User talk:Dbachmann/Archive 42

Please see protect-request

Thanks. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Neo-Babylonian_Empire#Requesting_semi-protection_for_the_article_- HammerFilmFan (talk) 03:34, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Human cultural universals

A while back, you commented that someone had messed up Cultural universals which they had. Without trying to start a fight there, I switched Brown's list to his book Human Universals, and set up a redirect from Unique human universals. I would be interested in your suggestions or changes.

Ultimately, something should be in the portal or nav box list, pointing to that article by Brown, IMO. Student7 (talk) 16:22, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Well, I am grateful to see somebody is working on fixing this problem, but I am afraid I do not understand the focus on "unique" you are pursuing here: this isn't the point, I think. This entire topic is not about distinguishing humans from non-humans, it is about identifying aspects of a culture that are characteristic of that culture from those that aren't. Is "courtship" a practice "unique" to humans? I should think not, or at least it would be difficult to come up with a definition of "courtship" which makes it so. Behaviouristically, any bird engages in courtship. If you want to exclude all animal mating behaviour from the notion of "courtship" you would have to very specifically describe human courtship, and if you go out of your way to describe human behaviour, it will come as no surprise that your definition ends up being suited to human behaviour exclusively. --dab (𒁳) 17:28, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

You are right about having to define some of the list more meticulously. What I was trying to accomplish was to list pure "culture" as opposed to inheritance/biological evolution. For example "gestures" which have different meaning among cultures, but all cultures have gestures, which they have passed along from generation to generation. "fire making" which apparently arose before our species, but still restricted to humans. Well, I guess I can't proceed from here any further, so will quit unless you have something that we can agree/cooperate on. I've done one-man crusades before. Wound up getting crucified too often!  :) Student7 (talk) 17:16, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Student7, I am not attacking, much less "crucifying" you. As I said I am grateful you bother to edit the topic in the first place. Wikipedia is an iterative process. Your input is valuable, but you will have to live with the fact that your input may lead to reactions, some of them critical, which hopefully will eventually lead to more polished articles. Doing nothing isn't an alternative. So please don't be put off just because I voiced some criticism. --dab (𒁳) 08:39, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

I was not attempting to criticize you. Just cautioning myself about a "Quixotic" crusade. The "crucifixion" term was intended as a pun on crusade. Sorry about the misunderstanding. Student7 (talk) 20:54, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Aksara

I have just now seen your edits of 28th March 2013. By deleting the very relevant passages and citations you have rendered those parts of the article Aksara meaningless. It appears you have not been able to truly grasp the significance and importance of the term “Aksara” which term figures prominently in Hindu texts - the Rig Veda, the Upanishads, the Brahma Sutras and the Bhagavat Gita. Aksara, which deserves a separate page, forms part of a subject I cannot teach or explain, not that it is not clear to me. In fact I was expecting my more learned brother-editors to expand this article. I have appreciated your attempt to improve the same but in the process you have left the article truncated with many blanks requiring to be filled up. I am to request you to kindly restore the article to what it was on 27th March 2013 and thereafter let us both work on expanding/improving it. Regards.Aditya soni (talk) 10:03, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Diff.

I have removed, or "truncated" as you call it, unreferenced nonsense. I have not removed any kind of "citations". I have even left in some obvious nonsense as I did not have time to actually fix the article. There was an attempt at citing Crollius, Word in Experience (1974).[1] This would in principle be possible, but the person perusing this source would (a) need to be aware of the relation of this highly dubious work to mainstream literature and (b) be capable of understanding and summarizing what is being said by Crollius. The fact is that there was never a concsious choice of discussing Crollius, this book just came up in somebody's google book search who then made some wild attempt at summarizing stuff that came up in some random page. The "reference" link to google still contained the search term. This isn't the way to do it.

Yes, there have been suggestions that the syllable aum existed in the Rigvedic period. This is a rather obsolete scholarly hypothesis from the 19th century, and while it can be discussed in context in the aum article, it is completely pointless to refer to it in a confused summary of a random google search.

Crollius seems to be an interesting author in his own right, a Jesuit missionary who published on religious comparison, but he is completely dependent on secondary literature himself, and he cherry-picks his sources for his comparative aims. If you want to discuss a Hindu concept as opposed to Jesuit comparative religious studies, you can use Crollius to find the actual sources he used (in this case Geldner), and then cite those. Then you can still use Crollius, if you must, in a chapter on 1970s religious comparison. --dab (𒁳) 12:11, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

The Rigveda has its own mythology, and its own terminology. In the RV, aksara occurs as a name of water. I will thank you for avoiding conflation of Rigvedic terminology with concepts from medieval or modern Hinduism. The earliest explicit use of aksara as a name of the syllable aum apparently occurs in the Manusmriti. This is an ancient text, and it still dates a full millennium after the RV, and is from a completely different socio-religious context. Bhakti-yoga etc. is of course younger by another millennium or more, and yet again from a completely different context. --dab (𒁳) 12:21, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Please comment

Hi. Please comment: Scythians: Consensus for the lead section: Iranian people or Iranian-speaking people. Thanks. Zheek (talk) 10:29, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Ethnic groups in Europe

Template:Ethnic groups in Europe has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. NSH001 (talk) 15:33, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Request for comment

Dear Dab, sorry to bother you. Since you know the area well, can you comment here:[2]. Basically, user making ethno-nationalist maps, and also reverting other users who remove his map (despite being told not to do so previously by admins). Here is his map [3] which is a falsification and does not have any sources (none of the sources he cites support his map and they are distortions of sources, and some the sources are not even RS in the first place). You know for example that currently Nagorno-Karabagh is at least Armenian speaking. I had to go into some detail why his ethnic map is not just a POV but grossly exaggerated and contradicts reliable maps on Iran/Iraq made by universities such as Texas or Columbia [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]. I know it is extremely silly, but also annoying to constantly deal with this sort of stuff. Not sure how you can do it but please make a comment (old admirer). --Xodabande14 (talk) 21:34, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for the notification, I will try to look into it. Surely this can be addressed purely on a WP:RS basis, without need to go into the nationalistic mud-flinging.

I cringe to see all the self-made "ethnic maps" on commons, which cite as their "sources" yet more self-made maps. That part of the world is really a nasty place in terms of ethnic vitriol, or should I say ethnic vitriol is more often directed there, apparently from the comfort of emigrants into western "multiculturalism" towards their imagined homelands. --dab (𒁳) 07:00, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks dab. It is unfortunate how ethnic conflicts waste so much time of Wikipedia. It is not just WP:RS (these sorts of users don't care about that). There are also some good maps out there in wiki commons that meet WP:RS (one of them reverted by the user to put his own map) and are in several of these related articles. I have also mentioned WP:RS university of Columbia/Texas maps. But that is not the issue. It is pattern that I am concerned about. The user has been warned of AA2, and was asked specifically to discuss any controversial edits and not slow revert war. He failed to do that. Recently Arbcomm enforcement is doing a nice job on clamping down on these sorts of nationalistic editing and that is where I made my complaint: [9]. Note the user has less than 500 edits and his page [10] and block log: [11]. I appreciate your comment here: [12] that can have weight in. Note just the first section where I mention behavior (outside of the scope of RS). The second section is about RS. AA2 was proposed precisely to relieve the community from such behavior, specially users that have been warned and block already. So your sound judgment is appreciated. Note I had to make a long report for admins who are not aware of the area (Part II which is long but illustrates some fact on how the users make dubious maps and then tries to claim sources for them), but my main point was also on the user's previous behavior (Part I of the complaint) --Xodabande14 (talk) 09:23, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I realize this is more than "WP:RS", but what I mean is that we do not have to enter into a debate on who is the evil nationalist and who isn't as long as we can simply reject an edit on technical grounds, in this case, use of an unreferenced map. I am busy in real life just now, but I will comment on this later on. regards, --dab (𒁳) 09:38, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the comment. When you get a chance to look at AE[13], you may want to read the unfortunate waste of time discussions on the Azerbaijani people talkpage .... --Xodabande14 (talk) 18:59, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

very small request

Dab, since your an admin, do you mind if you move your comment from here: [14] to here:[15] where it says: "Result concerning Ebrahimi-amir This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the section above.". Just a side note, the person being discussed actually made the map as well and then reverted/inserted it.--Xodabande14 (talk) 14:07, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

File source problem with File:Urals blank map.png

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Eponymous categories

I noticed you commented on the Category:Eponymous categories talk page, so i wanted to let you know i created User:Mercurywoodrose/Userboxes/Eponymous Categories (and User:Mercurywoodrose/Userboxes/Eponymous Categories pro). I dont know if i am helping the WP process, but i enjoyed doing it. Mercurywoodrose (talk) 18:16, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. It would be a relief to see WP is capable of actually getting rid of obvious crap like this. Common sense often prevails, but never without the cost of a painful, drawn-out, circular debate. --dab (𒁳) 18:19, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

GFDL

Please see my comment at Talk:The Fall of Arthur. Regards, De728631 (talk) 20:54, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

User:Ngunalik editing Acholi people

Hi, sorry to bother you, but I'm not sure whom else to contact in this kind of situations (I don't think WP:ANI would do, since the issue is not vandalism). I remember you as an editor who has experience in dealing with the various nationalist POV-pushers from around the world that plague linguistics- and history-related articles (the last time when I contacted you, it concerned the precise age of Armenia). In this case, it's a Ugandan nationalist who is determined to right a great wrong and prove to the world that his "Nilo-Shemitic" (sic) ethnic group were Hebrews or even Christians long before any missionaries came; his only source is a crackpot article by a non-expert on a non-peer-reviewed website. I've tried to explain to him all the policies that he is violating, but it seems like a pointless endeavour; he doesn't seem interested in listening and just reverts. Here is a taste of his arguments: he thinks the Acholi people's history is "their copyright" and that editors who are not Acholi have no business questioning his edits. By the way, looking at his activities elsewhere on Wikipedia, his main interest seems to be to prove that Joseph Kony isn't such a bad guy after all and he is even having some success at edit warring there, too. I'm not a regular Wikipedian, I stumbled upon this Acholi article accidentally and I can't afford to have a two-month edit conflict with this poor soul, who probably should have been banned a long time ago to begin with. So unless someone with better abilities addresses the problem, I'll just have to let him insert his nonsense and be one additional harm to Wikipedia. Greetings, --Anonymous44 (talk) 22:09, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Sumerian language

Dear Dbachmann, In your Revision as of 13:46, 10 February 2005 of the page “Sumerian Language”, you wrote: “Examples of suggested related languages include the Hurro-Urartian languages (see Subarian, Alarodian),……” Can you, please, provide the citations to sources of this statement. I also think that this relation exists, but I have not appropriate information. By the way, do you speak Russian? Best regards, Alex — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alexander Berchansky|talk (talk)

I had to dig for this, 2005 is quite a while ago now.

diff. I did not suggest that this relation exists, I merely stated that some people have claimed it does. Actually I was making fun of everyone claiming whatever they like about a complete unknown.

I know a little bit of Russian, but I cannot claim I actually speak it. --dab (𒁳) 08:46, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Witch trials in the early modern period

Thanks for the thoughts, my problem is threefold. Yes the categorization is messed up, and yes it can be fixed by editing the category structure, it cannot be fixed by removing categories that help the reader place the article in context. Secondly I am not sure of the value of the reader opening the show bar for {{witch hunt}} and then open the category you have replaced the others with to discover it is one and the same. Thirdly though not as specific as say Bury St. Edmunds witch trials the category (for example) legal history does have relevance and should stay. I will reinstate at the moment but await your thoughts on this. Thanks, Edmund Patrick – confer 20:38, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

ok, it may be we have a communication problem. We should first lay out the category system as it exists, then agree on what its problems are, and then find a solution. I am not sure I understand this,

I am not sure of the value of the reader opening the show bar for {{witch hunt}} and then open the category you have replaced the others with to discover it is one and the same.

I think the basic problem is an overloading of the term witch hunt. It is often use to mean the Early Modern witch-hunts, but in other contexts it may of course refer to any witch-hunt, e.g. in modern Africa, (not to mention figurative use). There may also be a similar overloading of witch trial, it may mean the actual proceedings of a specific court of law, or it may be used more widely, I suppose, "the witch trials" generically meaning "the entire complex of the witch craze in the Early Modern period".

We just need to become aware of these problems explicitly and then decide how we want to handle them for the purposes of categorization.

Also, regarding

the category (for example) legal history does have relevance and should stay

I think this is a misunderstanding on your part. Our categorization system is hierarchical. As long as Category:Witch trials is in the category Category:Legal history (which it should be, assuming that we restrict "witch trials" to actual, regular trials), every article in Category:Witch trials is automatically in the category Category:Legal history, and the category Category:Legal history should not be added to the page directly. But perhaps I misunderstood what you were saying? --dab (𒁳) 05:28, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

thanks, I will think,check out and explore, then get back to you. Edmund Patrick – confer 20:31, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Category:Culture heroes

Category:Culture heroes, which you created, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you. DexDor (talk) 04:59, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Om Shivaya Namah

There's new info and references on the talk page you should see. I put the documentary proof in the form of the original book, a known translation of that book, and an anthology containing said translation. 70.194.66.99 (talk) 23:56, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Om Namah Shivaya for a direct link to the page. 70.194.66.99 (talk) 23:57, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Orientalizing period

I notice you've added a "Dubious" tag here, but without an explanation what exactly is amiss. Can you remember what your problem with the part was and elaborate? The dating given seems fine to me.

See also Talk:Orientalizing period#Time period reference, though I'm not sure what citations exactly the comment is referring to. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 23:12, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

Note that an IP has added Anatolia to the list (linking the term to Phrygia). Is that correct? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 23:13, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

I don't remember. The article needs better references, and it needs to be clear what it is about.

I think this was about muddying the distinction between the technical term for a style of vases, and the more general and more complex question of "oriental" influence on Greek culture at the time. I may or may not myself have been confused about the two at the time I placed the template.

