User talk:RicardAnufriev
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Heliographs at Marathon?
[edit]You added this content to the Heliograph article, citing, Herodotus 6.116.1 VI, 115
"Heliographs as a method of communication were used by the ancient Greeks prior to 490BC. Polished shields were used to reflect sunlight over long distances."
I'd like to remove that, for the reasons below - what are your thoughts?
While the section you cite has was often interpreted in the 1800s, (and I've seen many citations with that view) as indicating signalling by reflected sunlight off of shields, this interpretation has been broadly attacked since then on multiple grounds [1-3] .
To begin with, Herodutus never said the signal was made by flashing sunlight from a shield.
The language Herodutus uses translates "to hold up a shield" in all five sections he mentions this (115,121,123,124 (2 pl.)).
Numerous other objections, technical and otherwise, are raised in [1-3].
Regarding this incident, in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Marathon, it says:
"Connected with this episode, Herodotus recounts a rumour that this manoeuver by the Persians had been planned in conjunction with the Alcmaeonids, the prominent Athenian aristocratic family, and that a "shield-signal" had been given after the battle.[49] Although many interpretations of this have been offered, it is impossible to tell whether this was true, and if so, what exactly the signal meant.[89]"
Macchess (talk) 08:02, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
[1] * The Shield Signal at the Battle of Marathon * P. K. Baillie Reynolds * The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 49, Part 1 (1929), pp. 100-105 (article consists of 6 pages)
- Published by: The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies * Stable URL:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/625005
[2] * Reflections on the Shield at Marathon * A. Trevor Hodge * The Annual of the British School at Athens, Vol. 96, (2001), pp. 237-259 (article consists of 23 pages) * Published by: British School at Athens * Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30073279\
Abstract: " Nobody flashed a shield at the Battle of Marathon, ..."
[3] Marathon 490 BC: The First Persian Invasion Of Greece By Nicholas Sekunda, page 73 http://books.google.com/books?id=pDACy7M7NHoC&dq=hoplite+flashed&q=shield+flashed
- You seem to be right. I am sorry for spreading misconceptions. I watched a documentary about Greek military and they said that this was the first record of such communications. It made me read more about it and when I saw, that Wikipedia starts the history of heliographs waay later, I added the info, using the most cited source I found about it.
- Maybe it would be good to leave the shield-signal information, but say that this assumption is not true. Readers, as I, would learn more about the topic instead of thinking "The article misses information". Thus it would reduce the misconception a bit.--RicardAnufriev (talk) 22:16, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
- That seems like a good suggestion. I could replace it with something like this, if you agree: "Two popular stories about sun-mirror signalling in Greco-Roman times are not supported by the evidence. The story of a sun-flashing "shield signal" after the battle of Marathon trace to words in passages from Herodutus that mean "hold up a shield", not "flash a shield, and there are other reasons to doubt this story [1,2,3]{from above}. The story of Roman emperor Tiberius signalling from Capri to the mainland by mirror flash traces to an article by John A. Kingman in 1919, but Kingman makes it clear this was no more than speculation, and says "there are no references in ancient writings to the use of signaling by mirrors"[4]. { http://books.google.com/books?id=MXJIAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA213 }{For more on the Capri story, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Heliograph }. What do you think?
- Regarding Greek military use of heliographs, here's an early 1920s photo of Greek soldiers using a heliograph : http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Anexartitos_merarxia_synennoisi_dia_optikou.jpg , and a nice article from 1912 on Greek use of heliographs: http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k5752212k/f497.image.swf (The article is in French, but there are some diagrams and photos if that is a problem.)
Macchess (talk) 07:06, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
- I like it :-)
- Maybe you could incorporate something like "Instead they used smoke signals, flashing lamps and torches for distance communication"
- Articles which regard this would be:
- Hydraulic_telegraph (stationary optical communication)
- Smoke_signal
- Polybius_square (the "Morse Code" of ancient Greece)
- But I am not sure whether it is necessary. At least it is interesting and removes the "Information travelled only with horse speed" belief.
