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Re: Arora - Need Your Help

Hi fellow editor, I have been trying to tidy up article Arora, but have been prevented from doing so from by an editor, and what I suspect is Sockpuppet. I have no intention of getting into an edit war there. I have been through the references added by another editor there and they seem to be typical google search type references. Some are deadlinks. As you can see from the edit history, some abusive messages have been directed at me. I was wondering if you could lend your expertise to this article. Thanks --Sikh-History 09:23, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

it's caste-cruft, sorry, I can swat the socks for you but I won't touch the content with a ten-foot pole if I don't have to. --dab (𒁳) 10:15, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

I think if we can actually cut through the gibberish, it may actually make a very good encyclopedic page. Like the Jat people one, people seem to use these pages as an opportunity to "big" themselves up. Shame you can't help. Know any other person who may? Thanks--Sikh-History 14:40, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

well, I did try to help, in giving constructive advice at User talk:Dhruvekhera. Also, there are a few good people who have become aware of our caste-cruft problem at WP:INB (where you should post such requests). But their focus should not be fighting yet another uphill battle to fix a single article on a single clan, the problem is endemic, and efforts should be made to fix it at a higher level. --dab (𒁳) 17:03, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Indeed, people get so fixated on caste they forget the purpose and achievements of certain clans. A good example are Julaha, considered to be Sudra, yet for Martial spirit and fighting ability out rival any Kshatriya or Rajput clan. Thanks --Sikh-History 18:31, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

these are just family historians, or fundamentally egotists. They only ever write about their own clan, and try to make it as glorious as they can. Clearly an ego problem, if you ask me. These people should all be forced to write articles about other clans than their own. --dab (𒁳) 19:30, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

This is utter nonsense I have added numerous Citations !!!! what caste system? what I am writing is Facts !!! historical FACTS that you blindly delete for no reason !!!! without adding any input of your own and you say your "tiding up the page" what did he tidy up exactly besides blindly deleting my citated edits!!!! dabPlease review the Arora page and see what exactly has User:Sikh-history contributed to the article! absolutely nothing! and he keeps on deleting my edits after I put so much hard work inn....I know I am new at this but he can't outright delete my edits without talking about them on the talk page! the user User:Sikh-history is a Jatt so he is going after all orthodox hindu groups likeKhatri,Lohana and Arora and blindly critiziing them(look at his previous contributions)..shows that he is the one with the caste problem!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dhruvekhera (talk • contribs) 16:47, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

I criticized your contributions because you didn't cite your references properly, and such references as you had were not scholarly ethnographic literature. I ask you again to read and then honour WP:RS. 'Sikh-history' is within his rights to revert your contributions if they aren't of an acceptable standard. First you make sure that your contributions are of satisfactory quality, then you can complain if people revert them (which they probably won't, since they revert you because your contributions aren't satisfactory, not because there is an anti-Hindu conspiracy or something). --dab (𒁳) 18:14, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

I will look into the WP:RS and try and get better citations!Thx for the warning dab. Dhruvekhera (talk) 20:18, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

"the user User:Sikh-history is a Jatt so he is going after all orthodox hindu groups likeKhatri,Lohana and Arora"? Please WP:Assume Good Faith and do not bring village prejudices to Wikipedia. Thanks --Sikh-History 11:28, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

You brought up the caste issue not me ! "Indeed, people get so fixated on caste they forget the purpose and achievements of certain clans. A good example are Julaha, considered to be Sudra, yet for Martial spirit and fighting ability out rival any Kshatriya or Rajput clan" ! and you have been editing in lohana, khatri and arora pages trying to ruin them nothing else by saying the citations are false etc without proving any input of your own once so ever! I had to go correct everything and am trying to find more suitable citations for some of them.It would be nice if you helped.Dhruvekhera (talk) 13:50, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Dhruvekhera, I think we are still waiting for your first useful edit. Until then, please, less politics, more encyclopedic efforts. --dab (𒁳) 16:46, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Please stop this. It has been shown you made some quite derogatory remarks about me here under you IP which I reported here. I say again, please stop this behaviour. Thanks --Sikh-History 16:51, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Muley Jat

Hi Fellow Editor, could you cast you eye over the article Muley Jat. I think you may have considerable knowledge about this. I am still not sure whether it is a hoax article or not. Thanks --Sikh-History 11:15, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Odd edits on articles by user Sikh-history

Main page: WP:INB

Hi Dbachmann
User named Sikh-history is misusing his admin status to provide misleading edits , references and deletions of valid content .
Please see this example , I could explicitly provide several more instances in other articles .

• Kutha Meat .

I have also left a note on his talk page.
Intothefire (talk) 18:45, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

See the Talk page on Kutha meat. This is a blatant example of WP:LAWYER by Intothefire. By all means check the reference, but to make accusation such as provide misleading edits is also not WP:AGF. You have been warned twice about WP:AGF. I suggest you read it. Thanks --Sikh-History 08:48, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

thanks guys, but I cannot single-handedly fix Wikipedia's India-related articles. This is the sort of thing WP:INB was intended for. --dab (𒁳) 09:19, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Where to start when studying historical linguistics?

Hello! I've stumbled upon some of your wiki entries, and while I'm now intrigued by PIE, I've found most material on it difficult to follow. As a hobbyist, I'd be honored if you could give me a few pointers. The sheer immensity of the subject matter (I have literally hundreds of ebooks) is overwhelming, and despite my interest in language structure I find it difficult to "learn" grammars in traditional ways. Although I've been studying Latin for 4 years, the book "New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin" by Andrew Sihler, for instance, took me about four months to get through (even though I completely ignored the Greek parts), let alone retain it long enough to be of any use in etymologizing and sound changing. It was extremely frustrating and tedious, but this is probably because my linguistic foundations could be summarized into tabula rasa. That's why I'd like to start over.

How would you approach Indo-European if you had to start over, considering shortcuts you could've taken and dead-ends you've encountered along the path? How would/do you approach memorization? Rote? Spaced repetition? Lots of practice? :) I'm mainly interested in etymologies, sound laws, proto-languages etc. Thanks. :) Manuel Reyes (talk) 15:39, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

That's a tough one. The classical approach is for you to become reasobnably proficient in two or more philologies, traditionally Greek and Sanskrit.

So my advice would probably be to begin by chewing through a Sanskrit grammar, perhaps Macdonell's "Vedic grammar for students", that served me well. After that, you will be well equipped to plunge into the Indo-Europeanist works directly, because you will find that PIE is practically Greek and Sanskrit grammar mixed together. But you could also try an introduction to PIE directly. There is apparently an "Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World" by Mallory and Adams (the authors of EIEC), I am sure that you would also be in good hands there although perhaps there would be too much 'world' and not enough 'language' for your interests.

As for memorization, fortunately we have computers these days. I used to have a good memory, but then I tried to cram so much knowledge into it that now sometimes I feel there is basically nothing there on demand and I have to look up absolutely everything. Fortunately if you keep enough reference works on your harddisk, it doesn't take longer to look things up than it would to remember them :) --dab (𒁳) 18:39, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! :) Manuel Reyes (talk) 17:57, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Nomination of Ultimate Reality for deletion

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ultimate Reality (2nd nomination) Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 22:03, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Nice one

Hello dab, I must admit that your edit to the Early Life of the MMY article is a definite improvement--much cleaner, and the main points preserved. Early morning person (talk) 01:51, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

thank you :) --dab (𒁳) 09:22, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Nomination of HEMA (Hookers, Escorts and Masseurs Association) for deletion

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/HEMA (Hookers, Escorts and Masseurs Association) (talk) 04:24, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

problems at Jona Lendering and Cyrus cylinder

Any idea who the IP accusing Lendering of racism is? I've raised the issue at WP:BLPN. Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 10:45, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Hey, Doug, I do not believe that you accurately reading the discussions occurring on the Lendering and Cyrus Cylinder pages and that you are making blanket accusations about my edits. The majority of your edits and undo have been lazy and sweeping with real consideration for the numerous sources that I provided. Please see the discussion pages on both the Cyrus Cylinder and Lendering pages again before your proceed. Moreover, what is to stop me from returning your accusations of sock puppetry (and the like) and to assume that you and Konstock "building consensus?" Please edit with caution. 75.82.13.51 (talk) 11:00, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

75.82, indulging in idle pov-pushing on the Cyrus Cylinder or "ancient Iran" in general firmly places you in the "Greater Iranian Patriotic Troll Cloud" immediately and makes your edits eligible for rollback, and your account eligible for the warn-block cycle, without any need for further discussion. --dab (𒁳) 11:07, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

I happened to this quite by accident. I don't know anything about this issue. However I can tell you that Jona Lendering, whom I know by email slightly, has problems with being attacked by Iranian nationalists. I've had vitriolic attacks on him posted at my own blog, so there is some real hate there (although why I don't know, and I don't get involved). I don't know if this helps, but that much I know from personal experience. Roger Pearse (talk) 22:56, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

yes, our Iranian nationalists are a pain in the nether regions. They for all in the world remind you of European nationalists in the years leading up to 1914. We know how that turned out. Except that the Iranian chauvinists of today are allowed to tinker with Uranium. I think the 21st century has not heard the last from that corner of the world. On the bright side, if this comparison holds good, this would mean that they are now lagging behind the history of civilization by only a single century, and if they keep speeding up like that maybe they will get away with only a few years of total war with single-digit megadeaths before they manage to join the present. --dab (𒁳) 09:53, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

(Butting in) I don't think most of our Persian chauvinist friends are that enamoured of the Islamic Republic and a lot of them are ex-pats, maybe the children of those who fled the 1979 revolution. They certainly seem keener on the late shah than on Khomeini. The Cyrus cylinder was a big element in Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi's propaganda, whereas his celebration of the 2500th anniversary of the Persian Empire was one of the events that outraged Islamists and led to his downfall. Wikipedia's Iranian ethno-warriors often have an anti-Arab streak which is not the kind of thing Tehran can afford to indulge in given the ethnicity of its Shi'ite allies in Hezbollah and, indeed, the founder of its faith. --Folantin (talk) 10:15, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

I know. But do you think Ahmadinejad is a religious soul? Islam has become an embarassment to the Iranian elite, just like Communism has become one to the Chinese elite. And, we might add, Democracy to the western elite. They are all in the same business, you just need to search-replace "Muslim"/"Communist"/"Democratic" in the respective rationales.

lol, I just noted the {{Indo-European}} template at Iranian nationalism. I didn't realize that article went completely unwatched. --dab (𒁳) 11:08, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

I admit I try to avoid investigating the way Ahmadinejad's mind works too closely in case his thought processes are contagious. But, yeah, contemporary Iran has been compared to Burma, especially after the last election. It's basically a dictatorship looking after its own vested interests. Iran's foreign policy is often cannier than you'd expect: it's aligned with Christian Armenia against Shi'ite Azerbaijan, for instance, and (I think) definitely prefers India to Pakistan.

But Ahmadinejad isn’t editing Wikipedia so he isn’t our problem (although it might be better if he was here spending hours and hours bickering over the nomenclature of the Shatt al-Arab and the Persian Gulf rather than playing at nuclear brinkmanship). Our bunch of POV-pushers generally hate his guts anyway. I’ve more or less given up editing articles on Iranian history. The thing is, why bother with Wikipedia when Encyclopedia Iranica is online? There you get pages written by experts who don’t bother to spend paragraphs and paragraphs analysing the exact ethnic composition of the Safavid dynasty. The only trouble is that Google ranks Wikipedia above the EI.

A lot of our bunch of POV-pushers seem to follow the line of an internet magazine called Rozaneh. Among their ideas is the belief that the USA is planning to divide Iran like Yugoslavia into its ethnic regions. They have a particular beef with Azeris. More Azeris live in Iran than in the Republic of Azerbaijan. In fact, some reckon they constitute up to 30% of the population of Iran. The Persian chauvinists are paranoid about any hint of Azeri separatism or “Greater Azerbaijan” sentiment (you can often spot the Persian chauvinists because they insist on spelling Iranian Azerbaijan as “Azarbaijan”). And , of course, we have their equally biased Azeri counterparts edit-warring. The fight between Iranians and Azeris on Wikipedia has close parallels with thr dispute between Greeks and Macedonians.--Folantin (talk) 12:18, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I just chanced onto to this discussion by following the contributions of a number of editors on the Iranian and most notably Cyrus Cylinder article. First, I find, especially DBachmann to be highly offensive. To me, it's a wonder to me how he can be considered legit. There seems to be, to my view, an equal number of "POV pushers" on both camps of the anti vs. pro Iranian sides. Second, Ahmadinejad seems to unrelated to the topic of Jona Lendering being a racist or not. Third, regarding Lendering, the topic, (I THINK), was whether to include a section on accusations of Lendering being a racist, not to decide whether his is or not (we should leave that to the reader). On the point, it seems that editors agree that there is n't enough material to support the notions that Lendering has been accused of racism (which is fine by me). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.182.24.239 (talk) 01:56, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

is there a reason you adress me in the third person on my own talkpage?

it isn't "anti-Iranian" to debunk nationalistic fantasy claims.

Having never met him, I have no idea whether Jona Lendering besides being a notable academic is also secretly a racist, but WP:BLP tells you that you will need excellent reason to include such a claim. --dab (𒁳) 06:24, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

DBachmann, the reason why you were addressed in third person is because I was addressing all the individuals (ie, you, folantin, weller) on the talk page). Why make an issue over something that is obvious and irrelevant?

Are you aware of your tone? Calling people chauvinists, trolls, is borderline if not officially a violation of talk page guidelines.

Lumping all the secular and religious movements in Iran as simply nationlistic, to me, shows a lack of understanding of the difference between Ahmadinejad and the Islamists, to the secularists, to the constitutional monarchists, to the pure monarchists, to the marxists, etc. Are you intentionally lumping them into one category? Are you implying that those who are editing the Lendering article, or the Cyrus article (I notice that there is an overlap), or general Iran articles altogether are all the same? Just want to make sure, because from my vantage point I think that you might be revealing your own bias and/or pov? With all respect I say this.

Also, what evidence do you have the Lendering is a noted academic? Out of curiosity. --130.182.26.0 (talk) 23:14, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

here is a suggestion: get an account and try to contribute constructively for some time before you begin throwing your weight around over questions of user conduct. Once you do get an account, stick to editing articles unrelated to your ethnic identity, so you get to see how it feels to have no stakes in a question, and how blatantly silly the editors pushing an agenda come across.

You are perfectly welcome to submit the Lendering article to WP:AFD. There is no need to spend time chatting on my talkpage if that is what you want to do. Whatever you do, just try to get something done that looks like an attempt to help writing an encyclopedia, ok? --dab (𒁳) 11:16, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Jewish control of the media (Antisemitic canard)

Hi Dbachmann, have you seen the newly created Jewish control of the media (Antisemitic canard) article? I was asked by CarolMooreDC of WP:IPCOLL to have a look myself, but I'm currently an involved admin attempting to administer discretionary sanctions in this topic area. Anyway, I'd be very grateful if you could look at the article. PhilKnight (talk) 16:40, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

As I wrote on PhilKnight's page, the issue is a oroblem with WP:Article titles WP:Content forking. The editors of formerly named Jewish control of the media are adamant about NOT admitting that WP:RS used in the article, as well as google book and web searches, show that "myth" and "conspiracy theory" are used to describe the concept far more that "canard," a word repeated almost every paragraph of the article! So today one of them changed the name to Jewish control of the media (Antisemitic canard). I don't want to go to the wrong place and be accused of forum shopping, and so advice on best noticeboard or whatever to go to to deal with this absurd behavior welcome. Thanks! CarolMooreDC (talk) 17:40, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Imo, there may be a problem with the article title, but not so much with content forking, as this is a straightforward WP:SS sub-article of Antisemitic_canard#Accusations_of_controlling_the_media. --dab (𒁳) 20:04, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Actually when originally writing that I interpreted them to be saying that if people wanted to mention myth or conspiracy, they should do that in a separate article, which would be the content fork. Now they are back stepping and saying, "no, canard is same thing as myth or conspiracy theory," which is not accurate and I doubt they'll find a WP:RS to say so. So it's starting to turn into a WP:BLP issue of libelously accusing living people of using an "antisemitic canard" when no source says they do that; and just POV interpretations calling things "canard" that the source calls myth or conspiracy theory. Not to mention, it's all a coatrack to use the article to call anyone who ever discusses Jews in the media an antisemite. And that is the same problem as the Antisemitic canard article.

