Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 00:44, 25 December 2004

Hello and welcome to Misplaced Pages!

Here are some tips to help you get started:

• If you haven't already, please add your name to the new user log to let others know a little about yourself.
• Read the Tutorial, and feel free to experiment in the Sandbox.
• Eventually, you might want to read the Manual of Style and Policies and Guidelines.
• If you need help, post a question at the Help Desk or ask me on my talk page.
• Explore, be bold in editing pages, and, most importantly, have fun!

Good luck!
Jrdioko

P.S. One last helpful hint. To sign your posts like I did above (on talk pages, for example) use the '~' symbol. To insert just your name, type ~~~ (3 tildes), or, to insert your name and timestamp, use ~~~~ (4 tildes).

Your welcome basket

Well if you insist, here's your welcome basket, Misplaced Pages style:

• Some fresh fruit
• Ghirardelli squares with lots of caramel

Enjoy!  – Jrdioko (Talk) 05:58, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Talk:Eddie Murphy

Perhaps you would like to add a comment to the debate on this page. Rmhermen 16:35, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)

Jazzy Welcome

A belated welcome from me as well. I'm glad to have you on board! I'll no doubt be seeing you around jazz related articles. Cheers, -- Infrogmation 18:20, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Jacking in from African American

Welcome. I had a bit of response about race riot over in Talk:African American, but I thought I'd add something here as well. I really admire the combination of cold rage and cold hard facts that you've put into that article.

I wonder what you think of blackface. I put a lot of stuff into that that confused people, but I think it has held up against the mind-numbers. The scale of injustice may not be quite the same, but I had some hassles straightening out the redneck article (my people, sort of), which was nothing but stupid jokes when I got there. Really stupid jokes.

Is there a black venue where you could promote Misplaced Pages contribution? Something online? Good luck, anyway. Ortolan88 22:50, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)

PS-later -- I appreciate your thoughtfulness and compliments re blackface, but it has caused me to think more about perhaps starting an article on black influence on popular culture. You probably don't hate Elvis as much as I hate Led Zeppelin, but these white guys (including me) really do love black music. I sound kind of black when I sing, because almost all the singers I like are black. Such an article could wrap up lots of stuff, particularly the profound influence of black musicians on country music, where many of the greatest names had black mentors, Elvis (Ike Turner), Hank Williams, Carl Perkins, etc. I'm just making notes here, but I observe that white jazz musicians for the most part do not try to do the Mick Jagger thing, but simply play and let the show-biz stuff go, but that goes for black jazz musicians too. I'll let you know when I start anything.

As for black venues, how about fraternities and sororitys? Keep on keeping on, Ortolan88 23:24, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

More on Blackface/Ortolan

Hey, Ortolan *waving*. Sorry to be so late responding, but I'm a techno-idiot and just figured out how to do this. I like, pretty much, the most recent changes to African American. (I'm even warming to the divisions.) I took a look at your piece on blackface and made some changes. However, I removed the stuff about white artists covering black artists, because it's simply not blackface. Yeah, it's white folks stealing black music and/or mimicking performance styles, but it's not the same -- and, I think, somewhat diminishes the value of the black innovators being ripped off. Instead, I stuck in a quote which, perhaps, says more succinctly what you may have had in mind. I think you did a respectable job with the subject, and I'm glad you tackled it.

As far as getting more black folks to contribute to Misplaced Pages, I don't know anyone. Most of my friends and associates are activisits who, frankly, have better, more real-world things to do -- battles to fight, wrongs to right -- that kinda stuff. I did once make mention of Misplaced Pages on BlackPlanet a long while back, but that place has turned into such a cesspool, I think another mention would simply attract vandalism. What can ya do? Peace. deeceevoice 17:48, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Went back and reread, then restored your cover stuff. Thought it important (I hate Elvis!) and noticed the language about "admiration." Cool. :-) deeceevoice 22:33, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I've gone back and even more substantially reworked, rewritten and expanded blackface to include its racist iconography and impact on American culture. I had to -- particularly after noting the igorance/naivete of some of the comments in the discussion thread. Besides, IMO, it's too important in the shaping of the American psyche (how I wanted to use that word, but I figured some ignorant asshole would flag it as violating NPOV) shouldn't be treated as merely as an entertainment phenomenon. Let me know what you think. Peace. deeceevoice 15:47, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Hadn't heard from you on my recent extensive rewrite/edits to blackface after posting the above notes to your page. So, I thought I'd post them here. deeceevoice 00:41, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Welcome aboard.

