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Thanks. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Neo-Babylonian_Empire#Requesting_semi-protection_for_the_article_- HammerFilmFan (talk) 03:34, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
A while back, you commented that someone had messed up Cultural universals which they had. Without trying to start a fight there, I switched Brown's list to his book Human Universals, and set up a redirect from Unique human universals. I would be interested in your suggestions or changes.
Ultimately, something should be in the portal or nav box list, pointing to that article by Brown, IMO. Student7 (talk) 16:22, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
Well, I am grateful to see somebody is working on fixing this problem, but I am afraid I do not understand the focus on "unique" you are pursuing here: this isn't the point, I think. This entire topic is not about distinguishing humans from non-humans, it is about identifying aspects of a culture that are characteristic of that culture from those that aren't. Is "courtship" a practice "unique" to humans? I should think not, or at least it would be difficult to come up with a definition of "courtship" which makes it so. Behaviouristically, any bird engages in courtship. If you want to exclude all animal mating behaviour from the notion of "courtship" you would have to very specifically describe human courtship, and if you go out of your way to describe human behaviour, it will come as no surprise that your definition ends up being suited to human behaviour exclusively. --dab (𒁳) 17:28, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
Student7, I am not attacking, much less "crucifying" you. As I said I am grateful you bother to edit the topic in the first place. Wikipedia is an iterative process. Your input is valuable, but you will have to live with the fact that your input may lead to reactions, some of them critical, which hopefully will eventually lead to more polished articles. Doing nothing isn't an alternative. So please don't be put off just because I voiced some criticism. --dab (𒁳) 08:39, 27 March 2013 (UTC)
I have just now seen your edits of 28th March 2013. By deleting the very relevant passages and citations you have rendered those parts of the article Aksara meaningless. It appears you have not been able to truly grasp the significance and importance of the term “Aksara” which term figures prominently in Hindu texts - the Rig Veda, the Upanishads, the Brahma Sutras and the Bhagavat Gita. Aksara, which deserves a separate page, forms part of a subject I cannot teach or explain, not that it is not clear to me. In fact I was expecting my more learned brother-editors to expand this article. I have appreciated your attempt to improve the same but in the process you have left the article truncated with many blanks requiring to be filled up. I am to request you to kindly restore the article to what it was on 27th March 2013 and thereafter let us both work on expanding/improving it. Regards.Aditya soni (talk) 10:03, 1 April 2013 (UTC)
Diff.
I have removed, or "truncated" as you call it, unreferenced nonsense. I have not removed any kind of "citations". I have even left in some obvious nonsense as I did not have time to actually fix the article. There was an attempt at citing Crollius, Word in Experience (1974). This would in principle be possible, but the person perusing this source would (a) need to be aware of the relation of this highly dubious work to mainstream literature and (b) be capable of understanding and summarizing what is being said by Crollius. The fact is that there was never a concsious choice of discussing Crollius, this book just came up in somebody's google book search who then made some wild attempt at summarizing stuff that came up in some random page. The "reference" link to google still contained the search term. This isn't the way to do it.
Yes, there have been suggestions that the syllable aum existed in the Rigvedic period. This is a rather obsolete scholarly hypothesis from the 19th century, and while it can be discussed in context in the aum article, it is completely pointless to refer to it in a confused summary of a random google search.
Crollius seems to be an interesting author in his own right, a Jesuit missionary who published on religious comparison, but he is completely dependent on secondary literature himself, and he cherry-picks his sources for his comparative aims. If you want to discuss a Hindu concept as opposed to Jesuit comparative religious studies, you can use Crollius to find the actual sources he used (in this case Geldner), and then cite those. Then you can still use Crollius, if you must, in a chapter on 1970s religious comparison. --dab (𒁳) 12:11, 1 April 2013 (UTC)
The Rigveda has its own mythology, and its own terminology. In the RV, aksara occurs as a name of water. I will thank you for avoiding conflation of Rigvedic terminology with concepts from medieval or modern Hinduism. The earliest explicit use of aksara as a name of the syllable aum apparently occurs in the Manusmriti. This is an ancient text, and it still dates a full millennium after the RV, and is from a completely different socio-religious context. Bhakti-yoga etc. is of course younger by another millennium or more, and yet again from a completely different context. --dab (𒁳) 12:21, 1 April 2013 (UTC)
Hi. Please comment: Scythians: Consensus for the lead section: Iranian people or Iranian-speaking people. Thanks. Zheek (talk) 10:29, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
Template:Ethnic groups in Europe has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. NSH001 (talk) 15:33, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Dear Dab, sorry to bother you. Since you know the area well, can you comment here:. Basically, user making ethno-nationalist maps, and also reverting other users who remove his map (despite being told not to do so previously by admins). Here is his map which is a falsification and does not have any sources (none of the sources he cites support his map and they are distortions of sources, and some the sources are not even RS in the first place). You know for example that currently Nagorno-Karabagh is at least Armenian speaking. I had to go into some detail why his ethnic map is not just a POV but grossly exaggerated and contradicts reliable maps on Iran/Iraq made by universities such as Texas or Columbia . I know it is extremely silly, but also annoying to constantly deal with this sort of stuff. Not sure how you can do it but please make a comment (old admirer). --Xodabande14 (talk) 21:34, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
Thank you for the notification, I will try to look into it. Surely this can be addressed purely on a WP:RS basis, without need to go into the nationalistic mud-flinging.
I cringe to see all the self-made "ethnic maps" on commons, which cite as their "sources" yet more self-made maps. That part of the world is really a nasty place in terms of ethnic vitriol, or should I say ethnic vitriol is more often directed there, apparently from the comfort of emigrants into western "multiculturalism" towards their imagined homelands. --dab (𒁳) 07:00, 11 April 2013 (UTC)
Thanks dab. It is unfortunate how ethnic conflicts waste so much time of Wikipedia. It is not just WP:RS (these sorts of users don't care about that). There are also some good maps out there in wiki commons that meet WP:RS (one of them reverted by the user to put his own map) and are in several of these related articles. I have also mentioned WP:RS university of Columbia/Texas maps. But that is not the issue. It is pattern that I am concerned about. The user has been warned of AA2, and was asked specifically to discuss any controversial edits and not slow revert war. He failed to do that. Recently Arbcomm enforcement is doing a nice job on clamping down on these sorts of nationalistic editing and that is where I made my complaint: . Note the user has less than 500 edits and his page and block log: . I appreciate your comment here: that can have weight in. Note just the first section where I mention behavior (outside of the scope of RS). The second section is about RS. AA2 was proposed precisely to relieve the community from such behavior, specially users that have been warned and block already. So your sound judgment is appreciated. Note I had to make a long report for admins who are not aware of the area (Part II which is long but illustrates some fact on how the users make dubious maps and then tries to claim sources for them), but my main point was also on the user's previous behavior (Part I of the complaint) --Xodabande14 (talk) 09:23, 11 April 2013 (UTC)
Yes, I realize this is more than "WP:RS", but what I mean is that we do not have to enter into a debate on who is the evil nationalist and who isn't as long as we can simply reject an edit on technical grounds, in this case, use of an unreferenced map. I am busy in real life just now, but I will comment on this later on. regards, --dab (𒁳) 09:38, 11 April 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the comment. When you get a chance to look at AE, you may want to read the unfortunate waste of time discussions on the Azerbaijani people talkpage .... --Xodabande14 (talk) 18:59, 11 April 2013 (UTC)
Dab, since your an admin, do you mind if you move your comment from here: to here: where it says: "Result concerning Ebrahimi-amir This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the section above.". Just a side note, the person being discussed actually made the map as well and then reverted/inserted it.--Xodabande14 (talk) 14:07, 12 April 2013 (UTC)
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I noticed you commented on the Category:Eponymous categories talk page, so i wanted to let you know i created User:Mercurywoodrose/Userboxes/Eponymous Categories (and User:Mercurywoodrose/Userboxes/Eponymous Categories pro). I dont know if i am helping the WP process, but i enjoyed doing it. Mercurywoodrose (talk) 18:16, 24 April 2013 (UTC)
Thank you. It would be a relief to see WP is capable of actually getting rid of obvious crap like this. Common sense often prevails, but never without the cost of a painful, drawn-out, circular debate. --dab (𒁳) 18:19, 24 April 2013 (UTC)
Please see my comment at Talk:The Fall of Arthur. Regards, De728631 (talk) 20:54, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
Hi, sorry to bother you, but I'm not sure whom else to contact in this kind of situations (I don't think WP:ANI would do, since the issue is not vandalism). I remember you as an editor who has experience in dealing with the various nationalist POV-pushers from around the world that plague linguistics- and history-related articles (the last time when I contacted you, it concerned the precise age of Armenia). In this case, it's a Ugandan nationalist who is determined to right a great wrong and prove to the world that his "Nilo-Shemitic" (sic) ethnic group were Hebrews or even Christians long before any missionaries came; his only source is a crackpot article by a non-expert on a non-peer-reviewed website. I've tried to explain to him all the policies that he is violating, but it seems like a pointless endeavour; he doesn't seem interested in listening and just reverts. Here is a taste of his arguments: he thinks the Acholi people's history is "their copyright" and that editors who are not Acholi have no business questioning his edits. By the way, looking at his activities elsewhere on Wikipedia, his main interest seems to be to prove that Joseph Kony isn't such a bad guy after all and he is even having some success at edit warring there, too. I'm not a regular Wikipedian, I stumbled upon this Acholi article accidentally and I can't afford to have a two-month edit conflict with this poor soul, who probably should have been banned a long time ago to begin with. So unless someone with better abilities addresses the problem, I'll just have to let him insert his nonsense and be one additional harm to Wikipedia. Greetings, --Anonymous44 (talk) 22:09, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
Dear Dbachmann, In your Revision as of 13:46, 10 February 2005 of the page “Sumerian Language”, you wrote: “Examples of suggested related languages include the Hurro-Urartian languages (see Subarian, Alarodian),……” Can you, please, provide the citations to sources of this statement. I also think that this relation exists, but I have not appropriate information. By the way, do you speak Russian? Best regards, Alex — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alexander Berchansky|talk (talk)
I had to dig for this, 2005 is quite a while ago now.
diff. I did not suggest that this relation exists, I merely stated that some people have claimed it does. Actually I was making fun of everyone claiming whatever they like about a complete unknown.
