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What is a source and what isn't

Geoffrey Wheatcroft is not the source. He is at most third hand. The participants in the discussion may have talked to Andrew Rawnsley; Rawnsley wrote it up; the very biased Wheatcroft then wrote an article (which is behind a paywall and therefore unverifiable so far as I am concerned) reporting his interpretation of what Rawnsley had said. This is simply unacceptable from Wikipedia standards and I ask you not to play fast and loose here. Sam Blacketer (talk) 20:06, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

This is all WP:OR. Geoffrey Wheatcroft is a distinguished journalist, historian and reviewer. He is reporting what the books under review (Blair's 'A Journey', Mandelson's 'The Third Man,' Rawnsley's 'The End of the Party' and Brian Jones's 'Failing Intelligence') report. Paywall? Well, I can copy out the relevant paragraphs, since I subscribe to the NYRB and have that copy.

If you reexamine your edits, and the summaries provided when writing about 'playing fast and loose', that idiom looks like an accurate projection of what you did there. Without apparently consulting the source, or evaluating where it came from (NYRB) you went ahead, kept the source, but rephrased the language in a way that makes the source unrecognizable. I kept strictly to the wording of that source. You say it, or Wheatcroft, or both got things wrong? That's your opinion, and has no place on wikipedia.Nishidani (talk) 20:32, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

You've fallen into a major error here. Editors are obliged to be neutral and not conduct Original Research when writing articles. There is no such obligation when independently verifying a source which has fallen into apparent error, and reporting on findings, which is what happened here. A book review is fundamentally an expression of the reviewer's opinion and a tertiary source; what awards the reviewer may have won are neither here nor there when assessing their partisan views (but it may be observed that it does not do much for Wheatcroft's reputation that the very title of his short book is a misquotation). Rawnsley too is not a detached academic but someone who has made his opinions about the subject quite clear. It is simply not sufficient on a subject as contentious as this, involving accusations against a living person of dishonesty, to take this source as establishing a fact. It states an opinion, and that must be balanced by the contrary. Sam Blacketer (talk) 20:51, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Indeed, editors are obliged to be neutral.

Your edits consisted in systematic rewritings of what I said a source stated, while you admit you haven't consulted that source.

In rewriting the text, you added what you thought was the truth (WP:V) of the matter, and that violated WP:OR. All I did was to rephrase my edits so precisely that the distance between my text and the source was minimal. This wasn't acceptable.

So you challenged the source, Geoffrey Wheatcroft. He's an historian, as well as a journalist, recognized as such by, for example, Sir Raymond Carr, and yet you cite the Daily Telegraph to put over he's partisan. Well, in politics, and writing on politics, who isn't. He has a distinct point of view, as do all historians, and journalists.

Again, you have it in for Andrew Rawnsley. Look, people with that academic background are not your usual Fleet Street hacks. Rawnsley got a Ist class honours degree at Cambridge. That Rawnsley has his opinions is neither here nor there. He's RS, and that's it. You appear to be trying to pick who can be used or not used, regarding Kelly's death, depending on your judgement of whether the writer, academic or journalist is detached or not.

No accusation has been made that Blair is dishonest, and repeating this is improper. I must to bed, but I do suggest you treat this with more temperance and leisure than seems the case, and wait, as I will, a few days to hear what other editors on that page think. Nishidani (talk) 21:14, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Strike outs

Could you strike out your edits on the SAQ talk page so we can keep up with them without having to hunt on the FAC page? Tom Reedy (talk) 14:54, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Sorry Tom. I'm totally confused. I thought one responded, then edited to the page, and waited for the original query-poser to strike out his point if satisfied. Whatever I've done wrong, feel free to just revert, erase or strike out. I'm clearly too tired (too much pruning, soil-turning, and planting vines to come back and edit as the rules apparently require). I can understand editing to texts, but all these page variants and rules bewilder me, and I don't even understand the problem. Nishidani (talk) 15:02, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

I copied his review to the article talk page so we can strike it out. He can strike out the FAC page if he wants, but I think it's handy to have a list that can be struck by us and also a place to discuss the edits among ourselves.

I'm doing the same to my gardens, plus I'm building a shed and replacing a fence. The neighbourhood association asked me to head a committee on constructing a community garden on some municipal land that a creek runs through at the bottom of the hill I live on, but I turned them down; I'm gotta suspend civic duties for a while until I can get some rest. Tom Reedy (talk) 15:18, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

SAQ FAC

I notice you have started copying my FAC responses back to the SAQ talk page. That's probably too hard to do (I've now done 43 responses), and not needed. Instead, please check Talk:Shakespeare authorship question#Points outstanding from Ealdgyth's review where I hope I have listed all outstanding items (I've just put the title of the items; search the talk page or FAC for the full text). It's immense work (particularly after all you have done so far), but it would be very helpful if you could help finish off the response. I think any simple "done" issues should be noted directly in the FAC review so that it is close to finished ASAP. Thanks. I responded at my talk saying it's too hard for me to fix that attribution error you mentioned. Johnuniq (talk) 12:49, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Dog-leg edits (section on your user page)

• I assume you speak Chinese? If so, then we both understand what 狗腿 means. ;-) • Ling.Nut (talk) 04:56, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Ah! 頭折, as the French say! (||:-() Nishidani (talk) 11:11, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Ebionites

Jayjg has said on his user talk page that he has no objections to any party wishing to be involved to participate in the Ebionites mediation. That being the case, I hope you will feel free to make any comments regarding it that you see fit. John Carter (talk) 21:04, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

I know you said "no way", but your participation would be helpful. Cheers. Ovadyah (talk) 03:34, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

On an unrelated note, let me know what you think of the GE article if you have time. The peer review is still open, and your comments would be appreciated. Thanks. Ovadyah (talk) 03:37, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks lads. I noted the date, and appreciated the joke!Nishidani (talk) 16:12, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Also, if you have any input which you would want to add to Wikipedia:WikiProject Religion/2011 meeting, obviously, feel free to do so. I have left a bot request to spam all the relevant WikiProject talk pages with notice of the discussion, but think that your apparent knowledge of several of the less developed articles around here might be particularly useful. John Carter (talk) 16:17, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

I think it more useful these days, as a pagan, to do practical things in regard to religion, like teaching Italian to a Congolese priest in exchange for lessons in Kiswahili and Washi, which takes 2 hours a day. I really think that editing pages on religion. like those on the I/P area a waste of time: nothing sticks, the quality is poor, disputes are endless, and gross POV-slanting inevitable. They are the areas no one will ever take seriously, except for the utility of using the link info gathered there for minor details. Sorry John. I'm at the short end of life, and am wasting valuable time even on the articles I'm still obliged to finish.Nishidani (talk) 16:23, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Congratulations

Thanks for all of your hard work on SAQ and my congratulations on it making FA. I have added the article to my watchlist and am an admin, so if there is anything I can do to help, please let me know. Yours, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 02:17, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the thanks. If I ever get back to writing articles, I'll keep your kind offer in mind. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 03:37, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Recent SAQ

I think your comments today were very well thought out (as usual) and offered great insight and as well as a nice level of synthesis (in a good way). Thought you should know that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rogala (talk • contribs) 22:51, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Templates

That's fine as far as I'm concerned. I'm afraid I'm terribly old fashioned - or perhaps lazy. I tend to stick with the template I'm most familiar with, even though I know it has many weaknesses. I hate all those elaborate backets and {{{* || palaver. Paul B (talk) 10:20, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

When it comes to being old-fashioned, I'd be just slightly avant-garde in the late paleolithic era at best. I'll start mucking around with the history page then. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 11:26, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Looking right through it, I see it is supposed to expand on the history section of SAQ but has far less coverage. It seems a typical fork to retain information from poor sources. Unless someone offers to really work it. . .Nishidani (talk) 17:57, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Request for review

You are one of the few editors on the article Ebionites who seems to have respect from both sides, so I am requesting that, if you see fit, you read the comments I added at Talk:Ebionites#Slavonic Josephus regarding that subject as used in this article. I believe that the previous history of editing in this article indicates that that material may be some of Ovadyah's, but I cannot be certain of it without a review of the extensive article history. However, if you can access either Tabor or Eisenman, to determine if either of them cites this as a source in their books, I would be most grateful. IF either does, if you have the time, I think it might also be interesting to see which of the other citations added by the editor who added that citation are also directly reproduced in Tabor or Eisenman. WP:V might well be involved here, and I think it would be in everybody's best interests if there were some review of how well or poorly it might have been met, particularly if the SJ material is cited by either Tabor or Eisenman. John Carter (talk) 15:09, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Hi Nishidani, I will save you the time. First of all, James Tabor's Jesus Dynasty has been accepted as a reliable source as a result of a consensus reached in mediation. Second, I added a page number and a quotation of Tabor's citation of SJ as an inline reference. Third, there was an online reference to a book by Mead in the article. I completed the reference with an ISBN number and a specific page number and a quotation of the SJ material as an inline reference. In summary, there are two reliable sources containing the same passage of SJ in the article. As for whether I added the material, I recovered it from the talk page where we moved it in Sept. 2007. We were concerned about WP:SYNTH issues at the time, but I don't remember any WP:V issues being raised, until now. I don't know if Eisenman ever uses SJ, and there are no citations to that effect in the article. Cheers. Ovadyah (talk) 16:23, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

It is the obligation of every editor who adds the material in the first place to adhere to WP:V - there do not have to be have "issues being raised" about it for the policy to be one that must be adhered to. If anything, the now admitted failure to abide by basic policy by whomever added the material in the first place should prompt a more thorough review of all the other material and citations made by that individual, to see if they may have the same problems as well. John Carter (talk) 16:55, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

I have already responded to this on In ictu oculi's talk page. However, if you want to comb through every edit I have ever made (again) for any possible violations of WP:V I have ever made, knock yourself out. Maybe the rest of us can get some work done while you are so gainfully occupied. Ovadyah (talk) 17:17, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

JC, there has been no "admitted failure to abide by basic policy by whomever added the material in the first place". It is delusional statements like this that lead to you being ignored. -- cheers, Michael C. Price ^talk 17:18, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Um, actually there was. It was that either "Tabor cites the SJ" (without citation to where Tabor says that - a violation of WP:V) or that the citation were not directly linked to the relevant source, also a violation of WP:V. It is rather clear from your comments here and elsewhere that you, Michael, have a rather weak grasp of policies and guidelines, particularly regarding yourself. Has it ever occurred to you to actually try to learn the basic rules around here, I wonder? John Carter (talk) 17:44, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

You should learn what "admitted" means. -- cheers, Michael C. Price ^talk 04:59, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Well, I answered briefly on the page. I think those who are so prepossessed by fringe sources, and the Ebionites should consider the implications of the following juxtaposition.

'Ebionites is a patristic term referring to a Jewish Christian sect or sects that existed during the first centuries of the Christian Era.[1] They regarded Jesus as the Messiah[2] and insisted on the necessity of following Jewish religious law and rites.' Our dreamy-eyed lead.

'Eisenman first draws a portrait of the early community of James as a nationalistic, messianic, priestly, and xenophobic sect of ultralegal pietism, something most of us would deem fanaticism. Eisenman shows how “Jewish Christianity” was part and parcel of the sectarian milieu which included Essenes, Zealots, Nazoreans, Nazirites, Ebonites, Elchasites, Sabaens, Mandaeans.etc., and that these categories were no more than ideal types, by no means actually segregrated one from the other like exotic beats in adjacent, well-marked cages in the theological zoo. . . (a) sort of “Lubavitcher Christianity,” 'Robert Price, ‘Eisenman’s Gospel of James the Just: A Review,’ reprinted in Bruce Chilton, Jacob Neusner (eds.) The brother of Jesus: James the Just and his mission, Westminster John Knox Press 2001 pp.186ff.

Just checking, but I think that material would very definitely be relevant for inclusion in the article on the book. Most of us Christians probably wouldn't have a clue what "Lubavitcher" means, so maybe some sort of alternate phrasing might be best there, but indicating that it might be, in a sense, kind of equivalent to some of the modern political/religious movements out there, many of which, in all honesty, differ from each other only by name or location, and that many of the groups are also less than clearly defined, and might include individuals of a broad range of beliefs, might be better. Maybe. Verbose as hell, but, maybe, a bit clearer. John Carter (talk) 17:08, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

No, it would be a WP:OR issue to make that point, John. The point being that one cannot use Eisenman naively on behalf of an Ebionite cause, as being a crushed and persecuted historic minority which followed Christ's original ostensible reformist Judaism (poverty, Torah fidelity, meagre diet, frequent ritual ablutions), while ignoring Eisenman's analysis, which identifies in Christ's followers, James particularly, as exponents of a chiliastic form of messianic xenophobic pietism. On the one hand you have pacific quietistic fringe-dwellers, on the other, militantly intolerant ethnophobes.

I am not a Christian, but a pagan, which however is no guarantee of neutrality. I think there is an ideological conflict underlying much of the difficulty here, not simply among the editors of the page, but within the hermeneutic and polemical literature dealing with this period. There are huge invested ethnic and sectarian community interests involved in spinning the irreducibly complex events, poorly reported, one way or another, and in wiki, where many come to edit because they are convinced of a Truth, or keen to throw their weight behind an institutional or ethnic interest with which they strongly identify, for a variety of reasons, personal or otherwise, the inherent tensions within academic discourse are only exacerbated. The Ebionite page, (but also many contiguous pages on Christian origins out of Judaism), are an outstanding instance. I think no harm would be done in simply standing away from the page, delisting it, and concentrating one's efforts on pages where (see In ictu oculi and PiCo's work on the Gospel of Matthew) progress can be made. I would suggest the same to Ovadyah, whose intensity of focus and learning here I do respect.Nishidani (talk) 17:40, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

FWIW, I don't think adding that material to the article on Eisenman's book would be POV at all, or at least adding material from Price's review which might include such summary information, whether in that potentially inflaming language or not. Regarding the problems with the actual nature of early Christianity, oh yeah, I don't disagree in the slightest. There part of the problem is that, unfortunately, we are bound by policies and guidelines to, basically, report what the academic press says in the approximate weight it gives, barring "alternate views" articles. In all honesty, I'm not sure I would have any objections to "alternate views of Jewish Christianity" or something similar (in fact, I would probably support it), but that is a separate matter. Right now, the academic press pretty much disagrees with Tabor. I think there were probably at least a few who agreed with The Passover Plot, as well, although I don't see favorable mention of that included in any of the major articles. The best thing we can do, I think, is to finish what I have already started, and list the various tertiary sources on the subject which have been positively received by academia, including Christian, non-Christian, and anti-Christian (to the degree those exist, I've only seen a few myself) and try to basically ensure everything they include is included, to the appropriate degree, in either the main articles, or in alternate view "spinout" articles, probably on early Jewish Christianity or early Christianity in general. The Christ myth theory is a good start, but the scope is rather too limited to be appropriate in this instance. Also, for better or worse, once the mediation is concluded we are scheduled to go to arbitration, and I don't see how ending the mediation prematurely, which would bring on the arbitration earlier, would necessarily be to everyone's liking. Mine, yes, but there are other people involved as well. And, whether anyone chooses to believe it or not, one of the reasons I was initially so intent on creating separate articles on every little group out there was that I had reservations about tackling several of the central articles, like Baptism, without having some idea what all the individual variations on the topic were, for fear of omitting some. This would include a lot of the African initiated churches, many of which are not particularly similar to what most of us would consider the majority of the Christian world. This is, however, a separate case, as the article is already about a specific, limited topic which doesn't relate that closely to a lot of other content. John Carter (talk) 17:18, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Sorry John, I unforgiveably, misread you. One of the curses of this medium for slow readers like myself is that one learns to run through a lot of remarks with unseemly velocity in order merely to survive, or not have one's real day, off wikipedia, devoured by this online work. In short, I forgot you had written 'article on the book'. I was thinking you meant to include Price's remark into the Ebionism article as a note to the use of him as a source there. Of course, you are quite correct. Price's remark is perfectly suitable for the article on Eisenman's book. Best Nishidani (talk) 18:37, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Split or AfD?

Hi. If you have time, have a glance at Talk:Canonical gospels will you? It's 100% essay by one editor, and contains a lot of , and is 70% about noncanonical gospels, but probably has some content better dealt with by merge. The editor, which I think is not entirely unreasonable, appears to basically be saying "AfD or nothing". Can you take a quick look and give quick comment? In ictu oculi (talk) 04:35, 17 April 2011 (UTC) Delete The article is a mishmash, a POV fork, and what it contains can easily be introduced to already existing articles.

This has no place on wikipedia, since it fails all tests, or violates most protocols (WP:SYNTH, WP:OR). If it had a semblance of an academic presentation, that might allow it to pass muster, but it has been patched up with no regard to the elementary rules for producing a BA level thesis on an historical topic that would be graded to pass level. It should be deleted. It is mainly about the non-canonical gospels, in any case. Leaving aside the actual text, below are a few examples of what not to do on wikipedia.

