Misplaced Pages

FleetCommand, do you understand WP:BRD? You have now made a perfect example of "D", you have discussed your points. Now I agree with points 1-3, but I have reservations about points 4, 5. This is progress: you would now have sucessfully negotiated the changes you propose in 1-3. This is how Misplaced Pages works. I do not understand your sulking "I won't touch the article again". After we have agreed on certain edits you proposed, I do not see why you should not proceed to making them. After that, we would look at your points 4 and 5 and see if we can come up with a solution that safisfies us both. --dab (𒁳) 11:52, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Please block me again

3 months this time please. I'll thank you for it. PiCo (talk) 11:22, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

try to be reasonable. And try to take responsibility for your actions -- as you would have to in real life too. --dab (𒁳) 11:49, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Reasonable, moi? And, (and this really is why I want to leave Misplaced Pages), could you please have a look at Creation according to Genesis - Lisa is trying to push a very hard-line Orthodox Jewish pov on it, one totally out of touch with mainstream Biblical scholarship. Ban her, ban me, I don't care. I'm out of here. PiCo (talk) 02:21, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

We have three million articles here, if you feel biblical scholarship articles are bad for your personal equilibrium, you should just focus your attention elsewhere. --dab (𒁳) 08:33, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Template:History of Iran

Take a look at the history of this template. User:Babakexorramdin insists on changing the date format and preserving a mistake (for the date of the collapse of Parthian Empire). It's meaningless to argue with him because his arguments (in his edit summaries) are just some absurd personal attacks (and apparently his only reason for doing those edits is reverting my edit, without looking carefully at what it is). I should also mention that his absurd personal attacks are not limited to that page (you can see another example here and here). Alefbe (talk) 20:57, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Apparently the Parthian empire began before Chirst and ended after Christ. It is funny that mr. Alefbe changes the BC (or BCE as he likes it more) with CE. Mr. Alefbe is simply wrong. period, basta, finitto.--Babakexorramdin (talk) 21:27, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Abut personal attacks: mr. Alefbe insists on reverting all my edits, eventhough all other users agree with me. Strangely all his problems with me are about the Iranian history which he tries to falsify. What I do is simply restiring his distortions to the former edits which were generally accepted. It seems that Alefbe has an obsession to revert all my edits. This he does also in the Persian wikipedia, where he has many enemies. No wonder!--Babakexorramdin (talk) 21:30, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

your edit makes out that the Parthian Empire lasted for all of 22 years. Take a minute to appreciate that you made a mistake, Babakexorramdin, and then consider apologizing to Alefbe. --dab (𒁳) 11:41, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Sorry to say that. You are confusing Alefbe's edit with mine. I say that Parthian empire existed from 248 BC until 226 AD, what Alefbe is saying is that it existed from 247 AD (or as he says CE) - until 224 AD (or as he calls it CE). It is Alefbe who is suggesting that it existed only MINUS 23 years! Does it makes sense?--Babakexorramdin (talk) 12:09, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

LOL! Dab, you've caught a live one... rudra (talk) 19:52, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

sorry, Babakexorramdin, it is impossible to have a coherent discussion below a certain level of cognitiive potential. I recommend you consider simple:, or perhaps drop the idea of contributing to an encyclopedia altogether. --dab (𒁳) 19:58, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

minaret controversy in Switzerland

about your"Well, we now have officials of Turkey and Iran(!) complaining about the ban. I ask you. This is involuntary comedy. I can see western countries criticizing Switzerland for falling short.."

There are no persecution(except KSA due to its status similar with the Vatican)against churches in "muslim majority" countries.

Christianity is a semitic monothesit abrahamic religion with semitic prophet(Jesus) and anatolian semitic "creator"(saul of tarsus)same as islam,also first built churches were in semit lands and anatolia not in Switzerland,christianity original texts were in semitic aramaic not in Swiss German...

Islam and muslims believe in Jesus and (real)christianity so they can not persecute their own faith/prophet/culture/civilisation and there are thousand of chucrhces with ringing bells in "muslim majority" countries whereas countries like Greece completly banned the construction of mosques in Athina(so there is far more islam persecution in this country than in Switzerland).

Turkey is a secular country where all religions have their whole rights(such as construction of churches with ringing bells) in Iran too,there is religious freedom for jews,christians,zoroastrians.

Whereas it's the "western democracies" like France,Greece which are banning construction of mosques or making the life harder for the ones who want to construct mosques.

"Well, we now have officials of Turkey and Iran(!) complaining about the ban. I ask you. This is involuntary comedy. I can see western countries criticizing Switzerland for falling short of western secularism, but to have an Islamic theocracy deposit official notes of protest over the minaret ban is simply absurd" dab said

best regards

Humanbyrace (talk) 14:33, 6 December 2009 (UTC) Humanbyrace (talk) 14:35, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

wow. You quite apparently live in a dream world. By your logic you can also "prove" that the crusades never happened, because after all Christianity teaches to "love thy neighbour" and wouuld never condone religious war, so it follows that no pope would ever command any military action. --dab (𒁳) 16:33, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

I wouldn't be at all surprised if it was impossible to build a new mosque in Athens. On the other hand it also seems to be impossible to build a new church in Turkey: "All the exponents of these minorities – lead by the patriarch of Constantinople and the Catholic bishops – are strongly in favor of Turkey's entry into Europe, which would produce a decisive improvement in their living conditions. Apart from lacking legal recognition, in fact, these minorities are prevented from constructing, and even from restoring, their places of worship, from possessing buildings and land, and from opening schools. Christians are forbidden from taking up some offices and professions, particularly in the military." Hans Adler 16:41, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

what people from the, ahem, near to middle east fail to understand is that in Western Europe, authorities actually tend to do what the constitution and the laws says they are supposed to do. This is a concept completely unfamiliar to anyone from, say, southeast of Zagreb. No, you won't be able to build any churches in Turkey, no matter what you do, not because the Turkish constitution outlaws churches, but simply because the officials won't let you.

No, I am not going to document this for you. If you cannot be bothered to research items as painfully obvious as religious discriminaion in Iran, I won't waste my breath on you. --dab (𒁳) 16:47, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

about the Shire (tolkien) and T. H. White

Sorry for my bad english, I am a french wikipedian, and I speak so bad your language. In 2007, you added that Tolkien's Shire was inspired by T. H. White, and I would like to know the origin of this assumption, for the french article. Thank you. --Harmonia Amanda (talk) 09:09, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

the entire paragraph summarizes the reference I give in this very edit, Tom Shippey, Tolkien and the West Midlands: The Roots of Romance, Lembas Extra (1995), reprinted in Roots and Branches, Walking Tree Publishers (2007). --dab (𒁳) 12:05, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Thank you --Harmonia Amanda (talk) 05:59, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Curious

Dab, I've noticed that you often (always ?) start new comments on talk pages with an uncapitalized letter, except when the first word is I. Is this just a personal quirk, or a deliberate choice ? Just curious. Abecedare (talk) 12:38, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

i'm just negligent sometimes :op --dab (𒁳) 13:38, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Ephebophilia article

Hello, Dbachmann. I tweaked your edit to the Ephebophilia article. Since the term does not only mean an adult homosexual male's sexual preference for mid-to-late adolescent males, I do not feel that it should be defined as that right off the bat. I am not even sure if the term was originally only restricted to that definition. Pederasty's definition is restricted to male-male sexual relationships, but not ephebophilia. And as for the other stuff: The age range generally being set at 15-19 is sourced and has been discussed extensively on the talk page. Stressing in the lead that ephebophilia is about the sexual preference was also discussed on the talk page. In this case, it is important that people do not confuse attraction (an older adult male finding an 18-year-old girl sexually attractive) with preference (an older adult male sexually preferring girls around 18 years old). Flyer22 (talk) 22:43, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

pure weasling. The term does mean "an adult homosexual male's sexual preference for adolescent males". The weasling about "mid-to-late" and the artificial "attraction" vs. "preference" is obviously agenda-driven cosmetics, I must assume in an attempt to make "ephebophilia" more palatable to the general public. It's not honest, and certainly not neutral or detached, it's subtle pov-pushing. I have no opinion on whether ephebophilia, or homosexuality for that matter, is "good" or "bad" (it's either, depending on your context, it is "good" in Pericles' Athens, but it is "bad" in Calvin's Geneva), but I do feel strongly that it is our responsibility to put the facts on the table without weasling or opaque embellishment, and let the readers judge for themselves. But I have given up on patrolling homosexuality articles for neutrality. It is difficult enough to impose intellectual honesty at "positive discrimination" taboos like Afrocentrism, it is positively impossible with homosexuality topics. Seriously, it is my impression that if there is one cabal at Misplaced Pages, this is it. --dab (𒁳) 08:54, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

dab: You're mistaken. The -philia terms are orthogonal to the -philia terms. Heterosexual males may be attracted to children (pedophilia), to pubescents (hebephilia), or to adolescents (ephebophilia), just as homosexual males may be. The same can be true of females' attractions, thus for example the notorious cases of female teachers and pubescent/adolescent male students. Such terms certainly apply in homosexual relationships between adults and minors; however, they also apply in heterosexual relationships — the classic fictional example being Lolita. (And Flyer22's distinction between "attraction" and "preference" is valid.) — Sizzle Flambé (☎/✍) 10:53, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

So I am "mistaken" because "The -philia terms are orthogonal to the -philia terms." In whose book, I ask? The terminology you suggest may exist, but my point is that it is a construct of the 1990s, and of a subculture aiming at prescribing politically correct terminology not for itself but for everyone.

An ephebos is a male adolescent. A paidos is a male child. If people take these terms and bend them out of recognition because they want to construct an "orthogonal" terminology, that's their hobby but it doesn't mean anyone has to follow their definitions. As for the difference between attraction and preference in sexual relations, I would ask you to clarify. Feeling sexually "attracted" is the same as experiencing a "preference" for whoever one is attracted to. Human sexual preference isn't an orthogonal coordinate system where every quadrant is equally valid. It is a bell curve. WP:DUE prescribes how we deal with covering Gaussian distributions: the bell curve's fringes need to be treated for what they are, and cannot be allowed to dominate coverage just because they exist.

Misplaced Pages is drowned in categories titled "LGBT this" and "LGBT that". Now LGBT is a 1990s neologism used within a certain subculture. It isn't in any way clear that it can be treated as an objective term. You can't just coin initialisms and then treat the resulting concept as an objective entity. To pick a crass example, in the interest of clarity, how about I claim "JMMT" means "Jews, Muslims, Marxists and Terrorists" and then I go and create articles on "JMMT people"? Ok, so LGBT wasn't coined on-wiki, but it is still an idiosyncratic term used for less than 20 years within a certain subculture. Misplaced Pages cannot (or at least, should not, even though policy has been defeated by the lobby) use this term as it were objectively. --dab (𒁳) 14:29, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Dbachmann, I am not quite grasping what you mean. Ephebophilia applies to mid-to-late adolescent girls as well; for example, men who sexually prefer mid-to-late adolescent girls. And it applies to women, as in women who may have a sexual preference for mid-to-late adolescent boys (though this is rare, just as there being female pedophiles is rare). It is not agenda-driven to differentiate between attraction and preference. There is a difference between a man finding a 17 or 18-year-old girl sexually attractive (which happens quite often among normal men) and one who has or seemingly has a sexual preference for girls that young (such as Hugh Hefner; though I would not diagnose Hugh Hefner as an ephebophile quite yet, he does love taking up with 18-year-old girls).

It is honest to distinguish in this case. We distinguish between adolescents and mid-to-late adolescents, because being sexually attracted to 15 to 19-year-olds is not the same thing as being sexually attracted to an 11-year-old adolescent, for example; people as young as 11 have also been called adolescent. We distinguish between sexual attraction and sexual preference for the reasons I just stated above. Right now, there are a lot of women (and I do mean women over 20 and up) who are sexually attracted to 17-year-old Twilight: New Moon star Taylor Lautner; most of these women openly admit it. Should we call these women ephebophiles simply because they find this guy "hot"? Just because they find this 17-year-old "hot" does not mean that they have a sexual preference for guys this young. Sexual attraction to late teenagers is common among older adults, seeing as plenty of late adolescents look the same age-wise as early 20-somethings, but most would rather not go after late teenagers romantically/sexually due to the possible illegality, the social ridicule they would most likely face or because of late teenagers being on a different mental level than they are (or all of the bove). Maybe even because of their moral feelings about it. A person feeling sexually "attracted" to someone is not necessarily the same thing as that person experiencing a "preference" for that someone. A person may be sexually attracted to someone but not have a preference for that person or that type of person.

As for homosexuality and LGBT articles on Misplaced Pages, I have no comment. If you feel that you have been wrongly treated on those matters here, I am sorry for that. Your thoughts should be heard as well. Flyer22 (talk) 22:15, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

"I" have not been treated. The topic has been treated, with systemic bias. This happens if a particular lobby is too strong on the wiki. This isn't my project, I'm just saying. --dab (𒁳) 10:23, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

dab, in this respect etymology does not determine definition: the gender of the Greek words ephebos and paidos has not set the gender of the English words ephebophilia and pedophilia; there is no separate "female form" of these -philias; a man (or woman) who sexually prefers children is called a "pedophile" whether he seeks out young boys or young girls; likewise for the terms referring to higher ages. The situation may be otherwise in German, but in English these -philias refer solely to an age preference, with no overtones of gender preference, nor implication of the patient's gender (though as Flyer22 notes, most are male). — Sizzle Flambé (☎/✍) 01:27, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

well, usage defines meaning. But usage is particular to interest groups. For example, pedophilia activists prefer the term "childlove". Does that mean that the term "childlove" now has the definition "pedophilia"? No. What counts is mainstream usage. "NPOV" doesn't mean Misplaced Pages is a propaganda platform to all sorts of fringe interest groups, although of course they keep trying.

so, luckily "ephebophilia" has an OED entry.