I know a little bit of Russian, but I cannot claim I actually speak it. --dab (𒁳) 08:46, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the thoughts, my problem is threefold. Yes the categorization is messed up, and yes it can be fixed by editing the category structure, it cannot be fixed by removing categories that help the reader place the article in context. Secondly I am not sure of the value of the reader opening the show bar for {{witch hunt}} and then open the category you have replaced the others with to discover it is one and the same. Thirdly though not as specific as say Bury St. Edmunds witch trials the category (for example) legal history does have relevance and should stay. I will reinstate at the moment but await your thoughts on this. Thanks, Edmund Patrick – confer 20:38, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
ok, it may be we have a communication problem. We should first lay out the category system as it exists, then agree on what its problems are, and then find a solution. I am not sure I understand this,
I think the basic problem is an overloading of the term witch hunt. It is often use to mean the Early Modern witch-hunts, but in other contexts it may of course refer to any witch-hunt, e.g. in modern Africa, (not to mention figurative use). There may also be a similar overloading of witch trial, it may mean the actual proceedings of a specific court of law, or it may be used more widely, I suppose, "the witch trials" generically meaning "the entire complex of the witch craze in the Early Modern period".
We just need to become aware of these problems explicitly and then decide how we want to handle them for the purposes of categorization.
Also, regarding
I think this is a misunderstanding on your part. Our categorization system is hierarchical. As long as Category:Witch trials is in the category Category:Legal history (which it should be, assuming that we restrict "witch trials" to actual, regular trials), every article in Category:Witch trials is automatically in the category Category:Legal history, and the category Category:Legal history should not be added to the page directly. But perhaps I misunderstood what you were saying? --dab (𒁳) 05:28, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
Category:Culture heroes, which you created, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you. DexDor (talk) 04:59, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
There's new info and references on the talk page you should see. I put the documentary proof in the form of the original book, a known translation of that book, and an anthology containing said translation. 70.194.66.99 (talk) 23:56, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
Om Namah Shivaya for a direct link to the page. 70.194.66.99 (talk) 23:57, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
I notice you've added a "Dubious" tag here, but without an explanation what exactly is amiss. Can you remember what your problem with the part was and elaborate? The dating given seems fine to me.
See also Talk:Orientalizing period#Time period reference, though I'm not sure what citations exactly the comment is referring to. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 23:12, 25 May 2013 (UTC)
Note that an IP has added Anatolia to the list (linking the term to Phrygia). Is that correct? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 23:13, 25 May 2013 (UTC)
Hey DB! When you have the spare time could you give HIV/AIDS in Africa the once over? There are many problems with the page, such as disappearing figures, misrepresentation of percentage changes, and deliberate duplication of paragraphs (which are then tagged as needing to be "merged"). The historical establishment of the AIDS Watch Africa body has also twice now been removed for unknown, unexplained reasons. It's odd cause the body is mentioned in the same UNAIDS press release that is used throughout the article. I've broken down some specific issues on the talk page, but I'm probably overlooking a few things. The page sure could use your even-handed approach. Peace - Soupforone (talk) 23:01, 28 May 2013 (UTC)
What a cheerful topic. I also see you came across a user who has figured out how to make wiki-pedantry serve their ends. --dab (𒁳) 05:32, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
Dab, if you get some time please respond here: Template talk:Yazdânism --46.239.60.21 (talk) 16:52, 7 June 2013 (UTC)
This map from 2006 created by you--which is in use on many wiki sites--omits any reference to the 2011 UN recognised state of South Sudan which the 2012 Pew Forum Report on Religion states was 60.5% Christian, 33% are traditional African religion followers and only 6% Muslim in this percentages table. Perhaps this map should be updated since it omits a major new African country and wrongly paints S. Sudan as Islamic green? The formal 2012 Pew study also paint South Sudan Christian red here if you scroll through it. Just a suggestion. Best Regards, --Leoboudv (talk) 09:26, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
The map shows the distribution as of 2006. You cannot just insert South Sudan, if you want to make a new map, as of 2012, you'll have to redo the entire thing with 2012 data. --dab (𒁳) 13:11, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
look, I wrote this in 2006. Now it is 2013. We should not mix population data 7 years apart if we can help it. I invite you to update the map with new data, under a new title. Please feel absolutely free and welcome to do this yourself. --dab (𒁳) 07:00, 13 June 2013 (UTC)
I agree with your change from {{Dubious}} to {{Citation needed}}. Debresser (talk) 13:14, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
Why are you removing sourced scientific material that refutes any possibility of the theory and posting text that focuses on anachronistic texts promoting the theory?
I don't have the time to examine your edits in depth at present, but will in the not too distant future. --Ubikwit 連絡 見学/迷惑 09:03, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
I am glad to hear you will. You are then welcome to post here again and thank me for fixing another broken article.
The reason I removed "sourced scientific material that refutes any possibility of the theory" is that the "sourced scientific material" did not even mention the "theory". The same way I would remove "sourced scientific material that refutes any possibility of Santa Claus" from the Santa Claus article, for the simple reason that Santa Claus is not a scientific hypothesis that can or should be "refuted". On-wiki "refutations" of mythology is a naive exercise in WP:SYNTH and attaches a false impression of "possible factuality" to topics that do not even begin to be examined for "factuality" in real literature. If they are mentioned, then for historical, anthropological or cultural interest and not as "theory".
If I point out the obvious to you this is not to question your intelligence, but then why do you come to my talkpage to complain before you have even "examined" the thing you complain about. --dab (𒁳) 09:08, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
An article that you have been involved in editing, Exotheology , has been proposed for a merge with another article. If you are interested in the merge discussion, please participate by going here, and adding your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. Srinivasasha (talk) 06:29, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
Hi. There are, at present, no particular clear guidelines for religious material here, or, for that matter, guidelines for how to deal with ideas in general, particularly those ideas which might be accepted as true by individuals of a given religious, political, or scientific stance. There have been attempts in the past to draft such guidelines, but they have quickly been derailed. I am dropping this note on the talk pages of a number of editors who I believe have some interest in these topics, such as yourself, and asking them to review the material at User:John Carter/Guidelines discussion and perhaps take part in an effort to decide what should be covered in such guidelines, should they be determined useful, and what phrasing should be used. I would be honored to have your input. John Carter (talk) 19:16, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
Template:Rashi table has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 06:35, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
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A tag has been placed on File:Etymologiae Guntherus Ziner 1472.jpg requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section F2 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is an image page for a missing or corrupt image or an empty image description page for a Commons-hosted image.
If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Click here to contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be removed without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 18:47, 30 June 2013 (UTC)
Hello there. You have a long history so do you know much about Rollback? I notice it is a facility many editors have for reverting. Is it something given to editors or can they put it on themselves by adjusting their settings? Thanks. The Big Hoof! (talk) 12:57, 1 July 2013 (UTC)
Seriously? This is even below Vennemann's standard; well, almost. Pure pseudo-scholarship presented in an academic journal. The lack of methodological rigour here is astounding, even for 1989 (when non-laryngeal PIE was already on its way out), when substrate studies (which are admittedly prone to sloppy argument, but can be and have been done with far superior method – they don't need to have the anything-goes Klingklang arbitrariness of pseudoetymology) were still a quite undevelopped field. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 15:13, 1 July 2013 (UTC)
Hi!
I noticed that you are one of the main developers of {{Script/Cuneiform}}.
Now that the English Wikipedia has proper support for Webfonts using the UniversalLanguageSelector extension, this template should be re-written.
See what I wrote on its talk page.
Thanks a lot for your help! --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 17:16, 2 July 2013 (UTC)
Hi Dbachmann. We are a team of researchers interested in the editing dynamics on different language Wikipedias regarding the topic of Kosovo. We are looking for users who have edited and discussed articles about this topic, and who would be willing to be interviewed for the purpose of this research project. The project is approved by the Wikimedia Foundations´ Research Committee and you can find more information on this meta-wiki page. Research results will be published under open access and your participation would be much appreciated. If you would like to participate you can reach us at interwikiresearch@gmail.com and we will set up an interview in a way that best suits your needs.Pbilic (talk) 09:19, 5 July 2013 (UTC)
You've edited this before. Seems to be Armenian nationalism edit-warring here. See my comments at Talk:Nairi. Dougweller (talk) 11:22, 5 July 2013 (UTC)
Switzerland has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article.--FutureTrillionaire (talk) 15:55, 11 July 2013 (UTC)
Hi, back in December you added {{synthesis}} to Werehyena. I'm curious what your specific concerns were (there isn't anything on the talk page and you didn't mention anything in the edit summary). I had added some of the content myself (overlapping with Buda (folklore)) and if there were problems with it I'd like to clear them up. Thanks, -- Gyrofrog (talk) 17:12, 18 July 2013 (UTC)
The thing is, if Wikipedia is to have a page called "Werehyena", it would be required that there exist secondary sources dedicated to the concept of "werehyena". The article needs to establish that the term indeed exists in the relevant literature, and it needs to cite a source that gives a coherent account summarizing the topic. You cannot build an article called "Werehyena" exclusively on sources that do not in fact mention the term "werehyena". If we aren't able to provide this, it would make more sense to transfer the content into an article with a more general scope of "the hyena in culture and folklore" (currently covered in a section, Hyena#Folklore.2C_mythology_and_literature, which could conceivably be expanded into a standalone article by a capable editor). --dab (𒁳) 09:25, 19 July 2013 (UTC)
I am afraid to tell you this but your edit to the religious symbolism page ruined the whole article. The older version was way better and it actually had a good list so I decided to revert the edit.--Micronationalist1999 (talk) 16:18, 23 July 2013 (UTC)
I am afraid to tell you, but your "good list" is 100% unreferenced. I tried to start a real article. Sure I didn't include all the footnotes, but at least my material was taken from the linked articles, where it was referenced. If you want to play this the difficult way, we will have to agree to just blank everything that isn't referenced. WP:TNT. --dab (𒁳) 16:24, 23 July 2013 (UTC)
In fact, you may have missed it but I placed the part of the list that was at all salvageable at religious symbols. Please feel free to help with that. It needs to be rebuilt, in a "reality-based" way. --dab (𒁳) 16:33, 23 July 2013 (UTC)
I will help with the list, for I already added a few.--Micronationalist1999 (talk) 20:45, 23 July 2013 (UTC)
Hi. I would generally bother Dougweller about this, because he has more experience in this sort of thing than me, but he's taking a vacation now. Damn it. Anyway, I was wondering whether you think that User:Jasonfward, who has recently shown an interest in Talk:Landmark Worldwide, might be the same Jason F Ward who is an attorney with a page here which indicates that perhaps there might be some sort of COI question involved. I myself don't do this sort of checking up on others much myself, so I'm hoping that maybe you have a bit more experience with such things. If the evidence is sufficient in your eyes to raise the question to the editor, I would welcome your doing so. The article in question has been the target of a lot of people associated with Landmark over the years, and, honestly, it might be easier if the NRM group didn't take an explicit interest in it, I dunno. It might, maybe, reduce some of the contentious talk page editing, anyway. But, I would welcome any input from you. John Carter (talk) 20:09, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
Well, if the editor is using his real name, there doesn't seem to be any need for second-guessing his identity? COI is COI regardless of whether the user's identity is known. --dab (𒁳) 08:48, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
dab, assuming you are still editing articles in this topic area, can you (or your page watchers) take a look at this article, which seems to have accumulated monumental amounts of cruft over the years ? greetings from a previously active editor/collaborator 107.204.46.96 (talk) 18:18, 16 August 2013 (UTC)
You have removed about 12000 bytes from the page Manusmriti, which were well sourced and put on the page with thorough discussions on talk page. Present page is full of errors. Please go through the talk page and decide on deletion. Your reason for deleting 12000 bytes, that 'flood theory in epics is myth' does not hold good. We have given references of scientific researches on floods and habitations in North India 9000-10000 years ago, which was the time period of saints Manu and Bhrigu who composed the scripture Manusmriti. So please put the properly sourced and referenced material which you have deleated back on the page.Sudhirkbhargava (talk) 04:36, 18 August 2013 (UTC)
See if you have anything to contribute to Talk:List of Georgian monarchs#Splitting into many lists. --The Emperor's New Spy (talk) 08:26, 25 August 2013 (UTC)
Hi! Looks like you're working on Diauehi. It might help you to take a look at the German version of the article, which looks pretty well sourced. If you don't read German, I could maybe help you with it, just drop me a word... Anyway, thanks for your nice work! Susuman77 (talk) 12:29, 27 August 2013 (UTC)
Category:People of 14th-century Zurich, which you created, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you. ...William 12:16, 30 August 2013 (UTC)
Thank you for your decrufting of Manusmṛti. It was a massive job that was badly needed. I didn't have the time and energy to wade into that swamp, except to anchor Manuvāda. I've replied further on talk:manusmrti.
