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Barnstar

		The Barnstar of Diligence
		Thank you for your constructive criticism and swift GA review of Q'umarkaj, your thoughtful input has contributed to a better article. Additionally I would like to thank you for all the work you have put into Mesoamerica-related articles. All the best, Simon Burchell (talk) 18:36, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Thank you!·Maunus·ƛ· 18:38, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Please consider

Hi Maunus! Referring to this message, I'd like you to consider that the sections mentioned by the ip are written in summary style based on the Lists of National Treasures of Japan. Most of the information is contained in a single source: Database of National Cultural Properties, but some information uses a large number of references which would be impractical to add here.bamse (talk) 20:25, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Takalik Abaj FA nom

Hi Maunus, I have expanded the intro section to Takalik Abaj and would appreciate it if you could have a look at it and drop by the FA Nom to comment. Many thanks, Simon Burchell (talk) 21:32, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Cantonese/Yue renaming

Just wondering, if you want to rename Cantonese (Yue) "Cantonese", what would you want to do with Cantonese? kwami (talk) 22:35, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I didn't think that through. I think you should probably disregard my vote.·Maunus·ƛ· 06:05, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Okay, have you any thoughts on what we should call Yue Chinese/Cantonese (iso3 yue) as opposed to Standard Cantonese/Cantonese? kwami (talk) 02:41, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Our Lady of Guadalupe (Our Beloved Mother)

Ref. Our Lady of Guadalupe

On 26 January 2010 14:41/CET, you reverted my edit of 26 January 2010 13:52/CET, where I had sub-edited my previous edit of 26 January 2010 13:39/CET (Footnote on the real meaning in Nahuatl of Tonantzin (to-nan-tzin): "Our Venerable Mother"), with the following change:

• Tonantzin (to-nan-tzin): "Our Venerable Mother" => "Our Beloved Mother"

It is not clear to me from the comment appended to you edit ("revert - not an improvement") if (1) you simply wanted to revert to my first version ("Our Venerable Mother") OR (2) if you wanted to scrap even that one.

• If (1), I would obviously bow to your linguistic competence, not without informing you that I have carefully consulted English/Nahuatl dictionaries before the edit ("Our Venerable Mother" => "Our Beloved Mother")
• If (2), I will ask you to justify the reason for your action, also because, contrary to you declared observance of the "1 Revert Rule", and your declared policy ("if I revert an edit I discuss it on the talk page immediately and refrain from reverting the same edit if inserted again"), you have obviously NOT talked of the reason for your action on the Talk Page.

In any event (as per 1 Revert Rule), please contact me before taking any further action on that article.

Thank you.

Miguel de Servet (talk) 22:04, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

The most important reason for my reversal was that the foot note you introduced was not sourced. I believe that if a translation of Tonantzin it should be sourced to a reliable source. Linguistically there is no clear reason to choose venerable over beloved or vice versa, the -tzin reverential suffix means both. That is why it would need a source. If you find a reliable source translating Tonantzin as one or the other then that is ok and I will not object to its inclusion, I would even suggest that it go into the main text instead of a footnote. But on the contrary the choice between which one to write is Original Research and essentially arbitrary. I am sorry that I didn't immediately discuss on the talk page, I should have done that. I will copy this discussion to the talk page of Our Lady of Guadelupe. ·Maunus·ƛ· 08:02, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Maunus,

thank you for your prompt reply and clarification. As you can see from the article, I have integrated the footnote with a quotation & reference as follows:

• ("A challenge for the English translator is the suffix -tzin, heavily used in this text. On the one hand, it is a diminutive, used for children and pets. On the other hand it is reverential, used for lords and gods. ... the best default "translation formula" for -tzin is probably "beloved," since that was formerly used in English for everyone from children to monarchs, although it is now quaintly dated in virtually all contexts." Nican Mopohua: Here It Is Told, Introduction and Explanations, The Language of the Nican Mopohua, @ weber.ucsd.edu)

I believe this should do. As for putting that correct translation and backup information into the main text, I believe that info should remain in a footnote, even if it is a rather long one, because it is a linguistic digression from the main contents of the section (Historicity debate and controversies). To end with, I agree with the idea of copying this discussion the talk page of Our Lady of Guadalupe, creating a new section, which I suggest to title "Tonanzin: Our Beloved Mother"
Miguel de Servet (talk) 17:28, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

WP:RANDY

I must remember this trap :p Cheers :) (Taivo (talk) 07:37, 6 February 2010 (UTC))

Yeah, keep a cool head when confronting those skeletons. :) ·Maunus·ƛ· 07:42, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Thank you

Thanks for the help with the Takalik Abaj nom, especially for sorting out all that linguistic stuff and, of course, for supporting the nom. Best regards, Simon Burchell (talk) 10:32, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Maya language query

Hi Maunus. I've got a query about a Maya language. I'm expanding the Huehuetenango Department article from a 1992 Spanish-language monograph and it mentions the "Chalchiteco" language as being spoken in Aguacatán together with "Aguateco". Aguateco is Awakatek, any idea what "Chalchiteco" is? The Spanish wikipedia indicated that it was only recognised fairly recently by the ALMG, and there's no mention of it in the English Mayan languages article that I can see. Can you shed any light on this? Thanks, Simon Burchell (talk) 12:02, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

As I am sure you know the distinction between language and dialect is mostly political. In this case what seems to have happened is that since Chalchitan was originally a separate community which was later made a subject community to Aguatan the people of Chalcitan seemns to have had a need to assert their difference from the Aguatecos by having their language (which has been counted as a dialect of Awateko - to which it is most closely related) recognized as a distinct language by the ALMG. The articles es:Idioma chalchiteco and es:Chalchiteco (etnia) shed some light on this process and provides a few sources for the Chalchiteco's struggle for recognition. The ALMG is based on a policy of recognizing any group that selfidentifies as distinct and this is the same process that has resulted in the separation of Achi and Uspantec form K'iche. I doubt that Chalchitec is more different from Awakatek than Achi' is from K'iche (and they are almost fully mutually intelligible). Anyway if we want to give it its own entry in the article about MAyan languages it would be under the Ixil node as a sister language to Awateko.·Maunus·ƛ· 14:28, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for that, I had some suspicions... Simon Burchell (talk) 14:34, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

GAC of National Treasures of Japan

Hi Maunus! Did you have another look at Talk:National Treasures of Japan/GA1 ? bamse (talk) 11:14, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Hi, Bamse. Sorry, I've been really bogged down with work. I'll get to it over the weekend at the latest.·Maunus·ƛ· 11:41, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

No problem. I was just worried that you might have forgotten. bamse (talk) 11:54, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Edit Request

Hallo,

    I've started to add articles in Danish that don't yet exist, and I'm looking for someone
to check the grammar in them.  If you have a moment, please consider reading over the danish
article for the Pure Holocaust record by Immortal to check for mistakes.

DenAntikristen (talk) 01:32, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

That codex and the tests

I've taken this to the RSN noticeboard, . I've also told Bellarmino (talk · contribs) to avoid using the IP address as a possible sock puppet, and will tell the IP address the same. Dougweller (talk) 08:51, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Well, what do you know. Take a look . Dougweller (talk) 13:13, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

That looks like a really good and careful analysis. The site does look at least as respectable as the ones bellarmino have been presenting - but I would still prefer to read an analysis by a peer reviewed scholar.·Maunus·ƛ· 13:38, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

The site is by Alberto Peralta, apparently now a doctoral candidate at ENAH. Have no problem with its content, which I think is pretty much spot on (and is used as a ref in the Codex Escalada article, think it may even have been me who added it), but it would be even better to back it up with more recognisable published sources. For eg, a lot of his points are made in Stafford Poole's The Guadalupan controversies in Mexico‎ (& prob others he's written), so at some stage would be worthwhile to go thru and cite/expand away. --cjllw ʘ TALK 02:54, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

If those are his credentials then I also have no objection to using him as a source. I just couldn't find his academic credentialsanywhere on the site. I think an expansion is then probably in order.·Maunus·ƛ· 09:51, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Talkback

Really just to point you to Misplaced Pages:School_projects if you haven't seen it, you probably should use it. Doug Dougweller (talk) 13:03, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Zapotec civilization

Just got a new large edit which needs attention from someone! I don't know anything worthwhile so I can't help. Dougweller (talk) 22:01, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Great! I'm there.·Maunus·ƛ· 06:05, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm not happy about the inline citations in this article, they are sloppy in that they don't use the full name of the book (in fact a form that isn't reflected in the title), and I'm not sure the format meets WP:CITE. I don't know if your students do technical tasks like that. One other concern, in this article neither reference is previewed in any way, are you going to check to make sure that there's no copyvio (including close paraphrasing)? Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 16:19, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Merging Ashkenazi Intelligence back into Ashkenazi Jews

Hello, I've reopened the merge issue on the AJ page, and was wondering if you could weight in. Thanks, A.Prock 21:14, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Otomi language refs

I was doing editing to those and accidentally closed the window, so I figured instead of explaining them after the fact (which I planned to do), I'd discuss them with you prior...

• I was going to split "content" and reference notes (using the group feature of footnotes).
• Fixing some refs with incomplete/differently formatted elements with no reason (i.e. Bartholomew 1995, several books formatted as journal issues)
  • On this topic, the Garibay Historia de la literature náhuatl ref is missing the year. Given it had two editions (1st 1951-53, 2nd 1971), that makes it impossible for me to complete it. Adding which volume (it appears to be a two-volumes work) is concerned would be a good idea too...
• Reducing multiple links, especially to multiple time the same journal/author in references that come one after the other.
• I'm really not fond of publisher links in general either, to be honest
• Removing publisher and ISSNs for periodicals
  • Publisher info was added to the template back in 2007 (IIRC) at the insistence of a specific editor worried about users citing biased periodicals in smoking-related articles. Generally it doesn't do much good (ISSN is better for disambiguating homonymous publications), though I thought you using it to mention conference proceedings published as a journal issue in Greenlandic language was brilliantly clever.
  • ISSN is only really useful for disambiguation, or when discussing the periodical itself.
• Simplify the format parameter (just "pdf" is more than enough: it's intended to describe specifics of the file to be loaded)
• I've come to prefer treating jstor links in a fashion similar to DOIs and ISBNs using {{jstor}} after the cite template (though now that I think of it, I probably could/should put in in the id parameter...). This has the advantage of not suggesting the article is free access like the url parameter does (compare the Russel 1966 and Lastra 1996 refs for what I mean), plus you don't have to add a not-so-needed accessdate.
• OCLC numbers are great for when you got no ISBN (e.g. Hardwood 1968). Otherwise, especially where you got a DOI, they're really not that good: OCLC separates records, not books, so an ISBN search (available from the ISBN link generated by MediaWiki) is more efficient.
• What's your feeling on formating series with the series # bolded and without "no" ?

90% of those are the same sort of stuff I did in Greenlandic language (which I'll probably look over again before long. I've spotted a couple refs that could receive extra details :D), but they represent pretty extensive changes and I figure it's less trouble discussing them beforehand (I've clashed with other editors over approaches to references). Others I definitely wouldn't do with your approval:

• Would moving Bartholomew 2004 to a footnote (as with note #31 in Greenlandic and others) be okay with you?
• I have a soft spot for using titles instead of appended letters to disambiguate publications done the same year. Any thoughts? (the Palancar refs don't need them, btw, so I'll take them out)
• I'm thinking regularizing the author-year format punctuation throughout, though I'm not sure yet whether I want to use a comma-based format or a parenthetical format like in Greenlandic (which for my own peace of mind I'd have to convert too XD).

As your friendly neighborhood stalker I'll probably get round to checking out the rest of your stuff (which I really enjoy reading) again soon. If you want help looking over the refs at Zapotec civilization, give me a heads up! Circéus (talk) 17:38, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Jesuit Reductions

Hi Maunus! Could you keep an eye on Jesuit Reductions and lend a hand if necessary. I see the topic has been discussed at Catholic Church. I'm trying to add refs, and clean up the article, but you know much more about this subject than I do. Thanks as always. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 01:11, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

FAC for funerary art

• Your input is humbly requested here. Thanks • Ling.Nut 05:12, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Catholic Church

You commented on the recent sweeping changes. My critique of them and an alternate suggestion is linked at Talk:Catholic_Church#Recent_Major_and_Substantive_Changes_to_this_Article Xandar 13:49, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Sorry I am in a process of directing my efforts where they have the most potential of improving the encyclopedia while causing me minimal stress. I am afraid I consider Catholic church a lost cause.·Maunus·ƛ· 14:30, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

phishing

See here. Crum375 (talk) 18:13, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Please sort this out

Please see the comment I made at WP:RFP regarding your decision and subsequent action regarding Ansar Abbasi. __meco (talk) 14:10, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

This has to be sorted out

Your attitude is arrogant. Tell me specifically which reference is invalid or looks like hearsay? References are the either the contributions of the person in question, his recorded statements, or the most reputable newspaper in the country. Peterhenych (talk) 00:05, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Sorry for the perceived arrogance, that was not my intention. I have adressed your concerns at Talk: Ansar Abbasi.·Maunus·ƛ· 04:50, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Marina Orlova

Thanks for the semi protection. Off2riorob (talk) 14:18, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Editor government of Peru

Besides having a username against our policy, this is a clear sock puppet of Luiscabrejo. Dougweller (talk) 13:00, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Seems quite likely yes.·Maunus·ƛ· 13:02, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

His 2:21 email says "Some mayor arqueologist have reviewed my theories as very important. Please revert that as what I put that before since I can have any mayor arqueologist in Peru to put that for me if I cant do that myself. If you cant help me then I can go to a higher instance." Dougweller (talk) 15:24, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Well we can't prevent him from doing that. ·Maunus·ƛ· 16:19, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

R&I

I made extensive comments on David.Kane's edits to the lede and the rest of the article on the talk page of the MedCab case and also on David.Kane's talk page. Talk:Race and intelligence is not really being used at the moment because of Ludwigs2's decision during mediation to have one editor redraft the article in mainspace, something which I think was a very bad idea. It should have been done on a subpage of the mediation case. It's confusing for everybody, including administrators who can't necessarily follow the paper trail to the mediation talk page. The lede has in fact been decided by broad consensus on the MedCab talk page. David.Kane was breaking that consensus. Cheers, Mathsci (talk) 14:39, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

As a disinterested observer, would you mind encouraging MathSci to discuss the changes he seeks to make in the lead of Race and Intelligence on the article's talk page ? I want to avoid an edit war but would prefer not to be bullied. Thanks. David.Kane (talk) 22:40, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Dude. go look on the talk page of mediation for explanations. Your edits seem like fairly extreme POV-pushing, some of the worst I've ever seen on wikipedia in my editing experience. Mathsci (talk) 00:27, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Kharkiv

Thanks for the quick action.  :) (Taivo (talk) 13:37, 10 April 2010 (UTC))

No problem, glad to help. :) ·Maunus·ƛ· 13:38, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

R&I

I guess you are back from the field? I want to tell you how much I appreciate your recent comments at the Race and Intelligence mediation page. I have just left some of my own comments. I am in the middle of dealing with a major Revise and Resubmit issue so I have no time for this stuff, actually. But given David kane's uncertainty about how to proceed, would you consider volunteering to do the next overhaul of the article, following the feedback on David Kane's recent work? It is possible that this mediation could produce an article that will actually satisfy a wide range of editors, and I think right now we are at a strategic point. A revision that does not remove any of the verifiable information from the current article, but that makes whatever changes are required to make it NOR and NPOV compliant, would be a huge push in the right direction and i thought ALL of your comments are spot-on. Slrubenstein | Talk 19:57, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Steve, I have given a try at including some of the points I raised in the article. I am not able to do a real overhaul, as I am not familiar enough with the hereditarian research - I will limit myself to make sure that the non-hereditarian concerns are given a voice in the article as well as the hereditarian viewpoint. ·Maunus·ƛ· 08:48, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Oh, and by the way, I am starting graduate studies in (Linguistic) Anthropology at Brown this fall - I can't wait to get deeper into the anthropological subject matter I think its a really good supplement to my linguistic background.·Maunus·ƛ· 10:01, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks - I think any additions or modifications you make to the article will be a significant contribution. And congrats. and good luck on starting the program at Brown. I do not know any of the linguists there but I think Kay Warren is there and she is a great anthropologist. Anyway, it is I hear a great school. And of course in a very dynamic region. Slrubenstein | Talk 10:40, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Numbers speak for themselves?