• Misleading use of sources for terminology (proto-Gospel for proto-Lucan)

Note 2. The word proto-Gospel is not used in the source.

• Indiscriminate use of outdated, often amaterurish sources

-N 9 Barclay’s book on the Talmud dates back to 1878
-N.13 Paul Isaac Hershon, A Talmudic miscellany, Trübner & co 1880
-N. 37, 61 Bernhard Pick The Talmud 1891 (not 2007 reprint)
-N.39 Paul Carus, The sayings of Jesus in the Talmud, The Monist 1914
-N.44.50,58, Edward Byron Nicholson The Gospel according to the Hebrews.1880
-N.49 John Bovee Dods, The Gospel of Jesus,1858
-N.51 G.P. Fisher Essays on the Supernatural Origin of Christianity 1867
-N.55 Walter Richard Cassels, Supernatural Religion - An Inquiry Into the Reality of Divine Revelation, 1874
-N 57 ,121 Arthur Lillie, 2005 The Gospel According to the Hebrews is in fact a pamphlet reprint of a chapter from Lillie’s Influence of Buddhism on Primitive Christianity 1893
-N 59 William Binnington Boyce, The higher criticism and the Bible 1881
-N 6o Sir James Donaldson, A critical history of Christian literature and doctrine: from the death of the apostles to the Nicene Council 1864
-N 63 Johannes Kirchhofer, Canonicity: a collection of early testimonies to the canonical books of the New Testament, William Blackwood, 1880.
-N.78 H. J. Cadbury, The Beginnings of Christianity II, 1922.
-N.122 Charles Burlingame WaiteHistory of the Christian religion to the year two hundred 3rd edition, 1881

• Primary Sources

N.23,24,26,27,28,29,32,33,34,38,40,41,42,43,45,46,4748,52,53,56,75,76,90,95,105,110.112

• Citing a translator for a translation, which is a primary source N.22,97 Thomas Patrick Halton, On Illustrious Men (1999)

• Trivial or irrelevant sources

-N.10 J. P. Moreland, The God Question, Harvest House Publishers, 2009 shouldn’t be there
-N 65 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Philosophical and Theological Writings,
-N 98 Lee Strobel, The Case for Christ, Zondervan, 1998

• Sourcing to a large number of pages

N 61,71,124

• Incomprehensible links in footnotes

N.101 takes us to a definition of the classical Greek preposition ‘’κατά’’

• Interwiki linkis in footnotes n.25,30

These are only a handful of provisory notes based on reading the article several times, and checking sources down to 123, after which I surrendered. Nishidani (talk) 14:46, 20 April 2011 (UTC) Posted here because I keep getting for the last hour an error readout on the actual page.

Main page appearance

Hello! This is a note to let the main editors of this article know that it will be appearing as the main page featured article on April 23, 2011. You can view the TFA blurb at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/April 23, 2011. If you think it is necessary to change the main date, you can request it with the featured article director, Raul654 (talk · contribs). If the previous blurb needs tweaking, you might change it—following the instructions of the suggested formatting. If this article needs any attention or maintenance, it would be preferable if that could be done before its appearance on the Main Page so Wikipedia doesn't look bad. :D Thanks! Tbhotch* ^{۩ ۞} 02:43, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

The Shakespeare authorship question is the argument that someone other than William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon wrote the works traditionally attributed to him. Proponents (called "anti-Stratfordians") say that Shakespeare was a front to shield the identity of the real author or authors, who for some reason did not want or could not accept public credit. Although the idea has attracted much public interest, all but a few Shakespeare scholars and literary historians consider it a fringe belief, and for the most part disregard it except to rebut or disparage the claims. Despite the scholarly consensus, the controversy has spawned a vast body of literature, and more than 70 authorship candidates have been proposed, including Francis Bacon, the 6th Earl of Derby, Christopher Marlowe, and the 17th Earl of Oxford. In 2010 James S. Shapiro surveyed the topic in Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?, in which he criticised academia for ignoring the topic and effectively surrendering the field to anti-Stratfordians, marking the first time a recognised Shakespeare scholar has devoted a book to the topic. Filmmaker Roland Emmerich's next movie, Anonymous, starring Rhys Ifans and Vanessa Redgrave, portrays Oxford as the real author. (more...)

Why have my crucially important contributions to this article gone unnoticed? nableezy - 18:07, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

This encyclopedia, as you and I know, accepts systematic bias in certain key areas, in order to keep out the riffraff of the great unwashed world at arm's distance. Consider (a) your ethnic origin (b) your political attitude (c) your general attitude - all serious marks against you getting any recognition. In addition, you said you disliked Shakespeare at high school, and this is the revenge of history against your adolescent, and post-adolescent, execrably poor taste. I could only manage one devious signal in recognition of your key role in providing us drones with a comfortably snazzy format, full of neat templates, to work within, i.e., I eliminated the material I have that proposed a 77th candidate, Shaykh-Sipahi, 'the elder of the army'. That he was Shakespeare is suggested by the fact that the only person in the plays who fits the idea of 'the elder of the army' is Talbot (Henry VI, Part 1), the only hero in Shakespeare whose virtues are untarnished by vices. Talbot died because of Falstaff's cowardice, and Falstoff, as it was once written, is code for False stuff and false toff (Edward de Vere). Talbot was originally Talebod, which in medieval German meant 'messenger of destruction', but in Arabic, from which the German mercenaries got the term, represents the semitic root tlb. Theories differ was to whether Talbot referred to a taliban (like yourself) or to a bod called Talib, who far from being a 'messenger of destruction' (a construct of medieval orientalism) was a missionary of enlightenment, as befitted a nephew of Mohammad (witness his remark: 'Utlub al-‘ilm min al-mahd ilal-laHd'). I was sure that, despising him as you do for having a queen of Egypt put an asp to her bosom, and thus relieving the occidental colonists of Egypt of the trouble of killing her, you would have bitterly disliked to see proofs that Sheikhspahi hailed from a region of the Delta

It may be of some consolation that Tom and I did 1500 edits that disappeared from view in the edit history when the page we drafted was approved and substituted the old SAQ page. As this took place, the real history of the page disappeared, and the false history of the present page, which gives one editor second place as contributor when he added zero to the article, incidentally also wiped out your work. So it's stiff cheddar all round. As Malcolm Frazer said, 'Life wasn't meant to be easy', and that is particularly true of a worthy oriental gentlemen like yourself.Nishidani (talk) 13:30, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Hi Nishidani, I came here to say congrats on such a magnificent article to you and the others who worked on it. Once it's off the front page, I can try to help you with merging old page histories if you like. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 15:05, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Nice indeed to hear from you Slim, and thanks indeed for your kind words, which apply I'm sure to the whole group, the myrmidons at the rock-face, and the cluey technicians, and FA experts who rolled up to sherpa our work towards FA quality. Re the history, I was only trying to counter Nableezy's selfmocking tone of faux-disappointment above, in noting how the page history is somewhat distortive. I think Johnuniq is looking around to actually see if the whole story can be done. He might drop you a note. To all those here, and Slim, if there's any collaborative stuff required any of you are working on, don't hesitate to ask me to chip in, if I can be of help. Teamwork really does work on pages that just have a history of stagnation, and the lesson here is that a little informal concertation can pull up the most troubled pages in short order (well, timewise, relatively short order) and do wonders. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 15:22, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

		The Literary Barnstar
		Even as an outsider to the discussion, I know that the Shakespeare authorship question was a swamp that could have sucked down a lot of editors. Congratulations on helping turn such a problematic topic into an FA. John Carter (talk) 18:24, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Congratulations on the magnificent FA and Main Page achievement! We mortals salute you! Johnuniq (talk) 01:00, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Boring stuff

It's time to clean you up, you old reprobate! I'd like to give you a proper modern archive box at the top of this page. Advantages are that you won't need to update it when you create a new archive, and you'll get a nice shiny new automatically-maintained index to your archives. I'm going out shortly (can't resist this good sunny weather) but I can do it later today, if you say the word. --NSH001 (talk) 10:20, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Neil you know you have more rights to this page than myself, as stalwart guardian monitoring my bloops and blunders, so if you see something that needs fixing, you don't need to ask me. Just ask Nableezy who may revert you, since he also has proprietorial rights here, and may well think that my frequent stuff-ups are evidence of my otherwise invisible incompetence that should not be quietly swept under the carpet, but rather reserved for those who like to waste their time tracking this crap! Cheers. I'll be out staking tomatoes till this evening.Nishidani (talk) 14:27, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

OK, stage one is done. The link to the Index is just to a dummy page for now, but you should have a proper index by tomorrow morning, assuming I haven't messed anything up, and assuming no glitches with the indexing bot. Normally the bot runs twice a day to keep the index up-to-date, but it will only bother updating your index if something relevant has changed. Note that the new box doesn't list the archives by date, since that function is performed much better by the index (well that's my opinion anyway). --NSH001 (talk) 18:40, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Proposed history merge

Would you please examine a proposal to merge the history of SAQ sandbox draft2 into the SAQ article at Talk:Shakespeare authorship question#Proposed history merge (and comment there). Johnuniq (talk) 08:51, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Thank you

Mike Restivo (talk) 20:17, 29 April 2011 (UTC) |} Modesty? Blazes Nishidani (talk) 20:33, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

One last thing

I know that I shouldn't keep this conversation going too long, especially on Nab's talk page but I had to let you know that Vancouver does not share Ontario's austere Protestant heritage. In fact, the city of Vancouver grew up around an illegal bar named the Globe that a Yorkshireman convinced some sawmill workers to build in exchange for a case of whiskey. Vancouverites are pretty tolerant of your habit although we're more well-known for Nab's. --JGGardiner (talk) 23:53, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

In Search of Australia

Got the book and checked p. 131. No tribe listed as such. Mentions Goondah as the protagonist of the bunyip story - like here Casliber (talk · contribs) 05:12, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

"retired"

Chill. Unless this is due to something other than the most recent bright idea from an admin. At least wait until some other genius says no to the appeal. nableezy - 21:07, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Contentious vs non-contentious articles

Hi. I decided to move the discussion here so as not to distract from the main thread on an important issue. Look, I did not have this weird idea that you enjoy contention. Rather I was referring to your assertion that articles in contentious areas are in much greater need of your contribution. I thus suggested that if that's the case, then there are plenty of such needy articles outside of I/P area. But of course, I also disgaree with the premise itself. There are myriads of poor and weak articles without any controversy whatsoever. In fact one could argue that due to strong emotional attachment from a number of contributers, contentious areas may have higher average article quality than backwater articles on topics few editors are interested in. But of course how this overlaps with your or my areas of interest is another matter altogether. Cheers. - BorisG (talk) 13:27, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Boris. I hate to hairsplit, esp. since I'm balding and can't really afford to, but I don't believe I 'asserted' that 'articles in contentious areas' have a great need of my attention. Had I said or implied that, it would have been unconscionably narcissistic. I don't think you should waste your time examining my record, but of banned I/P editors I think mine probably shows that I have, from the outset, consistently contributed substantial, article building content over a wide range of topics, in a dozen unconnected areas. On AN/I pages highly productive admins consistently admit, openly, that the area we are speaking of is a death-zone, an abandoned noman's land where only fools or madmen venture. I have a personal interest in the subject, as a lifelong student of its ancient history and religion, as someone who has lived there, and as someone who has collected over time a large number of specialized books on the area. It's not a political or emotive obsession. Most of my workday is spent in fields that have nothing absolutely to do with that area.

In any case, I think I have actually infringed my ban by actually replying to comments about me on that Amendment page. Technically I am obliged to shut up. I appreciate your balanced considerations though.Nishidani (talk) 15:35, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

OK. Let's leave it there. I would clarify however that my comments were in no way meant to imply that it is ok for you to remain topic banned. Indicdentally, I did check that arbcome case briefy, and it does appear that you have been treated too harshly. And yes, I agree that the remedy concerning featured content does seem strange. Cheers. - BorisG (talk) 15:47, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

No need to clarify. In signing off, I'd like to refer to that proverb Pasternak used to end his great poem on Hamlet: Жизнь прожить – не поле перейти. It pretty much sums up working that area! Cheers Nishidani (talk) 16:10, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Bronzino

An artist I hate. Dead dead flesh. Images of zombie lust and stuffed corpses. Dreadful colourist too. Still, I'll have a peek behind the curtain. Paul B (talk) 17:55, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

"a poem under the shower"

I hope, for your sake, it is not one of your own. Prolonged exposure to water can damage the skin, especially for the old as dirt. nableezy - 19:34, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Oh, go jump in the Nile, you ratbag, and, while gurgling in the canal, recite Pindar's ist Olympian, or at least the opening words:ἄριστον μὲν ὕδωρ . .(ariston men hudōr), namely 'water is best'. On second thought don't do that: my father got a thirty year long ear infection during the war from swimming the Suez Canal, just to win some drinking money, and though you belong to the great unwashed, I'm not that malicious.

On third thoughts, go ahead and jump in, like the Etruscan diver. That swim got dad repatriated back just before his division went to Greece, and death or concentration lagers. A silly bet saved his life. Do the dive and you might be saved from the consequences of other (edit) wars!Nishidani (talk) 19:51, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Hey, badman, loosen up, lighten out, get that rap crap out of your head, and, when you next shower (which gives you some rope, I mean, within the expiration of your next suspension, say within the year), sing, without notes, and with the impeccable dialect diction, the Galaxy Song. Apart from the fact it it one of the great lyrics of modern times, and the agreable practice it introduces, of reciting under showers, it has a propaedeutic function. One comes back to the world with a sense of proportion.Nishidani (talk) 17:07, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

I havent "sung" rap in a long time. But if you must know my preference for tunes, it has been, for the last few years, a collection of very old, but very good, Arabic songs. The Abdel Halim songs Resala min taht el ma (Letter from underwater) and Qariat el-fingan (the fortune teller) are steady on repeat, and a few Fairuz songs, a Sheikh Imam song, and one or two Umm Kulthum songs round out the playlist. Then the watany songs, which, due to my upbringing, will always be dear to me. Songs like Zekrayat, Soora, Nasser ya huriya, Ya habibty ya Masr, those are the songs of my youth, thanks to the good sense of my father. There is a saying that you should listen to Fairuz in the morning and Umm Kulthum at night. Fairuz has a voice that has a certain quality that, I dont know, makes the day seem a bit brighter. nableezy - 18:16, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

You definitely cannot sing any song I'm familiar with of Umm Kulthum's under the shower without coming out with a skin rash due to the length of time required to get through all of them. I can see why you don't recite stuff or sing under the shower (if you ever do shower? One can get a whiff of these things from certain edits you make.). As to waking up to a certain style of music, after a recent stayover over there I still have the muezzin call just before 5 am over the rocky landscape of Beit Sahour, bathed in soft moonlight, lulling in my 'whorlèd ear' (No I/P infraction I hope for mentioning that, or for visiting there?). Though I'm both a kafir and a pagan, it was deeply memorable.

To continue the original metaphor, you've just got yourself into hot water. The Umm Kulthum page needs a clean-up, and should, given her fame, be fixed to at least GA level. You'd better roust up the lads and give it the twice-over. No excuses, lad.Nishidani (talk) 19:44, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Naw, there are a couple. Walla Zaman ya Selahi, Asbaha 3ndi el-an bunduqiya (that is quoted and linked to on my user page), and a couple more. But, since you mentioned it, one of the things that I like most about Cairo is that no matter where you are you can hear the adhan from every direction; usually each mosque is a few seconds apart which makes it sound as though there you were listening in a canyon with echoes all around you. Alexandria not so much. Plus in Alexandria they, for some terrible reason, have an early adhan for Fajr, so you get woken up a half hour early. I would say something blasphemous, but its only really a joke among non-infidels, so it would be a waste on your pagan ass. But really, I know a European cant keep a straight face while remarking on the cleanliness of an Arab. This cant be happening, can it? nableezy - 20:15, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

I didn't get woken up that early. I used to rise that early just to capture the effect of the moonlit silence slowly breaking into the fajr. As to cleanliness, I'd like to see how many Christians would remain at mass if they had to take their shoes off before entering a church! (There's a beautiful vignette on this theme in the last part of Monsieur Ibrahim you might recall). I'm abusing wikispace, though much tempted to divagate on the way several African women have said Europeans smell like corpses, One of the Japanese words used for Westerners is 'stinking of butter' (bata-kusai). The Spanish only learnt to wash when the Arabo-berbers taught them how to use their scarce water resources intelligently by new hydraulic technologies. The whole Western system of dam constructions comes from the application of islamic engineering techniques developed in Iraq, while Valencia's water system comes from medieval Damascus. Jeez, see what happens if you take offence at my hamfisted insults. I get serious and become a pompous blowhard. Nishidani (talk) 20:48, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Become a pompous blowhard follows I get serious, there was no need to type those words. nableezy - 21:01, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Proposed Tibetan naming conventions

A while back, I posted a new proposal for Tibetan naming conventions, i.e. conventions that can be used to determine the most appropriate titles for articles related to the Tibetan region. This came out of discussions about article titles on Talk:Qamdo and Talk:Lhoka (Shannan) Prefecture. I hope that discussions on the proposal's talk page will lead to consensus in favour of making these conventions official, but so far only a few editors have left comments. If you would be interested in taking a look at the proposed naming conventions and giving your opinion, I would definitely appreciate it. Thanks—Nat Krause^{(Talk!·What have I done?)} 16:35, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up, Nat. I'll definitely look over it, and comment in a few days. It's by no means a simple issue. Regards Nishidani (talk) 16:54, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

Thoughts?

