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WikiProject LDS

Hello! I noticed you were on the list of members in the LDS WikiProject, and I was wondering if you were still interested in helping out there. You see, over the past few months, it appears that it has slowly drifted into inactivity. But you CAN help. Please consider doing both of the following:

1. Take ONE thing form the To-Do list and do it. Once you're done with it, remove it from the list, and from the<>{{Template:LDSprojectbox}}<>, so we know its done. Keep the page on your watchlist. We have a backlog going for more than half a year. Please help to work on it, and remove it.
2. Vote on the LDSCOTF, and work on it!
3. Tell your friends (esp. LDS friends, & esp. Wikipedian friends) about this WikiProject, and enocourage them to join (and be active).

Remember: your involvement in this WikiProject is just that - involvement! Please help us out.

(Note: I'm sending this out to everyone who's name was on the membership list, so I will NOT be watching this page for a response. If you want to contact me, do it on MY talk page, please.)

Thanks for all that you do -Trevdna 15:45, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

MMP

Saludos y shalom, amigo. I notice you put the article Minuteman Project into the Category:Racism. I don't know if you were basing the categorization on the SPLC's declaration or on the theory (I don't recall whose at the moment) that racism is defined by results, regardless of intent, and therefore since the Minuteman Project (and the Border Patrol, for that matter) affect only people of color, this makes them racist. Personally, I believe that the anti-illegal immigration movement in general has a racist tinge to it, but in my experience, this type of categorization, especially without prior discussion on an article's talkpage, only leads to revert- and edit-wars. I have made the same argument for de-categorizing National Council of La Raza from the racism category. There was a lively debate as to whether or not to categorize the group as mere vigilantes! I'm going to revert it for now, but please feel free to plead your case here, on the article's talkpage, or on my talkpage. Gracias,--Rockero 05:47, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Talk:Saadia Gaon

Note there that you might be interested in. Tomer^talk 06:33, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Japonic languages

Hello Gilgamesh --

User Nobu Sho added some text from the Japonic languages page to the Japanese language page, which seems to have originated with you back around August 2004. The snippet in question is:

Japanese is related to modern Korean based primarily on near-identical grammar, but there is scarce lexical similarity between the two; supporters of the Buyeo languages theory generally do not include modern Korean as part of that family.

As I discuss over on the Talk pages for Japonic languages and Japanese language, I've got some issues with this statement, and I was hoping you or someone else could provide a source citation or two. Would you be so kind as to post on either (or both) of these talk pages with a source? Thank you, Eiríkr Útlendi 23:23, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Nakbah and peace

Thanks for your recent note on my talk page. I usually find it best to respond point by point, it's easier for me:

• As (dispossession) also happened to 600,000 Jews who had lived in Arab countries, the Nakbah (and most of these people spoke Arabic too) really goes both ways. I absolutely agree that the catastrophe also applies to Jews who lived in Arab countries. It's just that the word 'Nakba', in and of itself, has come to be associated with the Palestinian plight. This doesn't diminish other 'Nakba's, but history has just popularized the word 'Nakba' to this particular event, although certainly the world is full of 'Nakba's.
• Equality for (Arab Jews) has come slow, but they are finding it. Probably evident with the election of Amir Peretz I guess.
• Israel slowly gave them was far favorable to what they were denied in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Lybia, Yemen, and so forth, and virtually none wish to return to what they see as a now-unliveable place Perhaps one can see why Palestinians who have ended up in these countries also do not wish to remain there.
• These Jewish refugees traditionally would bend over backwards to avoid conflict, but got conflict anyway, and the sentiment that they'll never get back what they lost is now absolutely orthodox to them. There has been some attempts to get the new Iraqi government to consider some sort of compensation, or possibly even reacquiring of lost property. Hopefully it is not a lost cause, although with other Arab regimes it is probably not going to happen anytime soon.
• maybe the greatest way (Palestinian refugees) can be served is to be given full citizenship in the places where they live now, such as Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, and so forth. I do not doubt that if offered, Palestinians would grab the chance to become citizens if only to be able to better their immediate living conditions. However, I don't think it is the solution to the conflict, since the refugee problem is a 'deep wound' and there needs to be some closure in the from of compensation and the right to return to a future state of Palestine, but not to Israel itself. See the third point above, these countries are not really places people would want to gain citizenship in voluntarily, not with their current regimes, miserable economy, and lack of basic freedoms.
• Jordan, for its credit was very graceous to give citizenship to Palestinians and their refugees residing in Jordan and the West Bank. Do not mistake Jordanian territorial ambitions for generosity. When the Jordanians realized they had no hope of reclaiming the West Bank, they severed all ties in 1988. Any Palestinian who was not domiciled on Jordanian soil on July 31, 1988 had citizenship revoked, including the entire population of the West Bank.
• And if Palestinians themselves want a state, there really is no equitable rationale to deny them their wish. Any Palestinian state before Israel comes to terms with what kind of country it wants to be would (in Israeli minds) pose a danger to Israel. I'm not talking about violence, but this so-called 'demographic problem' which I believe is the real reason (besides territorial ambitions) that Israel is afraid to have a free non-Jewish state so close to it that is economically symbiotic, because economic inter-dependibility sooner or later becomes a guise for a de-facto one-state situation, which scares the Israelis.
• But real peace and the end of beligerence can only really come when there is no more denials of anyone's shared history I agree!
• If many consider it a religious sin to divide the Land of Israel, then let it be united by people who agree and adhere to a peaceful coexistence where there is no fear of neighbors, and no one has to feel the psychological need for walls, checkpoints, raids, airstrikes, bombings, and the like. Again, I agree.

