Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 12:37, 5 December 2006

Archive

• Discussion up to November 3 2006 archived in: Archive 1
• Discusion on the Basque Portal and Wikiproject archived in: Archive 2
• Nasty discussion on the White people article archived in: Archive 3

Basque portal

Kaixo! Thank you for contacting me to help you with a Basque portal, but I do not have too much free time nowadays and I prefer wasting it on Basque Misplaced Pages, and only sporadically on other Wikipedias. I hope you find someone to help you. Gero arte!

Katxijasotzaile 12:03, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes the Euskal Misplaced Pages does need a lot of work. Sadly I fear my Basque is too poor to help much.

Anyhow, the project is active and the portal too, take a look:

• Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Basque
• Portal:Basque

--Sugaar 14:53, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the invite to help. I'm unable to devote much time to Misplaced Pages editing at the moment, but may be able to help later on. It's been 10 yrs now since I last visited the Basque Country, but visited it regularly before then and picked up some of the language in Barnetegiak. Probably my most useful contribution would be to tidy up some of the style and spelling/grammar errors in many of the Basque articles, which have obviously been written by people whose mother tongue is not English.

--NSH001 21:11, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

That's a great help indeed. :)

--Sugaar 22:36, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Kaixo Sugaar! Thank you for your invitation for creating the basque wikiproject, I have seen that you have created it and I think it's very interesting. I'll try to help you adding some information, but I have a lot of work adding info at our Misplaced Pages and working as an administrator. We have a lot of work with the basque wikipedia, creating pages and getting more people with us. Thank you for your contributions related to the Basque Country, we thank you a lot. If you want any information related to the basque language and country, you can ask me for it. Write me on my basque talk page, please! See you! TXiKi 23:06, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Mila esker, Txiki. Sadly my Basque is not good enough to work in eu.Misplaced Pages fluently but I can do that here instead. I take note of your offer and hope that it will be of use sometime in the future. Enjoy, --Sugaar 20:46, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

I'd love to collaborate on a Basque project. I did indeed spend a year there, and my Basque is not bad. Sadly, I'm really new to Misplaced Pages, and I'm not around often. But keep me posted of any help you might need.

@aron 00:11, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Kaixo Sugaar. Thanks for your invitation, but unfortunately I think I'm not going to be able to help much. I've been unlinked to Misplaced Pages for some months as I've been busy. Now I'm going to restart editing, but my main contibutions will be in the basque wikipedia, there is a lot of work to do there. However, I will help you whenever I can, and don't hesitate on asking me anything. You are doingt a great job, keep up the good work! Keta 18:22, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

RE: RFM

I took care of archiving it. Thanks for letting me know. -^demon 20:47, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

You're welcome, thanks to you. --Sugaar 21:15, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Basque

Sorry but I'm gone in south america for 9 month. No project is possible for now. mileskerMuturzikin 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Never mind. It will be around when you're back, I believe. --Sugaar 11:15, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Mediation

Medation has begun here. | AndonicO 19:35, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

You've been asked multiple times by many people to stop being incivil, stop attacking other editors and especially to stop harassing Thulean. Unfortunately you've now continued this both in the mediation and on my talk page. I've given you a short block - please stop the behavior and try to approach the mediation in a civil manner - without attacking and belittling other editors whom you disagree with. Shell 20:03, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Continued dispute on WP:AN/I

As the header of the page states and other people have counseled you, please take your complaint about my abuse of sysop powers to the appropriate place. The specific directions for opening a complaint can be found here and the template to create the subpage is located here. I look forward to the chance to have the community comment on this situation. Shell 09:29, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Shell: the main page of RfC does not say anything about RfCs being the place to appeal administrators' abuse. Instead WP:BLOCK does say it is ANI where it belongs. No mention of RFC.

Personally I am very sad that you insist in defending your wrong decission when it does so clearly breaks the rules. You have not even defended your decission (at least with minimal coherence) nor has done any other user/admin.

I also find very sad that no other administrator has dared to intervene even when the case is so clearly a policy violation. I am offering an exit in good terms but as wikipedian I can't but follow the correct procedures outlined in the relevant policy pages and I hope that you do the same, because, as administrator you must abide to policy as much or even more than the common user.

I am getting more and more worried at the apparent arbitrarity displayed and what seems a fear of retaliation felt by some administrators. As compromised wikipedian I can't but fight that with the means that policy allows. It's not just my pride, my feelings or anything of the like: it is Misplaced Pages and Misplaced Pages's pillars what are at the stake.

Really sorry we are at this stage, really, I used to have a high esteem of administrators and Misplaced Pages community rule and I still hope this faith in Misplaced Pages will be restored, maybe today, maybe tomorrow, maybe in a few years. I have patience and perseverance. --Sugaar 17:48, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

White people

Is there any way I can talk you into coming back to work on this article? The fewer educated people we have on it, the easier it is to lose ground due to the 3RR rule.-Psychohistorian 20:09, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

I wish I could, Psychohistorian, but I can't as I have been gagged by an administrator who considers I am something of a "systematic personal attacker", no matter I had no complaints before.

