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Revision as of 19:15, 28 February 2005

Re: Talk:Confucius#Suggestions

I cannot tell that you're not a native English speaker! Your English seems native enough. You're too humble.

Maybe because I read to many Chinese writers ;)

Are you a native Chinese speaker?

Oh no! I'm French! (living now in Chengdu)

So I am. And I assure you, my English is nowhere near perfection. But I write nonetheless! And get corrected when other people notice my mistake -- that is the spirit of Wiki, collaboration and tolerance. --Menchi 07:21, 28 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for your advices, Menchi. I'll try to "be bold" but i have few time and I want to work also on fr.WP... Gbog 07:40, 28 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Image attribution

It's better to explicitly state the source (URL or a book) of a photo you uploaded, and say it in the image description pages (e.g., Image:Confucius 01.jpg) It is a responsibility to GFDL license. Thank you. --Menchi (Talk)â 17:55, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Well... i don't remember exactly where I found it... looking for it, I find this http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/~smao/Myself.html and my web-site http://afpc.asso.fr/wengu/wg/wengu.php?l=Lunyu

Say "Copyright status unknown; source unknown" in the image description page then (which obviously is not ideal). If you can find it, that's the best. --Menchi (Talk)â 18:16, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Ok, done it this way gbog

I browsed your website, and , do you build that yourself? It seems to be a huge project to set up a website like that!! It's wonderful! but ancient Chinese is quite tough for me to understand... :( --yacht (Talk) 13:01, Dec 20, 2003 (UTC)

Yes, I did it with my own little hands and bits of php ! gbog

Hi, don't worry about not knowing what had happened before with the Mother Teresa article. There's been quite a history to it over the last two months, which I expect would be near-to-impossible for someone new to the page to follow. A quick summary of it is that many people feel the page is POV and the criticisms section need to be worked on, but Eloquence feels very strongly that this section must stay in the article, and that the photographs are NPOV. I do advise that if you want to get involved with the page, you check over the archives to make sure you're not raising the same points again. Also, you should be aware that the article has been the cause of quite a few raised tempers, so you need to tread carefully and not take criticisms personally if they are made against you. Good luck if you do get involved. Personally, I'm staying out of it. :) By the way, there's an NPOV tutorial which might help. Angela. 04:40, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for advices. I will try to do something (be bold, ô my heart!)... I hope everybody share the same tiny goal: be able to remove the POV flag...

Very brave! :) Angela.

Please calm down. I've looked at your website and I think you're a very intelligent person. I understand you're trying to help. But please take a step back and read through my arguments. I really hope we can work together productively, especially when it comes to adding information to the article. I only ask you to accept my basic position not to remove relevant facts. As soon as you do that, I'm sure that we will be able to cooperate well. Please allow for the possibility that I am correct.—Eloquence

Again, please stop being so aggressive. Try to work with me here.—Eloquence

When you will stop taking me for an idiot.gbog

And when you will show you try to work with me "also". gbog

I see you are the latest contributor to the Mother Teresa article that Eloquence has tried to bully, ridicule and patronise into letting him have his own way. At this stage Eloquence's behaviour here has become notorious (the comments made about it on AIM and in emails are a howl!) Don't be afraid to defend your view and ignore any threats. Lots of luck with the . . . eh . . . experience. :-) FearÉIREANN 23:30, 20 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I don't know what is AIM and I'd like to see the comments on this little campfire :) gbog

AOL Instant Messenger. I guess FearÉIREANN received some messages there. --Menchi (Talk)â 03:36, 21 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Thanks, Menchi

on mt

minor comments

Good luck with Mother Theresa article, sir. Eloquence is obviously quite knowledgeable, and has interesting points, but seems to me to want to use the article as a propaganda piece a bit, and displays a sad tendency to ad hominem attacks (which is unfortunate as otherwise he seems intelligent). I myself definitely don't care enough to wade into that mess :)

Yes, and ad hominem attacks from a sysop to a new Wikipedian is not exactly what I would call a good thing.gbog

From the top of one of your pages:

"that's what say's Routledge article about Confucius and Confucianism."

I suggest rather this:

"is what is written in the Routledge article about Confucius and Confucianism."

Notes: "say's" should not have an apostrophe, and "that's what says" sounds awkward, and too informal for written English. "Routledge" needs either an apostrophe, or else an article (an article makes it a noun used as an adjective here).

