Talk:Xian (Daoist immortal)

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Contents 1 Changes 2 Opening paragraph 3 Copyright violation? 4 Section reorganization

[edit] Changes

I’m glad to see there is a page on this subject, but it needs A LOT of work. I’ve formatted the page per the article of style and added some info about the five classes of immortals. I plan on adding additional material about the three ranks of immortals and the four schools of immortality as set by Ge Hong. I also made some redirect pages, so when a person types in “Chinese immortal” or “Chinese immortality” it comes straight to the article. (Ghostexorcist 22:04, 11 December 2006 (UTC))

Thanks for your additions and improvements to the Xian page, but I believe it should be moved back to Xian (Taoist immortal). I wouldn't presume to generalize about "English speaking people", but I do know that search engines better reflect English usage than your idiolect or mine. Google finds 14,800 pages for the phrase "Taoist immortal", 2,810 for "Chinese immortal", and 1,870 for "Daoist immortal". Please move it back. Thanks. Keahapana 23:28, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Well OK, I'll move it to the more common Daoist/Taoist immortal. Keahapana 19:04, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Please make sure that you correct the "redirects" the next time you move the page. Before, the phrases "Chinese immortal, Chinese immortality, etc." were redirects to "Xian (Chinese immortal)". Now they don't go anywhere. But I have corrected the redirects and even added the "Daoist immortal" and the like to the redirects. Read here for more info on redirects:

Wikipedia:Redirect

I learned how to do this from watching what others did. (Ghostexorcist 22:56, 15 December 2006 (UTC))

I'm sorry, but I didn't know how to move a page properly and I've screwed up this one. I tried but kept getting error messages, so I eventually just cut and pasted into this new page. Now I see what I did wrong, but I don't know how to correct it. The history is still under the Xian (Chinese immortal) page. Do you know how my mistake can be repaired? I do know how to redirect pages and will be glad to do that. Again, I apologize. Keahapana 18:30, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

That I don't know. I made the mistake of doing that myself with the Jow Tong article that I wrote. You should contact an administrator about that. Try an admin named Fire Star, he's a nice guy. (Ghostexorcist 18:36, 16 December 2006 (UTC))

[edit] Opening paragraph

I took some of the "translation" info and put it into the "etymology" section. Then worked off of the first sentence to expand it into a paragraph. But it needs to be expanded more in order to summarize everything covered in the entire article.(Ghostexorcist 20:29, 12 December 2006 (UTC))

I think this "Etymology" section should be deleted since none of it concerns the etymon of the Chinese word xian. The characters used to write a word don't have any more etymological significance than whether you Romanize it xian or hsien. The Chinese Wikipedia 神仙 article gives shen 神 as the etymology for xian 仙. I'll check this out and if it's verifiable, we can start a new Etymology section later. But for now, I think this information about translations, characters, and compounds needs to be moved back to the opening paragraph. What do you think? Best wishes. Keahapana 20:34, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

I kind of threw that etymology section together at the last minute since the article needed to be Wikified as per the manual of style. I WOULD NOT trust any form of Wikipedia (English, Chinese, whatever) as a source. Only use outside sources. (The creator of Wikipedia has even said that wikipedia is supposed to be a "starting point" in someone's research. Its a collection of various sources that should be referenced and not the article itself.) The part where it says Xian can translate into "immortal, transcendent..." could be moved back to the top. But the second paragraph should stay since it describes what group of radical characters makes just one character.

As you know, 仙 and 僊 are pretty much mean the same thing.Yellow Bridge has a very nice dictionary that shows a character’s etymology. It says…

仙 = 亻 (rén – “person”) + 山 (shān – “Mountain”)[1]

僊 = 亻 (rén – “person”) + ? (qiān – “to climb”) (they didn’t have a text character for it, only a jpg.)[2]

(Ghostexorcist 22:44, 15 December 2006 (UTC))

