Talk:East Asian age reckoning/Archive 1

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Archive 1

Formal challenge of unsourced material

  1. This article has been in existence for four years.
  2. In this time it has attracted a large number of edits, but only one source, for a single short sentence. Even the external link is broken.
  3. It has been templated for lack of sources for 22 months, with no noticeable improvement.
  4. I therefore placed {{fact}} tags on the unsourced material, to make it explicit that this material is "challenged", per WP:BURDEN.
  5. I would note that it is not required that "specific argument(s)" be provided. It should in any case be clear that the process of this article's creation mean that much of its contents may be WP:OR, hearsay, truthiness, inaccurately recalled, etc, etc.
  6. Benlisquare (talk · contribs) saw fit to remove the tags.
  7. I therefore removed the tagged material, per WP:BURDEN (NOT WP:BOLD as some have inferred).
  8. As this material has now been restored in direct violation of WP:BURDEN, and for the avoidance of doubt, I would like to make the following formal statement:

I, Hrafn formally challange all the unsourced material in this article.

Per WP:BURDEN:

…any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be attributed to a reliable, published source using an inline citation

I look forward to seeing these inline citations shortly. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 14:18, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Regarding number 6, I only removed the tags because I believed that the template at the top sufficed, and because I have come across similar cases previously, and although it was my fault for not WP:AGF, I interpreted previous cases as users trying to make a WP:POINT by ugly-fying an article; I see that you had no ill-intent through your contributions, and I acted mainly on a rough judgement. I however do believe that the material can be sourced eventually. I currently do not have the time to search for the said references, but I might be able to do so in the future, time permits. Like the essay says, there is no deadline. Sure, essays are not policy, but they do make sense when it comes with dealing with other editors. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 14:27, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
Also, as per Wikipedia:BURDEN: "If you want to request a source for an unsourced statement, consider tagging...the article with { {refimprove}} or { {unreferenced}}" it is arguable that the template was good enough, and that inline tagging may have been an overkill. The policy page stated that either of the given could be used (from the "or"), depending on the circumstances. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 14:32, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Alright, it's late now and I'm going off to bed, but here's a basic search that took me 5 seconds:

I'm sure we can build from there. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 14:47, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Oh, and one last thing before I forget, since I've had the same argument dozens of times earlier, I think it would be a good idea to pre-emptively mention WP:NONENG right now, where "sources in other languages are acceptable where an English equivalent is not available". Thank you all, and good night. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 14:51, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

  1. If "the template at the top sufficed", then this material has been challenged for 22 months! I think that's more than enough time to allow before deleting the material. Hence, my removal of it was simply me taking you at your word.
  2. In any case the "template at the top" certainly didn't 'suffice' to ensure that the article was significantly improved. Hence my individual tags, hence my formal statement above. If a 'kill' is being ignored, then 'overkill' doesn't seem unreasonable. As a matter of fact, I often find that even 'overkill' doesn't work, and that articles aren't improved until you either delete the unsourced material or AfD the article. It often seems that this is the only way of getting people's attention.

HrafnTalkStalk(P) 14:56, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

In response to the links, thank you for dumping a whole heap of links instead of providing inline citations as WP:BURDEN demands. Also:

  1. Baidu Baike does not appear to be a WP:RS (its a wiki or something very similar)
  2. www.nongli.com likewise does not give the appearance of a RS, but it is difficult to tell, given the lack of any apparent information on authoriship, site-'About' page etc.
  3. http://meiyu.xtpo.cn does have an 'About' page, which indicates that it is a commercial (and thus a promotional 'questionable', per WP:V) source.
  4. http://www.dsw8.cn likewise does not appear to be particularly reliable.

If you think any of these sources genuinely pass muster, then I'd be happy hear your reasons why. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 15:13, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Hrafn, I already gave a lengthy message in the section above explaining why much of the material you tagged (especially the language-relevant stuff) doesn't need citations. For some of the others, sites like this (note the .gov.cn) and this (published magazine article title "Why do Chinese people use 'traditional age counting'?"—I've used this publication in other articles, including one that's at FAC now) will probably suffice—and this is only for China, I haven't even started doing web searches about Japan, Korea, etc. The only stuff that leaves is the bits on how use of this calendar is fading out—and I am confident such sources can be found in foreign-language publications (for instance, this looks promising for China). rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 15:24, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
(i) You didn't 'explain', you simply baldly stated that they didn't need citations. (ii) Regardless, the material has been challenged and thus "must be attributed to a reliable, published source using an inline citation." This is in line with the core of WP:V: "…that is, whether readers are able to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether we think it is true."
If you can cite this material, well and good -- but after 22 months of inaction, I don't think a degree of skepticism and impatience is altogether unreasonable. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 16:23, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
re "You didn't explain why" -- perhaps you didn't read the explanations after the italicized quotations? rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 16:31, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
Sorry, I did not look closely enough, and the explanations were intermixed with the text. (i) I would suggest that a list of "simple translations", lacking any (sourced) explanations as to their deeper meaning is hardly encyclopaedic -- per WP:NOTDICT, wikipedia is not a Chinese-English dictionary. (ii) Your "simple math" is performed as an example of the unsourced claim made in the preceding sentence. (iii) You failed to classify large chunks of the article. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 17:42, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Dispute over unsourced material