They also keep saying that I should start an article called "Jewish influence in the media," which I don't particularly want to do. But of course such an article immediately would be shot down as an antisemitic canard, with these articles used as evidence. :-( CarolMooreDC (talk) 20:22, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

I am not sure I understand this. Of course there should not be two separate articles, one about the "canard" and one about "actual" Jewish control of the media such as it is. The topic is notable because it is an antisemitic "canard", not because some Jews happen to own media companies, or you could do any number of random articles on "X control of Y" (say, Italian control of the ice-cream industry). As for "canard", that's just an eccentric French word that happens to go with "antisemitic". It's the same as "conspiracy theory", or "myth" etc. in this context. --dab (𒁳) 06:19, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

1. I see "jewish control of media" as something that is not true, as opposed to influence, so I don't see that title as being as pernicious. Others obviously are more scared of the phrase.

2. "conspiracy theory" or "myth" are not necessarily "evil lies" like canard is. It's really WP:OR to say so. Review first paragraphs of that policy.

3. There are real BLP problems with accusing someone of engaging in a "canard" when the WP:RS used in the article only say they are perpetuating a myth or a conspiracy theory (not to mention merely mispeaking or being misrepresented). Let's face it, Spaceclerk clearly violated policy in reverting this properly referenced edit where Foxman and Goldberg are mentioned as using myth and conspiracy theory, claiming I (and evidently the WP:RS who had written similar things) were “obfuscating” the issue. So that shows how little these guys care about Wikipedia polidy.

4. False charges of "canard/lie" when WP:RS says myth/conspiracy theory/something else could be taken as a libel. (And saying same about a dead person is more like WP:OR and WP:POV.) If ONLY accusations that use canard (or lie) were in the article, I would not have a reason to put up a fuss, as I've said on the talk page. If they want to use accusations with myth, conspiracy theory or some other less canard-related descriptor, they need another more general name. Accusations of Jewish Control of the Media would be the most neutral and allow lots of stuff. That's been brought up before and I should suggest on the web page. CarolMooreDC (talk) 10:58, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

I am not sure I follow you. Of course nobody can force you to make a characterization of antisemitism as "evil". Many people will consider it "evil" or morally questionable, but it isn't Wikipedia's job to parade around verdicts of "good and evil". It is sufficient to say it's antisemitic.

look, you are within your rights to go on splitting hairs about the term "canard" vs. (sigh) "canard-related descriptors" on the article's talkpage, but I think it has become clear that I am not particularly interested in this discussion. A title of "Accusations of Jewish control of the media" would certainly be arguable, but I am not a big fan of "accusations of X" article titles. It is perfectly reasonable to discuss the best title for the article on talk, and examine WP:UCN in detail, but this should be done in good faith and in a spirit of collaboration, and I will be happy with whatever title comes up as the best solution. --dab (𒁳) 13:16, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

I know it can produce admin and even Arbitrator burnout/frustration dealing with these issues. But if we allow Wikipedia to become a forum for false/exaggerated and especially partisan accusations of antisemitism it will lose credibility. And mass media already is covering the organized recruitment of people who are first and foremost interested any issue even remotely related to Israel. See Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Israel_Palestine_Collaboration/Current_Article_Issues/Archive._Outside_organizing_of_editing. Such defacto meatpuppets can overwhelm sensitive articles. See these comments on a New York Times web page about a Times article on such Israel-based organizing. I do believe Wikipedia's credibility is on the line and it's important not to allow various POV policy violations to survive. CarolMooreDC (talk) 00:26, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

wait, you think that the fact that the article is called Jewish control of the media (Antisemitic canard) and not Accusations of Jewish control of the media is proof of a Zionist conspiracy, if not (gasp) of Jewish control of Wikipedia?

I am sorry, but I think you should get away from the monitor for a while, perhaps go skiing or something for the weekend.

I know that some Israelis are very fond of "playing the antisemitism card". This should be taken in account where it matters, e.g. 2006 Lebanon War, status of Jerusalem, Israeli settlement, etc., and not so much articles that are ostensibly about antisemitism. It cuts both ways:

1. the fact that antisemitism is real is no excuse for pushing around the Palestinians
2. the fact that the antisemitism card has been used as an excuse for pushing around the Palestinians doesn't mean that antisemitism isn't real

--dab (𒁳) 09:00, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Happy morning. No, I'm saying that major media (NYTimes, Haartz, etc.) covered organized efforts to send POV editors here does make one worry about meatpuppets - or at the very least new editors who are very hostile and disruptive. Are you familiar with Wikipedia:WikiProject Israel Palestine Collaboration? This is discussed on the Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Israel_Palestine_Collaboration/Current_Article_Issues page when such articles are published. There is an archive of such articles. Sorry if you were not familiar with the issue. Anyway, the good news is that the most hostile editor in the article has retired, which should calm things down and allow more consensus- oriented editing. Plus a couple more level headed NPOV editors are now aware of the article. And I do have other articles on other issues I'd rather be giving attention to. CarolMooreDC (talk) 09:15, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

um, of course we have Israeli pov-pushers. We also have Islamist pov-pushers. This is hardly news. Fortunately, they tend to cancel each other out. I have no idea why you insist on focussing on the pov-pushers on one side more than those on the other. I am aware of the existence of Wikipedia:WikiProject Israel Palestine Collaboration, but I hardly ever commented there so I am not really sure why we are having this discussion on my talkpage.

I support all efforts aimed at making life difficult for pov-pushers of any sort, including but not limited to Zionist pov-pushers. My personal involvement with this sort of thing has mostly been limited to people who childishly insisted on listing Jerusalem as "Jerusalem (Israel)" in articles completely unrelated to the Middle East conflict, and wouldn't hear anyone say that the status of Jerusalem is under dispute, basically because they thought the UN was an antisemitic conspiracy to begin with. This sort of approach is partisan nonsense in my book, and I am saying this to convince you that I am aware that Wikipedia among other things gets Zionist partisan nonsense, but I really do not have any close familiarity with this topical field on Wikipedia. --dab (𒁳) 09:42, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Final discussion

As someone how is (unfortunately for you :) well informed about WP:ARBMAC, and contemporary Kosovo status, you input will be highly needed at Talk:Kosovo#Kosovo article split. --WhiteWriter ^speaks 20:42, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

the OP?

I am thinking I must be missing something obvious. What is the OP you mention in your post?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:44, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

by OP I meant "original post". The thing about "everyone knows the Britons are Spaniards" and so on. --dab (𒁳) 20:46, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

LOL. Thanks. BTW I have a lot of these articles on watch now and I have seen less of these types of posts lately. I can write about things I enjoy more like Aristotle and Machiavelli. I think the field is settling a bit as it becomes more mature. It can hardly be any coincidence that at the same time we are finally seeing an end to the old situation where every new article in the mainstream conflicted with the last. Autosomal studies are going to be the thing of the future as far as talking about whole peoples. Y chromosomes will then hopefully also be treated more subtly. -Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:53, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

yes, thank god for progress, genetics at least seems to be one field where you can just hold your breath and wait for the situation to improve... --dab (𒁳) 21:07, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Paganism

Lorynote has been adding this as a see also to various matriarchy related articles, but I don't think it's appropriate - comments? Dougweller (talk) 19:57, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

pf, he or she will grow tired of this game. As long as they're just adding see alsos, I'm not going to bother throwing the book at them, there are more urgent concerns. Of course you are free to revert as you see fit, WP:BRD applies. L was bold, then reverted, and now needs to do some consensus building. --dab (𒁳) 20:12, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Immigration and crime

Hi Dbachmann, my beef ("racist filth") was that the paragraph I removed presumed that there were indeed such high rates of crime among immigrants, which I am entirely unconvinced of. It is entirely possibly and indeed likely that the perception of such high crime rates was responsible in part for the success of "populist" movements and politicians, but that's not the same thing. Your addition to the text, at least from a quick look at it, looks balanced and very acceptable to me. Thanks, Drmies (talk) 15:49, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

You are right, there are the facts, and then there is the perception and interpretation of the facts. It is a greatly underappreciated fact of politics that the facts themselves are irrelevant as long as there is nobody to perceive them. --dab (𒁳) 11:12, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Scottish people

A bit of advice needed... the article Scottish people is getting a lot of attention from IP editors placing POV material into the lead. Requests to take it to discussion are fruitless, and the main culprit is on a roving IP, so warnings are difficult to use. Is there a case for article protection? Catfish Jim & the soapdish 10:39, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Men and rape

I restored this redirect as legitimate, whatever the dispute. Bearian (talk) 19:51, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

of course it's legitimate, and extremely straightforwardly so, that's the entire point. --dab (𒁳) 08:36, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Ibiranu

Besides being unsourced, and the fact that although those dates can be sourced others are uncertain about the dates and other issues... what else is wrong? Dougweller (talk) 09:44, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

what is wrong is that Wikipedia articles are supposed to be about topics that have a potential to become a full article. Canaanite onomastics are such a topic, but not individual items in a list of known Canaanite names. These all need to be redirected to a single topic about Canaanite epigraphy, or Canaanite names, or something of the kind. --dab (𒁳) 10:47, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

In fact, the real article is probably Canaanite languages. This does have potential, but has just been a list of articles (most of them in turn poor). This article can be expanded to a full scholarly account, including sub-topics such as "Corpus", "Onomastics", and what have you.

Ibiranu is a special case: the actual topic of this article is the Letter from Prince Piha-walwi of Hatti to Ibiranu of Ugarit, one of the Hittite diplomatic letters. The letter itself could become an article, but failing that, the topic is Hittite diplomatic texts [1], and failing that, Hittite texts. The problem with the legions of naive Wikipedia articles is that they go around creating articles on individual names found in individual texts of the Hittite corpus, but it would never occur to them to work on the actual encyclopedic topic their term pertains to. --dab (𒁳) 10:53, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

looking into this some more, the real problem article is Canaan. Our priority should be to fix that one. All articles on Canaan that are part of the problem rather than the solution should be ruthlessly merge-redirected to the main Canaan article until that begins to get into recognizable shape. --dab (𒁳) 11:33, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

WikiProject Dacia

Hi, I saw that you collaborated on articles related to Dacia and thought this could be of interest: WikiProject Dacia is looking for supporters, editors and collaborators for creating and better organizing information in articles related to Dacia and the history of Daco-Getae. If interested, PLEASE provide your support on the proposal page. Thanks!!--Codrinb (talk) 03:24, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Mikesv1 and Assyrian Neo-Aramaic

I assume you're keeping an eye on this guy and his agenda. Thanks. --Taivo (talk) 03:02, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Shirk (Islam)

Hi D,
In the Shirk (Islam) article, there is a small couple of isolated words, "Shirk Al koboor" which I discovered to have been left by yourself on 11th Nov 2010 (assuming I'm reading the page history correctly). Did you intend to expand on the meaning of this term?
Kind regards Daniel De Mol (talk) 11:11, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

You are not reading the edit history correctly, I have nothing to do with this. My edit was a simple revert. This is the edit you want, it's just graffiti. --dab (𒁳) 14:54, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks :) Daniel De Mol (talk) 20:06, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

discussion notice: smallcaps and LORD

I have started a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (capital letters)#smallcaps and LORD.--Kevinkor2 (talk) 12:25, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Islam related articles

If you want then we shall stop editing and reverting and resort to consensus through discussion on talk page by putting a halt on edits for sometime?? - Humaliwalay (talk) 14:05, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

That would be a good idea, as long as you understand that you can only have a discussion towards consensus if you can present a point of view that is based on literature. Please do a literature search. As long as the only thing you have is an url, there cannot be any discussion. --dab (𒁳) 14:57, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Dab, can you please have a look at this disruptive revert made by Aquib american muslim (talk · contribs) in which he/she deleted around 6 or 7 major academic sources from the article as well as all my neutral and constructive edits. I properly organized and corrected some of the content in line with the given sources in the Pillars section, and fixed some other minor things. If you find my latest edits in the Islam article as good or appropriate can you then please revert back to my version. Thanks.--AllahLovesYou (talk) 02:18, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Ok, we shall proceed further with a discussion, I am on wiki break tomorrow and probably will resume day after. So I may be, out of discussion for 2 days. - Humaliwalay (talk) 04:52, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Gael / Gallia

You can't say easily "no!" my source says: Gael: 1810, from Scottish Gaelic Gaidheal "member of the Gaelic race," corresponding to O.Ir. Goidhel (cf. L. Gallus). Böri (talk) 09:27, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

ah, I see you are making a point (cf. Pteranodon).

Seriously. You got a patient and comprehensive explanation by Cagwinn (talk · contribs), and you still think it's ok to waste people's time over it because etymonline.com told you to "cf. L. Gallus"? You must be doing something wrong. --dab (𒁳) 11:16, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Re: Jat people

Hi Fellow editor, will you take a look, there are some people determined to re-add back what you have deleted. Thanks --Sikh-History 08:43, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Protection of Egyptians

This has been protected since September 2008, is it worth giving unprotection a try? -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 00:05, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Hi Dbachmann, I unprotected this article after it was requested at RFPP. Feel free to reverse my action if you feel it is necessary. Cheers, Dabomb87 (talk) 17:40, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Gael > Guoidel/Gwyddel

Firstly, I think OR would only really apply in this case if I were arguing that my point should be included in the article, not as part of what I see as a flaw in the logic/completeness of the information as presented.

I may very well be misguided, but to me, when a group takes on a borrowed word as their term for themselves in their own language, and then further apply that word to the language itself, and to anything related to their self-identity as speakers of that language, they are borrowing an identity, since the only reason to so is because the concept of themselves as a separate distinct group is a new one - otherwise the terms would already exist.

In the context of the information, as currently presented in the articles, the timelines for the borrowing (after several centuries of outside contact) and its spread (extremely late in the settlement) to all 'gaelic'-speakers don't make sense, unless there is something missing. If that is the case, then that something should be included somewhere in the articles. Thus far, nobody seems to be willing or able to provide the missing piece - or even discuss it, for that matter.

I'm not trying to make trouble here, but as I stated elsewhere earlier, if the information in an encyclopedia article can lead to confusion, then there's still some work to do. Gabhala (talk) 11:50, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the examples - at first glance, though, they don't seem to replicate the scenario proposed by Koch et al. for the origins of Gael (it's not the borrowing of an exonym in itself that I find strange, but rather the apparent subsequent application to all terms relating to their ethnicity)- but I'm going to read a bit deeper. In fact, I'm going to take a day or two to gather my thoughts (and chose my phrasing) regarding the apparent gaps I can see in the Welsh origin theory for 'Gael', and re-start the discussion at Names of the Celts, as per your suggestion. Perhaps a more careful phrasing can avoid repeating the misunderstandings of the last few days. Gabhala (talk) 20:15, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Mexica

You might want to look at the talk page of Penelope37 (talk · contribs). Fortunately she's gone away at least for a while. Dougweller (talk) 12:19, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

