User talk:Apaugasma/Archive 1

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	For your recent edits to Ibn Wahshiyya. Thank you for bringing a scholarly perspective based on recent research to the article! Cerebellum (talk) 11:21, 24 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Apaugasma, you seem to know what you're talking about! I'm working on Ibn Wahshiyya's Nabataean Agriculture right now, so if you ever have a moment to spare would you mind reading through it and letting me know what you think? I know the prose is rough, I need to clean it up, but I’m more worried about any errors of fact or interpretation. Until I saw your edit summary I didn’t know that Nasr was a fringe author, I’ll remove my citation to him but there are probably other mistakes lurking! --Cerebellum (talk) 11:27, 24 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Dear Cerebellum, thank you very much! Thank you also for motivating me to put a bit of extra effort into this; it most certainly works! I've been busy all day writing a series of comments and suggestions on your wonderful article, which I've posted on its talk page. Thanks again, Apaugasma (talk|contribs) 21:48, 24 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Questions

Can I ask whether you know much about the origins and development of the Greek four-stage colour-coded alchemical process ending with iosis (rubedo, rubefaction) via xanthosis, etc.? It was this connection, with the end product being purple and purple being the highest colour, indicating the (spiritual) purity of the rarefied material and somehow conceiving of purple as equal or greater than gold, or rubefaction as the final purifying stage in the production of "gold", that I am especially interested in. Reference was made to some Leiden papyri in Liz James's Light and Colour in Byzantine Art and some papers cited therein, but I'd like to know more about colour in the beginnings of alchemy and the first millennium of alchemy in the Greek East. Most work seems to favour the Arabic or Latin traditions of later centuries. GPinkerton (talk) 17:53, 24 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Also, it'd really help editing if you were to use the Template:Cite book and other such templates. If you use the WP:VisualEditor you can use the automatic citation formatting tool: one only needs to copy-and-paste in a DOI, URL, or an ISBN and it will do most or all of the work for you. Many thanks for your efforts thus far! GPinkerton (talk) 18:03, 24 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Dear GPinkerton, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I don't know much about Greco-Egyptian and Byzantine alchemy (a gap I intend to fill, though there are many!).

What I do know is that one of the four original books of pseudo-Democritus was called On Purple (now part of the Physika kai mystika, but also separately preserved in a Syriac version; see Martelli, Matteo 2013. The Four Books of Pseudo-Democritus. Sources of Alchemy and Chemistry, 1 = Ambix, 60, Supplement 1. Maney Publishing, p. 19). Like the other three books of pseudo-Democritus, it contained information on the production of dyes: this one on how to dye wool purple, the other three on how to 'dye' precious stones and on how to 'dye' metals gold and silver (these 'dyes' were probably rather chemical reagents, a terminology still found in Arabic and Latin alchemy). More specifically, On purple contained recipes for how to dye wool purple by using two natural substances (bryon thallasion and lakcha, see Martelli 2013, p. 11), which could be used as a substitute for the expensive Tyrian purple (also known as murex, the colour of emperors; Martelli 2013, p. 17). Similar recipes to dye fabrics purple are also contained in the Leiden and Stockholm papyri (Martelli 2013, p. 6).

Starting from this, we may perhaps hypothesize that, given the nature of purple as a status symbol comparable to how we regard gold today, the Byzantine alchemists commenting on pseudo-Democritus were especially proud of their capability to artificially create purple? Perhaps they associated purple 'dye' (probably involving a 'spirit' or highly volatile substance?) with the capacity to perfect nature, somewhat like later alchemists did with the 'elixir' or 'stone' that could perfect metals in order to create gold? Much further research is certainly needed, but this is as far as I get, on this evening, with my very limited knowledge. Apaugasma (talk|contribs) 00:37, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thrice-thanks! that's a magnificently more-than-adequate answer! I am very grateful! It is of note that many of the patristic authors refer to dyeing with purple as the basis of various metaphors for both positive and negative (but always indelible) characteristics, doubtless referring to Eclogue 4 (if I remember right) of Vergil and the pun on dyeing/baptism (βάπτω). One of the pseudepigrapha mentions a purple light emanation during the Harrowing of Hell. I'm working on this for my own research on coloured stones in the art of the relevant period. While I know the authors were often concerned with the σμαράγδας (perhaps represented in architecture with verde antico) but do you know of any mentions of porphyry (small p) in the esoterica of any language? GPinkerton (talk) 01:18, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@GPinkerton: Well, there's of course the Dēmokritou peri porphyras kai chrysou poiēseōs that is now part of Physika kai mystika as mentioned above. But since pseudo-Democritus' Physika kai mystika is the earliest known alchemical text and was regarded by all later Greek alchemists as the single most authoritative source, I suspect that you will find much of interest throughout the Greek alchemical literature. It strikes me as strange that someone would be researching coloured stones in the Byzantine period without consulting the alchemists, for whom the colouring of stones was one of their main businesses? Since you seem to read Greek fluently, I strongly suggest you just go through the actual texts, which are generally quite short, and even taken all together fit in one volume of c. 460 pages (vol. II of Berthelot, Marcellin and Ruelle, C. E. 1888. Collection des anciens alchimistes grecs. Vols. I-III. Paris: Steinheil, undoubtedly available online; vol. III has French translations of all texts). Note, though, that Berthelot and Ruelle's edition is very poor, so where available it is better to consult critical editions (mainly Martelli 2013 as cited above for pseudo-Democritus and the Les Alchimistes grecs series published by Les Belles Lettres). For secondary reading, I suggest Nicolaïdis, Efthymios (ed.) 2018. Greek Alchemy from Late Antiquity to Early Modernity. Turnhout: Brepols (a collection of essays, mainly by top tier experts); Magdalino, Paul and Mavroudi, Maria (eds.) 2006. The Occult Sciences in Byzantium. Geneva: La Pomme d'or (an older collection of essays), and perhaps (if you read Italian) Martelli, Matteo 2019. L’alchimista antico: Dall'Egitto greco-romano a Bisanzio. Milano: Editrice Bibliografica.

I strongly suspect that the fascination for purple was a typically Roman/Byzantine phenomenon, but of course it may have left some traces in the early Arabic literature. If I ever come across anything, I'll be sure to contact you! You may also want to contact Matteo Martelli, who is the world's foremost expert in technical Greek alchemy. In the meanwhile, I'd be very interested in some references for the Patristic allusions to purple dying (that the 'dye' would penetrate the whole of the substance and thus would be indelible was one of the ways in which alchemists differentiated 'their' dying from 'regular' dying), as well as to the pun on dying/baptism? Apaugasma (talk|contribs) 16:01, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Apaugasma, Thanks so much for this! I was just reading the Martelli paper and made a note to contact him or his team. I am keen to know what the authorities had to say on stones, but particularly building stones, marbles, and particularly porphyry. There is a fascinating late reference to a tradition involving the casting of porphyry columns in vats (obviously stemming from a confusion with the purple dye which shares the rock's name) cited in a footnote to Fabio Barry's "Walking on Water" on marble's historical conception of having been made from liquid by various means. Somewhere there is also reference in an Arabic source to certain porphyry columns in a mosque in Cairo which had been allegedly manufactured by a djinn (who had been forced to abandon them for one reason or another), and somewhere else there is mention of porphyry spolia in the Great Mosque of Damascus having come from the throne of Solomon (no less). Ibn Jubayr (according to the translation I read) saw porphyry (and green marble) in the very Ka'aba. Unfortunately my Greek is nowhere near good enough to read alchemy without the aid of a translation, though I will want to see the originals.

βάπτω (I dip, dye, give colour to) is the root and stem of βαπτίζω (I baptize). Because purple dye was the only really colour-fast garment dye in antiquity, it had a special symbolic value and never washed out (and neither did its fishy smell). Fetishizing purple dye was widespread in the ancient east long before the Romans; the Hebrew Bible frequently refers to purple, and early exegetes treated of these usages, and it may even have been tekhelet, possibly made from the same or similar snails by another method. (One of the most fundamental things is that "purple" (and colours in general) need not necessarily be the colour purple, though the most desirable seems to have been the blood/rust/wine colour usually represented.) I will give specifics soon. GPinkerton (talk) 16:28, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Apologies for copying this from my unpublished research's footnotes; it may be inaccurate and I don't recall exactly what is being said in most of them, though I can find out if necessary. It should be said that these ideas are mine and not (yet) reviewed. There are many more, but these footnotes represent the state of some of my work 2 years ago ... GPinkerton (talk) 17:11, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Citations

For dyeing and baptism see:

John Chrysostom, Ad illuminandos catechesis I. (NPNF1:IX:159-160.) (PG:LXIX:223.)

where baptism is described as "αϊματ βαφεΐσαν Δεσποτικῷ" ("dyed in the Master's blood")

On colourfastness of purple/the indelibility of its moral properties on the wearer:

Jerome, Epistula CVII, V. (NPNF2:VI:191.) (CSEL:55:295)
Jerome, Apologia ad Rufinum, I:30. (NPNF2:IV:498.) (PG:XXIII:422B.)
Cyprian of Carthage, De habitu virginum, XIV. (ANF:IV:434.) (PL:IV:452Bff.)
Tertullian, De cultu feminarum, I:8, II:10. (ANF:IV:17, 23) (PL:I:1327B, 1312B-1313A.);

cf. Pliny, Naturalis historia, VIII:74. (LCL352:138-139.)

On Virgil, Ecloga IV, 42-45. (LCL63:50-5.), describing eschatological self-dyeing purple sheep:

Lactantius, Institutiones divinae, VII:24. (CSEL:19:658-663);
Eusebius, Oration of Constantine, XX. (Heikel, 1902, 183);

On purple dye/colour and morality in general, with positive and negative (but always superlative) attitudes to the stuff:

Tertullian, De testimentio animæ, II. (ANF:III:176.) (PL:I:621-623.)

De pallio, IV. (ANF:IV:10 ) (PL:II:1045A.)

De idololatria, XVII-XVIII. (ANF:III:72.) (PL:I:686B-690A.)

De corona, I. (PL:II:77A.);

Cyprian of Carthage, De opere et eleemosynis, XXVI. (PL:IV:622B.);

Epistola VIII. (PL:IV:249C.)

Jerome, Epistola LVIII. (NPNF2:VI:122.) (PL:XXII:584.)
Theodoret, Epistola XLIII. (NPNF2:III:264.) (PG:LXXXIII:1220D.)
Athanasius, Fragmenta in Matthæum, XVIII. (NPNF2:IV:lxxix.) (PG:XXVII:1380D.)
Prudentius, Peristephanon, X:910. (LCL398:288.) and X:143-144. (LCL398:238-239.)

In the biblical tradition:

Jeremiah X:9.
Numbers IV:4.
Song of Songs III:9-10; cf. Theodoret, Explanatio in Canticum canticorum, II:3. (PG:LXXXI:125A.)
Luke XVI
Gospel of James, XI-XII;
Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, VIII, IX. (ANF:VIII:363, 372-373.)
1 Peter II:9 – "γένος εκλεκτόν βασίλειον ἱεράτευμα" and "θαυμαστὸν φῶς."

On the temple curtain and its dyes:

Josephus, De bello Judaico, V:5:4. (LCL203:66-67.)
Gospel of Nicodemus, I:2. (ANF:VIII:448.)
Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, V:6. (ANF:II:452.) (PG:IX:56C-57A.)
Philo of Alexandria, De congressu quarendae, XX. (LCL261:516-519.)
Ambrose, De fide, II:12. (NPNF2:X:225.) (PL:XVI:562A.)