First of all, there is no need to add a "citation needed" tag to every single unsourced statement, when the template at the top will suffice, as per Template:Citation needed#When not to use this template. Second, the template reads "Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed." You cannot blindly remove a whole portion of the article without challenging the content first, with specific argument(s) towards the content. People can always improve the article and add proper sources later on if they are WP:BOLD enough to do so. Also note that there is no deadline. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 05:05, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

  1. The 'citation needed' tags that I added were "challenging the content first". You removed them, so I removed the material being challenged. Per WP:BURDEN you are not permitted to restore this material until it is "attributed to a reliable, published source using an inline citation."
  2. None of the applicable policies or guidelines state that "specific argument(s)" are needed for such a challenge.
  3. WP:DEADLINE is an essay, so does not override WP:V.
  4. WP:DEMOLISH (which your edit summary cited) is likewise an essay, and in any case the article is not "still being built", but has been abandoned in a a ramshackle state. (No sourced material has been added since January 2008)

I am therefore reverting the restoration of this unsourced material, and would request that you cease and desist restoring it until you meet WP:BURDEN with inline citations to reliable, published sources. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 06:02, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Regarding your "non-notable" template placement; how is it that you assume that the topic is non-notable, where there are interwikis to Chinese, Japanese and Korean Wikipedias on the subject? Are you assuming that notability must correlate with the English language? Rather than making a judgement on a Google search for the title of the article, look up keywords such as 虚岁 and 数え年; this is clearly of notability. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 13:23, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
WP:GNG requires "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject". Where no such coverage is in the article, or can be found (e.g. with the results from a {{find}}), then a {{notability}} is not unreasonable. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 13:53, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
Yes, but your { {find}} was in English. Only 1.8 billion people speak English. And its not even an English topic we're dealing with here. Also, your { {find}} searched for the exact title in quotes; thus, the only results which would logically bounce back would be from sites which mirrored Wikipedia, and little else. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 14:37, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
(i) This is an explicitly English-language encyclopaedia, with an explicit policy of preferring English sources over WP:NONENGlish. (ii) The average English Wikipedia editor would not be able to read a given non-English source (or even a search in a given foreign language to find it), so expecting them to base notability decisions on what might be out there in a foreign language appears to be unreasonable. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 14:54, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
Again, the topic is obviously notable, it's something over a billion people know about. (Quick example: Baidu news search results, thousands of news articles give people's DOB in both Western and Asian methods. Another example: start typing "Chinese age" in the Google search bar and see how many things AutoComplete puts in; a lot is junk, but the sheer frequency is a strong indication that the concept is well-known.) Calling this non-notable because you can't find web results using this particular sequence of words is like calling the article Blue non-notable because it has a lot of web hits but most don't look like "significant coverage". If you took this article to AfD for being non-notable, it would surely be a SNOWy keep. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 15:01, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
Sure, the page does not have citations, but it is surely notable, and you can't really link between having few or no citations and not being notable. Not all pages have inline citations initially. Have a look at Cool Devices, for example; in my opinion it is poorly written, also fails to meet WP:V, and it bears the "references needed" tag. The topic also seems to be scarcely notable (I would personally take a few hacks and slices of that article). But really, one can make the judgement that Cool Devices is not notable, however East Asian age reckoning is, due to the nature of the content, that is, it covers something that is culturally significant and of a particular degree of seriousness, whereas the other page appears to be of meaningless fluff to myself personally. There is a clear distinction between these two articles in regards to WP:N. (These two articles are used for comparative purposes only in regards to content, not arguing for WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS) Leaving WP:GOOGLE and { {find}} aside, you can easily make the WP:N judgement by reading the content, and seeing if it is worth being in Wikipedia, i.e. is encyclopedic. If we go outside of the box of strict word-for-word howtos from WP: pages, one can see, from common sense, that the article is of some notability. Then, as for WP:RS, we can later build on that. All I am trying to argue now is that WP:N is not defined by black-and-white text. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 12:44, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
Agreed, this is one of the many cases where the spirit of the law matters more than the letter. Above all else at Wikipedia, the main law is that each edit you do should make the article better than it was before--"laws" like V, NOR, etc., are just ways of helping ensure that. But making an article into this, which almost looks like a joke, certainly does not make it better. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 12:57, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
(ec) I agree with Ben, sources are very important but with innocuous information like this it's better to leave it and wait for someone to come clean up the article. Essentially, removing all the unsourced information here has turned an informative, if poorly written, article into an entirely useless article—a reader coming to this page gets absolutely nothing. We're not dealing with libel or something here, we're dealing with innocuous claims that don't hurt anyone. Plus, to be honest, most of those tags should be {{or}} rather than {{fact}}, as a lot of this stuff is stuff that people with experience in East Asia know just through word of mouth. Anyway, I am reverting to the version before today's trimming (but keeping the tags for now, as they were added several days ago), per WP:BRD. Hrafn's bold edit was met with objections and was reverted, so it shouldn't be reinstated until broader consensus is gained. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 13:25, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
Aside: I don't see why the {{notability}} tag is here. This is clearly a major concept, millions of people are affected by it, and every first-year student of Chinese (and probably Japanese, Korean, etc.) reads about it. Judging by your edit summary when you added it, it seems you based that decision just on the fact that a google search didn't find this exact search term written in this exact way; but this is a concept known by many names (or sometimes by no name at all), and if you search for it in Chinese you get 600,000 hits on Baidu and 250,000 on Google...not to mention that the google test is not the only measure of notability, especially for a traditional concept which is talked about more off the web than on it. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 13:25, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
Below I have given a more detailed listing of statements that should not have been tagged {fact}. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 13:32, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
Statements that should be tagged {{or}}, rather than {{fact}}. from this revision
  • "In China and Japan it is used for traditional fortune-telling or religion, and it is disappearing in daily life between peoples in the city." Common knowledge over there.
  • "Today the traditional system is mainly used by the elderly. Elsewhere its use is limited to traditional ceremonies, divinations, and obituaries." Obviously based on personal experience, so it's closer to being or.
Statements that should not be tagged at all. from this revision
  • "The traditional age system is referred to as xusui (simplified Chinese: 虚岁; traditional Chinese: 虛歲; pinyin: xūsuì), and the modern age system is referred to as zhousui (simplified Chinese: 周岁; traditional Chinese: 周歲; pinyin: zhōusùi) or shisui (simplified Chinese: 实岁; traditional Chinese: 實歲; pinyin: shísùi)." Simple translations or statements of a word's basic meaning in some other language generally do not need sources, as they're common knowledge to millions.
  • "Japanese uses the word sai (歳 or 才) as a counter word for both the traditional and modern age system." See above.
  • "Koreans generally refer to their age in units called sal (살), using Korean numerals in ordinal form." See above.
  • "Because the first year comes at birth and the second on New Year's Day, a child born, for example, on December 29 will reach two years of age on January 1, when they are only three days old in western reckoning." Simple math. Any kid who's read about age reckoning can figure this out.
  • "The birthday by the lunar calendar is called eumnyeok saeng-il (음력 생일, 陰曆生日) and yangnyeok saeng-il (양력 생일, 陽曆生日) is the birthday by Gregorian calendar." Simple translation; see above.