Hi,

I am enjoying, and agreeing with, your comments on the race page. That article was the third thing I looked at on Misplaced Pages (after spiders and carrier pigeons -- both topics on which hard-bound encyclopedias regularly mess up). Wow! It started with a fight with somebody who was really interested in preserving the idea of race as a real thing out there in the real world. It's gotten a lot better than it was at that time, but it is one of those articles that we are going to have to watch forevermore because people will come in and "fix" it to suit what they think they know. Fortunately, although a couple of the current contributors are IMHO tactless, I don't think anybody is currently not operating in good faith or with a crimped intellect.

One thing I've noticed is that if I do not let my ego get involved I can be much more effective in securing changes over the long run. The other thing is that if we once get something said exactly right it has its own power and can pretty much take care of itself because most of the people who might change a poorer version of the same truth on the basis of their own thinking are actually educated by the article, see the justice in the way the matter is explained, and therefore let it alone.

Once in a while you will find the glorious exception to general Misplaced Pages practice, somebody who disagrees with you, maybe wants to change something you've put much effort into, actually reads your response and then says, "Now I understand. And the article should also reflect more clear that other thing you just wrote." Maybe you, too, will have the pleasure of bumping into Fenice somewhere on these virtual pages. Pat (P0M 11:23, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC))

P.S. On your most recent edit to the talk page for the Race article I think you ticked the "This is a minor edit" box. Ordinarily people only use that if they made no substantive change (i.e., fixed a spelling error, added a comma). It helps people who are seriously interested in an article, however, to know when a significant change has occurred, so if there is any doubt in my mind I left it unchecked. That way nobody will flame me for messing with their perfect prose. ;-)

"Talk"

When you get to the user page, just click on the "discussion" tab, and then click "edit this page" (or click the + symbol to add something new. (Hope that answers your question, I am a bit of a newbie too) Guettarda 19:13, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Racism at Misplaced Pages?

Have you happened to come across an Egyptologist here? There's a statement at Talk:List of interracial, interethnic or intercultural couples that I was going to just leave but I think I should speak to it, or visitors will just assume it to be true.

Can you also look at Talk:Black British usage and tell me if you think this person was attempting a joke?

Quill 22:26, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Response at Quill's page Quill 21:21, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Appreciation and Question and Request

Firstly, appreciated your tremendous improvements to soul food. I have two questions in that regard. 1) Do you think that "fat back" should be added, or at least mentioned. 2)Do you think that cabbage ought to be mentioned as a common ingredient in chow-chow? Another request (based on your screen name): Would you consider looking at my article District of Columbia home rule with an eye to improving it? It's been several years since I lived in the District area, but the idea of citizens of the U.S. mainland being essentially unrepresented in Congress and without effective control over their municiapl government is still pretty disturbing, and seemed to need its own article with a slightly different emphasis (more historical) than the good section on the Washington, DC page. Thanks! Rlquall 15:22, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

For the record:

I'm not Japanese. I have lived in the United States almost all of my life. Right now, I live in North Philadelphia and walk up Broad Street every day, through the heart of one of America's largest black communities. I don't profess to be an expert on African-American culture, but I have studied ethnography and world cultures for years, and I have worked on a number of diversity-related projects in my predominantly Afro-Caribbean high school and in my higher education. Your assumptions about my background are therefore entirely false.

I'm not mad at you, but I suggest that you exercise slightly better judgment in the future if you want people to take you seriously. In fact, I strongly suggest that you re-read Pat's note above. It's entirely true and it will probably save you a great many unnecessary fights. Name-calling does not win on Misplaced Pages; facts win on Misplaced Pages. - Sekicho 21:56, Nov 30, 2004 (UTC)

"Name-calling"? WHAT name calling? Secondly, I have some advice for you. Before you crticize an article in which many people have invested a great deal of time and effort, it might help if you took time to READ it. (It would save you the trouble of writing paragraphs and paragraphs of crap -- and then going back and deleting them, as you've done.) Further, you're welcome for the patient advice I extended to you -- despite your obvious attitude. Thirdly, you say you've studied ethnography for a number of years. Yet you presume to say (and quite erroneously) that African-Americans are not an ethnic group? Amazing. Not only have you lived here all your life, but you've studied to be so abysmally clueless. LOL Further, I already am taken seriously on Misplaced Pages, thank you very much. I've made numerous contributions to several subjects dealing with African-Americans that, IMO, have made them far better than they would have been without my input. And that's a fact. :-p deeceevoice 22:31, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Etymology of "hip" and "dig" in Hipster

I noticed that you changed the statements about the etymology of "hip" and "dig" in Hipster to state that the "likely" origin is from Wolof. From some cursory research, it looks like these hypotheses are due to Prof. Clarence Major of UC Davis, but are very far from being broadly accepted. Is there particular scientific evidence you know of that renders these substantially "likelier" than the various other alternative etymologies that have been proposed?

