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Talk:Ming dynasty

Semi-protected edit request on 1 July 2023
Change from to  in the "History" section. 112.205.182.144 (talk) 21:50, 1 July 2023 (UTC)
 * ✅ Cherrell410 (talk) 23:59, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

Mongol leaders
Please, can you also help me to translate from Chinese these Mongols: zh:董狐狸, zh:长秃, zh:长昂? Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.207.130.38 (talk) 21:38, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

Recent map change
I noticed that User:Scyhistorian is trying to change the infobox map of the article to the map on the right:

However, the map does appear to have the following issues:

1. All labels and descriptions in the map are still in Chinese (instead of English), such as the texts on the top-left and bottom-right corners, but this is English Wikipedia so clearly maps with English-language texts are preferred;

2. The map includes various areas such as Tibet, Ladakh, north bank of Amur, and the South China Sea (in the bottom-left corner) as Ming territory, but these are apparently disputed (seemingly the common problem of some Chinese-language Ming maps). For example, there was no such thing as nine-dash line or U-shaped line or so for the South China Sea before the 20th century, including during the Ming dynasty;

3. It appears that some disputes relating to the infobox map were previously discussed in the archives of this talk page, and users such as, and  were apparently against such maps. So pinging them for their views on the map.

--Wengier (talk) 03:49, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

 * I found a seemingly more detailed and historical map on Wikimedia Commons, and it appears to have been drawn for the purpose of studying Chinese culture, which is certainly clearer and more credible:
 * Map of Ming Chinese empire 1415 (cropped).jpg
 * Compared to the map above which I saw which looked truncated and had no reliable source, I think this map is actually much better. ▪  Fazoffic  ( ʖ╎ᓵᔑ∷ᔑ ) 11:28, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

 * The top map appears to be based on a Ming overview map for 1433 in The Historical Atlas of China, volume 7, pages 40–41, except that it has been adjusted to 1415 by adding Vietnam, which the Ming invaded in 1406 and lost in 1427. All the maps in that atlas, from the Paleolithic onward, show the currently claimed borders of China, including the 9-dash line – it's not clear that the original map was intended to claim the 9-dash line as part of Ming. Several authors have criticized the base map for advancing dubious claims and presenting them as identical to core Ming territory. The editor of the atlas himself conceded flaws in this respect in his afterword to the last volume. Kanguole 12:58, 25 June 2024 (UTC)
 * The map above is one based upon the lack of understanding that the Europeans of yesteryear had in regard to the workings of Imperial Chinese administration and authority over its own and bordering territory. The map above fails to make any mention of the various military protectorates that the Ming has established in the regions that bordered it. Some of these aforementioned military protectorates that existed were as followed:
 * Nurgan Regional Military Commission:
 * The Yongle Emperor had established with the Haxi and Jianzhou Jurchens of the southern regions of which the West refers to as Manchuria. The Yongle Emperor would later order Yishiha to start preparations for an expedition to the lower Amur River region, to demonstrate the power of the Ming Empire to the Nurgan Jurchen populating the area and induce them to enter into relations with the empire, and to ensure that they would not create trouble for the Ming state when the latter went to war with the Eastern Mongols. In 1413 Yishiha would visit the nearby coastal area of the Sakhalin Island and grant Ming titles to a local chieftain.
 * Ngari Military-Civilian Marshal Office, Ü-Tsang Regional Military Commission, and Amdo-Kham Regional Military Commission:
 * The History of Ming is one of the official Twenty-Four Histories that contains annals that pertain to the Ming dynasty, compiled by the succeeding Qing dynasty. According to the History of Ming, the Ming dynasty created the "Ngari Military-Civilian Marshal Office" for western Tibet, the "Ü-Tsang Regional Military Commission" for Ü-Tsang, and "Amdo-Kham Regional Military Commission" for Amdo and Kham regions. The History of Ming further divulges that administrative offices were set up under these high commanderies, including one Itinerant Commandery, three Pacification Commissioner's Offices, six Expedition Commissioner's Offices, four Wanhu offices (myriarchies, in command of 10,000 households each) and seventeen Qianhu offices (chiliarchies, each in command of 1,000 households).
 * As for the "nine-dash line" in the map above, that merely represents Ming authority in the South Chin Sea, backed by the voyages and documentation from the naval expeditions conducted by Zheng He. Another facet to keep in mind is that the image above is not showing the nine-dash line, because the nine-dash line is a term used to describe the contemporary dispute occurring in the South China Sea, and the map doesn't include the full claims that the People's Republic of China exert. So to adhere to the opinion of another individual on Wikipedia and the maps erected by the Europeans of a bygone era, limited by their technology and understanding of Chinese history is naught short of a fallacy in it of itself. To invalidate the centuries of Chinese history and documentation of their own history, whilst purveying the idea that the West's perception of Chinese history is correct is something that simply had to be amended.    Scyhistorian (talk) 16:04, 25 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Looks like an attempt to rewrite the past to better fit the ambitions of today. Gawaon (talk) 16:16, 25 June 2024 (UTC)
 * There's a total disregard of how little interpretation we allow ourselves to do when presenting data on the English Wikipedia. Our map isn't meaningfully different from more modern maps of the Ming, but we're expected to trudge through the nuances ourselves as non-experts, or at least adopt the most maximalist representations of the history others have created if we're not to be considered chauvinist Western rubes, I guess.
 * It's getting pretty damn exhausting and it seems on a course to be flaring up on each major Chinese dynasty article. Maybe that's how it's always been, but I have to wonder, though it would be silly to cast aspersions or conjecture anything concrete, because I don't know. Remsense  诉  17:35, 25 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I have to agree with your statement, in regards to how exhausting and hypocritical these types of arguments are. The long time debate as to “which of the following maps correctly portrays a certain country historically and aligns with their contemporary claims” is something that stirs a great deal of strife. This is in due part to the fact that quite literally no one can agree and even when the odds are against an individual, they remain incredulous and unyielding to the arguments of the opposing party. One may also argue on the side of or against the idea that Western media is “heavily against China” and “look for any opportunity to undermine them because they are a conservative imperialist force scared of when they triumph over the west.” Either way, it is getting exceedingly tiring to see these squabbles occurring over and over again in a form of perpetuity, with both sides unwilling to concede and remain in touch with their own ideals, dying upon a hill they really should not be. Historymatters456 (talk) 17:58, 25 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I guess it befalls onto me to acquiesce and be the bigger person. I have reverted the map back to what is considered "proper." Even though I don't fully accept the views of the others as to what accurately represents the borders of the Great Ming, I view it as utterly frivolous and beneath me to continue on with this pointless squabbling on this site prone to fallacy, from your side and mine own. As you continue your fool's errand, I shall abandon mine in exchange for the realm of truth and rationality. Our little dance of knowledge has proven to be utterly useless but did come with its own benefits to my own enjoyment; may all of you future aspiring, steadfast pursuers of knowledge and the truth continue to press on with inquisition and rationale. Scyhistorian (talk) 21:26, 25 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I didn’t even notice this, what a pretentious narcissist. I’m so sorry that “Great China” has done nothing wrong by anyone, and that all who “deign” to think other wise or bring up and opposing view is immediately an ignoramus who doesn’t know what they are talking about. Considering you believe yourself to be an “expert” on Chinese history and that you know better than what the textbook says, by all means, go write one and teach a whole class while you are at it seeing as how “better” and more qualified you are than everyone else. I promise you, try bringing this up in any university, even some in China, they will laugh you out the classroom, even at an elementary school. Historymatters456 (talk) 23:49, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

 * I can see the validity in the claims of both parties in this situation. Wengier utilizes the maps and evidence that are viewed as more widely accepted by the standards of the modern community, while Scyhistorian uses evidence from records from the Ming and Qing Dynasty to support their claims for the changing of the map, such as references to protectorates and other forms of administration and dominance. All in all, the only ones who would know for sure would be the Chinese from that time period. Historymatters456 (talk) 16:29, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