Honestly, I suggest you to take a break and leave the article to Stormfront for a while. You can always retake it later, nominate the article for deletion, open an RfC, etc.

Do not violate the 3RR please. It's better to bear a bad article than to be blocked on unquestionable grounds as that.

But personally I am quitting it for mental health. I have more than enough with appealing my unjust block and other areas that interest me more than a non-existent race. Maybe, if my appeal succeeds, and after a loooong recess, I might retake it. But not right now. Sorry. --Sugaar 20:33, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Sugaar. Leave it a month or so and wingnuts will have forgotten all about it. Doesn't mean they won't be back in the future though. The Black people article is also full of racist shite. Alun 04:02, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

I saw how someone involved in that article also placed a PA warn on your page and on someone's else too. Is that Afrocentric racism or Eurocentric one? Just curious.

Don't know, but they claim it was a "stable article" untill someone (me and User:Patrick0Moran) "vandalised" it. I replied than I stand by all my edits and that if they want to take it further I will be happy to. They put themselves in a very poor position by not assuming good faith and by calling obviously respectable edits vandalism. It is easily demonstrated that this was not vandalism. So I told them to stop trying to intimidate other good faith editors with meaningless threats. To be honest the Black people article is a joke, and I guess it's Eurocentric racism, judging by the way Coon's and J. Philippe Rushton's work is used. Rushton seems to be a non-expert (a psychologist not an anthropologist or biologist) and also does not represent even a tiny minority POV regarding human origins (so I don't think even the NPOV policy applies to his work). According to him Africans "branched" from the human "evolutionary tree" earlier, and therefore are less "advanced" because evolution is "progressive". Like there is a "progressive" branch and a "regressive" branch of the "evolutionary tree"? How can this gibberish be construed as reliable? It's just racism masquerading as science, like so much other crap written about "race and intelligence". To my knowledge humans have evolved (speciated) once, and only once, so how can there be evolutionary differences between human "populations"? If he means there is a different "selection pressure" in different parts of the world, then that is correct, but it only applies to certain functional genes that provide an addaptive advantage (like haemoglobin S in malarial regions and dark skin colour in sunny environments). These wingnuts don't seem to understand even the basics of evolution, they don't even know the difference between (natural) selection and evolution. Alun 07:38, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Rushton is very racist and Coon sort of pathetic in many ways. I wonder where are Afroamerican Wikipedians? Sadly I don't want to get involved in any more race-related articles in a while: I need to end with the block appeal and also prefer to take a break in those hot issues and push forward Basque knowledge, something I was focused in before all this nightmare.

You may want to mention all these issues in the Ethinic Groups Wikiproject. You may be able to get some help there, not sure. --Sugaar 17:29, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Btw, why do you think Black people is so biased? Because it shows a too US-centered vision of "blackness"? I've taken a quick look and it doesn't seem outrageous overall. But of course, I may be missing something. --Sugaar 18:46, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

The black people article is almost a carbon copy of what is taught in American "black studies" university curricula and was mainly written by American blacks with an agenda to push. It would have been much more extreme if some African blacks had not fought desperately against some of what they wanted to put in there. It might sound contradictory, but the white racist part and pseudoscience part of the black people article suits the American black agenda of a certain segment of "politically correct" black attitude. The results that show that a separate global black race does not exist are denied with a vengeance, because that means black people do not have power. They accept all the parts of the theory that claim they are a separate race, and deny all the parts of the theory selectively that claim they are an inferior race. It is pretty interesting, from a sociological perspective.--Filll 13:03, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_comment/Sugaar

Per your request at WP:AN/I, I have opened a request for comment on the incidents surrounding the block you are disputing. Please add any evidence or discussion you would like to the Response section at Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_comment/Sugaar. Thanks. Shell 02:25, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

You are wikilawyering. You have included things that happened long before the dispute began and after the block took place. Logically it will take me some time to gather all the info to reply to your far-fetched accusations.

You should better accept that you have trespassed the limits of policy and that you have taken sides in a dispute where you, as administrator, had the duty of remaining neutral. It's normal that I don't trust you at this point. What is not so normal is that you admit no fault.

I mean: I must have some part of reason even if small, partial or whatever. You admit nothing. I have apologized, I have admitted my errors (but you still use them against me), but you admit not a single piece of fault, not a single shadow of doubt, you are apparently the most perfect administrator ever: unable to commit a single error. Obviously that's not true. --Sugaar 12:51, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Hi Sugaar, I would agree that in this instance, Shell's involvement has not met the standards expected for a non-involved admin. Regarding your alleged personal attacks, I would suggest the essay WP:SPADE advises that your conduct didn't constitute a violation of policy. Also, help is available from the WP:AMA regarding disputes such as this. Addhoc 15:03, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Hi, Addhoc. I really appreciate your interest as well as that from other uninvolved people such as Vercellor. I think your independent comments actually support my case because, whatever I've done wrong, my main point is that there are two sides to a dispute of this nature and that the involved administrator has not been neutral, whatever her reasons.