@GPinkerton: Thanks a ton for these! I'm sure they will be of some use to me. Sincerely, Apaugasma (talk|contribs) 17:55, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

A barnstar for you!

	The Rosetta Barnstar
	For deciphering Wikipedia's alchemical morass in various language traditions; a magnum opus! GPinkerton (talk) 14:31, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, dear GPinkerton, I feel very honoured! Apaugasma (talk|contribs) 15:28, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Sinemorets

Hi! Wandered here from the ANI on Yaakov and was intrigued by your explanation of your username. Wondered if, based on your knowledge of greek, you might be able to decipher the last sentence of the lede at Sinemorets to clarify what the Greek name was? Trying to find some better history on this place as the current name is fairly new and thought having the correct Greek transliteration might help. Thanks either way. StarM 00:50, 16 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Star Mississippi: I only have a very superficial command of ancient Greek, and you might get a much better answer from someone who is a native speaker of Modern Greek (which is quite different). Here's a list of people who have volunteered for translating from Greek. However, I will do my best to provide you with an answer using my make-shift skills.

The name Γαλαζάκι (Galazáki) appears to be compounded of the words γαλάζιο (galázio) ("azure", "sky blue", noun) or γαλάζιος (galázios) ("sky blue", adjective) and the diminutive suffix -άκι (-áki), rendering something like "Little Azure" or "Little Blue". It appears to be a common name for the flowers Veronica persica (birdeye speedwell) and Centaurea cyanus (cornflower) in modern Greek (according to this and this blog respectively, of course not exactly RS, but likely enough since both are small blue flowers). My best guess is that the village's name refers to the azure color of the sea, though there's no way to be certain (the Spanish wiki translates the Bulgarian name as "lugar en el mar azul", "place in the blue sea", but again not a RS).

Hope this helps, Apaugasma (talk|contribs) 02:51, 16 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much. Even if not RSes, they're a helpful starting point toward further sourcing. StarM 13:24, 16 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Gospel of Mark

Just to clarify that I don't actually disagree with the content of what you wrote, just the division between the lead and the body of the article. Achar Sva (talk) 07:41, 23 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Achar Sva: thanks for clarifying that! :)

Just wanted to say thanks

Hey, just wanted to say thanks for taking the time to make Wikipedia better. You're the type of person that makes this site better. Thank you, friend! Much appreciate your help with the article. Rusdo (talk) 04:15, 28 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Rusdo: No problem! You'll probably also like what I did to Gospel of Mark. Apaugasma (talk|contribs) 04:35, 28 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I do like it and I think it makes for a better article. I don't understand this knee-jerk reaction by some people against nuance and qualifications. That's what scholarship is all about. Pretending like there's a consensus in scholarship when there really isn't helpful. Rusdo (talk) 00:10, 3 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Apollonius of Tyana

Hi Apaugasma,

A few questions for you about the Apollonius of Tyana article.

1. You put the Francis quote from the sources section to the historical facts section. May I ask why? Francis is specifically discussing the sources involved. This quote is a better fit in the sources section IMHO.

2. I checked the source for this quote: "This led to controversy, as critics believed Gibbon was alluding to Jesus being a fanatic." It was simply not there in the B.W. Young article. Unless I miss something, I think this is out of place.

3. "Hilton Hotema compared Apollonius to Jesus by noting that there is much historical data surrounding the life of the Tyanean, but that Jesus is unknown outside of the New Testament." This is well outside mainstream scholarship and demonstrably false. If this quote is included, a note should be made regarding this. There is ample evidence for Jesus outside the New Testament and virtually no early evidence for Apollonius, as demonstrated in the Wikipedia article.

Thank you. Rusdo (talk) 04:28, 17 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Dear Rusdo, since your comment directly deals with article content, I copied it to the article talk page and answered it there. If you want to get the attention of other editors in talk pages, you can do so by using a template such as {{u|Apaugasma}}, which will 'notifify' or 'ping' the editor involved. Apaugasma (talk|contribs) 14:12, 17 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the discussion

It would probably be a good idea for you to take a break from my talk page because you seem to have run out of ammo. Thanks. Viriditas (talk) 21:31, 22 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Viriditas: yes, you're absolutely right. Thank you very much for your understanding. Apaugasma (talk|contribs) 21:43, 22 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Apaugasma, Viriditas (talk) has smiled at you! Smiles promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. Spread the WikiLove by smiling at someone else, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. Go on, smile! Cheers, and happy editing! Viriditas (talk) 22:04, 22 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Smile at others by adding {{subst:Smile}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

Hieroglyphs, decipherment of

Hi Apaugasma! First off, thanks for the warm welcome and for the balanced edits :-). One request, though: I think "[...] was able to identify the phonetic value of a few Egyptian hieroglyphs" gives the wrong impression. This suggests that Ibn Washiyya was following the correct method like an early Young / Champollion, as per Dr. El Daly's claims. I would be very excited if that were true, but looking e.g. at the picture shown with the article (from Dr. El Daly's presentation), it clearly is not:

Going through the list from the upper left, 𓊰 is not a uniconsonantal sign at all, certainly not "aleph", 𓏌𓏤 is /nw/ + determinative stroke, not "y", 𓏏 𓏥 is /t/ + plural strokes and not "q", 𓉻 is ayn+aleph (the word "great"), not "g", the next character 𓏌 is /nw/ again, now interpreted as "b", 𓊹𓊹 "two gods" (nTr.wy?) is certainly not "k" and so forth ... I could go on for the rest of the chart: it is not just that the phonetic values are misidentified but that word signs are interpreted as phonetics and the author clearly did not even understand which signs belong together. This impression is confirmed by a quick glance through the translation of the work linked to in the article: whole groups of glyphs are given allegorical translations "if a man was poisoned they would write it with XYZ glyphs" with no basis in the actual text displayed. So, if any glyphs were identified correctly I would ascribe that to mere chance (sadly, again - if the work had been done 1,000 years ago, I would be extremely excited).

I think the reason why this never gets called out is because the number of reporters that can read Hieroglyphs and Arabic is vanishingly small if not zero. I would give Ibn Washiyya credit for trying and for his assumption that signs could be read phonetically (rather than just allegorically / as ideographs) - in itself an important step. But "correctly identified some signs" gives the wrong impression IMHO, especially since this has been hyped so much in the media and there has been no critical reporting whatsoever (outside of specialist circles). Can we find a better way to phrase this? I struggled, that's why I took the identification part out completely in the lead section. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MikuChan39 (talk • contribs) 12:35, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi MikuChan39! Thank you for posting here. However, since what you wrote could be of some benefit to future editors of the article, I moved it to the article's talk page and replied to you there. If you want to notify other editors that you wrote something on a talk page you can do so by using templates such as {{u|Apaugasma}} or {{ping|Apaugasma}}. Last but not least, don't forget to sign your posts by typing four tildes (~~~~) at the end. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 18:23, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

June 2021

Please stop your disruptive editing.

If you are engaged in an article content dispute with another editor, discuss the matter with the editor at their talk page, or the article's talk page, and seek consensus with them. Alternatively you can read Wikipedia's dispute resolution page, and ask for independent help at one of the relevant noticeboards.
If you are engaged in any other form of dispute that is not covered on the dispute resolution page, seek assistance at Wikipedia's Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents.

If you continue to disrupt Wikipedia, you may be blocked from editing. Reverting the deletion of material added by a blocked sock is...well, it's about the worst explanation one can give. Drmies (talk) 01:14, 27 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Drmies: These edits were originally added by a number of editors who have recently been blocked for promotional editing (see the recent thread at ANI). However, as I discussed with Notfrompedro (the user who carried out the mass-reverts), quite a few of these edits were actually quite helpful from an encyclopedic point of view. I've been going through them very carefully, only reinstating those that do contribute valuable content and are compliant with content policy (mostly NPOV, which a lot of the edits also failed). I've had some discussions about some of these reinstatements (see, e.g., here and here), but it's not always easy to decide which edits are good and which are not, so that is to be expected. In any case, I believe that we should preserve good content, even if it was added by blocked editors. Would you please reconsider the action you took here? Thanks, ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 01:32, 27 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Apaugasma, that ANI thread alone is as clear as mud as a rationale for restoring this content, but I'll take your word for it. I would, however, change that edit summary a bit--go ahead and restore what you believe to be right. Sorry to make you go through that, but none of this was just very transparent. Drmies (talk) 01:47, 27 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I reverted myself for a couple of edits, but reading through the "Days of Creation" article, I can't help but wonder why that is worth inserting all over the place. I can't find a single review of it, and only a few mentions--here someone points to it cause they published in it, and this tells me it's basically a proceedings collection from a conference in Tajikistan. So that it is valuable content verified by a valuable source, I am not convinced. Drmies (talk) 02:02, 27 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Drmies: I can see how this must be confusing. What about the following for an edit summary: "this content was originally added by a blocked editor and reverted for that reason, but I am restoring it because it complies with content policy and improves the encyclopedia; please discuss at the talk page if you disagree"? I usually try to be as clear as possible in edit summaries, but I clearly goofed up on this one.

Could you be more specific which edit you're discussing? The blocked editors indeed tended to add the same content to a number of related articles, but on the whole they did add a lot of different content of varying degrees of quality. I think each one of them is open for discussion, but I need to know which one you mean, and which source it is using. Shafique Virani, though by no means a top scholar in the field, generally is a reliable source (see, e.g., his contributions to the Encyclopaedia of Islam, the standard reference work for Islamic studies [1]). ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 02:24, 27 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Drmies: the source you're referring to is probably Virani, Shafique N. 2005. "The Days of Creation in the Thought of Nasir Khusraw" in: Nasir Khusraw: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow. Edited by Sarfaroz Niyozov and Ramazan Nazariev. Khujand, Tajikistan: Noshir Publishing House, pp. 74-83 ([2]). Its worth may perhaps be gauged from the fact that it was republished online by the Institute of Ismaili Studies (here), the prime research institute for everyone dealing with Ismailism. This is as reliable as it gets (the IIS has a problem of being funded by Ismaili organizations, but it is extremely well-respected in the field), though that does not necessarily mean that any individual edits by the blocked editors based on it are appropriate. Perhaps it is better to discuss these edits at the talk pages of the articles concerned. In the mean time, will you self-revert, or shall I revert your edits? Thanks, ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 13:24, 27 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

That edit summary is fine. Yes, go ahead and undo--if you can restore the previous version so I don't get a ping every time that would be great. Ha, you got a ton of them yesterday of course. But yes, that (above, "Days of Creation") was the one that troubled me, thanks, but I'll accept your analysis and trust your expertise. Drmies (talk) 13:39, 27 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The Arabic Hermes

You appear to be an extremely knowledgeable person to me. Will come to visit you from time to time to discuss few things or to get some book recommendations on the history of philosophy, religion and science if you don't mind. I have started reading Kevin Van Bladel's "The Arabic Hermes: From Pagan Sage to Prophet of Science." Interesting study. But the book I suppose suffers from some Hellenocentric biases. I don't know. That is just an opinion. I haven't even finished the book yet. Have you come across this term before? I mean, Hellenocentrism? I suppose you have. The article is not an well developed one. Need more references to enrich that entry. Anyways, Bladels' book is great. Learning many things from it. Wanted to let you know that I came to know of this book from one of your comments in a talk page. And yes, pardon my English, I am not a native speaker. Best wishes for you. Mosesheron (talk) 17:58, 1 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Mosesheron: Thank you for the compliments! You're always welcome here to ask for references; I would be glad to help if I can.