 * In any case, I think it is very important to follow the established English-world history conventions for English Wikipedia. There is no doubt that most English reliable sources do not really consider areas like Tibet and north bank of Amur to be part of Ming (at least they are in dispute). In the case of Tibet, even if we talk about Ming and Qing sources, they were actually contradictory, and of course official Ming sources were more helpful for the Ming-Tibet relations. While the Ming official publication "大明一統志" for instance may list offices like "Ü-Tsang Regional Military Commission", it at the same time placed Tibet part of the chapter "Foreign Barbarians" (外夷). Indeed, Tibet was included in the chapter "外夷" (Volume 89) of "大明一統志" or "天下一統志" in page 13, along with countries like Korea and Japan in previous pages. Clearly Ming did not consider it a core territory. Meanwhile, Melvyn C. Goldstein is generally considered a top authority in Tibetan history, and he concluded in his book "The Snow Lion and the Dragon" that "Relations between Tibet and China continued during the Ming dynasty, but unlike their Yuan predecessors, the Ming emperors (1368-1644) exerted no administrative authority over the area. Many titles were given to the leading Tibetans by the Ming emperors, but not to confer authority as with the Mongols. By conferring titles on Tibetan already in power, the Ming emperors merely recognized political reality". Indeed, Ming is different from both Yuan and Qing regarding Tibet. --Wengier (talk) 23:15, 25 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Yeah for convenience and to not ignite World War III over a Wikipedia thread, I believe it to be the most prudent move to simply adhere to what the general consensus is regarding this and future content. Don’t let that user try and ruin it for everyone, when they can’t even bother to properly source from credibly sources and just regurgitate what is already on Wikipedia. Historymatters456 (talk) 23:29, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Qing dynasty which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 16:11, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Ming dynasty


text:
Randomized controlled trial

A randomized controlled trial (or randomized control trial; RCT) is a form of scientific experiment used to control factors not under direct experimental control. Examples of RCTs are clinical trials that compare the effects of drugs, surgical techniques, medical devices, diagnostic procedures, diets or other medical treatments.

Participants who enroll in RCTs differ from one another in known and unknown ways that can influence study outcomes, and yet cannot be directly controlled. By randomly allocating participants among compared treatments, an RCT enables statistical control over these influences. Provided it is designed well, conducted properly, and enrolls enough participants, an RCT may achieve sufficient control over these confounding factors to deliver a useful comparison of the treatments studied.

Definition and examples
An RCT in clinical research typically compares a proposed new treatment against an existing standard of care; these are then termed the 'experimental' and 'control' treatments, respectively. When no such generally accepted treatment is available, a placebo may be used in the control group so that participants are blinded to their treatment allocations. This blinding principle is ideally also extended as much as possible to other parties including researchers, technicians, data analysts, and evaluators. Effective blinding experimentally isolates the physiological effects of treatments from various psychological sources of bias.

The randomness in the assignment of participants to treatments reduces selection bias and allocation bias, balancing both known and unknown prognostic factors, in the assignment of treatments. Blinding reduces other forms of experimenter and subject biases.

A well-blinded RCT is considered the gold standard for clinical trials. Blinded RCTs are commonly used to test the efficacy of medical interventions and may additionally provide information about adverse effects, such as drug reactions. A randomized controlled trial can provide compelling evidence that the study treatment causes an effect on human health.

The terms "RCT" and "randomized trial" are sometimes used synonymously, but the latter term omits mention of controls and can therefore describe studies that compare multiple treatment groups with each other in the absence of a control group. Similarly, the initialism is sometimes expanded as "randomized clinical trial" or "randomized comparative trial", leading to ambiguity in the scientific literature. Not all RCTs are randomized controlled trials (and some of them could never be, as in cases where controls would be impractical or unethical to use). The term randomized controlled clinical trial is an alternative term used in clinical research; however, RCTs are also employed in other research areas, including many of the social sciences.

History
The first reported clinical trial was conducted by James Lind in 1747 to identify a treatment for scurvy. The first blind experiment was conducted by the French Royal Commission on Animal Magnetism in 1784 to investigate the claims of mesmerism. An early essay advocating the blinding of researchers came from Claude Bernard in the latter half of the 19th century. Bernard recommended that the observer of an experiment should not have knowledge of the hypothesis being tested. This suggestion contrasted starkly with the prevalent Enlightenment-era attitude that scientific observation can only be objectively valid when undertaken by a well-educated, informed scientist. The first study recorded to have a blinded researcher was published in 1907 by W. H. R. Rivers and H. N. Webber to investigate the effects of caffeine.

Randomized experiments first appeared in psychology, where they were introduced by Charles Sanders Peirce and Joseph Jastrow in the 1880s, and in education. The earliest experiments comparing treatment and control groups were published by Robert Woodworth and Edward Thorndike in 1901, and by John E. Coover and Frank Angell in 1907.

In the early 20th century, randomized experiments appeared in agriculture, due to Jerzy Neyman and Ronald A. Fisher. Fisher's experimental research and his writings popularized randomized experiments.

The first published Randomized Controlled Trial in medicine appeared in the 1948 paper entitled "Streptomycin treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis", which described a Medical Research Council investigation. One of the authors of that paper was Austin Bradford Hill, who is credited as having conceived the modern RCT.

Trial design was further influenced by the large-scale ISIS trials on heart attack treatments that were conducted in the 1980s.

By the late 20th century, RCTs were recognized as the standard method for "rational therapeutics" in medicine. As of 2004, more than 150,000 RCTs were in the Cochrane Library. To improve the reporting of RCTs in the medical literature, an international group of scientists and editors published Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) Statements in 1996, 2001 and 2010, and these have become widely accepted. Randomization is the process of assigning trial subjects to treatment or control groups using an element of chance to determine the assignments in order to reduce the bias.

Ethics
Although the principle of clinical equipoise ("genuine uncertainty within the expert medical community... about the preferred treatment") common to clinical trials has been applied to RCTs, the ethics of RCTs have special considerations. For one, it has been argued that equipoise itself is insufficient to justify RCTs. For another, "collective equipoise" can conflict with a lack of personal equipoise (e.g., a personal belief that an intervention is effective). Finally, Zelen's design, which has been used for some RCTs, randomizes subjects before they provide informed consent, which may be ethical for RCTs of screening and selected therapies, but is likely unethical "for most therapeutic trials."

Although subjects almost always provide informed consent for their participation in an RCT, studies since 1982 have documented that RCT subjects may believe that they are certain to receive treatment that is best for them personally; that is, they do not understand the difference between research and treatment. Further research is necessary to determine the prevalence of and ways to address this "therapeutic misconception".

The RCT method variations may also create cultural effects that have not been well understood. For example, patients with terminal illness may join trials in the hope of being cured, even when treatments are unlikely to be successful.

Trial registration
In 2004, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) announced that all trials starting enrolment after July 1, 2005, must be registered prior to consideration for publication in one of the 12 member journals of the committee. However, trial registration may still occur late or not at all. Medical journals have been slow in adapting policies requiring mandatory clinical trial registration as a prerequisite for publication.

By study design
One way to classify RCTs is by study design. From most to least common in the healthcare literature, the major categories of RCT study designs are: An analysis of the 616 RCTs indexed in PubMed during December 2006 found that 78% were parallel-group trials, 16% were crossover, 2% were split-body, 2% were cluster, and 2% were factorial.
 * Parallel-group – each participant is randomly assigned to a group, and all the participants in the group receive (or do not receive) an intervention.
 * Crossover – over time, each participant receives (or does not receive) an intervention in a random sequence.
 * Cluster – pre-existing groups of participants (e.g., villages, schools) are randomly selected to receive (or not receive) an intervention.
 * Factorial – each participant is randomly assigned to a group that receives a particular combination of interventions or non-interventions (e.g., group 1 receives vitamin X and vitamin Y, group 2 receives vitamin X and placebo Y, group 3 receives placebo X and vitamin Y, and group 4 receives placebo X and placebo Y).