User:Eleassar and mass tagging

click to see the usual round of "I am ignoring the issue but will hound you for WP:CIVIL/WP:AGF instead"
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Please be aware that there is a template called {{inuse}} to mark the article if you're still editing it. As for the project tags, the users have generally been adding them to the talk page not removing, so please get a consensus before you remove them. These templates do no harm and allow more users to have the page on their watchlist (without ever adding it) - among other things. --Eleassar my talk 10:05, 19 December 2010 (UTC) "f you are reverted, the burden is on you to seek consensus for the change." No, the burden is in the first place on the one who reverts to provide a decent argument for the change (see WP:REVEXP). "If I see somebody mass-adding national tags to talkpages, I take this as an instance of a patriotic pissing contest, and I will mass-revert the mass-addition. This isn't what these tags are for." WP:AGF. I'll just say that the point is the history and archeology of Slovenia are dealing a lot with the Hallstatt culture and there is no patriotic contest but only the place that the Hallstatt culture has in the Slovenian humanistics and in Slovenian culture in general. This is mine argument for inclusion of the template. I don't know why I should care about other WikiProjects, I'm a member of the WikiProject Slovenia so the template I've been adding is of the WikiProject Slovenia. On the other site, what about the WikiProject Archaeology pissing contest? How can you be so sure the Hallstatt culture article is so much more in the scope of the WikiProject Archaeology than the WikiProject Slovenia? Please provide a decent argument before removing content as otherwise this very much resembles vandalism and you have to provide an argument for the deletion of the content. --Eleassar my talk 10:22, 19 December 2010 (UTC) I am assuming you are editing in good faith, I am just pointing out that you are doing a poor job at it. If you are so much into Slovenian archaeology, the proper thing to do for you would be create an archaeology of Slovenia article and focus on that. If the Hallstatt culture plays a role in "Slovenian humanistics and Slovenian culture", you are welcome to add a referenced discussion to that effect to the Slovenian culture article. You don't catch me adding the WikiProject Archaeology to articles that aren't ostensibly about archaeology, so there. If I catch you adding your Slovenia template to any more articles that aren't ostensibly about Solvenia, I will just roll back your edits since I take it you are not interested in constructive debate. WikiProject Solvenia is for improving Slovenia related articles. As it stands, culture of Slovenia is a pathetic stub. There is no Prehistoric Slovenia article, and no archaeology of Slovenia article. If you are here to edit in good faith, I suggest you have plenty to get busy about instead of wasting time arguing about your precious project template. Let's see you write some decent articles about Slovenia now, and my respect for your work and your wikikudos will improve momentarily. --dab (𒁳) 10:27, 19 December 2010 (UTC) What I'm currently into doing is to tag all the articles related to Slovenia so that I may watchlist them using the WikiProject watchlist at the Tools server and correct and improve them over time. As to your warning about reverting me, don't try to escalate things. At first you're saying you're assuming good faith, then you say you take I'm not interested in constructive debate. If you will revert me unnecessarily, I'll have to resort to all the necessary Dispute resolution processes that will seem fit to me. If you're so concerned about whether the content belongs to the WikiProject Slovenia scope, feel free to ask this at its talk page. My work is available in my contributions and you'll see that I've written numerous decent articles about Slovenia till now. --Eleassar my talk 10:37, 19 December 2010 (UTC) for crying out loud, just watchlist the article if you want to watchlist it. There is no need to spam talkpages with templates just because you want to watchlist them. Are you interested in constructive debate? Then reply to the points raised. If you are really going to "escalate" this WP:LAME "dispute", I will of course no longer feel obliged to assume good faith on your part. Go back to editing articles about Slovenia and I will respect you as an editor. Continue this patriotic pissing contest and you will only waste my time and yours. --dab (𒁳) 10:48, 19 December 2010 (UTC) I don't want to overburden my personal watchlist and I want to have the list available for other members of the wikiproject too. I've replied to all your points. I don't need your respect and have plenty of time available to settle this issue. --Eleassar my talk 10:53, 19 December 2010 (UTC) very well, I see you have "good faith", you fail to assume it in others. It will be better for us not to waste time arguing. When I see you edit-warring, I will revert you. You will run into 3RR and it will stop there. I don't think it will be fruitful for us to interact beyond this. --dab (𒁳) 11:00, 19 December 2010 (UTC) There are more intelligent ways to solve problems than edit-warring. I've asked for the opinion of other editors. --Eleassar my talk 11:14, 19 December 2010 (UTC) Wikiquette Alert notice Hello, Dbachmann. This message is being sent to inform you that there currently is a discussion at Wikipedia:Wikiquette alerts regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. --Eleassar my talk 10:15, 20 December 2010 (UTC) Please, be aware that per WP:TPO you should never edit someone's comments, even on your own talk page. I think you changed the connotation of my comment by replacing it with the {{WQA-notice}} template.[2] --Eleassar my talk 10:58, 20 December 2010 (UTC) asked user to either grow up or stay off my talkpage here. --dab (𒁳) 11:12, 20 December 2010 (UTC) As you've asked me to stay off your talk page, I'll do so. A reply to your comments has been posted at my talk page. --Eleassar my talk 11:31, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Indigenous Aryans

Hi dbachmann,

I'm changing 'pseudoscience' as the title because the content is NOT pseudoscience, it's actually just a variety of views and historical support for the theory. Witzel and bergunder just cite historical books and facts that support the theory being true. These are NOT pseudoscience. Incognito222 (talk) 16:44, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Apparently someone added nanda portions to support the content being pseudoscience, I ask permission to split the categories into two then, to show which is pseudoscience and which is support. Thanks dbachmann.Incognito222 (talk) 16:44, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

what are you talking about? The section ostensibly discusses how the idea arose as a result of pseudoscientific ideas in postmodernism during the 1980s. If you understood that "Witzel and bergunder just cite historical books and facts that support the theory being true" perhaps you should read this again. You should not repeatedly revert an article if you do not understand what is being said in the first place. Nobody thinks that this is a "theory" that can be considered "true" in any meaningful way. It's a political ideology that became notable in the 1990s, and we cite literature discussing how this could happen.--dab (𒁳) 17:05, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Dbach, indegenous aryans isn't a political ideology anymore, that's what is was regarded as in 1980's when there was no genetic testing and the British historians made up history without any solid proof. According to most modern genetic studies, Indians show no significant divides from each other and this weakens the now mythical "aryan invasion theory". In addition, the linguistic lines between the north indians and south indians have relations. And on top of all this, historical pieces such the Vedas or pieces around the Vedas make zero mention of an sort of invasion from the north; this is very peculiar considering that all major wars and invasions are documented in the vedas themselves (battle of ten kings and what not). All of this amounts to making indegenous aryans the viable theory now. Further evidence will strengthen indegenous aryans if the theory is true, or it'll lead to entirely differently theory.Incognito222 (talk) 12:15, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

It's nice that you are interested in the topic, but you have a lot of reading ahead of you. Also note the spelling indigenous. indigenous Aryans isn't a "theory", let alone a viable one, it is a political ideology pushed in the Republic of India by the religious right (Hindutva). Of course these ideologists will always pick scholarly findings to make their propaganda appear "scientific", hence the classification as pseudoscience. This is all very old and has been discussed numerous times. Please begin by reading the Indigenous Aryans article, then the Indo-Aryan migration one, and if you are still interested go on to read the talk archives, and perhaps the Voice of India, N. S. Rajaram, Purushottam Nagesh Oak, Subhash Kak and related articles to get an idea of the group of ideologues pushing this thing during the BJP rule in India. Until you have read and understood this material, you have nothing to contribute because you simply parrot stuff you read somewhere on the internet. --dab (𒁳) 12:29, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Kurdish people

Can you look at the recent massive edit wars for the intro of Kurdish people. One side is claiming that Kurds are "indigineous people" (which I do not know what it means because everyone in the world is an immigrant at some point). Also what needs to be used is mainstream scholarly sources [3]. Thanks--Khodabandeh14 (talk) 14:43, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Cyrus versus Augustus, Ashoka versus Qin Shi Huangdi

I just remembered something which shows an interesting parallel re our discussion about Cyrus and Augustus. Here's John Keay in his recent History of China contrasting the press two other ancient rulers, Qin Shi Huangdi and Ashoka, have received: "History's verdict on the two emperors could not be more different. Ashoka is revered as a benevolent reformer who renounced violence, championed monasticism, proclaimed a universal dharma and dispatched evangelists instead of armies. By contrast, Qin Shi Huangdi is seen as the worst of tyrants, an 'oriental despot' at the helm of a totalitarian state, by nature violent, superstitious and prone to megalomania. Yet his inscriptions claim that he too 'brought peace to the world', 'implemented good government', 'showed compassion to the black-headed people' and 'worked tirelessly for the common good', not to mention decommissioning weapons and administering justice without favour or remorse. They in fact contain sentiments from which Ashoka would not have shrunk plus phrases which in translation seem to mimic those of the Maurya. But because so little is known of Ashoka beyond what is contained in his inscriptions, he is usually taken at his own evaluation. The First Emperor, because so much is known of him from other sources, is not." --Folantin (talk) 13:26, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

This is interesting. Of course, the verdict on Ashoka is influenced by his role in the rise of Buddhism, and Buddhism itself also has very good press in the West. It would certainly make sense to apply some skepticism to such things. --dab (𒁳) 17:08, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

as an afterthought, there is good reason to treat Ashoka as a special case. After all, the Ashoka edicts actually apologize for past atrocities committed by Ashoka before his conversion to Buddhism. You don't find many Persian or Chinese emperors who left public admissions of guilt and feelings of remorse over past crimes in their inscriptions.

Beloved-of-the-Gods, King Piyadasi, conquered the Kalingas eight years after his coronation. One hundred and fifty thousand were deported, one hundred thousand were killed and many more died (from other causes). After the Kalingas had been conquered, Beloved-of-the-Gods came to feel a strong inclination towards the Dhamma, a love for the Dhamma and for instruction in Dhamma. Now Beloved-of-the-Gods feels deep remorse for having conquered the Kalingas.

even if this is propaganda, it is propaganda of an entirely different kind than the propaganda of Persia or China or Rome, where the emperor are always superhuman godlike figures of infinite power and wisdom. --dab (𒁳) 12:18, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I suppose the point Keay is making is that Qin Shi Huangdi would probably come over a lot better had a lot of the historical record been destroyed and only his inscriptions survived. Actually, the Chinese government has been trying to rehabilitate him. You can see this in such films as Zhang Yimou's Hero where the message is that the First Emperor may have been a ruthless tyrant but he did what he did to create a strong, peaceful China, just as the CCP's withholding of human rights is excused in the name of Chinese unity and stability. --Folantin (talk) 17:35, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Hello again

I hope all is and has been well Dbachmann. I was hoping for a once over to the article Henosis. I had ALLOT of data to compress and I apologize. I was hoping someone else might take a look over it and contribute to it as I am but one editor and I really don't want the article so heno or mono. Thanks LoveMonkey (talk) 16:06, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

well done, finally a {{main}} article for "The One". We should probably merge Monad (Greek philosophy) into it, too. --dab (𒁳) 16:14, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

OK alls good (I guess) as long as the word Henosis remains a redirect. However Henosis is the term used by the Neoplatonic in their works so I thought a stand alone article was due. Oh well. I see your logic though and I agree. LoveMonkey (talk) 13:11, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

actually my suggestion was to keep the Henosis article and merge the "Monad" one into it. --dab (𒁳) 13:30, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Even better! LoveMonkey (talk) 14:49, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Kurdish people

Please be active in the talkpage and introduction... I know we cannot clone you. Right now in the main article the word indigenous is there which makes no sense. On the talkpage there is talk about Kurds being existent in the Sumerian times! We need you active until the introduction is resolved. --Khodabandeh14 (talk) 14:18, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Dear Dbachmann, why are you removing the Iranic ethno-linguistic classification from Kurdish people's lead? All Wikipedia article on ethnic groups start with " _____ are an _____ ethno-linguistic group". Every single of them. I don't see why we have to make an exception in this case, in order to accommodate a disgruntled WP:SPA, using WP:IDONTLIKEIT arguments. Kurdo777 (talk) 14:45, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

@Dab, thanks for your involvement. The reason I collect lots of sources is because they are all the top experts in that area. For example Vladimir Minorsky or Wladimir Ivanov or Garnik Asatrian and James Russel. Unfortunately, in Wikipedia, that is the only way other people will agree. Anyhow, on any topic, one should do the most complete research. Also my statement about "division" was taken out of context by you. What I mean is that continuing political dominance since Safavid->Afsharid->Zand->Qajar era of Iranian Kurdistan, which is different than 20th century modern divisions which fixed the borders of Turkey, Iraq and Syria, and did actually "divide" Kurdistan. See Treaty of Sevres [[4]]. That is the cases are slightly different, while the boundaries of Turkey, Iraq and Syria were fixed recently (dividing Kurdistan which was promised by the Treaty of Sevres), the same does not apply to the Qajar empire which continued relative smoothly. So it has nothing to do with Islamic Republic of Iran or Achaemenids, and I am disappointed that you connected me with such a thought. Thanks--Khodabandeh14 (talk) 16:03, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

well, collecting sources is an important first step. But whatever you do keep them out of the lead section, it is extremely annoying to have lead sections that are just buried in dozens of footnotes. Collect them, then sort them, pick the best ones and cite those in the article body. Finally, have the lead section summarize the body. As a rule of thumb, if a point is completely undisputed, it is probably not necessary to tag it with more than five or six footnotes maximum. --dab (𒁳) 21:58, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

talkback

Hello, Dbachmann. You have new messages at GoetheFromm's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Another one.  GoetheFromm (talk) 19:06, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Daniel Streich

On 29 November 2010 you put a PROD on Daniel Streich, and after the necessary week I deleted it. (Your reason was "unnotable, the gist of the incident is now summarized at Minaret_controversy_in_Switzerland#Islamic_world".) The article has now been re-created. You may like to consider an AfD. JamesBWatson (talk) 18:44, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

Naresh Sonee

[ context:[5] ]

APPEAL TO YOU Reg: [BRAHMAN PUJAN] , [UNIVERSAL PRAYERS] . written by [Naresh Sonee] On wikipedia , These above two pages are far older than the present article [Brahman] References of above titles are also available on New York site - http://www.printsasia.com/BookDetails.aspx?Id=445813482 Meanwhile, Can your good selves in Wiki Indian Community re-create a precise pages on [Naresh Sonee] & his book [Brahmand Pujan] – [Brahmaand Pujan] . However, Sonee is the writer of this book [Brahmand Pujan] written in 1999 . registered with Government of India- HRRD. Details of the registration is provided here on http://brhmaandpujanbook.tripod.com/ . More than sufficient, news and reviews are there on http://brhmaandpujan-news-reviews.tripod.com/ Since 5-6 yrs, for one or the other reason pages of [Naresh Sonee] & [Brahmand Pujan] are faced by communal bias from outside India so these articles over and again get deleted here in Wikipedia for minor reasons. However, many hits of - Naresh Sonee reflects on google search engine also. So, I request Wiki Indian community to kindly come forward and generously help these two pages to grow, as I am fed up to fight my case alone here [left] and moved out long back. Meanwhile, such an important info/issue on ‘Indian literature’ which adds & spell ‘new meaning /dimension’ to Brahman -should it stay lost else ignored? Your community panel has to judge at last. Myself, will not be on Wikipedia, for the same i apologise, but- pls. help these two pages to get reinstalled, reap, sow and grow, if you too feel so, I appeal to do this munificent favour. Regards- Dralansun (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 05:34, 27 December 2010 (UTC).

Sper (Georgia) and Sper (Armenia)

Hello there, could you provide an explaiation for what reason you merged these articles with İspir? Sper (Georgia) and Sper (Armenia) were about old Georgian and Armenian principalities while the İspir is about current Turkish district. –BruTe ^Talk 08:56, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

they were about the history of the district you mean? Sorry, but they had no content. There is no reason to have three stubs with no content. Once there is an article, we can talk about it, but I find it pointless to discuss the merit of non-articles. --dab (𒁳) 10:17, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Kingdom of Armenia

Hello, I am user Safrastyan. I have some questions. Why have you reverted my edits. For example you have deleted Artashat, Vagharshapat, Dvin as capitals of Kingdom of Armenia, Tigranakert has been capital only for 20 years, you have deleted religions of Greater Armenia(Paganism, Hellenism, Christianity), You have deleted provinces of Greater Armenia with their areas and capitals, and the current map, I think isn't correct.Safrastyan--Safrastyan (talk) 11:03, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Protection of Germans

While protection seemed reasonable, indefinite semi-protection seems excessive to me. Any comments? -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 16:10, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Protection of Oera Linda Book

Indefinite semi-protection also seems excessive in this case, especially as there is no history of protection. Any comments? -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 16:12, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Wudangquan references

Just curious to know whether you actually read, "Fu Zhen Song's Dragon Bagua Zhang." You discuss it as if you have. I also wonder which other references you've actually read from the Wudangquan page (I have cited quite a few, with the Simon & Schuster book being especially reputable). Certainly you can read a number of the credible references which also happen to have web pages. I have an excellent collection of books and magazines on this subject, and have cited them very well. I also wonder what your expertise is on this subject, as you seem to "dabble" in so many different subjects across the entirety of WP-- you tenaciously ax-grind my WP work, even though these are the only subject areas in which I contribute. TommyKirchhoff (talk) 16:42, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

File permission problem with File:GoldenerBund 1586.jpg

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File permission problem with File:Gudis Argenteus.jpg

Thanks for uploading File:Gudis Argenteus.jpg. I noticed that while you provided a valid copyright licensing tag, there is no proof that the creator of the file agreed to license it under the given license.

If you created this media entirely yourself but have previously published it elsewhere (especially online), please either

• make a note permitting reuse under the CC-BY-SA or another acceptable free license (see this list) at the site of the original publication; or
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If you did not create it entirely yourself, please ask the person who created the file to take one of the two steps listed above, or if the owner of the file has already given their permission to you via email, please forward that email to permissions-enwikimedia.org.

If you believe the media meets the criteria at Wikipedia:Non-free content, use a tag such as {{non-free fair use in|article name}} or one of the other tags listed at Wikipedia:File copyright tags#Fair use, and add a rationale justifying the file's use on the article or articles where it is included. See Wikipedia:File copyright tags for the full list of copyright tags that you can use.

If you have uploaded other files, consider checking that you have provided evidence that their copyright owners have agreed to license their works under the tags you supplied, too. You can find a list of files you have created in your upload log. Files lacking evidence of permission may be deleted one week after they have been tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. Kelly ^hi! 09:52, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

WP:ANI

I imagine this block probably came as a bit of a horrible shock. I've unblocked both of you, per my comments at AN/I. Regards, Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 12:34, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

actually, not as a horrible shock, but as a useful opportunity to reflect on the state of the wiki and my role in it. I will consider this for a few more days to avoid rashness, but I am thinking of having myself de-adminned, as the flak I am getting just for being an admin stands in no proportion to the usefulness of the occasional page-move or vandal-slapping. I will also consider moving on to being more active on sister projects such as wiktionary and de-wiki instead of giving more of my time to difficult areas on en-wiki. This "God of Israel" thing is really an excellent test case, as it shows the capability of the admin community to deal with clashes of educated editors with the absolutely clueless editing out of pure ideology or religious sentiment. WP:Experts are scum has always been a problem here, but it is up to the admins to tip the balance in favour of those with a clue. If the admin community cannot perform this, these religious topics will turn out as useless trash.