(I'm not a professional editor at all, so I just try to explain my understanding, which as a native speaker, is sometimes too intuitive and insufficiently educated to be explained decently.)

Thanks for to this note. Very useful. I have corrected the page. Any other suggestions highly welcomed, my English is saaoo bad :)

Instead of trying to start silly fights all over Misplaced Pages, how about working to improve the actual article? I've responded to your criticisms and rewrote the article in parts. Please respond if you consider these changes acceptable. If you think the changes to the NPOV tutorial are not, please explain your dissent. You seem be in passive-aggressive mode right now. That won't bring us forward.—Eloquence

I am in passive agressive mode because

• you unfairly reverted me (->passive mode)
• you don't allow me to edit the FAQ you write on MT discussion page (->passive mode)
• nearly each time I suggest any change, you try your best to avoid making the change, as if it was your thing that I am not allowed to touch (->passive mode again)
• you attacked me ad hominem (agressive mode), and deleted my answers. See User:Gbog/Baston

Silly questions: Why not changing the way you mess with new people in Misplaced Pages? Do you think that your attitude is the proper one for a sysop? gbog 11:22, 21 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I think I've made it quite clear that I'm willing to work with you on the facts, the phrases that are used, the attributions etc. I just won't accept the removal of significant criticisms of Mother Teresa. That's all that I ask you to respect. Can you? —Eloquence

I think you have made clear, with me and many other ones, including fully respected Wikinausors I guess, that you don't want to works with others people on the edit on this article. I don't ask you to accept removals of any kind, I just ask you to consider other people equally allowed as you are to edit this article or others. gbog

If that's the case, why did I just make half a dozen edits in response to your suggestions?—Eloquence

Answer is obvious: you feel guilty. gbog

Just a warning: More than three reverts in a row are a violation of Misplaced Pages:revert policy.—Eloquence

A plea: I don't want to fight you. But simply removing info from wikipedia will not only not stand, but will get someone who tries to shunt it off lose credibility. (Cimon)

I did not intend to remove info from wp (but I may have unintentionally deleted something). What I think is not clear enough, off-topic, or has too much pov taste, I try to fix it. If I don't manage that, I may take the thing to the discussion page after asking for, so it can be easilly reworked.gbog

Hi gbog, the Mother Teresa discussions on the village pump were turning into nothing but a slanging match so I've refactored and moved only what was relevant to the NPOV tutorial talk page. You said on the pump "I have few info on few topics and I'd like to share them, that my goal here. I thought if was enough". Absolutely - do that! Don't let this episode put you off. I'm sure you can find a calmer place to edit than the MT article. It might be a good idea to take a break from it for a bit to let things cool down. They seem to be reaching boiling point again. Anyway, don't burn yourself out on it. Angela. 05:05, 22 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Don't worry, I am cool, and your refactoring is nice :) (but I don't like very much to be attacked and taken for an idiot, that's human...) gbog

Angela, as nobody is touching MT, and as I think frozen war will not make the MT article walk alone to npov, I will do little edits, if you don't mind. I just wanted you to now that I appreciated your advices and would have followed them (taking a break from MT) if there was some other editors on the task.

Just remember, gbog, that whenever you feel insulted at some corners of WP, you can always come to write about ancient China! There's little, if any, attack nowadays re: such subjects! :-) --Menchi (Talk)â 06:19, 22 Dec 2003 (UTC)

You are perfectly right!

Boilerplate permission text

Hi Gbog, thanks for the correction. The page with boilerplate texts is: Misplaced Pages:Boilerplate text, there are also some custom messages at Misplaced Pages:MediaWiki custom messages, however the permission text is at Misplaced Pages:Boilerplate request for permission. Good luck, and let me know if you have any more questions. Dori | Talk 17:54, Jan 11, 2004 (UTC)

Three Character Classic

Thanks for pointing out the information I lost with that grammar fix; I've tried to put it back, but I've added a note (on Talk:Three Character Classic, so others can spot it) that you might want to look at. - IMSoP 14:53, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Li Po

Hi, I've answered on my talk page. Markalexander100 04:14, 22 May 2004 (UTC)

Great link

Woa! The French Chinese teacher site you linked at Du Mu is amazing! The bilingual hovering mouse stuff is my favourite function. Thanks for sharing the fantastic link! --Menchi 08:39, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Your compliment touches my heart : This text base is my work, my little baby, my insignificant gift to Chinese culture :)