The link to Phrygia is tenuous and needs a citation. Also you cannot just pipe Anatolia to Phrygia, which is a true subset of Anatolia. --dab (𒁳) 09:01, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

I see. Thanks. But why the hell did you add a template to request a clarification of your own addition? %) --Florian Blaschke (talk) 15:22, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

I did, did I? Look, it was in 2009, I really don't know. I do this sometimes when I am being sidetracked from the article I am currently researching, I will insert a brief mention of an important aspect that is missing but lacking time to elaborate, I will add the template as a note to myself, or to any other editor willing to improve it, that clarification or elaboration is needed. After all that's what the template says, not that the statement is wrong but that it needs clarification, even if it is clear to me I might realize that the way I put it will not be clear to the reader. --dab (𒁳) 15:31, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

HIV/Africa

Hey DB! When you have the spare time could you give HIV/AIDS in Africa the once over? There are many problems with the page, such as disappearing figures, misrepresentation of percentage changes, and deliberate duplication of paragraphs (which are then tagged as needing to be "merged"). The historical establishment of the AIDS Watch Africa body has also twice now been removed for unknown, unexplained reasons. It's odd cause the body is mentioned in the same UNAIDS press release that is used throughout the article. I've broken down some specific issues on the talk page, but I'm probably overlooking a few things. The page sure could use your even-handed approach. Peace - Soupforone (talk) 23:01, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

What a cheerful topic. I also see you came across a user who has figured out how to make wiki-pedantry serve their ends. --dab (𒁳) 05:32, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

You can say that again :) Note the absurdly tiny and long quote box [16]; only the latest of many such antics. Soupforone (talk) 23:09, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps you both should study WP:AGF while listening to You and Me Against the World. And stop using this page as a place to attack other editors. Cheers. AfricaTanz (talk) 00:58, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

AfricaTanz, I am sure you mean well, meaning by that, you are sure you are right and know better than Soupforone. It's just that, I suppose, in former years your approach would have been described as "unwikilike". But I don't know what "wikilike" is anymore these days, so perhaps you are the new wikilike. --dab (𒁳) 06:02, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Unfortunately, it may indeed just be the new wikilike. Peace - Soupforone (talk) 23:23, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Opinion needed

Dab, if you get some time please respond here: Template talk:Yazdânism --46.239.60.21 (talk) 16:52, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

This Old Map omits South Sudan

This map from 2006 created by you--which is in use on many wiki sites--omits any reference to the 2011 UN recognised state of South Sudan which the 2012 Pew Forum Report on Religion states was 60.5% Christian, 33% are traditional African religion followers and only 6% Muslim in this percentages table. Perhaps this map should be updated since it omits a major new African country and wrongly paints S. Sudan as Islamic green? The formal 2012 Pew study also paint South Sudan Christian red here if you scroll through it. Just a suggestion. Best Regards, --Leoboudv (talk) 09:26, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

The map shows the distribution as of 2006. You cannot just insert South Sudan, if you want to make a new map, as of 2012, you'll have to redo the entire thing with 2012 data. --dab (𒁳) 13:11, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

• OK. I thought that you could update this PNG format map since png maps are easy to update compared to SVG. Its your decision....but you did write in the map..."To be updated with data on missing countries (mostly small nations)" However, South Sudan is a huge nation in Africa at 619,745 square feet in size. Its not like East Timor. Perhaps, you should consider updating your map. In the end, its your decision. If you decide to update your map, you have the figures from the respected Pew Research Center for South Sudan. Thank You, --Leoboudv (talk) 18:31, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

look, I wrote this in 2006. Now it is 2013. We should not mix population data 7 years apart if we can help it. I invite you to update the map with new data, under a new title. Please feel absolutely free and welcome to do this yourself. --dab (𒁳) 07:00, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

• I suppose a new map would be better but since this map is in use, I guess wikipedia has to use it. I am not an expert on maps unlike you but thanks for your reply. Best Regards, --Leoboudv (talk) 08:46, 13 June 2013 (UTC)
  • no we don't "have to use it" at all. Perhaps it would be best to stop using this map and create a new one. I certainly do not insist that it should be kept in use. --dab (𒁳) 09:14, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Agree

I agree with your change from {{Dubious}} to {{Citation needed}}. Debresser (talk) 13:14, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

since I have researched the thing in the meantime, I will now also take it upon myself to fix it. --dab (𒁳) 13:38, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Your edits to Theory of Pashtun descent from Israelites

Why are you removing sourced scientific material that refutes any possibility of the theory and posting text that focuses on anachronistic texts promoting the theory?

I don't have the time to examine your edits in depth at present, but will in the not too distant future. --Ubikwit ^連絡 _{見学/迷惑} 09:03, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

I am glad to hear you will. You are then welcome to post here again and thank me for fixing another broken article.

The reason I removed "sourced scientific material that refutes any possibility of the theory" is that the "sourced scientific material" did not even mention the "theory". The same way I would remove "sourced scientific material that refutes any possibility of Santa Claus" from the Santa Claus article, for the simple reason that Santa Claus is not a scientific hypothesis that can or should be "refuted". On-wiki "refutations" of mythology is a naive exercise in WP:SYNTH and attaches a false impression of "possible factuality" to topics that do not even begin to be examined for "factuality" in real literature. If they are mentioned, then for historical, anthropological or cultural interest and not as "theory".

If I point out the obvious to you this is not to question your intelligence, but then why do you come to my talkpage to complain before you have even "examined" the thing you complain about. --dab (𒁳) 09:08, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

Merge discussion for Exotheology

An article that you have been involved in editing, Exotheology , has been proposed for a merge with another article. If you are interested in the merge discussion, please participate by going here, and adding your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. Srinivasasha (talk) 06:29, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Request for input in drafting potential guidelines

Hi. There are, at present, no particular clear guidelines for religious material here, or, for that matter, guidelines for how to deal with ideas in general, particularly those ideas which might be accepted as true by individuals of a given religious, political, or scientific stance. There have been attempts in the past to draft such guidelines, but they have quickly been derailed. I am dropping this note on the talk pages of a number of editors who I believe have some interest in these topics, such as yourself, and asking them to review the material at User:John Carter/Guidelines discussion and perhaps take part in an effort to decide what should be covered in such guidelines, should they be determined useful, and what phrasing should be used. I would be honored to have your input. John Carter (talk) 19:16, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Rashi table

Template:Rashi table has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 06:35, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of File:Gladiatoria 015.jpg

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Speedy deletion nomination of File:Etymologiae Guntherus Ziner 1472.jpg

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If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Click here to contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be removed without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 18:47, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Rollback

Hello there. You have a long history so do you know much about Rollback? I notice it is a facility many editors have for reverting. Is it something given to editors or can they put it on themselves by adjusting their settings? Thanks. The Big Hoof! (talk) 12:57, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

You are given it, and if you ever use it to revert somebody, even the most blatant cases, people get pissy, so basically you don't use it. It used to be reserved for administrators, but I think you can also get it without the other admin rights now. --dab (𒁳) 13:17, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Got you. So you recommend it's best not to have it then, save all the trouble of comebacks. The Big Hoof! (talk) 13:55, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

probably. Unless you decide to do some specific and very repetitive task, or if you are out to hunt vandals from recent changes. Otherwise, it's not much use. --dab (𒁳) 15:59, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Urbian

Seriously? This is even below Vennemann's standard; well, almost. Pure pseudo-scholarship presented in an academic journal. The lack of methodological rigour here is astounding, even for 1989 (when non-laryngeal PIE was already on its way out), when substrate studies (which are admittedly prone to sloppy argument, but can be and have been done with far superior method – they don't need to have the anything-goes Klingklang arbitrariness of pseudoetymology) were still a quite undevelopped field. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 15:13, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

yeah, so remove it, I am not endorsing it or anything. --dab (𒁳) 15:58, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

I wonder why you added this crud in the first place. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 16:57, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Because I found it interesting, and funny? And it was published in JIES? I know all sort of idiocy gets published in academic journals, but given that this is the case, what makes you think Wikipedia should somehow be more aloof? I have learned to stop worrying and love the WP:FRINGE. Sheesh, get over yourself. --dab (𒁳) 19:40, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

So you've gone contrarian, or given up combatting the fringe to help retaining what's left of your sanity? Can't blame you.

Needless to mention then that Trask reconstructs *ili or *hili for Roman-era Early Basque (this lexeme apparently actually attested in place names such as the notorious Iliberris), and that (h)uri is, predictably, merely a dialect variant besides the more general (h)iri. That said, this clear blunder was almost forgivable compared to the idiocy of separating lab-úri-nthos like this and randomly assigning this chunk the meaning "city", which requires Vennemann-grade imagination ... --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:11, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Cuneiform template

Hi!

I noticed that you are one of the main developers of {{Script/Cuneiform}}.

Now that the English Wikipedia has proper support for Webfonts using the UniversalLanguageSelector extension, this template should be re-written.

See what I wrote on its talk page.

Thanks a lot for your help! --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 17:16, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Call for research participants

Hi Dbachmann. We are a team of researchers interested in the editing dynamics on different language Wikipedias regarding the topic of Kosovo. We are looking for users who have edited and discussed articles about this topic, and who would be willing to be interviewed for the purpose of this research project. The project is approved by the Wikimedia Foundations´ Research Committee and you can find more information on this meta-wiki page. Research results will be published under open access and your participation would be much appreciated. If you would like to participate you can reach us at interwikiresearch@gmail.com and we will set up an interview in a way that best suits your needs.Pbilic (talk) 09:19, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Nairi

You've edited this before. Seems to be Armenian nationalism edit-warring here. See my comments at Talk:Nairi. Dougweller (talk) 11:22, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, but I added the disputed tags. Dougweller (talk) 17:48, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Good article reassessment for Switzerland

Switzerland has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article.--FutureTrillionaire (talk) 15:55, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Werehyena

Hi, back in December you added {{synthesis}} to Werehyena. I'm curious what your specific concerns were (there isn't anything on the talk page and you didn't mention anything in the edit summary). I had added some of the content myself (overlapping with Buda (folklore)) and if there were problems with it I'd like to clear them up. Thanks, -- Gyrofrog (talk) 17:12, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

The thing is, if Wikipedia is to have a page called "Werehyena", it would be required that there exist secondary sources dedicated to the concept of "werehyena". The article needs to establish that the term indeed exists in the relevant literature, and it needs to cite a source that gives a coherent account summarizing the topic. You cannot build an article called "Werehyena" exclusively on sources that do not in fact mention the term "werehyena". If we aren't able to provide this, it would make more sense to transfer the content into an article with a more general scope of "the hyena in culture and folklore" (currently covered in a section, Hyena#Folklore.2C_mythology_and_literature, which could conceivably be expanded into a standalone article by a capable editor). --dab (𒁳) 09:25, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Religious symbolism

I am afraid to tell you this but your edit to the religious symbolism page ruined the whole article. The older version was way better and it actually had a good list so I decided to revert the edit.--Micronationalist1999 (talk) 16:18, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

I am afraid to tell you, but your "good list" is 100% unreferenced. I tried to start a real article. Sure I didn't include all the footnotes, but at least my material was taken from the linked articles, where it was referenced. If you want to play this the difficult way, we will have to agree to just blank everything that isn't referenced. WP:TNT. --dab (𒁳) 16:24, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

In fact, you may have missed it but I placed the part of the list that was at all salvageable at religious symbols. Please feel free to help with that. It needs to be rebuilt, in a "reality-based" way. --dab (𒁳) 16:33, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

I will help with the list, for I already added a few.--Micronationalist1999 (talk) 20:45, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Requesting input on Landmark/est

Hi. I would generally bother Dougweller about this, because he has more experience in this sort of thing than me, but he's taking a vacation now. Damn it. Anyway, I was wondering whether you think that User:Jasonfward, who has recently shown an interest in Talk:Landmark Worldwide, might be the same Jason F Ward who is an attorney with a page here which indicates that perhaps there might be some sort of COI question involved. I myself don't do this sort of checking up on others much myself, so I'm hoping that maybe you have a bit more experience with such things. If the evidence is sufficient in your eyes to raise the question to the editor, I would welcome your doing so. The article in question has been the target of a lot of people associated with Landmark over the years, and, honestly, it might be easier if the NRM group didn't take an explicit interest in it, I dunno. It might, maybe, reduce some of the contentious talk page editing, anyway. But, I would welcome any input from you. John Carter (talk) 20:09, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

Well, if the editor is using his real name, there doesn't seem to be any need for second-guessing his identity? COI is COI regardless of whether the user's identity is known. --dab (𒁳) 08:48, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

There is no COI. A Google for Jason Ward reveals there are a lot of us who share the name, some of whom are a lot more famous than I. However I can confirm that the Jason Ward who is a solicitor for Landmark Enterprises Inc (a company which appears as far as I can tell to have no relationship with Landmark Worldwide) is not me. I also have no current affiliation with Landmark Worldwide and have not for many years now, I last took part in what they do I would guess at least 6 or 7 years ago. Jasonfward (talk) 16:16, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

excellent, I am happy to take your word for it, no harm done I hope. --dab (𒁳) 07:47, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Manusmṛti

dab, assuming you are still editing articles in this topic area, can you (or your page watchers) take a look at this article, which seems to have accumulated monumental amounts of cruft over the years ? greetings from a previously active editor/collaborator 107.204.46.96 (talk) 18:18, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

You have removed about 12000 bytes from the page Manusmriti, which were well sourced and put on the page with thorough discussions on talk page. Present page is full of errors. Please go through the talk page and decide on deletion. Your reason for deleting 12000 bytes, that 'flood theory in epics is myth' does not hold good. We have given references of scientific researches on floods and habitations in North India 9000-10000 years ago, which was the time period of saints Manu and Bhrigu who composed the scripture Manusmriti. So please put the properly sourced and referenced material which you have deleated back on the page.Sudhirkbhargava (talk) 04:36, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

hah, "well sourced". I do not decide on deleting a number of "bytes", I look at the content. Your Ice Age floods have no place in an article on classical Hindu law, please go away. --dab (𒁳) 13:17, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

The page in present form is full of errors. For example the time period of recitation of 'Manusmriti' was flood time as described and referenced earlier, but the context is removed altogether. Also it is confusing to know from page who composed Manusmriti: while first para says that it was composed by Brahma, para with caption 'Structure' says that was composed by Bhrigu and Manu. I wonder if you are satisfied with the contents in present form ? I find the page completely distorted in present form..Sudhirkbhargava (talk) 07:33, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

the page is certainly a mess. It was even more of the a mess before. You need to distinguish the text's content and a scholarly discussion of the text's origins. See {{in-universe}}. The fact that the text contains stories of floods does not mean that it is to be dated to any historical floods, certainly not Ice Age ones. The text's language makes clear that it was composed after 500 BC (although it cannot be reasonably dated before 200 BC). Its composition presumably spread over a long time, 200 BC to 200 CE or so. Any discussion of the history of the text conterns the period between that earliest possible date and its oldest written record (presumably the 17th or 18th century, the oldest printed edition of the text seems to date to 1920 though). If you want to improve the article, base it on scholarly literature on the text and its history during the Indian medieval period. --dab (𒁳) 09:20, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

Talk:List of Georgian monarchs

See if you have anything to contribute to Talk:List of Georgian monarchs#Splitting into many lists. --The Emperor's New Spy (talk) 08:26, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Diauehi

Hi! Looks like you're working on Diauehi. It might help you to take a look at the German version of the article, which looks pretty well sourced. If you don't read German, I could maybe help you with it, just drop me a word... Anyway, thanks for your nice work! Susuman77 (talk) 12:29, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Category:People of 14th-century Zurich

Category:People of 14th-century Zurich, which you created, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you. ...William 12:16, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Good decruft

Thank you for your decrufting of Manusmṛti. It was a massive job that was badly needed. I didn't have the time and energy to wade into that swamp, except to anchor Manuvāda. I've replied further on talk:manusmrti.

I'm on my phone, yours in haste. =)

-SM 16:57, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Opinion needed

Hi Dab, there's month long ongoing dispute by me and one other user about Kurdish revolts in Iran, and during all that period no one was capable to review issue. In short:

• User Greyshark09 insists all revolts should be included in one article named "Kurdish separatism in Iran".
• I'm opposing such idea because I've explained not all such revolts were related to separatism (see Table) so I completely rewrote article and opened other one for all revolts (Rebellions in Iranian Kurdistan).