User_talk:Tibetsnow#July 2011 -FASTILY ^(TALK) 18:16, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

My talk

No worries there. I've made the same mistake. You know I was thinking about you and Nab. I know the Thackeray stuff isn't new but it is rare to see a story appear in the Stratford-upon-Avon Herald[1] and High Times.[2] Maybe there's an article in that. --JGGardiner (talk) 07:43, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

Dishonesty

This editor, Nishidani, has engaged in unethical editing practices to push his bias, see here. His input should be thoroughly examined. Tibetsnow (talk) 23:28, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

If you have any grounded complaints about my integrity as an editor, please register the evidence at AN/I or another other appropriate forum for community review. Unless you do this, the unrelenting barrage of unproven accusations, on this page or elsewhere, will probably end up as a self-goal. I won't report you, on principle. But others take a more severe approach to this kind of harassment involving wild violations of WP:AGF and WP:NPA.Nishidani (talk) 06:14, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

You and your gang have littered my talk page with groundless attacks (like accusing me don’t understand English words) see here. Why didn’t you give yourself this advice? You are so self-righteous. Tibetsnow (talk) 18:01, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

'My gang?' I don't know anyone there from a bar of soap, and the other editors had a decidedly negative impression of my ostensible POV at the outset, but support my edits because they comply with wiki rules. That's it. I suggest we drop this. Nishidani (talk) 18:27, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Early Christianity and other problematic religion topics

First, I do agree with you about the really problematic nature of a lot of material relating to early Christianity. One other example which comes to mind is Bart Ehrman's having some 20 years once again raised the question as to whether Saint Peter and Cephas were different people in the Journal of Biblical Literature. It was a rather good overview of the subject and argument for the lack of identity of the two, but the subsequent response from someone else saying the evidence available on the subject is such that we are, basically, forced by the data to assume they were the same person was good as well. Personally, as has happened in other "mythological" topics, I can't rule out that there might have been a separate Cephas, who, somehow, got misread/misinterpreted by later scribes into being the same person as Peter and "merged" into one person. (And, yes, there is an old argument that not only Peter and Cephas were different people, but Simon too. Oy.) The early source by Clement of Alexandria on the topic has not survived, unfortunately, which makes it really hard to say anything, as the arguments are in effect based on some document which has not survived in any meaningful way. And the question of Mandaeans, who claim to be in some way Jewish and follow John the Baptist, despite at best weak evidence for the former and the fact that the latter doesn't seem to have been particularly important to them before being used as an excuse for Muslims to tolerate them, is another example of same. We are, basically, screwed by the fact that a lot of the documentation has been lost. Unfortunately, I don't know how prominently and often that information needs to be repeated, and how much stress to give it, in all the articles in which some reputable academics seem to think it might apply.

A lot of the same things can be said about other religious groups. If we count the Norse gods as a religion, there is a reasonable question what stories, if any, about the Vanir may have existed and prompted some of them becoming hostages to the Aesir. We don't apparently have them either. Etruscan religion, which seems to have been very important to them, is another virtual unknown to us today, although we do have good evidence that their god Charun had a thing for hitting people a lot. And I really don't want to even think about the ithyphallic yogi found at Mohenjo-Daro and what if anything he might mean about whatever they might have believed.

So far as I know, the majority of what are counted the most reliable sources about most of these periods seem to be from sources on one side or another. Joseph Campbell, Mircea Eliade, and others all made great contributions on subjects of early religion, and I certainly think that any directly relevant material from them should be included as well.

If you would have any interest in maybe helping to get together a list of "overview" works (like encyclopedias and others) which could be used to help maybe establish some sort of more independent academic balance on such articles, or maybe reliable secondary sources which discuss such matters, maybe including atheistic/agnostic views, that might be very useful. If you know of any, that is. There is also a very big question about how much weight to give such material, particularly sources which count religious beliefs/traditions/whatever as some form of lie. Robert Price made a very good point about how Mormon historical beliefs are not supported by evidence and have been basically dismissed by a lot of academia. Unfortunately, we know a good deal more about Joseph Smith and his beliefs and ideas than we do about say Jesus, Paul, and the others. While I agree with him about the Mormons, because of the other information available, I am much less sure that it makes sense to think that the same should be done about people and an era about which there is a lot less contemporary evidence to work with.

Anyway, if you would have any interest in maybe helping me set up some sort of "academic views of religion" group, or maybe one on early Christianity, even if only in the set up, that would be very welcome. Those are as serious of topics as others, and should be as well covered, although I think, right now, one of the big problems for a lot of us is knowing what to add, where, and on the basis of what sources.

Shutting up now, he said to sighs of relief from others. ;) John Carter (talk) 15:10, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

You're always welcome here, John. I dunno. As I burble around the nooks and crankies of this glowsome wabe, I plug away at the dykes here and there, reciting mantrically to myself as I type, those lines from Auden's The Quest:

Fresh addenda are published every day

To the encyclopedia of the Way,

only mispronouncing that as fresh pudendabecause there's so much 'shameful' confusion in here, one despairs.

I think I only have time to play the local garage mechanic, mucking about with bolts and nuts, even though on the larger scheme of things, I've almost shot my own bolt. Marvellous things are done, but whole sections seem beyond repair, and the religious-political side is so filled with POV battles it does seem rather pointless.

Still, keep me tuned. I can't commit myself to anything these days, except ensuring my corn and tomato crops get enough water by dropping formal complaints to the local water carrier for gross malfunctions in their system which mean their contractual obligations to ensure I remain washed, and my small gardens fresh, are not fulfilled. I haven't even had time to respond in rhyme to JGG above, who caused me to write 100 lines of doggerel in response, until I thought better of it, or rather worse of them, and went back to hauling buckets back to the vegie patch. Tough summer.Nishidani (talk) 15:47, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

There is one thing I more or less saw over the weekend which, if I can actually force myself to get active on the content, is one which I would definitely welcome independent input on. I've read some stuff on the Mandaeans in particular over the weekend, and, honestly, their views of history seem about as reliable as the Book of Mormon's. Abraham, Moses, and Jesus were all apostate Mandaeans (no real problem there), but John the Baptist, the Egyptians Moses left, and presumably, Abraham's relatives in Ur were all Mandaeans. I dunno if history really supports that. And, at least in the articles I've seen, there's no real evidence that they were any earlier than roughly the time of Jesus, despite their own claims to the contrary. And there is always the possibility, although thankfully I haven't seen this explicitly yet, that the Mandaeans of today were at some point just a later splinter group from the earlier, possibly more "legitimate" (?), Mandaeans. The Mandaeans have recently been very much victimized in Iran and Iraq, and I am extremely sympathetic to the harrasment and violence they've received. Several have also, recently, moved to the West. They don't allow converts, and presumably don't prosletyze, but there is a real possibility that at some point in the near future we might have a Mandaean or Mandaean-sympathetic editor who claims bias as the reason for content not reflecting their own views. If that situation does arise, it would be I think very useful to have someone who is neither Jew, Christian, or Muslim, and presumably has no particular axe to grind, involved or previously involved in the development of the content. And there are additional questions about how much weight, if any, to give these apparently johnny-come-lately opinions in the main articles on Abraham, Moses, and the like. Anyway, if I can force myself to do this in the near future, I would welcome the input of someone who doesn't have any apparent bias against the Mandaeans. John Carter (talk) 16:12, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

I don't think anything in religious books is 'historical' in the proper acceptance of that term. There are only mythistorical tales that brush up against history throughout, but the authors weren't interested in facts. We only have complex legends which, however, like the admittedly completely ahistorical myths of Greece, are far more hermeneutically revealing about 'la condition humaine' in its manifold cultural refractions than anything you get in ancient (and many modern) historians. My interest there is not doctrinal, but the hermeneutics of these works as poetic texts, and that's a long way from the dryasdust grind of empirical studies on the 'historical core' behind the legendary material. So, I'm not much use there. Of course, if specific article might benefit from a glance-over, eventually drop me a note, and I'll take a 'dekko' or captain's. But I'm fairly intent on articles that can be built, rather than articles were blow-ins, of the kind you indicate, talk too much. Cheers John Nishidani (talk) 20:34, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Well, thanks for talking sense on Yeshu, unfortunately I cannot keep up with the pace of deletion etc. and that article is always going to be an apologia for 13thC medieval defences. The latest is that not just the renaissance and 17th-19thC material, but even the modern Hebrew dictionaries (which were fought against tooth and nail to begin with) have been redeleted. The article's title now says "this article is about Yeshu in rabbinical literature to make it self-defining that it is not about Yeshu (name). I have seen this before in Christian, Mormon, Muslim and Hindu articles where a blog mentality rules. But I'm wondering if Yeshu (name) material pace Yeshua (name) Isa (name) has a place on Wikipedia at all? In ictu oculi (talk) 07:06, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

You happen to be right on most points, but the majority refuses to budge, and therefore the article will remain the mess it is. As soon as you drop it, my hunch is the page will no longer be edited, which may be a good thing, since it is unreadable. My practice is, if I find the 'community' unresponsive to commonsense, I work another page where things can get done without endless nagging. The rule is, unless you can expeditiously run through a poor page, and fix it to minimum standards of informed clarity, it's a waste of time to persist remonstrating logically and with evidence on the talk page. The last time I wrote a commissioned article for an encyclopedia, I was asked to do so by the general editor, who held a view of the subject diametrically opposed to my own. It took a week, and, except I think for one minute grammatical correction (it was for a foreign language work), was published as written. That is how the real world of scholarship works, on recognition of competence and trust in fairness. See you around, Cheers Nishidani (talk) 11:22, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

Namri Songtsen

I think you are confusing first for "greatest", or "largest". All the ref says is that the "first" knowledge of mathematics and medicine came from China, in the sixth century, not the greatest amount, nor the one with the largest influence. It could have been something as simple as 1+1=2 or how to cure coughing. The largest influence on Tibetan medicine came from India, some came from the silk road since alot of contact occured as evidenced by the Dunhuang manuscripts, and during Mongol times I know greek and other influences permeated Tibet too. And I myself seriously doubt that Tibet lacked indegenous medicine before the 600s, since even primitive hunter gatherers have knowledge of medicine, but to insert that would have been original research.DÜNGÁNÈ (talk) 15:53, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

the source said China first in the sixth century, your other sources mention Indian and Greek influences in the 7th century after Namri died. We know where most of it came from, first does not mean best, greatest or imply superiority.DÜNGÁNÈ (talk) 16:02, 17 July 2011 (UTC) Text.

Let's examine the state of the text as I found it. There is an assertion.

'The Tibetans obtained their first knowledge of mathematics (arithmetic) and medicine from China during the reign of Namri Songtsen.'

Despite this being an extremely minor point in an article about a period we know almost nothing about with any degree confidence, we don't even know if Namri Songtsen was born in 569 or 605, there has been an apparently prodigious effort to secure this assertion in sources, which turn out to be:-

(1)Americanized Encyclopaedia britannica: rev. and amended A dictionary of arts, sciences and literature, to which is added biographies of living subjects. 96 colored maps and numerous illustrations, Volume 9. the University of Michigan: Belford-Clarke co. 1890. p. 5826. Retrieved 2011-7-1. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)Americanized Encyclopaedia Britannica: Rev. and Amended A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences and Literature, to which is Added Biographies of Living Subjects. 96 Colored Maps and Numerous Illustrations.

(2)The home encyclopædia: compiled and revised to date from the leading encyclopædias, Volume 18. Harvard University: Educational publishing co. 1895. p. 5826. Retrieved 2011-7-1. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)The Home Encyclopædia: Compiled and Revised to Date from the Leading Encyclopædias

(3)Americanized Encyclopedia britannica, revised and amended: A dictionary of arts, sciences and literature; to which is added biographies of livings subjects ... the University of California: The "Examiner". 1890. p. 5826. Retrieved 2011-7-1. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)Volume 9 of Americanized Encyclopedia Britannica, Revised and Amended: A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences and Literature; to which is Added Biographies of Livings Subjects

(4)Hugh Chisholm, ed. (1911). The encyclopædia britannica: a dictionary of arts, sciences, literature and general information, Volume 26 (11 ed.). the University of Virginia: At the University press. p. 926. Retrieved 2011-7-1. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)The Encyclopædia Britannica: A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Literature and General Information, Hugh Chisholm

(5)Thomas Spencer Baynes, ed. (1888). The Encyclopaedia Britannica: a dictionary of arts, sciences, and general literature, Volume 23 (9 ed.). the New York Public Library: C. Scribner's sons. p. 345. Retrieved 2011-7-1. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)The Encyclopaedia Britannica: A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and General Literature, Thomas Spencer Baynes

(6)Hugh Chisholm (1911). The Encyclopedia Britannica: a dictionary of arts, sciences, literature and general information, Volume 26 (11 ed.). The Encyclopedia Britannica Co. p. 926. Retrieved 2011-7-1. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)The Encyclopedia Britannica: A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Literature and General Information, Hugh Chisholm

(7)William Harrison De Puy (1893). The Encyclopædia britannica: a dictionary of arts, sciences, and general literature ; the R.S. Peale reprint, with new maps and original American articles, Volume 23 (9 ed.). the New York Public Library: Werner Co. p. 345. Retrieved 2011-7-1. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)The Encyclopædia Britannica: A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and General Literature ; the R.S. Peale Reprint, with New Maps and Original American Articles, William Harrison De Puy

(8)Translated by William Woodville Rockhill, Ernst Leumann, Bunyiu Nanjio (1907). The Life of the Buddha and the early history of his order: derived from Tibetan works in the Bkah-hgyur and Bstan-hgyur followed by notices on the early history of Tibet and Khoten. the University of Michigan: K. Paul, Trench, Trübner. p. 211. Retrieved 2011-7-1. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); More than one of |pages= and |page= specified (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

(9)William Woodville Rockhill, Ernst Leumann, Bunyiu Nanjio (1884). The life of the Buddha: and the early history of his order. Harvard University: Trübner & co. p. 211. Retrieved 2011-7-1. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); More than one of |pages= and |page= specified (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

(10) The Life of the Biddha (sic!) and the Early History of His Order Derived from Tibetan Works in the Bkah-hgyur and Bstan-khoten. Taylor & Francis. p. 211. Retrieved 2011-7-1. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)

I.e. there is nothing but 7 references to the same basic source, as the encyclopedias copy from each other and 3 refs to the same book on the life of the Buddha dated to the 1880s. The former are outdated popular encyclopedias from the late 19th century, and the only sign of scholarship is in the names of William W. Rockhill, one of the heroes of my youth, and Nanjō Bun'yū (南条文雄, with the outdated transcription of Bunyiu Nanjio), the latter of whom, unlike Rockwill, was not a Tibetologist..

So, the reader who chances on the page asks herself. Why on earth this humongous linking to outdated popular encyclopedias, on a technical issue like this, when we have a burgeoning scientific literature on Tibetan history, even in the last three decades, since Beckwith's pioneering studies, on medicine, mathematics, etc., among the Tibetans?

Tibet at that time was at a crossroads between expanding empires, Turkish, Arab, Indian, Uyghur, China, and there is even strong evidence of Greek influence in the sciences and arts in the 7th century from Byzamtium. It is a pure ethnocentric assumption that anything civilising in Tibet came first from China, (writing:'It could have been something as simple as 1+1=2 or how to cure coughing', unfortunately suggests that Tibetans were dumb until instructed from China.) especially when the Chinese word for Tibet at that time 吐蕃 in Sui/Tang sources refers to Amdo and Kham, not to 'Tibet' as we understand it (See Luciano Petech, Central Tibet and the Mongols:the Yüan-Sa-skya period of Tibetan history, Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, 1990 p.12.)

