User talk:Dvyost/Talk Archive 5/30/05 - 8/31/05

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-℘yrop (talk) 20:46, May 30, 2005 (UTC)

Welcome, and an award!

A welcome from me also — I spotted you over at WP:CSB and at the Africa regional notice board. I very much liked your meaty expansions of Ousmane Sembène and Nuruddin Farah; good work on Setif massacre also. I want to award you with the Exceptional Newcomer Award because of your high-quality contributions. Thanks again, and keep up the good work!

Kind regards, — mark ✎ 09:35, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Aw, shucks... thanks! Sooner or later this summer my mind needs to turn back to graduate school but I'm hoping to keep putting up at least a few articles each month. Dvyost 14:47, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Ha, be careful — Wikipedia is very addictive... :Incidentally, a nice way to get a brand new article some attention is to place an interesting factoid at Template talk:Did you know ...hey, I was just meaning to tell you this when I checked out the page and saw a suggestion by you over there. So you found it out yourself already... talking about exceptional newcomers! Cheers, — mark ✎ 18:54, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Did you know? has been updated. A fact from the article Setif massacre, which you recently created, has been featured in that section on the Main Page. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently-created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

Molefi Kete Asante

Hi, there are critical discussions of Asante's writings in several anti-Afrocentrist books. The most notable and extensive discussion that I know of is in Stepen Howe’s book Afrocentrism. There’s also Clarence Walker’s We Can’t Go Home Again. There’s an online discussion of that book here [1]. There’s also the Skeptic’s Dicrtionary online that has several links [2]. I can email to you a scan of Howe’s text if you like if you send me an address. If you don't want to post it here, send a message to me. My email address is paul.barlow@------. Paul B 17:09, 28 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, Paul!! I'll try to check those out later today. I muchly appreciate your taking the time to do this. Dvyost 28 June 2005 18:29 (UTC)

PS I went ahead and took your e-mail addy off so the bots wouldn't get it.

Setif massacre

Good work on Setif massacre! You might be interested in other Algeria-related projects at Wikipedia:Wikiportal/Algeria... - Mustafaa 28 June 2005 19:16 (UTC)

Thanks! Sub-Saharan Africa's more my strong point, but I'm always up for branching out; maybe this weekend I'll take a look at those and see if there are any more I can help with... --Dvyost 28 June 2005 20:09 (UTC)

Bamanankan

I ni sogoma! E be bamanankan fo wa? :) I guess you must have seen the Bambara Wikipedia? I've also been adding lots of Bambara to the French Wiktionary. :) Guaka 29 June 2005 15:01 (UTC)

Owo, n be bamanakan fo dooni dooni; n tun ye Corps de la Paix wolonteri ye... I did take a look at the bambara encyclopedia, great stuff, and I'm inspired that wikipedia could be growing in Mali of all places!! Nice work getting the Fula encyclo up, too; I was technically a Sidibe back in the day though I never learned a word of it...

Right now my main project is translating every French article I can find on Mali (seems like their coverage is much better). Anything you might want to check over would be much appreciated! -- Dvyost 29 June 2005 16:33 (UTC)

BTW, I have a French/Bambara dictionary here at my apt.; it's an out-of-print text by Charles Bailleul, a missionary priest and seems pretty comprehensive. My guess from your projects is that you're currently in Mali, so you probably have actual people to ask for translations, but if you ever need anything looked up, drop a line...

Aha! Sisan n'te Mali la. I do have Bailleul's dictionary. :) That's why I'm still advancing, not being in Mali anymore. And I still have a contact who is hopefully gonna send me articles.
One thing though, I still have two texts for the Bambara Wikipedia of which I can't make sense. I've put them at my page at Wiktionnaire. I'd be very glad if you could tell me what they are about. My guess is that Kondo is the name of a village, and Kori something that is being cultivated... Guaka 2 July 2005 23:39 (UTC)

My first instinct was to say that Kori was cotton, but Bailleul's translation seems to disagree. He notes that it can mean "la liane," which would be a kind of creeper vine/liana ("Woody, perennial climbing plant with very long stems, which grows around trees right up to the top, where there is more sunlight. Lianas are common in tropical rainforests, where individual stems may grow up to 78 m/255 ft long. They have an unusual stem structure that makes them flexible, despite being woody.") But the article does mention the women spinning (parata) the kori, and I don't think I ever encountered that verb for anything but cotton... still it seems possible that the women are spinning this vine into rope?