This does not mean I simply class anyone who disagrees with me as an uneducated hack. I am perfectly able to distinguish informed disagreement from simple failure to grasp the issue. I have frequently accused Deacon of Pndapetzim of bias, yet I would never group him with the likes of Jheald, as he is clearly willing and able to read and discuss encyclopedic references. But the reality we are facing is that the religion topics are swarming with uneducated hacks. Not just the religionists, also the teenage atheists, both equally ideological and clueless. I used to be willing to spend time directing such deadlocks towards an encyclopedic outcome, and I have years of experience of how to do this, but right now I am seriously considering why I should think this is worth my time. --dab (𒁳) 12:56, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

No comment on this particular situation, but unfortunately what you describe is just the way of English wiki. Most admins and arbitrators are unsuited to encyclopedic activities, don't have enough expertise to see the problems such editors bring and in any case regard themselves as being above the drudgery of content editing and childishness of caring about accuracy. I have a feeling this is reinforced by the US thing, a natural suspicion in US culture towards intellectuals as the natural enemies of the truest authority, market democracy.[6] So you'll just need to give less attention to controversial/popular content or accept that you will be blocked quite regularly for your efforts. I myself stay away from popular articles for this very reason, and there are several other areas I now avoid because they have been overrun by cranks. That still leaves plenty of areas for me to contribute. There are plenty of areas for yourself too if you want to contribute without maximum hassle. I think you have done remarkably well so far, though I don't think you make your own efforts any easier with the way you talk to/about them. Regards, Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 17:16, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Please do stay around on en.wiki, dab. Itsmejudith (talk) 18:38, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

For your information, Deacon, I do both content and administrative work. I recently made a major overhaul of Sante Kimes, which was being edited by someone with a massive and obvious COI. There was eventually a need for some administrative action there and as I was involved I did what I was supposed to do and found another uninvolved admin to handle it. And dab, I won't be apologizing or scrubbing your block log either. I realize you probably don't think much of me at this point but all of this has been in the interest of getting you to see the forest through the trees. Move warring and edit warring are unacceptable from any user, let alone an experienced administrator. I realize religious articles are a hotbed of uninformed, pushy behavior but what you have been doing is not helping the situation. I'm not trying to run you off, but I do think you have lost your way a bit and need to get some perspective on these issues. Much of the remainder of what Deacon has said above is good advice. There are plenty of areas of Wikipedia that could use the attention of a highly experienced user such as yourself that are not full of angry POV pushers. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:55, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

You "think you have lost your way a bit and need to get some perspective on these issues"? And your way of doing that is slapping me with a block without prior warning? Are you out of your mind or something? Perhaps you should consider handing in your admin buttons. I may have moved a semi-protected article, but at least I don't go around blocking veteran editors for no good reason.

I have repeatedly asked you to step in and show how you propose to resolve the situation. I don't see you making any progress. This is probably because "hodbeds" such as this need experienced admins, with balls. As long as you do not have it in you to tackle this sort of situation, I will thank you for not stabbing those in the back who do. It is the angry POV pushers that make this difficult. Have a look at my contribution history, I do lots of edits to articles without these, it's not like I am somehow addicted to the angry mob attention.

There are two ways for you to redeem yourself. Either apologize to me, or else, if you are too proud for that, grow a pair of your own and step in and show how you would handle the situation. That's the vastly more difficult approach, as you would begin with reading up on the actual encyclopedic content involved, but it is also the approach that would benefit the project the most (if you are up to it).

Note that I do not insist on or even prefer an apology from you. I would much prefer seeing you actually fix the problem. I am not here to make friends, or to gain status, or to be respected. I am here to write encyclopedic articles, and I will prefer an unfriendly editor who gets things done over a friendly chap who just makes a mess of things any day. --dab (𒁳) 12:05, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Sigh. No, I haven't lost my mind, and my testicles are just fine. Just because I haven't chosen to become your pawn and join your "enforcement action" here doesn't mean I am incapable of acting in any such situation as you very nastily imply here. I blocked you for edit warring, which you did. You've been blocked for it before and we had already discussed the ill-advised nature of your actions in this area, so you were already more than adequately warned. Unfortunately you seem to be one of those users who has managed to make themselves immune to the rules and nothing short of an ArbCom case can stop you. And now you are making nasty personal attacks at me, so I will not be engaging in any further direct discussion with you. Please do resign your adminship, you have become truly lost and out of touch, despite what your apologists would have us believe. Goodbye. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:38, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

You know all about when to switch to less controversial content or to devote your time and brains to other channels. At the same time, the work you do here in controversial areas is multiple the value, because we sadly lack people (with or without tools) who have the tenacity, knowledge, imagination and sense of reality to handle all sorts of tendentious editing in these fields. I cannot really characterize this incident positively, but I don't think it's very relevant, à la longue. Just like previous incidents, including an arbcom case with an odd outcome, haven't proven to be very relevant. Just time-wasting. You are the best judge of how and where to invest your energy, but you'd leave a vacuum here. I echo Itsmejudith's request. If this all makes me an apologist, so be it. ---Sluzzelin talk 23:29, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

At the risk of being branded an "apologist", I agree, although I wouldn't blame you if took a long break from patrolling Wikipedia's no-go areas. Why not join the New Model Admin corps for a change? Then you can spend hours on end discussing minor points of process in a nice warm police station. Judging from the current ANI thread, this is predictably becoming more about hurt feelings and a quest for "personal validation" rather than improving the encyclopaedia. All the best. --Folantin (talk) 08:57, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Beeblebrox's "apologist" epithet just reveals that Beeble has zero understanding of dab's history of interactions. dab and I have had more than one run-in in the past. We have the vices of our virtues. dab's virtue is that he knows a lot of stuff; his vice is that he knows he does. Tant pis, get over it, stick around and learn something. That we need to retain an editor with expert knowledge of Sanskrit, historical linguistics, Proto-Indo-European, Indian history, European history, is bleedingly blindingly obvious to anyone who has heard of those topics. Itsmejudith (talk) 11:43, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

dab don't deprive the rest of us of your presence because you have fallen out with a few misguided souls. You have an ascorbic style with editors who don't come up to the mark on your specialist subjects, but surely that makes us all try harder to make Wikipedia better? It would be a sadder place if we were all one homogenous mass! Best regards whatever your decision. Wilfridselsey (talk) 12:09, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

ascorbic style? Acerbic, perhaps. Where will we be without Dieter to insist on standards of literacy and scholarship? Itsmejudith (talk) 12:15, 8 February 2011 (UTC) No ascorbic as in 'acid', but acerbic will work too, but if you think about it ascorbic works better!! Wilfridselsey (talk) 12:21, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

(An essential nutrient, and effective at neutralizing harmful reactive radicals. I'd say it's a good choice :-) ---Sluzzelin talk 17:26, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

My attempt at Word play was entirely in deference to, dab Wilfridselsey (talk) 18:06, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Understood. dab, you are officially declared antiscorbutic. Itsmejudith (talk) 18:57, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Kaveh Farrokh

Here we go again... See Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard#Kaveh Farrokh. --Crusio (talk) 13:50, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

your expertise

This is a pretty strange state of affairs, and since if I commented on it I'd piss off parties on both sides, let me just leave the message I came here to leave. When you come back, here's an article that could use some whipping into shape by someone with your experience and expertise. It's undergone recent expansion.Cynwolfe (talk) 00:48, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

In a similar vein, something strange has been happening at Nebra sky disk. If you get a moment when you get back, maybe have a look? Carcharoth (talk) 01:19, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Armenian conflict

I've been asked for advice on this, please see my talk page. I'll take a look at the two articles mentioned above. Dougweller (talk) 06:40, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

History of Africa

I've added some comments about your merge undo at Talk:North Africa during Antiquity. In short, you haven't actually undone the merge until you've removed the content from History of Africa. I fixed a huge duplicated content problem that you've just restored, basically. Please comment further at the North Africa during Antiquity talk page. D O N D E groovily Talk to me 19:09, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

I also haven't undone the merge because I didn't just restore the broken article, I wrote a new article based on the broken one. Fixing the History of Africa article is quite another job beyond my present scope of involvement. "Duplicated content" is putting it mildly. "History of Africa" would probably be better of by being cut down to a very short WP:SS pointer page to the relevant articles. --dab (𒁳) 20:07, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Do you remember, a while ago I completely rewrote History of Africa, and people thought it was a good effort. Since then others have further improved it. I hope it does remain as more than just a page of pointers. It is a pretty essential topic for an encyclopedia. I know it will continue to attract vandals and POV pushers. Welcome back BTW. Itsmejudith (talk) 21:01, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

yes, sorry, I did not look at or edit history of Africa. I am sure it is in good hands. But I do not think there can be a meaningful "history of Africa" (as opposed to History of North Africa) article along the lines of ancient-medieval-modern. There was neither an ancient nor a medieval period in most of Sub-Saharan Africa. None of the work you did would be lost if it was distributed among History of North Africa and History of Sub-Saharan Africa (History of the Sahel, History of West Africa, History of the Horn of Africa, etc.) I much prefer the brief format of the present History of Asia, although it should be fleshed out with more pointers to History of East Asia, History of South Asia, History of Central Asia, History of Southwest Asia.

Now I spent a few hours with Wikipedia yesterday. This was due to current events in Libya, I tried to get basic coverage of the tribes of Libya, found that the Berber topics are in a sad mess, and finally stumbled on Berberism and its effect on our articles about the ancient history of North Africa. But I am still ignoring my giant watchlist, and I hope to limit my involvement here to weekends for the time being. Regards, --dab (𒁳) 09:16, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

I think we can agree that History of Africa must be consistent with the approach in recent historiography of Africa. So when I have a minute I will look at the major textbooks and see what divisions they use. Itsmejudith (talk) 09:41, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

of course. This isn't a content dispute, it is an editorial choice of how to present material. An encyclopedia article isn't the same genre as a textbook in terms of presentation, but the toc of a good textbook will still be a good guide towards the toc of an encyclopedia article.

My entire involvement here is my recreation (and improvement) of North Africa during Antiquity. Whatever you do with the history of Africa, I assume it is clear that it cannot go into the history of North Africa during Classical Antiquity in enough detail to render such a standalone article superfluous. The present section of History_of_Africa#Role_of_the_Berbers imo is an unthinking copy-paste job moving sub-par material from one page to another. Of course the "history of Africa" article can have a paragraph about the Berbers, but that paragraph will need to be a sweeping overview, not some random detail about the Punic War. --dab (𒁳) 09:48, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Absolutely. History of Africa needs to have many sections linked to Main articles, my only quibble is whether it should mainly be a link to Main articles without much summary of them. Itsmejudith (talk) 11:43, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

(Butting in) :I used to have Berber people on my watchlist and thought about revising it once or twice using Brett and Fentress (the standard book on the Berbers in English) but the thing is a complete mess and I'm not sure I can be bothered to maintain pages like this any more. At least the dodgy population figures have now gone (they used to vary between 15 and 45 million, all random guesses added by fly-by-night IPs). Given the unusual status of the Berbers, it's also a magnet for race cranks of various stripes arguing about haplogroups - and I really can't be bothered by that kind of thing. From what I remember, problems were more likely to come from Arab nationalists rather than "Berberists" (for instance, AFAIK, the history section has no mention of the Berber Spring and a reference to the Tangier Revolt was deliberately removed). Slabs of random text have also been dumped there from other articles. I've just removed a huge, WP:UNDUE chunk about "Greek-Berber beliefs" from the section about Berber belief which does not even mention marabouts. Folantin (talk) 10:01, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

well, Folantin, if we can tackle the Hindutvavadis, the Illyrianist Albanians, the far-out Proto-Indo-European Armenians, and the eccentric and belligerent people formerly known as Assyrians-Chaldeans-Syriacs-Aramaeans, and the Atlantean-Lemurian Tamils, I am sure we can deal with a little bit of Arab chauvinism vs. Berberism.

The race cranks are probably the worst problem. Someone should probably charge in and lose all the genetics nonsense, and reduce the article to a brief but presentable basic overview. Once the mess is gone, the article will be much easier to protect, as it is difficult to justify rolling back bad edits to an article that is already so bad that it cannot really be degraded any further.

I think the Berber coverage just suffers from lack of attention from good editors in the past. I just came across Berber pantheon, a completely unreferenced eclectic list of North African gods. This should probably just be deleted.

Perhaps it helps to think of the Berber problem in terms similar to the Basques problem. Which seems to be reasonably under control these days. "Genetics" sections in ethnic group articles are always bad news, not because population genetics isn't a valid or interesting field, but because the proportion of editors that have sufficient knowledge to interpret the expert literature pales in comparison to the number of ethnic race cranks. "Spaniards have a common genetic identity of over 70% with Basques" is a surprising claim indeed, considering that humans have 98.8% genetic identity with chimps. Perhaps the idea is that technically, 99.9% is also "over 70%". --dab (𒁳) 10:18, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

If you consider yourself to be both Basque and Spanish, then you share more than 99.9% of your DNA with yourself. Itsmejudith (talk) 11:43, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I have no expertise whatsoever in genetics. I know some of these kooks are pulling a fast one but I lack the scholarly ammunition to use against them. The Spanish/Basque common identity is funny though. I think another basic problem with the main Berber people is that the author(s) have no concept of chronology. The history skips around like crazy, e.g. Septimius Severus is mentioned before Jugurtha. It's been a long time since I looked into the Berbers, however, and I'd have to do a lot of re-reading. I also remember looking into the History of Libya, which had huge gaps (some now filled, apparently - but the 19th century section is inadequate as it omits any mention of Anglo-French rivalry in the early decades and the Italians just turn up out of the blue in 1911, whereas - IIRC- they had been gradually asserting their influence over the country since the 1878 Treaty of Berlin). Oh well, some other day maybe...--Folantin (talk) 10:53, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Berber pantheon should probably redirect to a fairly decent section here: Early History of Tunisia#Ancient Berber religion although I see we have a rather bad article Berber beliefs - maybe the section from the Tunisia article should be copied there? Dougweller (talk) 11:01, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

sigh, why do we have an article called Early Berber History of Tunisia? As opposed to Early Phoenician History of Tunisia? I can see there is a lot of junk to be cleaned up in this corner of Wikipedia. Yes, "Ancient Berber religion" belongs merged into Berber mythology. And "Berber mythology" is an excellent confirmation of Folantin's observation that whoever wrote this stuff has no concept of chronology whatsoever. This is of course a very common feature of ethnic essentialism. If you are an ethnic essentialist, time and chronology do not exist, the only thing that matters is your immutable racial essence. --dab (𒁳) 11:12, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

That's the essence of essentialism. Itsmejudith (talk) 11:33, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

I think you read that wrong, the article is Early History of Tunisia which has a subsection Ancient Berber religion. I haven't looked at it carefully but at first glance the section looks well referenced. Dougweller (talk) 11:27, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

I think you read it wrong. Early History of Tunisia was a redirect to Early Berber History of Tunisia, and that was a confused mess jumping here and there in the history and prehistory of North Africa, dumping the term "Berber" in every sentence if possible. --dab (𒁳) 11:38, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

I was looking at the pre-redirect version I presume, but I'm puzzled as I saw it less than an hour ago. Something to do with Google I'd guess, as I found it through Google. It looked as though there were some useful references in it about Berber religion. Dougweller (talk) 11:49, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

I tagged it for splitting, now at Prehistoric Tunisia. There is valid material in there, but as Folantin said, conflated without any grasp of chronology or topical focus. I also split the Berber genetics stuff to a new genetic history of North Africa. I don't have high hopes for that article, but at least it is now explicitly about genetics, and it stops messing up the Berber article. --dab (𒁳) 11:58, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Berber pantheon is probably unsalvageable as the article could well be an example of the existential fallacy. Maybe a redirect? --Folantin (talk) 12:16, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

yes, redirect. I tend to advocate deletion only if the term itself does not exist. In this case, google books gives me four (4) occurrences of the term "Berber pantheon":

1. Bilmawn, celebrated everywhere at the Great Feast of the Sacrifice, takes his place in this venerable gallery, which indeed gathers together the ancient divinities of an original Berber pantheon.
2. This cult [of Serapis ] spread to Tripolitania where, through the influence of Roman soldiers it was brought into the Berber Pantheon.
3. Latin soldiers introduced the popular god Serapis ... into the Berber pantheon.
4. (figurative) Resistance to Rome was symbolized by Jugurtha, who occupied a privileged place in the Berber pantheon.

so, the term generally refers to the unknown polytheistic religion of Roman era Berber tribes which was undergoing syncretism due to contact with Rome. --dab (𒁳) 12:23, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Done. I'm probably going to move Berber mythology to Berber beliefs (or something like that). Bad as the article is, its scope is way beyond "mythology". I'm not sure if I've got much time at the moment to invest in improving these pages - although I'm sure it would be a good idea to do so before the Middle Eastern uprisings spread to Algeria. --Folantin (talk) 12:41, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Early History of Tunisia

Further information: Early History of Tunisia and Prehistoric Tunisia

I am rather annoyed. Someone here manifestly did not possess the good graces and courtesy to inform the prior contributor of their plans to cut up into pieces and so appropriate what was a very long and well-referenced article. This article as "Early History of Tunisia" had been on Wikipedia for several years. That it is part of a much larger, tightly-organized, multi-article work, I vainly thought, would give pause to potential contributors. Naturally they would want to consider the views of another (presumably, having themselves written articles) and discuss the issues before launching any major revisions.