I appreciate your help. If you have time, can you review the article to see if there are other examples of numbers thrown around with no context, as if they speak for themslves? My understanding of the mediation agreement was that the stats on between-group IQ differences would lead the article, that it would be "data driven" in the sense that this data raises questions at least for some scholars. But the rest of the article is reviewing different possible answers and I think this distinction, between stats that raise questions, and stats that are being presented as answers, is a BIG difference. When numbers are presented as parts of answers, context - sample size, sampling method, significance ... in some cases coefficient of correlation, number of standard deviations from the norm etc. .... is essential to understanding the meaning and status of the proposed answer.

By the way I just do not understand Captain Occam and maybe e doesn't understand me, if you feel you can intervne constructively to explain my point to him (or if you think necessary, his point to me!), well, I'd appreciate it.

Do you know what your dissertation research will be on? Slrubenstein | Talk 02:02, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

I won't have much time today and tomorrow as I am teaching all day. I'll try to chip in if I have a moment. I'll be working with ethnography of speaking in a Nahuatl community and my adviser will be Paja Faudree a young linguistic anthropologist.·Maunus·ƛ· 05:08, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Question

I hope you are not suggesting that - for the first time in my 7,200 content edits to wikipedia - I have somehow suddenly started adding inappropriate contentious content to wikipedia? As explained on WP:ANI, out of the blue and without consulting me, Hipocrite added the content I have been carefully preparing over 3 days. I added a small summary at the beginning, which was required. Actually, as others have suggested, various bits can be pruned and the inline citations tightened up. On the other hand what was there before was not a proper history section: unlike mine it was not a summary of secondary sources. I don't have any plans to edit anything other than the history section, which no other editor had thought of doing up until now. Without a history section there was absolutely no indication what debate had gone on, why that was and amongst whom.

I don't really mind at which point this material goes in.

I know that some editors are probably a little uneasy that the two or three main researchers in the herditarian school are closely attached to the Pioneer Fund and sister organizations (according to secondary sources). I haven't understood why they might want to suppress that information - that would be POV-pushing. Perhaps they think the debate is some kind of abstract concept, that can be described without reference to events or people. Who knows?

Adding commentary without secondary sources is not how I have understand history to be written, even in mathematics articles. In the case of this article it involves value judgements on the merits of various article, which, because of the controversial nature of the subject, has to be left up to acknowledged academic commentators in secondary sources. All the secondary source I have used are impeccable. In the case of mathemetics article, even if I roughly know chronological order without looking at a book, I always have to find a secondary source that gives the history, which can be very time-consuming. Cheers, Mathsci (talk) 06:42, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

No, I very much like your history section and your general approach to editing article content. What I don't like is your fairly belligerent attitude towards Ludwigs and some of the other editors, which does much to deteriorate the editing environment and polarize the debate. I know that some people have different views of what constitutes lack of civilty and how far assumoptions of good faith should be taken, but your personal comments aimed at Ludwigs and David Kane are beyond my boundaries.·Maunus·ƛ· 08:27, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Chayote

Maunus: The Chayote article has two different Nahuatl derivations for the word chayote: chayotli and hitzayotli. Perhaps you could clarify this? Senor Cuete (talk) 03:04, 14 April 2010 (UTC)Senor Cuete

I've taken a look at it. hitzayotli is not a possible nahuatl word. - Some nahuatl varieties do call chayotes witzayohtli, but the source for the loanword chayote is the other word chayohtli. ·Maunus·ƛ· 08:16, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

semi-protection for Mongolian name

Mongolian name is being attacked by an anonymous user over the last few days. It's always the same edit and the same revert, without any discussion. If it is an unproblematic thing to do, the article could do with a week of semi-protection. If this is still unproportional, we will just keep reverting. G Purevdorj (talk) 14:03, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

A Sniper

I didn't want to bring this up on the talk page of Ashkenazi Intelligence, because it's an issue between users and not about improving the article, but I noticed you made a remark about A Sniper where he has a staunch defense of the article, but refuses to participate in improving the article. Unfortunately this is indeed the case. I have been trying to engage with him on addressing the questions I raised to him. He refused to address them, so I wanted to open up a broader discussion on the talk page, about merging this article. However he has constantly removed my merge tags, and has made it clear that he will continue to do so. I told him I would contact an admin about it if he continued, but he told me to contact an admin, and removed the tags again.

The discussion is here, http://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents#User:A_Sniper

If you have any opinions you would like to contribute, feel free to do so because I know you have engaged with him in the past as well.

About the article, if we can address all of the points that I raised and Slrubenstien raised, I wouldn't have a problem with keeping the article as it is. It's just in the state that it's in, it's awful. ScienceApe (talk) 17:16, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

I don't think he'll continue at this point.·Maunus·ƛ· 18:07, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

Need a bit of help

Maunus, there are a couple of Mormon faithful pushing against the scientific POV at Linguistics and the Book of Mormon. The article is a piece of garbage anyway and I've tried to get it deleted a couple of times, but to no avail. Sometimes the faithful show up and tag-team reverts to remove the scientific POV. Thanks. (Taivo (talk) 20:11, 17 April 2010 (UTC))

Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Alastair Haines 2

An Arbitration case in which you commented has been opened, and is located here. Please add any evidence you may wish the Arbitrators to consider to the evidence sub-page, Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Alastair Haines 2/Evidence. Please submit your evidence within one week, if possible. You may also contribute to the case on the workshop sub-page, Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Alastair Haines 2/Workshop.

On behalf of the Arbitration Committee, ~ Amory (u • t • c) 01:35, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Arb

You may like to revise your text here. It seems that your text "include explicitly include" should say "not explicitly include". Additionally, in the diff you mention, Alastair ascribes something to "L. R. of Alberta" that that editor did not actually say.--Jeffro77 (talk) 07:03, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, thanks. ·Maunus·ƛ· 07:18, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Simple supriya

Thought you might want to see this: . Allformweek (talk) 02:17, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

She's not banned there I guess.·Maunus·ƛ· 07:17, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

LINGUIST List

Thanks for noticing the vandalism by the anon IP. If you check out his contribs, you'll see he went on an anti-Linguist List crusade a couple of days ago and removed all the cross-references to the Multitree graphs from a number of language family articles. (Taivo (talk) 10:49, 27 April 2010 (UTC))

But these "cross-references" are vacuous; follow them.24.22.142.28 (talk) 10:55, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

The multi-tree is a pretty good resource for getting a birdseye view of different formulations of genetic relationship hypotheses - clearly the best and only on the web currently.·Maunus·ƛ· 11:02, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

(ec) They are not "vacuous"--they lead to the multitree charts which are quite usable for non-specialists. Indeed, I refer to them myself when I need to get an overview of the classification of some language family or other that I am not completely familiar with. (Taivo (talk) 11:04, 27 April 2010 (UTC))

Example(s)?

To my knowledge, their coverage is overwhelmingly Ethnologue+Ruhlen (1987), neither of which is a reliable source, both of which are already available both in print and on the web. It is really just a mirror site, like any mirror of Misplaced Pages (and you should not be relying upon Ruhlen or Ethnologue for an overview of anything, much less upon a computer-generated mirror thereof.)24.22.142.28 (talk) 11:10, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Actually, Ethnologue has veered far from Ruhlen in many respects. Compare the 16th edition classification of New Guinea and Austronesian languages and you can clearly see that. But that doesn't matter for either Misplaced Pages or Linguist List. The Multitree is not "just a mirror". If you look at it, for many families, it includes variant classification schemes from a variety of authors. If you don't see that in the New Guinea classifications, then look at Afroasiatic, which has a plethora of different schemes encoded. But it's not Misplaced Pages's place to sift and choose variants that are closer to one or another scholar's version of "truth". It is to list the alternatives as published in reliable sources. Ruhlen may not be widely accepted among specialists, but it is a reliable source by Misplaced Pages standards. (Taivo (talk) 11:19, 27 April 2010 (UTC))

Korean language

There's a user at Korean language who is deleting references to sources that state unequivocally that Altaic is a widely rejected hypothesis and that Korean is widely viewed as a language isolate. (Taivo (talk) 07:59, 29 April 2010 (UTC))

I'll keep an eye on the situation there. ·Maunus·ƛ· 09:38, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I appreciate that :) (Taivo (talk) 12:42, 29 April 2010 (UTC))

help

Can you comment here: and in the next section, which is entitled Comment? I am asking you to comment solely on policy, not content. This discussoon sorely needs the cmments of others who really know policy. Thanks, Slrubenstein | Talk 09:55, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Book of Mormon

I'm not sure what you were seeing when you wrote "both reverted twice" in the page protection request. There's no edit war there--LDS blanked a section and I restored it. Once. (Taivo (talk) 14:34, 30 April 2010 (UTC))

yeah I went back and noticed that - I must have been hallucinating. Sorry.·Maunus·ƛ· 14:52, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes, sometimes the first cup of coffee must be followed by a second to really get the blood pumping :) You do a lot of good work here so I'm not going to set the wolves on you, LOL. Cheers. Have a great day, my friend. (Taivo (talk) 14:55, 30 April 2010 (UTC))

RFC/U

I'm working on a draft version of an RFC on B9 Hummingbird. There are so many diffs to go through, and I could really use someone with more knowledge of the topics he edits to help locate relevant diffs. The draft is at User:Beeblebrox/RFCUdraft, feel free to add anything that seems relevant. Thanks. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:49, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/B9 hummingbird hovering is now live and awaiting certification. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:39, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

The RFC has been certified and is active. If you do not wish to make a statement yourself, you can watch the page for others doing so and add your name to the "user who endorse this summary" section below the statement. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:45, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

sorry, I had completely overlooked that. I'll comment now.·Maunus·ƛ· 19:47, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Alastair Haines 2

This arbitration case has been closed. The following remedies have been enacted:

• User:Alastair Haines is banned from editing Misplaced Pages for a period of one year, and thereafter pending further direction of the Arbitration Committee under remedy 2.
• Should Alastair Haines wish to return to editing Misplaced Pages after one year, he shall first communicate with the Arbitration Committee and provide a satisfactory assurance that he will refrain from making any further legal threats against other editors or against the Wikimedia Foundation. Should Alastair Haines, after being permitted to return, again make a legal threat or a statement that may reasonably be construed as a legal threat, he may be blocked for an appropriate period of time by any uninvolved administrator.
• To assist Alastair Haines in disengaging from Misplaced Pages, the case pages relating to this arbitration and all related pages have been courtesy blanked. As appropriate, other pages reflecting controversies to which Alastair Haines was a party may also be courtesy-blanked, particularly where the discussion is no longer relevant to ongoing editing issues. In addition, if Alastair Haines so requests, his username (and hence the username associated with his edits in page histories) may be changed to another appropriate username other than his real name. Editors who have been in conflict with Alastair Haines are strongly urged to make no further reference to him on-wiki following his departure.

For the Arbitration Committee, ---- Александр Дмитрий (Alexandr Dmitri) (talk) 11:49, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

This makes me sad.·Maunus·ƛ· 11:50, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Race and intelligence

Were you intending to reply to Aprock again here? I’d like to continue working towards implementing this last major change from the mediation, but it seems like doing so might have to involve disregarding Aprock, since he’s stated pretty clearly that he’s unwilling to respond to me with anything other than personal attacks. I’d much rather actually discuss this content with him and get his feedback about it, though, so if you were intending to try and reason with him about this any more, I don’t want to interfere with that. Were you? --Captain Occam (talk) 22:23, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

If you want to have a constructive discussion, it will help if you don't start your discussions with outright falsehoods. One of your standard tactics is to claim false consensus where none exists. When you're ready to discuss issues on their merrits instead of trying to ram them through on false consensus, I'll be happy to engage you seriously. A.Prock (talk) 00:01, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

What on earth are you talking about? When I refer to the outcome of mediation, I’m referring to the outline that we came up with at the end of it, which is here. You can see as well as everyone else can that the section I want to add is part of it, and you can also read the discussion there where most of us agreed that we needed to resolve the structure of this section, which is what I'm trying to do currently. It's a violation of WP:NPA for you to keep making personal attacks like this if you aren't able to support what you're saying about me. --Captain Occam (talk) 00:19, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Like I said before, I'm not at all interested in spending my time babysitting your misrepresentations. Stop pushing your claims of false consensus, they have no bearing on the conent. Here is the previous discussion about the section which clearly demonstrates no consensus. Pointing out your past behaviour is not a personal attack. A.Prock (talk) 00:45, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

That discussion was after we’d already come up with the article outline, and were trying to specifically resolve the significance section’s structure. The one which resulted in this section being in the outline was here. I know that after we’d decided on including this section, we weren’t able to reach a consensus about its structure, which is why we need to discuss its structure now. But if we hadn’t reached a consensus about this section being included at all, it wouldn’t have gone in the outline to begin with. In fact, from the comments on the outline, it looks like you approved of this section being part of the outline yourself.

I find it incredibly discouraging how little your behavior in this respect has changed since March. Most of the time you’re pretty reasonable, but whenever we discuss anything about this particular aspect of the article, you make these sweeping but nebulous accusations about what’s wrong with it and the editors who want to include it, while consistently refusing to get into any specifics. If you were willing to tell us what specific things you think need to be changed about this section, we probably would have implemented your suggested changes and added this section to the article even before mediation was finished. But instead, at the same time that you’re reminding us that there’s no consensus about this section’s structure, you’re refusing to engage in any discussion that could work towards consensus about it.

Maunus, in case it isn’t obvious: I would really appreciate your help here. --Captain Occam (talk) 01:24, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

@Aprock. If you are unwilling to discuss article content, but only willing to make personal comments about other editors based on lack of good faith, your participation at the Race and Intelligence article is unlikely to lead to any improvements. As the outline was an outcome of the mediation it is not unreasonable of Occam to assume that there is consensus for its contents. I realise that the mediation wasn't flawless and I don't see a reason to necessarily abide with its results if consensus can be established to the contrary. But consensus has to be built. Comment on how to improve the significance section or why it doesn't belong in the article if you believe it doesn't - anyhing else is counterproductive. If there is no consensus then build one. And disparaging comments about other editors and their behaviour without presented evidence are a personal attack according to WP:NPA. Don't make those, theres no need. If you feel exasperated about editing at Race and Intelligence take a tea break.

