Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Teeninvestor: Difference between revisions

Some of the criticism against Teeninvestor seems valid, he's acknowledged hes made a few minor wording errors, and yes he seems to have a POV on some issues. But he's not unresponsive to collegiate feedback. Teen seems to do a substantial amount of quality editing, and brings multiple quality sources to the table to support his position. While opposition editors seem to be often attacking with hostile rhetoric. Instead of empty criticism, it would be much more constructive if those holding opposing views do their own share of the research, and show a good example by backing up their positions with quality sources. FeydHuxtable (talk) 17:02, 19 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Veto, I am afraid. There is a continuing problem with Teeinvestor's fixation on Europe and the West, and his eagerness to subsume the economic development or military prowess of these world regions in – totally unrelated – articles on China: Just a few hours after your endorsement, Teeinvestor has added the following claim at Chinese economic reform:

For centuries, China had been one of the world's largest and most advanced economies, and its per capita incomes probably equalled and exceeded that of Western Europe as recent as the 18th century.

It is notable that Teeinvestor does not cite a source for this far-reaching claim. In fact, and this is crucial, he introduced the claim into the article, even though he is perfectly aware that recent scholarship has come to the opposite conclusion: cf. this table, where Western European GDP per capita exceeds China's in all benchmark times save 1000 AD. And you know what? Teeinvestor introduced the claim against his better knowledge, because his query on talk page and another one here just 48 h ago shows that he was absolutely aware of Maddison's estimate at the time of his edit! Still, he chose to went along with his preconceived view and willfully ignored Maddison's estimate in his expansion of the article on Chinese economic reform.

And that's the gross problem with his editorial behavior: He is cherry-picking sources according to his China-POV, and in case of disagreement with other editors, instead of providing balanced views, he embarks on a policy of systematically removing POV tags. It is clear to me that many editors have become frustrated with such an uncooperative, biased edit pattern, and unfortunately, the latest example shows that there is no sign that Teeinvestor is willing to change his ways here. Regards Gun Powder Ma (talk) 08:16, 20 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Regards, GPM, this source is cited from Pomeranz's source. See Great Divergence. I forgot to put the citation in, but this is sourced directly from Pomeranz's work. Yes, I am aware of Maddison's work, but there is a lot of controversy; if you look at Pomeranz's work, he cites estimates that are exactly the opposite, that Per capita income in China was higher than that of Western Europe. I think I made that clear on the talk page, When I referred to Bairoch's alternative estimates. Attacking me after seeing my comments about possible alternative estimates I have access to is a poor attempt to deceive other readers.Teeninvestor (talk) 14:20, 20 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I added the part as my "view". As I said there, I could add further examples from your articles on Chinese economy, military and the now deleted Rome and Han 'article', but I didn't want to rehash old topics. However, since I've noted your attitude that you only concede points when the proof is presented right under your nose, I may reconsider to bring a few more blatant examples of your attempts at aggrandizing Chinese economic and military history. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 15:49, 20 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