Unfortunately a few days ago I re-titled it "Early Berber History of Tunisia". Today the reversal of the new title was considered. The original title had left out the word "Berber" because, as I remember it, the word "Berber" appears to be a magnet for irresponsible users. Also, I realized that the article's subtitles were composed with the prior title in mind. Again unfortunately, what major changes I then found today were surprising and, of course, discomforting.

The article is meant to fit into a History of Tunisia. As the article's introduction states, it includes both history from inscriptions and writing, and prehistory from artifacts and ruins, and otherwise. The style of historical narrative it employes does not always follow a timeline. It does not, e.g., present a history of "ancient Berber religion" but gives information drawn from sources differing widely in era and location, which is clearly documented. As matters stand now, we know relatively little of early Berber religious beliefs and practices. By submitting what we do broadly know, it allows the intelligent reader to form their own ideas. For the unintelligent reader, who can say? That some beliefs seem to persist over time in a variety of cultures is well known.

In regard to Berber religion, the information in this article and the sources cited can be used to start independent research for another Wikipedia article. Yet it would be wrong to pirate the text itself for another article, and destroy the source article in the process. Certainly the worldview of the early Berbers remains somewhat illusive but nonetheless relevant to understanding early Tunisia.

Each section stands alone, and together they provide parallax views on the subject of early Tunisia (the introductory article History of Tunisia discusses the anachronism of using the name 'Tunisia' before the Islamic period). The "Berber language history" section is of a great time depth, yet does provide some clues as to the emergence of the Berbers from unwritten prehistory into recorded history. The section on Berber tribes spans a long period of recorded history and, as the section explains, is meant to provide background and some reference for the unfolding of the history of Tunisia into the Punic era, the Roman era, and then the early Islamic (Fatimid, Zirid, Almohad) period. The worth of such information is itself criticized and the article, of course, is part of a series on Tunisian history.

It is submitted that the best course now would be to return the article to its status prior to the name change. It would be appreciated if the person who did the changes undid them. In any case, several days courtesy time will be allowed to pass before any corrections from this end, if needed, begin.

Please notify and consult with prior contributors before making major revisions. Elfelix (talk) 20:52, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

I understand your annoyance, but in my opinion the article was absolutely unsalvageable. Really. Please see the discussion we had about it just above on this page. You seem to think that the article as it stood made sense. It did not. It was a sort of confused essay on the hoary antiquity of the Berbers, with an elastic use of "early" to include anything between 20,000 BC and 1000 AD as "Berber" just because the author apparently liked stream-of-conscioiusness associating about Berbers. This is not what Wikipedia does. By your own admission, the article was an {{essay-entry}}, where you try to communicate to the "intelligent reader" certain general ideas you hold about the "Berber essence". Wikipedia is not for this.

But I do not have the leisure to begin a drawn-out dispute on this, so, WP:BRD. Perhaps you want to seek more input on this. I do not have a fixed opinion on how to fix it, and I hoped my cleanup suggestion was preferable over just deleting the article as unsalvageable, but it is beyond dispute that fixing is needed here.

Anyone else seeing this, please consider chiming in at the article talkpage. --dab (𒁳) 11:33, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Please don't move without consensus and proper procedures

If you want an article from an original name you need to discuss its move on the talk page and request page move through proper procedures.The article was created in 2002 under the name of Volksdeutsche[7]Also do not delete references regarding Nazi atrocities like you did here[8]. If you want to change the name of the article from its original version than start a discussion, request a page move and go from there. But I do not see chances of that succeeding-Volksdeutsche is a unique word, just like Kulturkampf, Blitzkrieg or Ostsiedlung, with unique meaning.

• I see now a problem-somebody created a link on Germans page to Ethnic Germans. I have nothing against creation of such a article(properly sourceed), but it must be seperated from Volksdeutsche article which is a different thing alltogether and was created to describe especially this specific word and definition.

• I also think there might be a bit mess up right now, since one user did enter a lot of OR and his own claims into the articles.But definitely Ethnic Germans and Volksdeutsche are not the same, and Volksdeutsche should be a seperate article

• In any case I created a thread here to discuss any changes if you are interested[9]

Have a good day. --MyMoloboaccount (talk) 17:24, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

sigh, it is pretty difficult to know which is the "original article" because people keep moving things around without discussion because they are so convinced they know better (sound familiar)? It seems I moved Ethnic German to Ethnic Germans back in August 2007. This was then moved to German diaspora in September 2007. I reverted this to Ethnic Germans (together with a detailed rationale on talk) in October 2008.[10]

As you can see here, at that point we did have one article on Volksdeutsche (the historical nationalist concept) and one on the term "Ethnic Germans" as it is used in English today. Now what the hell happened to the former "Ethnic Germans" page? It took me about 15 minutes to figure out it was moved to Emigration from Germany without discussion, by Johanneswilm (talk · contribs) on 13 February. This was hidden from history because AnthonyAppleyard unwittingly deleted the redirect left behind on 18 February trying to clean up the mess you and Johanneswilm were making.

It seems that Johanneswilm has been disrupting things here, and your attempts to fix them have created even more of a mess. The only solution will be to put things back exactly the way they were before either Johanneswilm or you touched them, and you can take it from there via discussion. --dab (𒁳) 19:53, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

My chief concern here is that the article Volksdeutsche remains-as it is vital to many topics regarding XX century history. I am only partially interested in other articles connected to it. If you know how to fix the mess, please do. Have a good day.--MyMoloboaccount (talk) 19:59, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

I just notice all your guyses comments -- listen all my changes were throughly documented on the discussion pages for all the articles. Especially all the aggregation of people who according to completely different criteria belong to Germans, Danes, Norwegians, Austrians -- that is simply unscientific by any account. You want evidence for how Germans, etc. are defined -- well the only instance that gives you such a definition is the government of the country in question. Otherwise you should provide counter-evidence that the majority of the world population in fact defines Germans in an "ethnic way" according to which there are 155 million people that qualify according to that criteria. I am not promoting my own political opinion here -- this is what the countries in question have come to using democratci processes. Most of these countries have conservative governments. --Johanneswilm (talk) 00:26, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

well, you are wrong. This isn't a "scientific" topic, and consequently naive syllogisms and definitions aren't helpful. Assuming that there even is a "country in question" with defining power over ethnicity isn't just that, it is circular reasoning. This also is not about the "majority of world population". It's not a vote. Seriously, you clearly haven't even understood what Wikipedia is trying to do. Wikipedia does not report the "Truth" as defined by some arbitrarily chosen authority such as a government, nor does it do polls of world population. The only thing we do is report opinions published in expert literature. If there is a consensus, we report a consensus. If there is a dispute, we report a dispute. Before you understand what we mean by WP:DUE there is simply no point for you to participate in any discussion on the wiki because you won't know what is being discussed. --dab (𒁳) 09:50, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Childish pseudohistory

Please check three maps:

• Armenian Empire2.png
• Armenian Empire3.png
• MapSlide.jpg

All of them are made by one Armenian lad called Aram-van who is trying to convince us that Kingdom of Armenia stretched as far as India, China and Africa (as you can see it here, here and here). I'll also notice Dougweller about that issue since you aren't much active as I can see from leading infobox. --109.60.17.202 (talk) 02:58, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

yeah, this is probably just another incarnation of Ararat-arev. Should be blocked on sight. --dab (𒁳) 09:57, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

That might explain his lack of opposition to being blocked (or it might not). This is the first good explanation I've seen to date that the POV-pushing was too strong. It also looks very similar to A/A, yes. Magog the Ogre (talk) 10:49, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Nomination of Most difficult language to learn for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Most difficult language to learn 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/Most difficult language to learn 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 good 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 template from the top of the article. ––虞海 (Yú Hǎi) ✍ 13:53, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

File:Tigraxauda.jpg

Hello, Dbachmann,

recently the commons-user:Jameslwoodward delinked that picture File:Tigraxauda.jpg from all articles you uploaded from livius.org, because there´s no OTRS-permission from livius.org. We had a discussion about the problems of missing permission there: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jameslwoodward/Archive3#request:livius.org. Do you have any OTRS-permission or a mail about the permission from livius.org? Best regards.--92.229.32.118 (talk) 14:33, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

No, my understaning is that this is an unoriginal reproduction of an ancient 2-dimensional work of art. Assuming the issue is that a relief is not technically 2-dimensional: neither is an oil-paiting, or a pencil drawing. Nothing in this universe is 2-dimensional. A 2-dimensional work of art is a work of art that only depicts its subject from one angle, which is clearly the case here. --dab (𒁳) 14:44, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but Jameslwoodward said, according to copyright law a photographical reproduction of 3-dimensional object needs a permission or a licence of the photographer (so probably every reproduction, but Tigaxauda.jpeg is no painting or document). What to do now? Greetings.--78.53.92.157 (talk) 14:59, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

you clearly did not read what I wrote. It is not a 3-dimensional object other than in the sense that every object in the universe is necessarily 3-dimensional because it consists of atoms. --dab (𒁳) 15:02, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

A relief is a 3-dimensional object in my understanding, probably my wrong understanding of a relief, picked in rocks. So Jameslwoodward wrote, we need a permission from the photographer or from livius.org. Probably it´s right, I don´t know. Every picture or photo is 2-dimensional. --92.224.220.247 (talk) 16:44, 10 March 2011 (UTC) PS: A difficult question of interpretation: what about carpets or gobelins? I´m no lawyer, but what to do now about that picture, looking for a permission or waiting until that question is solved by all sites?--78.53.94.225 (talk) 17:22, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

yes, but I have explained something. For some reason you don't seem to be reacting to what I say at all. "three-dimensional" in this case means that it can be photographed from all angles. A statue can be depicted in profile, or frontal, or from behind. You cannot depict the Tigrakhauda from the front, or from behind, or from their right, you can only show them from the left, because the work of art is two dimensional. This means that reproducing their depiction is unoriginal and hence not protected by law. If there is a precedent case under Florida law that says otherwise I would be interested in seeing it, but until then I don't see why we should go around deleting images on commons that are perfectly legal. Thank you. --dab (𒁳) 08:18, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

I understood your opinion and interpretation and your anger about it. I don´t know, what´s the juridical definition of 3D, by angle of the viewer or by deepness of the artefact or whatever. But I´m not that user going aroud delinking pictures, I´m that person asking for a solution-somehow like a attaché ("You could certainly ask." ;). What to do now? Let´s "relink"? Best regards.--78.53.95.35 (talk) 16:10, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

what anger? I am merely making a point about copyright law. In the Anglo-Saxon legal world of precedent, it is safe to say that the copyright status of a bas-relief is unknown even to legal experts until there is a precedent case. The question is therefore political. Does wikipedia want to choose to delete content that is very possibly perfectly legal, simply because of a lack of precedent court verdict? I do not want to become involved in a wikidrama about this. But if anyone asks me, I will make clear my view that wikimedia should keep all content that can be reasonably assumed to be in the public domain, as long as nobody threatens to sue. The wikimedia board can still choose to take the prudent approach and remove content that is very possibly legal if somebody feels called to sumbit a cease and desist order. I know we have a bunch of self-important users who go around and construct far-fetched cases just so they can delete perfectly valid material on some trumped-up technicality. My opinion is that such users should not be humoured, and that WP:UCS should be applied to copyright questions. It is one thing to patrol uploads for blatant copyvios. It is quite another to be a wikidick about it. --dab (𒁳) 09:34, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

There is a considerable amount of case law on this, with which I am not not familiar. But I understand that coins are held to be 3D in this context, so anything that can be described as a bas-relief certainly will be. Does that help? On the other hand paintings with heavy impasto are still regarded as 2D. The issue is the flatness of the surface(s) that makes up the work of art. A painting on a thick panel is still 2D, even though it can be photographed from the side. Images of paintings painted on both sides of a panel are 2D also. The point is the amount of skill needed, in lighting etc, to make a good photo, and whether "different" photos could be taken of the same work. There is a degree of nonsense about this, but that is the legal issue. Johnbod (talk) 12:16, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Help with Libya Article

Hi Dbachmann. I stumbled upon the main Libya article and was very disappointed with the presentation of the information about Libya under Gaddafi. As such, I went to the larger article on Libya under Gaddafi that you've made some major contributions to. I was wondering if you could take a look at the Libya article, specifically this section and perhaps summarize the very well-written larger article that you've contributed to. If not, no worries, but I thought it would be more efficient if someone already familiar with the subject matter jumped into this rather than myself, as I'm highly uneducated on the subject. Thanks for all of your great work!--Gnowor^T_C 23:35, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Hi, dab. I've extended the above request to the wider community here. Still would greatly appreciate your contribution, if you have the time. Thanks!--Gnowor^T_C 22:57, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hands of God

Glad to see you are still around! Do you know anything about this? Johnbod (talk) 13:36, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I am still ignoring my watchlist, and most of my talkpage. --dab (𒁳) 12:03, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Maghreb edits

Would you mind explaining why you removed the following from the article during your edits?

Following Umayyad conquest of North Africa and Hispania, the term included Andalusia, Sicily, and Malta.

Cheers Koakhtzvigad (talk) 11:38, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Did you look at the whole of my edit? I am sure you can figure it out. Also, the claim that "Maghreb" referred to Malta or Sicily was technically unreferenced. --dab (𒁳) 12:02, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Talk:Lutescan language

I'd appreciate your thoughts on this article which you tagged as a hoax long ago. It survived, but I suspect it still is a hoax, I just don't know enough about the subject to be entirely sure. (see article talk page for more details) --Physics is all gnomes (talk) 00:19, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your detective work. --Physics is all gnomes (talk) 16:01, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Commonwealth Coat of Arms (1649 to 1653)

The Coat of arms of the Commonwealth that I have depicted does in fact exist, although the image file is not thoroughly sourced, there are plenty of examples. I am hoping to create an article one day on it: Coat of arms of the Commonwealth of England (or something of the sort), but been a little busy lately. The scan of this book is the best source on all the insignia of the Commonwealth including standards and seals: 'Prestwich's Respublica' by Sir John Prestwich, 1787

• 
  On a coin circa 1653
• 
  Behind the Speaker's chair, trail of Charles I (trail occured in 1649) drawn in 1683

• Cover of a book by John Milton 1651
• Pub sign

With Scotland

• Arms of Scotland to be born with the Arms of this Commonwealth.

And that this Union may take its more full effect and intent, Be it further Ordained by the Authority aforesaid, That the Arms of Scotland, viz. a Cross, commonly called Saint Andrews Cross, be received into, and born from henceforth in the Arms of this Commonwealth, as a Badge of this Union; and that all the Publique Seals, Seals of Office, and Seals of Bodies Civil or Corporate, in Scotland, which heretofore carried the Arms of the Kings of Scotland, shall from henceforth in stead thereof, carry the Arms of this Commonwealth. British History Online

• Illustrated Manuscript, document from the Speaker of the House to the Ottoman Sultan in 1653
• Another example on a Naval Medal 1653

It was only until the establishment of the Protectorate, that Oliver Cromwell's personal and familial arms were incorporated into the National Arms. So please change some of the stuff back. Sodacan (talk) 15:56, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

you are right of course. I have also found out some references on my own by now. The problem is that we have many, many articles on former countries with unreferenced coat of arms, many of them simply made up without basis on any sort of reference. We need more skepticism with stuff displayed in infoboxes like that. --dab (𒁳) 16:05, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Agreed!, I promise I will be more thorough in the future with my images, putting in sources and better descriptions etc. It is just that after I upload them onto commons, I just couldn't be bothered to come back and add text on them. But If you would like we could collaborate on an article on the Great Seal and arms of the Commonwealth and possibly for the Protectorate too. It would be a shame to let all these sources go to waste. Sodacan (talk) 16:10, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Jiroft civilization

Hi, I was wondering if you have time to read some of these: [11]. I think the article can be greatly improved. --Khodabandeh14 (talk) 16:28, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

yeah, this is a fraud, further inflated online by the Iranian cyber-nationalists. As iranica.com puts it,

"For archeological accuracy the terms “Jiroft” or “Jiroft culture” [not to mention "Jiroft civilization"!] employed to define a specific ancient Iranian culture and its artifacts should only be cited within quotation marks. All the artifacts known to date that are accorded the Jiroft label have not been excavated; they have in fact been plundered.