OED's definition is "sexual attraction in adults to adolescents, esp. homosexual attraction to adolescent males." I.e. the correct original (etymological) meaning is noted as the especial (primary) application of the term. Ephebophilia is sexual attraction in adults to adolescents. De facto this refers primarily to the male homosexual case. Period. OED also notes the term is a 1960s coinage. --dab (𒁳) 10:23, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Then OED would appear to be unaware of earlier usage cited on-Wiki. "Especially" is not "only", so Flyer22's point is sustained. An older adult male whose primary attraction is to adolescent females, or an older adult female whose primary attraction is to adolescent males, would still meet the definition. — Sizzle Flambé (☎/✍) 15:49, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

yes, you can of course also purposedly ignore my point. The point is that "ephebophilia" is to 95% a topic of male homosexuality. There may be 5% of other stuff subsumed under the definition, but that's marginal. --dab (𒁳) 15:53, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Given the stats of sexual assaults on children and adolescents — females still being predominant targets — the phenomenon (as distinct from the "topic") still seems primarily heterosexual. — Sizzle Flambé (☎/✍) 16:17, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Jesus Christ, have you ever heard a sexual assault on a girl described as "ephebophilia"? That's simply not what the word means. Please try to be reasonable. --dab (𒁳) 16:33, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

No more than it would be "pedophilia", or than man-rape would be "homophilia"; no, the -philia is the preference, the primary attraction, and sexual assault stats on children and adolescents by gender of victim would only indicate that females are still the preferred targets — thus still reflecting predominantly heterosexual drives. — Sizzle Flambé (☎/✍) 16:42, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

well, yes. I have no idea why you keep talking about sexual assault. Ephebophilia, or any other -philia, is about "preference" or "attraction", not assault. The "drive", not the act. It goes without saying that it is possible to withstand any sort of drive if one is motivated enough to withstand it and if one has the necessary spine. This isn't under discussion at all. What is under discussion is the definition of "ephebophilia" as essentially a topic of homosexuality, especially male homosexuality. --dab (𒁳) 08:53, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

look, if you want to play at being smart, find somebody else to do it with. You are being completely incoherent, nothing of what you say has anything to do with the topic at hand, which is the word meaning of "ephebophilia", and I assume you are trolling. Once you are done feeling coy, feel free to come back and resume this as a discussion between grown-up encyclopedists. --dab (𒁳) 16:46, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

No trolling involved, dab. For clarity: Sexual attraction in adults to adolescents (the OED's primary definition) is, as Flyer22 noted at the top of the thread, not only, not restricted to, homosexuality. The word "ephebophilia" may be more often ("especially") used in that context, but not exclusively. The phenomenon itself, the sexual attraction, certainly has no such restriction. — Sizzle Flambé (☎/✍) 17:10, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Sizzle, you keep ignoring my point. So you read somewhere that "ephebophilia" means "sexual attraction to late adolescents (15-19 y.o.) in adults". I am saying that this isn't how the term is used. There are hundreds of millions of adult men who feel "attracted" to legal pornography involving 18-19 year old females. Google this. I hereby ask you to provide any real life example where this attraction is described as "ephebophilia". Seriously, at long last, have you no sense of proportion? --dab (𒁳) 19:42, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

dab, "somewhere"? I quoted "Sexual attraction in adults to adolescents" from your quote of the OED definition. — Sizzle Flambé (☎/✍) 00:03, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Sorry that it's taken me so long to reply. Dbachmann, one reason men finding 18 to 19-year-women sexually attractive would not be called ephebophilia is because the mere sexual attraction to people of those ages is not ephebophilia. As stated before, ephebophilia is about the sexual preference. That is why we stress it in the lead, so that people will know that it is not correct to go around calling an older adult an ephebophile simply because that older adult found a mid to late adolescent sexually attractive. There is also the fact that the terms "hebephilia" and "ephebophilia" are not in wide-spread use, even among psychologists. This does not mean that psychologists call all of this pedophilia; most of them know what pedophilia truly is. It is rather that hebephilia and ephebophilia have not been taken as seriously by psychologists and sexologists. Recently, though, hebephilia has come under fire, as in debate about whether it should be listed as a psychological disorder; the Hebephilia article's lead has recently been altered to display this.

Basically, Dbachmann, though the general public is mostly unaware of these two terms, researchers do use them, and they are needed to describe the sexual preferences for each of these age groups (though hebephilia sometimes blends with ephebophilia; for example, plenty of 15 and 16-year-olds are still pubescent). Since the pedophilia sexual preference relates to either males or females, the hebephilia sexual preference relates to either males or females, why wouldn't the ephebophilia sexual preference also relate to either males or females? Where is the term to describe a man's sexual preference for 15 to 19-year-old girls/women...if ephebophilia does not apply there? Restricting the term as only applying to an adult homosexual male's sexual preference for mid-to-late adolescent males is not accurate. Even if the term is mostly used that way, stating it as that first in the lead makes people think that is its true definition. I don't see why it should be defined that way first. If there is a reliable medical source stating that it mostly applies to an adult homosexual male's sexual preference for mid-to-late adolescent males, then I am okay with that being at some part in the lead, but not as the first part.

As for dictionaries, we typically do not use those to initially define these three terms, because the dictionary usually does not get it exactly right. For example, the dictionary typically says that pedophilia is the adult sexual attraction for children. It does not stress the fact that pedophilia is about the preference. I note "preference," because there are plenty of people who have sexually abused prepubescent children but are not pedophiles (the Pedophilia article also touches on that). The dictionary also typically does not state "prepubescent children" in this case, even though the prepubescent part is extremely important. And for ephebophilia, the dictionary you cite states "sexual attraction in adults to adolescents." We should remember, however, that adolescence has no single definition, and has a range from ages 11 to 20. Though typically applied to teenagers, it is sometimes used to describe pre-teens and people a little out of their teens.

I do point out, though, that the Etymology section of the Ephebophilia article touches on the homosexual information you would likely want addressed, Dbachmann. Flyer22 (talk) 22:47, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Re: Article Tarakhāna

Hi fellow editor, I was wondering how it could be changed back to Tarkhan? The present spelling change by HFret does not reflect the actual references that still refer to it as "Tarkhan". Thanks--Sikh-History 08:50, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

The article is in a poor state, but I don't think that warrant removing 3 verifiable sources that you did. Surely the best course is to expand the verifiable sources and remove text rather than vast swathes and many citations. I have restored the removed stuff for now, and am expanding on references. Also I am planning a rewrite. I think the general structure is OK, but it needs some work. Thanks--Sikh-History 14:23, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I did not remove any information that was properly referenced. The article doesn't cite any sources properly. IF you want to work on the article, your first move will be to identify sources, with ISBN and publication year. --dab (𒁳) 14:25, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

There are 3 web refrences you removed. Also the Patwant Singh book I was in the process of finding the ISBN, to find you had removed it. This is not the way to edit. You should know better. Thanks --Sikh-History 14:42, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

web references? You mean naked urls. Please read and respect WP:RS. This is exactly the way to edit. You have no idea how many times I have heard the sulky "you should know better" you just gave me over painfully obvious things like "please cite your references". Feel free to restore information once you have a book with an ISBN, a year and a page number you can attach to the claim made. --dab (𒁳) 14:43, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Errr excuse me "sulky"?. That is a little personal do you not think? I really do not give a damm what you do with this article. I was asked to look at it by another editor, and I have no intention of dropping personal insults like "sulky", and yes you should know better. Happy Editing. I am out of this one. Thanks --Sikh-History 14:54, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

"personal insults" indeed. You are the one who came to my talkpage telling me "I should know better" than to expect you to honour WP:CITE. --dab (𒁳) 11:04, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

World language article - locking

Hi, Dab.

hey, basically every 2nd day someone (usually unregistered users) try add languages to the world language list, without sources. Typical actions are to increase the number of speakers, shift a language to a higher position, add a language to the list. It assume that people are doing it out of some kind of language ego/pride. Is there a way of protecting, semi-protecting, etc this article to stop this?Utopial (talk) 15:51, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

of course. these kids think they need to push "their" language. Funny how half of the time they don't even speak it, being 2nd gen expats in the US or elsewhere in the first world. --dab (𒁳) 10:18, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

yeh i think you're right. anyway, it's happening every 2nd day now. does this meet the requirements for locking an article or some kind of protection? people can post their desired edits to the talk section and we can transfer them to the article if they reach consensus and r sourced. Utopial (talk) 07:52, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Template:Politics of Kosovo

Only one question, what was agreed here (Template_talk:Politics_of_Kosovo#Request_to_remove_the_flag_2)? Flag (Coat of Arms) is still there?

All best,

Tadija (talk) 19:05, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I am willing to grant that Kosovo has made a number of important steps towards statehood since 2008, but that would be a matter for a new talkpage consensus. --dab (𒁳) 11:16, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Rollback for Tadija

Hello Dbachmann. I imagine you have some knowledge of User:Tadija. Would you care to express an opinion at WP:Requests for permissions/Rollback#Tadija? EdJohnston (talk) 19:21, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Persian people

Several new IDs (which seem to be single-purpose sock-puppets of User:SorenShadow or User:R1000R1000) are edit-warring to change the topic of the page and make it a redundant copy of Persian-speakers of Iran (without getting consensus in the talk page). Also, based on the history of their talk page, it's useless to argue with them or give them any warning (because they just ignore it). Alefbe (talk) 20:43, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

sure, some amins should clamp down on these. However I don't have the time to deal with the Persians at the moment, sorry. They make a habit of turning things into nasty, drawn-out bitching sessons. ANI should deal with it, sometimes I wonder what our 1,001 admins are up to most of the time. Persian nationalism is one major troublespot at the wiki, and you should expect a dozen admins to jump to it when new wae of trolls arrive. --dab (𒁳) 21:05, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

I reverted the page, and gave one of these WP:SPAs a 3RR warning. If they persist, a sock-puppet investigation should be next. --Kurdo777 (talk) 01:47, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Read Talk:Persian_people#Edit_war. Alefbe (talk) 20:11, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't know why you seem to have some issue with Persians. I am a Persian-American and you accused me of "racial musings" on another page when I was only explaining why controversial research that has been debunked should not be used in an article page. And as for Persian nationalism. There is nothing wrong with having pride in one's culture, especially since Iran has been oppressed by Arabs and Islamic fundamentalists, much as Ireland is by the British. Now, if you're talking about crazy Persians traitors and non-ethnic Iranians in Iran supporting the current regime of death. . . then I'd have to agree with you on that. You only have to look at the people to know which ethnic groups support which side. The Indo-European Iranians don't like Islam at all, and are against the regime. The mostly Arab or Arab-Iranians support the regime. A lot of people outside of Iran or Iranian communities around the world don't really understand this. Also, I wasn't aware the a Persian Wiki article was being hijacked. Are you thinking it was hijacked from outside the States? I don't understand why people would vandalize a page and put up fake references, or even take the time to to do that. I hope you see that most Persian people have great pride in our heritage, but we are also an educated people. Most of us on here know about the 3RR rule and use mediators when necessary. And just like other people, most of us don't troll around looking to vandalize on Wiki. --CreativeSoul7981 (talk) 00:10, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

please read WP:FORUM. This is a project to build an encyclopedia. If you see vandalism or trolling, by all means revert it or report it, but spare us the opinion pieces. Thank you. --dab (𒁳) 18:48, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

User:SorenShadow

If you have time look at the history his edits (I couldn't find even a single constructive edit from him). For some examples, see his edits in Arabic literature, Sangsari language, Proto-Indo-Iranian language and Indo-Iranians. Alefbe (talk) 20:39, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Ancient Greece

Hallo there. According to A. Greece, I believe that the introductory history section should remain. ] Actually it's part of the article's scope to briefly describe what happened before 8th century B.C. (the geometric age is fully disappeared, as well as historical reference to Mycenean civilization).Alexikoua (talk) 06:22, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree I may have overdone it. Brief mention of the pre-Archaic period may be in order. Let's find a compromise. --dab (𒁳) 11:04, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

A.V. Turicia

Hi dab

I found the above in the articles in need of post-translation cleanup. Which it needs big time if it is to stay. Of course there are others who can help out with that I just thought I would post here because you will know if it is notable or not. English is so bad I can only just make out that it is a Swiss student fraternity with 290 members. Cheers. Itsmejudith (talk) 13:17, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

they're university students, right? So you should expect them to be able to come up with a decent English-language article. Otherwise this is just a merge candidate, there could be a List of Swiss student societies or something along these lines. --dab (𒁳) 16:01, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Will propose merge. Those sorts of solutions are often forgotten when people see a challenge for their language skills. Thanks. Itsmejudith (talk) 17:43, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Kovel image

Re: > File:Spearhead of kovel.jpg: I recently found a better version (larger and more detailed) of this image (which actually dates back to 1889). Would you mind if I upload it over yours? I have the full citation on the source, so the copyright shouldn't be an issue any longer. Thanks, --Aryaman (talk) 17:04, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

sure, go ahead. --dab (𒁳) 19:31, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Done. Thanks, --Aryaman (talk) 19:51, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Regarding CreativeSoul7981

He's removed sourced parts of the Semitic and Magi articles, and I've already reverted him 3 times (if he was reverted one more time he wouldn't be able to switch it back without violating the 3RR, right?). He keeps removing these parts without providing anything to justify his claims that the three studies in the Semitic article are unscientific, or that Robert Charles Zaehner is not acceptable either. I've tried asking for help at the CoI board (he mentioned that he is a Christian descended from Iranian Zoroastrians, and goes on some about how Zoroastrianism is related to Christianity when Christianity has nothing to do with the topic at hand), but the only response I've gotten is 'POV isn't CoI.' Well, he's letting his identity get in the way of the NPOV policy. Thanks for any help. Ian.thomson (talk) 00:16, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Excuse me, I'm a female and NOT a male. Nice assumption. And I have not re-edited the Magi page again if you LOOK at the discussion page. I asked SimonP (talk) to mediate until further discussion resolves this and left it alone. Yet Ian.thomson (talk) accuses me again of not following the rules. I am NOT editing the portion on the Magi page. I said what needed to be said and invited other Wiki users to this discussion. Ian.thomson (talk) is following me on Misplaced Pages and reverting my edits out of spite now. Ian.thomson (talk) is a LIAR. I asked that ONLY a inflammatory and misleading PORTION of a quote from Zaehner be removed from the page, and NOT the sources or the rest of the contribution. I think that is fair. And SimonP (talk) backed me up on this, but as of right now, it's open for discussion.

The Semitic article had a contribution that used controversial and debunked science as references. The same "immunologist" wrote in his other scientific paper that the Japanese were African. It is not accepted widely by anthropologists and other scientists. Said "researcher"'s research has been taken apart and thrown out. I linked sources to why the statements should be removed. Yet, Ian.thomson (talk) keeps coming back and reverting the edits. I'd say he is close to breaking the 3RR rule. I have no objection to the discussion, and I have invited others to participate. Can Ian.thomson (talk) say the same? Ethnic Iranians, Iranian Kurds, and Armenians are NOT a semitic people. --CreativeSoul7981 (talk) 00:33, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

It was an honest mistake to for me to assume that you were male when I had no indication of your gender either way and have encountered slightly more males on the internet, particularly this site. I apologize for that. Now, how is "It is, therefore, quite likely that the sacerdotal caste of the Magi was distinct from the Median tribe of the same name"' inflammatory? And please show us where I am lying. Or how I am following you (seeing as these two articles are the sort of thing I usually edit).... In the Talk:Magi page, SimonP said:

"That is still not a good reason for removing the Zaehner cite, rather it is an argument for adding other valid sources to better balance things. From my own understanding the subject I don't think the Zaehner view is atypical." In other words, he says leave it in, and then bring in opposing sources, which you have yet to bring.