As for Hellenocentrism, I had not yet come across the term itself, but judging from the article it can refer to several different concepts which do sound familiar:

Understood as 'Ancient Greek exceptionalism' (i.e., the idea that the cultural accomplishments of the ancient Greeks happened in complete isolation from the surrounding cultures and that they represent some kind of 'miracle'), it's of course a well-known position in the older historiography of philosophy and science which slowly but surely is getting exposed as the ahistorical nonsense it really is. The main problem with it, as I see it, is that it entirely ignores the fundamental role played by textual transmission: what we do and do not know about the cultural accomplishments of people who lived more than 2000 years ago is entirely determined by the people who lived in the two intervening millennia: its their interests, their preservation efforts, their politics, and their military successes and failures which have resulted in the survival of some texts and the perishing of others. Basically, most of what we know about the ancient Greeks is due to the efforts of Byzantine copyists, their intellectual (Eastern Christian) predilections, and the fact that Constantinople remained unconquered until the 15th century. If Alexander had never conquered the cities of ancient Egypt and Persia, and if the Muslims wouldn't have done the same a thousand years later, we might have had access today to a rich Coptic and Persian literature similar to what we now have in Greek. There is no doubt in my mind that if that would have been the case, the whole idea of the 'Greek miracle' would have been an obvious absurdity that no one would even ever had thought of.

However, there also appears to be a secondary meaning of the term 'Hellenocentric' –one that the article strongly focuses on– which seems more closely related to identity politics, and which in my view wrongly blames modern (Western) historians for the vagaries of textual transmission as outlined above. That ancient Greek thought uniquely influenced all later civilizations west of India is not the result of some kind of Eurocentric bias, but merely a historical fact (and one largely due to the conquests of Alexander, which set into motion a process of Hellenization that had already reached levels of near-universality in early Byzantine Egypt and Sassanian Persia). That history books mainly focus on ancient Greek thought is partly due to this unique influence, and partly due to the fact that we have actual ancient Greek texts dating from that period to actually base our history books on. The simple reality is that we do not have an extant Coptic or Persian literature even remotely similar to what we have in Greek. Ancient Egyptian and Persian thought is all but entirely lost, and though what is left has not nearly been studied well enough, most of the pithy survivals were already under thorough Hellenistic influence, and just aren't of the quality and depth of what we have in Greek (and later, in Arabic). Again, this is entirely due to textual transmission, not to any inherent inferiority of Egyptian or Persian thought. But it still is the reality we have to deal with today, and the idea that modern (Western) historians are somehow trying to cover up or deliberately ignoring the evidence is itself a dangerous and damaging delusion.

As such, I do not believe that van Bladel is writing from a 'Hellenocentric' point of view: he is deliberately investigating Middle Persian, Syriac and Arabic texts in order to recover some of the rich intellectual traditions of the late antique and medieval Middle-East. The fact that most of these traditions go back on Greek and Hellenistic thought is not of van Bladel's choosing. Neither is the fact that the Sassanids were already engaging in an early form of identity politics by claiming that Alexander 'stole' all supposed Greek knowledge from the Persians, a theme that would reappear in many different guises in medieval Arabic literature. What exactly the ancient Greeks from the 6th century BCE owed to the Persians has been the subject of some speculation among 20th-century historians, but what Khosrow I claimed about this 1200 years later in the 6th century CE is simply of no historiographical value. Again, the actual facts about this are long lost, and it is wrong to blame modern historians for this.

With all this said, there is also the (different) phenomenon of Eurocentrism, which is a very real and much more insidious problem in Western historiography. Actually, the very idea that the ancient Greeks were somehow 'European' lies at the core of it, though there's of course also the neglect of anything not perceived to be 'European'. In fact, 'Europe' is a cultural construct dating from the 18th century, and the ancient Greeks really had nothing to with it: their world was part of the larger eastern Mediterranean, and they were looking to the inhabitants of Egypt and Mesopotamia as cultural 'relatives', not to the ancient Celts living in what is now Western Europe. Greek philosophy and science spread over Egypt, the Levant, and Persia about 1500 years before it finally reached Western-Europe (during the so-called Renaissance of the 12th century). Like ancient Greek culture itself, the history of Greek influence is a non-European one at least until the late Middle Ages. However, (Eurocentric) books on history of science or philosophy generally skip from ancient Greece to the Renaissance or the Early Modern period, leaving a huge gap that actually constitutes the greatest part of the story. In this context, Peter Adamson's History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps is a wonderful initiative. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 00:44, 2 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It was really enlightening. However, do you believe that modern historians have genuinely attempted, or are still attempting, to reconstruct the cultural context in which ancient Greece flourished, with all of its knowledge of philosophy, theology, and so on? Was it that difficult, given the fact that they have “successfully reconstructed" many aspects of history that were almost unknown to us? I'm sure you've considered the time period between the so-called first philosopher of ancient Greece, Thales, and the "all-knowing" Aristotle, in whose figure we see the culmination of nearly all ancient knowledge? How could they achieve so many things within such a short period of time? What are the real sources of pre-Socratic philosophy, theology, and so on? Did it all begin with them? If the answer is no, then, who were their real inspirations? People like Martin Bernal et al might well be wrong in their theses, but what really have the mainstream historians taught us about this aspect of intellectual history? I've been looking for a few works on the history of ancient philosophy, theology, sciences, and other subjects that explore the origins and sources of pre-Socratic philosophy in depth, but to my surprise, I have found none. Now that maybe because I am not an expert in the filed or a student of the history of philosophy and sciences like you. But again why are they so scarce if they really exist, if such works exist at all? Most books or journal papers I read start with the pre-Socratics, with an introduction that largely rejects rather than recognizes the contributions or contacts with other civilizations in a very smart way. They frequently spare a few lines to demonstrate how primitive and mythological other civilizations were, while claiming that the Greeks were unique and original in such and such ways. I made a comment on the Talk Page of the pre-Socratic philosophy about its sources and origin few months ago, which two devoted editors took very seriously. What do we come know about its origin and history from that page now? The straightforward answer is nothing. I am not of course undermining their efforts. Perhaps they did their best. Or perhaps they thought such little description was sufficient for it. Would you kindly recommend me some works that discuss the origins and sources of pre-Socratic philosophy in depth? Lastly, I thank you for your comment. It offers some ideas that our academics frequently fail to express. Best wishes. Mosesheron (talk) 17:13, 2 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hermann A. Diels (1848–1922). His collection of Presocratic fragments, *Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker*, is still used by scholars today. Also coined the term doxography, and reconstructed several ancient Greek doxographies in his *Doxographi Graeci*.

@Mosesheron: it's all about textual transmission, really. To understand this, first you need to understand what our knowledge of ancient philosophy is actually based on.

Did you know that we do not have even one work from a Presocratic philosopher? All of our knowledge about Presocratic philosophy is based on what we can glean from Plato and Aristotle (who have already been shown by Cherniss 1935 to be rather unreliable when it comes to the Presocratics), and from the fragments that can be found in late (and very unreliable) doxographical collections such as those compiled by Arius Didymus (fl. 1st century BCE), Aetius (fl. c. 100 CE) and Diogenes Laërtius (fl. 3d century CE), as well as in the works of some Church Fathers and other later thinkers (Cicero, Galen, Alexander of Aphrodisias, Plotinus, Neoplatonic commentators on Aristotle such as Simplicius, etc.). The most extensive of those later sources are the doxographical collections, but they're also the least reliable: to know how unreliable they really are, it suffices to look at what they say about Aristotle and Plato (whose actual works we do have), which often doesn't even remotely resemble the ideas found in Plato's and Aristotle's extant works. So the whole venture of reconstructing Presocratic philosophy is based on puzzling with mostly unreliable late fragments, and much, much speculation. But at least we do have the Greek works just mentioned to glean the fragments from, which is entirely due to medieval Byzantine copyists and geopolitical vagaries as explained above. On the non-Greek (Egyptian, Levantine, Mesopotamian, Persian) contemporaries of Plato and Aristotle, we have absolutely no textual evidence (apart from some travel tales and myths retold by Plato himself, who in this case constitutes an even less reliable witness).

But there are also important differences between the Presocratics themselves. Of Empedocles (c. 500 – c. 430 CE, not so long before Plato, c. 428 – c. 348 BCE), we have been able to reconstruct two almost complete poems. Of Thales (c. 625 – c. 550 BCE), on the other hand, we have not even one authentic fragment, and only some sparse and very questionable testimonies from Aristotle (i.e., we know almost nothing about him). So what are we going to say to someone who comes asking not about Thales himself, but about Thales' sources? There is a broad consensus today that in all probability, it did not start with Thales, and that he learned what he knew (whatever that was) from Mesopotamian and perhaps also from Egyptian itinerant teachers. But here we have entered the field of complete and utter speculation. There are no sources. This is an important point to grasp, because it both answers all your questions and leaves you entirely puzzled. More precisely, it leaves you as puzzled as scholars are, and I assure you that if there was anything that scholars could do to arrive at a better understanding, however slight, they would do it in a heartbeat.

But the puzzle is unsolvable, because almost all of its pieces are lost. There are some Babylonian clay tablets which contain practical instructions related to sciences like astronomy and medicine, some Egyptian papyri dealing with medicine and mathematics, etc. These are very similar in content to extant ancient Greek papyri such as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, i.e., mainly practical in nature and generally very far removed from the highly sophisticated texts dealing with philosophy and science, which also in the ancient world were very rare and constituted a very small minority of the written material (actually, they were more akin to jealously guarded treasure). This kind of text, which undoubtedly also existed in many other languages than Greek, did not easily end up somewhere buried under the sand, but needed to be diligently copied every few centuries or so to survive, which means that its survival depended on the existence of a scribal class who had the knowledge and the means to read, understand, translate, and copy material. This class of people often perished along with the empire that supported it, although there often was also some form of continuity (most notably in Christian monasteries, or in special cases such as when the descendants of Sassanian administrative functionaries were restored to power by the early Abbasids, most famously the Barmakids). For example, we know that there was an extensive philosophical literature in Middle Persian which was developed under the Sassanids (note, however, that this literature was already thoroughly Hellenistic), but which is almost entirely lost today (some traces of it may be found in the scanty Zoroastrian literature that does survive, such as in the Bundahishn; some works also survive in Arabic translation, such as part of the Arabic Hermetica). When it comes to ancient (before c. 300 BCE) non-Greek philosophical literature though, this was all swept away by the Macedonian, Roman, and Parthian conquests, and there's just nothing left for us but speculation.