Now I'm trying to categorize a little bit China related articles I'm watching, but I'm not shure if I do it properly and I found very few docs about that "Category:Shemesheme" scheme. If you know a little about it and think it should be done differently (or later), tell me. gbog 08:51, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Oh, is that your site? I came across it a few months ago, and since then I've been recommending it to everyone! Markalexander100 09:36, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Nice to hear that ! gbog

Firefox problem

moved from Talk:Mozilla Firefox:

Hello, this is probably not the right place to ask that. I recently downloaded Firefox and am happy with it. I only have problems with few sites, and especially with wikipedia : links are underlined with a stroke that is touching the bottom of letters, and the result is ugly ang hard to read. Do I have to correct this myself in a personalized css or shall the GUI developpers be warned that a kind of bug has to be fixed ? gbog 15:27, 2004 Oct 17 (UTC)

Hi; it seems you're not the only one to have this problem, but I can't seem to reproduce it myself. Clear your cache, and if the problem's still there, perhaps you could give some more details: What version of Windows/MacOS// are you using? Does anything other than the skin make a difference (e.g. logging in/out)? Please respond on my talk page so I'll spot it; thanks. - IMSoP 17:49, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)

In response to your response on my talk page:

Well, the reason I suggested you "clear your cache" (an over-simplification, obviously you only need to flush out the appropriate parts) was in case somebody had actually fixed the problem before I saw your comment - i.e. the reason I couldn't reproduce it was that I had a fixed CSS file which your browser hadn't loaded. Try holding down a ridiculous variety of modifier keys - contrary to people's instructions, I'm sure I've had Ctrl-Shift-R do something different from Ctrl-R, though I may have been imagining it.

Otherwise, well, we now know that I'm using exactly the same OS as you, so it's not that. I've also hunted through CSS files, and the font specified by Monobook appears to just be "sans-serif", so it's a pretty big deal if that is breaking Firefox. Just as a quick check, can you try pasting the following in to your address bar: to me, the text appears with a nice, normal, helpful underline just below the text, just like links on Misplaced Pages or any other site. Does it exhibit the problem for you?

data:text/html,<a href="data:text/plain,You followed the link" style="font: sans-serif">This is a link</a>

I admit, I'm pretty stumped here; not just because I don't have the in-depth knowledge of CSS to diagnose the error, but because I can't see any reason it should be different in my WaterquailFirefox from yours, unless you have a different stylesheet cached somewhere... - IMSoP 15:52, 19 Oct 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)

Re: Talk:Confucius#Suggestions

I cannot tell that you're not a native English speaker! Your English seems native enough. You're too humble.

Maybe because I read to many Chinese writers ;)

Are you a native Chinese speaker?

Oh no! I'm French! (living now in Chengdu)

So I am. And I assure you, my English is nowhere near perfection. But I write nonetheless! And get corrected when other people notice my mistake -- that is the spirit of Wiki, collaboration and tolerance. --Menchi 07:21, 28 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for your advices, Menchi. I'll try to "be bold" but i have few time and I want to work also on fr.WP... Gbog 07:40, 28 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Image attribution

It's better to explicitly state the source (URL or a book) of a photo you uploaded, and say it in the image description pages (e.g., Image:Confucius 01.jpg) It is a responsibility to GFDL license. Thank you. --Menchi (Talk)â 17:55, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Well... i don't remember exactly where I found it... looking for it, I find this http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/~smao/Myself.html and my web-site http://afpc.asso.fr/wengu/wg/wengu.php?l=Lunyu

Say "Copyright status unknown; source unknown" in the image description page then (which obviously is not ideal). If you can find it, that's the best. --Menchi (Talk)â 18:16, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Ok, done it this way gbog

I browsed your website, and , do you build that yourself? It seems to be a huge project to set up a website like that!! It's wonderful! but ancient Chinese is quite tough for me to understand... :( --yacht (Talk) 13:01, Dec 20, 2003 (UTC)

