User talk:Jmabel/Archive 40

Hebrew language in Pre-Revolution Russia

I removed that part of the sentence. I don't know if it's false, it does have a citation, but I am going to be very cautious. It's a vague statement and I do not know where it begins or where it ends, the book gave no details. This is why I went ahead and removed it. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. Hope to see you around. Aaрон Кинни (t) 08:50, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

FAC help

Dear Mr. Mabel,

I have read and admired many of your commentaries in various newspapers and journals. I have also been impressed by your writing and editing abilities as demontsrated in the various fascism artciles, some of shich I have helped work on myself.

Well, anyway, I am having an extraordinarily difficult time with my self-nominated FAC Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Hilary Putnam. The issue concerns 2a (prose style and copyedit) and, since I know that you are a professional writer with a great deal of experiecne, I was wondereing if you can possibly find the time to help out either with addressing the objections being raised or just with constructive suggesions and comments. The discussion and debate has been preposterous, as you can see for yourself (0;, but there are really no issues of philosophical content or knowledge in question. The objections are centered all concentarted on "flabinnes", "wordiness", redundancy and such things.

If you can find the time, could you please leave aside the fascims stuff for a bit and take a look (just ignore most of the comments and focus on objections by Tony1 and a few others). He insists that I can't get the thing thrugh without the help of some professional copyeditors. Well, I am asking you becaue I have great confidence in your writing and edititng skills. I would deeply appracite any help you can give. Thank you. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 21:44, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Category:Allegedly anti-Semitic people

Your vote is requested: [1]

Recent edit History of the Jews in Romania

Hi. Can you please look into this recent anonymous edit on the History of the Jews in Romania? I checked the link provided in the edit summary, but i cannot see the context and/or potential ramifications involved. Many thanks. Dahn 22:27, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

The article linked in the edit summary says

ISurvived is mostly a compendium of Holocaust information built through links to hundreds of reputable Holocaust archives and Jewish education sites -- links that may help account for its strong ranking on search engines. The one section bearing Brattman's personal imprint is the "Holocaust Controversy Page," on which "we present `sensitive' and controversial issues with respect to the Holocaust as we filter certain conventional representations of the Holocaust."

Given that, rather than remove it, I'd be more inclined to link both to it and to the Newhouse article critical of it, given especially that the criticism doesn't by any means say "this site is mostly crap", it says "there is a section of this site that we think is biased." - Jmabel | Talk 22:43, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

But your proposal would indicate that the references for Romania itself are disputed, and I am not sure this is the case. If I'm wrong, however, could you please add the reference back on the page and the Newhouse link? I am not how to formulate the relation between the two links ("ISurvivedlink, criticized by Newhouselink"? Or "ISurvivedlink. Note: Newhouselink expressed criticism of the archive for [insert reason]"? Or some other?). Thanks. Dahn 23:08, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

It also seems that the anonymous user has been doing this to many articles in a row: his/her contributions. Dahn 23:13, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

I've made the edit to the article. Man, I hate it when people start by slamming through articles instead of bringing their issues to the talk page first and trying to get some kind of consensus. - Jmabel | Talk 23:24, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Hilary Putnam

Joe, you added a new paragraph to the intro using the sources Hick and Foley, but without giving full citations, which means the footnotes are broken. Can you fix them, or let me know what the citations are so I can do it? Cheers, SlimVirgin ^(talk) 06:12, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Sorry. Fixed. - Jmabel | Talk 06:19, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. :-) SlimVirgin ^(talk) 06:22, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Seen Seattle_before_the_city ?