Apparently, the person responsible for this depressing state of affairs is Yousef Majidzadeh. I have no inclination or leisure to embark on yet another merry-go-round with our resident teenage Iranian nationalist troll cloud. They want ancient Iran to be associated with puerile chauvinism, that's their problem. --dab (𒁳) 06:28, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Do not change the Armenia map again!

The map that will be used for the Armenia map has already be agreed upon after extensive discussion and census among the members that take care of that page. Do not go about changing the map again as it will be marked as vandalism and abuse. We already have moderators on the lookout for people like you who continue to change the map. People have already been warned for changing the map against the agreed upon consensus. The points have been made, and a Europe map is going to be used for Armenia. End of discussion. MosMusy (talk) 13:12, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Lol.

what the hell does that have to do with anything? Stick to the topic or else stop wasting my time and spamming the Armenia page.MosMusy (talk) 16:09, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Only on Wikipedia. Bring it on! (apologies, dab for taking up your talk page). Itsmejudith (talk) 22:04, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

this is a content dispute, isn't it? If so, use the article talkpage, as I did. I have reviewed such sources as have been presented, and the situation is unambiguous. If you have any new sources worth considering, just show them and they can be taken into account. If you want to contribute to this in any meaningful way, kindly address the issue. Quoting myself:

"On the encyclopedic side, we have the UN, the CIA Factbook and Oxford Reference Online all unambiguously placing Armenia in Asia. So, it's worldatlas.com vs the UN, the CIA and Oxford. I'll leave it as an exercise to do the WP:DUE appreciation of this."

Please only bother to reply to this if you have anything meaningful to add to this evaluation. --dab (𒁳) 09:24, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

That is a political map. Armenia along with the rest of the South Caucasian countries are politicly Europe - Armenia belongs within the context of Europe not Middle East. That is why the maps of Georgia and Azerbaijan are within the context of Europe as well - Armenia is not different as it has the same political relationship with the EU and other European institutions. Stop trying to falsify information - you spam our page again you will be reported and I will not rest until its done. MosMusy (talk) 16:58, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Mani being of Babylonian origin

In the articles on Mani and Manichaeism, one user is repeatedly removing reference to Mani having possible Babylonina/Assyrian background. I have added three sources for this on the talk page for Mani, can you suggest how these two articles can be fixed so they will reflect the accurate info (i.e. dual Persian/Babylonian background is likely)?Jimhoward72 (talk) 00:03, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Armenia map

Since I have been involved as a third party on the Armenia article before, I was approached today by User:MosMusy, and I have to admit that he is right about one thing. It was agreed after lengthy discussion on the talkpage that the map should be File:Europe-Armenia.svg. So whatever else you want to change, please do not change this without being able to show that consensus has changed after proper discussion. Debresser (talk) 18:12, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

I am not sure how you can claim such a thing seeing as I was involved in this very discussion since at least 2009. You cannot call an "agreement" if people just wait until nobody is looking and then claim there is a "consensus" without even pretending to address the debate that has gone before.

The way things are resolved on Wikipedia is that past consensus matters, even if the editors involved in previous debates aren't around at the moment. Otherwise things just go in circles forever. Sure, a consensus can be overturned, but only by being aware of what has been decided before. Simply boring the opposition away by being absolutely thick about ignoring the issue and then calling "consensus" as soon as anyone intelligent has left the building isn't very wikilike in my book. But of course I have seen it done many times, and I have also seen many "uninvolved editors" catching up by a quick glance at the current talkpage being fooled by this approach.

The thing is that I raised a coherent point about why User:MosMusy's position is untenable. I have raised the same points two years ago, but let that pass, I have raised them now, once again. So the least you would expect would be people honouring the point I am making.

Of course it is futile to pretend that this is even a "discussion" in any meaningful way, as MosMusy has no case whatsoever, which is of course why he resorts to wikidrama instead of addressing the point. Also nothing new, of course. But the important thing is that "uninvolved editors" need to flock to the support of those making a case based on references, instead of empowering those trying to get their way by wikilawyering. Since this is a very clear-cut case, I suppose it can serve as an instructive exampe of what I am talking about. --dab (𒁳) 19:42, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Listen, the argument is simple. This is a political map. Armenia is politically Europe. Thus the map has to show Armenia in a European context, like for its other two similar neighbours (for which you don't change the map apparently). How many times I have to repeat myself. It's a simple reason. Stop creating an edit war on the Armenia page, everything was fine before you came with your uncalled for edits. MosMusy (talk) 20:03, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

"Armenia is politically Europe".

"The Republic of Armenia is a landlocked country in SW Asia" ("Armenia" World Encyclopedia. Philip's, 2008. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. (accessed 4 April 2011) www.oxfordreference.com)

It's as simple as that. I have never heard that Armenia is "politically" in Europe, let alone that it "is" Europe. You are perfectly free to cite your references for this. But you need to recognize that as things stand, there is no support for your opinion whatsoever. If you don't have any kind of quotable support for your political opinions, what are you even doing here? You would be much better off contributing to a forum or a blog. Read WP:ENC. --dab (𒁳) 09:08, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

A. is transcontinental, but the most important is that europe map looks good, unlike your map with the worst colouring possible, you are just doing vandalism, the purpose of the map is to show a. location in the world, your low scale map is probably the worst for that. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.250.88.127 (talk) 09:51, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

ffs, "A. is transcontinental". When will people learn that WP:CITE isn't just some decorative option? Armenia is not transcontinental. All our references say it is in SW Asia. Countries that are actually transcontinental are Turkey, Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Georgia: no dispute there. If you want to argue that anyone worth mentioning ever referred to Armenia as "transcontinental", cite your sources. Even after you do, all you will ever be able to establish is that "some sources" (which???) refer to Armenia as "transcontinental". We already have a whole bunch of important publications that do not.

If this is just about the colouring of the map, for crying out loud, go and suggest an alternative. Accusing me of "vandalism" because you happen to dislike some colour chosen in a locator map is about as lame as wikipedia "disputes" become. No, it is not "the most important thing" that our articles "look good". The most important thing is that they are encyclopedic, informative and accurate. Once this is satisfied, design concerns may be considered as a nice extra. This is how it works, not the other way round. Again, kindly go and have a long look at WP:ENC.

Consider File:Europe Location Armenia.svg, or upload your own suggestion. Just stop pretending it is "vandalism" to object to a locator map which stashes the thing to be located in the bottom right corner. --dab (𒁳) 10:36, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

See my response on the Armenia discussion, and let's keep all the proposals, and discussion there. My proof that Armenia is politically Europe is on that page as well. Why don't you also change Azerbaijan's map? It is literally on the edge of the map, almost not showing. MosMusy (talk) 23:14, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Azerbaijan is, in fact, partially in Europe. I could still see reason to change the locator map, so if you have a decent suggestion, make it and I may support it. You have no proof whatsoever that "Armenia is politically in Europe", because it is not. This is just nonsense, so please stop wasting people's time with this. If you have proof that some politician at some point said "Armenia is politically in Europe", kindly state who this was and when and where this was said but stop pretending some random political minority opinion (so far still unattested, and not found by google) is a "fact". --dab (𒁳) 09:05, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

European Union considers Armenia to be part of Europe. Armenia is part of Council of Europe. You need any more proof?MosMusy (talk) 15:47, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Nomination of Race and crime for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Race and crime 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/Race and crime 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 good 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 template from the top of the article. The Resident Anthropologist (talk)•(contribs) 21:57, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

European countries

I see you're going around poking beehives in peripheral European states. I'd just like to note here, once again, that I probably agree with much of what you said, but reverted for now, pending discussion. I've taken a lot of flak coming from the other direction in regards to these issues (and actually currently am), so do forgive me for being cautious from the other direction. Regards, Chipmunkdavis (talk) 11:15, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

My edit was a suggestion, so nobody can say I'm just tagging articles without actually proposing a solution.

If you feel you need to revert my suggestion, I will go ahead and tag the article in question for synthesis and bias, as its problems are really glaringly obvious. --dab (𒁳) 12:58, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Glaringly obvious to you and perhaps me, but the perfect POV to others. Hence my leaving of your dubious tag there. I'm not saying your proposing without a solution, but asking you explain your actions more fully on the talk, just so it's there to point at. Ta, Chipmunkdavis (talk) 13:14, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

there are lots of editors to whom the glaringly obvious will be "pov". These are the pov-pushers with an agenda, and they are not welcome. There is a reason the project has policies, and not every opinion is equally valid. Our job is to make life easy for those who follow policy, and difficult for those who do not. I have fully explained the problem on talk, even in more detail than would be necessary. There may of course be alternative solutions to the one I suggested, and as always, I would be perfectly willing to yield to alternative suggestions. I would never suggest that my solution is the only, or even the preferable one. I merely point out the problem and suggest one possible solution. As long as this is just about agenda-driven editors who try to stall by refusing to recognize there even is a problem, I am not interested in "discussing" this, nor do I think anyone else should be, per WP:TALK, WP:NOTFORUM. --dab (𒁳) 14:48, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Fair enough. I'll try find sources and work on synth etc, and fix along the lines of your edits. Thanks, Chipmunkdavis (talk) 14:53, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Would France, Spain, and the Netherlands be included on transcontinental countries, or would it be best to restrict that section to contiguous transcontinental countries? Chipmunkdavis (talk) 15:15, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

I know, this is a good question, isn't it. Just one that is far too rarely taken seriously in WP:RSes. So we'll need to mostly ignore it too, under WP:DUE. In my book, France etc. are just as transcontinental as Russia (or in other words, Russia is as "transcontinental" as France or Britain or Spain. All are European countries with a history of imperialism. Contrast this with trancontinental Turkey, an Asian country with a history of imperialism). The Asian parts of Russia are just as colonized as the oversesas territories of Western European countries, it is just a topographical coincidence that Russian Asia is contiguous with historical Rus, while the colonies of western countries are overseas. But because I understand WP:SYNTH and WP:DUE, I am not going to obsess over this point unduly. --dab (𒁳) 12:52, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

A nice and professional-looking map of various "views", sadly not based on any identifiable references whatsoever.

It is quite a terrible situation. Another user recently sent me a link to this book, from which I eventually plan to try and add a section to Continent about the history of the idea, and make a good start to actually decently sourcing it. It is probably also useful for the Borders of the continents, or at least, the 39 pages I can see would be. Do you have any other decent sources about the borders of or the definitions of continents? Chipmunkdavis (talk) 15:07, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

the "terrible situation" is that these articles have apparently for years been claiming random stuff without any sort of reference. This has even seeped into our maps, as mapmakers have just made bona fide use of the information in the articles. Our iron rule should be that if something described as "one view", and no reference is cited, it must be removed on sight. We now have lots of maps showing the "Meso-Caucasus definition" of the boundary, yet apparently there isn't a single source on all of Wikipedia. It's just "one view" added by some editor one day. The term "Meso-Caucasus" isn't even known to all of google books. This is literally just something made up on-wiki and subsequently spread over the internet in general based on nothing. This is why it is far better to have no information than to have unreferenced information. --dab (𒁳) 15:45, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

I agree, and admire the attempt to clean it up. Anyway, that book I linked has at least three different historical borders argued between Europe and Asia, one along the Don Volga Kama and Ob rivers, one along the Urals, and others pushing it further to the Yenisei river (page 27). Incidentally, there's been a spate of map edits in commons where the border in the Caucasus is shifted downwards, to lie in the valley between the two large rivers in the region. May be worth examining all these maps some time. I don't know where that line going into Iran came from. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 15:55, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Btw, if you ask me, a book about "The myth of continents: a critique of metageography" is po-mo bullshit. Continents aren't a "myth", they are just a useful semantic category to gesture at large geographic regions. This is only a conundrum to people who labour under the misconception that words mostly or even usually have a well-defined single meaning. Outside of the sciences and lojban, this isn't the case at all, and "Europe" and "Asia" are just two of many, many words with fuzzy semantic fields. "the unconscious spatial frameworks that govern the way we perceive the world" indeed. To most thinking people with the most basic education, one would hope, these are in fact the conscious frameworks that govern the way they perceive the world at a certain level of resolution, whenever that resolution is useful and appropriate. Sheesh. Myth of continents. I ask you. --dab (𒁳) 15:51, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

The book, as far as I can tell, is exploring the myth of the easily divided seven continents, with clear borders. It doesn't state there are no continents, just explores public conceptions of the idea and the history of the definitions etc. I found it an interesting read personally, the text. I haven't read the foreword. I do however try to give them artistic licence with the title of their book. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 15:58, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

yeah, I understand this is what the book is proposing to do. I am just telling you that I think it is a bad book, because it is shooting down a strawman. Beware of books (and Wikipedia articles) which propose to debunk "popular misconceptions". Because they end up relying on these supposed misconceptions as their very raison d'etre, and they will do anything to inflate the usually very modest notability of such misconceptions. It usually turns out that nobody but children and the completely uneducated hold these misconceptions in the first place. Seriously, have you ever believed in a "myth of easily divided seven continents"? Then a brief glance at any world map should be enough to cure you. --dab (𒁳) 16:06, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Pomponius Mela had less trouble defining his continents, because he thought the Caspian was a bay of the outer ocean, and that Tanais was a good border cutting across a narrow strip between the Black Sea and the Northern Ocean. But note how he still didn't draw the Asia-Africa boundary at the Red Sea, but rather along the Nile. These are definitions, they are not "right" or "wrong" (not to mention "myths"), they're just conventions. For some reason, Africa today is thought to end at the Red Sea, not at the Nile. This isn't "wrong" or "right", it is just a change in convention compared to the ancient definition.

Look. "historical" boundaries based on Herodotus and the like are plagued by the difficulty that the area across which these boundaries were drawn were not even known to those drawing it. We can discuss "historical" boundaries if they are modern (1800 onward), but "borders of continents" from antiquity are worthless outside the scope of ancient Greco-Roman geography. They assume that there are three clear-cut continents, Europe, Asia and Libya, surrounded by the outer ocean. It is futile to try and draw these on a modern map.

You are free to cite this book, of course, but I urge you to cite it as a named source ("according to"), you should by no means base statements in Wikipedia's voice on it. --dab (𒁳) 16:06, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

I've never thought of there being seven definite continents, but believe me, I've met some people... From personal experience, the popular misconception is very ingrained. Anyway, I will take that advise. Please do contact me if you ever find anything halfway useful in regards to this. Thanks, Chipmunkdavis (talk) 16:10, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

dab, in Borders of the continents, that so-called unsubstantiated "Meso-Caucasus" text from a single agenda-driven editor (and related map above) have annoyed me for years as a classic example of "'one view' with no references cited that should be removed on sight" as you say above. I've not had the "nerve" to just delete it.... I'm an editor who spends only a little time on WP and has startlingly poor knowledge of formal WP policies and even worse WP format skills after all these years.....But as a professional geographer and cartographer for dcecades, I do have a good grasp of what concepts are prevalent and accepted with certain realms of traditional geography and mostly limit my focus there and thus find your discussion above fascinating.

