It may seem petty to make a thread about this, but hear me out.
I'm bringing this up because I feel like I very likely may have had some involvement in a little blunder involving the promo posters for Ip Man 3.
When Ip Man 3 was announced, there was some excitement about who the mysterious rival Wing Chun master was that Yip Man would end up fighting. A young, enthusiastic and short-sighted me speculated that it might be Sum Nung. And I, without any information to back up my hunch, edited the article for the movie to say that Max Zhang's then-unnamed character was Sum Nung. It's just a little harmless fun, right?
Hey, wait a minute, what the hell is this? Holy crap, I was right!
I wasn't right at all. I have a very strong feeling that because of my irresponsibility, some artist who wasn't communicating with the studio got his information from the Wikipedia article I had edited.
The moral of the story? We need to be responsible about what information we put on the internet.
As it stands, the wikipedia article for Wing Chun is a disorganized mess of platitudes and unverifiable claims, and is a victim of people making edits willy nilly without any oversight because Wing Chun is such a niche subject.
Since people's first source of information on just about any subject in this day and age comes from Wikipedia, a Wikipedia article acts as a sort of equivalent to a social media profile that a potential employer might look at when deciding whether or not to hire someone. In this case, the potential employer is anyone looking for more information about Wing Chun, who might end up unintentionally spreading false information in a way that has consequences.
I propose that we collaborate to rewrite the entire article from scratch, according to the following standards:
1. No unverifiable claims about the style's effectiveness or history are made. That being said, legends are a big part of Wing Chun and thus ought to be given their own section.
2. Retain neutrality and objectivity when describing the style.
3. The ideas discused in the meat of the article must be universal* to all styles of Wing Chun.
4. Take time to represent the most notable lineages fairly and objectively.
*Within reason. Not all styles have the three hand forms, but there would be no sense in not discussing them
The article should discuss the following:
- Etymology
- Verifiable history
- Creation legends
- Basic triangle and centerline theory and absorption/redirection of force, sticking
- Striking techniques
- Weapons
- Training aids (Dummy, wall bags, etc.)
- Forms (perhaps single section with brief descriptions of the three basic empty hand forms with a table of different forms and various lineages with checkmarks on whether or not they have that form)
- Modern era (Yip Man's role in the style's spread, Bruce Lee, the VTAA, recent controversies including Xu Xiao Dong, etc.)
Anyone interested in the idea?
I'm bringing this up because I feel like I very likely may have had some involvement in a little blunder involving the promo posters for Ip Man 3.
When Ip Man 3 was announced, there was some excitement about who the mysterious rival Wing Chun master was that Yip Man would end up fighting. A young, enthusiastic and short-sighted me speculated that it might be Sum Nung. And I, without any information to back up my hunch, edited the article for the movie to say that Max Zhang's then-unnamed character was Sum Nung. It's just a little harmless fun, right?
Hey, wait a minute, what the hell is this? Holy crap, I was right!
I wasn't right at all. I have a very strong feeling that because of my irresponsibility, some artist who wasn't communicating with the studio got his information from the Wikipedia article I had edited.
The moral of the story? We need to be responsible about what information we put on the internet.
As it stands, the wikipedia article for Wing Chun is a disorganized mess of platitudes and unverifiable claims, and is a victim of people making edits willy nilly without any oversight because Wing Chun is such a niche subject.
Since people's first source of information on just about any subject in this day and age comes from Wikipedia, a Wikipedia article acts as a sort of equivalent to a social media profile that a potential employer might look at when deciding whether or not to hire someone. In this case, the potential employer is anyone looking for more information about Wing Chun, who might end up unintentionally spreading false information in a way that has consequences.
I propose that we collaborate to rewrite the entire article from scratch, according to the following standards:
1. No unverifiable claims about the style's effectiveness or history are made. That being said, legends are a big part of Wing Chun and thus ought to be given their own section.
2. Retain neutrality and objectivity when describing the style.
3. The ideas discused in the meat of the article must be universal* to all styles of Wing Chun.
4. Take time to represent the most notable lineages fairly and objectively.
*Within reason. Not all styles have the three hand forms, but there would be no sense in not discussing them
The article should discuss the following:
- Etymology
- Verifiable history
- Creation legends
- Basic triangle and centerline theory and absorption/redirection of force, sticking
- Striking techniques
- Weapons
- Training aids (Dummy, wall bags, etc.)
- Forms (perhaps single section with brief descriptions of the three basic empty hand forms with a table of different forms and various lineages with checkmarks on whether or not they have that form)
- Modern era (Yip Man's role in the style's spread, Bruce Lee, the VTAA, recent controversies including Xu Xiao Dong, etc.)
Anyone interested in the idea?