I'm on my phone, yours in haste. =)
-SM 16:57, 31 August 2013 (UTC)
Hi Dab, there's month long ongoing dispute by me and one other user about Kurdish revolts in Iran, and during all that period no one was capable to review issue. In short:
There's also short chronology about dispute on Dougweller's talkpage and much more on Talk:Kurdish separatism in Iran. Can you please give some short opinion? Best regards, --HistorNE (talk) 19:09, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
Template:Abjads has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Lfdder (talk) 15:48, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
Template:Northwest Semitic abjad has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Lfdder (talk) 15:49, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
The article Egyptians (disambiguation) has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:
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Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}}
will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Richerman (talk) 09:28, 5 September 2013 (UTC)
I have started a discussion about Template:Transl at TfD here. Thanks, — Lfdder (talk) 10:04, 6 September 2013 (UTC)
Template:Transl has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Kenfyre (talk) 11:26, 7 September 2013 (UTC)
A few months ago you inserted several inconsistent references to O’Keefe and dangling mentions of Mitchell, Ball and Howlett at Cædmon's Hymn. Would you insert the needed details, please?
This was in February and there have been lots of edits since so tbh I don't know exactly what you want me to do, perhaps give a few diffs. Are you complaining about formatting or about content? If content, what are the problematic statements I have supposedly introduced? If formatting, I suppose the article is indeed a mess in this respect but I am reluctant to take the blame for it, in any case we can agree it needs work. --dab (𒁳) 08:13, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
Dab, what's your opinion of this category? I did some clean up like removing Category:Kerala from it, among others, but I'm still not sure that an umbrella category so named is the right thing. Let me know what you think. cheers. —SpacemanSpiff 17:23, 10 September 2013 (UTC)
There is already Category:Dravidian peoples, so Category:Dravidians should just be merged with that as equivalent. Individuals of a Dravidian ethnicity will reside in the various ethnic subcategories anyway, which in turn are in the "Dravidian peoples" one. Nobody has a "Dravidian" identity without also having an ethnic identity of one of the Dravidian subgroups (Tamil etc.). --dab (𒁳) 07:37, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
Were you looking to put Islamophobic incidents up at WP:AFD? You would need a solid argument though. Many of the sources don't describe the incidents as "Islamophobic".
But which of the following is it?
Nobody knows.--Loomspicker (talk) 13:42, 14 September 2013 (UTC)
I am happy to have Wikipedia cover the "Islamophobia" debate for whatever it is worth, I just want to insist that this is a propaganda term no bettern than "racist" or "witch" or "heretic", i.e. it cannot ever be used as if it was some objecive thing that can be discussed as a "fact" in Wikipedia's voice. Everybody on every side of whatever fences there are just needs to be pragmatic about it. I note that in most Islamic countries, Christianity is considered an abomination as a matter of fact, yet there doesn't seem to be any term like "Christophobia" or "Christianophobia". I suppose it's just a synonym of "Islam" already. Fair enough. Wikipedia has a lot of "western bias" to be sure, "western bias" these days mostly meaning that there is a gratuitous amount of "white guilt" and western self-depreciation and self-hatred. Also fair enough, if that's how it is, that's how it is, we are just here to describe reality, not to have any opinions about it. --dab (𒁳) 14:17, 14 September 2013 (UTC)
Hi Dab, It's been a long time. (Somehow both of us seem to have survived.) Since you are the Indologist of last resort, could you take a look at my post Wikipedia:Fringe_theories/Noticeboard#Pushing_antiquity_on_Jainism_articles. I wasn't aware of these articles, but, for a few years now, a group of editors have been promoting fringe ideas (about how the first Jaina thirthankara, Rishabha, who in traditional Jaina sources is 100 feet tall and died before the birth of the solar system, is the proto-Shiva figure of the Indus Valley Civilization). Also, how Karma was really pre-Vedic, pre-"Indo-Aryan", which the Shramanic ascetics, passed down directly to the Jainas, who in turn threw a few crumbs to the Brahmins who wrote it up in the Upanishads, etc etc Anyway glad to see that you are active and (as someone said) making "the obscurantists feel the heat of knowledge." Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:17, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
dab, I noticed that you had marked some information in the article, sourced to Gavin Flood, as dubious. Flood is usually a reliable source (and I don't mean in only in on-wiki WP:RS terms) and Shaivism is his area of specialization, so I was wondering if there was anything specific about the claims in that article that made you doubt them. If so, I can try a deeper search of literature but I'll wait for your reply before I make that effort. Cheers. Abecedare (talk) 21:50, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
I do not pretend to speak with Indological authority, and in the end it doesn't matter what I think unless I can pinpoint specific reasons to back it up, but I have serious doubts about Gavin Flood and his "Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies". It is certainly possible that I get a distorted view of Flood's work because it is being cherry-picked for the purposes of Wikipedia, but I have frequently seen very dodgy stuff attributed to him on Wikipedia. As for the case at hand (ShvetUp), it will be best to see what other scholars have said and cite a "second opinion". --dab (𒁳) 08:22, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
I now remember that my suspicion was aroused because it is claimed that according to Flood, ShvetUp is one of the Mukhya Upanishads, It is possible that ShvetUp is one of the Upanishads that are by some canons considered "mukhya" but not by others, but then a proper reference would point this out and state where we find the claim of ShvetUp being "mukhya". Just saying "ShvetUP is mukhya" is misleading to the point of being wrong and if Flood really did this, it would reconfirm the impression I describe above. --dab (𒁳) 08:36, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
I found this book (1962) which ideosyncratically includes SvetUp as "Principal". I fixed it. Flood is innocent in this case (or perhaps in every case), his name just once again popped up in the vicinity of dodgy content. --dab (𒁳) 08:56, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
The one individual to whom I owe the deepest debt of gratitude and without whose advice and assistance this project would not have been completed is my colleague and friend Joel Brereton, who perhaps knows more about the Upanisads and the vedic literature than any living scholar
My dictionary has etymology under etymon, the true origin of a word. As the content of the article derives the current use of this single term, and is not an article about general wiccan terminology, as your new title seems to imply, I do not understand the reasons for the move. Please clarify. Fiddlersmouth (talk) 23:36, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
Indeed, the article does explain the origin of the term Wicca, as does witch (word). It then goes on to explain the history of Wicca and its terminology for about another ten pages. The "etymology" of the term "Wicca" is Old English wicca. The end. The rest of the article is not about "etymology" and may even be more at home in a history of Wicca article. I am genuinely concerned about WP:CFORK (i.e.{{duplication}}), not just in this topical area, it is a present danger in practically all of the project. --dab (𒁳) 12:06, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
dab, your input will be appreciated here. Abecedare (talk) 14:16, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
Please fill out your edit summaries to describe what you are doing to the article. Please do not disrupt the flow of the chronology (Art should come before Athleticism, and both of them before Criticism by Followers). Please do not assert in the lede what Chinmoy is best known for, because that is completely subjective and unproveable. Please do not delete content without discussion. Thank you. Softlavender (talk) 09:35, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
Hi, I happened to notice this move, and while I have no objection to it, I'm surprised by the comment you made. IAST uses "c" for the Sanskrit letter close to the English "ch" sound (the Devanagari च), and uses "ch" for the aspirated version (छ). There is no "chh"; the correct IAST for छान्दोग्य would indeed be chāndogya the way it was in the earlier title. chhāndogya would be something meaningless like छ्हान्दोग्य . Shreevatsa (talk) 06:01, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
you are completely right, sometimes I say stupid things in edit summaries. I then notice after posting them, but there is no way to edit them so they remain up for everyone to see. Sorry. --dab (𒁳) 06:27, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
This needs work and updating, I'll add sources on the talk page. I've minimised the MacKie stuff as it had more coverage than anything else. We could use some stuff translated from the German version. Dougweller (talk) 13:27, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
Can i ask why you chose to self-revert? I agree with your previous edit. No search for a country of empire redirects to the districts so why do we use it here? 69.165.246.181 (talk) 04:54, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
One point is that "British India" is not an empire, the British Empire is an empire, and "British India" just a (respectable) portion within that empire. The second point is that "British India" refers to the entire period of British possessions in India, 1612–1947, not just to the "British Raj" proper (1858–1947). We do not at present have any article about "British India" as in "British posessions in India, 1612–1947", so the "provinces" article is the best redirect target we currently have. Often "British India" is used to refer to the British Raj of 1858ff., and this is duly noted in the disambiguation hatnote.
