Template:Did you know nominations/Ren Jinping

• ... that Ren Jinping was the only founder of his film company not previously involved in spoken-word drama?

• ALT1: ... that Ren Jinping fought backlash against a crime film by calling it educational? Source: Sugawara, Yoshino (2022). "From Teahouse to Classroom: Educational Screen Practice in Republican Shanghai". Journal of Chinese Cinemas. 16: 9–24. doi:10.1080/17508061.2022.2120750. Note that Sugawara uses the term "new drama", which broadly refers to huaju (spoken-word drama) vis-a-vis traditional drama (i.e., Chinese opera)
• Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Otogirisō

 — Chris Woodrich (talk) 23:49, 22 January 2025 (UTC).

Policy compliance:

• Adequate sourcing:
• Neutral:
• Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:
• Other problems:

Hook eligibility:

• Cited:
• Interesting:

Overall: ALT1 looks fine. ALT0 has some issues - firstly, "spoken-word drama" is not mentioned in the text, but there is rather a link to "civilized drama". "Spoken-word drama" is also a rather puzzling term - does it mean he was involved in other kinds of drama instead? If "spoken-word drama" was linked in the hook to huaju, that would be acceptable to me, but then the article would also have to link to that, not to civilized drama. Gatoclass (talk) 10:50, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

• • Hi Gatoclass. This is one of those things that requires a bit of specialized knowledge. Ren was in a Peking opera fan club, though based on the available sources he doesn't appear to have produced any himself. As for the distinction between huaju and civilized drama, it's a matter of degree and labelling; civilized drama was more syncretic than the later attempts at spoken-word drama (huaju), and dramatists from the later generation tended to dismiss people like Zheng Zhengqiu who had penned works that blended Chinese opera with Western-style spoken-word dramaturgy (cited in our civilized drama article with the sentence "Histories of Chinese theatre have generally neglected civilized drama, considering the genre little more than a transition."). I've piped civilized drama to "early spoken-word dramas" to better reflect the wording in the hook. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 11:47, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

Chris, why not just use "civilized drama" in the hook? It would make it more intriguing. Gatoclass (talk) 12:10, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

• Fair. Adding ALT0a ... that Ren Jinping was the only founder of his film company not previously involved in civilized drama? — Chris Woodrich (talk) 13:17, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

• No probs. Verifying ALT1 and ALT0a. Gatoclass (talk) 14:19, 23 January 2025 (UTC)
• I was originally planning to review this, but since there's already an existing review, I'm leaving this as a comment. There are some odd things about the article. The lead says he flourished between 1910 and 1928, but the article also states he was born in 1896. Is this how it's usually done for articles on people with known years of birth but not dates of death? I haven't encountered a case like this before so I just wanted to know. And speaking of his death, is there really no known information about his life after 1928? Unless there really is none, the article as currently written might not meet WP:DYKCOMPLETE unless that's clarified. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 07:00, 24 January 2025 (UTC)
  • Hi Narutolovehinata5, that is correct. He almost disappears from coverage after 1928; as cited in the article, "Little information about Ren remains; there are no surviving portraits of him, and his date of death is unknown." The last information about him dates to 1949, and appears to be cited to a passing reference in coverage of another film director's funeral.
  • Huang's 1896 is not supported by Sugawara, who did a bit more focused research; I don't know where Huang got that figure for her history of Mingxing, and given that Sugawara explicitly states that his date of birth is unknown (2015 article) or that he was born "sometime in the 1890s" (2022 article), fl. is the best approach to this.  — Chris Woodrich (talk) 12:53, 24 January 2025 (UTC)
  • If you want a copy of Sugawara's article to confirm, I can email it to you. As for the use of floruit, I've reviewed approximately 50 transclusions, and it seems the common approach is to just omit lifespan altogether for more recent biographies, though some (such as William Moore (mathematician)) do include rough periods. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 12:55, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

Maybe just avoid mentioning years in the lede entirely to avoid confusion? Maybe the 1896 year can be kept in the article but it could be attributed to Huang, while also mentioning that Sugawara is more uncertain. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 10:44, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

• Alright. I've removed the floruit time span.  — Chris Woodrich (talk) 11:43, 25 January 2025 (UTC)