Template:Did you know nominations/Sheng nu

The following is an archived discussion of Sheng nu's DYK nomination. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page; such as this archived nomination"s (talk) page, the nominated article's (talk) page, or the Did you know (talk) page. Unless there is consensus to re-open the archived discussion here. No further edits should be made to this page. See the talk page guidelines for (more) information.

The result was: promoted by Allen3 ^talk 16:57, 23 April 2013 (UTC).

Sheng nu

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~~... that sheng nu is a term introduced by the Government of China to pressure unwed women into marriage in response to the gender imbalance caused by the one-child policy?~~
Alt1 ... that sheng nu is a pejorative term promoted by the Government of China to pressure unwed women into marriage in response to the gender imbalance caused by the one-child policy?

The article has about 8,170 characters with out spaces. It was created in the article mainspace on 28 March 2013. The hook itself is 143 characters long with out spaces, and 174 characters with spaces.

Created/expanded by Mkdw (talk). Self nominated at 20:01, 29 March 2013 (UTC).

Nice article. However, the term "sheng nu" was not introduced or coined by the government. Although the Huffington Post article claims so, it is simply wrong (I guess Huffpost cannot be considered a reliable source for Chinese etymology). The word was a slang term that was adopted by the official media. The hook and the lead need to be changed. -Zanhe (talk) 16:21, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

No problem. Please provide me the source of your information in the form of a reliable and independent publication and I will update the DYK hook and article as soon as possible. Naturally you understand that the Huffington Post, and the other sources such as the New York Times article which support the position the term was introduced by the government, are both well regarded media source, so I could not change the hook and article information with out an equally strong source that disputes this. Mkdw ^talk 19:21, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

The more respectable sources (NYT, BBC) only say that the word was officially recognized by the government in 2007, which is the truth. Only the less respectable Huffpost says it's coined by the government, which is easy to prove wrong: just google the Chinese characters "剩女", and set the parameters to show only results from 2006 and before, and thousands of links come up. For example, there's a 2006 article on the Chinese new site eastday.com on a survey of older bachelors, and on the Chinese portal baidu.com someone posted a message in May 2006 asking what sheng nu means. -Zanhe (talk) 19:16, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Noting that the term has been used in 2006 does not contradict that the All-China Women's Federation coined the term. The Ministry of Education (a complete different organization) added it to the lexicon in 2007. Nothing to do with the All-China Woman's Federation nor does the article or hook make a claim the term was coined in 2007. Furthermore, the sources you provided, Baidu's question, is user submitted content like Yahoo! Answers; a very poor source, and furthermore don't discuss the terms etymology at all which infringes on personal opinion and original research. Mkdw ^talk 03:23, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Almost all of the most reliable sources say that the All China Women's Federation gave the term a specific definition in 2007, which seems to be misinterpreted by the Huffpost freelance writer as the Federation "coining" the term. By the way, I'm using Baidu's question site not as a source, only using its timestamp to prove the term existed before 2007. There are numerous other sites confirming that. -Zanhe (talk) 23:31, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

The previous reviewer has not replied or addressed concerns that his opinion that the Huffington Post statement is unreliable. Again, search engine and links that show the term in 2006 do not contradict the statement and appear to be original research not shared by a reliable source. Mkdw ^talk 00:11, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't agree with the previous reviewer. The Huffington Post is a major publication. Sure, they may be slightly biased which causes them to not be the most reliable source on things political, but this is a different issue. I'll do a full review later this week (unless someone beats me to it and approves this article before I do), but I thought I would drop this here now. I have no quarrel with HuffPost being in the article. —♦♦ AMBER^(ЯʘCK) 21:58, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Sorry for not being more responsive. I've been travelling and haven't had much time to contribute on Wikipedia. As a longtime internet user who's bilingual in Chinese and English, I've seen numerous cases of normally reliable sources making basic mistakes about another culture due to the writer's lack of background in that culture. China's official Xinhua News Agency, for example, published an article based on a Western source, without realizing it was an April Fool's joke. This Huffpost writer also seems to be one of them. I've searched all over in both Chinese and English for the etymology of the term; almost all sources (including NYT and BBC) only say that the term was officially recognized by the All China Women's Federation in 2007, which also gave it a more specific definition (aged 27 and above). Then all of a sudden we have a freelance writer from Huffpost, who does not seem to be a linguist or China expert, making the claim that the term was coined by the federation. This is highly suspicious and looks very likely to be a misinterpretation of other sources. If we publish such a claim on the frontpage of Wikipedia without more authoritative sources, we risk making Wikipedia the butt of many jokes. Please note that another user also objected to the false etymology on Wiktionary. See discussion there. -Zanhe (talk) 23:31, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

I've given your words some thought, and I now concur with you on the reliability of the Canadian HuffPost in this matter. I'm strongly opposed to removing a great deal of western sources from this article, but HuffPost in particular may not pass the credibility test in this instance.—♦♦ AMBER^(ЯʘCK) 11:32, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Alt1 ... that sheng nu is a pejorative term promoted by the Government of China to pressure unwed women into marriage in response to the gender imbalance caused by the one-child policy?

Offering this as an alternative. This one is supported directly by the New York Times and the BBC. If you think it suitable, the article can be easily changed in the lead, though it will be suitable to mention that the Huffington Post did attribute the term as being coined by the Government of China - in doing so the article does not take it as fact but merely provides the information that has been reported on. Mkdw ^talk 05:43, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

I could support this hook, but the Huffington Post thing needs to go from the article entirely. —♦♦ AMBER^(ЯʘCK) 07:51, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

I have made the changes accordingly. Mkdw ^talk 08:00, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Good! Now we've got that controversy out of the way, we can focus on some other aspects of the article. I identified two other problems with it.

I'm not convinced the Newsweek cover contributes significantly to the article. It's an American magazine focusing on the American marriage market. It has got nothing to do with China or "sheng nu." Furthermore, I'm not convinced its fair use rationale is explicit enough.
I found evidence of close paraphrasing at reference 17.

Can you fix this? —♦♦ AMBER^(ЯʘCK) 08:24, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

I've fixed the paraphrase issue with reference 17. In regards to the Newsweek cover, I had actually considered changing the title of the section to comparisons in other culture. While the title may seem like OR, the BBC in depth analysis spent quite a bit of the article comparing it to that particular Newsweek cover, hence it's inclusion in the article. I think if the article is going to talk about that cover because the BBC drew comparisons, then having the cover seems appropriate? Unless we're considering removing the whole section? Mkdw ^talk 08:37, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Hmm. Alright. The cover can stay, but its fair use rationale needs some work. If you do that, I guess this is ready for a tick. —♦♦ AMBER^(ЯʘCK) 08:53, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

I have updated the rationale and linked the BBC article that draws the comparison to that exact over and also pointed out that there is no close alternative image considering that fact. I have also reduced the image size to 50kb. Mkdw ^talk 09:05, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

As promised, here's your {{DYKtick}} for ALT1. —♦♦ AMBER^(ЯʘCK) 09:35, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Amber. I appreciate your attention to this nomination since I was feeling like it was getting left behind. Mkdw ^talk 09:41, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

No problem, mate! Don't feel so bad though; there's this insane backlog of over 200 nominations. Response time on average will be affected by that. I've been trying to subdue it for the past week, but things move slow.—♦♦ AMBER^(ЯʘCK) 10:04, 23 April 2013 (UTC)