By outcome of interest (efficacy vs. effectiveness)
RCTs can be classified as "explanatory" or "pragmatic." Explanatory RCTs test efficacy in a research setting with highly selected participants and under highly controlled conditions. In contrast, pragmatic RCTs (pRCTs) test effectiveness in everyday practice with relatively unselected participants and under flexible conditions; in this way, pragmatic RCTs can "inform decisions about practice."

By hypothesis (superiority vs. noninferiority vs. equivalence)
Another classification of RCTs categorizes them as "superiority trials", "noninferiority trials", and "equivalence trials", which differ in methodology and reporting. Most RCTs are superiority trials, in which one intervention is hypothesized to be superior to another in a statistically significant way. Some RCTs are noninferiority trials "to determine whether a new treatment is no worse than a reference treatment." Other RCTs are equivalence trials in which the hypothesis is that two interventions are indistinguishable from each other.

Randomization
The advantages of proper randomization in RCTs include:
 * "It eliminates bias in treatment assignment," specifically selection bias and confounding.
 * "It facilitates blinding (masking) of the identity of treatments from investigators, participants, and assessors."
 * "It permits the use of probability theory to express the likelihood that any difference in outcome between treatment groups merely indicates chance."

There are two processes involved in randomizing patients to different interventions. First is choosing a randomization procedure to generate an unpredictable sequence of allocations; this may be a simple random assignment of patients to any of the groups at equal probabilities, may be "restricted", or may be "adaptive." A second and more practical issue is allocation concealment, which refers to the stringent precautions taken to ensure that the group assignment of patients are not revealed prior to definitively allocating them to their respective groups. Non-random "systematic" methods of group assignment, such as alternating subjects between one group and the other, can cause "limitless contamination possibilities" and can cause a breach of allocation concealment.

However empirical evidence that adequate randomization changes outcomes relative to inadequate randomization has been difficult to detect.

Procedures
The treatment allocation is the desired proportion of patients in each treatment arm.

An ideal randomization procedure would achieve the following goals:
 * Maximize statistical power, especially in subgroup analyses. Generally, equal group sizes maximize statistical power, however, unequal groups sizes may be more powerful for some analyses (e.g., multiple comparisons of placebo versus several doses using Dunnett's procedure ), and are sometimes desired for non-analytic reasons (e.g., patients may be more motivated to enroll if there is a higher chance of getting the test treatment, or regulatory agencies may require a minimum number of patients exposed to treatment).
 * Minimize selection bias. This may occur if investigators can consciously or unconsciously preferentially enroll patients between treatment arms.  A good randomization procedure will be unpredictable so that investigators cannot guess the next subject's group assignment based on prior treatment assignments. The risk of selection bias is highest when previous treatment assignments are known (as in unblinded studies) or can be guessed (perhaps if a drug has distinctive side effects).
 * Minimize allocation bias (or confoundin). This may occur when covariates that affect the outcome are not equally distributed between treatment groups, and the treatment effect is confounded with the effect of the covariates (i.e., an "accidental bias" ).  If the randomization procedure causes an imbalance in covariates related to the outcome across groups, estimates of effect may be biased if not adjusted for the covariates (which may be unmeasured and therefore impossible to adjust for).

However, no single randomization procedure meets those goals in every circumstance, so researchers must select a procedure for a given study based on its advantages and disadvantages.

Simple
This is a commonly used and intuitive procedure, similar to "repeated fair coin-tossing." Also known as "complete" or "unrestricted" randomization, it is robust against both selection and accidental biases. However, its main drawback is the possibility of imbalanced group sizes in small RCTs. It is therefore recommended only for RCTs with over 200 subjects.

Restricted
To balance group sizes in smaller RCTs, some form of "restricted" randomization is recommended. The major types of restricted randomization used in RCTs are:
 * Permuted-block randomization or blocked randomization: a "block size" and "allocation ratio" (number of subjects in one group versus the other group) are specified, and subjects are allocated randomly within each block. For example, a block size of 6 and an allocation ratio of 2:1 would lead to random assignment of 4 subjects to one group and 2 to the other. This type of randomization can be combined with "stratified randomization", for example by center in a multicenter trial, to "ensure good balance of participant characteristics in each group." A special case of permuted-block randomization is random allocation, in which the entire sample is treated as one block. The major disadvantage of permuted-block randomization is that even if the block sizes are large and randomly varied, the procedure can lead to selection bias. Another disadvantage is that "proper" analysis of data from permuted-block-randomized RCTs requires stratification by blocks.
 * Adaptive biased-coin randomization methods (of which urn randomization is the most widely known type): In these relatively uncommon methods, the probability of being assigned to a group decreases if the group is overrepresented and increases if the group is underrepresented. The methods are thought to be less affected by selection bias than permuted-block randomization.

Adaptive
At least two types of "adaptive" randomization procedures have been used in RCTs, but much less frequently than simple or restricted randomization:
 * Covariate-adaptive randomization, of which one type is minimization: The probability of being assigned to a group varies in order to minimize "covariate imbalance." Minimization is reported to have "supporters and detractors" because only the first subject's group assignment is truly chosen at random, the method does not necessarily eliminate bias on unknown factors.
 * Response-adaptive randomization, also known as outcome-adaptive randomization: The probability of being assigned to a group increases if the responses of the prior patients in the group were favorable. Although arguments have been made that this approach is more ethical than other types of randomization when the probability that a treatment is effective or ineffective increases during the course of an RCT, ethicists have not yet studied the approach in detail.

Allocation concealment
"Allocation concealment" (defined as "the procedure for protecting the randomization process so that the treatment to be allocated is not known before the patient is entered into the study") is important in RCTs. In practice, clinical investigators in RCTs often find it difficult to maintain impartiality. Stories abound of investigators holding up sealed envelopes to lights or ransacking offices to determine group assignments in order to dictate the assignment of their next patient. Such practices introduce selection bias and confounders (both of which should be minimized by randomization), possibly distorting the results of the study. Adequate allocation concealment should defeat patients and investigators from discovering treatment allocation once a study is underway and after the study has concluded. Treatment related side-effects or adverse events may be specific enough to reveal allocation to investigators or patients thereby introducing bias or influencing any subjective parameters collected by investigators or requested from subjects.

Some standard methods of ensuring allocation concealment include sequentially numbered, opaque, sealed envelopes (SNOSE); sequentially numbered containers; pharmacy controlled randomization; and central randomization. It is recommended that allocation concealment methods be included in an RCT's protocol, and that the allocation concealment methods should be reported in detail in a publication of an RCT's results; however, a 2005 study determined that most RCTs have unclear allocation concealment in their protocols, in their publications, or both. On the other hand, a 2008 study of 146 meta-analyses concluded that the results of RCTs with inadequate or unclear allocation concealment tended to be biased toward beneficial effects only if the RCTs' outcomes were subjective as opposed to objective.

Sample size
The number of treatment units (subjects or groups of subjects) assigned to control and treatment groups, affects an RCT's reliability. If the effect of the treatment is small, the number of treatment units in either group may be insufficient for rejecting the null hypothesis in the respective statistical test. The failure to reject the null hypothesis would imply that the treatment shows no statistically significant effect on the treated in a given test. But as the sample size increases, the same RCT may be able to demonstrate a significant effect of the treatment, even if this effect is small.

Blinding
An RCT may be blinded, (also called "masked") by "procedures that prevent study participants, caregivers, or outcome assessors from knowing which intervention was received." Unlike allocation concealment, blinding is sometimes inappropriate or impossible to perform in an RCT; for example, if an RCT involves a treatment in which active participation of the patient is necessary (e.g., physical therapy), participants cannot be blinded to the intervention.

