nihontopedia

[David Flynn]

I would like to inform this forum, that Andres Pedraza, has begun a nihontopedia: http://nihontopedia.com for the dissemination of Nihonto studies. I personaly applaud Andres and wish this site every success. I also hope that members of this forum, will contribute where ever and when ever possible

[Rich T]

Hi David, thanks for posting the link, it is not a bad idea but I would worry about the possibility of clashing egos and miss information, just as Mr Pedraza is claiming to want to put an end to. If like Wikipedia, can anyone edit a posting ?, If I write one thing, can someone come in and change that ?, can you see where this is heading ?.

 

I am not canning the idea but I must admit I found the comment on the front page

"I was disappointed to find that the information available on the web is vast, cryptic, fragmented, contradictory and unreliable."

a bit of a disappointment. There are many hours of good information online, and this points to all the work posted being unreliable by the sounds of things.

 

Articles and study done by the late Jim Kurrash, Dr Richard Stein, Fred Weisberg, Kenji Mishima, Darcy Brockbank, Jim Gilbert, Roger Robertshaw, Danny Massey, Ginza Choshuya, Osaru's Japanese sword school, Jinsoo Kim ( sadly now defunct ) and probably many more I have failed to mention are both accurate, interesting and informative and I would think that saying that they are anything but is a gross injustice.

 

I know personally how hard it is to try and add information online, to be as accurate as possible, relying on translations that can be a bit off or even inacurate, and to spend hours and hours compiling and collecting documents, images and other resources to share online.

 

I see that Mr Pedraza then goes on to say that there a lot of valuable information on the web, perhaps he should have a links section to point to that information as that opening statement on it's own could be misleading and I think it an incorrect statement.

 

That's just my take on it, but it would certainly be nice if it works. Also I seen no mention of Tosogu but I assume it is included ?.

 

Cheers

 

Rich Turner

[David Flynn]

I believe, the idea is to have as much information as possible, on the one site. I don't believe the intention is to criticise other sites.

Unfortunately, egos do become involved, which is a pity, but alas that makes us human.

I hope that egos may be put aside for the benefit of everyone. If this venture fails, I still applaud the attempt.

Maybe, if due credit is given to all contributory sources maybe it will succeed.

It is easy to criticise, even if there is no intention of condemming.

[Rich S]

I have to agree with Rich T. There is a lot of good, accurate info on the

web. IMHO I doubt that "Nihontopedia" will work. There are thousands

of books written and hundreds of websites already extant. Allowing

anyone to post and alter posts doesn't sound like a good idea to me.

While I use Wikipedia occasionally, I take it with a grain of salt.

 

Along these lines I have added to both my mirror sites copies

of Jinsoo Kim's WW II Seki Swordsmiths and WW II Showa Swordsmith

rankings. Both are excellent research pages. Of course I have given

full credit to him. Just trying to preserve the best of defunct websites

much like Rich T has done with others.

 

http://www.geocities.com/alchemyst/seki.htm

 

http://www.geocites.com/alchemyst/tosho.htm

 

Hope folks find these useful. Jinsoo did a wonderful job in

researching and publishing this information. I've found it

greatly helpful in locating and translating info on Showa period

smiths.

 

Rich S

[Carlo Giuseppe Tacchini]

I fear that wiki site will be butchered by korean, chinese and Japanese sword extremists, amending and deleting each other's work.

EDIT : better to say people with clashing points of view. I feel many western "Sammyri" will act there too.

Sites as the ones made by people enlisted hereabove are reliable

and well done, so at the end they'll still remain a more reliable source

to start with.

 

The great resource of wiki is that everybody can contribute to it.

The great weakness of wiki is that everybody can contribute to it.

[Rich S]

My point exactly. You never know on one of those "pedia" whether

the material was written by a 5 year old or by a guy with multiple

doctorates in the field.

 

I fear a "nihontopedia" would be swamped with kids who just got

a "genuine ninja sword" at the mall and/or by folks from the

SF Japanese Sword Socieity (aka the ninja nation). At least

with individual websites you know who is writing the material,

likely have some indication of their background, expertise, etc.,

or can ask around the Nihonto world about them.

 

Sure there are contradictions on the web and in books, but then

how many folks have had the same sword or tosogu attributed to

different schools/makers by submitting it to different Shinsa. Even

the Japanese experts sometimes contradict each other.