I've already considered to consult the AMA but I think I can manage with the procedure. The only thing it could help would be if they could persude Shell to step down from here pedestal and correct her errors, something that doesn't seem likely. I fear this will end in ArbCom as all the other procedures are being useless and, really, the case is more than ready for that stage. --Sugaar 19:26, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

ArbCom questions for Paul August

Hi Sugaar. I've answered your questions. Thanks for asking. Paul August ☎ 19:49, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, I saw it and it was one of the answers I liked most. I have three or four candidates in mind by now and you are among them. --Sugaar 22:22, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Basque Swadesh list and "lesser-used languages"

It appears to have been transwikied here: wikt:Wiktionary:Swadesh lists for lesser used European languages, and the Basque list on its own is still at wikt:Transwiki:Basque language/Swadesh list. Is that what you were looking for? --Sam Blanning 20:25, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes that was what I was looking for, thanks. Really I couldn't find it but no wonder as you (or whoever) have hidden it under such title "lesser used European languages", sounds offensive. I looked into Iberian languages but only Romance languages were there.

Anyhow it was in order to fix a link. Shouldn't a redirect or soft redirect have been left in place?

Guess that you already removed the request for undeletion, didn't you? --Sugaar 23:55, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't see how "lesser used" is offensive. Anyway, you can always argue for a different division/name with the editors at Wiktionary. No, I didn't do any part of the transwiki myself; you'd have to look at the history of the relevant pages on Wiktionary for that.

We don't leave soft redirects in the encyclopaedia namespace following transwikis; so far as I know the only soft redirects we have are in projectspace, at places like WP:DICK.

For future searching you might find Google more useful than MediaWiki's inbuilt search function - I found the Swadesh lists fairly easily by searching for site:en.wiktionary.org swadesh basque. --Sam Blanning 17:13, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

The expression "lesser-used languages" has become current in some European circles, basically I think as a bureaucratic ("euro-cratic"?) term meant to be equivalent to "minority languages" (with all the vaguenesses and defects inherent in the latter term). The expression was of course consecrated by the creation in 1982 of EBLUL, the European Bureau for Lesser-Used Languages. Whatever one may think of the term for stylistic reasons or whatever (I myself consider it to be bad English, but ah well), I don't think the people who use it do so with any intent to be offensive. I notice by the way that in the wikipedia Lesser-used languages redirects to Minority language, showing that some other Wikipedians also interpret the term this way. --A R King 18:20, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

I will try to keep up with things but I am a very busy guy, if there are any major things that you need help on just send me a message or something. Also thanks for the message. Joe

A Plea for Reason and Sanity in the editing of the White People article

Sugaar you may or may not be sockpuppeteering but you have and continue to use slanderous language as a means of communicating your disapproval of those users who happen to think differently than you on any number of unrelated subjects. Everytime you accuse someone of racism or of belonging to what you call a fringe or antisocial group—without any evidence whatsoever—it is you yourself who end up appearing fanatical and extreme in the eyes of moderate and temperate users. I strongly suggest that you tone down your hyperbolic rhetoric and make an effort, however painful, to join those seeking to reach actual understanding and consensus. I say this with the respect that I feel should be accorded to any and all who come here truly seeking to contribute and to learn in good faith.--Balino-Antimod 05:06, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm not sure what you are talking about exactly. I have disengaged myself from the White people article as I couldn't bear the pressure anymore. I am just interested now in the review of the unjust block derived from the dispute in that article.

As far as I can say, you are talking about the past. Still defending fiercely Stormfront's viewpoints and long outdated and discredited Nordicist theories by means of unilateral reviews seems quite sufficient evidence to me, don't know if it is to you. --Sugaar 20:45, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

And in any case I am not sockpuppeting. That's absolutely false. I have a single static cable IP and could not do it even if I wanted to without being detected easily.

And anyhow, I have some ethics. My defects seem to be excess of honesty, not twisted manipulation. I like to discuss things plainly, what is what ha caused my problems: excess of frank speech. I speak for myself: I don't need "ghosts" - much less to vandalize around. --Sugaar 21:09, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

White People

It is interesting to me that the black people article and the white people article are both suffering from somewhat similar problems; control by extremists who want to push certain agendas.--Filll 12:53, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm not involved in the White people article anymore because I was subject to premeditated wikilawyerist attack that resulted in a block. So I decided to disengage. I have only taken a brief look at the Black people article and have not a clear opinion, yet it seems some people there are resorting to the same type of aggresive wikilawyering tactics trying to displace other users with wider/different ideas.

