Talk:Andrew West (linguist)

Not a vanity page

'Oppose proposed deletion The page was created by Kaihsu Tai, who as far as I know is not personally acquainted with Andrew, who has only edited it once to delete some vandalism as far as I can see. There are a number of external publications which Andrew has authored or co-authored which are relevant to his expertise, some of which is in the same field as in my own. I will edit the article to include some of these. -- Evertype·✆ 22:42, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Software

I suggest adding references to his BabelPad software. -- Evertype·✆ 22:55, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

COI

These two users seem to have close professional connection (and in case of User:BabelStone, suspected socking) and the edits are considered cases of COI. Also see, Talk:Michael_Everson#COI. -Shervinafshar (talk) 21:05, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Any thoughts as to actual issues with the article? Johnbod (talk) 09:11, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Sure:

• The initial version was actually written on a user sub-page by Evertype. I find this the essence of COI on this article. See WP:COIN#Andrew West (linguist).

• I do not know anything about the history of this article as it was created two years before I started editing on Wikipedia, but the diff you link to is evidently a machine translation of the version of this article on the Chinese Wikipedia, which I see was created in 2004, two years before this article was created. BabelStone (talk) 18:25, 7 April 2015 (UTC)\

That diff shows that another user connected to you and Evertype, took that content from Evertype's user page (which he put it there) and this one shows how y'all are scratching each others back! --Shervinafshar (talk) 04:48, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

I do not know who Kaihsu is, and to the best of my knowledge I have never met him in real life, and as far as I remember I have never interacted with him on Wikipedia -- in short he is not a "connected user" wrt me, and I have seen nothing to suggest that he has any COI over this article. BabelStone (talk) 08:03, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

• This biographic info which is the major part of the article has almost no references. There is no information in any of the cited sources to confirm this content.
• One of the three books mentioned in "Works" section doesn't have him as editor and/or author.

• Please see the information page for this book. BabelStone (talk) 18:19, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

• Also there are notability issues; most of the professional information are around Unicode participation and writing proposals. It should be noted that anyone can write a proposal for Unicode merely because someone's proposal is accepted to be included in the Unicode Standard, doesn't give that person the notability of having a WP article. For instance, of all 19 editors of last version of Unicode Standard (and these people are not mere contributors like West), only the following four have WP articles:
  • Joe Becker (Unicode), co-founder of Unicode
  • Mark Davis (Unicode), co-founder and current president
  • Michael Everson
  • Ken Lunde (started by the same user, Kaihsu which created this page from content by Evertype.

In conclusion, I do not see this article of any substance to be kept here. --Shervinafshar (talk) 17:04, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

I am not aware that Wikipedia had any policies about conflict of interest. It would seem that policies about NPOV or notability would cover any possible concern about conflict of interest. In any event, I have profitably consulted this article when I sought information on this personage. I would therefore oppose deletion. Tibetologist (talk) 21:36, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

It is not a policy, but a guideline. See WP:COI. Jytdog (talk) 22:27, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

"Scratching each other's back"? What on earth are you talking about, Shervin? I'm not allowed to use a sub-page on my own User page to edit a machine-translation of an article? I've done this for Longcase clock and some articles about the Beaufort scale of wind speed. Accusations of Conflict of Interest need to show some harm to the encyclopaedia, not just be an expression of the accuser's interpretation of the "rules". (All WP rules are guidelines anyway.) What is it you're really after, Shervin? Are you still angry that Andrew and I opposed the encoding of the DHYANI BUDDHA that you proposed? If so, get a grip, man. I have proposed many, many characters which were opposed by others, and even where I disagreed with them and think the characters should still be encoded, I did not take it personally and did not go about trying to make their lives difficult. I am quite saddened to see your recent COI complaints. -- Evertype·✆ 12:05, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Evertype this is clearly a real world dispute that was inappropriately brought to COIN by Shervinafshar - this was all handled a long time ago. Please don't let that dispute spill over into WP - all of you. thanks. Jytdog (talk) 12:19, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

I'm just wondering about the irony here of a Chinese editor citing COI for the reason to delete a page of someone who has successfully gotten several minority Chinese language pages added to the UTF standard when making any such language official goes against the One China Policy. Notably, this same person is trying to get the page of Micheal Everson other primary contributor to UTF regarding Chinese majority languages also removed, and is specifically naming these two people in his complaint. I'm wondering if this whole complaint is influenced by COI on behalf of the person complaining. --Robert Wm "Ruedii" (talk) 15:00, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

Citations needed

Someone slapped a load of "citation needed" tags on the article.

• "Chinese name 魏安". It seems self-evident from the fact that the first work (Sanguo yanyi banben kao) is authored by 魏安 (pinyin Wèi Ān), and the second work (Catalogue of the Morrison Collection of Chinese Books) has "Andrew West" on the English title-page, and "魏安" on the facing Chinese title-page, but if you want a reference, I suppose that the Library of Congress gives the pinyin for 魏安 ("Wei, An") in their record for Andrew West.

• "He initially devoted himself to studying Chinese novels of the Ming and Qing dynasties". I guess this is inferred from the fact that in 1996 I wrote a book on a Ming-Qing Chinese novel, and in 2006 I was not writing books on Chinese novels, but I agree that this sentence is really not good, and if I were allowed to freely edit the article, and I had access to the appropriate sources, I would replace it with a neutral and factual statement, somewhere along the lines of "West studied at such-and-such University from year to year, where he received a PhD for a dissertation on such-and-such a topic, and he then held a position as blah at such-and-such University where he taught such-and-such subject from year to year". As it is probably difficult to find any sources for the factual statement, I suggest removing the sentence entirely.

• "He now specializes in the minority languages of China, especially Khitan, Manchu, and Mongolian". I guess that is inferred from various encoding proposals and documents that I have written, but it is a subjective statement that is hard to prove, so I suggest that it be removed.

• "West has also worked to encode gaming symbols and phonetic characters to the UCS". I suppose you could reference the Unicode Standard acknowledgements, but it does not seem particularly notable, so I suggest removing this sentence.

• "and most recently has been working on encodings for Tangut and Jurchen". The Tangut claim could be justified by this and other encoding proposals, but there is no justification for the Jurchen claim. Probably not notable anyway, so I suggest simply removing it.

I hope someone can address these citation needed issues, so as to improve the article. BabelStone (talk) 07:46, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

External links

Evertype added a bunch of external links to encoding proposals authored or co-authored by myself; Jytdog removed them; and then Kaihsu re-added them. Although the external links do provide some information that may be useful to readers of this page, I agree with Jytdog's characterization of them as "random", and as there is no indication that any of them are particularly noteworthy or intrinisically more important than any of the many encoding proposals by myself that are not linked to, I suggest removing them all, and only adding external links to encoding proposals by me on an as-needed basis to support something mentioned in the body of the article. BabelStone (talk) 07:56, 8 April 2015 (UTC)