"Sai" and "common language knowledge"

To state that 'Japanese uses the word sai (歳 or 才) as a counter word for years of age' would probably be "common language knowledge" (and is supported, albit without citation, by counter word). Stating that it does so in "both the traditional and modern age system" is the sort of thing that should have a citation, or be left unsaid. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 05:24, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I would further suggest that an article relying solely on "common language knowledge", OR and/or unsourced material, in whatever mix or combination, is inappropriate for inclusion in Wikipedia. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 05:33, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Then take it to AfD. But, as you have already been told several times, this is an encyclopedic topic, regardless of the quality (or lack thereof) of the article that is currently in place. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 07:10, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
No -- AfDing it would be disingenuous as I believe that there is probably a notable topic under all this mess. Redirection would have been the obvious alternative for notable-but-completely-underdeveloped/unsourced -- but to where? I didn't know, therefore I didn't make the attempt. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 08:53, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
Why the sudden change of heart? rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 12:22, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

The abusive "Fact" template tagging

It is great that Hrafn (talk · contribs · logs · block log) has addressed a concern over the lack of sources on the content to verify whether this article says facts or not. However, the excessive tagging with {{fact}} rather looks like WP:POINTy. If a whole section is unreferenced, but several people want to keep the section because that info falls under common knowledge, then placing {{unreferencedsection}} at the top of the section suffice instead of tagging {{fact}} to every single sentence. The information could be easily verified, so having a little patience would be better than keeping throwing uncivil remarks/accusations and engaging in edit warrs. I began adding inline referencs from English and Korean sources, so I guess other sections would be followed by our peer editors.--Caspian blue 06:27, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