Actually, I note that this is already made clear in the article, so I don't know why you ask. Another target might be the section Colonial_India#English_and_British_India, which however already links to British India as its main page. --dab (𒁳) 13:44, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
Hi fellow editor. Please could you help me. I'm having a really frustrating time with an editor who's first laguage is not English and clearly lacks WP:Competence. I've tried warning, engaging, everything you can think of, but to no avail. Please can you try. His main two focuses are Nihang and Sikhism which he is systematically turning into what I can best describe as Pidgeon English. ThanksSH 21:59, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
diffs I have to say, while his style certainly isn't brilliant, it isn't really much different from the average bland style of prose on the wiki. Nothing I would describe as "pidgeon" English, or that couldn't be fixed by minor copyediting here or there. Are you sure this isn't actually about content? --dab (𒁳) 19:35, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
Please see my proposal to merge Category:Prehistory of Georgia (country) Hugo999 (talk) 05:07, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
Hello, I'm Miningpyropony. I noticed that you recently removed some content from Count of Toulouse without explaining why. In the future, it would be helpful to others if you described your changes to Wikipedia with an edit summary. If this was a mistake, don't worry: I restored the removed content. If you would like to experiment, you can use the sandbox. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page. Thanks! Your Friendly Neigborhood Wikipedian (talk) 09:46, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
I have nominated Rus' Khaganate for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Chaosdruid (talk) 01:46, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for bulldozing your stuff and your "cooperative" style! Comment on the Duchy of Gascony. Iñaki LL (talk) 23:57, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
Thank you for fixing the Harlequin page and removing that ridiculous stuff about St Francis and Sufism. 50.80.153.173 (talk) 00:30, 21 December 2013 (UTC)
It was commented out here
I have removed the tag here.174.3.125.23 (talk) 07:19, 21 December 2013 (UTC)
You protected Mount Ararat in 2009 with a summary of 'anon edit warring'. Do you think that lifting it now would be appropriate? Cheers. Crazynas t 10:26, 26 December 2013 (UTC)
I do not understand the reason, it you want to re-live the campaign of bizarre crackpot nationalism every four years, by all means the article should be unprotected every four years. But this sort of thing isn't really the point of this project, at least not officially. --dab (𒁳) 17:31, 1 January 2014 (UTC)
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Could you please look at this? There's a new user who insists on contesting the consensus Indo-Iranian identification, in favour of Turkic/"Altaic" identifications, with sources which I find difficult to take quite seriously. It smells synth-y at the very least. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:57, 5 January 2014 (UTC)
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Thanks,
Hello, you have an opportunity to make a statement at Ancient Egyptian Long-Term Editor Misconduct as you are named as a party, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case Regards, Andajara120000 (talk) 18:59, 6 January 2014 (UTC)
On a more generic note, I'm not sure you realize how your edits over there may appear: it's as if you were claiming that the Slavic name is just a piece of trivia that shouldn't be on par with the fine Germanic name. I know you didn't mean it that way, but that's easily how it can be interpreted what with the "relegation" of the Slavic name to a hypocorism based on a source that is not really scholarly, the removal of a Slavic WP from the talk page etc. I'd appreciate it if you were a bit more tactful in the future. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 09:03, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
I have no idea what you are talking about. The article mixed up completely unrelated names as if they were variants of each other, and I corrected it. I fail to see where I ever implied that one language is more "fine" than another. It is my view in general that not every hypocorism needs its own wiki page, hypocorisms are countless, and so far as they can be referenced they should be listed on the page of whatever name they are a hyposorism of. --dab (𒁳) 16:34, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
Back in 2007, you edited God, adding a mention of the word "epitheta", as the plural of "epithet", and this has stayed there ever since, redirecting to "epithet". But I can't find any obvious support for this plural in English -- dictionaries all (well, SOED, Webster, wiktionary) say 'epithets'. Googling for 'epitheta' produces traces of the WP article, and lots of occurrences in German, which appears to use epitheton/epitheta. So I wonder if it is a slip from German? I intend to change it to 'epithets', but thought I would ask you first. (Please reply here: I am watching!) Imaginatorium (talk) 06:22, 19 January 2014 (UTC)
It was a "slip", if you insist, from Greek. I have no problem with the anglicized plural. It is easy to google for English usage but I am happy to accept that "epithets" is far more widely used. --dab (𒁳) 16:37, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
Greetings DB! Would you mind taking a look at this paragraph? Certain adivasi notwithstanding, it looks neither accurate or neutrally presented. Kind regards – Soupforone (talk) 23:21, 28 January 2014 (UTC)
I take it you mean the bit about
The problelm is, of course, with "modern". The "modern population of India" isn't a "branch" of anything, because India is far too inclusive a term, and its population is the product of millennia of miscegenation. What they are trying to talk about is the Neolithic population of India, not the "modern" one. --dab (𒁳) 16:43, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
Did you come across studies or a book discussing what actual measured genetic differences a group of study siblings have between them? If researchers have genetic maps of both parents and both siblings and then compare them strand for strand does a 50% coefficient hold? What are the odds of finding siblings with 62% identical genes? 51%? Alatari (talk) 23:17, 23 January 2014 (UTC)
I am sorry if I pointed out the obvious, but then why are we having this discussion? Is this about something on the Coefficient of relationship article? If you look at my contribution history, you see that I jump between topics very much and if you ask me about a topic I edited months ago, it usually helps to give some context in the form of diff links.
What is it you want to see studies about? If the "0.1%" thing I describe above is understood, the consanguinity of siblings is exactly 50%, all the time (ignoring the Y chromosome). They get a haploid strand from their father and a haploid strand from their mother. Most of these (99.9%) will be identical in content, but it's still 50% from the father and 50% from the mother. So frankly I do not understand what you want to see a study about now. --dab (𒁳) 12:12, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
I am interested in the topic, and I will be happy to help you search for references, as soon as I understand your question. Is your question about the mechanism of meiosis, or is it about demographic averages? I do not think your question is well formulated. What is a "meiosed gene"? What is this "50%" number you keep talking about? Both parent's DNA is meiosed to 100%. This gives you two haploid strands, each to 100% from one parent, which is combined to form a diploid strand, which is consequently derived from each parent to exactly 50%. This is how the process works, you cannot deviate from the 50% by any margin. You don't get to receive more or less than 50% from each parent, because each contributes one out of two separate strands (again, ignoring Y chromosome). --dab (𒁳) 12:23, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
Actually, your question begins to make a lot of sense if you extend it by one generation, and ask what deviation from the average of 25% of genetic material people receive from their grandparents. As each parent themselves have a mixture of 50% each from their parents, and meisosis mixes this up during the time between conception of the parent and conception of the child, you will get very close to 25% contribution from each grandparent, but there may be deviations. I assume you would expect a poisson distribution for that, so on average 5% deviation from the 25%, so most people will have between typically 20% and 30% from each grandparent. The poission distribution will be almost gaussian due to the large number of genes, but for this, you may actually go and look for studies verifying it. --dab (𒁳) 12:33, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
Hi. I see you created Pracetas as a redirect. What is the connection with the destination page? Regards, Rui ''Gabriel'' Correia (talk) 01:42, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
Did you try reading the target article? They had a king called Pracetas. --dab (𒁳) 09:06, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
Very odd - I actually did a search for the word on that page and did not see that. My apologies. Rui ''Gabriel'' Correia (talk) 14:59, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Germanic-speaking Europe is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.
The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Germanic-speaking Europe until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.
Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Fakirbakir (talk) 15:05, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
Last year several biographies on Gothic people were deleted by Dougweller because they had been created or edited by a banned user. Some of these articles, like that on Aoric, Ariaric and Athanaric, obviously encyclopedic, have since been restored by you. There are still related articles of encyclopedic value that remain deleted, like that on Alavivus. Krakkos (talk) 21:56, 8 March 2014 (UTC)
yes, Doug went a bit over the top with these. Perhaps you want to ask him to undelete them. Or you could just recreate a stub from scratch. --dab (𒁳) 10:38, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
Hi. My attempt to add the map IE expansion yuo've uploaded, to Template:Indo-European topics, was met with some skepticism, in particular Dougweller, who pointed out that a editor pointed out alleged faults in the map on the images talk page shortly after it was uploaded. Could you respond to the remarks on the talk page or correct the map, in order to correct what appears to be a nice piece of work? Krakkos (talk) 20:44, 8 March 2014 (UTC)
The points are valid. I still endorse my map within the scope it was intended for in the first place, giving a rough sketch of expansion in the Kurgan framework, but no doubt it could be improved.
I created this map as a quick hack back in 2005, in order to give Wikipedia coverage of the Kurgan hypothesis it had hitherto been lacking. This is 2014 now and coverage on these topics has much improved. Also, Wikipedia's standards regarding maps and so on have greatly increased over the years. So it would certainly be worthwhile to make an effort and improve the map. --dab (𒁳) 10:44, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
I strongly agree ʿAqīdah is not theology. where do you discuss the split? The links on the tag don't take you to the talk page, which is where (I would think) you'd discuss it. --BoogaLouie (talk) 19:15, 13 March 2014 (UTC)
since the suggestion is eminently sane, and I think also self-evident, I suppose you should just go ahead and implement the split under WP:BRD. Or I will do it at some point if I remember to. --dab (𒁳) 06:18, 14 March 2014 (UTC)
I am curious about an edit you made to the Vikings article a long time ago. You added the following misconception/myth about Vikings:
Over the course of nine years this entry has grown and the status of this myth has now been enlarged to "common motif in popular pictorial representations of the Vikings." Personally I can not remember ever seeing a Viking portrayed drinking from a human skull. Maybe some weird Orc/Viking hybrid from a Dungeons and Dragons-esque game but nothing that was attempting to portray Vikings. In fact I did some searching and I could not find any pictures of Vikings drinking from human skulls. I did see a number of pages that seem to regurgitate this misconception. I am curious if we have a great example of citegenesis on our hands? Do you have any pointers to the existence of this misconception?
