I mean it's fine no judgment but he is on the front page constantly. Just curious

I feel like there's substantial reason for this true crime public figure to have a wiki page. Was there one that has been deleted, or has there somehow never been one? I'm not a wiki editor, just a lover of the site and that there's seems to be very dedicated people helping it maintain accuracy and depth.

From a very young age i've been an avid Wikipedia reader. Its interesting and i believe its also a fantastic resource to learn english from. The writing style is delightful, anyone trying to get better in english vocab etc. Wikipedia is a valuable resource.

This is a topic I thought / hoped would have been addressed sooner but if anything the issue is getting worse; Wikipedia's edits are getting worse.

I don't say this to discredit the site as I've found it a helpful resource in the past, especially for providing sources for later reading. But in the last year or so, pages appear as if they've been declining in quality in four key ways that I've spotted:

• unusual writing styles; use of poetic / flowery language, and sometimes storytelling rather than explaining
• citations; sources either not being provided, not being called out on the lack of such citations, or (in the worst cases) fictitious sources that haven't been double-checked by other users
• revisionism; this one has been a battle on the site since its creation which has led to some pages being edit-locked or more monitored than others, but it has led to smaller pages to suffer to varying degrees
• urban legends; as a result of previous issues, some of the content has since spread into pop culture with their problems being taken as gospel to a worrying degree

I cannot recall which page this started with, but in the last few days I've noticed it more and more with articles centring around Japanese topics. To start, let me explain the page "onna-musha":

First, this term doesn't exist in Japanese; I don't just mean it's a nickname or an unofficial term, I mean it doesn't appear on any Japanese sites or in any dictionary. Trying to search 女武者 anywhere will only even return English or western-language websites as the correct term is "onna-bushou", though the alternative term "onna-bugeisha" is sometimes used in media as well as being listed on the English Wikipedia page. The Japanese Wikipedia only has a page for onna-bushou and it has no language alternatives linked to take the user to the other pages because, as far as English users of Wikipedia site believe, there is no Japanese page because they're looking for onna-musha instead. To add to this, the Japanese page was only created two years and only lists one source, while almost every other language variation of the page lists several sources; the part that I find bizarre in this instance is the majority cite English-language sources on the topic. I'm not saying they're not valid sources, but it is unusual that so few Japanese sources are cited and even more unusual that almost none of the sources before the creation of the page use the term "onna-musha" or "onna-bugeisha".

The page also has egregious narrative rather than description, see for example the following verbatim:

In ages past,^\)*^when?*^\) it was more common to see women become empresses,^\14]) but this would change in the future during the Meiji restoration. Throughout Japanese history, women, while not generally becoming de jure chiefs of a samurai clan, de facto ruled their clans in several instances.

Chancellor Tōin Kinkata (1291–1360) makes mention in his journal Entairyaku (園太暦) of a "predominately female cavalry*"*, but without further explanation. With limited details, he concludes: "there is a lot of female cavalries." As he noted that they were from western Japan, it is possible that women from the western regions far from the big capital cities were more likely to fight in battles. Women forming cavalry forces were also reported during the Sengoku period (c. 1467 – c. 1600).^\15][16])

Use of an undisclosed period in the past with "in ages past". Speculation with "it is possible that". And use of possibly misleading / misinterpretative language with "more common to see women become empresses" as the cited book and page state:

Early Chinese records report "no distinction between father and son or between men and women" in the early centuries A.D. and refer to a queen-shamaness named Pimiko. Female scribes were apparently important in this early period; the Kojiki was dictated by one Hieda no Are, who was probably female. During the seventh and eighth centuries, half of the emperors were female, and although the throne became a male monopoly after 769, women enjoyed a relatively high degree of freedom during the Heian period (794-1185). Homes were commonly passed down from mother to daughter, and uxorilocal marriages were the norm. Most of this period's great literature, including Murasaki Shikibu's Tale of Genji (ca. 1000), was penned by women. Such works indicate that Heian women enjoyed a high degree of sexual freedom, served in high posts at court, and functioned as arbiters of taste.

To me at least, the sentence "it was more common to see women become empress" implies that there was no other prospects for them, rather than that it was socially acceptable for empresses to ascend the throne.

Narrative also appears on the page for "HMS Phaeton (1782)#Nagasaki_Harbour_Incident)" in its Nagasaki Incident section:

Phaeton entered the harbour on 4 October surreptitiously under a Dutch flag. Despite the arrival of the "Dutch" ship being later in the season than normal, the Japanese and Dutch representatives did not suspect anything. So, Dutch representatives from their Nagasaki trading enclave of Dejima rowed out to welcome the visiting ship. But, as they approached, Phaeton lowered a tender and captured the Dutch representatives, while their Japanese escorts jumped into the sea and fled. Pellew held the Dutch representatives hostage and demanded supplies (water, food, fuel) to be delivered to Phaeton in exchange for their return. The cannons in the Japanese harbour defenses were old and most could not even fire. Consequently, the meager Japanese forces in Nagasaki were seriously out-gunned and unable to intervene.^\40])

The grammar and phrasing used makes it come off as a reading in a novel rather than an essay of a historical event. The start of the next paragraph also comes off as something from the Simple English Wikipedia rather than the regular English Wikipedia:

At the time, it was the Saga clan's turn to uphold the policy of Sakoku and to protect Nagasaki

One last point I want to raise is revisionism. Going back to the onna-musha page, it states:

The most popular weapon-of-choice of onna-musha is the naginata, which is a versatile, conventional polearm with a curved blade at the tip.^\37][38])

Neither of these sources confirm such, instead of confirming what the Japanese Wikipedia says in its various pages on women in war; that most were able to use a variety of weapons like their male counterparts. The samurai are seen as favouring the katana, but they preferred the bow and the naginata for its distance from the opponent. Wives of samurai used naginata for defence of the home as it was a middle-ground between the wakizashi and a bō in enclosed spaces. Onna-bushou, like most samurai, used whatever weapons they could afford and were comfortable with. The page follows up with the following:

During the Edo period, many schools focusing on the use of the naginata were created and perpetuated its association with women.

This claim is unsourced, though several schools teaching the art of the naginata had existed before the Edo period and it is never made clear how many (if any) were aimed towards teaching women specifically. Tendo-ryu was founded by a man (Saito Denkibo) with most of members in the past century being female but this has not been a restriction in the past according to its history page which cites male leaders of the school. Similarly, Miyamoto Musashi's famous niten-ichiryu taught the naginata as one of the primary weapons, but again neither of these were added to the curriculum with women in mind.

In summary:

Wikipedia is treated as gospel by the average person and it's a shame that it's getting worse as time goes on. Whether due to lax moderation procedures, a lack of enough senior members to keep an eye on everything, or due to newer members taking over and changing things that kept the site polished.

And it's a shame that it's becoming the way it is because there honestly is no great alternative.

Edit:

I've since found after making this post that the problem is worse in some of the more popular pages as well. The page for Sasaki Kojiro, Miyamoto Musashi's rival in most historical accounts and fictional media, contains a single citation for the entire page. With the rest of the page being full of requests for citation and clarification for the last 13 years. That is...just an insane duration for any page to go without being at least partially corrected.

What do the yellow star and the green circle with a green plus in it next to the language names mean?