Talk:Shi Yan Ming

Are the abilities really "verified" or just "claimed"?

Can fellow Wikipedians please re-read the "abilities" section? The claims made there are just too extreme to be true - "He can also lick red-hot iron shovels" - really? I assume that no human in the whole world can lick a red-hot iron shovel without serious, serious injury to the tongue and possibly the face, as it has to be positioned very close to the shovel in order to be able to lick it! "He could sleep standing on one leg." Indeed! Ahd how, precisely, "could [he] deflect the tip of a spear with his neck"? I'd like to see it and learn it, too!

The "sources" given in the article are not really good sources as e.g. a Nature paper would be - they are just standard articles in standard media which make the same claims as they are echoed here in Wikipedia, but without any more reason to believe the claims. Show us the youtube video of the monk licking the shovel! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.133.233.29 (talk) 22:02, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

The New York Times, Time magazine and The New Yorker are indeed reliable sources, by the standards of Wikipedia's Reliable Sources policy. Science journals like Nature are certainly good too, but they are not the only acceptable ones. Shi's abilities are demonstratable and therefore easily tested and measured, and in some cases, the sources are explicit in documenting these demonstrations, such as the way Stan Lee's Superhumans measured his punching power. By contrast, his claim of never having been sick or experiencing health problems since going to the Temple at age 5 is much harder to document, as it is self-reported, and comes from his own website, which is why I indeed phrased that passage as such. But the wording you added, which included phrases like "Some sources claim", "Supposedly", "It is also claimed", and "it is purported", are clearly prohibited by WP:WEASEL and WP:CLAIM. I understand what your concerns are, though, so I attributed the actual sources. Nightscream (talk) 00:23, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

The fact that the claims are demonstratable does not mean they actually *have* been demonstrated. And the sources quoted don't refer to demonstrations, i.e. they don't claim something like "on January 15th 2011, in front of NYC solicitor A.B. and various journalists, including from NBC TV, Shi Yang licked a red-hot iron shovel. The experiment was conducted under the medical supervision of Dr. Foo Bar. The hotness of the shovel was measured at XXX degrees Celsius. Licking was defined as having at least one square centimeter of tongue tissue in direct contact with the iron. The experiment was videotaped and can be downloaded from youtube at URL blabla". The source, in this case the New Yorker, simply makes a completely unsubstantiated claim, nothing more - just read it. I mean, get real! The claim is blatant self-aggrandizement by Shi Yang, echoed by some credulous reporter who probably had his last Physics lesson in high school. But it is one thing if a lifestyle magazine makes a claim for the entertainment of its readers, it is another thing if Wikipedia accepts them as face value. As far as I know, there is no original, real source for the red-hot iron licking claim. So it should not be made here. Wikipedia is not Claimopedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.133.229.13 (talk) 14:52, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Again, you're applying a standard that we do not use. Wikipedia is a tertiary reference source. Not a peer review journal. Sources do not have to refer to or detail demonstrations. They only have to pass WP:IRS and WP:ATT, which the sources in question (which is not simply one reporter) clearly do. This includes The New Yorker, which is the original source for the assertion about his licking a hot iron shovel. Wikipedia only relates what reliable sources say. It does not present any conclusions or positions as to whether it "accepts" the assertions provided by sources as "right" or "correct". The standard is verifiability and attribution, not truth or editor credulity. By way of analogy, if you suspect or discover that the material that Jayson Blair wrote for The New York Times or Stephen Glass wrote for The New Republic was fraudulent, you don't criticize Wikipedia for relating it. You go to The New York Times and The New Republic, and the rest of the media, to report what you've found. If your discoveries are publicly validated, then Wikipedia will then remove any article material based on their reporting. The same thing applies to Shi. If you have a problem with Shi's claims, then you're problem is with the sources in question, and not Wikipedia. Take it up with them. If you feel that my application of the relevant policies and guidelines is incorrect, then please explain how. Nightscream (talk) 01:10, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

vC?

'1.78 vC'? I'm unfamiliar with the units/notation 'vC'. Could someone expand or link them in the article? 149.241.94.180 (talk) 14:40, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

what a total fluff piece! Someone please fix this!

No critical analysis at all, no mentioning of the controversies surrounding his claims of being a 'monk', his estranged wife in China, etc. Reads like a press release at best... 112.120.5.44 (talk) 10:43, 22 April 2015 (UTC)