Traditionally, blinded RCTs have been classified as "single-blind", "double-blind", or "triple-blind"; however, in 2001 and 2006 two studies showed that these terms have different meanings for different people. The 2010 CONSORT Statement specifies that authors and editors should not use the terms "single-blind", "double-blind", and "triple-blind"; instead, reports of blinded RCT should discuss "If done, who was blinded after assignment to interventions (for example, participants, care providers, those assessing outcomes) and how."

RCTs without blinding are referred to as "unblinded", "open", or (if the intervention is a medication) "open-label". In 2008 a study concluded that the results of unblinded RCTs tended to be biased toward beneficial effects only if the RCTs' outcomes were subjective as opposed to objective; for example, in an RCT of treatments for multiple sclerosis, unblinded neurologists (but not the blinded neurologists) felt that the treatments were beneficial. In pragmatic RCTs, although the participants and providers are often unblinded, it is "still desirable and often possible to blind the assessor or obtain an objective source of data for evaluation of outcomes."

Analysis of data
The types of statistical methods used in RCTs depend on the characteristics of the data and include:
 * For dichotomous (binary) outcome data, logistic regression (e.g., to predict sustained virological response after receipt of peginterferon alfa-2a for hepatitis C ) and other methods can be used.
 * For continuous outcome data, analysis of covariance (e.g., for changes in blood lipid levels after receipt of atorvastatin after acute coronary syndrome ) tests the effects of predictor variables.
 * For time-to-event outcome data that may be censored, survival analysis (e.g., Kaplan–Meier estimators and Cox proportional hazards models for time to coronary heart disease after receipt of hormone replacement therapy in menopause ) is appropriate.

Regardless of the statistical methods used, important considerations in the analysis of RCT data include:
 * Whether an RCT should be stopped early due to interim results. For example, RCTs may be stopped early if an intervention produces "larger than expected benefit or harm", or if "investigators find evidence of no important difference between experimental and control interventions."
 * The extent to which the groups can be analyzed exactly as they existed upon randomization (i.e., whether a so-called "intention-to-treat analysis" is used). A "pure" intention-to-treat analysis is "possible only when complete outcome data are available" for all randomized subjects; when some outcome data are missing, options include analyzing only cases with known outcomes and using imputed data. Nevertheless, the more that analyses can include all participants in the groups to which they were randomized, the less bias that an RCT will be subject to.
 * Whether subgroup analysis should be performed. These are "often discouraged" because multiple comparisons may produce false positive findings that cannot be confirmed by other studies.

Reporting of results
The CONSORT 2010 Statement is "an evidence-based, minimum set of recommendations for reporting RCTs." The CONSORT 2010 checklist contains 25 items (many with sub-items) focusing on "individually randomised, two group, parallel trials" which are the most common type of RCT.

For other RCT study designs, "CONSORT extensions" have been published, some examples are:
 * Consort 2010 Statement: Extension to Cluster Randomised Trials
 * Consort 2010 Statement: Non-Pharmacologic Treatment Interventions
 * "Reporting of surrogate endpoints in randomised controlled trial reports (CONSORT-Surrogate): extension checklist with explanation and elaboration"

Relative importance and observational studies
Two studies published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 2000 found that observational studies and RCTs overall produced similar results. The authors of the 2000 findings questioned the belief that "observational studies should not be used for defining evidence-based medical care" and that RCTs' results are "evidence of the highest grade." However, a 2001 study published in Journal of the American Medical Association concluded that "discrepancies beyond chance do occur and differences in estimated magnitude of treatment effect are very common" between observational studies and RCTs. According to a 2014 (updated in 2024) Cochrane review, there is little evidence for significant effect differences between observational studies and randomized controlled trials. To evaluate differences it is necessary to consider things other than design, such as heterogeneity, population, intervention or comparator.

Two other lines of reasoning question RCTs' contribution to scientific knowledge beyond other types of studies:
 * If study designs are ranked by their potential for new discoveries, then anecdotal evidence would be at the top of the list, followed by observational studies, followed by RCTs.
 * RCTs may be unnecessary for treatments that have dramatic and rapid effects relative to the expected stable or progressively worse natural course of the condition treated. One example is combination chemotherapy including cisplatin for metastatic testicular cancer, which increased the cure rate from 5% to 60% in a 1977 non-randomized study.

Interpretation of statistical results
Like all statistical methods, RCTs are subject to both type I ("false positive") and type II ("false negative") statistical errors. Regarding Type I errors, a typical RCT will use 0.05 (i.e., 1 in 20) as the probability that the RCT will falsely find two equally effective treatments significantly different. Regarding Type II errors, despite the publication of a 1978 paper noting that the sample sizes of many "negative" RCTs were too small to make definitive conclusions about the negative results, by 2005-2006 a sizeable proportion of RCTs still had inaccurate or incompletely reported sample size calculations.

Peer review
Peer review of results is an important part of the scientific method. Reviewers examine the study results for potential problems with design that could lead to unreliable results (for example by creating a systematic bias), evaluate the study in the context of related studies and other evidence, and evaluate whether the study can be reasonably considered to have proven its conclusions. To underscore the need for peer review and the danger of overgeneralizing conclusions, two Boston-area medical researchers performed a randomized controlled trial in which they randomly assigned either a parachute or an empty backpack to 23 volunteers who jumped from either a biplane or a helicopter. The study was able to accurately report that parachutes fail to reduce injury compared to empty backpacks. The key context that limited the general applicability of this conclusion was that the aircraft were parked on the ground, and participants had only jumped about two feet.

Advantages
RCTs are considered to be the most reliable form of scientific evidence in the hierarchy of evidence that influences healthcare policy and practice because RCTs reduce spurious causality and bias. Results of RCTs may be combined in systematic reviews which are increasingly being used in the conduct of evidence-based practice. Some examples of scientific organizations' considering RCTs or systematic reviews of RCTs to be the highest-quality evidence available are:
 * As of 1998, the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia designated "Level I" evidence as that "obtained from a systematic review of all relevant randomised controlled trials" and "Level II" evidence as that "obtained from at least one properly designed randomised controlled trial."
 * Since at least 2001, in making clinical practice guideline recommendations the United States Preventive Services Task Force has considered both a study's design and its internal validity as indicators of its quality. It has recognized "evidence obtained from at least one properly randomized controlled trial" with good internal validity (i.e., a rating of "I-good") as the highest quality evidence available to it.
 * The GRADE Working Group concluded in 2008 that "randomised trials without important limitations constitute high quality evidence."
 * For issues involving "Therapy/Prevention, Aetiology/Harm", the Oxford Centre for Evidence-based Medicine as of 2011 defined "Level 1a" evidence as a systematic review of RCTs that are consistent with each other, and "Level 1b" evidence as an "individual RCT (with narrow Confidence Interval)."

Notable RCTs with unexpected results that contributed to changes in clinical practice include:
 * After Food and Drug Administration approval, the antiarrhythmic agents flecainide and encainide came to market in 1986 and 1987 respectively. The non-randomized studies concerning the drugs were characterized as "glowing", and their sales increased to a combined total of approximately 165,000 prescriptions per month in early 1989. In that year, however, a preliminary report of an RCT concluded that the two drugs increased mortality.  Sales of the drugs then decreased.
 * Prior to 2002, based on observational studies, it was routine for physicians to prescribe hormone replacement therapy for post-menopausal women to prevent myocardial infarction. In 2002 and 2004, however, published RCTs from the Women's Health Initiative claimed that women taking hormone replacement therapy with estrogen plus progestin had a higher rate of myocardial infarctions than women on a placebo, and that estrogen-only hormone replacement therapy caused no reduction in the incidence of coronary heart disease. Possible explanations for the discrepancy between the observational studies and the RCTs involved differences in methodology, in the hormone regimens used, and in the populations studied.  The use of hormone replacement therapy decreased after publication of the RCTs.