The good news tho is that I can forward this on to a more qualified source; I'll let you know what he has to say.

BTW, how do I download the international phonetic alphabet characters onto my computer? I can't seem to find them on the Windows download page...

Keep up the good work! --Dvyost 3 July 2005 16:09 (UTC)

IPA is contained in the Arial Unicode MS font; check out its article for some other fonts. Nowadays, using that font for special characters is by far the best way to be sure the symbols display correctly on as much browsers as possible. Because Internet Explorer doesn't comply with some standards, at Wikipedia it may be preferable to additionally use the {{IPA}} template. You might like the following way of entering IPA characters (I use it all the time):

1. Go to the IPA keyboard of Weston Ruter. This is an interactive IPA chart. Be sure to mark the 'insert entities' checkbox.
2. Click on the character(s) you need. Strange codes will appear in the lower part of the window. These are Unicode entities which will be interpreted as IPA symbols by your browser.
3. Copy the codes to the Wikipedia edit field. If you want to be perfectly sure of correct display, put them between {{IPA| your characters here }}.
4. Hit preview and enjoy. — mark ✎ 3 July 2005 22:18 (UTC)

Thanks! --Dvyost 4 July 2005 15:05 (UTC)

Diacritics

Hi Dvyost. A handy way of entering diacritics is the box right beneath the edit window (it says 'insert', and then a lot of characters with all sorts of diacritics on them). If it doesn't work, there's probably a Javascript issue. I don't know if it's an option, but if you set your keyboard to the US/International keyboard layout, you will be able to produce diacritics with shortcut keys like SHIFT+", e for 'ë' and so on.

Nice to hear that you lived in a Senufo village in Mali (Supyire or Mamara/Minyanka?). It's also good to know that my articles are helpful (it's an obscure corner of Wikipedia to many people :P ). Thank you for your high praise. Cheers, — mark ✎ 30 June 2005 01:42 (UTC)

You know, it's occured to me that the collobarative efforts here may be the only West African language resources on the net (at least, outside of academic databases). I remember that when I tried to search before leaving three years ago, it was a pretty grim picture; it may be obscure for some but I imagine there are still a lot of Peace Corps/Geek Corps/missionaries who are desperately looking for stuff like this.

Insofar as I can tell from your maps, I myself was in a Suppire-Mamara area, though I don't recall the Senufo speakers mentioning this distinction locally. Then again, given the state of my Bambara and French, I suspect they were happy to get the word "Senufo" across to me at all.

Anyway, thanks for the advice! I see the characters you're talking about now; I'm embarrassed to say I just haven't been scrolling down far enough... -- Dvyost 1 July 2005 13:12 (UTC)

DYK

Did you know? has been updated. A fact from the article Umar Tall, which you recently created, has been featured in that section on the Main Page. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently-created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

Setif massacre was also recently featured. - Mgm|^(talk) July 4, 2005 08:19 (UTC)

Macina

Hi, I sometimes do work on articles concerning Africa, but that's not my major task. Look at my contributions, and you can see that I'm interested in all sorts of different things - I really don't have any very specific interest here on Wikipedia. — Stevey7788 (talk) 6 July 2005 00:54 (UTC)

DYK

Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Battle of Kirina, which you created. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

- Mgm|^(talk) July 7, 2005 07:43 (UTC)

Tidjani

Dvyost, you seem to be a real contributor and not someone that I would suspect of spam. Thus, I'm not going to revert your change at Tidjani, but I ask that you look over the external link that you added a bit. The link is to a site (www.tijaniyya.com) whose whois record contains:

Registrant:
  Aim Info
  1390 Bedford Avenue
  brooklyn, New York 11216
  United States

  Registered through: GoDaddy.com
  Domain Name: TIJANIYYA.COM
     Created on: 25-Apr-02
     Expires on: 25-Apr-06
     Last Updated on: 07-Nov-04

and mostly contains ads for products. If you follow the trail to the owner's site you will find that they are dealers in African furniture.

