Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 05:41, 16 October 2008

December 2007

Welcome to Misplaced Pages. Everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia. However, please do not add promotional material to articles, as you did to 2012. Advertising and using Misplaced Pages as a "soapbox" is strongly discouraged. Take a look at the welcome page to learn more about Misplaced Pages. Thank you. —BoL 06:43, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war according to the reverts you have made on 2012. Note that the three-revert rule prohibits making more than three reversions in a content dispute within a 24 hour period. Additionally, users who perform a large number of reversions in content disputes may be blocked for edit warring, even if they do not technically violate the three-revert rule. If you continue, you may be blocked from editing. Please do not repeatedly revert edits, but use the talk page to work towards wording and content that gains a consensus among editors. —BoL 06:55, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Mayanism

Hi there Hoopes- would just like to compliment you on your impressive expansion of the a/n article. I think you've struck just about the right balance on a topic that is notoriously infused with much vagueness and speculative claims. You've also done very well to neutrally describe and distinguish between the contemporary esoteric interpretations, and the more authentic historically-based ones they are often mistaken for. Nice work! Cheers, --cjllw ʘ TALK 07:55, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Votan

Hi there Hoopes. If you want to change Votan from redirecting to Woden and beginning an article there instead (I agree it would make an interesting subject), here's how to do it:

1. just enter "Votan" in the search box and hit "go", or alternatively just click on the link to Votan above
2. You will be redirected to the Woden article. However, at the top left of the page you should see some small text saying "(redirected from Votan)". Clicking on the link to Votan there will open up the Votan page without forcing the redirect. It will look something like this: #REDIRECT ].
   1. This external link will also have the same effect.
3. Then just click the 'edit this page' tab, and you can start the new article by replacing the '#redirect' instruction with your new text.

To handle other possible meanings / associations of "Votan", we can just put up some variety of disambiguating hatnote on it to provide pointers to other potential targets. Would be happy to help setting that up once you've made a start on the new article.

Hope that helps, and regards, --cjllw ʘ TALK 07:43, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi Hoopes, no worries. And many thanks for that extremely interesting expansion on Votan- good work! Just one or two minor stylistic conventions there that I'll update. One thing that would be great to add in when you get a chance is a couple of inline cites against the key assertions, to annotate where that particular info comes from. This is accomplished by enclosing the annotation between <ref> and </ref> tags, immediately after the sentence. You can use a Harvard-esque abbr., for example:

Some statement that would benefit from an inline cite specifying the source of the information.<ref>Smith and Jones (1992, pp.123-125).</ref>

The cited work (here Smith and Jones) would be expanded in full bibliographical style under the 'references' section. I'll have a go at adding in some of these, but may need your help for page no's etc as I don't have those works to hand myself.

Otherwise I think this serves its purpose admirably. It will be interesting to see if anything from actual Maya legendary accounts turns up, as opposed to the subsequent embellishments and projections by Europeans from Clavijero onwards. Regards,--cjllw ʘ TALK 05:33, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

ps. I did some quick scouting around for other related context mentions of votan, no doubt you've come across these. I think it'd be good to work them into the article for a fuller picture, I listed them on the article's talk page here. Saludos, --cjllw ʘ TALK 08:02, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

DYK!

On 4 February, 2008, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Votan, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

Congrats! Ruhrfisch _><>° 15:01, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Ancient Maya class contribs suggestion

Hi there Hoopes. Saw your proposal at the WP:MESO strategy talkpg, re your class coordinating some (much-needed) imput & improvement on Maya articles. I think that is a fantastic idea, and any input from that quarter would be most welcome. Feel sure that the other (alas few in number) currently active wp:meso folks would be only too happy to help out and support if and where needed.

I crossposted your proposal outline to the main WT:MESO discussion board (here), as that is probably the most visible place. May I suggest that further notices and chat take place in that thread. Completely up to you, but you might like to set up some separate project and discussion page to aid coordination; whatever suits.

