Should I correct Wikipedia or not?

[Rasmus]

This page on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iaido

Claims:

Creator: Nakayama Hakudō (c.1873–1958) is generally credited with first use of the term "iaido".

Which is easily refuted by the simple fact the the Zen Nihon Iaido Renmei was founded years before he became a big name and powerfull political player within the Zen Nihon Kendo Renmei.

While it is true that he by his involvement in the ZNKR, and the strong expansion of the Muso Shinden-ryu dominated ZenKenRen Seitei gata, he surely helped making iaido extremly populare as a sport. But to claim that he coined, created or invented the term is just rubbish.

So is there any reason why I shouldn't remove this claim from the Wikipedia page?

[Rasmus]

Which is easily refuted by the simple fact the the Zen Nihon Iaido Renmei was founded years before he became a big name and powerfull political player within the Zen Nihon Kendo Renmei.

Not to mention the fact that Nippon Butokukai awarded him a hanshi title in both iaido and kendo as early as 1920. Which is about 28 years before ZNIR was founded, and 47 years before ZenKenRen Seitei gata was put together and ZNKR expanded their sports with a iaido branch.

Sure there's some iaijutsu techniques in Shindo Munen-ryu but it wasn't until 1916 when he picked up Eishin-ryu that he started studying iaido for real. I find it a bit hard to believe that he in only four years would "create" the word/sport/art of iaido and manage to convince the Nippon Butokukai to start handing out titles in it.

[ryoma]

That one always bothered me as well. I don't know what is needed to be able to change a wiki-page.

[Cliff Judge]

I muck about on wikipedia from time to time. The general procedure is:

- raise your issue on the Talk page for the article.
- wait a couple of days to see if anyone is paying attention and wants to debate your point with you
- make your changes

It is best to have an external source of some authority that you can cite as a reference for what you put in there. Websites that seem like they know what they are talking about are good, books are really good. What is frowned upon is "original research"....wikipedia is not supposed to be a place for "new information."

[ryoma]

Has it already been changed? I can't find the reference to Nakayama's first use of the term "iaido" anymore.

I also think it's a shame that there is no wiki page for Ôe Masamichi (not even in japanese).

[someguy]

There may have been one at one time. The problem with Wikipedia is there are a bunch... a bunch of people on there editing and changing things. The major problem is if there is no third party books, articles or the like to point directly too the information usually gets deleted rather fast, add to that the fact that most official martial arts editor or moderators have no knowledge of martials (I've found) they will quickly label a page unimportant and delete it.

[Rasmus]

Has it already been changed? I can't find the reference to Nakayama's first use of the term "iaido" anymore.

It is still there on the right inside the infobox.

I found another case of over embellishment on the page for Musō Shinden-ryū. It claims:

Founder: Hayashizaki Jinsuke Minamoto no Shigenobu (林崎 甚助 源重信)
c.1546–1621, Nakayama Hakudō (中山 博道), reviser.[1] 1869-1958

Compare that to the page for Hasegawa Eishin-ryū which says:

Founder: Hasegawa Chikaranosuke Eishin (長谷川 主税助 英信)

Which seems a bit strange to me since fact is that MSR is just a new name for Shimomura-ha Eishin-ryū with some minor alterations, and if HER claims to be founded by Hasegawa Chikaranosuke I don't see how MSR can ignore him, step back a few generations and instead claim it was created by the mythical Hayashizaki Jinsuke Minamoto no Shigenobu and draw straight line to Nakayama completely ignoring Hasegawa. It's just stupid.

The only honest way of describing history would be state the fact that Nakayama was the sole creator of MSR with a footnote explaining that it's really a branch of Eishin-ryu. Maybe mention that fact that when he was invited to do a public demonstration in 1930 by the Butokukai he couldn't use the Eishin-ryu name because he hadn't received a menkyo kaiden nor had any other credentials that gave him permission to do so. He then came up with the name ”Muso Shinden Ryu Battojutsu” (無双神伝流抜刀術) to avoid being bashed by his seniors. I guess the name stuck and he kept it 1933 when he started teaching Muso Shinden Ryu (夢想神伝流) officially at Yoshinkan. Whether he actually received a valid menkyo later is besides the point here.

I also noted that Wikipedia uses koryu.com as reference. They list Hayashizaki as the founder of both MJER and MSR. Alltough it is "correct" in some sense I feel that on Wikipedia we can allow ourselves a bit more detail. Putting Hayashizaki as the "founder" for every school that can trace it's lineage back to him isn't a very interesting fact. Better to point out the actual people that differentiated them from the others.

Note: The Musō Jikiden Eishin-ryū page seems to suffer from the same case of over-embellishment with a reference to koryu.com. I guess James is correct when he says most editors on Wikipedia don't really know much about the the history of iaido.

[Rasmus]

I've edit the pages now!
Let's see how long it takes someone to object...

Now:
- The guys that actually created the schools is now listed as founders.
- Only the direct ancestor schools are listed as ancestors.

In the lineage chart for MJER I also added notes at the headmasters which derived new schools along the way to clearify the fact that it was new and different ryuha rather than a single one.

On the iaido page Nakayama is no longer the founder and the statement in the text that he's behind the work "iaido" has been challenged by a "need citation" mark.

The only thing I'm not happy with is that I haven't been able to find a date or even a time-period when Ōe Masamichi established MJER. So if anyone could fill in the piece of fact at Wikipedia that would be great!

[someguy]

As long as you make a note on the talk page the objection shouldn't result in deletion right away. Sometime they do discuss things before editing or deleting them but you have to watch the page checking on it several times a day or getting an email alert. good luck

[Joseph Svinth]

Put the page on your watchlist, and Wikipedia will notify you whenever anyone makes a change.

This is useful to do for any pages you're interested in, not just that one.

[hyaku]

This page on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iaido

Claims:


Which is easily refuted by the simple fact the the Zen Nihon Iaido Renmei was founded years before he became a big name and powerfull political player within the Zen Nihon Kendo Renmei.

While it is true that he by his involvement in the ZNKR, and the strong expansion of the Muso Shinden-ryu dominated ZenKenRen Seitei gata, he surely helped making iaido extremly populare as a sport. But to claim that he coined, created or invented the term is just rubbish.

So is there any reason why I shouldn't remove this claim from the Wikipedia page?

Problem is Wiki allows people to re-edit. I edited some HNIR averse propaganda to find it cut and re-edited. I complained to wiki and it just continued as a 'disputed page".