Talk:Oom Yung Doe/Archive 1

Citations in this article

Wikipedia guidelines state, "...self-published books, newsletters, personal websites, open wikis, blogs, knols, forum postings, and similar sources are largely not acceptable." WP:SPS Furthermore, "self-published sources should never be used as third-party sources about living persons, even if the author is a well-known professional researcher or writer." WP:SPS The guidelines also state, concerning living persons and organizations, "do not leave unsourced or poorly sourced information that may damage the reputation of living persons or organizations in articles and do not move it to the talk page (See Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons for details of this policy)." WP:BURDEN

A large portion of the statements in this article are opinionated, and cited to blogs, forum postings, and self-published books. These sources are considered questionable WP:QS by Wikipedia, and are highly discouraged from being used in articles. Since the subject of this article is an organization, and also a living person, Wikipedia also requests that these sources and statements be removed immediately without discussion.WP:GRAPEVINEWP:VWP:LIVEWP:CS Mx08 (talk) 07:09, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

While blogs, forums, and self-published books, etc. are against wikipedia policy, there is no reason to suggest that the Freedom of Mind web site is not. This is particularly true since many of the citations are drawn from articles previously published in newspapers, for example here [1] and here [2]. Cjim63 (talk) 04:12, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Note that rickross.com is used in other articles in wikipedia. For example, the high-trafficked article on Scientology.[3] Cjim63 (talk) 04:52, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Just to clarify, self published sources refer to the author of said source coming here and trying to add it as a reference. I see no evidence of any of that here, and in fact most of Mx08's claims are at best poor attempts at interpreting longstanding Wikipedia policy from someone who just joined Wikipedia 3 days ago. The further fact that all of Mx08's edits have all been just on this article, and consist entirely of removal of content and reversions of others edits, does set up a bunch of red flags for other related policies. WP:COI comes to mind immediately, as does WP:Disruptive. --Marty Goldberg (talk) 08:02, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

More on citations

If Oom Yung Doe is thousands or hundreds of years old, there should be books available as references. Does anyone have a paper reference to the existence of Oom Yung Doe? jmcw (talk) 09:40, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

I have requested better references in the Achievements section. If there are no better references available, I will delete the section. jmcw (talk) 10:46, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

There is a huge quantity of references at bottom of the following site:http://www.freedomofmind.com/resourcecenter/groups/c/chung/. Perhaps some of those could be useful. Cjim63 (talk) 16:59, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Linking Oom Yung Doe Martial arts to other martial arts

Please note while several of the styles apparently taught by Oom Yung Doe share the names of other styles of martial arts, that they often share only the name and some superficial similarities. I am not sure how that should be handled in this article; whether they should be linked to the other styles as they are now, or whether the links should be removed.

Observe the following Oom Yung Doe variants of the following styles: Tai Chi http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6V-AXHVE94

Kung Fu (Tiger Form) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7L6I-2MHb-k

"Bagwa Chung" Bagua? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ8Rc4R-qPc

Taekwondoe, then some Kung Fu http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhr2zdeeFUk&feature=related

Perhaps someone well qualified in these styles could make a recommendation as to how similar the Oom Yung Doe variants are. Cjim63 (talk) 17:51, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

I can comment on the "Tai Chi" and "Bagwa Chung" videos - absolutely terrible, and nothing to do with the actual arts other than superficial attempts at loosely copying some of the postures and making up motions. I'd strongly suggest not linking those to the actual arts unless some form of verifiable connection is demonstrated. --Marty Goldberg (talk) 07:42, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Criticism section

I have undone the edit that merged all critical pieces together, as it seemed to be marginalising them, it also makes more sense to discuss linage of training methods in those secitons rather than in a seperate section that is jsut targeted on the negative. There is not policy on this in the MOS but two sections do disscuss the issue:

1. Wikipedia:Words_to_avoid#Article_structures_that_can_imply_a_point_of_view
2. Wikipedia:Criticism#Evaluations_in_a_.22Criticism.22_section

The second seciton is part of [[Wikipedia:Criticism which is all relevnt to the treatment of these points. --Nate1481 13:27, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree with [User:Nate1481|Nate] and therefore have reverted the most recent edits of [User:Mx08|Mx08] to the last version left by Nate. I am also doing the reversion due to the inclusion of several unsourced statements, and the deletion of several sourced statements.

Cjim63 (talk) 23:21, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Since there is no policy on this issue, I think it's best to follow how other wikipedia articles deal with critcisms. I removed the word "criticism" in the article, since that is under wikipedia policy, however I think this article is more objective by grouping all of those statements into their own section. Take a look at how encyclopedia articles, or academic papers are written; it is usually in this manner.

The "unsourced statements" were simply restatements from existing statements further down in the article, which are sourced there. The first paragraph should be an introduction, summarizing what the rest of the article will contain. Sourced statements were not deleted.

Mx08 (talk) 23:33, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree that the latest edit is better. There are a few items to consider.

First off, what Wikipedia policy are you mentioning, Mx08? I think it doesn't exist. After all here is a wikipedia article, about wikipedia of all things, that includes the word multiple times: [4].

Second, the citations must be sourced from the beginning, even if it occurs later on in the article. I will put in "citation needed" behind those parts.

Third the tone of the added paragraph sounds more like promotional literature than an encyclopedic article. For example: "In addition to physical movements, the school also teaches meditation and traditional philosophies. These elements are said to be key to an individual's complete development. These elements are said to be key to an individual's complete development...Many individuals have stated over the years that they have had many benefits from training in the school. Some have stated they have maintained their health and gained greater meaning out of life."

These statements appear to be authoritative statements about what has been established about OYD, not just what are internal OYD beliefs and practices. There must be independent sources. For example, who said "These elements are said to be key to an individual's complete development?" Whichever independent, verifiable source said this, he or she must be citated.

Fourth, while you correctly point out that compartmentalization is often used in academic literature. However, I believe - along with others - that consideration of the lineage is relevant to the training. After all it really is in most styles of martial arts.

Final, I believe it is important to rephrase how the beginning paragraph is worded. It indicates that OYD includes eight forms of martial arts. However, these are the "Iron" Kim variations of these martial arts, and as discussed by others in this discussion page, these styles actually appear to share little with the styles with the same names. This is something that must be addressed.

Cjim63 (talk) 05:18, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

BTW here is the edit I am referring to: [5]. Cjim63 (talk) 05:18, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

A renewed effort to integrate the article

Some time ago user Nate14 pointed out that it is generally viewed as less desirable to have a specific "criticism" section. Perhaps it is time to try and integrate some of the relevant criticisms into their respective areas; ex. training criticism into the training portion, etc. Perhaps some of the items that do not match well with other sections of the article (ex. the link between OYD and the student's death in 1991) can be moved into a section dedicated to criticism until they are more fully researched.

Having posted this, I will wait a few days for comments and then go ahead and make the changes. Cjim63 (talk) 06:38, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

I still believe this would be best for neutrality, and I am adding an appropriate tag, there is a revision here where I tired to re-integrate the criticisms if this is of any help for comparison. --Nate1481 11:42, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

p.s. the previously cited Microsoft article has a tag indicating that the criticism section should be merged in...

Youtube Vidoes

I've been advised to try and remove as many of the youtube references as possible. Because some of these videos might be useful for potential editors who are unfamiliar with how OYD styles differ from the styles that bear the same names, I am going to leave all the videos here for a bit.

The two Pam Zekman vids:

OYD Udo/Ju Jitsu

OYD Kung Fu: "Tiger" form

OYD Tai Chi Chung

OYD Bagwa Chung

OYD Chinese Weapons

OYD Herbal Training

Videos of Oom Yung Doe practitioners in promotional materials or practicing are available for viewing online through video sharing web sites. Cjim63 (talk) 17:00, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

The opening paragraph

There appear to be some disagreements about how the first paragraph ought to be put. In order to ask for other people's take on things, I am starting a little discussion here. So seriously, please post here! The first time I reverted, I said the following about the problems with the opening paragraph as edited by Rljs3 (talk):

1) You've included several lists (i.e. listing the styles of OYD, listing the states where there are schools) which really aren't appropriate for the first paragraph. Those items are gone over later in the article so don't worry about them not getting any attention.

2) You've made no attempt at indicating what each edit is for. Perhaps if you were just fixing some spelling mistakes that would be OK, but you really aren't.

3) You misrepresent the sources. For example saying that articles were written in the 80's when I see source [5] through [12] were all written in the 90's. You suggest that "Local and National TV stations have also done news reports hilighting the benefits to many of the practitioners including those with arthritis and other medical conditions in More Magazine[13] and on the The Oprah Winfrey Show[14]" when these sources just talk about how a fairly health single older woman uses OYD to maintain her health.

Rljs3 (talk) replied with the following: "I replaced some of the changes that were undone, because they are neccesarry to avoid the bias currently running throughout this article. We are talking about a school that thousands have benefitted from (by their own claims) over decades that had a single tax case and a few negative articles written in the late 80s and early 90s. The introduction makes it sound like this is the defining aspect of the school. To the many practicing currently the organization is not controvertial at all. It is ridiculous to put a minority viewpoint in the introductory summary of the article. This critisism should be noted and described but it is not the defining aspect of the subject."

To which I will say: You still haven't addressed the issues I raised before. Thus me reverting it again. For example the citation being used to prove that so many benefit from OYD only talks about one woman. I think that OYD is still a very controversial school with the a critical article written about it as recently as the King 5 article in Washington state in 2005. The history of OYD also is one of the things that makes an organization like OYD controversial. So, in my opinion the controversy really is one of the most important defining aspects of OYD. Cjim63 (talk) 03:08, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

I will add, whether they happened in the late 80's and early 90's or more recently is irrelevant. They still happened and are documented, and I see more recent activities documented as well. Likewise, claiming "thousands have benefited" needs to be backed up by a reliable third party source per guidelines. "To the many practicing" is WP:OR. And as far as the controversy, I've been in martial arts for about 30 years now and have always heard Oom Yung Doe/Chung Moo Doe in relation to controversy. A simple google search with the keywords "chung moo doe cult" brings up 3,640 hits and plenty more references on said controversy, such as this one from the Chicagoland Daily Herald, cult awareness group profiles, and a plethora of negative personal experiences to counter the claimed "1000's" that have benefitted. All this alone also easily shows its not a "minority view". In fact, I was hard pressed to find any positive reviews that came from anywhere except the people who run the schools themselves. --Marty Goldberg (talk) 03:38, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

I do not believe the sentence regarding the death of Robert Ludden is significant enough to belong in the introductory paragraph. First of all, it is not considered one of the main controversies of the school. Second, the link to the school itself is questionable. As far as I can see, there are only articles stating that the police opened an investigation. However looking further, there are never any articles stating the results of the investigation, or that the schools (or someone connected to the schools) were in any way related to the death. I could be wrong, but if there was even the smallest link ever found, would there not have been some kind of article or news report? In addition, in one of the very articles cited, it states that Ludden's own wife says he had not been involved with the school in more than seven years when his death occurred. Also, it says that police had reports he was using and selling drugs. I think that definitely removes a lot of credibility from the theory that the schools were in some way related to his death. I think it most certainly means it is not worthy of being in the introductory paragraph, which should summarize the main points of this article.--Crj1000 (talk) 04:29, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Ludden & the first paragraphs

Crj1000(talk) has argued that referencing Mr. Ludden should not be done in the first paragraph because it is "not considered one of the main controversies of the school" and that the link between Ludden and OYD lacks "...credibility from the theory that the schools were in some way related to his death. I think it most certainly means it is not worthy of being in the introductory paragraph, which should summarize the main points of this article." While Crj1000 is correct in pointing out that no other articles on Mr. Ludden's disappearance have been written, it is still a notable part of the OYD controversy. The sheer number of news articles written on it attest to this fact. However, Crj1000 points out that the link doesn't appear to be that strong - an opinion that I agree with. So should we avoid including it in the first paragraphs because the link doesn't appear to be that strong? (Is that OR or a judgment call on our part?) Or do we include it anyways since it is a notable part of the controversy? Cjim63 (talk) 06:29, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

mass edits

I have reverted some and maintained other of the large number of edit by User:Rljs3 as some were fair points, about both original research and POV wording, but there were also removals of sourced info when all that needed changeing was one word. --Nate1481 10:03, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Robert Ludden

Crj1000(talk) recently stated the following (after removing the citations to the death of Robert Ludden from the first paragraphs for the 3rd, maybe 4th time) "the link to the school itself is questionable. As far as I can see, there are only articles stating that the police opened an investigation. However looking further, there are never any articles stating the results of the investigation, or that the schools (or someone connected to the schools) were in any way related to the death. I could be wrong, but if there was even the smallest link ever found, would there not have been some kind of article or news report? In addition, in one of the very articles cited, it states that Ludden's own wife says he had not been involved with the school in more than seven years when his death occurred. Also, it says that police had reports he was using and selling drugs. I think that definitely removes a lot of credibility from the theory that the schools were in some way related to his death."

To which I respond: I agree that Crj1000 is partial correct, but not entirely. It is true that Mr. Ludden was not involved with OYD for some time prior to his disappearance. However, it is also true that he was receiving phone calls form the OYD schools at his home shortly before his disappearance. I've edited the paragraph on Mr. Ludden to try and reflect both why the link with OYD was considered and other information presented by Crj1000 that suggests other possible causes. Cjim63 (talk) 06:20, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Image:OYD Altered Photo.jpg & a self published source

Recently there has been some discussion about Image:OYD Altered Photo.jpg. This discussion began when it was correctly pointing out that I did not upload the image with the proper copy-right attributions. That has been corrected.

The next item was pointed out by a user with an IP of 63.215.28.28 [6] who said " Commented out image, FUR is not valid. The image is not being used to discuss a historical event and is protected by copyright)" Here is why I believe the image is historically important:

1) Kim's achievement claims are an extremely important part of OYD claims. The only image so far was of Kyong Gong Sul Bope - which is also serves the purpose of the main image or logo of the OYD schools. There are no other images of Kim's achievement claims. 2) Some claims have been leveled that these photos have been staged or doctored to support the miraculous claims of Kim. In order to show that, I have used a self-published source that was very specifically critical of this.

Which brings me to the next issue: the self published source "Herding the Moo." I realize that a self published source may only be used to explain the claims of the publishers and may not serve as a "reliable" source. However, I have included it because it certainly puts the pair of photos in perspective.

While I would rather hold the article to a higher standard and not use such a source, it really explains why the images might be important and justifies the Non-free use claim that the images are used for "commentary or criticism." I would also like to point out that if we are being entirely fair about how we handle self-published sources, that essentially all of the information about OYD forms and movements are from a self published source: An Explanation of Traditional Moo Doe: First Edition. That would basically leave the article as a very notable description of OYD's long, colorful past with the IRS and the police.

I hope that other editors will comment on this; those who are just professional wikipedia editors, those who are a little critical of OYD and those who are supportive of OYD.Cjim63 (talk) 05:49, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

FMC: Aliases for John C. Kim

My edit removing the reference to aliases of John C. Kim was reverted, despite the fact that:

• The cited source doesn't contain the statement that bears the citation.
• The cited source is secondhand from anonymous sources ("The following information has been provided by former members of Chung Moo Doe")
• "Charles Won-Suk Kim" is a relative of John C. Kim's, not an alias. That's a strong indication to me that this information, whatever its ultimate source, comes from someone who's not being careful with their facts.

Really any one of those should be sufficient to remove this statement. All three make it a no-brainer. See for example WP:BURDEN:

"I can NOT emphasize this enough. There seems to be a terrible bias among some editors that some sort of random speculative 'I heard it somewhere' pseudo information is to be tagged with a 'needs a cite' tag. Wrong. It should be removed, aggressively, unless it can be sourced. This is true of all information, but it is particularly true of negative information about living persons." - Jimmy Wales

Jmcw37, any comment? --Subverdor (talk) 16:27, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

You didn't explain in you edit summary why you were removing it, so it looks like you have simply removed a piece of information for no reason, I will have a quick look at that source. --Nate1481 16:59, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

The source list some of them under aka at the top and some of the others further down, in this case I think that any non obviously silly aka (e.g. 'Foo man who' or other nonsense) should be tagged first as the source would seem to establish that he uses aliases and it might be just a matter of looking to find a reference to a specific one, if you do have a look and can't find them then remove the specific one with an explanation in the edit summary, or point here if you want to include more details and links etc. p.s. in the case of 'Charles Won-Suk Kim' mentioned above, if you remove it saying 'this is his brother' and link likley no one will object. --Nate1481 17:08, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

What? Again from WP:BURDEN: "The burden of evidence lies with the editor who adds or restores material." If it's "just a matter of looking to find a reference to the specific one," then the burden lies with the restoring editor to find a proper source. It's not my responsibility to "have a look and [not] find one", or to dig up a source _contradicting_ each unverified statement before I can remove that specific statement. That whole cited source looks invalid to me; as I say, it's secondhand and anonymous. Wikipedia policy looks to me like it specifically says that we shouldn't even need to have this conversation. "Unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material about living persons—whether the material is negative, positive, or just questionable—should be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion." I do apologize for not including an explanation in the edit summary; I didn't want to write a little essay there, and wrongly concluded that it was better just to state what I was doing instead. --Subverdor (talk) 17:24, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

'Charles Won-Suk Kim' appears to self-identify as 'Grandmaster "Iron" Kim'. 'Grandmaster "Iron" Kim' is a well-known alias for John C. Kim[7] [8]. If there aren't any objections, I will move those citations into the article.

With regard to the Freedom of Mind web site, it is important to note that much of the information being used in the Wikipedia article are actually reprints of newspaper articles available online, for example here [9] and here [10]. There is no reason to suggest that the Freedom of Mind web site may not be used on Wikipedia. In fact, the same web site is used as a source in other Wikipedia articles, such as the highly-trafficked and edited article on Scientology.[11] [12] It seems to me like there is plenty of precedent for its use on Wikipedia.Cjim63 (talk) 21:03, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

If there's doubt about the Freedom of Mind site, you can file a WP:RS/N on it. You can also check through the archives there to see if it was brought up there before, if its being used in other articles. --Marty Goldberg (talk) 21:07, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

"The Master Key of Wisdom" is not written by John C. Kim. It's written by a relative of his with consultation with him (mostly because he doesn't speak English very well, I believe). This is an example of the kind of mistake it's easy to make when you don't have any authoritative source for the information you're providing. "John C. Kim", "Grandmaster 'Iron' Kim", and "Chong Su Nim" are all aliases for the same person. I've never heard of any of the other aliases; that doesn't mean that they don't exist, of course, but I looked at the source being claimed for that information and the source (a) looked unreliable and (b) didn't contain most of the claimed information anyway. I don't object to the Freedom of Mind web site being used in general, but in this specific instance, it's providing -- I should reiterate -- secondhand information from unidentified sources. If it's repackaging information from a more authoritative source (such as one of the citations at the end), that more authoritative source should be cited directly, and if it isn't, then the information shouldn't be considered reliable IMHO. --Subverdor (talk) 21:26, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

If you have access to more reliable sources about the identity of Mr. Charles Won-Suk Kim, please use them to improve the article. I was not able to find any other sources than those already posted that certainly make it seem like Mr. Kim and Mr. "Iron" Kim are the same person. Perhaps the formatting of some of the citations could be improved; however, that does not change the fact that there is precedent for using articles published by the The Rick A. Ross Institute itself (ie. not just the newspaper articles they are republishing) on Wikipedia.

On another note, I believe you, Subverdor, may be having some difficulty editing the talk page. If you just add your comments on at the bottom instead of cutting and pasting, it will not remove the indentation that other people have used on their comments. You can indent by putting ":" in front of whatever you want to move over. It helps make the talk page easier to read. Thanks.Cjim63 (talk) 22:28, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Okay, is this formatting more to your liking? The page was confusing for me with multiple-paragraph comments with attributions only in the last paragraph, but if this is the style that's preferred on wikipedia that's fine for me. Which 'Mr. Kim' and what sources are you referring to when you say "those already posted that certainly make it seem like Mr. Kim and Mr. 'Iron' Kim are the same person", exactly? I don't think there's any dispute that "John C. Kim" and "Grandmaster 'Iron' Kim" are the same person, any more than there's dispute that "George W. Bush" and "President 'Dubya' Bush" are the same person. I've not seen any source (authoritative or not) that indicates any good reason to think "Charles Won-Suk Kim" is an alias for John C. Kim. Subverdor (talk) 03:07, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

What about this? The copyright for The Master Key of Wisdom reads "(c) 2007 Charles Won-Suk Kim and Grandmaster Iron Kim" [[13]] -- the two people involved in creating the book. I shouldn't even have to do this; as I mentioned above, the burden of proof is explicitly on the person who's arguing that a given statement should be included on Wikipedia. I'm kind of at a loss -- I honestly don't see why assuming that these two people are one person is even plausible, let alone verified authoritatively enough that it belongs in Wikipedia. Where did you see a statement that they were the same? Subverdor (talk) 03:23, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Just to clarify my initial point I was not suggesting it should be left indefinitely, just that a look around before a removal and an explanation would be helpful, your initial edit simply removed any mention of aliases and the source. As the source attached had not been obviously questioned initially, andt when looked at did discuss aliases, it would seem that replacing the section and starting a discussion on the specifics would be reasonable.

The book mentioned above description states "This book is based on a true story about Grandmaster "Iron" Kim's memories of his master..." and is authored by Charles Won-Suk Kim, as you said the copyright is isted as to both of them, so it would seem they are different people but it is also obvious why the confusion may have arisen. I have removed Charles form the alias list but the others seem reliably sourced, and would benefit from discussion if you feel they are incorrect. --Nate1481 09:46, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

So faced with a book about one person with another person listed as the author, you rejected the explanation that one person had written a book about another, and chose the "obvious" answer: There was a grand name-changing conspiracy at work, whereby one person wrote a book about himself, but used one alias to describe himself in the book, and a separate, so-far-un-heard-of alias as the "author", because... well, for some surely nefarious reason. I see. It sounds like this statement was included, not because anyone had any reason to believe it was actually true, but just because it was a theory that sort of made sense to whoever added it. That's a gross violation of Wikipedia policy, as I pointed out multiple times above. Explaining "why the confusion may have arisen" misses the point -- there should be no confusion about any statement you're adding to Wikipedia. If you use authoritative sources instead of your own guesses, this sort of mistake is a lot harder to make.