There's also short chronology about dispute on Dougweller's talkpage and much more on Talk:Kurdish separatism in Iran. Can you please give some short opinion? Best regards, --HistorNE (talk) 19:09, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Abjads

Template:Abjads has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Lfdder (talk) 15:48, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Northwest Semitic abjad

Template:Northwest Semitic abjad has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Lfdder (talk) 15:49, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Egyptians (disambiguation)

The article Egyptians (disambiguation) has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

This page has been superseded by Egyptian (disambiguation) which has more links, and duplicates all of the links there, causing a very confusing situation. There seems no point in having separate disambiguation pages for the singular and plural form of a word

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

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} 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 {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Richerman (talk) 09:28, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Template:Transl

I have started a discussion about Template:Transl at TfD here. Thanks, — Lfdder (talk) 10:04, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Template:Transl has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Kenfyre (talk) 11:26, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

What was the point of this? I notified them yday, right above. — Lfdder (talk) 11:43, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Cædmon's Hymn

A few months ago you inserted several inconsistent references to O’Keefe and dangling mentions of Mitchell, Ball and Howlett at Cædmon's Hymn. Would you insert the needed details, please?

—189.61.0.190 (talk) 02:20, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

This was in February and there have been lots of edits since[17] so tbh I don't know exactly what you want me to do, perhaps give a few diffs. Are you complaining about formatting or about content? If content, what are the problematic statements I have supposedly introduced? If formatting, I suppose the article is indeed a mess in this respect but I am reluctant to take the blame for it, in any case we can agree it needs work. --dab (𒁳) 08:13, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Category:Dravidians

Dab, what's your opinion of this category? I did some clean up like removing Category:Kerala from it, among others, but I'm still not sure that an umbrella category so named is the right thing. Let me know what you think. cheers. —SpacemanSpiff 17:23, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

There is already Category:Dravidian peoples, so Category:Dravidians should just be merged with that as equivalent. Individuals of a Dravidian ethnicity will reside in the various ethnic subcategories anyway, which in turn are in the "Dravidian peoples" one. Nobody has a "Dravidian" identity without also having an ethnic identity of one of the Dravidian subgroups (Tamil etc.). --dab (𒁳) 07:37, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes, but this one appears to be something more than the term Dravidians that's why I was a bit apprehensive. I'll clean it up over the next few days. cheers. —SpacemanSpiff 18:28, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Label

Were you looking to put Islamophobic incidents up at WP:AFD? You would need a solid argument though. Many of the sources don't describe the incidents as "Islamophobic".

But which of the following is it?

1. List of incidents described as Islamophobic
2. List of incidents described as Islamophobic in the modern era
3. List of Islamophobic incidents in the modern era
4. Islamophobia by country
5. Persecution of Muslims by country
6. List of every known use of the term Islamophobic or Islamophobia by the media etc etc...

Nobody knows.--Loomspicker (talk) 13:42, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

I am happy to have Wikipedia cover the "Islamophobia" debate for whatever it is worth, I just want to insist that this is a propaganda term no bettern than "racist" or "witch" or "heretic", i.e. it cannot ever be used as if it was some objecive thing that can be discussed as a "fact" in Wikipedia's voice. Everybody on every side of whatever fences there are just needs to be pragmatic about it. I note that in most Islamic countries, Christianity is considered an abomination as a matter of fact, yet there doesn't seem to be any term like "Christophobia" or "Christianophobia". I suppose it's just a synonym of "Islam" already. Fair enough. Wikipedia has a lot of "western bias" to be sure, "western bias" these days mostly meaning that there is a gratuitous amount of "white guilt" and western self-depreciation and self-hatred. Also fair enough, if that's how it is, that's how it is, we are just here to describe reality, not to have any opinions about it. --dab (𒁳) 14:17, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Your input invited

Hi Dab, It's been a long time. (Somehow both of us seem to have survived.) Since you are the Indologist of last resort, could you take a look at my post Wikipedia:Fringe_theories/Noticeboard#Pushing_antiquity_on_Jainism_articles. I wasn't aware of these articles, but, for a few years now, a group of editors have been promoting fringe ideas (about how the first Jaina thirthankara, Rishabha, who in traditional Jaina sources is 100 feet tall and died before the birth of the solar system, is the proto-Shiva figure of the Indus Valley Civilization). Also, how Karma was really pre-Vedic, pre-"Indo-Aryan", which the Shramanic ascetics, passed down directly to the Jainas, who in turn threw a few crumbs to the Brahmins who wrote it up in the Upanishads, etc etc Anyway glad to see that you are active and (as someone said) making "the obscurantists feel the heat of knowledge." Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:17, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Shvetashvatara Upanishad

dab, I noticed that you had marked some information in the article, sourced to Gavin Flood, as dubious. Flood is usually a reliable source (and I don't mean in only in on-wiki WP:RS terms) and Shaivism is his area of specialization, so I was wondering if there was anything specific about the claims in that article that made you doubt them. If so, I can try a deeper search of literature but I'll wait for your reply before I make that effort. Cheers. Abecedare (talk) 21:50, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

I do not pretend to speak with Indological authority, and in the end it doesn't matter what I think unless I can pinpoint specific reasons to back it up, but I have serious doubts about Gavin Flood and his "Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies". It is certainly possible that I get a distorted view of Flood's work because it is being cherry-picked for the purposes of Wikipedia, but I have frequently seen very dodgy stuff attributed to him on Wikipedia. As for the case at hand (ShvetUp), it will be best to see what other scholars have said and cite a "second opinion". --dab (𒁳) 08:22, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

I now remember that my suspicion was aroused because it is claimed that according to Flood, ShvetUp is one of the Mukhya Upanishads, It is possible that ShvetUp is one of the Upanishads that are by some canons considered "mukhya" but not by others, but then a proper reference would point this out and state where we find the claim of ShvetUp being "mukhya". Just saying "ShvetUP is mukhya" is misleading to the point of being wrong and if Flood really did this, it would reconfirm the impression I describe above. --dab (𒁳) 08:36, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

I found this book (1962) which ideosyncratically includes SvetUp as "Principal". I fixed it. Flood is innocent in this case (or perhaps in every case), his name just once again popped up in the vicinity of dodgy content. --dab (𒁳) 08:56, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Ok, quick survey:

• Patrick Olivelle dates the verse upanishads collectively to post-5th c BC and "probably in the last few centuries BCE"
• fr:Michel Hulin dates it as "3rd century BC ?" (the series editor is Jan Gonda, so Hulin can't be too bad)
• J. N. Farquhar (not necc. the best of sources, but ...) dates it to roughly between 5th and 3rd c BC

I found a couple more "unreliable" sources that date it in the same range. Given the normal error-bars on such dating I would say that these all are consistent with each other and with Flood's estimate.

About Flood: My main exposure to him has been through the The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism which he edited (see contributors; this is one of my go-to texts for citing/finding references), and I have found him to be a middle of the road scholar, in the sense that he is neither a Hindu-antiquity/superiority drum-beater, nor a feather-ruffler a la (say) Doniger. So give him a second look. Btw, not long back I realized that my visual system/memory was mixing up Klostermaier with Koenraad and therefore looking askance at citations to the former's work; so I know how such mental associations can form. Cheers. Abecedare (talk) 10:04, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Regarding Mukhya vs Principal Up. etc: I don't know about Nikhilananda's thinking, but I have seen a larger set of Upanishads clubbed together as major, prinipal etc w/o reference to the Muktika cannon. For example Joel Brereton here talks of 14 "Vedic Upanishads" which I assume is just a term of convenience as being of central importance. Brereton is translating the Rigveda for OUP and Olivelle's acknowledgement to him is quite gushing,

The one individual to whom I owe the deepest debt of gratitude and without whose advice and assistance this project would not have been completed is my colleague and friend Joel Brereton, who perhaps knows more about the Upanisads and the vedic literature than any living scholar

so we need to consider whether Upanishads should mention classifications other than the one in Muktika. Nothing urgent, since this will require some research to judge how widely accepted these alternates are, but something to look into eventually. Abecedare (talk) 10:53, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

thank you. I think I should review my "opinion" (gut feeling) on Flood, I am sure he is bona fide; it's just that I have encountered his name frequently when I was annoyed for having to clean up broken Hinduism articles, but that is no fault of his, anyone can be cited out of context. As for the SvetUp date, it is perfectly reasonable, I tagged it for future attention because I was confused by the "principal" claim (which I had inserted myself in 2005 it turns out...), and the tag did it's job now, the point has been reviewed and cleaned up.

I think it turns out that there are ten principal Principal Upanishads, i.e. ten who everyone agrees to include. Then there are various candidates who are included sometimes and sometimes they aren't. Of course the Mukhya Upanishads page would be the place to cite all the details of this. So far, I have cited one case of 11 and one of 13 "Principal Upanishads". There are also "12" and Brereton's "14". This means we'll end up with a list of four Upanishads which "may or may not be" considered principal, and SvetUp is one of them. --dab (𒁳) 10:59, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Etymology of Wicca

My dictionary has etymology under etymon, the true origin of a word. As the content of the article derives the current use of this single term, and is not an article about general wiccan terminology, as your new title seems to imply, I do not understand the reasons for the move. Please clarify. Fiddlersmouth (talk) 23:36, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

Indeed, the article does explain the origin of the term Wicca, as does witch (word). It then goes on to explain the history of Wicca and its terminology for about another ten pages. The "etymology" of the term "Wicca" is Old English wicca. The end. The rest of the article is not about "etymology" and may even be more at home in a history of Wicca article. I am genuinely concerned about WP:CFORK (i.e.{{duplication}}), not just in this topical area, it is a present danger in practically all of the project. --dab (𒁳) 12:06, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

Focus of Vedas article

dab, your input will be appreciated here. Abecedare (talk) 14:16, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

Sri Chinmoy

Please fill out your edit summaries to describe what you are doing to the article. Please do not disrupt the flow of the chronology (Art should come before Athleticism, and both of them before Criticism by Followers). Please do not assert in the lede what Chinmoy is best known for, because that is completely subjective and unproveable. Please do not delete content without discussion. Thank you. Softlavender (talk) 09:35, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

"Art should come before Athleticism, and both of them before Criticism by Followers"? Then I presume "crapping his pants" should become before "Art"? The "biography" section certainly should be chronological, but the other sections, I would humbly submit, should be informed by notability, not pure chronology.

also, there is a reason articles have talkpages. I do not propose to resolve edit disputes by edit summary. I am willing to compromise, of course, as long as you are willing to have a relaxed discussion on talk. What we cannot discuss is removal of unreferenced claims or needless hyperbole. What we certainly can discuss is the relative notability of "art" to this bio article, and if you can convince me that he is better known as an artist than as an athlete, you will certainly convince me the "Art" section should be moved up. --dab (𒁳) 09:59, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

IAST

Hi, I happened to notice this move, and while I have no objection to it, I'm surprised by the comment you made. IAST uses "c" for the Sanskrit letter close to the English "ch" sound (the Devanagari च)‌, and uses "ch" for the aspirated version (छ). There is no "chh"; the correct IAST for छान्दोग्य would indeed be chāndogya the way it was in the earlier title. chhāndogya would be something meaningless like छ्हान्दोग्य . Shreevatsa (talk) 06:01, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

you are completely right, sometimes I say stupid things in edit summaries. I then notice after posting them, but there is no way to edit them so they remain up for everyone to see. Sorry. --dab (𒁳) 06:27, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Nebra sky disk

This needs work and updating, I'll add sources on the talk page. I've minimised the MacKie stuff as it had more coverage than anything else. We could use some stuff translated from the German version. Dougweller (talk) 13:27, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

British India redirecting to provinces and presidencies of British India

Can i ask why you chose to self-revert? I agree with your previous edit. No search for a country of empire redirects to the districts so why do we use it here? 69.165.246.181 (talk) 04:54, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

One point is that "British India" is not an empire, the British Empire is an empire, and "British India" just a (respectable) portion within that empire. The second point is that "British India" refers to the entire period of British possessions in India, 1612–1947, not just to the "British Raj" proper (1858–1947). We do not at present have any article about "British India" as in "British posessions in India, 1612–1947", so the "provinces" article is the best redirect target we currently have. Often "British India" is used to refer to the British Raj of 1858ff., and this is duly noted in the disambiguation hatnote.

Actually, I note that this is already made clear in the article, so I don't know why you ask. Another target might be the section Colonial_India#English_and_British_India, which however already links to British India as its main page. --dab (𒁳) 13:44, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Sikhism

Hi fellow editor. Please could you help me. I'm having a really frustrating time with an editor who's first laguage is not English and clearly lacks WP:Competence. I've tried warning, engaging, everything you can think of, but to no avail. Please can you try. His main two focuses are Nihang and Sikhism which he is systematically turning into what I can best describe as Pidgeon English. ThanksSH 21:59, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

diffs [18][19] I have to say, while his style certainly isn't brilliant, it isn't really much different from the average bland style of prose on the wiki. Nothing I would describe as "pidgeon" English, or that couldn't be fixed by minor copyediting here or there. Are you sure this isn't actually about content? --dab (𒁳) 19:35, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

I don't think it's content. He seems to have some good references (then again some equally poor ones) but he seems to quote them out of context, and the wording is skewed. He seems to have calmed down for now, but feel free to take a look as well. Thanks SH 11:20, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Proposed Renaming

Please see my proposal to merge Category:Prehistory of Georgia (country) Hugo999 (talk) 05:07, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

December 2013

Hello, I'm Miningpyropony. I noticed that you recently removed some content from Count of Toulouse without explaining why. In the future, it would be helpful to others if you described your changes to Wikipedia with an edit summary. If this was a mistake, don't worry: I restored the removed content. If you would like to experiment, you can use the sandbox. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page. Thanks! Your Friendly Neigborhood Wikipedian (talk) 09:46, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

• please WP:DNTTR
• the reason was, of course, that the material was off topic. The general history of the county of Toulouse belongs on the page on the county of Toulouse. General remarks on the medieval history of Europe belong on neither.

--dab (𒁳) 12:57, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

FAR Rus' Khaganate

I have nominated Rus' Khaganate for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Chaosdruid (talk) 01:46, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Sudden changes to Duchy of Vasconia/Gascony

Thanks for bulldozing your stuff and your "cooperative" style! Comment on the Duchy of Gascony. Iñaki LL (talk) 23:57, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

yeah, thanks for reviving the tradition of pissing all over articles because you want to live out your ethnic essentialism. Why let mere facts get into the way of enjoying that. --dab (𒁳) 12:09, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

Harlequin

Thank you for fixing the Harlequin page and removing that ridiculous stuff about St Francis and Sufism. 50.80.153.173 (talk) 00:30, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Middle school

You applied {{split}} here

It was commented out here

I have removed the tag here.174.3.125.23 (talk) 07:19, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Protection of Mount Ararat

You protected Mount Ararat in 2009 with a summary of 'anon edit warring'. Do you think that lifting it now would be appropriate? Cheers. Crazynas ^t 10:26, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

I do not understand the reason, it you want to re-live the campaign of bizarre crackpot nationalism every four years, by all means the article should be unprotected every four years. But this sort of thing isn't really the point of this project, at least not officially. --dab (𒁳) 17:31, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

I'm sorry, what? Crazynas ^t 07:31, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

Hello! There is a DR/N request you may have interest in.

This message is being sent to let you know of a discussion at the Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard regarding a content dispute discussion you may have participated in. Content disputes can hold up article development and make editing difficult for editors. You are not required to participate, but you are both invited and encouraged to help find a resolution. The thread is "Population history of Egypt". Please join us to help form a consensus. Thank you! EarwigBot ^{operator / talk} 17:20, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you.