@Occam. You can certainly ignore every personal commentary made by other editors, keep focusing on the content and how to improve it. Try to imagine yourself being someone with the opposite viewpoint - what would they want to change about the content? Why is that particular section provocative to them? (It is to me) What could we do to accomodate those qualms?·Maunus·ƛ· 06:06, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

I think I have a general understanding of why some people find this section provocative, but I don’t have any specific ideas of how it could be changed to make it less so, or even whether doing so would be possible without sacrificing certain information in it that’s notable and deserves to be included. I would appreciate any specific advice you can offer on the article talk page about how this section could be improved. I know you’ve commented there once already, but you weren’t specific about what you meant by ethical concerns, and you also haven’t responded to my question about whether this is the right section to talk about ethical concerns, or Bpesta22’s comment about why he thinks the image ought to be included.

If you think the section is acceptable in its current state, I would appreciate you mentioning that also. It will be easier to tell whether and when this structure has consensus if other editors can be clear about how they feel regarding it. --Captain Occam (talk) 07:20, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Maunus, could you please stay involved in the talk page for the race and intelligence article? Aprock is continuing to repeat the same claims there that you've already responded to here, and he doesn't seem willing to acknowledge what you've said in response. I'm afraid that we're going to end up in a WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT situation here, and that as a result even after everyone's suggestions about this revision have been incorporated into it, it's going to be impossible to add it to the article without it resulting in an edit war. I would appreciate you trying to prevent that from happening. --Captain Occam (talk) 01:06, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm more than happy to stay on topic. But if Captain Occam is going to keep repeating irrelevant false consensus claims to motivate his POV, I'll continue to point out that he is indeed advocating false consensus. There is no real need to discuss past consensus (imagined or real) when working on current content. A.Prock (talk) 13:35, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Hi, Maunus. You recently noted the following on the Race and intelligence talk page:

In the same vein I think the article should also mention the significance that cultural focus on different kinds of intelligence may have on the race gap, for example the fact that in tests that doesn't test G but for example creative intelligence, blacks perform considerably better.

Forgive me if it seems like I'm trying to "stir the pot". I'm not. I simply felt compelled to mention that what you've written is virtually identical to what Jensen's 1969 article concludes. To note:

If are unfair, it is because they tap only one part of the total spectrum of mental abilities and do not reveal that aspect of mental ability which may be the disadvantaged child's strongest point—the ability for associative learning. Since traditional methods of classroom instruction were evolved in populations having a predominantly middle-class pattern of abilities, they put great emphasis on cognitive learning rather than associative learning. And in the post-Sputnik era, education has seen an increased emphasis on cognitive and conceptual learning, much to the disadvantage of many children whose mode of learning is predominantly associative. Many of the basic skills can be learned by various means, and an educational system that puts inordinate emphasis on only one mode or style of learning will obtain meager results from the children who do not fit this pattern. At present, I believe that the educational system—even as it falteringly attempts to help the disadvantaged—operated in such a way as to maximize the importance of Level II (i.e., intelligence or g) as a source of variance in scholastic performance. Too often, if a child does not learn the school subject matter when taught in a way that depends largely on being average or above average on g, he does not learn at all, so that we find high school students who have failed to learn basic skills which they could easily have learned many years earlier by means that do not depend much on g. It may well be true that many children today are confronted in our schools with an educational philosophy and methodology which were mainly shaped in the past, entirely without any roots in these children's genetic and cultural heritage. The educational system was never allowed to evolve in such a way as to maximize the actual potential for learning that is latent in these children's patterns of abilities.

If diversity of mental abilities, as of most other human characteristics, is a basic fact of nature, as the evidence indicates, and if the ideal of universal education is to be successfully pursued, it seems a reasonable conclusion that schools and society must provide a range and diversity of educational methods, programs, and goals, and of occupational opportunities, just as wide as the range of human abilities. Accordingly, the ideal of equality of educational opportunity should not be interpreted as uniformity of faculties, instructional techniques, and educational aims for all children. Diversity rather than uniformity of approaches and aims would seem to be the key to making education rewarding for children of different patterns of ability. The reality of individual differences thus need not mean education rewards for some children and frustration and defeat for others.

I've "banned" myself from editing this article, so I won't bother you with this any further than this note. Thanks, --Aryaman (talk) 08:30, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

This is a red herring of course, because this part of what Jensen claims is obviously and uncontroversially true. The part where he is controversial is when he suggests that this predisposition for "associative learning" (which is by the way not the same that Sternberg calls "creative intelligence" by a long shot) is biologically and racially determined. That part of his views are the problem. Everybody agrees that education should be accomodated to the cognitive preferences and abilities of the individual. But whether this is culturally (as I stated based on Sternberg, Nisbett, Neisser and many others) or genetically (as supposed by Jensen, Rushton and Lynn) is the big question - and the article is slanted towards the hereditarian view currently.·Maunus·ƛ· 09:12, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

A "red herring"? Yes! Rather than suggesting that the bulk of Jensen's paper was uncontroversial and can still be considered a reliable source regarding systemic bias in education, I'm really trying to whitewash Jensen and obscure the controversial points of his paper. Well spotted. --Aryaman (talk) 09:41, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

It is a red herring because we are not talking about the uncontroversial parts of Jensen's opinions, but about the controversial parts. And I am not stating anything about what you are really trying to do - I am stating that what you are saying doesn't really have any bearing on the discussion I am having with other parties. I am sure Jensen is a reliable source on something, but that is not what we were discussing here before you butted in.·Maunus·ƛ· 09:58, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

WP:NPOV

Hi. I have long thought NPOV - the policy page, not the policy itself - had become bloated and inconsistent and confused. I am proposing a rewrite on one section here

My intention is not to change the policy at all, but to explain it more concisely, clearly, and consistently. If you have time to compare versions and comment, I'd appreciate it. Slrubenstein | Talk 12:10, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Personal Attacks and Outing

I'm a bit confused by your rationale here. It was certainly not outing, as the information is currently available on the very page you edited. The information was on his user page until it was used to verify that he had recruited a meatpuppet, whereupon he deleted it. And the information wasn't unsubstantiated. It took me half a minute to find the relevant link. A.Prock (talk) 08:57, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

It was unsubstantiated because MAthsci did not include it along with his allegations. Also Cap Tain OCcam is not editing under hius ral name. I don't know how you have arrived at the conclusion that that is his blog just because he linked to it. Anyway the information is irrelevant and I would have rather rmeoved the entirity of Matschi's rant as it does no good to the debate at all but rather inflames and escalates it.·Maunus·ƛ· 09:04, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

He didn't just link to it, he called it "My art and my writing" on his user page, and "I've linked to a DeviantArt community that I said belonged to me..." on the page you edited. There is no obvious identifying information on those links, although I suppose it's possible that if someone dug deep enough they could find something which identified him in real life. A.Prock (talk) 14:35, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

The point is that editors should focus on the merits of the content, rather than on unrelated personal grudges/conflicts/prejudice with contributors - the latter poisons the environment, particularly where disagreement arises. I appreciate that the concerned editor is involved in this case, but there have been at least a few other instances where Mathsci, in this dispute, has adopted a similar battleground approach with uninvolved editors, be it myself , or others ; I'm not surprised that this dispute is still not resolved at ANI. Ncmvocalist (talk) 15:29, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Speaking directly to the content of this section, I don't see how Mathsci's statement constitutes a personal attack or outing. With respect to your conflict with Mathsci, perhaps you should refrain from calling people stubborn and/or approach him on his talk page to resolve the issue. A.Prock (talk) 19:45, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Let me be more blunt then; your choice of header doesn't address the issue that Maunus refers to in his last sentence, nor does it address mine. Perhaps you're having trouble recognising the variety of problems because you've assumed that others find only 2 issues with Mathsci's approach in this instance, when in reality, there's more to it than that. As I've already substantiated with diffs, this is no more a conflict between 2 editors than it is between Mathsci and several editors. Ncmvocalist (talk) 07:01, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

The fundamental problem is that there is a large group of SPA editors who are assiduously trying to push a minority POV. If you don't see that, that's fine. But there is no reason to attack Mathsci, or to jump into this thread and hijack it. A.Prock (talk) 13:46, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

You're not getting it. Nobody here has denied that there is an SPA problem; in fact, that was not even the issue at the centre of this thread. What is being said is that SPA problem or not, editors do not have the right to engage in battleground behavior which is why Maunus intervened. Please refrain from making frivolous claims (like you did in your last sentence). Ncmvocalist (talk) 20:14, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Marriage

If you have time: this. We need more anthropologists here ... Slrubenstein | Talk 20:23, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

I see the need as well, but I am up over my shoulders with the reading I need to do to keep up with the R & I situation and another anthropological crisis at Patriarchy - I am reading about cultural universals for that. If you have any good general theoretical texts (not so much single ethnographies) to read about the human universals debate and especially the supposed universality of male dominance of the public sphere I'd like a tip. Best.·Maunus·ƛ· 13:52, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

I cannot think of anything short and pithy on patriarchy. There is a classic article by Eleanor B. Leacock on egalitarianism in band societies in Current Anthropology - I do not have a precise citation but you should be able to find it with this info, if not let me know. I happen to believe that there are or were plenty of wocieties where men and women were equal. Leacocke and Etienne coedited a volume on gender or women and colonialism, their argument was that gender inequality is usuallyintroduced through westernization or colonialism. But I cannot think of any good theoretical texts off-hand. Leacocke wrote an introduction to Engels origins of marriage the family and private property (I am surely mixing up the title). Sherry Ortner and Whitehead (Harriet?) coedited a volume on gender and sexuality that would be worth looking at. Slrubenstein | Talk 18:19, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Commented at both articles, hope you will find time for Marriage, let me know if you want cites for anything I mentioned. Slrubenstein | Talk 22:33, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I do not know why I blanked on this. You need to read Gayle Rubin's "The Traffic of Women" in Reiter's Toward and Anthropology of Women. Also, the most important theoretical work on gender is Strathern's The Gender of the Gift it is a brilliant book but very dense and you would not need to read all of it, just the introduction and a couple of chapters but it is very very dense and abstract. Her basic view is that all the categories we use to talk about women are Western categories and we thus must not assume they apply to non-Western societies (again, problematizing the very question of whether patriarchy is universal - for her cultural relativism must be used to confound such questions). So she has chapters in which she addresses specific issues (e.g. power, or hierarchy, or whatever0 and shows how Melanesian data simply does not fit well into these categories but redirects our attention elsewhere. Finally, Henrietta moore wrote a book 9for classroom use) called Feminism and Anthropology or something like that. My recollection is it is more about women in underdeveloped countris than, say, Melanesia, but while it is dated it is the only book I know that attempts to provide a general exposition of anthropological research on women. Slrubenstein | Talk 11:09, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Removed talk page comments

Yes, I agree. Removing an accusation of whitewashing and conspiracy could appear to be .....well.... whitewashing and conspiracy, which I guess is exactly what Lucy wants it to look like. Will give you a call if it happens again. Thanks for the advice. Bksimonb (talk) 15:09, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Lead of the race article

I've posted a new section on the talk page of this article for us to discuss the changes to its lead section: Talk:Race_(classification_of_human_beings)#Changes_to_the_lead. If you think this section needs to be changed from the way it was before you became involved in the article, I'd appreciate it if you could discuss the problems I've raised there with the new version. --Captain Occam (talk) 07:05, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

I was answering your concerns there while you typed this. :) ·Maunus·ƛ· 07:08, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Disruptive sock is back already

Hi Maunus,

It seems User:Lucyintheskywithdada is back already as User:The Same Every 5000 Years. It is obvious from his editing pattern that his intention is to make it look like I am having some sort of edit war with him so he can brag about it. In fact, he just sent me an email saying...

'What I don't understand is how you cannot get it through your acid addled brain that what you are doing me every time is handing me a gift.

You are correct. You are proving my thesis. "Look ... look at what these people are like! Media control ... deception ... historical revision ...", the hole just become deeper and deeper.'

Would be most grateful if you could clear up after him. I've filed an SPI report but made no other edits.

Thanks & regards, Bksimonb (talk) 07:14, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

I have answered his edit request by asking him to state specifically and backed by sources what is the problem with the current version. If he can do that then of course the article can be changed, but if he can't then there is nothing to worry about. I will of course take care of any personal attacks he might make in mainspace, although I can't keep him from emailing personal attacks to you.·Maunus·ƛ· 07:17, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

OK thanks for responding. However he is an indefinitely blocked editor. Is it really appropriate to offer him any further opportunity for input into any article? He has a long history of disruption and harassment.Bksimonb (talk) 07:29, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Well, if the SPI report comes up positive that takes care of that problem.·Maunus·ƛ· 07:34, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

OK. That sounds fair. Regards Bksimonb (talk) 07:37, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Looks like the report did indeed come up positive. Would you be so kind as to clean up after him?. User:Jeff_G has already dealt with the articles he disrupted, only the BKWSU talk page remains.Thanks & regards Bksimonb (talk) 04:24, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Done. :)·Maunus·ƛ· 04:45, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, much appreciated :-) And would you be able to remove the previous paragraph that he re-inserted from his previous sock? Bksimonb (talk) 04:58, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks again! Bksimonb (talk) 05:10, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

JBsupreme

Hi, and thanks for this!   — Jeff G. ツ 19:20, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

BKWSU

Hi - I guess I was a bit surprised by your actions at the BKWSU page, although I know you acted entirely in good faith. It's a delicate situation where all is not quite as it appears and which has previously been to arbitration, and when I entered that particular minefield (as a neutral admin desperately trying to prevent the whole thing going back to ArbCom) about 2 years ago I actually found that there was some merit to the recurring user's arguments. I'm not sure if you realise Bksimonb is actually a member of the organisation (and in fact has previously said he is their web manager), and hence has a COI with relation to actions on the page. (It's worth pointing out that he got the original Lucy user banned, and the "long term abuse" page was entirely authored by himself - so we have an organisation singlehandedly censoring their adversaries, basically.) He was mentioned, albeit peripherally, at the ArbCom which imposed the probation.