The effective "Fact" template tagging

  • I will draw Caspian blue's attention to the the fact that this article had an {{unreferenced}} template for 22 months with no significant improvement. It has been only when I have placed individual tags on unsourced material that it has gotten any attention. This level of tagging is therefore clearly the minimum necessary to get editors attention -- and therefore neither "excessive" nor "abusive". If "the information could be easily verified" then why has it taken 22 months ? How much "patience" are you demanding? Two years? Three? Five? If you want 'civility', then I would suggest ceasing and desisting lobbing adjectives like "abusive" & "excessive" at what has proven to be the only means of getting attention to these problems. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 08:48, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
    Or, to summarise, you can only legitimately label a level of tagging to be "abusive" or "excessive", if you can demonstrate that a lower level of tagging is effective to get the article improved. I would suggest that you cannot demonstrate this, so should not be applying those labels. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 08:57, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
User:Hrafn, as you see, I've added references and the article is getting referenced as well by other editors. Although {{unreferenced}} and {{unreferencedsection}} have the same function, they are applied differently within the article. You may feel sorry that people here do not agree with your assessment on the "excessive" tagging. However, the templates all over the place made the article indeed very unstable and ugly, so the alerting template that has the same function looks better in my view. Editors here have acknowledged the problems that the article has, so well, pursuing edit-warring over the tagging is "abusive" and "ineffective" in my view. If you think that you've been not uncivil in the process of discussion, please read WP:CIVIL. Regardless, I clearly appreciated you spotting the lack of inline source, but merely tagging does not improve the article's status. Since the article is very poorly written, User:Hrafn, if you really care about the quality of the article, please copy-edit and fix grammatical errors on the article. Thanks.Caspian blue 09:06, 11 November 2009 (UTC)


Four points:

  1. None of those complaining about the tagging (yourself, Rjanag, Benlisquare) made any attempt whatsoever to improve the article prior to my tagging. I therefore take leave to place a value on your complaints commensurate to the level of your prior improvements.
  2. 'Stability' and 'prettiness' in an abysmally-sourced article aren't virtues. Source it first, the references will of-themselves 'stabilise' it to a considerable extent, and then worry about polishing it.
  3. Whilst "the alerting template" may have served the same theoretical function as my tags, the lack of improvement on sourcing after 22 months demonstrates that it didn't serve any practical function whatsoever.
  4. I'll do what I can on grammar -- but will be severely hampered by the lack of sources (I refuse to rewrite for grammar when I can have no idea as to whether my rewrite moves the text closer to, or further way from, the facts).

HrafnTalkStalk(P) 09:39, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

In responses to your points, I've been aware that you've complained about the lack of sources of the article for 22 months, but the responsibility of that status does not automatically fall under the three editor's shoulder since none of three caused the negligence. Perhaps, the other two editors' involvement in the article started due to your excessive tagging while patrolling recent changes of articles. The article seems to be written long time ago, and citation policies have been changed through the past. The reason I've decided to edit the article is just because of you tendentious edit warring over just the tagging instead of actually improving the article by editing with sources. It is too obvious that you care about the article, so I merely suggested you a way to actually improve the article.--Caspian blue 09:53, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
I take leave to contradict you. The "responsibility" is explicitly on Rjanag, per WP:BURDEN, for restoring this material. The "responsibility" is also on yourself & Benlisquare for removing/complaining about the tags that had proved necessary for correcting the "negligence". There are two ways of looking at it. (i) If the template was 'sufficient' then template+22 months is sufficient warning and removal of the unsourced material was legitimate. (ii) The template was 'insufficient' and thus my further tagging was legitimate. You cannot have it both ways -- you cannot claim that neither the increased tagging nor the removal of unsourced material was legitimate. I know very little about the topic, so attempting to edit it would be time very inefficiently spent. So I tagged it and moved on -- expecting the experts to do something about it -- that is after all what tags are for. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 10:13, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
Is there anything of substance that is being argued over here? Or are we just arguing over whether or not you or I was "right" a few days ago? Because I could care less about who was right or wrong in the past, and if we're not discussing a substantive, constructive change to be made then I don't see any point continuing this. You've already said you don't intend to AfD this article; the tags that aren't necessary have been removed and the tags that are legitimate have been added; some sources have been dug up (and listed above or placed in the article). Everyone seems to have gotten there way, why is there still anything left to discuss? Can we not drop this and get back to editing? rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 12:22, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
The article is already on the way to improvement; we should bury all this. Past is past. All that is needed now are sources for the parts that are currently WP:OR and certain things in the LEDE, and there should be no issues with the article; all other sections are sourced, thanks to Rjanag and Caspian. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 12:48, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Which cultures to include?

There has been some edit warring over which "cultures" to include in the lede. It has mainly been over whether or no to include Taiwan.