Sadly it seems that people with racialist POVs (to put it smoothly) take such articles as heir pet projects. The only solution I see is to delete them and make them disambiguation pages to more precise topics such as classical anthropometric races, race in census, pygmentation, etc. But it's not a solution that seems likely to find strong support. --Sugaar 20:51, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

On one hand it is disappointing, but on the other side, I am learning a lot more about how people think. I am also thinking about what I realize now is the main issue here: the mathematical issue of genetic metrics.--Filll 22:43, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Genetics can be a good tool to asess diversity in humans but see what happened in White people: all genetic evidence linking Western Eurasians/Caucasoids was flatly ignored by people with stubborn Nordicist ideas and a clear will of beating the rest by any means at reach. --Sugaar 22:47, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes and the same thing is happening in the black people article. But the only reason I was at the black people article was to try to keep people calm on the talk page so they could actually do real work instead of tearing each other apart. I personally have not edited the article very much at all. Most of it is not real science and is sort of nonsense, as far as I am concerned. Nevertheless, I have learned a lot about these human dynamics, some of which I never would have guessed existed before this. The good thing is that it has directed me to an interesting place to do some personal research. I really do not care much about race; it is not interesting to me from a research standpoint. But metrics are one of the things I am interested in, and all of a sudden I realize that this is a great application of different sorts of metrics and in fact we are working in some sort of Hilbert space and there is information theory involved etc. This is good stuff.--23:22, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, there's a lot of maths involved in genetics (and also antropometry, what is nevertheless somewhat old fashioned and confuse). I' not that good at that: I think better visually but I am very interested in antropology and genetics, as well as in archaeology (prehistory specially). --Sugaar 23:31, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks a lot!

You deserve a history one... I'll find it soon. David 16:16, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

You're welcome. I thought it was about time I gave one of those and I really think you do deserve it. Enjoy, --Sugaar 20:17, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

--Sugaar 22:56, 28 November 2006 (UTC)=

Basque matters

: Yes, with enough "disprovements" an article can become truly "pessimal".

Could I ask you to have a look at User talk:Jmabel#ETA and indicate whether you would be open to some sort of mediation? After an initial suggestion of arbitration (which I pointed out would not be appropriate) Mountolive is proposing that Error (if he is available) and I try to mediate between you and he on the ETA article. I guess it wouldn't be strictly a mediation, because Error and I each also certainly have our own views on the topic, but it might be good to try to cool down the conflict between you and Mountolive, resort more to the discussion page, and see if with a little more involvement by people whose views fall between yours and Mountolive's we can move toward a more consensual and stable article. Let me know there what you think. - Jmabel | Talk 18:34, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm fully open to mediation (either formal or informal, I also suggested RfC) and I have all the time insisted that other more neutral editors take a greater role in the ETA article, as it's obvious that while the situation remains prolarized between Mountolive and myself, it will not advance much (though the discussion is likely to remain very lively). I realize that you and Error may have other priorities anyhow, but I am open to all sort of DR in the benefit of the article. --Sugaar 22:56, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

DerStormtroper

Don't worry about him, I'll take care of it.--Vercalos 19:51, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your interest, really. --Sugaar 23:05, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I've had enough

Sugaar: I am a linguist and a specialist of thirty years' standing in the field of Basque language description, the author of several books on the Basque language, recognised in the Basque Country as a proficient speaker and writer of Basque (I translate professionally both into and out of Basque and have even taught Basque grammar to native speakers), a corresponding member of the Basque Language Academy since 2002 and an active member of the Academy's grammar commission since about 1980. Besides my own acquired knowledge of Basque, my statements are generally supported by the rather extensive bibliography at my disposal.

You are by your own admission a student of the language at intermediate level. When you quote a reference to "prove" your point and tell me I am wrong about something, it is from a non-authoritative dictionary which, I have already pointed out to you, was never meant to be comprehensive and became completely out of date about twenty years ago. I have not seen you make a single statement with the slightest hint of deference or tentativeness, you speak as if laying down the law.

Now the wonderful thing about Misplaced Pages is that it gives opportunities for people like you and me to work together, combine our efforts, discuss issues and learn from each other and from the experience, in the knowledge that (in the best of cases, anyway) all this is also ultimately helping other people in their quest for knowledge. Misplaced Pages asks nobody what their qualifications are and makes everybody everybody else's equal.

However, we seem to have a problem, don't we. Apparently I cannot say anything about Basque without you jumping in and saying that it's all wrong and producing your own theory of how it is. And I cannot point out a mistake that you make on the subject without your rejecting my opinions out of hand and telling me that it is the other way around. Since you don't seem to listen to, or else fail to assimilate, the reasons I give for your being wrong about something, we are starting to just go round and round in circles as you repeat the same mistakes. On one occasion you even brought in someone from the Basque Misplaced Pages to say who was right (about the correctness of an example sentence in the article on Polysynthesis), yet when confirmation of my assessment was given, you seemingly ignored it because you still haven't made a move to withdraw the incorrect example. (Don't expect me to; I'm not getting involved in any edit war with you.) You tell me you are learning Basque but I don't know from whom, because the last thing you seem to be interested in is learning from someone who is able to put you on the right track and willing to do so with the very best of intentions, I assure you. People who know a lot more Basque than you often come to me for advice...

Perhaps you enjoy this situation, but I do not. I will not play cat-and-mouse with you, because I have better things to do. I have a lot of expertise to offer Misplaced Pages on many issues related to the Basque language, but if every offering I make turns into a silly argument with someone who wants to just bicker for the sake of it, well I just haven't got the time or patience. If you like I'll just bow out and let you carry on playing at being the English Misplaced Pages's "authority" on all things Basque. Tú mismo.

I complement you (zorionak) on your efforts to learn Basque and I encourage you to carry on. I also think you are quite good at developing linguistic arguments, so congratulations. What you seem to be lacking is a sufficiently developed sense of when you are right and when you don't have enough information to really know what you're talking about - or the ability or disposition to incorporate the information you are missing when someone takes the trouble to provide it.