None of this is absolutely conclusive, but it does seem like this isn't quite the authoritative site on the topic that you indicated, which is why I ask you to re-evaluate and if you still feel it's legit, I'll stay out of it. Thanks! -Harmil 7 July 2005 16:50 (UTC)

You raise a good point about the ads on this site. As far as I can tell, it's got a lot of good, legit info for the current Tijaniyya brotherhood (see pictures at the top and the green links at the bottom for founders, doctrines, etc.), and I followed a link from another site that claimed this was the official one (though I can't seem to find that now). On the other hand you're right that the site seems to be sponsored or even constructed by this furniture company. As this is a little out of my expertise (both the relevant Wikipedia policies and the subject of Islamic sects; I wandered here from Umar Tall), I'd be happy to leave it to your discretion... --Dvyost 7 July 2005 17:02 (UTC)

Thought about it, agreed with your concerns, found a better link. Thanks for the catch! --Dvyost 7 July 2005 17:07 (UTC)

Thank you for taking the time to check it out! -Harmil 7 July 2005 17:28 (UTC)

verses

Hiya,

you recently voted to merge per Uncle G at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Matthew 1:verses

however, that VfD concerned only the verses from Matthew 1, wheras Uncle G's proposal covered a much larger group of verses.

would you be prepared to make a similar vote at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Individual Bible verses, which covers the full list of verses in Uncle G's suggestion?

~~~~ 9 July 2005 15:22 (UTC)

Koubiala

Umm, yes, it is indeed a misspelling of Koutiala. I've turned it into a redir, although it could be deleted now. Thanks for spotting my silly error. Warofdreams 09:40, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Did you know?

Did you know? has been updated. A fact from the article Massa Makan Diabaté, which you recently created, has been featured in that section on the Main Page. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently-created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

Tony Gatlif

Hi, I see you are creating alternate spellings to Tony Gatlif, and then redirecting them to a non-existant page. It's not a good practice to create several articles, just to redirect them. The wiki search will find close matches. Although redirects are cheap, its good to at least have an article to actually point to. Are you plan on making this article, or are your redirects wrong? Thanks. ∞Who?¿? 05:38, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

Don't worry, the article's going up in about five minutes; I found a list of alternate spellings on IMDB and wanted to put in the redirects before I forgot them. My own experience with the wiki search engine is that it's not very spell-savvy, which causes me constant problems in finding names transliterated from other languages (the West African history pages are a real nightmare for this), so I'm trying to address this as I go. Sorry for the trouble, and thanks for checking before deleting, --Dvyost 05:50, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

No trouble :) I was more concerned about the red-links than the mutiple redirects, I have made some myself. For a second, it just looked like a bunch of reserved name spaces :). Thanks for replying. ∞Who?¿? 05:52, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

DYK

Did you know? has been updated. A fact from the article Seku Amadu, which you recently created, has been featured in that section on the Main Page. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently-created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

DYK

Did you know? has been updated. A fact from the article Bitòn Coulibaly, which you recently created, has been featured in that section on the Main Page. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently-created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

Nono

I saw that you deleted something in the Bozo article concerning the Nono. I would be interested what it was. The Nono (or Nononke) mostly speak one of the four Bozo languages called Jenaama (or Sorogaama). So they are linked to the Bozo, even if not ethnically.

Hi, and welcome to wikipedia! I removed a "See Also:Nono" from the article that redirected here; since neither the French guitarist nor the anime character seemed relevant, the see also was at the time useless. If you know something about the Nono, though (and obviously you do), an article would be terrifically helpful! Or an article (even a four-sentence one) on the Bozo languages would also be much appreciated. You can click the red links on those words to get started--feel free to post here if you have any more questions. My computer's in the shop but I should be off and on until it's fixed. Again, welcome! --Dvyost 15:30, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

