User talk:Zaian/Archive01

This is an archive of past discussions about User:Zaian. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Welcome!

Hello, Zaian/Archive01, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

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Thanks for the nice job on Chris Hani. Wizzy…☎ 09:06, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Good work!!

Hi, a cursory glance at your contributions suggests that you have been doing great work. Please use edit summaries more often. --Gurubrahma 07:04, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Scouting

Seeing your interest in Scouting, check out userbox template {{User:Kintetsubuffalo/workshop/Template:User Scout}} Chris 18:40, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, you're quite right, you could say I've got an interest in Scouting! I might use the template if I develop my user page.

Chris asked me to make regular userboxes out of the ones he has in his workshop, which you are using. To change to the Wiki userbox (which is exactly the same, but now part of Wiki proper and not his workshop), add the {{User ScoutGuide}} box to your page. There is also a {{User ScoutTrade}} one for collectors. Both are in the userbox [category]. These will add you to appropriate categories too. See my user page for an example. Rlevse 20:06, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Or there's {{User Scout}}, which has the world badge on it. Zaian 21:41, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

African Scout Associations

Hi! Since as you say many of the African Scout Associations are quite small and don't have websites of their own, and as that is your area of interest, do you get updates from the Region, or interesting tidbits that would help flesh out the generally-generic articles I've seeded? Yours in Scouting, Chris 19:04, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I'll keep a lookout for things to add. There are two aspects of international interest - Scouting in those countries today, and Baden-Powell's experiences in Africa and how they influenced Scouting. I think it's important to push the contemporary Scouting aspect rather than just the colonial side (I noticed your Malawi contributions are particularly good in that sense). You haven't got to Mozambique yet - they're due to host the next Africa Jamboree, although it's been postponed more than once, and also to host the World Moot. With your interest in Eastern Europe, I should tell you that their Chief Scout is from Poland, and their uniform is similar to the Polish uniform, despite the climate differences! I see you've been to iDespatch - it's a good source for current news, although it's more about organisational stuff than grassroots news. Zaian 21:57, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Very cool, Madagascar gets done tonight, I scanned up the badge last night but sleep called. That is some great info! As a historian, I'm kind of partial to the what-has-already-happened, usually, and let others fill in gaps. There's just not a whole lot available (here) on Scouting in other countries (three guesses where I'm from-give you a hint, the president is named the same as sparsely populated countryside), and for Africa, the available material just seems to be more prevalent for the colonial period. I have a great old French postcard of Congolese Scouts in berets and khaki shirts with the emblem noticible, but all else is tribal-again maybe 50 years ago. I will keep plugging. Chris 22:53, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

I uploaded MozambiqueScoutLogo.gif for you to use when you get to Mozambique :) See also www.scouting.org.za/seeds, and presumably you know the Pine Tree Web and Johnny Walker's Scouting History pages. Zaian 22:59, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Scouting

Hi: I saw your edit and notes on BP and the other female interests in his life. Haiduc left a msg on the talk page asking about the page numbers. There is an article started on this book at: Baden-Powell: Founder of the Boy Scouts (book) (so far it only talks about his sexual orientation). I have three questions: 1) have you read the whole book 2) if so, what do you think of the book, 3) would you be interested in writing a review the whole book using the article that was started? Rlevse 23:09, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I read it only a few months ago. I think it's an outstanding, sympathetic biography that in fact spends a lot of time defending B-P against other hostile reviews. It's conclusion that he was a repressed homosexual seems reasonable, and doesn't make me think less of either B-P or the book. However the sexuality issue is not the main thrust of the book and I don't think the page as it stands does the book justice, so I'd support the idea of a more thorough review. I'd like to contribute, but as I am overseas I no longer have the book with me! I've also read the Hillcourt biography which I also recommend. It is equally thorough, but less probing on controversial topics as it was an "official" biography, approved by Olave. Zaian 07:04, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. Rlevse 11:07, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Good work on the Jeal book intro. Do you know enough about the rest of the book to cover other topics in the book besides his orientation? Rlevse 02:31, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately not - although I read it quite recently, I don't have the book any more. I did however get the overwhelming impression that Jeal is a sympathetic biographer, who devotes a lot of space to defending B-P against his critics, many of whom have been quite vitriolic. Zaian 13:14, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Za ism

Hi, I see you mean DOT ZAIAN.. Regards, Gregorydavid 08:26, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Well figured :) I like the handle for all sorts of reasons. Greetings, Zaian 19:20, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

South African Scouts

I've chosen the article on the South African Scout Association for the Portal article in April. I'd appreciate it if you look it over: Portal:Scouting/Selected_article/April_2006 . There is portal space for you to add about two lines if you like. Thanks for this and all your Scouting editing. Rlevse 00:05, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Vaalkat

Beefart says: I'm working on it. May take a while....