I understand that this topic may be somewhat political, since all of us who are descended from relatively small ethnic groups (myself included) are wont to take some amount of pride in evidence of English borrowing from our ancestral language. However, as a linguist (by training), I'm wary of statements as fact (or as "likely" fact) of etymologies that are not established as such (by the proper standards of the linguistic community, which are substantially more rigorous than folk etymologies might have you believe). Zyqqh 19:10, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

It's got nothing to do with wishful thinking. There are lots of words Africa has contributed to the English language via African-American input. The hipster argot originated with black jazz musicians and the use of AAVE. Certain slang words were merely appropriated by white hangers on. It is far more likely that "dig" is from Wolof than from Irish because of the cultural milieu in which it is in evidence -- along with the fact that there are other slang words in AAVE -- also in use in hipster argot -- that are African in origin. Jazz is an African-American creation. The "fraternity," if you will, of black jazz musicians had its origins in areas of the country and at a time in which the black community was still highly insular/segregated/separated and in many ways was still highly Africanized -- Thelonius Monk, for instance, jumping up from the piano and shuffling around counterclockwise. The moments of the sun.

Irish? That's a real stretch -- and certainly far less likely than African origins. If you have another source for "hep cat," I'd certainly be interested in hearing it. deeceevoice 19:47, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Article Licensing

Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Misplaced Pages's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. Since you are among the top 2000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:

• Multi-Licensing FAQ - Lots of questions answered
• Multi-Licensing Guide
• Free the Rambot Articles Project

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" template into their user page, but there are other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:

Option 1

I agree to ] all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}

OR

Option 2

I agree to ] all my contributions to any ], county, or city article as described below:

{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" with "{{MultiLicensePD}}". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. -- Ram-Man (comment| talk)

A note about the changes in the AAVE article

Thank you so much for contributing while I'm making such massive changes.

Here's the story. As an agreement with my linguistics professor, in leu of a paper on AAVE, I decided to fill the Misplaced Pages articles on the subject, since Misplaced Pages is my new thang. However, as is typical, I procrastinated a bit too long, and am now scouring whatever sources I have to get content into the page, so I have something to show. Some of it may be naïve or even outright wrong, but I'm trying as hard as I can to root what I say in respected fact and from an NPOV.

Anyway, thanks for proof-reading. :-) If I say something stupid, you don't have to bother to ask me what I meant, as I probably just overgeneralized from my hasty reading.

Thanks, Luqui 22:48, 2004 Dec 10 (UTC)

US music

Hi, I was wondering if you might be willing to give some thoughts on music of the United States, especially the section on black "roots" music. The article is already at 32k, so we can't put much more info in (and, of course, there is aleady an article on African American music itself), but it could use some TLC from someone who knows more, especially about blackface minstrelsy. I'd like to nominate US music as a featured article soon, so I'm trying to get everything tidied up. Thanks! Tuf-Kat 17:24, Dec 11, 2004 (UTC)

Hey, Tuf-Kat! Been seein' your work around Misplaced Pages. You a real music freak aincha, bwoi? :-p Well, I took a real quick look at only portions of some article subtopics, and I see problems all over the place. IMO, while the piece may be basically sound (I don't know; as I said, I haven't read it), from a quick look, I'd say this is a long way from bein' ready for prime time -- and not just the section on black roots music. I'd really like to help out, but stuff always seems to pile up just before the holidays, and this time is no exception. I just don't have time right now. How 'bout holding off 'til after the new year? It really does need some serious work in the black folks department.

