) 06:32, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

Re Oppenheimer....

my bad, considering what I'd said about Cariboo veterans like all colonial-era BCers having a much more accepting relationship with teh colony's Chinese and natives vs the extremely racist attitudes of [Central] Canadians [mostly ontarians] in both the city's elites and in the railway-era sudden immigration of huge numbers of them once the railway opened...considering this was the first election and not the 2nd, this well-known if much misunderstood/misrepresented incident was not Oppenheimer but McLean.... and if it's not a quote then NO PAGE CITE is required. Only the sources that mention it, in this case many books. That the 'pejorative' sources gloss over the distinctions between different kinds of Vancouverites and BCers of that era and talk about it in the sense of "all white people were/are racist" misses the point of the story completely; it's in The Gastown Story by Olga Ruskin et al, Early Vancouver by Maj. Mathews, the historical atlas of Vancouver (title? MacDonald? - another book I used to own) and all of the major histories of the province and the early city.

You'll find it in Morton; given your avidity about challenging all you don't know yet and get rather imperious about demanding page-cites before, it's time for you trip to that university with your phone cam in hand and make your own copy to take with....or sit there with a notepad and take notes while you learn what's in it, not look for things to use to win word-wars and score argument-points. You should learn about the city and hits history before presuming to commandeer content and wiki-cop like this; and your ongoing demand for page-cites that WP:V does NOT require or mention in any content other than for quotes is disruptive...and a sad sign that you have not changed your AGF ways or SYNTH/instruction creep about/abusing guidelines in the slightest ... nor intend to.

Go read the book and learn what you demand; you are welcome to add the bloody page-cites, but stop demanding, imperiously and impatiently without relent, for others to do that for you when only YOU require it. WP:V doesn't, and stop asserting that it does. It doesn't.

I'll take out Oppenheimer's name and am now pretty sure it should be MacLean; User:Bobanny is no longer with Wikipedia as he's a busy local heritage blogger now; User:Franamax is no longer with us but in a different way; he's dead. But I know Bobanny online as we share heritage and historical material all the time; I'll ask him; you trying to assert editorial authority and demand actions by others that only you require, and that you can do yourself, and which yhou should have an open mind about, not an iron-clad one, is disruptive and AGF...and more "battlefield behaviour" ... but the battling is yours, and it's tiresome and out of place, and in fact against guidelines as being constantly AGF.Skookum1 (talk) 19:12, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Skookum1, " and if it's not a quote then NO PAGE CITE is required." is false. WP:V : "Attribute all quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged to a reliable, published source using an inline citation." Most material is likely to be challenged.
Get the required books ASAP so you can start doing page cites now.
WhisperToMe (talk) 20:29, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
"ASAP" is yet more impatient demandingness=control freaking; YOU have focussed on your selection of cites and ignored the hundreds of cites of well-known sources on BC history I summarized on this page for you before, while you were orating to yourself on the OR board trying to discredit me. Instead of demanding that *I* fulfill your demands for page-cites that are not required (no matter what you claim/assert so obnoxiously and repetitively; your SYNTH about WP:V re-made just above I deconstructed already on the OR board, which of course you ignored because you only hear yourself and no one else), it is YOU who should be assiduously poring over the dozens and dozens of expert sources and main historical sources on the province/colony that I assembled for you, or anyone, to use to improve the article to give it the proper range and fairness that you are clearly bent on fighting off with specious logics and wildly misrepresentative edit-comments like the one about "British and others" re "Natives and Blacks"; you are not being collaborative and continue to pretend to be an authority which you are most definitely NOT.

Have you noticed that I have commented here and elsewhere that I am trying to recruit actual British Columbians with knowledge of their local histories, and who own copies of the books I mention? That you clearly hold such sources in disdain because they contain facts and accounts that are in direct conflict with the false assertions and POV conflations you are wiki-lawyering to engineer/commandeer this subject is by now very obvious, even though you are a complete newbie in the field of BC history and geography; many are scholarly and come from some of the province's main historians (e.g. Howay & Scholefield).