Whatever, the references listed are simply not acceptable in a modern encyclopedia, since they date to a time when knowledge of Tibet was exiguous, and scholarship on its past in Chinese and Western sources very primitive. My own view is that the passage could be improved by removal, which removes the contention here. Nishidani (talk) 16:44, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

I've nailed down two sources, one a primary, the other a secondary source. The primary source says exactly what your original edit had, so you were spot-on. My trouble on reading the page was the huge number of poor sources used. The secondary source by RA Stein tells us that other Tibetan sources attribute the entry of Chinese astrology and medicine to his son. I've included both.

Both sources however long predate the research results now emerging as Tibetologists examine more broadly the movement of science and knowledge over the silky and musk routes, and therefore I have retained the bibliographical stuff I introduced. We have to handle any ancient sources with great care, since (esp.here) they carry a hermeneutic agenda, and often a political agenda. I've always worked on the principle that primary sources must be filtered through modern secondary source usage, as here. Still, you taught me something. I was more familiar with the modern research than the Tibetan traditions on this obscure point Regards Nishidani (talk) 21:20, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

Thank your for your explanation. I used primary sources, since they tend to be very old, since its not copyrighted I can avoid getting into a copyright mess....DÜNGÁNÈ (talk) 00:34, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Motion regarding Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/West Bank - Judea and Samaria

By motion of the Arbitration Committee voted on at requests for amendment,

The editing restrictions placed on Nishidani (talk · contribs) in the West Bank - Judea and Samaria case are lifted effective at the passage of this motion. Nishidani is reminded that articles in the area of conflict, which is identical to the area of conflict as defined by the Palestine-Israel articles case, remain the subject of discretionary sanctions; should he edit within this topic area, those discretionary sanctions continue to apply.

For the Arbitration Committee, Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 17:34, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Eeeee. nableezy - 17:41, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Instead of making a dozen edits to swell my editcount illegally, I'd just like to make a general comment here. Get stuffed, Nabster! I was so happy tilling my version of Eden, the vegie patch, and now I gotta sweat it out in porridge over in the Stony desert of the IP area? Sounds like a change of prison! from solitary confinement to the embattled salients of a crusader's castle. I'd like to register a profound note of thanks to Ravepopper as well for submitting the request. For those who were kind enough to put in a good word my way, thanks. For those who disagree, no hard feelings. I have one huge edit to make, at Hebron, to relieve me of a nightmare that has lasted over two years, and then to sleep. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 19:45, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Hebron

Thanks for your edits on Hebron. But if I could please ask a favor of you -- that you try to consolidate your edits a bit. Forty-four of the last 50 edits are entirely yours. It makes it hard for others to see the history of such edits (especially people like me on very slow internet connections). I think doing everything in the sandbox first would better suit what you are trying to do. Thanks again for your contributions. -asad (talk) 16:07, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

Everything? I had an hour's work today wiped out by a pixie bot. What I am doing should be fairly obvious. The page is quite good textually, but it has a mess of different citational templates. Checking every cite, reformatting according to a single citational template, the sheer dumb routine of trying to make the page aesthetically pleasant, is extremely laborious and a rather thankless task, but I'm happy to do it, as long as I don't have to drag it out for yonks. I'd be as pleased as punch if someone would offer to do this mechanical drudgery, so I could sit back and read a backlog of books. I'm hardly touching the article, so really there is no worry for editors concerned they might miss some devious little POVing by my disreputable self. If you wait a day or so, you might just see that all is in order, and that this is just janitorial work. The real job here is, once the formatting is fixed, to go slowly through the sources and improve the url links to pages, find better sources for the ones that are a bit ragged with age, and control that the sources we do have actually say what is imputed to them. I can find nothing in Khalidi so far that justifies the attribution to him of the information re the 1874 sanjak and Hebron. Apologies for any frustration caused. But Ashley kennedy3 and myself, apart from the stalwart Hertz1800, seem to have been the only people over the last 4 years committed to building this into the article that city deserves, and perhaps my return to the I/P area, now Ashley's gone bush, left me with the impression I'd have to go it on my own. Nishidani (talk) 16:30, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

Tibetan topics

I need help creating an article on the Wutun area in Qinghai, also known as Seng ge gshong to Tibetans. I also plan on expanding this Shan'ge article about the types of songs sung by different peoples (han, salars, Tibetans, and Mongols). You seem to edit Tibetan topics alot. I just got a bunch of sources dumped on me by another user and have no idea what these things were.江南吳越 (talk) 21:49, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm just a little busy now, but this place works on a slow rhythm. Never rush, is the only advice I can give for the moment. The more preliminary research you do offwiki befor editing, the more likely it is to stick. You can count on me to look over and examine whatever you build, and if I happen to know something you don't (highly unlikely) I'll chip in. Just work quietly away, and drop me a note when you like some specific help, or if it's something about wiki methods, lay the problem out, and I, or someone watching this page, will help out. Good editing. Cheers 江南吳越- Nishidani (talk) 22:52, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Treatise

Dude, you do realize I was just commenting on someone else's inability to spell? --Khajidha (talk) 04:15, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

More dud than dude. I retained the term in my head, nothing else. Nothing personal. Nishidani (talk) 20:14, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Nawi

Hi, please simply stop removing a fine cat and join in the discussion on the talkpage thanks - Off2riorob (talk) 20:42, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Where are you on that talk page. Had you read it you would have noticed that, given the delicate WP:BLP questions raised by various editors, an administrator decided that anything on this issue be thrashed out to consensus before messing with the page. 'A fine cat' does not consist of one person, for which it appears to have been invented. That looks very much like a POV cat. There's plenty of that taxonomic stuff you can throw at Nawi (see the Moshe Katzav page, as I said in my edit summary) if branding is your game.Nishidani (talk) 20:49, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Dude - stop beating yourself up - Ed said your were not excessive and we worked it out - there is little to warrant your self blocking one month - please reconsider and just trout yourself.. Off2riorob (talk) 22:02, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

I understand you completely. I, too, am getting pretty fed up with the nonsense that goes on here. A month's vacation sounds like a good idea. --Ravpapa (talk) 14:52, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

A reply awaits

I have replied to you, belatedly, on my talk page. Regarding your self-disciplining: A whole month! Aren't you being too hard on yourself? Please consider an immediate amnesty. Hertz1888 (talk) 00:34, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

German task

Hi, Joseph's Tomb is missing a substantial amount of history that I only have a German academic source for. Might that be your cup of tea? I can email the source if you like. Zero^talk 09:15, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

Well, I don't think my self-suspension for a month for a possible 1RR violation extends to working off-line, but you may wish to clear this obscure point of wiki law with the clerks at the wiki circumlocution office, to avoid some hairsplitting remonstration replete with diffs and suspicions of virtual meatpuppeting! By all means, drop me an email with the text. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 11:04, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

你好

上面的改动是根据历史情况的，希望你尊重维基百科的自由。李海斌 (talk) 18:10, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

馬馬虎虎

ウィキペディアは自由とは何の関係もない. 信頼できる情報源は我々の編集者としての自由を支配する.

祝你每天愉快 Nishidani (talk) 19:43, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

想问你下，你是从什么地方知道说文成公主离开的是CHINA的。

李海斌 (talk) 12:36, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

請仔細閱讀以下 Nishidani (talk) 12:57, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Patron of Joseph's Tomb

		Patron of Joseph's Tomb
		Awarded in gratitude for your efforts and diligence at Joseph's Tomb. Your valued additions have enhanced the article! Thank you. Chesdovi (talk) 18:53, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Contributions à un article

Bonsoir,

Je vois que tu es encore là. Et moi aussi. :-) L'Arbcom m'a prié de rester discret. Alors j'interviens sous IP.

Ecrire un article en anglais est trop difficile pour moi. Mais le sujet du M_ _ _ i serait un beau sujet à développer.

Comme le "requin gris" apprécie ton travail, avec le soutien de cinq zero's, il y a un "momentum" à saisir qui permettrait d'en faire quelque chose de formidable.

La vierge svelte pourrait être d'un grand recours également.

Amitiés, Fuit sec (81.247.88.127 ([[User talk:81.247.88.127|talk]]) 19:39, 13 September 2011 (UTC))

Alors, mon 'vieux'! D'accord. J'ai mis un peu plus de temps que prévu ce soir pour systématiser les références en notre section bibliographique. Je vais la finir demain.

Je suis très heureux que tu es encore ici. Oui, en effet, il faut vraiment battre le fer pendant qu'il est chaud ( existe cet idiome en français aussi?) On ne doît pas courir le risque de perdre cette merveilleuse opportunité! Rassure-toi que les choses ont changé. Le vent souffle dans nos voiles.Nishidani (talk) 21:23, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

The Procrastinator's Barnstar

		The Procrastinator's Barnstar
		In recognition of the long and winding road you've travelled in finally getting around to the Mufti. --NSH001 (talk) 21:14, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Oh fuck it. Editconflict, and I hadta remangle or remongrelize my french letters to the cobber above! But thanks pal!Nishidani (talk) 21:23, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

The Mysterious Missing Mufti

Hi, Can you shed any light on the problem I just noted at Talk:Grand Mufti of Jerusalem? Zero^talk 13:40, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Answered, as best I can, on the page. By the way, have you got access to, or read, Pappé's The Rise and Fall of a Palestinian Dynasty: The Husaynis, 1700-1948? I'll have to order it, but I live in a place where donkeys have to carry goods over hillsides, more or less, and that will take time.Nishidani (talk) 15:33, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Hi

我的老天，你也会中文？Good to see you're around, or underneath. If you have time take a peek at the WP:EN attempts that have been picked up per Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Judaism and feel free to comment on my Talk if I'm overstepping in any area. 多保重。 In ictu oculi (talk) 09:51, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

(天哪! 你是中國人吧)

I'm as busy as a pro on Pimp street with the al-Husayni article at the moment. Had a look. The consensus seems to be, so far, 'Palestine'. If it swings, let me know. I could imagine the mess and endless conflicts that would occur if it became the norm to write 'Land of Israel' for all Jewish-related articles, and Holy Land for all Christian-related articles, and Al-Quds for all Islam-related articles, and 'Xīcáng' for all China-related articles mentioning Tibet. . .:再見! Nishidani (talk) 11:53, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

email notice

I'm sending you a present. I hope 15 MB is not too big for your mail box. If nothing arrives within a day, let me know. Zero^talk 15:19, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

some input

Ezra Nawi (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

At Ezra Nawi? I've just hauled it out of the slough of stuby despond in which it languished over a month ago. I think I fixed one or two things you mentioned, as per my latest list on the talk page. It's much larger now though, and needs critical review. I'd appreciate if you could give me the one-over, and provide me with insight and input to improve it. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 12:51, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Well, the topic is well out of my expertise but your edits look NPOV and like a clear improvement to me, well done, regards. - Off2riorob (talk) 18:57, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

ref name

Yo. Use ref name only when the exact same reference, meaning the content between the ref tags, including page numbers, is used multiple times. Also, only define it once, as in only put <ref name=nableezy>{{Harvnb|Nableezy|2011|p=1}}</ref> once. Any subsequent use can be called by simply including <ref name=nableezy />. Also, you cannot use one name on multiple references. Let me know if this doesnt make sense. nableezy - 21:07, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

It makes a lot of sense. In fact I followed it strictly, and kept getting (ref tag) problem notices when I previewed. Now, I know that it's hard to wrap your mind round some problems, but here you have a two-generational gap, with a geriatric geezer wheezing, and a young bloke hissing in a technocratic tutorial. I do my best Nab, but it's plainly not enough. I've asked Neil to dob in as my wiper-up after I've edited. But he too is a busy lad. So, son, there are some things you just have to learn to put up with when hanging around the metholated methusolahdidahs of this woild. Either get used to my sloppiness or give me the flick pass, and spend your time on useful things, like rap, ganja, jihad etc.Nishidani (talk) 15:00, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Don't worry too much about those ref error messages in previews when you're only editing a section. The software only sees the section you're editing (which is why it's a lot quicker than editing the whole article) so it will sometimes complain about what it thinks is a missing counterpart to a ref, when in fact it is there, just in another part of the article it can't see. --NSH001 (talk) 17:41, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Nab is right that each unique ref name must only be defined once. However, it does no harm if you assign a name to every reference, as long as you make sure you don't inadvertently use the same name for two different refs (and essential to do so if using list-defined references, which I'm quite fond of, as an alternative way of keeping citation clutter out of article text). But it doesn't do any harm either not to assign ref names (for refs used only once) if you're not using LDRs. Nab - I think (but will have to check) AWB will automatically clean up duplicate ref names - I ran it just now, and it didn't find any, which probably means you got'em all. --NSH001 (talk) 22:46, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm still posing myself the question, which would interest Raymond Tallis. Why is it that I can pick up a book on a new subject, intricate, obscure, full of arcane trivia about phonetics, or cultural structures, and dither about nodding 'yep','no, that's wrong', 'that's logical', 'No. something odd here', and then, when I come here, and am given pellucid instructions on a simple digital manoeuver, fuck up gloriously. Perhaps hostility to technical things? I refuse to have anything to do with phones, let alone cellphones, for example. But, no. I learnt to use a computer by throwing away the manual and using it empirically, in two hours. I've fixed televisions, video-ricorders, etc. It must be psycho-illogical.Nishidani (talk) 15:06, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

At your request, I took another look, and couldn't see anything that you'd obviously "fucked up". I gave AWB another spin anyway, and it only wanted to make a few, very minor, changes, which I didn't save since I can see you're editing again and didn't want to cause you an edit conflict. AWB should be used sparingly anyway, though it's OK to try it after a long spell of heavy editing as a final clean-up (its main purpose is do repetitive editing, such as cleaning up links to dab pages on large numbers of articles at a time - the clean-up part is just a side show). --NSH001 (talk) 17:41, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Another thought - People hate following instructions. Wikipedia is full of instructions, mostly well-written and comprehensive, but one sees people ignoring them all the time. You learn a language (or mathematics, or programming/using a computer) by doing it. It helps enormously if you have a teacher or somebody or something (such as a computer) to correct you immediately you make a mistake. --NSH001 (talk) 19:45, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Well, you're it, 'nolens volens', and I'm now going to sing 'Teacher's Pet', and you can take 'pet' in the French sense, or as any stray mongrel that looks like it needs a guiding hand to the kennel :=)Nishidani (talk) 19:54, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Just got back and saw your note. My conjecture re AWB was partly right, it's fixed some of the problems, but not all of them. Gimme a little while to correct the rest manually. Explanation to follow. --NSH001 (talk) 17:01, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

OK, I think I've got most (all?) of them now. Let me know if you spot any I've missed. One potential pitfall I've just noticed: AWB has changed some of the ref names to lower case e.g.,<ref name=bronner09 />, not Bronner09. Dunno why it's done that, bit of a proctalgia, methinks. Also beware, I've consolidated the refs so they're only defined once. This is nice and pleasing for a pedant like me, but has the disadvantage that if someone deletes the sentence/phrase where the ref is defined, all the other refs will be messed up - so try not to delete anything where a ref is defined, or if you do, then re-define it elsewhere. Having said that, I think there is a very clever bot that will come along eventually and fix it. (Using list-defined refs will also avoid this pitfall, but I don't think we want to use them here.)

I notice several places where you attach a note to a ref. It is possible to do this in what I think is a more pleasing way, by having a ref cited within a ref, but it's quite tricky to do. Example at User:NSH001/sandbox. If you'd like something like this, it can be done, but I'd rather leave it for a while.