Yes, I did it with my own little hands and bits of php ! gbog

Hi, don't worry about not knowing what had happened before with the Mother Teresa article. There's been quite a history to it over the last two months, which I expect would be near-to-impossible for someone new to the page to follow. A quick summary of it is that many people feel the page is POV and the criticisms section need to be worked on, but Eloquence feels very strongly that this section must stay in the article, and that the photographs are NPOV. I do advise that if you want to get involved with the page, you check over the archives to make sure you're not raising the same points again. Also, you should be aware that the article has been the cause of quite a few raised tempers, so you need to tread carefully and not take criticisms personally if they are made against you. Good luck if you do get involved. Personally, I'm staying out of it. :) By the way, there's an NPOV tutorial which might help. Angela. 04:40, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for advices. I will try to do something (be bold, ô my heart!)... I hope everybody share the same tiny goal: be able to remove the POV flag...

Very brave! :) Angela.

Please calm down. I've looked at your website and I think you're a very intelligent person. I understand you're trying to help. But please take a step back and read through my arguments. I really hope we can work together productively, especially when it comes to adding information to the article. I only ask you to accept my basic position not to remove relevant facts. As soon as you do that, I'm sure that we will be able to cooperate well. Please allow for the possibility that I am correct.—Eloquence

Again, please stop being so aggressive. Try to work with me here.—Eloquence

When you will stop taking me for an idiot.gbog

And when you will show you try to work with me "also". gbog

I see you are the latest contributor to the Mother Teresa article that Eloquence has tried to bully, ridicule and patronise into letting him have his own way. At this stage Eloquence's behaviour here has become notorious (the comments made about it on AIM and in emails are a howl!) Don't be afraid to defend your view and ignore any threats. Lots of luck with the . . . eh . . . experience. :-) FearÉIREANN 23:30, 20 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I don't know what is AIM and I'd like to see the comments on this little campfire :) gbog

AOL Instant Messenger. I guess FearÉIREANN received some messages there. --Menchi (Talk)â 03:36, 21 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Thanks, Menchi

on mt

minor comments

Good luck with Mother Theresa article, sir. Eloquence is obviously quite knowledgeable, and has interesting points, but seems to me to want to use the article as a propaganda piece a bit, and displays a sad tendency to ad hominem attacks (which is unfortunate as otherwise he seems intelligent). I myself definitely don't care enough to wade into that mess :)

Yes, and ad hominem attacks from a sysop to a new Wikipedian is not exactly what I would call a good thing.gbog

From the top of one of your pages:

"that's what say's Routledge article about Confucius and Confucianism."

I suggest rather this:

"is what is written in the Routledge article about Confucius and Confucianism."

Notes: "say's" should not have an apostrophe, and "that's what says" sounds awkward, and too informal for written English. "Routledge" needs either an apostrophe, or else an article (an article makes it a noun used as an adjective here).

(I'm not a professional editor at all, so I just try to explain my understanding, which as a native speaker, is sometimes too intuitive and insufficiently educated to be explained decently.)

Thanks for to this note. Very useful. I have corrected the page. Any other suggestions highly welcomed, my English is saaoo bad :)

Instead of trying to start silly fights all over Misplaced Pages, how about working to improve the actual article? I've responded to your criticisms and rewrote the article in parts. Please respond if you consider these changes acceptable. If you think the changes to the NPOV tutorial are not, please explain your dissent. You seem be in passive-aggressive mode right now. That won't bring us forward.—Eloquence

I am in passive agressive mode because

• you unfairly reverted me (->passive mode)
• you don't allow me to edit the FAQ you write on MT discussion page (->passive mode)
• nearly each time I suggest any change, you try your best to avoid making the change, as if it was your thing that I am not allowed to touch (->passive mode again)
• you attacked me ad hominem (agressive mode), and deleted my answers. See User:Gbog/Baston

Silly questions: Why not changing the way you mess with new people in Misplaced Pages? Do you think that your attitude is the proper one for a sysop? gbog 11:22, 21 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I think I've made it quite clear that I'm willing to work with you on the facts, the phrases that are used, the attributions etc. I just won't accept the removal of significant criticisms of Mother Teresa. That's all that I ask you to respect. Can you? —Eloquence

I think you have made clear, with me and many other ones, including fully respected Wikinausors I guess, that you don't want to works with others people on the edit on this article. I don't ask you to accept removals of any kind, I just ask you to consider other people equally allowed as you are to edit this article or others. gbog

If that's the case, why did I just make half a dozen edits in response to your suggestions?—Eloquence