So in essence one is looking at two opposite POV editors/arrangements, both with some level of COI, both of whom also have some valid points. There also seems to be a question that one side is using admittedly weak Wiki policies/procedures to push their case to a level of merit it may not otherwise have, and the sensitivity of the area has kept neutral admins out. I wouldn't like to see a situation where this ends up at ArbCom again and admin actions are scrutinised for bias towards one side. Orderinchaos 05:36, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

I was aware of the COI issues which is why I didn't act untill the user was confirmed to be a sock of a banned user - removing talk page comments from banned users (especially unconstructive comments like these) is fairly standard practice. I agree that the situation at BKWSU may need extra attention to promote neutrality, but in this case where the problem was a banned user trolling a talk page I didn't see any reason to act differently than what I did. If you or any other user has constructive suggestions on how to promote neutrality at BKWSU related pages I will happily colaborate towards that end.·Maunus·ƛ· 06:07, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Minor terminology issue - the user is not and was not banned, they were blocked. I was around at the time that happened, and the user was engaging in good faith when they could be calmed down. I find myself thinking what I would do in this person's situation and I'd likely be pretty noisy as well. Perhaps that should actually be reviewed so that the person can contribute legitimately under one username, although in saying so, the protection for the article and edit-protected requests to modify it are also probably a good strategy if that were to be done. If they become unconstructive, there's always the option to block them again. Orderinchaos 08:34, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

I haven't checked my self how the indef block was implemented whether as a ban or a block - hence the terminology.I also haven't revised the block so I haven't made any decision about the validity of the indefinite block or whether the user should be given a good faith unblock. Is the user even requesting an unblock?·Maunus·ƛ· 08:56, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Checking the users history myself it seems that several admins have interacted with her and that the process leading to her block cannot really be said to be faulty. SHe is not requesting an unblock (probably her talkpage is locked and she has to request unblock per email). Theres not much for me to do there.·Maunus·ƛ· 09:29, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

May I also add that Lucy was blocked at a time when I was not active on Misplaced Pages. This isn't just a COI issue. This user was blocked for persistent disruption and harassment of other editors. Lucy has returned using many new accounts and continues to disrupt Misplaced Pages and harass editors. He is presently focussed on me but at least this is diverting him from griefing other editors as he did when I was absent. I have been asked not to name the editors concerned because they do not want any further attention from him. Before doing anything drastic like re-activating this account I strongly recommend looking into his history and discussing it with more admins and arbcom (since he was previously sanctioned), especially those with past experience. Bksimonb (talk) 09:44, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

We are at least in agreement that the more neutral voices on this, the better in my view. (And to Maunus - just to make it clear, I wasn't accusing you of anything, and my reason for elaborating on the block was a presumption that you didn't know the circumstances.) Orderinchaos 10:33, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Maunus, you are just yet another admin being dragged into this by the Brahma Kumari editor to do their work with his spin.

I am sorry but if you go back to the very beginning, there was no offence, no infraction of rules. I used a user name which was disallowed or 'indef blocked' because it was too similar to a living person (Lwachowski, I think it was), once he had that, he was able to falsely represent by re-start as a evidence of socking and since then has been attempting to railroad me away from his cult's topics.

• Simon states: "May I also add that Lucy was blocked at a time when I was not active on Misplaced Pages." This is blatantly untrue, see: Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/ Brahma_Kumaris.

• Like much of what he says, this is entirely untrue. He and the BKWSU IT team were already busy at work owning their topics and blocking any informed, independent voices from them.

• BK Simon B also omits to include that he was directly involved in "Chilling Effect" legal action against such open discussion of the Brahma Kumaris elsewhere on the internet. So much for good faith.

His conflations of complaint after complaint after complaint ... all the skillful use of language and policy ... time and effort invested ... and time and effort of Wikipedian admins wasted hide simple facts, what the Brahma Kumari adherents are doing is attempting to persistently control ... and water down ... their Misplaced Pages presence and bring it inline with their current PR and propaganda.

If you care, I can provide for you the diffs and specific details of what the Brahma Kumaris are up to with their topic. I am expert on this topic.

• Unfortunately, my experience is generally that admins are easily played, will kneejerk to the WP:COI or WP:POV grinders and have no interest nor incentive to look at the facts. And so I will not do so until you ask.

Thank you. --Every 5000 Years (talk) 02:40, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Hi Maunus. I have filed an SPI report already. I get tired of having to address the same accusations over and over. I address most of them on my user page. He was banned as User:195.82.106.244 and blocked later (in my absence) as Lucy, see the block log. Bksimonb (talk) 09:19, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

R & I history

I'd appreciate your involvement in this discussion. Do you think the arguments I'm presenting for wanting to mention the Snyderman and Rothman study in that article make sense? I don't even completely understand what the basis is for the objections to mentioning this study. --Captain Occam (talk) 07:02, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Can you make any sense of what Mathsci is saying about this? He's insisting that we can't cite Gottfredson's commentary on the Snyderman and Rothman study because her commentary is a primary source, but I can't for the life of me understand what he's basing this on. --Captain Occam (talk) 08:40, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Update

I read your comment on my talk page and appreciate it. I stepped back from the editing some months ago for the same reason. I felt that there was too much antagonism and bias in the editing, making it very difficult to come up with an unbiased and accurate article. I recieved some encouragement and decided to try to again edit the JW article. I'm going to try to stick with it this time. Any help in editing, ideas, support, are appreciated. Thanks. Natural (talk) 19:49, 18 May 2010 (UTC)Natural

Patriarchy

Well, I know you continue to fight the good fight at R&I. Thanks to you I have been following Patriarchy which is turning into a personal essay by someone who is really confused about some things. I just made some edits, simply cutting stuff that was obviously silly, or unrelated to patriarchy, or personal-essayish. Are you still watching it or have you dropped it? I still hope you can do some edits at the marriage article some time. I have said all i have to say on the talk page; no one else cares or gets it. best, Slrubenstein | Talk 16:06, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Manus is this a warning on my talk page? I know that you two work together. Hopefully the problem is a simple one, ie. you did not read the discussion and see the material that was blanked. I can't be expected to know this person's status, only his behavior at this particular time. He is either biased, or mistaken. Hammy64000 (talk) 19:42, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Maunus, Hammy has suggested that I have either deleted material you added to the article or that was added in response to your concerns. If you object to any of the deletions I made I hope you will tell me so we can enter into a constructive dialogue about the contents of the article. Dito, if you feel any deleted material should be restored. Slrubenstein | Talk 14:26, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

I just hatted one of your comments at that talkpage, as it was replying to a block-evading editor and would not make sense without the original comment. Feel free to do whatever you want with your comment. - 2/0 (cont.) 19:44, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Aztec article

Hello Maunus,

I took the liberty of adding information about the book of Capt. Bernal Diaz del Castillo in your article. It seems that we differ in our opinions. It was not my intention to damage your magnificent work, I merely intended to add information. I did so because in my family we keep information on the Conquistadores. We have one of the copies published in Mexico in 1961 of the book by Capt. Bernal Diaz del Castillo, published from a manuscript residing in Antigua, Guatemala. We are Altamiranos, direct descendants from Hernan Cortes and the Pizarro brothers. We have letters in our possession written by Hernan Cortes and Capt.Bernal Diaz del Castillo. Letters written when they were relatively young men. These letters in general confirm what Capt.Bernal Diaz del Castillo later documented in his book. These documents have been handed down through time generation to generation. Because of our family involvement with the politics of Mexico and Central America, we also own an exact copy of the portrait of Capt.Don Pedro de Alvarado, portrait that exists in Antigua, Guatemala, under the protection of the local government. I would be delighted to share some photos of the painting with you, in view of the fact that you are so incredibly educated about our part of the world. Please contact me if you would like collaboration. Maurice. azurdia@aol.com Azurdia1954 (talk) 22:12, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

I think you flatter me. But thanks anyway. The article isn't mine however, but a collaborative effort by many editors.If you really have letters by Cortés and Bernal Díaz del Castillo I think you should let some historians have a look at them. Currently historians are not very convinced by Díaz' work since it was written so late, but if there were earlier works written by him in existence that might change the historians view of Bernal Díaz as an unreliable source to information about the conquest of Mexico. I am much more interested in those letters than in the picture of Alvarado·Maunus·ƛ· 06:00, 22 May 2010 (UTC).

Post block cleanup

User:Every 5000 Years‎ has been blocked as a sock of Lucy now. Would you be able to clean up after his contribs to articles? The only edits made subsequently are to minor corrections to sections that Lucy re-instated.

Thanks Bksimonb (talk) 10:23, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

I have reviewed his edits and I am not in a position to undo them. I don't believe that the editor being blocked is in and of itslf a reason to revert non-disruptive edits. Many of his edits appear to be supported by sources and are not obviously non-neutral. This should be handled as a content dispute - and I am not sufficiently acquainted with BKWSU or the literature about it to take a stance. ·Maunus·ƛ· 10:52, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

OK, but how do I resolve a content dispute with a banned editor? Should I post a request on each talk page and come back after, say, a week if there is no legitimate challenge to the request from uninvolved editors? Bksimonb (talk) 11:00, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Well, that is a problem of course. I think you should probably review the edits he made and check whether they are supported by reliable sources - if they are then the material should probably be included in some way, maybe you can find a way to include it that seems more palatable to you than the way he did it. If you revert his edits or remove his material I think you should argue why you do so on the talk page so that other editors have a chance of seeing why and agreeing or disagreeing with it. ·Maunus·ƛ· 11:08, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

OK I can have a close look at it and do as you suggest. Also, with regards to a block not being reason in itself to revert, do you think it appropriate for me (or perhaps someone more neutral) to seek a community ban based on what you have seen of his behaviour. Previously I believed that an indefinite block equated to a ban as per the policy on indefinite blocks but looking at the differences between bans and blocks policy it seems that there are indeed differences. Bksimonb (talk) 11:26, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Maunus,

I provided you a clear breakdown of how and where all this started, why Brahma Kumari Simon B's initial banning/blocking thing was bogus and how it has been used to railroad ever since. I'd appreciate a response or for it taken into consideration.

• I show how there never was any sockpuppetry nor abuse of multiple accounts in the first place.

Of course, under the circumstances I am not going to walk away from it. I am sure you would feel the same.

Thank you. --Yet another 5000 years (talk) 20:08, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Look, I am not going to help vindicate you in this. What you are doing now is clearly disruptive and you are not making a good case for denying that you were disruptive previously. If you have specific requests for well sourced edits you want to make to BKWSU articles I will happily review your proposals - but I am not going to try to get you unblocked. You are the one who can get yourself unblocked by stopping your disruptive behaviour and try to convince people that you are a valuable editor who is able to follow wikipedias rules and collaborate with other editors. ·Maunus·ƛ· 04:23, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Well, I am happy to give you a list of all the new topics and non-controversial editing I have created on the way to this point. In fact, if you look at all the formatting and the referencing of the BKWSU topic, I did most of that too.

But until someone looks seriously at the history of this business, the Brahma Kumari adherents deliberate part in it, it is very difficult.

• Where is the first WP:COI ... where is the first offence?

As I said, I provided you(s) with a of how and where all this started ... why Brahma Kumari Simon B's initial banning/blocking thing was bogus, and how it has been used to railroad ever since.

At some point someone has to look at it straight in the face ... and see what is there. --Same as 5000 years ago (talk) 06:33, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't care about that. Present arguments for how you want to change the article - that is what I am interested in. A COI doesn't matter if it is fully disclosed and doesn't lead to a lack of neutrality - show where you find problems with the coverage of BKWSU topics and argue your point from reliable sources. Don't just come here to argue against BKSimonb it is disruptive and useless and it will get you blocked. ·Maunus·ƛ· 07:35, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Hi Maunus. It looks like I'm being stalked/hounded by this Same as 5000 years ago account. I'm not likely to get any sensible responses from other editors on the Talk:End time and Talk:Dada Lekhraj‎‎ pages with all this ranting. I can't operate as an editor if he won't leave me any space to breath without telling all and sundry stuff to try and make me look bad. "AGF" this isn't. Would appreciate your help or, if you can't help, advice on what to do next. I don't what to go straight to ANI since you and Orderinthechaos are on the case and I want to check with one of you first. Bksimonb (talk) 15:48, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for removing the offending posts. I have responded to the other post on Talk:End time. Since this is obviously Lucy still posting, do you have any objection to me filing more SPI reports. As far as I am concerned the community has decided he is indefinitely blocked and I have a common interest with the community to report evasion of that block. Will file in 24 hours unless you have other suggestions. Bksimonb (talk) 06:31, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Go ahead and file those SPI's now, no need to wait - should be obvious for any checkuser by now.·Maunus·ƛ· 06:39, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

OK done. But I just noticed they were blocked already, just not tagged. Thanks Bksimonb (talk) 09:48, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

ArbCom Case

Rvcx recently filed a request for arbitration on Race and intelligence and the related articles.

You are involved in a recently-filed request for arbitration. Please review the request at Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests#Race_and_Intelligence and, if you wish to do so, enter your statement and any other material you wish to submit to the Arbitration Committee. Additionally, the following resources may be of use—

• Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests#Requests for Arbitration;
• Misplaced Pages:Arbitration guide.

Thanks, Captain Occam (talk) 14:30, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Sorry but

I am sorry Magnus ... but please allow Simon and I to sort this out.

He and I have known each other for years. It really is none of your business.

Besides which ... you are being played.

Thank you. --For God's sake keep out of it (talk) 04:57, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

I asked politely ...

I asked politely Magnus ...

Now please, serious, keep your nose out other of people's business and stuff you know nothing about.

Leave us alone to sort it out ourselves.

Thank you. --I asked politely (talk) 14:46, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

RFAR Race and intelligence

An Arbitration case involving you has been opened, and is located here. Please add any evidence you may wish the Arbitrators to consider to the evidence sub-page, Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Race and intelligence/Evidence. Please submit your evidence within one week, if possible. You may also contribute to the case on the workshop sub-page, Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Race and intelligence/Workshop.

On behalf of the Arbitration Committee, Александр Дмитрий (Alexandr Dmitri) (talk) 12:09, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Articles WP:NINJA'd by Lucy again

Would you be kind enough to revert the damage done by User:The Wiki Undead?

Thanks & regards Bksimonb (talk) 05:06, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

In response to your post on my talk page, my objections to Lucy's edit are briefly,

1. The Brahma Kumaris are an organisation with a membership of less than a million. Should we also include every small religious organisation with a view of the "end time" in the same article?
2. Walliss is a reliable source. However the quoted text used is not Walliss' words. He is quoting the words of a splinter group yet the reference is being used as if Walliss himself said it. Here is the full context of the quote, "In the first instance, the Advance Party claim that when 'the destruction did not materialize...many Brahmins left the because their hopes were dashed. Those who stayed had their faith reduced by half. They sacrificed their lives in the godly institution, left their families and invested all their wealth in this cause. How they go and where they go? They no choice but to stay because they were dependent on the institution for their bread and butter.' Next they claim that nay mention of the prophecy was removed from the murlis, becoming 'hidden from those who came after 1976', and members were told this was a test of faith'." Notice that Walliss is reporting the claims of a splinter group, not making a statement of fact. So it comes down to whether or not the claims of the "Advance Party" themselves are a reliable source.
3. The sources are always used to prove a point that people will find shocking or off-putting e.g opposing views to Hinduism, doomsday, prophesies with precise dates and times, secrecy of beliefs, people must be purified, failed predictions. Though some or most of this criticism is valid, after a fashion, as for most religions, there is always a more sympathetic way understanding it that is not represented here. What you will never see in any text submitted by Lucy is anything that shows the organisation in a positive light. For example, in one of the sources used also says, "The serenity and calm on the BKs' faces is arresting. Particularly true of youngsters such as Kiran, 20, whose face shines with goodwill and joy. 'Here our life is balanced spiritually, mentally and physically,' she says. And their collective sense of efficiency and organization is superb." I am not proposing to use such a quote as I don't think it is appropriate for an encylopedia. It just struck me as being the positive equivalent of the way Lucy uses sources in a negative way.
4. Reliable sources are one requirement. Neutrality, weight and balance are also requirements. I do not believe they have been met here in the context of the article.
5. I proposed the change on the article talk page for more than one week and received no objections from other editors. I did seek consensus. I suggest that it is not unreasonable that any further revert should be done with consensus instead of ninja-style made with an attacking edit comment by a editor evading a block.
6. Banned editors may have all their edits reverted whether those edits are good or bad. I believe this is appropriate in this case because Lucy latches on to any attention he can get. Over the last week he has trolled our talk pages on an almost daily basis making constant taunts and accusations against me. I believe it escalated because he believes his campaign is somewhat successful by the attention he has received recently. If he realises that he has exhausted the patience of the community and that he has no further avenue of expression on Misplaced Pages then perhaps he will be more likely to give up....or just calm down a bit. At least reverting everything he does is less work than discussing the merits, or otherwise, of it. Is the fact that he is technically only indef blocked an issue?