Andronovo culture

Could you please look at this? There's a new user who insists on contesting the consensus Indo-Iranian identification, in favour of Turkic/"Altaic" identifications, with sources which I find difficult to take quite seriously. It smells synth-y at the very least. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:57, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

ArbComm

You are involved in a recently filed request for arbitration. Please review the request at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#section name and, if you wish to do so, enter your statement and any other material you wish to submit to the Arbitration Committee. Additionally, the following resources may be of use—

• Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests#Requests for arbitration;
• Wikipedia:Arbitration guide.

Thanks,

Hello, you have an opportunity to make a statement at Ancient Egyptian Long-Term Editor Misconduct as you are named as a party, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case Regards, Andajara120000 (talk) 18:59, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Ivo

On a more generic note, I'm not sure you realize how your edits over there may appear: it's as if you were claiming that the Slavic name is just a piece of trivia that shouldn't be on par with the fine Germanic name. I know you didn't mean it that way, but that's easily how it can be interpreted what with the "relegation" of the Slavic name to a hypocorism based on a source that is not really scholarly, the removal of a Slavic WP from the talk page etc. I'd appreciate it if you were a bit more tactful in the future. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 09:03, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

I have no idea what you are talking about. The article mixed up completely unrelated names as if they were variants of each other, and I corrected it[20]. I fail to see where I ever implied that one language is more "fine" than another. It is my view in general that not every hypocorism needs its own wiki page, hypocorisms are countless, and so far as they can be referenced they should be listed on the page of whatever name they are a hyposorism of. --dab (𒁳) 16:34, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

Epithets

Back in 2007, you edited God, adding a mention of the word "epitheta", as the plural of "epithet", and this has stayed there ever since, redirecting to "epithet". But I can't find any obvious support for this plural in English -- dictionaries all (well, SOED, Webster, wiktionary) say 'epithets'. Googling for 'epitheta' produces traces of the WP article, and lots of occurrences in German, which appears to use epitheton/epitheta. So I wonder if it is a slip from German? I intend to change it to 'epithets', but thought I would ask you first. (Please reply here: I am watching!) Imaginatorium (talk) 06:22, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

It was a "slip", if you insist, from Greek. I have no problem with the anglicized plural. It is easy to google for English usage[21] but I am happy to accept that "epithets" is far more widely used. --dab (𒁳) 16:37, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

Desi

Greetings DB! Would you mind taking a look at this paragraph? Certain adivasi notwithstanding, it looks neither accurate or neutrally presented. Kind regards – Soupforone (talk) 23:21, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

I take it you mean the bit about

The modern population of the India are believed to be a branch of the indigenous people of Australia, often categorized as Australoids,

The problelm is, of course, with "modern". The "modern population of India" isn't a "branch" of anything, because India is far too inclusive a term, and its population is the product of millennia of miscegenation. What they are trying to talk about is the Neolithic population of India, not the "modern" one. --dab (𒁳) 16:43, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

Actual measured Coefficient of relationship between siblings

Did you come across studies or a book discussing what actual measured genetic differences a group of study siblings have between them? If researchers have genetic maps of both parents and both siblings and then compare them strand for strand does a 50% coefficient hold? What are the odds of finding siblings with 62% identical genes? 51%? Alatari (talk) 23:17, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

well, to start with, there is human genetic variation, meaning that all humans are genetically identical to about 99.5%. Now in most cases, unless say an Eskimo mates with a Kalahari bushman, any two parents will already be related to rather more than 99.5%. So any genetic difference between two siblings will be relative to whatever genetic difference existed between their parents, im most case maybe 0.2%. So saying that siblings are related "50%" means that their genetic difference is 0.1% if their parents had a difference of 0.2%. It is quite important to keep this in mind, or the percentage figures are just meaningless. --dab (𒁳) 16:29, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

I assumed that we both understood that point and was referring to the actual genetic consanguinity of siblings caused by meiosis of their parents gametes. How much variance off of 50% is measured? Has there been any studies? Alatari (talk) 11:47, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

I am sorry if I pointed out the obvious, but then why are we having this discussion? Is this about something on the Coefficient of relationship article? If you look at my contribution history, you see that I jump between topics very much and if you ask me about a topic I edited months ago, it usually helps to give some context in the form of diff links.

What is it you want to see studies about? If the "0.1%" thing I describe above is understood, the consanguinity of siblings is exactly 50%, all the time (ignoring the Y chromosome). They get a haploid strand from their father and a haploid strand from their mother. Most of these (99.9%) will be identical in content, but it's still 50% from the father and 50% from the mother. So frankly I do not understand what you want to see a study about now. --dab (𒁳) 12:12, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

I thought you might have a varied and deep number of sources on the subject. I did not investigate your overall editing habits. Looking at theory and then investigating actual differentiation has lead to some interesting discoveries in various branches of science. Is every chromosome meiosed(sp)? Are there family lines where some typically meiosed genes are passed on whole in all children? Is the actual consanguinity found to be 50.06% across a wide selection of siblings? With rapid genome testing some of these questions can be studied now and I'm curious if you've seen anything. Alatari (talk) 12:22, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

I am interested in the topic, and I will be happy to help you search for references, as soon as I understand your question. Is your question about the mechanism of meiosis, or is it about demographic averages? I do not think your question is well formulated. What is a "meiosed gene"? What is this "50%" number you keep talking about? Both parent's DNA is meiosed to 100%. This gives you two haploid strands, each to 100% from one parent, which is combined to form a diploid strand, which is consequently derived from each parent to exactly 50%. This is how the process works, you cannot deviate from the 50% by any margin. You don't get to receive more or less than 50% from each parent, because each contributes one out of two separate strands (again, ignoring Y chromosome). --dab (𒁳) 12:23, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Is that true? Is every human gamete receiving 100% meiosed genes or is there some that are untouched? Are there some genetic diseases which creates not fully meiosed genes? And of course there is 50% contribution from each parent. (Well except for the mitochondrial DNA). You've already mentioned the 99.5% identical genes carried and then suggested that two parents are 90% identical in the remains leaving .05% variable genes. Is that number small enough to see skewed distributions between siblings? I see you mention it in the grandparents. Alatari (talk) 13:03, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Actually, your question begins to make a lot of sense if you extend it by one generation, and ask what deviation from the average of 25% of genetic material people receive from their grandparents. As each parent themselves have a mixture of 50% each from their parents, and meisosis mixes this up during the time between conception of the parent and conception of the child, you will get very close to 25% contribution from each grandparent, but there may be deviations. I assume you would expect a poisson distribution for that, so on average 5% deviation from the 25%, so most people will have between typically 20% and 30% from each grandparent. The poission distribution will be almost gaussian due to the large number of genes, but for this, you may actually go and look for studies verifying it. --dab (𒁳) 12:33, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

You started to touch on it by mentioning most parents have 99.5% 90% identical genes. That source would be interesting to see. Alatari (talk) 13:03, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

I said all parents have a genome that is to at least 99.5% identical. This is the "interracial" case, in the vast majority of cases it will be closer to 99.9%. This is assuming both parents are human. I am careful with the term "gene" because it is very difficult to define, and very easy to use carlessly as synonymous with "genome". I am now asking you to consult human genetic variation, which states that "on average" two humans are 99.9% identical, and that the maximum difference is estimated at 99.5%. Both statements come with excellent references that I will not bother to copy-paste to my talkpage.

I am sorry but I do not feel as if this exchange between us is going anywhere. I tried to understand your question and answer what I understood you were bringing up. Perhaps I misunderstood. I think now is the time to go back to the articles, you find a lot of resources at the articles mentioned and I am sure you can go on from there. --dab (𒁳) 14:21, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

Since I've learned some more terms from Human genetic variation I can formulate my questions better.

What's the expected identical nature between two siblings in the 3 million non-fixed nucleotides out of the 3 billion total in the human genome? Consanguinity relates to this topic in a way I don't quite yet understand. It looks like between any sibling, even identical, there is an expectation of a likely 60 mutation differences to start with. After that you have to consider the differences in the genomes of the parents and how they recombined.

Putting this in a word problem:

Sarah and Wayne have two children, Mary and John. It is found through genetic testing that Sarah and Wayne have a total of 2 million different nucleotides in their genomes. After both parents' gametes combine to form the new genome of John what is the expected number of nucleotide differences between John and his father? Between John and his mother? Between John and his sister Mary?

I don't think the answer is 1 million between John and his mother/father and 1 million between John and Mary which consanguinity would suggest. Maybe it's 1 million as the measured peak of a Gaussian distribution and if so what is the standard deviation? 100,000 nucleotides? What are the measured differences of a large study group where the father/mother/child/sibling genomes have been measured and compared for differences? I'm not finding a Wikipedia article or an outside source on genetic diversity within family groups and individual members. Maybe because my search terms are still not quite right or maybe because this is too recent and the funding is all going to population wide studies like the HGDP.

The other aspect my mind was trying to formulate questions about was consanguinity as a measure of potential risk to the offspring. My contention is that in some geographic areas of long isolation and high consanguinity within the peoples, pairing with a 1st cousin should be much more risky to the offspring than say 1st cousins who have in the four parents a San person, a Micronesian, a European and a Inuit. I found this source that uses consanguinity of populations Genomic Runs of Homozygosity Record Population History and Consanguinity while searching for "genetic diversity and consanguinity". I think it answers my question if a study about individual family diversity exists by stating The availability of genome scan technology, capable of genotyping individuals at hundreds of thousands of markers has made this observational approach possible. yet they still only had only about 1000 individuals in 2010 to get data from. They are focusing on entire populations and not so much on individual family lines. They are analyzing data gathered from the Human Genome Diversity Project. Looking into their source list should be interesting.

You wanted to get out of this conversation but I just needed to get this question formulated and was struggling (I had been awake for 30 hours at the time). You were helpful, thankyou. Alatari (talk) 01:57, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

It currently remains very expensive to analyse an entire genome down to the level of individual bases, which is what you seem to want for your theoretical questions. It's getting cheaper, but I doubt there's many, if any, small-scale studies to this level.

There's a problem with your question, in that every human has two copies of each autosomal gene (each gene not on the X and Y chromosomes, which more or less just pass down gender-wise). So parents Sarah and Wayne will have nucleotide differences between their own genes. Thus, saying Sarah and Wayne have 2 million differences isn't clear at all.

Let's assume Sarah and Wayne are completely homogenous, so Sarah's chromosome pairs are identical to each other, and Wayne's chromosome pairs are identical to each other. In this case, recombination (without error) is going to do nothing, as the areas switched are identical. Children John and Mary each receive a full copy of each of their parents genomes, as they get one of each chromosome pair from each of their parents. Thus, the children will have the entire set of their parents DNA, one parent in each chromosome.

This is not actually going to happen, because you probably never get homogenous chromosomes. For some genes (some being very very small, considering as noted above the vast majority of the human genome seems not to vary at all) each parent will have two alleles, one in each chromosome, and their children will get one of these two alleles, from each parent. So the children get half of the differences within Sarah's genome, and half of the differences within Wayne's genome. There may be differences between the parents (Sarah may have versions A and B and Wayne has versions C and D), but the children will still get either A or B, and either C or D (giving combinations AC AD BC BD), and thus have their parents genome within them, only without variation.

It's 50% chance to get A instead of B, and 50% chance to get C instead of D (and vice versa for both). This is true for all children Sarah and Wayne have together. The differences between the genomes of the children are based on this potluck.

Variation between different races/ethnicities/populations/whateveryouwanttocallthem will be reflected in Wayne and Sarah in there being more areas where they will have different alleles, but no matter how close or distant the parents are the children get 1/2 of their genome from each parent.

Does that help? CMD (talk) 03:09, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

Well, yes and no. The ~3.09 billion genes that all humans share, if I understand correctly, are homozygous and passed on as the same copy except in mutations. So I'm referring to the other ~3 million (0.1%) to ~15 million (0.5%) that have variability. I was going to post an example of Sarah and Wayne have homozygous chromosomes (in the 2 million that differ) but of different varieties (Wayne is AA, Sarah is BB) so that Jim and Mary would have 2 million AB (simplistic case of only two allele possibilities for all differences) all different from their parents. That's the maximal case of children having 2 million different genes from their parents.

When I say 2 million differences I mean through the whole genome of Wayne and Sarah ~3.09 billion are identical and the rest have differences in alleles between the two people, not that some of them are heterozygous genes within each person. Even if one is dominant when Jim inherits it but his father was AA and mother BB, Jim's AB would express itself but still be different from either parent. Same with your example of AB/CD; all possible combinations will necessarily be different from both parents. Combinations AB/BC gives (AB, AC, BB, BC) 50% chance of matching one parent or AA/AB gives (2xAA,2xAB) or 100% chance of matching one parent, etc. People doing genetic disease probability, having two genomes in hand, would have the mathematical model ready to calculate the expected odds for any couple.

I agree that this is just now becoming in the realm of financial possibility and I'm in WP:recentism on this question. Thanks for the response CDM! Anytime someone challenges my thought about a problem I have to again rethink it, maybe learn some new terminology, check I'm using it correctly, and visualize the problem in another way thus improving my understanding. Thanks for deepening my understanding. Alatari (talk) 06:20, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

Pracetas

Hi. I see you created Pracetas as a redirect. What is the connection with the destination page? Regards, Rui ''Gabriel'' Correia (talk) 01:42, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Did you try reading the target article? They had a king called Pracetas. --dab (𒁳) 09:06, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Very odd - I actually did a search for the word on that page and did not see that. My apologies. Rui ''Gabriel'' Correia (talk) 14:59, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Nomination of Germanic-speaking Europe for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Germanic-speaking Europe is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Germanic-speaking Europe until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Fakirbakir (talk) 15:05, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Restoration of Gothic biographies

Last year several biographies on Gothic people were deleted by Dougweller because they had been created or edited by a banned user. Some of these articles, like that on Aoric, Ariaric and Athanaric, obviously encyclopedic, have since been restored by you. There are still related articles of encyclopedic value that remain deleted, like that on Alavivus. Krakkos (talk) 21:56, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

yes, Doug went a bit over the top with these. Perhaps you want to ask him to undelete them. Or you could just recreate a stub from scratch. --dab (𒁳) 10:38, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

IE expansion map

Hi. My attempt to add the map IE expansion yuo've uploaded, to Template:Indo-European topics, was met with some skepticism, in particular Dougweller, who pointed out that a editor pointed out alleged faults in the map on the images talk page shortly after it was uploaded. Could you respond to the remarks on the talk page or correct the map, in order to correct what appears to be a nice piece of work? Krakkos (talk) 20:44, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

The points are valid. I still endorse my map within the scope it was intended for in the first place, giving a rough sketch of expansion in the Kurgan framework, but no doubt it could be improved.

I created this map as a quick hack back in 2005, in order to give Wikipedia coverage of the Kurgan hypothesis it had hitherto been lacking. This is 2014 now and coverage on these topics has much improved. Also, Wikipedia's standards regarding maps and so on have greatly increased over the years. So it would certainly be worthwhile to make an effort and improve the map. --dab (𒁳) 10:44, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

split of islamic theology/ʿAqīdah page

I strongly agree ʿAqīdah is not theology. where do you discuss the split? The links on the tag don't take you to the talk page, which is where (I would think) you'd discuss it. --BoogaLouie (talk) 19:15, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

since the suggestion is eminently sane, and I think also self-evident, I suppose you should just go ahead and implement the split under WP:BRD. Or I will do it at some point if I remember to. --dab (𒁳) 06:18, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

human skulls as drinking vessels

I am curious about an edit you made to the Vikings article a long time ago. You added the following misconception/myth about Vikings:

"The use of human skulls as drinking vessels is also unhistorical. The rise of this myth can be traced back to a mis-translation of an icelandic kenning, "skull-beams" referring to drinking horns. Scandinavian skalle, skal means simply "shell" or "bowl"." Revision: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vikings&diff=next&oldid=6699613

Over the course of nine years this entry has grown and the status of this myth has now been enlarged to "common motif in popular pictorial representations of the Vikings." Personally I can not remember ever seeing a Viking portrayed drinking from a human skull. Maybe some weird Orc/Viking hybrid from a Dungeons and Dragons-esque game but nothing that was attempting to portray Vikings. In fact I did some searching and I could not find any pictures of Vikings drinking from human skulls. I did see a number of pages that seem to regurgitate this misconception. I am curious if we have a great example of citegenesis on our hands? Do you have any pointers to the existence of this misconception?

