User talk:JPFay

JPFay (talk) 22:08, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Cupstone

Hi JP -- yes, there's considerable visible similarity to the omars (though the fish residues and orbital grindings, as well as association with fires and geometrical patterns mark cupstones as non-natural artifacts), and it's clear we need better images. I'll see what I can do. Meanwhile, I added a dab for Omaralluk (sp?), and I recommend that you re-name the article to that title, since it's the full technical one. DavidOaks (talk) 01:31, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Actually, it was easy enough for me to go ahead and do these things myself. I note that the extreme sourthern limit of omars is, for early glaciation, Northern ONtario, and later, the Dakotas & Minnesota -- either omar thinking is badly uninformed about how common these objects are in the southern midwest and even down to Florida, or there's confusion about what's an omar and what's not...DavidOaks (talk) 02:50, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

I found the omar in he illustration a couple hundred yards from my house in Central Illinois. I can pick up a bucketful of them in an hour or two.

JPFay (talk) 13:13, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Illinois

Hi- Your help is needed, in this revision: [1], there is a typo: "irini8ak", it has the #8 in it, and that sentence needs a citation, since I couldn't find it on pg. 220. Also, I would suggest using italics for each of the foreign words, like Illiniwek, instead of quotation marks per WP:MOS#Foreign terms. Thanks, --Funandtrvl (talk) 16:53, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Good catch. Thanks for the suggestion. Rather than footnoting each individual citation I went with citations from a later reference book. It doesn't quite have the impact of the explicit info, but it's certainly more concise. As for when to use quotations and when to use italics, I try to follow the suggested style as much as possible, but in quotes I use the style used in the original. JPFay (talk) 14:37, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for fixing it.--Funandtrvl (talk) 21:36, 27 November 2009 (UTC) Happy Thanksgiving!

RE:

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

Article message

{{helpme}} I have seen a flag or box or whatever in other articles that is a disclaimer of some kind. I would like to put a similar disclaimer in an article stating something to the affect that:

The remainder of this article appears to be a "red herring," that is, a body of irrelevant information intended to divert attention from relevant, good faith discussion of the subject.

I have moved your message to the bottom of the page and added a section heading. The guidelines at Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines are that new topics should be started at the bottom of talk pages under a new heading.

There are a lot of messages that can be added to articles, and you can find them at Wikipedia:Template messages. The closest to the one you want is probably {{off-topic}}.

Please let me know if there are any more questions. Thanks! --Mysdaao ^talk 13:47, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia interpreter

{{helpme}} Is there an interpreter I can download and use to work on at least early drafts of Wikipedia material without having to do it all online?

Not really, no....unless you want to install Mediawiki on your computer. You might try SoloWiki - that's the closest thing I've ever found. I use it sometimes, but it has limited functionality. Further questions? let me know! Fleetflame · whack! whack! · 15:06, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, but I don't have Java.

But I appreciate the effort. Have a good one.

76.195.221.185 (talk) 19:17, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Choctaw origin of OK

Hello JPFay. I am an infrequent contributor to Wikipedia, so I just now noticed your message about the etymology of OK. Thanks for the info. I suspected there was some agenda at play in purging the Choctow origin but I had no idea who or why.

What got me interested in this was that a Webster's dictionary I inherited from my grandmother had the Choctaw etymology, buy my editions did not, and I began to wonder why.

I was doing research on Pushmataha, and noticed references to two different instances in which he used the word while talking to Jackson. The first was when Jackson asked him now the left flank (manned by Choctaws) was holding up during the Battle of New Orleans and Pushmataha responded "okeh." The second was when Jackson was personally negotiating the Treaty of Doak's Stand. Pushmataha accepted the terms of the treaty by saying "Hoke."DrHenley (talk) 02:11, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Wow! Terrific! Can you give me some references for these fact?

I assume one is Malinowski's Notable Native Americans. In any event, thanks for the info.

I referenced both of them in the article. I looked up the passage about the Treaty of Doak's Stand, and I misquoted it... Instead of "Hoke" Pushmataha said "Sia Hoka" which meant "Very OK"

That came from:

Lewis, Anna. (1959) Chief Pushmataha, American Patriot, 155-156.

Lewis, who was the foremost Pushmataha historian, has a paragraph devoted to the subject of how Jackson learned "OK" from Pushmataha.

The other is:

Kaye, Samuel H., Ward, Rufus Jr., and Neault, Carolyn B. (1993). "By the Flow of the Inland River - The Settlement of Columbus, Mississippi to 1825.".DrHenley (talk) 18:41, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Copyright status of Proquest scans

{{helpme}} What would the copyright status of a Proquest scan of an 1889 New York Times obit or a 1900 Chicago Tribune article be?