 

Rich S

[Darcy]

I am not so worried about the overall content of the wikipedia sites, as they take a random walk towards accuracy and when tested against Brittanica they held up perfectly well.

 

However, I think his approach is poor. The information available online is none of vast, cryptic, fragmented, contradictory or unreliable.

 

I wish it were vast.

 

What has been put up by English speakers is easy to understand. Any easier and you would lose meaning. Fragmented... it neither is nor is not, I just don't see how that applies... by the nature of multiple people with multiple sites you are going to have various sources but I fail to see the issue.

 

Contradictory: wait until you start reading sword books. Much of what we are dealing with is theory, and in theory you will have contradictory information. Unfortunately we didn't videotape any of the swordsmiths of the Kamakura period so cannot verify their activities.

 

Lastly, reliability is always going to be a problem because none of us are true experts. We repeat what we hear with our own editorializing. All that means in the end is that we have to continue studying independently to improve our own knowledge as students so as to know what to filter out. Just making a wiki won't suddenly make us all experts.

 

The handful of people in the west that I would call experts, none of them are writing stuff for internet consumption on a regular basis.

 

So I definitely applaud the efforts of anyone who wants to add content... anyone writing content cannot help but improve their knowledge. It's on the wrong foot though to take a shotgun out there to the people who are interested in making content and blast them all in this way... who after all will be left to create content, if the content creators mostly suck?

 

As for myself, no research on anything I put on my site is done until I consult what's written online. Often times I dig up gems.

[David Flynn]

Personaly, I do my own research where ever possible. However, when it comes to texts in Japanese, I come to an end. Harry Afu Watsons Translations of Nihonto Koza and Fujishiro are worth their weight in cocky kack ( an Australianism for priceless ). I applaud any site, which promotes Nihonto study. E.g. Richard stein's and the now defunct Jin soo kim. However, no site is Perfect and only time will tell if this site will be of any value.

I for one, wish this site every success.

[Henry Wilson]

I have just joined up and made an edit under mumei just to see how it works.

 

For what it is worth, I think it is a good idea but I feel that there is a lot of potential for bickering, name calling and general falling out with each other.

[apedraza]

I was doing a quick google on “nihontopedia†to see if I'd been picked up by Google, and was surprised to find this site as the only other hit. I read all the posts and decided they warranted a response from me, mainly to thank everyone for even discussing my modest initiative, and secondly to answer a few comments which I'd like to clarify.

 

First off, thanks, David, for mentioning my site here. Much appreciated!

 

To Rich Turner:

 

If like Wikipedia, can anyone edit a posting ?, If I write one thing, can someone come in and change that ?, can you see where this is heading ?

 

Yes, anyone can edit a posting. I'm banking that such edits will improve or complement prior postings, and not be vandalistic in nature, or worse, descend into the ego clashes you also mention. As with Wikipedia, if “edit wars†do break out, the sysops can lock an article and thus prevent further modifications. It seems to be working well for Wikipedia, and since the Nihonto community is much smaller, I think, than Wikipedia's, I hope we can make it work.

 

I am not canning the idea but I must admit I found the comment on the front page

 

>>"I was disappointed to find that the information available on the web is vast, cryptic, fragmented, contradictory and unreliable."

 

a bit of a disappointment. There are many hours of good information online, and this points to all the work posted being unreliable by the sounds of things.

 

Yes, upon rereading that here I realized it may have been coming across differently from what I intended. I never meant to even imply that the information already online is inaccurate or flawed in any way. I was just pointing out that you can find erroneous info on line, and for the beginner, the person just starting to research on nihonto, it can be almost impossible to determine what's legitimate and what's not. I, personally, owe a great debt to the many people who have posted accurate knowledge on the web. I did not mean to belittle their efforts in any way. If anything, I want to make a place available on the web where the people who have the knowledge, and are recognized as such by their peers, can come together and collect all that knowledge for everyone's benefit. A lot of these people I would be happy to make sysops of Nihontopedia so that they can in turn do peer review on what others post, and help make sure that the information does remain accurate, useful and impartial. And, lastly, based on your comment I did rewrite that portion of the main page that was sending out a wrong message. Thanks for pointing it out to me.

