Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Zhiyuanduo

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete‎. Daniel (talk) 08:23, 26 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Zhiyuanduo[edit]

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Contested PROD. This full-fledged article is based on one primary source and one tertiary source, with the latter being a dead link. The primary source, the Biography of Zhang Ji from the Records of the Three Kingdoms, has only namedropped this rebel leader once, without elaboration on their activities or indeed, their gender (ctrl+f 治元多 from wikisource here). A search to satisfy WP:BEFORE reveals that the tertiary sources on the internet are similarly brief. I mean one sentence brief. One must wonder where the current article's content comes from, if not a hoax or hallucination by ChatGPT. And yes, the citations on the article all do not support the claims made, except one cite to the aforementioned one-line mention in the Records. _dk (talk) 01:35, 12 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: History and China. _dk (talk) 01:35, 12 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Correction. I guess I thought that the article's creator, squeezing blood from stones with speculation and dead links, had used up all the references to this individual from good sources, but I didn't double check and misread the nomination statement. There is a second mention, as raised by User:Zhoudadudu, but I've left my original !vote basically as-is, and reply beneath. Folly Mox (talk) 23:05, 12 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Speedy delete G3 as a hoax, although quite possibly a good faith hoax given the creator's experience and background in this area.
There is one mention of this person ever in historical records: Chen Shou (1977) [429]. "15: 劉司馬梁張溫賈傳". In Pei Songzhi (ed.). Annotated Records of the Three Kingdoms 三國志注. Taipei: Dingwen Printing. pp. 474, 79注. Here's the sentence in which they appear, with graphs marked as proper terms (toponym, demonym, name, or title) in blue: “涼州盧水胡伊健妓妾、治元多等反，河西大擾。” The topic of the sentence is the Hu people of Lushui, in Jingzhou. It's not clear if the Hu are separate to 伊健妓妾 (Yijian's concubine) or if Yijian's concubine is the Hu tribal leader instigating the revolt (反) along with others (等) that causes such a big disturbance (大擾) in Hexi. What is clear is that Zhiyuanduo (治元多) is a separate person to Yijian's concubine, due to the presence of the listing comma 、.
That's it. Here's all three things we know about them: they were part of or closely affiliated with the Hu people of Lushui, Jingzhou; they took part in a rebellion against Cao Pi (described on the following page but minus any identifying information); they were not Yijian's concubine. That's if we trust the professional editors who have punctuated the original unpunctuated Classical Chinese. If we want to do original research, we could claim that the listing comma is an error, and the subject is defined in the source as "Yijian's concubine Zhiyuanduo" (this does make sense grammatically in the original). There's zero other mention of this person anywhere else in the historical record.
Here's some things that are definitely untrue: The name bestowed upon her by the Han Chinese translates to "There are many rulers." (it doesn't, and that's not how people render names in other languages, which are transliterated); identified as the concubine of a Han Chinese man named Yi Jian (易謙) (the identification as such is contra-RS original research, as mentioned, but the name is badly misspelt, and there's no indication Yijian is ethnic Han, although it could be); 三國志) recorded: "Yi Jian's concubine Zhiyuanduo and other people of the Lushui Hu, in the three counties of Lixian (骊蚠), Fanhe (番和), and Xianmei (显美) (none of these places is mentioned in relation to Zhiyuanduo).
Everything else in this article is entirely speculative. Troop strengths are mentioned in the source, likely vastly overinflated as was customary, and we don't learn the names of any of the rebels or the fates of the commanders. Wei forces cross a river, attack the rebels, and decapitate or capture a bunch of them.
This article reminds me of another I saw at AfD this week, where it described historical background information and major events, and attempted to tie the non-notable subject to them without references. This is different because the identity of the subject is in no way defined, the speculation is obvious and marked lexically, and only one source has the capability of addressing any component of the subject's life.
Two nitpicks: the base text of 三國志 I don't consider a primary source, because Chen Shou made editorial decisions about what to include from his sources, some material may have been copied verbatim from primary sources, but overall I treat it as secondary, by a trained expert. The other thing is that Book of Wei linked in the article is way the wrong target.
I consulted the physical copy of the source in question, and affirm the text at zh.ws is an accurate transcription, including punctuation. My edition lists no errata for this page. Folly Mox (talk) 03:28, 12 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your detailed analysis @Folly Mox:, though I must question if any hoax on Wikipedia could be seen as be made in good faith. The other tangential thing to point out is that it is possible that 伊健妓妾 here is a non-Han name transcribed into written Chinese using the graphic derogatives to denigrate them as "concubines", thus the rebel leaders would be Yijianjiqie and Zhiyuanduo, not Yijian's concubine (and) Zhiyuanduo. _dk (talk) 04:21, 12 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Honestly, the transliteration thing was the first thing that I thought of, because I didn't know (or at minimum, didn't remember) 妓. There are other speculations just as possible as the theory advanced in the article, like graphic corruption through scribal transmission.

I think you're right that "hoax" falls necessarily into the sphere of "bad faith": I guess maybe the word I'm reaching for is closer to "fundamentally untrue, but the creator wasn't aware beforehand." Folly Mox (talk) 04:50, 12 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

For clarity, I both didn't think of using 女-determinant graphs in transliteration for the purpose of denigration, and also forgot to mention the possibility of transliteration at all. Sorry to overexplain. My first sentence of the above comment reads like I might be making claims to cleverness I don't possess. Folly Mox (talk) 04:54, 12 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Thanks for the excellent reply! @Underbar dk actually shared this article with me a few days ago and our discussion led to the deletion conclusion based on very similar arguments outlined in your reply.