For what it's worth, I believe the list should be exhausted so at first I was gonna speak up in favor of including Taiwan. But then, I thought, really Taiwan culture is still Chinese culture, as far as stuff like age reckoning is concerned. Just mentioning "Chinese culture" covers it. Some other ones would be a bit harder (for example, what about Malaysia? if people use this reckoning system there, would we want to add them to the list, or is it only Malaysians of Han descent who do it?), but for Taiwan I think it's pretty clear. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 01:28, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

As far as age reckoning is concerned, to the extent that they all do it the same way they're all the same culture as far as age reckoning is concerned. Readin (talk) 01:41, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
To me, this whole Taiwan thing looks more like a political statement than a conscious effort to improve the article. From the reasons provided it the edit summaries, it seems like editors are removing and restoring "Taiwan" due to the dispute over whether Taiwan is a "part of China" or not. IMO, we should leave all of Chinese culture as Chinese culture, regardless of location, but I'm sure there will be some in opposition to that view. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 01:58, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
I've removed Taiwan because of NPOV issue. If Taiwanese are included alongside Chinese, that would imply that Taiwan is not part of China, which is taking a side. In fact, Taiwan was not there until a User:Taiwanrox8, and based on his talkpage, I question his commitment to NPOV. On the other hand, removing Taiwan does not imply that Taiwan is a part of China. Thailand does this too, and they are not mentioned, but nobody thinks that Thailand is a part of China. Thailand has more population then Taiwan, so the population argument does not make sense either. T-1000 (talk) 03:59, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
I disagree that the "Chinese culture" listiong can be said to include Taiwan, especially since it links to the "Culture of China" page. "Han culture" might be better. But I can except the exclusion of Taiwanese culture under the theory that we're not listing all cultures. But I question why we can't list the most populous cultures and explicitly say "and others" to make it clear that the list is not exhaustive. Readin (talk) 22:00, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
Han culture is what I meant when I said Chinese culture—I was referring to Greater China. Note that I am not making a statement on whether Taiwan is "part of the PRC" or not; "China" is not the same thing as the People's Republic. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 22:05, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
Then perhaps we should say "Han culture" if that is what we mean. And let's avoid bringing other politically charged POV terms like "Greater China". Readin (talk) 22:38, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
Here is where the lever tips. "Greater China" would refer to the PR of China, the Republic of China, the SARs, and in some cases Singapore, but to some who dispute Taiwanese sovereignty it can become a POV problem; on the other hand, "Han Culture" would be excluding the Zhuang, Miao, etc. and specifically marking them as "non-Chinese" in a sense. (but then again, as per Names of China, isn't "Han" a synonym for "China" anyway?) -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 02:12, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
Based on my experience "Greater China" also presents problems for Singaporeans. And how are we creating a problem by not listing Miao, Zhuang, et al. when you claim that we don't create a problem by listing Taiwanese?
But all that is getting off topic. What is the problem with stating explicitly that we are not listing all cultures? Readin (talk) 03:50, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
I guess there is no problem with it since I haven't received a response. Readin (talk) 04:10, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Template idea

Is there an age template for this? I'd love to see how old someone is, in Korean years, on their bio page. (I developed the original {{age}} template, which is on 10,000's of bio articles.)

If I understand the article correctly, an American born on December 9, 2011 (solar) would still be 0 years old on February 2, 2011. But a Korean would be in his first year at birth (2011.11.15 lunar) and in his second year on 2012.1.11 (lunar), right?

  • 12 years old (solar)
  • {{East Asian age|2011|11|15}}

Is this worth developing? --Uncle Ed (talk) 23:55, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Such a template would probably be quite complicated, given that the lunar new year falls on different dates every year (see, e.g., the variation at Chinese zodiac#Years). rʨanaɢ (talk) 00:47, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
I see what you mean. The lunar year begins on a different solar month and day, every year. Maybe I'll work on it offline before posting a first draft. --Uncle Ed (talk) 03:22, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
  • See Template talk:Korean age for examples of my new template. Note that most Koreans are 2 years older by E.A. reckoning (쌀) than Western reckoning. The average difference will gradually lessen as we gradually move toward the end of the current (Lunar) year. --Uncle Ed (talk) 06:39, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