Thanks

JPFay (talk) 12:52, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

It's in the public domain. Any work published in the United States before 1923 is in the public domain. The image can be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons with the license tag Template:PD-1923 because it is a free image. See Wikipedia:Public domain or commons:Public domain for more information. Please let me know if there are any more questions. Thanks! --Mysdaao ^talk 13:11, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

"okay" article

JPFay, the long edit you made (that is, I think you originally made it--I got in trouble earlier by asking this of someone else who had simply been reverting vandalism) to the okay article (Revision as of 12:40, 5 November 2009) gives a very helpful explanation and wrap-up, but I don't understand this one paragraph:

It was and is offered without reservation in dictionaries. The 1968 edition of Webster's Dictionary, for example, offered a gross misrepresentation of the documented early uses of the expression for months before it was ever used in New York: "first used in name of the Democratic O.K. club (earliest recorded meeting March 24, 1840), in which O.K. is abbrev. of Old Kinderhook.

By "documented early uses" do you mean, for instance, Jackson's use? But then you say "for months before it was ever used in New York", presumably meaning "months prior to the earliest recorded meeting March 24, 1840 of the O.K. club."

It's quite true that dictionaries and other sources tend to give either Oll Korrect or Old Kinderhook, or both, without mentioning any prior usage. Merriam-Webster's Online dates it to 1839, which would presumably fit your "months", but credits it to Oll Korrect rather than the O.K. club.

I wonder if you might want to edit this to try to clarify what you meant. Then aside from the question of what the paragraph is supposed to mean, I also wonder about your "gross misrepresentation" terminology--whether it's really consonant with Wikipedia's policies of unbiased neutrality. Your dictionary (along with most others) being arguably incorrect may very well be the case, but I'm not sure that "gross misrepresentation" is the best way to describe the problem at this website. Milkunderwood (talk) 03:54, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Alan Walker Read devoted a whole paper ("The First Stage in the History of 'O.K.'") to the year before the expression was ever used to refer to the "OK club" or "Old Kinderhook." He documents the dozen prior uses of "OK" in the popular press that time. Any suggestion that the expression was "first used in name of the Democratic O.K. club (earliest recorded meeting March 24, 1840), in which O.K. is abbrev. of Old Kinderhook. is a gross misrepresentation of the facts. We are not talking about a typo here or a matter of interpretation or slight misunderstanding or understandable misconception or inaccuracy. We are talking about a bold-faced lie, a gross misrepresentation of the facts.

JPFay (talk) 14:52, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

It seems to me that if you are talking about dictionaries published relatively soon after Read's 1963-4 papers, such as the 1968 edition of the Simon & Schuster "Webster's New Twentieth Century Dictionary", you need to remember that revisions of dictionaries take years to prepare before their actual publication date. Prior to Read's change of mind, from what I gather, the O.K. club was commonly accepted as its origin. Modern dictionaries such as these have revised histories based on Read's 1963-4 publications:

Merriam-Webster Online (11th), the current edition, has this: "Main Entry: OK; Variant(s): or okay; Etymology: abbreviation of oll korrect, facetious alteration of all correct; Date: 1839"

Also, American Heritage (online) gives this: "OK or okay"; ETYMOLOGY: Abbreviation of oll korrect, slang respelling of all correct. (The entry also provides a "Word History" which discusses both oll korrect and Old Kinderhook.)

In any case, where a dictionary is wrong in its etymology for whatever reason, I'm not sure it's entirely reasonable or fair to accuse them of "gross misrepresentation of the facts" (much less a "bold-faced lie"), especially in an instance of still-disputed first usage which presumably is still currently under investigation.

In my own opinion, it might be better to delete this one paragraph in question from the article, and to hold it in abeyance pending the results of any newer research. FWIW I still think it's a little confusing as written, especially since your "documented early uses" could refer to Jackson, etc, besides being rather unfair to the S&S publishers given the short time frame involved in their 1968 edition following Read's 1963-4 papers. I have no idea how a current edition of the New Twentieth Century dictionary might treat the expression's history.

(Also note that the word "Webster's" is in the public domain, and is appropriated by a number of different American dictionaries. Since it's a generic term, "Webster's" by itself is generally understood to refer to Merriam-Webster, while Simon & Schuster's "Webster's New Twentieth Century" is an entirely different dictionary, as is "Webster's New World", published by Pocket Books. Essentially these and other such publications are riding on Merriam's reputation for authority.) Milkunderwood (talk) 17:55, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Hmm, seems to be a typical "verifiability v truth" argument. Whilst it may well be true that the dictionary offered a gross misrepresentation, unless that specific claim is verifiable, then it does not belong in the article - because it is not neutral, it is an opinion - and a strong one. If the New York Times had an article stating that it was a gross misrepresentation, then yes, it would be fine; without such a reference, it is not acceptable.

I am not, in any way, 'taking sides' here; I think I understand the issue, and I strongly recommend the essay, WP:TIGER. If we can explain the history in a factual, neutral manner, then that will be great. Best,  Chzz  ►  23:26, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for your work on this question! I've tried to synthesize the three major theories in respecting all the actors. I personally remember looking up the term in our family's Funk and Wagnell's and learning of the Choctaw term. The revisionist Read's research is very interesting and certainly important regarding the spread of the term, as is the argument related to the West African kay. But I must say it was a pleasure pursuing all the leads that you provide in your article that can be found googling okay okeh :D I also enjoyed the Beware the Tiger article above. SashiRolls (talk) 15:08, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Sorry!

Sorry for misspelling your name, it is correct on the NLIAS article! Bill Whittaker (talk) 14:30, 13 April 2010 (UTC)