PS: Teeinvestor, being Teeinvestor, restored the claim without adding the very opposite view of Angus Maddison, although he is totally aware of the latter. I feel thus vindicated in my criticism of a systematic lack of balance in his edit pattern and added Maddison's view, which reflects the standard view on the matter, to the article. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 16:08, 20 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Excuse me? I stated specifically on the article that there were alternative estimates to Maddison and then I added them. How can I add Maddison if I don't have the source? If I did, knowing your behaviour, you would probably then accuse me of WP:SYNT.Teeninvestor (talk) 18:24, 20 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I had to revert you. Yes, I fully agree that the whole part on the historic GDP per capita is too long, but that is only an inevitable result of your edit pattern of making aggrandized claims of Chinese excellence in key parts of articles. In this example, you chose to push the minority view of Pomeranz to prominence in the lead. But instead of recognizing this, and modifying - or removing altogether - the part accordingly, you choose to play the transparent little game of trimming the whole part for 'reason of brevity', deliberately deluting Maddison's et al. majority view along the line "some say these, others say that". Who do you actually believe to fool with such kindergarden moves? As long as you continue to play the cheapest tricks out of Sun Tzu's book, you will sail against adverse winds, that's for sure. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 18:58, 20 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That's not the point. The article is titled Chinese economic reform, not Historical GDP per capita of China. And as I said, Pomeranz is not a minority view; I have just found 2 more sources supporting him (not to mention Needham). We can both find all the sources we want, and write a 150kb article on it, but trimming it to a sentence is best. Maddison is not the only, or even mainstream view on this. For example, according to John M. Hobson, another Cambridge scholar, Chinese manufacturing output was 16 times that of Britain in 1750 (and China was ahead even more in agriculture). There are scholars on all sides; some scholars even think that the Ottoman Empire was ahead of the west (a view that I would agree is absurd) in 1800. The majority clearly believe the divergence happened around 1800. If you have so much energy, add the GDP per capita argument to Great Divergence, where it belongs, and don't edit war over every speck, for gods sake. Also, there's major problems with the silver wages paper, as I have raised on the talk page.Teeninvestor (talk) 19:10, 20 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• I still think any pro China POV on behalf on Teeninvestor is being over exaggerated. Im an almost daily reader of the Financial Times, and it often has articles on the rise of China, where it mentions China is on its way to return to the number one position that it enjoyed in the worlds economic rankings for centuries. There's been claims Teeninvestor makes grandiose claims about Chinas economic track record, but he seems to be inline with the FT. I searched for an example, and by chance the first FT article I looked at cites Maddison, but far from contradicting Teeninvestor it seems to support him! "Angus Maddison, the historian, wrote that for hundreds of years prior to the 19th century China was the world’s largest economy. In 1820, it accounted for 32 per cent of global GDP, compared with Europe’s 26 per cent." FeydHuxtable (talk) 19:59, 22 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  The issue isn't a simple matter of an obvious breach of WP:V. There are sources which describe China's economy in such terms, but there are a range of views and cherry picking of sources to exclude other views is not acceptable is it? Nev1 (talk) 20:03, 22 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This is correct, but largely irrelevant to the discussion (and never doubted so far) which evolves rather around GDP per capita which is a much more significant economic determinant. The same Maddison, as most others, comes to the conclusion that Western European GDP per capita exceeded that of China (again) since the Early Modern Age, whereas China's larger GDP is only a function of its larger population size. So: China's economy = larger, but Europe's economy = more advanced & wealthier. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 20:09, 22 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Nev1, I don't think any reasonable scholar will doubt the figures I have put in. Maddison has the lowest estimates for China and yet as you can see above even his figures are quite high. If we take into account Pomeranz's figures and common sense (if GPM is correct, Marco Polo should be decrying China's poverty instead of praising it, as according to GPM per capita income of Europe in 1300, under the black death, is higher than China), these claims are obviously correct.Teeninvestor (talk) 20:12, 22 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've given you half a dozen recent, peer-reviewed and widely cited references stating that the so-called Great Divergence already began around the Renaissance. Yet you still continue to reproduce only Pomeranz' view in all of Wikipedia. Maddison's estimates for 15th to 18th century China are not "quite high", but in reality roughly correspond to all other extra-European economies which all hovered somewhat about subsistence level. Only the (Western) European economy enjoyed a substantial qualitative growth, that is increase of GDP per capita. What you have been doing in the last days, and still very much do, is pushing Pomeranz coal and colonies made the difference view over a large array of articles, while trying to minimize the standard view of a growing European exceptional development since 1500. This view holds that long before the Industrial Revolution began, Renaissance, Scientific Revolution and the Discovery of the World Sea Lanes by European explorers (key word: Smithian growth) had put European economic development on a different, higher trajectory, away from the traditional constraints of agricultural societies like China and all the rest. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 21:09, 22 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

