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Disagree entirely on Japanese translating the English wiki - that is too many steps and most people do not do that. Also within Japan, SEO and such always put J

Disagree entirely on Japanese translating the English wiki - that is too many steps and most people do not do that. Also within Japan, SEO and such always put Japanese content first (especially on google.) vs en.wikipedia.org. The article is touching heavy on Japanese and if you do not have a basic fluency of the langauge, it's easy to jump to conclusion... Alongside, same with the renaming of Nanjing - what if the government renames the incident and it becomes the status quo? What is the source of truth? Machine translating one "wikipedia" is also wrong, because context is removed, and having English be the language of truth and all other languages translate from it - you'll miss out on many things, especially words that do not have a specific English translation. The article is poorly written and documented.

mschuster91 5y ago
> Alongside, same with the renaming of Nanjing - what if the government renames the incident and it becomes the status quo? What is the source of truth? The "source of truth" should be scientific consensus, not government decrees and policies. The problem is obvious: it takes a lot of resources to determine what the consensus is on hotly debated topics.
- quanticle 5y ago
  What is the "scientific consensus" on the name of a city? When the government of India decides to rename Calcutta to Kolkata, then has the "scientific consensus" on the name of the city shifted?
  - 908B64B197 5y ago
    It's what the inhabitants calls it. Calcutta, Pondicherry and Pekin were "best attempts" by Europeans to transcribe the sounds from the locals that were relayed to them by illiterate sailors.
    - alisonkisk 5y ago
      Which inhabitants?
    - quanticle 5y ago
      The inhabitants of Calcutta called it "Calcutta" prior to the Indian government renaming it. Now they call it Kolkata. The people of Madras called it Madras before the government renamed it to Chennai. Now they call it Chennai. I think it's incorrect to pretend that there's some kind of "objective" scientific reality at play here. Naming geographic locations is an inherently political act, and choosing which of several names to call a place inherently means favoring some interpretations over others.
- lwouis 5y ago
  See my sibling comment. You don't need a consensus. You can list multiple perspectives and have them coexist. That's how we have to do with religion for example. There can't be a consensus there clearly, so we share all perspectives. Facts of life such as what's on Wikipedia should be edited as well as narrated by a variety of sources so that it represents the diversity of humankind
  - mschuster91 5y ago
    The question if something was a "massacre" or an "incident" or if a Nazi installation was a "concentration/extermination camp" or a "collection camp" is not something that allows coexistence or diversity.
    - perl4ever 5y ago
      >if a Nazi installation was a "concentration/extermination camp" or a "collection camp" I'm not sure if a "collection camp" is an accepted term, or a term related to Holocaust denial, but there is a fact-based distinction between concentration and extermination camps, and a "collection camp" sounds like it might mean a camp that was used to gather people to be sent on to the others. For example, "the Theresienstadt ghetto functioned in part as a transit center for Jews from Czechoslovakia, Germany and Austria on their way to extermination camps and other mass killing centers" Regarding massacres: "The term massacre, being a synonym of "butchery, carnage", is by nature hyperbolic or subjective, primarily used in partisan descriptions of events. There is no neutral definition of what constitutes a "massacre" although some authors using the term may lay down general "working definitions" of what they mean by the term" Things described as massacres seem to range from the killing of 3 people to a million.