If you have anything reconciliatory to say, I'm all ears. If not, please don't bother. If you want us to work together, rather than get into fist fights, then let us do so: you will find me very willing. I offer you my hand and assure you of my willingness to work together with you, if that's what you want. But if my interpretation of what Misplaced Pages is is right, it is not a shouting match in a Basque tavern. --A R King 08:16, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

This doesn't make sense: I am not going into any fist fight. I just question what is not sufficiently obvious. In fact I recognized that what you said about sorginak made sense, just that I could not source it and you were not documenting it either.

And I don't like your attitude anyhow: you may be a respected scholar (I take your word on that) but I don't know you personally nor I have read any of your books, so for me you are like anyone: give evidence of your claims if you can. Thanks.

Aditionally, that I disagree with some of what you or others may say, is no obstacle for you to make the adequate corrections, hopefully with suficient documentation. You don't need my permision to do that (obviously). --Sugaar 08:30, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I will give you the benefit of the doubt. However I do see a problem, in that I'm not sure whether the discussion page of an article on Basque witches is the right place for me to offer you (I don't know who else would ask for it) documentary evidence that sortu means 'be born' in Basque, so how about I tell you here instead? If this is an issue that only concerns you and me, then we don't need to force ourselves on an uninterested audience, surely?

This is the relevant part of the discussion on that page, copied over to here:

• Sor(tu):create. To be born is jaio. --Sugaar 20:41, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

I have to correct you there, Sugaar. Jaio is the word for 'to be born' in western Basque, but in eastern Basque it is indeed sortu. --A R King 18:33, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

What "eastern dialects"? The Bi Mila dictionary, funily enough, gives only the sense of "adormecerse los sentidos" (not sure how to translate that to English) and gortu (to deafen). Yet to create is translated as kreatu, sortu, egin, while to be born is translated only as jaio. They may be missing something though.

I see sense to the equation create = be born = give birth = midwives = sorginak = akelarre = Mari and Sugaar creating the storms in their cave... but I have no evidence myself that sortu means to be born or to give birth. It's logical though. --Sugaar 03:50, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

I already said I don't think you should be appealing to that dictionary as evidence for this kind of discussion, but anyway... Since you are still quoting it, I must point out that because of the way Kintana chose to cite verbs (and order them alphabetically), he has placed two different verbs whose participles are both sortu on different pages, since he has analysised them as sor(tu) (alphabetised as sor) and sort(u) (alphabetised as sort) respectively. The one we are interested in is sort(u), but you have been looking at sor(tu), hence the other meanings. If you look on the next page you will find:

Sort(u): 1 concebir, -ido. 2 nacer, -ido. 3 brotar, -ado. 4 inventar, crear, -ado.

If you look at a map of the major Basque dialect divisions you will notice that they range from west to east. By "western dialects", without further qualification as here, I mean what I seem to mean: the ones further to the west as opposed to the ones further to the east. And by "eastern dialects" I mean the opposite, of course. In the context I don't think it was necessary to go into exactly which dialects use which verb for 'to be born', since the relevant point I was making was that you had no reason to correct the previous contributor to the discussion who had (correctly) glossed sortu as 'nacer'. I could have said: "You're wrong, Sugaar, sortu does mean 'be born'", but instead I mentioned the dialectal issue, saying that although in some (western) dialects it is the case that 'be born' is jaio, there are other (eastern) dialects in which sortu is used, thereby suggesting you were "only partly wrong" so to speak. I was trying to be kind. I don't have the books by my side to provide more precise information but I can assure you off the top of my head that all Basque dialects use sortu as 'be born' except for the two westernmost major dialects (Gipuzkoan and Bizkaian) where jaio predominates. Thus sortu is used in High Navarre, Lapurdi, Low Navarre and Zuberoa. Literary Basque admits both verbs, of course. Furthermore, this use of sortu is well-known to literate Basques everywhere so should come as no surprise. Since even your own dictionary confirms this, I don't think it's necessary to provide you with other dictionary references on this occasion (but I can if you insist).

You say you don't know whether I am a reputed Basque scholar or not. Is there anything I haven't already told you that I can tell you that could persuade you? --A R King 09:20, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

PS If you like, in the future when you want to "ask me for clarification" we could do that on your talk page (or on mine if you prefer), but I don't see the point of subjecting the general public to our discussions unless the place is obviously appropriate for that. Alan --A R King 09:22, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Why don't you keep the discussion in the proper article's talk page? That way you won't only persuade me but also (hopefully) any other editor that may come around in the future. Anyhow, thanks for all that info.

I don't say I don't know about your reputation: I say that I only know about it from your word and actions. As long as you justify your viewpoints, I really couldn't care less about you being the new Barandiaran or just an anonymous bypasser with good ideas. What I don't like is that attitude of "I say it: it's correct", when the readily available evidence I have doesn't say the same.

Whatever your credentials, you should explain and/or document your prposals like anyone else and don't take the issues of verifiability as personal matters.