First Year

The way I understand this is that, in your first year of existence, you exist in that year. For example, if you were conceived in the year 1990, the first year that you existed in was 1990. This is what accounts for the first year of age. Then, once the new year comes, 1991, you become a year older, two years of age. This is what I learned as a Korean. The concept of one year of gestation period is both new and actually very funny to me. Jin29 18:46, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't know about Koreans but it's claimed to be the case amongst the Chinese at least whenever anyone has mentioned the tradition to me. [1] is a good source Nil Einne (talk) 01:21, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
Some interesting discussions. [2] & [3]. Some people suggest it may be the same for Chinese as you say for Koreans and the gestation thing is a recent invention. This may very well be the case but without a RS we can't speculate Nil Einne (talk) 01:34, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
I think Jin29 answered this, but my question (in fact, specific to Korea) was: Is a statement of age in the old system equivalent to saying "I am in my first year," which implies that the count begins at birth but includes the current year, or is it really "I have lived for one year" including the year of conception/gestation? (The concept of including gestation is found funny, but conception is also mentioned seriously, so I still find this ambiguous/confusing.) For instance, if a *pregnancy* spans the New Year, that child is not born "2," right? --64.252.197.154 (talk) 06:52, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
I'm not quite sure I understand the New Year bit. It doesn't matter if the pregnancy spans the new year, the person is obviously still going to be only a year old since it's only been a year since they were conceived (or more accurately, 9 months). Think of it this way. If the child is conceived in the 9th month, when they're born in the 6th month they'll be one year old. A year later, they'll be two years old . (Again technically only 1 year and ~ 9 months but the difference is ignored). This is no different from in the Gregorian calendar custom where a person born on New Year's eve is not 1 year until next new year's eve, they don't become 1 year on new year's day. Nil Einne (talk) 13:34, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
I, too, think it strange to talk about gestation or conception as the start of the count of one's age. I'm not ethnically East Asian, and was not raised in one of those cultures, but still my impression from what I have read, heard, seen is that, as a previous poster wrote, it is simply a matter of counting the first year of life as the first year in which one was alive. Thus, at birth, we are in our first year; a year later, at the age which would be called "one year old" in Western reckoning, we are in our second year. It has nothing to do with conception or gestation periods. LordAmeth (talk) 02:27, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
I don't see any reason why it's 'strange' to consider the conception as the start of one's age, whether or not it's the reason. Age is ultimately a fairly arbitary concept and it's questionable if there's any real reason why it's more natural to count birth rather then conception except that conception is never as well known as birth, and probably wasn't really known at all when people began counting their age. Any way strange or not, as noted in the earlier discussion, there are various sources including at least one RS which make the claim it's the reason, whether or not that's correct and sources here are what matter not our own personal theories. Nil Einne (talk) 12:02, 23 July 2011 (UTC)
This business of talking about gestation or conception as the start of the count of one's age by the East Asian calendar is not objectively correct when explaining the tradition, whether for China, Korea, or Japan. It is a subjective and possibly recent "pro-life" assertion.
There is a specific age counter used - sai in Japanese (same counter, different pronunciation in the other traditions: I am 34 age-years or years of age is the meaning, though in Chinese, one can say, I am 1973, if one was born in 1973. That is because one is identified with the year into which one is born, an objective duration of special value in the Chinese Sexagenary cycle of years. One is born into the year of the Dragon or Snake or Rat, etc. This is the birth-sign year in the larger Chinese Sexagenary cycle. Chinese women could, if due in the first month of an inauspicious year (perhaps based on gender appropriateness) try to induce labor early to get a better year for the baby and were thus warned by Chinese doctors against doing so. The specific hour, day, month, and year were important to understanding one's astrological fate. The issue of what years of age you are is not so much about an individual's duration as about the individual's intersection with the larger scheme of time and its relation to fortune. This relation may have had different interpretations in China, Korea, Japan, etc., but it was crucial to all.
In China, after childbirth, women traditionally "do the month," zuoyuezi 坐月子, a practice of staying indoors and resting, not washing hair or touching cold water, etc., and often being fed special food or medicine for their health and, via breastmilk, of the new infant. This period is one lunar month. On the day it ends, Chinese celebrate the infant's being one month of age, mua guek (full moon ceremony. Some now claim that is the lunar anniversary of the conception and offer intellectual gyrations to make it so, but there are 12 or 13 lunar months in a Chinese lunisolar year, and babies could survive being born prematurely or late by a month or on time, but the same number of days from the birth is always used to determine mua guek. You cannot get 12 or 13 lunar months for everyone in the appropriate years. These claimants ignore the relation of mua guek to the end of the mother's zuoyuezi 坐月子, which clearly related to the danger of the first month for both mother and infant and the crucial need for quality breastmilk for the infant during that month in particular. I have explored various personal and impersonal sites that pop up for "mua guek" and "one-month celebration" and "full moon celebration": ordinary Chinese women do not seem to give the "from conception" view.
Chinese traditionally held/hold the official naming of the infant at mua guek, when mother and infant come out and see people after the confinement, while Japanese held/hold the official naming on the third day. However, at the end of the first month, Japanese would take the infant to visit a Shinto shrine, and this would probably mean there that the pollution/danger was over. The Japanese used 30 or 31 days for this calculation based on the infant's gender, precisely.
At one year of age and in old age on particular birthdays, there were birthday celebrations, and these were calculated based on the day of birth, not a calculation from conception.
This does not mean that people in China did not consider time of conception important. There is a Chinese birth chart all over the web that people can use to try to predict the baby's gender: chineseculture.about.com/od/chinesefestivals/a/Chinese-Birth-Chart.htm. Asiaedit (talk) 19:06, 26 February 2013 (UTC)asiaedit
At last found again the source I wanted to share, from a very useful reference website:
www.chinaknowledge.de/History/Terms/sui.html
The traditional lunar age calculation operates with "void years" (xusui 虛歲). This method uses calendric years to indicate the age of a person. When born, a person is one "year" (sui 歲) old, not because he or she has spent 9 months in the womb of the mother, but because the current year is the first calendric year the person experiences. With the shift to the next calendric year (according to the Chinese calendar), the person in question is two "years" (sui) old, even if he or she was born only a week before the Chinese New Year. The consequence is that the difference between the lunar age and the real age (shisui 實歲, measured in absolute time) can be as much as one, in many cases even two "years". A person in a traditional text, having the age of 20 sui, is thus 19 or 18 years (absolute) old. Luo Zhufeng 羅竹風 (ed. 1991). Hanyu da cidian 漢語大詞典, vol. 8, p. 814. Beijing: Hanyu da cidian chubanshe. Asiaedit (talk) 11:42, 2 March 2013 (UTC)Asiaedit