You might also like to look over WP:SUP, some optional guidelines and suggestions for coordinating school & uni class inputs and contributions. May or may not contain some useful info. I know that User:Thelmadatter, a TEFL instructor at ITESM has been doing quite a few class contribs for Mexico-related articles for a while know, which have been working pretty well. Cheers, --cjllw ʘ TALK 04:42, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Hi John. Good idea, but you might want to read so you don't run into any of the problems that professor did. Doug Weller (talk) 08:08, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, guys! I've actually used this kind of assignment several times already (for courses on Mesoamerica, the Central Andes, and the history of anthropology), but decided to be more "transparent" in WP:MESO this time so that my students could see how more of the behind-the-scenes stuff works, especially in the context of WP:MESO. I am making it clear to students that this is NOT a context in which I want them to post termpaper drafts, but instead to create content appropriate for this medium. We'll see how it goes! (BTW, I really wish I could find more time for my own contributions...) Hoopes (talk)

No probs, and best wishes for the exercise. If you or any of your students run into issues or misunderstandings (for eg, to another wiki editor unaware of their origins, student contribs like these sometimes look suspicious, potential copyvios & the like) just give any of us a shout & we'll help to sort it out. Regards, --cjllw ʘ TALK 09:10, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages Assignments for "The Ancient Maya" at KU (Fall 2008)

To my students: Please use this space for asking any questions you might have about the assignment. I'll answer if I can, but there may also be some answers from others. Please remember to sign your posts! Hoopes (talk) 01:17, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Maya personage names

Hello All: Two questions here. First, I am working on an entry on the topic of Ruling Queens and I have come across some different name spellings in two very recent publications for one of the Queens of Yaxchilan--Lady K'abal Xook. For my entry, which will be a stand alone page, I am inclined to use that of Martin and Grube 2008 in their Chronicle of Maya Queens and Kings, however Josserand's publication of 2007 (The Missing Heir at Yaxchilan: Literary Analysis of a Maya Historical Puzzle, In Latin American Antiquity vol 18(3) p 295-312) has the name as Lady Xok. Additionally, the existing Misplaced Pages page on this queen has it written as Lady Xoc. So what to do? Second question/note is with regard to the existing Lady Xoc page, it is in some need of updating, clarifying and correcting of the existing text, which I can do as I have time but I wanted to check first before re-writing parts. Thanks Archaeochica (talk) 05:36, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Hi Archaeochica, apologies for delay in commenting on your questions.

Re the naming conventions and orthography for ancient Maya personages- at WP:MESO we had begun to work out some consistent naming guidelines, but so far have only developed a couple of guiding principles: see the WP:MESO guidelines page. The rule of thumb for wikipedia naming conventions as a whole can be paraphrased as "use the most common name form (if there is one) for an entity, as it appears in english-language sources" — refer to WP:NC. However, for most things we write about on Mesoamerican topics they are usually not widely enough known beyond the fields of Mesoamericanist study to have acquired some definitive 'common-use' form, so we take a more specific approach. Or more to the point, we might interpret "most common name" as the most common name appearing in contemporary scholarly sources, and not "common" in the sense that, say, some generic travel guide would use.

For Maya personal and deity names or titles, our guideline would be to firstly use the actual Maya name (if that is known through some generally accepted modern decipherment), instead of any 'pre-decipherment' nickname or guess that may have been used in the past—even if that nickname or approximation may still be popularly known (Of course, as an encyclopaedia the relevant article should mention and document all of the main alternative names by which the figure has been referred to in literature past). Thus, we'd have Siyaj K'ak' and not "Smoking Frog", for eg. (the latter redirects to the former). However, if the figure's name is not yet deciphered or uncertain, then we'd refer to them by some established nickname or approximation, like "Casper" or "Sky Witness". Note, we still have articles like Lady Xoc and Pacal the Great which do not yet conform to these guidelines, although at some stage would prefer that they do. Pakal's article really should be at K'inich Janaab' Pakal, have been meaning to move it there for a while now only hadn't worked out disambiguating with the other couple of Janaab' Pakals.

As far as which version of orthography to spell Maya names goes, that's not so well defined. For consistency between articles, we've proposed a general adherence to ALMG orthography of Mayan languages, as a preferred update over the historical 16thC and later Spanish orthographies (eg ajaw, not ahau, or ahaw; pakal not pacal; kawak not cauac). Within this though there are still some spelling choices which seem to be six of one and half-a-dozen of the other, eg b'alam vs b'ahlam, and others where proposed decipherments differ, eg yopaat vs yoaat. This is as close to a consistent standard that we can suggest, in the absence of an identified overarching resource that covers/applies a consistent orthography for every Maya name, that we cld refer to.