I apologize i it is in poor form to bring up an edit from nine years ago. Thanks for your help. DouglasCalvert (talk) 00:43, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
This is older stuff, predating orcs by a century or more. It is not now predominant, but was predominant in early "Septentrionalist" (Viking revival) literature. I remember putting references on this in the article, but as you say it's nine years ago and would need to be dug up from the edit history. It is probably wrong to stash this under "common motif in popular pictorial representations of the Vikings". The "modern depiction of Vikings" is a topic which itself has now a 400 year history, and it is misleading to cast it in terms of contemporary pop-culture (which is given far too much weight in many parts of Wikipedia). But since most people editing the article insist on going on about pop-culture (either documenting it, or "refuting" it), I have little hope for improvement. --dab (𒁳) 07:28, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
Hi, Dbachmann. As I've noted that you've done an excellent job of tidying Template:History of Ukraine, I wonder whether the same shouldn't be done for Template:History of Russia. A little uniformity in presentation would benefit this template. Cheers! --Iryna Harpy (talk) 21:51, 15 March 2014 (UTC)
Dbachman, I am actually delighted to see your recent interest in improving the quality of the C-T articles. I spent hundreds of hours working on them a few years ago. When I first stumbled on the original article I was searching for some information about the early Hellenes, and I discovered this fantastic culture. However, the article was in horrible shape: it was a mess! So I took it on and helped make it into what it is today: an entire family of articles. I even had the Economy article included in the "Did You Know" feature on the homepage of Wikipedia.
But I then got very busy doing other things in rl, and could not continue my work on these articles. I know they still need a lot of work, and I do hope someone can improve them. But I still have a lot of interest in making sure that the C-T articles are not damaged by edits, whether by good intention or not. I know that nobody "owns" any part of Wikipedia, but I can't help but feel that the C-T articles are my babies.
But I know they need improving, and I can't do it, so I'm really open to the idea of someone coming along and making them shine. A couple of the articles have the potential for being very good, and I'd love to see that happen. So what I'm writing this for is to gently and politely suggest that if you'd like to work on them, improve them, please by all means do so! But I'd also like to be kept in the loop. I would suggest that if you want to make huge changes, just drop me a note in my Talk page. It would make me feel much better knowing why big changes were being made, and I'd be much more open to them, thus avoiding a conflict or edit war.
BTW: I fully support your removal of the "Archaeogenetics" subarticle. I always hated that one. I only included it as a separate article for two reasons: 1) to placate one of the earlier editors of the C-T article who felt strongly about including it, and 2) to remove it from the main article, because I didn't like it and didn't want it messing up the original work. So I banished it to a lonely spot and forgot about it mostly. I am glad you deleted it, because now I can support your decision and nobody can say I did it just because I'm a meany. --Saukkomies talk 00:47, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
I would like to see some improvement in this area too. But I am not one to make articles "shine" -- I have hundreds of thousands of edits but hardly any "featured articles" to my name, as I prefer to focus on stuff that is completely broken and leave off to tend other areas once they are "fair". But I would prefer the CT articles to be narrowly about the archaeological culture. Sweeping treatments of cultural topics related to it would be much more at home in pages with a wider scope, such as Chalcolithic Europe. --dab (𒁳) 12:00, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
Hi, dbachmann. Do you think the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture or Yamna culture are really part of the national history, as such edits seem to imply? --Ghirla-трёп- 10:10, 15 March 2014 (UTC)
I realize this is a minefield right now. But this is pov-pushing by navigation template. If they want to make a legitimate point about the prehistory of Ukraine, let them do so in prose and not by slapping templates on articles about the Stone Age that just so happen to sport their preferred national flag.
Or else let them remove modern flags from "history" navboxes as anachronistic. --dab (𒁳) 10:25, 15 March 2014 (UTC)
Spot on. One has to wait for a year at least before trying to sort it out. --Ghirla-трёп- 10:29, 15 March 2014 (UTC)
it's both the curse and the great strength of this project. History as it happens. Sadly, people cannot just mess up the articles on "unfinished" current events, there is always spill-over into topics of ancient history, or even deep prehistory ("antiquity frenzy").
I have no idea who is "right" in the whole Crimea/Maidan mess, but I do know for very certain that the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture has no bearing whatsoever on the answer to that. --dab (𒁳) 11:36, 15 March 2014 (UTC)
Apparently, the Trypillian culture doesn't play such an enormous role in Ukrainian nationalism. Based on this source, their deal is more that they are the real Rus' , while the Russians are descended from some marginal populations that were hopelessly mixed up with Finno-Ugrians and Turks, and that there is cultural continuity between the Kievan Rus and the Ukraine. Again, this isn't necessarily wrong factually, but ethnic nationalism doesn't really mix well with articles on early history and the two need to be kept cleanly separated. They don't care about the Neolithic so much, but they aren't above supposing, at times, that "the Rus' ... embodied the local cultural traditions in development since Trypillian times". So, the real bone of contention is once again going to be poor Kievan Rus', while the CT article can be expected to remain more of a sideshow, I think. --dab (𒁳) 15:27, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
Do you think Indo-Aryan superstrate in Mitanni could be unprotected? Jackmcbarn (talk) 01:40, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
technically, I suppose? It's just semiprotected, which means any account with half a dozen edits to its name can edit it fine. Any passing anonymous contributor isn't going to improve things. But sure it can be unprotected. Just make sure that the person unprotecting it takes it upon himself or herself to also watch the article and prevent it from deterioration. This is not a topic that is going to be watched by 20 people, so it will not benefit from Wikipedia's system of many eyes. If one person is dedicated to watching it, fine. If not, it will just go to pieces in a matter of months. --dab (𒁳) 07:23, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
Hi, could you please lower down the protection level for Assyrian people. The article is in need of expert contribution and I have seen a number of good faith edit requests recently.--Kathovo talk 13:08, 19 March 2014 (UTC)
this is one of the worst battlefields on Wikipedia. Since many of the edit warriors have established accounts anyway, it doesn't really matter if it is semiprotected. What would be needed are admins with balls dedicated to enforce project policy. I spent some effort on that, but I decided it wasn't worth my time to clean up an article that is only ever going to be read by people who are already part of this ethnic mess so I quit. --dab (𒁳) 07:25, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
never mind, I am not surprised to see that you yourself are in there with an agenda. Or why else would you push the name "Aramaean" as being used to refer to the modern Aramaic speaking populations by reference to books published by Gorgias Press LLC? Gorgias Press makes clear that this is an outfit created for the exact purpose of producing "references" to support this kind of ethnic bickering. By all means cite these books, but please do not pretend that they are "scholarly" or "impartial". This is about a people who are positively obsessed with their ethnic heritage, and grimly determined to be as cranky about it as they can, for reasons that are psychologically understandable, but that still doesn't excuse them for flying in the face of project policy. --dab (𒁳) 07:32, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
I am not accusing you of being any kind of -ist as I have given up even keeping track of the various "-isms" involved in this, I do not have nor did I ever have any kind of stakes in this question other than trying to keeping Wikipedia sane, and I have long stopped trying in this particular case. I realise that "Aramaeans" is commonly used in German and afaik Swedish, it is much rarer in English, and it will not help throwing yet another term into the already hopeless terminological mess. But that's up to the people who are trying to fix things, and I wish you the best of luck.
I can un-semiprotect the article, it doesn't matter, it's not going to help but it's also not going to do any more damage. Please understand that every registered editor can already edit the article, the only thing semiprotection does is keeping down the white noise caused by driveby IP editors. --dab (𒁳) 10:43, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for splitting Modern history of Ukraine. Could you also do it for the "Early modern history"? Then we can safely summarize (cut) some less important content from the main article's sections. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 08:07, 21 March 2014 (UTC)
I just suggested it, it was implemented by Timothyhouse1 (talk · contribs). I endorse this, but wth? He did this on 16 March and just left the article dumped there with no lead? That's not editing, that's just cutting-and-slashing. I placed a split tag so somebody with some time on their hands could do it properly, if it was just a copy-paste job, we wouldn't need "editors", the job could be done by a small shell script. --dab (𒁳) 08:52, 21 March 2014 (UTC)
The article fails to explain how New Russia came to be attached to Little Russia. Until 1919 the two regions had little in common ethnically, linguistically and historically. Without keeping this in mind, one can't understand what's going on in Ukraine now. --Ghirla-трёп- 11:53, 21 March 2014 (UTC)
I agree. Still, "understanding" is not taking sides, necessarily. So this bit of land passed from Russia to Ukraine. Before that, it was taken from the Tatars, who had taken it from the Alans or Khazars, who had taken it from the Goths, who had taken it from the Sarmatians, who had taken it from the Thraco-Cimmerians and so on. My experience with the topic of ethnic bickering and irredentism is that it is always the exact same people who (a) whine about being victimised by a more powerful ethnic group and (b) glory in historical days when their group was in a position to victimise others as the way it should properly be. It's human, but it's also ridiculous. Also, "ethnically", really? There is a separation of barely 600 years, Ukrainians and Russians are ethnically closer than Swabians and Bavarians. I realise that this doesn't prevent people from going to war, but making it "ethnic" is really pushing the envelope. --dab (𒁳) 10:23, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
There's already a request for a move (to Autonomous Republic of Crimea) on the way on the talk page. I don't think adding a request to split the article is helpful, it only confuses the matter. It does look like there is a broad consensus for the move, though, so it would be appreciated if you could perform it. CodeCat (talk) 14:46, 23 March 2014 (UTC)
Category:Swiss rapists, which you created, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you. Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 15:51, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
I have no idea why I created this, and I am happy for it to be deleted. I must have been seduced by the existence of Category:Rapists by nationality, which when I think about it is a terrible example of category clutter and fragmentation.
Otoh, I have little patience with awkwardly phrased category names just for the sake of political correctness, pussy-footing around the issue, or whatever it is you want to call it. "people convicted of rape" for "rapist", I ask you. --dab (𒁳) 09:18, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
Hey, remember to move subpages as well when you perform moves. You didn't move the Talk archives for Talk:Crimea so I had to do it myself: This can create inconsistencies in the archive system. =P —Ahnoneemoos (talk) 00:53, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
You've completed the moves with regard to this page, but you haven't closed the discussion itself on the talk page. Please do so. RGloucester — ☎ 01:17, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
sorry to both. I guess I am not used to playing admin any more.
Also, as I said by no means do I want to pretend that "the discussion is closed", as it clearly
isn't. The aim of the whole exercise was to reach a stable but provisional form on which to build.