Re your latest note, I'm not sure what you mean by one thing running into another. It looks fine to me. What browser are you using, and where exactly is the problem? --NSH001 (talk) 18:36, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Book of Deborah

Hi, I don't mean to disturb your semi-retirement, but can you shed some light on what you meant by the "Book of Deborah," in relation to this edit? Did you perhaps mean Tomer Devorah, or just the Song of Deborah?—Biosketch (talk) 09:13, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Of course, you only interrupted my post-prandial digestion! I didn't mean anything by 'The Book of Deborah'. In a hasty edit, I merely (witlessly) copied what the impeccable source says. Lustick has evidently conflated in his remarks 'The Book of Judges' with 'the Book of Deborah' which forms chapter 5, as you, and Lustick, would know. I've of course taken the opportunity to provide the right link. I may live near the Pope but don't arrogate his infallibility, and in this share common ground with Lustick, and most reasonable people.Nishidani (talk) 10:32, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Life in Palestine: there is very little evidence to support the claim of de Hahn being a homosexual

You only cite on article which alleges homosexuality...but you have no proof — Preceding unsigned comment added by SwaRajSwaDesh (talk • contribs) 17:58, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Proof if ever that you didn't even read what I added to the text before reverting me three times, and eliminating three new sources which qualify as RS on this issue. By the way, SwaRajSwaDesh is a pretty obvious give-away, can't you get something more obscure to make the same point?Nishidani (talk) 18:13, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

besides reference to "Jacob Israel de Haan: sexology, poetry, politics" I don't see any other reference. You seem to be very emotional about this issue. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SwaRajSwaDesh (talk • contribs) 18:24, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

I thought you said you were not going to report me for violation of editing terms:

Request concerning SwaRajSwaDesh

User who is submitting this request for enforcement Nableezy on behalf of Nishidani (talk · contribs) 18:14, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Warned on 27 September by Nishidani (talk · contribs)

Additional comments by editor filing complaint

An account registered today has repeatedly removed material from the article Jacob Israël de Haan.I am not involved in this, I was only asked to create the report by Nishidani. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SwaRajSwaDesh (talk • contribs) 18:30, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Not at all, though I take it that by suggesting I am 'emotional' about homosexuality, you subtly impute to me some personal attraction in the matter. I get slightly pissed off when dumb things are done that waste my time. I am attracted to facts, and that is the end of it. The pun on Gandhian names and linguistics in your brand new user name left me smiling wisely, since I had some objections when I edited the Ezra Nawi page, dealing with a Gandhian activist, who is homosexual, and who is probably for swaraj in Palestine.Nishidani (talk) 18:41, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

besides reference to "Jacob Israel de Haan: sexology, poetry, politics" I don't see any other reference. Can you please provide me with the other sources you mentioned? You are straying off the subject. And you did say you were not going to report my trespass of editing etiquette which evidently was an outright lie as you did report me anyway.. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SwaRajSwaDesh (talk • contribs) 18:56, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

If you didn't see any other reference, it was because you were so busy pushing the undo button you didn't take the time to read the edits you were cancelling, which mention

• Robert F. Aldrich, Colonialism and homosexuality,Psychology Press, 2003 p.84.
• Menachem Friedman, 'Haredim and Palestinians in Jerusalem,' in Marshall J. Berger, Ora Ahimeir, Jerusalem: a city and its future, Syracuse University Press, 2002, pp.235-255, p.238
• Gert Hekma, 'De Haan, Jacob Israel' in Robert Aldrich, Garry Wotherspoon (eds.) Who's who in gay and lesbian history: from antiquity to World War II, Routledge, 2003 p.143

Add that to the Hekma quote you elided earlier, and it amounts to wiping out four reliable sources in a few minutes of temerarious censorship. Nishidani (talk) 19:03, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

If you apologize, and promise to hew strictly to the rules here, I'll request that the AE request be ignored this time. or if I can I will withdraw it. I'd be quite happy to rewrite that whole page so that it becomes a quality article. Nishidani (talk) 19:05, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

J'lem A City and Its Future: while being a very informative historical exposee there is no mention of homosexuality

Colonialism and homosexuality By Robert F. Aldrich from what I can see online the opinion is based upon de Haan's writing--a very weak proof

only Hekma seems to come close to passing from mere allegation to fact. But again, musing in poetry is not evidence of anything except a restless imagination. He was obviously part of a decadent movement before moving to J'lem. What he did in J'lem his only speculation.

I see that you are a prodigious polymath and I respect you. My editorial faux-pas were just that...I find Wikipedia's editing system to be very counter-intuitive (the talk function especially). I should have seen how the shears work before setting upon the garden and for this I do apologize with a contrite spirit and truly repentant heart.

I am not convinced that de Haan was a homosexual. It seems wrong to label him as such without more compelling evidence. Anyone who effectively opposes Zionism is demonized in one way or another. But perhaps here lies the better question: what did he do that incurred their wrath to such a point that he was murdered? — Preceding unsigned comment added by SwaRajSwaDesh (talk • contribs) 20:04, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Well, you are new to editing here. There are rules. What you did is akin to moving the Queen in chess without troubling to unblock her progress by first moving the queen, bishop or king's 's pawn out to create space for her. The rule you overlook is that what we believe, indeed what we are convinced is the truth, must not interfere with what we write. What we write is singularly restricted to what WP:RS state. We are humble secretaries, or, if you like, removalists, who relocate information in reliable sources from articles and books to wikispace, guarding against damage to the goods conveyed by ensuring our portage (a lovely word reintroduced by George Steiner back into English) does not meddle with the contents. Like dragomans, we are allowed only to paraphrase faithfully what is said in the original source so that its essential meaning survives in the article.

This means that, whether de Haan was homosexual or not is irrelevant. Most reliable sources report that he was, and definitely the puns he uses in his Dutch novels which describe sex leave little to the imagination. One is forbidden to make judgements on the 'truth' of what Reliable Sources say when judging whether it is suitable for inclusion or not. One can, if one dislikes the putative facts or opinions, challenge the source as not adequate to what wikipedia requires for sourcing articles. But, if the publisher is a respectable university press, or a major imprint like Routledge, and the author a known authority in his field, we have to register what the book and the author affirm. There are technical exceptions to this, where discretion, or WP:BLP issues are at stake, or if the esteemed source patently gets things wrong, or is using a source which is known to be disproven or dubious. But the general rule is the one to cleave to.

In your remarks above, you have confused your personal belief as a reader and editor, with what sources say. I know this is hard to wear, if one wants to contribute, but it is one of the basic conditions we are required to accept if we are to work here.

I find homosexuality to be an absolutely 'normal', if the word 'normal' has any substantive meaning. (I don't understand it myself, and regard it as rather a false, and derogative label) I find nothing scandalous in the fact. Sociologically, just as the Jew subject to the antisemitism of Christian civilization understood instinctively the situation of blacks in slavery or segregration, so many homosexuals, subject to the same social hostility, were extremely sensitive to analogous conditions in discriminated populations, as de Haan and Ezra Nawi were, or are still, in regard to Palestinians.

In any case, I will put in a word at the AE page suggesting my complaint be cancelled, as there appears to be a honest misunderstanding. But I hope you examine the guidelines on editing to grasp what are the limitations on our personal beliefs imposed by our agreement to edit here. No harm done, if the lesson is understood.Nishidani (talk) 20:29, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

I am looking over what you have written to me. I appreciate the time you have taken and will literally study your suggestions.

It is a busy time for me right now. I would like to keep this dialogue open. What you say in "The West Bank/Judea and Samaria Problem" is quite interesting. I am going to look over it more. One thing I noticed that needs clarification: what language is spoken by the modern Israeli? Just be advised that I consider it to be a demonic speech a linguistic freak more like a virus than a language and certainly not 'lashon hakodesh'.

Also, Wikipedia is really lacking in any decent information about the anti-zionist Rabbis especially pre WW II and it goes without saying WW I. Just look at the Brisker Rav and you will see my point or Moishe Blau. I had assumed this was a matter of fact and it never occurred to me that this could be changed. It would be a time commitment which I am not sure I can make but with your calmer mind prevailing perhaps we could talk more about the issues here.There has been published recently a 4 vol work on the The Brisker Rav (Itzhak Zev) so it seems unnecessary to have so little on him and what little there is to lack citation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SwaRajSwaDesh (talk • contribs) 15:25, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

You have clearly some considerable knowledge to add, from a world and perspective poorly represented here. My interests here can be subsumed the following way, I try to counter what we call Systemic bias, the domination of a hegemonic voice over all others. The major difficulty for the system we are working in, is that it has strict rules which requires close study in certain key areas. WP:NPOV, WP:RS particularly.

But I think with Rabbinical biographies some large leeway should be allowed. The ones you mention have considerable scope for improvement. The first rule is, never hurry, or be impatient. Gather your materials offline. See how articles are formulated, and use one (there are many on rabbis) as a model, by copying and pasting it on a work page. Rest assured that you can call on me here for help on anything where you are unsure. I think I may be able to help out on the historical side, on the wider contexts of 1917 onwards, where I have a large number of good secular academic sources that I will put at your disposition when required.

ps. I do understand how difficult my remarks on de Haan may appear to some, given the Levitical (toevah), and appreciate that you, unlike the generality, have patiently and temperately lent your ear to an interpretation that might otherwise be deemed unacceptable. Regards, and, take your time.Nishidani (talk) 16:55, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

I have read above.Thanks for your kind remarks.You are an honest man and what you say therefore has weight. I am going to take to heart your caution regarding patience and deliberate over a good first step might. The Satmar Rebbe might be wise. There is an article here http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Satmar_Hasidic_Dynasty

which seems better. All the best to you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SwaRajSwaDesh (talk • contribs) 16:57, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

And a very belated L'Shana Tova to you. My discourtesy in being distracted by content, rather than form, has weighed on my leisure this past week in this regard. I like to think of our future collaboration as one conducted under the Latin motto festina lente, not because you need be slow but rather because I'll probably need to study much that will be new to me, or not sufficiently fathomed though I have been reading some interesting material from Michel Warschawski recently that reminds me of several aspects of the subject I learnt about while studying the origins of Neturei Karta some years ago. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 17:18, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

L'Shana Tova ou'mseeka to you as well. Until after Succus or Succot, I will be preoccupied. Yom hakodesh or Yom Kippur has passed and the New year feels as if it has only now begun. Warschawski looks interesting. Your knowledge of Israeli politics seems vast. And your mention of George Steiner was not unheeded by me. I am quite surprised at his insight into the 'zionist problem'. He said somewhere, "If the price of having a state means torture it is not worth having." This is insightful and well put-such simplicity can be worth more than a book of observations. At least when viewed as a moral issue and weighed on the scales of 'human rights'--the problem is as he has framed it. The rabbinical-chassidic angle is not in opposition to this, but there is the additional disgust(for lack of a better word)of usurping God's plan with a forged man-made medina...human rights violations are merely the unavoidable outcome of this forgery. The problem I have with the political left is their ignorance of the Torah or their outright disparagement of it. But the Torah community almost without exception is seduced by the political right and certainly all their power is to be found on the right in Israel. But what good is the Torah for them if they can no longer see the outrageous suffering caused by this need for a nation? If they can no longer feel injustice? If they obtain new housing at the cost of destroyed Arab families and lives? If they build up a mighty community of Torah learning funded by money supplied by a gov't very anti-Torah? The holy ideals of Naturei Karta have been sold out. The state of affairs reminds me of that amazing passage of Dante's when he meets Sordello and because of the love of the refinement of that man's spirit must also recognize the coarseness of his own times and lament:

Ahi serva Italia, di dolore ostello, nave sanza nocchiere in gran tempesta...

and the whole piece up to

Fiorenza mia, ben puoi esser contenta di questa digression che non ti tocca,

I am consoled that in spite of this great 'selling out' of my fellow Jews I dimly perceive some pure Fiorenze that yet remains.

I hope that it is not my undoing in this nascent project that I am completely biased. My allegiance is with one-point of view alone and I wonder what objectivity I can possible offer.

Do you know anything about Ilan Pappe's history and is it reliable?

I feel a happiness in my heart when I read your responses. I detect in them the coruscations of a good and decent soul! — Preceding unsigned comment added by SwaRajSwaDesh (talk • contribs) 01:38, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

The word "forgery" within the larger problem, evoked a long train of thoughts as I wandered the streets on my morning's round of mundane chores. It evoked first of all, the tselem-demuth problem in Genesis, the tension, present also in Plato, between image and likeness, and all the immense philosophical issues that arise from the yearning gap that alienates things in themselves from their representations. If man (generic) is made in the image of ****, then humanity at large is united by paternal resemblance. Among men, however, we are all marked by differences, thus each is like to **** transcendentally, but unlike the other in sublunary terms. Dante, I recalled, mentions precisely this, and in his humility, admits language fails the former (direct reimaging of the eternal, though it "saves the phenomena" of human representation:

Oh quanto è corto il dire e come fioco
al mio concetto! e questo, a quel ch’i’ vidi,
è tanto, che non basta a dicer ‘poco’.

O luce etterna che sola in te sidi,
sola t’intendi, e da te intelletta
e intendente te ami e arridi!

Quella circulazion che sì concetta
pareva in te come lume reflesso,
da li occhi miei alquanto circunspetta,

dentro da sé, del suo colore stesso, 130
mi parve pinta de la nostra effige:
per che ’l mio viso in lei tutto era messo.

Qual è ’l geomètra che tutto s’affige
per misurar lo cerchio, e non ritrova,
pensando, quel principio ond’ elli indige,

tal era io a quella vista nova:
veder voleva come si convenne
l’imago al cerchio e come vi s’indova;

ma non eran da ciò le proprie penne:
se non che la mia mente fu percossa 140
da un fulgore in che sua voglia venne.

A l’alta fantasia qui mancò possa;
ma già volgeva il mio disio e ’l velle,
sì come rota ch’igualmente è mossa,

l’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.

Zionism is just the 'accelerated grimace', contemporary and ephemeral, of a larger universal problem in human aggregation, and I do not think it wise to beset one's life with it, more than is necessary to be just in one's relations, and true to one's encounters with the depth of things. Just a snippet, poorly represented, of a rich train of thought your words engendered. Such stimuli are gifts. Best Nishidani (talk) 11:21, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Apologies. I allowed myself to get distracted. You asked of Ilan Pappé. No histories are reliable per se. They're all just-so stories, that, like wiki articles, fall to pieces if too closely examined. I like reading Pappé for the empathy he shows into the 'Arab (b(r))other', (sorry, but I was infected fatally by James Joyce as a boy). I think other scholars, many sharing his general outlook, are more reliable on Zionism and modern Israel's history. But, that said, as with any historian, it all depends on what specific detail is being narrated.Nishidani (talk) 19:27, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

linking to a category

You can link to a category by inserting a : before the word Category. So, for example, if you want to link to Category:Polish rabbis you can do Category:Polish rabbis. All the usual rules with wikilinks apply, such as piping to a different name, as I do with this category. If you neglect to include the colon you will place the page in the category. nableezy - 15:41, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Effmedead, but that's what I did, and all I got wuz commas! Well, (flustered wheeze, much scratching of the blister, ums and haas..) I admit that pruning magnolias, and harvesting quince, figs, and apples for jam-making, and perilously tinkering with bulb replacements in inaccessible lights on the walls of my staircase which had me teetering for a halfhour on a creaky ladder propped up by 10 volumes of the Oxford English Dictionary spread over two steps to create a base for the ladder, and the other oddjobs, don't leave a chappy in whatcha'd call a poise of intellectual clarity adequate to the technical nuances of category citation in the virtualpedia...Bout time for a suck on a marlboro and a cuppa.Nishidani (talk) 15:49, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Arrgh... I see whatcha sayen. Willdo, over and out.Nishidani (talk) 15:52, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Price tag

I found it very difficult to follow the talk page. Comments are interleaved, indented and signed so haphazardly that it is at times impossible to see who is making the comment, and whether they are quoting or responding to others.

Could you be a bit more explicit about what you are looking for? Are the Hebrew references being used to support a particular contentious claim? Do you want me to look for English versions of the articles cited (usually possible with Haaretz, rarely with Yediot)? RolandR (talk) 00:39, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Detailed reply on my talk page. RolandR (talk) 13:54, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

FYI

Talk:Israeli_settler_violence#Recent_edits --ElComandanteChe (talk) 16:18, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

the feurer's sourt

My own gargantuan capactity for mistypes gives me an deep sensitivity to the sight of them. It only when I see them in section headings that they really distress me though. I never learned to spell fuhrer, with or without an umlaut.

I have created an article on Safa Khulusi, the Iraqi scholar who argued that the Bard was from Basra. Since you are a noted Arabist, I'd welcome any corrections or comments. Most of it derives from a rather sanitised obit written by his son, a gastroenterologist in Hull, for his family's sins. It makes no mention of his Shakespeare discoveries. Sadly none of the sources I can access give a title or date of publication for the magnum opus. Paul B (talk) 14:07, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Will do, in fact have done (a bit). The patch I added is a bit WP:OR. I bet that novel had Nabokov whispering in Khulusi's ears.