Your presumptuous word-games over usages and terms and wiki-lawyering about cites and more is only a dodge to protect the ideological/ethnic basis of your POVism, IMO... your POV agenda on this page is very clear and it's noxious and anti-Wikipedian in character. Your ethno-POV soapbox content/agenda for this article, and here on its talkpage as in your board-warring orations, does not jibe with the tone and content of scads of other BC articles connected to this subject directly or indirectly; you are building a POV castle in the sky and resisting any attempts at informing or educating you on what else you don't know yet.....scholarly sources that contain bad facts and false claims based on selective excerpts to build a false generalization about "whites" (Americans in most cases she mentions) should not be taken at face value; or asserted as if only badly-researched "scholarly" works should hold sway above all others, especially if those otehrs get in the way of what the agenda underlying those works is all about.

Yee lists off events and cites her sources, but e.g. re the steamer incident at Hope she makes no mention at all of the government's response to that event; similarly she makes no mention that in the same period Chinese were attacked by two Americans (out of several thousand in teh area at the time, plus several thousand other kinds of "whites" including Scandinavians, Poles, Italians, Germans and Maritimers and French Canadians - many of whom were Metis and "not white") that natives drove off Chinese placer miners from spawning beds; or that Chinese dominated the placer workings on the Fraser from Quesnel to Hope by the end of the gold rush. She makes no mention of the government's responses to American misconduct, or the governor's and Judge Begbie's mandates of equality for all in the goldfields; she's not interested in presenting that, it gets in teh way of her underlying theses. And neither are you, it seems.Skookum1 (talk) 09:09, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

P.S. If you want my scans I can e-mail them to you. Just make sure they are NOT publicly posted. These are only for personal use! WhisperToMe (talk) 04:28, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
I am not interested in page-citing for your demands and impatience; or in you patronizing attitude about me not posting them if I were to have you send them to me; I've told you what I know is in the book and about what issues and events your preferred and highly biased "scholarly" sources never address fully by design; there are other scholarly sources, and scads of books both general and local in scope in both popular press, journalistic authors like Stephen Hume and Alan Morley and more, that you seem intent on not ever acknowledging as worthwhile to investigate and are hellbent-for-leather to prevent even mention of what's in them from even talkpage discussions.
You have the book, I've told you what's in it; find the page-cites yourself and stop trying to be the boss of me; you're not. I get accused of OWN behaviour but it's you who have shown that since day one of your entry in Canadian wikispace.....there's big difference between OWN conduct and a POV agenda and protecting the integrity of BC history and consistency of Wikipedia content and CANSTYLE from POVism and cherrypicking of sources/content. You are out of line and have been for quite a while; your arrogance is breathtaking in its persistence and conjectures/claims.... you are not interested in collaboration but only in control.Skookum1 (talk) 09:09, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
There's a good reason why I said "ASAP". It takes weeks to ship a book, particularly if you can't get it from a country close to Cambodia. If you put the orders in now you may still have to wait several weeks to get the book.
I asked about it at Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Are_.22page_cites.22_required.3F and there's a content guideline here: Wikipedia:Citing_sources#WP:Page_numbers. The noticeboard folks said that if you are referring to the book's general concept (say you are citing a book titled "Chinese in British Columbia" to say that there was Chinese in the province you don't need specific page cites. However... if you are citing a specific fact in the book (something that may appear only on a certain page, or a certain paragraph) you absolutely need a page cite.
It's obvious that this subject is important to you, and it's important for you to have access to these books. Please do Wikipedia a service and obtain the books yourself and do not ever sell them at least until/unless you make copies/scans of the necessary pages. (it's good to scan the chapter lists and/or index too so you have an overall picture of the book)
WhisperToMe (talk) 20:49, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Go find a kite to fly. Re "It takes weeks to ship a book, particularly if you can't get it from a country close to Cambodia. If you put the orders in now you may still have to wait several weeks to get the book." = I'm three times your age, you think I don't know that???. Good grief......patronizing and arrogant and pretentious all at the same time. Nothing new of what I know of you by now, to be sure. What "the noticeboard folks" said is nothing like what you are maintaining here, and @GBfan: said outright that they are not required. As for telling me to buy/order the book, I've mentioned before that I am in crisis here; in fact I only ate today because someone put some money in my account, which will pay the next two days' rent and one or two meals each day....must be nice being funded to spedn all day revising history or to have family/business money to spend all day pontificating and demanding work from others that you should be doing yourself,