PS If you have a continued interest in Wikipedia, why not create an account? It helps you watch pages, get messages, etc. and looks snazzy besides.

West Africa

• I replied over there. Kind regards, — mark ✎ 12:14, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

DYK

Did you know? has been updated. A fact from the article History of West Africa, which you recently created, has been featured in that section on the Main Page. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently-created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

Flcelloguy | A note? | Desk 00:29, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

Did you know? has been updated. A fact from the article Mauritania Railway, which you recently created, has been featured in that section on the Main Page. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently-created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

History of Guinea

Nice expansion! Cheers, --Dvyost 21:06, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

Ta. It's nowhere near finished yet. I was going to compliment you on History of West Africa which is a lovely piece of work. --Cherry blossom tree 21:26, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

Cheers

Once again thanks for your superb contributions. I guess I'll have to abandon my daily routine of checking out what good Dvyost has brought us, though I'm sure I'll see you around now and then (I told you that Wikipedia is addictive!). Have a good time over at graduate school! All the best, — mark ✎ 09:37, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Replied there. --Dvyost 15:42, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

DYK

Did you know? has been updated. A fact from the article Battle of Tondibi, which you recently created, has been featured in that section on the Main Page. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently-created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

Arabic transliteration

I wish I could be more help with Arabic transliteration. Alas, I'm just a beginner. I have found, however, that it often works to post a question (even if in English) to the Village Pump on the Arabic Wikipedia (here). Hope this helps, – Quadell ^{(talk) (sleuth)} 04:00, August 19, 2005 (UTC)

Replied there. --Dvyost 04:12, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Working on Non sequitur at this very moment

Hey, Dvyost -- just thought I'd let you know I'm working on Non sequitur this very evening, to disambiguate it, then split into two articles the senses of meaning having to do with logic and with absurdism, and finally redirecting links.

Actually, I'm doing the redirecting first, and will come back to the writing later tonight.

To that end, would you please remove the categorization "rhetoric" from the Non sequitur (absurdism) page, and move it to the Non sequitur (logic) page?

(See Non sequitur (disambiguation).)

Many thanks.

Paul Klenk 23:27, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Replied there --Dvyost 15:58, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:List of missing Africa Topics

Hi Dvyost, I am sorry for the inconvenience. I'll double check that. But tell me, if some of the removed links had nothing to do with the Wikipedia:List of missing Africa topics, why do they have to be there? Maybe they have to be fixed so they have to be corrected and linking to the real african topics? I'll revert all that to the last edition and then recheck all again later on. Cheers -- Svest 14:51, August 28, 2005 (UTC) ^{Wiki me up™}

Replied there. --Dvyost 15:08, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

Thanks Dyvost. What I think is that I'll leave it as it was before as I am not sure if I'd be accurate in correcting them. I hope someone who's more knowledgeable in the subjects would fix them. Maybe the person who mentionned the Fage book on top of the list ;). Cheers -- Svest 15:26, August 28, 2005 (UTC) ^{Wiki me up™}

Kidal Region

My only concern with a move back to simply 'Kidal Region' would be fixing all the reverts. To be honest, I've been doing this with a lot of the articles on Wikipedia:Requested articles/Geographical regions, namely with fixing up UTF-8 titles. As I've never seen a general guideline quoted anywhere - the decision usually seems to be at the whim of the editor - I didn't figure it would be a big deal. Since I don't really care as passionately about the title as you do, feel free to revert it back. You won't offend me.... —akghetto (talk) 20:18, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Responded there. --Dvyost 20:36, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

African Collaboration of the Fortnight

Hi again Dvyost. I just noticed that you voted for the African featured article. I added a nomination recently. Would you consider voting there? Cheers. -- Svest 15:48, August 28, 2005 (UTC) ^{Wiki me up™}