      - alisonkisk 5y ago
        Even laying aside "extermination camps", both US and Nazi Germany ran "concentration camps". They were very, very different.
    - lwouis 5y ago
- philwelch 5y ago
  "Scientific consensus" is easily gamed by any authority with enough power to influence the scientific community. In the crudest version of this, any scientists who publicly disagree with the "consensus" are thrown into gulag. In more refined versions, they are excluded or expelled from the field, sometimes by activist mobs. The problem with the more refined version is that it's intentionally difficult to distinguish honest and qualified dissidents from kooks unless you know enough about the actual science. Consensus is a social and political phenomenon, not a scientific one.
lwouis 5y ago
She seems to dream of this "one absolute source of truth". There is no universal truth. The best way to know something is to know as many perspectives on it as possible. In her example of "massacre" changing to "incident", both are descriptions that groups of people find appropriate. You open a left-wing journal and read about what people in that bubble think of the world. You open a right-wing journal and read a different perspective. Plurality of information and perspective gives you the richest knowledge. Not some Orwellian universal truth that some committee/government approved.
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  There is universal truth (though there may be many perspectives - some biased purposefully, some merely imperfect), and that truth is rooted in the fact that the real world is an objective thing that exists. Claiming that "there is no universal truth" just feeds the recent concept of "alternative facts" and lends validity to absurd worldviews that don't take the objectivity of the physical world as foundational feature. I agree that it's good to try to see things from various angles, but "there is no such thing as universal truth" seems like a very damaging idea.
  - alisonkisk 5y ago
    Do you claim to know the solution to the age-old problem of epistemology? A Nobel Prize awaits you.
    - lwouis 5y ago
      The GP is mentioning "recent" things. None of this is recent. I studied the idea of truth in high school. We studied it through the historical lens of Greek philosophy and how it influenced and evolved through following European philosophers up to modern times. I'm often seeing people react to "fake news" and other trends like this is the first time humanity is dealing with such things. Historical revisionism, propaganda, all of these are as old as the first human settlements
  - HKH2 5y ago
pavon 5y ago
The article also assumes there is one audience which is also false. The English language page for a Japanese subject will inherently need to describe things differently for a western audience to understand than the Japanese language page would. Trying to merge these would make things worse for both audiences.
- TchoBeer 5y ago
  Do you know of any examples where the English version of a wikipedia article has a more "Western" explaination whereas the Japanese version has a more "Eastern" one?
  - zaik 5y ago
    Well, the second paragraph of the Nankin massacre article is relativizing, saying things like 'there are a lot of contradictions' and that 'the truth of the incident is still unkown'. > 中国側は南京大虐殺や南京大屠殺と呼称しているが、事件の真相はいまだ不明であり、捕虜、敗残兵ないし便衣兵を殺害したのか婦女子も含むのか、どの程度の規模か、などの点で食い違いが多く、事件の規模、戦時国際法違反か否かの論争、犠牲者数をめぐる論争が存在している。日本の学界ではこれをめぐって賛否が分かれており、犠牲者の推定値は20万人、4万人、2万人などいくつかあるが、「宣伝目的ででっち上げられた」と主張する国粋主義や学者もいる。
    - TchoBeer 5y ago
      Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but this is clearly less about cultural differences as much as it is about official party ideology.