YellowBridge is OK, but there are more reliable dictionaries. (I'd be glad to suggest some, if you like). If it says 仙 is simplified and 僊 is traditional, that's wrong; 仙 is both traditional and simplified and 僊 is an archaic variant. Click here 仙. What YellowBridge refers to as "Character Etymology" is an oxymoron. Do you know about what John DeFrancis calls the "Ideographic myth"? It's the common misunderstanding that Chinese characters have meanings or etymologies, but they actually only represent words. "Character etymology/splitting" is like "folk etymology", interesting but usually linguistic garbage. For example, English favor comes from Latin favor "good will; support," and whether it's written favor or favour is irrelevant to etymology, in the same way that whether you write xian, hsien, 仙, or 僊 has nothing to do with the historical linguistics of Sino-Tibetan etymology. I'm trying to be helpful, not argumentative, but I don't know how much Chinese you've studied. It's important that Wikipedia correct the misunderstanding that Chinese characters represent something other than spoken words. Best wishes. Keahapana 18:39, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

No, it didn't say they were simplified and traditional variants of eachother. It calls them "historical" variants. It was my blunder to assume that since I was half asleep when I originally wrote it (I work 9pm-6am and do other things during the day). That's why I changed what I wrote as soon as I read it shortly thereafter. You seem to know a great deal about Chinese. I take it you are a native speaker? I've got a basic understanding of Chinese. I realize that they are words and not just pictures. What is a better dictionary? (Ghostexorcist 18:47, 16 December 2006 (UTC))

[edit] Copyright violation?

Hi Ghostexorcist

I suspect this "Teachings of Immortals Chung and Lu" at www.universal-tao.com is plagiarized. Try searching inside this book by Eva Wong and let me know what you think. Best wishes. Keahapana 20:18, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Do you mean the website plagiarized from the book or that I plagiarized from the website itself? I knew about the book, but I don’t have it. So I couldn’t cite it from the source as I've never read it. I paraphrased the content because I knew it was copyright according to the webpage. If you know that it comes from the book, then change the citation. (Ghostexorcist 22:06, 15 December 2006 (UTC))

Sorry again, I never thought that you'd plagiarized, but wanted to warn you that this universal-tao website looks bogus. That's why I marked it "Chung ??". I thought you'd put in the pages where I had (Hsi 2001:?), etc. I could be wrong (yet again), but I thought this MOS says either Harvard Referencing or Footnotes is acceptable, and that subsequent edits should follow the existing citation format. Doesn't format style work like either American or British English being acceptable in Wikipedia articles?

I regret my mistakes and that we've gotten off on the wrong foot, but I appreciate our shared interest in xian and hope we can work together to improve this article. I'll wait until I hear from you before making any more edits here. Best wishes. Keahapana 18:42, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Don't worry, I wasn’t offended in any way. The MOS page recommends...

Inline citations may use one of the following three systems.

• Embedded HTML links
• Harvard referencing
• Footnotes (most often using <ref> and <references/> elements)

...so either of them are still good. I'm just in the habit of using the embedded kind. I've noticed that a very large majority of the articles that I occasionally edit have switched to embedded. I haven't used the format you are using since I was in highschool. Ah, fond memories. I won't change the format again so we can keep consistancy.

I'm not trying to take the page over (although it may seem that way). That's why I contacted you in the first place. Feel free to edit as much as you like, just warn me if you are ever going to delete the "Chung" info. Just as long as the "Campany" info stays, I won't care.(Ghostexorcist 18:58, 16 December 2006 (UTC))

[edit] Section reorganization

What would be the best arrangement of these Xian sections? Something like the French article?

The way it is now, "Descriptions" (I'll delete Akahori) and "History and famous works" overlap. One possible arrangement would be an "Early textual references" section historically subdivided into Zhuangzi, Liezi, Huainanzi, Liexian zhuan, Baopuzi, etc. Any ideas? Keahapana 23:32, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Wow, the french have themselves a pretty nice page. Your idea sounds fine since it currently overlaps. I just threw those together because the page originally needed to be wikified. (Ghostexorcist 23:43, 28 December 2006 (UTC))

OK. I'm going to insert another image. Is there a way to move this unsightly Taoism portal to a header or footer? Keahapana 23:51, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Nevermind. I've figured it out. Best wishes. Keahapana 00:22, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

You read my mind. I was getting ready to suggest moving the photo up. Good work. (Ghostexorcist 00:26, 29 December 2006 (UTC))