Disadvantages
Many papers discuss the disadvantages of RCTs. Among the most frequently cited drawbacks are:

Time and costs
RCTs can be expensive; one study found 28 Phase III RCTs funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke prior to 2000 with a total cost of US$335 million, for a mean cost of US$12 million per RCT. Nevertheless, the return on investment of RCTs may be high, in that the same study projected that the 28 RCTs produced a "net benefit to society at 10-years" of 46 times the cost of the trials program, based on evaluating a quality-adjusted life year as equal to the prevailing mean per capita gross domestic product.

The conduct of an RCT takes several years until being published; thus, data is restricted from the medical community for long years and may be of less relevance at time of publication.

It is costly to maintain RCTs for the years or decades that would be ideal for evaluating some interventions.

Interventions to prevent events that occur only infrequently (e.g., sudden infant death syndrome) and uncommon adverse outcomes (e.g., a rare side effect of a drug) would require RCTs with extremely large sample sizes and may, therefore, best be assessed by observational studies.

Due to the costs of running RCTs, these usually only inspect one variable or very few variables, rarely reflecting the full picture of a complicated medical situation; whereas the case report, for example, can detail many aspects of the patient's medical situation (e.g. patient history, physical examination, diagnosis, psychosocial aspects, follow up).

Conflict of interest dangers
A 2011 study done to disclose possible conflicts of interests in underlying research studies used for medical meta-analyses reviewed 29 meta-analyses and found that conflicts of interests in the studies underlying the meta-analyses were rarely disclosed. The 29 meta-analyses included 11 from general medicine journals; 15 from specialty medicine journals, and 3 from the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. The 29 meta-analyses reviewed an aggregate of 509 randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Of these, 318 RCTs reported funding sources with 219 (69%) industry funded. 132 of the 509 RCTs reported author conflict of interest disclosures, with 91 studies (69%) disclosing industry financial ties with one or more authors. The information was, however, seldom reflected in the meta-analyses. Only two (7%) reported RCT funding sources and none reported RCT author-industry ties. The authors concluded "without acknowledgment of COI due to industry funding or author industry financial ties from RCTs included in meta-analyses, readers' understanding and appraisal of the evidence from the meta-analysis may be compromised."

Some RCTs are fully or partly funded by the health care industry (e.g., the pharmaceutical industry) as opposed to government, nonprofit, or other sources. A systematic review published in 2003 found four 1986–2002 articles comparing industry-sponsored and nonindustry-sponsored RCTs, and in all the articles there was a correlation of industry sponsorship and positive study outcome. A 2004 study of 1999–2001 RCTs published in leading medical and surgical journals determined that industry-funded RCTs "are more likely to be associated with statistically significant pro-industry findings." These results have been mirrored in trials in surgery, where although industry funding did not affect the rate of trial discontinuation it was however associated with a lower odds of publication for completed trials. One possible reason for the pro-industry results in industry-funded published RCTs is publication bias. Other authors have cited the differing goals of academic and industry sponsored research as contributing to the difference. Commercial sponsors may be more focused on performing trials of drugs that have already shown promise in early stage trials, and on replicating previous positive results to fulfill regulatory requirements for drug approval.

Ethics
If a disruptive innovation in medical technology is developed, it may be difficult to test this ethically in an RCT if it becomes "obvious" that the control subjects have poorer outcomes—either due to other foregoing testing, or within the initial phase of the RCT itself. Ethically it may be necessary to abort the RCT prematurely, and getting ethics approval (and patient agreement) to withhold the innovation from the control group in future RCTs may not be feasible.

Historical control trials (HCT) exploit the data of previous RCTs to reduce the sample size; however, these approaches are controversial in the scientific community and must be handled with care.

In social science
Due to the recent emergence of RCTs in social science, the use of RCTs in social sciences is a contested issue. Some writers from a medical or health background have argued that existing research in a range of social science disciplines lacks rigour, and should be improved by greater use of randomized control trials.

Transport science
Researchers in transport science argue that public spending on programmes such as school travel plans could not be justified unless their efficacy is demonstrated by randomized controlled trials. Graham-Rowe and colleagues reviewed 77 evaluations of transport interventions found in the literature, categorising them into 5 "quality levels". They concluded that most of the studies were of low quality and advocated the use of randomized controlled trials wherever possible in future transport research.

Dr. Steve Melia took issue with these conclusions, arguing that claims about the advantages of RCTs, in establishing causality and avoiding bias, have been exaggerated. He proposed the following eight criteria for the use of RCTs in contexts where interventions must change human behaviour to be effective:

The intervention:

 * 1) Has not been applied to all members of a unique group of people (e.g. the population of a whole country, all employees of a unique organisation etc.)
 * 2) Is applied in a context or setting similar to that which applies to the control group
 * 3) Can be isolated from other activities—and the purpose of the study is to assess this isolated effect
 * 4) Has a short timescale between its implementation and maturity of its effects

And the causal mechanisms:

 * 1) Are either known to the researchers, or else all possible alternatives can be tested
 * 2) Do not involve significant feedback mechanisms between the intervention group and external environments
 * 3) Have a stable and predictable relationship to exogenous factors
 * 4) Would act in the same way if the control group and intervention group were reversed

Criminology
A 2005 review found 83 randomized experiments in criminology published in 1982–2004, compared with only 35 published in 1957–1981. The authors classified the studies they found into five categories: "policing", "prevention", "corrections", "court", and "community". Focusing only on offending behavior programs, Hollin (2008) argued that RCTs may be difficult to implement (e.g., if an RCT required "passing sentences that would randomly assign offenders to programmes") and therefore that experiments with quasi-experimental design are still necessary.

Education
RCTs have been used in evaluating a number of educational interventions. Between 1980 and 2016, over 1,000 reports of RCTs have been published. For example, a 2009 study randomized 260 elementary school teachers' classrooms to receive or not receive a program of behavioral screening, classroom intervention, and parent training, and then measured the behavioral and academic performance of their students. Another 2009 study randomized classrooms for 678 first-grade children to receive a classroom-centered intervention, a parent-centered intervention, or no intervention, and then followed their academic outcomes through age 19.

Criticism
A 2018 review of the 10 most cited randomised controlled trials noted poor distribution of background traits, difficulties with blinding, and discussed other assumptions and biases inherent in randomised controlled trials. These include the "unique time period assessment bias", the "background traits remain constant assumption", the "average treatment effects limitation", the "simple treatment at the individual level limitation", the "all preconditions are fully met assumption", the "quantitative variable limitation" and the "placebo only or conventional treatment only limitation".

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Randomized controlled trial


text:
User:Imadork

I plan to substantially revise some of the criminal law sections, such as mens rea (mostly done), actus reus, murder, and others. I just finished my Criminal Law course and since this is an encyclopedia the summaries I have planned are perfect.

title: User:Imadork


text:
Strowger

Strowger may refer to:

 * Strowger switch, automatic telephone exchange equipment
 * Strowger Automatic Telephone Exchange Company, the company that manufactured Strowger switches
 * Almon Brown Strowger (1839–1902), who invented the principle of the Strowger switch in 1888

title: Strowger


text:
Talk:History of China/Archive 1

 History of China Talk archive 1: September 19, 2001 - December 31, 2002

 Talk continued at talk:History of China  ...though recent archaeological findings seem to provide evidence for the existence of at least the Shang dynasty.

I was under the strong impression that the existence of the Shang had been well-known for a long time. There has been the suggestion that things like bronze working and chariot construction link the Shang to Indo-european or related migrants, like the later Tocharians. Some work in west China found spectacularly preserved clothing, from the era and of Celtic design, though on the whole I think insufficient work has been done. But in any case, none of the speculation (which I think would be worth mentioning) would be possible if the Shang was not known and known for a long time, right?