I have your talk page on my watch list so I would be happy to continue the conversation here.

Thanks & regards Bksimonb (talk) 10:35, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

I hope you don't mind if I move to bring a closure to this issue. I will wait another day for a response here, otherwise I will post my reasoning on the article talk page and wait another week for editor comments. After that week I will either proceed to undo the edit or abide by any consensus that emerges with other legitimate editors. Please appreciate I am trying my best to do the right thing here but in the absence of any feedback I will assume everything is OK. Thanks & regards Bksimonb (talk) 08:34, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

I apologize for not answering, I can see why that may have cause you frustration. I have been extremely busy and the short time I have had for wiki purposes has been spent in an arbcom case. I understand your arguments, but I do not agree with all of them. I think the most serious one is the second one - that the source does not adequately support ther claims. I don't think there is any reason that small religions should be excluded from the article out of hand: I think a better way to determine weight is by the amount of attention a religious groups "end time" related beliefs has received - many millenial movements have been very small but have received lot of attention. I don't agree entirely with your point about it being a neutrality problem to include facts about the religion that may be off-putting or controversial to some. The encyclopedias purpose isn't to show religions in any particular light, but to describe their beliefs, practices and history. Whether people find that off putting is really beside the question. The Christian cannibalisic rite of the communion for examle may be off putting to many - but the description of the christian faith would be incomplete without mentioning it. Personally I find millenial belief systems fascinating and not off putting at all - and I think the "end times" article should provide a wide perspective on different types of millenial movements and show how they have emerged in many different epochs and from most major religious traditions - it seems logical to me to include hindu millenialist movements as well. As for how to proceed I think it is important to make sure that the information reflects the source. That is first priority - if anything written in the paragraph is wrong or false it must go. Then the next step is to rewrite the paragraph in a way that is completely neutral and in the same style as the other sections in the article. I regret I won't have mch time helping out as I am currently traveling i Mexico and have only intermittent internet access. I think it is a good idea to seek input at the talk page - maybe also posting at some related wikiprojects. That should assure that the development is well suported by the community.·Maunus·ƛ· 19:24, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Hi Maunus. Thank you for a very thoughtful answer. I agree with your assessment of how to determine weight based on how much attention a religion has received. I don't have any sources of information on that myself so I am happy to go along with the view that it is indeed notable in this article unless a different consensus is reached from other editors.

I'm currently reading up on some sources to get an idea how the BKWSU view of the end times is generally reported. There seem to be quite a few new books I wasn't previously aware of I can see online now. Like you, I'm quite occupied at the moment but hope to be able to give it more attention next week. I would welcome any input you may have on the article talk page. The plan is to proceed as you suggest, that is, remove any stuff based on misused sources etc and re-write the paragraph in a neutral way.

Hope you are enjoying your travels in Mexico! Best regards, Bksimonb (talk) 13:47, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Article desperately needs help from fair-minded, intelligent editors

Would you mind taking a look at List of cult and new religious movement researchers and encouraging other fair-minded, intelligent editors you might know to do the same? An editor who may not know much about the topic seems to have taken "ownership" of the article and is ignoring criteria for inclusion that have been in place for years. Admittedly, it is a controversial topic, but it seems obvious that someone actually being a researcher (having both had the requisite training as well as actually conducting at least one research study on the topic) would be required. -DoctorW 02:24, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Clean up request

Hi Maunus,

Not sure if you are still away from the Internet. Another sock of Lucy appeared and made disruptive edits to articles Special:Contributions/Time_served. He has been blocked now but would appreciate a third party cleans up after him to diffuse his personal targeting of me.

1. End time The changes I made along the lines you suggested were reverted
2. Cults and governments Restored something I removed some time ago because the reference was just a link to the BK's own UN-related website and didn't support the contentious claim being made
3. Dada Lekhraj Date diddling and insertion of bias using words like "claimed". Basically undid your previous revert.
4. Robin Gibb Re-insertion of a paragraph that was removed by Orderinchaos due to BLP concerns

I saw you were active yesterday, but if I don't hear in a day then I will ask on ANI. Just thought I'd call you first since you are familiar with the case.

Regards, Bksimonb (talk) 08:08, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

It seems someone has taken care of it already. Thanks for the notice.·Maunus·ƛ· 21:38, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Strange Zapotec request

Maunus,

Do you happen to have a contact who's involved in developing Zapotec on the web? I'm locale leader for Gaelic on Mozilla and I noticed that about 10 years ago, someone translated 90% of the strings for Firefox into Zapotec and then vanished. It would be a pity if that got stuck there forever and I'm trying to find at least one internet-savy Zapotec speaker who'd be interested in taking it on or at least passing the word on? Cheers, Akerbeltz (talk) 12:07, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Hm let me modify that, on closer inspection, very few strings have been translated into Zapotec, but someone added a lot of Spanish instead. So it would be a lot of work actually... more like 99% to be done. Akerbeltz (talk) 12:10, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the thoght, but I don't know any internet savy zapotec speakers, or in fact any zapotec speakers at all. But I guess since it turned out not to have been so close to completion afterall I guess it doesn't matter, now.·Maunus·ƛ· 19:32, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Sad but true... thanks for response though! Akerbeltz (talk) 02:12, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your participation on the race and intelligence articles.

I see you are busy in off-Wiki life, but I just wanted to say thanks for your calm and civility in discussions about editing on the very contentious articles related to race and intelligence. Keep up the good work. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 02:10, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

nks. I hope that after the arbcom racket has calmed down it'll be possible to make some improvement there.·Maunus·ƛ· 01:03, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

NPOV proposal

M, I think the NPOV policy needs to provide more guidance about how properly to identify a view. I would like to know what you think. I want to propose something to the NPOV policy along these lines: that (1) we should identify the POV of texts, not authors (as we cannot read people's minds only what they write) and (2) POV should be detemined by explicit statements about one's view made by the author of the text, or descriptions of the the text's point fo view found in another reliable source. (3) one cannot assume POV based solely on biographical information about the author; the value of biographical information depends on (1) and (2). Do you see the sense in this? If so, could you take a stab and coming up with an elegant, clear, and appropriate way of wording it? Thanks, Slrubenstein | Talk 22:05, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Assistance with "naivyal" apparent nahuatl dialect

Hi! I read your comment on my talk page and i need your assistance. I dont know what specific dialect of Nahuatl (or possibly a very similar other non-nahuatl, Uto-Aztecan) i have an orthagraphic transcrption chart of. I spoke with a family freind last time i was in mexico and he speaks what he called "naivyal" which he said is the pronounciation of "nahuatl" and i assumed that it was simply classical nahuatl. However this is not the case. I am having an extremely difficult time trying to figure out what language it is. I am fairly certain that it is a nahuatl based language; many words sound similar or are the same words, but what specifically interested me was the fact that the "v" sound was common and most times replaced the "w" sound (usually written "hu" or "uh") although the "w" sounds was sometimes still pronounced. I know that the "v" sound is very uncommon in nahuatl languages as is the "ʒ" and "θ" sound. Most "a" sounds are pronounced with a following "i" producing a "ai" sound. I have several hand written documents in the language and he was taught a standardized romanization of it in school so im sure that it is listed somewhere in the public school system of mexico or at least the SIL ethnolouge. If you have any idea what branch of nahuatl that this is or if it is something different. The most common sounds seemed to be "v", "a", "ai", "n", "ya", ng", "e", "l", "r", "vs" and "sxh"(pronounced like nahuatl "x" but with an "s" before.) It seems to have a Zapotec based orthgraphy concerning certain sounds ("x" means ʒ and xh means "ʃ"). He has lived in the DF his whole life and he fully understood what IPA characters produced which sounds so i'm assuming that this langaue wa standardized using the IPA chart (because they have a character for every differnt IPA sound that the language uses. It may be tone based but he didnt really know what a tonal language was but most vowels can be combined with a circumflex diacritic that changes the pronounciation so i think it may be. I would really like to learn more about this language. It sounds quite different than most amerindian languages i've heard and is an especially nice sounding one so I would greatl apprieciate you're assittance. I a small list of words written in it so if you have time to help me that would be really cool. Thanks - Rahlgd (talk) 01:46, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Also here is a piece of sample text i had him translate for me, to hopefully start a language test of this language. The first segment was the text as he romanized it, the second is a self produced phonetic pronounciation of it, and the third section is the english sentence that i had him translate it from:

Vɧmyěɽʒîkhyö, sřäskǎdtǐɣŋ ɣ̌ɧ Ǎʒäustkǐɽŋłäŋ Vsǎyästɨrgɽǔft, ɽöh kzɧxhǫryeŋʈ ǎŋ lyülɧckǎʒirvya vsǎ wölftɧ vsieuzɽâsxht Käʒtǐlyäŋvstěŋɧêɧ vsǎ jsɧxhtěghkɣ̌ɧ sxʈeu ǎŋ ztvěhř ʒɧsxhtöwuɣrvêŋɖ xülʈsǎɧvstě hsǎŋ ksǎyatkǒlyä vzyösɧbřǫdemzǎydt gsaŋ vrîstɧisxhê ǎŋst .

V'myeirzhik'yoh sra'eskaid-tee'ung uh aizhaust'keerng'tlang vs'ayahst-ir-groo'eeft, roh kz'sho'er'yengt aing lee'yul-skaizh'irv'ya vsai wohlf't vs'ee-ih-yuhz'ras'sht kaz'zh-teel'yahng'vsteing'e vsai dzh's'shteiq'kuh szhte-yu aing zv'teir z'zh'shtoh'wuhr'veng'd zhyult'sai hi'saing ksayat'koil-ya vzyohs'browedemzaid't g'sang vrist'ishe aingst.

Mexico is a country in north america and is the largets spanish peaking nation on earth and is one of the worlds largest economies and has a population of one-hundred-eleven million people.

Below is a IPA table i made based on the information i have:

Vowels

Circumflex Vowels

Consonants

• An asterisk means that the sound is not native but is commonly used in loanwords and foreign words, mainly from Spanish and Zapotec.

Thanks for asking. This is not one of the 62 officially recognized indigenous languages of Mexico - it seems to be a constructed language possibly invented by your friend. It is most ceryainly not any living Uto-Aztecan language - and no dialect of Nahuatl. All transcription schemes used for indigenous Mesoamerican languages are based either on Spanish orthography or on IPA - no latin american language uses characters from the cyrillic script to transcribe its sounds.·Maunus·ƛ· 02:01, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Atlas Berber

There's a proposal to merge the Atlas lects of Berber, in case you're interested. — kwami (talk) 20:46, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Race and intelligence

This arbitration case has been closed and the final decision is available at the link above. The following is a summary of the remedies enacted:

• Standard discretionary sanctions are authorized for "race and intelligence" and all closely related articles.
• The following editors are topic-banned from race and intelligence articles, broadly construed:
  • Mathsci (by consent)
  • David.Kane
  • Captain Occam
  • Mikemikev
• Mikemikev, who was indefinitely blocked as a result of an ANI discussion during the case proceedings, is site-banned for 12 months. Until his ArbCom ban expires, he may only appeal his block to the Arbitration Committee, via the Ban Appeals Subcommittee. After 12 months, he may choose to appeal the ban to either the Arbitration Committee or to the community.

On behalf of the Arbitration Committee,

NW (Talk) 22:59, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Discuss this

The IQ Controversy, the Media and Public Policy

Hi, I made a query about the use of sources in this article at WP:NOR/N.--Victor Chmara (talk) 17:44, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

TechnoFaye

Hi Maunus, there is currently a discussion at ANI about TechnoFaye (talk · contribs). It started off as a discussion of images on her user page, and turned into a discussion whether the account should be indef banned. I haven't looked into the contributions history to any great extent, but I know you have interacted with the account in the R&I topic area; what would be your view of the value of the account's project contribution, and the merits or otherwise of an indef ban? --JN466 17:19, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

I am fairly convinced that she is unable to contribute positively within the framework of wikipedia. I am not going to participate in the discussion, as I believe the best approach is to ignore her untill she goes away, or breaks a rule which cannot be fixed.·Maunus·ƛ· 17:42, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your response. --JN466 17:54, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Aorist (linguistics)

You are using admin powers in a dispute in which you are involved; please don't do it again. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:38, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

He is using admin powers in a dispute where there is only one opposing disputant who is edit warring and obstructing progress. --Taivo (talk) 23:41, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't consider myself involved in this dispute, no. If you believe I am I will be happy to unprotect. ·Maunus·ƛ· 23:43, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

I believe the article should be protected and moved; the claim that "my edits are progress" should be followed by immediate protection in all cases. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:51, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Possible evasion of ban by User:NYScholar

I have started a thread at Possible evasion of ban by User:NYScholar, which you may be interested in. Jezhotwells (talk) 20:42, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Mikemikev

You blocked an IP? Why bother? If I need to I can clean up your crap. Your admin "powers" are impotent. 86.180.42.134 (talk) 16:34, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

I know, thats why I didn't do it untill I was forced to by someone suggesting that Mike's/your other IP was going to contribute to writing the article. As I had admitted I knew it was blockevasion I couldn't really just sit on my hands and let him/you work on the article. I think you should just leave the issue and find something else to do.·Maunus·ƛ· 17:20, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Human

Is this something more akin to what you were looking for? There's a whole story to why that article stub is there, but I'm working on it. -Stevertigo (t | log | c) 17:27, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Not really, my version would start with "We humans ..."·Maunus·ƛ· 17:28, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Ha. -Stevertigo (t | log | c) 17:29, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Request

• As you are an editor who had participated here, could you please state/explain your level of "involvement" (if any)? I'd appreciate it if you could provide a response (or a copy of it) here. Thank you, Ncmvocalist (talk) 10:36, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

GA

Nono. I understand. I don't want to seem as if I'm moaning about your review to Thelma. It was just ironic what you said about a fluent english speaker needing to copyedit given that the chief article writer Thelmadatter is actually a fluent English, highly capable editor who is teaching Spanish!! Your comments about it needing more book sources and polishing is a valid one. Its just frustrating at times though how some of my GA noms like Chamba, Himachal Pradesh and Sisimiut which I've significantly contributed to pass GA without a single issue and then others not only fail but fail spectacularly to the point they have to be delisted, (Thikse) was another. One moment an editor tells me I'm a great writer and one of our very best and then people like JMabel says things like "Please study plain English" (see the review) which seems a little patronising!! I have a good success rate but occasionally when there are a lot of issues I think its not worth it. I also think the Oaxaca article is the best article online about Oaxaca which is why it is even more frustrating that its still not good enough. Yes, Enciclopedia of Mexico is used in just about every Mexican municipality/goeogrpahy related article given that it is the most comprehensice source on the web on Mexico. As for reliability I was under the impression it met requirements...♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:33, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

