Talk:Dragon bones

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Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: rejected by reviewer, closed by BlueMoonset talk 00:39, 25 December 2023 (UTC)
Previously marked for closure, no action from nominator despite multiple recent pings; closing as unsuccessful.

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Created by Mychemicalromanceisrealemo (talk). Self-nominated at 13:33, 27 October 2023 (UTC). Post-promotion hook changes for this nom will be logged at Template talk:Did you know nominations/Long gu; consider watching this nomination, if it is successful, until the hook appears on the Main Page.

    More information General: Article is new enough and long enough ...
    General: Article is new enough and long enough
    Close

    Policy compliance:

    Hook eligibility:

    • Cited: No - Not really despite a mention in the article.
    • Interesting: Yes
    QPQ: None required.

    Overall: I would like to give the benefit of the doubt that the sources do say something related to your fact at least, but I need to be able know whether one of the source specifically states the fact relating to that in the DYK nomination. You'll need to state one source in the nomination that supports it. Also, whatever problem there is that someone placed an issue regarding an unclear citation style, you may need to address that as well. PrimalMustelid (talk) 00:50, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

    @Mychemicalromanceisrealemo: Please respond to the above. Z1720 (talk) 01:43, 25 November 2023 (UTC)
    Got it. Tryin to make a change :-/ 09:04, 25 November 2023 (UTC)
    @Mychemicalromanceisrealemo: It's been a month, any progress for your DYK nomination? PrimalMustelid (talk) 13:25, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
    Nominator Mychemicalromanceisrealemo has not responded to numerous pings, so I am closing this as abandoned. Z1720 (talk) 01:52, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
    I left them a talk page message. If there is still no response soon this can be closed. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 00:21, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
    I thought this was closed a while ago? Tryin to make a change :-/ 19:31, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
    @Mychemicalromanceisrealemo: It was marked for closure a while ago, but as long as the nomination has not been rejected/archived, discussion and work can still continue. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 02:18, 19 December 2023 (UTC)
    I plan to close this nomination in the next 24 to 48 hours unless there is a firm commitment from Tryin to make a change :-/ to take care of the issues before I've closed it, and to have everything settled within a week's time. If someone decides to close it sooner, I won't object. BlueMoonset (talk) 22:28, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

    Requested move 13 April 2026

    Dragon bones → ? – There has been dispute (see Talk:Long_gu#Namechange) about whether the title of this article should be "dragon bones" a literal translation of the Chinese name, or "longgu"/"long gu" a phonetic rendition of the Chinese name. Both of these titles have considerable use in the scholarly literature (pure ngram searching is probably unreliable due to the use of "dragon bones" in fantasy literature) (with "dragon bones" seeing a broad range of use, particularly for paleontology and history-related literature, while "longgu"/"long gu" is primarily used in scientific papers evaluating traditional Chinese Medicine) . A considerable amount of English TCM literature also uses the terms "Os draconis" (literally "dragon bones" in Latin) and to a lesser extent "Fossilia Ossis Mastodi" . I personally favour "dragon bones" because I think it the most recognisable and natural title in English as discussed in Wikipedia:Article titles. Hemiauchenia (talk) 16:29, 13 April 2026 (UTC)

    I'm sorry but this framing is deceptive: Long gu was the last stable form of the article name for several years until less than a week ago. The proposed change should therefore be from Long gu to dragon bones, per the policy on stable versions; the article name was changed without significant (or really any) discussion -- I wrote the damn article and I had no idea there was a proposed change even though it's on my watchlist. The difference here is important because of how non-consensus is treated by policy.
    Furthermore "dragon bones" does not see a broad range of use, but is relegated mostly to geomythology, which does not reflect its most common usage (which is among practicioners of TCM). The use there is mostly rhetorical to propose that mythology reflects a sort of folk paleontology, a concept which has seen significant controversy from both paleontologist and anthropologists in recent years. wound theology◈ 17:01, 13 April 2026 (UTC)
    I made a technical request because there had never been any discussion about the article title and I perhaps naively didn't think anyone would object, as discussed at Wikipedia:Requested_moves#Undiscussed_moves, this move request was accepted. Your claim that the use of the term "dragon bones" is mostly rhetorical to propose that mythology reflects a sort of folk paleontology is not true. Much of the literature using the term "dragon bones" is simply descriptive of the trade in fossils for use in traditional medicine, without meaningfully trying to tie it to Chinese mythology other than noting they were traditionally believed to be the remains of dragons, (e.g. ) something I don't think anybody disputes and clearly you don't because you were the one who added that claim to this article. Hemiauchenia (talk) 17:23, 13 April 2026 (UTC)
    Yes, there was never discussion, but there should have been; and the move request should reflect that the current state of the article was a WP:BOLD move made without discussion. Currently it portrays it as the opposite, which is not only deceptive, but would have bearing on how non-consensus is treated (i.e., reversion to the last stable version of the article).
    So far you have made several claims about the name here but not backed it up with any sources. Again, a simple Google search for TCM products, or from ethnomedicine journals, shows that long gu is the most common name in English circles, even if you think the ethnicity or nationality of those authors discounts it as you stated before. Again, for some examples...
    wound theology◈ 17:44, 13 April 2026 (UTC)
    About scholarly searches: a literature search for "long gu" or "os draconis" would also bring up mentions of "dragon bone" in the context of TCM. Using Boolean operators ("long gu" || "longgu" "dragon"), for example on Google Scholar shows that there are incredibly few articles -- actually practically none, I couldn't find a single one -- that prefer "dragon bones" over either "long gu" or "os draconis". wound theology◈ 17:57, 13 April 2026 (UTC)
    Does the use of "longgu" in niche traditional medicine journals really represent the most common name for a concept in English? I can find plenty of counterexamples in popular books . Many sources use the term in relation to the initial discovery of the inscribed oracle bones, which are not fossils at all Hemiauchenia (talk) 17:57, 13 April 2026 (UTC)
    Long gu is a niche traditional medicine topic, so yes, niche traditional medicine journals absolutely represent the scholarly consensus, and given the sheer amount of articles and how large TCM is as an industry even in the English-speaking world, it is obvious this reflects the most common English name. Again, I'm well aware of popular books and sources about historical paleontology that use the term "dragon bone"; I added plenty in the article when I was originally writing it. The problem is that those do not reflect a holistic overview of the topic, which remains flatly in the purview of traditional medicine. There are hundreds, probably thousands, of English-speaking TCM stores and they almost universally refer to the crude medicine as long gu. Again, this can be easily verified by going to your TCM supplier of choice, but I won't link it because of spam filters. wound theology◈ 18:04, 13 April 2026 (UTC)
    I think our profound disagreement on how we should weigh the literature surrounding this topic is obvious. I'm going to let others assess our comments to see what they think, rather than continue this back and forth which doesn't bring us closer to resolution, which requires outside input. Hemiauchenia (talk) 18:33, 13 April 2026 (UTC)
    • Oppose Per WP:USEENGLISH and WP:COMMONNAME and WP:DIFFCAPS and WP:NOTDICTIONARY. There is no obvious alternate topic for "dragon bones", as Wikipedia does not discuss the bones of dragons in fantasy. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 00:00, 14 April 2026 (UTC)
      Plainly fails WP:COMMONNAME, other policies are irrelevant as this is the only rationale given for the Long gu → Dragon bones change. Again, I'd like to stress that Long gu was the original and stable name of the article and it was moved without discussion; Dragon bones was originally a redirect to this page. wound theology◈ 01:43, 14 April 2026 (UTC)

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