Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2012 January 10

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January 10

Jewish dyers

I've been reading the travels of Benjamin of Tudela (in 12th century Palestine), in which he details all the Jewish communities he comes across. Where there are only a handful of Jews in a town, their profession is almost always 'dyer'. Any idea why? Henry^Flower 00:44, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

I've no idea about the specific case, but an ethnic division of labour has been a common feature of many societies - and minorities often end up specialising in work that is seen as 'impure' or 'contaminated' by the majority ethnicity: dyeing with natural substances often involved some fairly noxious materials, e.g. mordants made from urine were common. Then again, it may have just been that they found a specialised niche that made expanding into new areas beneficial. No doubt knowledge of the processes involved was passed down the generations... AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:51, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

An interesting article on the subject: Dye-Making A Judaic Traditional Art. This seems to confirm the strong links between Jews and the Dyeing Industry. AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:26, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't know about dyers specifically, but Benjamin was visiting the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem, where there weren't many Jews, who had been kicked out or killed (and they weren't allowed to live in Jerusalem itself). Maybe dyeing was a particular skill that the crusaders did not have. Adam Bishop (talk) 04:10, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks especially for that link, Andy. Henry^Flower 00:53, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

AndyTheGrump is right, Jews in the east and Egypt did jobs that Muslims refused to do. Dying is unclean as it uses urine.
Sleigh (talk) 08:54, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Any nurse can confirm that last statement. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 19:08, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Factual inacuracy - South Africa

Dear WP I happened to be reading through the SA article for SA and discovered that the iformation provided for the Provinces is incorrect. In the Province of Gauteng - Johannesburg is listed as its Capital - this is incorrect the Capital of the Country is in fact PRETORIA in the Metropolitan of Tshwane. It is also the country's Administrative capital + the seat of the President. johannesburg has always been referred to as the economic centre of the country due to its Gold mines and other industrial enterprises.The resty of the article seems in order. Please make the necessary adjustments to save the article from being biased an untrustworthy Thank you lionel wedge 122.59.32.50 (talk) 02:24, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

My reading of the articles is that Johannesburg is the capital of the province of Gauteng, whereas Pretoria is one of the three national capitals of South Africa. (Pretoria is indeed located in Gauteng, but it is a national capital, not a provincial one.) TenOfAllTrades(talk) 02:38, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Lionel, many thanks for raising this question, however the best place to address these sorts of problems is on the discussion page of the article where it can be picked up by previous authors of the article. Richard Avery (talk) 08:31, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Sorry Lionel, you are mistaken, TenOfAllTrades is correct, Pretoria is a national capital and Johannesburg is the capital of Gauteng. There are sufficient South African editors active on WP to catch such an obvious error if it was one. Roger (talk) 10:56, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Grumble alert: Can you guys get your indenting sorted out, please? All three of you were replying directly to Lionel, but it looks like Richard was replying to TOAT (but calling him Lionel), and Dodger was replying to Richard (but calling him Lionel). It does make a difference when you use these things properly. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 19:07, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia, a prehistoric conflict

In the same way first humans avoided conflicts moving apart as far as possible to alleviate resource competition, can Wikipedia avoid conflicts creating more articles (resources, lands) where people can "live" instead of overcrowded pages? emijrp (talk) 12:19, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Suggestions for how to improve Wikipedia (as opposed to improving individual articles) are best posted on WP:Village pump. But given that pages are created by anybody who wants to create a page, and edited by anybody who wants to (including vandals) I find it hard to see how your suggestion could have any effect.--ColinFine (talk)

Wikipedia is, in a sense, a Biblical Babel. The idea is to move together in one giant panhuman undertaking, not apart. Besides, we are already creating more articles, yet people will always crowd on the most controversial ones. The idea of an article having several different versions with different biases to avoid conflict is not particularly attractive as well. There are already spinoffs of Wikipedia which cater to particular biases due to difficulty in propagating them on Wikipedia, and they're not exactly reliable.-- Obsidi♠n Soul 13:09, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Spinoffs, plural? What's the other one?  Card Zero  (talk) 14:18, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

There's loads of them. Conservapedia has splintered as rapidly as any religion or extremist political grouping, e.g. into A Storehouse of Knowledge (more Biblical) and Ameriwiki (less bonkers). --Colapeninsula (talk) 16:16, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Enciclopedia Libre (mentioned below) and WikiPilipinas are two forks I can immediately think of that are tamer. Uncyclopedia, Wikipedia's crazy bastard sister site is not a fork but nevertheless is obviously based on Wikipedia, as it is a parody site. Metapedia is another that is literally crazier, also not a fork but started on the premise of providing a place for a POV that can't ever be accepted at WP. Baidu Baike started because zh.wiki did not and could not conform to mainland China's censors, etc. etc. I'm sure there are others. -- Obsidi♠n Soul 16:30, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

This has happened. What you are describing is essentially forking. Awhile back there was some sort of forking of the Spanish Wikipedia — see Enciclopedia Libre Universal en Español. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:28, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I know that case, but I'm not saying we need to fork. Just implying that a lower users/page ratio can avoid conflicts. But that has a collateral damage, articles written by very few users tend to be incomplete, biased and error prone. By the way, most conflicts occurs in a few pages (the most famous ones), so, people will continue to create conflicts there. Now, I'm not sure about my first message, I guess we need some real figures to make assumptions. emijrp (talk) 15:39, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm curious of how exactly you're going to do that though. You can't quite dictate what a user wants to read.-- Obsidi♠n Soul 16:30, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

It sounds like you're suggesting that if some people want an article to have a pro-foobar slant, and others want the article to have an anti-foobar slant, we should split them up into two separate articles so that the two groups of people don't fight?