You mention a list being in the Oaxaca article. WHat list? If you are referring to the region/district table this is very important. A good resource would mention to main districts and towns. See any of the featured articles on countries/states we have. It isn't any old bullet pointed list which I'd have to agree with you I mostly remove from articles. As for galleries the fauna gallery could have been removed and any other photos which made it too crowded. It could do with a fresh copyedit to ensure it is fully sorted but I'm not sure I want to spend the time addressing it when you'll pick up on the history source issues anyway...♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:44, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

I agree that the MOS issues are easily fixable, thats also why I didn't quick fail it but wanted to wait to see if you were willing/able to adress the more important issues. I did mean the regions and communities list - I disagree that is important enough to allow it to disrupt the reading flow as mich as it does. I'd give a prose summary of it and then make a "main" link to List of Regions, Districts and Municipalities of Oaxaca. That would make for much better lay out. I think that when you decide on which articles to try to get to GA you should go for topic about which you either already have or is willing to acquire a good acquaintance with the most important sources. A topic like Oaxaca has many many sources, and it is impoirtant to be able to pick out the right ones. The article on Sisimiut doesn't have many sources and so making oneself acquainted with them require much less effort. "Small topics" like Sisimiut are also easier to give broad coverage - while a huge one like Oaxaca requires more knowledge about many more topics. When I get some spare time (that happens once in a blue moon) i'll adress the history issues in the article myself. ·Maunus·ƛ· 18:20, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

The thing is we didn't list all of the 500 odd municipalities in the article for the reason of the list as it would look far too bloated. The idea is that the muncipalities are all then accessed by either the list or by district. I disagree, I think first level divisions at the very least are accepted in the mother article. I think it is perfectly appropriate to have the regions and districts mentioned in the article itself. It would be like an article on Cameroon not listing its main regions in the article or an article on Ardabil Province not listing its counties etc...Its done much better in a table format or prose I think than loose lists.. But I agree with you that wider area topics are more difficult to extract and to make as comprehensive as possible.♦ Dr. Blofeld 18:50, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't think the divisions need to be given in a list format - they can easily be converted into flowing prose. And if they can't they can certainly be presented in a tale format that doesn't take up a full screen. ·Maunus·ƛ· 18:56, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

In prose would certainly be better than nothing at all... If you ever feel like working on it sometime I'll join you as I thnk the basic content is there it just needing to be fully copyedited and a few more book sources found. If you have access to any books on Oaxaca this would be good.♦ Dr. Blofeld 19:52, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Mexican people

Yep, you're right. The article on Mexican people is not very good. I'll work on it in conjunction with the other articles I'm currently working on, but I can't concentrate on it too much until I finish that ridiculous Mestizo article and it's main article, Casta. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. Chicaneo (talk) 13:15, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Well, its a lot better now than it was yesterday around this time - I removed a lot of racialist garbage and wrote up an analysis of ethnic and race relations in Mexico based on the few sources that exist on that topic.·Maunus·ƛ· 13:18, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Race in biomedicine draft

It's now been over three days since anyone commented on my biomedicine draft for the Race (classification of humans) article. I doubt anyone else is going to comment at this point. I can't tell whether or not Muntuwandi is satisfied with it now, but everyone else who's given their opinion (you, aprock, and Terra Novus) seem to think it's an improvement over the current section in the article.

What should we do at this stage? If my draft is better than what's currently there, I don't think it should be kept out of the article just because the discussion died out before reaching a conclusion. Do you think it's okay to add it to the article now, or is there something else that needs to be done first? -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 21:57, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks!

While I'm here, there's something else I was wondering, if you don't mind. I'm curious about how you think I've been doing on these articles in general lately? When you commented in my arb amendment thread you stated concern about whether I'd be able to avoid making the same mistakes that Occam made. I don't think I have been causing any problems like that, but Muntuwandi, Weiji and Mathsci all seem to think I've been just as disruptive as Occam was.

For example, in Mathsci’s last comment there he linked to 2 of my recent comments on Richard Lynn as examples of me displaying a WP:BATTLEGROUND mentality. I don't see how that's the case, since both of those comments were pointing out content issues that others agreed needed to be fixed, and ended up fixing them based on my comments. I figured that meant my concerns were constructive.

The three editors dominating the amendment discussion apparently strongly disagree with me about content, based on how they react to my edits. Because of this I'm wondering if what looks like disruption to them wouldn't seem that way to someone less opinionated. My question is: do you think I'm being disruptive? I think I trust you to provide an unbiased opinion, and if I am doing anything that's a problem I'd like to know what so I can fix it. -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 23:08, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't think you are being disruptive no. But that doesn't mean much since I also didn't have a problem with working with Occam and David Kane and they are both topicbanned. I've made an update to my statement at the arbcom amendment page. I hav gotten really fed up with the topic myself and I don't think I will be paying much attention to it in the proximate future - luckily I have many other areas that I enjoy editing - I like writing content, not endless squabble without progress. For the sake of your own sanity I hope that you don't forget completely about the dinosaurs.·Maunus·ƛ· 23:49, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

I haven't forgotten about the dinosaurs - they just require an awful lot less discussion and debate. For what it's worth, though, I appreciate your reasonableness and devotion to neutrality on these articles a huge amount. For the articles' sake I hope you don't leave, especially if I get topic-banned, since the article will need more people like you who are able to keep the balance and see from both perspectives. -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 23:58, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Are you going to reply to Muntuwandi’s response to you in the amendment thread? If you aren’t, I probably should, but my statement is already long enough that I’d rather not make it even longer by duplicating something you were going to say there. During the arbitration case, some of the arbitrators complained that what I posted there was so long that they had trouble reading it all, and I’d like to avoid that problem here if I can.

Some of what he’s claiming about me there is false, and I think he knows it’s false. For example, I never evaded my ban on the race article. Since you were involved in the discussion about this, you might remember what actually happened—before my topic ban was implemented, I stated there that I intended to voluntarily disengage from the article, but WeijiBaikeBianji and a few others considered the “voluntarily” aspect of this unacceptable, and started a clarification request in order to prove that I had no choice in the matter. I haven’t edited that article since I was topic banned, and I also didn’t express any intention to remain involved in it after it became clear during the arbitration case that a topic ban for me was the likely outcome. I’ve pointed this out several times, but it hasn’t stopped him from continuing to claim that I evaded my ban there.

I’m sorry to bother you about this. I don’t know if I’ve made this clear, but I find this situation extremely frustrating also, and not just because I can observe in person how Ferahgo is affected by it. I share your concern that with so few editors left who edit from the hereditarian perspective, there’s a danger that the neutrality of the articles might suffer as a result, and Ferahgo is pretty much the only one of these left who hasn’t either been topic banned or quit out of frustration. Muntuwandi’s recent behavior on these articles does not give me a lot of confidence that he and WeijiBaikeBianji will be able to keep them neutral if given free reign over them. I’m very worried about what will happen to the articles if these editors manage to get rid of the only remaining editor who disagrees with them. --Captain Occam (talk) 17:55, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

I am not going to reply to Muntuwandi there. I think arbcom members will be capable of seeing of forming their own decisions based on evidence not just accusations. The best we can all do is to work hard on assuming good faith from everyone involved - including the assumption that we all work towards making the article better and more balanced - the only thing we disagree on is the exact point of equilibrium - even if it isn't found in the near future I think the articles will overall become better for the process. I think it is positive that muntuwandi is now writing a draft and I am looking forward to synthezie it with Ferahgo's proposal and achieving an even better one through that process. What frustrated me in Muntuwandis behaviour was what I perceived as simple rejection without proposals for improvement. As long as we are writing new drafts we are progressing. ·Maunus·ƛ· 18:07, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

He now doesn't seem willing to discuss content with me anymore, rather than constantly harping on how he thinks I'm a sock and shouldn't participate here - he also said he thinks it's acceptable to use the article's talk page for this. What bothers me is that even though I disagree with his removal of my section, it means there's no way for me to resolve this with him, regardless of which version is actually better for the article. If he removes my version but is only willing to discuss personal accusations with me on the talk page, does that mean his version will stay in the article by default? Or is there some other way situations like this ought to be handled? -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 07:58, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

It does seem that his version is closer to a consensus though - WeikeBianji and Slr back it. I don't think its bad - just very short, but I am not willing to remove it either. I understand its frustrating that he won't engage constructively with you, but theres not really anything I can do about that. You could take it to ANI and see what happens, though its a bit of a gamble. ·Maunus·ƛ· 13:34, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

It's not just the section itself I'm concerned about, it's also the principle of the matter and how this may continue to affect me going forward. I doubt this will be the last time Muntuwandi reacts like this when I try to discuss content with him, and I don't like the idea of him being able to keep my edits out of any article by just keeping reverting me, then refusing to discuss anything on the talk page other than personal accusations.

Thanks for the suggestion about AN/I. But from watching (and sometimes participating in) several AN/I threads related to these articles before arbitration - and seeing them devolve into mudslinging matches - I think AN/I is likely to be unhelpful. I am wondering, though, whether at this point it would be appropriate to file an RFC/U about Muntuwandi. The requirement for filing one is that at least two users have tried and failed to resolve the issue on the user's talk page, which you and Vecrumba have both tried to do. Do you think that filing an RFC/U makes sense at this point? -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 17:38, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Honestly, I think the way the arbcom amendment case looks that and RFCU or ANI intervention is unlikely to change much for you i the long run as I think you will likely have to return to the dinosaurs soon whether you want to or not. I do think Muntuwandi is being unreasonable towards you, but I don't think the effort would be worth it. Sometimes we just have to abide. I have unwatched the race articles now and I think I'll come back to them and take a look in six months or so - I do believe they will be better then than they are now, also without my involvement. Letting go is also an important skill to master.·Maunus·ƛ· 17:49, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Oh jeez... if you're leaving and I'm forced to leave, I really do not believe the articles will be in a better state six months from now. In the amendment thread you mentioned the issue of viewpoints on these articles shifting toward the opposite (environmental) extreme, and how few editors there are who care enough to try and prevent this. Other than you and me, the only recently involved editors who seemed to care enough to try and prevent this have been Victor Chmara and Vecrumba, but they both seem to not be very active anymore. I'm very concerned about what will happen to the neutrality of these articles if you and I stop participating in them too.

Letting go of this issue isn't something I can do as easily as most people probably could. I saw what these articles were like a year ago (especially Race and intelligence) when they devoted a huge amount of space to describing the debate itself and almost none to the data being debated. I saw firsthand the amount of effort Occam spent researching with the intent of improving the articles, and then slowly working towards a consensus to improve them during mediation. I don't deny that he engaged in some unconstructive behavior (edit warring etc), but I still think the improvements he and others contributed were valuable overall. I find it really depressing to think that in a fairly short amount of time, every one of the past year's worth of improvements could be undone. But this seems like a likely outcome if Muntuwandi and Weiji are given free reign over them - they've already made one recent attempt to revert the Race and genetics article back a year, before Occam, David Kane or Varoon Arya had gotten involved.

I know other people aren't likely to have a personal reason for caring about these articles' neutrality, but I know their neutrality matters to you for its own sake too. Are you not worried what will happen to them once the editors who care most about neutrality are all gone? -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 19:15, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Sorry to butt in. I agree with Maunus about letting go. I must say that I am somewhat disappointed with our representatives on Arbcom for taking a long time to address this matter, its now close to one month. I don't believe that matter is really that complicated as it doesn't require doing any content research. Basically this issue doesn't require a lot of effort to form an opinion. The longer it takes, the more needless "mudslinging". The Amendment page is already becoming bloated. As Stifle said, some declaratory relief would be helpful. Without a ruling on this, I will continue to assume that Occam is evading a topic restriction. OTOH, without a ruling, FTA will continue to assume that my concerns about sanction evasion are unfounded. This purgatory is not helping anyone. So, strangely, I do support Maunus and FTA on their suggestion to take this to ANI. Maybe a preliminary decision can be reached while waiting for Arbcom. Wapondaponda (talk) 19:10, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Maunus, I agree with you that it is very short. I hope though that at the talk page you nd I but more importantly Muntuwandi and WeijiBaikeBianji can have a reasonable discussion of what they currently leave out that you would have in. I bet that after discussion at least some of what they removed might be put back, although in some cases in a rewritten version. I hope we can get away from polling differences of opinion to discussing reasons and exploring alternatives and compromises. Slrubenstein | Talk 23:29, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

I've realized it doesn't really matter whether its long or short. I've gotten into a position know where the drawbacks of editing the article outweighs the benefits - I am happy with the fact that I have had to read extensively about a topic and that I know know much more about it than I did before - but I don't feel a need to keep editing about it right now. I don't think that the the arbcom case has resulted in a significantly improved editing environment on the pages, too much battleground mentality still going round. In spite of that I think the articles are going to improve - with or without my participation. I think I can spend my energy better elsewhere.·Maunus·ƛ· 02:56, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Talkback

I must say this is unfair

I am not Supriya. Just because two users have similar editing patterns, how can you conclude they are the same people? Jesus. I checked the articles that I edited besides linguistics. There is no user called Supriya who has edited those. How can you make such an allegation? Ridiculous. I continually go to India to teach as a visiting faculty at three of the universities in Delhi. India is a huge center for linguistics right now, and every other person goes there! Fellowscientist (talk) 13:06, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

It is unfair if you're not Supriya. But then if you're not the investigation is likely to clear you and you'll have no further problems.·Maunus·ƛ· 13:11, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

That sounds like a fair deal. Let me know the investigation results. Fellowscientist (talk) 13:17, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

FYI: New York Times article of August 26, 2010 by Guy Deutscher

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/magazine/29language-t.html?_r=1 Hpvpp (talk) 00:47, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks!