Now scholars generally don't write books based on nothing but speculation (OK, Martin Bernal did, but there's a reason why we call his work pseudo-historic around here), so that's why you're not finding such. I don't know any real good reference for pre-Greek science (i.e., Babylonian and ancient Egyptian science), but I highly recommend checking the first chapter of Lindberg, David C. (2008). The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, 600 B.C. to A.D. 1450 (2d ed.). University of Chicago Press., which probably refers to some good sources on this in the bibliography (actually, the whole book is worth reading in itself, as it is the standard introduction to the history of science west of India). For Presocratic philosophy, there's Cherniss, Harold F. (1935). Aristotle's Criticism of Presocratic Philosophy. New York: Octagon Books., which is of course outdated in many ways, but remains the go-to classic when it comes to source criticism with regard to the Presocratics. For Presocratic philosophy itself, there are the well-known standard introductory works by scholars such as W. K. C. Guthrie and Jonathan Barnes (especially Guthrie is still very often cited), but I suspect you will find a much more up-to-date historiographical approach (as well as some interesting references) in Laks, André; Most, Glenn W. (2018). The Concept of Presocratic Philosophy: Its Origin, Development, and Significance. Princeton University Press. There's much more where that came from, so please feel free to ask.

I too wish you all the best, ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 01:11, 3 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I cannot thank you enough. Of course, I will come back to you for more references. But for now I think I will have to meditate upon your comment and look into the sources you have mentioned in order to fully comprehend what you have said. Best regards. Mosesheron (talk) 15:04, 3 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Removing legitimate talk page comments

Please do not delete or edit legitimate talk page comments, as you did at Talk:Shem HaMephorash. Such edits are disruptive, and may appear to other editors to be vandalism. If you would like to experiment, please use your sandbox. Thank you. Skyerise (talk) 11:06, 4 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Skyerise: I can assure you that was in good faith, and that I don't mind you reverting it at all. It seems that the discussion is actually taking place in the thread above, and I just thought that it would be better if those who read the notifications at the Wikiprojects would be directed to that thread rather than to an empty poll. It was not my intention to vex you. Please accept my sincere apologies. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 11:26, 4 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that's the intention. The discussion should take place in a separate section from the poll. It's cleaner that way and the closer can see the stated opinions more clearly. However, it is a poll and I've been informed by an admin that it's a perfectly legitimate thing to do. Those who don't put their opinion in the poll will simply not have their opinions counted. Skyerise (talk) 11:29, 4 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Skyerise: Yeah it sure is legitimate. I was just going to propose adding something like this, but you've already done so, so that's great! I guess that other editors have some resistance to this because usually a poll (or a request for comment, which as far as I can see is the same) is only started after some discussion has taken place on the talk page (this is explicitly mentioned in WP:RFCBEFORE). Perhaps we could still add an {{rfc}} template to it? That way, the RfC is listed and random editors are notified by the feedback request service. I've never done this before though, so I'm somewhat hesitant about it. Thanks, ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 11:49, 4 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I don't mind if someone adds an RfC to it. If that makes it necessary to change the heading, just make it a subheading under mine, since I've already notified two interested WikiProjects using my heading. Skyerise (talk) 12:23, 4 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Empty Tomb Assumption Narrative — is the source good enough?

@Apaugasma:, I was wondering if you'd like to weigh in on a discussion of sources over at Empty tomb. The question is over the validity of an assumption narrative lying at the heart of the empty tomb story in Mark. It seems to me that according to the source in question, this is problematic and probably not a mainstream or even a significant minority view. I know you appreciate taking sources seriously and figuring out what they're saying. I'd love to have your take. Rusdo (talk) 14:05, 8 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you

Thank you Apaugasma for informing the mistake in my draft article. I moved the page title of the article 'Paracelsus' to Philips Paracelsus. It will be more informative are easy to search. Regards, Hrishikesh Namboothiri V VNHRISHIKESH (talk) 06:43, 20 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Repeated links in See also section

Thank you for you comments on my talk page. I see that you have restored some of the "see also" link I removed, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Layout#%22See_also%22_section says that the "See also" section should not repeat links that appear in the article's body - and those link are already in the article.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Inf-in MD (talk • contribs) 23:34, 1 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Inf-in MD: yes, in theory you are certainly right. However, I think there are often good reasons to ignore this rule, as I will explain below. The following is partly copied from another talk page where I have made this argument before:

MOS:SEEALSO says that as a general rule, the "See also" section should not repeat links that appear in the article's body. But it also says that whether a link belongs in the "See also" section is ultimately a matter of editorial judgment and common sense. It seems to me that in many cases, these two recommendations are in conflict.

In what is probably the most recent Request for Comments (RfC) questioning the guideline, those who defended it wrote the following (each paragraph from a different user):

The guideline says "As a general rule", so if a link is particularly important and helpful to the reader, it can be repeated in See also. But if this [sc. this guideline] is removed entirely, people will add whatever links they want to draw attention to.
The point of the guideline is to make sure the See also section doesn't get too long, so we're supposed to use it sparingly. If something really is an excellent link to repeat, then you can do it. Note that editors may differ in their interpretion of "excellent", of course. We used to have an editor who would go around removing See alsos, no matter how helpful. He would either incorporate them into the text or remove them. That was a nuisance, but I've not seen anyone do that in a systematic way for years.
The way I see it, the links in the article body are most often associated with some sort of context or description. The links in the "See also" section are most often not. [...] So, the rule prevents the section from becoming a list of indiscriminate items.
Even if this rule is lifted, I will continue removing those "See also" links that I had removed in the past, only this time I will cite WP:REPEATLINK. And there is a reason to it too: I have never removed a link from "See also" whose existence improved the article despite this "rule". MOS is a guideline and I treat it that way.
[...] If the restriction is lifted, then I don't see a natural limitation. In a biographical article that describes a person's associations with many other people over decades, all of them wikilinked, what would keep others from thinking "Hey, he worked with X, we should suggest to readers that they also see X", with the "see also" section ultimately containing dozens of links and thereby rendering the section fairly useless as a means of focus on especially related topics.

It seems to me that those who (successfully) defended the guideline primarily see it as a way to avoid editorial discussions on what to include or exclude from a See also section. Moreover, some of them do not even intend to follow it when it is not in line with their editorial view, but want to keep it only because they like to use it when it is in line with their editorial view. But, as I see it, this rationale is in deep conflict with the spirit of Wikipedia, which favors discussion over the bureaucratic application of rules.

For this reason, I believe that editorial judgment should be more important than the general rule, which mainly serves to prevent See also sections from becoming page-long lists of marginally related topics.

Although we certainly want to avoid such overlong lists, the truth is that there are often good reasons to repeat a link in the See also section. One of them is that the See also section functions for many readers as a kind of further reading guide, helping them to choose which article to read next. From this perspective, it would not be logical to exclude the most closely related articles from the See also section. Yet precisely these articles have the highest chance of already having been cited before. This way, the See also section will absurdly point only to the least closely related articles. One may object that when there is a link in the article's body, readers will already have had the chance to click on it. But they may for various reasons not have clicked on it, and they will not in any case have all the relevant links clearly in mind anymore when they reach the end of the article so as to make the best informed choice. Some readers may also have started to read the article at some section that caught their interest in the table of contents, and have missed a number of relevant links in the other sections which they did not read.

Because of reasons like these, links which are repeated in the See also section may often be very helpful, and they should only be removed when they are not. In the case of the repeated links you have removed from The Kybalion, I believe that As above, so below and Correspondence are highly relevant and worthy of repeating. Hermetica, on the other hand, has been mentioned already enough to not need repeating, and may be removed. As for the repeated links you have removed from Emerald Tablet, I believe that they are so extremely relevant that there is no good reason not to have them in the See also section.

What do you think of this? ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 02:24, 2 August 2021 (UTC) (please remember to sign your posts with four tildes, ~~~~)[reply]

A few things: 1. I don't think there is any contradiction or conflict between saying "the "See also" section should not repeat links that appear in the article's body." and "whether a link belongs in the "See also" section is ultimately a matter of editorial judgment". An article about topic X could have links to topics A and B in the body, and these should not be in the See Also section , but whether tangentially related topic C should be in the See Also section is a a matter of editorial judgment. For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970_FIFA_World_Cup_Final can (and does) link to Pelé in the body, and should not link to it again in the See Also section, even though it is very important and very relevant to the article. But whether Brazil–Italy football rivalry belongs there is a matter of judgement. 2. You linked to a discussion about this very issue. Some people believed, like you, that the rule should be changed, but ultimately it was not, and the discussion ended with "There is strong consensus against the proposed change.". And it seems to me that what you are doing here is ignoring the result of the discussion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Inf-in MD (talk • contribs) 12:50, 2 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Inf-in MD: thanks for engaging me on this! Yes, I am ignoring the result of the RfC, but I am following its spirit, which is that the rule serves the specific purpose of preventing See also sections from becoming overlong, that it should stay for that reason, but that it can be ignored outside of that context. Did you know that one of the five pillars of Wikipedia is that Wikipedia has no firm rules? It's a rule in itself here that "If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it." (see Wikipedia:Ignore all rules). You say that 1970 FIFA World Cup Final should not repeat the link to Pelé in the See also section, even though it's very important and relevant to the article. But regardless of rules, do you personally believe that the See also section of that article is better without a link to Pelé? This you should always do, to ask the one question: Does it make Wikipedia better or not? To quote: Answer that question first, then pick whatever policy, guideline, essay, or argument supports the answer. Don't flip the order. If you look at a policy page first, then decide that something is good/bad because that's the conclusion of the policy, you forgot to ask yourself the one question. And you could very well end up supporting an outcome which does not make Wikipedia better. So I would like you to ask the one question with regard to the links in The Kybalion and Emerald Tablet. If you truly believe that Wikipedia is better without repeating them, then I won't argue over that. Thanks again for your attention! Sincerely, ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 18:12, 2 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I think Wikipedia:Ignore all rules is one of the worst things about wikipedia. Even if it did not create an internal paradox (can you use Wikipedia:Ignore all rules to ignore Wikipedia:Ignore all rules, thereby saying you can't ignore?), it is a potential source of endless arguments about whether a particular rule should be ignored, based on editors' subjective opinions. It is far better to fix rules if they create a problem. To me "See Also" sections are remnants of pre-internet paper encyclopedias, where the only way to draw attention to other relevant topics was via such footnotes. Hyperlinks fix that problem more elegantly. Ideally, there should be no "See Also" links, at all. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Inf-in MD (talk • contribs) 19:38, 2 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, though I do not agree with it, that's of course a perfectly respectable take on things. Thanks once more for engaging with me! ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 19:57, 2 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Well, reasonable people can disagree on this. Thanks for the discussion and explaining your point of view. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Inf-in MD (talk • contribs) 14:37, 3 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks

I appreciate you spending time on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hitchens's razor, my AN/I concern, and my talk page a while back when you helped me to understand policy better. You seem very professional and kind, and I appreciate that you have pointed out my mistakes in a professional and kind way. MarshallKe (talk) 13:13, 19 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@MarshallKe: thank you for coming here and leaving me this very kind message. I appreciate it very much! Sincerely, ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 22:17, 19 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Another thank-you

I have long appreciated your good edits on a number of articles, so: thank you! You are careful and knowledgeable, you respect good scholarship, and you tactfully revert inappropriate edits. If you make changes to Pseudo-Democritus, please read Martelli first. I think his monograph on the subject concludes about as much as is reasonable to conclude from the available sources, and successfully dates this writer's work to ca. 60 AD. I know Martelli, and can vouch for his conscientious professional scholarship. Ajrocke (talk) 17:54, 27 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Ajrocke, thanks for the compliments!

I am indeed entirely basing my current rewrite of pseudo-Democritus on Martelli 2013. There is no doubt that he is the most important current expert on the topic, and the quality of his scholarship really speaks for itself. The article will still just be a stub, but I hope you'll like it!

☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 18:05, 27 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent re-write and expansion of the article pseudo-Democritus! Thanks for doing this.Ajrocke (talk) 16:55, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much!

Hi, Apaugasma! Thank you very much for your kindness for how to contribute to Wikipedia. It was the first edit of Wikipedia for me, and I seem to have made a mistake, editing it. If you made a correction for my edit, I thank you so much! I have some things to do now, and would like to read about Pneuma (Stoic) and Stoic Physics later. I will not discuss it on the talk pages. Take care!Ruby2021 (talk) 16:16, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Militant atheist

The term "militant atheist" isn't used to refer to a biographical subject anywhere on Wikipedia. Should I assume that you already know this? The term "militant atheist" was used by members of WikiProject Conservatism to attack atheists. Viriditas (talk) 20:30, 30 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Viriditas! I'm sorry to hear that the term was used to attack fellow editors.

I understand that this may wake up some bad memories, and if I had known, I would never have proposed the term. As I said, I was fighting with my thesaurus to find the most neutral synonym possible for "avowed", and I thought it'd fit the context. Certainly Hitchens was militant about his views (it's not a sin you know!), but I totally see why you don't like the word. Let's just try and find something we agree on.

☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 21:19, 30 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Shem HaMephorash

Whatever happened to your additions to this article? Will they see the light of day? Skyerise (talk) 18:29, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Skyerise! I've been working on it off and on, but I have been too busy with other things to finish it yet. You can look at what I already have in my sandbox. It currently more or less breaks off towards the end of the 'Name/Word as angelomorphic divine hypostasis' section, where a paragraph on Jesus as carrier of the divine Name in early Christianity still needs to be completed. After that, the section on the taboo needs to be rewritten to fit in the current structure of the draft, the section on the term Shem ha-Mephorash itself needs to be expanded a bit, and I still have to write the whole part about the late antique and early medieval development of 12-lettered, 42-lettered, and 72-lettered Names (for which sources are scarce).

I'm not directly planning to write anything about the later history of the term (from high medieval Kabbalah and angel magic, through Renaissance Christian Kabbalah and goetia, to 20th-century Hermetic Kabbalah and occultism), since I'll have more than enough work with the early history. I'm not sure when exactly I'll have time to do all this, but it's probably safe to assume that it may still take a while. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 10:44, 6 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Help with draft articles

Hello. Can you please make the article Draft:Reign of Love out from draft? I think name of article must change to Velayate-e-Eshgh. Thanks Nikan Faze (talk) 14:37, 22 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. Can you please help me and say what can I do for the article Draft:List of Shahbanus of Persia? Nikan Faze (talk) 14:41, 22 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Nikan Faze! Unfortunately, I cannot really help you with these drafts, but I will try to give you some advice.

It appears that Draft:Reign of Love needs more reliable sources to establish the notability of this series. However, I have no experience in editing this kind of subject, nor am I frankly very interested to work in this area, so I could not say where or how to find these reliable sources.

As for the list of Iranian queens: it's an interesting idea, but it would require a lot of work. What you basically need to do, in my view, is to add reliable sources for the queens which do not have their own Wikipedia article (you can look for sources in the articles on their parents and/or children). It would probably also be a good idea to add the dates from those which have wiki articles, and perhaps their spouse. List articles are often not independently notable, yet are often kept because of their informative value (make sure to see WP:LISTN and WP:LISTPURP). However, they often also are a magnet for problem-editors, which is why AfC reviewers are probably reluctant to accept them. I guess that the key is to make them truly informative, for example by adding the dates and some other small info. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 16:43, 22 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Nikan Faze (talk) 18:03, 22 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Abu Amra Kaysan

If you are interested, can you do the same thing you did for Abu Lu'lu'a for Abu Amra Kaysan too? I think this article must to expand. thanks. Nikan Faze (talk) 12:57, 24 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The Abu Amra Kaysan article appears to have been written by two of our best editors on early Islamic topics, so I'm not sure why you're specifically asking for this article to be improved. In any case, while the article certainly could use a serious expansion, I unfortunately do not have the time to work on this right now. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 14:36, 24 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Requesting some article expansion help

Greetings,

Requesting your visit to article Draft:Aurats (word) and help expand the same if it interests you.

Thanks and warm regards

Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 03:07, 6 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Bookku! Unfortunately, I don't have the time to work on this. I must also say that as it stands now, the draft seems kind of OR-ish. In my opinion, it should be much more closely based upon secondary sources. Just my 2 cents. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 18:29, 6 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Different capitalization at RfD

Hi Apaugasma, I wanted to reach out here since I just closed the discussion at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 September 28#Shurafa committee. I also deleted the uppercase variant that you identified. I see this as an acceptable deletion per WP:NOTBURO. When closing RfDs, I try to consider whether the heart of the discussion is really a specific redirect or a more general idea. In this case, I saw the core question as "Should this phrase redirect to this page?" The answer was no, so requiring a separate discussion for the variant would be overly bureaucratic. In the future, you can list such variants in the same discussion. I expect editors would not object to that even if you don't spot the variants immediately.

One caveat is for situations where capitalization variants redirect to different places. This is not necessarily wrong, but that sort of situation comes up at RfD periodically, usually with an eye to bringing the redirects into sync. So if Shurafa Committee had redirected to a different page, I would not have taken action, leaving it instead to a separate discussion. Hope this explanation is helpful. --BDD (talk) 15:47, 6 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi BDD, thank you very much for your thorough explanation!

☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 18:31, 6 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Pings

Hey Apaugasma,

I have been impressed by your survey of scholarly works on Islam-related articles. I have already pinged you on some discussions over the past month and want to continue to do so. Is it ok if I do? I don't consider this canvassing as I consider you a fairly neutral editor (and in fact you've opposed my proposal in this discussion). I ping you because you provide insight from usually a different angle than how I see things.VR _talk 04:37, 14 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Vice regent! I've been worried before that this may at some point cross the line to canvassing, so I'd definitely recommend to be careful with it. But then I'd say you're surely experienced enough around here to know what is okay and what is not. Yes, you can always ping me when you'd like to hear my opinion, and I'm very honored that you value it so highly. From my side, though, I'm hoping I'll be able to resist answering the pings, since I've been trying to get busy with off-wiki things for some time now, which has not at all been working for me. If all is good, I will be off talk pages at least for a few months now. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 12:23, 14 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

A friend once told me a joke. There's a guy in the office, a total workaholic, always comes in earlier than anyone, leaves late, works studiously. Then one day the workaholic waltzes in late, only does occasional work, and mostly socializes by the water cooler. When this repeats for several days, someone asks him "what's going on?" The workaholic responds "I'm on vacation!"

My advice would be to just take a clean break. I've been trying to take a wiki-vacation but keep finding myself back. Maybe I should take my own advice... But I definitely hope you come back after your vacation (as I've seen some people leave and never return).VR _talk 14:18, 14 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi

I think you can revert your previous edit on Indian religions. Because the grammar was error. Indian religions are not those 4. Those 4 are major. It includes so many folklores and faiths. Those are mentioned in the article aswell. Wholepak (talk) 15:07, 14 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Wholepak! I think you are right. I have changed the article accordingly. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 17:24, 14 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

A beer for you!

Thanks for your input. When one is ranting into the void, this is the response one is hoping for, but doesn't really expect. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:07, 16 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hey Gråbergs Gråa Sång! Thank you for you magnanimity, and for the golden beer! It's very refreshing indeed.

☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 12:06, 16 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

If you haven't come across this before, you may enjoy it. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 12:09, 16 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

If you feel like having an opinion, or just watch some passionate debate: Talk:Bible#Proposed_leadtext. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:57, 21 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

History vs legend

Hey,

What, in your opinion, is the difference between history and legends? From what I understand, a legend is a folk tale and its historicity can either be:

confirmed by historians, in which case do we still call it legend?
doubted by historians, in which case it is definitely not indicative of historical facts (but still possibly useful as an indicator of what people believed)
neither confirmed, nor doubted, or perhaps a mixture of both, in which case I've seen historical books mention it with attribution ("Locals say the city was founded by..." etc)

From my reading, I'm seeing the legends of Abadir falling into the third category. It seems that historians agree Abadir existed; they doubt some of the more exaggerated tales surrounding him, but consider other stories of him believable enough to mention. For example, A Yemeni Sufi called Abadir migrated to Harar after the conversion and established Islamic schools there. His influence was important and today many Hararis sons of Abadir. The same source then goes on to mention Abadir domesticating hyenas (which sounds mythical to me).[3]

But as a general question, though, doesn't history include a lot of folk tales and hearsay?VR _talk 16:11, 17 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hello again Vice regent! A legend consists of a narrative featuring human actions, believed or perceived, both by teller and listeners, to have taken place within human history. Contrary to what our article –misleadingly– indicates, this is much wider than mere folk tales: actually, the great majority of serious historical sources contain at least a few legends. It is the historian's task to separate fact from fiction, history from legend, within one and the same primary source. Rather then 'confirming' or 'doubting' narratives that are already known to be legends, historians identify legendary narratives within a wider narrative that may well be, and often is, historical. That's also why you'll commonly see figures like Abadir, Ishaq ibn Ahmad, Darud, etc., being characterized as 'semi-legendary': while almost anything that has been written down about them is probably fictional, it is not possible to completely exclude the possibility that they may actually have existed.

The stories about such (semi-)legendary figures are also commonly interpreted as representing a fictional 'rendering' of historical fact: for example, while the stories about Ishaq ibn Ahmad's 12th/13th century migration from Arabia to Somalia and his conversion of the local population to Islam are undoubtedly legendary, they are commonly understood to reflect a historical settling of Arab Muslim tribes in Somalia during that period.

So your third option, a mixture of impossible, doubtful, possibly accurate, and almost certainly accurate information is in fact how most historical sources may be described. In that spectrum, the existence of Abadir definitely falls within the 'doubtful' range, and this is how you'll find actual subject specialists speak about him. I don't have the wherewithal right now to quote you all of those sources (I've already quoted a few at the AfD [4] [5] [6], but there are of course many more, and probably more relevant ones too), but as a professional historian broadly familiar with this kind of subject myself, I'm just going to ask you to trust me on this.

Whom you shouldn't trust is non-historians, even if they are scholars, like the politologist and international relations-expert Keith Somerville (the source you cite). It is very common for non-historians to take the information found in primary sources, or at times oral information picked up from locals, on face value. This is an intuitive approach, motivated by an attitude which you'll also commonly find on Wikipedia: this-or-this medieval source says this, or this-or-this local is deeply impassioned by this subject matter and seems to know every little detail about it, so why should some modern, western historian scholar know better? Because they're historians, meaning that they know how to properly interpret that primary source. Because unlike the non-historian, they have examined a broad range of other primary sources, written from different perspectives and often contradicting each other. Because they have gone through the trouble of reading all the studies of those primary sources done by other scholars, from which they have gained a broader perspective, enabling them to judge what is likely and what is not. Because they are independent of the subject matter, and have no personal vested interest in whether this-or-that element of it is true or not. That's why we have historians, and we should trust them, and no one else, especially on a project like Wikipedia. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 18:36, 17 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You're right that the source I presented was poor. Mainly because its not on the topic of history, but rather hyenas. History of Harar should come from sources in fields that are more relevant. I found plenty of good sources on Abadir migrating to Harar from Hejaz and spreading Islam, but most of them don't say this in their voice but rather "according to Harari belief"[7] etc. This source seems to treat him like a real person who was influential in spreading Islam in its own voice. Would you agree that wikipedia can mention the legend of Abadir in a History of Harar article, with attribution? VR _talk 21:59, 17 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I would much rather insist that Abadir be mentioned in a History of Harar article. Not doing this would be as absurd as writing History of Rome without mentioning Romulus and Remus. But I would strongly disagree with any implication that he was anything more than a legend: we should describe the legend, but as a legend, and also properly contextualize that (as shown by Gibb 1999, there are important religious and sociological factors at play in these legends).