You might want to invite User:Ortolan88 to comment on the piece. Based on his attempts with blackface, he seems to be a guy with some decent knowledge and appropriate (kind of) sensibilities when it comes to at least some of the later-era stuff vis-a-vis black folks. I'm not inviting him in, 'cause this is "your" thing; you decide. Don't know if he got the ass 'cause I extensively rewrote his piece (after he asked me in on it) or what, but dat bwoi jus' won't write me back! :-p But I think he may have some interesting/useful contributions, in general, as well.

Peace 2 u. deeceevoice 12:50, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Mau Mau Uprising

Thanks! The old article was definitely an embarrassment. I was just going to ignore it, but I couldn't get its sheer awfulness out of my head. It's basically jigsawed into my own contribution and there's still some cringeworthy stuff worthy of a massive edit, but at least it doesn't seem to conjure up images of the grass-skirt clad natives at the beginning of King Kong anymore.  ;) p.s. K=Kalorama? BanyanTree 04:27, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Oh, my God. "King Kong." LOL. :-D And, yes, "Kalorama." What? Are you in the neighborhood? deeceevoice 09:07, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Blackface references

Where are you getting your information from? Unless we get some references we can't really make it a featured article, and I'd like to see it as one as its well written (apart from the headings!) Ta bu shi da yu 12:42, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thanks mate :) I do appreciate your kind words! I'm always impressed by how encouraging people can be on this site, especially to people who aren't doing so well. I'm in a much better state now so I'll be reverting back. It's good to know that people are very kind on this site though :-) Anyway, I'd love to see some references and I'd love to see your hard work and well researched and written article get recognition around here! Apart from the fact that it'll make the article a lot more "solid" (not sure if that's the right term). Not sure if I agree about the comment on articles that hit featured article status, but I appreciate your honesty! If you have any specific objections to a specific article let me know and I'll see if we can get our FAC crew to look into them for us :-) Ta bu shi da yu 14:02, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Deeceevoice, I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed Blackface. It's a great read, very well written, very interesting. I've put my support for it on the page. Don't be discouraged! I've self-nominated two articles for Featured Article status now (so far, one has made it; I'm still working to improve the second). Both were heavily criticized to start with, and I know what that feels like when you've put a lot of work into something. It's gut-wrenching. But it's tough out there! Try to incorporate some of the objections; argue with the ones you really don't agree with; try to reach a compromise. Provide good references. It's a pain in the neck but you'll make it. Your article IS the best of Misplaced Pages and it deserves that label. Slim 10:12, Dec 15, 2004 (UTC)

Bias and Equal Protection

Couldn't agree with you more that there's systemic bias on Wikpedia. Glad you are trying to fix that; don't get discouraged; keep it up.

Apropos of this, are you interested in working on Equal Protection Clause with me? I don't know if you have any interest in the law at all, but if you do, please join me; the history of legal discrimination against minorities in the U.S. is a topic that has not yet gotten adequate treatment on Misplaced Pages. Hydriotaphia 20:13, Dec 16, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. One question, though—when you wrote, "When skimming the article, I was led to inquire about institutional racism and found it just appallingly abominable in so many ways -- not to mention itself racist as hell," were you talking about the article on institutional racism or the article on the Equal Protection Clause? If it was the latter, please do tell me. Best, Hydriotaphia 15:23, Dec 19, 2004 (UTC)

Oh, disregard the above; it's clear to me now that institutional racism was what you were talking about (at least so it seems to me). Jesus H. Christ, that article was absolutely awful before you got a hold of it. Uff da, as my people say. Especially horrible was that BS about the "far left." My personal take on all of this, though you may disagree, is that it's not so much racism as it is the kind of selfish and ridiculous libertarianism that is found everywhere on the internet among white people who for utterly foolish reasons have come to believe that they're being persecuted. But perhaps that's naive of me, and it's just straight-up racism. At any rate I really hope you won't give up on this. Can't stress enough how happy I am that you're here. Hydriotaphia 16:08, Dec 19, 2004 (UTC)

Hey, deeceevoice, I've got yet another favor to ask of you. Could you

1. Look over my Equal Protection Clause article when you have time, and if you support it, please add your support at the Featured article candidates page?
2. If you don't support it, please lay your criticisms on me!
3. I'm afraid that people are going to give me sh*t for my account of affirmative action in the article—not NPOV, etc. etc. Tell me what you think of it.

Hmm, this has turned into favors, not just one favor. Well—you don't have to do all of these things, obviously. (Or any of them, for that matter!) Happy holidays, Hydriotaphia 00:44, Dec 25, 2004 (UTC)