The result was delete. From what I can tell, this is a divisive fork. Arguments for deletion are stronger than those for keeping (the ones that discuss deleting the article and not just Uncle G's motivation for creating it, whatever that might be), despite the lengthy heated arguing between Uncle G, Skookum1, and others, who are all admonished to be civil in the future. The articles proposed for merging into this one are not affected by this AFD since they were not nominated. --Coredesat 03:24, 8 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
That there are other things denoted by the word "Chinaman" is entirely a red herring. No-one has suggested merging all of those other articles listed at Chinaman (disambiguation), only the article that has the "X is a name for a Chinese person. Some think it pejorative. Some not. Here's a laundry list of people who have got into hot water for using it." form, of which we have several, all addressing the same single subject in exactly the same way, with the only difference being the article titles.
You ask "Why duplicate it?". Given that I'm the one saying that the duplicate articles should be merged into a single article that addresses this one single subject, that question should be posed to others, not me. So I pose that question right back at you: Why are you arguing for having a whole raft of duplicate articles (which at last count would end up with 22 articles addressing exactly the same single subject, in exactly the same "X is a name for a Chinese person" form) instead of one single article for one single subject? You also state that "We have ethnic slur pages.". I suggest that you read the article and the sources, because they both tell you that these are not solely ethnic slurs. Treating them solely as ethnic slurs is wrong.
Treating them as lists of words is wrong, too. The sources address this as one single subject, don't treat it from the single viewpoint that these are ethnic slurs, and don't treat the individual words seperately from one another. Please do as encyclopaedists are supposed to do and base your arguments upon what the sources say.
And please, as I've asked repeatedly, start looking at sources other than dictionaries. Building articles solely from long lists of dictionaries, as those individual duplicate articles are being built, can logically (unless one performs the sort of original research that editors are performing) yield nothing except a whole set of dictionary articles. You have at least three history books cited as references in this article. That should be a big clue as to the sort of source that editors should be looking for. Such non-dictionary sources, you will find, don't divide this single subject up. That is, in part, because they are not dictionaries that give individual articles to individual words. Wikipedia is not a dictionary, too. We merge duplicate articles that are about the same single subject, that differ solely in the titles used. This article is a demonstration of what the single subject is, of what sources there are, and of how many individual words it covers, in part to show those editors, who claimed that there wasn't a single subject here solely on the erroneous basis that "the words are different", that there was, and that if they actually went and looked at some actual sources, instead of performing lexicography in the wrong project, they would see what it was. Uncle G 11:17, 4 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia is not a dictionary, but unfortunately several editors are doing lexicography here, as can be seen at Talk:Chinaman/Skookum1's sources where editors are collecting a corpus of quotations that contain certain words, and then performing their own firsthand analyses of these words and what people may have meant when they wrote them. That's lexicography, and is exactly the sort of work that belongs in Wiktionary, where it is welcome.
A proper encyclopaedia article, in contrast, should have sourced analyses, not analyses done by Wikipedia editors directly, and this one does. Hence the reason that it isn't original research. You'll find, for example, the analysis given in the article that "chink" has been used as an "innocent slang term", on the very page of the source that is cited for it. This isn't a collection of firsthand analyses by Skookum1 and other pseudonymous Wikipedia editors of quotations that they've collected. It's a summary of the analyses by Mencken, Lewis, Isaccs, Tchen and the others whose writings discussing this subject are cited in the article.
(Notice also from the talk page discussions, and the discussions above, that the main aim of this mis-placed lexicography is to contradict what the secondary sources actually say, because editors disagree with what the sources say and want their own analyses to be reflected in Wikipedia. Zeus1234, for example, asserts that these words are all slurs, even though we have a cited source, Lewis, documenting the fact that they have been used without intent to slur by some people. Ironically, it is that promulgation of a single view, and not this article, which states right from the start that there's more than one opinion to be had, and presents several of them, that would be non-neutral.)
It's not even original research in terms of being a novel synthesis or presentation. Ironically, the novel synthesis and presentation is exactly what those who want to do lexicography in the encyclopaedia are creating. If one looks at the actual sources that discuss this subject, rather than trying to do one's own primary research from quotations, one finds that they don't discuss these words individually. They discuss them en bloc. Lewis discusses "Chinaman", "Chinee", and "chink" in the same breath, for example. Tchen discusses "John Chinaman", "chink", "heathen Chinee", "mandarin", and "celestial" all together, for another example.
These are not separate subjects, and should not be dealt with piecemeal, with editors doing original lexicographic research in the wrong project, in individual articles. The way to deal with them is to use sources, who have already done the analyses, and to deal with the single subject, that the sources themselves address as a single whole, in a single article — i.e. exactly as here. Uncle G 14:47, 3 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
“ | POV forks usually arise when two or more contributors disagree about the content of an article or other page, and instead of resolving that disagreement, someone creates another version of the article (or another article on the same subject) to be developed according to their personal views rather than according to consensus. | ” |