Since "It's obvious that this subject is important to you, and it's important for you to [buy] these books."; I've provided you names of dozens of titles that have content related to the article, do you need me to Amazon/Googlebook-link them for you or do you know how to do that for yourself. You want something to accept that I am speaking in GF, which I have been throughout since you first showed up in Canadian wikispace, then you go buy the book and do the work you demand of me YOURSELF. Rather than send me your scans of Morton, or tell me to buy the books I sold off a few year ago after having and reading them for years (some of them far longer than you've been alive), why not send me e.g. around 500 USD as my time in the last three months dealing with you has been worth at least that much; more like 10x that amount. A 40 pounder of good scotch would be nice too. YOU order the books, YOU read them, YOU get the page-cites you're demanding/bossing/patronizin g me about and do the work YOURSELF....since "it's obvious this subject [page-cites] is important to you. Good grief.....Skookum1 (talk) 11:40, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

And re the page-number guideline you link above it says only:

"When citing lengthy sources, you should identify which part of a source is being cited"

It says "should"... NOT "must". More "instruction creep" and rule-mongering. Send me that scotch ASAP, and that 500USD too....ASAP, as you put it to me about what YOUwant....just for being thrown to the dogs by you because of this ongoing distortion of guidelines and confabulation of them into rules. And tell ya what, make a nice big print-out and put it at the top of yhouyr computer screen of the Fifth Pillar, and maybe use it as you phone alert too, so you hear it all the time THERE ARE NO RULES I wonder if I'll actually get some sleep tonight, which I haven't the last few from echoing all the junk being spewed out of you mind and subjected into mine.Skookum1 (talk) 11:49, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

Re: @GB fan: he's learning that they are required. The wording has been addressed on the noticeboard: it clearly covers facts and not just quotes. Please accept it.
The reality is that if you don't have these books (and people now know you don't have them) and you don't have access to them, you won't be able to use them as arguments in regards to specific facts (as opposed to the overall concept), nor to use them as sources. In other words the amount of participation you would like to have on this topic is limited. Are you willing to accept being in this position? (Even WP:RX will not give scans of an entire book, only a few pages).
Obviously you know a lot about BC history, and I have discovered this through reading Willmott's paper on the Chinese in small BC towns and matching it with the comment about the first. Even so, Verifiability is an important component of Wikipedia, and it demands exact citations. If you don't have a source, your knowledge is in admissible. If your knowledge does not appear in any published source, your knowledge is inadmissible. This is why it is important to find and keep reliable sources.
WhisperToMe (talk) 16:39, 28 January 2015 (UTC)
that post is over two weeks old by now, but is typical of the AGF towards things I bring up; nothing I have mentioned is not in a published source; suggesting that I make things up, and that my knowledge is inadmissible, because somebody who has never heard of the books or read much BC history/geography at all, is ignorant and rude and unCIVIL.Skookum1 (talk) 01:22, 11 February 2015 (UTC)
"nothing I have mentioned is not in a published source" - The Wikipedian must specify which source that a certain piece of information comes from, and the Wikipedian who makes the claim has the responsibility of sourcing the claim exactly. WhisperToMe (talk) 06:36, 15 February 2015 (UTC)
I have consistently mentioned EACH AND EVERY TIME which sources are associated with events and individuals I have brought up. What part of that did you not understand? And you usage of "claim" is yet more ongoing AGAINST GOOD FAITH towards me; I'm from the place you are presuming to pontificate and have read far more than you ever will on BC history, both in terms of events concerning the Chinese and also general history, geography and politics; other than my book-readings and article-readings, I've had 40+ year of reading local newspapers and magazines on a daily basis. I'm a responsible Wikipedian and that is not going to be measure by your CLAIMS about what guidelines require. It appears that your comprehension abilities are even worse than your English composition skills which are so much evident in the garbled writing I am taking on to turn into readable natural English.
I repeat: I have always mentioned what's in sources I name, it is you who call them "claims" while never having read them, or given me the slightest bit of good faith about the matters I raise; "sourcing the claim exactly" when whole books e.g. Early Vancouver are full of possibly dozens of cites for given events; which your precious academic sources don't.Skookum1 (talk) 07:29, 15 February 2015 (UTC)
  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference WillmottBCTownsp2728 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Willmott, "Some Aspects of Chinese Communities in British Columbia Towns," p. 29.
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