 

I see that Mr Pedraza then goes on to say that there a lot of valuable information on the web, perhaps he should have a links section to point to that information as that opening statement on it's own could be misleading and I think it an incorrect statement.

 

We will have a links page (feel free to create one, just go in and type “useful linksâ€. It will tell you no such page exists, and allow you to create it).

 

Also I seen no mention of Tosogu but I assume it is included ?

 

Yes! Tosogu are definitely included. Again, feel free to start posting on the subject.

 

To David Flynn:

 

Unfortunately, egos do become involved, which is a pity, but alas that makes us human.

 

I hope that egos may be put aside for the benefit of everyone. If this venture fails, I still applaud the attempt. Maybe, if due credit is given to all contributory sources maybe it will succeed.

 

I hope the egos can be put aside, too, for everyone's benefit. As for due credit, all articles have a tab on the top labeled “Historyâ€. This tab tracks all changes as well as contributors. Besides allowing for proper credit, this also allows sysops to revert to prior versions of an article if vandalism or other inappropriate edits occur. And, David, again, thanks for initially posting about my new site here, as well as for your wishes.

 

To Dr. Richard Stein:

 

You are one of those people I mentioned before, to whom I owe a large debt for all the great info on your site regarding Nihonto. Thank you! At the same time, I'm very sorry you seem to be against the idea behind Nihontopedia. To be honest, you and your site were a big part of what inspired me to think about something like Nihontopedia. It was the desire to have a site like yours, only allowing others to contribute at will, while still keeping some control over content. Also, and linked to your comment in your post regarding information you have saved from now defunct websites, I wanted a site that could outlive us all, and not be dependent on any one person's resources or goodwill. I plan on turning over Nihontopedia, once it reaches critical mass, to an organization. I still haven't decided if that will be an existing one, or one created for that sole purpose. But I definitely don't want to be the sole owner in the long run.

 

 

To Carlo Tacchini:

 

I fear that wiki site will be butchered by korean, chinese and Japanese sword extremists, amending and deleting each other's work.

 

It would be up to us to make sure this does not happen. I'm sure that once they realize there is active policing of all contributions, and inappropriate ones are deleted, they will quickly grow bored and leave. That's if they ever arrive in the first place.

 

To Dr. Richard Stein again:

 

Sure there are contradictions on the web and in books, but then

how many folks have had the same sword or tosogu attributed to

different schools/makers by submitting it to different Shinsa. Even

the Japanese experts sometimes contradict each other.

 

Here's where I hope we can be mature enough and recognize in any articles that need to be that specific, that the jury is still out, with some attributing X type of work or object to Y school, and others to Z school.

 

To Darcy:

 

Lastly, reliability is always going to be a problem because none of us are true experts. We repeat what we hear with our own editorializing. All that means in the end is that we have to continue studying independently to improve our own knowledge as students so as to know what to filter out. Just making a wiki won't suddenly make us all experts.

 

I don't want to make us instant experts, I just want the knowledge collected and added to constantly in a single “libraryâ€, for easy access when required. So, by all means let's all continue studying independently, but at the same time, let's make our findings public and easy to find so we all don't have to face the same hurdles acquiring them. Not all of us have ready access to the same obscure tome, more's the pity.

 

The handful of people in the west that I would call experts, none of them are writing stuff for internet consumption on a regular basis.

 

And isn't that a huge shame? Maybe we can entice them out.

 

So I definitely applaud the efforts of anyone who wants to add content... anyone writing content cannot help but improve their knowledge. It's on the wrong foot though to take a shotgun out there to the people who are interested in making content and blast them all in this way... who after all will be left to create content, if the content creators mostly suck?

 

Wow. Where did I say all the content creators suck or take a shotgun to them? You'd have to be pretty creative to make that come out of my blurb on the main page. Anyway, I have modified that paragraph (and welcome any other suggestions from anyone) since it definitely seemed to be creating friction where none was intended.

 

To Henry Wilson:

 

I have just joined up and made an edit under mumei just to see how it works.

 

Yes, I saw your edit. I added a sentence after it, and moved the link to the other article back to the end, so it would be more visible. Thanks for being the first (and so far only) contributor besides myself!

 

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Sorry for the length of this post, folks. I am new to this forum, and I didn't see a way to reply to individual posts.

 

Thanks again!!!