Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 23:14, 1 September 2005

Hallo Sarcelles! I've noted that you changed the section about "Flemish" dialects in the article about the Dutch language. You apparently based these changes on the Dutch article about Dutch and the German article about Limburgish. At first blush they seem very reasonable. They also pose a few major problems however:

I. You are now mixing up two irreconcilable systems. What most German linguists mean with Limburgisch-Bergisch is not the same either in range or interpretation as the Limburgs of linguists in the Low Countries. Hint: the old town of Limburg is today located in Germany.

II. You use Dutch and German names. However there are English ones and obviously these should be preferred, especially when they link to already existent articles.

III. You use the higher-level grouping of the Dutch article. It's not a very bad system and often used, but there is no consensus whatsoever among linguists about its validity. The relations between the various Low Franconian dialects are extremely complex. East Flemish in particular is very difficult to categorise. In some ways the southern Brabantic dialects and East Flemish are very closely related. That's one reason to talk about a Central Dialect Group. However there's also a very strong isogloss bundle between them, while there's none between the southern and more northern Brabantic dialects. And in some ways West Flemish and East Flemish are more closely related. So it seams preferable to me to use a more traditional and "atomistic" lower-level approach and to speak of four groups. Of course we should then add that according to some criteria East Flemish should be grouped with Brabantic.

IV Strangely however the system is in some ways too atomistic: it shows divisions where there are none. Now why should it do that? The answer is: Hollandocentrism. Holland has been for four centuries the dominant province in The Netherlands. The normal sociological process has taken place of creating a value system in which the Hollander is at the top and the others are his inferiors. To emphasize his uniqueness his language also has to be set apart. In reality however the standard Dutch the Hollander today uses is basically Brabantic in origin. To repress this painful truth defence mechanisms have been activated. One other reason to use the term Central Dialect Group, is that "Brabantic" can be avoided. Also the fact is hidden that Brabantic very gradually fades into present Hollandic. So artificial dialects are created in the system to form a buffer, like the non-existent Zuid-Gelders (no isogloss bundle exists) and the barely discernable Utrechts (very weak isogloss bundle). The same trick is used to keep the Flemish away by talking about Zeeuws which in fact is northern West Flemish. But is there no justification to be found to distinguish a separate Zeeuws in the fact that the dialect continuum is broken by the geographical division in several islands? No. For the dialect of each islands then would have be considered its own dialect group: they form no unity.

Do you find my remarks correct or do you disagree? I'll also put them on the talk page of Dutch, in case anyone else should care to comment.

--MWAK 09:23, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hallo MWAK,

your comments on Dutch are founded and seem valid. Thanks a lot, Sarcelles 20:13, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

No thanks: especially as I made a mistake in stating the town of Limburg was located in Germany: it's in fact located in de Voerstreek in Belgium, south of Dutch Limburg.--MWAK 07:51, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Ituri

I have moved Ituri war back to Ituri conflict. This is by far the most commmon name, albeit for a vastly underreported conflict. I'm not arguing that it does not fit some definition of war, but that it should go under the most common name, e.g. Darfur conflict. Many of the google hits for "Ituri war" are for "Ituri's war", which is not a proper title. Also, I have changed the link at List of current wars for Second Ugandan Civil War, listed as beginning in 1995, to the insurgency of the Lord's Resistance Army. 1995 roughly coincides with the collapse of the Bigombe talks and the beginning of Sudanese support so I think that's what it's referring to, though it's possible it's referring to the Allied Democratic Forces insurgency. Feel free to change it if I assumed the wrong rebel group. Cheers, BanyanTree 01:51, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

Please be more careful with your edits

Hi Sarcelles,

When I noticed that you switched your edit efforts to the English Misplaced Pages, I took the time to check some of your edits.

I noticed that you keep producing substub quality articles in English just the same way you did in nds:. I strongly urge you to put more effort in good quality and especially in longer articles. No one will be interested in articles about administrative parts of small towns in Germany. Especially not if it is just three sentences.