I do try to make occasional edits correcting geographic goofs ("myths" here and there, and thus of course have run into Chipmunkdavis and have seen his frequent and generally excellent work in my opinion. Just wanted to say thanks for your work on the Armenia map and to encourage you dab not to take too long a wiki-break as your work seems as valuable as I've seen, and definitely say to Chipmunkdavis, keep up your great work!DLinth (talk) 17:18, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Ancestral Indians articles

Ancestral North Indians and Ancestral South Indians - not sure what to do about these, except they shouldn't exist as they are. Dougweller (talk) 17:50, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

misguided genetics cruft, redirect to genetic history of South Asia. --dab (𒁳) 12:49, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

India at FAR

India is now at FAR. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:24, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

List of women warriors in folklore, literature, and popular culture listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect List of women warriors in folklore, literature, and popular culture. Since you had some involvement with the List of women warriors in folklore, literature, and popular culture redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion (if you have not already done so). Lara 20:52, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Boundaries between continents

Excellent, outstanding, long overdue, more concise, and rid of most of those voluminous old self-sourced, self-invented descriptions. Thanks for all of your work. The only question I have is the contradiction still in the Panama bit. As it correctly says, most atlases and lists of countries by continent (Nat'l Geo, World Factbook, etc., etc.) use the Darien Watershed as the continental divide (conveniently, the only break in the Pan-Am Hwy not that that's relevant!)...the same as the Panama-Colombia boundary, and reject the Panama Canal as a recent man-made construction ineligible as the separation between continents. It certainly wasn't the separation in 1800's literature, and I've never actually seen (except in this article) a WP:RS showing that....but maybe you have? What's your take on that? I would certainly suggest that the "most common" moniker go with the Darien Watershed (Panama-Colombia border.) BTW, a good source for Cyprus in SW Asia or the Mideast is the CIA WorldFactbook. Keep up the good geographic work....most helpful!DLinth (talk) 16:22, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I have focussed on the Europe-Asia thing so far, ignoring Panama. I invite you to look into it, or I will when I get round to it. --dab (𒁳) 14:06, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Georgia Maps

I see you've stumbled upon the river boundaries on commons. Most of the recent changes have been from ComtesseDeMingrelie (check their commons contributions for a fun list), who was recently blocked on wikipedia. I've contacted a commons admin about whether their socking here can result in a block there. If it can, the ridiculousness can stop. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 11:37, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

unbelievable. Some people really go out of their way to make things difficult for others. I really can see no conveivable motivation for such behaviour other than desperate fishing for attention, no matter what kind. If you are an attention junkie, quietly working on improving things isn't going to get you your fix, you need to fly in people's face so they take notice you are there.

here is a 1861 map showing the modern convention for the boundary of Asia. Now the least you could do would be to show a single source confirming that your preferred boundary has ever been proposed by anyone. If you can do this, we have a debate. If you cannot, kindly just stop wasting people's time. --dab (𒁳) 20:47, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Again, fantastic work with Boundaries between continents --keep up the most helpful editing there! Actually, topic here not Goergia but Azerbaijan. As in Feb. and four days back, User: Proger is back to his old tricks, just doing drive-by rv's with no discussion, since he feels that a map of Europe(!) with Azer. falling off the extreme edge is somehow WP:NPOV for Azer. Other than Cyprus, most locator maps have the country in question at least somewhere near the center, a point made by at least 3 other editors in recent weeks chipmunkdavis included....I'll leave him a message too....who have attempted to change this map for the better, only to be rv by Proger.

In my lowly geographer role (with no agenda or connection to the Caucasus at all), I suggested that when consensus is reached to start the article with "Azer. is in Europe" (unlikely), then, and only then, can a map of Europe be legitimately used as a locator. Result: another drive-by rv by Proger. (Neftchi tends to help him.) Any suggestions or help would be greatly appreciated as I'm not well versed or experienced in WP practices-policies. (As you know, there are several Azer maps in Commons where Azer is more in the center....and of course, they are not maps of Europe!) Thanks. DLinth (talk) 19:36, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Indeed, this is a no-brainer. Locator maps should locate a country. There can be debate about Cyprus, as an EU member state (do you want to locate it within the EU, as a member state, or within the Mediterranean, as an island?). But there can be no reasonable discussion on whether states of the Caucasus should be located relative to the Caucasus. Locating them relative to Scandinavia, or the Bay of Biscay, or the Falklands is just a bizarre suggestion, and WP:DUCK-obviously motivated by shady agendas of one sort or another. We do not to figure out what these agendas are exactly, we just need to show the people who tout them the door and get on with building the 'pedia.

The way this works in practice, when you have an obvious troll like User:Proger, you don't enter into legalistic debates with them trying to prove they are indeed trolls. You just draw the attention of a few good editors to the problem, and by virtue of WP:3RR it will go away. The troll will usually try some stunts like sockpuppetry or drawn-out Wikidrama, but this will only hasten their demise. --dab (𒁳) 09:06, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Agree on all points (well phrased.) I had never seen WP:DUCK but that often applies! Good advice.DLinth (talk) 14:12, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Kievan Rus

Is it even factually correct to write that Kievan Rus was founed by East Slavic tribes like it says in the summary? Thre is no tribe mentioned in the rest of the article so it doesnt really make sense. I've tried to fix it several times but each time it's reverted. It appears to have been randomly inserted ([12]) some months ago. You should take a look. Alphasinus (talk) 09:49, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

The phrase reads "Originally founded by East Slavic Tribes and Scandinavian warriors (Varangians) called "Rus'".-

"Slavic Tribes" (note the capitalization) is just about as adventurous as "Scandinavian warriors". This is just a sign that the article has been reviewed by teenage Nordic and Slavic patriots. You are welcome to fix it. Of course this is idiocy, but on Wikipedia we are not supposed to call it that, we are expected to engage in discourse with Randy until the sword-skeleton theory can be incorporated into the article without passing judgment.

But please, if you're going to remove the "Tribes", take care to remove the "Warriors" as well. This is 9th century history, not some kind of barbarian themed MMORG. --dab (𒁳) 10:01, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Thank god for wikipedians like you. Alphasinus (talk) 13:01, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Locator map of Azerbaijan

I've fixed it :) --Sisyphos23 (talk) 10:47, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

thank you. --dab (𒁳) 11:20, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

The Graphic Designer's Barnstar

		The Graphic Designer's Barnstar
		For the Russian historical maps you created (this and this). Great maps that were desperately needed! Regards, Swarm X 01:25, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

thank you. Unfortunately, my vector graphics, and vector map generating, skills are still limited. I usually just take a bitmap blank map and use gimp layers. I think we, as a project, need a good repository of blank vector maps. Especially for historical Russia I found that no decent blank maps are available: The blank maps either show all of Russia, of which the historical Russia is just a tiny part, or they show Europe, cutting off the eastern part of historic Russia. --dab (𒁳) 11:10, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Ararat arev

I've seen that you are familiar with the doings of banned Armenian nationalist User:Ararat arev, and had indeed protected Hurrian language because of some IPs appearing to be him. You also have experience with nationalist issues on Wikipedia in general. Now, at Urartian language, I'm having trouble with a patriotic Armenian User:Aryamahasattva (also editing with various, constantly changing, Californian IP addresses), whom I suspect for various reasons to be identical to Ararat arev. I've also submitted a sock puppet case, where I've listed the reasons. Since you seem to be familiar with the issue, I'd be glad if you would weigh in (either in the article, the sock puppet investigation or both). I think you would also be able to "appreciate" the disagreements I'm having with him in Urartian language while he's not blocked yet: he's pushing the idea that "Urartian was a form of Armenian", and also that only the elite spoke Urartian, whereas the common people were, apparently, pure Armenians. Since he is trying to recruit other Armenian users as well, I'm not sure if the problem will be gone when the sock puppet investigation is.--Anonymous44 (talk) 01:57, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Armenian nationalists disrupting articles about the Bronze and Iron Ages? Just slap blocks on them first and ask questions later. There is really no need to spend time "discussing" with this sort. You should go to WP:ANI and ask people to ban the socks and IPs whenever an Armenian crackpot nationalist makes an appearance on these articles. The admins watching these noticeboards should simply issue blocks without asking questions. Point them to Wikipedia:Long-term abuse/Ararat arev if they are too new to know this is what they are supposed to do. It is imperative that no further time is wasted with wikidrama over this thing, because this will send a signal to the would-be trolls that the fun is over. --dab (𒁳) 11:12, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, I agree that the banned user has already had infinitely more fun than he should have been allowed to have - I have compromised with him, pleaded with him, added sources to pacify him and tagged his clearly fake sourcings instead of undoing them. The problem is that I'm not a well-known editor like you and don't have the kind of reputation that would allow me to immediately request a block. A registered sock and myself look equal for an uninvolved admin, and most admins can't recognize which theories in such specialized fields as the ANE are crackpot, as you can. In the SPI case, I gave the simple and comprehensible argument that the new sock shows the same California IP range as Ararat arev did (apart from their sharing the brilliant idea that Hurro-Urartian = Armenian = Aryan!), so the sock should simply be indef blocked, but there has been no direct response to this issue for 24 hours, and I'm afraid that it might still look too complicated for uninvolved people.--Anonymous44 (talk) 18:36, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

I believe Anonymous44 is speaking of Phoenicians8[13] and the numerous anon IPs and the disruptive editing that has followed in his "footsteps". --Kansas Bear (talk) 18:50, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Yep, User:Phoenicians8 and User:Aryamahasattva are the same person - what's worse is that both of them are apparently User:Ararat arev and should never have been able to edit at all per his indef ban, yet "they" have been able to do "their" usual stuff for quite some time.--Anonymous44 (talk) 19:20, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

I have no idea what keeps motivating this guy. Probably the intermittent stretches where he goes undetected and feels he has successfully fooled Wikipedia. But then he is always found out and his stuff is reverted, so he literally spent years of ingenuity trying to beat the system, with a zero result. He would have been much better off spending his time just writing a blog. --dab (𒁳) 06:39, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Oshe

Hi Dbachmann!

You redirected Oshe to Shango some years ago. I don't know why - the word Oshe appears nowhere in the Shngo article - maybe you can add an explanation to the Oshe article.

Regards, Arne

Knipptang (talk) 00:24, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

you're asking me to explain what I was doing on the afternoon of 16 November 2006. Frankly I don't remember. "Oshe" must have been mentioned at Shango back then. --dab (𒁳) 06:31, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Ah yes, I see, this was about the labrys. The article used to say that Shango's "symbol is the oshe (double-headed axe), which represents swift and balanced justice." I have no idea whether this is correct. And of course there was no reference. --dab (𒁳) 06:34, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Merya/Muromian/Meshcheran

Did you merge these into Volga Finns just out of the blue? I don't recall there being any discussion about this. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 21:50, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

There was no reason not to merge these stubs, was there? The stubs were basically copy-paste copies of one another, all explaining that "X is a prehistoric Volga Finnic people". You will note that I did not merge those articles that had any actual content, such as Mari people.

The point is not that these article "should" be merged. The point is that they didn't exist. As soon as somebody writes them, of course they should get standalone status. As long as nobody does, there is no point in a placeholder stub. --dab (𒁳) 09:07, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Antonio Arnaiz-Villena

There is a reference about you in [[14]]Symbio04 (talk) 22:44, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

It seems you have changed your mind.

The College of France and the Royal Society do not thik like you. However,"individual" thnk you for your help. By the way ,what have you done in Academcs?See [15] It is very confortable anonimity to insult people- ,who has published 320 internetational papers,including in Nature and New England J Medicine,directrd 48 PhD Theses , beingeducated 9 years in London i Immunogenetics and creaated and school in Spain to whom I am proud to belong. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Symbio04 (talk • contribs) 21:32, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Vandalism

If you keep destroying the site about Ukrainian history, you will be reported for vandalism!--Vitaly N. (talk) 14:44, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

What are you even talking about? Perhaps indicate which article or edit? Diff? Or did you post this message to the wrong talkpage by accident? It isn't really constructive or useful to accuse veteran editors of "vandalism". --dab (𒁳) 15:55, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Rus

What about renaming Rus' Khaganate to Early Rus and Kievan Rus' to Rus? Alphasinus (talk) 13:03, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free image File:Thor steinar.jpg

⚠

Thanks for uploading File:Thor steinar.jpg. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, the image is currently orphaned, meaning that it is not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).

If you have uploaded other unlicensed media, please check whether they're used in any articles or not. You can find a list of "file" pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Wikipedia page when you are logged in), and then selecting "File" from the dropdown box. Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. Courcelles 04:33, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Primorye

Well, good question. I can assure you that the construct itself is correct and quite common (cf. взморье, заболотье, заречье, залесье, подлужье, приозерье, приречье, etc.). The soft sign in all these constructs is a suffix which indicates a place and has, to some degree, a meaning of aggregation (i.e., all of the area near the sea for "primorye"; all of the area beyond the river for "zarechye", etc.). The prefix clarifies the location ("при-" means "near", "за-" means "beyond", and so forth). As far as I can tell, this is the only way to construct a noun of this type (something like "при море" cannot be used as a noun on its own). Bear in mind, however, that I am not a linguist, and the above explanation is based on what I remember from my Russian lessons back in secondary school :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 5, 2011; 13:58 (UTC)

great, thank you ... I could consult a Russian grammar, but the internet taught me to be lazy and just ask people instead :) So my two questions actually resolve one another, and it is not simply the phrase "pri morye" but rather a proper noun formed with an -ье suffix. Check this out: [16] for a list of words on wiktionary that are formed with this. --dab (𒁳) 14:29, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

No problem :) As for the list of words, they are not actually all equivalent. The soft sign in words like платье, здоровье, сиденье conveys neither location nor aggregation. However, I don't quite recall what it does convey... it's been years and years since my Russian schooling!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 5, 2011; 15:40 (UTC)

yes, I will try to figure this out and put the information at wikt:-ье. I suspect this is a suffix descended from Proto-Slavic, and since ь was Slavic -i-, perhaps it was just the Indo-European -iyo- suffix. Clearly, it can take a number of roles in Russian, with the "location" meaning (more or less "all the stuff next to X") being one of them. I would really like to learn better Russian btw, if only just to be able to read some of the excellent novels published in Russian, but I have just the bare basics and it would take a huge effort to get to a point where I could enjoy literature. --dab (𒁳) 06:24, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Well, best of luck to you in that quest :) If in the process you have questions you think I can answer, I'll be happy to help with what I can, so don't hesitate to ask.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 6, 2011; 12:13 (UTC)

I hope there's more where that article came from :) If I may ask, however, what prompted you to translate "ой" as "oy"? Now, I don't know how to best translate it—I myself used "oy" in the Korobeiniki article, and NPR even used my translation, although with the caveat that "it's from Wikipedia, so don't blame us if it's wrong", but this translation was later labeled by someone else as "terrible". Which makes me curious how you came to it.

As for the word "резвиться", yes, it's from the adjective "резвый", but no, it's not connected in my mind with "резкий". But then, I never gave this any thought before. So, I checked with Vasmer's etymological dictionary, and whaddayaknow, they are indeed related.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 8, 2011; 16:14 (UTC)

D'oh, I've just realized that you did not translate "oy", you simply transliterated the title. There's a reason why I don't normally edit during weekends, after all :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 8, 2011; 16:18 (UTC)

That's right, I gave "ой" as "ah" in translation. "Oi" sounds more like a hip-hop homeboy in English, not like a picturesque old cossack :) Wiktionary gives "surprise tinged with fright" but I am not sure about that. It seems to be more of "melancholy and resignation to fate", but perhaps that's just the normal Russian way of dealing with "surprise tinged with fright".

As for резвиться etc., this is what I love best about these lyrics. The composition is sublimely dramatic. And in the second verse, the fact that the speaker uses three consecutive verbs to describe the movement of his dream-horse already suggests that he is intimately acquainted with horsemanship. You sort of see love of horses expressed in a Whorfian way, by the fact that in a very concise account, three verbs are dedicated to expressing how the horse moved. Also it expresses the the rising sense of unease perfectly, at first the horse notices something is wrong, it is "playing", then "dancing" and then "jerking about" even before the rider notices there is an "evil" wind coming.