Answer is obvious: you feel guilty. gbog

Just a warning: More than three reverts in a row are a violation of Misplaced Pages:revert policy.—Eloquence

A plea: I don't want to fight you. But simply removing info from wikipedia will not only not stand, but will get someone who tries to shunt it off lose credibility. (Cimon)

I did not intend to remove info from wp (but I may have unintentionally deleted something). What I think is not clear enough, off-topic, or has too much pov taste, I try to fix it. If I don't manage that, I may take the thing to the discussion page after asking for, so it can be easilly reworked.gbog

Hi gbog, the Mother Teresa discussions on the village pump were turning into nothing but a slanging match so I've refactored and moved only what was relevant to the NPOV tutorial talk page. You said on the pump "I have few info on few topics and I'd like to share them, that my goal here. I thought if was enough". Absolutely - do that! Don't let this episode put you off. I'm sure you can find a calmer place to edit than the MT article. It might be a good idea to take a break from it for a bit to let things cool down. They seem to be reaching boiling point again. Anyway, don't burn yourself out on it. Angela. 05:05, 22 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Don't worry, I am cool, and your refactoring is nice :) (but I don't like very much to be attacked and taken for an idiot, that's human...) gbog

Angela, as nobody is touching MT, and as I think frozen war will not make the MT article walk alone to npov, I will do little edits, if you don't mind. I just wanted you to now that I appreciated your advices and would have followed them (taking a break from MT) if there was some other editors on the task.

Just remember, gbog, that whenever you feel insulted at some corners of WP, you can always come to write about ancient China! There's little, if any, attack nowadays re: such subjects! :-) --Menchi (Talk)â 06:19, 22 Dec 2003 (UTC)

You are perfectly right!

Boilerplate permission text

Hi Gbog, thanks for the correction. The page with boilerplate texts is: Misplaced Pages:Boilerplate text, there are also some custom messages at Misplaced Pages:MediaWiki custom messages, however the permission text is at Misplaced Pages:Boilerplate request for permission. Good luck, and let me know if you have any more questions. Dori | Talk 17:54, Jan 11, 2004 (UTC)

Three Character Classic

Thanks for pointing out the information I lost with that grammar fix; I've tried to put it back, but I've added a note (on Talk:Three Character Classic, so others can spot it) that you might want to look at. - IMSoP 14:53, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Li Po

Hi, I've answered on my talk page. Markalexander100 04:14, 22 May 2004 (UTC)

Great link

Woa! The French Chinese teacher site you linked at Du Mu is amazing! The bilingual hovering mouse stuff is my favourite function. Thanks for sharing the fantastic link! --Menchi 08:39, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Your compliment touches my heart : This text base is my work, my little baby, my insignificant gift to Chinese culture :)

Now I'm trying to categorize a little bit China related articles I'm watching, but I'm not shure if I do it properly and I found very few docs about that "Category:Shemesheme" scheme. If you know a little about it and think it should be done differently (or later), tell me. gbog 08:51, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Oh, is that your site? I came across it a few months ago, and since then I've been recommending it to everyone! Markalexander100 09:36, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Nice to hear that ! gbog

Firefox problem

moved from Talk:Mozilla Firefox:

Hello, this is probably not the right place to ask that. I recently downloaded Firefox and am happy with it. I only have problems with few sites, and especially with wikipedia : links are underlined with a stroke that is touching the bottom of letters, and the result is ugly ang hard to read. Do I have to correct this myself in a personalized css or shall the GUI developpers be warned that a kind of bug has to be fixed ? gbog 15:27, 2004 Oct 17 (UTC)

Hi; it seems you're not the only one to have this problem, but I can't seem to reproduce it myself. Clear your cache, and if the problem's still there, perhaps you could give some more details: What version of Windows/MacOS// are you using? Does anything other than the skin make a difference (e.g. logging in/out)? Please respond on my talk page so I'll spot it; thanks. - IMSoP 17:49, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)

In response to your response on my talk page:

Well, the reason I suggested you "clear your cache" (an over-simplification, obviously you only need to flush out the appropriate parts) was in case somebody had actually fixed the problem before I saw your comment - i.e. the reason I couldn't reproduce it was that I had a fixed CSS file which your browser hadn't loaded. Try holding down a ridiculous variety of modifier keys - contrary to people's instructions, I'm sure I've had Ctrl-Shift-R do something different from Ctrl-R, though I may have been imagining it.

