Talk:Kyoto City Zoo

Criticisms

24.176.0.82: The edits you made broke all of the other citations, so I have completely reverted them. I was planning to move the criticism down to the "Incidents" section and rename it "Incidents and criticism," but I decided to look at Lonely Planed Japan, and what the online version says is "Those with children might want to stop by the Kyoto City Zoo. The zoo is home to about 1000 animals and has some decent gardens and groves of cherry trees." This is hardly the criticism you claim, so I am suspicious of the Rough Guide Japan citation as well, though I do not have access to the book. Citations need to SUPPORT the statements you make, not contradict them. Donlammers (talk) 23:56, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

There is nothing wrong with including criticisms about a zoo (or anything else). However, the criticisms MUST be properly cited (including page #s if you are referencing a book), and they had better match verifiable information, not contradict the same travel guide's Web site like yours does in the case I can verify. In addition, this information does NOT belong in the lead, unless you have LOTS of citations from more reliable sources other than travel guides (for instance, if they were kicked out of JAZA and this is in the news). If you put the relevant information below, I am willing to create citations that will not break the others. Yours are not properly formatted, and are the cause of the breakage -- the only way to fix the others is to remove or correctly cite the information. Donlammers (talk) 12:27, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Don--I have no idea what edition of the Lonely Planet you are using. Does it also recommend viewing the cigarette smoking monkey? The basic problem is that the article on the Kyoto Zoo does not contain information. It contains misinformation--even if the "facts" are accurate it creates an impression that is so far from reality that outright lies would be far better. Having a "criticisms" section as a balm to that is like having a "criticisms" section in the article on Darfur, or a "criticisms" section that says that "shit smells." Have you ever been to the Kyoto Zoo? If so, when was your last visit. If you go and you do not feel that the Wikipedia article that you are carefully shepherding gives a better description of what the Kyoto Zoo is like than, let's say--ABSOLUTELY NO ARTICLE ABOUT THE KYOTO ZOO--I will gladly pay your 800 Yen entrance fee. JDH

I am looking here, where I got by typing Lonely Planet Japan (one of your citations) and searching for Kyoto Zoo. This is verifiable by anyone, as opposed to your citations which require a purchase, and the web site is where most people will go to verify, given the choice. I do not have the ability to go to Kyoto, as I am half way around the world. HOWEVER, if I did, my opinion would not matter on Wikipedia unless I could also support it with verifiable citations from reliable sources. Unverifiable information gained from going somewhere is original research, which is not allowed (WP:OR). I don't claim to always like this rule, but it's the rule. As someone else put it, truth does not matter -- only that you can quote someone. So far your efforts on that front are not very good, as the only source that I can immediately verify contradicts what you claim the book says. As for the monkey, I will get to that if I do any more work on the article, which I may not. My purpose was not to "shepherd" the article -- just to turn it into a start article -- after which it's on my watchlist just like every other zoo article. To answer the last point about it being better not to have an article, you can always nominate the article for deletion on the basis that it is not notable.

I have removed the videos (which require analysis to come to the conclusions that you do) and "independent casual observers", which are not reliable sources. The first of them, the web site doesn't say anything bad -- just the person going there. I have left the Polar bear article, as it seems at first glance to be from a reliable source, until I have had a chance to look a it more closely. Wikipedia is not your personal soapbox, or anyone else's. Donlammers (talk) 02:11, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Undid revision--That these opinions exist is a FACT, not an opinion. The videos are relevant because they actually SHOW the FACTUAL conditions of the zoo. Use CRITICAL THINKING, Don. (edit comment by 24.176.0.82 on 2010-10-04T20:16:09).

This article will soon be protected and in doing so will stop the constant reverts and addition of unsourced information. Unless sources can be provided to the contrary I will caution you that your actions are now considered vandalism and this is against all policy. Youtube is not a reliable source, If you can provide me with links I will personally look over them and determine if they are acceptable to use in the article. If they are then I will add the information, However if they are not then the information will not be added. I understand the scrutiny and harshness people often place on zoos and am all for ensuring bad zoos and abhorrent conditions are known and people can make an informed decision as to how they feel about a zoo, however to do this you need very reliable sources that are able to back up the claims as wikipedia could be held accountable for slander if it is not a fact. Even the best zoos in the world have some issues and they are cited in there articles. Edit warring and personal attacks are not the way to go about things. Donlammers is a trusted user and has enough judgment and sense to cite sources and also to investigate them if need be, in saying that I have not looked at any of your current sources and have no intention to. Provide me with some new and credible information and I will make the change, if not I suggest you find something helpful to do elsewhere on the project. regards ZooPro 04:07, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Now that I look closely, I can see why this article is so poor. Essentially it is unsourced. All information (apart from what I provided, most of which donlammers deleted, and a link to the association the zoo belongs to) are paraphrased from the official zoo website. The fact that there are numerous references that appear to be different but which are IN FACT ALL FROM THE OFFICIAL WEBSITE would be considered an act of academic dishonesty at most institutions. At the university where I teach you most likely would only receive a failing grade for the paper. However, since there is a deliberate attempt to fabricate sources (by making one source appear to be many) charges of academic dishonesty would not be out of the question.