Thank you for your words and also your recommendation of Loolwa Khazzoom. I have often argued that Israelis and Palestinians have at least one thing in common if nothing else: tyranny at the hands of Arab neighbors. One one hand, nobody doubts that had Arabs won the war in 1948, they would have prevented the establishment of an independent Palestine as well. On the other hand, non-Palestinian Arabs have oppressed and humiliated Jews and now Palestinians in their midst, but denied they did either. Funny how things go. Now we Palestinians, being what I consider the most democratic among all Arabic-speaking nations (regarding not just choice of leaders but basic internal freedoms (like press, etc) that make up for the absence of basic external freedoms imposed by the occupation) are about to go through what the rest of those nations will inevitably have to go through - the path of being ruled by religious fundamentalists. And hopefully we'll be the first to emerge from this inevitable situation, and with a strong peace, be a symbol of prosperity and tolerance to those other places which are still in constant denial of their miserable conditions. Thanks again, Ramallite ^(talk) 20:59, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Okina Template

Gilgamesh - Whatever change you made to the Template:Okina it appears to have defeated the purpose, as it is now appearing as an empty box to most users. I cannot tell if there is a system wide problem or what, but pages like Template:Okina and even Hawaii no longer appear as existing when I try to access them. I can get to them through their history if I can find where I have edited them in the past, but the system tells me the page does not exist if I try to go through a link - Marshman 02:02, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Looks like you fixed the okina template. Thanks! - Marshman 18:16, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, but it's still breaking Wikipedia policy by including the unicode template. The alternative would be to use it every single time a Hawaiian-origin word or name with the ʻokina is used, but that doesn't seem very realistic to me for Hawaiian English. No, this is a Hawaiian English letter, and it should be simpler than that. But remember that the template breaks inside <span> tags, as the unicode template itself uses <span>. So...what to do... - Gilgamesh 19:39, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Well we are working towards two goals: 1) readability and 2) accurate representation. Those need to be satisfied before 3) another Wikipedia policy (=suggestion). Can something be included in the symbols table such as was done for the macron on letters? Or would that require the same sort of work around, the real problem being with the browsers? - Marshman 18:15, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Same workaround, unfortunately. Our problem is longstanding displayability bugs in Internet Explorer, which have gone unfixed because there is very little incentive for them to do so. We could, however, provide a second template for ʻokina without the unicode template, which could be used safely inside other <span> tags, albeit still with the same IE displayability bugs... All this would be far easier if Wikipedia didn't force any font faces anywhere at all, so that the browser's default font display engine could do as it pleases. - Gilgamesh 18:20, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Hi Gilgamesh, maybe you're the hero not only for Uruk but for the poor little ʻokina in the middle of the Pacific as well ... I'm working on the invention of the ʻokina in the German Wikipedia for a while. Trying to rename the article de:Hawaii to de:Hawaiʻi some others claimed to be the Unicode character U+02BB "illegal" to use in article names. Following some of the discussions here I think you're one of the few who understand both sides of the problem (linguistic, technical). When I checked en:Kaua‘i ‘Ō‘ō I realized:

• there seem's to be a U+02BB in the title, but
• when I copy it here, there is another character (or is it just the way it looks in the Lucida unicode font???)