Now, considering how you insist on SimonP's talk page that I seem "to be trying to push Iranians into the semitic category (which ethnic Iranians are not) and making claims about Magi being Ethiopian, etc" despite my comments:

"It isn't saying Iranians are totally Semitic and totally not Indo-European, it's saying that a number of Semitic and Indo-European groups show signs of being related" in the Semitic talk page, and:

"At no point does it say that the Magi were from Africa" and "Noone at any point said that the Magi were an Ethiopian group" in the Magi talk page

I'm going to assume your selective reading is probably accidental, but it is something you need to work on. Ian.thomson (talk) 02:38, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

CreativeSoul7981, people are objecting to your edits because they are bad, not because of who you are. Stop assuming anyone on Misplaced Pages is interested in your gender, your ethnicity or your genome. On Misplaced Pages, you are just a blip on people's watchlists. --dab (𒁳) 18:46, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. Ian.thomson (talk) 18:49, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Yet more WP weirdness

This popped up on my watchlist for some reason. I am baffled. I can't figure out how we wound up there. - Kathryn NicDhàna ♫♦♫ 01:52, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

it is apparently a new feature of mediawiki -- it places the authors of the deleted category page in the edit summary for the new category when moving a category. Or something like that. It's for licencing reason, although a category page rarely contains any edits that can be considered copyrightable. Your name just pops up because you reverted an edit to the old category once. --dab (𒁳) 18:42, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Hi, Dab...

Hello. Just wanna inform you that you are mentioned here. Misplaced Pages:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Muzakaj

All best.

Tadija (talk) 21:34, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Re: Article Vande Mataram

Arjun (talk) 13:22, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

--59.182.107.187 (talk) 17:43, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree having the whole song and Aurobindo's translation makes no sense when the whole text is a click away at Wikisource. I removed the lyrics and translation (except the first verse which is adopted as the national song).--59.182.7.103 (talk) 17:38, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Bachmann-Turner Overdrive: Picture upside-down

http://en.wikipedia.org/File:Sumerian_26th_c_Adab.jpg

I think that image is upside-down. It is an incised object, and not only does the lighting makes it look like it is in relief, but the cuneiform marks are backwards. I don't know how to invert this 180 degrees. Are you able to do this, Herr Bachmann?

Zelchenko (talk) 14:35, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

I think it should actually be rotated by 90 degrees, to the left. But I don't read archaic cuneiform. It would be ever so helpful if they could present a picture of the entire tablet instead of this aesthetic snapshot. dab (𒁳) 16:37, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Bard article

Bard is a word in current use. It's application is very much broader than the article seems to imply. A bard, to me, is a type I'm rather familiar with, my father having been president of the vaudeville union. We've had them in our house, at our table, etc., but bards are basically all-around improvisers, even ordinary people who are just up for trying anything to entertain, whether well or poorly. They're not only professionals, but amateurs, even kids you met in school. Now, the history of the word as indicated in the OED would be marvelous, but let's not forget "bard" is defined nowadays by current usage. A "bard" is synonymous with a "card". It should start from there, before launching into the origins of the word in places and on occasions. This is a hard topic to cover. Unfree (talk) 10:44, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

yes? You may want wikt:bard. The bard article is not about the word, it is, as the lead very clearly states, about the professional poets in medieval Welsh and Gaelic culture.

Nope. You're wrong. You don't own that particular permutation of four letters, whatever the lead states. You're right about what the article is about, but you can't simply insist it must not be about "bard", because no other thing can be about "bard" than "bard". That's no decision to be made, it's a simple equation. Maybe the article will evolve to include treatment of everything the topic, "bard", is about, or maybe you'll stop it, but you can't alter the sort of thing I'm talking about. The article's about whatever it's about, and what it's about now isn't adequate. The future's not ours to see. Che sera sera. Don't you see that English isn't invented by anybody; it's not like a software language, by a genius who sits up all night? Do you think the House of Lords could have done it, or should have?

The fact is, I don't even want to "contribute" to "bard", after all, not that I'm sore about anything, but that I don't think I'd be of much help. I may have said so farther down your talk page, but that was then. I can't do any more than touch up grammar or stylistics, anyway, having no books on the subject available to me at all, and having better things to do.

Please don't take this the wrong way. Read and re-read my words, if you must. It is no reflection on you, but simply upon your words, that's all. Unfree (talk) 06:29, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

If you feel that there is another meaning of "bard" that deserves a Misplaced Pages article, you may want to consider disambiguation. Note that the article is already aware of derived meanings under the discussion of terminology.

No, disambiguation isn't what I want to consider, either. We'll just have to wait, whether it be to see "bard" emerge from its limitations, or to remain frozen forever in time. Unfree (talk) 06:29, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

I do not understand your assertion that 'A "bard" is synonymous with a "card"'.

Now, I agree with that very much. I don't think you're "reading" my meaning at all correctly. I doubt you even use "card" the way I intended, because you'd have gotten it immediately. Briefly, consider a bard. Think of what he was like when he was five. That's what a "card" is in my dictionary, somebody who has the potential, the personality, the verve, the smarts, and so on, to grow up into a real bard (using the word, "bard", as you use it). Someone who can entertain kings to their hearts' delight. Not a jester, who's always there, and witty, and funny, but may not always make the grade as the entertainment the king wants at all times. Sometimes a king would like to hear an epic poem from the good old Greek days, would he not? Or something reminiscent of Turkey, or a legend he heard mentioned, but doesn't know, or wants to hear again in a new voice, a different bard. But I ramble. On "card": we illiterates sometimes say, "Oh, he's a card!", meaning "He's kidding!", but not only that. We mean much more than that he's kidding. What we mean is more about who he is than what he's doing at he moment. To understand what I mean, you'd have to get into my skull, to know me well, because I'm no lexicographer, as I stated elsewhere, and I'm not up to such a task. My statement, not claim, was very imaginative, I think, and I'm glad I thought of it. As a claim, it fails. It goes into no Fowler, much less Wariner's. There's nothing to reason about in it, to analyze or critique. It's not a claim, but a musing, perhaps. But what it does do is remind me of Dad (the great Vaudevillian, Georgie Price) as he might have been as a kid. It was nearly half a century before my time, but my imagination's had years to work on it. And not only Dad, who would have been a bard if he were in the right place at the right time, but lots of people, both in and out of Vaudeville. Unfree (talk) 06:29, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

You may also consider using the article talkpage. I do not understand why you take this to my user talkpage. --dab (𒁳) 10:51, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Neither do I. I forgot. But perhaps here, you won't hesitate to erase it. It's just ephemera, anyway. There, you might. I don't know. I'll erase it anytime you ask, if you like. But you shouldn't have any trouble doing it once it's read, or even beforehand. I'm an ex-Usenet lover, if that means anything. I'm enjoying the exchange of ideas, aren't you? I certainly hope so. But don't consider it to be worth anything, if that's what you're thinking. Unfree (talk) 07:19, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

here is the exhaustive list of meanings listed by the OED for "bard n.:

1. An ancient Celtic order of minstrel-poets -- the topic of our bard article
2. In early Lowland Scotch used for: A strolling musician or minstrel (into which the Celtic bard had degenerated)
3. Applied to the early versifying minstrels or poets of other nations, before the use of writing, as the Old English gleeman, Scandinavian scald, etc.
4. poet. A lyric or epic poet, a ‘singer’; a poet generally. .]

you seem to be referring to the poetical usage of the term. It is unclear why we should have an article about this.

--dab (𒁳) 11:03, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Ah, you do misunderstand. This isn't me or you or Jimmy Wales or anybody. It's determined by Misplaced Pages's URL structure, and all that. I agree, it's unclear why it's so, and I can't direct you to the place where it says so. I'm lousy at that sort of thing, anyway. But I'm pretty sure it is so, just by thinking about it. Surely it's somewhere. And so far, we've only found four senses in one musty old dictionary. We've got a long way to go, my friend. No authoritative commission can say "just because you heard it last night on such-and-such a radio show doesn't mean anything", because it does. In fact, it's crucial to a usage, regardless of questions of "legitimacy". Now, whether a late-night comedian's usage of "bard" meets Misplaced Pages's standards for determining whether "bard" means what he, or anybody, thought it means isn't of any concern to us. But when it appears defined that way in a respectable dictionary, however rightly or wrongly, and a discussion of it meets Misplaced Pages's standards of inclusion, where does it go? Under "bard", that's where. We don't have any choice about such a thing, unless I'm sorely mistaken, and I might be. Unfree (talk) 07:52, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Now, that's worth something, all righty! People pay good money for that. But you're missing the very best thing about the OED, the dates. IMHO, that is. Its famous editor was rather proud of that side of things, too. ;) Unfree (talk) 07:19, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

But it doesn't illustrate the limitation, "employees of kings", and even "employee" in modern-day usage would leave a bad taste in the mouths of historians, don't you think? It isn't as broad a concept as it once was: somebody used a certain way or to do something. Unfree (talk) 07:19, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

I take it "degenerated" doesn't reflect on the validity of the early Lowland Scotch sense in any way, just how it came about. Unfree (talk) 07:19, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Aha! I missed the "1627" before, Thomas May's meaning, complete with date. So you see, "bard" means whatever that means also. As for "whether it belongs" in "our" article, or whether we "should" have something or other, isn't a decision to be made by anybody, it's a proven fact, and you've given the evidence right there. Do you think the OED is wrong, or its authority must be overridden for some reason? What the OED says, especially if you know how well it's respected, isn't open to the judgment of thousands or millions, it's established, period. How can it be called into question, unless you create an opposing dictionary which somehow blows it to smithereens, not by consensus opinion, but by valid proof? The burden is upon whomever challenges the OED to show evidence upon which to judge it wrong, surely. How can you disagree? Do you? How can the creation of articles whose names end in parenthesized things, or disambiguation pages, or the like, cope with the simple fact that you're using "bard" wrong. It means at least four things, not just "the topic of our bard article". That's why I said the article was inadequate. In it, you won't find thorough discussions of whatever the word means. That's what officially belongs there, whether we like it or not, regardless of the state of it at any point in time. It is only right and meet so to do, to coin a phrase. ;)

IOW, Unfree's claim, ill-starred, is marred; the use of "bard" as ="card" is barred. — Sizzle Flambé (☎/✍) 14:16, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Hi, it's Unfree again. I'd like to help out on the article, and what I said about what a "bard" in common parlance among American bards isn't nonsense, it's just silly, but intended to broaden the topic. What's in the article needn't be altered, but expanded by a sentence somewhere, or not, to make the point that we actually do say "bard", whether anybody likes it or not. Freedom of speech will have to be abolished first, not after our quaint, but slippery tongue, "English", becomes redefined by careless researchers who insist on not looking in a direction they'd rather not. But this is neither here nor there. What I propose is a monster article on "bard". An all-inclusive, thoroughly encyclopedic, unabridged, utterly authoritative article, not losing, but contributing lots and lots of stuff, maybe all that can be found, all that has ever been written, on "bard". I want to see reams and reams here, not a smidgeon of it. "Bard" should be a great formal introduction to the history and practice, celebrities and historians, everything anybody has in his or her library all over the world, not just celtic, though that's of greatest importance and should be of highest priority, most assuredly, in my humble opinion. But "bard" can't be limited to the select few who were "employees" of, or even those who were "utilized" (How I detest that word") by the great and mighty king, in his excellent personhood, himself. What about the almost king down the road into whose door a pseudo-bard came singing and dancing, offering a night of scholarship, poesy, song, etc., with a "Anybody want to hear the greatest poem ever written? It's all about..." Should we not include the greatest of the great bardlet, the future or past, but not tonight, king's bard, among our exclusive company because somebody's "going to be on television tonight", or "We're not interested in being entertained like the king, we're practicing tying our shoelaces. Sorry."? Oh, and by the way, what was my "claim"? Something about English Usage? Forget it; that was no claim. I disown it as a claim. It was only intended to give nigh-inexpressible insight, that's all. Besides, if it were interpreted as a claim, I'm sure Misplaced Pages software will correct it while we sleep. By the way, the jack of clubs actually is a card. And Shakespeare wasn't just "called" the bard. Unfree (talk) 05:17, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Me again. Somebody said "You may want wikt:bard." Heaven forbid! I'm no lexicographer! Anything of that "wikt" form isn't of the least interest to me. I'd rather die! I may lose my temper and go there some day, but I'll wait, thank you very much, for a decade or two and pop in to see what's happened. Nothing of any interest, I suspect, because I know that just because Misplaced Pages was a great idea doesn't mean that (just) anybody can write a decent dictionary. I'll stick to my own collection of expensive, standard, popular, erudite, unabridged dictionaries, which at present stands firmly fixed at zero. Meanwhile, I'll continue my typical habits, which seem to be working quite well. As for the bard article we're discussing, just because I have opinions doesn't mean anybody should respect them. I'm more the creative type. Let the opinionated folk get you riled up about things, not me. Unfree (talk) 05:30, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Re:Vande mataram

Hell yes! The article now looks in a better shape. Congrats! --59.182.109.75 (talk) 17:17, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Please note I am not the editor who goes by the ip 59.93.242.192 (vandalism:section blanking) --59.182.109.75 (talk) 17:19, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Quettar

The article Quettar has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Fails our notability guideline.

While all contributions to Misplaced Pages are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{dated prod}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{dated prod}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. The speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Fram (talk) 13:06, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Tyalië Tyelelliéva

The article Tyalië Tyelelliéva has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Fails our notability guideline. No evidence that it has received any attention from reliable independent sources (e.g. no Google news hits, 2 Google books hits: passing mentions, at least one from another fan-published source).