I'm getting more tolerant of mispellings and mistypes after seeing what these fucking dumb-orwellian automatic spell-check programs can do in messing up a finely tuned piece of prose. Actually, the article's not bad at all, and I think you could wangle a DYK for it? Nishidani (talk) 15:37, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Chaney on the Earl of Oxford

Re Earl of Oxford, Chaney in fact says more about him and reproduces his portrait in Evolution of the Grand Tour; I take your point about the long quotation, though almost certainly authentic and v unusual for anyone to go there, let alone English earl, and Chaney published it before the biography did. The Greene to Shakespeare point important also and tends to give the lie to the Oxford wrote Shakespeare brigade... so please do cite; also add to bibliography as providing context for travels... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.148.146.62 (talk) 15:23, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

De Vere's travels began in 1575. The vessel on which Webbe served as a gunner was captured by the Turks two years earlier, in 1573, and from that period onwards, rising from galley-slave to gunner, he served as a master-gunner for the Turks, and was only ransomed in 1588. Just out of curiosity, could you elucidate how Webbe managed to be an eyewitness to the Earl of Oxford's ostensible doings in Palermo in 1575-6 when the former was in bondage to an enemy, Turkey? Nelson is sceptical of all this, it smacks of patronage-mongering, and unless strong corroboration from Elizabethan sources confirm its just-so story as possible, I'd hesitate at jumping at it. If Webbe's account were true, and 'al Italy over, he is acknowledged ever since for the same, the onely Chivallier and Noble man of England,' there must in any case be an abundance of mentions of his passage in the Italian literature of that period, which I'd appreciate your referring me to for my instruction. That kind of 'riscontro oggettivo' would certainly predispose this editor to approve a cite of this sort from Webbe. Thanks.Nishidani (talk) 17:22, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

I might add that the Greene to Shakespeare shift does not give the 'lie' to the Oxfordians, since the absurdity of the remark lies in the idea that there was something hugely singular in Oxford's suspicion his wife was having a bit (as as the French would say a 'bite') on the side, and that what is a staple of comedy or tragedy from time immemorial is here annexed to the paranoia of a minor historical fop. I don't know how familiar you are with continental literature and life, but this is the tritest of commonplaces, a topos in farce since the Miller's Tale. Nishidani (talk) 17:49, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Multiple uses of reference

Hi, Nishidani. I noticed that some of your references at Anonymous (film) are repeated. You can consolidate them by following instructions at WP:REF#Repeated citations. Erik (talk | contribs) 12:36, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Well, I usualy fuck up when I do. Of course, since I usually take just a few days to do a page, at the end I clean up, when the construction is more or less in place.Nishidani (talk) 12:48, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Wouldn't It Be Cool if Shakespeare Wasn't Shakespeare?

What a wonderful article you just added to James S. Shapiro (NYT).

It contains many brilliancies, but here are two that particularly appealed to me:

[On why historical dramas often change the story] "Real life lacks narrative tension; that's why people go to the movies."

[On claims of intrigues by Shakespeare professors to hide the author's identity] "Let me assure everybody that Shakespeare professors are absolutely incapable of operating a conspiracy of any size whatsoever. They can't agree on who gets which parking spot."

Thanks! Johnuniq (talk) 00:57, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't think the first generalization is true. I live in Italy, where posting a letter, or paying a bill, or just walking down a street, hits you every day with a dozen life-threatening, time-wasting existential difficulties, of which melodramatic hijinks I am something of a connoisseur. I only come to wikipedia to relax! Plots are of course everywhere afoot here, but they are child's play, and so obvious one can shrug them off with olympian insouciance. I think he's a tad unfair to academics in denying them malice. The unsuccessful ones, who manage however to secure tenure, are usually all gossip, and spend most of their time plotting to gain career advantages they don't merit. There are fields where this is not the rule (in my experience): classics departments, and perhaps Shakespeare specialist circles, but then they are obliged professionally to read drama, which means they don't need it in their own lives or work? If you haven't read it yet, David Lodge's Small World is a wonderful read on the subject. When it came out, I mentioned it to a colleague at an academic conference where all of its 'fictional' devious politicking seemed to be scandalously on hand, and he agreed that it gott the mischief of academic bitchiness down to a tee. The one area where Oxfordians are 'academic' is precisely in this: they spend most of their time in figuring the angles of advocacy for their pet cause, are very astute at making spurious claims and getting public support for injuries apparently wrought on their pretensions to recognition as serious 'researchers', and in recasting everything that does occur in the obscure world of real scholarship as a mirror conspiracy to their own obsessions with getting an embattled 'truth' accepted, as doctrine. Nietzsche said, whoever stares into the abyss too long, becomes a monster. Whoever sees malice everywhere, is likely to crank up huge reservoirs of resentment, and malice, since we are what we eat, mentally, as Feuerbach argued with his German pun.Nishidani (talk) 08:12, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

LOL and thanks again—for some reason your exuberant response has reminded me of Richard Mitchell, an author I had forgotten about, and just now is the first time I looked at his article. If by faint chance you have not encountered Mitchell, have a look (possibly not your usual fare, but Less Than Words Can Say is here). Johnuniq (talk) 10:16, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Nice vignette, which I'd underwrite (those surveys are dumb when not daft: teaching is just the close care to inculcate the virtue of honesty and respect for facts and logic in assessing evidence, and, as Kant wrote, an obligation to pass on that autonomy of judgement which you may have acquired, but which your students do not yet have: if the lesson succeeds, they will challenge you), except for:'Language is the medium in which we are conscious. The speechless beasts are aware, but they are not conscious.' Language is the medium in which we are unconscious of what we say most of the time. I write fast in this place, because if I reread what I write, which has a purely functional value for a restricted context, I start to quarrel with what, and how, I write. Cheers and thanks.Nishidani (talk) 10:33, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Have you read The Eyre Affair and its sequels, by Jasper Fforde? They are set in a world whose basic belief system is literature, rather than religion, and groups of Baconians and Marlovians gpo door-to-door trying to convert people, rather like the Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses. And I am reminded of reading, when I studied ancient history, the wonderful sentence "The Odyssey was not written by Homer, but another man of the same name". RolandR (talk) 09:16, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

No, Roland, but now that you mention it I'll keep an eye peeled for a copy. Sounds like a fun read. The theme of being visited by preachers reminded me of Kevin's Wilson's delightfully disreputable challenge to Dante's lyrics in his Festival of Light. not everyone's cup of tea, but life is various. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 09:33, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

I read that book several months ago. Its reality is permeable to literary settings, and characters can travel between the real world and the world in books. It's a good read. It reminded me a bit of Martin Amis's "Career Move". Tom Reedy (talk) 17:12, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

chill

We don't need to prove anything to obvious partisans. We already have a guideline in place. At this point the thing that actually matters is what do uninvolved users say at WT:WESTBANK. Until some uninvolved editors show up to offer their view of the dispute there I would suggest holding off on arguing at length about it, either at WT:WESTBANK or that talk page. I still cannot understand how anybody can read 6D the way it is being read, but let's just wait and see what others have to say. nableezy - 02:14, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Alon Shvut discussion at IPCOL

Hi Nishidani, just to let you know I asked for outside advice on disagreements over Alon Shvut that you're also party to. --MichaelNetzer (talk) 04:48, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Note to Stegasauroos

Apropos your email yesterday evening.

Fakestinian vermin. You are a subhuman piece of shit. I hope you Arab invaders get exterminated.

this is all very fascinating, but I don't open emails of this kind. If you want your powerful insights into my inhuman nature to be scrutinized with care please drop them here. Thanks.Nishidani (talk) 10:20, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

You may want to consider disabling email. I made a note of this at the talk page of an admin familiar with this particular "person". nableezy - 19:11, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Nab. Drop me a note on how to disable, if you think that's necessary. I may as well disable that, being disabled ere I saw Elba, if you get my meaning etc.Nishidani (talk) 19:31, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

This is User:JarlaxleArtemis, who has apparently now joined the People's Front of Judea - or is it the Judean People's Front? He loves getting attention (and apparently can't think of any way to get it other than repetitive insults), so just ignore him. NawlinWiki (talk) 19:41, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

It is up to you, but if you want to disable getting emails through Wikipedia go to Special:Preferences then uncheck Enable e-mail from other users. Not necessary if you dont mind deleting that crap as a user is not given your email address when they email you through the Wikipedia interface. But if you dont need to have it enabled I dont see a reason to do so. But, again, up to you. Just make sure you dont respond to any such emails, as then they will have your email address and the abuse may become more than a person of such an advanced age is able to deal with. nableezy - 19:50, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi, so he has found you, too. I had to disable my email earlier this month, after nearly 150 equally charming messages. Yeah; best ignored. Israel really have some charming friends here: first the Runtshit-vandal, and now Jarleartemis. Cheers, Huldra (talk) 13:09, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Good evening everbody. Nice to see you all here. Nishi, I got the same email. And a few other gems before that too. I may disable email as well, and only enable upon request. Its easy enough to do. Warmest regards to all of you. Tiamut^talk 15:27, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Well, jeepers, if insults bring this sort of company to my page, I'm all for them, esp. since I grew up on streets where 'Hey, shitfabrains,' was considered an amicable greeting, and one learnt early to take it all 'cum grano salis', or, as my mother told me, 'water off a duck's back.' Nothing to do with Israel, Huldra. As the cockneys say:'every family has one.' :) Nishidani (talk) 16:05, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, true. And some families have many. I´m just a bit, well peeved by people who say they want to smash my head ´cause I´m a "dirty Arab", or whatever. Oh well. On a nicer note, you read French, don´t you? Are you familiar with the work of Mujir al-Din al-'Ulaymi? He wrote a lot about Jerusalem and Hebron. A French translation of him from 1876 is in public domain, see here. A lot of history which can be "mined," hint hint. Cheers, Huldra (talk) 16:31, 17 November 2011 (UTC) (who does not speak French)

Wonderful. Have downloaded. I've a long promise outstanding to Hertz1800 to finish the Hebron article. That is just what the doctor ordered. Nishidani (talk) 16:54, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

JarlaxleArtemis isn't a "friend" of Israel, charming or otherwise, though I understand how convenient it is to paint him as that. He doesn't care about the I-P conflict, he's just trolling; apparently successfully. Jayjg ^(talk) 03:07, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Humble suggestion: The more this is talked about, the more crap will be dished out. The best approach is WP:DENY, and I would recommend deleting this entire section and any other talk page comments regarding this subject because public exposure feeds trolls. Johnuniq (talk) 06:44, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification

Hi, this message is to let you know about disambiguation links you've recently created. A link to a disambiguation page is almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. For more information, see the FAQ or drop a line at the DPL WikiProject.

Alon Shvut (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver)

was linked to Herzl

Any suggestions for improving this automated tool are welcome. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 23:54, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Links for troublemakers like you

Wikipedia:Why Wikipedia cannot claim the earth is not flat

Wikipedia:Civil POV pushing

Tom Reedy (talk) 21:54, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

The second's irrelevant and impertinent. I am an uncivil POV pusher, you yankee fascist.Nishidani (talk) 11:38, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

ps. I se Brian Boyd got p***sed off over the film at the Nabokov L-serve, just for the record.Nishidani (talk) 12:14, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Email disabled

Well in coincidence with the discussion on Judea & Samaria my email system is being bombarded with threatening and violent messages, so I've had to disenable it. Rejoice, o messiahs of settlement, that this small victory has been won.Nishidani (talk) 08:18, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Messiahs? Can there be more than one? Really? --MichaelNetzer (talk) 07:41, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Diff confusion

I watch the Arbcom pages but generally ignore them. For some reason I just looked at the current activity and noticed your statement. I know nothing about the disagreement or the topic, but I thought I would click a couple of links to get a taste of the issue. Anyway, I suspect your first two diffs are wrong. Did you mean these:

• Alon Shvut became the prototype for the Jewish communities of Judea and Samaria
• in the West Bank, a geographical district known in Israel by the biblical term Judea and Samaria

I hope this doesn't make me a party! Johnuniq (talk) 10:39, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

I had a page with several, and got confused. Thank **** for guardian angels. I hate arguing from diffs, the prospect of synthesizing an argument through decontextualized snippets is about the only thing that makes my stomach churn. Yeah, keep right out of it - this is one of the great nuisance burdens of any external editor's life, to get things rightly balanced in the I/P area, where one side has failed to show up. Thanks pal. The old are incontinent, and do appreciate the kind passerby who is furnished with dunny paper, and not reluctant to clean up.Nishidani (talk) 10:51, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

At the risk of getting further involved (and without expressing any opinion on the content!), you might like to consider wikitext like the following:

*X did this:
*:[http://www.example.com this is dummy text]
*:Note. Here is a note.
*X then did this:
*:[http://www.example.com more dummy text]
*:Note. Here is another note.
*Y then did this:
*:[http://www.example.com yet more dummy text]

Note that there are no blank lines. If wanted, the "notes" could use two colons instead of one, for extra indent. The above wikitext looks like this:

• X did this:

  this is dummy text

  Note. Here is a note.

• X then did this:

  more dummy text

  Note. Here is another note.

• Y then did this:

  yet more dummy text

Inserting a blank line does insert a pleasing amount of vertical space, but it breaks what is supposed to be a single list into multiple lists (and it destroys the use of *: which provides the appropriate indent for a bulleted list). Johnuniq (talk) 11:08, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm sure I screwed up somewhere again. But it looks slightly better. Remember to read the top of this page, where 'semi-retired' in the code comes out as 'semi-retarded'!, which is a generous euphemism for the state of my mind these days.:) Nishidani (talk) 11:41, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Looks good! I will reply at my talk re your stunted state. Here is another possible tweak (author on a separate line):

To provide arbitrators with a thumbnail quote from one of the world's leading authorities on this subject:

'Judea and Samaria are the biblical names for the general areas south and north of Jerusalem (respectively). Historically, they include substantial portions of pre-1967 Israel, but not the Jordan Valley or the Benyamin district (both within the West Bank). For political purposes, and despite the geographical imprecision involved, the annexationalist camp in Israel prefers to refer to the area between the green line and the Jordan River not as the West Bank, but as Judea and Samaria.

— Ian Lustick, For the land and the Lord: Jewish fundamentalism in Israel, 1988 (1994) p.205 n.4.

Johnuniq (talk) 22:44, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Hadr out of place?

This was probably not intentional, but you have changed a header line from "{{pp-semi-indef}}{{pp-move-indef}}" to "{{pp-semi-indef}}{{pp-move-indef}}Hadr" in this diff. AgadaUrbanit (talk) 20:10, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Jerusalem: Abode of Peace

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is "Jerusalem: Abode of Peace". Thank you.

1 the futility of trying to discuss this courteously and respectfully in the face of the rudeness both these editors display has convinced me to withdraw from this issue

2 I'm done with you and with Zero as I find no virtue can be had for improving an encyclopedia by interacting with either of you.

Those are your stated views, Michael. You withdrew and gave us the go-ahead. Of the 768 people who have bookmarked and watched that page, only 4 thought the issue important, and three found a compromise and resolution to the issue. You don't accept that.

Since we are considered rude, disparaging, and prone to attacking you personally even where our language dwells on the sheer technicalities of semitic philology, your invitation to reopen a closed discussion is pointless, for you don't trust our bona fides.

If third parties wish to understand the issue at that dispute page, link them to this, and ask them for an independent opinion after a close and precise reading. I won't interfere. There has been no animus or politics on my part in all this. I simply trust scholars more than editors, and am passionate about making the formers' presence in articles dominant, and the latters' invisible. Regards Nishidani (talk) 22:46, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Semi-retired?

Hi. Is this current? Cheers. - BorisG (talk) 12:19, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

G'day Boris, nice to hear from you. 'Retired' was altered to 'semi-retarded' by some joker fiddling with the template, and I really enjoyed this, which is a more precise description of my activities here. Unfortunately, political correctness and regard for the proprieties led to a restoration of the old template, and condemns me to semi-retired. I now take this to mean that my bull(shit)-dozing semi has only been partially re-tired after all the heavy wear of earlier trafficking around wikipedia, and whatever I do therefore lacks much traction, and I tend to slip into neutral as age creeps up on me.I should really extract the digit and take you and several other exemplary toilers in the field for a model - infrequent appearances, a quiet voice, and always impeccably to the point, and laconically incisive. It's just that to do this would require me to concentrate far more than I am presently capable of, and bad habits are hard to fix.Best regards Nishidani (talk) 12:59, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, that's flattering but hardly deserving. Anyway, I have always been a sporadic contributor, and I thought it was a bit odd that someone is obviously contributing a lot more while calling oneself semi-retired. But it is all relative, of course. BTW I prefer to always keep a dialog in one place. Isn't it a default? Cheers. - BorisG (talk) 13:23, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

In one place. Will mentally bookmark, which means I'll forget to apply the rule. I'll copy this and above to my page, and you can, if you wish, tidy up, and delete this original 'copy'. I too prefer to keep to one page, but at one point got guilty feelings that always replying on my page might look narcissistic. Too much Freud in my tender years. Best. Nishidani (talk) 14:06, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

Such a thought did cross my mind, but everyone replied there, so I convinced myself that that's ok. Some people explicitly state such a rule on the top of their talk page, but I hope I can avoid this grandstanding. Cheers. - BorisG (talk) 14:11, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

Replied

Please see my response to one of your comments at User talk:Nableezy#Nazareth.Thank you, EdJohnston (talk) 18:43, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

Christmas-New Year

It's premature but to all those who follow this page I'd like to pass on a little known song that is one of the jewels of music. If I wait for year's end, I'll probably forget to post it. It's a poem in the Sardinian language, which I heard a week ago at my nephew's wedding - we have strong links with Sardinia. So here it is. There is also a fine rendition by Achinoam Nini. Best wishes to all for the new year.Nishidani (talk) 17:56, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Notes

• ego

I'm a pagan, so I have no horse in the race. I dislike or rather have deep suspicions about feelings of nationalism, esp. collective, that rise above the love of a landscape, food, and language. These are the prejudices I bring to edits.

