Humanities desk
< August 16	<< Jul \| August \| Sep >>	August 18 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Humanities Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

August 17

Citrine - vote of no confidence

About a month ago, DuncanHill asked "Does anyone know if Walter Citrine says anything about votes of no confidence in The ABC of Chairmanship?". As it turns out, I borrowed a copy over the weekend, and can now answer. He says (page 94 of the 4th edition) that if a motion of no confidence is carried by a 2/3 majority, then the chairman has no option but to resign. Whether this has any bearing on his presumed question over Jeremy Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party is not clear to me. --Phil Holmes (talk) 15:16, 17 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks, much appreciated. DuncanHill (talk) 20:20, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Ancient Chinese Cleromancy

On a page of the website Occultopedia, I read:

The ancient Chinese system called chiao-pai, which is still practiced today, involves the tossing of two curved bamboo blocks on the ground. If both blocks land with curved sides up, the answer is positive; if both blocks land with flat sides up, the response is negative.

Can you find me any source for this? I'm interested in the ancient origins of dice. Indian Pachisi used cowrie shells, while, in the New World, Mesoamerican Patolli used beans, and another unnamed Mesoamerican game used split reeds, and maybe this all comes from very ancient cleromancy. Unless it's just evolutionarily convergent for humans to construct board games. Card Zero (talk) 16:02, 17 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

For background and context, we too have a decent article on cleromancy. I don't know "ancient Chinese" matches up with the timeline in Leviticus, but there it is related that god asked Aaron to cast lots, and Moses also divided up lands for the Israelites with some sort of lot-casting too.

I see now that we have article about the Chinese bamboo lot casting at Kau_cim. Might be a Romanization of Chinese issue on the name, or maybe <gasp> occultopedia got some wires crossed. Or maybe there are at least two different methods of using bamboo sticks to make decisions.

See also dice#history and sortition for the history of chance-based divination. SemanticMantis (talk) 16:15, 17 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! I tried spellings like "qiao-pai", but from there to "kau cim" is quite a leap.

Edit: in fact that article links to the right one: Jiaobei. Card Zero (talk) 16:21, 17 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, good! Still no good refs, but at least our article has some decent external links and better pictures :D SemanticMantis (talk) 16:35, 17 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The tools used were originally clam shells, the modern bamboo ones are meant to resemble shells. I don't know when the bamboo ones became common, but if one were to nitpick it might not be wholly accurate to state it as if they were always bamboo. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 17:02, 17 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There's also the I Ching, although that involves six sticks, but not knuckle bones or dice per se. μηδείς (talk) 22:09, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Rates of autism among wikipedians

What are they? 2600:1010:B14D:5E4A:EA62:911E:7F02:3D2A (talk) 23:59, 17 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@2600:1010:B14D:5E4A:EA62:911E:7F02:3D2A: That's an unusual question. What makes you think these sorts of statistics are available? RunnyAmiga (talk) 00:00, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia has a culture of anonymity; I like RunnyAmiga am confident there is zero chance of finding any meaningful statistics about Wikipedia editors as a whole. There may be a fraction of Wikipedians willing to self-identify as any number of things, with the caveat that 1) such a list of Wikipedians would not be complete and 2) Such a list of Wikipedians is unverifiable. --Jayron 32 00:06, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Um, I never said I was confident that there is zero chance of finding any meaningful statistics about Wikipedia editors as a whole. That said, I am confident that there is zero chance of finding any meaningful statistics about Wikipedia editors as a whole. RunnyAmiga (talk) 00:43, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I've mentioned this thread here. Bus stop (talk) 04:56, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

We have a category for Wikipedians with autism (all self-identified via an infobox); perhaps you could ask someone there. Nyttend (talk) 23:46, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The current count of users there is 73. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 12:09, 19 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The current count of users is 48,256,909. Plainly, that number of 73 does not adequately represent all autistic Wikipedians. As noted above. --Jayron 32 12:27, 19 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Says who? —Tamfang (talk) 03:18, 20 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Is it reasonable to say that the rate of autism across the world population is greater than 73 in 28 million? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:51, 20 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

To be fair, Jayron's "like RunnyAmiga" does not necessarily mean exactly like. —Tamfang (talk) 03:18, 20 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Making a paper napkin estimation, there are between 1.1% and 1.5% of children diagnosed with autism, which would put the estimated number of registered Wikipedia users between 31,785 and 43,344. However, this ignores a whole ton of factors, like inadequate data on diagnosis rates, a higher preponderancy for children in high income countries to be diagnosed and how both of those things correlate to who edits Wikipedia. For a neurological disorder, autism is fairly new and not as thoroughly studied. There has been a massive increase in diagnosis of autism disorders since the 1980s but we are still determining if that is due to a rise in prevalence or some other factor. This also discounts geographical location, people who have it but aren't diagnosed, false positives and plenty of other things to consider. I think the real question is "are people with autism more or less likely to edit Wikipedia than people without?" I can't find a study that ascertains either side. Yet. uhhlive (talk) 15:21, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]