In English texts, new paragraphs are indicated

Like this

Not like this. :-)

Concerning the paragraphs: I fixed it. Thanks for the tip, though I should have known it ;-)

Concerning the Shang Dynasty issue:

I think, the question was not if there existed some high culture at this time, the question was rather if the accounts of Sima Qian and others, which are quite detailed, are to be trusted entirely. The underlying problem was this (my apologies if I'm trying to tell you things you know;-) :

Sima Qian wrote a history of China from the beginnings until his time (1st century BCE). At the very beginning of his work, there are stories about "cultural heroes" like Shun and Yu, who are said to have invented things like marriage and the use of characters. Now these stories are definitely not historically accurate, but the events related towards the end of his work definitely are, or at least they seem very probable. So, there arose the question where to draw the line. Since there is no written material from the time ascribed to the Xia dynasty and only very few fragments from the "Shang time", Western historians tended to classify these two dynasties as legendary. The "recent archaeological findings" alluded to are inscriptions from the Shang dynasty, which give emperor names that quite agree with Sima Qian's information, hence the Shang dynasty seems to really have existed.

I think I didn't quite make this clear in the article, but my command of the English language is not quite good enough to fix this. Could you perhaps do this for me?

About the theories of Tocharian influence in the Shang dynasty: I think this material belongs into the Shang Dynasty article proper. The "Chinese history" entry should just give a general overview. But if you think it's necessary, well, I'm not THE GREAT BOSS OF THE CHINESE HISTORY ARTICLE :-) Just go and change it, that's what wiki is for, I guess...

-- Xiemaisi

Ok, I've made what changes I feel are apropriate. You may not be the great boss, but you are the original author, so feel free to adjust them as you see fit. :)

''Thanks, looks quite good. Just one minor point: You say If the Xia existed at all, they may have been contemporary. What do you mean? Contemporary to whom? To the Shang Dynasty? I'm not sure if this is quite clear from context... Oh, and if you've got material about the Shang at hand, could you perhaps write the corresponding article? The Chinese history page looks a bit sad at the moment with all these unwritten subentries :'-)''

Um.. records back 1 million years? I'd think I would have heard of this before... also, is a histiographer the same as a historian?

The records don't go back that far, but the archaeological records do - remains of people dating back that far have been found on Chinese soil. Historiographers and historians are pretty close to the same, but I think the former emphasizes keeping records over research.

 * What is this "1 million year" stuff in the first paragraph? Given that homo sapiens is only 100,000 years old, what kinds of animals "inhabitated" China for the 900,000 years prior to that? --AxelBoldt

--

I made a lot of changes

archeological records, while a lot of the stories we have about the Chou are things that we don't know are true or not.
 * I added a note about Xia and Shang being contemporaries
 * I have some reservations about characterizing the Chou as the first dynasty for which a reliable historical tradition exist. The historical tradition for the Shang matches the
 * I rewrote the section about the Chou dynasty being feudal. The big problem with using the term is that it is part of an attempt to fit Chinese history into a Marxist framework and assuming knowledge of how the Chou worked that we do not have.  I changed it to be NPOV.
 * Rewrote text describing Spring and Autumn period
 * The warring states didn't give up without a fight
 * I have a lot of reservations about the statement that Confucianism was the underpinning of all dynasties up until the Qing, but I need to think about how to reword that.
 * The Han dynasty section needs to be expanded, but I don't have the expertise to do it

Let me save everything and continue

More changes
 * Song Dynasty - The Song didn't lose North China to the Mongols
 * The Mongols really didn't get assimilated so I look that statement out
 * Not sure I agree with the statement (among the common people)
 * I changed the interpretation of stagnation into NPOV
 * I removed the statement about the Ming secluding itself. It was popular to believe this about 40 years ago, but it's demonstratably false, and I don't know of any current historian who argues this and will gladly change this to NPOV if anyone else can.  For a more updated view look at (The Sextants of Beijing) by Joanne Waley-Cohen or anything by Jonathan Spence.  The treasure ship trips to Africa did end in 1430.  The Ming did ban maritime commerce in the 15th century, *but* the ban was lifted in 1520 and there proceeded to be large amounts of commerce between China, India and Southeast Asia.
 * I changed the view of the Qing to NPOV
 * I removed the section about no cultural renovation
 * I removed the section about decline, abundant bureaucracy and military weakness. At best they need to be rewritten as NPOV.  Abundant bureaucracy cannot be objectively asserted as the Qing bureaucracy was much weaker than the Ming.  Military weakness is a matter of the glass being half filled or half empty.
 * I removed the section about there being little military resistance. There was a great deal of resistance.  It wasn't effective.  Also, the reasons for the lack of military effective is far more complex than a general "decline"
 * Large areas of China were not ceded to the Europeans. The British got Hong Kong
 * Rewrote section on Qing dynasty. A lot of the motivations were wrong
 * The view about the 1911 revolution is the one that the Guomindang has traditionally used. Most current historians do not agree with it (See Wakeman's the Fall of Imperial China), and the Guomindang itself really doesn't care that much any more.  I've modified it extensively.
 * The next paragraph need to be rewritten, will do it when I have the time
 * I rewrote the section on Taiwan. The situation there is extremely complicated and worth a paragraph or two.

-

 * Jin Dynasty or Jin Dynasties ? - There were two completely disconnected Jin dynasties, one in 3rd century A.D. another in 11th century. Not a problem if the Chinese characters were written or pronounced.

 * Liao Dynasty - Jin dyansty wiped out the Liao; Liao did not wipe out the Jin.

 * Northern and Southern Dynasties, Jin dynasty (the 3rd century one) - they deserved more attention than just several sentences. I expanded into a paragraph on the main page. Will do more detailed account of each when I finished Wu Hu and the Sixteen Kingdoms

 * Han Dynasty - I will input my account of its emergence and the table of emperors. Will do more especially about social life, technological advancement during its time if time allows. Created links for new pages under personal names of emperors instead of the posthumous names to avoid confusion with other emperors in other dynasties who had the same names.

 * the Wu Hu barbarians and the Sixteen Kingdoms - they were nowhere to be found in Wikipedia. Essence of my work will be on these new pages.

 * Created pages like Sima Guang, Liu, Tables of Chinese Sovereigns

 * Only the most recognized posthumous names were used for all tables of emperors and referencing. For example, many kings of the Ten Kingdoms in the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period had tiresome posthumous names consisting of 10 to 20 Chinese charaters. Why bother quoting them while only clear referencing is needed.

Keep up the good work guys. Ktsquare :-)

Page looks good, but wouldn't the title better be "History of China"? I think most other history pages (as far as they have been converted from subpages) are also named in that way. jheijmans

IMO The description was a bit isoloated from the history of the world until the Marco Polo's trip. More connections can be drawn like linking the tribes lived around China to those known to the West. I'll make a table here for comparison.

Keep up the good work guys. Ktsquare :-)

172,

Why did you delete the section on Pommeranz and Waley-Cohen? You've basically eliminated all reference to any recent scholarship on China which suggests that the paradigm of decline from the mid-Ming dynasty is wrong.

-- User:Roadrunner

Roadrunner,

Of course I know that the official reason behind the cancellation of Cheng-ho's voyages was the Mongol incursions. Of course I know that commerce continued to expand, and my section points that out. I even pointed out the rise of the silver money economy after contact with the Spanish and Portuguese. These are not recent, startling revelations. Personally, I doubt that the Ming era was not an age of "incipient capitalism" or a true parallel to the age of commercial capitalism in the West because it lacked state support, even though commerce was interested in moving in such a mercantilist direction:

"Although the late Ming, following contacts with the Europeans, saw the emergence of a genuine silver money economy (due, in large part, to trade with the New World), due to the attendant development of relatively large-scale mercantile and industrial enterprises under private as well as state ownership (most notably the great textile centers of the southeast), the Ming age was not one of “incipient capitalism” due to the predominance of the political realm over the economic. Although commerce was stimulated by the flow of silver from the New World, used to pay for Chinese exports of tea, silk, and ceramics, and although Chinese businessmen devised a way of mass-producing cheaper types of porcelain to satisfy European markets, comparing economic patterns to the those in Europe during the genesis of capitalism illustrate why state backing of capitalism was crucial. Generally, unlike in China, these early capitalists, protected and encouraged by governmental controls, subsidies, and monopolies, generated most of their profits from the buying and selling of goods. Hence it was associated with mercantilism, which was attacked early during this Cycle by Adam Smith and laissez-faire. Commercial capitalism, as mentioned, in many ways paralleled some broad economic trends under the Ming before the death of Yung-lo. So, from the standpoint of Historical Materialism or Marxian Stage Theory, we would expect to seem the progression of capitalism along Western lines in China."