Also, for the tone of your first post here, I think that you are more upset at the discussion of Iruña-Veleia than about this petty matter on the possible etymology of sorginak.

In any case, my apologies if I have offended you in any way, what clearly wasn't my intention. --Sugaar 21:51, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Sugaar, I'd just like to say that I've met Alan a couple of times (at London Basque Society functions) and you are very fortunate to have someone of his knowledge and experience helping with the Basque articles on the English wikipedia. Among other things, he wrote the first substantial book for English speakers wanting to learn the Basque language, published by the University of Nevada press (the U of Nevada is noted for its department of Basque studies). In an e-mail to me, Larry Trask called it "the best grammar of Basque in any language". I hope you can respect his very valuable contributions and work constructively with him.

--NSH001 00:40, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Hey, stop it. I do respect him yet I don't have to take his word for everything. He's surely more upset at the issue of Iruña-Veleia than the silly discussion on sorginak's etymology anyhow, I believe. Else he would not have exploded like he did above.

Still, I'm interested about that west/east dialect division I had read nowhere before. So far I thought there were three groups of dialects: western (Bizkaiera), central (most) and eastern (Xiberuera and extinct Erronkera). The "eastern dialects" phrase definitively caught me off guard. Who has suggested that division? And why is the Bi Mila dictionary so crappy in some aspects. Is the Hiru Mila any better? --Sugaar 04:15, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

As I said in my earlier response, I was using "eastern" in an informal sense to mean dialects in the east rather than the west. I don't think that was a real problem in the context because the worst you could have done was to interpret "eastern" in the more restrictive sense you mention (eastern versus central AND western), in which case the truth of my assertion would not be affected (if sortu = 'be born' is used throughout the eastern half of the Basque-speaking dialect spectrum, then it is also used in the eastern third!).

(You are right that the "west - centre - east" division that you cite is sometimes employed in discussions of Basque dialects, rather inappropriately in my opinion because I find this too "centralist": what I suspect it implies is that central Basque is "normal Basque" and normal Basque includes Gipuzkoan Basque (which tends to dominate in modern Basque de facto), whereas Bizkaian Basque falls outside the "central/normal" domain so we call it something else (western). This seems to me to be a Gipuzkoa-centric view of things. But I admit I'm only talking about one point of view here, which happens to be mine (even though I live in Gipuzkoa and speak Basque with a Gipuzkoan "accent" myself, so this is not reflecting some Bizkaian's gripe about Batua being too "giputxi", which is quite another matter).)

But I think you will find that in current usage in Basque language studies, there also exists a casual tendency to refer to western and eastern Basque, not as rigorous categories but because this east-west perspective makes more sense, both geographically and linguistically, than the north-south (iparralde-hegoalde, "French Basque vs. Spanish Basque") perspective which is perhaps more widespread in the popular mind and, of course, above all, aligned with the current political schema dominating many people's perception of the Basque territorial entity. It is easy enough to see on the map that Basque dialects do not really fall into a dichotomy between "north" and "south" (you know this as well as I do, I'm sure), any more than they are really "French" and "Spanish". North and south only come in at certain lower points in a finer classification, such as the traditional division between northern ("septentrional") and southern ("meridional") High Navarrese dialects, or indeed northern (coastal) and southern (highland) Gipuzkoan, for some features perhaps.)

You ask me what is wrong with the dictionary you use. I already mentioned earlier that it has changed its name several times. The 2000 one was preceded by "Hiztegia 80", a copy of which I am looking at now, and as I recall it was called something else before that, though the name escapes me at this moment. When I started living in the Basque Country in 1978, it was the dictionary everybody used because there was nothing better, and people were very glad to have it, you could even say that a generation of Basques were "brought up" on Xabier Kintana's dictionary, but that doesn't mean it didn't have its limitations, and we were stuck with those too until something better came along. Personally I was surprised and disappointed that as the newer editions of this dictionary came out (with a new name each time) the opportunity was not taken to give the dictionary's content a thorough revision or, better yet, redesign the whole thing, but that didn't happen; only minor errata or omissions were corrected, but it basically stayed the same. So what did happen eventually is that with time and new resources, other dictionary projects sprang up and resulted in new works which have left Kintana's dictionary so far behind in every respect that it can no longer be seen as a good choice for anyone with a serious interest in Basque. It certainly should not be used by such a keen student as yourself!

One way to answer the question of what is wrong with this dictionary would be to suggest you open up, say, a copy of the Elhuyar bilingual dictionary and place it side by side with Kintana's, comparing the two. I think that alone should convince you (or anyone), probably better than my words on the subject. But briefly:

• The dictionary is incomplete, especially with respect to the evolution of modern Basque over the last two or three decades.
• It is prescriptive. The dictionary came out when Batua was quite new and people were looking for guidelines. Being prescriptive is not in itself a defect (it's not a criticism), it is just a characterisation of the type of dictionary it is and what it is most useful for (and what not). It is important to understand that it is in no sense a historical dictionary, but also only partially reflects present-day (2006) Basque usage. At the time it was produced, and in the climate of the period, this prescriptive aspect tended to mean "restrictive": the developers and proponents of Batua were busy "unifying" Basque by deciding what dimensions of internal variation to exclude from a standard norm. Kintana was very much a part of this movement and his dictionary was primarily telling Basque speakers/writers what words and forms not to use. And this involved a lot of subjective judgment on the author's part. If you don't know it, Kintana is well known as a person with a lot of strong opinions about what he feels is correct or not, or should be, in standard Basque. Again, that served a useful purpose at the time - people needed guidance, and Kintana gave it. Inevitably, he gave his own opinions along with it, and not everybody agrees with all his opinions. Above all, for present purposes, it is important to understand that this dictionary does not attempt to give all the existing Basque lexicon, it represents choices and preferences and recommended usage, by a given authority at a given point in the evolution of modern Basque.
• In terms of the dictionary's design, the amount and kind of information given about Basque words is lacking in the extreme. Parts of speech are not indicated. Different senses (acepciones) of entry words are not differentiated systematically, and some senses are simply omitted outright. Other essential information about usage is also absent. Some of this information could have been provided through the inclusion of examples (as in subsequent works), but the dictionary rarely provides any. Coverage of collocations, idiomatic expressions and so on is also lacking in quantity and quality. In short, it is more of a word list than a dictionary.

I am not saying all this to disqualify the Kintana dictionary outright. I just want to put it into perspective as a reference work (since you seem to be using it as one). I think Xabier himself would probably agree with at least some of the things I've said here. --A R King 10:22, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Ok, A.R. Thanks for your extense explanation. I will consider buying another dictionary in the future. You're surely right that it's a little obsolete and that the new editions have not changed it enough. --Sugaar 11:12, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Basque dialect classifications

I'm really (somehwat) interested in the west-center-east "classical" division (and possible alternatives. Certain irakasle of mine suggested that these three groups would be considered separate languages would they be more extended and that idea caught my imagination, naturally. If Spanish, Catalan and Italian would be spoken by just 700,000 fluent speakers and compacted in a territory of about 200x100 kms like Basque is, maybe they would be considered a single language too. Inversely if Basque speakers would be numbered by tens of millions and their spread would include thousands of kilometers possibly some of the most distant dialects like Bizkaiera or Xiberuera would be thought/claimed as related but different languages in the full sense of the term.

If you have anything to say in this regard, know that I am interested. No need to be very extense, just a general opinion is more than sufficient.

Regards, --Sugaar 11:12, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Just a note on this. I recently got hold of a book called Language and Nationalism in Europe. Stephen Barbour makes a similar point to Sugaar. He uses the examples of Germany and Jugoslavia, where he claims that certain German dialects are mutually incomprehensible, but are still considered the same language, whereas Croatian and Serbian are now considered different languages, even though they are mutually comprehensible. He makes the point that language does have a national identity and the divisions between what constitute "different" languages can be due to nationalist reasons rather than linguistic ones. I should say I'm no linguist and just got the book out of interest. There's a nice picture of a bilingual signpost in Wales on the cover :) In my experience most English people think it's quite quaint that we have roadsigns in both Welsh and English in Wales. Alun 13:48, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, we could talk about that a bit more. Your suggestion that we do so concisely may be a bit harder to comply with :-)

Alun is right when he says (I think that's what he's saying) that, as countless linguists have pointed out but there is no harm in repeating it, there simply are no black-and-white purely linguistic criteria that can be relied upon to determine what constitutes a separate language, and of course there are sufficient examples to illustrate this in Europe alone, and the same issues pop up just as often in other parts of the world, naturally. Consequently, whenever there could be the faintest doubt about such divisions, one may be sure that other considerations do come into play in determining what is considered a language. And we have to recognise that that is perfectly legitimate. In brief: "language identity" does not only depend on linguistic criteria!

What that means is that statements that "A and B (names of languages) could be considered separate languages/the same language if X, Y and Z were the case" are not saying all that much really, because X, Y and Z are always important factors in determining how A and B are considered.

If that is one problem, another one is that statements such as "P and Q (two dialects of language A) are really very different from each other" or "there is really not all that much difference between P and Q, basically" are not statements that can be evaluated objectively because "very different" and "basically the same" are totally relative concepts that need to be put on a scale to be pinned down: different or similar compared to what? Now this may seem very obvious, but the trouble is that when ordinary people make such statements or circulate such beliefs, they do so referring only to their own knowledge of such cases (usually limited to one or two languages) or to assumptions about other languages which they don't know first hand and have to take on faith. An example of the first of these would be when Spanish speakers think that French or English are very exotic because they never never tried learning Basque, Japanese or Arabic. The second kind of situation is illustrated when a Basque speaker (or worse: a Spanish speaker who knows no Basque!!) tries to tell me that Basque dialects are hopelessly different from each other, and when I reply by asking, "Well, do you have any idea how different ENGLISH dialects can be from each other?", respond: "Oh, but not as different as Basque dialects, I can assure you" even if they have no experience of the differences between English dialects. What I'm getting at here is that in the last resort, difference and similarity is all relative and therefore other considerations are determining whether a person decides, in a given context, to emphasise the one or the other.