I apologize i it is in poor form to bring up an edit from nine years ago. Thanks for your help. DouglasCalvert (talk) 00:43, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

This is older stuff, predating orcs by a century or more. It is not now predominant, but was predominant in early "Septentrionalist" (Viking revival) literature. I remember putting references on this in the article, but as you say it's nine years ago and would need to be dug up from the edit history. It is probably wrong to stash this under "common motif in popular pictorial representations of the Vikings". The "modern depiction of Vikings" is a topic which itself has now a 400 year history, and it is misleading to cast it in terms of contemporary pop-culture (which is given far too much weight in many parts of Wikipedia). But since most people editing the article insist on going on about pop-culture (either documenting it, or "refuting" it), I have little hope for improvement. --dab (𒁳) 07:28, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

"Hear! Hear!" (thumping human skull mead bowl on table) I cringed when I saw the reference to such in the History Channel's new series "Vikings". What a horrid show. But what do you expect from the History Channel? --Saukkomies ^talk 00:58, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Eastern Europe templates

Hi, Dbachmann. As I've noted that you've done an excellent job of tidying Template:History of Ukraine, I wonder whether the same shouldn't be done for Template:History of Russia. A little uniformity in presentation would benefit this template. Cheers! --Iryna Harpy (talk) 21:51, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

sure, but I cannot spend too much time fiddling with templates. It's a bottomless timesink, especially as "well-meaning" editors keep adding back cruft faster than I can remove it. --dab (𒁳) 21:53, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Oh, I do understand! Apologies for imposing on you. It simply struck me that it would provide a good reference point for me and, hopefully, other neutral users in terms of structure. As I do a lot of work on copyediting, checking citations (and citekill) on articles affected, I'm driven mad by finding them being turned into sprawling lists longer than the article itself. It simply struck me that your formatting is compact and intuitive. Both enthusiasts and POV pushers keep trying to turn them into an 'everything you ever needed to know' history of the region. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 22:19, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

I'm afraid there's nothing to be tweaked. The template lists neither the Denisova Cave, nor the Maikop culture, nor Sintashta culture, nor Pazyryk, nor Tanais, nor Balhae, nor the Xiongnu, nor any other ancient peoples who dominated parts of Mother Russia before the Rus/Slavs and the Tatars/Turks :) --Ghirla^-трёп- 22:29, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

I beg to differ, Ghirla. It would definitely benefit from collapsible, intuitive headers as per the Ukrainian template: Prehistory, Early history, Early modern history, etc. or variants thereof. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 22:54, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

PS, Ghirla, point taken about the Prehistory section of the History of Ukraine template. I'll see whether I can make some sort of inroads into removing some of the spurious entries there, although I'm not expecting to be able to do so without a little sparring. Oh, well, if I end up getting sanctioned it'll be in the name of encyclopaedic accuracy. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 04:14, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

there is always room for debate on "tweaking" these templates. I agree with Ghirla that the Russian template looks clean. "Collapsible" templates in my view are just a necessary evil, it needs to be done when people insist on piling up too many links. So far the Russian template doesn't really suffer from that. But I do accept that it is a matter of taste and of taste, and I accept if other people actively prefer the "collapsible" mode. If there is a collapsed sections that lists a bunch of archaeological cultures, it's not extermely hepful in terms of "navigation", but no harm done I think. It's not inconceivable that there might be a Prehistoric Russia page linked from the Russian template. --dab (𒁳) 11:53, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

also, "indigenism" isn't wrong per se, as long as it doesn't serve as an excuse to be nasty to others. It is perfectly straightforward and verifiable that

• while there has always been a constant degree of "diffusion", "invasion" and "migration" (overlapping concepts)
• the vast majority of populations have just been largely sedentary since the Paleolithic. Where "sedentary" is subject to a convolution over a certain coherence length, which will depend on territory (shorter in mountainous areas, longer in the steppe).
• this holds true for the pre-modern era, before there was the technical means of dislocating or replacing entire populations, as was first done in the colonisation of the New World, and then in planned bursts by Stalin and friends, and now by state-sponsered immigration in western countries.

so yes, of course there was no "Russia" prior to the Rus, just as there was no "Switzerland" prior to the Swiss, it is still a useful shorthand to talk about Prehistoric Russia and Prehistoric Switzerland in both senses that

• it's a territorial shorthand simply referring to what archaeologists have unearthed in these modern countries
• it is plausible and in most cases verifiably the case that the ethnic majorities are indeed descended from prehistoric populations in situ. This is perfectly unexciting as a fact, and I wish people wouldn't always make such a fuss about being "proud" of it (doh, everyone has prehistoric ancestors, it's a simple consequence of being alive; the special thing is having historical ancestors: only a tiny minority of people can cite all their ancestors who were alive in the 19th century, I know I can't; Elizabeth II can, but even for her, genealogy breaks down in the 18th century)

--dab (𒁳) 12:42, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Cucuteni-Trypillian culture

Dbachman, I am actually delighted to see your recent interest in improving the quality of the C-T articles. I spent hundreds of hours working on them a few years ago. When I first stumbled on the original article I was searching for some information about the early Hellenes, and I discovered this fantastic culture. However, the article was in horrible shape: it was a mess! So I took it on and helped make it into what it is today: an entire family of articles. I even had the Economy article included in the "Did You Know" feature on the homepage of Wikipedia.

But I then got very busy doing other things in rl, and could not continue my work on these articles. I know they still need a lot of work, and I do hope someone can improve them. But I still have a lot of interest in making sure that the C-T articles are not damaged by edits, whether by good intention or not. I know that nobody "owns" any part of Wikipedia, but I can't help but feel that the C-T articles are my babies.

But I know they need improving, and I can't do it, so I'm really open to the idea of someone coming along and making them shine. A couple of the articles have the potential for being very good, and I'd love to see that happen. So what I'm writing this for is to gently and politely suggest that if you'd like to work on them, improve them, please by all means do so! But I'd also like to be kept in the loop. I would suggest that if you want to make huge changes, just drop me a note in my Talk page. It would make me feel much better knowing why big changes were being made, and I'd be much more open to them, thus avoiding a conflict or edit war.

BTW: I fully support your removal of the "Archaeogenetics" subarticle. I always hated that one. I only included it as a separate article for two reasons: 1) to placate one of the earlier editors of the C-T article who felt strongly about including it, and 2) to remove it from the main article, because I didn't like it and didn't want it messing up the original work. So I banished it to a lonely spot and forgot about it mostly. I am glad you deleted it, because now I can support your decision and nobody can say I did it just because I'm a meany. --Saukkomies ^talk 00:47, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

I would like to see some improvement in this area too. But I am not one to make articles "shine" -- I have hundreds of thousands of edits but hardly any "featured articles" to my name, as I prefer to focus on stuff that is completely broken and leave off to tend other areas once they are "fair". But I would prefer the CT articles to be narrowly about the archaeological culture. Sweeping treatments of cultural topics related to it would be much more at home in pages with a wider scope, such as Chalcolithic Europe. --dab (𒁳) 12:00, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for replying. I understand your preference in editing. I also am heartened that you find that the CT articles are important enough to warrant attention. I do feel that the CT subject matter encompasses a wide range of scholarship, not just limited to one or two, and this was partly one of the reasons I split the original article out into subarticles, in order to deal specifically with these various subjects logically and appropriately within the Wikipedia framework. The focus of the main article, as I saw it, was more of a survey, with the more specific topics covered by subarticles. --Saukkomies ^talk 13:12, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

I appreciate your dedication to the topic. Also, I am by no means opposed to topical sub-articles. It's just that the amount of content needs to justify them, and they need to be cleanly organised under WP:SS. But it is clear to me that we are on the same page on this. Happy editing, --dab (𒁳) 13:21, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

History of Ukraine

Hi, dbachmann. Do you think the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture or Yamna culture are really part of the national history, as such edits seem to imply? --Ghirla^-трёп- 10:10, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

I realize this is a minefield right now. But this is pov-pushing by navigation template. If they want to make a legitimate point about the prehistory of Ukraine, let them do so in prose and not by slapping templates on articles about the Stone Age that just so happen to sport their preferred national flag.

Or else let them remove modern flags from "history" navboxes as anachronistic. --dab (𒁳) 10:25, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Spot on. One has to wait for a year at least before trying to sort it out. --Ghirla^-трёп- 10:29, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

it's both the curse and the great strength of this project. History as it happens. Sadly, people cannot just mess up the articles on "unfinished" current events, there is always spill-over into topics of ancient history, or even deep prehistory ("antiquity frenzy").

I have no idea who is "right" in the whole Crimea/Maidan mess, but I do know for very certain that the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture has no bearing whatsoever on the answer to that. --dab (𒁳) 11:36, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

As someone seriously interested in the Cucuteni-Trypillian articles (all you have to do is check out the pages' histories to see my considerable work on them), I was actually surprised to find that the Ukrainian national flag/symbol template was featured so prominently in the article. I must have missed that when someone slipped it in, since I usually try to keep a close eye on any vandalism of these articles. I concur with Ghirlandojo that the Ukrainian template does not belong in the Cucuteni-Trypillian articles. The C-T culture was just as much the ancestral progenitors of many other European peoples, not just Ukrainians, since their DNA was scattered throughout the continent as a result of countless migrations and invasions over the millennia. The Ukrainians certainly do not hold a monopoly on the C-T culture - not even if you include the Romanians in the equation. --Saukkomies ^talk 21:44, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

I wouldn't call it vandalism. Just misguided enthusiasm. After all, CT is actually part of Ukrainian prehistory. An archaeological culture isn't about "genes", as you seem to imply, it is about the material culture and as such has a geographical scope. But if we slap national templates on all archaeology articles, well, the CT article will at least need Moldovan and Romanian flags as well. Not to mention the Linear Pottery article, etc. --dab (𒁳) 21:53, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Point taken about calling it "vandalism", you are likely correct. Of course I completely understand the concept of archaeological cultures being defined by material artefacts, however in using an archaeological culture as a means to substantiate a nationalistic claim to a particular piece of real estate implies that the descendants of the ancient people still inhabit the same land today. However, it has been shown that the C-T DNA haplotype has been spread throughout all of Europe, and that they therefore cannot be the ancestors of just the Slavs or anyone else, but part of the general mix that makes up most Europeans. Thus, the subject of DNA has nothing really to do with the archaeological culture, but it does impinge on the subject of nationalism. --Saukkomies ^talk 00:35, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

I've been told the Ukrainian textbooks feature a chapter on the nation's Trypillian heritage. Many people there refer to the Trypillians as the ancestors of Slavs. Searching for the national identity, they underscore indigenism. Hence the claim that the Ukrainians (or their genetic ancestors) have inhabited the Pontic steppe from time immemorial. --Ghirla^-трёп- 22:15, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

You've 'been told', Ghirla? By whom? Do you have the names of the textbooks... or any online links to these textbooks? If they're in Ukrainian, I'm happy to translate the alleged sections 'underscoring' indigenism in order to verify whether it is true or merely hearsay. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 00:48, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

this is verifiable of course. These textbooks exist in print, we just have to consult them. I actually think that a "modern reception" section tying in with Ukrainian nationalism would be a good addition to the CT page. I do expect this to be the case, actually, as it's perfectly common to build national identity on remote antiquity, it's not just the Ukrainians or Slavs doing it. Swiss national historiography in the 19th century was much infatuated with the Helvetii for example. --dab (𒁳) 11:57, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Apparently, the Trypillian culture doesn't play such an enormous role in Ukrainian nationalism. Based on this source, their deal is more that they are the real Rus' , while the Russians are descended from some marginal populations that were hopelessly mixed up with Finno-Ugrians and Turks, and that there is cultural continuity between the Kievan Rus and the Ukraine. Again, this isn't necessarily wrong factually, but ethnic nationalism doesn't really mix well with articles on early history and the two need to be kept cleanly separated. They don't care about the Neolithic so much, but they aren't above supposing, at times, that "the Rus' ... embodied the local cultural traditions in development since Trypillian times". So, the real bone of contention is once again going to be poor Kievan Rus', while the CT article can be expected to remain more of a sideshow, I think. --dab (𒁳) 15:27, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Indo-Aryan superstrate in Mitanni

Do you think Indo-Aryan superstrate in Mitanni could be unprotected? Jackmcbarn (talk) 01:40, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

technically, I suppose? It's just semiprotected, which means any account with half a dozen edits to its name can edit it fine. Any passing anonymous contributor isn't going to improve things. But sure it can be unprotected. Just make sure that the person unprotecting it takes it upon himself or herself to also watch the article and prevent it from deterioration. This is not a topic that is going to be watched by 20 people, so it will not benefit from Wikipedia's system of many eyes. If one person is dedicated to watching it, fine. If not, it will just go to pieces in a matter of months. --dab (𒁳) 07:23, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Assyrian people protection level

Hi, could you please lower down the protection level for Assyrian people. The article is in need of expert contribution and I have seen a number of good faith edit requests recently.--Kathovo talk 13:08, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

this is one of the worst battlefields on Wikipedia. Since many of the edit warriors have established accounts anyway, it doesn't really matter if it is semiprotected. What would be needed are admins with balls dedicated to enforce project policy. I spent some effort on that, but I decided it wasn't worth my time to clean up an article that is only ever going to be read by people who are already part of this ethnic mess so I quit. --dab (𒁳) 07:25, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

never mind, I am not surprised to see that you yourself are in there with an agenda. Or why else would you push the name "Aramaean" as being used to refer to the modern Aramaic speaking populations by reference to books published by Gorgias Press LLC? Gorgias Press makes clear that this is an outfit created for the exact purpose of producing "references" to support this kind of ethnic bickering. By all means cite these books, but please do not pretend that they are "scholarly" or "impartial". This is about a people who are positively obsessed with their ethnic heritage, and grimly determined to be as cranky about it as they can, for reasons that are psychologically understandable, but that still doesn't excuse them for flying in the face of project policy. --dab (𒁳) 07:32, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

It's funny that I'm now accused of being an Arameanist since I had just had a conflict with another user who accused me of being an "Assyrianist with an agenda". What references do you contest? If Morony and Brock not scholarly in your opinion could you offer other references that you deem more reliable?

All I'm asking is to give new editors a chance, it has been 6 years since the article was locked and it's still in a bad shape.--Kathovo talk 09:18, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

I am not accusing you of being any kind of -ist as I have given up even keeping track of the various "-isms" involved in this, I do not have nor did I ever have any kind of stakes in this question other than trying to keeping Wikipedia sane, and I have long stopped trying in this particular case. I realise that "Aramaeans" is commonly used in German and afaik Swedish, it is much rarer in English, and it will not help throwing yet another term into the already hopeless terminological mess. But that's up to the people who are trying to fix things, and I wish you the best of luck.