So I think perhaps instead of trying to read a Russian novel and get bogged down, I will spend some time reading song lyrics and short poems to get a feel for it. Of course this is a romantic song, published in 1899. I don't know whether the "collected from a 75-year-old cossack" should be taken at face value. In those days, it was fashionable to go around and collect incoherent mumblings from the "folk", and then sit down and rewrite it into the way it should have been. But maybe I am being too skeptical, and this is really what an old cossack was singing back in 1880. Also, I think the association with Razin is obviously apocryphal. This is clearly a young soldier, not a rebel leader. He clearly has a commanding officer he turns to, this is not "one of the esauls" of Razin's, it is "the" esaul of the young cossack. At best it could be a young Razin getting a prophecy of his later future. But then there is no reason why the wind should come from the east, as the menace for Razin was obviously the Tsar, who from the point of view of the Don Cossacks would be a threat from the north. Either way, it's a nice piece of poetry. --dab (𒁳) 09:22, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, so I was wrong. I found the original text, and not only does it mention Razin explicitly, it is also considerably less "streamlined". The four verses now current must originate much later, perhaps with modern recordings? It would be interesting to review the history of this. --dab (𒁳) 11:16, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

You know, I always thought that, as far as foreign languages go, understanding poetry is more difficult than understanding prose, and that understanding poetry from the days of yore is something else entirely. Color me impressed :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 9, 2011; 14:50 (UTC)

yes, but I spent several hours now with what, half a page? That's clearly not a feasible proposition for reading a 200-page novel, never mind calibres like War and Peace. --dab (𒁳) 15:57, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Phoenicians8 sockpuppet

This anon editor[17], calling for Moosh88 to revert another editor, appears to be the same modus operandi as Phoenicians8. I didn't know if I should alert you or not. --Kansas Bear (talk) 23:58, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

You should alert WP:AN/I, not me. --dab (𒁳) 10:11, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

jihadist clip art

this flag is well know as the flag of jihad.

http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/File:Flag_of_Jihad.svg

i believe it was used by the ottoman empire.

this box is related to Muhammad's jihad, i.e the battles he participated in

http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Template:Campaignbox_Campaigns_of_Muhammad

on those grounds i thought a jihad flag would be suitable but i am now thinking that this is too controversial . i will change the flag to a black one. that was used by Muhammad.--Misconceptions2 (talk) 11:54, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

List of Yoga schools

You've done a brilliant job there - it's been on my watchlist a long time but all I could do was remove the promotional edits. I did wonder if there should still be hidden notes in each section. Dougweller (talk) 10:16, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

It's not something I'm particularly interested in, but I just couldn't stand the pathetic shape this major topic was kept in any longer. --dab (𒁳) 10:17, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Request for comment

This message is being sent to you because you have previously edited the Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English) page. There is currently a discussion that may result in a significant change to Wikipedia policy. Specifically, a consensus is being sought on if the policies of WP:UCN and WP:EN continues to be working policies for naming biographical articles, or if such policies have been replaced by a new status quo. This discussion is on-going at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (use English), and your comments would be appreciated. Dolovis (talk) 16:48, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Palamism

LoveMonkey commented on my talk page about you: User talk:EdJohnston#Administrator abuse? At the very least a bit of concern. I think he may be confused due to the editing restriction he is under, which confines him to editing EO material and the thinking of EO theologians. He can't speak in general terms about the church or about the opinions of Catholic theologians. See WP:RESTRICT and search for 'LoveMonkey'. I think he imagined you were taking an admin role due to his editing restriction. I told him you were acting as an ordinary editor. Just so it's clear! Thank you, EdJohnston (talk) 17:25, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Blocked account returning

Dear Dbachmann, I am sure you remember User:MosMusy who tried before to push his POV in pages Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. He was then blocked by you and other admins and then came back as User:Mov25 and was blocked as the sockpuppet of Meowy but after being unblocked as MosMusy he's back and does the same thing on Talk:Azerbaijan. Can you please look and comment? Also his sock case is here Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Meowy Dighapet (talk) 18:04, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Template for Syriac Script

Hi, Can you help create a template for Syriac scripts like how you did with Arabic? I have tried creating a similar three templates for the Scripts used in Syriac which can be found here. They, however don't follow the general form of Template:Script/a_Language/a_script_name used in other scripts. Thanks in advance.--Rafy talk 16:01, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Meal ticket (idiom)

I believe an etymology section in the article Meal ticket (idiom) would be of help. Asinthior ^(talk) 16:08, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

RE: Eastern and Western Hemispheres

Hello. Why did you create this article, merging two distinct articles and concepts, when there was a recent discussion to rename all the earthly cardinal hemispheric articles (with lower case; see Talk:Southern_Hemisphere#Requested_move) that failed? As well, articles regarding the Northern and Southern Hemispheres were not merged, so there's dissonance here. This should have been discussed and consented to beforehand (or am I missing this?), and I may just undue the merge or work towards that if a compelling consensus doesn't support it or rationale provided. Thanks. Bosonic dressing (talk) 04:08, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

I do not understand what you are objecting to. Since there were no encyclopedic articles worth keeping, I don't see what could have been discussed. If you are willing to keep working towards getting this in encyclopedic shape, you are very welcome to proceed. I am confused how many people seem to think that Wikipedia is about "consensus" even before any work has been done. Consensus is between two or more informed editors each of which have taken the trouble to present an encyclopedic approach. The "consensus" then consists in implementing an informed compromise between the approaches that have been presented. But some people seem to think that they should discuss "virtual" articles that haven't even been written. I do not have any patience with this. I am always willing to respect people's work. Where "work" takes place in article namespace. Once I see an article is in competent hands, I am more than willing to step back, as there are always plenty of articles that aren't. But I am not willing to discuss anything on purely hypothetical grounds, this isn't worth my time, nor anyone else's if you ask me. --dab (𒁳) 09:52, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

I object to your unilateral merger of articles and topics -- without discussion or consensus -- that should be kept separate. No notices were posted, no discussions held, and no compromise arrived at. You did not garner any input (AFAICT) to merge the articles before doing so: like, how difficult would it have been to post notices on the talk pages? (If this was done, my apologies.) Based on your opinion that the articles weren't worth keeping, you merged them into one that, IMO, really doesn't belong. You will not find a similar article 'Easter and Western Hemispheres' in other compendiums, like Britannica, which is also inconsistent given that separate articles exist for the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, or (for that matter) the Land and Water hemispheres -- all are important enough topics deserving of discrete articles, regardless if they are stubs at present. So, how encyclopedic is that? If you do not have patience for this, which you certainly didn't exhibit with an unjustified merge, you simply should've stepped back, ignored, and withdrawn. If this isn't worth your time, you are certainly wasting more of our collective time now, since -- emboldened by an apparently intransigent and unsatisfactory response from you -- I will work to reverse this. Bosonic dressing (talk) 03:02, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

then revert me and do something else that is as least as useful as the cleanup I did. Just whatever you do don't just revert to the broken article revision just because you feel righteous about proper procedure. I am not interested in discussing procedure with you, I am interested in your suggestions on content. If you have a valid suggestion, go ahead and implement it already, and I will applaud. If not, I must ask you why you bother to talk to me.

I feel strongly that Wikipedia is first and foremost about encyclopedic content. Any debate on proper procedure, "controversy" or guidelines is interesting only inasmuch as it ultimately leads to better content. If you go and write good content, I will accept any ideas on procedure you may wish to communicate on top of that with a shrug. If you refuse to go to article space and fix the content, I am simply not interested in spending time with idle discussions on philosophy that I could have spent improving some other article.

I do wish you would revert me already and then show off your improved solution of presenting this topic. The only thing I will not welcome is the misguided approach of "one page per term". Just because a term exists does not mean it needs a Wikipedia article. Show that "Northern Hemisphere" is an encyclopedic topic in its own right and then present it on its own page. If you cannot present any tertiary encyclopedic source that dedicates an article to the topic of "Northern Hemisphere", you have failed to establish WP:NOTE, and your article is broken, to be tagged with {{dictdef}} and {{notability}}. If somebody comes along and instead of slapping tags on your article does it the courtesy of fixing the problem, you should be grateful that somebody did your work for you. If you are unhappy with the details of how this work was done, you can still fiddle with them (it's a wiki), or else you can ask yourself why you didn't simply do the job yourself to begin with. I hope this amply clarifies my position on the question. --dab (𒁳) 08:33, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

I will revert you, then, quite simply, or rectify otherwise. Edits will come along in due course, as time is finite; there are, nonetheless, an abundance of reliable sources to buttress those topics. As for the 'clean-up' you did, it means that much more of a morass to sift through to rectify; you certainly fixed nothing. You just as easily could have slapped those tags onto the articles or improved them separately, but you took the easy, misguided way. I am also not interested in further discussing procedure with someone who had no regard for it in this instance. Perhaps you should refrain from wasting my time and others by being just somewhat more procedural and attentive than holier-than-thou and misguided, because otherwise I could just as well also act without further comment and courtesy. That is all. Bosonic dressing (talk) 09:01, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Civility is important. Courtesy, otoh, is vastly overrated. If you simply fix the problem without bothering to bless my talkpage with "courtesy", I will certainly be very happy on all counts. And I would certainly not get the idea to impose on your precious time by the act of posting text to my own talkpage. --dab (𒁳) 10:33, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Tohu wa-bohu

Hello. Why did you say "Transliteration: Tohu wa-bohu, Tohu wa bohu, even Tohu wa-vohu, but not Tohu va bohu. --dab (𒁳) 14:27, 24 November 2009 (UTC)" on Talk:Tohu wa-bohu?

Waw/Vav (letter)#Vav as consonant: "Consonantal vav (ו) generally represents a voiced labiodental fricative (like the English v) in Ashkenazi, European Sephardi, and modern Israeli Hebrew; and originally a labial-velar approximant (/w/). It is still pronounced as a 'w' by Jews of Oriental origin.

Only in Yemenite Hebrew pronunciation is "Vāv is pronounced /w/ as in Iraqi Hebrew and as و in Arabic."

Does your attribution refer to Biblical Hebrew#Orthography, rather than Modern Hebrew phonology#Regional and historical variation?

As today, "Tohu Va Bohu" is the usual recognised Biblical pronunciation, then perhaps the article name should be moved to that? Or, if not, then I'll add the Vav pronunciation as an additional pronunciation on the first line of the article. (Revision history of Tohu wa-bohu-27 April 2010 Tommy2010: "The title is wa-bohu. Please specify a reason for changing otherwise your edits are considered disruptive". This was correcting a first-line change of pronunciation to Vav alone. I would instead include both pronunciations). I'll also add what you think from our discussion to the Talk:Tohu wa-bohu page. Thanks in advance for any assistance! April8 (talk) 15:32, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

(I'm seeking clarification, as I'm writing new Kabbalah page Tohu and Tikun. N.B. separate, but linked pages Tohu wa Bohu and Tohu and Tikun are needed. Tohu and Tikun page will be one of the central Kabbalah pages, and indeed the most important page for modern-Lurianic and Hasidic- interpretations and adaptions of Kabbalah) April8 (talk) 15:37, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

The entire point is that this is about Biblical Hebrew, not modern Ivrit. It is extremely ill-advised to transliterate waw as v. Certainly in Biblical Hebrew, but also in modern Hebrew, as in that case, beth (b) is sometimes also rendered /v/. I am not going to campaign about the transliteration schemes of modern Hebrew, just as long as they are kept from spilling over into Biblical Hebrew. --dab (𒁳) 10:39, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Your point about retaining the present name for the article is convincing. However, would you mind if I added, together with "Tohu wa-Bohu", in the article's first line, the alternative "usual contemporary pronunciation" of "Tohu va-Bohu"? It would follow the Waw version, and would reference link to the page Modern Hebrew phonology. I recommend this as, for example, contemporary people, whether religious or secular, studying Genesis in Hebrew-English would not refer to "Torah wa-Bohu", unless they are Yemenite, or Biblical Hebrew academics. Furthermore, the subsequent centuries of Ahkenazi (and perhaps Sephardi other than Yemenite?) religious commentary on Genesis, including Kabbalah's Tohu and Tikun, would not refer to and recognise "Tohu wa-Bohu" in speech. Also, can I paste the relevant points of this discussion to Talk:Tohu wa-bohu for others' future reference?

What do you think? April8 (talk) 20:19, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, please do this. I admit that I do not have any detailed knowledge about Modern Hebrew. There may be a genuine issue here, and I cannot comment on it with authority until I have researched it.

We need to remember WP:UE, i.e. this is English language Wikipedia, directed at English speaking readers. If English speaking readers discuss Biblical Hebrew at all, they will of course opt for the classical pronunciation. Only if they have spent time in Israel or learned modern Hebrew somewhere will it occur to them to use modern Hebrew phonology. This is an issue comparable to Classical vs. Modern Greek (but in that case there are additional difficulties because of the Great Vowel Shift in English, so that the "classical" pronunciation of Greek in English is neither the classical nor the modern Greek one, but the Shakespearian one. This problem is less pronounced for Hebrew, because Hebrew has historically had less presence in English).

In spite of what you say, I am rather convinced that "contemporary people, whether religious or secular, studying Genesis in Hebrew-English" would indeed say "Tohu wa-Bohu", unless they have been exposed to modern Israeli Hebrew. But as I said, I may be mistaken about this, and I will not try to push this question in any direction as long as I haven't researched it. I am in fact interested in learning more about this. I have a suspicion that the modern Israeli /vav/ is due to Yiddish (i.e. German) influence, as Germans famously are unable to pronounce /w/ at all. --dab (𒁳) 06:24, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks - I'll add this to the article start soon. My main perspective is less with modern Hebrew-Ivrit pronunciation, than the last millenia and more of European (Ashkenazi) and Mediterranean (Sephardi) Rabbinic literature commentary on Genesis, thought and culture. In this context, "Tohu wa-Bohu" is an arcane, unrecognised pronunciation (apart from in Jewish Yemen. I don't know enough yet about other historical varieties of Sephardi pronunciation. I should read the relevant Wikipedia pages. At the outset, I guess that the true Sephardim-1492 exiles from Spain to around the Mediterranean etc- also pronounce it vav, but I'm not sure). As the article should both discuss Biblical academic commentary, and latter historical Rabbinic commentary on Genesis (linking to Tohu and Tikun Kabbalah page), as I think it already does, so the first line should include both pronunciations in chronological order. I'll call it "latter historical Rabbinic culture" or the like, as opposed to the much more restrictive recent "Modern Hebrew phonology" alone. (Modern Hebrew-Israeli culture is not so renowned for widescale interest in Genesis!). Best Wishes April8 (talk) 19:52, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Just added extra text to my last reply here, above - N.B. in case you have only read the first slightly shorter version! April8 (talk) 20:06, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes I see -- I am almost completely innocent of knowledge on medieval Rabbinical culture, so you evidently have the advantage here. And I am very happy to yield to your better-informed judgement. What remains, I would submit, is that the a basic Biblical Hebrew / Iron Age Northwest Semitic primer would give "waw = /w/". This is the original meaning of the letter, and if you know one thing about waw, it should be that it represents /w/. I will happily accept that this became /v/ in European Rabbinical culture from an early time, but this will already be a specialized topic of medieval Rabbinic culture, which imho in a basic discussion of the Hebrew letter should take second place. --dab (𒁳) 06:33, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Native speakers of German language

I don't know if you still have German Language on your watchlist but I wondered if you had seen this query. I am contacting you, because it appears you added one of the sources and changed the figures in 2007 (26 February). There are two sources given, both from 2006: However, the figures have been changed since then, without altering the references. I suspect someone may have updated the figures, based (for instance) on the SIL Ethnalogue Web site, without amending the references. I am still not sure how the figure of 120 million is arrived at. I presume it may come from adding various figures from the sources, but I don't know which languages/dialects are included to give the figure of 120 million. I thought you might have easier access to the appropriate sources and could help clarify how the figures were arrived at. --Boson (talk) 14:23, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

well, I doubt the number of native German speakers can be estimated with better than 20% accuracy. But it is of course a wikisin to tweak numbers without providing new references, and such edits should just be reverted on sight. --dab (𒁳) 15:04, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Ekurs and Huburs

Hi dab,

I've recently started a series on important Sumerian words like Ekur, Hubur, Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature and Acgi pages, getting one planned for Enamtilla as well. I'd be greatly honoured if you could apply your cuneiform skills or peer review over them, none better than the man who wrote the book. Thanks. Also created Decad (Sumerian texts) and Miscellaneous Babylonian Inscriptions with detailed analysis of the myths involved that might interest you - they should save us having to argue about their previous title of the Kharsag epics of old times. Would also be highly interested in your thoughts on a pre-neo-sumerian Decad and Christian O'Brien's theory of a single story source. Regards! Paul Bedson ❉talk❉ 10:31, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Hi Paul -- I'll be glad to look into them. My cuneiform skills are limited though, I have to piece things together as a hobbyist.

I wonder if some articles on Sumeian words would be more at home at wiktionary? Their coverage of Sumerian is rather poor so far. Also, unfortunately they insist to name pages in Unicode cuneiform. ... I know.

I am afraid I haven't heard of O'Brien's theory, is that covered somewhere? --dab (𒁳) 06:12, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for any attention on the matter. I'll try to take up the cuneiform piecing-together hobby you've got there by following your lead on hursag, I know you're busy on other things. The Wictionary idea is a good one that I'll look into. I won't be making an overflow of words on here, don't worry, just ones that convey important concepts for understanding of Sumerian and comparative mythology and cosmology.

Regarding O'Brien's theory, outside his self publishing, this source gives a fairly notable and positive (if still fringe) review of what Malkowski calls the Tablets of Kharsag - Edward F. Malkowski; R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz (30 October 2007). The Spiritual Technology of Ancient Egypt: Sacred Science and the Mystery of Consciousness. Inner Traditions / Bear & Co. pp. 345–. ISBN 9781594771866. Retrieved 7 June 2011. It's based on dated evidence, but raises an interesting concept that I support in parts, that certain texts (as noted about the Kesh temple hymn) could have been passed down over a long period and formed part of a larger composition about events very distant in prehistory.

As a more respected authority A.R. George suggests, such hymns "can be incorporated into longer compositions, as with the eulogy to Nippur and Ekur which makes up a large portion of a well-known Hymn to Enlil and the hymn to temples in Ur that introduces a Shulgi hymn."A. R. George (1992). Babylonian topographical texts. Peeters Publishers. pp. 3–. ISBN 9789068314106. Retrieved 3 June 2011. Paul Bedson ❉talk❉ 10:36, 7 June 2011 (UTC)