Talk:Tank Man

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Help me out here -- why do we need an article on both Wang Weilin and Tank man when they refer to the same person? Garrett Albright 22:56, 18 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Smyth and I have been discussing that on my talk page. Look there. →Raul654 23:32, Sep 18, 2004 (UTC)
Here is a copy of the discussion – Smyth 13:07, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

There is little point in insisting on a link to Wang Weilin, as nobody knows who he is, and no other pages but Tank man link to him. We can't have a bio on him because nobody knows who he is. :) Should the page be created, it would be nothing but a permanent substub with only one useful outgoing link – to Tank man. Surely you don't want to encourage the existence of such a page? — Smyth 20:01, 18 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Just to prove everyone wrong, I've gone and written it. It contains 7 internal links, 2 external links, and 3 sentences - quite a bit more than a substub. And there's more room to grow. →Raul654 20:20, Sep 18, 2004 (UTC)
Right, so we now have two articles under two pseudonyms of the same person. The new article contains one new piece of information, which should be incorporated back into the original article. The rest is straight duplication.
This is what redirects are for. – Smyth 20:49, 18 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Tank man should contain information about the suspects (who Tank man could be), and the impact (being on Time Magazine's top 100 most influental people). The Wang Weilin article should be a striaght biography - it could talk about what university he went to, the fact that he was the son of two factory workers, etc - none of which belongs at tank man. →Raul654 21:01, Sep 18, 2004 (UTC)
If any actual, real, substantiated information was known about Wang Weilin personally, or if he was a notable person in some other way, then I'd agree. But we only have the vaguest hearsay about who "Wang" was, assuming he actually existed, so there is no useful purpose in having a separate article for him. – Smyth 21:24, 18 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Uh, no one is disputing the claim that he existed, or that he was a student, etc etc. The claim that he is tank man might be wrong, but he definitely existed. →Raul654 21:28, Sep 18, 2004 (UTC)
I'm sure lots of people called Wang Weilin existed, and lots of those were students, and probably one of those students were in the Square on that day. But we don't add a page for every person who exists, we add a page for the Tank Man because he did something worth writing a Wikipedia article about.
I suppose my point really is that there is no prospect that any new information will ever be added to the Wang page which would not equally belong on the Tank man page, because there is nothing else known about him except the barest rumors. In such a situation, having two pages seems unjustified. – Smyth 21:42, 18 Sep 2004 (UTC)
To reiterate what I said above - The Wang Weilin article ... could talk about what university he went to, the fact that he was the son of two factory workers, etc - none of which belongs at tank man. Tank man is about the tank man persona. We can't say for sure that it's Weilin, tank man shouldn't go into depth about his life -- that would be awkward. On the other hand, Wang Weilin is about Weilin himself. There is definitely information that belongs in the latter and not in the former. And with the barest of google searches, I turned up several facts that were usable. If someone wanted to, they could find a lot more info than that. (all they would have to do is email the professor who reported that he had died after 14 days). →Raul654 21:56, Sep 18, 2004 (UTC)
I've reconsidered my position. I suppose it could go either way - in general, yes, it's a horrible idea to have two articles about the same thing, but this case is odd, since we don't know that they're the same thing. I'm fine with it as is, but if you want to merge the two, I don't think I'll have any further objections. →Raul654 23:35, Sep 18, 2004 (UTC)

As a sidebar to this discussion, the Chinese version of the Tank Man page in Wikipedia is called "Wang Weilin".