Award

You're most welcome, you kept popping up on my watchlist. Are you a fellow Cape Tonian by any chance? Cheers Banez 14:21, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Yup, I'm away from SA for a few months though. Zaian 18:59, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Re: tokencoins

Sorry, I've been out for the week. I see the discussion has pretty much tapered out; unless the anon editor returns to defend his/her additions, I'd say just leave them out for now. All the editors seem to be in agreement that the link doesn't add anything significant. dewet|™ 15:23, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, I agree. I've also been away for a week or two. Zaian 18:59, 15 April 2006 (UTC)\

Scouting article work

If you are getting this, it is because you do or did work on Scouting articles (see Wikipedia:WikiProject_Scouting#Participants_and_primary_areas_of_interest).

As the Scouting WikiProject has been formed since early January 2006, we've had many great improvements made in this area of Wiki and I want to personally thank everyone for their help. We don't always agree on things, but we keep moving forward. YIS, Rlevse 22:09, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Artscape Theatre Centre

Thanks for your update on the Artscape Opera House (which may not have been its correct name, anyway...). As a member of the Wikipedia Opera Project who has been working on the opera houses section throughout the world, anything you can add to the Centre's article (or provide a separate one on the opera house? area? whatever?) would be wonderful..

I have put together a guideline (which has not be challenged) on what a performing arts centre with several performance venues should look like.

The best examples are probably Kennedy Center or Denver Center for the Performing Arts; both show a list of venues with wiki links, as appropriate.

While I gather you are away from Cape Town right now, any contributions which you can make will be welcome. I visited Cape Town in 1968 after two years in Tanzania, and would love to come back there again under what are very different circumstances now.

All the best, Vivaverdi 20:37, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Afrikaans translations of terms

I have removed a number of Afrikaans translations of political entities in South African articles (such as High Court of South Africa), added recently by an anonymous user from 203.25.230.27, 203.214.27.117, 203.214.30.124, 203.214.119.137 and other IP addresses. I do not think these translations add value. Since South Africa has eleven official languages, either all should be included, or none, except in rare cases like the Cape Town page which includes English, Afrikaans and Xhosa titles as these are the three main local languages. In general, if translation is required, the Afrikaans wikipedia article is the appropriate place. Zaian 22:04, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Pages affected include Constitution of South Africa, Parliament of South Africa, Magistrates Courts of South Africa, Provinces of South Africa, Senate of South Africa, Chief Justice of South Africa, National Council of Provinces, List of Prime Ministers of South Africa, Supreme Court of Appeal of South Africa and more. The same editor using 203.25.230.27 and 203.25.230.28 has done another round of restoring the translations I removed. I left comments on the user's talk page but received no response. Anonymous editor, if you read this: please enter into a discussion rather than simply repeatedly inserting the same information. I do not think a revert war is appropriate here, however, I am running out of options if you will not enter into a discussion. For comparison, the Afrikaans wikipedia does not include English (or Zulu!) translations for these terms in the opening paragraphs, and nor should it. Zaian 09:41, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Mafeking Cadet Corps

you should submit this for DYK at: Template_talk:Did_you_know#Suggestions Rlevse 21:17, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Barnstar of National Merit

I have recently been noticing your excellent contributions to articles about South Africa, so ...

National Merit

Citation
For your extensive work in articles pertaining to South Africa, I, Elf-friend, hereby award you The Barnstar of National Merit. Congratulations! Elf-friend 09:22, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Boy Scouts of America

Do you know of a citation we could use for the line beginning "The Southern African tribes also held a belief that shaking..." in this article? Rlevse 17:13, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Rondebosch

Sorry...I'm a Bishops Boy (and what I said is on the whole the truth --> Bishops did win the latest cricket, rugby, athletics and debating encounters).

I will check on some of the "is noted for academic, sporting and cultural successes" - this too is a bit of an advert... maybe someone could help out and provide some information like, "x % A aggregates last year".

-- Chris Lester ^talk 14:22, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Go ahead... I created a seperate heading of "Achievement" and put it under there. That way the claim can be substanciated. If you think its better back in the header, go ahead. :) -- Chris Lester ^talk 15:30, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Spelling

Hi, I see you fixed my 'Parlement'. In South Africa we need to be on the lookout for correct spelling and I knew I had to go back and fix that.. I do enjoy contributing to Wiki, there is so much to do.. Cheers Gregorydavid 07:59, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

DYK

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

--Cactus.man ✍ 16:52, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

AECI

My reference is their own company website ([1]) -> History -> 1924.