I'm not arguing a point. But the comparison is illuminating.

--

Wikipedia is not a forum for original research or a debating forum. If *you* are arguing a point then it doesn't belong in the article.

In any case, A full discussion of the economic history of China in the late-Ming and early-Qing would require hundreds of pages and be well beyond the scope of a general article on Chinese history.

-- Roadrunner,

I wasn’t arguing a point. I was responding to you accusation that some accounts were over-simplified. I merely wanted to clarify the logic. Your hostility seems to be getting personal and petty.

--User:172

- Whoa,

The text said that current historians of the economic history of China (Waley-Cohen, Pommeranz, and to name two more Thomas Metzger and Jonathan Spence) think that the views of John Fairbanks and Joseph Levinson were highly oversimplified.

The big problem I have with your edits is that you are presenting one particular view of Chinese history, the life of Mao Tsetung, etc. etc. and this is squeezing out alternative interpretations which disagree with the interpretations that you are presenting. Your edits are not doing a good job of presenting an overview of the controversies within Mao's life or within Chinese history. Whether the Ming dynasty was an age of incipient capitalism or not is an issue that could easily take dozens of pages to do justice, and it simply will not to make an argument that it was not without mentioning the other side of an issue.

One reason these issues are controversial is that there is surprisingly little known about Chinese economic history. All of the assertions you are making about China being this way and Europe being that way are debatable.

For example, the statement that

 * Generally, unlike in China, these early capitalists, protected and encouraged by governmental controls, subsidies, and monopolies, generated most of their profits from the buying and selling of goods.

is hardly one for which there is scholarly consensus on.

Also, there is a log of old versions of the talk page. To argue that you weren't arguing a point when you just said "I am arguing that" is somewhat embarrassing, but I'm not sure what to make of your going back and changing the talk page to erase that contradiction.

--- User:Roadrunner

-

Lighten up, Roadrunner:

Do you have a petty and personal vendetta or something? You are the one trying to advance particular interpretations. Some statistics on the Mao era don’t coincide with your interpretation, so you have to use that Taiwan analogy.

The present sections on the Ming history are also fine. You probably didn’t even read it. It’s describing MANY interpretations.

 * But your text holds that China was in decline since the Ming dynasty, that China never had a commercial revolution or modern science, that there was an official downgrading of trade during and after the Ming, that state control of the economy was a dominant characteristic of the Ming dynasty. All of these assertions have been questioned by recent scholarship and are quite controversial.

You just seem to want to advance your own correct one.

 * My personal belief is that the economics of the Ming/Qing dynasty is far too poorly understood to make any sweeping generalizations.

The current Ming article merely suggests that Western-style capitalism was impeded by a lack of state support, which was provided in the West. This doesn’t really contradict your recent interpretations, which, I admit, counter some simplistic older explanations that over-emphasize Confucian conservatism at the expense of underlying social and economic factors.

And yes, I changed the dialogue. I was a bit inarticulate in the discussion section. I was speaking INFORMALLY. I didn’t realize that you would be so uptight. So what? I stated an opinion on the discussion. That’s why there is a discussion section. By changing my response somewhat, I wanted to reiterate that the encyclopedia article was not written from the standpoint of one interpretation.

READ THE ARTICLE NOW. IT'S PRETTY BALANCED. AT FIRST, THE RECENT INTERPRETATIONS WERE REMOVED BY MISTAKE. NOW, THEY'VE BEEN WOVEN INTO THE ARTICLE, WHICH NOW HAS A MORE COHERENT FLOW.

 * The text still makes assertions which are controversial and debatable and which do not have the consensus support of scholars in the field. My main issue with the text is that Chinese history is a very active, interesting, and rapidly evolving field and that the text simply does not capture the flavor of the most recent scholarship.  A lot of the most recent scholarship has a post-modern flavor to it and looks at the question of whether or not the traditional questions are even meaningful.

User:Roadrunner

-

You’re right, Roadrunner. That’s why the article describes many different interpretations. Add more facts or describe other interpretations. By the way, post-modernists often deconstruct good historical scholarship. They’re the cancer of academia. --- User:172

- Science progresses when one “community of experts” shatters an outmoded paradigm. Post-modern historians attempt to do so laboriously. Unfortunately, they’re not presenting a creative, new paradigm, but shattering old ones for the sake of shattering old ones. It’s a cancer spreading from the humanities to the sciences that must be stopped.

Roadrunner seems to be preoccupied with advancing this point of view, criticizing me as I briefly describe some scholarship on Chinese history that attempts to be more illumining.

--- User:172

Roadrunner,

Your section on recent post-modern scholarship adds perspective to the article. Some adjustments, however, were required. Your writing overly espoused this perspective and was slanted against other paradigms. Now, the point of view is more matter of fact.

Actually, I was trying to present an accurate summary of recent scholarship.

I toned down revisionist. A lot of current work on Chinese history is revisionist, but a lot of it isn't. For example, studies on the Chinese publishing industry in the mid-Qing dynasty could hardly be called revisionist because there is no dominant paradigm to revise.

It would be a good idea to start writing up a complete list of the paradigms that exist in Chinese history. As of 1970 there were basically three (modernist, China's reaction against the West, and the imperialist/anti-imperialist paradigm). I think I started an article stub in Chinese histiography.

point of view is more matter of fact.

This is an article on Chinese history, not Chinese scholarship on Chinese history. I short aside was fine, but the expanded articles is an obvious attempt to argue on behalf of these revisionist interpretations. The section on recent interpretations has been moved to the article on Chinese historiography.

-- User:172

---

Guys, This page provides pnnoramic view of Chinese history. Descriptions of Ming economy should be kept as concise as possible. Those paragraphs can be moved to Chinese Economic history or under Ming Dynasty -- User:kt2

---

User:kt2:

No. This page just lacks information on everything else.

-- 172 This page initially lacks inofrmation of a concise overview of Ming and Qing Dynasties. Some paragrahgs on Ming are mostly descriptive of economy and redundant. Move relevant information to Ming Dynasty and Qing Dynasty. Example: Ming emperors sent seven maritime expeditions probing down into the South Seas and across the Indian Ocean

That's the 7 expedition of Zheng he, which is repeated in next paragarph:

The most extraordinary venture, however, during this stage was the dispatch Cheng-ho’s seven naval expeditions, which traversed the Indian Ocean and the Southeast Asian archipelago.

Don't try to babble ideas over and over again. --User:kt2

---

Listen, kt2, contribute something yourself. It's much easier to bitch than to contribute. That error was probably due to poor copyediting

Listen, 172. refine your vague generalizations before asking people to contribute. Don't cut and paste lots of info from other sites that others have to read all of them just to think how to edit. If you don't explicitly know what your are trying to say, how could you expect people to edit your stuff? User:kt2

Moved Ming Dynasty text to Ming dynasty Roadrunner

 * I agree with the move. The Ming text was specific to the Ming dynasty and not to China. The article with the Ming-specific text was over 35,000 bytes which is unreadably long for an encyclopedia article. Now the article is about 21,000 bytes which is still a bit on the long side (idealy, fully developed articles should be in the range of 10 - 20 KB). --mav

---

The Ming section is the best one, and you’re destroying it. Lengthen the sections on the other dynasties. The article in Britannica on Chinese history, for instance, is hundreds of pages long because it chronicles each dynasty in detail.