I also noticed your change in England. You added info about more religious communities. You added so many entries that it would be better to move that into a separate paragraph. The info box of a country has one simple purpose: to give an overview. This purpose is not fulfilled by listing all religios communities in the info box. (Besides you missed mine: Seventh days adventists :) ). One more thing: You listed Church of the Latter-Day Saints, which does not exist. This should not have passed unnoticed, after all the English Misplaced Pages already has more than 500.000 articles, so a religious community of 180.000 people can expected to be covered. Indeed it already is: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Please, please take care of your quality.

Heiko Evermann 19:24, 9 May 2005 (UTC) Hi Heiko Got your message. There is no need for 5 lines-articles. Particularly not careless ones. Regards, Sarcelles 09:25, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

Laogai

Hi Sarcelles, I appreciate your efforts in adding more information about laogai to Misplaced Pages, but don't you think that it's too specific to start articles about cities just for the purpose of describing laogai facilities there? Articles about American or European cities, for example, don't contain lists of prisons or prison abuses; even a list of schools, hospitals, courthouses or police stations is really pushing it. Many of the cities that you're describing have long, illustrious histories; interesting and unique local customs; and are hometowns of famous personnages. It's just strange to sum all of them up by describing the laogai camps there, and starting so many articles about individual geographical locations for the purpose of supporting one particular political voice is not particularly NPOV either.

Frankly, I would suggest collating all of the info you have into one single Laogai article. -- ran (talk) 14:53, May 15, 2005 (UTC)

I've brought this issue up at Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Chinese cities#Laogai articles. -- ran (talk) 15:11, May 15, 2005 (UTC)

I don't agree, that prisons in China are comparable in their importance to ,say, US prisons. Furthermore, the Laogai system is one of the main features of Mainland China of our days.

Sarcelles 12:31, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

I suggest further discussion to take place at Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Chinese cities#Laogai articles.

Sarcelles 12:35, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

I don't see the point in going to various articles about Chinese cities and putting up poorly worded sentence fragments about prisons. It would be much better if you were to focus on putting up one article focusing on the topic rather than posting all over the place. And yes I must agree with Ran, your articles are definitely not NPOV either.

-User:Abstrakt

Censorship

Sarcelles,

nice to talk to you again.

You said I have to criticize your habit of voting for deletion of German articles critical of Mainland China's system. - again an allegation, please give evidence. I never vote for deletion unless I spot articles that are clearly wrong, such as your masterpiece Chinesische Volksreligion. But this one has nothing to do with Mainland China's system, as you write. So, I am waiting for your evidence. -- Herr Klugbeisser 00:46, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Yes, Ah, Not Really.

As mentioned above, this dispute is going on on Misplaced Pages talk Chinese cities. Sarcelles 09:19, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

As mentioned on the talk page, personal allegations should be discussed on user talk pages. This is one reason why they exist.

So, where is your evidence? There is still plenty of space on my user talk page for this. -- Herr Klugbeisser 13:20, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Tetauni

Is this spelled correctly? The name of the city is Tétuan, it seems strange that the name of a dialect named after the city would be called Tetauni instead of Tetuani. Tomer 23:56, May 17, 2005 (UTC)

This is the spelling I know, independent from the article Ladino language, which uses Tetauni and Tetuani. Maybe it is best you decide, which title is better.

Sarcelles 06:06, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

For you

just in case you are interested: de:Chinesischer Volksglaube, I'm not yet 100% satisfied with this article, though. -- Herr Klugbeisser 11:00, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Thanks.

Sarcelles 11:16, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Tewu

Please look at Talk:Tewu. -- ran (talk) 17:06, Jun 18, 2005 (UTC)

Edit quality

Hi Sarcelles, I've been looking through your contribs and found that you have created MANY new articles. That is good. However, I noticed that most - if not all - of them are substandard. There is no wikification, and no elaboration. Of course, many articles start that way, but we would all appreciate it if you would place a

{{stub}}

template after each article that are not really well elaborated. Thanks. -Hmib 02:31, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I actually overestimated the formal quality of my recent edits.

I didn't realize my last article in this wiki was not written in English. Sarcelles 05:57, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Please use this template:

{{China-geo-stub}}

This Chinese location article is a stub. You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it.