So let me ask you. How come this super-advanced renaissance europe, which had products so much superior to China, couldn't exceed Chinese iron production in 1078 til 1700, and then with a bigger population? How come Europe ran a persistent trade deficit in manufactured goods with ancient, "agarian" China til the industrial revolution? How come Chinese agricultural yields were miles ahead of the west, who didn't even have a seed drill until the 18th century? How come Chinese lifespan and nutrition exceeded all European countries except England by substantial margins even in 1800 when China's GDP per capita had already been declining since 1600? How come Marco Polo was amazed at China under the Mongol despotism, which had probably half the income per capita of Song? By your theory, Marco Polo should have been writing about the immense poverty of China, since Europe was in "Smithian growth", which had put its GDP per capita way ahead of China? Was Polo blind? Navigation is something special, so can I ask you this: how come all of europe's sailing technology came from China? How come Chinese ships were traveling to East Africa and India by the Tang Dynasty? Have you read anything about the technological history of China, GPM? Have you even read European history? Do you know what entail, mercantilism, and Louis XIV did? I suspect if you did, you wouldn't be talking about "Smithian growth" in Europe before the 18th century (except maybe in England). And what's this bollocks about China being an "agarian economy" compared to Europe's "Smithian economy"? 75% of every economy before 1800 was agriculture; Everyone was an agarian economy. I happen to have Adam Smith's wealth of nations on hand and 3/5 of it is about agriculture.

Now, I am not an anti-westerner (I even live there). On the contrary, the west's achievements, especially since the nineteenth century, outstripped China completely and probably contributed more than any other civilization to the uplifting of mankind. Without the west's achievements since the liberal era, we wouldn't even be here to argue in the first place. But we have to look at the facts. Just because the west's achievements in the modern era are great, doesn't mean we should go back and then claim the west was superior in the middle ages or even the dark ages; should we go back and argue Mao was a good thing because of China's current boom? The facts are the facts. let them speak.Teeninvestor (talk) 22:25, 22 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Exceptional, unprovable claim or not? Keep or remove? Please see Talk:Chinese armies (pre-1911)#What to do with this claim?. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 20:15, 21 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

So far, Teeninvestor has not responded to the diffs where he makes unfair accusations of personal attacks or misinformative edit summaries. It has also been demonstrated that there's a persistent problem with edit warring and so far Teeninvestor has not commented on his own behaviour; you can't blame others for your own actions. Nev1 (talk) 18:10, 22 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

According to GPM, adding a criticism section on an article who confidently declares that "Roman Britain's GDP per capita is equal to US" is edit warring. I have nothing else to say.Teeninvestor (talk) 19:25, 22 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That only addresses one of the above three issues (and not even that one fully). Have you no comment on accusations of personal attacks and edit summaries? Nev1 (talk) 19:38, 22 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

First of all, I did not attack him; merely mentioning his history of edit warring is not equivalent to questioning another editor's "mental capabilities". Some of my edit summaries are incomplete, however I promise to be more thorough in the future.Teeninvestor (talk) 19:45, 22 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

At least we're making progress with the edit summaries. But I didn't say you were attacking people, I was referring to the links given in the RfC ([1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]). You seem to have a habit of taking criticism of your work as a personal attack. Nev1 (talk) 19:58, 22 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Uuh, where did I write that "Roman Britain's GDP per capita is equal to US" *confused* ?! You are dreaming up things. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 20:28, 22 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Despite much heat being generated above, I would appreciate a response from Teeninvestor on the issues that have been highlighted in this section. Nev1 (talk) 22:37, 22 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm confused? Look at Maddison's estimates They claim that in 1 CE the native American tribes' per capita income was equal to Roman Britain! Since you added them, you must have endorsed them. As to the claim that I take criticism of my work as personal attacks, click on several of your links, such as link 4, and look at GPM's comments, and you will find the word wargamer.Teeninvestor (talk) 22:45, 22 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The fourth link is you accusing Pmanderson of making personal attacks. Do you seriously think each and everyone of those accusations was valid? Nev1 (talk) 22:49, 22 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, the third link. As to the fourth link, Pmanderson made many rude comments; declaring that he should not have wasted his time with "violating the vanity of this adolescent", for instance, but I don't think this is part of the dispute.Teeninvestor (talk) 00:29, 23 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The above shows to me that Teenivnestor is interpreting criticism of his article work as personal attack. In some cases, the chronology is confused, for example Gun Powder Ma has called Teeninvestor a wargamer but Teeninvestor accused him of making personal attacks before that. In order to make things clear I will provide entire quotes below along with the links as Teeninvestor does not seem to have bothered reading them fully. For each situation, I want to know explicitly where the personal attack is in the eyes of Teeninvestor, with a dff if there is something I have missed.