I responded on my talk page, but I suppose it can't hurt to say it again: Thank you for the compliment. =) I hope that my future edits continue to improve the article. Cosmic Latte (talk) 19:11, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Linguistics and anthropology

Hey Maunus, I started a discussion about the recent edits at Talk:Linguistics#Subfield of anthropology?. Thanks, rʨanaɢ (talk) 03:05, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Huei tlamahuiçoltica

Is this on your watch list? I hadn't noticed it before. Dougweller (talk) 07:28, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes it is. It is just as weird as the other Guadalupan articles.·Maunus·ƛ· 14:36, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

It's on my watchlist now. Dougweller (talk) 15:39, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

LA

You are of course right. Articles should draw heavily on Judith Friedlander, Marisol de la Cadena, Charles Hale, Jan Hoffman French, Deborah Pool, mary Weismantel, andof course Peter Wade's important book. Alas, my friend, I will have NO time at all until December. Sorry. Slrubenstein | Talk 10:22, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

I know what that is like. But, maybe if you have them on your watchlist as well we can keep them from degeneratin into statements about the number of mestizos and white people in each country based on the CIA world fact book.·Maunus·ƛ· 12:35, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Arbitration enforcement

Hello, an arbitration enforcement request about an issue you've been involved in has recently been posted here: Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement#WeijiBaikeBianji

I know your suggestion was that Muntuwandi was the person whose behavior needed attention from admins, and I do agree with you that a lot of his recent behavior hasn’t been appropriate. But the fact is, Muntuwandi has been barely involved in these articles for the past two weeks, and as long as he’s this inactive I don’t think it really makes a difference whether he gets warned or sanctioned. The behavior from WeijiBaikeBianji that seems like POV-pushing and article ownership to me has been ongoing, though, and I think that a formal warning to WBB would benefit the editing environment on these articles. If you decide to comment in that thread, I hope you’ll take a look at the diffs I provided, and offer a neutral perspective about whether you think this behavior is problematic. -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 22:40, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't think that was a helpful move on your part. I am sure the people who might be directly affected by any misconduct by WeijiBaikeBianji are capable of taking steps to remedy it themselves.·Maunus·ƛ· 15:23, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

I do respect your opinion, but as I said in our discussion about this here earlier this month, I'm concerned about what will happen to the neutrality of these articles with so few editors willing to edit from a hereditarian perspective. I know you agree this is a reasonable worry in principle, since you raised a similar concern in Muntuwandi's amendment thread about me. My reason for caring about this isn't to protect the interests of newer editors who've recently gotten involved here, it's because I've seen the amount of time and effort that's gone into improving these articles to the state they are today. I'm very concerned about the possibility of that progress being undone, possibly even in a single one-year revert like Muntuwandi and WBB tried to do on the race and genetics article last month.

When I raised this concern with admins in the discussion about my topic ban, I was told that if there were editors involved in the articles whose behavior I thought was in danger of skewing the articles' neutrality, I should post an AE thread about this. I waited two weeks to do it because I wanted to see whether the behavior from WBB that I consider problematic would improve after the amendment thread, but I don't think it did. I apologize if you don't think this was the best way to address my concern, but I'm not sure what would have been better - I was basically just following the advice I was given by admins. -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 16:43, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

I am not very worried about that anymore - new editors have appeared on the scene such as miradre and Tijfo (and victorchmara is active again) who seem very capable of working against any environmentalist bias that might eventually develop. I also think that it is good to remember that there's a difference between admins saying that you are allowed to post an AE petition and the conclusion that it is a good idea to do so.·Maunus·ƛ· 16:48, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Is this Wikihounding?

Maunus, I feel like I really need some outside perspective from another user about this, and I think you’re better able to provide that than anyone else. I hope you don’t mind me asking me about it.

During the time since my topic ban, one of the main things I’ve been working on at Misplaced Pages has been the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation case article. (Just to make sure this article wasn’t covered by my topic ban, I clarified this with ArbCom first.) Muntuwandi has just followed me to this article, accusing me of a lot of the same things there that he accused me of when I was participating in race and intelligence articles. As far as I know, this is the first time he’s ever been involved in articles about politics or about the New Black Panther Party. This is the second time in the past month that he’s appeared to follow me or Ferahgo to an article that he hadn’t previously been editing, the first time being when he followed Ferahgo to the Race (classification of humans) article when she proposed her biomedicine draft there.

If you look at Muntuwandi’s contributions, you’ll see that more than half of his participation in Misplaced Pages since the end of the arbitration has been focused on opposing me and/or Ferahgo in some way. I had been hoping that after leaving the race and intelligence topic area I wouldn’t have to deal with him anymore, and I’m pretty disappointed to have been wrong about that.

Do you think this can be considered Wikihounding? It seems that way to me, but my tiredness of dealing with some of the R&I regulars might be making me oversensitive about this, which is why I think I need another perspective about it. If you agree that it is, I would also appreciate some advice about how I should deal with it. It doesn’t seem like something that should be dealt with at arbitration enforcement, because it’s happening outside of the topic area covered by the arbitration case, but I’d also really rather not start an AN/I thread because of how those have typically gone in the past. --Captain Occam (talk) 20:11, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Nomination of Nagualism (Carlos Castaneda) for deletion

A discussion has begun about whether the article Nagualism (Carlos Castaneda), which you created or to which you contributed, should be deleted. While contributions are welcome, an article may be deleted if it is inconsistent with Misplaced Pages policies and guidelines for inclusion, explained in the deletion policy.

The article will be discussed at Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Nagualism (Carlos Castaneda) until a consensus is reached, and you are welcome to contribute to the discussion.

You may edit the article during the discussion, including to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion template from the top of the article. --Nuujinn (talk) 23:24, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

ethnicity

Your comment on this edit - the most recent of a little revert war - might be very constructive. Slrubenstein | Talk 17:02, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

hey man

who is the god of wikipedia? why you delete the map all the time for no reason? you are hiding knowledge from the public for your own personal agenda?

THE MAP IS WORK OF SCIENTIST DO YOU UNDERSTAND?Retroqqq (talk) 12:46, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

But not scientists working on the topic of the article where you are trying to insert it.·Maunus·ƛ· 12:48, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

ok sorry you are right about that. how am i going to transfer it to Genetic history of Europe? could you help so this war wont happen again?Retroqqq (talk) 12:53, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

I think that you should start by going to the talk page at Talk: Genetic history of Europe and suggest including it. Then the editors there will be able to discuss with you whether it can be included as you wrote it or whether the material is already covered in the article or if it should be tweaked.·Maunus·ƛ· 13:09, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

WP:DYK

The link referenced in the edit summary here is broken. Can I see the link to the community discussion? Shubinator (talk) 15:27, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I've been following that discussion. The added rule is a bit premature though, and isn't as uncontroversial as you might think. For example, the first part on multiple sources is actually in the DYK rules already, and took an uphill battle to get in: Wikipedia_talk:Did_you_know/Archive_49#Rule_against_single_sourcing. The second part is just common sense. Anyways, would you mind if I removed the first bit since it's already a rule? (I'll leave the second part since it's become a flash point.) Shubinator (talk) 15:40, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Ah, just saw your most recent edits. I'm fine with that. Shubinator (talk) 15:41, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

It's raining thanks spam!

• Please pardon the intrusion. This tin of thanks spam is offered to everyone who commented or !voted (Support, Oppose or Neutral) on my recent RfA. I appreciate the fact that you care enough about the encyclopedia and its community to participate in this forum.
• There are a host of processes that further need community support, including content review (WP:GAN, WP:PR, WP:FAC, and WP:FAR). You can also consider becoming a Misplaced Pages Ambassador. If you have the requisite experience and knowledge, consider running for admin yourself!
• If you have any further comments, input or questions, please do feel free to drop a line to me on my talk page. I am open to all discussion. Thanks • Ling.Nut (talk) 02:26, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

User should be blocked

Hello, can you block Flaviobm?

here is his vandalistic edit of your last Undo... Thanks, warshy 18:12, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Notwithstanding your warning at 'his' talk page, he just did it again. Are you an Admin? (I thought you were.) As an Admin you would have the tools to block him off, wouldn't you? Just trying to understand how exactly it works, and why sometimes it works, and other times it doesn't... Thanks, warshy 21:05, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

I am an admin and I can block him - but I don't block without warning. ·Maunus·ƛ· 22:12, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

OK. Thanks a lot for the explanation. I counted and in the last 3 days he has reverted that edit just like that, without even a note of explanation for it, 7 times! Also, technically, I don't think he has even been really warned by an Admin about true consequences (such as being blocked) if he keeps doing it. Sorry to bother about a little trifle like this, but it can sometimes be annoying... Thanks for listening at least. warshy 23:52, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

I owe you an apology. You did explicitly warn him about being blocked in his talk page. Also, thanks for acting on it! I for one certainly believe you did the right thing. I wouldn't be surprised if he still comes back and does it again... Thanks a lot for listening again. warshy 01:05, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

If he does the block will be longer next time. :) ·Maunus·ƛ· 02:58, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Quick question

Hi Maunus - I have a quick question. The image in Scyld appears to be from this website, which for some reason I seem to be able to read, somewhat. I'm curious what language it is that I'm reading? Btw - hope all is well, we haven't touched bases in a while. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 23:14, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Truthkeeper - I am glad to know that you are still out there. Abiding. And making the wikipedia a better place for it. The language is norwegian (.no is norway). The image is by the famous Norwegian Illustrator da:Louis Moe. I should probably give him an article in the english wikipedia. ·Maunus·ƛ· 00:21, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks so much Maunus! The illustrations are wonderful. According to the article you linked he died in 1919, so the file for the image is wrong (has a death date of 1945). I suppose I'll have to learn about Norwegian copyright laws, but am hoping more of those illustrations can be uploaded. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 00:27, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

No he died in 1945, in 1919 he became a Danish citizen (possibly some Norwegians would consider that having died).·Maunus·ƛ· 00:29, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Ah - I skipped a line! Too bad. Thanks for the information anyway. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 00:31, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

"alleged", "accused", etc.

Note that WP:W2W specifies that "Alleged and accused are appropriate when wrongdoing is asserted but undetermined". In this case, no arrests were ever made, and after a bit of searching, I cannot find confirmation that any suspects were even considered. There's no shortage of people claiming the whole thing was a hoax. The bottom line is that no reliable sources I can find seem to indicate that a crime definitely occurred- everything is just based off of the Dodsons' own report. If that's not "alleged", I don't know what is. —Bill Price (nyb) 17:24, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Please don't put words in my mouth.

I’m pretty sure I never said that I thought the R&I history article was more neutral than the main Race and intelligence article, and I don’t think David.Kane has said this either. The way I feel about the history article is that it was definitely a POV fork when Mathsci first created it, but that David.Kane, DistributiveJustice and I eventually managed to fix its most severe POV issues. At this point I think it’s probably no longer an actual POV fork, but it still has some POV issues that I’m hoping will get fixed eventually. (I can tell you what some of them are if you want, but I suspect it’s best for me to not be bringing up specific content issues here.)

What you’re saying about my opinion is something that I don’t believe—I don’t think the history article is actually in better condition than the main article. And I definitely don’t agree with the idea that it’s in so much better condition that all of the links to race and intelligence ought to be replaced with links to the history article, which seems to be what you’re implying about how I feel. --Captain Occam (talk) 01:22, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Ok, I'm sorry for misrepresenting you. I actually thought you had said something to that effect.·Maunus·ƛ· 02:21, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for striking out that part of your comment. I’d figured this was just an honest mistake, but it still bothers me if my opinion is misstated in a discussion where I’m not allowed to participate in order to correct it. --Captain Occam (talk) 02:45, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Correct Translation

I like your Aby Warburg translation (Hebrew for Jew) fine, but every translation I could find right now, either in German or English has Jew or Jude. And I agree that this Boas thing starts to get on everybody's nerves.--Radh (talk) 15:03, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

I couldn't see that the translation was from the original source, since the source given was in italian. I surmised that the translationwas made by a wikipedian - so I decided to correct it since Italian does distinguish Jew from Hebreo and ebreo means Hebrew. If however there is a published English translation of the passage I think that should be used instead and sourced with a reference. Could you please supply it and replace my translation?·Maunus·ƛ· 15:06, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

About the identity of Jews in Germany, the view that German identity was fully attainable for Jews goes back at least to the Jewish reform movement of the early 19th century where reformed Jews declared Germany to be the new Zion. This assimilationist policy is obviously the background for Boas viewpoints and his parents clearly were not what one would call orthodox or even practicing Jews. Jews had formal legal equality as German citizens from 1848 to The Nurenberg laws - even if this equality was in practice reserved for Jews that had converted to christianity. 12,000 Jews died in the trenches of WWI to fight for their German fatherland . I think it is fair to assume that they like Boas thought of themselves as Germans.(Just like Durkheim's student Robert Hertz fought for France in spite of his Jewish ancestry and the shadow of the Dreyfus affair (Durkheim himself was also a French patriot and of Jewish ancestry at the same time))·Maunus·ƛ· 15:24, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I must have written complete nonsense. This was not what I tried to argue against (I hope). I just consider ethnic and gender- and religious- and class-differences inside a nation to be important, regardless of what the Progressives and liberals think.

And German citizenship for many Germans was even before 1933 connected to the concept of something like a German race. To give, say, Turkish people living in Germany "our" citizenship, is in fact still regarded as very strange by some Germans, not only by Nazis. It is also regarded strange by many Turks, who also tend to think of themselves as a kind of different race.

May assimilation have been a part of the problem in Germany? The strong anti-French resistance movement of 1812 turned viciously antisemitic very fast - with the threat of assimilation - and the Nazis may have only been the end-product of all this. /PS: The best thing I can find on Google right now on Warburg and antisemitism is a book by Mark A. Russell: Between Tradition and Modernity. Also: Charlotte Schoell-Glass: Aby Warburg and Anti-Semitism. --Radh (talk) 16:27, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't think that progressives or liberals think that internal differentiation within nation states is not important. But just as we don't describe Karl Marx in the lead as an "Upperclass, male, atheist German Jew" we don't need to define people into all possibly relevant categories in the lead (and picking out just one would be arbitrary). We only need to define them in relation to what they are notable for - and for some (arbitrary) reason also according to nationality (this is the practice - I don't think I agree that defining people by nationality is always necessary in the lead of biography articles but it is standard practice). In this case it is quite clear that there is no reason to define Boas as a Jew - he is famous for his influence in anthropology not for his descent, and he was a national of America and Germany. Adding to this his own views about Jewishness describing him as a Jew becomes highly questionable since he quite clearly did not identify with that category or even think of it as meaningful in the sense of "ancestry", or "race". For Boas Jewishness was a set of cultural practices that he didn't take part in, and in so far as it had once been a biological race (which Boas thought did exist in the sense of phenotypes) it wasn't any more, as centuries of assimilation to Europeans had removed all possibilities of distinguishing a "Jewish phenotype". The fact that heritage-Germans and German Turks still see themselves as ethnically different is really beside the point, Boas would probably not have argued against that as long as it is possible to distinguish ethnic Turks from ethnic Germans based on cultural practices or phenotype (and self identification). ·Maunus·ƛ· 16:45, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

This work uses a translation closer to mine: ·Maunus·ƛ· 16:50, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't need Boas' Jewishness or non-Jewishness mentioned in the lead. We should also close down the debate for now. I still find it just a bit strange for a salvage anthropologist like Boas to be so utterly assimilationist when it comes to his own people. But all this is neither here nor there. And I must thank you for your Geduld. --Radh (talk) 08:48, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

I know you aren't arguing in favor of mentioning, it at this point I was just arguing with you because its an interesting debate. :) And his view of Jewishness is very odd considered his other stances. There's a very good book out that contains an essay about the Boasians and their concept of race and culture, its Kamala Visweswaran's "Un/common cultures" - I highly reccommend it. I wasn't lying when I told OO-Yun that I had never read anyone spending time on analysing Boas' heritage in relation to his anthropology - but then I was asigned this book. She does, and she does it very well. The other essays are also critiques of how great anthropologists form Levi-Strauss, Du Bois and Geertz have handled the relation between race and culture - something they have done with varying success. There is also a really interesting essay on the first female anthropologists working on the western frontier. I highly reccomend it.·Maunus·ƛ· 13:21, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, this Un/common cultures book sounds good. I don't know of any useful work on Boas' "roots" and his anthropological ideas right now. --Radh (talk) 14:33, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Oo Yun