Kind Regards, Elf-friend 07:54, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Images

If you come across more images to delete plaese do not put on the prod page that page is for articals ONLY Thank you,--Wompa99 19:34, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, my mistake. I should have used {{ifd}} rather than {{prod}}. I didn't know about {{ifd}}. It's a pity the {{ifd}} process is harder. Zaian 17:31, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

The South African Bush Telegraph

Hi Zaian, the Africa Award has been proposed as an official award, we could sure use your input at the proposal page - Thank you! --Jcw69 08:15, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

University-preparatory schools

Hi Zaian,

I have understood it not under the strict American prep school definition (i.e. private school) but all schools (public and private) that have a school leaving phase -- they could be high schools/secondary schools or primary and secondary combined. That said it is not used in South Africa and perhaps is redundant given the Schools in South Africa category? Raker 06:47, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Wiki break

Hi Zanian, While you are away I shall keep an eye on pages you have worked on.. Some of us need to get ADSL lines or we will get cut off. Cheers Gregorydavid 11:36, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Talk:Andries Treurnicht

I have answered your query here. Sussexman 09:57, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

apartheid

Then why is the article called "History of South Africa in the apartheid era" rather than just "apartheid"?Sonofzion 21:16, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

(Copied to your talk page). I'm not going to start a revert war, but History of South Africa in the Apartheid Era is a high-quality article, and South African apartheid is the only "indisputable" use of the term Apartheid, because that's where it was invented and officially used. The redirect to the specific name is to prevent the page being diluted with discussions of other countries, where the term has no official status. This is by far the preference of the editors of History of South Africa in the Apartheid Era and I respectfully request that you, in turn, respect this. Zaian 21:21, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Why don't editors of History of South Africa in the apartheid era want to move that article to apartheid then? Sonofzion 21:23, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

(Copied to your talk page). The consensus, achieved after much discussion and upheld over several years, is that Apartheid should redirect to History of South Africa in the Apartheid Era as the article about the official use of the term. The longer name is to prevent confusion and controversial editing involving other countries (in particular Israel) from taking place at that location. That debate should not take place under the official Apartheid heading as it is very much secondary to the official historical use of the term in South Africa. If you would read the many archives at both Talk:Apartheid and Talk:History of South Africa in the Apartheid Era you would see that your recent editing of the page Apartheid is a perhaps unintentional hijacking of this topic. Again, I respectfully ask that you allow it to be returned to the previous status quo. Otherwise I've absolutely no doubt that a great many editors of the South African article will disagree with your move and see it as unilateral. Zaian 21:30, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

I've moved this discussion to Talk:Apartheid. Please continue there unless you would like to talk to me personally about this. I think the discussion is more important than an individual conversation. Zaian 21:39, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Hi Zaian. Could you please take a look at my fresh proposal at Wikipedia:Central discussions/Apartheid#Proposal by User:Humus sapiens. I respect your opinion and would appreciate your advice how to improve it. Thanks. ←Humus sapiens ^ну? 10:30, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Excellent suggestion, thank you. ←Humus sapiens ^ну? 10:48, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Hi Zain. I changed the redirect without really thinking about it, then discovered a huge ongoing discussion about it, to which I contributed some thoughts. I appreciate that you are a South Africa buff, and I absolutely believe South Africans wouldn't use the term in any other fashion. And I'm sure the article on South African Apartheid is excellent. But for the rest of the world the word has taken on a specific meaning, sort of like genocide without all the killing, if that's not too glib, but more stringent than the term segregation alone implies. If we didn't have the word genocide we'd probably have adopted a generic version of holocaust, and think of the edit wars then! But instead we can talk about the Jewish Holocaust and the Armenian genocide in the same sentence, and there's no confusion or ruffled feathers (even though it is indeed sometimes called the Armenian holocaust). I won't even make that argument on the talk page due to Godwin's Law, though I think it scratches at the surface of the problem. I mean -- just as there are Holocaust deniers and pretty much deniers of any other genocide for most of human history, I think we have an obligation not to let apartheid regimes, whether or not any exist or ever will, off the hook by letting them hold up a copy of the Wikipedia and saying "look, we're not practicing apartheid -- it says right here only South Africa ever has done that" while cleverly ignoring the definition in international law. Frankly, that scares me. I just think the main article needs to reflect the wider use of the term, and I hope you understand why I think it it important. Kendrick7 23:22, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Rondebosch

I see...I am wrong...maybe we didnt need that rugby score (I won't restore it but it can be argued that why put the UCT maths competition there - just as relevant (though in reality rugby beats maths...)). Lets leave it like it is.