• v
• t
• e

Also, seriously.... rather than starting one million tiny articles, why don't you focus on one city and write it out well? -- ran (talk) 06:32, Jun 20, 2005 (UTC)

First of all, using that template is a good point.

Writing a major article on a city currently not having an article is quite difficult, considering that I neither live in Asia nor in an English-speaking country. Translating fully developed German articles might be an option. Sarcelles 08:09, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Okay, Sarcelles... you really really need to improve the quality of your edits. Like Shihezi for example, the general quality was horrible until Physchim62 and Abstrakt cleaned it up for you. (And what is the "Xinjiang Cultivation Corps"? Can't you find the official translation of an organization before putting it down?)

The truth is, we need 1 well-written, comprehensive article more than we need 20 poorly-written stubs. Why don't you focus on one city and make it better, rather than the way you're doing it right now?

Finally, about the World Christian Encyclopedia, can you tell me where they get their numbers from, and what year those numbers are applicable for? -- ran (talk) 18:12, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)

The World Christian Encyclopedia uses figures from the 20th century. Sarcelles 21:10, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

No, look, I'm serious. Which year do those figures come from? And how are these figures collected? -- ran (talk) 21:30, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)

They come from the World Christian Encyclopedia, 2001 edition. It gives about the sources, that there is contextual evidence. Sarcelles 11:55, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

What kind of sources? What is "contextual" evidence? Do they say? As I said, the Chinese government does not conduct any survey of this kind. I'm not even sure if they give out the memberships for the official churches. So where did the World Christian Encyclopedia get it?

Also, the other question, which year are these applicable for? -- ran (talk) 16:52, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)

Contextual evidence is based on overalll figures on provinces, which are used as bases for the compilation of data for cities. I didn't find a year mentioned.

Sarcelles 08:24, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Well, the source probably is not reliable enough (World Christian Encyclopedia)

Sarcelles 30 June 2005 06:55 (UTC)

Sudanese localities with massacres

Hi Sarcelles,

Actually I'm not really a Misplaced Pages guru or anything, but my suggestion would be to write up the locale as one would write up any geographical location, and then note the historical events that took place there. This is the pattern I've seen in other articles, although I don't have any examples at hand. I think the sound approach is to describe the place as a place first, in general terms, and as the place where atrocities took place second -- as difficult as that may be on an emotional level, it's the encyclopedic approach... --babbage 10:25, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Cite sources

Please read and respect Misplaced Pages:Cite sources. Thank you.--Fenice 11:39, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Mandarin / Standard Mandarin

Please don't confuse the two. The zh: links you added to Mandarin point to the wrong places. -- ran (talk) 12:43, July 19, 2005 (UTC) Sorry. My attempt to seperate the two went wrong. Sarcelles 13:31, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

Chinese cities

Hi Sarcelles,

I'm sure you realize the amount of exasperation you've caused us due to the articles that you've been starting on Chinese cities. I don't really understand what you're trying to do... why are you trying to put up poorly-written articles about Chinese cities that you probably know nothing about? This does nothing but bring down the general quality of Misplaced Pages. If you're trying to help Misplaced Pages, then why are you causing us so much grief? Can you concentrate on something that you know more about instead? -- ran (talk) 00:53, July 21, 2005 (UTC)

Hi Ran,

I actually don't agree with this view. By now I wouldn't say I know nothing about this subject. Regards, Sarcelles 09:28, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

Really? Then why do you think there are at least four people (Abstrakt, Herr Klugbeisser, Hmib, and me) chasing after your edits, trying to check them as fast as you add them? Why do you think several non-English encyclopedias have taken action against your highly suspect edits?