Getting back to the issue of all the other aliases, I don't see them in the cited source. I see "Chong Su Nim 'Iron' Kim" and not any of the others. I remember seeing "Jack Park" listed in the title of one of the citations at the end, sort of in passing, but I don't seem to see it now (and I don't find it in the wayback machine). Maybe I'm remembering some other article. Anyway, where do you see "Jack Park"? Subverdor (talk) 13:59, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Ah, I see. Yes, there's a citation at the end of the article that simply says "'Chung Moo Doe is Chung Moo Quan, John C. Kim Alias Jack Park,' 12/26/95". What periodical was that published in? Or are you going to make the argument that because that statement exists with a date behind it in an anonymous document, it therefore must be true and may not be removed from Wikipedia even if no other documentation exists?

Like I say, I'm open to the idea that John C. Kim used other aliases at some point in his life; he certainly wasn't named "John" at birth in Korea, and I've known people who came to this country and used more than one name because of language issues. The way this is presented in this article (and often the way it's represented elsewhere on the internet) makes it sound disreputable, though, and statements like that should be backed up with real documentation if they're going to appear on Wikipedia. Subverdor (talk) 14:16, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm lost, I just agreed that they are almost certainly different people, but said I can see why someone my have misinterpreted it. For example if a review was written by a 3rd person reading that it is an individuals memeoris then looking at the author. It was in all likelihood an honest mistake when it was originally added so please calm down, if you had read what I wrote and looked at my actions, you might have noticed that I removed the incorrect name.

On "Jack Park" it appears listed as an alias in the Articles Related to Chung Moo Doe section specifically "Chung Moo Doe is Chung Moo Quan, John C. Kim Alias Jack Park," 12/26/95 (emphasis added) which looks like a good reason to include it as here. The reason I support keeping it, is that there, is that there is some evidence supporting it and it is more likely that additional information can be found if it is there to be seen. There is no deadline and this is most likely to improve the encyclopaedic value in the long run if kept for now.

If you feel the tone is negative then change the wording to be more neutral, most people here want all the most acurate infomation to be presented as fairly as possible, you can help that by keeping calm and reading peoples comment and explaing your view and acitons as I have tried to do here. --Nate1481 14:27, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

I am actually assuming good faith -- I never said that these unsupported statements about aliases were included to defame John C. Kim, or that their inclusion is an indication of malicious intent, or that the person who added them must have been a bad person. I can understand how someone can reach the conclusion that "Charles Won-Suk Kim" is an alias for John C. Kim inside their own head. Making the leap to including that statement in Wikipedia as a result is a violation of policy, though, and I want to stress that at every occasion. It seems like the standards of verification for negative statements about Oom Yung Doe in this article are very, very low, and in general I'd like to work to correct that.

I like Wikipedia partly because it's a sort of neutral ground for intense disagreements. Two people on opposite sides of an issue may never come to a common understanding, but if they both work hard at it they can at least work out what the actual facts of the matter are, and document them in a relatively neutral way. It's hard work, and the policy is there to make it easier, which is why I keep bringing up the policy as it relates to this document. Wikipedia is absolutely not simply a forum where people can air their arguments or their theories on how something is, and policy helps to rein in that natural tendency when something that's important to you is being discussed.

As for "Jack Park", I did eventually find that citation. I don't feel that's a good source. It's not cited from any particular publication, it's just a snatch of headline with a date behind it, in an anonymous document, on the internet. For all I know the text of that source says, "One former student reports that he once saw 'Jack Park' on a legal document addressed to 'John C. Kim'. Kim is known to use many other aliases, including 'Chong Su Nim' and 'Charles Won-Suk Kim'." It could be yet another total misunderstanding. It's impossible to tell what the real facts are simply from that source, even if you do assume that it's 100% reliable.

Again, policy quite clearly states that the burden of proof is on the person who wants a statement included. Leaving a statement in because you feel that it's likely that additional information can be found to support it is reasonable in some contexts, but it's not the way Wikipedia is intended to work. I know you feel you've made a compromise by removing the statements that are totally unverified and in one case seem to be obviously and verifiably false -- the way I look at that is that it's a serious indictment of the standard of truth of the rest of the statement to have so much of it turn out not to be verified, and the remainder of the statement should be held to an extremely high standard in order to be included. Subverdor (talk) 15:06, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

The fact both Mr. Kim and Won-suk Kim have the copyright certainly suggests that they are different people. Problem solved.

As for Jack Park, I believe that the article on the Freedom of Mind web site might be making reference to some of the court documents associated with IRS' legal case against Kim. I will try to get access to those documents. I am sure they will be helpful in resolving this issue, and may provide more information relevant to the past of Mr. Kim, as well as that of Oom Yung Doe, and possibly other relevant individuals still associated with the organization. In the mean time, I would also like to appeal to the there is no deadline principle. It is laudable to check the references extensively since things get moved around and people (including me) make mistakes. However, in the case of "Jack Park" there does appear to be at least a little evidence that Mr. Kim did use the alias, so lets please not disassemble things today just to reassemble it all tomorrow. Subverdor notes that "It seems like the standards of verification for negative statements about Oom Yung Doe in this article are very, very low...." While I agree that "negative" statements about Oom Yung Doe do need to be verified, I would suggest that the key "negative statements" (ie. the criminal conviction and reports from serious investigative journalists to the effect that Oom Yung Doe is an organization designed to funnel money to Mr. Kim) are actually very verifiable and documented.

That being said, I look forward to contributing alongside others to improve any problems the article has. The more accurate and complete it is, the better it will be.Cjim63 (talk) 20:00, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Only one problem is solved, and from my point of view it's not the important one. There's a problem of unverified statements being added to this article because someone believes, or guesses, or has heard that they are true. That problem isn't solved by the removal, after days of argument, of a single trivial example of those statements. The problem of the specific inaccurate part of the specific poorly-sourced statement we're currently discussing has been solved by its removal, yes.

Above, I quoted a statement from Jimmy Wales. I'll quote it again: "Unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material about living persons—whether the material is negative, positive, or just questionable—should be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion." I am willing to discuss the matter a bit, but I do not agree that "immediately and without waiting for discussion" should be read as "after waiting for someone to attempt to secure further documentation to investigate the theory that said documentation might contain supporting evidence". Disassembling things today to bring them into compliance with policy, once everyone's had their say, and then reassembling them tomorrow if new sources do turn out to contain new information, is actually quite easy on Wikipedia. Not only that, it makes good sense to me to do so.

I'm not at all interested in getting drawn into a more general debate here over whether Oom Yung Doe is a Good Thing or a Bad Thing. Subverdor (talk) 01:05, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

I listed several more statements I take issue with in the section below. Getting back to this issue, is there anyone who still claims that "Jack Park" being an alias for John C. Kim is a reasonably-sourced assertion (i.e. anyone who is planning to undo again if I remove "Jack Park" again as an alias)? Subverdor (talk) 05:01, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I'm removing this information. I'm fine with it being readded if a proper source is found, though I'd ask any editors to please bring up the source here instead of just making the edit. Subverdor (talk) 13:22, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Not 'Okay' by a long shot. Removing information and sourcing while a major discussion (below) is going on without notice is not appropriate. --Nate1481 14:06, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

I stated that I was planning to remove this, waited a couple of days, and then removed it, since no one spoke up (or responded to my point above about poorly sourced contentious material). I definitely don't think that waiting until 100% of this conversation gets resolved before editing anything makes sense. Of course, there is a lot of conversation going on, and I do see that people are still contending that everything on the Chung Moo Doe page at FMC should be considered as verifiable. I'll start a section about the validity of the FMC once things calm down somewhat. Subverdor (talk) 21:16, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

2 days while is not a long time, especially when one of the main reasons to keep was to see if more sourcing could be added. The last two other opinions, disagreed that it should be removed and the situation had not changed between then and the edit so is was not appropriate. I missed the 'I'm changing this unless you let me know ' bit, largely as it was posted in the middle of lots of edits over the weekend when I can't get on. As most of the article was being discussed by section bellow, including the source used here I thought this was being discussed there so didn't re read this section for new posts. --Nate1481 08:59, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Who wrote "Master Key of Wisdom" and what is the Kim Family Trust?

I hate to reopen a can of worms, but I was recently directed to the following page on the US Copyright Office's public catalog. It sure makes it seem like "Master Key of Wisdom" was written by John C. Kim (John C. Kim, 1933- a.k.a. Chull Kim a.k.a. Grandmaster "Iron" Kim), who appears to be born in 1933, has a wife, Jeanne Kim, and something called the "Kim Family trust." I am not exactly sure what to make of it, but at the very least it makes me think that at the very least, the Patent office thinks that Master Key of Wisdom was written by John C. Kim and that Chull Kim is an a.k.a that John C. Kim has.

I am not exactly sure if the US Patent office counts as a source on Wikipedia - having never seen it used as one. I am also not entirely sure what to make of the information provided; however, it certainly makes one curious.

So I searched a little for this "Kim Family Trust" and "Jeanne Kim" and I found the following page. Once again, it has enough information to make me really curious (i.e. it suggest that Oom Yung Doe is a brand owned by "KIM FAMILY TRUST, COMPRISING JEANNE M. KIM, A U.S. CITIZEN." Does anyone know what this stuff means? Specifically, Subverdor if you are in the know could you please comment?Cjim63 (talk) 03:51, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

No worries. It looks to me like that's a copyright registration for something earlier than the 2007 volume published by Authorhouse, since all the dates are in 2000. That copyright information doesn't at all match what's on the Authorhouse copyright page, obviously. Maybe it's an earlier draft that was then rewritten by Charles Won-Suk Kim because the English wasn't very good; I'm not sure.

My guess would be that "Chull Kim" was John C. Kim's given name in Korea (I should have expanded above: he wasn't named "John" or "Honorable Founder" at birth). I'd happily accept this as a verifiable source for listing "Chull Kim" as an alias, although it would be nice to find a source indicating that that was his name in Korea if that's true, so that we could include more explanation in the article. Subverdor (talk) 05:59, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Any idea about what the "Kim Family Trust" business is?Cjim63 (talk) 02:52, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

No idea at all. Subverdor (talk) 13:24, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Statements about Kim

In one of our previous discussions, Subverdor state the following:

Only one problem is solved, and from my point of view it's not the important one. There's a problem of unverified statements being added to this article because someone believes, or guesses, or has heard that they are true. That problem isn't solved by the removal, after days of argument, of a single trivial example of those statements. The problem of the specific inaccurate part of the specific poorly-sourced statement we're currently discussing has been solved by its removal, yes.

Above, I quoted a statement from Jimmy Wales. I'll quote it again: "Unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material about living persons—whether the material is negative, positive, or just questionable—should be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion." I am willing to discuss the matter a bit, but I do not agree that "immediately and without waiting for discussion" should be read as "after waiting for someone to attempt to secure further documentation to investigate the theory that said documentation might contain supporting evidence". Disassembling things today to bring them into compliance with policy, once everyone's had their say, and then reassembling them tomorrow if new sources do turn out to contain new information, is actually quite easy on Wikipedia. Not only that, it makes good sense to me to do so.

I'm not at all interested in getting drawn into a more general debate here over whether Oom Yung Doe is a Good Thing or a Bad Thing. Subverdor (talk) 01:05, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

I propose that we use this section to address all of Subverdor's concerns here as a bolus so that many changes to the article can be made in an adequately timely fashion. That way, everyone will have a say, but by addressing multiple issues simultaneously, it won't take as long as Subverdor fears.

Having said that I would like to address the quote from Mr. Wales that Subverdor includes. In my mind the most important bit of "contentious material" in the article about Mr. Kim are these ones: "In 1995, legal entanglements led to the incarceration of Kim and several of the organization's senior instructors for conspiracy to commit tax fraud. Furthermore, critics and investigative reporters have accused the schools of being an unethical cult designed to funnel money to Kim." Those statements are very well sourced and reflective of important events that did, in fact, occur.

OK, now on to the good stuff! Subverdor, please write in your concerns below. Maybe you can use the template I've provided, or do it some other way, if you want.Cjim63 (talk) 20:55, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Heh. I have a feeling that this is going to turn into something of a free-for-all if I list everything I have issue with, since as I say there's a lot of it (and I know that WP tends, with good reason, to resist abrupt and sweeping changes to contentious topics). That said, I'm happy to write down some of the worst offenders.

I should make it clear that I do believe you're honestly trying to help people by giving them information they need to know. As I said, I don't think it'll be at all productive for us to have a debate about what's "true." Deciding the truth involves too much investigation and judgment which is unique to each person. My hope is, quite honestly, that we will go several times through the process of me reading a statement which I know to be untrue, me asking that it be documented objectively, Wikipedia's collective forces of "Oom Yung Doe is destructive and evil" attempting and failing to document the untrue statement, and the statement being removed. Possibly after that process has been gone through many (many!) times, some of the people who have been supporting all of these statements (which I realize they wholeheartedly believe to be true at present) will start to consider revisiting their "truth." Subverdor (talk) 04:36, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm doing another round on the tags that were added to the section headings; I also propose that we add the tag "FMC" for sections that turn out to hinge on whether the FMC page is a verifiable source, and "Moo" for sections that turn out to hinge on whether "Herding the Moo" is a verifiable source. Subverdor (talk) 15:15, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Done: "The existence of these individuals cannot be verified."

Needs a citation. Subverdor (talk) 04:36, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Indeed this does need citation. This statement comes out of an observation made by jmcw that "If Oom Yung Doe is thousands or hundreds of years old, there should be books available as references. Does anyone have a paper reference to the existence of Oom Yung Doe?" Indeed, OYD does claim to have benefited "millions" over the course of "thousands" of years. Yet unlike other forms of martial arts information is unavailable about the various leaders. "Wang Po" and "Bagwa" are noticeably impossible to find, even though other notable Chinese, Japanese, and Korean martial artists can be found.

The problem here is proving the negative. Perhaps a compromise would be to put " Critics claim that the existence of these individuals cannot be verified." Then we could use the "Herding the Moo" source. I can already here the screams.... Those are weasel words! That source is self published!

With regard to using "Critics assert," describing OYD is such a polarizing thing with proponents and critics saying such different things that if we eliminate all "critics/proponents/practioners..." we would basically have to delete almost the whole article. We would be left with basically two things: 1) Kim and several others were convicted of conspiracy, and 2) Investigative reporters have done several exposes to the effect that OYD is a cult designed to send money to Kim, and 3) the police investigated OYD for the death of Richard Ludden, but his wife said he didn't have anything to do with OYD for 7 years. The whole article is full of critics this, and proponents that. I don't see any way to get around it. If we delete one side we'll have to delete the other to maintain a NPOV.

Having said that, if we decide to keep the critics/proponents (ie. we keep both the self-published sources "An explanation of..." and "Herding the...") then the statement would just be an accurate source about what critics claim.Cjim63 (talk) 06:06, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

I'd be okay with this if there were a consultation with an authoritative source, and the source said, "Yes, I'm familiar with area such-and-such, and I know individuals such-and-such from that time, and they all say that they'd never heard of such-and-such a man." Then that conversation could be cited. You're correct that I'd be unhappy if this statement -- which, as it is, is unacceptable -- were suddenly transformed into an acceptable statement by the addition of a dubious citation and a "Critics say...". That's really the core of a lot of my complaints here -- it seems like the primary motivation for including all these statements strewn about outside the "controversy" sections is not that there's a burning need to educate people on what critics of Oom Yung Doe are like. It seems that the primary motivation is to include the statements in order to better communicate the "truth" of Oom Yung Doe (by your definition) and the "Critics say..." is just in there as a little prophylactic against the fact that the statements are not, technically, documented or verifiable, and don't belong on WP in the first place (or at least not outside the "controversy" section).

A compromise I'd actually be quite happy with would be to stick as much as possible to verifiable facts for the bulk of the article, and then include a section fully explaining some of the sources of less-verifiable criticism of Oom Yung Doe, and the specific statements that come from those sources. Verifiable criticisms, as always, would be in the main part of the article where they belong. Subverdor (talk) 08:50, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Only skimming so far but it's not weasel wording if you name and cite the critics, only if you put 'critics say' leaving out who the critics are and where they say it, so the "Herding the Moo" article is a can be used for what that says, acknowledging that is a primary source so cannot be referred to on the validity of the opinions expressed.--Nate1481 08:57, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, and I'm a bit concerned over the fact that Subverdor's only contributions at Wikipedia have been to this article and talk page. And only to push a seemingly pro-Oom Yung Doe revision. I'm sensing a possible conflict of interest and non-neutral viewpoint, especially with the attempt at labeling everything "weasel words", etc. when they're clearly not. --Marty Goldberg (talk) 18:22, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

These are not my only contributions to Wikipedia. I've made a handful of trivial contributions in years past under my main account, which uses my real name. Like Cjim63, I preferred not to use that account to take part in this controversy. I'm not particularly well-practiced at editing very controversial topics, as you can probably see from some minor missteps I've made (editing without giving a reason, malformatting comments on the talk page), but I'm certainly not a newcomer to WP.

Conflict of interest is not limited to a pro-Oom Yung Doe viewpoint. In the last few days, I've seen several times a cited statement which, upon examination here on the talk page, proved to be based on original reasoning by the editor with an unrelated citation slapped on after the editor and others had finished figuring out their line of argument. To me that sounds like someone trying to use Wikipedia as a soapbox for their particular viewpoint at the expense of the quality of the article (as well as being a violation of policy). That's a conflict of interest. Certainly it's possible to do that from a pro-Oom Yung Doe viewpoint as well, but personally, I've been making every effort to be conscientious about allowing WP policy and the quality of the article to override my personal feelings about what should be included in this article. If you insist on preventing anyone at all with experience with Oom Yung Doe (unless they have something bad to say about it) from contributing to this article, you're going to wind up with an article that's uninformative about the non-controversial aspects (which are barely mentioned at all at present) and misleading about the controversial aspects.

Side track: You say "after the editor and others had finished figuring out their line of argument", could you point out this/these disscusion(s)? Thanks!--Nate1481 14:26, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

One applicable quote is: "When the article was first made, some people suggested linking the OYD styles to their name sakes. However, upon review of some youtube videos showing these styles and this is what they had to say about the similarities: "I can comment on the "Tai Chi" and "Bagwa Chung" videos - absolutely terrible, and nothing to do with the actual arts other than superficial attempts at loosely copying some of the postures and making up motions. I'd strongly suggest not linking those to the actual arts unless some form of verifiable connection is demonstrated." The statement which resulted from those events has a broken citation pointing to a source that I've not seen any indication anyone here has ever seen. Subverdor (talk) 21:19, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Those discussions occurred a while ago. If you'd like to see the videos yourself, a quick search on youtube is more than sufficient. The links obviously worked whent hey were first posted....Cjim63 (talk) 23:24, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Looking over your comments elsewhere, I don't think we're going to come to much of a shared understanding. If you're planning to be involved in this discussion, I think it may make more sense to consult a higher authority (in this case, a WP:RS/N on the FMC as it relates to this article) rather than spend any time trying to convince each other. I'd prefer to talk things out and try to agree on how to proceed, so as to avoid anyone feeling that they were treated unfairly or overridden, but I don't see what I can say other than what I've said, and certainly you don't seem to be at all convinced so far. Subverdor (talk) 19:06, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

I repeat, please stop assuming malice where incompetence will suffice, for the most part these seem like someone bothering to go and find a source and making an error, pov pushers most comonly just put their version in without citing it or by using false cites (deadlinks, unfindable news articles etc).This however, looks like an honest mistake.

Going to the RS notice board on the FMC source seems like a good plan, but from a quick google, it looks like there will be other sources that will support the same material, I am not immensely familiar with the subject, never having even come across a OYD (et. al.) school, or (I think) heard of it before seeing the article, I got involved mainly to try & keep things neutral. --Nate1481 11:22, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm not assuming anything; I'm just restating information that's been presented to me elsewhere on this talk page ("'Charles Won-Suk Kim' appears to self-identify as 'Grandmaster "Iron" Kim'." "However, upon review of some youtube videos showing these styles and this is what they had to say about the similarities"). As I said above, I actually don't think that this is malicious. I think that one reason people are so passionate about communicating the "truth" about Oom Yung Doe is that they really want do want to warn others about what they see as a danger, and they honestly believe that what they're presenting is the truth. Wikipedia's definition of "truth" as far as what can be presented is much stricter than this, though; it's simply not designed as a site where people can present their inferences or arguments, no matter how well-founded or well-intentioned.

As I said, I'd really like to try to talk this out for a bit longer instead of going to WP:RS/N. Consensus is important. I do appreciate the presence of a relatively unbiased outsider, though I don't envy you your task :-). Subverdor (talk) 13:34, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

We don't do 'truth' in wikipedia: we do 'verifiable'. Bullshido does opinions and peer-review and is a valuable partner to wikipedia martial arts. jmcw (talk) 15:30, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

I certainly know the difference between truth and verifiability; it seems that a lot of what's in this article is what someone thought was "true" rather than what was verifiable. As for Bullshido, have they seen the movements demonstrated in Oom Yung Doe's promotional video[[14]] and if they have do they have any comment? Subverdor (talk) 00:51, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Its a big site, there areseveral threads on OYD. --Nate1481 09:23, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

I removed the above line as it is either stating the obvious or WP:OR depending on what opinion you fall on, the fact that the whole thing is phrased as "According to Oom Yung Doe practitioners..." qualifies the statement without this, so unless we cite someone questioning their existance it dosent belong. --Nate1481 14:26, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

I appreciate it, Nate. I notice people are much more reluctant to revert your edits than they are mine :-). You do have the force of neutrality on your side. Subverdor (talk) 00:51, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

No problem, I think is more because the discussion here had reached that point and in part because I'm a picky on these kind of things and the people who have worked with me before know that if I'm convinced there's a reason --Nate1481 09:15, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Lineage and Origin of OYD

I've taken a whack at this and have tried to write something that avoids the issue of nonexistence altogether. I've also moved sections on Kim's training (as related to the Lineage) up here. I think if we divide up the issues of lineage and Kim's history (both rather sticky subjects) it will be easier to make something that is truly NPOV. If anyone wants to comment on my effort, please do so.Cjim63 (talk) 01:12, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

What's there does not look like "truly NPOV" to me. The sources are two excerpts from an Oom Yung Doe handbook, one of which begins with, "there are many different beliefs and legends ... The Oom Yung / Chung Moo style follows the legend that ..." and the other of which begins with, "This and other stories have come into Chinese culture through a strong oral tradition. What is fact may never be determined. ... One legend is that ...". Both of these are presented in the article as if they're claimed as factual by Oom Yung Doe. Then they're contrasted with the prevailing historical theory about the origin of Bagua without mentioning that there is some uncertainty about a possible origin of Bagua before Dong Haichuan. The sum effect of leaving out the "of course we're not sure" from each side of the story is to create a disagreement where none actually exists. Then for flavor there's the statement, "This 'legend' has been openly ridiculed by the mainstream martial arts community."