But here's the thing with Wikipedia: editors have this bad habit of going on a googling trip, thus finding all kinds of non-expert sources, and then insisting that these are given the same weight as the views of dedicated experts. For almost any subject, you will find non-expert scholars who have written all kinds of nonsense about it. This is often innocent enough from the point of view of these non-experts themselves: the fact that it's nonsense is in most cases not crucial or even relevant to the topic they are really writing about, and on which they are the experts. But when it comes to evaluating sources it ought to be simple: where non-experts contradict the experts, the non-experts should be flatly discounted.

The problem is that editors are not even interested in identifying who the experts are for any given topic, and just want the view they happened to find on Google to be reflected on Wikipedia (and that's of course already assuming good faith with regard to having an agenda, etc., which really is as often the case as not). The great majority of Wikipedia editors just lack the basic heuristic skills needed to write a truly reliable encyclopedic entry, and that problem is much worsened by the fact that they don't even know they're lacking these skills. They have no idea about bibliographies, about going through the tertiary literature, about checking footnotes to see who is cited for what, to learn whose views are cited with approval and whose views are rejected, etc. They don't realize that this is even something that can be done, let alone that it ought to be done. To put it crudely, due weight on Wikipedia is whatever shows up first on Google and is published by an academic publisher. There's no awareness at all about how one scholar relates to another: if it's a scholar, it's 'reliable', and we should be good to go. Except that most often, the results arrived at through this method are not reliable at all.

If you want to pursue this, I've found a tertiary source that should be authoritative and that should refer to authoritative secondary sources which can then be checked: Wagner, Ewald (2003). "Abādir ʿUmar ar-Riḍā". In Uhlig, Siegbert (ed.). Encyclopaedia Aethiopica, vol. I (A–C). Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz Verlag. pp. 4–5. ISBN 978-3-447-04746-3. One slight problem: I don't have access to this source.

I will not pursue this myself though. I think it's very productive for me to be researching and writing content myself, but I should really learn to leave random articles I encounter stay the mess that they often are. Trying to improve them just slightly by removing some unreliable sources or adding some reliably sourced content, or even just pointing out that something is an error, or a hoax (!), turns out to be an exhausting exercise. It's really unproductive to spend days on end explaining basic stuff, and then only scarcely being heard or understood by other editors. I really want to continue patrolling and stewarding the articles I've written even when I'm not writing content, but apart from that I should really adopt a 'live and let live' attitude. Wikipedia's Horn of Africa-related articles are incredibly bad, but that's on other editors, and there's nothing I can, nothing I will do about it.

Anyways, I'm sorry about the rant. I'm really getting at wit's end, and I just need a break from having to argue over every last little thing. One day someone who is academically at home in Somali-Ethiopian studies will come by, and write beautiful articles about Abadir and all the rest. I've come to learn that this is the only true way for Wikipedia. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 00:55, 18 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Wives and concubines

I'm writing this here, per WP:NOTFORUM. Kecia Ali's Marriage and Slavery in Early Islam argues that there were strong parallels between wives and concubines. Early literature used the word milk (meaning ownership) to describe a man's dominion over both his wife and his concubine. She compares marriage (where a man pays mahr) to purchase of a concubine (where a man pays her price). She compares husband talaq-ing (ie divorcing) his wife to a man freeing ahis concubine. She then says Muslims weren't the only ones who thought like that, and quotes Norman Cantor saying "roughly one quarter of any major society in antiquity were human chattels— someone’s property." She discusses the work CHATTEL OR PERSON? THE STATUS OF WOMEN IN THE MISHNAH as means of comparison to Judaism. And then there's this source which says concubinage was closer to marriage than to domestic slavery.

All this is not to deny the horrible treatment concubines faced as you indicate here. But did wives in the medieval Muslim world fare significant better? Forced marriage and marital rape were historically common. So do we recognize the plight of Muslim wives by moving marriage in Islam to marriage and sexual slavery in Islam? Of course not. In fact, when one ponders on the plights of a medieval wife, the term "concubine" does not seem nice at all. Concubine denotes a woman inferior to a wife. Just as the life of a wife depended on the wealth and status of her husband, so did the life of a concubine.VR _talk 02:50, 21 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Vice regent: you're largely right of course, but it seems that you're almost deliberately ignoring one crucial aspect: concubines were legally owned property. As such, concubines had far fewer rights than full wives, and however easy it was to divorce an old wife and 'buy' a new one, it was never as easy as selling and buying a slave on the market. Concubinage in Islam, in contradistinction to marriage in Islam, was an actual form of slavery. The distinction wasn't by far as great or as clear as it is today, but it was still there, and not by any means insignificant. In my view, it makes perfect sense to treat it together with other forms of sexual slavery in Islam. Doing that also has the added benefit of making it clear from the get-go that it was a form of slavery (which really isn't obvious from the regular meaning of the word 'concubine').

Just think about it this way: if we were to exclude everything related to concubinage from the sexual slavery in Islam article, what would be left? And if we would do the same for the marriage in Islam article? It obviously makes sense to have a separate marriage in Islam article, but a separate sexual slavery in Islam article? Not so much. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 04:00, 21 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Again, from my reading of sources, concubines are treated by sources together with wives. I don't see concubinage being treated together with sexual enslavement of men, at least not for "Islam". For example, the book by Kecia Ali above covers both wives and concubines (but not male sex slaves, or forced prostitution). The book Queens, Eunuchs and Concubines in Islamic History, 661-1257 lumps them together. The book The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire simply lumps wives and concubines together in a chapter called "Wives and Concubines: The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries". Another title (though I haven't looked inside it): Conquerors, Brides, and Concubines: Interfaith Relations and Social Power in Medieval Iberia.

Another thing I want to point out is Western bias. Just do a ctrl+f at Concubinage to see how common it was for concubines to also be slaves (according to one source, "most" concubines throughout history were slaves). Even in the Judaic tradition (from which Christianity comes), Hagar, Bilhah and Zilpah were both concubines and slaves. Concubinage, for most of history, did not preclude slavery.VR _talk 05:17, 21 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

BTW, look at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Persecution by Muslims. It was deleted because it WP:synthesized a variety of topics into an WP:ATTACK page. Individual examples of persecution by Muslims were notable in their own right (Armenian genocide, Persecution of Baháʼís etc), but it was OR to lump them together. We can see a parallel with sexual slavery in Islam: it can become a dumping ground for every rape or sexual abuse ever committed by a Muslim (see this discussion, someone trying to include Rochdale child sex abuse ring etc.) And its a synthesis of topics that are individually notable, but notable together.VR _talk 05:36, 21 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Any article on Wikipedia can –and most in fact do– become a dumping ground for irrelevant cruft and user-generated POVs, unless it is written and stewarded by someone who is knowledgeable on the subject. Perhaps you are right that Concubinage in Islam and Sexual slavery in Islam should be two separate articles, perhaps not, but that is not what is actually important. What really would make a difference is if these pages would contain some well-written, summary style- and NPOV-compliant prose. The subject of sexual slavery in Islam is certainly covered by reliable sources (I think you might actually be unconsciously avoiding to read the sources that specifically deal with this subject in a dispassionate way, sticking rather with Islamic feminists such as Kecia Ali, who are in fact opinonated and cover only a specific partisan POV), and there could certainly be a good article based on those sources, separate from an article on concubinage or not. In any case, avoiding at all costs to speak about sexual slavery in Islam or to go into more detail about its darker aspects is just as much 'WP:DEFENSE' as the opposite constitutes WP:ATTACK. It's, in other words, a WP:BATTLEGROUND, and that is always to the detriment of the actual articles. Anyways, I expressed what I think should happen here, and I'm really done with this now. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 19:47, 21 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I saw that, and I'm disappointed. I thought of the above as an interesting and cordial conversation where we could learn from each other (or at least I could learn from you). I think I rubbed you the wrong way, and for that I apologize. Take care.VR _talk 19:52, 21 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Creating English version of a page

Hello , i want to know how to create an English version of this article ar:بنو العنبر. CorrectionKSA (talk) 03:56, 26 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hello CorrectionKSA! See the instructions at Translating from other language Wikimedia projects. Basically you can just translate the material and add it to Draft:Bani Al-Anbar - بني العنبر, using the following as edit summary:

Content in this edit is translated from the existing Arabic Wikipedia article at [[:ar:بنو العنبر]]; see its history for attribution.

However, I don't think it's a good idea to do this. This is because the article on the Arabic Wikipedia is entirely based on primary sources. It only cites al-Baladhuri and Ibn Hazm, both medieval sources, while Wikipedia articles should really be based on modern scholarly sources that write about those medieval sources (secondary and tertiary sources). You should be looking for modern books, papers, and encyclopedia entries on the Banu al-Anbar. Moreover, since such sources seems to be rather scarce (e.g., type in "Banu al-Anbar" on Google Scholar), this subject may not meet our notability criteria. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 12:07, 26 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Samaale

Hi thank you for your concern about my last edit Samaale, but i would like to share with you about the Samaale.

Samaale is a ancestor of Somali people and where Somali name come from, Samale brother is Sab, and their father is Hiil, and the grand grandfather is Abroone. Samaale Hiil Abroone you can confirm any somali.

Samaale has 9 children, Dir and Hawiye are one they are brothers in one father and called irir Samaale, ( you can comfirm to anyone) Gardheere Samaale is the frist born or oldest Samaale children, Mayle Samaale, Maqarre Samaale, Xarmalle Samaale, Yahabur Samaale, (not Yakabur, there is no Yakabur word in Somali language, if you see Yakabur in the book mybe there is error typing) Karure Samaale, Hariire Samaale and more,

I hope you understand when i edit i just want to proof my Samaale, not just to write what i wanr, if you are the one who can only edit and yoy are the owner of this article its ok i won't edit agaon,. Doorwaaq (talk) 13:07, 27 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Doorwaaq, thanks for coming to my talk page!

You too can edit any article, including the Samaale article. No one 'owns' any article on Wikpedia. But just like everyone can change the articles, everyone can also undo changes ('revert') made by others. After such a revert, it is common to discuss on the talk page of the article (in this case: Talk:Samaale).