- --RicardAnufriev (talk) 07:58, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
- I'll see what I can do - hopefully I can get to this tomorrow, or if not, on Saturday. Regarding the broader picture, perhaps a Wikilink to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_telecommunication . For a discussion of many ancient distant signalling systems, you might enjoy the early chapters in "The Early History of Data Networks", a version of which is readable online at the web page: http://people.seas.harvard.edu/~jones/cscie129/papers/Early_History_of_Data_Networks/The_Early_History_of_Data_Networks.html (and especially Chapter 1, here: http://people.seas.harvard.edu/~jones/cscie129/papers/Early_History_of_Data_Networks/Chapter_1.pdf ), for its descriptions of early fire-signalling, and pigeons (which have a very long history, and a lot of people don't realize how heavily pigeons were used for communication in WWI and WWII). This work does mention several possible pre-1800 instances of sun-flash signalling, which I haven't researched in enough detail to be comfortable putting in the Heliograph article (the Xenophon reference, in particular, sees to me to be similar to the Marathon reference, and I know the Tiberius/Capri story to be total speculation). Also, there are numerous errors and omissions in the description of heliographs in the 1800s - that's an area where I've read many period first-person documents written by the actual heliograph inventors, developers, sellers and users of the day.
- Macchess (talk) 06:52, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
- I updated the front end of the "History" section in the Heliograph Wikipedia article, including nine new references and five Wikilinks. The most direct link I added was a Wikilink to ancient optical telegraphy. The target page there could use some serious updating, btw. I also made the point was that ancient telecommuncations existed with: "the documented means of ancient long-range visual telecommunications was by beacon fires and beacon smoke, not mirrors". I'm a bit ambivalent about giving bandwidth to the two most popular heliograph myths, but we'll see how it goes. Macchess (talk) 07:48, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
Your recent edits
[edit]
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Thank you. --SineBot (talk) 13:43, 29 September 2013 (UTC)
" users may freely remove comments from their own talk pages. "
Do not write on my Talk page going forward. Thank you. Jytdog (talk) 17:16, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
- I was hoping for some sort of communication regarding your edits, which I perceive as vandalism and rudeness.
- Well never mind.
- "The removal of a warning is taken as evidence that the warning has been read by the user."
- I guess you just have to be reported and stopped, although I'll wait a few days for a response.
- --RicardAnufriev (talk) 17:24, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
- i blew my cool. I struck my remarks. I left, and am not going back. You are trying to close the barn door after it has already been closed. Jytdog (talk) 04:16, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
- After looking into more of your 120-130 edits per day, I've to say I'm sorry. Your contribution (regarding the content) is overwhelmingly positive.
- Still I find your methods harsh.
- Imagine yourself in the shoes of those editors, whose updates you reverted:
- Many seem to be quite new to Wikipedia. Some put much effort into it and seem to care, but get their work removed after a few minutes with a WP:SOMETHING or WP:RTFM.
- I guess many of those will not come back. (a similar GTFORTFM attitude is killing the next linux contributors generation, imho)
- Maybe you could flag the given passages with some tags instead of removing them or write on the young editor's talk page something to encourage him / some advice how to do it better (there are some cool, short templates out there)
- Long-term community growth and fostering > Short-term elitism
- on another topic: Please, use care with the "primary source" reverts. I understand your scientific view regarding medical publications. Still: If a primary source is used without interpretation or similar, it is of course fine (e.g. using the bible as a source for the statement: In the bible the following Jewish tribes are mentioned).
- --RicardAnufriev (talk) 18:06, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
- Give it a read:
- http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~halfak/publications/The_Rise_and_Decline/
- or look here:
- https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Editor_Lifecycles
- Especially the probability of new editors to survive the first year is... sad.
- --RicardAnufriev (talk) 18:24, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
- i blew my cool. I struck my remarks. I left, and am not going back. You are trying to close the barn door after it has already been closed. Jytdog (talk) 04:16, 19 March 2015 (UTC)