Can you help to clear this for me? Mahalo in advance, ThT 07:28, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Only a few of the article titles actually use the valid ʻokina character. Most use a simple ASCII apostrophe in its place, but use the full ʻokina in the article text. Also, most common Windows fonts still do not display ʻokina at all, and this becomes an issue with Internet Explorer's crippled display engine. So the {{okina}} template intentionally uses Lucida Sans Unicode in all cases. As the template name itself does not code, the template's contents may change in the future if most people's browsers have no problem displaying the letter. - Gilgamesh 10:20, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

the fakauʻa, the ʻeta, whatever you call it

That is the way that thing ʻ, the Hawaiʻian ʻokina, is called in Tonga and Tahiti. Macintosh users have it already for years, but Windows users only see boxes. Or so I believe. People get frustrated when I talk about it, so I am still not sure, and your discussions did not make me much wiser. Fact is that people complain they cannot read the articles I wrote about Tongan and Tahitian when I use ʻ (unicode 0x02BB). And I would not want to use ‘ (0x2018). Is the { {okina} } template supposed to solve the problem or not. Is it working now or not? The others said that they could read en.wikipedia.org/hawaii but not haw.wikiepedia.org/hawaii. So I am utterly confused now. You seem to be the expert. Please illuminate. --Tauʻolunga 05:38, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

The okina template is probably the best that can be done in Internet Explorer's increasingly obsolete display engine. - Gilgamesh 06:02, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Hawaii and article naming style

Hi Gilgamesh, there are two different issues at stake with the naming of Hawaiian articles. Firstly, the official name of the state of Hawaii does not have an 'okina today, so by Wikipedia style it should be consistently written without one when referring to the state. This guideline has not been enforced particularly strongly, as you may notice; more important atm are article naming guidelines (see below).

Secondly, the guidelines for article titles in particular is to use widely-accepted names when there is a choice between different spellings. So even in cases where there is no official-name issue, if a name is always spelled without an 'okina in most contexts, but with an 'okina by people living in Hawaii, the article title should be without one (though the article text is welcome to use an 'okina). See for instance Kingdom of Hawaii.

Cheers, +sj + 14:25, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

But what of Hawaiian English? Consider regional standardized spelling variants around the world, such as "center" and "centre". In Hawaiian English, the ʻokina is used everywhere. - Gilgamesh 22:47, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Pontian Muslims in Trabzon

Hi Gilgamesh,

You added to the Trabzon article a long time ago that it still has a sizeable Pontian Muslim community. Do you have any sources for this? See Talk:Trabzon for more details. Thanks. --Khoikhoi 22:06, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Ok, thanks. --Khoikhoi 08:42, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

VEI cfr

See Wikipedia:Categories_for_deletion#Category:VEI-8_supervolcanoes_to_Category:VEI-8_volcanoes. Also, these categories are a bit tricky since most volcanoes fall under multiple categories. — jdorje (talk) 21:17, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, that's easy. Virtually every volcano has smaller eruptions, but I categorized each volcano by each of their known eruption size crests. Otherwise, every volcano would also have to be in almost every smaller eruption size category. So, even though the 1980 Mount Saint Helens eruption was a VEI-5, it's categorized as VEI-6 because of the sheer size of one of its known prehistoric eruptions. If only the most recent eruption were to be considered, then Mount Saint Helens would be a meager VEI-whatever because it's currently only building a lava dome, and not explosively ejecting huge amounts of material. So, the question is, "What was this volcano's largest single eruption, and how big was it?" The fact that a volcano is capable of an eruption this huge further shows what it is (or at least was) capable of, which is part of what makes it amazing. And because the eruptions could get that big, it is surely implied that it also probably had any number of other eruptions on any of the smaller VEI numbers. Therefore, it really isn't necessary to put the volcano in both the larger and the smaller eruption categories. - Gilgamesh 05:41, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Hebrew/Aramaic transliterations and etymologies