Contents

[edit] Name of the tank man

The identity of this man is known, at least in China. The official Chinese government position is that they do not know who it is. a merge from the Chinese article of relevant information is needed, and this article moved to "Wang Weilin" with Tank Man and The Unknown rebel left as redirects. I have put this on my to-do list, but if anyone else wants to work on it, leave me a talk message. -Vina 01:57, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Please provide the sources that document this. --Jiang 02:29, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Also, please do not move this to Wang Weilin unless you can prove within a shadow of a doubt that that is this man's name -- that is, you have some bombshell bit of evidence that no other source I've been able to find has had. We've been through this (or something like this) before. Thank you. Garrett Albright 05:37, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)
After further research, I agree with both of you that it is not documented (even the Chinese wiki says it is unverified) The point is, most people refer to him by that name (that I am aware of.) The Times article refers to him as the Unknown Rebel and does not mention his (alleged) name because of unverifiability, but his name is referred to as such in many other documents. The reason I hit upon this issue was because I was navigating from the Chinese wiki and trying to find an interwiki link. The Chinese article is titled Wang Weilin (王维林) and not tank man, or the unknown rebel, or any such "mythical" label. I agree that as hard evidence goes, the name is no more "mythical" than the others, but it has more chance of being accurate than the other two. More importantly, people searching will search by his alleged name, rarely by either of the other two alternatives. -Vina 18:28, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Wang Weilin redirects to Tank Man. And most of the sources I found while researching the article (I was the original writer) were quite hesitant to refer to him as Wang with certainty, if they mentioned the name at all. I took a similar tack with this article, and I think it's the best path to take at our current level of certainty. Garrett Albright 03:51, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I still think that the actual article should be at Wang Weilin as opposed to Tank man, as more people search for him under that name, at least in my experience. <edit after more research> hmm, looks like English has more "tank man" than Wang Weilin, but Chinese googling turns up an overwhelming majority using that name. You also see a lot more Chinese articles taking his name as fact than english articles. I wonder if there is a Chinese source of which western media is unaware? (highly unlikely, but still, the discrepancy is wierd.</edit> -Vina 21:53, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

whether more people search for Wang Weilin or tank man is irrelevant as long as Wang Weilin redirect here. people will find this article find. at no point should we sacrifice accuracy in favor of popular searches. --Jiang 03:25, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Tank man or the Unknown Rebel?

Is "Tank man" really a more common usage for him than "The Unknown Rebel"? It seems Time uses the latter, and I happen to think it sounds better. "Tank man" sounds too much like "Tank Girl", or somebody that transforms into a tank, or something else totally unlike who he is. Is there a strong objection to moving this page to "The Unknown Rebel"? -R. fiend 21:19, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

"Tank man" seems to be an unprecise reference (try googling it) but when people say "The Unknown Rebel" (try googling again), we know theyre talking about this person. I never seen the former before I stumbled upon this article, but BBC uses "tank man" --Jiang 00:44, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Well, disreagrding what BBC says, it seems that this information supports a move to "The Unknown Rebel". Is anyone opposed to such a move? -R. fiend 01:14, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I just looked at that BBC link. Is that the only place he's referred to as such? That was just in the headline, where word count and length are important, giving "tank man" a certain advantage. In the article itself they call him "the unknown rebel" (or at least say thats how the American media refer to him). -R. fiend 01:18, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Tank man → The Unknown Rebel

The name "The Unknown Rebel" is what he is more commonly called, and it just sounds better. "Tank Man" is a stupid name, and it seems to me it came from a single headline where it had the advantage of being shorter. This is not a reason to use it as the title of the article. I brought up the discussion on the talk page and have no opposition so far. - R. fiend 16:30, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