While all contributions to Misplaced Pages are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{dated prod}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{dated prod}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. The speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Fram (talk) 13:12, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

List of People who have been considered dieties

Following your recent edits of List of people who have been considered deities, do you think it would be worth adding Jesus is considered God incarnate by orthodox Christianity, including the Anglican, Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches? For more info, the incarnation status is discussed in the article Incarnation (Christianity) Watercracker (talk) 15:27, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

It is not clear to me what you are suggesting. Jesus is alreadly listed as being considered God incarnate in mainstream Christianity, which of course includes the Anglican, Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches. --dab (𒁳) 16:43, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

In case you need further evidence of Jesus as a notable diety: . Hans Adler 17:02, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

I am sorry, what are you talking about? Did I in any way suggest that Jesus was not "notable as a deity"? I'm confused. --dab (𒁳) 17:05, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Of course you didn't. I just got confused by the section title. I thought you were discussing dieties, not deities, and Jesus is much less known in his role as an inspiration for diets. Sorry for the bad pun. Hans Adler 18:19, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

doh, I should have clicked on your bbc link Hans, my mistake :) --dab (𒁳) 20:48, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, Catholics certainly consider him a diety. -- Zsero (talk) 18:36, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

so, according to you, ichor has less calories than wine? --dab (𒁳) 21:10, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

I didn't say he was a reducing diety. However you look at it, so long as he keeps the accidents of ordinary bread and wine he's got to be more appetising than a diet of worms. -- Zsero (talk) 21:21, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Sorry about the typo, must have been hungry when posting this. I was making a distinction between Jesus being God (as you edited it to say in the article) and him being God incarnate. It seems according to the Incarnation (Christianity) page God incarnate is a better way to describe him, as in Christiology God was incarnated into human form - as Jesus. It's a minor point, but you seemed set on removing incarnate, calling it 'ridiculous' in your edit text. Do you think it's not more accurate, in light of the other wiki articles on Jesus as being referred to as God incarnate directly? Watercracker (talk) 19:02, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

you have missed the point entirely. The point of the revert was moving Jesus back from "self-deification" to "posthumous deification". The distinction between God and God incarnate is irrelevant here, because the entire page is about people "in the flesh". What I called 'ridiculous' was the claim that Jesus himself claimed to be "God in the flesh" during his lifetime. What he did claim, by oblique allusion, was being the Messiah, which no 1st century Jew could have mistaken for a claim of being God. I think the first to claim Jesus was God incarnate would have been John, about 60 years after Jesus' death. --dab (𒁳) 20:48, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Help, please

Hi Dab, I seem to have f*cked up somehow. First, the background is here. Next, I tried to undo this bogotic renaming. So, I reverted the latest additions, "moved" "Sanskrit metre" back to "Vedic meter" to restore the status quo ante -- all of which seemed to work -- and then killed the redirect (to "Vedic meter" as a result of my move) on the now "shadow" Sanskrit metre page to start a real page in earnest (where I put back in those additions so as not to lose content, and added some stuff to boot).

The problem is that this new Sanskrit metre page does not have its own Talk page. The "talk" tab takes one to Talk:Vedic metre instead. How can I fix this? Thanks! rudra (talk) 03:24, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Looks like Varoon_Arya (talk · contribs) took care of it.:-) rudra (talk) 05:55, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Violating site policy at page List of new religious movements

= in this edit you removed sourced info, and added a great deal of wholly unsourced info to the page. Please see WP:BURDEN. Please do not do this again. Cirt (talk) 15:24, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

nonsense, I restored an earlier revision, viz. the article structure which you destroyed. If you have complaints related to WP:CITE, use a tag, but don't destroy carefully designed article layouts like this. --dab (𒁳) 15:32, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

With this edit you have again violated WP:BURDEN a second time, after the above warning - by adding unsourced info to the page. I request that you please revert your edit. Cirt (talk) 15:38, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

wow, you are "warning" me now? Presumably because you are "right" and I am "wrong"? Or because you decided you "OWN" the article after you have run over it roughshod? If you want this to become a bona fide discussion, you want to stop with the "warnings" and begin defending whatever it is you want to say by citing WP:BURDEN, a page competely unrelated to the question of list organization.

Your unilateral changes to the list article have broken lots of redirects, such as Christianity-derived new religious movements, and you have not bothered to clean up after yourself, you just left them lying around. Even now, you prefer to issue "warnings" decorated with wikijargon instead of trying to help fixing the problem, or considering that a veteran editor with 100k+ edits may be familiar with "site policy" and may not be intersted in violating said policy deliberately. Do me a favour and try to understand my complaint, and then we can work together like Wikipedians towards a solution. --dab (𒁳) 15:41, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

Cheers

Iraq

I'm afraid that Izzedine and his Iraq crew have gotten under my skin. Would you mind taking a look at the same "Iraq" = "Mesopotamia" issue at Iraq? I'm not sure whether I can be objective about it anymore. Thanks. (Taivo (talk) 09:11, 28 December 2009 (UTC))

Re: Gibuld

Hi, dab. I was curious to know if you had any additional information regarding this. Thanks, --Aryaman (talk) 13:06, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't think that any more is known about this king than the two anecdotal mentions already referred to. It just remains to figure out the precise reference. This type of article is a merge candidate, into a comprehensive king of the Alamanni or similar. --dab (𒁳) 14:23, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Hindu mythology

Please comment http://en.wikipedia.org/Talk:Hindu_mythology#Hindu_mythology BalanceΩrestored 08:59, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

the article had been vandalized several times since October. Apparently, nobody is watching it. --dab (𒁳) 09:59, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

replied BalanceΩrestored 08:31, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

you are again wasting people's time because you cannot figure out for yourself what is shoved right in your face. Mythology discusses the primary meaning (meaning 1) of the dictionary meaning of "myth", not some derived meaning like "urban legend". I am sure that if you tried really hard, you could have concluded as much on your own. --dab (𒁳) 09:28, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

repliedBalanceΩrestored 10:11, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Your domain

Hi Dab, Happy New Year! I'm traveling and strapped for both the time and the energy needed POV battles. If you have the appetite, here are a few pages for your viewing pleasure: British soldier in India and British in India. Please also see new additions to East India Company (discussion on Talk:East India Company). Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:49, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Hi Dab, Thanks for all you help on the Company rule and EIC pages! Whenever you find it convenient, could you also take a look at British Raj, where the same editor user:Eraserhead1 is looking to add material. My memory of the page is that there was some concern that the history section was too long and that the first two subsections of it, both about prehistory, should be majorly pruned. Unfortunately, I am still traveling and won't have much time until after the third week of January for even routine editing, much less ideological battles. So, if you can add your input there as well, it would be great. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 02:40, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Talk:Babylon

Hey,

Regarding this edit, how is consensus supposed to be formed then? Regards, warrior4321 19:30, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

if you are referring to the current consensus of WP:ERA "armistice", this has been solid for about four years now. But if you have an idea on how to improve the situation, you should bring it up at Misplaced Pages talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers). --dab (𒁳) 20:37, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

No, I am referring to "Do not change from one style to another unless there is substantial reason for the change, and consensus for the change with other editors". I was trying to establish a consensus by conducting a discussion and viewing how many would support and how many would oppose it. The discussion was closed by 20 days after I had started the discussion. If anybody else had wanted to comment in the discussion, they would have done so by then. However, you came and just reverted everything. warrior4321 18:01, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

um, there is no reason whatsoever, let alone "subatantial" reason, for your change. the only reason you give is your personal preference. I strongly disapprove of people trying to sneak by changes in era format by claiming "consensus" ex silentio. --dab (𒁳) 19:19, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

CfD nomination of Category:Military history of Asia

I have nominated Category:Military history of Asia (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at the discussion page. Thank you. SatuSuro 02:14, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Please note it has been withdrawn - due to MILHIST reorganisation issues, Have a safe new year! SatuSuro 03:53, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

ANI Activity

Were you aware of this ANI action? (Taivo (talk) 15:43, 31 December 2009 (UTC))

this chap is just begging for a ban, isn't he. --dab (𒁳) 21:07, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Gayatri Mantra

Your input will be appreciated here, where an editor is contending that the mantra is not addressed to Savitr, because Brahmoism doesn't recognize devas. Abecedare (talk) 20:46, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

And why is my input necessary to deal with patent nonsense based on no references? --dab (𒁳) 21:06, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Do you have this

and Happy new year Taprobanus (talk) 15:51, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

FYI

mtEve v. PB666  16:44, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Also see ]. The shortening of the article was a long time coming, and not done in a rush, and it is a shame PB666 is unable to take part in discussions about such things in any practical way.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:21, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

User PB666 on Mitochondrial Eve and R1a

Hi. Your name is mentioned as a reference point here, and I think there is a good chance you would not like your name being used in this way. This is part of a bigger problem building up, and you should perhaps also cross reference to . I am keeping some notes, not perfectly complete, about previous incidents, here .--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:14, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Happy New Year

Happy New Year, Dab We may not agree on everything but I sort of agree with your point on Rajan Zed. Honestly, I never heard of him before he was asked to say the first prayer in Congress!!

Regards, Raj2004 (talk) 15:38, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

well, it's a minor point in the present context, because even if Zed himself was notable, the Avatar movie would still be a recentism for the purposes of the Avatar article. Cheers. --dab (𒁳) 15:42, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Happy New Year. Let's hope 2010 is better than 2009 (overall, anyway). --CreativeSoul7981 (talk) 18:21, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Irfan Habib

Please see this. That's the Bengali organ of the CPI(M), a social democrat party leaning more towards fascism than communism, .

Professor Irfan Habib has been a towering intellectual presence on the Indian academic scene for over four decades. Known as an unflinching Marxist scholar,...

the "Marxist scholar" is a bit dubious here. In Indian context, Marxist scholar can mean two things. Firstly, it is somebody who follows historical materialist approach and secondly it could also be said about somebody who owes his/her allegiance to the "Marxist Party", the common name for the CPI(M). In the case of Habib and others mentioned in the Ganashakti article (Panikar, Ms Patnaik etc), the second meanings seems more probable. They are a pathetic lot, worlds apart from a non-tendentious scholar like Romila Thapar. Aint I right Abeecedare?--117.204.93.123 (talk) 08:27, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

I realize this. This topic needs to be discussed, with references, at Marxist historiography. Please be aware of WP:BLP and don't submit online sources as "references". We can't just go around and label people "Marxists" just because we found that somebody on the internets is calling them that. --dab (𒁳) 09:30, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

a word of thanks

I'm a very long term editor on Misplaced Pages, been editing since around 2003. Now, however, I tend to only use IP addresses to mostly make minor spelling/style edits and try to stay away from content as much as possible, due to getting tired of being dragged into ridiculous arguments on various language/history/nationalism/religion etc. related articles. Whenever I do check one of these, however, I see your name coming up on the talk pages again and again, invariably being the contributor arguing for the most sensible and well reasoned point of view, tirelessly defending against all manner of nonsense and chauvinism. At times I can see your frustration emerging, and I understand it must be hard to keep your cool, but I'd encourage you not to give up or let it get the better of you. You're providing a great service to the project, and as such, to an accurate understanding of the state of human knowledge for literally millions of people all over the world! Keep up the good work! --86.172.114.47 (talk) 22:20, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Hear, Hear! (Taivo (talk) 23:11, 6 January 2010 (UTC))

thank you, I appreciate this a lot. It also reminds me to hand out more barnstars to those editors I think highly of. --dab (𒁳) 09:31, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

.....All this need now is a sharp pin. Meowy 19:52, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Idiot IP at Talk:Western world

There's an anon IP that keeps inserting an anti-Christian and anti-Jewish rant at Talk:Western world. Suggestions? (Taivo (talk) 05:44, 7 January 2010 (UTC))

I semi-protected the talk page and warned the IP. --Akhilleus (talk) 06:16, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks (Taivo (talk) 06:37, 7 January 2010 (UTC))

Ram Sharan Sharma

Hello, I just want to say that I did not understand this edit by you. I have added a reliable source which says RS Sharma belongs to the Marxist camp, then why you added a dubious tag. He belongs to the Marxist camp means he is Marxist. --Defender of torch (talk) 17:56, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Oh, I just noticed you did the same in the other articles also. Why? --Defender of torch (talk) 17:58, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Just noticed you have brought this issue in NPOV board. Replied there. --Defender of torch (talk) 18:01, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

what you are doing is known a cherry-picking, you are extracting soundbites to support your agenda. If you want to discuss this "Marxist historiography in India" topic, please do it properly and in context. --dab (𒁳) 09:13, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Your edit in Bede about mss of his works

Hi DaB,

I just came across this old edit to the article on Bede, which as it presently stands makes very little sense. I just moved the discussion of the manuscripts of Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica to that article and left the section on mss of his varied works from the Palatina in Bede, but it looks like an orphan as it stands. Do you have any strong opinions about keeping it? --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 20:01, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

well, I don't remember what I was doing when I made this edit, and I agree the list looks a little forlorn, but on the other hand I would argue that this is important and difficult-to-find information. I was probably researching something and spent an hour to find this information, and decided to dump it on Misplaced Pages for future reference and to save others the trouble. I would have to look into it before I can form an opinion. --dab (𒁳) 09:11, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

My thoughts when I first saw it was that there are so many Bede mss (several hundred of both the Hist. Eccl. and the De temporum ratione) that singling out a few mss in one library was a little unusual. On those grounds I favor deleting. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 01:21, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

yes of course, you are free to blank the list, it would be my responsibilty to do something encyclopedic with it. --dab (𒁳) 08:38, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Template:Infobox extended Ethnic group / Spanish people

Sir, I'm really upset about your recent edit in the Template:Infobox extended Ethnic group. This template was created in order to stop a number of edit wars in the Spanish people page, and though it's true that it has not been completely successful in achieving this goal, it is noteworthy that no editor, not even the anons, has shown any disagreement about the new template.

Needless to say, this template can be (and should be) used in many other pages. The "related by" category is open and can be adapted to different situations. I'm quite sure that other editors would find the template useful if they knew about its existence.

About my agenda, my point is really that all "X people" pages should be removed, though not before transferring any valuable content to other pages. The exact definition of any particular ethnic group is simply to subjective to serve as heading of any page. As this is too much of an objective for a single editor who is not even an administrator, I was just trying to make a little bit of sense of a nightmarish page, so that Misplaced Pages users don't get too misguided. Now, will you take care of this page? And what is your position? Are 25 million Argentinians ethnically Spanish because some tourist brochure says that they probably have Spanish ancestry? Or should they be ignored altogether? And, will you have the patience to revert almost daily those edits that don't agree with your position?