Same system in traditional Chinese age reckoning

A lot of the information on this page also applies to the traditional way of reckoning age in the Chinese community. I wonder if there is some way of either making a separate page for that without duplicating information, or merging the two usefully? (For that matter, I wonder if it also applies to other nearby cultures?) --ian 18:00, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

i'm surprised to hear that. do you mean the ordinal calendar years? i wonder what parts of china, cuz at least some chinese i know were puzzled by korean age counting, & did not celebrate the 100th day. i wouldn't be surprised at all if other cultures did this, but it's hard to google for, & sal & dol are native korean words afaik. is there already an article on chinese age reckoning? Appleby 19:59, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
I couldn't find an article on Chinese age reckoning, but I lived in Taiwan when I was little, and I learned the traditional way of counting age: you started at one year old when you were born (the reasoning being the same, that you spent a year in the womb), and gained a year each time the lunar new year rolled around. But IIRC, people called this "xu1 sui4 (虛歲)", and referred to the age reckoned by the Western method "shi2 sui4 (實歲)", which implies more legitmacy for the newer, Western method of age-reckoning.
I'm unfamiliar with celebrating the 100th day, and obviously the words used to refer to different ages differ between languages, so I think the commonality is mainly in the concept of age-reckoning. Also, I don't know if this practice is still used in mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore, etc. --ian 21:02, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
In Japan, kazoe doshi (数え年 lit reckoned year or age), the traditional system of age reckoning, works in the same way. The Japanese article on kazoe doshi states it is common among East Asian countries.... And in Japan, the age reckoned by the standard (Western) system is called man nenrei (満年齢, lit. full age), similar to Korean. --Kusunose 17:08, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
then maybe the article needs to be renamed & extensively rewritten. in my limited personal experience, a couple of chinese and japanese people thought the sal system was confusing, & i had a hard time trying to google for this topic. maybe the only difference is the extent of modern usage? of course, feel free to correct the article. Appleby 05:51, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
I started some of the reorganization (I noticed Appleby also made some changes); feel free to correct my changes, fill in the missing information, etc. --ian 19:49, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
i'm very curious how widely the traditional system is used in japan/china/taiwan. it is pretty much the default conversational usage in korea, unless otherwise specified, as when filling out certain forms or for some legal definition purposes. Appleby 17:07, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
As far as I remember, the modern system is the one mostly used in Taiwan (especially in legal documents and with younger folks), but for religious rites (probably not Christian though?), fortune-telling, marriageability, etc., people do still use the traditional system. --ian 17:47, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
The western system is used for all legal and "official" purposes, but socially and conversationally the traditional reckoning is still quite common. Most people's grandparents would still use the traditional age by default, and while growing up it is often preferred by children. Of course, they commonly switch over to the western age to knock a couple of years off their self-reported ages once in adulthood - no one likes being old. 220.132.37.177 (talk) 06:04, 21 October 2015 (UTC)
I do not know whether it is related or not, but in Persian the word for year is 'sál'; thus, for example, "do-sále" means "two years old". -Persiciser, 21 September 2006, 03:00 (UTC)

Lack of clarity

"The age qualifier for tobacco and alcohol use is actually similar to, but distinct from the East Asian reckoning system. A person is allowed tobacco and alcohol if it is after January 1 of the year one turns 19 (post-birth age).[18] This is the "year age", which is basically (Korean age – 1), or when a person's Korean age is 20." -- Still very unclear. Now that they are abolishing Korean age by law, is the minimum international legal age for drinking and smoking in Korea 19 or is it 20, or something else? When they abolish Korean age in law, does the law stating that they need to have a "year age" of 19 mean that they now need to have an international age of 19, or does it mean something else? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.208.181.52 (talk) 10:58, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

Is this concept perhaps a mis-translation of the meaning of 'age'?