mschuster91 5y ago

> Alongside, same with the renaming of Nanjing - what if the government renames the incident and it becomes the status quo? What is the source of truth? The "source of truth" should be scientific consensus, not government decrees and policies. The problem is obvious: it takes a lot of resources to determine what the consensus is on hotly debated topics.

quanticle 5y ago
What is the "scientific consensus" on the name of a city? When the government of India decides to rename Calcutta to Kolkata, then has the "scientific consensus" on the name of the city shifted?
- 908B64B197 5y ago
  It's what the inhabitants calls it. Calcutta, Pondicherry and Pekin were "best attempts" by Europeans to transcribe the sounds from the locals that were relayed to them by illiterate sailors.
  - alisonkisk 5y ago
    Which inhabitants?
  - quanticle 5y ago
    The inhabitants of Calcutta called it "Calcutta" prior to the Indian government renaming it. Now they call it Kolkata. The people of Madras called it Madras before the government renamed it to Chennai. Now they call it Chennai. I think it's incorrect to pretend that there's some kind of "objective" scientific reality at play here. Naming geographic locations is an inherently political act, and choosing which of several names to call a place inherently means favoring some interpretations over others.
lwouis 5y ago
See my sibling comment. You don't need a consensus. You can list multiple perspectives and have them coexist. That's how we have to do with religion for example. There can't be a consensus there clearly, so we share all perspectives. Facts of life such as what's on Wikipedia should be edited as well as narrated by a variety of sources so that it represents the diversity of humankind
- mschuster91 5y ago
  The question if something was a "massacre" or an "incident" or if a Nazi installation was a "concentration/extermination camp" or a "collection camp" is not something that allows coexistence or diversity.
  - perl4ever 5y ago
    >if a Nazi installation was a "concentration/extermination camp" or a "collection camp" I'm not sure if a "collection camp" is an accepted term, or a term related to Holocaust denial, but there is a fact-based distinction between concentration and extermination camps, and a "collection camp" sounds like it might mean a camp that was used to gather people to be sent on to the others. For example, "the Theresienstadt ghetto functioned in part as a transit center for Jews from Czechoslovakia, Germany and Austria on their way to extermination camps and other mass killing centers" Regarding massacres: "The term massacre, being a synonym of "butchery, carnage", is by nature hyperbolic or subjective, primarily used in partisan descriptions of events. There is no neutral definition of what constitutes a "massacre" although some authors using the term may lay down general "working definitions" of what they mean by the term" Things described as massacres seem to range from the killing of 3 people to a million.
    - alisonkisk 5y ago
      Even laying aside "extermination camps", both US and Nazi Germany ran "concentration camps". They were very, very different.
  - lwouis 5y ago
philwelch 5y ago
"Scientific consensus" is easily gamed by any authority with enough power to influence the scientific community. In the crudest version of this, any scientists who publicly disagree with the "consensus" are thrown into gulag. In more refined versions, they are excluded or expelled from the field, sometimes by activist mobs. The problem with the more refined version is that it's intentionally difficult to distinguish honest and qualified dissidents from kooks unless you know enough about the actual science. Consensus is a social and political phenomenon, not a scientific one.

lwouis 5y ago

She seems to dream of this "one absolute source of truth". There is no universal truth. The best way to know something is to know as many perspectives on it as possible. In her example of "massacre" changing to "incident", both are descriptions that groups of people find appropriate. You open a left-wing journal and read about what people in that bubble think of the world. You open a right-wing journal and read a different perspective. Plurality of information and perspective gives you the richest knowledge. Not some Orwellian universal truth that some committee/government approved.

selfhoster11 5y ago
There is universal truth (though there may be many perspectives - some biased purposefully, some merely imperfect), and that truth is rooted in the fact that the real world is an objective thing that exists. Claiming that "there is no universal truth" just feeds the recent concept of "alternative facts" and lends validity to absurd worldviews that don't take the objectivity of the physical world as foundational feature. I agree that it's good to try to see things from various angles, but "there is no such thing as universal truth" seems like a very damaging idea.
- alisonkisk 5y ago
  Do you claim to know the solution to the age-old problem of epistemology? A Nobel Prize awaits you.
  - lwouis 5y ago
    The GP is mentioning "recent" things. None of this is recent. I studied the idea of truth in high school. We studied it through the historical lens of Greek philosophy and how it influenced and evolved through following European philosophers up to modern times. I'm often seeing people react to "fake news" and other trends like this is the first time humanity is dealing with such things. Historical revisionism, propaganda, all of these are as old as the first human settlements
- HKH2 5y ago

pavon 5y ago

The article also assumes there is one audience which is also false. The English language page for a Japanese subject will inherently need to describe things differently for a western audience to understand than the Japanese language page would. Trying to merge these would make things worse for both audiences.

TchoBeer 5y ago
Do you know of any examples where the English version of a wikipedia article has a more "Western" explaination whereas the Japanese version has a more "Eastern" one?
- zaik 5y ago
  Well, the second paragraph of the Nankin massacre article is relativizing, saying things like 'there are a lot of contradictions' and that 'the truth of the incident is still unkown'. > 中国側は南京大虐殺や南京大屠殺と呼称しているが、事件の真相はいまだ不明であり、捕虜、敗残兵ないし便衣兵を殺害したのか婦女子も含むのか、どの程度の規模か、などの点で食い違いが多く、事件の規模、戦時国際法違反か否かの論争、犠牲者数をめぐる論争が存在している。日本の学界ではこれをめぐって賛否が分かれており、犠牲者の推定値は20万人、4万人、2万人などいくつかあるが、「宣伝目的ででっち上げられた」と主張する国粋主義や学者もいる。
  - TchoBeer 5y ago
    Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but this is clearly less about cultural differences as much as it is about official party ideology.