Template:Did you know nominations/Yu Zhou

Yu Zhou

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• ... that in 2008, Chinese folk musician Yu Zhou died in the custody of Chinese authorities 10 days after being arrested for possessing Falun Gong literature?

• Reviewed: Parasola auricoma

Created by TheBlueCanoe (talk). Nominated by Rcej (talk) at 05:40, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

• Pretty much all online refs rehash the same story, which is summarized by the fairly neutral and interesting hook. The article is long enough and old enough. The only thing that I worry about is the article's neutrality. I fixed some pretty serious violations by closely adhering to the sources—for example, attributing certain claims to practitioners and their families rather than to human rights groups, which gave them a lot more credibility—but the article creator, who is not involved in this nomination, may try to fight to keep some of the advocacy-esque wording. If that happens, I'll pursue dispute resolution and recommend withdrawal of this nomination on grounds of stability. Shrigley (talk) 18:19, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

I have analyzed your changes on the talk page in cases where I disagree, and you are welcome to go there if you would like to discuss further. And as long as the parties in disagreement can talk to each other, it seems quite unnecessary to suggest withdrawal of a nomination. It is unclear to me what you mean by "advocacy-esque," though I did note that you deleted most of the information sourced to Amnesty International, so perhaps that's it. I think Amnesty is a reputable and reliable source on human rights issues. Its statement that a person is "at risk of torture" doesn't constitute advocacy in my mind, so I think that content should remain. I do not support your choice to change the article name, but I won't contest it for now TheBlueCanoe 12:33, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

I responded to you on the talk page, but I'm afraid a lot of our disagreements revolve around framing and intricate POV issues, which can take up pages of discussion and be inconclusive. (I hope, nonetheless, that our dialogue will prove an exception.) Here are some of the most egregious misrepresentations in the article which I removed, and all of which tilted in the direction of pro-Falun Gong advocacy in my view:

• As mentioned above, saying in Wikipedia's voice that Yu Zhou "was killed", when the only established fact is that he died in custody, officially from diabetic dehydration as a result of a hunger strike (a possibility without blame that is unexamined in this wording).
• The weaseley sentence in lead, "evidence of the Chinese government’s continued use of extralegal detention and torture" when the only mention of torture is AI's generic "urgent appeal!" that he was "at risk" of torture; your wording falsely implies that he was detained extralegally or that he was tortured
• Your stating as fact that Yu was taken "to the Tongzhou detention center" (when the cited sources just say that he "was detained" more generically), as a set up for later when Tongzhou would deny knowledge of him; it was Yu's lawyer who is the source of most of this information, and he is a paid advocate for the man.

This is not mentioning the more subtle issues like your partial quoting of Yu Zhou's sister and constant peppering the article with emotive words like "crusade" and "persecution" on which I could more easily assume good faith. An obvious rule of DYK is that articles must be stable, and if we can't agree on whether certain sentences should be included or not, we cannot feature the article. Shrigley (talk) 16:59, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

I did not disagree with you on a single one of the three points you mentioned above. Those were cases where I thought your edits were acceptable, and didn't contest them (even though the CECC source does point to Yu Zhou's case as an example of "torture and abuse in custody"). I'm quite willing to compromise, but you seem to be manufacturing a dispute here, almost as though you want this article to be unstable. Fortunately, stability does not actually seem to be a requirement for DYKs. They're new articles, so it's natural that they would undergo a lot of improvements and changes. TheBlueCanoe 21:14, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Hey, sorry for what might have looked like a defensive tone. I wasn't even sure that you were going to participate in DYK, although now that you have, the article is all the better for it. I had some bad experiences before, although I do recognize and appreciate your ability to compromise. There's no "manufactured" quality to the dispute, since we've altogether written almost 15,000 bytes of debate on the talk page on complex issues relating to neutrality. It's stated on the supplementary rules that "D6: The article is likely to be rejected for unresolved edit-warring or the presence of dispute tags." and "D7: There is a reasonable expectation that an article—even a short one—that is to appear on the front page should appear to be complete and not some sort of work in progress". Try to keep in mind that I'm not trying to sabotage this nomination: I am the one who approved it, after all. Shrigley (talk) 23:36, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

• I'm going to be my arrogant Louisiana boy self and flat-out say that withdrawing this nomination is off the table! Shrigley, ce the article to what you will pass for the current hook! Once it has had its day on DYK, then war it out ;) But we must keep the focus on letting the neutrality of the article fundamentally support the neutrality of the hook! Rcej (Robert) – talk 04:03, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

• I'm puzzled as to why a DYK review that states that the article has neutrality issues was also approved (that's what the green tick means: the article is fine, not just the hook): both hook and article are supposed to be neutral. If there are significant issues, then approval can wait until they are solved. Until the article is ready to appear on the main page, that green (or gray) tick should not be given. BlueMoonset (talk) 06:39, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

I really don't think there are neutrality problems with the article as I wrote it.[1]. I do think there may be a neutrality problem with the reviewing editor. Statements like "Amnesty International reports are hearsay repackaged as God's own truth" are sort of a dead giveaway. Add that to the fact that this editor has a history of deleting information about the persecution of Falun Gong, and I'm coming to think that he is not a good arbiter of neutrality here.

I am not going to edit war, and I'm happy to initiate dispute resolution, but I don't want this to be filibustered until the nomination grows stale. If there is a way to hold the article until dispute resolution is concluded, but still have it appear as a DYK, that could be a good option. Can someone more familiar with the process tell me if that's possible? Alternately, I would just say that another, uninvolved reviewer should take a look.TheBlueCanoe 04:23, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

I just read through this (and am reading the dispute on the talk page), but after also consulting the supplementary rules, I noticed H2: "You're not allowed to approve your own hook or article. DYK novices are strongly discouraged from confirming articles that are subject to active arbitration remedies, as are editors active in those areas. Use common sense here, and avoid even the appearance of conflict of interest. A valid DYK nomination will readily be confirmed by a neutral editor." Emphasis added. Shrigley has been active in the Falun Gong area and has previously been caught up in arbitration proceedings because of his editing on the topic. So according to H2, if I've understood it correctly, Shrigley shouldn't be involved in vetting the article for DYK. In particular, Shrigley's argument appeared to be that an article can't appear as a DYK if it's unstable, while he was the one creating the instability. The problems with that should be apparent. In other news, I don't think there are major neutrality issues, since the facts of the Zhou Yu case are not really in dispute. Maybe there is some disagreement about how certain things are phrased, but that shouldn't be escalated to derailing a legitimate DYK nom. The page seems to easily satisfy the relevant criteria. TheSoundAndTheFury (talk) 18:40, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

BlueCanoe, are you saying that it would be better to have somebody who is completely ignorant of the techniques of Falun Gong's propaganda to review an article chock full of it, that might reach thousands of viewers on Wikipedia's front page? I don't think DYK regulars would agree: after all, Gibraltarpedia articles get extra vetting because they've wised up to the fact that they are being pushed for commercial purposes.

BlueMoonset, the hook is completely fine. The article's neutrality was also fine—which is why I gave it a green check—after my edit, which has since been reverted and viciously verbally parried on the talk page, just as I had feared. As of now, you can consider my approval withdrawn.

TSTF, fair enough. I actually wasn't aware of that rule, although I don't think I violated its spirit, since I was prepared to pass through an article that, with or without my minor changes, would have impressed unfavorably on what you and Canoe assume is my POV. In any case, I have made clear from the beginning that my approval would only count if there was no objection to it, and such a time has long passed. Shrigley (talk) 18:49, 16 January 2013 (UTC)