My suggestion for correcting this page, if no dissenting or otherwise substantive material can be included, is to simply erase the page apart from the link to the external website. That would be honest. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.176.0.82 (talk) 21:51, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Poor article: If you find poor or badly written sentences or incorrect information, you are certainly welcome to improve/correct this situation. This is currently marked as start-class article. You can see the general criteria for articles in Wikipedia here (this is just a copy of general Wikipedia criteria) and the very slightly stricter criteria for zoo articles that I go by here.

Dishonest: A casual look at the current citations will show that the article is cited based on only two works -- the zoo Web site and the JAZA member list. The work and publisher for each is clearly listed. This is no different than citing several pages or page ranges from the same book, which is generally done as separate citations to get the user closer to the information. There is no attempt to deceive or hide this fact. Two to three works with multiple citations of one of those works (usually the zoo Web site) is typical for a start-class zoo article.

Polar bears: The polar bear article which you cite is about the treatment of polar bears in Japanese zoos in general, and not about any other animals. It is also not a condemnation of Kyoto zoo as a whole. The specifics of the Kyoto zoo may be appropriate in a criticisms section, but certainly not in the lead, and certainly not the whole quotation. Page numbers are sufficient, and at this point any proposals for changes (like the polar bear addition) should be put on the discussion page first, as they are likely just to get reverted in the article, which is hardly productive.

Elephants: Your original elephant statement (which started all of this) was immediately contradicted by someone else, whose observation doesn't count for any more than yours or mine. Neither statement was backed up by a reliable source. We could certainly add something if you find a reliable written source that states this (not an opinion on You Tube or Yahoo Travel, or a bunch of pictures that need to be interpreted), which we could then paraphrase in the article. I have not found such a statement in a source that I can cite.

Smoking monkey: ZooPro has tagged this as needing citation. If none is forthcoming the sentence will be deleted in due course. I am certainly not going to make any great effort to find a citation for this -- it's not information I included, and the only other mention I have found so far on the Web looks like it was copied from this article. It certainly does not belong in the lead -- maybe under History if it is kept -- but since I expect it to be deleted I'm not going to bother moving it.

Critical thinking: Wikipedia should not be confused with academic publications. Drawing conclusions from videos or other articles, or using your own observations without sources, is original research, and is specifically against policy (see WP:OR). There are many places where you can publish original research or opinion, but Wikipedia is not that place (see WP:NOT). It may be bad form in academics, but "paraphrasing" is what is done here, so that's not even an insult.

Facts: I do not believe that the article contains any false facts. I don't purport to know the condition of animals at the zoo, nor do I claim anything about this in material I have added. I simply added the history, paraphrased from the zoo site, and a list of animals, mostly taken from the zoo map, and a couple of other items. Travel sites that I found neither add to or contradict what I put in the article, so I have not cited any -- most seem to be just single paragraph entries and copies of each other. As far as I can tell from other reading, Japanese zoos have much lower standards than European, North American, and Australian zoos, but that is not the point of this article. This article is about Kyoto Zoo, not the plight of zoo animals in Japan (you are certainly welcome to write such an article if you wish). If the article moves up the scale, it will gradually get more detail, some of which may be critical, but this detail needs to be from verifiable and reliable sources, and not original research (i.e., drawing conclusions and critical thinking), and it needs to be written from a neutral point of view (see WP:NPOV).

Motivation: Your insulting tone is certainly not giving me any great motivation to help you get information into the article in proper Wikipedia form. I am usually fairly good at ferreting out information from the Web, but I have failed to find anything specific about the zoo in a reliable source (there may be Japanese newspaper articles, but I don't read Japanese well enough to include such sources myself). It is true that I have found things like "Kyoto Zoo is always so depressing..." in travel blogs, so I suspect that the conditions are not that good. But I have yet to come up with the "smoking gun" article that I can use to justify putting anything in the article by Wikipedia standards, and at this point I am not very highly motivated to spend any more time at this. Donlammers (talk) 11:48, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

You are right that the polar bear article does deal with all zoos in Japan. The statement I included that the Kyoto Zoo has been found to violate international standards is factually correct, and I think is significantly more accurate than the watered down version that you have now, at least incldued. It would probably be good to point out that Kyoto Zoo is not alone--EVERY Japanese Zoo was found to violate international standards for polar bears. This might help you feel that this was not just a vicious attack on the Kyoto Zoo, and would also help readers think about zoos in Japan in a more general sense.