FYI: Misplaced Pages:Sockpuppet investigations/Mikemikev. Mathsci (talk) 15:22, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't think its Mike this time - Mike has more of a sense of humour than Oo Yun.·Maunus·ƛ· 15:23, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Well blimie, I guess I was wrong!·Maunus·ƛ· 15:25, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Gooseberry

You were justified in removing "gooseberry" as an example in Cranberry morpheme because it is a confusing example, but the story of the word's etymology is more complicated than it may seem at first glance :) see Gooseberry#Etymology. —Bill Price (nyb) 04:23, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

I read that. It says the Oxford dictionary says it is just plain "goose". The example is not just confusing it is bad - especially in the wording given where the reader would be let to believe that the word "goose" does not appear by itself in the English language - as no information about its etymology was provided.·Maunus·ƛ· 04:25, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Our Lady of Guadalupe

The section on scientific analysis seems to need work. Minor point, the ref at 25 is just a website on infrared photography and we don't need it anyway as there's a link to our article on infrared photography. Ref 26 is to 'Folklore Forum' which doesn't seem to be peer reviewed. " The journal encourages the free-flowing exchange of research and ideas on all aspects of folklore and folklife. An interdisciplinary publication, Folklore Forum seeks to continually question existing assumptions and bring new ideas to the fore of humanities and social sciences." . The statement using reference 27 should probably be worded more tentatively. Ref 16 is a copy of an article in a magazine about an unpublished study, and because copies can be altered we don't normally link to them. But see Painting a new world: Mexican art and life, 1521-1821 By Donna Pierce, Rogelio Ruiz Gomar, Clara Bargellini, Frederick and Jan Mayer Center for Pre-Columbian and Spanish Colonial Art Footnote 33, p280 "Recent technical studies claim the presence of the signature of this painter ("M.A." for Marcos Aquino) and the date 1556 on a first painting, under the prsent one: Rodrigo Vera "La Guadalupana: Tres imagenes en una", Proceso, issue 1334 (26 May 2002) 52-53. If this is so, the complicity of painters in creating and maintaining the miraculous image would be further confirmed." The book looks like a great source if you search the Google copy with "miraculous Guadalupe" and "miraculous Guadalupe Diego". This book looks invaluable: Dougweller (talk) 07:35, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Question about using sources to edit an encyclopedia

Hi, Maunus, I see that while I was away from my office with my family today that there was a new enforcement action to follow up the Race and intelligence case. I recall from a comment that you made on some talk page that you have access to a very large academic library system. I too have access to a great collection of academic libraries (at a state flagship research university and also at a consortium of private colleges and universities). It happens that the public libraries in my town have a fairly strong academic orientation too, especially for humanities subjects such as history. So to me it's a routine part of every day—after work and family responsiblities are taken care of first—to read serious academic books with lots of footnotes to previous sources and with meticulous tables of contents and indexes pointing readers to all the main subtopics of each book. The Wikimedia Foundation has a goal of improving Misplaced Pages content quality, and surely one element of achieving that goal will be to add more and more reliable sources to as many of the 6,929,826 articles on Misplaced Pages as possible. That's the kind of goal, described especially in the book How Misplaced Pages Works by librarian Phoebe Ayers, that drew me into editing Misplaced Pages after years of reading the work of other wikipedians who built up this 💕 that anyone can edit in the early years. I have sources that I read for fun anyway, and I thought I might as well use those to help make incremental improvements to Misplaced Pages. But I'm puzzled by my experience here in the last half year. It hasn't been my experience elsewhere in editorial offices that adding reliable sources found in academic libraries to publication content is considered "a bad idea." Where it's just part of a day's work to build an encyclopedia or edit an academic journal, it's generally a good idea to find a recently published source that meticulously cites earlier literature and is fairly widely available in libraries. But even after I read an informative book by a careful historian, and check his book for what topics it mentions that are little sourced at present on Misplaced Pages, I find that citing the book in a Further reading section is construed in bad faith and even reverted. I don't know what kind of encyclopedias you read in your youth, or what kind you read today, but pretty nearly all the print encyclopedias I find in academic libraries have articles that end with brief bibliographies of book-length works that cover some aspect of the article topic in more detail. I have also thought, inasmuch as the Manual of style specifies characteristics of books to include in Further reading sections, that first mentioning a new source in that kind of an addition to an article allows other editors to find the source in their own most convenient library system (and these days Google Books or Amazon allow lots of searching into books online), so that editors can verify sources. I've seen some very blatant examples of article text that cites sources that do not, in fact, verify the article text, so I figure one good confidence-building measure to pursue on controversial articles is to share sources first, and to edit article text later. I began my Misplaced Pages involvement largely by sharing source lists, and I expect to be maintaining those for a long time. (Librarians like Phoebe Ayers know of a genre of scholarly literature called "pathfinders," guides to the professional literature in a particular subject, and that is the model I have in mind as I incrementally build the source lists.) It's hard to help when every effort to help is construed invidiously. Perhaps this kind of unwelcoming atmosphere is what frustrates the Wikimedia Foundation's goal of increasing participation, as there are certainly scholarly communities where sources are welcomed and discussed rather than reverted on sight. On my part, I will continue to attempt to help and to build the encyclopedia according to the model of the best available print encyclopedias. It would be great if persons like you who have the project mop in your hand would use the mop to clean up messes and not to push away new scholarly sources. It would good just in general, as I learned from Phoebe Ayers and her co-authors, to encourage the Misplaced Pages culture to move in the direction of cherishing scholarship and being curious about what reliable sources say and whether or not article text is based on reliable sources. Checking sources together can build an atmosphere of lifelong learning and mutual collaboration. I'm sure I have a good bit of anthropology and not a little linguistics to learn from you, and I hope I can offer some learning opportunities to you as well. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 03:18, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

It is never a bad idea to add sources. But further reading sections are not for sources, they are for readings related to the topic - further reading sections are for including important literature related to the topic that has not been used as a source for the article. Sources are included in bibliography or references sections or in footnotes. Further reading sections is like an external link section where the material linked just happen to be a book. Dumping the same book in ten different further reading sections looks a lot like link spamming - especially when several of the articles where it is dumped are only very marginally related to the topic of the book. Some of the persons in whose articles you added the book were only mentioned a few times in the book. Furthermore the book is a well researched piece of scholarship, but it is also clearly in favour oif a particular viewpoint. This makes including it in marginally related articles a bad idea. In this case it ended up getting Ferahgo blocked because she took the liberty of removing a tangentially related book from an article about a specialist in dinosaurs who happens to have also had a hobby as an eugenicist advocate. I am pretty sure you knew it was going to be controversial in some of those articles yet you decided to be bold - I believe that in some cases boldness is not preferable - sometimes deliberation and prior discussion is best. I had hoped you had learned that fromn your experience with boldy renaming controversial articles. I am sure we can collaborate very well in the future as we have in the past, and I know I can learn a lot from you about intelligence related topics. But I do encourage you to consider the overall effects that repeating possibly controversial actions over several articles may have. Often it will do more harm, by making the environment more tense, than good. By the way you will have noticed that I did notm remove the book from most of those articles - I incorporated it into the text where it makes much more sense. Only when I could not find any information in the book that was relevant for the article did I remove it completely. ·Maunus·ƛ· 12:35, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Hi Maunas. What do you think of these "Further reading" additions to the Linda Gottfredson, Richard Lynn and Glayde Whitney articles? The subjects themselves are barely mentioned (maybe three or four times each). The title of the book added to the further reading section, The funding of scientific racism: Wickliffe Draper and the Pioneer Fund (google books link here), would give a specific impression to the reader about the subject's views. These are all BLP articles. I am troubled by the use of Further Reading like this. I don't want to revert because I'm keen not to get involved in warring in this rather testy area, so I came here to ask you for advice.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 23:43, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't worry about BLP - Tucker's book is a reliable source and Misplaced Pages does not run any risks by referring to it, but I think that any information it has that relates to the topic of the article should be integrated into the article body and not in a further reading section. I feel loathe at reverting now as well - why don't we copy our commentaries to the article's respective talk pages.·Maunus·ƛ· 23:52, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Fine - if you want to move them. I'm surprised that you don't find any BLP issues. It's not that Tucker's book is not RS, it's that by including the title it implies the article subjects are a chief topic of a book called "scientific racists".VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 00:01, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

The three persons do figure in the book so if they have any issues with Tucker's statements they would have to take it out with his publisher not with wikipedia. It is also not the first time they have been mentioned in the same breath as scientific racism - that is part of the package when you accept money from the Pioneer fund - the Pioneer's own website makes a point out of defending themselves against accusations of that type. I guess it could be seen as biased to not include a book with a more apologetic title - but that could be solved by integrating the books claims into the article instead and add their own rebuttals. Whitney is dead by the way so no BLP - and was quite openly held holocaust deniying, anti-semitic views and promoted of demonstratedly false theories about racial segregation and the division of mankind into several species - can't be much more of a scientific racist than that. Lynn and Gotfredson both routinely have to defend themselves againt such claims. ·Maunus·ƛ· 00:20, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

We should separate two points here. One is that the book shouldn't be in Further Reading - which I think we both agree on. The other is that the additions are troubling in terms of POV and may be an abuse of the Further Reading sections rather than simply a misuse. I would have no problems with any of the articles using the book as a source. However, further reading is, one would presume, "here's what to read to know more about the subject", and a handful of mentions in a book is not only not justified, it also presents the book topic as the proper sphere the article topic's work should be considered part of. This you agree is a troubling POV view of two of the article subjects. It's not the title that's the issue, it's the overall focus of the book, which the title reveals. Fair enough on Whitney, btw, in terms of BLP (both dead and clearly racist). But it's still not a good further reading addition for the article, as the book barely mentions him. I don't know if WBB is adding this material deliberately, but it's an indication of the danger of his approach.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 00:50, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

I think we're in agreement - I think the problem is that the further reading section should be for books that are for books that treat the topic of the article - not just mentions it - and that can be uncontroversially agreed on as reccomended reading by the editors involved with the article. The same guidelines as used for external links - there must be wide agreement that external links are directly relevant for them to be included - the same should go for further reading. It should be the kind of book that is logically the next place to read more after reading the wikipedia article.·Maunus·ƛ· 00:58, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Agreement is always nice :-) You might be interested in adding to the discussion here: Misplaced Pages talk:Manual_of_Style_(layout)#Further_reading. Clearly the guidelines are not enough at the moment.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 01:08, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Maunus, you wrote, "further reading section should be for books that are for books that treat the topic of the article - not just mentions it - and that can be uncontroversially agreed on," but where would editors look in currently published Misplaced Pages policies or guidelines to find either idea? The idea of "treat the topic of the article - not just mentions it" is of course something that is best ascertained by actually looking at the source. You can be assured that I always look at sources and make sure that they treat the topic of the article before adding those sources in any manner to articles, but I've had quite a few highly pertinent reliable sources deleted from article text for no reason that was apparent in edit summaries other than that some other editor didn't like the point of view of the reliable source author. And that leads to the second point; how can any source "be uncontroversially agreed on" while active edit-warring is going on in articles, even after an Arbitration Committee case with active sanctions? Both ideas seem to involve a tension with core Misplaced Pages principles, which generally strongly favor reliable sources, and the second idea, if applied prospectively, would completely gut bold editing, which several dozen of the articles in discussion badly need. Perhaps I should ask for some additional refinement of these two ideas, which I am sure you offer as a guide to constructive editing, and appreciate hearing from you. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 03:51, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree that the guideline about Further reading does not unequivocally support my view as it is - but I feel it is a quite commonsensical view nonetheless and I am willing to argue in favour of it (I already am). I realize of course that you have looked at the sources - and I acknoledge that they contain good informationthat should be incorporated into the articles. But my view of what a further reading section obviously differs from yours, and that is the cause of our disagreement it seems to me. You are quite right that it is difficult that a piece of further reading could ever be universally agreed upon in a controversial article where editwarring is going on. This is however not an argument against requiring consensus for inclusion in further reading sections - it is rather an argument for not including further reading sections in controversial articles - as that would only stimulate the editwar. Bold editing is fine when things can be easily fixed and everyone is happy afterwards - when that is not the case BOLD has to be exchanged for BRD - with a lot of stress on the D. In controversial situations lots of stress and frustration can be avoided by going directly to D andf leaving out the BR bit altogether. In my view the only justification for undertaking the BR part for that cycle is that the BOLD part didn't know that what it was doing would not be immediately accepted by other editors. That is my basic problem with your BOLD approach - it aggravates conflicts instead of promoting collaboration and consensus building. I think we should all focus much more on being forthcoming to other viewpoints and working towards compromise than on "improving" controversial articles - because when articles are controversial one mans improvement nvariably looks like something else when seen from different angles - whereas neutrality never coincides with anyone's particular vantage point and looks equally undesirable to all. ·Maunus·ƛ· 04:16, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

I’ve been trying to come up with a list of all the articles that currently have books like these in a “further section” because of WeijiBaikeBianji's adding them. The two main books he’s done this with are Defending the Master Race and The Funding of Scientific Racism, although he’s also added The Cattell Controversy to a few of them- which is also pretty opinionated, and by the same author as The Funding of Scientific Racism. Here's the articles I found where he’s done this and where it hasn’t been removed yet:

• Linda Gottfredson (BLP article)
• Richard Lynn (BLP article)
• Roger Pearson (BLP article)
• Glayde Whitney
• Charles Davenport
• Hans F. K. Günther
• Wickliffe Draper
• Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League
• Paul Popenoe
• The Kallikak Family
• Immigration Restriction League (Whats with the little check mark that he added next to The Funding off Scientific Racism in this article? Does that mean he thinks the book is especially important as further reading in this article?)
• Robert Lowie
• Aryan race
• Nordic race
• Eugenics
• Anti-miscegenation laws
• Mediterranean race
• Alpine race
• Scientific racism
• Cephalic index]
• Immigration Act of 1924
• Compulsory sterilization
• Institute for the Study of Academic Racism
• William McDougall (psychologist)
• Harry Hamilton Laughlin
• Robert Yerkes
• Henry Fairfield Osborn
• Margaret Sanger
• Ernst Haeckel
• Carleton S. Coon
• The Passing of the Great Race
• Mankind Quarterly
• The Bell Curve
• Cattell Culture Fair III
• Cattell-Horn-Carroll theory (On this article and the next two, he said in his edit summary for adding this source that he was going to incorporate it into the article text, but that was three weeks ago and he still hasn’t)
• 16PF Questionnaire
• 16 Personality Factors

That’s 37 articles he added this to, not including however many he previously added it to and then had someone else later remove it. The books might be relevant to some of these articles, but I don’t feel they're relevant to all of them. WP:BOLD only goes so far, and it seems like more than just boldness to make a change thats likely to be controversial on at least 40 articles without any discussion. However, I’m also not about to go make 37 reverts. Is anyone willing to go through these articles, and figure out how many of them there are where the books that WeijiBaikeBianji added to the “further reading” section actually belong there?-SightWatcher (talk) 04:54, 28 November 2010 (UTC)