However, please be aware that on Wikipedia, we cannot write anything based on our personal knowledge: everything we write must be directly verifiable in the sources we refer to. The source here (Abbink 2009, full reference in the article) indeed has "Yakabur" rather than Yahabur (I've double checked it). That may well be a mistake, though it is not a typo (Abbink refers to "Yakabur" a number of times in his book, and never to "Yahabur"). In any case, as long as we use Abbink 2009 as a source, we have to write it that way. We could correct it, and add other information to the article, if we have another reliable source. Google Books and Google Scholar are good starting places to find those. I hope you understand, ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 16:42, 27 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Reflections and response

So the ANI thread is closed! Good riddance. But a few comments to continue here.

regarding go write on the blackboard 1000 times: I would like you to stop for a moment and reflect on how you would feel when other editors would address you this way. That's not cool. I'm surprised that you took offense. If someone wrote that to me, I would respond in kind, but I wouldn't hold it against the person. Maybe I'm a jaded old fart who has been around WP for too long, but this sort of banter was historically par for the course. I think you know that I hold you in esteem and although I disagree strenuously with some of your positions and may phrase my disagreements in hyperbolic fashion, it's kinda a style thing. If you don't like that repartee, I apologize. I thought we were on better terms perhaps.

Your other point is an interesting one. You are right that there is a presumption that off-wiki organizing is a no-good-very-bad-thing. I want us to consider whether this is the correct presumption. I think that, in fact, this is only a problem when it results in a circumvention of the other WP:PAGs at issue. If such off-wiki coordination results in an improvement in the encyclopedia -- it is a good thing.

Now the rejoinder to that argument is that some people sometimes think they're improving WP by off-wiki coordinating. The EEML is the bugbear of this. But that story is one that is not of off-wiki coordination in my book. That is a story of WP:TAGTEAM, WP:CANVASS, and WP:MEATPUPPET. Even if the mailing list had not been exposed, there was enough evidence against the bad actors in that situation that it could have been identified. (I'll not worry too much about the history of the situation to comment on whether this was a type-case that hadn't yet been tested.)

The long and the short of this is that I think there are certain presumptions that this website that need to be interrogated in light of the overall vision for what we want Wikipedia to be -- as a community. In my mind, the best thing is for the encyclopedia to adhere to the standards for reliability, verifiability, and academic rigor. If that happens with off-wiki coordination, who am I to argue? And, what's more, I off-wiki coordinate myself! As I said, I have encouraged students to edit Wikipedia, I'm active on other sites that discuss Wikipedia, and I have acted on requests by others who have pointed out issues with Wikipedia. I believe I have done so in a way that has improved the encyclopedia. Others have disagreed. For a time I was banned from this website. But I think, ultimately, there is an underlying thread of believing that what is best for the content is what is best for the encyclopedia. In my judgement, what is best for the content is to tolerate or even celebrate groups that try to do what GSoW and Sgerbic are doing. The rest is just dross.

jps (talk) 02:29, 6 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi jps! Thanks for coming here. I've seen that EEML name tossed around, but to be honest I don't know what it refers to. I haven't been around here for that long yet. Yes, a discussion about strict off-wiki coordination (the strict qualifier is important here: you can't join GSoW if you're not in their private fb group, and you obviously can't connect the real names from fb with wiki accounts without outing them, so you effectively can't coordinate with other members on-wiki) is what that ANI thread should have been about. I think it should not be allowed, because by its very nature it will lead to abuse. This is not about encouraging other people to edit Wikipedia, or about teaching them some tricks, nor about commenting on WP in general on other sites, nor even about a casual WP edit that results from real-life conversations: it's about a team that is in constant communication on a social media group with the explicit goal of promoting scientific skepticism. I'm a skeptic myself (also in the broader sense that I am overly skeptical at times, because I tend to overthink things), so perhaps I have a suspicious mind, but I just don't see such an editing team consistently avoiding canvassing, tag-teaming, and other unwanted wiki-behaviors.

Partially it's a matter of principle: I would not trust any strictly off-wiki editorial team to consistently adhere to WP policy. The transparency of a wiki is what makes the crazy idea of an encyclopedia that anyone can edit actually work, and it would soon fail without it. Obviously, it would sooner fail with some ideological groups coordinating off-wiki than with others. But as much as I sympathize with some of GSoW's goals (or perhaps rather the ideology behind those goals), I'm really not sure whether what they're doing is always so good for the content. Again, as a skeptic, I'm generally wary of people who appear to be on a crusade, like Sgerbic. I love science, but I'm no fan of prophets of science. Prophets always lie and deceive. You can't promote science by violating its basic principles, which a great many so-called advocates for science do as a matter of course: they overreach, and pretend science can decide things it really can't. You also can't promote science by ridiculing things that are not science. That too is a matter of course for many who would claim to promote science, as you surely are very well aware. Those who do these things are really doing a disservice to science. Its cause is an ideological blindness that is, ironically, wholly unscientific. The word "skepticism" comes from the Greek σκέπτομαι (skeptomai, "to look carefully, to consider, to investigate"), and essentially means being careful about knowledge claims, insisting that important decisions should not be based upon them as long as they're not rigorously proven. That's a far cry from the dogmatic positions taken by many so-called 'skeptics', and the way they do not suffer anything appearing to contradict that dogma to even be uttered. It's a caricature of what a scientific skeptic should be. Or zealotry, often replacing a previous religious or pro-fringe zealotry. Anyway, it's an agenda, and I don't blindly trust people with an agenda with WP:NPOV, even if I largely agree with that agenda.

NPOV is another pillar of this project without which it would soon falter, and the essence of NPOV is that editing should be disinterested. The best way to guarantee that WP articles follow the POV of prominent sources is that the editors writing the articles have no special POV of their own. So no, religious activists should definitely not be editing WP articles on religion, in my view. And skeptic activists shouldn't be editing fringe-related stuff. Of course that's an ideal rather than reality, but it's a principle that should be followed as far as is possible. So from that perspective, a bunch of activist skeptics declaring that they are going to edit articles related to skepticism, well yeah, that's a problem. Perhaps an unavoidable problem, but let's say that I'm skeptical about it. I want to be able to perform skepsis, careful investigation, on them. And that means they should at the very least be on-wiki, where such skepsis is possible. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 04:31, 6 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

As with most things WP, the answer to one of your questions can be found at the redirect: WP:EEML. Be prepared to wade in deep.

The problem with your disdain for the off-wiki because of your lack of trust of others is that we really can't do anything about it, and arguing that there should be a principle of "NO!" not only doesn't work in practice, it is arguably bad in principle as well. My favorite example of this is the policy on WP:PAID. This was first implemented (before its current, more sensible approach) in a terrible way at first that basically demanded blocks and bans for everyone who was getting paid to edit Wikipedia. The irony was not lost on the first subject of this implementation who went on to become such a fly in the ointment and bugbear of the powerful that he is now globally banned.

We really don't have any way of stopping people from doing what they want to do off-wiki and if we start rules that say, "thou shalt not..." we only run those discussions underground in more and more opaque fashion. You think it's hard to perform careful investigation now? Imagine if it were pushed even further underground! People who think that mailing lists don't exist anymore thanks to WP:EEML are fooling themselves.

But what is more, presuming that Wikipedians have an interest in snooping around in off-wiki activities flies in the face of the open nature of this project. Wikipedia is basically run by activists who have managed to wedge open the door under the Open Access, Free Culture ideology. Things are more controlled than when this website was first set-up, but that ethos is not going away. If you wanted to ensure that all work had to be done on-wiki to allow for vetting and scrutiny, the real way to do that is to lock stuff down, get rid of pseudonymity, and make people sign a term of service document that explained this. Barring that, we're just weaving a web of special pleading that changes rules whenever one person or another feels uncomfortable with another member of the community.

I also think that your devotion to WP:NPOV is vaguely ideological. The person who invented "NPOV" didn't really interrogate closely the idea of neutrality and has lately become an apologist for QAnon. I argue that this is not just an unfortunate falling off the deep end, but it is the result of an ironically arrogant assumption that he knew what was neutral and no one else did. I know I am not neutral, and I rely on the wider community consensus. I also think that I am (and everyone else is) necessarily unable to clearly identify "neutrality" and so I don't try to achieve it as a matter of personal action. I don't think it is fair to demand achieving such a personal standard of anyone else either. jps (talk) 10:16, 6 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

No, those who feel 'pushed' to go underground because they don't want to comply with a demand to keep their activities on-wiki are in a way much easier to control, because they can simply be treated as meatpuppets that should be blocked on sight. Just like vandal-fighting is trivial while pushing back against (civil) POV-pushing is at times near impossible, fighting meat- and sockpuppets is much easier than fighting people who openly admit coordinating off-wiki but somehow manage to get the approval of the community. That is because the load of the work is deciding whether certain activities should be met with a block/ban, not tracing, detecting and putting a stop to these activities once it's clear they're not to be allowed.

Characterizing this defense of transparency as a lockdown is just putting things on their head. I want people to be open and on-wiki about what they do precisely to avoid blanket prohibitions. Pseudonymity is precisely essential to make that openness work (I wouldn't want things done under my real name to be recorded forever on the internet, open for everyone to view!), and it's precisely the off-wiki groups who threaten that pseudonymity by mixing wiki-activity with real-life activity.

Finally, saying that my devotion to WP:NPOV is vaguely ideological because apparently the person who invented NPOV now defends a despicable sect is pure innuendo and guilt-by-association. I will not waste my time here with defending NPOV itself (it's truly a pillar of this site and those who don't agree with it should just go elsewhere, in my opinion), but note that my remarks were not about NPOV as much as about how I believe it can best be achieved. I believe the way forward for Wikipedia is on the one hand to attract much more scholars to the site (imagine how WP would look like if scholars would see it as a matter of honor that the WP articles on the subject of their expertise would be in the best state possible), and on the other hand to get rid of editing that is not disinterested as much as possible. Anyone can edit does not mean anyone can write an encyclopedia. The fact that we're open means that also people with no subject-expertise can edit, which in many ways is a good thing, but we should make it much clearer that we favor editing based on disinterested subject expertise, and that we draw the line where one not only has limited or no grasp of the disinterested scholarly literature, but also has an agenda. There are many things on which I personally have no subject expertise, and there are also many things which I personally have an agenda about, but I'm sure as hell not going to edit on these topics. This is not about being 'neutral' on everything, or even on anything, it's about being self-conscious about where one is more or less neutral, and about avoiding to edit in the places where one is less neutral. It's also about recognizing that an agenda is always a bad thing for NPOV and thus for WP, no matter how natural it is for people and indeed for WP editors to have agendas.

I realize that this may be a hard message to bring home, because you yourself are likely editing far outside the scope of your subject expertise on topics which you more or less have an agenda about. Our visions on how WP should move forward probably clash fundamentally. But I like what you said about not being able to control everything. This rings true for WP even more than many things in real life: WP easily gives off the illusion that one can control things which one doesn't. We could discuss these things endlessly, but it's probably much more productive to go about our own editing business and leave other editors with different visions do their thing. I'm largely responsible for this round, and for that I apologize: I've probably wasted a lot of people's time the last two days, and now I wish I wouldn't have. But I'm learning, I promise! ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 15:24, 6 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, I think it's good to have ideological opponents that you respect (I'm not sure whether you respect me or not, but I sure respect you)! There are not many examples of that which I have encountered on Wikipedia. There are more examples of that happening off-wiki for me. In fact, before you, the only other account I recall sharing this sort uncomfortable of bonhomie was User:Ragesoss... and that was more than a decade ago! Such relationships are rare precious gems, and I'm glad we can talk! Now that we agree not to control things, I'll agree to go on my merry way! See you round! jps (talk) 20:19, 6 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Jabir ibn Hayyan

Jabir ibn Hayyan was born: 721 AD, Tous, Iran. Could you please inform me why you Deleted it? You dont lik it? --خردمندان (talk) 12:54, 15 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hello خردمندان! This is my user talk page. Since this is about the Jabir ibn Hayyan article, I answered you at the article talk page, here. Please also respond there. Thanks!

☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 13:16, 15 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hello! I do not see this as fair. It's a purposefulness with a culture and country. I am writing here for managers to review! --خردمندان (talk) 13:57, 15 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi خردمندان, right here I am about the only editor who sees this

. On the Jabir ibn Hayyan talk page, on the other hand, there are many more editors who watch that page and who will thus see the discussion. Please be sure to base your argument on relevant policies and guidelines though, the most relevant here being our policy on reliable sources: we will need you to point out exactly which reliable sources support your point of view. Thanks! ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 14:13, 15 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

ِDo you have any sources or any doubt sources that he was born in another place?! --خردمندان (talk) 14:37, 15 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

No, I do not. As also mentioned in the article, backed up by many reliable sources, it is not clear whether Jabir ibn Hayyan ever existed as a historical person. The first person to write anything about him, Ibn al-Nadim, did so almost 200 years after Jabir supposedly lived. For this reason, scholars do not regard the information on Jabir given by Ibn al-Nadim as very reliable, and even Ibn al-Nadim did not state that Jabir was born in Tus, only that he came from Khurasan. We just don't know where he was born, if he ever lived at all. In such a case, it is misleading to give a birth place in the infobox.

If you want to discuss this further, please do so at Jabir ibn Hayyan's talk page, where other editors can also follow –and perhaps participate in– our discussion. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 15:05, 15 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I do not see this as fair. It's a purposefulness with a culture and country!!! I am sure I am not first one and not be last one talk with you for fair and not be purposefulness with Non-Arab countries. This source is not enough for you?! Just for information Tus is a place in Khurasan, Iran. You don't look for sources, just write in google Jabir ibn Hayyan please. How many famous person in history has more information about place of birth! Why you delete place of birth instead of writing No source?! --خردمندان (talk) 16:16, 15 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

خردمندان The policy on Wikipedia is that all material must be attributable to reliable, published sources. Additionally, quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be supported by inline citations. See Wikipedia:Verifiability-- Toddy1 (talk) 16:26, 15 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Resumptions

Dabaqabad has over the past 2 days gone to several articles and engaged in mass deletions of content related to the Nugaal region, even when sourced. I'm wondering whether ARBHORN restrictions placed on him are relevant in this case. Heesxiisolehh (talk) 22:53, 4 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I would also like to add the arbitration on his case went stale, while a 6 month TBAN was proposed in October 2021, there was no further action taken by the admins here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement/Archive295#Dabaqabad.

Is there a way to reopen the case and get a firm decision? Thanks Wadamarow (talk) 01:55, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I filed this case, which indeed has been archived without action, because Dabaqabad regularly broke the restriction imposed upon them here, which reads you are to always follow a revert with an article talk page comment explaining it in any and all WP:ARBHORN topic area pages or edits (whatsoever). My secondary concern was that they did not seem to understand reliable sourcing (often reinstating poorly sourced content), and I eventually even found some examples of tendentious editing, introducing errors either without any source [8] or by blatantly misrepresenting the source [9]. But these secondary concerns cannot really be convincingly proven without a higher participation of experienced editors and/or admins in the topic area, so that kind of backfired: the case got too long and admins lost interest.

As far as I can see, Dabaqabad is massively breaking this restriction again, despite the promises the last time. For example, this 16 November revert and this 29 November one came long before their first talk page edit on 3 December. This one also went unexplained at the talk. The same here [10] [11], and here [12] [13], and here [14] [15]. Here they posted on the talk page before, but not after the revert, and failed to observe WP:BRD. The spirit of the AE restriction is of course also to make sure that Dabaqabad engages in talk page discussions and avoids edit wars, but this does not at all look good in that regard.

@Heesxiisolehh and Wadamarow: I think there's more than enough here to open a new request at WP:AE, if you feel so inclined. However, I will warn you now that your own editing may also come under scrutiny: I didn't look into this myself, but I see that Dabaqabad calls your edits unreliably sourced, original research, etc. If they are right in this (and the above is no way an implication that they aren't), I advise you to proceed cautiously. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 11:55, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yasser Al-Habib view of Abu Lu'lu'a

It can be added as Shia view of Abu Lu'lu'a in his article, be cause Sheikh al habib is a great Shia clergy. He says:

https://alhabib.org/en/what-is-the-proof-that-abu-lulu-reached-iran-and-was-buried-there/

https://alhabib.org/en/was-abu-lulua-a-zoroastrian/

89.183.23.67 (talk) 17:15, 3 December 2021 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.183.77.254 (talk) [reply]

No. Reliable sources do not take this person's views on Abu Lu'lu'a into account, and so we will not either. Please do not post such requests to my talk page anymore. Thanks, ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 18:37, 6 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

OK. But what about the sources he mentioned? Can't they enter the article too?

89.183.23.67 (talk) 17:15, 3 December 2021 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.183.77.254 (talk) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.233.48.138 (talk) [reply]

No, they are not independent (their author has a vested interest in the topic, and does not treat it in a disinterested way), and they are not published by an entity that practices editorial oversight and that has a reputation for fact-checking. Wikipedia is based on reliable and disinterested, academic sources that speak about the views of religious activists, not on religious activists themselves. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 14:08, 7 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Editing on Battle of the Yarmuk

I have been studying Islamic studies and Islamic history for 5-6 years. I have read many articles and books. Majority of books say there was a troop of more than 100,000 army against Muslim. But I don’t understand how and why “Modern estimation” says 80,000 or 15,000 to 25,000. Modern estimation is absolutely wrong. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Amazing237 (talk • contribs) 01:57, 9 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Amazing237! The article actually says that the vast majority of estimates for the Byzantine army are between 80,000 and 150,000, so it seems to be saying more or less the same as you (more than 100,000)? The article then goes on to say that other estimates are as low as 15,000 to 20,000, which clearly is a minority point of view (because the vast majority says otherwise). According to our Neutral point of view policy, we must represent fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic. So the question really is what is proportionate or due to mention. Who defends the 15,000 to 20,000 estimate? Is this a significant minority? Or is it only a fringe point of view not held by any reliable source? I don't know the answer to these questions, but if you want to change the article, it would be best if you would raise these questions on the talk page of the article, where other editors can chime in. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 10:54, 9 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

What is want to say is that minority are wrong. Any one write any thing and some people accept it in minority. 15,000 - 20,000 is 100% wrong and I believe that this estimation is not collected from an authentic source. People reading Wikipedia will get wrong idea. And about getting “bias” has no reason here. I just said the truth. You may refer more article/ book/ web. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Amazing237 (talk • contribs) 12:49, 9 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

What you ned to do is to look at what the sources say. For example:

Citation [42] is Heraclius, Emperor of Byzantium by Walter E. Kaegi (2003), page 242, which says "The Byzantines, together with their Christian Arab allies, probably enjoyed numerical superiority, having troops that totaled [sic] up to 15-20,000 men, possibly more." (I checked the 2007 paperback edition, which evidently has the same pagination as the 2003 hardback edition.)
Citation [43] is "John Haldon (2013)" This is a problem, as it is unclear which book is meant, or what the page number is.
The bibliography lists two books by John Haldon, but neither have 2013 listed as their publication date.

Haldon, John (1997), Byzantium in the Seventh Century: the Transformation of a Culture, Cambridge, ISBN 0-521-31917-X
Haldon, John (2001), The Byzantine Wars, Tempus Publishing, ISBN 0-7524-1795-9

Byzantium in the Seventh Century was published in hardback in 1990 and in paperback in 2008.
The Byzantine Wars has a 2008 paperback edition on sale on Amazon.
He also did Byzantium at War: AD 600-1453 published in paperback in 2002.
He did Warfare, State And Society In The Byzantine World 565-1204 published in paperback in 1999.
There were probably other paperback editions. It is one of the flaws of citing by author's surname and date of publication that it is sometimes completely unobvious which book or article is meant.

-- Toddy1 (talk) 13:10, 9 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for that Toddy1! I edited the article, adding quotes for both Kaegi 2003 and Haldon 2008 (= Haldon 2001), and a whole bunch of templates of the {{citation needed}}, {{page needed}}, etc. variety. The sourcing in that article is disastrous, and at this time it does not all deserve its WP:GA status. Anyway, I opened a thread about this on the article talk page, and any further discussion should probably take place there. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 23:21, 9 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Renaissance magic

Have you seen my recent upgrade to this article? It's mostly cobbled together from the separate biography articles, so it may need some copyediting, etc... Skyerise (talk) 15:35, 12 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Skyerise! These days I try to limit myself to patrolling articles and reverting obviously unconstructive edits, with a talk page discussion here and there. I mostly do not inspect edits by trusted editors like you, and articles which get heavily edited by such editors are generally just removed from my watchlist. But despite all this, I still find myself putting more time into Wikipedia than I should be (real-life duties are suffering from it), so I won't dive into Renaissance magic at this time. I hope you understand!

☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 16:44, 12 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Levantine Arabic

Hi Apaugasma, I fondly remember our discussion on the Omar / Umar topic and was wondering if you have an interest in another question of modern Arabic. There is currently a peer review ongoing at Levantine Arabic, and I have raised a number of challenges around the relationship between Levantine and MSA / CA, and the history of its development. I remember from the previous discussion how much more knowledgeable you are than I am in these topics. If of interest, the discussion is at Wikipedia:Peer review/Levantine Arabic/archive2. Onceinawhile (talk) 01:29, 24 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Onceinawhile, thanks for coming here! Unfortunately, I'm rather ignorant about historical linguistics, or perhaps I should say about linguistics generally. This being the case, I wouldn't be able to contribute anything valuable to that discussion. However, you do seem to know a thing or two about this topic, so you're probably doing fine! Merry Christmas & happy holidays!

☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 10:57, 24 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Merry Christmas to you too. Hope to collaborate more with you next year. Onceinawhile (talk) 11:30, 24 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Disclosed COI

Hi, I have disclosed COI as per the guidelines you provided. Can I continue such legitimate edits? i.e., adding reviews to movies/shows that our site has covered? Or good-faith citations? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 103.126.20.210 (talk) 11:42, 24 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hello IP user, thanks for that! Apart from disclosing the COI, you are expected to request edits to articles with which you have a COI on the article talk page (using the {{Request edit}} template). This includes pages to which you want to add citations from your website: don't add them directly to articles, but request it at the respective talk pages. This may seem a bit of a hassle, but it is really important because it allows independent review by an editor who does not share the COI. If you add the template correctly there will always be someone responding fairly quickly, so it shouldn't be too big of a problem. For further guidance, please also review Wikipedia:Conflict of interest. Finally, please consider creating an account: this way, you won't have to disclose the COI separately every time your IP changes. Thanks for you attention!

☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 12:45, 24 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Dartmoor

You're v v welcome! I was just in the middle of faffing around with the BBC story so I thought I should keep going. Cheers DBaK (talk) 00:01, 29 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Deletion discussion

Figured you'd probably want to weigh in on this one: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Congelation. Skyerise (talk) 17:32, 31 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Skyerise, I've updated the article a bit further and commented at the AfD. Happy new year! ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 01:50, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

And Happy New Year to you! Skyerise (talk) 02:02, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]