If I write a book, after a day, how old is the book? Half way through the first day how old was the book? What is the actual definition of 'age' and the rules of how to use it? --ZhuLien 18:00, 29 October 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 27.32.141.11 (talk)

Yes, kind of. The issue is that up to now it still hasn't clearly explained what sui are measuring that's different from years, probably because few Chinese still follow traditional astrology, let alone understand the principles it's theoretically based on. — LlywelynII 13:26, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

Rename Page

The page should be renamed to Asian Age Reckoning. Many cultures in Southeast Asia use this same system. Calling it "East Asian AGe Reckoning" gives the implied notion that it is used only by East Asian cultures and that is wrong. The term is frankly rather offensive to the people outside of East Asia who use the same system. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.193.28.243 (talk) 03:27, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

"Asia" is quite a large place though. Do people in Israel, Iran, Tajikstan and Sri Lanka follow the same age reckoning? I'm pretty sure they don't. A naming like "Asian age reckoning" would be quite confusing and ambiguous for readers. This age reckoning comes from East Asia, and even though some communities in Southeast Asia might also use it, I assume its because of influence from East Asia where it originates from. Also, would you mind explaining specifically which communities in Southeast Asia use this form of age reckoning? -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 05:04, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
It is used in Vietnam, it is basically the only system in use there. Even when dealing with westerners they use this system.
I'd just simply write it as "East Asia and Vietnam" then, since not all of SE Asia uses it. VN isn't geographically within East Asia, that is true, but it doesn't make up all of SE Asia either. Though, I'd assume that Chinese communities in Malaysia and Thailand might follow this; I haven't confirmed whether this is the case yet. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 06:14, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
It seems that all the countries that have this are within the Sinosphere (with the exception of maybe Mongolia). Would it be weird to call it something like "Chinese age reckoning", rather than using a geographical term? rʨanaɢ (talk) 07:22, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
I can assume that there would be quite some opposition by some people to use that name. I guess for something like this, we could have more people giving their opinion to be sure of what we should do; probably only 3 or 4 people are watching this talkpage anyway. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 07:59, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
You should rename the page to Age reckoning and explain how it's done in other places as well. 193.61.28.40 (talk) 18:57, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure that Israelites use a similar way, i.e. inclusive counting for reckoning days, ages, length of reign, etc. , except based on their own calendar (which is also lunisolar) instead of Chinese calendar, at least during the biblical time. In fact it is fairly reasonable to use inclusive counting for most of the ancient civilisations in order to avoid the number zero which was not invented until 5th century AD. --Quest for Truth (talk) 15:37, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
This system is specific to Chinese communities and places that picked it up. East Asian is totally accurate even if some Chinese happen to live in Indonesia, Surinam, Botswana, or Mars. You could go with Traditional age reckoning in the Sinosphere or in the Chinese cultural sphere but that's probably going to be a lot less appreciated. The only way 'Asian' works is if we're using the US definition, which usually includes Pacific Islanders and the Southeast Asians you're thinking of already but excludes Indians, Central Asians, Russians, and people from the Middle East. You'd still need to include East Asian... in the lead sentence for all the Brits in the audience, though, and Americans understand the concept of 'East Asia' just fine. — LlywelynII 13:39, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

Lack of impartiality

The graphic is biased - it calls international age "real age" as though it is an objectively correct system. Why should real age not be measured from the start of pregnancy, or from when the embryo becomes a fetus? Or measured from birth but rounded up to 1 at the six-month mark, instead of waiting for a full year to pass before calling someone a 1-year-old? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.208.181.52 (talk) 10:53, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

The graphic goes by the Korean government's own conception about what age is supposed to measure: number of times around the sun since birth to an accuracy of ±24 hours or so. The fix I would propose would be 'Actual Age', which wouldn't help you with your ontological issues. Maybe just accept that the page is written in WP:ENGLISH and the English word age has some cultural preconceptions baked into it for the overwhelming majority of its users, which we at Wiktionary are bound to accept. If there were a sizeable community of English speakers whose dialect processed things differently, that'd be the point to address with a footnote... but there isn't.
Oddly enough, the actual problem is the word 'Korean'. First, it's mostly a Chinese system. Second, Koreans use both systems as Koreans. The one on the left is for particular contexts and being-in-Korea, being-a-Korean, and while-speaking-Korean aren't any of them. The better phrasing would be 'Traditional<br>Reckoning' and 'Official<br>Reckoning' but none of that involves anything remotely tangential to the American abortion debate. (Not that that was your particular concern, of course. Reducing WP:BIAS is always an uphill battle but here it's the way most Koreans themselves view the situation.)
My own preference for the graphic would be to expand it to include a third column and third date so that it included the traditional Chinese system, which ticks up at the variable Chinese New Year. For best effect, the date should probably be changed from the middle of the year to something like February 1st to show how some years it would tick up at different places relative to the normal total. It might require that each year become longer to make the divergence more visible though, requiring that it only go to 3 or 4 instead of 6. — LlywelynII 13:56, 5 March 2023 (UTC)
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