User talk:Cbdorsett/archive/2009

Had to laugh

At your edit and edit summary at Hamas: "largely ceased" is an oxymoron - changed to "greatly diminished" -- is it my imagination or did you just exchange one oxymoron for another? Tundrabuggy (talk) 05:38, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Hello, Cbdorsett. You have new messages at Blanchardb's talk page.
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Thanks for Vieta

I have seen your changes. Well. Nice work. Thanks a lot.Jean de Parthenay (talk) 07:43, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

لو سمحت؟ لو سمحت؟

Hey, I'm going to send this as a semi-standard template to you and the other two avowed Arabic speakers/readers on the WS Project. I am currently engaged in a seemingly futile (ومتخلف) argument with a user (Kwami) over the source of Arabic orthography and to a certain degree etymology. It's at this point too convoluted to describe, but I would very much appreciate any qualified person stepping in and not so much helping me as adding their voice to what appears to be - on my side - evidence, versus - on his side - repetition and unqualified reversion. Thanks! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Middle_Bronze_Age_alphabets#reverts) Msheflin (talk) 14:48, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Shukran ya ragil. My fear now is that it's not worth trying to come up with a major retooling because Kwami will just block all the posts. He keeps arguing for some "standard" argument, but never actually draws upon opinions other than his own and has ignored every cited piece of scholarly evidence I've provided on the discussion. Thus I am afraid that adding those citations will lead to their summary reversal.

As for hamza... at the risk of offending my coreligionists... You're right, hamza in a movable semi-haraf/semi-diacritical manner was without a doubt a creation by three people I cited in that discussion; and if not them then by someone(s) after the Qur'an was revealed - i.e. when it first began to be written. One of the articles I cited claimed it was pronounced, in the dialect that would become "fus7a," as a ya when preceding an alef. Thus the Prophet (ص) pronounced the word as Quryan, according to the author. Whether right or wrong it's interesting.

But the reason I included it (twice at this point) under my Arabic interpretation of the available evidence (for the table) is that the orthographic split resulted because of the attachment of a glottal and long-a sound to alef (hence they split the orthography to retain greater coherence in writing, than in speech at the time). The same author claims that alef by itself was at the time primarily written as a dagger alef (as frequently in the Qur'an), and hence initially often not written (as a letter).

I appreciate your support and would help if you intend to try to edit, but I fear this will just lead down the same path of questionable reversion. Another major fear is that if you do a google search of Wadi el-Hol, you find that most of the available web info either a) comes from the same source (معلومات الكتاب lol) or b) was taken from Wikipedia. The Serabit al-Khadim google map reference (semi-related to this) is from Wiki. Thus I had to find an al-Masry al-Yom article just to confirm that there was a place spelled like this in Sinai... Ordinarily, I wouldn't fret on this preeminence of Wikipedia as an informational source. But on a topic as sparsely attested as these scripts, it is terrifying that most of what is out there comes from this poorly obtained article. (Until a few hours ago, by the way, Colless's blog was (self?-)advertised in the references section as a refutation to one of the cited accounts... how awful). Michael Sheflin (talk) 19:11, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Ah... I get it now. It would appear my friend actually initiated the page in 2005 (along with the info on Colless) http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Middle_Bronze_Age_alphabets&offset=20050430091412&action=history; along with the table later. So I think maybe the concern is over "one's baby" rather than the "world's alphabet..." Michael Sheflin (talk) 19:40, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Well man... I made it through another day or two, but now I think I'm done. I'll participate in future mediation if it comes to pass, but otherwise, to be honest, standards of academic empirical evidence are an easier burden to meet in journals than on this guy's Middle Bronze Age Alphabets page. Thanks for the advice though. Michael Sheflin (talk) 01:57, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Invitation for the typeface collaboration

Requesting editors' help There is currently an oppened collaboration which aims in improving articles related to typefaces and font categorization. If you´re interested in this subject, please visit the collaboration page, add your self and see how you can help.

I hope you can contribute in this section. Happy editings! - ☩Damërung ☩. -- 21:42, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

IP editors and vandalism

I just read what you wrote about yourself on your user page. A couple of years ago, I spent a lot of time reverting vandalism, but I got bored with it. I did notice, however, that there are a few reasons for people to edit as non-logged-in, which do not scream "bad faith edit":

• To make an edit on a sensitive subject (politics, sex, religion) so that people won't harass you about it later.
• To make an edit about something where you know you are not an expert.
• To make an edit on any subject, knowing that comments will not come back to you.
• To make an edit on company time (not the brightest bulb, I admit, but there are those).
• To write about something that may or may not be a trade secret - info that might have been learned on the job but is not generally available.
• Making a little edit takes what, 2 clicks plus typing? Logging in adds two more clicks and some more typing ... too much work for some people.
• Some people forget
• Some people don't care whether their edits are counted up in their personal edit count

I suppose this list exists somewhere on Wikipedia already. Maybe you could find it and add your own comments. That might impress people who evaluate RFAs. Good luck. --cbdorsett (talk) 05:16, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

It took me a few minutes to realize which page you were actually talking - and it certainly shows that my user page can use a cleanup. I originally wrote that piece in July 2008, more then a year ago at a time i wasn't even a year around as an editor. Back in those days i had been using the lupin vandalism patrol tool for most of my work. That tool being a word list based tool it meant that about every edit it showed me was vandalism (After all, how many legitimate uses are there for "poop"?).

When Huggle came out, it was like stepping into a racing cart after being used to a bicycle. It showed EVERY edit ever made, and because i (thought i) knew that 90% of the IP edits were vandalism, i was quite vigilant and overzealous with my reverting. Certainly, i hit 90% of all vandalism, but since i wanted to counter all vandalism i reverted an unacceptable amount of non vandalism. And on top of that i made mistakes because i wanted to keep up with the 180 or so a minute edit rate.

Nowadays, i tend to be on new page patrol more, with an occasional trip in vandalism patrol (As soon as huggle lite is back that is). In the time that past between RFA and now i very well learned that not every IP is a vandal, and indeed i recognize some of the reasons i found in your list above. As for a new RFA... maybe sometime in the future, but not anytime soon. There is plenty of work i like to do that do not need admin privileges, and occasionally i still make mistakes. Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 10:07, 22 October 2009 (UTC)