I'm reverting this change. I've got no particular problem with an expanded history section, but it needs to represent the historical claims accurately. Subverdor (talk) 06:16, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

While "This 'legend' has been openly ridiculed by the mainstream martial arts community." is over the top without strong/multiple source(s) (i.e. not just a book the but something peer reviewed or lots of books) as "mainstream martial arts community" is a seriously weaseley term. (try and find the 'main stream' on any 3 randomly selected general MA forums & you get at least 4 if not 6 streams...)

However it might be better to adapt the expanded version rather than revert, that way we keep more info and get a neutral view, i.e. the best of both! --Nate1481 09:15, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree that a reasonably NPOV version would be nice, but I was concerned that an edit of mine that took it in that direction might be reverted. Of course, a policy-compliant version of this story will be hard to put together; there's not really anything verifiable in the handbook (just "this is one legend for how it might have happened..."), so unless we want the article to say "An untrusted Oom Yung Doe source says that one possibility is..." I think it might be better to stick with what's there already (Wang Po, Grandmaster Borion, and other claims that are made as concrete assertions). Subverdor (talk) 14:51, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Whoa! It was changed in the middle of my edits to include that whole "This legend is widely ridiculed..." I didn't write that in myself, but I did miss that it had been put in.

I am going to revert, pull out the inflammatory statement and specifically use the wording suggested by Subverdor. There are multiple sources from many OYD websites, as well as the OYD handbook that suggests that, at the very least, OYD practitioners do follow the belief that Bagwa was the first grandmaster of Oom Yung Doe and the originator of the Bagua style. I will include several citations to the effect. On another note, if we are using the Oom Yung Doe handbook and OYD websites as official self-reported sources for everything else, why should this be any different? I would argue that if we cannot use them here, we cannot use them for anything.... Here are the citations suggesting that OYD actually do follow the legend of Bagwa as the name of the first Gen OYD founder:

http://www.oomyungdoe.com/historyofoyd.asp

http://www.oomyungdoeschool.com/Handbook/HistoryOYD.html

http://www.oomyungdoe-nw.com/more-info/legend-bagwa/

http://www.chungmoodoe-nj.com/BagwaChung/

As for uncertainty about the origin of Bagua as a style, I did note that "Historians generally credit..." which is very similar to the wording on the article on Bagua the style. If that is not precise enough, we can specifically cite the names of the 5 or so historians and Bagua practitioners that I have included. I'm sure that it wouldn't be to hard to find more historians who support the same notion. I don't think there is any debate on what the translation of the term "bagua" is.Cjim63 (talk) 18:15, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Also, why was the first bio paragraph reverted if it contains nothing new?Cjim63 (talk) 18:00, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

I thought that parts of the bio were moved to the history section, and I just didn't want to lose anything with my revert. I may have made a mistake. Anyway, this still looks a little misleading and a lot wordy. I've cleaned up that language to say effectively the same thing with fewer quotation marks, made it quite a bit clearer that both the OYD version and the historians' version are not represented as 100% certainty, added a mention of Yin Yang Doe (technically the name, according to my understanding, for the line of Moo Doe that's claimed for Oom Yung Doe, since it's a Chinese line up until John C. Kim's generation), and moved the line about starting training at age 7 to the bio, since it didn't fit in the lineage section any more with all those edits. Subverdor (talk) 01:23, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

I've reverted again. Fun! Here are the reasons why:

1) The last change has deleted some of the links resulting in orphaned citations.

2) The section on the etiology of "Bagua" has been deleted. That is very well documented, and also is quite relevant.

3) I also object to putting both the OYD claims and the martial arts historians claims on a similar level. While martial arts historians are not pretending to know 100% that Dong Haichua invented Baguazhang, there are historical evidences for that. At least the great majority of Baguazhang schools trace their lineage to Dong Haichua and his existence is documented. The Oom Yung Doe history, on the other hand, is not based on historical evidence, but rather on an undocumented oral tradition. I do not believe that it can not be presented on the same level. At the very least, we would need some idea about where the OYD oral tradition comes from, or who stated it. An undocumented oral tradition with no representation in academic literature cannot be compared to the theory generally held by most martial arts historians and schools of Baguazhang.

I will strive to improve the wording to eliminate the quotes a bit and will move Kim's training. Perhaps I can put the Yan Yang Doe in too.Cjim63 (talk) 03:10, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

After reverting, I note that these changes (to the quotes and mentioning Yin Yang Doe) already were included, and do not need to be addressed.Cjim63 (talk) 03:24, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't feel that the etiology is at all relevant unless you're trying to present a line of argument to the reader for why the "legendary" explanation is false. That's the kind of thing that's appropriate for an authority on the subject to do, and then for WP to present his/her conclusions on; editors and readers shouldn't be expected to have enough linguistic and historical knowledge to make an informed judgement on what the etiology implies about the believability of the legend.

It seems like this is kind of a tempest in a teapot; there are also legends presented in the Oom Yung Doe literature that describe Bagwa flying around in the air, martial arts masters creating forms by observing dragons playing in the water, and so on (and there are actually similar legends about Dong Haichuan). The Oom Yung Doe "claims" that you seem to want to debunk in the article are simply not being presented as the truth.

I'm not editing these statements, because I don't want to start or continute an edit war. However, I'd like to make the following changes: (1) Remove the etiology again, as it's only relevant as part of a line of argument; it has zero informative value as encyclopediac description of Oom Yung Doe. (2) Reintroduce the statement that the history of Bagua is unclear. I'm not trying to tear down the historical version when I do that; I don't think any reader is going to put something described as a "legend" on equal footing with something described as the general consensus of historians, regardless of whether there's some uncertainty about the exact history. There is, however, uncertainty about the historical record. That's a fact, and it's relevant if you're going to present inconsistencies between two different accounts of the history.

Are there still objections to those changes? Subverdor (talk) 15:03, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

I object. Here is the problem: Most articles on Wikipedia about martial arts go on at some length about the founder of the style. You see, most Asian martial arts view lineage as something important, therefore it is important to consider the Lineage of OYD. So all sources indicate that the original founder of the style is considered to be a gentleman named "Bagwa" who was born 1,500 years ago. Where was he born? How did he learn martial arts? Why did he teach? What was he doing? These are all questions that hopefully an encyclopedia will answer about the originator of the martial art under consideration. Now consider if we suggest that the gentleman named "Bagwa" was the originator of Baguazhang and that he is the first link in Kim's Lineage.

What happens now? Wikipedia is presenting a Legend, yes, but this legend teaches the reader that Bagwa is a name, the originator of Baguazhang and that this is where Kim's lineage comes from. But here is the thing: Bagua is a word that can be translated, and there is absolutely no historical evidence for it being a name of a person (and I've looked, if I am wrong, please post the sources). Baguazhang, on the other hand, is a style of martial arts with a rich history that has evoked the interest of martial arts historians. With regard to consensus, let us look at a little summary of where martial art historians stand:

Baguazhang's beginnings are obscure as the I Ching itself. Legend surrounds the famous Dong Haiquan, and many practitioners often hold him up as the "father" of their art. However, circle walking was a part of many early Daoist meditative practices as well as external arts -- especially early forms of Eagle Claw Kung Fu. More importantly, while Baguazhang's beginnings may be obscure, the origins of the two main symbols of Bagua, Pre-Heaven and Post-Heaven, are ancient. They are mentioned in early texts such as, "The Yellow Emperor's Classic on Medicine," the "Dao De Qing," and the "Hua Hu Jing."

The main styles of Baguazhang practice as we know it today can be traced directly to Dong Haiquan. However, there are Baguazhang systems that are newer and are not as clearly connected to Dong Haiquan since they were developed long after his death; one of the newest -- Emei Baguazhang was developed in 1960 from a combination of popular Bagua Schools from Dong Haiquan and Emei Mountain Wai Jia (External) Kung Fu. (This history of Emei Baguazhang has been documented and is available through the Traditional Wushu Association of Chongqing in Sichuan Province, where Emei Mountain is located.)

As you can see, while there is no consensus about newer Baguazhang systems, the main styles can be traced directly to Dong Haiquan. OYD certinaly seems to claim to be "older" rather than "newer," so the lack of consensus really doesn't apply to OYD. Dong Haichuan is widely credited by historians, and modern practitioners as the founder of the style. I am sure that somewhere in the academic literature you can find someone who disagrees; however, I'll bet you can't find any researcher who suggests anything remotely like "bagua" being the name of the founder of the style, born 1,500 years ago in Chine. I certainly am unable to find a source for that. Wikipedia is a resource for people to learn as much as they can about something and we must provide the relevant information.

If we are going to describe the origins of OYD, we must describe "Bagwa the originator of Bagua martial arts." If we are going to discuss Bagwa, we must discuss the information available.Cjim63 (talk) 21:15, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

So you're unhappy about something that seems false being included with a qualifier "Oom Yung Doe says that a legend tells the story that..."? It sounds like your concern is that people might not pay proper attention to the qualifier and be misled. I can certainly sympathize. In fact, I remember someone quite recently who was very concerned about something like that. I wasn't quite the same; it had something to do with the phrase, "critics say..." :-).

I do understand the need to include the accurate history, so that people aren't at all misled into thinking that the legend is being presented as factual or even particularly likely. That's why I left the history in. Do you really think that someone would read my version and come away with the idea that the historians' consensus might be wrong and Oom Yung Doe's legend might be right?

Presenting the business about the trigrams seems like clear original research to me. Personally, I have no idea what the difference between proper names and words in Chinese is, now or 1500 years ago. I need someone to explain it to me. If you want to link to an authoritative source explaining that Chinese grammar makes Oom Yung Doe's legend extremely unlikely, which seems like what you're arguing above, then that's fine for me. You're not allowed to present that argument on WP, though (even if only with a collection of facts that the reader is supposed to fill in the reasoning for).

If I can take another sidestep into arguing about the "truth," also... you seem to be arguing that a man who I believe does speak Chinese (John C. Kim) made a simple and obvious mistake with Chinese grammar. Do you speak Chinese, or are you working from sources you find and your own understanding?

One last thing: according to the internet, which we know is always reliable, Dong Haichuan told at least one story about learning Bagua from an earlier practitioner[[15]]. That's what I was going from when I said that the history of Bagua before Dong Haichuan (if any) was not 100% clear; I'm certainly not familiar with the detailed history. Subverdor (talk) 15:08, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't think that giving the translation of a word is original research. I hope you are not suggesting that all of the Korean words we've translated will require citations. However, in order to avoid even the appearance of original research, I supposed I could cite a Chinese-English dictionary for the translation and etiology of the word. That should be fairly easy to do, so I guess I don't mind doing it - even if I don't think it is strictly necessary. I do not speak Chinese. I do speak a little Korean. My spouse speaks Korean, Chinese, and a little Japanese and is formally trained as a linguist. While that doesn't mean I've got a special "authoritative source" it does mean we have a few books lying around that are, and I've got someone who can help me. You can also look for Chinese words on internet dictionaries (btw this can be somewhat difficult at times...), check Wikipedia here, or ask a Chinese person. All helpful sources.Cjim63 (talk) 18:38, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Okay, let me restate: Arguing that "Bagua" is unlikely to be a person's name is original research. Words that mean things can also be people's names in many languages; if the nature of the Chinese language and naming traditions makes it ridiculous (even in a legend) that "Bagua" could have been a person's name 1500 years ago, then I'd prefer that that statement be presented by a historian or Chinese linguist as opposed to argued by you in the article. If that suggestion is not ridiculous, then I don't see a reason to digress into the etiology of 'Bagua' in the article. Subverdor (talk) 19:54, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

As for me "arguing" a point in the article, it is basically cut and pasted from the Wikipedia entry from Bagua. The sentence "X in language 1" literally means "Y in language 2" is generally how it is written out and is certainly not an attempt at original research. I'll provide info from a couple of chinese-english or chinese-korean dictionaries so that we can see how they define the word. As for it being a digression, we've already translated "Chung Moo," "Oom Yung," and "Kyong Gong Sul Bope". Since Bagua is claimed to be the root style, I don't see how defining the word is a digression - even if it had nothing to do with the name of the 1st generation grandmaster at all. In fact, perhaps we should add in a definition and derivation of "Kong Su" and "Chung Moo Quan" as well.Cjim63 (talk) 05:15, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

When it was originally included, this section was prefaced with the statement, "The term 'bagwa' is not recognized by modern translators as a name, rather..." Are you still including the etiology of "bagwa" to communicate that idea? If not, why do you now want to include this information in the article, and what made you change your mind?

By the way, the Chinese name article says, "With a limited repertoire of family names, Chinese depend on using given names to introduce variety in naming. Almost any character with any meaning can be used." Subverdor (talk) 13:53, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Here are some dictionary links:

http://us.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?cdqchi=%E5%85%AB%E5%8D%A6

http://www.mandarintools.com/cgi-bin/wordlook.pl?word=%E5%85%AB%E5%8D%A6&searchtype=chinese&where=whole&audio=on

Here and here that the origin of the word bagua, as used to describe the martial arts, comes from the Yi Jing - the Book of Changes.

Indeed, as Subverdor correctly notes, anyone could name their child anything, but I would suggest that these citations suggest that this wasn't the origin of the word used to describe the "bagwa" style of martial arts. As for the part about modern translators, I don't know if using the etiology (ie. it comes form the Yi Jing) to exaplin what modern translators think is really necessary to the article. The differences in "origin story" as provided by OYD and as provided by translation of the Chinese language/martial arts historians is pretty clear. So it seemed unnecessary to add something in about modern translators. Perhaps we could add something similar back in with the etiology, but it seems like the language part is already long enough and the martial arts aspect of Baguazhang is more relevant.Cjim63 (talk) 02:24, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Um... so are you saying that you think the etiology needs to be included, or not? If you are saying it needs to be included, can you explain a little more simply why you want it to be included? Subverdor (talk) 06:43, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Despite all of the links I think "no" we shouldn't add any more. I think it would be language overkill.Cjim63 (talk) 02:00, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

I wasn't asking about adding more. I was asking about whether you think the existing statement, "The term 'bagwa' or 'bagua' (Chinese: 八卦; pinyin: bā guà; Wade-Giles: pa kua; literally 'eight symbols') are eight diagrams used in Taoist cosmology and are often translated into English as the 'eight trigrams.' Baguazhang literally means 'eight trigram palm.'" should still be included, and if so why. Subverdor (talk) 14:01, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

CJim63 indicated on my talk page that he thinks it should be included because, "we've translated most foreign words int eh article already and giving a complete translation seems to be important based on the differing views of the origin of the Bagua style." He also indicated an unwillingness to answer further questions, but I'll ask anyway :-). Can you elaborate a little more on that "seems to be important"? I know there are differing accounts of the origin of Bagua. I also know that you feel that including this statement is important. Can you provide some elaboration on what exactly the reason is that including the information is important given the differing views of the origin of Bagua? Subverdor (talk) 04:01, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

I am responding here. I'm sorry if I have not been responding, but I began to see that more time was being spent on the talk page rather than the article itself. Thus I took a step back for a while. I have included the translation of Bagua for the reasons I have already described above. If you'd like to, you can read my explanations again, but I am afraid they probably won't change. To turn it on its head a bit though, we shouldn't we include a translation of a Chinese word to English in an English wikia article?Cjim63 (talk) 19:26, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

I took a look at this again -- somehow I got distracted by the translation-of-bagua issue from the more central issue, which still exists. There is a handbook for Oom Yung Doe which includes the statement, "Some people say that the Bagwa style originated about 200 to 400 years ago. Others say that it dates back several thousand years. The Oom Yung / Chung Moo style follows the legend that ..." and then presents a particular legend for the origin of Bagua. There is a general historical consensus with some small amount of uncertainty (Dong Haichuan "is widely credited as the founder of Baguazhang and most, if not all, existing schools of Baguazhang place Dong Haichuan at the beginning of their lineage.") (emphasis mine). There is no "differs sharply" between those two uncertain assertions, even if one is probably right and one is probably wrong. Presenting something from the handbook which is specifically disclaimed several times as "the history given by Oom Yung Doe practitioners," in order to then contrast it with the actual (probable) history without mentioning any uncertainty in the history, is grossly misleading. There's no point to presenting things that way except to falsely disparage the school.

I'm going to remove the misleadingness in this section as I see it; if you really feel that things must be presented the way you've presented them, are you open to mediation on this issue? Subverdor (talk) 05:32, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

"... All Asia Championship..."

"Critics of Kim assert that the All Asia Championship never existed for Kim to participate in or win and the only evidence that such an event occurred comes from Oom Yung Doe itself."

Weasel words, secondhand anonymous source. Subverdor (talk) 04:36, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

This is not an anonymous source. It is the Rick Ross Institute, which we have already discussed. They certainly appear to be critics of Kim, so I see no reason to suggest that they would not be authorities on what critics claim about Kim.

I would also like to be cautious about the phrase "weasel words." There has been no attempt made by editors here to put one past the public. Furthermore, as I have noted elsewhere here, almost everything about OYD is very polarizing, thus resulting in lots of proponents and critics in all of our sources. In this specific case, there is no independent information available on any "All Asia Championship" as described by OYD. There is evidence of many, many other martial arts competitions throughout Asia, but still not sources on any "All Asia Championship."Cjim63 (talk) 06:06, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

First, this citation is on Freedom of Mind, not Rick Ross. Second, see the section above where I indicate my feelings about taking an opinionated argument, wrapping all the non-neutral or unverifiable statements in "critics say..." and a dubious citation, and pretending it's an objective presentation of facts suitable for Wikipedia. Subverdor (talk) 08:50, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

The Rick Ross Institute maintains the Freedom of Mind web site. I use the terms interchangably. As I have previously stated, I believe that the Freedom of Mind website is an acceptable source, and there is precedent for its use on Wikipedia.Cjim63 (talk) 02:14, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

It is an accepted and notable source at Wikipedia. --Marty Goldberg (talk) 18:38, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Regardless, I've removed the source in favor of more specific sourcing including a statement by Nam Tae Hi and the Illinois Attorney General.Cjim63 (talk) 03:58, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

This looks a lot less weasely, yes; I approve. What exactly is the text (or transcript) from this source; what was Nam Tae Hi asked, and what did he say? Also, do you have the fourth amended complaint? I'd be very interested to see what it contains (in general, though also for this specific issue). Subverdor (talk) 15:08, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

The Nam Tae Hi quote is from the Zekman report. Below is the relevant section:

PAM ZEKMAN & TAE HI NAM

Zekman: You could not become champion of all Asia?

Nam: No.

Z: In the fifties?

N: No.

Z: Not possible?

N: Not possible. No.

The relevant section from the Illinois Attorney General report (page 11, #20):

Defendants falsely represented to students that Kim is the "Master" who is the "Champion of All Asia", when in fact, Kim never won said championship.

Cjim63 (talk) 21:24, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Hm, this actually doesn't look inconsistent with the Oom Yung Doe page. The handbook claims that John C. Kim won a particular tournament called the "All Asia Championship," with fighters from several different parts of Asia competing. It does make the inference that winning that championship means that he can be considered "Champion of All Asia", which a reasonable person could claim is hyperbole, but it doesn't claim that he was the best fighter in Asia, and it doesn't claim that there was an official title "Champion of All Asia" which was granted to him (which is what they asked Tae Hi Nam about). See the difference?

Of course, that's going to be difficult to present in a way that's informative and NPOV -- I'm not arguing that Nam Tae Hi and the fourth amended complaint's feelings on the matter simply shouldn't be discussed. If you have authoritative evidence that the "All Asia Championship" did not exist (and no, Joe Smith the author of "Herding the Moo" saying so doesn't count), then that seems like it would make it very simple to present a factual account (we can drop the "critics say" and simply say "The All Asia Championship did not exist"). If you don't have that evidence, I don't have an immediately good answer for how to present this controversy.

Does anyone watching this debate happen to know someone who was active in martial arts in the Cho Leung area of Pusan in 1956 :-)? Subverdor (talk) 15:23, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

I do not think a reasonable person would suggest a person can become the "All Asia Champion," without competing in and winning the "All Asia Championship." Would you consider it reasonable to claim to be a Super Bowl Champion without competing in the Super Bowl?Cjim63 (talk) 18:50, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

I did not suggest that at any point above. I suggested that a tournament called the "All Asia Championship" can exist in a particular part of Korea without people in a different part of Korea being aware that there is a "Champion of All Asia" who is the winner of that tournament. Subverdor (talk) 20:02, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

What about removing all mention of "All Asian ..."? There are no references to support the claim and apparently not good enough references to critics to satisfy BLP requirements. jmcw (talk) 23:34, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

I think that removal of this claim would be detrimental to the article. Mr. Kim has made a series of claims of various achievements that serve as an important basis for his claims of being an exceptional martial artist and a "Grandmaster." While there aren't any references to support the existence of such a tournament, this claim is possibly the one that is most amendable to verification by a 3rd party. Nam Tae Hi, for example, was a very influential martial artist who was active and well known in the Korean martial arts community during the same period of time as Mr. Kim's claimed victory. When he was asked directly about Mr. Kim's claim, he gave the statement cited above. Of all the claims Mr. Kim makes, it seems like this claim is the one that could be best addressed in an unbiased manner.Cjim63 (talk) 03:36, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

As I said above, he wasn't asked precisely about John C. Kim's claim; a hostile party asked him a question which he answered 100% correctly (AFAICT), but which ultimately didn't settle the question under discussion. I also think that removing this from the article is unreasonable, though. It would be a lot better if we could simply refer to a documented source that really confirms or refutes this claim. Maybe WP:KOREA can be of help? Subverdor (talk) 13:35, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

I am not sure what question you are asking. If the question is whether Mr. Kim was the "Champion of all Asia" Mr. Nam does appear to answer that question. Perhaps a longer excerpt from the Zekman report would be helpful.

PAM ZEKMAN

Chung Moo Quan schools say they teach the "true martial art." The walls are plastered with pictures of their Korean founder. Master John C. Kim, said to be a ninth degree black belt. He's on posters demonstrating Chung Moo Quan, crouching like a tiger, soaring like an eagle, and using his whole body as a weapon to attack. The signs declare he's the Champion of all Asia. Instructors say he won the title in the 1950's, but get vague about where the competition was held.

TOM McGEE. INSTRUCTOR

Well, in Asia. Exactly. In Asia. More a tournament in Asia. More the champion off all Asia.

Martial arts officials from Korea say there was no such competition.

TAE HI NAM

Q: You could not become champion of all Asia?

A: No.

Q: In the fifties?

A: No.

Q: Not possible?

A: Not possible. No.