--dab (𒁳) 08:15, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
You recently placed a request to split the article "Taurica" into two new articles named "Crimean Peninsula" and "History of Crimea". As both of these pages already exist and as "Taurica" refers to a particular period in the history of Crimea, I believe you have placed this tag in error and actually are proposing deleting the "Taurica" page and moving its content into the other two articles. This would be a request for deletion then, not splitting. However, if this is your intention, I would oppose such a move. A summary of this article's contents should appear under "History of Crimea" and maybe an even briefer summary (if anything) in the geographical article on "Crimean Peninsula." However, there is enough information on the classical period in the Crimean Peninsula's history to warrant its own article and too much information to only put it in the "History of Crimea" (which is overly long already). I do plan to flesh this article out a little bit more, as it is kind of sparse right now.Nomadic Whitt (talk) 22:58, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
"a recent re-analysis of the Border Cave baboon fibula (Fig. 7), which identified four sets of non-sequential markings, is taken to suggest ‘accumulation over time and a notational function’ (d’Errico et al. 2012)""Tracing The Emergence Of Palaeoart In Sub-Saharan Africa" Peter B. Beaumont and Robert G. Bednarik. No use of the word mathematical. Dougweller (talk) 10:59, 29 March 2014 (UTC)
Category:Kronos-Saturn, which you created, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you. Tim! (talk) 07:37, 30 March 2014 (UTC)
Here are some sources, but I don't know which one seems reliable:
A simple "Hdt. 4.20, 4.110" would have been enough, but thank you :) --dab (𒁳) 05:28, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
M aurice 08:33, 3 April 2014 (UTC)
@ Bachmann,
Gruß, Ulamm (talk) 13:33, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
Finde ich ein mässig überzeugendes Beispiel, timber framing entspricht inhaltlich im wesentlichen de:Fachwerkhaus, beides sind schöne und ausführliche Artikel zu demselben Thema, da ist es nicht wirklich entscheidend, ob sich die Seitentitel nun exakt übersetzen. --dab (𒁳) 17:36, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
Please take a look at the template. Are Cimmeria, Taurica, Sarmatia, Kazarig (?), Great Bulgaria, Kiev Military District, or Prešov really "Ukrainian historical regions"? It looks to me like a random dump of stuff. --Ghirla-трёп- 20:14, 14 April 2014 (UTC)
Well, the title of the template has been fixed to read "historical regions in present-day Ukraine", which is innocent enough, and I assume the template was compiled when the borders of Ukraine were completely undisputed. So yes, it's a random dump, like most of these "navbox" templates, and I don't see why every article footer needs half a dozen of these in collapsed form, but this is just run-of-the-mill Wikipedian OCD (hoarding behaviour) and my "pov pushing by template" alerts don't really go off in this case. --dab (𒁳) 08:48, 19 April 2014 (UTC)
Hi Dbachmann! You are the top contributor of almost every Sanskrit related topic in English Wikipedia. Judging by your edits you also appear to have access to JSTOR. I just started the article Columbia University Indo-Iranian Series (and Harvard Oriental Series) and you edited the WP articles of many authors/translators of both the book series. I was just wondering, then, if you can help expand the articles (from the JSTOR reviews). I would have done it myself if I have had access to JSTOR. Kindest regards. Solomon7968 01:39, 19 April 2014 (UTC)
hi Solomon, I have been on Wikipedia since 2004 (my full decade is coming up in July I think) and obviously I am not the same person I was when I did my first edits here. And sadly, my access to journals behind paywalls is now intermittent. Most of my Sanskrit related edits were done in years past, when I was generally sitting around university wasting time with Wikipedia. I can still get access to university networks but I do not generally sit there to begin with, and I need to get VPN access, which will be sort of semi-legal. I mean to get around to setting this up but so far I haven't. --dab (𒁳) 08:44, 19 April 2014 (UTC)
Hi. In 2005, you posted File:IE expansion.png. Do you still know at which sources you based this map? Best regards, Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 13:22, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
It reflects the Kurgan scenario. It's intended use is "Kurgan hypothesis sketched on the back of an envelope". The general gist is undisputed, but of course its "resolution" doesn't go down to the last pixel, and isn't intended to. There have been justified suggestions for improvement, and I would endorse such improvement. See User_talk:Dbachmann/Archive_42#IE_expansion_map. --dab (𒁳) 08:46, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
Hi. I know, this is the reason why I directly checked if they are referenced on their own articles. Do I have to re-use their references also in the list. thank you.--Giant4s (talk) 15:02, 29 April 2014 (UTC)
Hello, I'm ReferenceBot. I have automatically detected that an edit performed by you may have introduced errors in referencing. It is as follows:
Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, ReferenceBot (talk) 00:38, 1 May 2014 (UTC)
Hello dab, I was confused by this edit to Prehistoric Korea. The reference reads "Barnes (1993): Early Bronze c. 5th to 4th c. BCE, Early Iron (Late Bronze) c. 3rd to 1st c. BCE. Choe & Bale (2002): Mumun (Bronze): mid 2nd millennium BCE to 4th c. BCE, Early Iron: 3rd c. BCE to 1st c. BCE". I understand that this refers to the book and article in the Further reading section. But I don't know what the text between the reference tags means.
Thanks, SchreiberBike talk 06:56, 3 May 2014 (UTC)
it does indeed. I take it you are saying it is confusing to abbreviate both "circa" and "century" using "c."? --dab (𒁳) 12:55, 4 May 2014 (UTC)
I was citing after this online copy, and my footnote is based on the graphical representation in tabular form on p. 98. I suggest that if you want to flesh out my footnote, you consult the source directly. --dab (𒁳) 08:20, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
Firstly, I would like to say thanks for making those edits for the Portuguese Empire page. I haven't got around to making the proper edits yet, and I am glad that you made changes where necessary. I still needs quite a bit of work before it gets to GA status, so all the assistance where needed is gladly appreciated. If you need any assistance on the page, just contact me on my page. I'll be glad to help you whenever I get the chance!LeftAire (talk) 22:49, 10 May 2014 (UTC)
Category:Semitic peoples, which you created, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you. Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 00:08, 11 May 2014 (UTC)
Yeah, the usual rant. Italy was NEVER a COUNTRY TO BEGIN WITH, NOT UNTIL 1870.
While noting a despicable vein of hateful contempt in your petty envious words (but, never mind!), if you'd actually read (can you do that?), what I HAD ACTUALLY WRITTEN, your small eyes would have been able to decipher (thing of which I greatly doubt, again):
After the dissolution of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and the successive barbarian invasions, Italy was not a politically unified Country, being instead divided in several smaller states. The following is a list of the various Italian states until the Italian unification in 1860.
If you actually knew some English (and history of it, which is always useful), you'd know the thing you're trying to talk about is a State. As for the definition, I will just kindly ask you to refer to the relative article.
I've not claimed Italy was united before that date (ah, also: 1861, not 1870! Ahhh, if only some people thought twice before spitting nonsense!). As you (perhaps) will now see, I'd written:
...[it] was not a politically unified Country.
I've claimed it was a Country, which originally, in English too, simply denoted any geographical entity. As for the notion of Italy as a nation, as for Roman Italy, as for all those Greeks using the name long before Rome, as for the coins of the Social War spotting the engraving of that name, as for the nation of Italy, yes, the comuni and the Renaissance and Columbus and all of that, I am afraid even a total idiot, at least they were not lying to themselves, would know the real answer: as a CULTURALLY entity, Italy has existed far earlier than 1861. (Or 1870, for that matter. ;) ).
I will not proceed to claim the worthiness and outstanding contributions of said cultural life, it is not my duty and those are not objective things (I just so much wish everyone could be able to understand that! Instead, you simply have to visit pages like foibe killings to see not everyone is endowed with such a basic gift!). Here, and in that lede, I've exposed its antiquity. The facts.
My regards (nah, not really). Wish you far more wisdom, and MUCH more learning for your future! --80.181.235.120 (talk) 22:40, 12 May 2014 (UTC)
I can always do with more learning, so thank you. I think you will also find you misrepresented my statements. To begin with, I do not use allcaps quite so liberally. Indeed "Italy has existed as a CULTURALLY entity", for some definitions of "entity" and, I suppose, of "culturally", since about the 1st century BC. We even have an article about that, Roman Italy.
But then it seems you are invested in this emotionally, or I don't see why you would come to my talkpages to tell be about your wishes or non-wishes? If your definition of "country" is "geographical entity", then Eurasia is a "country" as much as Padania, and the term becomes meaningless. "Italy" is a geographical entity in the sense that it is a peninsula. It was never a political or cultural unity in any strict sense before 1860. It was part of the Roman Empire, but so was most of Western Europe, so anything you can say about Italy as a country you can also say about Italy plus France plus the Balkans plus Greece plus North Africa, this aggregation of territories is also "a country" because of its Roman heritage. The peninsula is a geographic entity, but that wouldn't include Sicily or Sardinia. I think you will have to face the fact that the borders of modern Italy are a more or less random product of 19th century politics, as are the borders of most countries, and there is no reason for you to get worked up about the Italian case more than about any other. Except if you have some private interest in Italy, I guess, perhaps for the reason that you happen to be Italian, but then you should not expect that anyone is interested in your personal predilections on a website dedicated to encyclopedic content.
Hello, You put some interesting information there, years ago, about KE affiliations with, say, curious milieux and publications (TeKOS, Nucleus etc.). Well, a supporter of K. Elst is arguing BLP violation and UNDUE there, following a complain of KE himself on his blog. Of course there is absolutely no BLP violation, all is perfectly sourced. But a big part of the material you've put there has been removed. I am trying to reintroduce it with new refs, like Meera Nanda, but it's not easy. If you have some time... I 'll be busy tomorrow and after tomorrow. Best, - TwoHorned User_talk:TwoHorned 21:28, 20 May 2014 (UTC)
I have no opinion on this, and only a dim memory of this anyway. Iirc, this was always a borderline case in terms of notability; it's almost impossible to say anything "WP:DUE" about the guy because then the article would be empty. I may be wrong. Anyhow, I don't own the material I contributed and consensus will need to form on how to do it. The important thing is to keep the people with an agenda / WP:COI out of the loop. At least I would only listen to uninvolved people reviewing third party sources. --dab (𒁳) 14:45, 22 May 2014 (UTC)
Please see Template talk:Paganism (contemporary)#Revert of recent move to Tl.7CNeopaganism-sidebar. I've no idea what this is about, but I just performed a technical move that was claimed to be uncontroversial. In the history of one of the files I noticed you talking about move warring. Thanks, EdJohnston (talk) 18:52, 21 May 2014 (UTC)
It's a crystal clear case of WP:COI, people trying to move stuff to their prefererd terminology not based on any WP:NAME argument but simply because they have an opinion as involved parties. If this is debated above board among uninvolved editors, I have no complaint, but the tactics at all neopagan topics has long been just to gang up on the uninvolved editors until they leave or are outnumbered and then turn the articles into propaganda-speak. I just have a reflex to act as an obstacle to this sort of behaviour whenever I come across it. My recommendation would be to treat no move requests in this corner of Wikipedia as "uncontroversial", because chances are it is not. Let people discuss it and then let an admin decide. Even then, the "vote" will always be in favour of the COI editors because they will mobilize, but at least the admin will have a chance to remember that these debates aren't supposed to be votes but comparison of evidence presented. --dab (𒁳) 14:49, 22 May 2014 (UTC)
You still have this on your watchlist? IP hopper from near Los Angeles. Dougweller (talk) 18:46, 20 May 2014 (UTC)
I suppose you should just semiprotect? Neither of us deserves to waste time over IP-hoppers :) --dab (𒁳) 14:56, 22 May 2014 (UTC)
Please see my proposal to speedily rename Category:Christian evangelicalism in Switzerland to Category:Evangelicalism in Switzerland Hugo999 (talk) 06:28, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
Makes sense, no objections. --dab (𒁳) 05:14, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
Hello! I've been working on the Portuguese Empire page off and on for almost a 18 month stretch, and I happened to stumble across the conversation about separating the article. I wish I would have seen it earlier, for I have some ideas to offer about the page splitting if possible.