  • Would it not be better to name the article Wang Weilin (if his identity is established...which I thought it was) and redirect both the above to Wang Weilin? Otherwise, I support the move provided the identity of Tank Man isn't established. —ExplorerCDT 16:43, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)
    • There's a big stink on the talk page about how verifiable the name "Wang Weillin" is. Until that's settled (and I doubt it ever will be) I'm in agreement with those who say it should not be the article's title. -R. fiend 17:02, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)
    • I wrote a good chuck of this article (including most of the stuff about Wang Weilin. Explorer's claim that Wang Weiling is the "established" identify is laughable - in fact, he's very, very probably not tank man. He's the one that the London Star (a tablooid) happened to identify based on super flimsy evidence. The short of it is - nobody knows who he is. There's really no evidence, and no one claiming to be. I support because the Unknown Rebel is the name I've heard it as. →Raul654 19:53, Jan 29, 2005 (UTC)
      • I didn't claim that it was "established." A simple readback of my comment will show you that much. However, I agree it is laughable because a lot of people (even academics) go around thinking someone in the media identified him. I have always heard that someone figured out who he was, and tracked down that he was executed. It wasn't until reading this article that I learned there was significant doubt as to those claims. Surprisingly, I have never heard him referred to as either of the two article titles above. If he can be positively identified, I think both Tank man and The Unknown Rebel should redirect to him, but lacking that positive identification, I support the move as requested. Again Raul654, you should re-read my comments to see that I didn't claim an identity was established, only mentioned an alternate conditional suggestion. —ExplorerCDT 20:52, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  • Support, makes sense. Timrollpickering 19:48, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  • Support, for reasons I outlined above. →Raul654 19:53, Jan 29, 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose, because even though it is a somewhat stupid name, it seems to be more common. Now both names are somewhat ambigous, so the best google test I could think of was ["tank man" Tiananmen]:2,410 and ["unknown rebel" Tiananmen]:425. It is better if this article be found from a search engine with a stupid name than not found at all.--Pharos 00:41, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose. "Tank man" is stupid, but no more so than "The Unknown Rebel," which I would expect to star Burt Reynolds and involve motorcycles and Chevy muscle. The current name for him is generic, hence the minuscule m; the proposed alternative is a nickname apparently coined by Time magazine—which actually scores it a few points with me, but it still lacks the ubiquity required to make it the article's title. ADH (t&m) 02:37, Jan 30, 2005 (UTC)
  • Support. Neutralitytalk 06:38, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)
  • Support. "Tank man" makes him sound like a video game character. Proteus (Talk) 12:38, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)
    • Indeed . Actually there's a small downloadable game called Tank man [1] --LukeSurl 16:19, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Lots of unknown rebels, but "tank man" is descriptive of one particular rebel. For instance, without looking at the article I kinda guessed who it was about. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 14:12, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  • Support. Estel (talk) 17:46, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Both titles are meaningless, what has title to do with Wang Weilin, he was meant to have been a student at Tiananmen Square protest. Where these titles some kind of US media promotion?--Daeron 07:31, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose. As noted above, while none of the nicknames are particularily clever or aescetically pleasing, I find Tank man to be far more descriptive of who it is than the Unknown Rebel.--kissekatt 17:00, 2005 Jun 4 (UTC)
  • Support for reasons outlined above. The Tank man is actually the name of a British electronica band, a [2004 Finnish Film http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0432127/] and an American World War II painting. I'm not suggesting that these take the place of this article, but it goes to show how general the phrase is. To me, the phrase "Tank man" would imply an article about people who make tanks move rather than stop them.--LukeSurl 16:13, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose. If "Tank Man" is good enough for Frontline, then it's good enough for me. Like Tony, I had an idea of what this article would be about just from the name. -AED 05:52, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
Just to submit comment: "Tank Man" sounds rather dumb. It describes everything but the kind of person who would risk his life standing in front of a tank. Really, it makes it sound like he's the guy driving the things, not protesting them. Nah, the "Uknown Rebel" isn't much better, but at least clearly indicates who the man is in the picture.

Vote talley as of April 2006:

Support 7, Oppose 6. No consensus

[edit] What about the man in the 1st tank?

I'd really like to know about the guy who was the driver of the first tank; He was almost as signifacant player in this event. The fact that he actively avoided running down Tank Man for 30 minutes contrasts starkely with the subsequent crackdown closer to the square.

Couldn't agree more. You have to wonder if the people who pulled him away from the tank made the wrong choice. They basically sided with the tanks against the people.
Rubbish, just because one is trying to saves another life, doesn't mean one is siding with the opposition in the process.

[edit] PLA Top Brass was clearly embarrassed by the incident!

The tank column consisting of regularly 18 units Type 79 (Type 69-III) medium battle tanks (37,5 tons, 105 mm gun, heavy machine gun demonstratively covered!) was part of the tank regiment of the elite 40th Group Army of PLA Military District Chengdu. Consequently these technologically rather primitive Main Battle Tanks were among the best equipment the PLA was able to field in 1989. Through CNN satellite TV coverage nearly a billion people on the globe saw instructively that Chinas military might was at least 20 years obsolete in comparison to first rate militaries of the time. Audiences worldwide could easily observe that not only the methods but also the means were rooted deep in the 1950´s. Actually the tanks the Soviet Army used to suppress the reformminded Dubcek government in Czechoslovakia 1968 were mainly more advanced than the crude armour of PLA tank regiments over two decades later. The whole situation ended up as a double nightmare for PLA officers. Humiliating enough was the fact that they had to secure the power of the CCP against ordinary people in the streets of their capital instead of safeguarding the security of a emerging major power, but the ultimate embarrassment was the stunning disclosure of technological backwardness in front of the world public. Eventually this tormenting incident was one of the driving forces that led to the modernization of the PLA since 1991 because the leadership recognized that such a disaster must not happen again. Another show of weakness was to be avoided at any cost since the consequences for the party and the army would be inevitably fatal. G.R.S 26.12.2005

[edit] Most powerful photo ever?