As for Zekamn being a "hostile party," I don't think she was hostile to Mr. Nam at all.Cjim63 (talk) 01:57, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Please reread my post above (the one that ends with "See the difference?"). If you asked a man in Brazil who won the title of best baseball team in the world in 2008, he might be confused and say, correctly, that that title doesn't exist. That doesn't mean that there wasn't a baseball team that won the "World Series" in 2008 in the United States. Again, see the difference? When you rephrase things (especially things involving phrases translated between dissimilar languages), things get confused. The current handbook contains an abundance of detail about the All Asia Championship. Partially summarizing the situation to a news reporter and then having her ask an expert three questions based on her minimal understanding of the situation while constructing a story explicitly hostile to Oom Yung Doe (which was what I meant by "hostile", obviously) is not a good way to seek the truth.

As I said, I'm not arguing that this should simply not be presented; it is close enough to an informed, expert opinion that I can't really ask for it to be ignored except in the face of contradictory evidence. Subverdor (talk) 07:01, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

"... photograph ... edited ..."

"Some critics of Kim claim to have found evidence that at least some of these photographs, including the photograph of Kyong Gong Sul Bope and Kim cutting an apple in four, have been staged or edited to appear to be extraordinary."

Weasel words, self-published source. Subverdor (talk) 04:36, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Same rational as explained in the first problem. Once again, the sentence says "Critics claim..." The sentence states that critics claim certain things, and the source indicates that critics do, in fact, claim that many of Kim's photographs were staged.Cjim63 (talk) 06:06, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Certainly there are verifiable facts about Oom Yung Doe. My assertion is that WP policy strongly encourages us to stick to them. Again, I realize that you believe it's extremely important to communicate this information, but you do realize that by the logic you're using it would be acceptable to include every single statement that appeared anywhere on the internet in the Oom Yung Doe article, each one preceded by, "critics say..." or "supporters say..."?

I hesitate to ask, but what's the claimed evidence? Subverdor (talk) 08:50, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Look closely at the photos on the Wikia. Other claimed evidence are photos of what critics claim to be practice runs for the Kyong Gong Sul Bope.Cjim63 (talk) 02:20, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Interesting. If there's actual documentation linked to that seems to support the critics' assertion -- which those photos look like at first glance -- then including the assertion gets a lot more reasonable to me. Personally, I don't agree with the logic (would you really jump off a building without careful organization and a few practice runs?), but my objection at this stage is to statements that seem to me to be more or less made up, but aren't technically untrue because they're prefaced with "critics say...".

Would you mind including on the talk page the text of the cited source that's relevant to this statement? How long is it? Subverdor (talk) 05:49, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Let me rephrase that. Practice runs....on the ground. Also explanations of how Kim could have got the Kyong Gong Sul Bope photo by jumping of any prominence on the roof of a certain building. Unfortunately, electronic books do not allow me to cut and paste. If you would like to read the source yourself, the book is available cheap here as an ebook. It is easy to find the statements because they are with photos.Cjim63 (talk) 19:42, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

I feel fairly strongly about not giving money to the author of "Herding the Moo." Would it be possible for you to take a screenshot showing the applicable excerpt, and email it to me via my user page? Subverdor (talk) 21:25, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

I could get a screen-shot if I could get around the Adobe software, but it appears to be made to prevent just that sort of thing. Copyright violations and all that. I don't know if a book like that would be at a library, but I suppose it wouldn't hurt to ask around.Cjim63 (talk) 19:18, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Can you take a digital photograph of the screen with the e-book on it, or retype the applicable excerpt if it's not too long? Subverdor (talk) 20:03, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Hm, so this one's run out of steam too. Is there anyone who's willing to share details of what's claimed in this source as support for this statement? Wikipedia policy requires page numbers as a minimum, and I'm definitely curious to hear the details of what this source says about editing or "staging" of photos. Subverdor (talk) 23:34, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Cjim63 has indicated on my talk page that he's not planning to share any more details. Cjim63, does that include page numbers, or are you willing to include those? Subverdor (talk) 19:40, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

I'll take that lengthy silence as a "no". I'm now planning to remove this source from this statement -- both because it's self-published, and because it doesn't include page numbers which are unambiguously required by WP policy. As I said, I'm willing to talk things out and be reasonable instead of just insisting that any self-published source has to go away (as I pretty much have to be as long as I'm arguing for continued citations to the school's handbook :-), but if you're not willing to share details and discuss the precise nature of this source's support for this statement, then I don't see a reason to bend WP policy to include the source. Subverdor (talk) 04:46, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Let's come back to this. This statement has been removed, but the apple-cutting photo illustration is still up. I've now taken a look at "Herding the Moo", the 2007 edition. I didn't find any statements about the apple-cutting that were "with photos"; all I found was the "How It All Started" photo near the beginning and the "The Jump Side Kick Explained" section in part 8. Is there any reasonable source for the assertion that this photograph has been "staged"? If so, can you please point me more precisely to it (page numbers or at least chapter names)?

If there's not a reasonable source for that assertion, I'm planning to remove these photographs. My personal feeling about the apple-cutting photo comparison is this: about the worst conclusion you can draw is that someone altered a photograph to convert it to a horizontal format for space reasons. Nothing related to the actual demonstration is shown to have been changed, only the relationship to the students who are watching. I can certainly understand the other side of the story, and I can understand someone wanting to make the argument that it's unethical or misleading to make any change to a photograph when you're going to use it to argue for a certain level of ability or show a certain demonstration, and wanting to present these photographs as evidence that that's happened. Wikipedia isn't a forum where we can debate the merits of that argument in order to decide whether it's reasonable to present it, though. For that you want a blog or forum where you can present the pictures and make your case. I think this should only be included in the article if there's some sort of reasonable source which can be cited as making the argument.

Are there any objections? Subverdor (talk) 22:34, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Done: "...movements share common names..."

"While Oom Yung Doe movements share common names with several other forms of martial arts, some practitioners of these other forms of martial arts have noted that they consider these styles to be very different."

Weasel words, and this source needs to be fixed: it's another of those odd sources that has a title and a date but nothing else that would be useful in tracking it down. Subverdor (talk) 04:36, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I had a look at the source, and this source is a malformed cite tag for "POWERLinesChicago Magazine" from November 1997 (with that all stuffed in a "magazine" field, which I suspect means it was carelessly copy-and-pasted from somewhere else without a reference to the original source). The table of contents to the November 1997 Chicago Magazine is available online[[16]], and it does have a "Power Lines" section. I don't see "Cultist Mea Culpa" or anything similar in the brief blurb about what's discussed, although it's possible that Power Lines is one of those sections that consists of many small subsections. What I do see is "Will the South Side overrun the North? Plus, overkill on downtown's honorary streets". I don't find anything related to 'cultist' or 'tai chi', and attempting to use google to find an article with that title or subtitle fails[[17]][[18]], although google is capable of searching those archives[[19]]. Subverdor (talk) 05:33, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Here we do run into a problem. This issue has been a source of some discussion for a while. When the article was first made, some people suggested linking the OYD styles to their name sakes. However, upon review of some youtube videos showing these styles and this is what they had to say about the similarities: "I can comment on the "Tai Chi" and "Bagwa Chung" videos - absolutely terrible, and nothing to do with the actual arts other than superficial attempts at loosely copying some of the postures and making up motions. I'd strongly suggest not linking those to the actual arts unless some form of verifiable connection is demonstrated."

However, we really do need to find good sourcing for the statement or delete it altogether. If it is deleted, I would suggest not including links, because I also believe that the styles do not share similarities to other styles. To include links would kind of be close to tacitly supporting the notion that they share similarities.

The ideal solution would be to track down a better source.Cjim63 (talk) 06:06, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree that the statement should be properly sourced or deleted. I restored my second comment above, which you deleted, where I investigated the citation. Was this citation even looked at before being attached to this statement? What you describe above sounds like original research. Subverdor (talk) 08:50, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

As should any statements trying to link to said arts unless backed up by a reliable 3rd party source. --Marty Goldberg (talk) 18:15, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm marking this with "citation needed", and I plan to remove it in a few days if a reliable source can't be found. Subverdor (talk) 13:37, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Why did this edit get reverted? It doesn't sound like anyone is contending that the Chicago Magazine article -- which I still haven't seen any indication anyone here has seen -- is the actual source of this statement. Subverdor (talk) 21:42, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

As there was no answer to my question above, I'm remaking this edit. If someone has a problem with the edit, please raise it on the talk page instead of simply reverting. Subverdor (talk) 16:21, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm now removing this statement. Subverdor (talk) 14:06, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

I am deleting the links to other martial arts that share the names. It is important to note that there is nothing in the OYD literature that suggests that "Bagua Chung" is "Baguazhang" or that "Tai Chi Chung" is "Taichichuan". Those styles that do share the same exact name, there is not 3rd party verifiable sources suggesting that they are, in fact the same.Cjim63 (talk) 06:04, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

I halfway agree with this edit.

The "disagree" half is that I think that there's likely to be a lot of squabbling surrounding almost any school that claims to teach something like Bagua (with various people saying that they don't teach "true" Bagua and shouldn't claim to), but I think that the fact that a school verifiably claims to teach Bagua should be good enough to include a statement in WP that that school claims to teach Bagua. I don't object to that statement including an accompanying note that experts consider the school's version of Bagua to be sufficiently different that it shouldn't be described as such, as long as it's backed up with a citation to a real expert. I don't think that including, or not, a link to the WP page describing Bagua (or anything else that any martial arts school claims to teach) makes any difference at all to whether it's okay to present the statement that the school teaches Bagua.

The "agree" half is that this section's links have wanted cleanup for some time; Tai Chi Chung is not synonymous with Tai Chi Chuan according to my understanding, although I believe they're related. "Bagwa Chung" and "Baguazhang" are two different romanizations of the same thing, but it looks like people have been guessing that other similar phrases (also including "Kom Do" and "Kendo") are alternate romanizations when in fact they're totally different things.

All things considered, I think cleaning up the links in this section is pretty far down the list of priorities. I do think your edit makes things better. I like having no links better than having haphazard ones. Thanks. Subverdor (talk) 18:25, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

We seem to have come back around to this, after I readded links to the martial arts that Oom Yung Doe claims to teach in this section. They've now been re-removed without further discussion. I guess I'll just reiterate what I said above -- I don't think that making a word a link makes the slightest difference to whether the statement that contains the linked word is acceptable. I like making words into links because it makes Wikipedia more usable in general; I don't think that linking a word from a controversial statement adds any particular weight to any side of the controversy.

I don't feel strongly enough about this to make a big stink about it; it honestly seems silly that we've spent so much time on it already, so I'm just going to leave the links out that have now been removed. I have reinstated the citation that was removed without being replaced with anything. Subverdor (talk) 16:16, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Done: "necessary for rank advancement"

This statement needs a proper citation devoted specifically to it. Subverdor (talk) 04:36, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

One of the citations included does indeed say that the special seminar will give "30 points (worth $900 toward special lessons or evaluations)" Perhaps we should change the phrase to "necessary for rank evaluations" to be more true to the self-reported source.Cjim63 (talk) 06:06, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Evaluations are very, very different from testing for an increased rank. It is not necessary to have evaluations as you progress in Oom Yung Doe. This is -- it seems rude, but I keep feeling the need to say this -- the kind of mistake that's easy to make when you're not using authoritative sources, and substituting your own logical-seeming guesses for firsthand knowledge. Subverdor (talk) 08:55, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

And this is the problem of conflict of interest when people involved in CMD try and discredit cited sources, claiming the very source of the controversy as "authoritative" and portraying those sources discussing or presenting said controversy as somehow "less than" authoritative. --Marty Goldberg (talk) 18:36, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm certainly not claiming that my statement up there on the talk page is authoritative, or arguing that it should be included in the article. I'm simply explaining my experience, which you're free to accept or not. I would ask that the citation for this statement include more evidence for the statement than it currently does; I don't feel that "30 points (worth $900 toward special lessons or evaluations)" is sufficient evidence that attending the weeklong seminar is "necessary for rank advancement." If you're interested in investigating on your own, I would suggest that it's probably very, very easy to find students who reached a relatively high belt level without ever attending a weeklong seminar. Subverdor (talk) 19:15, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Here we've another source that indicates that by going on the "International Level Degree Program" that one receives "50% of the points required to take the International Level 1st and 2nd Degree Test."Cjim63 (talk) 01:28, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I get it. I need to keep a cooler head. Yes, you need points to advance beyond a certain level, and the most common way of getting them is through Sae Gae seminars. If you change the statement to "necessary to advance to first degree and beyond", then it becomes more or less accurate (that also matches the source that you found). Subverdor (talk) 21:28, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Agreed.Cjim63 (talk) 23:10, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Done. Cjim63 (talk) 02:06, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Done: "...'classical herbal formulas' containing..."

"There have been allegations that under close examination that these 'classical herbal formulas' containing 'rare and unique Asian herbs' prove to only consist of simple, cheap components such as soybeans and black soybeans."

I recognize that a "criticisms of..." section is going to consist largely of what elsewhere would be considered weasel words. However, I think that finding a single person, quoted in a single place on the internet, saying something negative about Oom Yung Doe, and then copy-pasting their words with "There have been allegations that..." in front is a bit much.

I'm trying to resist, as I said above, getting into an argument about the truth of what we're discussing. I've been trying to restrict my objections to policy and verification-quality grounds, and trusting that that will do a good job of sorting the wheat from the chaff. This is another of those "Charles Won-Suk Kim" cases that's so blatant that I can't help but explain a little on the side, though: The important herbs in these bags are powdered dry herbs which gradually work their way out of the bags (through the cloth) and onto the hands. The soybeans are just soybeans. Whether you believe that the powdered dry herbs have any validity or not, the people who opened up the bags without knowing much of anything about them, decided that the soybeans themselves were supposed to be valuable, and concluded that the bags were worthless because the soybeans were just soybeans, were guessing. Subverdor (talk) 04:36, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

OK, so in this case we should replace the vague word "allegations" with the names of the individuals. By the way, these can be found by reading the sources, and they are: Steve Given and Allen Sayigh the dean of the School of Oriental Medicine and manager of the Chinese Herb Dispensary, respectively, at the natural health University, Bastyr. I suspect that it is unlikely that individuals with this kind of expertise would not know what they were looking at. The sentence would be improved if the direct quotes and the names and credentials of the individuals involved were used.Cjim63 (talk) 06:06, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

... and this is why I've been avoiding discussing the truth, and focusing on verification quality. Now we get into a big argument where I say, "They were set up to fail. They correctly identified what they were looking at as soybeans, but they didn't know..." and you say "But if there was powder inside the bags they SURELY would have noticed..." and it goes on and on.

If we replaced this statement with a less weasely-worded description of what happened, that would be a good place to start cleaning this up, yes. Subverdor (talk) 08:50, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

I see no weasel words in all these sentences you're claiming they exist. What I see is someone new to Wikipedia, from CMD, trying to use their limited understanding of Wikipedia policy to attack an article that CMD related people have done many times in the past - enough so that great care was taken to rewrite the article from neutral standpoints several times over. OR as you put it "that we will go several times through the process of me reading a statement which I know to be untrue, me asking that it be documented objectively, Wikipedia's collective forces of "Oom Yung Doe is destructive and evil" attempting and failing to document the untrue statement, and the statement being removed." If consensus is that said documentation and references are indeed objective, but you just disagree with it, then it becomes a different matter entirely - on of filibustering and potential disruptive editing, which are both highly looked down upon here, especially when its carried out by members of the controversial topic whose sole edits have been in relation to said topic. --Marty Goldberg (talk) 18:32, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm being open about my involvement with the school and my objective in editing this topic. If you feel there's a conflict of interest, or that anything I'm doing is illegitimate, it might be better to open a new talk section on me, to avoid cluttering this section and digressing from the specific statements being discussed.

I'd like to talk a bit more about "Herding the Moo" and the FMC to try to convince the regulars of this article that they're not reliable sources, but if it becomes clear that there's a consensus that I'm not going to succeed in altering, then I plan to seek WP:RS/Ns on those two sources. As I say above, I'd like to talk it out first, though. There's a lot of conversation here, but that's a result of Cjim63 asking that I outline several complaints at once; I'm not deliberately filibustering, and I'm not planning on taking hasty action before everyone's had a decent amount of time to read and respond to all this text.

Please don't describe discussing things on the talk page which you disagree with as "potential disruptive editing." That's misleading. Subverdor (talk) 19:26, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Take your time: you are doing well in a difficult discussion. You are allowed to have a POV. The goal is that the article will have a Neutral POV. This article must present several POV to arrive at a NPOV. jmcw (talk) 15:42, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm afraid that most of us are going to be supportive of the FMC website. This is not the first time that it has been discussed, and I suspect that the consensus will very likely continue to be very much the same.

With regard to the "Herding the Moo" source, this is a matter that needs to be discussed. I've reviewed the pertient wikia policy found here and invite others to do the same. I personally believe that we may want to use it to describe some of Kim's critics, but we won't be able to use it to describe anything about OYD, itself.

At the same time, I would like to point out that the book we've been using as the authoritative source on how OYD views itself "A Traditional Explanation of OYD," as well as the OYD web-site itself are also self-published just like "Herding the Moo." Here is the policy on that. It looks like we may have to re-evaluate our use of those sources as well.Cjim63 (talk) 06:06, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

We've wandered significantly from the topic of the soybean statement -- I'll create new sections below to discuss these sources, once the rest of this calms down slightly. Subverdor (talk) 13:45, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I've put together a proposed herbal formulas section below, that incorporates the controversy while trying to avoid a he-said-she-said style. Subverdor (talk) 21:38, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Done: "... miraculous skill and ability... "

"Finally, while Oom Yung Doe instructors maintain that practicing Traditional Moo Doe in the prescribed manner permits the development of miraculous skill and ability far superior to those of practitioners of other styles of martial arts,"

I don't see this anywhere in the cite. The cited page discusses the difference between proper and improper martial arts training, but nowhere is it implied that Oom Yung Doe is the only source of proper martial arts training. If you read "Unfortunately, in the United States today, there are many schools teaching fabricated movement" as "Unfortunately, in the United States today, all other schools but Oom Yung Doe teach fabricated movement", then it becomes a reasonable citation, but as is it isn't. Subverdor (talk) 04:36, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

This could indeed be improved upon to more accurately keep with the wording of the source. That shouldn't be too difficult.Cjim63 (talk) 06:06, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

I would wholeheartedly support bringing the statement in line with the source, yes. Subverdor (talk) 08:50, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm marking this statement with "citation needed", and I'm planning to remove the section that reads "far superior to those of practitioners in other styles of martial arts" after a few days if no one can find a source for it. Subverdor (talk) 13:47, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Why did this get reverted? I haven't seen anyone contend that the cited source contains backing for the statement that bears the citation. Subverdor (talk) 21:45, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

I've changed it up so that uses wording from the source material.Cjim63 (talk) 02:01, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

"controversy ... conviction and incarceration of the organization's leadership ..."

"Much of the controversy surrounding the schools of Oom Yung Doe stem from the conviction and incarceration of the organization's leadership ... for conspiracy to defraud the U.S. IRS,[4][5][6] the charging of fees in the vicinity of $10,000 per annum,[44][36][8] and accusations of fraudulent[7][8] and unethical business practices including pressuring students to pay excessive prices and providing second-rate training or services to students who do not pay supplemental fees for additional seminars or courses.[13]"

This one is really bizarre. It's not possible in the US for someone to be convicted and incarcerated for accusations of something. I'm not very familiar with the facts of this case, but what I get simply from untwisting the English in this statement is that members of the Oom Yung Doe leadership were convicted of conspiracy to commit tax fraud, convicted of charging high fees (?), and acquitted of fraudulent and unethical business practices and so on. Are those the facts that this statement is attempting to communicate? Subverdor (talk) 04:36, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, maybe this is trying to include too many things into one sentence. They were convicted of conspiracy to commit tax fraud, accused of charging high fees, and also accused of unethical business practices. Although I suppose that in a sense they were convicted of unethical business practices (Unless you consider withholding millions of taxes from the IRS to be ethical. ;) ) I suggest we break the sentence into two or three shorter sentences.

As a side note, some of the statements are vague. For example, the statement that "leadership." Perhaps we could improve the accuracy of the article by including the names of Frank Kucia, Joselito Jakosalem, Thomas Condon and Michael McKay who were the ones specifically convicted by a jury (along with Kim, of course).Cjim63 (talk) 06:06, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

So if they were accused of charging too much, and accused of unethical business practices, but not convicted, then they were acquitted of those two charges, right? Bear in mind I have very little knowledge of this case; I'm still trying to figure out what it is that you're claiming happened. Subverdor (talk) 08:50, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

The court case was about conspiracy to defraud the IRS. Investigative reporters (not the IRS) are the ones leveling the other charges. I believe the sentence was meant to indicate that the controversy stems from the legal case, fees, and business practices; not that Kim was convicted for those three things.Cjim63 (talk) 02:28, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

In that case the sentence should definitely be reworded. "Controversy stems from incarceration for looting, burning, and accusations of pillaging" does not parse as (incarceration for looting) + (burning) + (accusations of pillaging) to me. Subverdor (talk) 03:49, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Looks like its badly worded, I'll have a hack to try and seperate fact from accusation in a bit. --Nate1481 11:27, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Done, comments? --Nate1481 14:52, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

This looks much better. I've cleaned up the English a bit; the only substantive change I made was to note that the tax charges were against thirteen members of the Chung Moo Doe leadership (AFAIK not all thirteen became members of the Oom Yung Doe leadership). I'd like to change the second instance of "Oom Yung Doe" to "Chung Moo Doe" with a similar note and expanded explanation of the two organizations, but I have a feeling that that would be a very, very controversial change that would have a lifetime measured in minutes :-). Thanks, Nate1481. Subverdor (talk) 21:52, 13 January 2009 (UTC)#

That make sense to me, the change could be made but a note (see Help:Footnotes) might be a good idea. Describing the relationship between the organisations would also be a good addition to to the history section. --Nate1481 09:34, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

That sounds like a fantastic idea. Would anyone object to me working on this section to add a clear distinction between Oom Yung Doe and Chung Moo Doe and which controversies have applied to which? I'd like to describe all the controversies that are currently there are applying to Chung Moo Doe (which they do), and then add something like, "Media reports and internet discussion groups have remained critical of Oom Yung Doe; critics point out that the senior leadership of the two organizations is much the same. Oom Yung Doe has not generated the storm of media and legal attention that was the downfall of Chung Moo Doe, however, and positive news stories have begun to appear. A recent Seattle Spectator article critical of the organization[[20]] was met with vocal disagreement by many involved in the school[[21]], prompting a follow-up article that brought (in the author's words) "balance to a piece that, until this point, had very little." Furthermore, there have been several media reports published detailing the benefits described by practitioners, including a segment on the Oprah Winfrey show and TV interviews with a medical doctor who trains at the school."