I was just not sure about that UCT Maths Competition (was it 6 / 7 or 7 / 8 years that RBHS won) - so I left out the finer details. I don't say the Bishops article is right - it does read like a bit of an advert - and with time hopefully i can adress that. I wonder, do you come from RBHS?

Anyway, I see you removed stub status: do you mind if I restore it on the basis that information about the school is sketchy and needs far more of it? Otherwise should I use an expand template? Most of the data deals with famous alumini - which is not a problem, but does little to address the core details of the school.

POV is always going to be an issue with school articles -- hopefully the way to address this will be to provide evidence to back those statements up.

-- Chris Lester ^talk 10:57, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Bantustan

Here's the result #7 from [2]: "Multicultural States: Rethinking Difference and Identity - Page 123 edited by David Bennett - Social Science - 1998 - 320 pages 2 The term ‘bantustan' was used by apartheid's apologists in reference to the partition of India in 1947. However, it quickly became pejorative in left and ..." Thanks. ←Humus sapiens ^ну? 03:39, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

This makes sense. Thanks for fixing my flop. ←Humus sapiens ^ну? 09:11, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Funny

You wrote:

"I suppose being hardline anti-communist isn't the only reason to oppose perjorative anti-communist labelling. Too many negatives, my head hurts."

I lived in Ukraine for 2 1/2 years, so my view of communism is more nuanced than most. I am aware of the horrors of the USSR second hand. First hand, I know capitalism has been a complete failure for the people of Ukraine, as I know (second hand) that it has been for so many other countries around the world. I have so many dear Ukrainian friends in such wretched poverty.Travb (talk) 16:27, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

apartheid activists

I did not think about this before, but we could create a category named 'International anti-Apartheid activists'. I suppose various people articles could be collected into this category that currently reside in the categories you mentioned as well as some other 'policy/groups' categories. This would become a sub-category of various categories, except not a sub cat of South African activist categories. Maybe we should estimate how many people would fit before acting.

If necessary, we could also create a 'South African anti-Apartheid activists' category by proposing a rename of the existing category. After the rename is finished (and all the articles moved there by automation), we could re-create the 'Anti-Apartheid activists' as a supercategory. It would be composed of the new 'South African anti-Apartheid activists' category and the 'International anti-Apartheid activists' category (if we create the latter; otherwise if there are not enough people, of the articles on the non-South Africans}.

This could be done by automation and not much manual work. Your thoughts? If you agree, but don't know how to accomplish some of this work, I can help. Thanks Hmains 15:40, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

If we stared listing proponents and opponents of any political/human rights subject, we would have many very long lists indeed. Activists we can limit to those fitting the Wikipedia definition of 'activist'. They took actions, whether physical or intellectual. I hope there is no problem in this angle. Thanks Hmains 18:43, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Brownsea

will need to somehow link the main Brownsea article and this one to each other
is this, in Background, "organised the camp for 20 boys on Brownsea Island during the summer of 1908." different front the 1907 encampment? The text doesn't make it totally clear.

Rlevse 11:42, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Very nice draft. Where did you get all this detail? I've never seen such detail on the camp before.

Let me know when you move it to article space and I'll rate it. I'd say it's already B-class and with a tad tweaking (like can you footnote anything), should make Good Article.Rlevse 11:56, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Footnotes are a breeze, let me know if you need help.Rlevse 12:05, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

I listed this at our project's New Artilces section on the project page. I agree you should list it at Template_talk:Did_you_know, and should certainly mention the 100th anniversary in the write up. Nice work. You may want to list at WP:GAC too. Rlevse 13:05, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Scouts on DYK

On 12 July, 2006, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Brownsea Island Scout camp, which you created. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

--Mgm|^(talk) 08:01, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

ECC

Hi, this is a courtesy call to say that I have done a fairly thorough clean-up on the End Conscription Campaign article, which I think you originated. --Adam Brink 09:57, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment on my talk page. I see from Ethnopunk's talkpage that he has a bit of a history... I take it from whence it comes! (I see you are taking a break and don't want to bother you further, so please don't feel the need to respond to this.) --Adam Brink 15:05, 14 July 2006 (UTC)