In the particular case of Lady Xoc (Xok), we'd therefore lean towards K'abal Xook (or more strictly following ALMG, K'ab'al Xook ), while at the same time mentioning all the other variants and previous handles. IMO I'm not entirely convinced about having "Lady" (or ix) as part of her name/article title, but recognise that it's often appended.

Re the 2nd part of your question: by all means! If you have the time to spare then please do have a go at rewriting that article. We can always tidy up names & spelling &c. after the fact, but having the info there expanded in the first place would be excellent.

Hope this helps, regards --cjllw ʘ TALK 06:22, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

One of yours?

Hi Hoopes. Is this editor Chrisbfromeg (talk · contribs) one of your KU students? If so, seems some new article watchers got a little suspicious at seeing the text of their Maya priesthood article appearing out-of-the-blue, and it's ended up nominated for deletion or merging. I'll contest the deletion/merge proposal anyway since there's valid info there, but wanted to check if part of the overall assignment. --cjllw ʘ TALK 05:23, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the author of this entry is one of my students. I'm not sure of the reasons given for deletion, although merging with an existing article may be a better strategy. What do you think? Hoopes (talk) 20:32, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

OK, thx for the clarification. The deletion proposal didn't go though. I tend to agree with the comments you made at talk:Maya priesthood that there'd be a distinction to be drawn between "Shamanism" and the topic of this new article (I think "Maya priesthood" needs a better name, but can't think of one ATM. Maybe later). Re incorporating the priesthood article into (say) the Maya religion article- some merit in that, but would equally be inclined to keep them as separate articles. Both need work and while one can cross-ref the other as subjects they can stand independently. Until recently we used to have a Maya shamanism article as well, tho' I've just noticed someone has just redirected this to the Maya religion article without any content transfer (the content was in bad shape, but still could've been improved; the old version is here.) Maybe the shamanism one could be brought back (in an improved form), so that we cld have the 'priesthood' (or whatever better title) and 'shamanism' articles to make that distinction. --cjllw ʘ TALK 06:16, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. One of the problems with the priest vs. shaman (and priesthood vs. shamanism) issue is that it is difficult to avoid venturing into the realm of new scholarship. Despite a lot of important discussion by Cecelia Klein, Alice Beck Kehoe, Barbara Tedlock, and others, there remains no consensus on whether "shaman" or "priest" is a better term. The best work I've seen on this is by Max Weber in Sociology of Religion (book), with additional theoretical work more recently by Augusto Oyuela-Caycedo. I think the best strategy is to pick the best title (perhaps "Maya shamanism") and do a redirect from "Maya priesthood". Hoopes (talk) 20:02, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Notability of Blossom Goodchild

A tag has been placed on Blossom Goodchild requesting that it be speedily deleted from Misplaced Pages. This has been done because the article, which appears to be about a real person, organization (band, club, company, etc.), or web content, does not indicate how or why the subject is notable: that is, why an article about that subject should be included in an encyclopedia. Under the criteria for speedy deletion, articles that do not indicate the subject's importance or significance may be deleted at any time. Please see the guidelines for what is generally accepted as notable. If this is the first page that you have created, then you should read the guide to writing your first article.

If you think that you can assert the notability of the subject, you may contest the deletion by adding {{hangon}} to the top of the article (just below the existing speedy deletion or "db" tag), coupled with adding a note on the article's talk page explaining your position, but be aware that once tagged for speedy deletion, if the article meets the criterion it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the article that would confirm the subject's notability under Misplaced Pages guidelines.

For guidelines on specific types of articles, you may want to check out our criteria for biographies, for web sites, for bands, or for companies. Feel free to leave a note on my talk page if you have any questions about this. X MarX the Spot (talk) 05:29, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Midwifery in Maya society

Hi, I was wondering if you realized that Midwifery in Maya society was already a "live" article? I was trying to work on it myself, but maybe you could look it over since you seem to be much more familiar with the subject material than I am. --Ships at a Distance (talk) 22:15, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Re: Blossom Goodchild

Re your message: It was an oversight on my part for not restoring the Talk page. It's a long story, but the article was deleted for a moment and I restored it. While I was fixing the mess that I made, I had forgotten that I had deleted the Talk page. It's back now. -- Gogo Dodo (talk) 05:41, 16 October 2008 (UTC)