How would people feel about that (as if I didn't know :-)? Subverdor (talk) 15:15, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

The problem with this section ultimately is that it doesn't do a good job dividing up the Illinois Attorney General's Fourth Amended complaint against John C. Kim (Case No- 89 CH 10044), from the IRS case # 95-CR-214-1, from more modern allegations. Perhaps we should make an effort to divide the legal battles from the media coverage. As for positive media about OYD, the Oprah piece has been included, but the piece on the medical doctor has not, so that is something else to take care of.Cjim63 (talk) 18:33, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

What's the fourth amended complaint about? What was the verdict? Like I say, I know next to nothing about these cases, other than that there was a conviction for conspiracy to commit tax fraud. Subverdor (talk) 01:29, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm only working with what I see, I don't know the background. Could you rework it to include more details of the other case? --Nate1481 09:57, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

A fourth amendment complaint basically is a complaint by the Illiniois Attorney General that Kim, et. al. were doing a list of naughty thing. This complaint was leveled at Kim before the tax case and had to do with the business practices and claims that the Attorney General felt were in violation of, well, the fourth amendment. There is some information in it about shady practices with he money, but that evidence was really gathered by the IRS in raids on the schools. As for the verdict, Kim et. al. fought it to the end but lost and had to pay a cumulative fine of $4,800.00 to, ironically enough the "State Project and Court Ordered Distribution Fund for Consumer Enforcement and Education." State of Illinois also gave a list of things they should do differently in the future. More work does need to be done on the background, but it is a hefty job that will take some time.Cjim63 (talk) 21:38, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

What you've said makes sense but I am still a little confused as I thought fourth amendment was basically about a requirements for warrants etc. but that may just be my (very) limited understanding of US law... however, it may need explaining to avoid WP:systemic bias --Nate1481 11:20, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

The fourth amendment to the United States Constitution protects citizens of the United States against unlawful search and seizure by representatives of the government. It's not possible for a private individual or organization to violate the fourth amendment. A fourth amended complaint is the fourth revision of a complaint, seen in court cases when four revisions (amendments) are made to a filing as the case progresses. The two are not related. Subverdor (talk) 15:34, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Learn something new every day.Cjim63 (talk) 18:52, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I'm adding the proposed paragraph (slightly modified) to the "controversy" section. It doesn't properly fit there; it seems like it would be nice long-term to have a "legal entanglements" section that details the IRS case and the fourth amended complaint, and a "media attention" section that includes a brief history of CMD/OYD coverage both positive and negative. In general I like the idea of moving away from having the article be made of positive sections and negative sections divided into little hostile camps. Subverdor (talk) 01:28, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

These are good edits because they are combining all of the information. I've commented out the sentence where you are using the Seattle times blog. While I would normally not have a problem with that source, we've already moved beyond using blogs, or anything like a series of comments from people on the internet, so adding something like that in is sort of like a set backward in terms of the quality of the citations accepted for the article.Cjim63 (talk) 04:51, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

I actually thought this was a Seattle Spectator (not Times, BTW) article, not a blog posting, but it looks like you're right. It's a blog posting by a staff journalist for a print newspaper, on that print newspaper's site. That still seems to me to be authoritative enough to describe with an explicit description of the source, but it's certainly a lot less solid than if it were an article in the print newspaper, yes.

Tell you what: I'll raise this and the FMC Chung Moo Doe page on WP:RS/N and see what they say. Subverdor (talk) 06:08, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

I am also planning on tackling the legal section over the next couple of days. I support the idea of giving it its own subsection if it ends up being longer than a few sentences. I suspect it will since we really haven't covered very much with what is there right now. We'll see how it goes.Cjim63 (talk) 05:00, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

FMC: "Monitoring by the Freedom of Mind Center"

The Freedom of Mind center hosts a single web page with a reprinted -- and specifically sort of disclaimed by the FMC -- statement from some anonymous source(s) about Chung Moo Doe (which already indicates that it's almost ten years out of date). I fail to see how that indicates anything as active as "monitoring" without an additional citation to convince me. Subverdor (talk) 04:36, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps we should remove the word "monitoring." The Scientology page says something to the effect of "The FMC has maintained files on organization X since year X." The page doesn't say anything specific about the year that they started to maintain files on OYD, but the copyright at the bottom says "2001-2009," so maybe 2001 would be the right year to put.Cjim63 (talk) 06:06, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

I think we should remove this whole section. The fact that the Freedom of Mind Center maintains a ten-year-old web page contributed by some anonymous former members of Chung Moo Doe is, to me, not one of the fourteen most important things about Oom Yung Doe. I'm kind of surprised that it even gets so many citations in this article, never mind its own entire section. Subverdor (talk) 08:50, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

I disagree. The FMC is a perfectly good source with precedent for its use. The "proponents" side of OYD is well addressed through many many citations to the self-published source "A Traditional Explanation..." and the organization's website. The FMC website is one of the key resources for the "critics" side. Both sides must be addressed.Cjim63 (talk) 02:35, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

By your above logic the FMC has "maintained files" on Alcoholics Anonymous[[22]] and Falun Gong[[23]]. I fail to see how stating that the FMC hosts a web page (and therefore "maintains files") on Chung Moo Doe enlightens readers of WP. Their disclaimer reads, "The fact that these groups appear on this list does not necessarily mean they are a destructive mind control cult. They appear because we have received inquiries and have established a file on the group." I don't think that indicating the the FMC has received inquiries about CMD communicates anything factually relevant, and it carries a negative insinuation to me. I'm not certain, but the existence of this page may mean nothing more than that someone once emailed them a screed about Chung Moo Doe [[24]], and they decided to post it with a semi-disclaimer. Do you have any grounds to believe that something more than that was behind the creation of this page? Subverdor (talk) 04:31, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

It enlightens them to the fact that there is controversy surrounding CMD for cult like practices and that the FMC, who's mission is "We endeavor to be a safe and responsible place where you can turn to for resources, news and information about destructive cults, and mind control techniques, as well as learn how to help yourself and others," is a valid and notable source for said controversy. And quite honestly, I'm not liking this campaign of yours I'm seeing to remove any and all discussion of controversy from this article, which is currently well in the bounds of neutrality required by Wikipedia. --Marty Goldberg (talk) 18:29, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Are you saying you don't have any grounds for believing that something more than a single email was behind the creation of this page? If you do have such grounds, what are they? Subverdor (talk) 13:49, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Multiple legal complaints (including complaints of using violence and undue pressure to elicit funds in the fourth amendment complain against Kim), convictions, the multiplicity of media reports and exposes, etc. all could lead someone to believe that there are grounds for making a web page like that.Cjim63 (talk) 18:35, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Ah, yes. "John C. Kim is a bad person, therefore all of this information that says what a bad person he is is pretty trustworthy." Of such pieces are circular structures built. I wasn't asking why you personally felt the information was believable; I was asking for your opinion (well, actually Marty's, but I'd like yours as well) about how that web page might have gotten created. What the simplest, stupidest, least actual-documentation-involving way you can easily believe is. Subverdor (talk) 01:35, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Monitoring is a little strong, but it dose deserve a mention, the FMC is not a gold standard source but as sourcing in martial arts articles go its far better than most. If we can get more detail of where the info came from and some of the articles used it would help, I'll have a google & get back to you... --Nate1481 10:01, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Looking into the matter to get more details would be fine. I was asking, though, just based on your current state of knowledge, whether my proposed theory on this page sounds plausible to you. It seems to me like it's easily possible that one single person emailed the FMC explaining that Chung Moo Doe was a cult, and providing some information on it, and the FMC simply included that information in a page and explained that it came from former members without doing any of its own verification. In fact, it seems sort of unlikely that they would investigate the matter on their own and then not present any conclusions, and certainly the text at the top of the page seems to specifically imply that none of the information contained therein is the FMC's conclusions.

It's not my intention to be rude or pushy, but I've asked this question twice in a row now and gotten silence from the person I asked and eventually a not-quite-answer from someone I didn't ask. We've now run out of alternate people to pipe up with responses :-), so I'll ask it a third time: Does that sound easily plausible to you, or no? Subverdor (talk) 15:20, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Subverdor, if you really want an authoritative answer, you might consider sending an e-mail to someone at the FMC. Also, if you have a message for a specific person, (i.e. not for group discussion), you might consider writing it on that person's talk page.Cjim63 (talk) 21:42, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

That's also a non-answer. It's not my job to do research and debunk things on this page; it's your job to demonstrate that you've done the research and found verifiable sources for everything. I'm just going to keep asking (and this is directed at all three of you; Nate, Marty, and Cjim63): Does my theory sound realistic to you, right now with what you currently know? I'm not trying to be rude, but I really do want to hear the answer to this (or else a concrete statement "I refuse to answer"). It's a simple yes or no question.

Also, just by the way, you still haven't answered a question I asked you five days ago on your talk page related to the copyright for the Sae Gae image. Anyway, I believe that discussion of the Oom Yung Doe article does belong firmly on the Oom Yung Doe talk page. You can assume that if I reply to someone's comment, and in my reply I ask a question, then that question is directed at the person whose comment I replied to. Subverdor (talk) 15:45, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

I give as my opinion that when the FMC made the web site that they did so based on more than a single e-mail about Chung Moo Doe. The fact that there are multiple pages including news articles and citations make me believe that.Cjim63 (talk) 18:59, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

I didn't ask what explanation was your opinion for what had happened. I asked: Does the explanation I've provided sound plausible to you? I can't make you answer if you don't want to, but as long as we're talking I'm not going to stop asking :-). Subverdor (talk) 20:08, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Hm... it seems the conversation's run out of steam. Okay, let me phrase it this way:

Is anyone still going to contend that this is an authoritative source? If so, please address the above question -- whether you think it's plausible that someone on the internet assembled this information (including the full text, and all of the citations) and sent it in an email to the FMC, who published it on their site with minimal verification. If you do think it's plausible, I'd like to hear why you still think that the page is authoritative, since that explanation makes the page no more trustworthy than any random Geocities page. If you don't think that explanation is plausible, I'd like to hear why you don't think it's plausible. Subverdor (talk) 14:51, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Is not asking about 'plausibility' getting close to Original Research? Find any kind of reference critical to FMC and we will gladly look at it. jmcw (talk) 22:53, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

"Original research" describes a type of information that shouldn't be presented within the article. The use of judgment, logic, and argument on the talk pages is not forbidden; in fact, I think it's even encouraged at times. Subverdor (talk) 23:06, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

I'd also like to add that the information at the top of the FMC page, where "8 Martial Arts for Health" is listed as an alternate name for Oom Yung Doe, is definitely and absolutely wrong. "8 Martial Arts for Health" is a group of former Oom Yung Doe instructors who stopped dealing with the national organization and began teaching martial arts (based on what they'd learned in Oom Yung Doe) on their own. You can see the difference if you look at the list of locations[[25]] and compare it to the list of Oom Yung Doe locations[[26]]. You can also call up one of their schools and ask about John C. Kim and I'm sure you'll get an earful. I've heard that they sometimes define themselves as "Oom Yung Doe schools", but describing them as synonymous with Oom Yung Doe, in terms of being an evil cult based around worship of John C. Kim, is about as wrong as you can get. Subverdor (talk) 15:18, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

The site is referring to OYD. The fact that sources call the schools CMQ, CMD and OYD support that. 8 martial arts taught as one, 8 martial arts for health etc. may refer to certain schools that have left OYD; however, it is also commonly used in OYD promotional material, on school fronts, etc.Cjim63 (talk) 04:48, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Are you really arguing that because the term "8 Martial Arts" appears in Oom Yung Doe promotional materials, it's okay to list the organization "8 Martial Arts for Health" as a synonym for "Oom Yung Doe", even though that name describes a separate organization that actively refuses to associate with the Oom Yung Doe organization? Subverdor (talk) 06:14, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

WP:RS/N seems to be of the opinion that the FMC is not a reliable source, so I'm planning to remove it as a source and add "citation needed" as appropriate. Subverdor (talk) 07:45, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Only one person at Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Freedom_of_Mind_page_on_Chung_Moo_Doe commented: someone who has no editing experience in the Martial Arts Wikipedia. I would not call that the opinion of RS/N. Perhaps you could shop for some more opinions before you delete things. jmcw (talk) 21:08, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Could I suggest a compromise? There are four usages of FMC in the article:

• a cites FMC and has a 'citation needed' tag
• b cites FMC and has a second reference from 'City Pages'
• c cites FMC only
• d cites FMC citing what FMC reports. I think this is OK.

Could I propose adding a 'citation needed' tag to c? jmcw (talk) 21:37, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

If there's been a response indicating that the source is not reliable, the onus should be on the proponents of that source to seek contradictory opinions (which I see you've been doing). Looking at the kinds of things that get sources considered as "not reliable" on WP:RS/N, I got the feeling that the reason the FMC got so little response was that it was so obviously an unreliable source that no one thought it was an interesting enough question to pay attention to.

Unless I see a contradictory opinion on WP:RS/N about the reliability of this source, I'm still planning to remove it. If anyone feels that it should stay, now is the time to solicit supporting opinions.

You do realize that "cites FMC citing what FMC reports" was precisely what I did with the Seattle Spectator blog post, which edit was reverted without any discussion or any checking with WP:RS/N, right? I actually was convinced that that removal was correct (see the discussion on WP:RS/N#Are_staff_blogs_on_newspapers_considered_.22media_coverage.22.3F), and I think that removal of the FMC page is also correct, but the obviousness (to me) of the double standard was what prompted me to go to WP:RS/N with both. Let's have one standard, and let's have it follow WP policy. Subverdor (talk) 13:58, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

You have your opinion and one additional opinion from RS/N. There are several other opinions here on the talk page. I do not see that you have reached a consensus. jmcw (talk) 17:24, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

That "one additional opinion" is from a Wikipedia administrator.

I said before that I'd rather discuss and build consensus. That seems better than putting all the burden on third parties to make sense of all this and figure out something "fair". That being said, my options for building consensus through debate are pretty limited if the people I'm debating simply won't respond to certain points, or answer certain questions. I put in time and effort to explain in detail why I didn't agree that this source was verifiable, and I don't feel that my arguments were addressed at all, even when I distilled them to a single, specific question and asked it five or six times in a row.

Certainly that's your right; I'm not going to tell you how you can and can't debate this issue. The fact is, though, that on Wikipedia there are options for settling disagreements when there isn't consensus. If you stick in your heels and absolutely refuse to address something, and I bring it to the attention of an admin and that person agrees with me, that's probably an indication that you should have listened more to what I had to say. Continuing to stick in your heels and arguing that I need to come up with even more of an effort to convince you of what I'm saying is no longer a reasonable option at that point.

If you want to try to convince people on WP:RS/N that this is a reliable source, that's fine for me, but I'm not going to spend any more time trying to "reach a consensus" on this issue. The time to do that has come and gone. Subverdor (talk) 19:46, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Ummm, perhaps you don't realize that admins are not gods? Admins also prefer to build consensus. I have sympathy that you feel frustrated but the people who have commented here do not yet agree with you. This article is difficult because it must have several POVs. And we do have lots of time<g>. And the options for resolving disagreements on Wikipedia require reaching consensus. jmcw (talk) 22:26, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Admins are not gods. They even make mistakes from time to time (which is one reason I'd prefer to talk things out here than go to a noticeboard with each individual issue). They are authorities here, though, and disagreeing with their stated opinion should address their reasoning a lot more specifically than, "Well, I do not yet agree with you." Actually, that's true for disagreeing with anyone's stated opinion, but certainly more so for admins.

I'd also like to quote from WP:CON: "'Consensus' between a small number of editors can never override the community consensus that is presented in Wikipedia's policies and guidelines; instead, consensus is the main tool for enforcing these standards. The focus of every dispute should be determining how best to comply with the relevant policies and guidelines. Editors have reached consensus when they agree that they have appropriately applied Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, not when they personally like the outcome." Subverdor (talk) 04:39, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

FMC: "Monitoring by the Freedom of Mind Center" continued

I am trying to get a fresh view on this. Have you looked at other articles use of FMC? [27] jmcw (talk) 12:40, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

That is exactly the opposite of specifically addressing the administrative opinion that resulted from raising this issue on WP:RS/N. I'm removing this source from this article. If anyone would like to restore it, I would ask that you first address the problems that have been cited with this source (both the question I raised which went unanswered, and the issue dougweller raised on the noticeboard). Subverdor (talk) 00:22, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Subverdor, I would like to restore the FMC source. It is a source that has been used in other articles. I've posted something to the effect on the WP:RS/N. We'll see if that will attract some more attention. I think that most people would agree that You + One Other Person (even and administrator) does not a consensus make.

I've also noticed that you've said several times that noone addressed the question that you asked about FMC. I read over the section you wrote above again, and I am afraid that I still do not understand your question. It would be nice if you would restate the question again, perhaps in different words so that a couple of people can give their opinion.Cjim63 (talk) 01:17, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

You do realize that there are over two million articles on WP, and that a certain number of them incorrectly use unreliable sources, right? Using "other articles use it" as a reason to keep a source makes a chicken-and-egg problem which would make it effectively impossible to remove an unreliable source once it's cited on a sufficient number of articles.

Once again, my question is: Does it sound plausible to you that the origin of this page was that a single person emailed Steve Hassan a little screed about Chung Moo Doe, and he posted it on his website without any particular verification? I'm not asking if that's your preferred explanation, just whether it sounds plausible to you that that might have happened. Subverdor (talk) 07:06, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

My answer is "no," as it currently exists, the editors of the website obviously made an effort to do at least a little verification. The abundance of newspaper articles suggests that someone made a concerted effort to go beyond simply posting something because of a single e-mail. If a single e-mail was the original impetus behind making the website is impossible to determine.

I do realize that other articles can incorrectly cite sources. However, the article on Scientology is very closely followed by a lot of people. It is protected, carefully guarded for vandalism, and a lot of discussion and formal dispute resolution has gone on there to addressing sourcing issues. So I don't think that someone just "snuck in" with the source.Cjim63 (talk) 05:55, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

It sounds like you're saying that the page must have undergone some verification because there's a bibliography. It seems highly likely to me that the bibliography at the end of the page was included by whoever wrote the document in the first place, possibly with minor contributed revisions over the years. I don't feel that that's an indication of verification. If I've understood you correctly, then why do you feel those citations must have been researched by the editor(s) of the website?

There's a citation of Rick Ross in the Scientology article, which I'm assuming is what you mean. I know you said above that you consider the two interchangeable, but they don't seem to be at all the same to me[[28]][[29]]. Why do you think they're operated by the same people? Even if it does somehow turn out that they're somehow operated by the same people, can you please make it clear when you're talking about rickross.com and when you're talking about freedomofmind.com? Switching the terminology around seems needlessly confusing to me. Subverdor (talk) 14:20, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Cjim63 seems to have indicated on my talk page that he's not planning to address the above points, because "further discussion about the FMC article does not seem to be bearing fruitful results". Subverdor (talk) 19:26, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

I see that this has been reverted, without my question above or the admin's logic for why this is an unreliable source being addressed at all. How would you (Cjim63, Jmcw37, and anyone else who still feels that this source needs to stay) feel about mediation or other formal dispute resolution on this issue? Subverdor (talk) 14:12, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Maybe someone else other than I would be a judge of whether dispute resolution would be necessary or not. For my part I don't have any problems with some formal review.Cjim63 (talk) 05:55, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Hm, it seems that the RFC isn't having much effect, and I haven't heard from Cjim63 in about a week. If Cjim63 does not reappear in the near future, is there anyone else who would be willing to enter mediation on this issue? Subverdor (talk) 13:43, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

February 11, 2009: First Reliable Source discussion has been archived without conclusion (but with opinions): Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_27#Freedom_of_Mind_page_on_Chung_Moo_Doe. jmcw (talk) 13:48, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

March 27, 2009: Second Reliable Source discussion has been archived without conclusion (but with opinions): Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_30#Is_the_Freedom_of_Mind_page_on_Chung_Moo_Doe_reliable.3F. jmcw (talk) 10:59, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm going to take the silence that greeted my question about mediation as an indication that people here (other than Cjim63, who is still radio silent) are not willing to enter mediation on this topic. This is frustrating for me. The only substantive arguments I've seen get made in favor of this source are:

• It includes citations to other sources and therefore must be reliable / must be verified.
• Other pages on freedomofmind.com and rickross.com are used in other WP articles.

Neither of those seem to hold any water to me; they just don't seem to be reasons to consider a source reliable. Furthermore, it seems like my arguments against the source -- even when I phrase them in the form of direct, yes-or-no questions and ask them over and over again -- tend to get ignored in favor of talking about something else. Do you folks really think it's reasonable to simply keep stating, "We think it's reliable," and refuse to offer any better reasons than those two above, and refuse to address specific points I'm asking you to address?

If anyone feels I've misrepresented the argument in favor of this source above, please speak up -- if there are other arguments in favor of this source besides those two, I've missed them in going over the conversation so far. Subverdor (talk) 23:54, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm still around. I figured I would take some time off to deal with life. Anyways, the article seemed to be going around in circles for a bit there. I'd be fine with mediation. In looking at the comments on the the Noticeboard, it seems like there is a range of ideas about the resource. I believe that user "Sticky Parkin" makes the most balanced argument in that the web site might be sited as an expert on cults, rather than as an expert on martial arts. The only statement in the article that is dependent on the website is the reference to the alias "Jack Park." The article by Jennifer Vogel, the Zeckman articles, etc. cover the the business practices, etc.

Subverdor, with regard to your specific "Yes-no" question, I beleive I did answer it when I said "My answer is "no," as it currently exists, the editors of the website obviously made an effort to do at least a little verification. The abundance of newspaper articles suggests that someone made a concerted effort to go beyond simply posting something because of a single e-mail. If a single e-mail was the original impetus behind making the website is impossible to determine." Perhaps you don't like the answer, but there it is.Cjim63 (talk) 05:30, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Right -- you did address my question with a sentence or two (and I included what you said when I listed the two substantive "pro" arguments I've seen). You then specifically refused to address my followup questions. No one else even addressed my question in the first place. I feel like that's not a very good outcome to show for weeks of discussion totaling tens of kilobytes of text :-). Subverdor (talk) 19:26, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Subverdor, this article is not the first priority in everyones life. Everyone has (or should have<g>) a budget of time for Wiki. Several experienced MA editors have tried to help with this difficult article. RS attracted only a few comments and no resolution. I invited three administrators who are also MA experienced to make comments. Could I suggest that you and Cjim form a consensus here on the talk page? You two are very interested in this article - I am sure together you can bring it to good quality. jmcw (talk) 08:41, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I have other priorities too. I probably assign a higher priority to the article than you folks because the school is something that's pretty important to me. I'm not so much complaining about lack of discussion as I am about lack of response to my arguments. People certainly have shown a willingness to spend time and bytes on the topic, which makes it doubly irritating to me when I make arguments or ask questions and see them not get addressed.