Otherwise, well, we now know that I'm using exactly the same OS as you, so it's not that. I've also hunted through CSS files, and the font specified by Monobook appears to just be "sans-serif", so it's a pretty big deal if that is breaking Firefox. Just as a quick check, can you try pasting the following in to your address bar: to me, the text appears with a nice, normal, helpful underline just below the text, just like links on Misplaced Pages or any other site. Does it exhibit the problem for you?

data:text/html,<a href="data:text/plain,You followed the link" style="font: sans-serif">This is a link</a>

I admit, I'm pretty stumped here; not just because I don't have the in-depth knowledge of CSS to diagnose the error, but because I can't see any reason it should be different in my WaterquailFirefox from yours, unless you have a different stylesheet cached somewhere... - IMSoP 15:52, 19 Oct 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)

Chinese philosophers

I've been adding the Category 'Chinese philosophers' to various articles, including some that I've started, but have just discovered that the Category is up for deletion. I can't find any discussion, or even an entry on the CfD page. Has it already been decided? I'd be sorry, because your Edit summary is surely incorrect; scientists, theologians, historians, etc., are all thinkers, but they're not philosophers. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 11:21, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The problem is that some say there is a Chinese philosophy, some say there is nothing of the kind. My opinion on this is not fixed yet, as I don't understand exactly what philosophy is, but I'm pretty sure that our Western categories don't work well in Chinese world. If Wang Chong may be a little close to our idea of a philosopher (because he's using suspicion as a tool for understanding the world), others like Confucius, Mencius or (worse) Lao Zi, are all but philosophers (in the narrow sense), mostly because Truth isn't their aim, and Logical reasonning isn't their mean. That's the reason why I'd prefer a category like "Chinese thinker", where we could include Sima Qian, than "Chinese philosopher" which is narrow and western-centric. Having both may be a solution but I read the policies were to try to avoid overlapping categories whenever possible. gbog 09:17, 2005 Feb 27 (UTC)

I don't know anyone living (at least, no-one significant in the field) who says that there's no such thing as Chinese philosophy; that was a claim made in the past by those who had a very narrow notion of Western philosophy, and little or no knowledge of anything else. Chinese philosophy is fully represented in mainstream philosophy texts, both more academic (see for example A Companion to the Philosophers ed. Robert L. Arrington; 2001: Blackwell) and more popular (see for example One Hundred Philosophers Peter J. King; 2004: Barrons). (I also disagree with the claim that Confucius and Mencius weren't concerned with truth, or that they didn't use reason in their attempt to discover and argue for it — but see below.)

The Chinese themselves certainly distinguish between philosophers and other thinkers. There's obviously a problem when one goes further back in time, and it becomes more difficult to distinguish between philosophers and more general teachers of morality or good governance — but the same is true of Western philosophy, expecially with regard to much of the late-Classical early-Mediæval period. Speaking as a professional philosopher myself, I have no problem with the idea that much of Chinese philosophy is as philosophical as Western philosophy.

The question of overlapping categories is a different matter, of course. I'd prefer to think of Philosophers as a sub-category of Thinkers, rather than as overlapping. Perhaps that would solve the problem? After all, there are many Western philosophers who would figure in more than one subcatgory of 'Western thinkers' (Kant is claimed by geographers, Descartes and Leibniz by mathematicians, Hume by historians, etc. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 11:39, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I have heard about Hegel denying the existence of Chinese philosophy. I know he is dead but I guess this kind of guy must have a reason to say that. I read a little bit of Wang Chong, more of Xun Zi and Confucius and the difference with Socrates' way (as read in Plato) is really amazing. I don't see many links between the two different ways. But I'm no professional philosopher, and therefore not qualified to determine the fields and methods of philosophy. the name of Thinker category probably came to my mind because I'm often consulting la Pensée Chinoise, written by Marcel Granet. That said, I don't care that much. I do care more when articles about Philosophy here don't say a word on Eastern part of the world.

I'm afraid that the sad truth is that some philosophers, including Hegel and (even more disappointingly) Kant and Hume, were racists. One can try to excuse them by pointing to the times and cultures in which they lived, but that's no excuse for a philosopher. As for the Socratic method — very few Western philosophers have followed it either. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 19:15, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)