Sonja Brentjes

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Hello, Sonja Brentjes, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few links to pages you might find helpful:

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Alhazen

This [1] won't do either. I'll leave it there so that someone else can take it out, so you'll know its not just me. The assertion you've added ("which is full of mistakes") is your own, not supported by any sources. Ditto for the rest. Perhaps try Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources William M. Connolley (talk) 21:54, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

Hello William, I am a reliable source. I am a professional historian of science in Islamicate societies. I can judge competently whether a book by an amateur is solid or full of mistakes. You can check me out on academia.edu, on the Max Planck Institute for History of Science website and elsewhere on Google. The problem with your editorial policy is that it allows amateurs to publish all sort of mistakes by simply quoting a book with the same kind of mistakes by another amateur. You are producing unreliable non-knowledge.--Sonja Brentjes (talk) 22:04, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

I'm sure you're a "reliable source" in the commonplace meaning of the word. Unfortunately, on wikipedia WP:RS has a specific meaning, and words you write on wikipedia are not reliable sources. Further, its not *my* editorial policy; its wikipedia's. You are producing unreliable non-knowledge - I rather resent that; you should be rather more careful with your words, if you don't want to alienate people. Well, you'll find out soon enough William M. Connolley (talk) 22:11, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

Hi William, yes I understand that you resent my comment as I resent the propagation of falsehood and the impossibility to correct it based on my professional expertise. I resent very much that you belittle this expertise and declare it invalid, while accepting mistakes simply because someone before printed these mistakes. Your guidelines speak of verifiable accuracy. Much of this entry on Ibn al-Haytham as well as the UNESCO website as well as other entries on Muslim scholars are full of mistakes. Their "verifiable accuracy" is inaccurate. This is the truth. I am sorry when you resent this. Maybe you should change one important point of the editorial policy, although I admit good-naturedly that this is difficult: forbid using inaccurate, i.e. amateurish sources.--Sonja Brentjes (talk) 22:19, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

the result of your policy is that i now give a reference to a reviewer who is much less competent on the subject matter than i am. does that give you reason to ponder the editorial policy?--Sonja Brentjes (talk) 22:28, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

Badischen Gruß zuvor! William hasst mich innig, der reagiert etwas emotional, wenn ich irgendwo auftauche, das trägt dann nicht zur besseren Stimmung bei. Ich stimme ihm aber insoweit bei, als Sie selbst, sehr geehrte Frau Dr. Brentjes, in Ihrer Eigenschaft als WP Autorin selbst keine relevante Quelle darstellen. Sie müssten eine von Ihnen verfasste Quelle heranziehen. Ich stimme Ihnen inhaltlich voll zu, die Unesco versucht verzweifelt und mit etwas dubiosen Mitteln, Alhazen zum Posterchild hochzustilisieren, damit die Jungs mit Goldkettchen und Migrationshintergrund sich nicht nur Ali G als Rollenvorbild nehmen. das Problem ist aber imho nur so zu lösen wie geschehen - wir brauchen externe Quellen, die erklären, wieso Alhazen zwar technisch brilliant war, aber seine Ideen erst viel später Resonanz fanden. Die direkte Vaterschaft ist damit wohl zu widerlegen, ein wichtiger Vorfahr war er durchaus. Howgh sowie Gutes Neues nach Sachsen. :) Serten II (talk) 23:21, 4 January 2015 (UTC) PS.: Ich habe unter anderem die de:Kaffeekrise_in_der_DDR, das sachsenlastige Native Americans in German popular culture und Reiner Grundmann verbrochen, den Sie womöglich sogar kennen könnten. Bei meinen Artikeln zu After Saturday Comes Sunday und Ahmed Taymour würde ich mich über Ihren fachkundigen Rat sehr freuen.

Hallo.wer immer Sie auch sein mögen. Mein Interesse besteht in der Korrektur der unmöglich vielen Fehler, die Wikipedia, 1001, und nun leider auch die UNESCO machen und verbreiten. Ich habe nichts dagegen, Ibn al-Haytham zum Posterchild zu machen, wie Sie das nennen, nur sollte das halt mit richtigen Angaben und Einschätzungen geschehen. Ich habe auch nichts dagegen, wenn sich Jungs wie Mädchen Ibn al-Haytham als Rollenvorbild nehmen. Das ist keine schlechte Wahl. Sie sehen, ich habe andere bildungspolitische und allgemein politische Ansichten als Sie offenbar. Dennoch finde ich die Editionspolitik von Wikipedia unangemessen und die Ursache des vielen Unfugs auf ihren Seiten. Nun denn. Ich werde also meine Besuche auf ein Minimum beschränken. Es lohnt sich einfach nicht, meine Zeit für so etwas zu vergeuden. Die Artikel, für die Sie meine Bemerkungen erwünschen, stehen auf Wikipedia? Wenn nicht, schicken Sie sie mir bitte. Im übrigen wohne ich in Brandenburg. :-)--88.72.99.84 (talk) 23:39, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