Not spending time on WP is any human being's right. If you're willing to spend time reverting my edits or adding to the article, though, I think asking that you spend some time responding to criticisms (and not just writing back to me your own arguments or saying "there isn't consensus") on the talk page is pretty justifiable.

Let's see what the admins you have invited have to say before trying formal mediation. Subverdor (talk) 19:26, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

I've now filed a formal request for mediation on this topic. Since no one but Cjim63 indicated willingness to take part, I've listed only myself and Cjim63 as the involved parties. Subverdor (talk) 14:14, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

The 7-day window for Cjim63 to formally indicate agreement to the mediation has now passed, and then some. While the mediation request hasn't been officially rejected, I'll consider it dead in the water unless something happens to it.

I'm now planning to re-remove this citation unless there are some more substantive arguments in favor of it (additions to the two I've listed above, or explanations why one of those two is a valid reason to consider a source reliable). I plan to seek arbitration or other heavy-handed intervention if someone reverts the change without presenting a good argument for considering this source reliable. Subverdor (talk) 03:29, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Some general comments

I'd like to leave this little section up for a few days so until there are a couple of other opinions posted. Then lets go ahead and edit away on all of the above areas. If anyone else has some general comments on the rash of edits we'll be doing, please put something down in the various sections. On our way to 'B' class article!Cjim63 (talk) 06:06, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. Subverdor (talk) 08:50, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Done: "founded in 1972" from the opening paragraph

Oom Yung Doe was not founded in 1972. John C. Kim came to the U.S. in 1972; depending on who you listen to, Oom Yung Doe was either founded much earlier or a few decades later. Does anyone happen to know when Oom Yung Doe schools were first opened in the United States (hopefully sidestepping the issue of who to listen to)? Subverdor (talk) 02:13, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Most OYD web sites list 1972 or 1973. We previously used the date 1973; however, an early re-write of the page by OYD staff suggested that it started in 1972, so we've used that. OYD was not founded much earlier since Kim was not in the US yet, and it was not founded later. If you could provide some of the sources for your comments, maybe it could be considered.Cjim63 (talk) 04:45, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

John C. Kim's first martial arts school was founded in the early 70s, teaching Kong Su (empty hand hard form, like karate or tae kwon doe). Oom Yung Doe is a specific organization (teaching much more than hard form) that was founded sometime around 2000. I actually can see a reasonable argument that the school has always been the same, just with four different names over the years, even if personally I don't agree. Maybe the best approach is to avoid listing the founding date in the summary, and then give the full history in the history section, and not have the article make a judgement on whether Oom Yung Doe was "really" founded in 1972 or 1999 or whenever. Is that okay for you? Subverdor (talk) 14:08, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

I think the idea behind the article is to address the organization lead by John C. Kim over the years. That is why it gets the redirects from Chung Moo Doe, Chung Moo Quan, etc. The OYD sources themselves self-describe the schools as an organization that has had various name changes over the years. In other words, based on the sources, I don't see how anyone would come away with the impression that Kong Su/Chung Moo Quan/Chung Moo Doe/Oom Yung Doe is anything other than a single organization which has had different names over the years. That is how the history is explained in all of the OYD websites and books. Perhaps you are referring to a source that I am unfamiliar with. I am familiar with other schools with similar names, for example Chung Moo Kwan, but these schools are already described in other wikipedia articles, for example here and here.Cjim63 (talk) 04:33, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Your idea behind the article is to address the organizations led by John C. Kim over the years. A strictly factual perspective -- Wikipedia policy's idea behind the article, IOW -- is that there are four different organizations; it is factually incorrect to state that Oom Yung Doe was founded in 1972 simply because you feel that the other three lines of schools were so similar that they "should be" considered synonymous. Oom Yung Doe LLC was created sometimes around 2000 (I'm not sure exactly when). The others were different organizations. There's a legal abstraction for changing the name of an existing company, and I'm certainly not aware of it having been followed to change "Kong Su" to "Chung Moo Quan" to etc. There are plenty of other differences between the schools internally; anyone who trained in both Oom Yung Doe and Chung Moo Doe can tell you plenty about the differences.

I thought I was being pretty reasonable to say that even though the actual, technical, legal fact is that the four were different, though similar, schools founded consecutively as sort of successors of one another, I won't ask that be the way it's presented in the article. I really can understand the argument that the underlying truth of the matter is that they're all the same school with the name repeatedly changing even if that's not the legal formalism. I think that argument is partially true. What makes sense to me, then, is a compromise under which we include the history of the earlier schools, explain the facts about which ways they look like the same school and which ways they look like different schools, and remain silent on the topic of whether they're "really" the same school (which is sort of a judgement call for the reader to make IMHO, since the answer is "yes and no").

Is that really a problem for you? Subverdor (talk) 06:26, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

I think most people would probably be more sympathetic to your line of reasoning if you could provide some articles or sources with these "actual, technical, legal" facts that your are referring to.Cjim63 (talk) 03:23, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Sure. Oom Yung Doe LLC was formed in 2002[[30]]. If you can find a pre-1999 incorporation under that name, or a reference to a US-based organization called "Oom Yung Doe" before then, I'll be very surprised. Subverdor (talk) 14:14, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

This is a nice source to use in the article. It does suggest that an LP/LLC was filed for OOM YUNG DOE LLC on 1/18/2002. However, that does not show that all of this paperwork wasn't done by the leadership of the Chung Moo Doe line of martial arts. One might look at this as evidence of when the name change occurred. The OYD sources self reports that "Grandmaster Kim" was the founder of the Traditional Moo Doe line of martial arts which has had the following names: "Kong Su", "Chung Moo Quan", "Chung Moo Doe", and "Oom Yung Doe". Then there are all of the newspaper articles, such as this one. In fact we see the following on the OYD web site:

Schools licensed by Oom Yung Doe, LLC have the right to use these items to properly display the strength of the Oom Yung Doe™ Line. Someone who doesn't have a license with Oom Yung Doe but uses any items (some examples shown below) to portray teaching or promoting the Oom Yung Doe, Chung Moo Doe or Chung Moo Quan line of Traditional Moo Doe is clearly in violation of federal trademark law.

Below this citation we see schools and flags with "Oom Yung Doe", "Chung Moo Quan", "Chung Moo Doe", "East Asia All Martial Arts United" and so on. The number of sources that show a direct linear connection between Chung Moo Quan, Chung Moo Doe, and Oom Yung Doe are almost overwhelming. For example, try typing in "www.chungmoodoe.com" and see where it sends you.Cjim63 (talk) 01:40, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps your issue is with specifically using the term "Oom Yung Doe" in the very first sentence that indicates that the schools were establish in 1972. Perhaps the more generic term "Traditional Moo Doe" could be used, and we could add a very brief overview of some the names that have been used over the years.Cjim63 (talk) 01:46, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, my issue is very specifically with using the term "Oom Yung Doe" in the opening paragraph to refer to organizations that precede Oom Yung Doe and are, technically, different organizations. You've hit the nail right on the head :-). I don't think "Traditional Moo Doe" is good for this, because "Moo Doe" more or less just means "martial arts" (and the term is used by plenty of other martial arts schools), but rephrasing it so it says "schools led by John C. Kim" or some such definitely sounds like a step in the right direction. Subverdor (talk) 07:16, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. I'll make some changes to try and make it more precise.Cjim63 (talk) 05:58, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

This looks much better to me now. Thanks! Subverdor (talk) 15:12, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

"there had been communications between Ludden and Chung Moo Doe instructors just prior to his disappearance"

What's the excerpt from the cited source (whichever one corresponds to this statement) that supports this? Subverdor (talk) 14:54, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Read the sources. Some of the television programs referenced also are available on youtube.Cjim63 (talk) 18:48, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

My comment below also applies here. Also, which one(s) of those sources is or are being claimed as support for this statement? Surely you can't be arguing that it's reasonable to give a single statement eight or ten citations and expect any editor who challenges the statement to specifically check each one of the citations to verify whether it contains support for the statement. Subverdor (talk) 19:52, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

You need to read/watch the sources. I don't think it is unreasonable to expect a fellow editor to read or view, at least once, the sources used to write the article. If that really is a problem, I'll hunt down the exact statements in a couple of days.Cjim63 (talk) 17:52, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

If you're willing to, then please do. I'm perfectly willing to spend twenty minutes on the internet watching a specific video that's claimed as support. I'm not willing to spend an afternoon at the library digging up six different print sources from local media in at least two states to challenge a single sentence, and I don't think it's at all reasonable to ask me to do so. Subverdor (talk) 15:46, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

I've added a "citation needed" to this specific statement. Subverdor (talk) 04:13, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

"often viewed as highly suspect"

"In fact, the effectiveness and credibility of the Oom Yung Doe style and its senior members are often viewed as highly suspect by other members of the martial arts community." What's the excerpt from the cited source that supports this? Subverdor (talk) 14:40, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Read the source provided. Your local referance librarian can help you there.Cjim63 (talk) 18:47, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

The burden of proof is on the editor that wants a statement included in Wikipedia to argue that there's a solid foundation for including it. I'm not asking that you fax me a copy of the article, or prove definitively that a copy on the internet isn't faked, or anything particularly unreasonable (as I see it). Whoever included this statement obviously should have access to the source, though, so I don't see that it's at all unreasonable to ask them to take a few minutes to dig up the excerpt that supports the cited statement and tell us what it says. One reason I'm asking is that we've now discussed a few sources on the internet which haven't at all supported the statements which bear those citations, and so I think starting to get a little bit paranoid about whether cited sources actually back up the statements they're attached to is warranted at this point.

Does that sound reasonable to you, or no? Subverdor (talk) 19:35, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

It does sound unreasonable. The burden of evidence is on the editor in the sense that statements in the articles must be accurate reflections of the resources; however, Wikipedia is not a court, where you have to actually present evidence and testimony to a jury of sorts. Everyone on Wikipedia is involved in evaluating sources and editing. To be sincere, I know that your purpose here is to eliminate what you view as misinformation about OYD which editors (mostly myself) have written about OYD. While I do feel it is good to maintain the very highest level of accuracy in the article and welcome the constructive criticism you've brought, I am not a defensive lawyer who's professional job is to hunt down, index, and provide evidence to a jury in a court of law. In other words, we are all lay people doing researcher and I think it is equally incumbent upon all of us to do that research. I do feel it is unreasonable to expect me to provide copies of "evidence" for each and ever statement that is challenged to anyone who happens to make a challenge. In many cases I am willing to do that, and have done that, but I do think it is unreasonable to expect me to always do that.

As for this article, it was highly critical of OYD and was published in a magazine called "Martial Arts Pro" that was read by many martial artists. Changing the statement to "In fact, the effectiveness and credibility of the Moo Doe style and its senior members are viewed as highly suspect by some members of the martial arts community." would be perhaps be a more precise statement, but trust me when I say that this is really the most positive change one could make based on this source. Once again, if you do not trust me, I still feel that you do need to do some research yourself in order to have a basis for your challenge.Cjim63 (talk) 17:48, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

If I may jump in with a small comment: as discussed elsewhere on this page, this controversial article does not have high quality references. When a reference is difficult to verify, its value is low. We need more higher quality references here. jmcw (talk) 22:36, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

First off, "Moo Doe" means "martial arts." See the Mudo redirect. It's not a particular style.

Second, you do need to "hunt down" backing for statements before including them in Wikipedia -- not simply because I'm asking you to in this particular case, but for every statement (particularly contentious ones) that you're planning to include. It looks like this statement was first included with citations to blog and forum postings, and then changed to the Martial Arts Pro reference after the fact. I'd like to know what statements were found in that article that supported the statement. You should have already "hunted down" the source in order to cite it, obviously, so as I said, it's just a matter of typing a few sentences in so we can all have a clear idea of what support there is. Technically, you're only required by Wikipedia policy to provide specific page numbers (see Wikipedia:BURDEN#Burden_of_evidence), but figuring those out without also providing an excerpt seems needlessly combative. If you feel it's unreasonable for you to provide "evidence" that every single one of your citations is solid, how can you claim it's reasonable to ask me to provide "evidence" arguing against every single citation attached to every contentious statement by every editor (when one sentence can have 8 citations and challenged statements can get new citations without being modified)?

Third, leaving it as "some people say X" is weasel wording. I'm sure you can find "some people" who say that almost any martial arts style is no good. I think we've made some good progress so far changing these types of statements into more specific statements that identify the speakers (when those speakers have a reason to be considered authorities). I'm planning ultimately to argue for changing this statement similarly. We (I) need to at least figure out exactly who's making the statement and what statement it is before moving on to that step, though. Subverdor (talk) 15:39, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

I've replaced this citation with a "citation needed" tag. If you're planning to restore it, please indicate the precise page numbers, and an excerpt would be helpful in addition. Subverdor (talk) 04:14, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Translations of "Oom Yung Doe" and "Chung Moo Doe"

The section of "training" that discusses the translations of "Oom Yung Doe" and "Chung Moo Doe" looks a little suspect to me. "Chung" can mean "correct", but my extremely limited understanding is that "moo" does not mean "martial." I thought it meant "zero" or "nothing" (with "moo doe" translating directly as "zero way", or as a phrase as "martial arts"). There are a few different interpretations of "Oom Yung Doe" in the school; the preferred one may be "a way to develop harmony through practice" (which seems to me like a more English-friendly version of the direct translation "harmony-symbol way"), but that statement certainly isn't contained anywhere in the text that was cited as support.

I'm marking everything in this section that looks suspect with a "citation needed" tag. I don't actually think that translations need citations to a dictionary; in this case I'm using that tag for its "Subverdor is planning to delete this unless someone can find solid backing for it" meaning :-).

For what it's worth, the handbook does have this to say about the terms: "'Chung Moo,' translated means Mind and Body. 'Oom Yung' (Korean) means the same as Yin Yang (Chinese). While 'Chung Moo' more specifically means 'mind and body,' 'Oom Yung' means the balance and harmony of everything in nature -- which, of course is inclusive of 'mind and body.'" Subverdor (talk) 00:54, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Recent edits by Wuxiayi

It looks like this topic is getting exciting :-).

I'm reverting some recent edits by Wuxiayi (while preserving other edits which seem at least to be compliant with WP policy). Specifically:

• "There is no independent verification that such an event occured." -- needs a citation
• "Oom Yung Doe's categorization of styles has been criticized as unconventional. For instance, bagua, taichi, and shippalgye are all considered different styles of kung fu and Oom Yung Doe's "aikido" bears a striking resemblence to basic kung fu chin na techniques." -- "has been criticized" constitutes weasel words, and this statement needs a citation.

I also take issue with "and the only evidence that such an event occurred comes from Oom Yung Doe itself", but I also took issue with that sentence for exactly the same reasons before the addition of that statement. I don't see that simply lengthening the poorly-sourced sentence is much of a concern, so I'm not reverting it.

If someone wants to re-make these changes, I'd ask that you please explain first why you feel these statements are reasonable to include (including good citations which you plan to use in the article). Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Subverdor (talk • contribs) 02:51, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm also reverting most of the change readding the reference to the Pa Kua Chang journal. The "specific criticism" that's referred to seems to be, "Ha ha! What a silly idea," which (1) isn't actually a disproof, merely a statement that that specific person hasn't heard that version before and considers it ridiculous, and (2) doesn't seem necessary, since we do make the much stronger statement that the legend differs from the currently understood factual history.

It still seems to me that you're tilting at windmills here. The legend presented in the handbook is described as such, and immediately followed by a note that historians generally agree that it's not actually the truth. What value do you think is brought to the article by piling on additional evidence to "debunk" the legend? Subverdor (talk) 14:08, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Wuxiayi, could you please post what exactly is being reported in this article? Perhaps it is relevant.Cjim63 (talk) 01:48, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

I found a PDF of the relevant Pa Kua Chang journal on the internet, but I can't seem to find it now. If you can't find it and are interested I can send it to you. The only section that seems relevant to Wuxiayi's statement seems to be a single sentence saying (in a discussion of bad Bagua teachers), "I even have one teacher's promotional material that says (I kid you not) that his system of Ba Gua was invented 2000 years ago by a man named Master Ba Gua. The brochure continues by saying that the art is called 'Ba Gua' because the originator's name was 'Ba Gua.'"

You might well find this interesting -- I see now that the author of this journal gets unhappy just as you do about lines of Bagua which claim to predate Dong Haichuan, although I don't see any specific citations. Subverdor (talk) 07:39, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Unless the author identifies the school or goes into some depth about the claim, it might not be as relevant to the discussion as an article on martial arts history might be. Perhaps this source would be worth more extensive consideration if we decide to substantially expanded the scope of this section later on.Cjim63 (talk) 07:02, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Proposed new Herbal Formulas section

How's this for a slightly more informative section on herbal formulas that doesn't have to include "described as" in the first sentence, "purportedly" in the second, "claim to" in the third, etc.? I'll have to find references for a lot of this stuff, but assuming that I can find more or less verifiable references, it seems that this would add slightly to the quality of the article while not glossing over the controversy:

---

Herbal formulas are an essential part of Oom Yung Doe practice. Nearly all long-term practitioners apply liquid herbal formulas to their skin before, during, or after practice. There are several formulas with various intended effects, but in general the herbs are said to aid in recovery after strenuous practice, remove toxins from the body, and improve circulation and energy flow during practice. In addition, some training techniques use specific dry herbal equipment; the most common examples are cloth bags filled with beans and powdered herbs. Some of these bags are held in the hand while practicing forms, and some are placed on a table for practice involving striking the bags with various hand attacks. During practice with this equipment, powdered herbs are said to penetrate the cloth and be absorbed into the hands.

Some critics have contended that the herbal equipment used in Oom Yung Doe represents little more than an additional revenue stream for the school. Although herbal equipment is included in standard introductory programs and most seminars, most students purchase additional liquid herbs on a regular basis, and Oom Yung Doe's herbal equipment can cost upwards of forty dollars. During an investigation for a news program, Steve Given (dean of the School of Oriental Medicine at Bastyr University) examined a set of dry herbal equipment and concluded that it contained nothing but soybeans worth far less than the amount the student had paid for the equipment.

---

How would people react to the replacement of "Acupressure and herbal equipment" with this section, and the removal of the herbal part of the "Criticisms of training" section? Subverdor (talk) 21:36, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

I just saw that the "criticisms" section does include a note that Oom Yung Doe is the only approved source of herbal equipment; I'll add a statement to that effect. You should assume for purposes of reviewing what I wrote above that I included that information, since I am sure that it'll come up :-). Subverdor (talk) 21:56, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

I think this is pretty good. The problem with this (as with many other sections) is citation. While I like what you've written, every little bit of it needs to have citations. The resources online tend to say very general things about training like "The use of Traditional Moo Doe herbal equipment and topical herbs with the proper training techniques ensure much quicker and safer results as they quickly harmonize the body and increase energy flow throughout the body. This increased energy allows you to be more secure and have a much easier and happier daily life." - which doesn't tell you much about the actual use of the herbs.

One of the main issues we are facing in the article is the issue of citations and so called original research. For example, what you have written above is quite true, but there aren't sources that are sufficiently specific. Likewise, I know that Kim used the alias Park, etc. but that information is also subject to excision because sources are not sufficiently specific.Cjim63 (talk) 23:20, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

I think it should be possible to find sources that will back up this information. It may be necessary to draw on Oom Yung Doe internal literature, but I actually don't think relying selectively on that is as dubious as people here seem to think it is. The reasoning behind not using self-published sources as a verifiable source is that anyone can self-publish a book; it's effectively the same as printing something out on your laser printer and signing it with a ball-point pen. There's no editor to filter out obvious falsehood, or unjustified logic, or just general poor quality. Internal manuals and literature for an organization, in my opinion, are a lot different; if you're trying to document what the office supply policy is at The New York Times, or what the bylaws of the Shriners are, then using an internal manual or reference seems perfectly solid, whether it's a stapled printout or a self-published book or a web page or whatever. I understand there's a line to be drawn -- the Shriners can't write "the Shriners are all ten feet tall" in their bylaws and then demand that Wikipedia include it -- but for relatively mundane information that nobody really objects to, I don't see that there's a problem drawing on Oom Yung Doe's internal sources. It'll certainly make the article a lot more informative without really compromising its verifiability. Someone could always argue that liquid extracts are applied only before practice, never after, and there's an elaborate conspiracy in the Oom Yung Doe internal literature to pretend that it's applied after, but if so we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

I'm sort of figuring out that the key thing here is to try to improve the quality and factuality of the article at the same time. I think if we both just keep trying to pull in our respective directions we'll wind up spending a large, large amount of time tugging back and forth on individual phrases to no particular effect. Yes, I'm aware that I started that particular contest :-). I just saw how much easier and faster it was to write that section than to convince anybody of anything by complaining about the "classical herbal formulas" phrase. Subverdor (talk) 01:19, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

I think I will just put it in the article as it is and add "citation needed" as, well, needed. I think it would be wise, from the critics point of view to include the specific items that our Critical Dean of Oriental medicine said. That way, the Wikia will simply be reporting facts and cannot possibly be accused of bias. As for internal documents, I personally don't have any personal aversion to their use; however, I am totally unaware of Wikipedia policy on that.Cjim63 (talk) 01:36, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

I believe the relevant policy is ignore all rules.

Yes, I did just claim that my own self-published internal sources can be used as verifiable while continuing to argue that yours are self-published and therefore not verifiable. Neat trick, huh?  :-) Subverdor (talk) 14:54, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

I would suggest that we have kind of moved beyond the "ignore all the rules" policy at this point, thanks, in part, to your efforts. ;) However, lets allow this part have the benefit of the doubt for the time being since it badly needs improved expansion. We can be rigorous with it later when it has had time to mature and we've had more time to find relevant articles in news reports, etc.Cjim63 (talk) 18:39, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

'Black or White' Proposal

Today there are 53 references for this article. Three are books with an ISBN number. One is a US Federal Prisoner database. There is an article from King 5 television web page. IMO these 5 references are the only academic, verifiable references.

I hereby propose a motion to move to 'Black or White': let us remove all other material and have a strict Wiki article.