Hey Gilgamesh. User:Haldrik is adding transliterations and etymologies of Hebrew/Aramaic words that seem to contradict others I've seen. Since you're an expert in this, I'm hoping you can provide some insight. Would you mind taking a look? You can find them at Jesus#Names and Yeshua. Jayjg ^(talk) 19:26, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

To be honest, I'm not an expert of Aramaic. I just know how to vocalize and transliterate biblical Aramaic as it is written with the same consonants and vowel pointing systems as the Hebrew in the rest of the Tanakh. But I'll give it a look. - Gilgamesh 01:37, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

from unicode to Chinese

Thanks for working on changing all the unicode to regular Chinese characters!!!!!!!!!!! You rock!Mike 16:30, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Disco or no Disco

to me, the only disco is the dance music up until 1980 or 1981. "It's Raining Men" is most definitely a club anthem but not disco in my opinion. same with the song "Who Do You Think You Are". however if you feel that the songs qualify as simply another form of the genre, then by all means re-add them as "disco songs." Drmagic 20:59, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Israel-Palestine

Hey, Thanks for your contributions to WP. Unfortunately, I nominated the Israel-Palestine article you started for deletion for reasons stated therein. Regards, - the.crazy.russian τ ç ë 17:51, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Greek Islands

I've noticed that you've created stubs of many Greek Islands. Maybe you should slow down and expand them. Thank you, --Janarius 17:00, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

I would, but the truth is that I barely know anything about them other than their name, their location, and the archipelago they're located in. - Gilgamesh 17:01, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Your Strongili is not my Strongyli

Hallo, I noticed that you merged my Stub about the Islet of Strongili with yours. Unfortunately, you did not read carefully my stub, so you did not notice that "my" Strongili (where I have been last summer with the sailboat: it is really a beautiful place!) is located east of Kastellórizo: this means in the Dodecanese, and not in the Cyclades. I don't know any Strongili there, but Strongyli ("round", in Greek) is one of the ancient names of Santorini. So I corrected the stub. Anyway, if you find out that another Island with this name does exist, you can add write another stub and a disambiguation about it. Thanks! alex2006 15:18, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Koine Greek

Hi, I noticed you modified the phonetic transcriptions at Koine Greek. I don't quite agree with some of the changes - in particular, the change from aspirated stops to voiceless fricatives is dated rather late in antiquity, as far as I know, so for the Maccabeans text the plosives were quite appropriate. Would you mind if I changed those back sometime? Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:36, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Oh...well, no, I don't mind. Just don't forget the sandhi rules. :3 And, afaik, the Christian texts should use fricatives, right? - Gilgamesh 18:02, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, if I remember correctly, Horrocks dates the voiceles fricative shift to as late as 3rd/4th century AD. I'd have to check again. And don't overdo it with the sandhi rules - I think you had one or two across phrase boundaries where I wouldn't expect them, as in pántoŋ ke aoráton. But that's certainly open to interpretation to some degree :-) Fut.Perf. ☼ 19:05, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, then I invite you to use your best judgment in regards to sandhi. :3 - Gilgamesh 00:10, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Saints Wikiproject

I noted that you have been contributing to articles about saints. I invite you to join the WikiProject Saints.

You are invited to participate in Saints WikiProject, a project dedicated to developing and improving articles about saints. We are currently discussing prospects for the project. Your input would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks! --evrik 16:14, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

*blinks* I don't remember that... Maybe I just edited an article about a saint once or twice, but I'm not really into that topic. - Gilgamesh 00:43, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Siberian Traps and VEI

Why did you put a VEI of 11 at Siberian Traps? Isn't the maximum VEI 8? Or did I misinterpret it? --Hardscarf 22:46, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

It's math. Learn the VEI scale and then read how much material the volcano extruded during its long effusive eruption. The VEI number goes up for every factor of ten, and a VEI-11 extrudes at least a thousand times as much as the smallest VEI-8. - Gilgamesh 03:09, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