Das honorige Anliegen der UNESCO habe ich vermutlich zu flapsig beschrieben. Es ist ihm besser gedient, wenn wir die manchmal ziemlich nervigen WP Regularien einhalten, nicht nur WMC kennt sich da aus und nutzt die weidlich aus, auch wenn das gelegentlich kontraproduktiv erscheinen mag. Ich hatte bei der deWP mit einem [https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Dieter_E Spezialisten für Lebensmittelbestrahlung) zu tun, der ähnlich wie Sie wirklich vom Fach kam, aber in WP gelegentich wegen, nicht trotz seiner Insiderkennntnisse auf diverse Hindernisse stieß. Auch aufgrund dieser Erfahrung habe ich Sie persönlich angesprochen. Ich würde mich sehr freuen, wenn Sie weiter hier aktiv blieben und grüße auch gerne ins Red-Eagle-county ;) Serten II (talk) 00:01, 5 January 2015 (UTC) Die genannten Artikel erreichen Sie direkt über die angegebenen Links, wenn Sie dort auf den Talk pages kommentieren sollten, müsste ich das über meine Beobachtungsliste sehen. Sie können mich auch via einen ping (vgl @Sonja Brentjes:) direkt benachrichtigen. Serten II (talk) 00:06, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

-) erst einmal gute nacht für heute. bis demnächst.--88.72.99.84 (talk) 00:08, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Hi Sonja, let me also welcome you to Wikipedia and provide a brief introduction to some the problems that I've found academics often have in writing for Wikipedia.

• A relevant element of Wikipedia's policies is that original research is prohibited. To a historian this policy is very disconcerting. But when you consider that anyone can edit Wikipedia and there is no way to verify an editor's credentials, the ban on original research is necessary to limit crackpot theories about history or other disciplines.
• Related to this is that the crucial element in Wikipedia is verifiability. Formerly Wikipedia's policy on verifiability defined the threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia as "verifiability, not truth". That paradoxical statement gets to the core of the problem professional scholars have writing for Wikipedia. We know what the truth is; we've been taught it by distinguished scholars and have done research on our own. But in Wikipedia's "anyone can edit" context, our knowledge carries no weight on its own. We have to be able to cite reliable sources that anyone with access to a good library or the internet can find. Sources are required for every statement that's likely to be challenged; for me, that means I cite a source for everything that's not common knowledge.

A related problem is that although Wikipedia tries to distinguish reliable from unreliable sources, it does it in a fairly mechanical way. the publications of an international organization (e.g., UNESCO) and a book published by a respected publisher are given equivalent weight. This often runs up against a third Wikipedia policy, which requires that articles be written from a Neutral Point of View. When sources disagree, we're in a situation where it often comes down to counting sources and this is where Wikipedia often falls short.

The key to writing in Wikipedia, then, is to find the sources that support a particular argument, and use them to build a coherent argument. Writing in a collaborative environment like Wikipedia can be frustrating, but it is a widely read source and it is important that professional scholars like yourself help maintain the standards we expect of an encyclopedia.

Best wishes, SteveMcCluskey (talk) 02:46, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Sonja asked me to present myself, I have an earth science background with a postgrade in cultural studies. With regard to "auld and ancient literature" @SteveMcCluskey:, my analytics Prof always asked to read 1880 (not even 1970) literature to learn about sampling, since certainty is not based on fashionable instruments in the lab but the biggest errors happen in the field. Some points about experts from my perspective