Or is this controversial article more valuable with the multiple, non-perfect-academic sources in shades of dirty gray? jmcw (talk) 09:09, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Some of those "gray" sources are ones that some people are going to argue are reliable (and my purely personal opinion is that a local TV station's news reports are far from "academic"). If you feel that 90% of the citations need to go away, it seems like it would be better to argue them point by point. That's what I've been doing with the changes I've been wanting to make to the article. It is a lot more time-consuming, but it seems that that's the only way to make big changes with everyone having a chance to give detailed input. Subverdor (talk) 13:56, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

The "dirty gray" sources provide the context for the sections that use the books with ISBN numbers. That would leave us with the US Federal Prisoner database and the King 5 page. I suppose we could try and base the article on just those sources, if that is the consensus.

BTW are the US federal court case and the Illinois Attorney General complaints not considered to be reliable sources?Cjim63 (talk) 07:17, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Only lazy, skeptical editors who cannot access the material over the Internet think these sources are not verifiable. (me, in this context of 'black or white'<g>.) jmcw (talk) 12:40, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

While I haven't found complete dockets on the net, there are bits and pieces of information available on the internet. For example, of the Illinois complaint here. If this link quits working go here and type in Case Year: 1989, Division Code: CH, Case Number: 10044. I also do have an electronic copy of the court docket for the federal case.Cjim63 (talk) 02:31, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

This is a valid reference that there was a court case but it says nothing about the statement that it should support ("Champion of All Asia", when in fact, Kim never won said championship."[27]) jmcw (talk) 09:23, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

That source itself does not claim to be accurate. You will note at the bottom it says "Please note: Neither the Circuit Court of Cook County nor the Clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County warrants the accuracy, completeness, or the currency of this data. This data is not an official record of the Court or the Clerk and may not be represented as an official court record." I provided it as evidence on the internet that the Illinois complaint case did occur. Are court cases not considered reliable sources?

Anyways, the real question still remains. I think the books will be cut out since they won't be relevant without context. Do you still think that there will be enough for a decent article?Cjim63 (talk) 19:15, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

There is a difference between reliable and "academic" sources. They are not the same. Television-reported journalism and other sources can be considered perfectly reliable, as the definition of reliability on Wikipedia states that a reliable source is one with an identifiable editorial structure and fact checking. The sources proposed to be removed to do have such things, and are thus clearly reliable to my way of thinking. Steven Walling (talk) 20:25, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

I wouldn't call television news "perfectly" reliable. I do agree with you that it seems to be reliable enough to be used as a source on Wikipedia, but the investigation is often somewhat cursory, and TV reports are notorious for sometimes misrepresenting things to make a more exciting story (see for example CNN's famous treatment of Mike Cena's interview discussing steroids[[31]]). Probably if you've ever known someone who's had personal involvement with a story that made it to the local news, you know that local stations in particular sometimes get things maddeningly wrong. Subverdor (talk) 00:04, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Does anyone want to use just the King 5 and the Prisoner database to write the article? Personally I am of two minds about the proposal, so some other opinions would be nice.Cjim63 (talk) 17:57, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

RFC: Is the Freedom of Mind Center citation reasonable

There's been some extended discussion (here and here) of whether the Freedom of Mind Center's page on Chung Moo Doe is a reasonable source in this article, but we don't seem to be moving towards any kind of consensus. How can we move forward with deciding whether or not to include this source?

I have to say that "An appeal to WP:RS/N has returned a brief response (in the negative)" mis characterizes the discussion, 'Indecisive' would be more accurate summary --Nate1481 14:37, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

I can see your point. I've modified the summary. Does it look better to you now? Subverdor (talk) 15:24, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Only marginally better I would just link to the discussion and be done with it an RFC should be introduced neutrally and implying there was a consensus on the RS noticeboard undermines that, also is the core point that the comments basically say that it shoudl be made clear where the marterial is sourced from, and explicetly do not say I should not be used. I'm jsut as on the fence on that source but that summary does not represent the disscussion. --Nate1481 15:47, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Okay, done. I didn't think that anything I was presenting was controversial, but I can see how my judgements about which points are key to summarize and how to do so could be considered biased. One reason I definitely wanted to bring up the question on WP:RS/N is to forestall a complaint that an RFC is inappropriate and we should be going to WP:RS/N instead. In any case, is it okay now? Subverdor (talk) 16:25, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Sorry if I wasn't clear, I think it should be mentioned and linked but without the summary of the outcome, as it was far from clear if there was one. --Nate1481 16:37, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Okay, tell you what: I'll leave the summary as is, and if you feel it should be further modified I'll let you do the modification :-). Subverdor (talk) 16:48, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

FMC IV

The FMC citations balance the POVs in this controversial article. Your wish to delete them pushes the article out of NPOV. As I interpret the discussion on this talk page and the RFC, there is no consensus to delete FMC - just your wish. See the essay Wikipedia:Wonk. Please stop delete the FMC citations until you provide a better balance of POVs. jmcw (talk) 10:50, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't agree with this assessment -- it sounds like you're saying that this source needs to be included simply because it has an anti-Oom Yung Doe POV, and that's needed to "balance" the article. I would maintain that there need to be policy-based justifications for including this source (and every source) regardless of its POV about the school. I'd be happy to hear any justifications you have for considering this source reliable (see my comment from about a month ago, search for "This is frustrating for me"), but as I said before, I don't think "There is not yet consensus" is such a justification. There needs to be a reason those supporting the source are supporting it; editors don't simply have veto power by right of refusing to "reach consensus."

As I said before, I do agree that continued discussion doesn't seem to be getting anywhere. It seems like this discussion is repeating itself. As I see it, though, what's repeating is my requests for justification or clarifiation, which don't draw a meaningful response. See WP:EQ -- "Do not ignore questions", "If another disagrees with your edit, provide good reasons why you think that it is appropriate", and "Concede a point when you have no response to it". I can't stress enough how unreasonable I think it is to refuse to respond to my arguments and yet still revert my edits. Still it doesn't seem that WP:ANI or similar is quite justified yet; I'll share my assessment of your behavior with WP:WQA and see what people say about it. Subverdor (talk) 19:09, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

On a more basic level, using "there isn't consensus to delete FMC" as a reason to keep it doesn't make any sense. There isn't consensus to keep the FMC source, either, and reliability (or inclusion) is not the default. The burden is on the editor who wants to add or restore material to WP to argue that it's reasonable to do so. It seems to me like there's no reasoned argument to keep the FMC -- just your wish. See also the opinions from WP:WQA -- "the portions you quoted from WP:EQ would, IMHO, apply to cases where something was purposefully reverted or removed, and you deserved to know why" and "I agree with you about it not being a particularly reliable source, if it's an RS at all. The disclaimer of 'this is what some people told us' at the top is particularly troublesome."

I agree it's not fair for me to unilaterally remove this source when others active in the discussion want it to stay. That's why I've been discussing this on the talk page so much. It seems to me, though, that after a handful of not entirely sound arguments for verifiability got thrown around, and very few of my arguments against verifiability were responded to, the possibility for discussion has ended. CJim63 has specifically refused to discuss the matter anymore, and you don't seem to respond except to say that there "isn't consensus." Standard options for dispute resolution have either been inconclusive or specifically rejected. How can you honestly expect me to build consensus here when discussion isn't taking place? What option is available to me to get this resolved, if you're going to claim the right to indefinitely refuse to change your mind without presenting or responding to any arguments? Subverdor (talk) 17:17, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

I believe there is consensus here except for one dissenting opinion. jmcw (talk) 18:07, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

I've seen pro positions from you, CJim63, Nate, and possibly StickyParkin. I've seen anti positions from myself, dougweller, and arimareiji. If I really were hearing from everyone that I was in the wrong, I wouldn't be continuing to pursue this. Also, is there a reason you didn't address my last couple of questions? They weren't rhetorical. Subverdor (talk) 18:40, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

For those following this story, the Wikiquette chapter. I believe I have addressed Subverdor's concerns about sources: see Talk:Oom_Yung_Doe#.27Black_or_White.27_Proposal. We came make this a small article out of strict Wiki-type references or we can make a more useful article out of a balance of multiple POV references. I think Subverdor and Cjim63 have made a good article using this second approach. jmcw (talk) 09:40, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

I notice that the "Wikiquette chapter" has ended much like the other chapters ended -- with me asking questions, a reply which does not address those questions, me pointing out that my questions weren't answered, and then the end of discussion being declared :-). Subverdor (talk) 13:33, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

I've posted this to WP:RS/N again. Subverdor (talk) 13:20, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

I've commented out the various uses of FMC and the associated text in the article due to the several comments posted on the latest WP:RS/N. I do not necessarily agree with the whole treatment of the FMC sourcing. This is because I cannot help but to notice that while descriptions of OYD martial arts and training are coming from non-reliable sources, that only the criticism is held to such a high standard. However, it is for the best. High standards are good, and there are plenty of critical articles/convictions to bring balance to the article.

I do suggest we leave the comments in for the time being. This well allow us to decide if some of the text ought ot be moved to other places in the article.Cjim63 (talk) 19:21, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

I saw this, I do appreciate it. I really don't see the double standard that you describe, though -- can you give a couple of examples of positive statements about Oom Yung Doe that you feel come from unverifiable sources? Subverdor (talk) 14:37, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

The following web sites are WP:PRIMARY and require a reliable secondary source:

• www.oomyungdoe.com
• www.oomyungdoeschool.com
• www.chungmoodoe-nj.com
• www.oomyungdoe-nw.com
• www.oomyungdoe-ne.com
• www.oomyungdoe-sd.com
• www.oyd-midwest.com

As mentioned above in 'Black or White Proposal', there is not much left to this article if the material attributed to these primary sources are removed. jmcw (talk) 15:59, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

... and the bottom of WP:PRIMARY says, "Appropriate sourcing can be a complicated issue, and these are general rules. Deciding whether primary, secondary or tertiary sources are more suitable on any given occasion is a matter of common sense and good editorial judgment, and should be discussed on article talk pages." Every statement and citation is slightly different, which is why I asked for some specific examples of positive statements that CJim63 felt were currently inappropriately sourced. Subverdor (talk) 21:30, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

jmcw gave a nice list of specific sources. These are all websites put up by OYD to promote itself. If such a rational can be used to justify using such self-promoting sources to describe what OYD truly believes itself, why cannot this rational be equally applied to a source such as "Herding the Moo"? After all, it is a similarly self-promoting, self-published source, that describes what critics truly believe themselves.Cjim63 (talk) 14:10, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

I didn't ask about sources, I asked about statements. I would agree with you if the article had a ton of positive statements about Oom Yung Doe attributed to internal sources (medical benefits, descriptions of training from students, etc.), but that's not what I see when I look at the article, so I'm trying to get an idea of what you're talking about. Can you give a couple of examples of positive statements that are sourced to the above references? Subverdor (talk) 13:02, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

"do not engage in formal competition ..."

The "criticisms" section that discusses Oom Yung Doe's lack of interaction with other schools seems misleading to me.

First of all, the sourcing needs improvement. The statement, "this is viewed with skepticism by many because the schools of Oom Yung Doe do not engage in formal competition or training of any kind with other martial arts schools or associations" seems only to be supported by a single quotation from a person who runs a competing martial arts school: "He says Chung Moo Quan is one of the only schools in town that doesn't complete with other schools. He claims, 'they'd be exposed real quick.'" I don't feel that that's sufficient justification for including a statement claiming that no Oom Yung Doe school anywhere trains or competes with any other school or association.

Second, the way it's presented in the article is slanted. It is actually true that Oom Yung Doe schools very rarely interact with other schools; I'd be fine with that being presented if it's properly sourced. However, "this is viewed with skepticism by many" is weasel wording, and there is verifiable indication that the abilities developed through Oom Yung Doe training are indeed valuable. For example, the same article "Be True to Your School" that's cited as support for the existing statement contains these excerpts:

"When I started, there was a guy at the Brooklyn Center school. This guy could move like no one I'd ever seen." (from Russell Johnson)

"Students' say-and even the school's critic's admit-the Chung Moo program is rigorous, and that it includes some valuable martial arts skills." (from Jennifer Vogel)

Furthermore, I'd take issue with the word "miraculous" in "instructors maintain that practicing Traditional Moo Doe in the prescribed manner permits the development of miraculous skill and ability" -- about the most superlative adjective I see in the linked document is "tremendous" :-).

Just off the top of my head, I'd propose the following replacement for this paragraph:

"Finally, there is disagreement as to the quality of Oom Yung Doe training. Students, and even some critics, tend to describe the rigorous training as a good way to develop increased health and self-defense skill. Oom Yung Doe internal literature describes traditional Moo Doe training techniques as far superior to the 'fabricated movement' taught in many martial arts schools in the United States. However, some critics claim that Oom Yung Doe's training methods are inferior to those available in other schools, and Oom Yung Doe schools rarely participate in training or competition with other schools or associations."

Any objections? Subverdor (talk) 17:22, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

I've now made this edit. Subverdor (talk) 15:02, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Recent edits

Hello again, CJim63!

I have some questions about your recent edits:

• Are you still unwilling to provide page numbers or excerpts for the "Martial Arts Pro" reference attached to the statement, "Some martial artists have published articles questioning the veracity of Kim's lineage claims"?
• Why do you think the statement "Oom Yung Doe and its predecessor organizations continue to be controversial" is a better lead-in to the controversy section than "Oom Yung Doe's predecessor organization, Chung Moo Doe, was at times extremely controversial," when both of the "main areas of controversy" deal specifically with Chung Moo Doe and nearly all of the citations apply to Chung Moo Doe?
• How are the statements you've removed about Oom Yung Doe not receiving as much negative media attention as Chung Moo Doe inaccurate or otherwise unsuitable?
• Was US Attorney James Burns arguing (or otherwise making statements) on behalf of the prosecution when he called the conspiracy "a long-term, systematic and massive effort to thwart and violate the tax laws of this country"? If he was, it seems difficult to find a less neutral source :-).
• In general, would you mind explaining how you came to possess the court records? I might want to request copies for myself as well.

Thanks. Subverdor (talk) 14:31, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

• I don't recall any such request before. Regardless, the citation is used appropriately since that is what the article indeed says. If you are very concerned about the page numbers, I invite you to get the magazine from a reference library.
• The main areas of controversy regard 1) Mr. Kim's conviction, which does not apply to an organization but Mr. Kim himself, and 2) claims about unethical business practices that are equally made about OYD and its predecessors.
• OYD has received negative media attention. In fact, one of the only sources that truly is a reliable source, the King 5 investigation, is critical of OYD and not its predecessors. Deciding which organization has received proportionally more negative media attention is something that must be established by a source and not just put into the article. Since every single source I know of about OYD suggests that OYD and its predecessors are indeed the same organization (with a name that has changed as Mr. Kim has released more knowledge), I don't see how such a distinction can be justifiably be made.
• Mr. Burns did indeed say that in a statement to the media. You can find that in the article cited, rather than the court case itself. Perhaps the article can be edited here to replace Mr. Burn's opinion about the conspiracy with actual statements made by the court about the conspiracy after they were indeed convicted for such a conspiracy.
• Subverdor, you have already discovered my name in other places on the internet. You can find the answer to your question about obtaining sources on the discussion board about OYD.

Cjim63 (talk) 14:28, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Oom Yung Doe is controversial. I guess my objection is more that the opening section of the "Controversies" section seems slanted to me - basically taking the most damning information that's available about the school and presenting it using language that's as loaded as possible (and, as long as it's presenting events related to the organization "Chung Moo Doe" and attributing them to Oom Yung Doe, factually inaccurate). I've tried to reorganize things so that the tone is more neutral, and so that the bulk of the factual information goes into appropriate subsections below, with the introductory paragraph just touching on the various areas of controversy explained in more detail below. I've also used the phrase "the school" as much as possible to avoid the question of whether Chung Moo Doe and Oom Yung Doe are "really" the same organization. Subverdor (talk) 15:56, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Wait -- how is it possible that the attorney general's complaint against Chung Moo Doe can be a source for the information about the consent decree? It seems to me like a consent degree would be a judgement of the court, not something you could find out about by reading an argument from the prosecution. Subverdor (talk) 13:28, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Information about the complaint is taken from the complaint. Information about the consent decree is taken from the consent decree. I am not sure if they need to be cited separately since they both stem from the same court case. Mr. Burn's statement comes from a different source altogether.

Obviously the controversies section does present the most damning information: after all, it is the "controversies" section. My understanding is that it generally is better to merge controversy sections into their respective sections in articles (ie. Legal problems into the school's and Kim's history, the criticisms of training into the training section, etc.) in order to provide the whole article with a more NPOV attitude. We've actually already discussed/done this before [32], but we may need to do it again.Cjim63 (talk) 22:50, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

The complaint and consent decree absolutely need to be cited separately -- they're different documents. If someone (me, for example) went to the trouble to request the complaint from the court, paying a nominal fee, waited a few weeks for it to arrive, and then discovered that it contained nothing of value about the statement that had a citation to it, someone might be quite irritated :-).

I agree on the undesirability of "controversies" sections in general. It's true, though, that there a lot of miscellaneous topics which are all about controversies but otherwise unrelated, and making them all second-level sections seems odder than grouping them all together. The "Criticisms of training" section I think could logically go either under "Training" or under "Controversies".

The phrase "a traditional Chinese martial art (Moo Doe) called Yin Yang Doe" seems misleading to me. It makes it sound like Moo Doe is a single martial art. You acknowledge that "Moo Doe" means "martial arts," right? I believe that it also can be used to describe a specific group of Chinese-descended martial arts, BTW (the "traditional Moo Doe line").

I discussed the specific people who described the value of the training above when I proposed the new phrasing. I'll add their names to the article, and I'm also going to add a "who?" to "some critics claim that Oom Yung Doe's training methods are inferior to those available in other schools." Subverdor (talk) 02:06, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

I've replaced the citation to the fourth amended complaint (attached to the information about the consent decree) with "citation needed". Would you please update it to refer to the document where you actually got the information? Subverdor (talk) 15:16, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

I haven't noticed that court documents for a single case being cited differently throughout wikipedia. If they are, please show me an example. Also, I encourage you order all the documents you would like. It would make discussing them much easier.

I've fixed the section on discussing the value of training. Nobody in the cited article suggests that OYD is great for self-defense or health. In fact, the main thrust of the article is that the student was abused and had to seek surgery because of his training. He does not discuss the self-defense benefits of training at all. He does suggest that he believes he would like to study martial arts in general for self defense in general citing Chuck Norris as his inspiration. I've also edited it so that the article simple says what the critic says.

I have restored the section on Bagwa. I know that you, subverdor, would rather not have it because you view it as POV. However, the information is well referenced and simply contrasts the OYD views, that are found in multiple sources, with the views of martial arts historians, also found in multiple sources. Things like that cannot just be deleted.

Good job on the medical benefits section.Cjim63 (talk) 18:52, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

What on Earth are you talking about? You've attached a specific document filed on June 5, 1992 to a specific set of statements. Does that specific document contain support for those statements, or not? If not, why are you insisting on citing that document, instead of the one that actually does contain support for the statments?

You've removed Jennifer Vogel's name from the list of critics, and the value of the martial arts taught in the school from the list of claimed benefits. Why? The cited article contains this statement from Jennifer Vogel, which I've now pointed out to you twice: "Students' say-and even the school's critic's admit-the Chung Moo program is rigorous, and that it includes some valuable martial arts skills." I actually made the statement less complimentary by changing "even the school's critics admit" to "some critics ... describe".

Keith Griffin runs a competing line of martial arts schools -- for the same reason that the school's promotional materials should not be used as sources for complimentary statements about the school or the training, I don't think he should be considered a particularly notable critic. WP:ASF indicates that "it is necessary to ensure that the attribution adequately reflects the relative levels of support for those views, and that it does not give a false impression of parity." So far we have one of your reliable sources simply stating that the school's critics admit that the training is valuable, corroborated by multiple statements from current and former students (including those without any loyalty to the school). Do you have any source besides Keith Griffin for the assertion that the training is not valuable?

I don't feel that the Bagwa section is "POV"; I feel it's wrong. I've explained why above. What exactly was incorrect about my summary, or what information is included in your summary that's not in mine? Also, once again, are you open to mediation on this issue? Subverdor (talk) 02:09, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I have edited the section to include Jennifer Vogel's comments. Mr. Griffin is indeed a competing martial artist, and a critic. I do not see why he would not be a reliable source with regard to describing the opinion of critics of OYD. Just as we are using OYD sources with regard to their position, I don't see why we cannot use a critic to describe their positions. Basically, that is how the whole article is written - based on these kinds of inherently POV sources. Your statements make me feel that perhaps we really should reconsider deleting most of the article and just basing it on the few reliable sources available. I am going to start working to try to see if that would be possible. Perhaps the article would be very short, but at least it would be a lot easier to balance.

My understanding of your point of view on the Bagwa section is that it is POV, per your edit summary that you left when you made the edit. From your previous statements, I think you believe it is perhaps unnecessary or overkill. I don't agree. I think that discussing the foundation and lineage of OYD is completely essential to the article. Most good martial arts articles discuss the martial art's lineage and foundation at length.

I don't know if each court document needs to be cited differently. I have not found a template for amendments or consent forms or such. I am just going to change it to a more generic court case citation for now. Despite your apparent concerns over my good faith efforts to use a source, the consent document does contain the statements, verbatim. Please feel free to verify that. Perhaps you might know someone who has one, or could order it from the Ill. Attorney General's office. I will also ask around to see if Wikipedia has some means of providing documents for everyone to see.

Cjim63 (talk) 19:22, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

A court case is not a document or a source; it's an event. The documents from a court case can fill a filing cabinet; it's surely not reasonable to simply cite the case as a whole. What exactly would I order from the Illinois court system if I wanted to get the source you're using? What document are you talking about that "contains the statements, verbatim"? I don't see any particular reason to doubt the information about the consent decree except for your strange refusal to explain exactly what document you're looking at that contains the information you're providing.

I sort of wandered off topic in the past into arguing that the language section was overkill. Taking a fresh look at the article, I realized (again) that that entire thrust of that section is simply factually incorrect, because it represents an uncertain oral history presented as a "legend" in the handbook as if it were claimed as a factual history, and because it represents the somewhat uncertain historical consensus (I've explained why I consider it uncertain before: Dong Haichuan's statements that he learned Bagwa from an earlier practitioner, and the Baguazhang entry's statement that "most" Bagwa schools trace their lineage to Dong Haichuan) as if it were certain. Violating WP:SYN by combining those two half-truths into the synthesized position that the two "differ sharply" is sort of icing on the cake. This is one excellent reason for "no original research": people are going to disagree on how to synthesize information much more than they will about facts or expert opinions (which, in this case, we can't even seem to get straight). Anyway, this is all a much bigger problem than simply a slanted POV. I'm assuming from the fact that you've refused to answer either time that I've asked about mediation that you're not open to the idea and plan to simply continue saying "I don't agree" and reverting any edit that I make. That sounds to me like it's getting close to edit warring, honestly. I've got just as much ability as you do to keep typing "I don't agree" and bouncing on the "undo" button; I'm just choosing to talk things out on the talk page instead.