Intended meaning. I am prejudiced against expressions of nationalism when I edit.

Implicit policy ref. WP:NPOV

• alter

Interpretation by the interlocutor. 'Wikipedia is not to be shaped by such a pretentious ideology that would erase most knowledge of a civilization entrenched in collective nationalism. That you admit your disdain motivates your editing is outrageous.'

The interlocutor takes my deep suspicion about nationalistic edits to be an admission that I am driven ideologically to expunge from the record one '(a) civilization entrenched in collective nationalism.'

He takes as a personal affront to his own cultural world, which he defines as 'entrenched in collective nationalism' a confession that I am wary of nationalism, esp. as a collective phenomenon.

• ego

Reply. Bewilderment. 'entrenchment in a collective nationalism' is one of the reasons that led Germany to WW2 and to the policies that executed a holocaust. The statement suggests its author edits from a perspective 'entrenched in collective nationalism', which is against policy. Worse. My dislike of collective nationalism, and suspicions about its manifestations, is evidence for him that I should not be editing this encyclopedia, for scepticism about collective nationalism is an outrageous 'ideology'. In that twisted logic, I see much that is wrong with the I/P area. But I must admire the honesty of anyone bold enough to register the obvious in such explicit terms. Nishidani (talk) 21:38, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

1. "the prejudices I bring to the edits" is enough to block users from editing areas relating to their prejudice. You are required to leave prejudices out of your edit works. No feigning of neutrality as you are now attempting can undo this remark.
2. It is not my world, "his own cultural world". It is a definition of the reality of the world we live in and as such we are expected to keep our prejudice against it outside of the editing work. If you are interested in what my cultural world is about, we can discuss it sometime but I have not put it on the table for you to make assumptions about.
3. One can argue that the common excuse given for world conflicts being nationalism is a shallow ideology meant to mask deeper and more insidious motives rooted in more basic flaws of the human spirit. A lust for dominance, wealth and might are not confined to nationalistic tendencies. An ideology that singles out nationalism is what has allowed global capitalism to drive humanity into near slavery. Your confession of prejudice towards nationalism, applied to your editing here, has yielded twisted logic, tendentious distortions and combative manipulations that violate the very definition of a collaborative encyclopedia.
4. The twisted logic I've seen in our exchanges is rooted in the extraneous runaround you've dragged us into. Arguments sugar coated with scholarly intentions while concealing prejudices that make it impossible to discuss anything with any measure of reason or logic. I am certainly not impressed with a pretension of humanism that makes assumptions based on nationalistic intimations as a basis for imaginary conflicts between editors. If you've noticed, I've had no trouble making edits that conflict with the motives you erroneously construe of me.
5. Neutrality is not construed by shallow self-declarations of ideological piety. Your collective body of edits and argumentation reveals biases that motivate your every word, and speaks for itself. Much better is expected of an editor taking such a high moral ground in these environs.--MichaelNetzer (talk) 01:42, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

   Presumably the above nonsense has been posted here to extract some sanctionable response. Editors are expected to be reasonably adept at English usage, and if anyone can fail to understand Nishidani's "These are the prejudices I bring to edits", they should not be active at Wikipedia. Nishidani of course is saying he has no prejudices other than that NPOV should be observed. Johnuniq (talk) 03:03, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Your presumptions are mistaken and inflammatory. I have no intention of "extract[ing] some sanctionable response" against anyone and have said so often in discussions. If you have reason to believe I should not be active here, then by all means do try to extract such a sanction yourself. I am pointing to the severity of the editor feigning neutrality under false pretexes, e.g.:

1. "I'm a pagan, so I have no horse in the race" means the editor has a "pagan horse" in the race. No pretense of neutrality can mask this proclamation.
2. "Intended meaning. I am prejudiced against expressions of nationalism when I edit." [and] "Implicit poliy ref. WP:NPOV" cannot go together when editing an encyclopedia. If as an example, a French editor who has nothing particular against the Kurds, but dislikes nationalism, is editing an article about the Kurdish struggle for nationalistic autonomy, and dismisses content representing their position, based on his own prejudice against nationalism, the editor cannot be considered reasonably neutral to make such edits.
3. Nishidani has engaged in extensive discussions with me and dismisses scholarly sources based on his personal dislike for nationalism (and in this case only a particular one of several). The pretense of neutrality fails all measure of reason.

--MichaelNetzer (talk) 05:14, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

No, the editor does not mean what you claim he means, kindly stop distorting what others have said. You have repeatedly ignored what Nishidani has wrote, and you turn around the opposition to your clearly nationalistically driven attempt to include folklore as fact in encyclopedia articles that is being opposed because the most qualified sources on the topic disagree with your notion as being what cannot be considered reasonably neutral. At the very least, if you are going to continue insisting in distorting the record, at least do it somewhere other than here. nableezy - 05:52, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

It seems perfectly reasonable to respond here when what I've said has been quoted, misrepresented and distorted. As to the actual content of the dispute, this particular "folklore" as you call it, has been recognized in scholarly linguistic definitions. It has become embedded in academic recognition and widely acknowledged in scholarly sources. It is more pertinent to an article's lede than etymology or linguistic overkill: Encyclopedia articles should begin with a good definition and description of one topic (or a few largely or completely synonymous or otherwise highly related topics), but the article should provide other types of information about that topic as well. An encyclopedic definition is more concerned with encyclopedic knowledge (facts) rather than linguistic concerns. How often do I have to refute such obvious disregard for policy? --MichaelNetzer (talk) 06:16, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for once again demonstrating that you are willing to twist any strand of a policy that you think can be distorted into supporting your position. The Jerusalem article is about the city of Jerusalem, and the article covers more than the meaning of the word. But when discussing the meaning of the word, an encyclopedia is concerned with linguistics and history, not folklore. NOTDICT does not mean that we throw away linguistic concerns as though they were not encyclopedic knowledge. By placing Abode of peace as the English meaning of the Hebrew you are not defining a topic, you are, poorly, defining a word, a definition that most qualified sources says is not accurate. You are, intentionally, attempting to place errors of fact due to a purely nationalistic motive. That you think that those that oppose your attempt to degrade the accuracy of some of our most viewed articles is a Bad Thing™ done by a Bad Man™ is not all that important. What is important is that you think you are entitled to hold the article hostage as you distort not just the policies and guidelines but also the writings of the other editors in the discussion. How many times do you have to refute a disregard for policy? Once, but it is difficult to demonstrate that while distorting that policy and violating several others. nableezy - 13:49, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

No one is throwing out linguistic concerns and you have no idea what you're talking about. Check the facts and take off your battle gear if you want to discuss this with me. If you're looking for a fight, go somewhere else. --MichaelNetzer (talk) 16:27, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

giggle. nableezy - 16:30, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Please reconsider: I am not an opponent of whatever side you are on. All I have done is look at the parts of the discussion at DRN that led to the above comments, and the interpretations of what Nishidani said are simply not correct. All is fair in love and war, but misinterpreting "I'm a pagan, so I have no horse in the race" as above is not going to work with intelligent readers. Also, the view that disliking nationalism is a violation of NPOV is upside down (you did read the "that rise above the love of a landscape, food, and language" qualifier?). Johnuniq (talk) 06:45, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

If the comparison is between nationalism and pagananism, as Nish said, then a pagan horse is a horse, of course of course. I never said disliking nationalism is an NPOV violation. I said that saying "These are the prejudices I bring to edits" indicates a violation. Prejudices are to be kept out, regardless of what the are. One cannot claim a higher moral ground for their peculiar prejudices and use that to slant content by later claiming their prejudices are somehow miraculously neutral. --MichaelNetzer (talk) 07:20, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

If we asked, Nishidani could probably provide the correct name for the expression of English where one says something like "I have nothing to fear but fear itself", or "I am not prejudiced, except against prejudice". When someone says they dislike nationalism (that rises above the love of a landscape, food, and language), and that is their prejudice, they are skilfully using English to assert that nationalist editing (that rises above the love of a landscape, food, and language) is not generally desirable. It is highly likely that a discussion at any noticeboard would support that assertion. Johnuniq (talk) 07:46, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

You may be right as I have a fair impression of how such discussions can go. But I would still insist on how problematic Nish's wording is, especially in the overall context, which I'll try to explain. If it is such a skillful turn of a phrase to indicate what's now being claimed, then it fails, in its sophistication, to communicate clearly. Perhaps Nishidani can consider writing plainly what he means the first time, instead of needing to interpret it afterwards with convoluted reasoning. The statement made a primary allusion that Nishidani holds to a pious morality of individualism over national intimation and allows this prejudice to affect his editing. There was no indication that he intended "nationalistic editing" by other editors. He only said "nationalism". In his explanation, as if to say that Nishidani is prejudiced against my reasoning for keeping 'abode of peace' in the lead, alluding that my editing is nationalistically motivated, I am doubly astonished in that I have never made such arguments but have rather posted reliable scholarly sources in support of my position. I have further been an editor who makes edits in favor of the "other side" to help dissipate tensions, as Nish acknowledges in a recent edit on Golan Heights. On the other hand, Nishidani's attempt to remove content based on his dislike for "holy writ" of one nationality is peculiar when he takes no such position on the "holy writ" of another, such as 'Shalim' or 'Al-Quds', used in the same context. All in all, I am either left with the impression that Nishidani's communication skills are faltering, or that he is trying to mask a prejudice in his editing with "after the fact" convolutions. I would like to be more kind about this but I've found every effort to do so with Nishidani is answered with even fiercer ostracism, as the discussions show. I know this kind of thing is understandable with "old geezers", as I consider myself one also, despite Nish's flattering psuedo-fatherly portrayal. Perhaps he needs to lay down the boxing gloves already and get to work on collaborating a little more harmoniously. --MichaelNetzer (talk) 08:48, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for your helpful response (although I do not totally embrace your conclusion). I have no background suitable for commenting on the meaning of "Jerusalem", but from what I have seen of Nishidani in completely unrelated topic areas, he would like to focus on scholarly sources and what they say, and if Nishidani says that certain wording is inappropriate, his reasoning warrants careful examination. If you really have a reliable academic source to contradict one of his assertions, please just ask for an explanation of why he maintains that view despite the source. You are not under an obligation to accept his response, but I guarantee that such an exchange would produce interesting information. Johnuniq (talk) 09:49, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for the considerate answer. Partly embracing my conclusion is perhaps slightly better than total disagreement. At the top of the DR request is a link to a section on the Jerusalem talk page where all this began. Nishidani and I have discussed the sources extensively. His reasons for dismissing them are somewhat irrational. Some of them are in the Etymolgy section of the article already. I have tried every reasonable way to explain reservations about removing the meanings and have found little to no consideration for anything I've said. Nish's arguments have been evasive of my position and focus on slanted linguistic considerations while ignoring others that are more relevant to the opening in the lede. His arguments often turn into personal jabs stressing his superior knowledge, while also revealing an underlying discomfort with Hebrew language associations for the name. I believe his prejudice against nationalism has spilled over into this area and is being applied out of context. I don't think it's good enough to say that because Nishidani may have been right in other areas that he's right also in this one. He will need to do better than that, namely to adhere to neutrality and other guidelines, in order to gain a consensus for making a change. But if that happens, he might realize that the change he wants is a mistake that compromises the article. --MichaelNetzer (talk) 10:47, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Why don't we conduct an experiment? Try asking Nishidani why he believes X when source Y says Z. I'm sure there would be some debate about whether the words you use to describe X are agreed, and then there would be a need to verify what Y actually says. After all that is settled, we could evaluate Nishidani's reasons. Johnuniq (talk) 11:05, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Alright. Let's do these one at a time. Here's the first source. [3] Nishidani can explain why he dismisses this source and we'll pick it up from there. --MichaelNetzer (talk) 16:27, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Already exhaustively explained, with Zero's support, here. though I omitted adding the obvious, that a blog fails WP:RS. No need to pick it up again. Since the arguments have been exhausted.Nishidani (talk) 23:12, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Nishidani's answer underscores his astonishing and unfounded disregard for a first degree reliable scholarly source. Let us first review the organization behind the blog:

• The Center for Conflict Studies is an academic organization of peer-reviewed scholarly research and dissemination of knowledge: "Our task is to create the space and the resources for knowledge acquisition."
• CCS is adopted and recognized by the George Mason University, The School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, Commonwealth Center for Excellence. The university also profiles CCS founder with due academic recognition and regard.
• CCS founder, assistant professor Pushpa Iyer, heads the program within the framework of the Monterey Institue for International Studies and is lauded there for her academic achievements.
• CCS publishes its peer-reviewed journals in a primary venue magazine featured on its website, Reflections, a peer-reviewed platform for dissemination of knowledge and research on conflict studies, likewise recognized by the George Mason University, The School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, Commonwealth Center for Excellence. It also publishes Wandering Thoughts blog, "an online forum that provides the opportunity to share and discuss opinions on current conflict issues and events.'
• As such, the CCS blog, Wandering Thoughts qualifies as a Magazine Blog, under the qualification "These are acceptable as sources if the writers are professionals and the blog is subject to the newspaper's [or Magazine's as in title of guideline] full editorial control. The blog clearly meets these qualifications and is thus considered a reliable source for this purpose.
• Nishidani and Zero's primary reason for rejecting this source, and their "exhaustive" explanation, raises further astonishment in light of Nishidani's penchant for linguistics. The sentence in question in the relevant cited source reads as follows: "Translated from Hebrew, ‘Jerusalem’ means ‘Abode of Peace’, while in Arabic it means ‘The Holy Sanctuary’." Nishidani and Zero take offense at the wording as if to say that Denise DeGarmo, "a professor of international relations at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville." cannot distinguish between Arabic and Hebrew or has worded her statement carelessly, thus disqualifying the source.
• The professor's concise wording cannot be construed as a mistake by someone like Nisidani, who has repeatedly expressed his admiration for linguistic innovation. There can be no doubt that the professor crafted her sentence to do away with unnecessary words in order to make her point clear. There can be no doubt that her sentence, when expanded to illustrate what it clearly says: "Translated from Hebrew, ‘Jerusalem’ means ‘Abode of Peace’, while in Arabic [Al-Quds] it means ‘The Holy Sanctuary’." is a well crafted statement that concisely reflects academic recognition for both meanings that now appear in the lede of the article.
• In light of all this, I invite everyone to revisit Nishidani and Zero's rejection of this source and ask them to explain whether they are truly serious about it. If needed, this source will be taken to Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard to clarify this careless and astonishing disregard for a reliable source of the first degree.

--MichaelNetzer (talk) 04:15, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

‘unfounded disregard’; ‘take offense’; ‘his admiration for linguistic innovation’(?); ‘careless disregard’, etc. As Johnuniq correctly suggested, you should have taken this to Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard long, long ago. If you do now, please provide better arguments, because nothing above supports your contention that one poorly phrased, indeed in terms of grammar, absurd remark in a blog conveying a casual impression of a trip to Jerusalem made by a Professor of International Relations proves that 'Abode of peace' is the default meaning of Yerushalayim. Good luck Nishidani (talk) 11:43, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Please pay attention Nishidani because you persist on making one mistake after the other. That was my suggestion to go to Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard, not Johnuiq's. I've tried everything possible to discuss and explain my reservation about your opinion and I've resisted seeking outside intervention in hopes we could work it out. I'm the one who suggested it because your response leaves no door open for considering anything I say. You ridicule a professor who understands what they're saying about the words they use, as if they're incompetent to acknowledge the common meaning of an name repeated in many scholarly sources and you expect me not to explain how flawed that is? Sorry. No one said "proves" anything. It's one of many sources and a fine supporting one at that. --MichaelNetzer (talk) 13:38, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Oh, at last a triumphal vindication of your thesis that Nishidani misreads and makes world-shaking mistakes!

Michael, check the tense used in what I wrote:

As Johnuniq correctly suggested, you should have taken this to Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard long, long ago.

Johnuniq wrote:

'Better would have been to ask for opinions on the issue (who cares whether a blog is a suitable source—what matters is the meaning of the term and whether it needs to be mentioned in the lead), and to ask if anyone knew a better source.' 07:46, 21 December 2011‎

Clearly he is not asking people at those discussions, but people external to them in the wider community on boards that specialize in these questions.

Both Johnuniq and I, in citing him, used a conditional past tense, i.e., we employed a modal verb in the past tense to suggest what you should have done had you disagreed with what Zero and myself wrote about your putative perfect source. Johnuniq was not explicit in citing the forum which you had already alluded to, re your intention to take it to Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard 3 and a half hours earlier. In reply, Johnuniq simply suggested you should have asked around for outside opinions on this this earlier, i.e., you should have, procedurally, gone to the forum you had mentioned much earlier.