I've looked and admired the presentation of the Portuguese layout of the Empire, as it is separated by region primarily instead of chronological ordering like the English page. I've been wanting to go about organizing it in this manner, but haven't got around to getting people to come along with it (wrong place at wrong time, busy schedules, etc.) If that's not possible, I would like to see it separated in the following way.
First Portuguese Empire 1415-c.1663 Second Portuguese Empire c.1660-1822 (Yes, Brazil would be largely covered, but the Empire was also losing territory in the Indian Ocean to the Omani in the Arabian peninsula around the 1650s into the late 16th-early 17th centuries) Thrid Portuguese Empire 1822-1974 (Africa, and the Portuguese Republic)
Some of the issues with the current layout is the unnecessary coverage of certain topics (such as the Chinese slave count as what was mentioned there) and the lack there of certain subjects. I was going to go into further detail with the Portuguese section with the Protestant powers and clean that section up a bit (since it too Dutch-centric, and not focusing on its losses to the Safavids under Shah Abbas and the English enough, for example), but the losses of Portugal in the Indian Ocean span out past 1663. Perhaps I should just rid of the year span listed if not extend it. The section regarding fighting the Turks into the 1580s to a draw does need to be covered a bit more. I attempted to do so, but failed because of the restructuring that would have happened. I also feel that the contacts with Africa during the 16th and 17th centuries (Luso-Ethiopian contract with Jesuits, involvement with Kingdom of Kongo, etc.) I have certain sources available (and links can definitely be had on Google Books if necessary, I have a plethora of bookmarks for each subject), and if I can get anyone's help, I could get started on it as soon as tonight! I'm free to work on this for the next 10-12 days.
I don't mean to bombard you with all of this, I just would like to get some other people who are interested in improving this article to get in touch with me, for I would be happy to oblige! Thanks for readingLeftAire (talk) 22:03, 21 May 2014 (UTC)
I'll try to look into it again. Generally, my advice in broad topics like that would be, reduce the main page to bare-bones WP:SS as much as possible. Don't allow the 'condensation nuclei' for needless bloat to form, because the tendency is that people will add little bits here and there without reviewing the article as a whole and you end up with an unmanageable pile of random paragraphs. An article like "Portuguese Empire" should perhaps be not more than 30k, with lots of sub-articles both regional and chronological. I don't even necessarily propose that this is the best kind of article, but it is the best way of presentation that under the specific dynamics of editing the wiki best prevents the fate of gradual deterioration over time. --dab (𒁳) 14:54, 22 May 2014 (UTC)
Hi Dbachmann. I noticed you added the image for the Coat of arms of Philip II and I of Spain and Portugal. I just want to say that at that time Spain was the name of the Iberian Peninsula and each kingdom of Spain was refered to as being one Spain and all the kingdoms were collectively known as The Spains. Portugal stopped being refered as one of the Spains after the end of the Union but the peninsula kept the name Spain. Like Italy, France or the UK, Spain was only unified during the Age of Enlightenment. It was unified in 1812 and with the name The Spains. It changed the name to Spain in 1876. This is when Spain was officialy born, although the term is always used anachronically. The first king to use the title king of Spain was Amadeo I of Spain as already referenced in the List of titles and honours of the Spanish Crown. The image should say: Coat of arms of Philip II and I of Portugal Castile León and Aragon. It is better to keep it neutral or at least historically accurate. The portuguese prefere to ignore that the peninsula was once called Spain and Portugal was one of the Spains,(some say the name Spain was snatched from portuguese history when it became the official name of the kingdom of Castile) as much as the spaniards prefere to ignore that Spain was officialy born in 1876.
"the last major occasion on which the portuguese crown contested the terminology of "crown of Spain" or "monarchy of Spain" for the rulers of Madrid was at the time of the peace of Utrecht in 1714" Stanley G. Payne. Spain: A Unique History pg. 269 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.214.213.176 (talk) 00:06, 14 June 2014 (UTC)
I am aware of the problem. It explains the gaggle of articles at es-wiki, es:Monarquía Española, es:Monarquía Hispánica, es:Corona de España, all of which correspond to our Monarchy of Spain. Well, historical semantics is complicated, I suppose, but I cannot help but feel that this is about the Spanish wanting it to be as complicated as humanly possible. "Spain" is not the only name in the world that has undergone an evolution of meaning. --dab (𒁳) 11:30, 16 June 2014 (UTC)
Hello. "The city's official name was changed to Istanbul by the republican Turkish government on 28 March 1930",(ref) "although it was used as such since ... (2, 3 how many?) centuries"... Could you please add something there? Regards. --Why should I have a User Name? (talk) 05:40, 3 July 2014 (UTC)
I merely rearranged the content that was already there with the purpose of giving a proper summary. The question is discussed in detail at names of Istanbul, I suggest you read that. The name is recorded from as early as the 10th century, but it became more and more popular and began to be used in print during the 19th. I suppose it came to be seen a popular nickname of the city, and it was part of Ataturk's "folksy" or "folkish" approach to replace the "imperial" name with the "folksy" one. The short version is that Constantinople remained official until 1930, and that's really all that is needed in a short summary, as we already do have a fully developed article for those who want to know more.
I think you need a username if and only if you are trying to communicate with people or to have a discussion, as I find it unlikely people will have the patience to keep addressing you as "Why should I have a User Name?". --dab (𒁳) 06:17, 3 July 2014 (UTC)
well, your summary does amount to the impression I have taken away from this myself. it does seem to be correct that the city had been also known as Istanbul for centuries, and that Kostantiyye seems to have become "more elevated register", the main point seems to be that nobody was in the least bothered by this before it suddenly was made an issue in 1923ff. I have just hunted down this picture to see how Piri Reis labelled his map of the capital, and it turns out it is labelled Kostantiyye. So at least in 1525 this seems to have been the straightforward name of the city. Of course there may well have been a shift of the kind you describe between the 1520s and the 1880s, with the name Kostantiyye becoming more and more rare and "elevated". Your point that "Istanbul" at first may have referred just to the ancient core of the city also makes excellent sense.
I did not intend to have this discussion, and I did not edit names of Istanbul, I merely wrote the briefest of lead paragraphs for the history of Istanbul page, and for the purposes of that, I still think it is adequate to say the name was officially changed in 1930, for better or worse, and point the reader to the dedicated article for details. --dab (𒁳) 09:25, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
I am talking about English/western usage. The city was known as Constantinople as a matter of course throughout the Ottoman period: this usage does not imply any kind of "Byzantine irredentism", as the Turks used the name Constantinople themselves, even if it existed alongside "Istanbul" for the city proper. The western convention was changed by "decree" (or if you like by diplomatic request) in 1930. Calling "Constantinople" a "traditional name" is slightly silly imho, this was simply the city's name until Atatürk asked could people please change it to "Istanbul", and so people did, as nobody had any problem with calling the city anything Atatürk liked it to be called.
I understand you are objecting to the notion of an "official change" within Turkey, and I don't know about it, but the special thing under discussion here is the change of the exonym (much like Burma/Myanmar, Zaire/Congo, etc., i.e. external compliance with a change in terminology in foreign languages following a regime change). --dab (𒁳) 12:01, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
--dab (𒁳) 12:01, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
If you really wish to communicate with me you can call me simply "Pepe". In case you need to ping me, it must not take much time to copy-paste the user name. Regards. --Why should I have a User Name? (talk) 16:50, 3 July 2014 (UTC)
Hi. Just FYI I removed the merge tag at Ilah, as Cambridgebayweather also did in 2012, because while there are several possible merge targets there has been no actual merge discussion.
Just letting you know because your recent (and in my view, entirely correct) reversion of the redirect to Deity#Islam restored the 2010 merge tag to El (god), which has since become a redirect to El (deity). This is a potentially valid mergeto target but again, one for which no merge discussion has been held.
If your tag restoration was intentional and you support merging Ilah into El (deity), then my apologies and please feel free to revert my removal. Euryalus (talk) 05:10, 18 July 2014 (UTC)
I restored the article because some idiot had redirected it to deity. I don't care if it stays or if it is merged. The topic is the ancient Semitic term and/or concept of deity, so "El (deity)" probably isn't ideal, as this is about the Ugaritic god in particular. The best merge targed is probably Ancient Semitic religion. --dab (𒁳) 14:59, 18 July 2014 (UTC)
Replying to a response from February that I missed back then.
The thing is, the premise, that "Ivo" is merely a hypocorism of "Ivan", is moot. Most Croatian sources of similar quality that I've seen simply say it's a derivative form, not a form of endearment. Granted, it likely came to be as a hypocorism back in the day, but a fair few hundreds of years later, it's no longer so strictly associated with the other name, it's no longer necessarily interchangeable. And it's probably even less likely to be associated with the other name by readers who don't know about South Slavic word formation. Regardless of the etymology, when a name is as notable as this one, I see no real benefit in trying to move it away from its own title because it can lead to slippery slopes - cf. Beth. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 19:27, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
I wondered if you could mediate regarding a problem with Future Perfect's behaviour on the Gaulish language Talk page? Thanks, Shylock--86.154.102.162 (talk) 11:52, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
I have two questions regarding this: 1. could you give the page(s) where this is mentioned in Tavernier's book? (which can be viewed online here , by the way) 2. could you please elaborate a little bit on your text on the talk page: "derived from a facsimile in a 1983 edition published in Karachi". What kind of edition of what exactly? Thanks.--93.104.33.84 (talk) 20:33, 13 September 2014 (UTC)
Fair questions. re Tavernier, I took the information from here (added 2008) and did not verify it, it seems to be cited after this, which states p. 265, but perhaps this is the pagination of an English translation.