I don't know about you guys, but when I look at that photo and think of the story behind it, I almost want to cry. If anyone can think of a more powerful photo, I'd like to see it. MondoManDevout 06:18, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Photo #2 in Time Magazine's 2005 Photo of the Year spread (flash required)

http://www.time.com/time/potw/2005_viewers_choice/ The photo was taken on location in Iraq during the battle of mosul, and was nominated for a pulitzer prize.

There is certainly no lack of powerful images. [2] from [3] and images planes sticking out of the twin towers. So much drama transpires within our lives, capturing on film is inevitable.

[edit] Injured man?

The article contains this text:

Neverminding the injured man, the tanks continued on their path, crushing him.

What injured man? Who was crushed? That paragraph repeatedly uses "him" to refer to Tank Man, and I'm not sure who the Injured Man was supposed to be. I finally figured it must be Tank Man who was crushed, but then I read that no one knows what happened to him...

This is a very confusing way to end the writeup. If someone was crushed to death I want to know more about it, and it should be clear that it was not Tank Man himself.

[edit] Wire photo?

From the article:

This image also represents one of the first instances of the digital transfer of images, as the Associated Press photographer there wired the image directly to the United States hours after the image was taken. This began a significant step into the transfer of information around the world.

This seems a bit odd - "wire photography" was around since the 1930s. It may be referring to a specific form of technology, but even so... I've cut it out for now. Shimgray | talk | 23:21, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

It may have been the first emailed digital photo for AP wire? I agree this seems rather odd.  ALKIVAR™ 00:35, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
Email seems pretty odd, too, in '89. Possible, but "in the field"? Shimgray | talk | 17:16, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
Well email sort of did exist back then. AOL was in operation starting in 1988, Prodigy and Compuserve and the like were as well. So its not as if a provider didnt exist. Then theres the fact that Fidonet and BBSes existed back then. So its entirely possible that these images were uploaded directly via modem. I'm not saying that it necessarily was ... but the potential was there...  ALKIVAR™ 22:40, 17 January 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Google.cn

The article doesn't seem to have any reference to Google's censorship in its new China service. I think it's relevant. Essentially, a search for Tiananmen Square on ordinary Google brings up Tank Man as the first hit. A search on google.cn, the Chinese version provided by Google to the PRC, does not show the Tank Man, instead it shows families having fun in the park. This sort of censorship shows that discussion of Tank Man isn't just risque but actually banned. Anyone mind if I add this to the article (with links)? -Kasreyn 10:17, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

searching for tiananmen at google.cn does not bring up pictures of The Tank Man on the front page; however, searching for tienanmen does show it. furthermore, at the time of this posting, you can in fact see the picture of The Tank Man on the third page, albeit only as a picture in another picture.
the google search link: http://images.google.cn/images?q=tiananmen&num=10&hl=zh-CN&lr=&start=20&sa=N&filter=0
the found page: http://images.google.cn/imgres?imgurl=http://cryptome.cn/tk/pict506.jpg&imgrefurl=http://cryptome.cn/tk/tiananmen-eyeball.htm&h=345&w=512&sz=23&tbnid=WL2Zdn_TWnTnbM:&tbnh=86&tbnw=128&hl=zh-CN&start=22&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dtiananmen%26start%3D20%26num%3D10%26hl%3Dzh-CN%26lr%3D%26sa%3DN
the actual page: http://cryptome.cn/tk/tiananmen-eyeball.htm
the actual image: http://cryptome.cn/tk/pict506.jpg
further more, on this page (note the .cn tld!) you can actually see the original picture.
original tank man picture: http://cryptome.cn/tk/pict536.jpg
of course, whether or not that image would be banned if i had a chinese ip is unknown. i'm not sure if there's anyone in china who'd be willing to try this out either. bluemonq 05:43, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
i don't know; while it might be a good example of the situation, it might be a bit too specific. bluemonq 08:10, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] alternate credit for photo

other references name Brit journalist John Keenan as the source of the photo of Tank Man; note also that the angle of the photo as shown could NOT be from sixth floor from half a mile away

funny i was aware this was originally recording and a still shot was taken. i think the footage came from a security camera of some kind. the chinesse goverment managed to get a hold of the footage too because the chinesse got a hold of it and displayed on TV. -Yadrin

[edit] Date of the Barbara Walters interview

There's a documentary on the tank man mentioning the interview by Barbara Walters where the final statement on "Tank Man" took place in 1990, not 1992. There are numerous sources for both years, but 1990 seems more accurate, does anyone have a final say on this? Arjarj 19:14, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

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