Also, GoDot is being intractable at Duwamish (tribe). I am considering giving up... :| --Lukobe 06:51, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Just noticed Pike_Market,_Seattle,_Washington, which neighborhood doesn't really exist... --Lukobe 06:59, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Replied on my talk page. It's kind of hard to keep up a threaded conversation not on an article talk page, innit? --Lukobe 08:06, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Re "Pike Market," this from GoDot: "For me, the question is not of belief, or indeed of whether it exists, but first of why it might." Like I said, I'm considering giving up on him. --Lukobe 06:36, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Incoherent, indeed. But what does "giving up on him" mean? Quitting because of him? - Jmabel | Talk 06:40, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Nah, just quitting trying to do anything with articles he's taken a shine to. --Lukobe 06:43, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Wow. But that would pretty much push you out of Seattle articles, no? - Jmabel | Talk 06:47, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Excellent point. I think I may be overreacting :) --Lukobe 18:59, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Bogdan I

There are some boys who do not allow me to put the real history about Bogdan I. They make a confusion between Dragos of Moldavia and Bogdan I and write the history of Dragos on the page of Bogdan I. They used no bibliography to make the article about Bogdan I. Because you can read in Romanian please read the article in Romanian: Bogdan I al Moldovei and see the true. I used 2 important history books to write that article. Please make the corection. Maybe the boys will let you to do it. Thanks! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.77.7.161 (talk • contribs) 5 August 2006.

• It seems that the boys understood my explanations. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.77.7.160 (talk • contribs) 5 August 2006.

In case you were wondering, this IP is a sockpuppet of User:Dacodava, who has been banned from editing wikipedia a while back and whom you have identified as a troll following his comments on the talk page at the UDMR article. If he is indeed a researcher at the Nicolae Iorga Institute, as he presented himself at some point, the science of history in this country is going down the drain; I sincerely hope that he made that claim in jest. Now, I cannot vouch for everything in the article, as I have done some reverting based on first-glance assessing of the info deleted, but I can tell you that we should not use the Romanian article as a template: I stand by my view of it as "crap", given that every line in there coaches the reader and looks to be written by a person still in 5th grade (it is a stylistical and grammatical mess). I've done some looking into what Dacodava did and does at the rowiki version: I believe he drops mention of such things as "gangs of boys" and addresses you as our supposed "padrone" only because he has created himself a fine retinue of Bonapartes. Dahn 03:13, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Expansion

I just knew someone was going to say something about this. :) The only reason I put the tag on the article was because I was removing about 3 stubs, plus there was a comment above, and I was not sure if someone was going to disaprove of me removing all three stubs. So I replaced it with the expand tag, to show that if whoever put all those stub tags on felt it still needed expansion, then the expand tag was the way to go. Seeing as how its not a stub. I'm supposed to file a request before placing a tag on an article? SynergeticMaggot 06:05, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Actually, it says it might be given. If you work on the article and dont want the tag on it, just remove it. No worries. :) SynergeticMaggot 06:36, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

National Theater Bucharest & galbeni

Hi. Actually, the galbeni definition is always more vague than "standard gold coins" or something similar: note the definition in Dex online, Entry 3, to see how giving the native name for various coins of no single provenence and fluctuating values canot possibly make it clearer for the reader, nor establish the proper sum spent (which is why all Romaniann comments never give any sort equivalent for galben). As such, it is simply a folk term for "gold coin that I trust has this weight and not another" (add to this that the weight itself did fluctuate in time).

The self-referential link is perhaps standard, but it is also: optional, and provisional (to be used only where quoting texts that do not themselves cite sources); it is also redundant to the interlingua links. Note that the text did cite a source (and, presumably, it did so correctly), and that I have given a reference which confirms much on the page. Dahn 06:48, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

(1)I think the cross-wiki links like this are useful, because it makes it much clearer where someone should go if they actually have a question about content & research. There is no point to asking on the talk page of what is basically a translation, you want to go to the original.