As for the facsimile edition, this is my conjecture, and for this reason I did not add it to the article and left it on the talkpage instead. The book in question is Sultan Ahmed Qureshi, Letters of the Holy Prophet, Karachi (1983). If you compare the facsimile quality in this book with the rendition in the early versions of the flag (2006?), you will be able to form your own opinion. If I was not writing a Wikipedia entry but a blog entry, I would argue that it is very likely that jihadists looking for symbols of authentic, 7th-century Islam pulled these seal images from that book, unaware of the fact that they were Ottoman era manuscript copies. But as I was writing for Wikipedia, I just stuck to the facts for the purposes of the article, and left the conjecture on the talkpage in case anyone was interested. --dab (𒁳) 21:01, 13 September 2014 (UTC)
Hi, I was just looking over your image and have some concerns about its source: you give attribution to two other people for the map information, but you do not seem to specify where the actual terrain map comes from. Could you add that information to the file? Thank you! KDS4444Talk 17:01, 24 September 2014 (UTC)
I uploaded the image more than eight years ago, man. It was some online engine that generated maps from PD GIS data, I think. --dab (𒁳) 17:09, 24 September 2014 (UTC)
Where is the link that leads me to the archived discussions? --217.82.133.50 (talk) 19:22, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
A file that you uploaded or altered, File:Maenad.png, has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for deletion. Please see the discussion to see why it has been listed (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry). Feel free to add your opinion on the matter below the nomination. Thank you. Kelly hi! 08:02, 8 October 2014 (UTC)
Someone added this article to Category: Ancient Indian cities. Since Dvārakā is only mentioned in the Mahabharata and Puranas, is it appropriate to call it an Ancient Indian city(which is like saying the city actually existed in historical times)? I am thinking of creating a new category for epic Indian cities, Puranic cities, etc. What do you think? Jayakumar RG (talk) 09:47, 16 October 2014 (UTC)
The Mahabharata is pretty much the definition of "ancient India". There is no other meaningful scope of a category "Ancient Indian cities". But I know what you mean. In the end, we mirror terminology found in scholarly literature, and google books has 9,000 hits for "Ancient Indian cities", but zero hits for "Epic Indian cities", so that term is out. The best thing would be to keep a category "cities mentioned in the Sanskrit epics" or similar, and make that a subcategory of "Ancient Indian cities". "Puranic cities" is even less meaningful, as the Puranas are medieval, and they do not focus on geography, their geographical scope is pretty much based on what is found in the epics. --dab (𒁳) 12:39, 16 October 2014 (UTC)
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Apep (disambiguation). Since you had some involvement with the Apep (disambiguation) redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. uKER (talk) 12:47, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
Came across this article today, which till my recent deletion claimed that Hindu scriptures prophesied the coming of Muhammad as demonic power, which reminded me of our work on Bhavishya Purana all those years back. In any case, any suggestion on what can be done with this article personal essay (see my note here). Hope you are doing well. Abecedare (talk) 16:15, 25 October 2014 (UTC)
Yes the Hindu history articles are terrible, here we are after ten years and we still don't know how to handle this. I am sure the 'demonic' bit can be referenced (i.e. the claim must have been made somewhere interesting off-wiki, perhaps even in the medieval period?), but the point is that they always ramble on without even a pretense of understanding the concept of "reference". But more recently, my attention has been attracted by much the same problem on the "Islamic" side, only much less blatant, and as such much more difficult to catch. This typically involves claims of achievements of the "Islamic Golden Age" which on closer inspection turn out to be bogus. E.g. the "Arab Agricultural Revolution" looked like a perfectly credibly item until it turned out that it wasn't. There's a lot more like that, as in Fatima al-Fihri , a Muslim woman touted as the "founder of the world's oldest university"; invention of zero (which for once is really an Indian idea, even though not found in the Rigveda, written as we know, in 70,000 BC or thereabouts), and what have you. While the Hindu-history bogus is almost endearing in its naivete, and nobody in their right mind would even consider using them as an encyclopedic source, the Islamic stuff is in a sense much worse because it is presented with more skill. --dab (𒁳) 17:02, 25 October 2014 (UTC)
It was just moved toRice Paddy Hat, I think because the editor thought the old name was racist. You took part in a discussion about that in 2010. The result of that discussion was to move it from Straw hat to Conical asian hat. Thoughts on this new name "Rice Paddy Hat"? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 09:53, 27 October 2014 (UTC)
I see, high and mighty when it comes to sweeping judgements of "racism", but not bothering to learn the most basic guidelines such as article name capitalisation. --dab (𒁳) 10:32, 27 October 2014 (UTC)
Still, I have to say I'm not a fan of your (equally undiscussed?) move of "conical straw hat" to "conical Asian hat", for grammatical reasons. The way adjectives work, a "conical Asian hat" is an "Asian hat" that is also conical, while what we are looking for here is a name for a type of conical hat that is often found in Asia. As long as "Asian hat" isn't a meaningful concept, "conical Asian hat" isn't really valid either. But I think I suspect that in a world where what counts is accusing one another of "racism" based on close analysis of vocabulary used and far-reaching leaps of logic, nobody has time to bother about such questions of grammatical scope. --dab (𒁳) 10:35, 27 October 2014 (UTC)
Well since we do not have pictures of all the flags of different dynasties, maps are mostly used in order differentiate it and so the picture isn't plain blank. --Mossadegh-e Mihan-dust (talk) 12:24, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
I don't understand the point of your comment. Yes, this is what has been the case, and what I have changed, because it was a misuse of the template slot. It seems you are explaining my own edit to me? A "blank flag" is certainly preferable over an inscrutable 15px "map", and the flag is correctly left blank because there was no flag. Problem solved. --dab (𒁳) 14:23, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
I am not trying to explain your own edit to you, but what i am saying is that i think it would be a better idea to have the map of the certain dynasty shown instead of a plain blank picture. Its better than nothing and is used in most if not all articles about dynasties. --Mossadegh-e Mihan-dust (talk) 15:16, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
A file that you uploaded or altered, File:Jrrt lotr cover design.jpg, has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for deletion. Please see the discussion to see why it has been listed (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry). Feel free to add your opinion on the matter below the nomination. Thank you. Stefan2 (talk) 21:44, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
Could you please contribute to this discussion, Talk:Islamic Golden Age#Recent edit. --Fauzan✆ talk✉ mail 15:30, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
Just wondering if you have any thoughts re: the idea of WMF hosting a genealogy project. If so, feel free to contribute to this discussion. And apologies if I have made this request before. ---Another Believer (Talk) 16:54, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
Hi, some anonymous editors keep deleting this page or some portions of it. Do you think such edits are valid? --Ghirla-трёп- 08:58, 9 January 2015 (UTC)
He should make a proper merge suggestion, but in essence I agree that this kind of Mahabharata-cruft should be merged if possible. An ancient kingdom and its capital, about both of which we have nothing but a list of MBh quotes, I do think this would make for one page at best (if not an entry in a "list of kingdoms in the MBh"). --dab (𒁳) 09:17, 9 January 2015 (UTC)
yes, Videha has lots of completely unreferenced stuff. If you rip out all the (usual for the topic) unreferenced rambling, it will become much more obvious that the page wants to be merged.
Now "Kundalindi syndrome" is just childish. I parse this for the lead: "Kundalini syndrome is [...] sometimes called the 'Kundalini-syndrome',[1][2][3][...] or simply referred to as a 'syndrome'[8][9]". Please somebody take an iron brush to this one and clean out all the rambling, cheap verbal posturing and editorializing. Bladesmulti, I seriously hope you aren't defending this disgrace of an article. If you feel tempted to, I can only point you to WP:GREENCHEESE. I have nothing against an article on the topic, if written candidly and matter of factly. But you will note that "transpersonal psychology" is itself within the "New Age" bracket, so no further argument is required to put a topic which is admittedly part of "transpersonal psychology" within the same context. The Moon is made of green cheese is a good page, exactly because it doesn't try to pretend to be about lunar physics, and because (I assume) nobody has made a great deal of asking for references that it is not about lunar physics. --dab (𒁳) 13:55, 9 January 2015 (UTC)
[] You suggested last year that this article did not meet the general notability requirements. After reading your thoughts, I aree. I have therefore proposed the article for deletion. This is a heads ups. Capitalismojo (talk) 19:15, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
The schoolmasterish tone of this edit summary is exquisite. (Season's greetings, dab, hope all is well!) rudra (talk) 15:51, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
Hi there. Just wanting to follow up why you moved 'Dreaming (spirituality)' to 'Dreaming (Australian Aboriginal art)'? I can't find an explanation or discussion on the article talk page. hamiltonstone (talk) 11:02, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
Because I read the article's content? It is about a term for designs in Australian Aboriginal art. It is not about the concept of "Dreaming" in the field of "spirituality". Nor is it a discussion of "Dreaming" in the context of Aboriginal mythology, there is a (very poor) article called Dreamtime on that, but the main page for the topic is at Australian Aboriginal mythology.
In my opinion it is useless to keep page titles based on what the article "could" be about, as opposed to whatever content we actually do have on the page. If there is no content, or no referenced content, or if the content is too poor to be useful in any way, the solution is merge-delete, but in this instance, there did appear to be some actual information pertinent to Contemporary Indigenous Australian art, specifically to the Papunya Tula collective built in the 1970s. But now I am just reading the article back to you, I don't see why it should be easier for you to read this information on my talkpage phrased for you privately than in the article itself. --dab (𒁳) 11:14, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
Please read this notification carefully:
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Woodroar (talk) 15:09, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
Why am I being templated for leaving a comment about the lead section on an article talkpage? I didn't even touch the article. This must be one of the most toxic pages on Wikipedia ever. I am also not an idiot and did see the bunch of giant templates screaming "sanctions" right on the talkpage I edited. For the record, as long as I never even edited the page I would include myself in the class of "uninvolved administrators" mentioned. --dab (𒁳) 16:03, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
Just letting you know I've proposed a motion at that does somewhat relate to you. Nothing needed on your part, just a heads up. Courcelles 12:14, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Saraswati (goddess). Since you had some involvement with the Saraswati (goddess) redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. Redtigerxyz Talk 19:17, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
for your post to my talk page. Being an Arb has led me to cut down heavily on my watch list, but I'm still a bit active as an editor. Dougweller (talk) 14:45, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Fringe_theories/Noticeboard#Restatement.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 02:41, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
sigh, can it be that BJP has won another election? The "Aryans" always become much more "indigenous" after this happens. --dab (𒁳) 14:38, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
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