I can un-semiprotect the article, it doesn't matter, it's not going to help but it's also not going to do any more damage. Please understand that every registered editor can already edit the article, the only thing semiprotection does is keeping down the white noise caused by driveby IP editors. --dab (𒁳) 10:43, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for understanding. We can always re-protect if it gets out of hand.--Kathovo talk 12:21, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Split

Thanks for splitting Modern history of Ukraine. Could you also do it for the "Early modern history"? Then we can safely summarize (cut) some less important content from the main article's sections. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 08:07, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

I just suggested it, it was implemented by Timothyhouse1 (talk · contribs). [22] I endorse this, but wth? He did this on 16 March and just left the article dumped there with no lead? That's not editing, that's just cutting-and-slashing. I placed a split tag so somebody with some time on their hands could do it properly, if it was just a copy-paste job, we wouldn't need "editors", the job could be done by a small shell script. --dab (𒁳) 08:52, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

Er, I'm a little confused as to where this was 'split' from and where the discussion to 'split' took place? Could anyone enlighten me? I seem to keep finding articles about Ukraine lurking here and there which are, essentially, replicas of existing articles except written using a few spurious secondary sources and mainly conjecture. The main article on Ukraine itself doesn't link to it. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 09:18, 21 March 2014 (UTC) Apologies. My brain is disambiguated and I think I'd better call it a night! Found the link. I'm a moron and I admit it. Cheers! --Iryna Harpy (talk) 09:25, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

The article fails to explain how New Russia came to be attached to Little Russia. Until 1919 the two regions had little in common ethnically, linguistically and historically. Without keeping this in mind, one can't understand what's going on in Ukraine now. --Ghirla^-трёп- 11:53, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

I agree. Still, "understanding" is not taking sides, necessarily. So this bit of land passed from Russia to Ukraine. Before that, it was taken from the Tatars, who had taken it from the Alans or Khazars, who had taken it from the Goths, who had taken it from the Sarmatians, who had taken it from the Thraco-Cimmerians and so on. My experience with the topic of ethnic bickering and irredentism is that it is always the exact same people who (a) whine about being victimised by a more powerful ethnic group and (b) glory in historical days when their group was in a position to victimise others as the way it should properly be. It's human, but it's also ridiculous. Also, "ethnically", really? There is a separation of barely 600 years, Ukrainians and Russians are ethnically closer than Swabians and Bavarians. I realise that this doesn't prevent people from going to war, but making it "ethnic" is really pushing the envelope. --dab (𒁳) 10:23, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

Edits to Crimea

There's already a request for a move (to Autonomous Republic of Crimea) on the way on the talk page. I don't think adding a request to split the article is helpful, it only confuses the matter. It does look like there is a broad consensus for the move, though, so it would be appreciated if you could perform it. CodeCat (talk) 14:46, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Category:Swiss rapists

Category:Swiss rapists, which you created, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you. Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 15:51, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

I have no idea why I created this, and I am happy for it to be deleted. I must have been seduced by the existence of Category:Rapists by nationality, which when I think about it is a terrible example of category clutter and fragmentation.

Otoh, I have little patience with awkwardly phrased category names just for the sake of political correctness, pussy-footing around the issue, or whatever it is you want to call it. "people convicted of rape" for "rapist", I ask you. --dab (𒁳) 09:18, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Moving pages and their archives

Hey, remember to move subpages as well when you perform moves. You didn't move the Talk archives for Talk:Crimea so I had to do it myself: [23] This can create inconsistencies in the archive system. =P —Ahnoneemoos (talk) 00:53, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Talk:Autonomous Republic of Crimea

You've completed the moves with regard to this page, but you haven't closed the discussion itself on the talk page. Please do so. RGloucester — ☎ 01:17, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

sorry to both. I guess I am not used to playing admin any more. Also, as I said by no means do I want to pretend that "the discussion is closed", as it clearly isn't. The aim of the whole exercise was to reach a stable but provisional form on which to build. --dab (𒁳) 08:15, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

One doesn't move the articles without providing a proper closure rationale, does one? RGloucester — ☎ 03:26, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

I did provide a comprehensive and rational explanation for my actions. It's all there on the talk page, thank you very much. It is one thing to behave erratically or inadvisedly. It's another to bicker about wiki-bureaucracy, red tape, and proper template placement. —dab (𒁳) 09:17, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

I'm not opposed to your actions, I've just never seen a requested move completed before official closure. RGloucester — ☎ 16:49, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Classical Taurica

You recently placed a request to split the article "Taurica" into two new articles named "Crimean Peninsula" and "History of Crimea". As both of these pages already exist and as "Taurica" refers to a particular period in the history of Crimea, I believe you have placed this tag in error and actually are proposing deleting the "Taurica" page and moving its content into the other two articles. This would be a request for deletion then, not splitting. However, if this is your intention, I would oppose such a move. A summary of this article's contents should appear under "History of Crimea" and maybe an even briefer summary (if anything) in the geographical article on "Crimean Peninsula." However, there is enough information on the classical period in the Crimean Peninsula's history to warrant its own article and too much information to only put it in the "History of Crimea" (which is overly long already). I do plan to flesh this article out a little bit more, as it is kind of sparse right now.Nomadic Whitt (talk) 22:58, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Re your old posts at Talk:Lebombo bone

"a recent re-analysis of the Border Cave baboon fibula (Fig. 7), which identified four sets of non-sequential markings, is taken to suggest ‘accumulation over time and a notational function’ (d’Errico et al. 2012)""Tracing The Emergence Of Palaeoart In Sub-Saharan Africa" Peter B. Beaumont and Robert G. Bednarik. No use of the word mathematical. Dougweller (talk) 10:59, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Category:Kronos-Saturn

Category:Kronos-Saturn, which you created, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you. Tim! (talk) 07:37, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

Article Crimea: reference for Heredotus' "Cremni"

Here are some sources, but I don't know which one seems reliable:

• http://herodot.glossa.dk/hdt4.html
• http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0064:entry=cremni-geo
• http://books.google.de/books?ei=bw07U8mzDIGytAa254B4&hl=de&id=vx251bK988gC&q=cremni#v=snippet&q=cremni&f=false
• http://www.gilians.de/amazonen/html_en/amaz_en04.html
• https://archive.org/stream/historyherodotu00unkngoog/historyherodotu00unkngoog_djvu.txt
• http://ncbible.info/MoodRes/History/Herodotus.pdf

Nice evening. - 91.56.249.213 (talk) 19:12, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

A simple "Hdt. 4.20, 4.110" would have been enough, but thank you :) --dab (𒁳) 05:28, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

No discussions since the 31st October 2011

Hello, Dbachmann. You have new messages at Talk:Ghosts_in_English-speaking_cultures.
Message added 08:33, 3 April 2014 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

  M aurice  08:33, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Bilingual work

@ Bachmann,

• manchmal ist es ja die geringste Arbeit, das Ergebnis einer Recherche gleichermaßen in beide Wikis einzubauen.
• Wenn auch du in mehr als einer Sprache unterwegs bist, möchte ich dich daran erinnern, Fehlverlinkungen in Wikidata wie auch in handgemachten Interwikis zu bereinigen. In solchem Zusammenhang habe ich seinerzeit horsebus neu erstellt, weil das Fehlen dieses Artikels in en.wiki "weltweites Chaos" zur Folge hatte. Und um dem schönen und ausführlichen Artikel timber framing einen deutschen Andockpunkt zu liefern, habe ich den stub de:Holzfachwerk im Hochbau erstellt.

Gruß, Ulamm (talk) 13:33, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Finde ich ein mässig überzeugendes Beispiel, timber framing entspricht inhaltlich im wesentlichen de:Fachwerkhaus, beides sind schöne und ausführliche Artikel zu demselben Thema, da ist es nicht wirklich entscheidend, ob sich die Seitentitel nun exakt übersetzen. --dab (𒁳) 17:36, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Template:Ukrainian historical regions

Please take a look at the template. Are Cimmeria, Taurica, Sarmatia, Kazarig (?), Great Bulgaria, Kiev Military District, or Prešov really "Ukrainian historical regions"? It looks to me like a random dump of stuff. --Ghirla^-трёп- 20:14, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Well, the title of the template has been fixed to read "historical regions in present-day Ukraine", which is innocent enough, and I assume the template was compiled when the borders of Ukraine were completely undisputed. So yes, it's a random dump, like most of these "navbox" templates, and I don't see why every article footer needs half a dozen of these in collapsed form, but this is just run-of-the-mill Wikipedian OCD (hoarding behaviour) and my "pov pushing by template" alerts don't really go off in this case. --dab (𒁳) 08:48, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

Help expanding?

Hi Dbachmann! You are the top contributor of almost every Sanskrit related topic in English Wikipedia. Judging by your edits you also appear to have access to JSTOR. I just started the article Columbia University Indo-Iranian Series (and Harvard Oriental Series) and you edited the WP articles of many authors/translators of both the book series. I was just wondering, then, if you can help expand the articles (from the JSTOR reviews). I would have done it myself if I have had access to JSTOR. Kindest regards. Solomon7968 01:39, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

hi Solomon, I have been on Wikipedia since 2004 (my full decade is coming up in July I think) and obviously I am not the same person I was when I did my first edits here. And sadly, my access to journals behind paywalls is now intermittent. Most of my Sanskrit related edits were done in years past, when I was generally sitting around university wasting time with Wikipedia. I can still get access to university networks but I do not generally sit there to begin with, and I need to get VPN access, which will be sort of semi-legal. I mean to get around to setting this up but so far I haven't. --dab (𒁳) 08:44, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

No worries! I will sort this from somewhere else. For now, a kitten for your tireless volunteer work for a decade. Wikipedia is a lot better place because of you! Solomon7968 16:01, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

File:IE expansion.png

Hi. In 2005, you posted File:IE expansion.png. Do you still know at which sources you based this map? Best regards, Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 13:22, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

Found one! Christopher I. Beckwith (2009), Empires of the Silk Road, Oxford University Press, p.30. Best regards, Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 06:50, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

It reflects the Kurgan scenario. It's intended use is "Kurgan hypothesis sketched on the back of an envelope". The general gist is undisputed, but of course its "resolution" doesn't go down to the last pixel, and isn't intended to. There have been justified suggestions for improvement, and I would endorse such improvement. See User_talk:Dbachmann/Archive_42#IE_expansion_map. --dab (𒁳) 08:46, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Ethnic groups

Hi. I know, this is the reason why I directly checked if they are referenced on their own articles. Do I have to re-use their references also in the list. thank you.--Giant4s (talk) 15:02, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Reference Errors on 30 April

Hello, I'm ReferenceBot. I have automatically detected that an edit performed by you may have introduced errors in referencing. It is as follows:

• On the Arab diaspora page, your edit caused a cite error (help). (Fix | Ask for help)

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Prehistoric Korea

Hello dab, I was confused by this edit to Prehistoric Korea. The reference reads "Barnes (1993): Early Bronze c. 5th to 4th c. BCE, Early Iron (Late Bronze) c. 3rd to 1st c. BCE. Choe & Bale (2002): Mumun (Bronze): mid 2nd millennium BCE to 4th c. BCE, Early Iron: 3rd c. BCE to 1st c. BCE". I understand that this refers to the book and article in the Further reading section. But I don't know what the text between the reference tags means.

• Does the reference tell us when those periods were in Korea based on those sources?
• Does "c. 5th to 4th c. BCE" mean circa 5th to 4th centuries BCE?
• Same with "c. 3rd to 1st c. BCE", does that mean circa 3rd to 1st centuries BCE?

Thanks, SchreiberBike talk 06:56, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

it does indeed. I take it you are saying it is confusing to abbreviate both "circa" and "century" using "c."? --dab (𒁳) 12:55, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

I found that confusing and wanted to check with you to make sure I understood the meaning properly before correcting it. Would it make sense to change it to "Barnes (1993) divided the periods into the Early Bronze Age, from c. the 5th to 4th centuries BCE, and the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages to c. the 3rd to 1st centuries BCE. Choe and Bale (2002) called the periods Mumun (Bronze Age), from the mid-2nd millennium BCE to the 4th century BCE, and the Early Iron Age, from the 3rd century BCE to the 1st century BCE"? Thanks, SchreiberBike talk 17:49, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

I was citing after this online copy, and my footnote is based on the graphical representation in tabular form on p. 98. I suggest that if you want to flesh out my footnote, you consult the source directly. --dab (𒁳) 08:20, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Portuguese Empire

Firstly, I would like to say thanks for making those edits for the Portuguese Empire page. I haven't got around to making the proper edits yet, and I am glad that you made changes where necessary. I still needs quite a bit of work before it gets to GA status, so all the assistance where needed is gladly appreciated. If you need any assistance on the page, just contact me on my page. I'll be glad to help you whenever I get the chance!LeftAire (talk) 22:49, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Category:Semitic peoples

Category:Semitic peoples, which you created, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you. Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 00:08, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Hey.

Yeah, the usual rant. Italy was NEVER a COUNTRY TO BEGIN WITH, NOT UNTIL 1870.

While noting a despicable vein of hateful contempt in your petty envious words (but, never mind!), if you'd actually read (can you do that?), what I HAD ACTUALLY WRITTEN, your small eyes would have been able to decipher (thing of which I greatly doubt, again):

After the dissolution of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and the successive barbarian invasions, Italy was not a politically unified Country, being instead divided in several smaller states. The following is a list of the various Italian states until the Italian unification in 1860.

If you actually knew some English (and history of it, which is always useful), you'd know the thing you're trying to talk about is a State. As for the definition, I will just kindly ask you to refer to the relative article.

I've not claimed Italy was united before that date (ah, also: 1861, not 1870! Ahhh, if only some people thought twice before spitting nonsense!). As you (perhaps) will now see, I'd written:

...[it] was not a politically unified Country.

I've claimed it was a Country, which originally, in English too, simply denoted any geographical entity. As for the notion of Italy as a nation, as for Roman Italy, as for all those Greeks using the name long before Rome, as for the coins of the Social War spotting the engraving of that name, as for the nation of Italy, yes, the comuni and the Renaissance and Columbus and all of that, I am afraid even a total idiot, at least they were not lying to themselves, would know the real answer: as a CULTURALLY entity, Italy has existed far earlier than 1861. (Or 1870, for that matter. ;) ).

I will not proceed to claim the worthiness and outstanding contributions of said cultural life, it is not my duty and those are not objective things (I just so much wish everyone could be able to understand that! Instead, you simply have to visit pages like foibe killings to see not everyone is endowed with such a basic gift!). Here, and in that lede, I've exposed its antiquity. The facts.

My regards (nah, not really). Wish you far more wisdom, and MUCH more learning for your future! --80.181.235.120 (talk) 22:40, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

I can always do with more learning, so thank you. I think you will also find you misrepresented my statements. To begin with, I do not use allcaps quite so liberally. Indeed "Italy has existed as a CULTURALLY entity", for some definitions of "entity" and, I suppose, of "culturally", since about the 1st century BC. We even have an article about that, Roman Italy.

