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A fact from Jieba appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 30 August 2022 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that a practice known as jieba, in which a Buddhist monk has scars ritually burned into his head, was banned by the Chinese government for 300 years?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2022/August. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Jieba.

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Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 17:13, 28 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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Comment or view
Article history

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Jieba ceremony being performed

... that a practice called Jieba (pictured), where a Buddhist monk will ritually burn scars into their head, was banned by the Chinese government for 300 years? Source: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/shi-yan-fan-shaolin-temple_b_833281 Quote: "Then, in 2007, the Chinese government allowed the partial lifting of a 300-year-old ban of an ancient ceremony at the Northern Shaolin Temple..."
- Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Patrick Degorce

Created by Aoidh (talk). Self-nominated at 20:20, 21 August 2022 (UTC).[reply]

Comment only: The first source (also available on google books) is both written and published by Derek Padula. Not that I doubt he's telling the truth, but it would be great to have outside confirmation on e.g. the Chinese characters. Surely he himself has been using some other sources? --LordPeterII (talk) 23:20, 21 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@LordPeterII: You were absolutely correct to question the Chinese characters and I'm absolutely embarrassed that I took him at his word on it. 印度 does not mean yìnba or "seal scars", it literally means India, as in the country (see zh:印度). I have removed that source and added one that does verify the 戒疤 characters for jieba. - Aoidh (talk) 04:28, 22 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Err... lol XD I know zero Chinese and only randomly noticed that the book wasn't published by "United States" (which I had initially and erroneously thought). That there was indeed such a (funny!) error I didn't think, but kudos @Aoidh for identifying and fixing that so quickly :D --LordPeterII (talk) 08:56, 22 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: Interesting:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: The issue discussed above being solved, I don't see anything else wrong with this nomination. My only question is: Do you not want to use the picture in the nom Aoidh? I found it rather interesting, would be a fresh thing compared to the usual "portrait or building" pictures in DYK. I'd approve it, but it's your choice as the nominator. --LordPeterII (talk) 09:12, 22 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@LordPeterII: I don't know why it didn't even occur to me, but I just added the image if you'd like to update your review of the hook. - Aoidh (talk) 16:18, 22 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Approve image as well. --LordPeterII (talk) 16:35, 22 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

untitled

“ Jieba (or jièbā, Chinese: 戒疤[1] "ring scars" or "ordination scars") is an ordination practice where ritual burn scars are received by Buddhist monks of many sects of Buddhism…This practice is very rare…” I find this confusing and perhaps even contradictory: is this ritual practiced by many sects or is it rare? Do any Theravadin monks do this? Also the passive voice and the word repetition of Buddhism and Buddhist is awkward. Perhaps it would be better to say: “Jieba is an ordination practice among Mahayana Buddhist sects where monks receive ritual burn scars.” — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ryguy913 (talk • contribs) 13:33, 30 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's even "some" Mahayana sects, or perhaps only certain Chinese ones. It's not many, I'm sure. Secretlondon (talk) 16:29, 30 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I have changed the wording to "some" to better reflect this. - Aoidh (talk) 22:04, 30 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Sources

Should Shaolin Monks Be Asian? Just Ask Abbot Shi Yan Fan of Shaolin Temple Los Angeles

This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site. If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email.

This seems a self-published source and, although it does not quote sources, seems to be based on assertions by Shi Yan Fan/Franco Testini.-Error (talk) 16:43, 30 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The Truth About The Legendary Shaolin Monk Warriors

The part about jieba is referenced to the HuffPost Contributor article.

I'd like to see better sources. -Error (talk) 16:43, 30 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I admit I did not see that blurb at the top, and according to her she practices Kung Fu and seems to have been published in a few Kung Fu related publications, that does not make one a subject-matter expert on kung fu in general, let alone on the history and ritual practices of the Shaolin monastery. I would say that Shi Yan Fan, an ordained Shaolin monk and one of the Shaolin temple's cultural ambassadors who has undertaken the jieba ceremony would be a more authoritative source. - Aoidh (talk) 22:19, 30 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Letting that kind of source through is embarrassing; I should have been paying closer attention but was too focused on just finding anything in English that discussed jieba. I'm going to go through and replace these sources with better ones, which I'm searching for now. The problem I'm running into, both in English and Chinese, is that jieba is also the name of some sort of python-based language program so I'm getting a lot of noise from that in my searches. - Aoidh (talk) 22:56, 30 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I've emailed both Stacey Nemour and Shi Yan Fan to ask them if they can help provide a source for some of the content in the Huffington Post article, particularly the 300 year ban/relaxing of the ban information. - Aoidh (talk) 01:11, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I can find very few English language sources, and everything only relates to Chinese Buddhism. I agree the sourcing is poor. Secretlondon (talk) 16:46, 30 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

That's the problem I've been running into as well, is that the availability of English-language material on this subject is extremely limited to the point of frustration. I'm going to expand my search to non-English sources and see what I can find. - Aoidh (talk) 22:20, 30 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

There's a book in particular, 《中國和尚受戒·香疤考證》 by 談玄 that I think would be helpful if I could find it in a way that I can easily translate. - Aoidh (talk) 22:41, 30 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding how everythign seems to relate only to Chinese Buddhism, I've come across several sources in Chinese who are insistent that the practice is unique to China, though I have seen other sources that very clearly refute this. I think it's more accurate to say that it's unique (or most commonly associated with) Chan Buddhism, which is mostly Chinese but is also found elsewhere. - Aoidh (talk) 23:14, 30 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - @Error and Secretlondon: This is embarrassing and I am absolutely ashamed that this slipped through, and onto the main page via DYK no less. The HuffPost article says Then, in 2007, the Chinese government allowed the partial lifting of a 300-year-old ban of an ancient ceremony at the Northern Shaolin Temple. and the Grunge article (which appears to base at least part of it's information on that same HuffPost article) says Those are the marks form a ritual called Jieba, and it's rare to see them because the ceremony had been banned by the Chinese government for around 300 years. I am not exaggerating when I say I have spent the last 8+ hours researching everything I could about this topic to (1) find better sources and (2) verify or deny the claim. I found a lot of research material and was able to improve the article a bit, but only just came across what I was actually looking for within the past hour; the Chinese government did abolish the practice, but this was done in 1983, not 300 years ago. I couldn't find out where the 300 year number was coming from but finally found out that it's because a specific kind of ceremony at the Shaolin Temple hasn't been done for 300 years because the altar where it was held had been destroyed and was finally rebuilt after 300 years. It had nothing to do with any sort of ban, so the "300 year ban" part of the DYK hook was wrong, because I didn't pay enough attention to the source I used for the content. I don't know why monks received the jieba scars during that 2007 ritual and I'm still looking into if there was some sort of repeal or relaxing of that abolishment of the practice, but the content in the article and the DYK was wrong because the sources were junk and it led to junk in the article, and I feel absolutely terrible about putting that junk on the front page. I screwed up on this article I think because I was so desperate to find something in English about this topic because there's so little, that I missed very obvious warning signs right in front of me about the quality of what I was working with. - Aoidh (talk) 06:48, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]