Look, your problem is twofold: you have a credibility problem, and people don't trust what you add ever since several fiascos revealed your ignorance of the subject (e.g. Tewu). You also have a language problem, since your command of conventional written English standards is sub-par. You need to deal with these problems to become a fully welcome member of Misplaced Pages. -- ran (talk) 18:13, July 22, 2005 (UTC)

Articles on Churches

Hi Sarcelles. I wanted you to know that I'm chasing after you, proposing all the new articles on churches for deletion. The reason is I feel the subject matter is not notable, and the articles themselves are almost completely void of information. If you were to add a bunch of notable content, I'll vote to keep them, otherwise I think they should all go. Bubamara 10:46, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

If you wish to defend these articles, they are up for deletion at Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/Rawang churches. Cheers. --BaronLarf 14:11, July 28, 2005 (UTC)

More on Church articles

Could you please standardize the naming of your church articles? (i.e. calling them all churches, such as Akha churches, rather than alternating between Church, church, Churches and churches) It's just a real pain in the butt to find anything when they're all named differently, so they'll have to be moved, which is a ton of work for whoever has to do it. Thanks! --Scimitar 14:25, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

Re: Yue names of cities

What exactly are you actually looking for? :-) — Instantnood 20:16, August 10, 2005 (UTC)

I am looking for the pronunciation and English spelling of Yue names.

Sarcelles 20:20, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Do you mean the Cantonese pronunciation of the names of the cities in Guangdong? — Instantnood 20:46, August 10, 2005 (UTC)

I mean the local pronunciations of cities, where the native speakers of Yue form a majority.

Sarcelles 20:54, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Are you looking for information like those provided in brackets in the first sentences of Shenzhen and Kowloon? — Instantnood 21:02, August 10, 2005 (UTC)

Yes

Sarcelles 21:18, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

That's actually what I'm doing with place names in Hong Kong. Not sure if it should be done for Guangdong cities, as practically Cantonese is not as much an official language in Guangdong as it is in Hong Kong or Macao. — Instantnood 13:11, August 11, 2005 (UTC)

Re: Names of Chinese prefectures

Sorry.. what prefectures are you taking about? — Instantnood 13:10, September 1, 2005 (UTC)

I mean the fact, that it is misleading for European leaders if the name Baoding for example is used for both the prefecture and the city.

Sarcelles 13:12, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

Well these are prefecture-level city. — Instantnood 13:28, September 1, 2005 (UTC)

This is incomprehensible for most Americans.

Sarcelles 14:23, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

Hmm.. to make it simple and clear, the top level of the hierarchy are the provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities. The second level are prefectures, and many prefectures are having the city status. The third level are county-level divisions, that can be (rural) counties, a district within a prefecture-level city, or a county-level city. The third-level (or county-level) divisions are subordinate to those in the second-level (prefecture-level). — Instantnood 14:32, September 1, 2005 (UTC)

Americans might understand ,,province" as ,,state", but ,,prefecture-level"

city is not going to be understood as corresponding to ,,county" by most of them. Particularly if the title of the article is the same as the name of a city in the American meaning of ,,city". Sarcelles 14:53, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

The meaning of city as a level of administrative division varies from country to country, and Misplaced Pages is not written only for American readers. — Instantnood 15:35, September 1, 2005 (UTC)

The German and Polish words for city can be translated as ,,city". The Mandarin word can be translated as ,,city" or ,,prefecture".

Sarcelles 15:50, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

No.... there are two types of cities. One is second-order (i.e. prefecture-level) in the hierachy, and the other is third-order (county-level). Both are known as shì and translated as "city". The terms "prefecture-level city" (dìjí shì) and "county-level city" (xiànjí shì) tell which level a city belongs to. There are other prefecture-level divisions which are not designated as cities. — Instantnood 16:10, September 1, 2005 (UTC)

Sarcelles, I'm an American myself and I have no trouble comprehending the various political divisions of China, I think it is just you having having difficulty understanding the political terms. I don't mean to pick on you but your English language skills are a bit sub-par. Anyway please refer to Political divisions of China if you need help understanding the political divisions of China. And to add to what Instantnood has already said, Misplaced Pages is not written with the sole purpose of catering to an English speaking American audience and the meaning of city as a political division DOES vary country to country so such a request to rename political divisions of China to make them more in line with counterparts in American political divisions is a ludicrous one at best. Abstrakt 21:40, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

I still consider the titles misleading. How should be clear whether the urban area or the prefecture is meant ?

Sarcelles 23:14, 1 September 2005 (UTC)