Just to elaborate a little on your reply and also adding some of my own opinions:

I think you meant Liangzhou 凉州, not Jingzhou 荆州.
I have also consulted two separate Modern Chinese translations of the Sanguozhi (https://book.douban.com/subject/1597252/ and https://book.douban.com/subject/3445763/), and both of them interpreted the particular line as two separate people Yijianjiqie and Zhiyuanduo with no clear relation other than the fact that they rebelled at the same time.
Zhiyuanduo is actually also mentioned in Pei Songzhi's annotations to the Sanguozhi (Vol 2, Annuals of Emperor Wen) and in Zizi Tongjian (Vol 69). The context for the mentioning is the same (the rebellion), but only Zhiyuanduo was mentioned, nothing about a Yijian or concubines. Logically, if these people were related, they would likely have been rebelling together with strong ties and thus mentioned together. And if mentioning the "concubine" Zhiyuanduo requires additional elaboration about who the husband was, it would be inferred that the husband would have been influential and important at least in this particular rebellion context. But in fact, we see quite the opposite in other sources where Zhiyuanduo seemed to be the more mention-worthy name with no mention of Yijian or the supposed "husband". I'm therefore cautious on concluding a relationship here without any substantiations.
Given the modifier about the Lushui Hu, I would believe it's clear that at least Yijian was one of the Lushui Hu, and then the claim in the article about "Yi Jian was likely associated with the Cao Wei government, potentially serving as a lower-ranking official in Liang Province" makes no sense, either a source misreading or a claim without substantiation.

Zhoudadudu (talk) 10:43, 12 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

That's right: I did mean to transliterate 涼州 properly as Liangzhou. Thanks for that correction. So I'm looking at these two mentions of this name now. The other one comes from Wang Chen; Xun Yi; Ruan Ji (c. 250s). 魏書 [Book of Wei] (official history). This had more editorial oversight and people involved, and it's interesting that in this account we have "叛胡治元多、盧水、封賞等", with 盧水 (transmitted as 蘆水 at zh.ws; Guoxue has it same as the book) being treated here as a personal name rather than a toponym. Since we're already deep in our cups of speculation, I wonder if Chen Shou or some later copyist made a mistake in the base text, and altered "涼州胡盧水" to "涼州盧水胡" in 卷15 based on a misunderstanding.

I'm feeling pretty swayed by the arguments advanced above that 伊健妓妾 represents the name of a person and doesn't mean Yijian's concubine (could also be the names of two people maybe?). Anyway the article is not encyclopaedic and we should remove it rather than spreading misinformation. Folly Mox (talk) 23:05, 12 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'm with you on the copyist/writing mistake. Wu Jinhua in my copy of his 三国志校诂 commented the same as well.

And yea coming back to the article deletion itself, definitely for deletion given what we have seen. It does also make me a tad concerned about the citing of sources (in this case, the Sanguozhi Biography of Zhang Ji) with minimal or no understanding of the actual source, as evident in errors like "bestowed name", wrong characters for the names and so on. Zhoudadudu (talk) 15:35, 13 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: Relisting. Not eligible for Soft Deletion. There may be more than one editor here voting "Delete" so please BOLD your vote if this is what you are advocating.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 01:54, 19 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

DELETE PaulGamerBoy360 (talk) 23:11, 19 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

DELETE Zangxuangao (talk) 10:12, 20 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Liz, all three of us in the discussion are firmly in favour of deletion. Sorry we used so many words or whatever, but this is a bad relist. Folly Mox (talk) 02:32, 19 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Folly Mox, Zhoudadudu I'm glad to see the amazing discussion above. However, you guys were discussing about her names meaning and other translation issues, not the notability of the subject. If she was a real rebel leader in the history of China, and this claim is supported by academic sources, then she meets the WP:NPOL as a major historic political figure. I hope she is not a hoax. Best. 1.47.150.18 (talk) 11:30, 21 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Apologies if we weren't clear, but I believe Folly Mox and I had explained above that while this rebel leader did exist, the original source only had a one-liner mention that doesn't warrant an entire Wiki article. Whatever extra information that was added were either misinterpretations or hoaxes. Hence our delete decisions. Zhoudadudu (talk) 15:16, 21 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

1.47, just as a technical note, I didn't receive a notification for your mention from Template:U. I'm uncertain if unregistered editors can generate notifications, just as they can't receive them.
We did do a lot of discussion about problems with the article, which impugn its accuracy in general. As the person who mentioned hoaxes, I should probably walk that back, because the article doesn't quite meet that definition and I should have used more nuance.
We haven't argued that "Zhiyuanduo" is the sinicised appellation of a person involved in a Donghu people revolt against Emperor Wen of Wei. That is clear from the two historical mentions. What's not clear is if the rebellion had one leader or many (both sources mention many, and the first one in each case is not Zhiyuanduo but Lushui), which subsequent military actions any leader was involved in, or what their eventual fate was. Saliently, the sources give no information about who Zhiyuanduo was, in any sense.
Cleanup notes. The Zhiyuanduo article is linked from Fei Yao, Zhang Ji (Derong), and Chenggong Ying, with contextual prose misinformation about "suppressing a rebellion (factual) led by (dubious) a female tribal leader (unverifiable)". List of rebellions in China goes further and blandly accepts the inflated enemy force figures presented in the sources (this is so common a trope that when an advisor gave his general an accurate estimate of opposing forces during the Guandu campaign twenty years prior, it was remarked upon and discussed with explanation). The link from Lady Triệu is a trivial See also. Folly Mox (talk) 19:24, 21 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.