1. On Talk:Comparative studies of the Roman and Han empires (previously TalkComparison between Roman and Han Empires) Flamarande (talk · contribs) commented that "And how about the military? "Discipline and training were strict; the Romans punished minor infractions by death." That's utter nonsense and only shows that the author knows precious little about the Roman military (but nevertheless somehow wants to make a comparison between the Roman military and the Chinese military)." Teeninvestor responded with "Flamarande is strange, not checking my other sources and being very difficult with this article(which he has a prejudice against), making ad hominem attacks on numerous users(don't know anything, etc...)".
2. On, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Comparison between Roman and Han Empires (2nd nomination) Gun Powder Ma said "Teeinvestor. I replied more fully here. In a nutshell, you did not refer to Scheidel in your 'article' and you do not seem to understand what Scheidel is actually doing in his work. What he does, is trying to fill in gaps in our knowledge of mainly ancient Rome by taking a look at developments in Han China. In doing this, he concentrates on monetary, population and to a lesser extent political issues. This is very meticulious work where only very cautiously certain working hypotheses of limited scope can be worked out. He is not in the least making a full scale virtual clash of Roman and Han Chinese armies and culture as you did. Your 'article' totally deviates from his work and has frankly nothing to do with it except on the most superficial level". Teeninvestor responds with "Your destructive personal attacks are most discouraging. You refer to "Virtual clash of Roman and Han Chinese armies and culture". I ask you: Where is it? Where is it? You have not yet presented a single example of what you have said except your boisterous bias. Ignoring your personal attacks and attempts to distract the issue, I ask you: Do you not admit that there are scholarly sources on this topic, which is also a topic of scholarly interst?. You haven't answered this question, because there are scholarly sources on this notable topic, which you have failed to acknowledge, either because of ignorance or bias."
3. The following is closely related to the above and happened almost concurrently. The following statement by Gun Powder Ma is referred to above when he said "I have replied more fully here" (I only copied over the text, not the link). He said "Papers which you did not even bother to consult for this 'article' for one full year, and, frankly, don't quite seem to understand. When Scheidel endeavours to compare certain aspects of both empires, he does not do it for establishing a who is better, greater and more advanced of the two as you did. That wargame mindset is something he is not at all interested in. He does it rather to fill in gaps of our knowledge of each empire, namely the Roman. For example, there is a problem with the late Republican population count. So Scheidel takes a look across Asia to see whether the missing figures could be filled in with corresponding Han numbers. Might not turn out correct, but at least worth a try. Scheidel's account is 95-99% reasoning, and 1-5% - very cautious - conclusion. The conclusion, being preliminary, is not so important to him, it is the how to come to the conclusion which is valuable from a scholarly viewpoint. But your 'article' is all about how to let best Roman and Han armies virtually clash and who would prevail in this fantasy scenario. This has nothing to do with Scheidel's intention. It's a perversion of the whole thrust and intent of Scheidel's work, so please stop to refer to him". Gun Powder Ma pulls no is saying that he thinks the source has been misrepresented, and I calling it a personal attack is disingenuous. Teeninvestor however interprets it as precisely that.
4. At Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Comparison between Roman and Han Empires (2nd nomination) Teeninvestor accused Pmanderson of making personal attacks. By the time Teeninvestor makes the accusation Pmanderson had made a lot of posts to the AfD. However, I would like to know where in this debate (the version of Teeninvestor's accusation) the attack is? In the above section, Teeninvestor complains that Pmanderson said he had wasted his time with "violating the vanity of this adolescent", yet this occurred at 22:36 (UTC) 24 December 2009, after Teeninvestor accused him of attacks at 13:45 (UTC) 24 December 2009.
5. At Talk:Chinese armies (pre-1911) Teeninvestor accused Gun Powder Ma of calling him a wargemer: "The man who calls "nomadic cavalry" a weapons system calls me shallow?I have invited Pericles to give an assessment, since he has access to most of the sources of the article, which I don't have at this moment nor do I have the time to do so. However, I warn you to stop insulting other editors and calling them "wargamers"; I can stick a few far nastier labels if I chose to, but it is editor decorum not to do so. I hope you can maintain at least a basic level of respect". While it cannot be denied that Gun Powder Ma has called Teeninvestor a wargamer in the past (a stale issue) a quick search of the version of the talk page Teeninvestor commented on will show that the last use of the term was on 18 January 2010. Accusing Gun Powder Ma of attacks like that poisoned the well of discussion and deflected from the issues Gun Powder Ma was actually raising.
6. At Talk:Great Divergence Kanguole (talk · contribs) made the brief comment that "We have seen several examples of your misuse of sources above. This material is not information; it is a POV that you have inserted into this article (in two places)". This is a criticism of Teeninvestor's use and interpretation of sources rather than Teeninvestor himself. Yet that is not how Teeninvestor felt, as he expressed himself: "Kanguole, information is defined as "something that conveys knowledge". The insertion about Qing policies insert knowledge. Why this information is required is seen above. By launching personal attacks on me based on wording errors and the like is a violation of WP:AGF, and does not prove in any way why this info should be removed".