To say it briefly: You don't like my solution, so what is your solution? --Jotamar (talk) 17:49, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

My suggestion is that you don't attempt to resolve content disputes via templates. If you want to present "related ethnic groups" to the Spaniards, present your evidence on the article talkpage, and once you find consensus for your proposal, insert it into the article body (not an infobox). I do not understand what your "related by" parameter is even supposed to mean. In English, "related by" would express the means of relationship, i.e. if we are cousins, we are "related by" a grandparent. If you think you have a new parameter that can be usefully included in {{Infobox Ethnic group}}, you should make a suggestion at Template talk:Infobox Ethnic group. The important thing is that you seek consensus. People will then also be able to help you express properly whatever it is you want to list under your "related by" parameter. Note that there is already a "related" parameter for related ethnic groups. What you have done is, you have done a copy-paste move of a complex template just to introduce a new parameter to the clone. This is unacceptable already on formal grounds.

In terms of content I have to inform you that the Spanish people are not an ethnic group, they are a nationality comprising a number of sub-nationalities. This is clearly stated in the Spanish people article already. If the Spanish people aren't an ethnic group to begin with, the Argentinians a fortiori cannot be "ethnically Spanish". As for reverting daily, if there is trolling or vandalism at that article, the solution will be semiprotection or protection, not fiddling about with template syntax. --dab (𒁳) 18:00, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Romani infobox

Template:Romani infobox has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. Plastikspork _―Œ 00:18, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Sura Kingdom

Hi, Kindly give your input on This discussion Ikon 16:56, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't think I have anything to add to what SpacemanSpiff said. Please edit responsiby and respect WP:CITE]. --dab (𒁳) 18:01, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Comments

Comments by Nigedo ("I suggest you go and participate in another area of Misplaced Pages") Dbachmann ("you of course mean "my homies",") and David Rohl ("Sanity and reasonableness regains a foothold"; I take Dbachmann's point that this implies there had been insanity and unreasonableness) all seem to me inappropriate as article talk page comments, at the very least straying from what we're supposed to be discussing there. (I'm putting a similar message on all three user talk pages.) ☺Coppertwig (talk) 23:15, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Anon. comments

Hello, Dbachmann. I deleted some comments off your page from an anonymous user who using POV and false statements to "help" his cause. Obviously you and I may not agree on some problems at the Spanish people article, but its at least civil. Thank you. C.Kent87 (talk) 01:11, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

thanks, I am used to this. Regarding the Spanish people article, I am open to any solution that may be based on citable references, but I insist that the solution may not lie in a infobox specially tuned for the Spanish. If an infobox creates trouble, it must be reduced, not expanded. Any infobox should only ever contain uncontroversial facts. It isn't possible to represent controversies in infobox form. --dab (𒁳) 09:39, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

MEXICAN COMPLEX IN SPANISH PEOPLE ARTICLE

So sad that ridiculous complex of the Mexicans for being Spanish, it has been vandalizing the article, you should only engage people of Spanish nationality and ethnic Spanish,. Mexicans not understand , the only nations where the population is majority are Ethnic Spanish are Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Costa Rica, and with significant numbers in Brazil (15,000,000) and Mexico (10,000,000) Mexico is a country of exotic culture, the only area of western European culture and america are USA, Canada, and America's Southern Cone (Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and southern Brazil)— Preceding unsigned comment added by ] (] • ])

sheesh, maybe you should find an article you feel less strongly about. --dab (𒁳) 20:41, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Mount Beiwudang

If you are ever in central China you should check out Beiwudang Shan. If you are going let me know and I can give you detailed directions about finding the place. :D

I would certainly love to, but I do not plan on getting within a thousand miles of Beiwudangshan any time soon... --dab (𒁳) 10:23, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Ashoka Chakra

That article is a common target for trolls, do you think it should be semi-protected? Mitsube (talk) 03:40, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I think it should be merged. --dab (𒁳) 10:23, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I suppose you are right. Mitsube (talk) 22:49, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Ahir

Hi, I saw your concern regarding disambiguation of ahir/abhir & also proposed clean up. I have left my comment on talk page regarding disambiguation. Please note, the articles were different initially with many names like ahir, ahirs, ahira, abhir, abhira etc, and had been merged later. Kindly share your views. Also, I have already cleaned up Origin section, and would like to have your evaluation of the same. It was full of conjectures earlier, which I already explained to Timberframe. Also, the article has a lot of unencyclopaedic sections, which needs to be removed. Looking forward to hear from you. Ikon 12:26, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Harry Palmer

I agree his self-description was vanity, but establishes his public claims as just that -- his own. Are you sure we should not add it back? Venus Copernicus (talk) 00:43, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Merging Fictional turtles into Cultural depictions of turtles and tortoises

As a contributor to one of these articles, would you like to comment at the merge proposal? Vmenkov (talk) 03:08, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Please

dab, please don't harass people in this way. We're supposed to have a spirit of community, try not to forget that. Izzedine 13:51, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

I am amazed to get this from you of all people with a straight face. Well, I can't see your face, can I.

You wouldn't recognize a "spirit of community", let alone encyclopedicity, if your life depended on it.

My only consolation is that with this renewed outbreak of trolling on your part, your wiki-career is very likely drawing to its close. --dab (𒁳) 13:53, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

I am concerned with your manner towards me. This is a public website which anyone is free to use without bullying or harrassment. In what way am I "Trolling" exactly? Izzedine 14:00, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

You two clearly cannot collaborate. As your interactions are becoming a source of disruption, I ask that you both disengage. (That, Izzedine, includes editing Dbachmann's talk.) AGK 14:55, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

I expect you are aware that Izzedine has a long history of trolling, including recent off-wiki canvassing due to which he only narrowly escaped a ban? If you are, I would ask you not to portray this as a symmetrical dispute. This is one patriotic pov-pusher vs. Misplaced Pages's immunity system, not "two who cannot collaborate". Thank you. --dab (𒁳) 08:55, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Central Guoshu Institute

This comes from just about the most reliable online English source of CMA information: "The Central Guoshu Institute had to move out of Nanjing at the very start of the war. It changed locations almost every year following, until the war was over. In 1946, the Institute returned to Nanjing, however the move back was largely symbolic. The war left the Institute with no office, no activities and no money. Two years later, the Institute was no more." Simonm223 (talk) 15:48, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

For the record any information coming from Gene Ching about CMA history is likely to be about the best quality available in the English language. Gene is strongly connected to organizations in both USA and China, has years of research, and is impecably honest. I love working with him and do so whenever I get the chance. (I have written for his magazine on occasion). Simonm223 (talk) 16:00, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

excellent, many thanks. --dab (𒁳) 08:57, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks (TM pages)

Thanks for your input on the TM related pages. Added editor input can only make the articles stronger. As per the ref list. Many times rewrites or sources have been added on the talk pages for editor scrutiny, so although it is not the norm on many article pages it is the accepted standard where such ongoing checking of sources and text is necessary. Just for your information. (olive (talk) 17:50, 16 January 2010 (UTC))

After five minutes of involvement, I scan that you apparently have a WP:COI. This is something that does not "make the articles stronger" but rather weaker. If you are in any way involved with or attached to TM I would ask you to take a back seat in this.

On a point of formatting, if it is you who keeps using cite.php on talkpages, please stop doing it now. --dab (𒁳) 17:52, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

If you have comments about my editing take it to the COI Notice Board . I am a neutral editor and I don't appreciate your comment after "5 minutes of scanning", an astonishing and patronizing statement. Further, the use of the ref list is not "mine" , but is a relied on convention being used on these pages, as agreed upon by all editors. Rather than walk onto contentious article pages and immediately attacking, you might wait and see what is actually going on. If you don't like my formatting change it, or cite what you add. These are contentious articles, and we are all careful about what we add, but do not walk onto the page and begin by ordering editors around. Thanks.(olive (talk) 18:13, 16 January 2010 (UTC))

yes, I apologize for the patronizing tone. I deal with WP:FRINGE topics on a regular basis, and you tend to develop a curt mode of interaction with pov-pushing accounts. This isn't, of course, personal. As for ordering you about, I have asked you politely to stop using cite.php on talk, as this is not in any way common practice, and for good reason. Also, I do not agree at all that the TM articles are at all "contentious". They may need cleanup and review, but this is not the same. --dab (𒁳) 19:10, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Please note the banners on these two pages: , , and should you decide my edits are POV please feel free to notify me so I can review them. Thanks.(olive (talk) 20:34, 16 January 2010 (UTC))

Thank you for your works.

Thank you for works.

Humanbyrace (talk) 22:28, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Dab. You came onto the TM pages with an admitted bias.

"I have always thought that people will need to be really desperate for a guru before choosing to follow this one."

You became accusatory with in in your own words five minutes, hardly time to make any form of unbiased judgement.

"After five minutes of involvement, I scan that you apparently have a WP:COI. This is something that does not "make the articles stronger" but rather weaker. "

Within a very short period of time, you once again accuse me of COI and despite my suggestion you stop or take your concerns to a Notice Board, you continued your attacks.

"It turns out that problems these article suffer is apparent WP:COI editing on the part of Littleolive oil (talk · contribs)."

You are now suggesting that editing to remove a WP:WTA violation here , an obvious editing mistake per Misplaced Pages, is a biased edit on my part. I will suggest to you in a friendly manner that you stop harassing me, and if you truly have unbiased concerns take this to a Notice Board. Thanks.(olive (talk) 16:58, 18 January 2010 (UTC))

Why yes, my admitted bias while editing Misplaced Pages is "pro mainstream", which actually helps wrt WP:NPOV and WP:DUE. You will concede, I hope, that I have succeeded in fixing a large number of problems in the Maharishi article. As for the TM movement one, you will note that I have not re-introduced the "so-called" you objected to on grounds of WP:WTA. I have no intention of harassing you. Of course you have a bias, and unfortunately it is not the pro-Misplaced Pages-policy bias I subscribe to, but rather a full-fledged WP:COI, as I daresay it is rather evident that you are involved with TM. If you try to stand in the way of the very necessary cleanup efforts of the TM articles you will find that you are not in any dispute with me personally. --dab (𒁳) 17:03, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

That is a threat, and you have no right to accuse me of a bias that stands against Misplaced Pages. But thanks for making your position clear. I'll continue to edit in a manner that supports Misplaced Pages policy and guidelines.(olive (talk) 17:09, 18 January 2010 (UTC))

As I said, I have no interest in either harassing or threatening you. You are the one who came to my talkpage. I will also stop saying you have a COI if that annoys you, but I cannot help but notice how you carefully avoid stating that I am wrong and that you have no personal involvement with TM. I am looking to help cleanup the TM topics, and I will be very happy to ignore you as long as you do not force me to take notice.

As a full disclaimer, my only personal contact with TM was (a) a guy trying to recruit me when I was a teenager, (b) listening to a lecture at Seelisberg, including a hilarious "Yogic flying" video and (c) a good laugh when the "Natural Law Party" tried to win seats in a local election. All of this is several years ago, and I have never given TM another thought since. --dab (𒁳) 17:18, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Ah but you are. Since I have been harassed off Misplaced Pages, I do not tell anybody anything Dab, and especially someone whose immediate response to another editor is to harass and threaten. If you are concerned about my comments on your talk page, I can make them more public. (olive (talk) 17:24, 18 January 2010 (UTC))

no, I am telling you that you have no case, and unless you have something new to say instead of rehashing your empty accusations, I would suggest this thread is closed. --dab (𒁳) 20:30, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Dab, I've spent much more than five minutes reading your Talk page, and I must say I'm impressed by the range and helpfulness of your editing and administrative activities. I'd like to write here to give what I hope is unbiased feedback on the activities of Olive (Littleolive oil). At the time she became an active editor of Transcendental Meditation and related pages, these TM pages were a mess, oscillating between extremely pro-TM and extremely anti-TM (to simplify a bit). Although Olive is clearly pro-TM, she quickly learned WP policies and understood how they help ensure the accuracy and appropriateness of WP articles. Ever since, she (along with several other editors) has been calm during storms of conflict, helping us steer the article in the direction of balance between opposing points of view, always insisting on WP:CITE and other basic policies. Asking her (or any of the other editors) to leave because of WP:COI would be bad for the article. I'm not sure why, but TM seems to invite controversy and argument (in spite of its being a peaceful meditation technique!). Without Olive and other level-headed editors, the article could easily again become an unreadable mixture of pro and con statements. We've learned that what is important is not whether an editor is pro or con, but whether they help improve the article. This means sourcing all definitive statements and making sure the material is accurate and reflects all significant points of view. You and Olive share a certain conciseness, almost curtness, of expression. I think that is why there was some misunderstanding going on here. I hope my input will help you to accept Olive, just as we accept Fladrif and other editors who offer a critical assessment of TM. While our methodology in editing the TM pages may seem inefficient, our constant discussions help to weed out unjustified content and improve the article over the long term. David spector (talk) 23:21, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

thanks for your considerate comment, David. I realize my tendency for curtness, it is a behaviour optimized over years of wiki-disputes, but I understand it involves treading on some toes that do not deserve being trod on, on occasion. On the other hand, I do not mind being addressed with equal curtness, and I won't start a wikidrama "zomg CIVIL" over disgruntled editors calling me names. You are very welcome to stay involved in this and mediate where possible. I accept your word that olive has helped in the past, but she certainly isn't helping now. I insist the TM articles are dreadful and need to be cleaned up. The problem is that they heavily rely on primary sources, while articles need to depend substantially, if not exclusively, on independent third party sources. If olive is willing to help weed out the primary sources associated with TM and replace them with independent ones, she is very welcome to help. If she is just here to keep pushing TM propaganda, she will find that this will not prevail, as Misplaced Pages is built to withstand such attempts.--dab (𒁳) 09:48, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

In my least curt tone possible, let me remind you that it is not your place to tell an editor where or where not they are welcome, either David or me. It is not your place to tell an editor what they can or cannot edit. In my country we would call your position skating on very thin ice, since you are editing with an obvious and declared bias, and attacked another editor withn, in your own words, five minutes of being on the page. Finally, primary studies have a place on Misplaced Pages in terms of self defining the topic of an article. Whatever you may think of the TM technique and related programs, and again you have made your bias clear, sources must be included that describe how the organization defines itself along with how it is defined from outside. Either one with out the other would probably create an non-neutral and inaccurate article. I include an astute comment posted earlier today by Blueboar concerning primary sources which is the wider more comprehensive view of primary/ secondary sources and their use and applications in articles.