Sorry, but that sounds like a terrible idea. Wikipedia is based on the idea that everyone is constantly checking each-others' work. When a small group of people go off to make a 'walled garden' of fringe topics, it almost always leads to a bunch of articles full of rubbish that need to be deleted or completely rewritten. APL (talk) 01:11, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Citizendium was intending to be a fork of wikipedia, which would be more carefully controlled. They abandoned that idea after it was decided there was too much stuff and only copied stuff which they would maintain. In the end, none of it went very well, amongst other problems, it had difficulty attracting both readers and editors. Despite (or perhaps because of) their emphasis on experts (and also 'thinking people who read about science'), from what I've read it became somewhat of a haven for pseudoscience at one stage. Nil Einne (talk) 14:08, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

• Wow. I was not aware of Metapedia. It's basically copies of our articles with anti-semitic additions. I looked up Bill Clinton and it was part of the WP article on him, followed by a picture of him in a yamika and another with the caption "Clinton and his Jewish harlot Monica Lewinsky." Delightful. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:07, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
  • So what did they think was worse? That she's Jewish? (Assuming she is.) Or that she's a "harlot"? (I didn't know anyone still used that word.) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:44, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
    • Continuing with the idea of using quaint, antique expressions, maybe they could have had a movie about those two: The Varlet and the Harlot. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:47, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

• Interesting. I wonder when archaic English began sounding like high-profile multi-million-dollar-budget soft porn movies.-- Obsidi♠n Soul 01:57, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

• Probably around the time they were invented. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:04, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

High level technical people in STEM fields who never went to college and didn't start their own company in the past 50 years

I want to know of people (if any) who (in, say, the last 50 years) taught themselves in a STEM field without any formal college and were able to get a job in industry in that field at an already-established company. 69.243.220.115 (talk) 13:50, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Sean Parker? He didn't start his own company although he was involved in various start-ups as well as serving on the board of other companies. --Colapeninsula (talk) 16:21, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

What is STEM? I can think of a couple of meanings, but they don't really match the question. HiLo48 (talk) 23:07, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics or Science, Technology, Engineering and Medicine. The UK government is prioritising these subjects in university funding, and we have STEM research centres and such like. Itsmejudith (talk) 23:17, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. It's always interesting to see what jargon becomes important in different parts of the world. HiLo48 (talk) 05:38, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

... and how it has changed. (I remember STEM as "Science and Technology Education on Merseyside", but the only remaining trace of that seems to be in the archives of Liverpool University). Dbfirs 12:53, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

The OP has now wikilinked the term in the title [1] Nil Einne (talk) 17:54, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Deficiencies in an article

Dera Wikipedia

I have read a wikipedia entry in which the Author is clearly showing his political bias by suggesting that a specific historical figure is not to be trusted as he his reliability has been doubted by writers (unknown) and colleagues (unknown. This is clearly propaganda purporting to be fact. My question is how does one highlight this fact and draw attention to the deficiencies in this article

Yours faithfully paddockofthesun — Preceding unsigned comment added by Paddockofthesun (talk • contribs) 15:26, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

You use the talk page of the article in question. Or you add appropriate article tags (while discussing the problems on the talk page). Or you edit the article yourself. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:29, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

If the trustworthiness of a political figure has been doubted by published writers, then it is legitimate to mention that in the article. Do not edit the article to delete criticisms unless you are sure that the material you are removing violates Wikipedia policy. Your first action should be to comment on the article talk page. --Colapeninsula (talk) 16:28, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Incidentally, if you have questions about Wikipedia you should ask on Wikipedia:Help Desk, not here. --Colapeninsula (talk) 16:29, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Citations are important for this sort of thing. If the article does not give citations for people who have given the views then that is a good reason for deleting the stuff. However if it is cited then it may be more a case of giving balance by having other citations giving the other point of view. Dmcq (talk) 00:27, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

In nearly every case, it's easier to give advice about an article if we know what article you're referring to. Dismas|^(talk) 08:38, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

science and pseudoscience

It always came across me,How Do You Compare and contrast science and pseudoscience. what are the similarities and differences? 184.44.131.140 (talk) 19:26, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

As always, Wikipedia has a suitable article:Pseudoscience -for your edification. --Aspro (talk) 19:29, 10 January 2012 (UTC)