I think that you are not entirely correct in regard to the role that You Tube vides can play here, but I agree that there are different ways that they can be handled. For instance, perhaps they could be included as external links. It seems to me that at least directing people to material where they can see the zoo (and the zoo conditions for themselves) is useful. I think that you also need to think, again, about the fact that this is a wiki, and a collaborative project, rather than your personal page. It is not your responsibility to look at every You Tube video to decide whether it is fitting. In regard to the elephant statement you noted, the video that you deleted basically resolves that. We don't even need to have a statement about elephants (based on my observation or another). We can just let people look at the elephant and decide what they think. There are millions of Wikipedia users, and if THEY find them to not be useful they can be removed (or used in a different way) through a group process. When you say that you don't have time to do such and such, or that other material might be added when you find it, or that you aren't very motivated speaks to the fact that you are treating this to much as YOUR page, which it isn't. Again, let this page be a wiki, which is what it is supposed to be.

I apologize for the tone I have directed to you, though, honestly Don, I think you could own up to the fact that you have done some things in regard to this page that really are not appropriate. The worst thing that you did is that you deleted an actual, verified source, which said exactly what I said it said. You are correct that it said other things to (that is the nature of information that is presented more complexly and completely than Wikipedia), but it also said exactly what I said it said. There are two possible reasons that I can think of in terms of why you would have done that. First, (and what I consider most likely) you didn't actually read it--just got the factoid that it was about polar bears and didn't deal with it in any depth (which is a huge problem in the Wikipedia Age. Deleting something without reading it does not really further the quality of Wikipedia. The second possibility is that you simply got your hackles up and decided to participate in an editing war in which you would just delete whatever I put up. That is also unproductive.

There are also very serious problems with the page. The citations as they stand are very misleading, because it is not transparent that you are relying on only one source and it is not transparent that it is the Official Website. (FYI: The official website has a POV. They want people to like and go to the zoo. So if you want material that does not have a POV (which is totally impossible, but we can play with that Wikipedia premise), then the Kyoto Zoo website is not the place to go. Splitting one source into many is not okay because it creates the impression that the article is more authoritative than it is. I may have been wrong to say that it was dishonest for you to have done so. However, since you are a technical writer by trade I believe that you have sufficient competence to not have done it accidentally. Please correct this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.218.154.237 (talk) 16:42, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

The citations as they stand clearly state the source. One book is often split into many page references, and this is no different. I was actually technically wrong when I stated that there were only two works, since one of the citations is from the city web site, no the zoo site, so there were three (now four with the polar bear citation). The bulk of the information is paraphrases from the history page, and this is reflected in that numeric citation being used a bunch of times. I add three other pages on the site from which I took information, but they are clearly from the same work and publisher. This is deliberate and I do not think it is deceptive. If you want other opinions on this usage on Wikipedia, you can ask other editors or post on one of the discussion boards or on the WP:CITE discussion page. Donlammers (talk) 02:14, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

And I'm sorry, but this article is really, really bad, It basically is an infomercial for the zoo. So, why don't we all be nice and try to make it good. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.218.154.237 (talk) 16:42, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

You may add information as you find citations. However, you should read some of the Wikipedia policy pages that I pointed to above, and add WP:EL to the list, to familiarize yourself with the difference between this publication and an academic publication.

I don't see how this is an informertial -- it does not try to advocate for the zoo, and the bulk is simply a statement of history and a list of animals. How does that advertise anything? This is a very incomplete article. If you have objections to particular statements or their grammar, or think you can make them more neutral, please make suggestions here. Or, you can appeal to an administrator or even request deletion of the page. I don't personally have a great interest in this zoo, and although I added information to make it a start-class article rather than just a stub, I don't really have any desire to keep working on it. Donlammers (talk) 02:14, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

This is without a doubt in no way an advert for the zoo. It is just like all the other zoo articles such as Australia Zoo, Taronga Zoo, New York Zoo and San Diago Zoo. All contain factual and cited information. I would agree to attempting to improve the page and add referenced material, The page wont be deleted as it does meet the guidelines. I would like to point out that Donlammers mostly improves articles from stub to start class's and I have never found any issues with his editing so please stop thinking he is against you. Improve the article if you must however it will continue to be watched with some degree of interest on my part. Regards ZooPro 12:23, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

It is really frustrating to deal with people who delete things without even looking closely at what they are deleting. THIS is vandalism. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.134.81.198 (talk) 15:49, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Actually, it's very frustrating dealing with someone who is evidently injecting experience into the pictures on the zoo history page, which is what you are citing. I see an indoor elephant paddock which is easily 4-6 times the size of the elephant and is probably only the "bedroom". I can't tell what the floor is made of, but concrete in an indoor paddock is not unusual, and the picture of the outdoor paddock doesn't give a good perspective of how large it is or (besides the section the animal is standing on), what the material is. The only other recent picture of the "iron bars" is the monkey, and there isn't enough picture to really tell anything about the exhibit (that's one of the problems with closeups). At this time, I'm not going to do anything, as I think I'm too involved and I've also wasted too much time on this. However, you seem to be logging on with at least three different IP addresses, and as far as I can tell, the only reason you are on Wikipedia is to paint the Kyoto zoo in a bad light. We've already discussed the You Tube videos. I would suggest that you take a look at the policy and style pages and read them carefully, and then watch some other editors and see how they work before you continue. Donlammers (talk) 01:34, 15 October 2010 (UTC)