Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 20:49, 18 February 2009

this is my user talk page J8079s (talk) 20:05, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

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al-Hassan

I have replied slightly differently on the talkpage of the History of Gunpowder. This is a longer edited version

al-Hassan has three books published by UNESCO (one of which, Islamic Technology (1986)), was also published by Cambridge University Press) and the other two are here . He was Director of the Institute for the History of the Arabic Science, University of Aleppo and more recently at the Department of Middle Eastern Studies, University of Toronto. He appears to meet the criteria of a reliable source. I have a copy of Islamic Technology (1986) and whilst there are no foot notes, there is a nine-page bibliography that covers English, French and German language sources - including Joseph Needham.

Partington was first written in 1960 and what he wrote was accurate at that time. I would not be surprised if nearly 50 years later there is a disagreement with newer books. Possibly the most update books on the history of gunpowder are those edited by Brenda Buchanan in 1996 and 2006.

Where there is a disagreement between reliable sources, the appropriate response is to quote (in this case) all three sources; and to highlight that there are differences between the sources. The requirement of wikipedia is WP:Verify. Quotes that are accurately taken al-Hassan appear to meet the criteria of verify; but I have not checked whether he is being accurately quoted

I could be wrong but from your edit history you appear to favour sources that advocate Chinese primacy; and for Islamic sources you appear to add flags such as {primary sources} or {self published}, possibly because you disagree with the content. With this type of editing history other editors, such as myself, could take a view (right or wrong) that you are biased. Pyrotec (talk) 21:19, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Geber

Thank you for encouraging me. My problem is that I'm not good at writing in English. I do many grammatical mistakes. When I see inacuracies in Misplaced Pages, most of the times I just delete them without much contributions because I cann't argue with others in English because it is not my native language. Dy yol (talk) 13:47, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

re: barnstar

You're very welcome. JFD (talk) 20:49, 18 February 2009 (UTC)