(2)I would have thought that in a given period in the 19th century the value indicated by galben would be reasonably clear; certainly I agree that over a longer period or wider geographic area it is vague. But I would think that given a time and place, the term used in the local language can be quite useful to a researcher. - Jmabel | Talk 06:59, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

(1)Is it a mere translation now that it has two sources? Granted, we both may not enough to answer a particular question, but what tells you that the person asking will find out more from the Romanian contributors? We have, most likely, either a question that we all of us can't answer or an answer that we all may be able to provide. (2)I think it is quite the contrary. There doesn't appear to have been any offical exchange-rate: Wallachia and Moldavia did not issue coinage, and basically established relations between coins based on their relative weight. There was a different course for every transaction, and businessmen who established their whole trade in evaluating "what this shiny French thing" is to "this glowing Turkish one". Dahn 07:24, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

(1)Again, even it it's not a "mere" translation, it started as one. Usually, one does not drop mention of a source after the fact: this is pretty standard academic practice, acknowledgment of where you got your information.

(2)Interesting. So 20.300 galbeni means not much more than "a rather big heap of gold"? - Jmabel | Talk 07:35, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

(1)Oh, come now. If a text uses as its source a published text, and presumably does it honestly, its translation is just going to be its translation. The source is not the text, but what the text used as its source: otherwise, what is the use of providing sources? To me, this has always rhymed with self-reference - I believe we all agreed that we are not furnishing information as authors. Furthermore, the translator of a text is not required to know more than the text itself

(2)More likely "a heap of gold with a certain weight which nobody probably ever bothered to record", especially since the reference to galbeni does not clarify even what galbeni it is talking about - the contractors probably didn't want to tie themselves to a certain coin. Either that or the more specific reference is available, as lowenthalers or whatever, but we only have the vague one. Note that in this last of instances, rendering it as "galbeni" would add nothing relevant it's like saying "the French paid them in monnaies d'or" or "the Italians in monete d'oro" instead of "gold coins" - unless we know either if it is a particular coin or weight and/or what was the value of bullion in Wallachia. Dahn 08:04, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Whatever galbeni reference is made to here, they were: "1.200 galbeni, sau în lei de piaţă 44.400" [2] sometime in the 1840s. Dahn 08:09, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

I got it: "Prin Regulamentele Organice adoptate în 1831 în Ţara Românească şi în 1832 în Moldova, se stabilesc monedele care pot fi folosite pe teritoriul românesc: galbenul austriac," etc.[3] Information is available here in the article Austro-Hungarian gulden.: "With the introduction of the Conventionsthaler in 1754, the Gulden was defined as half a Conventionsthaler, equivalent to 1/20 of a Cologne mark of silver and subdivided into 60 Kreuzer. The Gulden became the standard unit of account in the Hapsburg Empire and remained so until 1892". I have no idea if that could aid a man converting in today's dollars, but at least we found what the texts are likely to be talking about. Dahn 08:15, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Great work, Dahn! - Jmabel | Talk 08:24, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, but that was pure fluke. We're still bound to hit major trouble if we want to assign present-day value to the galbeni in circulation before the 1830s. Dahn 15:00, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Oh, agreed. Starting from the industrial revolution, comparing the value of money more than about 30-40 years apart is almost always a dubious exercise, unless one can agree to a specific packagebasket of goods: the ratios have simply changed too much. - Jmabel | Talk 16:47, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Anyway, I've added it all to Romanian leu. - Jmabel | Talk 18:00, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Perfect. The "leu" article needs some work in other areas (some links are not provided, some terms are not as fully expalained as they should be, and we need to clean up some stuff hanging in there). Sorry for not replying sooner, but I was involved with the Phanariotes article, removing some Victorian bias curtesy of Britannica and Mr. Greier; in a bizarre twist, I was making use of the same info, because I referenced the jolly good times when the Turks decreased the tribute just to keep us in the family :). Thanks. Dahn 18:15, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

You replied quite quickly (15 minutes!). There was a bit of a gap there while I got something like a night's sleep. - Jmabel | Talk 18:18, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