This is unfortunately a pattern of behaviour, and the most recent example I am aware of is from 8 July (the accusation of Kanguole). The above section also leads me to believe that Teenivnestor is oblivious to the problem. My hope is that by laying out the quotes above and asking him to pick the personal attack out of the line up he will think about his actions and whether such behaviour is acceptable on a project which aims for a collaborative atmosphere to improve articles.

I believe part of the problem here is Teeninvestor's understanding of what a personal attack is. Chambers Dictionary gives the following as the definition of ad hominem: "1 appealing to one's audience's prejudices rather than their reason. 2 attacking one's opponent's character rather than their argument". Ad hominem is of course not the only type of personal attack, but no interpretation of WP:NPA validates the accusations linked above. In the examples, nowhere do people attack Teeninvestor before he accuses them of such. Criticism of one's work is not the same as criticism of one's self. Although people can get attached to what they write– believe me, I understand that all too well– criticism of work should not be conflated with a personal attack. The two are very different, and to confuse them makes a collaborative environment very difficult to foster. It breaks down the collaborative principle that Wikipedia is based on. Teeninvestor clearly feels passionately about what he writes, and perhaps that is part of the problem.

It is worth noting that while Gun Powder Ma and Pmanderson have made cutting marks towards Teeninvestor, they were after he accused them of making personal attacks. Making such accusations is going to rub someone up the wrong way, and in these two cases proved to be a self-fulfilling prophesy. This hypersensitivity towards criticism makes working with Teeninvestor difficult. On a closing note, I think it is interesting that when taking the second definition of ad hominem given by Chambers, many of Teeninvestor's accusation of personal attacks actually verge on ad hominem themselves. They serve to avoid the issue at hand and discredit the accused by portraying them as malicious. Nev1 (talk) 01:52, 23 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I can't say much. It does seem that Nev1 is partially correct on this issue. I would like to say, however, that when I referred to GPM and Pmanderson's attacks, I was referring to much earlier incidents of interaction with these editors, which were not exactly in the positive vein, though that time is too far back to actually pick these incidents out. And that impression did stick. However, Nev1 is right that constantly raising these issues do not help resolve disputes, and I will try to avoid doing so in the future.Teeninvestor (talk) 02:13, 23 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]