But then it seems you are invested in this emotionally, or I don't see why you would come to my talkpages to tell be about your wishes or non-wishes? If your definition of "country" is "geographical entity", then Eurasia is a "country" as much as Padania, and the term becomes meaningless. "Italy" is a geographical entity in the sense that it is a peninsula. It was never a political or cultural unity in any strict sense before 1860. It was part of the Roman Empire, but so was most of Western Europe, so anything you can say about Italy as a country you can also say about Italy plus France plus the Balkans plus Greece plus North Africa, this aggregation of territories is also "a country" because of its Roman heritage. The peninsula is a geographic entity, but that wouldn't include Sicily or Sardinia. I think you will have to face the fact that the borders of modern Italy are a more or less random product of 19th century politics, as are the borders of most countries, and there is no reason for you to get worked up about the Italian case more than about any other. Except if you have some private interest in Italy, I guess, perhaps for the reason that you happen to be Italian, but then you should not expect that anyone is interested in your personal predilections on a website dedicated to encyclopedic content.

--dab (𒁳) 04:55, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

Koenraad Elst

Hello, You put some interesting information there, years ago, about KE affiliations with, say, curious milieux and publications (TeKOS, Nucleus etc.). Well, a supporter of K. Elst is arguing BLP violation and UNDUE there, following a complain of KE himself on his blog. Of course there is absolutely no BLP violation, all is perfectly sourced. But a big part of the material you've put there has been removed. I am trying to reintroduce it with new refs, like Meera Nanda, but it's not easy. If you have some time... I 'll be busy tomorrow and after tomorrow. Best, - TwoHorned _{User_talk:TwoHorned} 21:28, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

I have no opinion on this, and only a dim memory of this anyway. Iirc, this was always a borderline case in terms of notability; it's almost impossible to say anything "WP:DUE" about the guy because then the article would be empty. I may be wrong. Anyhow, I don't own the material I contributed and consensus will need to form on how to do it. The important thing is to keep the people with an agenda / WP:COI out of the loop. At least I would only listen to uninvolved people reviewing third party sources. --dab (𒁳) 14:45, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Mentioned

Please see Template talk:Paganism (contemporary)#Revert of recent move to Tl.7CNeopaganism-sidebar. I've no idea what this is about, but I just performed a technical move that was claimed to be uncontroversial. In the history of one of the files I noticed you talking about move warring. Thanks, EdJohnston (talk) 18:52, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

It's a crystal clear case of WP:COI, people trying to move stuff to their prefererd terminology not based on any WP:NAME argument but simply because they have an opinion as involved parties. If this is debated above board among uninvolved editors, I have no complaint, but the tactics at all neopagan topics has long been just to gang up on the uninvolved editors until they leave or are outnumbered and then turn the articles into propaganda-speak. I just have a reflex to act as an obstacle to this sort of behaviour whenever I come across it. My recommendation would be to treat no move requests in this corner of Wikipedia as "uncontroversial", because chances are it is not. Let people discuss it and then let an admin decide. Even then, the "vote" will always be in favour of the COI editors because they will mobilize, but at least the admin will have a chance to remember that these debates aren't supposed to be votes but comparison of evidence presented. --dab (𒁳) 14:49, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Hayk

You still have this on your watchlist? IP hopper from near Los Angeles. Dougweller (talk) 18:46, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

I suppose you should just semiprotect? Neither of us deserves to waste time over IP-hoppers :) --dab (𒁳) 14:56, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Life's too short, I agree. Hate these time wasters. Dougweller (talk) 18:07, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Proposed renaming

Please see my proposal to speedily rename Category:Christian evangelicalism in Switzerland to Category:Evangelicalism in Switzerland Hugo999 (talk) 06:28, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Makes sense, no objections. --dab (𒁳) 05:14, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Portuguese Empire splitting

Hello! I've been working on the Portuguese Empire page off and on for almost a 18 month stretch, and I happened to stumble across the conversation about separating the article. I wish I would have seen it earlier, for I have some ideas to offer about the page splitting if possible.

I've looked and admired the presentation of the Portuguese layout of the Empire, as it is separated by region primarily instead of chronological ordering like the English page. I've been wanting to go about organizing it in this manner, but haven't got around to getting people to come along with it (wrong place at wrong time, busy schedules, etc.) If that's not possible, I would like to see it separated in the following way.

First Portuguese Empire 1415-c.1663 Second Portuguese Empire c.1660-1822 (Yes, Brazil would be largely covered, but the Empire was also losing territory in the Indian Ocean to the Omani in the Arabian peninsula around the 1650s into the late 16th-early 17th centuries) Thrid Portuguese Empire 1822-1974 (Africa, and the Portuguese Republic)

Some of the issues with the current layout is the unnecessary coverage of certain topics (such as the Chinese slave count as what was mentioned there) and the lack there of certain subjects. I was going to go into further detail with the Portuguese section with the Protestant powers and clean that section up a bit (since it too Dutch-centric, and not focusing on its losses to the Safavids under Shah Abbas and the English enough, for example), but the losses of Portugal in the Indian Ocean span out past 1663. Perhaps I should just rid of the year span listed if not extend it. The section regarding fighting the Turks into the 1580s to a draw does need to be covered a bit more. I attempted to do so, but failed because of the restructuring that would have happened. I also feel that the contacts with Africa during the 16th and 17th centuries (Luso-Ethiopian contract with Jesuits, involvement with Kingdom of Kongo, etc.) I have certain sources available (and links can definitely be had on Google Books if necessary, I have a plethora of bookmarks for each subject), and if I can get anyone's help, I could get started on it as soon as tonight! I'm free to work on this for the next 10-12 days.

I don't mean to bombard you with all of this, I just would like to get some other people who are interested in improving this article to get in touch with me, for I would be happy to oblige! Thanks for readingLeftAire (talk) 22:03, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

I'll try to look into it again. Generally, my advice in broad topics like that would be, reduce the main page to bare-bones WP:SS as much as possible. Don't allow the 'condensation nuclei' for needless bloat to form, because the tendency is that people will add little bits here and there without reviewing the article as a whole and you end up with an unmanageable pile of random paragraphs. An article like "Portuguese Empire" should perhaps be not more than 30k, with lots of sub-articles both regional and chronological. I don't even necessarily propose that this is the best kind of article, but it is the best way of presentation that under the specific dynamics of editing the wiki best prevents the fate of gradual deterioration over time. --dab (𒁳) 14:54, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

• • I've posted a response onto the talk page of the Portuguese Empire. Respond whenever you get the chance. LeftAire (talk) 19:50, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

Iberian Union

Hi Dbachmann. I noticed you added the image for the Coat of arms of Philip II and I of Spain and Portugal. I just want to say that at that time Spain was the name of the Iberian Peninsula and each kingdom of Spain was refered to as being one Spain and all the kingdoms were collectively known as The Spains. Portugal stopped being refered as one of the Spains after the end of the Union but the peninsula kept the name Spain. Like Italy, France or the UK, Spain was only unified during the Age of Enlightenment. It was unified in 1812 and with the name The Spains. It changed the name to Spain in 1876. This is when Spain was officialy born, although the term is always used anachronically. The first king to use the title king of Spain was Amadeo I of Spain as already referenced in the List of titles and honours of the Spanish Crown. The image should say: Coat of arms of Philip II and I of Portugal Castile León and Aragon. It is better to keep it neutral or at least historically accurate. The portuguese prefere to ignore that the peninsula was once called Spain and Portugal was one of the Spains,(some say the name Spain was snatched from portuguese history when it became the official name of the kingdom of Castile) as much as the spaniards prefere to ignore that Spain was officialy born in 1876.

"the last major occasion on which the portuguese crown contested the terminology of "crown of Spain" or "monarchy of Spain" for the rulers of Madrid was at the time of the peace of Utrecht in 1714" Stanley G. Payne. Spain: A Unique History pg. 269[24] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.214.213.176 (talk) 00:06, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

I am aware of the problem. It explains the gaggle of articles at es-wiki, es:Monarquía Española, es:Monarquía Hispánica, es:Corona de España, all of which correspond to our Monarchy of Spain. Well, historical semantics is complicated, I suppose, but I cannot help but feel that this is about the Spanish wanting it to be as complicated as humanly possible. "Spain" is not the only name in the world that has undergone an evolution of meaning. --dab (𒁳) 11:30, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Istanbul

Hello. "The city's official name was changed to Istanbul by the republican Turkish government on 28 March 1930",(ref) "although it was used as such since ... (2, 3 how many?) centuries"... Could you please add something there? Regards. --Why should I have a User Name? (talk) 05:40, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

I merely rearranged the content that was already there with the purpose of giving a proper summary. The question is discussed in detail at names of Istanbul, I suggest you read that. The name is recorded from as early as the 10th century, but it became more and more popular and began to be used in print during the 19th. I suppose it came to be seen a popular nickname of the city, and it was part of Ataturk's "folksy" or "folkish" approach to replace the "imperial" name with the "folksy" one. The short version is that Constantinople remained official until 1930, and that's really all that is needed in a short summary, as we already do have a fully developed article for those who want to know more.

I think you need a username if and only if you are trying to communicate with people or to have a discussion, as I find it unlikely people will have the patience to keep addressing you as "Why should I have a User Name?". --dab (𒁳) 06:17, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

If I may butt in here, I'm not quite convinced this is the whole story, but unfortunately the whole thing seems to be shrouded in a strange lack of sourcing. At the risk of some OR here: nobody has ever adduced any evidence that there ever was a "renaming". The only thing people have been able to put a finger on regarding what happened in 1930 (but unfortunately still without a precise cite) is that the authorities asked foreigners to use the Turkish name in their foreign languages (e.g. in postal addresses), apparently through a new Postal Law. However, that's nothing special to Istanbul; it was just the same step as replacing "Smyrna" with "Izmir" and "Angora" with "Ankara" (and nobody seems to be wanting to say that Ankara was "renamed"; it's uncontroversial that these places were always called like that in Turkish). As for previous use of "Istanbul" in Turkish, it seems pretty certain that that name was not just "folksy"; it had been in widespread use for official purposes too. So I'm truly not certain what happened: (a) "Istanbul" was the regular official name all along, and "Kostantiniyye" had merely been a rare alternative in a yet more elevated register within the standard usage, which just happened to be silently dropped at around the same time as the thing about the postal rules for foreigners; or: (b) "Kostantiniyye" had been the regular official name for the entire city, while "Istanbul" was the – equally official – name for the historic inner part (as was the common usage of "Constantinople" vs. "Stambul" in western language), and there was some kind of administrative reform redefining the municipalities (but then, why would that have been done in the course of a "Postal Law"?) or (c) There was an actual renaming (but then again, why through a "Postal Law"?) The whole story of the "renaming" is one of those things that get unthinkingly and uncritically proliferated through hundreds of websites and books, including some that may be otherwise reliable, but once you look further there's a surprising dearth of actual information. Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:33, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

well, your summary does amount to the impression I have taken away from this myself. it does seem to be correct that the city had been also known as Istanbul for centuries, and that Kostantiyye seems to have become "more elevated register", the main point seems to be that nobody was in the least bothered by this before it suddenly was made an issue in 1923ff. I have just hunted down this picture to see how Piri Reis labelled his map of the capital, and it turns out it is labelled Kostantiyye. So at least in 1525 this seems to have been the straightforward name of the city. Of course there may well have been a shift of the kind you describe between the 1520s and the 1880s, with the name Kostantiyye becoming more and more rare and "elevated". Your point that "Istanbul" at first may have referred just to the ancient core of the city also makes excellent sense.

I did not intend to have this discussion, and I did not edit names of Istanbul, I merely wrote the briefest of lead paragraphs for the history of Istanbul page, and for the purposes of that, I still think it is adequate to say the name was officially changed in 1930, for better or worse, and point the reader to the dedicated article for details. --dab (𒁳) 09:25, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

Hmm, I'm not quite happy with "finally changed by official decree", as long as we really have no idea what that "official decree" actually said. I'd go for something like "Since 1930, "Istanbul" has been the sole official name of the city in Turkish, and it also replaced the traditional name "Constantinople" in the usage of most western languages during the 20th century". How about that? Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:58, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

I am talking about English/western usage. The city was known as Constantinople as a matter of course throughout the Ottoman period: this usage does not imply any kind of "Byzantine irredentism", as the Turks used the name Constantinople themselves, even if it existed alongside "Istanbul" for the city proper. The western convention was changed by "decree" (or if you like by diplomatic request) in 1930. Calling "Constantinople" a "traditional name" is slightly silly imho, this was simply the city's name until Atatürk asked could people please change it to "Istanbul", and so people did, as nobody had any problem with calling the city anything Atatürk liked it to be called.

I understand you are objecting to the notion of an "official change" within Turkey, and I don't know about it, but the special thing under discussion here is the change of the exonym (much like Burma/Myanmar, Zaire/Congo, etc., i.e. external compliance with a change in terminology in foreign languages following a regime change). --dab (𒁳) 12:01, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

--dab (𒁳) 12:01, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

Communication

If you really wish to communicate with me you can call me simply "Pepe". In case you need to ping me, it must not take much time to copy-paste the user name. Regards. --Why should I have a User Name? (talk) 16:50, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Ok Pepe, I will. --dab (𒁳) 07:47, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

Ilah merge proposal

Hi. Just FYI I removed the merge tag at Ilah, as Cambridgebayweather also did in 2012, because while there are several possible merge targets there has been no actual merge discussion.

Just letting you know because your recent (and in my view, entirely correct) reversion of the redirect to Deity#Islam restored the 2010 merge tag to El (god), which has since become a redirect to El (deity). This is a potentially valid mergeto target but again, one for which no merge discussion has been held.

If your tag restoration was intentional and you support merging Ilah into El (deity), then my apologies and please feel free to revert my removal. Euryalus (talk) 05:10, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

I restored the article because some idiot had redirected it to deity. I don't care if it stays or if it is merged. The topic is the ancient Semitic term and/or concept of deity, so "El (deity)" probably isn't ideal, as this is about the Ugaritic god in particular. The best merge targed is probably Ancient Semitic religion. --dab (𒁳) 14:59, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

Re: Ivo

Replying to a response from February that I missed back then.

The thing is, the premise, that "Ivo" is merely a hypocorism of "Ivan", is moot. Most Croatian sources of similar quality that I've seen simply say it's a derivative form, not a form of endearment. Granted, it likely came to be as a hypocorism back in the day, but a fair few hundreds of years later, it's no longer so strictly associated with the other name, it's no longer necessarily interchangeable. And it's probably even less likely to be associated with the other name by readers who don't know about South Slavic word formation. Regardless of the etymology, when a name is as notable as this one, I see no real benefit in trying to move it away from its own title because it can lead to slippery slopes - cf. Beth. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 19:27, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

Gaulish problems

I wondered if you could mediate regarding a problem with Future Perfect's behaviour on the Gaulish language Talk page? Thanks, Shylock--86.154.102.162 (talk) 11:52, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Seal_of_Muhammad

I have two questions regarding this: 1. could you give the page(s) where this is mentioned in Tavernier's book? (which can be viewed online here [25], by the way) 2. could you please elaborate a little bit on your text on the talk page: "derived from a facsimile in a 1983 edition published in Karachi". What kind of edition of what exactly? Thanks.--93.104.33.84 (talk) 20:33, 13 September 2014 (UTC)

Fair questions. re Tavernier, I took the information from here (added 2008) and did not verify it, it seems to be cited after this, which states p. 265, but perhaps this is the pagination of an English translation.