I had initially meant to reply on your first message, trying to figure out what on Earth the tribute would have been expressed in as a standard for what the guilder represented (which got me thinking about a reference I had been meaning to add to Phanariotes for quite some time - it's complicated, as I had also realized that it is likely that Austrian money were the standard for some time before the 1830s etc.). I had also meant to ask you whether it is not possible to turn "that much dollars at the time" into "this much dollars in 2006" (at least for the History of the Jews article, where the Jewish Encyclopaedia seems to be certain of the sum). Oh, before I forget: a contributor added info in the History of the Jews article about Hasidic dynasties, which is precious info, but the articles themselves need serious copyedit and inclusion into categories - my knowledge of Hasidism is very limited, and I'm afraid I would involontarily introduce improper terminology if I do it on my own (I have improved the one article which seemed more apprachable). Do you think you could look into it? Many thanks. Dahn 18:53, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

The Jewish Encyclopedia is 1901-1906, not too far into the era when technology accelerated so much as to make comparisons over time tricky. A century later, it's much tougher. I'm not too knowledgable on Hasidism myself, but you might want to drop a note at Wikipedia:WikiProject Judaism or Wikipedia:WikiProject Jewish history. That's where I go for this sort of thing. - Jmabel | Talk 19:02, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I left a note on the Jewish history project talk page. As for the other thing: I'm certainly not planning to "make you do the math", but isn't it theoretically more accessible to turn a 1906 dollar into a 2006 and dollar than lowenthalers into galbeni? I mean, there's bound to be some evidence kept of what value dollars have had to one another for the last, say, 200 years. Perhaps I'll look into it in the future. Btw, you won't believe how hard it is turning silver lownthalers into guilder... silver went from being The Bullion in the 1600s to Monopoly money in the 1700s, and then only God knows what happened to it - the Romanian halftruth, for example, usually "fails" to make note of this when they complain about how the tribute to the Porte "increased" in the 18th century... When I'm good and ready, I'll take the wrath of source citations into the Early Modern Romania article, and remove the halftruths present there. Dahn 19:42, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

There are numbers available on US dollar inflation, and they are useful over a term of 10 or 20 years; even arguably so up to about 40 years; but past that? Pretty pointless. Consider, for example, that in 1900 it was considerably less expensive for a Bostonian to study at Harvard for a year than to travel to London and back. Now the former is about US$40,000 and the latter somewhere under US$1,000.

Maybe we could elide all of this by comparing everything in terms of the value of gold? I'd be interested in knowing if the IMF or anyone has a standardized way of making comparisons over the long haul. - Jmabel | Talk 19:55, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't see purchasing power as problematic in the context. I mean, it varies considerably today, at the same moment, and for the same currency. People will always have trouble figuring out what that much was able to buy for you back then, but actually less so if you just transfer dollar per dollar: the difference in purchasing power would be relvant, I guess, only if, say, Wallachia paid its tribute or commissioned its buildings in eggs or toilet paper or trips to London or scholaships to Harvard. I guess I am right in assuming that the dollar today is half of what it was in the 1950s or so, and I'm sure an exact estimate may be found; I also believe that there is an estimate on what 1950s dollar is, ultimately, to 1850s dollars and so on. Perhaps feasible, after all. Dahn 20:43, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Based on consumer prices, the dollar today is much less than half of what it was in the 1950s. - Jmabel | Talk 20:46, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Here are US consumer price statistics since 1913: ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/cpi/cpiai.txt. 1950 to now would be about a factor of eight. 1913 to now would be about a factor of 20. - Jmabel | Talk 20:51, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

You are right, obviously. But, since we may never know the actual purchasing power of any of those early currencies, we could, on principle, reference it dollar by dollar with an "approx." in front. Purchasing power may never be reconstructed for that early a time (and it is ever-mysterious), but, hypothetically, if a reader knows what the currency was worth purely in today's dollars, (s)he could, on principle, also compare relative values where these are provided (the Atheneum costs this much, and an egg this much etc.) for all that is worth. I get the weird feeling I am missing some essential piece in my argument, as if some market rule I should have minded is waiting to strike me and expose my foolishness, but I can't stop now :). Does what I say make any sense? Dahn 21:23, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