All this is intensely Horatian piddling. Go ahead, use the next forum to rehearse the case you alone are convinced of. 'Rehearse,' because the corpse of this moribund process will be hauled once more to a happy hunting ground, only to be reburied.:) (forgive the touch of sarcasm and sardonic punning, but no one should be asked to WP:AGF to the degree your quibbling longueurs require. Another half hour wasted, instead of washing the labourers' dust off my living room floor, now that the new chimney's been built.

ps. Add: 'you ridicule a professor' to the list of phrases used to 'spin' my arguments in your retelling as though they were expressions of negative emotional states.Nishidani (talk) 15:27, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

I was hoping for a more meaningful question, expressed with more grace. Instead, you produced an issue that has recently and exhaustively been explained at Talk:Jerusalem#Abode of Peace (suggestion: count the number of editors who agreed with you). More disappointingly, you ask why a blog has been dismissed as a source, after the comprehensive explanation that a blog fails WP:RS, and that the careless/carefree wording showed that the source was not suitable. The attempts above to justify the blog as a reliable source completely miss the point of Wikipedia: editors should not be here to win an argument, and articles should not use a whimsical blog (regardless of the credentials of its author) to support a claim about the meaning of a term—use a scholarly source free of careless/carefree wording. If you had understood Nishidani's initial response to the wording in the blog, you could have conceded that the author was taking a liberty, but assert that the meaning could be inferred. Better would have been to ask for opinions on the issue (who cares whether a blog is a suitable source—what matters is the meaning of the term and whether it needs to be mentioned in the lead), and to ask if anyone knew a better source. No doubt you will have a long reason why my concerns should be dismissed. Please understand the purpose of Wikipedia: you do not have to have the last word, nor is there a need to win every argument—that is not why we are here. Instead, wait for a new topic and, while expressing your views, ask what dissenting editors are getting at, and engage with their responses. Johnuniq (talk) 07:45, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

I must say I'm perplexed by your response. I believe what Nishidani is getting at is already well understood and I tried to answer it as gracefully as possible. You seem to believe his response is not open for debate. Fine. But that disqualifies you as a neutral arbitrator. Could it be that nothing I said above is considerable or correct? I've posted links and explanations and they mean nothing to you or Nishidani and are not open for discussion? And you make insinuations that I don't understand Nishidani and cast aversions on my efforts to explain myself as "long responses". What makes you believe what you do so absolutely? Why are you so 100% one sided for a neutral observer? Look. I'm not trying to win anything. I'm asking for some consideration other than flat out rejection of everything I say. You have not shown such a capacity and it's doubly disappointing in that you try to posture yourself as a neutral arbitrator when you've already declared agreement to most anything Nishidani says based on previous encounters with him. I'm sorry. Your position and response are very flawed. --MichaelNetzer (talk) 13:38, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

I’ve thought twice about replying, Michael, because you are prolix in saying what you think you think, but, in my experience, don’t attend to what others say in reply. You are not attentive to the way language functions, and when you are taken up for loosely expressing yourself, you just keep up modulating the thought in a defensive fashion that denies you were careless, while insinuating your interlocutor misunderstood. Since we must interact, I have little option but to explain once more why you give me the impression that you read beyond, or beneath or over what is said, suspecting that I or anyone else disagreeing with you is saying more than they actually say. You by turns always assert you meant less than what you wrote. Also, you seem to be both worrying the life out of a nonsense of your own invention, on a page where I just noted something that struck me as odd, and worry others who have better things to do than defend my bona fides, however much I appreciate their remarks.

• I wrote:

(A)I'm a pagan, so I have no horse in the race. I dislike or rather have deep suspicions about feelings of nationalism, esp. collective, that rise above the love of a landscape, food, and language. These are the prejudices I bring to edits.

• You interpreted this to mean:

(B)'Wikipedia is not to be shaped by such a pretentious ideology that would erase most knowledge of a civilization entrenched in collective nationalism. That you admit your disdain motivates your editing is outrageous.'

• I interpreted the gist of your remark thus:

(C) He takes as a personal affront to his own cultural world, which he defines as 'entrenched in collective nationalism' a confession that I am wary of nationalism, esp. as a collective phenomenon.

• You denied this interpretation, as is your right, with the following justification

(D)It is not my world, "his own cultural world". It is a definition of ‘the reality of the world we live in’, and as such we are expected to keep our prejudice against it outside of the editing work

In this version ‘a civilization entrenched in collective nationalism’ is a ‘definition of the reality of the world we (all of us) live in’, and absolutely not a reference to his Michael's cultural world or milieu, i.e., Judaism. I misread, you say.

But I didn’t because, in the exchange with Johnuniq, you subsequently wrote of:-

(E)Nishidani's attempt to remove content based on his dislike for "holy writ" of one nationality.'

I.e. my interpretation of your curious phrase ‘a civilization entrenched in collective nationalism.’ (a here means 'one of many', and therefore one culture not the global civilization we all live in as a shared reality) turns out to be correct, by your own admission, since in a later formulation you rephrase my ‘attack’ as a reference to the ‘holy writ of one nationality’.

And, just for the record the Bible or Tanakh is not the holy writ of one nationality. It is the universal patrimony of world civilization, and of numerous ‘nationalities’ or groups who subscribe, for example, to Christianity, which grew out of Judaism, as a dissident sect of that faith, and whose founder, and earlier apostles, were Jewish. The Bible, “holy writ” is not the exclusive possession of one nationality. It is an integral part of the authentic cultural patrimony of the Christian world, which is multinational, speaking once more, if I may, as a "prejudiced" "pagan".(Please note that there is a rhetorical device called irony, which means 'dissimulation' in classical Greek. I dissimulated what I consider a 'virtue' by mocking it by its antonym, which is a vice.)

Clarified? Please don’t turn this into an excuse for blogging on the world.Nishidani (talk) 14:16, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

For someone who's so sharp to construe what others mean, Nishidani, you certainly have missed the mark about everything I've said. I think enough peripherals have been hashed out here. --MichaelNetzer (talk) 16:27, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Sincerly, Mike, I took pleasure in the way you ended this. The choice of 'sharp to' as opposed to what a reader might expect 'sharp at' makes a world of ironical difference. Language is a wonderful thing, full of nuance, and when I see it, whatever the disagreements, I applaud the author.Nishidani (talk) 18:41, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

It is a reciprocal sentiment indeed, good sir. Thank you. --MichaelNetzer (talk) 04:15, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Give me 10 minutes please

I've lost reams of text due to edit conflicts. Tom Reedy (talk) 22:59, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

OK I'm good bro! Tom Reedy (talk) 23:06, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

MN

Stop paying attention, the user is clearly operating in bad faith with the intention of causing some reaction to his incredibly tendentious argumentation that could result in a ban. Just ignore him, consensus does not require his acceptance. nableezy - 14:13, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

You think anything should be added here? nableezy - 19:06, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

I know you are a pertinacious stickler for the rules because you think only their exact application will stop this area from collapsing into utter chaos. I don't think Michael is acting in bad faith. It's something worse, he is acting as as true believer in his own POV, in disregard of sources. You can bring round to a compromise even those who act in bad faith. I know also that attrition, which is what is occurring tends to be explained mostly as a mere gaming tactic in bad faith. The argumentation is tendentious, and markedly flawed, but Michael is undoubtedly sincere in his conviction that everyone is out of step but himself.

Given his clean sheet (my presumption, I haven't checked) any serious ban is out of the question and should not be called for. I would suggest that you offer him the option of asking for a third opinion, and/or going to WP:RS to see if he can muster any support for his extremely isolated and idiosyncratic interpretations of a very simple, straightforward issue. He certainly should not have reverted a consensus reconfirmed after almost three weeks in which he has failed to persuade anyone he has had the better in what has been an endless succession of repetitive arguments. Since you asked, in any case, I rewrote your MN sketch, to get rid of adjectives, emotions and rhetoric. These expositions should have the brevity, evidential neatness, and neutrality of a legal brief, which probably explains why I have never had recourse to A/I or A/E to make a complaint.Nishidani (talk) 21:42, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Happy Xmas

	Merry Christmas
	From me, a happy NSW Xmas bush Xmas from us all down here in Oz (damn, should have 5x expanded that for this Xmas...is there still time I wonder....) Casliber (talk • contribs) 05:51, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Merry Christmas Nishidani. Thanks for the note on Jebus. Hope your self imposed ban ends soon because I don't have the time to add what you are proposing as interesting as it is. Glad that Bethlehem reaches out beyond its walls to touch your celebrations ... I spent Christmas there two years ago and loved it. Its. very special and charming town, even more so than Nazareth ... kind of reminds me of how Nazareth might have been before it became a place triple its size overnight in the wake of 1948. Nazareth hasn't made the transition to city as much as it has to refugee camp ... but then Bethlehem for all its charms to those with privileged passports is in fact a ghetto for its inhabitants. Perhaps the future will bring better days or all? Tiamut^talk 18:16, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

I know of that firsthand. Ask any Palestinian hotelier about how much his water bill, taken from the Palestinian hills, costs him compared to what settlements pay, etc. And what happens to the mains when it's hot, etc. One group I accompanied was so shocked by what they saw and heard there, that they organized themselves to help with funding projects on their return home. And politically, they are and remain nice, decent right-wing Christians, (unlike myself).And of course my very best to you and yours.Nishidani (talk) 18:40, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Greetings etc.

Hi Nishidani,

I'd like to add my good wishes to the others you received. Also, you might be interested in this thread on my talk page. I have nothing to add to your comment on my behalf at the article talk page.--Peter cohen (talk) 17:02, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Bit late for Hanukkah greetings, Pete, but my best wishes for a prosperous, intelligent New Year. I'd drop a note there were it not for the fact that this only seems to stoke more discussions on more pages in an endless expanding galaxy of pages where one man's view angles for the world's attention. I absolutely hate AE and A/I complaints, but I'll get round to putting one in. I'll try to restrain myself and not engage, and thereby further feed the farce.Nishidani (talk) 18:57, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I quite understand. He's Vere-tably similar to another editor I can think of. Thanks for the good wishes.--Peter cohen (talk) 19:29, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Peter, could you do me a favour while I'm selfbanned to mid Jan? Just read that Elias Canetti was the model for Mischa Fox in Iris Murdoch's Flight from the Enchanter. Could you add, 'his friend Elias Canetti, was the model for Mischa Fox in the same novel' ref. Susan Sontag, Under the Sign of Saturn, Vintage Books, New York 1980 pp.184-185 close ref, to note ii of the Franz Baermann Steiner article? Sorry for the bother.Best Nishidani (talk) 21:08, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Done. I need some way to stop your number of edits running away from mine. Weren't you at 13000 when you tried retiring?--Peter cohen (talk) 00:07, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

BTW, I've unwatched the article. I'm wanting to reduce my watchlist to a manageable size and am pruning those articles that I don't feel worth listing on my user page as having had more than a minimal contribution. So if anyone queries this edit it's in your court.--Peter cohen (talk) 01:18, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

No problem. I have to get my number of contributions up somehow.

Processing my watchlist is actually surprising. Every now and then I find I contributed more content to an article than anyone else without realising it. (Not very big articles, mind you.)

AEs

Yo, if I could you ask you nicely, try not to get involved in the AEs in which I am subject. Thanks, nableezy - 07:40, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

And please dont take that the wrong way, I appreciate your input and advice, but I would rather you leave it at my talk page. I dont think involved users should be commenting except for presenting evidence, either for or against, that had not been presented. I object when "they" do it, so I have to also say that I would rather it not be done by people who, for whatever reason, are associated as being on "my side". nableezy - 08:53, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

That's more than fair, indeed admirable, since I broke my own rule, which is the same as the one you mention here, in dropping my notes. I'll shut up. Nishidani (talk) 09:29, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

I broke my given word, in what I call in my own private language, the St.Peter's square obelisk syndrome. Probably, since you're more faithful to rules than I, you should revert my last comments there. I won't say 'sorry'.Nishidani (talk) 17:27, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Hello Nishidani. The level of diplomacy you have shown in disputed areas is worthy of emulation by others. Thank you, EdJohnston (talk) 17:47, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Ed, I am sorry if my diplomacy does not rise to such standards, but I dont think my reactions are unjustified. nableezy - 17:52, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Sorry to be late on this, nephews and dinner got in the way. Last night I reread Ralph Berry's The Shakespearean Metaphor, and on opening it and reading 'One holds the play up to the light, and views it via that single angle of incidence,' I thought of admins in the AE debates. I expressed some time back my belief that these cases should be debated between the plaitiff and accused before admins, and that others shouldn't interfere. This morning, I forget where, I read Ed's note to the effect that input from other parties actually helps admins figure more angles than might be at first apparent. I wavered. I hadn't thought of that; I thought admins just looked at a few diffs, measured them against policy, and made sanctions. In other words, Ed's view is that we peons count in administrative judgement. Putting aside whatever my views might be, I tried to imagine how WGF's 'single angle of incidence' might be, saw the Jefferson quote, and wrote: 'Rather than personalize this in a partisan way or speak of animus or battlefield mentalities, I think there is a clash of intellectual style. Seurat's pointillisme or chromoluminarism disgusted Renoir, while Renoir's impressionism had no hold on Seurat. Nableezy is punctilious: he is what in an earlier day, was called a 'precisian', whereas WGF often looks like a broadbrusher.' The two don't communicate well, and it is no fault of either, because they talk past or ignore what is most important to the other.' Like several other things, I elided it to avoid angst over my tolutiloquent windbaggery.

Nab, you are very gifted, but diplomacy is not your forte. It ain't mine, either. But I twigged a month or so ago that, whatever you did, irrespective of merits, the atmospheric drift was 'he'll get permabanned. It just takes one slip, and the wrong admin, or even the right admin, will drop the fineprint because fatigue will get the better.' That's why, though I think here, as often, against you was trivial, the human tendency to think 'there's no smoke without fire' will trump all explanations. I selfbanned myself for a slip on IR, which NMMGG notified me of but didn't report (as Jiujitsu should have done), and yet three times broke my selfban inadvertently because, seeing something stupid, or to be done, I did it, and then realized a few seconds later that I had restricted edits to the talk page. So the memory lapse explanation is something I understand. But precisely for that reason, I suggested you take a hint from your lapse: that fatigue (and it is absurdly fatiguing trying to do the right thing here)'s there, and you'd do well to suspend yourself for a breather. In honour cultures, that often translates as surrender. From another 'angle of incidence' it's just insisting on a higher standard for oneself, whatever the consequences (the spectre of someone gloating if you do, etc.)

About dislikes. I think some arbs have them. But that is not the point. We are superfatigued at writing articles in the I/P area, but are forced to do a lot of pleasurable and rewarding extra-curricular reading. Arbs have to read such a motherlode of contentious bullshit, that it's hard to see where their payoff is. An arb if he has self-esteem for his job and desires the respect of his peers, will learn to self-correct in time, if he likes the role. Needling on errors doesn't help. All it does is justify 'the other side' complaining against arbs, as well, and arbs then, for professional empathy with their unthankful task, will be tempted into collective solidarity whatever the merits. Fuckmedead, I'm longwinded. Nishidani (talk) 20:34, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

(Removed after it was read)

Nab, you and Ravpapa got me unpermabanned, and a Cairene and a Jerusalemite managed a minor miracle, after two years of waiting. Everything I wrote above I wrote while thinking to myself, 'you pompous c..t. Blathering on while not defending to the bitter end someone you know has been harassed beyond most men's patience, someone you owe for the restoration of a right unfairly denied you.' I still think that, and much else, I concur that was a terrible oversight. What I can't take, contextually, is letting it get to you. Where would Ezra Nawi or the Hebron shepherds be, if they took the bait and let themselves lose their self-control? They put up with injustice on a daily basis, but refuse to go over the edge, because that is what their tormentors want them to do, so that their civil activism can be criminalized as terrorism, and they lose everything. I'm quite distressed about this, and apologize. Nishidani (talk) 21:21, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Regarding the now removed comment, you have nothing to apologize to me for, and I remain, deeply, indebted to you. nableezy - 21:23, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Note :)

Thank you; and to you and yours as well! -- Avi (talk) 16:20, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Hi!

If you do retire, this would be a worse place, but I respect your choice. I diagreed with you on a number of occasions (and most certainly, on your perception of pro-Israel bias on Wikipedia), but you are an amazingly interesting fellow, and the place will be more dull (or is it duller?) without you. I am still trying to figure out your background but haven't got anywhere. Cheers and happy new year! - BorisG (talk) 21:25, 4 January 2012 (UTC)