I understand, but this page states " There are no known explosive events with a VEI larger than 8." and this blog states "So why no VEI 9? Simple, massive eruptions don’t happen often! But they do happen. The Siberian External Link Traps External Link erupted a massive 1,000,000 - 4,000,000 km3 of magma covering an area of 7,000,000 km2. The volcanism continued for a million years and spanned the Permian-Triassic External Link boundary and may have contributed to the massive global extinction, although no firm evidence exists for this.". It leaves me wonder if you can really use the VEI for something like that. If VEI=11 is not defined, then I don't think wikipedia should invent it (no original "research"), besides the category of the article mentions VEI=8. On the other hand, if you have a source for VEI=11, then please add it. --Hardscarf 08:58, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Eh, I can't argue with that, though I was under the impression that VEI measured the total volume of material in a single eruption, and that using simple math with the scale could not be original research. But if you think VEI-11 and such are inappropriate labels, then feel free to remove them. - Gilgamesh 11:38, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Ok, thank you. --Hardscarf 16:04, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Pangaea

I asked some questions at Talk:Pangaea about etymology; could you have a look please? I studied Greek once but have forgotten most of it. --Mathew5000 04:37, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Eritrea

Quick question. Would the rift valley be the largest mainly overland mountain range?

Yom 08:24, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't be able to say that for sure, and I wouldn't unless it could be cited. - Gilgamesh 08:47, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Cities destroyed during WWII - CfD

Hi there - as the creator or editor of many of the categories in Category:Cities destroyed during World War II, I thought you might be interested in the discussion here. Thanks. Carcharoth 11:13, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Opinion?

Just wondering if the statements on your page about Mormon doctrine were yours or official opinion. I'm not Mormon, but they were the most liberal statements I've ever seen, and I commend you! Secos5 02:53, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Opinion, and yes I'm very liberal. - Gilgamesh 11:20, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Really..? I beg to differ. maybe liberality is more prone to interpretation than I thought :) --Procrastinating@^talk2me 20:09, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, most of my neighbors are arch-conservatives, so even the moderate conservatives in my family are "liberals". - Gilgamesh 09:25, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Yep, some liberals are other's conservatives. like this new article full body tattoo, will you treat such a person will full unprejudice respect regarding knowledge of something you feel dear about ,such as history .. because one of those (fuckin) freaks has a PHD in it...:) I dont know if anyone is really fundamentally liberal --Procrastinating@^talk2me 16:57, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Tajik alphabet

Thanks for the contribution, but could you explain why you changed the 'g' ? I'm probably either forgetting something or just being stupid, but what is the difference between 'g' and 'ɡ'? Is one an IPA symbol and the other not? Feel free to explain either on my usertalk or on the talk page. Thanks :) - FrancisTyers · 15:59, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I just read Voiced velar plosive and now I understand. Thanks again :) - FrancisTyers · 16:01, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, I'm glad that's cleared up. :3 Regardless of font style, IPA [ɡ] must be displayed in written script form, rather than the double-loop 'g' typical of Times and Antiqua style fonts. As such, Unicode provides a dedicated [ɡ] glyph that is supposed to be shaped like the written script letter regardless of the font's appearance. Its Unicode value is 0x0263, and can be written in HTML and in Wikipedia as &#X263; if you can't paste the actual character. - Gilgamesh 16:47, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Diamond Head, Hawaii

One of the pictures on the Diamond Head, Hawaii article is up for nomination to become a featured picture! You can see the picture here. Please add a supporting vote on its nomination page here or, more specifically, here, if you feel it's worthy. Thanks for your help! Cathryn 16:13, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Hello

We seem to have things in common. Also, I would like help. User:Johngagon

Another okina question

Is there a font in which that character is expressed in? It may fix some problems for users of IE if there's a font face that utilizes the okina in normal text (although I doubt this will fix everything). Ryūlóng 22:41, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Lucida Sans Unicode and Arial Unicode MS display it. - Gilgamesh 00:47, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

I've editted {{'okina}} and {{okina}} so that they appear correctly in Internet Explorer. I do not believe that there was any change (the only problem was that I had to remove the usage of one of the templates in Hawaii's infobox so all of the images and links displayed correctly). Ryūlóng 20:04, 30 July 2006 (UTC)