1. Wikipedia:Expert editors: Actually, there is a strong undercurrent of anti-expert bias in Wikipedia and the "appeal to expert authority" often backfires, that is a part of WP since Larry Sanger quarreled with Jimmy Wales.
2. The authority of Wikipedia is not based on individual expertise (Jean Goodwin, an anglistic scholaress, 2009).
3. Experience as an author is more relevant here than being an expert in a certain field. Authors gain support from articles they write and take care of, and they gain support from coauthors and the interaction with external scholars. In my case Sebatsian Luening and Reiner Grundmann, which have supported me in writing articles and on external blogs. A strong network (both of topics and humans) is, again, more important than actual expertise. I am not bound to a certain field of topics but as well write funny entries like Hobby horse polo and have brought them to the mainpage via WP:DYK.
4. That said, make sure that you have fun, and take care as well of your user site, I was so freee to add a picture for a less rookie first impression. Serten II (talk) 13:26, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Hi Steve, hi Serten, thank you both for your comments and for your introduction. I am no longer amazed that there is so much simply wrong stuff on the humanities' sites of wikipedia. i still am curious whether things are handled in the same manner in the sciences, i.e. whether people can acquire reputation as authors of wikipedia by writing nonsense and making the most simple mistakes. can you enlighten me in this point? i really do not need wikipedia to become an author. as i said yesterday, all i meant to do is correct the most unpleasant mistakes in the ibn al-haytham article. can either one of you tell me how to correct the introduction? by the way those parts of the wikipedia entry on ibn al-haytham that are not exaggerations in the one or the other direction or downright false are what in real life is called plagiarism: a long part is copied from a paper by david lindbergh without clarifying that except for the occasional marking of a part of the copied text as direct quote. sigh. -- 2.202.209.164 (talk) 14:51, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Hi Sonja, Serten II, and SteveMcCluskey. In general, I'd say sciences are a little better, although if you delve into any particular niche topic, the same dynamic of bad content — usually more a case of poor and muddled work that reflects just a few sources that the author happens to have seen, rather than any malicious attempt to insert nonsense. As others Steve and others noted, editors themselves are not considered reliable sources for Wikipedia articles, but humanities scholars generally know the literature in their fields well enough that it's easy to bring "reliable sources" by the Wikipedia definition to bear. In cases where there is a divide between what different groups say (like, say, UNESCO and historians of science), then the best approach is to explicitly explain in the article what each group says. That said, although the application of Wikipedia's general rules about sourcing can be a bit mechanical, there's always room for common sense discussion about which sources are appropriate and why. If you found parts of an article that are plagiarized, you can cut those right out. If there's anything I can help with, please let me know.--ragesoss (talk) 16:52, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Hi Ragesoss, thanks for the information. I find this amazing, I mean the public production of bad quality information. Is nobody of you guys getting nervous about this? What drives you to participate in producing poor, muddled, erroneous or ideologically distorted information? I honestly do not understand that. When you want to have fun as Serten says, why dabbling in fields outside of your qualification? Why using third-rate sources of information? Why not prescribing the use of academically approved material? The latter does not guarantee that everything is correct or high quality of free of distortion, but at least most of the authors tried to make sense of primary sources. As for simply cutting out plagiarized parts, this does not help much since then the entry loses its sense so to speak. All I could do when I find the time to mark everything that is either a direct quote or a slightly altered copy of Lindberg's text. I do not have the time to do an extensive reading for rewriting the entire piece. I have contacted the expert on this matter. But she is busy and can't do it. Moreover, Wikipedia has a bad reputation and very few of my colleague are willing to engage since anybody can change what we write. As for the UNESCO issue, I am currently trying to get the permission to correct their presentation. Will see whether I succeed. Most of the severe errors in the domain of history of science in Islamicate societies is not so much maliciousness (I think), but incompetence, lack of familiarity with primary sources and a lack of understanding of the distance between then and today on all levels. Best, Sonja--Sonja Brentjes (talk) 17:58, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Compare User_talk:Yngvadottir#Goodbye_statement and Talk:Alhazen#Scientific_method.2C_again. Houston, We've Got a Problem ;) Serten II (talk) 08:15, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, Serten. Unfortunately, I am so busy with work I can't do anything on the Ibn al-Haytham page. SonjaSonja Brentjes (talk) 00:49, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Youre welcome. I have my preferences as well. The guy starting and ignoring this disucssion seems to be eager still to keep on with the BBC bullshit, he has his found his POV there, and stays there. Nothing to care about science nor external experts. Those are the days, and honestly, its and he is a problem for WP, not for you and me. 09:35, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

I hope I can come back with some better staff in two months or so. Sonja Brentjes (talk) 20:25, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Sonja Brentjes, you are invited to the Teahouse!

Hi Sonja Brentjes! Thanks for contributing to Wikipedia. Come join other new editors at the Teahouse! The Teahouse is a space where new editors can get help from other new editors. These editors have also just begun editing Wikipedia; they may have had similar experiences as you. Come share your experiences, ask questions, and get advice from your peers. I hope to see you there! Missvain (I'm a Teahouse host) Visit the Teahouse This message was delivered automatically by your robot friend, HostBot (talk) 16:24, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

1001 Inventions

You may be interested to know that your critical review of the "1001 Inventions" exhibit and catalogue has already been cited at the Reliable Sources Noticeboard and there is an earlier discussion of the 1001 inventions project here. These discussions provide enough criticism of the reliability of the 1001 inventions material (and the associated muslimheritage.com website) that you would be justified deleting passages that are based only on these sources, citing deleted per WP:RS in your edit description. That, of course, doesn't affect citations of UNESCO as a source which would require the provision of alternative sources to present the points of view of academics on the particular issue at question. If necessary, you can even cite your own published material. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 17:06, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Hi Steve, I added already a reference to a review of Khalili's book in my cut down comment on UNESCO. The author of the revue is a Renaissance scholar with very little own competence for Islamicate societies. This is the result of this untenable policy of Wikipedia. sigh. Thanks a lot for the information and for connecting with the other editor. I will check things later. Best, Sonja--Sonja Brentjes (talk) 17:58, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Hello, Sonja Brentjes. Please check your email; you've got mail!
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dear all: please go to the user page i opened. i posted a question to you all there. i need help. thanks. --Sonja Brentjes (talk) 14:09, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

MfD nomination of User:Sonja Brentjes/Lede

User:Sonja Brentjes/Lede, a page you substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Sonja Brentjes/Lede and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of User:Sonja Brentjes/Lede during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. Ricky81682 (talk) 22:30, 10 October 2015 (UTC)