On the off chance that you'll suddenly decide to start answering questions that I pose :-), I'll ask again: What information do you feel is relevant that wasn't included in my summary, or what incorrect information did I include?

You didn't answer me about Keith Griffin, either. To answer your point: the reason he wouldn't be a reliable source on this issue is that he has a substantial financial interest in negative statements about Oom Yung Doe. Does it make any sense to cite a Burger King regional manager as a source for statements about the quality of McDonald's food? There are plenty of martial arts experts who don't run schools in areas that also have Oom Yung Doe schools, or who don't actively run schools at all. To reask my question, which, again, you didn't answer: Do you know of opinions from any of those experts (or any source other than Keith Griffin) that are critical of the quality of the training?

As a side note, I think "how good is it?" is about the silliest thing you can possibly try to put into a Wikipedia article about a style of martial arts. Whatever the eventual outcome of the certain flamewar that follows, it's likely that the article text that results will not be entirely factual. Since the controversy about the quality of training is notable enough to include, though, I'm perfectly willing to investigate what reliable sources we can find for the quality of the training. I definitely think, though, that we should follow WP:ASF in presenting this controversy, as I mentioned above. Subverdor (talk) 21:04, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I am sensing some tension. Relax, Subverdor: I am just here to improve the article. If you can show me a better template for filling in the court case citations, I would be happy to use it. The items come from the 4th Amended Complaint, and from the consent decree associated with the same case. Case no. 89-ch-10044.

I don't believe that your summary of the history is correct. The "Legend" of Bagwa is to be found on multiple web sites made by OYD itself. That is the only information available about the person described as the original founder of the style. Summarizing it as described on the websites does not seem to me to be original research. The information about Baguazhang is pretty well established. Sure there will be contradictory opinions, but the weight of the evidence supports Dong Haichuan. Surely you can see why discussing the origin of OYD might be relevant in an article on OYD. I've deleted the word "sharply" in case that is what is bothering you.

I did answer your question about Mr. Griffin. To use your analogy, the article includes employees of McDonalds and Burger King both. If you can use one, then you can use them both. For example, who describes OYD as actually teaching the eight styles listed? The OYD sources. Who suggests that OYD is of Chinese origin? The OYD sources. This is why I say we should consider a return to the Black/White proposal.

I don't think a flamewar will follow.Cjim63 (talk) 00:17, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

If the format to use for the citation is really the issue, why not just use exactly the same format you used to cite the fourth amended complaint? The exact name of the document, the date it was filed, and then the case number.

Since yet again you didn't answer any of my other questions (despite claiming, somewhat bizarrely, to have answered them), I'm going to play Paxman and just ask them again:

What information do you feel is relevant that wasn't included in my summary of the Bagwa legend situation, or what incorrect information did I include?

Do you know of opinions from any source other than Keith Griffin that are critical of the quality of the training?

Are you open to mediation on the Bagwa legend issue? Subverdor (talk) 13:12, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm trying to dig up the sources cited in support of CJim63's Bagwa section. The only one I've found is "Chinese Boxing," and I can't find any mention of Dong Haichuan in it (he's not in the index, and in a quick glance over the sections that are referenced from "Pa Kua" in the index I don't find his name). What section of this source are you citing in support of this summary, CJim63? Subverdor (talk) 20:23, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Primary sources

I see the introductory sentence has been tagged with "non-primary source needed". Nearly all of the sources in this article are primary sources -- newspaper articles and court records both are, for example. As I've mentioned above, WP:PRIMARY says, "Appropriate sourcing can be a complicated issue, and these are general rules. Deciding whether primary, secondary or tertiary sources are more suitable on any given occasion is a matter of common sense and good editorial judgment, and should be discussed on article talk pages." The primary criterion is verification by an expert. Since assertions that the handbook is an invalid source keep coming up, I've posted the question to WP:RS/N. Subverdor (talk) 11:44, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

There's been a semi-conclusion on WP:RS/N that the handbook is reliable for non-controversial information but that the article shouldn't rely too heavily on it. That seems reasonable to me; I'm removing the sentence that depends on the handbook from the introductory paragraph. Subverdor (talk) 13:51, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

We have had one response from one person who read neither the article nor the handbook but parroted some policy we have already read. I do not find this an advance or a semi-conclusion. How do you find the proposal "What would a Wiki editor see if they visited a class" guideline? jmcw (talk) 18:42, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

People giving their opinions on how to interpret policy (often without a totally complete understanding of the situation) is really all you find on WP:RS/N. It may not be ideal (indeed, I've found it frustrating at times that there's no Central Committee of Policy Correctness to appeal to), but it's the avenue Wikipedia offers to resolve this sort of dispute, and I'm inclined to abide by it without a very strong reason not to. Subverdor (talk) 19:19, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Archived: Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_33#Oom_Yung_Doe_handbook jmcw (talk) 12:10, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I tried to take a stab at examining references to the handbook... I basically only got as far as cleaning up all the existing references to the handbook so that they all actually cite the handbook (a lot of them previously cited Oom Yung Doe web pages that contained excerpts from the handbook). I also removed some duplicated references to the handbook (sometimes via separate web pages which both say the same thing, or multiple references to the same excerpt from the handbook with different formatting). Actually examining the references to the handbook to see what can be done will have to wait for another day, I think. Subverdor (talk) 16:28, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

I've now taken a pass at references to the handbook. There really weren't many that weren't already qualified with something saying that the information came from Oom Yung Doe sources; the only major thing I saw that wasn't qualified was the description of the history of the school. Subverdor (talk) 14:47, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

... and now I see that around twenty-five "non-primary source needed" tags have been scattered throughout the article attached to various statements. Some of these statements are already qualified with something along the lines of "according to internal Oom Yung Doe sources...", and for many of them I feel that the sourcing is acceptable. As I mentioned above, WP:PRIMARY does indicate that primary sources are sometimes acceptable and that things need to be worked out on a case-by-case basis. Jmcw37, what do you feel should happen to each of these statements? If a secondary source can't be found, should they all be removed, or qualified with a phrase indicating the source, or what? I don't see that scattering a huge number of tags through the article improves it at all; what improvement are you trying to seek for the article here? Subverdor (talk) 16:20, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, primary sources are sometimes acceptable. The use of "according to ...." is certainly allowed. At this time, I do not want any statement marked as "non-primary..." removed. The tags are useful to various Wikipedians: authors can see what needs a secondary source, readers have a warning that the article is not a Featured Article and the reviewers at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Deletion_sorting/Martial_arts can more easily judge if the article is mainly sourced by primary sources. For the same reasons, I have tagged the court record citations. jmcw (talk) 10:50, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Court cases as sources

I find it strange that this is even an issue, but I don't think court cases should be cited as sources. Particular documents from court cases make sense to cite, of course, but since court cases are events and not sources, it doesn't make any sense to simply cite the case. If you learned about something that happened within the case from a particular source (such as a court document or transcript), then of course it makes sense to cite that source, and I would expect that the fact that it happened in court would often make it a pretty solid (if primary) source.

I want to ask if there are any objections. I guess I know that there are (because Cjim63 and jmcw have both reverted my edits removing these "sources"), but for the life of me I can't imagine a rational argument in favor of citing "the case as a whole" as a source. Subverdor (talk) 19:29, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Since there was no response, I've now brought this up on WP:RS/N. I plan to remove these sources if there's confirmation for my viewpoint, and if they don't get changed to more specific citations to actual documents. Subverdor (talk) 15:00, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Cjim63 is attempting to learn the Wiki procedures for uploading the court documents he has in his possession (see User_talk:Jmcw37#Oom_Yung_Doe_Black_-_White_proposal. Could you extend him the courtesy of marking the court cases with a 'fact' statement for a time? jmcw (talk) 18:36, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

What? Why would they need to be uploaded? Why can't they simply be cited like all the other sources in this article? I've got no objection to them being uploaded, but saying that that's what's holding up fixing the citations is silly. Obviously he has the actual documents if he's citing them (right?), so it shouldn't take more than a few minutes to enter the name of the document(s) in question. We've been going back and forth about this since I mentioned it about a week ago, and in all the different explanations I've heard for why the citations aren't being fixed this is the first time I've heard this one. Subverdor (talk) 18:52, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Have you seen the court documents at http://sports.groups.yahoo.com/group/oomyungdoe_discuss/files/Court%20Documents/ ? jmcw (talk) 13:14, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

I've not; I'm not too eager to sign up for oomyungdoe_discuss. I actually joined temporarily some time back so I could take a look over the documents and photos, and it was pretty off-putting to see photographs of people I know well and respect alongside all the random insults that fill the message boards (just now I chose a message at random to read and encountered, "They all prance around like gay ballerina's, all akward and clumsy, just luv'n what they are doing, even though it's total and complete imaginary bafoonery."). I don't remember encountering anything particularly informative. If you have specific documents you'd like me to see you can email them to me via my user page. Also, this is still completely beside the point of simply identifying the exact documents that are being cited in the article. Subverdor (talk) 13:34, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Archived: Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_33#Court_cases_as_sources jmcw (talk) 12:13, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

This has been reverted again asking for me to give Cjim63 more time. Why does it take weeks to answer the simple question, "What document are you looking at that gives you this information?" We've been talking about this since mid-April; it's not like Cjim63 just hasn't been on WP to check the talk page. He just hasn't said anything relevant to identifying the documents at issue (enough such that someone else would be able to request them and verify the information). The closest we've gotten was a vague reference to "the consent decree associated with the same case".

How much time do you think is reasonable in this case? I've got no problem waiting if time is the issue, but I simply don't see time as the issue. Subverdor (talk) 16:36, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree with you that this is taking a long time. I do not know why Cjim has not edited since April 23. He states that the Cjim account is just for editing this article - I do not know his real user name or how to contact him. I will try to send an email to him: he could/should quickly make a comment here. jmcw (talk) 10:57, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

I'd be more than happy to provide some information about the court documents. I have to note that I have not been editing wikipedia much. I am busy. Also, dealing with subverdor's uncivil behavior (ie. Failure to assume good faith, suggesting that I somehow am trying to hide documents while I am learning how to uploading the documents, suspecting "flame warring", constant assertions that many users are not answering questions when many people have made consistent efforts to answer the non-personal questions posted, using Wikipedia policy as a bludgeon to meet his/her goals, asking for person information about people on my talk page, etc.) is just tiresome and uninteresting.

I have already provide a certain amount of information about the court documents above in the talk page. As I have previously stated, I would be more than happy to fill out some kind of template. Here is some of the information that I have that hopefully is what you all are asking for:

• The consent form is from the Illinois complaint case 89CH10044 "People of the state of Illinois ex rel. Roland W. Burris, vs. John C. Kim, et al." It is dated 7-25-94 and signed by Charles G Fergus, chief of Consumer Protection Division and Mr. Kim. If I had an idea about what specific items might be included in a template, I would be more than happy to oblige.
• The document used for the IRS tax conspiracy case is the docket from case number 95-CR-214-1, USA vs. Kim, et al. filed 4/11/95 in the US district court, Norther District of Illinois (Chicago). The case was assigned to Judge James F. Holderman. Once again, if someone provides me with a template, I would be more than happy to fill in more details.
• I intend on uploading these files as soon as I figure out how to do so. I am not planning on doing that ASAP. I have other things to do and this is something new for me to learn. Furthermore, I do not view editing wikipedia as a race. I hope the information I have provided might be enough for other people to the obtain documents themselves. Good luck! Cjim63 (talk) 16:15, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

It would have taken a lot less time to update the article with your best stab at properly-formatted citations to specific documents than to write the above comment. I've now raised this on WP:WQA. Subverdor (talk) 12:22, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I've now updated the citations in the article to cite the documents which CJim63 uploaded. Subverdor (talk) 20:19, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Notability

I see that a dispute about notability has been added to the top of this article. What's the argument against notability? Looking at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Martial_arts/Notability I see these criteria supporting notability:

• Subject of an independent article/documentary;- Sole or majority subject in the media, either a news article of a TV program
• Multiple wide spread sites;- an organisation 2 or 3 in a 30 mile radius is a lot less likely to be notable than one with 30 schools in different countries. These are the extremes but illustrate the point.

I don't see any criteria supporting deletion, unless you count "Single/few schools that teach the art", which only makes sense if the WP article was about the _art_ of Oom Yung Doe as distinct from the line of schools in the US under John C. Kim. I do think that there is a lack of verifiable information about the historical martial art of Oom Yung Doe, and that an article about it wouldn't make sense, but there's certainly enough information about the line of schools in the US to have an article.

I'm removing the tag. Please make a coherent argument against notability if you're going to restore it. Subverdor (talk) 16:00, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

I can only surmise that Jmcw37 was suggesting that we remove some of the information that is supported only by primary sources.Cjim63 (talk) 19:55, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

The article is currently based on primary references. Casual readers should be warned about the quantity of primary-sourced material: tagging is proper. I am not requesting article deletion. jmcw (talk) 17:20, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

The "controversy" concerning Oom Yung Doe has its notability established by being investigated by a Pulitizer-winning reporter. The notability of the "martial art" Oom Yung Doe is so far only supported by primary sources. This article would be stronger with one secondary article about the martial art Oom Yung Doe. jmcw (talk) 17:35, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

I think you're misunderstanding the intended use of the notability infobox. Template:Notability says, "Use this template when an article subject is most likely non-notable." You're not supposed to use it because you're unhappy with certain citations within the article, or to "warn" readers of anything other than potential non-notability of the article subject. Subverdor (talk) 18:45, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

I believe that the current "martial art" article OYD would fail in AFD due to notability. I appreciate that no one has proposed this article yet for AFD because we are working on it. I would appreciate it if you would work on your manners rather than on correcting my editing misunderstandings. "Coherent argument" indeed! jmcw (talk) 19:27, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Okay, so we're back to the question I asked above. Why do you think the Oom Yung Doe article would fail in AFD due to notability? I mentioned two MA notability criteria which it passes, and I didn't see any non-notability criteria that it passes. By "coherent argument" I meant that you need to cite concrete criteria indicating its non-notability, and specifically not simply a statement that "I believe" that this article fails notability. Subverdor (talk) 19:59, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

If this article were named "The Incarceration of John C. Kim", the documentary would establish notability. It is not: it is named "Oom Yung Doe" which is a recently founded martial art that has no non-primary references. jmcw (talk) 21:38, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

jmcw makes a good point: while parts of the article certainly are notable, other parts are based solely on primary sources. The fact that vast portions of the article are based on these primary sources suggests that at least parts of the article probably are not notable.

• According to me, the what of non-notability are the parts tagged by this:
• The why of non-notability (of the aforementioned parts) can be demonstrated by following this familiar link:

Cjim63 (talk) 02:25, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Well, the "no non-primary references" part simply isn't true. Even if I were to accept your seeming assumption that articles discussing controversies surrounding Oom Yung Doe somehow "don't count" for establishing notability, there's the JAMA article and the local TV news stories I added.

There is no way for part of an article to be notable and part not. Either an article subject is notable, or it isn't. CJim63 created this article, so obviously he thinks the article subject is notable. It sounds like what you're really saying is that you think there are too many references to the handbook in the article. Is that right?

I'll take a pass through the article and remove some of the text that references the handbook or other internal sources. Subverdor (talk) 13:57, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

There is no way for part of an article to be notable and part not. NOT! See Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Okuno_Ryu for an example of a notable person with their style deleted as non-notable. Subverdor, assume that someone will submit this article to AFD. We have spent months and 256kb of text discussing OYD: an AFD is only a few kilobytes and a few days. Please temper your wishes for this article with some knowledge of WP:AFD customs. jmcw (talk) 15:48, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Well, certainly one subject can be notable and another related subject can be non-notable. That's different from claiming that part of an article is notable and part isn't. That doesn't even make sense; notability applies to article subjects and not to the content of the articles.

In any case, if you think that an AfD submission is an appropriate solution, that's fine for me (though of course I don't agree that the article should be deleted). It sounded like you were advocating keeping the article and leaving the infobox up indefinitely, which I would object to. Subverdor (talk) 16:08, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Hm, silence. So is there a plan to submit this article to AfD? Subverdor (talk) 19:35, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm assuming that the lack of comment (or AfD submission) means that there's not such a plan. I'm removing the infobox again. Subverdor (talk) 16:52, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

"have described the school as a 'cult'"

I'd object to the recent edit to the intro -- let's present the controversy that surrounds the school honestly and verifiably. To me indicating that critics of the school tend to attach a derogatory label to it doesn't make any more sense than indicating in a biographical article that some people believe that the subject is "a real bastard," even if that is strictly a true statement. I did make an effort to honestly describe the factual assertions that tend to lead notable critics of the school to reach the conclusion that it is a "cult" in the intro, since there is a certain amount of controversy surrounding the school.

Let me ask this: How would you feel about me starting to include some of the verifiable, positive information about the school (such as that which appears in the "Medical Benefits" subsection) in the introduction? To me that's a necessary part of a top-level overview of the school, in the same way that to other editors it seems to be necessary to properly convey the school's "evilness". Subverdor (talk) 16:36, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

I assume you are referring to the Journal of Asian Martial Arts article. Perhaps it would be good to include a sentence about that study.Cjim63 (talk) 20:02, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I've done this. Let me know what you think. Subverdor (talk) 20:32, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Looks pretty good to me.Cjim63 (talk) 06:52, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

It looks like you've changed your mind about this.

• You've removed benefits to mental health, made the description of self-defense benefits much less strong (making it a not-quite-direct quote by only a single reporter), and limited "physical health benefits" to improvement of asthma and diabetes. I don't see that any of these removals make the intro a more accurate summary of what students describe in the cited sources from their training; do you have issue with any of those specific elements of the intro as I wrote it? I'll cite exact quotes to support any of those statements that you believe is unsupported (which it sounds from your edit summary like you do).
• I don't think anyone can reasonably contend that training in the school isn't rigorous. I cited sources which say "I literally was signing contracts after some of the hardest physical training of my life" and "Students' say-and even the school's critic's admit-the Chung Moo program is rigorous, and that it includes some valuable martial arts skills." Saying that it "has been described" makes it sound like the issue is in question; the article about the moon doesn't say that it "has been described" as orbiting the Earth. Do you have a source to cite to argue that there's some question about the rigorousness of Oom Yung Doe training? If it looks like there is any verifiable controversy, then it probably makes sense to just remove this from the intro as opposed to including it with weasel words.

Consider the reliability of source: a famous Olympic athlete makes the remark "It was rigorous" and a non-athletic middle-aged man makes the remark "It was rigorous". In the second case, "has been described" makes sense but not in the case of the famous athlete. jmcw (talk) 09:36, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

One source is Jennifer Vogel -- is she not reliable to you? Subverdor (talk) 16:45, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

"Students say-and even the school's critics admit-the Chung Moo program is rigorous, and that it includes some valuable martial arts skills." Jennifer Vogel does not make this statement. jmcw (talk) 21:11, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Jennifer Vogel says that the school's critics admit that the Chung Moo program is rigorous. I don't see a way to read that other than that Jennifer Vogel investigated the matter by interviewing students and critics, and concluded that it is. You're correct that the clause which indicates that students says that the training is rigorous is not especially meaningful.

Mike Rothwell was training at another school at the time of the King 5 story, but said that Oom Yung Doe was some of the hardest physical training of his life. Keith Griffin says that former Chung Moo Quan students who came to his school were "real disciplined." Both of them seem to have some knowledge about the school but still acknowledge that it offers hard training.

As I said before, in all the controversies about the school this is one that totally mystifies me. Do you have any reliable source to indicate non-rigorousness of the training? Reliability aside, why do you think that the intensity of the training is in question? Subverdor (talk) 22:41, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm going to break my own rule for a minute and start talking about truth instead of verifiability on the "rigorousness" issue. There's a mythology that's grown up on oomyungdoe_discuss that everything about the school is bad. Some of the wide variety of negative things that are universally accepted as true in that group actually are true, most are half-truths or were true at a certain time at certain schools, and some are complete fantasy. Of the things that are simply made up, the idea that training in the school is weak or not difficult is by far the most ridiculous I've heard -- of all the criticisms you could make, legitimate or illegitimate, I honestly cannot imagine someone in their right mind who ever trained in Oom Yung Doe saying that it's not a hard school. That's why it's so easy for me to find lots of verifiable support in your sources for the assertion that whatever else you may say about the school, the training is intense.

Here we touch on the possibility to establish notability: Is there a source from a famous/reliable person that says OYD training is more rigorous than say, Kyokushinkai?

I've already cited reliable sources indicating that the school is rigorous. I'm not required to cite any "famous" sources or any ones indicating that Oom Yung Doe is the most rigorous style on the planet. It isn't. Subverdor (talk) 16:57, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry - what are the reliable sources? Un-named students? jmcw (talk) 21:13, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

I have to imagine that it seems strange to you that something that "everyone [meaning everyone on oomyungdoe_discuss] knows" is not just unsupported but directly contradicted by reliable sources -- even ones that are very, very negative about the school.

I'm done breaking my rule now -- please don't let that digression distract you from the two content-related questions I'm asking in the bullet points above it. Subverdor (talk) 03:31, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Cost of training

I see CJim63 has reverted some of my changes to the "Cost of Training" section -- I felt that some of these statements were unsupported by their sources, and that the others were all basically redundant. My goal with this edit was to neutralize the POV on the (correct) information that critics feel that the school charges too much. I didn't see that "Be True To Your School" made the specific statement that the true purpose of training was to build loyalty to the school. If you remove that (it should be moved to a section other than "Cost of Training" if it does turn out to be supported), we have:

"Critics have argued that the true purpose of training is to charge exorbitant fees. News media and journalists have alleged that the school charges thousands of dollars per year and engages in fraudulent and unethical business practices including aggressively pressuring students to pay excessive prices."

Effectively we have "exorbitant fees," "thousands of dollars per year," "fraudulent," "unethical," and "excessive prices." Since the only fraudulent or unethical behavior that's being alleged is that of charging high fees, then we have made the statement that the school charges a lot of money five different times using four different adjectives. Is there any specific information being conveyed by the current wording that would not also be communicated using the statement "Critics have argued that the school's prices are excessively high and that students are aggressively pushed to pay for higher levels of training?" Subverdor (talk) 03:51, 18 October 2009 (UTC)