<Sigh>... Once again, we are sidetracked by focusing on whether something is Primary or Secondary... when the important thing is whether we are using the source appropriately or misusing the source in a way that constitutes OR. It does not matter whether a scientific journal article is Primary or Secondary (or a little of both)... because OR is not determined by whether the source is Primary or Secondary. It is not OR to cite a primary source. It is not OR to discuss what a scientist says in a published journal. It is not OR to discuss a researcher's published interpretation of his or her data... although we should attribute that interpretation to make it clear that the interpretation being discussed is that of the researcher. The whole point of NOR is that we may not include our interpretations. Yes, we need to be careful, because it is easy to cross the line between discussing the researcher's interpretation and discussing our own interpretation. But as long as we are careful, and don't cross that line, there is no problem. Blueboar (talk) 15:22, 22 January 2010 (UTC) (olive (talk) 23:51, 22 January 2010 (UTC))

question about a map, and Ancient Observer, with ban expired, has just rv AE race controversy to his last version before his ban

A question has been raised about File:Old Europe.png which I think you created, both at its talk page and the articles where it's being used. The other bit is self-explanatory, see his rationale at Talk:Ancient Egyptian race controversy. I'm not sure whether to take this to ANI or what. Dougweller (talk) 12:57, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

in my understandng, if an editor returns from a ban and carries on seamlessly with the behaviour that led to the ban, he should be immediately issued with another ban, longer than the preceding one. You can just issue the ban, and take it to ANI if the user complains or starts posting unblock requests. --dab (𒁳) 13:02, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Believe me if I am reblocked on bogus grounds I will take the matter up with Arbcom again. I haven't violated any rules so I recommend you think twice about conspiring against me. AncientObserver (talk) 13:10, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

open discussion on user talkpages hardly qualifies as a "conspiracy". If you return from your ban and show you have learned nothing, you will be re-blocked very quickly, much more easily than the first time around. This is the way it works. --dab (𒁳) 13:15, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

There was no justification for my previous ban as was revealed in the Arbcom discussion. If I am re-banned on bogus grounds I will simply take it up with them and this time I will see to it that Admins actually look into the matter. AncientObserver (talk) 13:24, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

There's no justification for this sudden reversion. I've taken it to ANI. The file? Dougweller (talk) 13:53, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Hate to nag, but File:Old Europe.png does seem problematic and I sympathise with the desire to remove it, unless you've got some references I don't know about, which wouldn't surprise me. :-) Dougweller (talk) 19:09, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

I did not understand your question "the file?" as this this section combined two topics and we were sidetracked by the Afrocentric troll. If you want to remove the image from the articles, just be bold, I am not going to edit-war over it. You will realize, I hope, that you are depriving these articles of a perfectly good overview map. You may also want to help verify the image, e.g. check EIEC. --dab (𒁳) 20:29, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

The last thing I want to do is deprive any article of a good map. But I admit that a lot of similar maps bother me because as you probably know, some of them are ill-sourced and some just downright wrong. I'll see if I can get hold of EIEC. Dougweller (talk) 21:02, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

I will also try to address this once I get a moment. If you remove the map from the articles in the meantime, no harm is done, it's not a big deal. --dab (𒁳) 09:50, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Unreferenced BLPs

Hello Dbachmann! Thank you for your contributions. I am a bot alerting you that 2 of the articles that you created are tagged as Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons. The biographies of living persons policy requires that all personal or potentially controversial information be sourced. In addition, to ensure verifiability, all biographies should be based on reliable sources. If you were to bring these articles up to standards, it would greatly help us with the current 28 article backlog. Once the articles are adequately referenced, please remove the {{unreferencedBLP}} tag. Here is the list:

1. Tim Krohn - Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL
2. Robert Cramer (Swiss politician) - Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Thanks!--DASHBot (talk) 17:17, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Mailbox

E-mail seems so 20th century, but I'm a push-over for the old-fashioned ways of doing things. (Though I'm a bit rusty at Morse code.)   Will Beback  talk  09:54, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Gujjar

Dab, can you take a look at the walled garden of Gujjar that now has creepers crawling out to other topics? I came across it when a National Highway 24 (India) was renamed because a segment of the road was named to something Gujjar related. The Pratiharas rule is being expanded in articles and templates, and this topic needs some attention before it gets to the Kamboja fancruft level. cheers. -SpacemanSpiff 17:19, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Elohim

Have you seen this edit? . Dougweller (talk) 11:32, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I see you've dealt with it. Dougweller (talk) 11:34, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Could you state the reason for this revert please? Elamongelohim (talk) 15:08, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I reverted it because you're claiming with no reliable source that this is the first use of the word 'star-ship' (not 'starship' if the Sacred texts site is correct, by the way). Dougweller (talk) 15:47, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Thank you that is helpful as far as revising a possible section in the Ancient Astronaut wiki, but I was wondering about why the Elohim wiki section on Elohim in Oahspe was reverted. Having studied Oahspe extensively we are trying to work on a valid reference section discussing the historical information in Oahspe on the word Elohim (It is our understanding that Oahspe qualifies as a reliable source, having been in publication since 1882).Elamongelohim (talk) 21:02, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

The Elohim page is about the Hebrew word, ok? Whatever "Elohim" may mean in Oahspe, it has nothing to do with the Elohim article, and you an place a disambiguation link for whatever it is worth at Elohim (disambiguation). --dab (𒁳) 09:39, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Combining grapheme joiner

The article Combining grapheme joiner has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Overly technical article which doesn't provide sources to demonstrate this single unnotable unicode character is deserving of its own entry.

While all contributions to Misplaced Pages are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{dated prod}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{dated prod}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. The speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Dylanfromthenorth (talk) 01:10, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

you must be joking. --dab (𒁳) 09:44, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

List of cities

Please can you explain why did you remove Zadar and Nin from the list as "unsubstantiated" ? Zenanarh (talk) 07:10, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

because these entries were obvious items of national mysticism. Please cite a verifiable reference, and leave out all the tangents on 'ancient peoples and their Pre-Indo-European languages'. --dab (𒁳) 12:05, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

"obvious items of national mysticism"? LOL There is no any kind of such national mysticism in Croatia (we are not the Albanians) and I'm not some myth POV pusher. Dbachmann, I did cite verifiable references, based on hard archeological evidences. My fault is that I've added some additional info on toponomastics, in good faith, but unfortunatelly you've recognized it as... whatever you have. I'll reedit it without these "unuseful" details. Zenanarh (talk) 12:45, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

ok, look, let's forget about the mysticism and focus on reliability. How are we supposed to verify that these Croatian authors (a) claim continuous habitation and (b) are bona fide archaeologists? Don't you have anything more accessible? --dab (𒁳) 14:00, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Listen, Suić is not anonymus in the scientific world. Quite opposite, it's almost impossible for any worldwide author to write anything about Antiquety in Dalmatia without Suić's refs. He is just one of the quality authors coming from University of Zadar, there are also others, like Stipčević, Zaninović, Batović, Čače, Petricioli, and others, but Suić is probably the best known. Example: Mallory has based all chapter about the Illyrians, Dalmatae and Liburnians on Suić (Liburnians) and Stipčević (Illyrians), solely. Suić is ref for Zadar. Concerning city of Nin, I've used one nice page I've found in the net, provisionally, until I replace it with direct source - scientific work. Don't worry about reliability. But let me ask you this: why you people think, a priori, that we are all rednecks here? Come visit Croatia as a tourist to see where western civilization culture came from. ;-) Zenanarh (talk) 14:49, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

um, I did not mean to imply that Suić is a redneck, I a sure he is as fine a scholar as any. All I was saying that I find it hard to verify the precise content of Suić (1981) (no page, no ISBN). It isn't a slight on Croatia to say that it will be difficult to find a Croatian language publication from 1981 outside of Croatia, and that it will be difficult for a non-Croatian speaker to plod through the entire work to verify the claim regardint the continuous habitation of Zadar. Perhaps you could just provide the relevant quote? --dab (𒁳) 19:56, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

request to you re Passage Meditation

Hi, you may remember a discussion back last October about whether the Passage Meditation and Eknath Easwaran articles should be merged. At the time you said the EE article was very stubby, but since then I did quite a bit of work on it and it was upgraded to C Class. I also extended the PM article, as did another contributor. I think the 2 articles now justify their independent existences and I have proposed the merge tag on PM be removed. It would be very helpful if you, as a seasoned[REDACTED] editor, could give your opinion on the articles as they now stand. Several (new to wikipedia) contributors have joined this discussion, and the fact they are new has raised suspicions with the other editors - who are talking of sock-puppetry which is actually in my view quite an aggressive response to new contributors. I wonder whether these other editors have actually checked the latest version of the articles, or the arguments put forward by the new contributors. Your voice in this discussion would be appreciated. Of course, I'd hope you would now oppose the merge, especially as you did say earlier that you had no objection to the 2 articles remaining, but I do recognise that you may not agree - however, I do hope you might be prepared to take the time to look at it. Thanks, DuncanCraig1949 (talk) 11:11, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I would agree that the two articles can remain unmerged as they stand now. Thank you for your efforts. Of course, both will need to be patrolled for partisan editing. --dab (𒁳) 11:18, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for your action, much appreciated. However, I see Verbal has immediately reverted your change, apparently without any explanation. What happens now? DuncanCraig1949 (talk) 08:34, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Articles for deletion nomination of Mark Pitcavage

Christ myth stuff

just as a matter of curiosity, I take it you don't think the Christ myth stuff is a serious religious debate. I always thought it had some reasonable elements, personally (though admittedly the concept has gotten sucked up by some people who have Points to Make). at least, it seems obvious to me that the story of Christ has accumulated a layer of borrowed mythology over any core elements of historical truth. is that not how you see it? --Ludwigs2 17:16, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

well of course, this is perfectly obvious, and should be discussed both at historicity of Jesus and Jesus Christ in comparative mythology. "Christ myth" is reserved for people who realize for the first time that mythology has gotten attached to the historical figure and then go "omg it's all a lie". I mean, nobody would claim Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor was unhistorical because folklore has him sitting in a mountain with his beard growing, but somehow all Luke needed to do was add some angels and magi and suddenly the entire thing is fiction? -dab (𒁳) 22:50, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

lol - yeah, we're on the same page. people... --Ludwigs2 23:18, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Creation according to Genesis FAQ

If you're interested in helping me with the FAQ for this article I'm working off of the following test page Nefariousski (talk) 19:42, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Wendy Doniger

Dab, take a look at the debate on the Talk on Wendy Doniger. Goethan keeps on removing the criticism section. I agree that the current criticism section is not NPOV so I have revised it with counteropposing views. Please take a look. Raj2004 (talk) 19:54, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

I am not at all a right wing Hindu nationalist. I agree that there are some out there who are crazies. But let's be civil here by presenting all points of view, whether we agree with them or not. Dab from my experiences in the past, you always aim to be NPOV. Raj2004 (talk) 16:08, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, Wendy Doniger is a difficult case, the kind that puts WP's flaws in stark relief. The basic problem is that Doniger is "the establishment": she has succeeded in making her silly brand of "Hinduism studies" the "mainstream" in academia -- at least, in the West and even more specifically, in the US, which is what counts, unfortunately (because only in the US will people actually pay to be "taught" such garbage -- and money talks.) So, by WP's rules, it doesn't get any more "mainstream" and "academic consensus" and WP:RS and WP:V and whatnot than her stuff and her brand of stuff, unmitigated crap though it all may be. The only way out of this mess is a policy that BLPs should not have "Criticism" sections, period. rudra (talk) 21:49, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Dab, I believe that this is not handled in a fair way. Contrast this with an article on the controversial Catholic theologian, Mary Daly; see http://en.wikipedia.org/Mary_Daly#Controversy_and_criticism Can Goethan and Rudrasharman write something like that? I will reintroduce my introduction, and you guys can rewrite it in a similar style like the Mary Daly article? Raj2004 (talk) 12:26, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

WP:OTHERCRAP. Of course we can cite academic criticism of a person's work, but we will cite that in the context of a discussion of that work, not collated in a "criticism" section. --dab (𒁳) 15:29, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Israeli Jews needs a semi protection

There has been a lot of IP vandalism in this article - different anonymous users are constantly trying to add less notable celebrities to the template. I am currently trying to reach a consensus regarding this matter in the discussion page. Please protect the article until the issue is resolved. TheCuriousGnome (talk) 07:51, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

The article shouldn't even exist imho, under {{duplication}}, because its scope overlaps with that of Israelis to 83%. Not any more than Egyptian Muslims or Swiss Christians. Should redirect to religion in Israel. --dab (𒁳) 15:12, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Professor Kazanos?