 * Each dynasty has its own page. Present the detail there. --mav

Ultimately, I expect there to be thousands if not tens of thousands of pages on Chinese history on Wikipedia. It will not do to have all of that on one page.

-- User:Roadrunner

As of now, the other dynasties don’t have detailed histories in the dynasty sections. So, deleting the Ming sections would be inconsistent.

 * Well get to work and add them.....

 * Yep, Ming sections deserve to be moved to Ming Dynasty, expanding the article there. The Ming sections also lack coherence without those cut paragraphs; however including them would be made them off topic. The left behind sections need to be refined so it reads more meaningful. User:kt2

As of now, the other dynasties don’t have detailed histories in the dynasty sections. So, deleting the Ming sections would be inconsistent.

": Well get to work and add them....." WRITE THEM FIRST!!!!!!!!! LEAVE THE MING SECTION HERE ALONE UNTIL THEN!!!!!!!!!

 * Whoever put those lengthy sections up here will then be respomsible of all the moving and refining.

 * This isn't the place for detailed histories about any of the dynasties. That is why we have (or plan on having) separate articles on each dynasty. This article is supposed to be a broad overview of Chinese history; an introduction if you will. Ideally, each dynasty should have its own small section in this article with an introductory overview consisting of a few paragraphs. Anything more detailed or specific to the particular dynasty should be in that dynasty's own page (and eventually we will spin-off detail in those articles into [History of the X dynasty] articles). This is the WikiWay. --mav

-

That would be better. But it's just a plan now. I'm going to revert that Ming section until your done with "planning".

 * Please note that your text has only been moved/copied to Ming dynasty -- it has not been deleted. I agree with mav; detail should be spun off to specific articles. Please work with us! -- Anon.

--

As of now, the other dynasties don’t have detailed histories in the dynasty sections. So, deleting the Ming sections would be inconsistent.
You are a hypocrite, Roadrunner. You were chronicling changes in Ming historiography earlier, rather than moving the Ming section altogether. Now you’re just trying to destroy my contributions.

 * See my comment about detail above. --mav

 * You seriously need a chill-pill, 172. The decision to spin off a new article occurs when the information on that subtopic reaches a critical mass. The suggestion to move it is reasonable. What in the world do you think is the difference whether it's one giant article or many littler ones? --Len

For the sake of consistency, I’m going to revert that section until you finish the detailed histories of the other dynasties in the dynasty sections.

 * ? That's not the way we do things here. We add and edit bit by bit. No goddesses come fully grown out of our heads in full battle armor here. --mav

You people are ganging up on me for petty reasons.

 * No, we are doing what we feel is the best for the article. --mav

---

LenBudney: THE OTHER LITTLE ARTICLES DON'T EXIST YET. THAT'S WHY!!

I'll stop reverting this section once the histories of the other dynasties are done
Personally, I can't wait to start the others. I'll get to that once you stop bothering me with this revert/restore game.

 * The text has not been lost. Just moved. --mav

-- I know that the text has been moved; for now that is inconsistent.

Why don’t we compromise? Let’s each pick a dynasty to chronicle. Until those articles are finished though I’m going to be restoring the Ming section.

 * Why is this necessary at all? This isn't your article to do with as you please and anything over 30,000 bytes is too long to read or edit. Work on the detail in the correct places -- the subjects of that detail. --mav

-

I've already moved over the Qing dynasty section and am in the process of moving over the ROC section. The ROC section perfectly illustrates the problem with the current situation as there is dual material that needs to be merged.

You are not the only person on Wikipedia and you need to take into account the opinion of others if you wish for them to take your opinion into account.

---User:Roadrunner

 * Try not to impose your view of chronicling Chinese history here. They should go to Chinese historiography

 * The Ming and Qing sections needs to be moved for a smaller Chinese history article. Respective paragraphs should also be rephrased so they look more coherent. 172, stop your edit war and work on them. Don't try to exploit consistency as an excuse to keep your gaint article here. -- kt2.

---

The Ming section has to be summarized before it is moved as well.

KT2, before you attack other people’s work, why don’t you contribute something comparable on a Chinese dynasty?

 * Check User:Ktsquare/Articles. I'm also the major conytibutor to Han Dynasty, author of Wu Hu and Table of Chinese monarchs, the second longest Wiki article. Check before crticizing others' contributions. -- kt2

--- I SAW HOW YOU SLANDERED ME EARLIER TODAY, KT2. I MIGHT HAVE REPEATED A SENTENCE DUE TO POOR EDITING, SO WHAT? BUT HOW DARE YOU CLAIM THAT I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHAT I WROTE? EVERY WORD WAS MINE.

PLEASE APOLOGIZE FOR THAT INSULT.

I'm not slandering but you have babbled idea over and over. Those sections need to be condensed and moved. That's all I meant.

A redundant sentence? Big deal. I wrote the whole thing on the Wiki prompt. That's fairly difficult.

That sentence is only a example of the whole picture. -- kt2.

Your insult was that I don't have an understanding of the Ming era.

 * Where did I say you don't have an understanding of the Ming era? Your sections are just too lengthy and babbling for others to edit. -- kt2

You implied that earlier today. Go through this talk section fight. You probably just have a short attention span.

---

This is the slander for which I want an apology:

Don't cut and paste lots of info from other sites that others have to read all of them just to think how to edit. If you don't explicitly know what your are trying to say, how could you expect people to edit your stuff? kt2

 * Here's the whole verse:

 * Listen, 172. refine your vague generalizations before asking people to contribute. Don't cut and paste lots of info from other sites that others have to read all of them just to think how to edit. If you don't explicitly know what your are trying to say, how could you expect people to edit your stuff? User:kt2

 * I said you don't know what you are trying to say because you keep putting lengthy and vague generalizations. You know you have an understanding of the Ming era but how you expect people to know your thorough understanding from your lengthy and babbling verses. And you don't demand an apology because of your way of putting up long sections. If you refine your sections on a word processor before posting up here, you might not have such lengthy sections.-- User:kt2

172, again: Why is it necessary to keep scores of pages of text here instead of just working on the individual dynasty histories? This is very strange and not at all polite to people who are trying to get a summary of Chinese history from this article. Key word "summary". --mav

Early Imperial, Mid-Imperial and Late Imperial China periodization is a way of periodization but not the only way. Supporters of Chinese Marxist interpretations might not agree with that. It's better to put under Periodization of Chinese_historiography so the History of China article will be as NPOV as possible. User:kt2

 * Point taken
 * Those headers moved under Periodization of Chinese_historiography.

The length of the Ming Dynasty section is ridiculous. It is fantastic to have this level of detailed history here on Wikipedia, but the top level article of any history should always be a summary. The idea is to make information readily available to readers. Tannin

 * You hit the nail right on the head. --mav

-

The suggestion that the article be kept as is until the history of the other dynasties is finished will not work. It will take months if not years to write a full history of China, and with wikipedia being a work in progress who is to decide what is "finished".

 * Yep. That is why all this seems so very strange. --mav

-- Can the mob allow me to summarize the Ming section myself without butchering the entire article?--172

 * Copy the text onto your own personal sandbox and summarize it there. When you are done you can paste it back into the article. user:172/sandbox --mav

 * Yes, an excellent suggestion, 172. I want to do a general copyedit and tidy up of expression on the article (not your Ming Dynasty part, the intro and more general parts) and look forward to the edit war cooling off long enough to allkow me to do that without running into edit conflicts.- Tsar Tannin of Mob

 * Same here written in 2002th year of Gong Yuan

- Hm. I can't complain too much about the length now (the article is about 23K in size now). It still could use some weightloss but I see no point in prolonging the edit war now. --mav

- Why can't we all be friends?

 Talk continued at talk:History of China/archive 2

title: Talk:History of China/Archive 1