We shouldn't have any problem translating a 19th-century gold-standard currency to US dollars of the same period. The problem is that it's hard to translate it into anything meaningful today (arguably, the gold itself makes a better benchmark). - Jmabel | Talk 21:26, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Who says we can't conver gold to dollars and change the rate in the article every single day? :) Well, you're right. It would be too much work for something to approximate. Dahn 21:46, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Re: Lilian Cristina Aya Ramirez

Thanks. I've been saying that was crap from day one. - Jmabel | Talk 22:55, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

You're welcome. You can help a lot too. Read the WP:BLP policy, unsourced negative statements about living persons must always be removed inmediatly and without hesitation JRSP 23:03, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes. That policy is rather new (and very welcome). It wasn't yet in effect at the time I was disputing the reference. And even now, matters could be unclear if someone came forward and tried to argue that the trashy reference was valid. - Jmabel | Talk

Check WP:V, blogs are usually not reliable JRSP 23:10, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

George Reeves

I never heard of that singer either, but I expect someone has. A more colorful way of saying "little known" would be to say "known only to family and friends"; or, more to the point, "famous only to his mother". >:) Wahkeenah 00:40, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Help! I'm Autoblocked

Hi, Joe. I'm currently in a major overhaul of my userpage and have been autoblocked. The user that is responsible for the original block is not online. Could you please unblock me so I don't loose my works. The IP is 205.188.116.5. Thanks -JCarriker 05:34, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't see any sign that the IP is blocked. I don't know a way to unblock if I can't find the block. - Jmabel | Talk 05:43, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Just asked on #wikipedia on IRC. It was blocked, someone unblocked it already. - Jmabel | Talk 05:51, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Transylvania

Please take a look at what User:Criztu has begun doing in the article Transylvania. This man has called for mediation, has opened ten debates on the same topic in various places, has been proven wrong every single time, and now he just adds the same views without even caring. Please give your input on the article's talk page about whether this is or isn't trolling/vandalism. Dahn 16:14, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

GoDot copyvio?

Do my eyes deceive me? User_talk:GoDot#copyvio.3F I am rather surprised, actually... --Lukobe 17:13, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

History of Bucharest

Perhaps you can help me here. I have recently expanded and referenced the article, and it has becom a tad, shall we say, too large (the notes especially). I was thinking of creating the last section as a new article. I gave that section a title which is best described as "provisional": "Religious and communal history". It is kind of awkward, but ckecking with the article would clarify why I chose this title and section. The thing is, I don't know if it is the best one, and I don't know if an article with that title is not going to raise questions (I do not see any parallel for it in other categories). Please let me know your thoughts. Dahn 20:24, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I thought of doing something like that, but I had my concerns: the main problem I see with it is that, were someone to consider a reference superfluous or ill-placed, we would have to review each bit of reference to that particular book, so as not to leave the first reference to it be an op. cit.. Do you have any thoughts on the possibility of a split into several articles? Dahn 00:02, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

I didn't think much about it yet. It's not all that massive. I will try to get back to this, though. - Jmabel | Talk 00:04, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Ok. Thanks. Dahn 00:07, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

re: confusing edit summary

If you look at the end of the brainyquote address, you will see a closing "]" missing before my edit. This is what I was reffering to in my edit summary. AscendedAnathema 00:35, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

OK, it fixes a link (which I hadn't noticed), but more significantly it removes the sentence "He acknowledged, however, that in 37 years of military and reserve service he had not personally known any openly homosexual service members," which certainly seems to me like a more significant edit, and more worthy of comment, than fixing a link. Or have I missed something? - Jmabel | Talk 02:20, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

WRT Allende

Keep working for good standards with that articel and the related ones. I've had run-ins with the user you posted on AN about and am glad someone's ensuring that that article and related ones aren't allowed to dissolve into hopeless PoV (Which, given their nature, is probably pretty easy). 68.39.174.238 12:20, 8 August 2006 (UTC)