Pardon my ignorance. Why do you have objections towards him? I am curious as I do not know much about him. This site (http://nalandainternational.org/IndusConference/Participants.htm) seems to suggest that he is a scholar. If so, his views may be included in the Doniger article. I recognize one of the participants though. (Edwin Bryant. Thanks for the clarification. Raj2004 (talk) 00:19, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

what? Your link says "Director, Omilos Meleton Cultural Institute, Athens". It doesn't say "professor". Kazanas is a Greek Yoga teacher who is touted by the Voice of India Hindutva crowd. Nothing new or interesting there. They might at least come up with a new meatpuppet every other year or so, Kazanas is so 2002. Raj2004, have you ever bothered to read our coverage of this sad item? At Indigenous Aryans, Out of India and Voice of India? Please do so now. This was a propaganda stunt under the BJP government back in 1998 to 2004, and some people on the internet just won't let it die now. --dab (𒁳) 00:24, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the links. I will read it. Please be polite. Thanks, Raj2004 (talk) 13:28, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Baligród massacre

Don't remember whether it was you or another editor that was commiserating about the plethora of tiny "massacre" articles, but there's a deletion discussion going on at . (Taivo (talk) 00:44, 30 January 2010 (UTC))

Hinduvta bigot

Dab, are you accusing me of being a Hindutva bigot? I am not, for your information. I don't care about Doniger either although I do believe that there should be balanced academic criticism of Doniger from both sides, if there are available. Raj2004 (talk) 17:34, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

no, I was talking about the tomato throwers. Unless you were one of those, you need not feel addressed, although it is beyond me why you should insist this is an encyclopedic item. --dab (𒁳) 18:09, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Sorry for the misunderstanding, Dab. I am of course, not one of those throwers. Yeah, you are right. Who really cares about Doniger? As you correctly stated,"She appears to represent the generation of academics that form the very nadir of postmodernist gender trash." She is not a real scholar, like Gavin Flood, or the other ones from the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. She is of course controversial, but probably not made much of an impact on the real study of Hinduism such as the Oxford Group. Thanks,

Raj2004 (talk) 18:21, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

LGBT themes in Hindu mythology

The article was recently moved to "Gender to Hindu mythology" by you. Discussion about the undiscussed change at Talk:Gender_in_Hindu_mythology#Requested move. --Redtigerxyz 04:27, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

I have discussed this recently, and I am not disposed to have the same discussion every other week, but thanks. --dab (𒁳) 06:43, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

"You cannot parody Misplaced Pages"

Too true. I once tried it, see Relations between Helmut Kohl and Kurt Tucholsky. But then one of the Liechtenstein–Togo relations supporters told me: "Understanding life is about understanding relationships , I really dont see why we couldn't have articles about significant relationships between people, the Kohl – Tucholsky article seems most interesting." Hans Adler 20:42, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Moses of Chorene

Hi. Since you have been involved in this discussion previously, you may wish to provide your opinion here: Grandmaster 08:23, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Map

Hi Dbachmann. This map File:Islam-by-country-smooth.png you uploaded seems to suggest that Islam is a major religion of North Korea and Taiwan (among others).... Am I getting something wrong? Best regards :-) Per Honor et Gloria ✍ 08:33, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

from the very page you link to: "Countries in black have no data." It's only line 2 of the image description, but I realize that most people will only get as far as the first part of line 1 in most cases. --dab (𒁳) 10:55, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I finally saw it too. It's a bit confusing. Do you mind if I correct these countries and just put them in white anyway? Cheers Per Honor et Gloria ✍ 19:52, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

ok, sorry for my grumpy reply earlier. Please note, this map is color-coded. There is a legend saying what each colour means. White means "0% Islam", so whatever you do, don't turn black ("no data") into white ("0% Islam"). Perhaps you will find another suitable colour for "no data", although I don't quite see what's wrong with black. --dab (𒁳) 22:07, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

No big deal really, but black looks a lot like dark blue on many computers ... hence the confusion. Maybe I'll try checkered or line designs to show "no data". Please revert if you don't like my attempt! Cheers Per Honor et Gloria ✍ 07:40, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Poor scholarship in Indian references

Dab, I agree with your points. In fact, I find that Professor Pandey in his book, Encylopedia of Indian Philosophy appeared to take excerpts from the Misplaced Pages article and pasted it in his book; I was checking Google Books and note that whole excerpts from my[REDACTED] article on Karma in Hinduism were published in Vraj Kumar Pandey 's Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophy, pg. 33 See, http://books.google.com/books?cd=1&q=swami+sivananda+karma+vraj+kumar+pandey&btnG=Search+Books Did Professor Pandey acknowledge in a footnote in his book, Misplaced Pages? S

I changed one of the references in the current article to Thirugnana Sambanthar, since the referenced 2004 web link was dead, and Mr. Pandey seemed to have copied my article anyway. Indeed, the earliest versions of the article with reference to Swami Sivananda, with reference to karma was made in 2004 way prior to the 2007 publication of Professor Pandey: http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Karma_in_Hinduism&oldid=8711064 I hope that he referenced Misplaced Pages or otherwise this may be a case for plagiarism. The Google snippet was a limited preview so I don't know whether he referenced wikipedia.

But the surprising thing is that the publisher is Motilal Banarsidass, which I think is a well-respected publisher.

Raj2004 (talk) 18:18, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

hm, I am not sure about "professor" Pandey, but yes, MB is quite a respectable publisher, altough I take it they do mostly cheap reprints of old works. But Pandey's "Encyclopaedia" (read, Misplaced Pages ripoff) is apparently published with "Anmol Publications". --dab (𒁳) 22:11, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Yep, you are correct. Sorry for the mistake. The publisher is Anmol Publications, not Motilal Banarsidass. I am not sure if Pandey is a professor. Thanks, Raj2004 (talk) 22:47, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

The Egg

Forget about it, Dab It was a heated edit conflict and errors occurred. I wanted to present both sides, which included a laudatory article about Professor Doniger. Unfortunately, there are hardly any scholarly critiques of her, except for Witzel. Most critiques are just "tomatoes," as you said. Raj2004 (talk) 12:12, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

yeah, we should forget about this, and probably we should just stub Doniger's article to the bare facts we have about her. --dab (𒁳) 12:15, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Karma in Hinduism

I agree with Rudra's edits relating Shani in the Karma in Hinduism article, but many Hindus believe that planets are tied with past karma. What do you think? Raj2004 (talk) 12:14, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I think this should be discussed under Jyotisha. The Karma article can do with a brief link of Jyotisha to the concept of Karma, if it can be based on a serious academic reference. This is about the quality of references, not about what should or should not be discussed. By all means, discuss the relation of astrology to karma, but don't use crappy sources like "Effectuation of Shani Adoration" or books on "Vedic Astrology". --dab (𒁳) 12:31, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Ok, I agree. I am trying to find a serious academic resource, but unfortunately, in this realm, I have not yet found a serious academic source. Raj2004 (talk) 13:21, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

You Know Better (TM)

• To all, this talk page is to discuss the subject and text of this article. Other topics and discussions especially those about editors, their behavior, allegedsock puppets, COI etc. belong elsewhere. Thank you.-- — Kbob • Talk • 17:36, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
• "Please show a Misplaced Pages policy or guideline that says an editor accused, especially unfairly, of sockpuppetry or meat puppetry must stop editing" is tongue in cheek wikilawyering, nothing else, and Misplaced Pages has a time-honoured tradition of showing people trying this the door directly. We want no socks, and we want no COI pov pushers, and we have the will and the tools to ban such editors, under WP:DISRUPT, WP:COI, WP:DUCK, WP:UCS and if necessary even WP:IAR. If the letter of policy is made to conflict with the spirit, it is the spirit that is going to win out every time. This is no court of law, and it is no democracy. Ah yes, and WP:ENC. --dab (𒁳) 11:12, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Dab, your post above is inappropriate for a talk page and as a Wiki Admin you know better. Please think twice next time. Thanks.-- — Kbob • Talk • 17:31, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

what utter nonsense. I am replying to another post. The quote "show a Misplaced Pages policy or guideline that says an editor accused, especially unfairly, of sockpuppetry or meat puppetry must stop editing" is not mine. You want to keep talkpages clean of any tangents? Then why do I not see you complaining to the editor who made the original comment?

The TM talkpage would be empty if it wasn't for the perpetual pov pushing by the COI editors. Until and unless we finally manage to contain this, talkpage discussion will naturally revolve around COI. If you are suggesting summarily banning the pro TM editors, I think you do have a good case but I am afraid such vigorous admin response to tag team editing is rather rare.

also, you may note that you are not the only one who uses this talkpage. Do me the minimal courtesy of posting a link to the issue you are complaining about. I do not have the time to sift through my contribution history to figure out what exactly you are referring to. --dab (𒁳) 08:54, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

There is nothing nonsensical about it. Talk pages are not the place for discussion on editor behavior and COI. As an administrator you know better. I placed the above post on the talk page as a polite reminder and addressed it "To all". You disregarded the policy and you disregarded my reminder post and you disregard my comment to you on this User Page by saying "what utter nonsense". If this is acceptable behavior for an Administrator then Wiki is in serious trouble.-- — Kbob • Talk • 16:25, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

yeah yeah, Misplaced Pages has been "in serious trouble" since 2001 according to the malcontents. I didn't disregard your complaint, I commented on it. If you cannot accept my comment, you are free to either drop it or go forum shopping with it. --dab (𒁳) 20:22, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Karma in Hinduism-an academic source

Dab, I found one academic text. Please take a look at these edits. Thanks for your time. Raj2004 (talk) 00:02, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

MOSKOS

In order to prevent all future problematic edits regarding Kosovo, Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style (Kosovo-related articles) must be approved. Can you please help me, and advice what can be done in order to approve MOSKOS. As with that approval, numerous vandal edits can be reverted with no more explanation then just with: "Reverted per WP:MOSKOS".

To good to be true. Please, Dbach, i am waiting for your reply. What happened, so MOSKOS wasn't approved then, when it was written? All best, --Tadija (talk) 20:37, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

we cannot address a problem of pov-pushing via a style guideline. Pov-pushing is already unwanted, under WP:NPOV etc. The style guidelines are records of standing consensus developed over time on article talkpages. We don't write guidelines and then try to get them approved, we seek for the best solution in articles, and then collect such solutions in guidelines for future reference. --dab (𒁳) 11:17, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

I know, but is it MOSKOS not already collection of good solutions? All of that mentioned there are now used, just not official. And, actually, it is not that much POV problem, as it is problem of unclear guidelines regarding Kosovo related articles. MOSKOS will help on all those fields. And you must agree that style guideline will help tremendously. Even with POV-pushing. How proposition can be accepted?--Tadija (talk) 13:23, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Alboin

Hi Dab. I've noticed you've in the past you've edited regarding Alboin and other Lombard-related articles, and so thought to tell you that I've rewritten Alboin and submitted it to a peer review. If your interested, or just bored for a moment with nationalists, you may want to offer your views and criticisms regarding the article; but since I know you've got a lot of things in your hands currently, I would find much more than understandable if you opted for declining. Ciao, Aldux (talk) 01:02, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

I think you have done a very good job with the article. What remaining rough edges there are can be easily spotted and/or fixed by the WP:GA leprechauns. --dab (𒁳) 11:30, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, that's probably a good idea, passing it under GA scrutiny; I'll certainly do it. Ciao, Aldux (talk) 17:59, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Indo-Scythians, Jats and Kambojas

Hi dab. A recent flurry of activity on Jats has included an exchange about whether they are descended from Indo-Scythians or not. That took me to the Indo-Scythians page, which has had an attack of the Kambojas. Fourteen references in it descend the Jats from the I-S but nearly all of them are Victorian speculation. How can we get some real info into these articles? Itsmejudith (talk) 09:49, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

As you say, this is Victorian speculation. We should mention it as such and be done. The main task will be to baby-sit the family historians. --dab (𒁳) 11:14, 9 February 2010 (UTC) --dab (𒁳) 11:14, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

I just took a chunk of it out for the time being. Someone else can, if they like, put back that the Victorians speculated in this way. Itsmejudith (talk) 11:28, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

it is plain that the Punjabi familiy historians are absolutely obsessed with the Scythians and their "pure ancient Aryan bloodline". This isn't the kind fo content Misplaced Pages is looking for, and they should be politely but firmly asked to take their research elsewhere. --dab (𒁳) 11:31, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

It's very saddening that people will go to these lengths to be accepted as white. On a totally different subject, University of Zurich is Wikiproject Universities collaboration of the month if you wanted to pass by it. In quite good shape already, perhaps needs some detail translating from the university website. You might see something that jars. Itsmejudith (talk) 11:46, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't think this is about "being white" at all. I realize that the "Aryan Nation" crackpots in the US use "Aryan" as a synonym for "white", but usage of "Aryan" in Indian derives from the Victorian era usage directly and was not affected by the semantic shift of the term in the mid 20th century.

I think this is simply the Indian notion that if you want to be anyone, you need to trace your bloodline to "ancient tribes". And presented with the choice, do they want to descend from local underdog peasants or from conquering steppe barbarians, these people decide they want to be conquering steppe barbarians, and from that moment stop at nothing in the mission to contort any available evidence into substantiating this "truth". It's a private obsession about family origin, but it is damaging our articles, therefore we need to deal with it. --dab (𒁳) 11:54, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps warrior, conqueror, high caste, fair skin all get mixed up together, and the British Raj notion of "martial races" doesn't help. Some Americans spend as much effort trying to be descended from Scots, Irish, Native Americans etc. I was going to say they don't mess up the encyclopedia so much with it, but actually perhaps they do, with long biographies sourced to 19th century newspapers. Itsmejudith (talk) 12:21, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Most of their sources are essentially "family histories". Taking off from Victorian speculation is part of it, of course (Tod being the all-time favorite), but the rest is almost surely whole-cloth invention. The problem, from a WP perspective, is that these books really are not WP:RS, but a concerted effort will be needed to excise them (and thus the material they "support"). Inertia is in the way: once any randomly published book gets cited, it's practically here to stay these days on WP. But challenging the reliability of books is the key here to root out the cruft. rudra (talk) 12:24, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

I have tried to approach it from this direction but it is difficult to work out which books are scholarly and I would appreciate any advice. BTW, Tod, writing in 1829, actually precedes the Victorians. Itsmejudith (talk) 12:27, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

he certainly precedes the British Raj, but he does not precede Victoria herself, who was at the time, I learn, "heiress presumptive" :) --dab (𒁳) 12:42, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

For some reason, I always associate the date 1849 with Tod. I stand corrected, of course, but I think the entire genre here would qualify as "Victorian", regardless of exact dates. rudra (talk) 12:55, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Oh, I was only pointing out the irony, not trying to prove anyone wrong. I am in no way an expert on Indian history, at least I wasn't when I first responded to dab's call for more people to get involved. I thought we might have had the date of his book wrong but our article says he died in 1835. I also found the following in our article on his contemporary Wilhelm von Humboldt "Humboldt's pioneering work has been superseded in its details by modern linguistics and archaeology, but is sometimes still uncritically followed even today." Superseded but still followed uncritically - sounds like the way Tod is used. Itsmejudith (talk) 18:16, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

(butting in, came here to discuss this and saw this discussion). Can one of you address the comments on Talk:Jat people#Indo-Scythian Descent, the great grandson of Prithviraj Chauhan has stepped in to the Scythian/Aryan argument with lots of sources, can't say what's reliable, what's not. The Scythian argument got into the Dravidian people article too, and has since changed to Turkish ancestry, it's becoming increasingly difficult for me to distinguish between fact and fantasy! And the Gujjar empire has just expanded to create a new cat Category:Gurjar villages. Nairs are currently going through an identity crisis (was asked to intervene on my talk page, but I'm staying clear). cheers. —SpacemanSpiff 18:23, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Schwau resin

In your revision of Garden gnome, http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Garden_gnome&oldid=330260517, you state that modern gnomes are made of schwau resins. What are these? I can find no definition of schwau that makes sense in this context. --ABehrens (talk) 16:15, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

This Discussion

Hi fellow editor, I am at a loss, as this discussion seems to be getting me nowhere, and I fear and edit war. Thanks --Sikh-History 18:50, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

References on talk pages

Per discussions elsewhere, I've started a thread at Misplaced Pages talk:Talk page guidelines#References on talk pages.   Will Beback  talk  21:32, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Liburnians

Could you contribute in Liburnians? Please... The article was a mess and still is. Ungodly errors in grammar and syntax by the previous editor. Much of it that can't be salvaged, nothing makes sense in many places and it was even worse before. Strange theories on Liburnians#Origins_and_ethnogenesis with Egyptians?!, sources in Croatian and 19th century sources, original research and other things. I have begun replacing with secondary sources and correcting language.Megistias (talk) 11:18, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Allsherjargoði

I've twice edited down references to this von Neményi guy at allsherjargoði - is he important? Haukur (talk) 21:24, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

no, but he popularized the term. Fwiiw, I think it would be best to merge this brief article into a section goði. --dab (𒁳) 22:00, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

latin

A while ago, you contributed the following comment at Infinitesimal: "(from a 17th century Modern Latin coinage infinitesimus, originally referring to the "infinite-th" member of a series)". I am curious about the source of this claim. Do you have any additional details? Tkuvho (talk) 13:53, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

As always for points of English etymology, the prime source is OED:

"The ‘infiniteth’ member of a series. Obs. rare." — H. More, App. Antid. Ath. xiii. 391 (1655) "But for us whose capacities are finite, if we would venture to name a first in infinite succession, we should call it proton apeiraston, the first infinitessimal, and acknowledge our selves unable to go through, our understandings being finite."