As for the facsimile edition, this is my conjecture, and for this reason I did not add it to the article and left it on the talkpage instead. The book in question is Sultan Ahmed Qureshi, Letters of the Holy Prophet, Karachi (1983). If you compare the facsimile quality in this book with the rendition in the early versions of the flag (2006?), you will be able to form your own opinion. If I was not writing a Wikipedia entry but a blog entry, I would argue that it is very likely that jihadists looking for symbols of authentic, 7th-century Islam pulled these seal images from that book, unaware of the fact that they were Ottoman era manuscript copies. But as I was writing for Wikipedia, I just stuck to the facts for the purposes of the article, and left the conjecture on the talkpage in case anyone was interested. --dab (𒁳) 21:01, 13 September 2014 (UTC)

File:Scythia-Parthia 100 BC.png

Hi, I was just looking over your image and have some concerns about its source: you give attribution to two other people for the map information, but you do not seem to specify where the actual terrain map comes from. Could you add that information to the file? Thank you! KDS4444^Talk 17:01, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

I uploaded the image more than eight years ago, man. It was some online engine that generated maps from PD GIS data, I think. --dab (𒁳) 17:09, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

How to enter your archive?

Where is the link that leads me to the archived discussions? --217.82.133.50 (talk) 19:22, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

By the page history. But this link will also help: User talk:Dbachmann/Archive 42. The Banner talk 17:02, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

File:Maenad.png listed for deletion

A file that you uploaded or altered, File:Maenad.png, has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for deletion. Please see the discussion to see why it has been listed (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry). Feel free to add your opinion on the matter below the nomination. Thank you. Kelly ^hi! 08:02, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

Dvārakā

Someone added this article to Category: Ancient Indian cities. Since Dvārakā is only mentioned in the Mahabharata and Puranas, is it appropriate to call it an Ancient Indian city(which is like saying the city actually existed in historical times)? I am thinking of creating a new category for epic Indian cities, Puranic cities, etc. What do you think? Jayakumar RG (talk) 09:47, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

The Mahabharata is pretty much the definition of "ancient India". There is no other meaningful scope of a category "Ancient Indian cities". But I know what you mean. In the end, we mirror terminology found in scholarly literature, and google books has 9,000 hits for "Ancient Indian cities", but zero hits for "Epic Indian cities", so that term is out. The best thing would be to keep a category "cities mentioned in the Sanskrit epics" or similar, and make that a subcategory of "Ancient Indian cities". "Puranic cities" is even less meaningful, as the Puranas are medieval, and they do not focus on geography, their geographical scope is pretty much based on what is found in the epics. --dab (𒁳) 12:39, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Apep (disambiguation) listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Apep (disambiguation). Since you had some involvement with the Apep (disambiguation) redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. uKER (talk) 12:47, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

Hindu-Islamic relations

Came across this article today, which till my recent deletion claimed that Hindu scriptures prophesied the coming of Muhammad as demonic power, which reminded me of our work on Bhavishya Purana all those years back. In any case, any suggestion on what can be done with this article personal essay (see my note here). Hope you are doing well. Abecedare (talk) 16:15, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

Yes the Hindu history articles are terrible, here we are after ten years and we still don't know how to handle this. I am sure the 'demonic' bit can be referenced (i.e. the claim must have been made somewhere interesting off-wiki, perhaps even in the medieval period?), but the point is that they always ramble on without even a pretense of understanding the concept of "reference". But more recently, my attention has been attracted by much the same problem on the "Islamic" side, only much less blatant, and as such much more difficult to catch. This typically involves claims of achievements of the "Islamic Golden Age" which on closer inspection turn out to be bogus. E.g. the "Arab Agricultural Revolution" looked like a perfectly credibly item until it turned out that it wasn't. There's a lot more like that, as in Fatima al-Fihri , a Muslim woman touted as the "founder of the world's oldest university"; invention of zero (which for once is really an Indian idea, even though not found in the Rigveda, written as we know, in 70,000 BC or thereabouts), and what have you. While the Hindu-history bogus is almost endearing in its naivete, and nobody in their right mind would even consider using them as an encyclopedic source, the Islamic stuff is in a sense much worse because it is presented with more skill. --dab (𒁳) 17:02, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

• The Muhammad in BP can be easily referenced - Ramanujana discusses it; as does Alf Hiltebeitel, who date the passages to the 19th century, and use it to make the point of the open-ness of the Puranic corpus. On wikipedia it looses all this context, and simply becomes a form of childish insult, "I called your mother a &^%$%. What are you gonna do about it?" (funnily though, the original 19th c. authors of the Muhammad passages were also perhaps acting out a similar impulse. Plus ça change...)
• Agree that the outright tall-claims written in indecipherable English are relatively easy for a reader to recognize as fluff, and dismiss accordingly. It is the more skillfully presented stuff with a patina of encyclopedic-ity that is more dangerous. Most dangerous of all are the real-world walled gardens of "scholarship" created by motivated ideologues (Homeopathy is an obvious example in medicine; I am sure you can think of analogs in history, religion, economics)... wikipedia is ill-equipped to deal with these, but then so is the real-world. Abecedare (talk) 17:29, 25 October 2014 (UTC)
  • actually, I used Arab Agricultural Revolution as an example illustrating that Wikipedia is indeed able to deal with this, but it takes time. First this was an unnotable 1970s (dead-tree) paper, not verifiable online. Then it gets blown out of proportion in an agenda-driven Wikipedia article. Then it sits there unchallenged for five years (this is the problematic part). But then it is found out and researched properly by Wikipedians, and this is because it was misrepresented (nobody would have bothered researching the thing if it hadn't been). From that time, Wikipedia, and by extension the internet, is as it were inoculated and the thing is now part of the knowledge that made the jump to the digital age. So this is my "wiki-triumphalistic" philosophy of how bad-faith editing is in fact instrumental in improving content. --dab (𒁳) 17:44, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

• Agreed on your central point :-) It is eminently possible that my version owes some intellectual credit to you. Hard to keep track. Abecedare (talk) 17:56, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

• Abecedare, I see Dbachman has a good rationale here, and it is also relevant for this article. If you read a few minutes older version[26] or [27](few days), you would find it to be very pro-islamic. As per your actual concern, it can be confirmed from these versions that we had well included the mention, that these editions to the scripture might be recent. Problem was, that much of the information of that section was obviously made up, tagged and it cannot be found elsewhere. E.g. Hindus think narashansa is not reference to muhammad, or Muslims consider narashansa to be 'praised one'.. I know that you are considering the current version to be a personal essay, of course it is, but if you had visited it few months earlier, you would know that it was worse than now. Bladesmulti (talk) 03:14, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

so what you are saying is, Muslims and Hindus are in a competition as to who is better at falsifying history, and the Muslims are winning? I am really not sure how that is supposed to reflect on either community. It's just sad, man. --dab (𒁳) 10:42, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Conical asian hat just moved to Rice Paddy Hat

It was just moved toRice Paddy Hat, I think because the editor thought the old name was racist. You took part in a discussion about that in 2010. The result of that discussion was to move it from Straw hat to Conical asian hat. Thoughts on this new name "Rice Paddy Hat"? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 09:53, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

I see, high and mighty when it comes to sweeping judgements of "racism", but not bothering to learn the most basic guidelines such as article name capitalisation. --dab (𒁳) 10:32, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Still, I have to say I'm not a fan of your (equally undiscussed?) move of "conical straw hat" to "conical Asian hat", for grammatical reasons. The way adjectives work, a "conical Asian hat" is an "Asian hat" that is also conical, while what we are looking for here is a name for a type of conical hat that is often found in Asia. As long as "Asian hat" isn't a meaningful concept, "conical Asian hat" isn't really valid either. But I think I suspect that in a world where what counts is accusing one another of "racism" based on close analysis of vocabulary used and far-reaching leaps of logic, nobody has time to bother about such questions of grammatical scope. --dab (𒁳) 10:35, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Points taken, my friend. Please consider weighing in at Talk:Rice Paddy Hat#Page move from Conical Asian hat to Rice Paddy Hat. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 11:53, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

About the map-flag thing

Well since we do not have pictures of all the flags of different dynasties, maps are mostly used in order differentiate it and so the picture isn't plain blank. --Mossadegh-e Mihan-dust (talk) 12:24, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

I don't understand the point of your comment. Yes, this is what has been the case, and what I have changed, because it was a misuse of the template slot. It seems you are explaining my own edit to me? A "blank flag" is certainly preferable over an inscrutable 15px "map", and the flag is correctly left blank because there was no flag. Problem solved. --dab (𒁳) 14:23, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

I am not trying to explain your own edit to you, but what i am saying is that i think it would be a better idea to have the map of the certain dynasty shown instead of a plain blank picture. Its better than nothing and is used in most if not all articles about dynasties. --Mossadegh-e Mihan-dust (talk) 15:16, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

File:Jrrt lotr cover design.jpg listed for deletion

A file that you uploaded or altered, File:Jrrt lotr cover design.jpg, has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for deletion. Please see the discussion to see why it has been listed (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry). Feel free to add your opinion on the matter below the nomination. Thank you. Stefan2 (talk) 21:44, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

Islamic Golden Age

Could you please contribute to this discussion, Talk:Islamic Golden Age#Recent edit. --Fauzan^{✆ talk}_{✉ mail} 15:30, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

Wikimedia genealogy project

Just wondering if you have any thoughts re: the idea of WMF hosting a genealogy project. If so, feel free to contribute to this discussion. And apologies if I have made this request before. ---Another Believer _(Talk) 16:54, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Videha

Hi, some anonymous editors keep deleting this page or some portions of it. Do you think such edits are valid? --Ghirla^-трёп- 08:58, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

He should make a proper merge suggestion, but in essence I agree that this kind of Mahabharata-cruft should be merged if possible. An ancient kingdom and its capital, about both of which we have nothing but a list of MBh quotes, I do think this would make for one page at best (if not an entry in a "list of kingdoms in the MBh"). --dab (𒁳) 09:17, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Reverted his change, I have also removed the so called references in sections. A mention of Ramayana, Mahabharatha, that they have some connection with the Kingdom might be enough. Bladesmulti (talk) 09:30, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Ok. Kundalini syndrome is another funny page. The authors carefully omit mention of the word "pseudo-science" which immediately springs to mind after reading the first sections. --Ghirla^-трёп- 09:51, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

That would be pseudohistorical revisionism. None of the citations describe it as a pseudoscience thus authors did it right if they omitted this proposed term here. Bladesmulti (talk) 13:46, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

yes, Videha has lots of completely unreferenced stuff. If you rip out all the (usual for the topic) unreferenced rambling, it will become much more obvious that the page wants to be merged.

Now "Kundalindi syndrome" is just childish. I parse this for the lead: "Kundalini syndrome is [...] sometimes called the 'Kundalini-syndrome',[1][2][3][...] or simply referred to as a 'syndrome'[8][9]". Please somebody take an iron brush to this one and clean out all the rambling, cheap verbal posturing and editorializing. Bladesmulti, I seriously hope you aren't defending this disgrace of an article. If you feel tempted to, I can only point you to WP:GREENCHEESE. I have nothing against an article on the topic, if written candidly and matter of factly. But you will note that "transpersonal psychology" is itself within the "New Age" bracket, so no further argument is required to put a topic which is admittedly part of "transpersonal psychology" within the same context. The Moon is made of green cheese is a good page, exactly because it doesn't try to pretend to be about lunar physics, and because (I assume) nobody has made a great deal of asking for references that it is not about lunar physics. --dab (𒁳) 13:55, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Your hopes are correct, I only discarded the suggestion of "pseudoscience" rest, I had already started to remove unnecessary from the article. Bladesmulti (talk) 14:31, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Daniele Ganser

[[28]] You suggested last year that this article did not meet the general notability requirements. After reading your thoughts, I aree. I have therefore proposed the article for deletion. This is a heads ups. Capitalismojo (talk) 19:15, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

SCNR

The schoolmasterish tone of this edit summary is exquisite. (Season's greetings, dab, hope all is well!) rudra (talk) 15:51, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

Indeed, I suggest we insert the important genealogical information "is descended from Frankish high nobility including Charlemagne" into every biography on individuals with at least partial origins in western Eurasia! --dab (𒁳) 07:33, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Why the page move?

Hi there. Just wanting to follow up why you moved 'Dreaming (spirituality)' to 'Dreaming (Australian Aboriginal art)'? I can't find an explanation or discussion on the article talk page. hamiltonstone (talk) 11:02, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Because I read the article's content? It is about a term for designs in Australian Aboriginal art. It is not about the concept of "Dreaming" in the field of "spirituality". Nor is it a discussion of "Dreaming" in the context of Aboriginal mythology, there is a (very poor) article called Dreamtime on that, but the main page for the topic is at Australian Aboriginal mythology.

In my opinion it is useless to keep page titles based on what the article "could" be about, as opposed to whatever content we actually do have on the page. If there is no content, or no referenced content, or if the content is too poor to be useful in any way, the solution is merge-delete, but in this instance, there did appear to be some actual information pertinent to Contemporary Indigenous Australian art, specifically to the Papunya Tula collective built in the 1970s. But now I am just reading the article back to you, I don't see why it should be easier for you to read this information on my talkpage phrased for you privately than in the article itself. --dab (𒁳) 11:14, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

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Woodroar (talk) 15:09, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Why am I being templated for leaving a comment about the lead section on an article talkpage? I didn't even touch the article. This must be one of the most toxic pages on Wikipedia ever. I am also not an idiot and did see the bunch of giant templates screaming "sanctions" right on the talkpage I edited. For the record, as long as I never even edited the page I would include myself in the class of "uninvolved administrators" mentioned. --dab (𒁳) 16:03, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

It's pretty damn obvious that these children are heavily biased toward the feminist side and they aren't looking for anyone to get in their way. Not that we can do anything about it, sadly. Singdavion (talk) 16:34, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

I'm sorry if you took offense at the message. I did not mean to imply that you were involved, nor that you did anything wrong. I try to notify everyone about the sanctions, whether or not I agree with them. Again, sorry for the bother. Woodroar (talk) 16:42, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Arb motion that is VERY tangential to you

Just letting you know I've proposed a motion at [29] that does somewhat relate to you. Nothing needed on your part, just a heads up. Courcelles 12:14, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

Saraswati (goddess) listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Saraswati (goddess). Since you had some involvement with the Saraswati (goddess) redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. Redtigerxyz ^Talk 19:17, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks

for your post to my talk page. Being an Arb has led me to cut down heavily on my watch list, but I'm still a bit active as an editor. Dougweller (talk) 14:45, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Indigenous Aryans again...

Wikipedia:Fringe_theories/Noticeboard#Restatement.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 02:41, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Hello Dbachmann. I have found that a few times(e.g.[30]) you had suggested that we should keep Aryan migration/invasion theories on a single page or their main pages, you were also correct when you had said that there is not much controversy when languages are mentioned, but it becomes controversial when migration/invasions are mentioned. That's how these pages and articles were maintained until last year when the one-sided Indo-Aryan migration theories were transferred to a few Hinduism pages without discussion. Even when you had protected the main page, and reverted to a better version[31] it looked much more neutral than the current version. There was no controversy or article disputes in those days. Can you suggest same resolutions here again? Bladesmulti (talk) 05:04, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

sigh, can it be that BJP has won another election? The "Aryans" always become much more "indigenous" after this happens. --dab (𒁳) 14:38, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, that seems to be the case. Modi's public relations team is very effective.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 15:40, 27 January 2015 (UTC)