OED has this note on the development of the term's meaning:;

"The form. of the mod.L. word shows that it was orig. meant as an ordinal, viz. the ‘infiniteth’ in order, that which is at an infinite distance from the first; but the ordinals are also used to name fractions, e.g. hundredth (part), thousandth (part); hence, infinitesima pars, infinitesimal part or infinitesimal, came to mean unity divided by infinity".

--dab (𒁳) 14:11, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Can H. More be thought of as the one to have coined the term? Is the passage above translated from Latin? What does first initial H stand for? Tkuvho (talk) 14:25, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

I see we have an article on philosopher Henry More whose work "Appendix to the late Antidote against Idolatry" is dated 1673. This does not seem to agree with the 1655 date appearing above. Or is this a different Henry More? Tkuvho (talk) 14:30, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

I see that we are working with "Antidote against Atheism, or an Appeal to the Naturall Faculties of the Minde of Man, whether there be not a God, 1653 : 2nd edit. 'corrected and enlarged: With an Appendix thereunto annexed,' 1655." Tkuvho (talk) 14:32, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

you are correct. The OED expands the citation to: "More, Henry, An antidote against atheisme 1653 (1662, 1712) —appendix 1655–87 (1712)" i.e. we are dealing with the 1655 appendix to the 1653 work.

The editors of the OED take great pains to pinpoint the earliest attestation of a word in English. The 1655 reference being listed first means that this is the earliest attestation they have been able to find. They cannot prove, of course, that More did indeed coin the term. He may also have taken it from a source that is now lost, or has escaped the attention of the OED editors. But in this case, the phrasing of the quote does suggest very strongly that More is coining the term ad hoc. Also note that the context here is theological, not mathematical. The first attestation in a mathematical context dates to 1704 (Hayes, Charles, A treatise of fluxions), and was probably a renewed coining, unaware of More's usage. --dab (𒁳) 14:44, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

--dab (𒁳) 14:42, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

I see that Charles Hayes (mathematician) uses the term "infinitesimae infinitesimarum" in his book, attributing it to unnamed "geometers". He then switches to "fluxions" as he is writing in Newton's tradition. Tkuvho (talk) 15:16, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

TM COI Accounts

Saw your pointed question at Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Since Checkuser User:Dominic has now confirmed the true extent of the Fairfield/MUM/TM-Org sockpuppetry/meatpuppetry, perhaps the process to actually enforce WP:COI and related policies on the TM-related pages can move forward. I've separately asked Will , who commenced the Sock Investigation, what's the next step in this process. Fladrif (talk) 15:52, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

It is all so dishearteningly unsurprising, isn't it. --dab (𒁳) 16:49, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't know about disheartening, but definitely unsurprising. On to ArbCom, I suppose, as having three different Admins at WP:COIN tell these folks not to edit the TM-related pages had no effect whatsoever. Fladrif (talk) 17:02, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Get a grip. Nothing has been confirmed, and you can't prove an untruth. There are no sock or meat puppets, There are dynamically assigned IPs in a small town.(olive (talk) 17:07, 15 February 2010 (UTC))

WP:DUCK. User:Littleolive oil certainly is one of the more duck-like accounts in this. You may want to begin to wrap your head around the fact that Misplaced Pages is not a democracy, not a bureaucracy, and does not have the principle of in dubio pro reo. When in doubt, we strictly choose the option that is best for the project, not the individual users. --dab (𒁳) 17:12, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes now that it is confirmed hopefully we can move forwards. All these accounts from the same little town all pushing the same POV is not really rocket science. They continue despite warming to desist.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:20, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Eric Goldman

Hi there. As the person who turned this article into a redirect back in 2007, you may be interested to know I've nominated it for deletion. Your comments are welcome at WP:Redirects for discussion#Eric Goldman. Robofish (talk) 01:29, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

File:Chariot spread.png

Hi Dbachmann. I recently posted this comment on your Commons talk page, but since you seem to be more active here, I thought I would copy it over. A couple of other editors and I are looking to take the Horse article to FA status on the English WP, and we would like to use your image File:Chariot spread.png in the article. However, as an image in an FA article, it needs to include a source for the information you included in the drawing. Would you possibly be able to add this information to the description of the image? Thanks in advance! Dana boomer (talk) 01:50, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

the image is what we would these days call WP:SYNTH. It collates information from the chariot article, all of it referenced and verifiable, but I do not think it was based on a single source. --dab (𒁳) 08:31, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

OK, thanks! Dana boomer (talk) 13:31, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Merger

Thank you for tackling this merger, I've been dreading doing it myself for far too long. The whole slew of (multiplier)(unit) combinations was a real mess. Getting it all in one place with redirects will be a big improvement. User:LeadSongDog come howl 18:08, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

thanks. I've gone ahead and merged the entire thing into year. --dab (𒁳) 19:51, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

The next R1a argument

SA:

Hi! You and User:Rudrasharman were involved in a discussion here and here which touched upon R1a, and which has now spread onto R1a and also the data article related to it List of R1a frequency by population. He has started a cycle of deleting ALL reference to the Sharma 2009 paper from both articles. (There is very little actually, and that annoys some editors also.) We seem to officially have a slow edit war. Looking at the talk page it was virtually inevitable because there was aggression from the first moment. I believe that what he is demanding is nothing to do with opinions etc but one of the most straightforward violations of WP:Neutral I have seen. Because he found some formatting errors in this Sharma article he says it should be expunged even from the reference list. Could you please have a look?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:48, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

It is one of my wiki-credos that it isn't worth spending time on haplogroup and "genetic history" articles as they will always end up as an unstructured heap of references to research papers.

Fwiiw, I believe Rudrasharman is right, there is nothing to force Misplaced Pages to refer to any specific research paper. If at all possible, we shouldn't refer to any research papers but to secondary summaries of research. If a particular paper causes trouble, it may be the best solution to just drop it.

That is to say, I sympathize with Rudrasharman's edits, but I won't join the edit war. WP:UCS tells me that the paper in question is indeed garbage. This is why we should not base substantial content on a single research paper. Strictly speaking, as long as no review of the paper is cited, it is just a primary source. Simply having passed peer review may be enough to make brief mention of a paper, but not to reference substantial content in Misplaced Pages's voice to it. --dab (𒁳) 19:54, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

I did not ask you to enter an edit war. I know you have worked with rudra and I asked if you can have a look at it. I must be missing something. What is so special about this particular Sharma article? Rudra himself just pointed to some formatting errors and left it there. His talk page postings look purely vendetta driven (and increasingly personal and creepy) and contain no arguments about the content apart from that. So what is the "common sense" case that is so clear to you? Please help me out. And how can you mean what you say about needing secondary sources? All genetics articles in Misplaced Pages have to rely on primary sources. I do not think that is a good thing, but that's life unless they ALL get deleted. How can you say that we can use different rules for sources we personally like and do not like? (I have no particular love of the Sharma article at all by the way, but it is a big survey of an important area.) The way the RS rules have been interpreted for genetics articles would make this one a reliable source, and from that point of view the WP:Neutral rule seems black-and-white. The whole idea of that rule (as it explains) is that there should be no arguing involving personal subjective judgments. It all comes down to what is normally considered reliable in a particular field. You might sympathize and I might sympathize but you also previously argued a position quite similar to mine about this same article. Keep in mind that rudra wants to delete all MENTION of this article. Have a look at WHAT he is deleting.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:41, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

BTW Rudra has never argued that this is not a mainstream RS. He has called it substandard. There is quite clearly and deliberately no rule in Misplaced Pages about wikipedian-judged substandard sources, because that necessarily involves personal judgment second guessing the reviewers who let the article through. The only way to argue about removing something for being substandard is to argue that it is fringe or not notable, and even then this would be most often used to argue giving less weight. The idea of even removing mention from the references is quite extreme. That is the whole point of the neutrality rule. I think you know as well as I do that the R1a article has suffered from a near constant back and forth of this type of thing. There is not one source in the article, I think, which someone has not wanted to remove. R1a has been a great lesson to me about why the neutral rule was written. My only POV about the article is that the neutrality rule is important to it.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:53, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

I know you "did not ask me to enter an edit war". I informed you that I forgo entering it because if I did, you would just run into 3RR.

I do not think you understood what I said. It is undisputed that the Sharma paper can be cited, within WP:DUE and with strict attribution. It is just one paper out of legion, and a rather unexciting one at that. What will not do is using this paper for data presented in Wikipeia's voice, as you do here is highly dubious. This is not about "Sharma yes or no" but about the obvious fact that the Sharma paper has been given way, way too much weight in these articles. Rudra has become annoyed with that and started removing all of it. If you just blanket-revert him, you have an edit war. What you should do instead is restore some mentions of Sharma that you think you can argue are DUE but not others.

The reason the R1a is such a trouble-spot is that the "Aryan" racialist crackpots have embraced this haplogroup. Rudra is aware of this, and can spot when edits have an oblique agenda. You show no awareness of the probem behind all this. You need to understand that WP:Neutral is never "black-and-white". You severely underestimate the intellectual investment on the part of Wikipedians. Writing these articles isn't just piling up references, the selection and coherent arrangement of this material takes a lot of understanding of what is going on, what is important and what is not. This is why WP:DUE is an integral part of WP:NPOV, and indeed the important part, which requires a deeper understanding of the issue. --dab (𒁳) 11:05, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

All said and done, Andrew Lancaster is not an asset. Apart from having serious WP:OWN issues with genetics related articles (perhaps stemming from being a genealogy hobbyist), he appears to be a naive inclusionist. That isn't always bad, of course (being a magpie by inclination is probably a very good trait for the hobby, as tidbits and trivia are the lifeblood of "interesting" genealogy sites), but such a POV is utterly disastrous for the haplogroup articles. Never mind that, in particular, Sharma was introduced by a troll, in general Andrew Lancaster shows no awareness of either the wider issues affecting these articles, or the WP requirements of dealing with the lack of secondary and tertiary literature, or how to distinguish good information from bad. Right now, he is only a tad worse than a nuisance, but at this rate, a topic ban could become the best option for the WP project. rudra (talk) 16:01, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Before. After. (Still some cleanup left, this was the Augean stables.) rudra (talk) 17:00, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Dab, Rudra, I do not mind being called an inclusionist, although I would nuance it by saying I thinking the topic of an article is what should be looked at. Some articles need a stricter reading than others. Certainly the position you seem to be taking is simply illogical because you are happily citing articles that do not meet the criteria you demand of articles you disagree with. Has Underhill et al. 2009 been cited in secondary literature? The Sharma article is in a major journal and is discussed by people who know this field beyond nationalist debates, because every bit of data counts in this field. Ask people who know something about the subject if you know any. If it is not such an exciting article, why is being deleted even from the list of articles on the subject? Dab's pretending he is more qualified than me is hopefully transparent enough. He is anonymous and his edits are ignorant. His only argument against me (and he should not be arguing against me ad hominem to begin with) is that I do genealogy!! I have had correspondence with some of the more citable authors in this field and being interested in genealogy should not be held against me. If rudra would at least follow WP:Talk and act in a less obviously "strategic" manner then the article could be improved. As it is going, I think we are headed back to the same troll war we had one year ago. Rudra, at least if we speak about edits where we differ, is clearly removing material not based on scientific integrity but on a nationalist basis. He even resurrected the old Cosmos edit war of moving around the sequence of discussion so India would be first, and he wants to remove/reduce discussion about the debates concerning R1a origins so that it sticks to India in a simplistic and Undue way. Not all that long ago dab, you thanked me for helping end that old troll war and get a basic structure together for the article that was more stable and easier to improve. I certainly never claimed the article was in any way finished, but I am shocked to see you now apparently accepting the argument that that work was actually not an improvement, and that the old principles which were used by the trolls who controlled the article before should return. Maybe rudra has potential to be more than a troll, but if he is encouraged to edit by using personal attacks as a fending device, as he is, then he has shown that he can effectively work as a troll and of course the experience on this article shows that trolls attract trolls.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:42, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Arbitration notice

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On behalf of the Arbitration Committee, Dougweller (talk) 11:22, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, this is a 'statutory requirement' and I just managed to catch yours as I thought I'd copied everything over, and then found while I was doing that you'd commented!. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dougweller (talk • contribs) 13:28, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Empty throne

I wonder if you have anything to add here? Johnbod (talk) 18:10, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

it looks like a very good article to me. --dab (𒁳) 15:57, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

File:Sargon II.jpg listed for deletion

A file that you uploaded or altered, File:Sargon II.jpg, has been listed at Misplaced Pages:Files for deletion. Please see the discussion to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. Calliopejen1 (talk) 15:53, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

List of R1a frequency by population ‎

I can't shake the feeling that there is a policy violation here, given the origins of this listing (basically, a random grab-bag wholly dependent on whoever finding whatever wherever). I've tried to capture the essential nature of this table in these edits (added one}. I'm concerned that WP:PRIMARY data -- and a possibly tendentious agglomeration thereof, to boot -- is being passed off in WP's voice as having been filtered through secondary sourcing. Am I imagining things? Thanks. rudra (talk) 17:21, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Hello, please help: block 151.201.146.123 created to be disruptive. Fear mongering. I can demo from denial here, that it's not good faith. Manipulative, arbitrary, fevered, sadistic

http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0BwLzSbD7svWPMzMwYmM0MDMtYjhhMS00YWNjLTkzNDctOWI4YjUwNzA0Nzc0&hl=en

Thank you, good night--Machine Elf 1735 (talk) 13:27, 20 February 2010 (UTC)