So, it is true that there are differences between Basque dialects, but they are also very similar. Mitxelena once said that the surprising thing about Basque dialects was not how different they are, but the fact that they are not more different still. He actually proposed, on this basis, that there must have been a process of internal recolonization or some such homogenising process within the Basque linguistic domain in order to explain why there is not more divergence than there is. (Sorry, I haven't got the reference, and this is from memory.) Given this relativity of the issue, we have to be careful to contextualise our assessments of similarity. I wouldn't be surprised if you could make a case for Ondarroa Basque being a "different language" from Markina Basque if that was what we were aiming for. Of course we are not aiming for that, and so we don't. The Chinese, on the other hand, commonly insist that even Mandarin and Cantonese are "the same language", again because that is what they are interested in being the case.

Well, sorry to have rambled on for so long. And I haven't really answered the point about east, central and west, have I? Sorry, perhaps next time... Cheers, Alan --A R King 17:30, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Frankly, you haven't answered my question but anyhow.

Just as anecdote, some years ago, I transcribed an Iberian text (in Ionian alphabet) and shown it to a friend of mine from Ondarru (Ondarroa) to see what opinion might it cause in him, a native Basque speaker that surely was the first time that read an Iberian text. He said: It's not Ondarruan Basque... but Lekittian maybe. Lekitto (Lekeitio) is not farther from Ondarroa than Markina actually. Anyhow coastal towns and villages (like Ondarroa and Lekeitio) often have very special dialects, a feature that doesn't seem to be the case at all in the interior. --Sugaar 02:01, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Good anecdote :-)

Rather than clearcut dialects, what I see are numerous isoglosses. For the most part, local Basque speech patterns (local meaning Lekeitio, Ondarroa, Gernika, Markina, Eibar, Oñati, Ataun, Zarautz, Oiartzun, Leitza, Elizondo, Sara, Hazparne, Luzaide, Santa Grazi, Izaba...) are a patchwork of largely mutually transitional varieties. (Likewise on a still smaller scale, e.g. Zumaia - Getaria - Zarautz - Aia - Orio - Usurbil...)

I have my doubts about whether, if the province of Gipuzkoa didn't exist as a territorial concept, anybody would think there was such a thing as a Gipuzkoan dialect at all! What is clear is that some varieties of "Gipuzkoan" share considerably more with Bizkaian and others have greater affinity to varieties to the east, but with no obvious non-arbitrary dividing line on this account.

There is also quite a lot of internal variation within Bizkaian (and not only between the coast and the interior: the main internal division within Bizkaian of Bizkaia usually recognised is between west and east; the Bizkaian of Gipuzkoa makes up a third division). However, it has been said that there is greater internal homogeneity within Bizkaian than within Gipuzkoan, given that there are certain common features that all Bizkaian dialects share in common. Notice that common features need not be exclusive features: Gipuzkoan varieties (e.g.) may also share them.

As far as I can tell, the same observations apply to Zuberoan and the surrounding dialect areas: Low Navarrese is internally heterogeneous much as Gipuzkoan is, some Low Navarrese varieties share a number of the features considered "typically Zuberoan", much as some Gipuzkoan varieties display supposedly "Bizkaian" features.

So we have two possible macro-views of the Basque dialect spectrum: one in which "west" and "east" are treated more restrictively as equivalent to Bizkaian and Zuberoan respectively, and everything else is bunched together as central; and another in which the transitional and heterogeneous nature of all the main Basque "dialects" is acknowledged and which does not therefore recognise any radical cut-off between west (or east) and central areas, but a continuum. (That's as brief as I can make it!) --A R King 09:51, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Ok. Thanks for the explanation.

I imagine you now understand why I asked "what eastern dialects?" It wasn't so clear, it seems. --Sugaar 10:30, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

No problem. But just for the record, the statement I made about sortu meaning "be born" in all eastern dialects was not dependent on any particular definition of eastern dialects: however you define "eastern", the statement holds. Alan --A R King 10:59, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

About my previous post

Wondered what you might think of this? from User talk:LaBotadeFranco. I auto-translated the French into English, but got "warned" not to User talk:Wobble. So I disregarded the "warn". Don't think there's any rules against this. I hope he does "report" me. He removed the text and wrote "¡Albino, te pido que no escribas nada comprometedor en mi pagina pues hay un loco aqui que lo traduce todo!" which I also autotranslated. So I left a message saying that it is still accessible. Check out the Falangist stuff on his user page as well from User:LaBotadeFranco. Wonder what lovely neutral edits these people plan to make? Alun 17:33, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Ah, I see you've met before! No introduction necessary then. Alun 18:52, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it seems that the first thing right-wing newbies do after they sign up is to vandalize my page one way or another. I have alredy reprorted him, naturally.

It's funny about the translation, because there's a lot of people (including administrators) in en.Misplaced Pages who can read Spanish and French pretty well. Bt it's never an excess to do it, because everybody has the right to know what's going on in Misplaced Pages and using languages other than English in excess (specially when they are PAs or ideological manifestos) is clearly an abuse in itself.

Nevertheless I have more useful things to do than persecuting falangistas. I leave that to administrators, if that's the right thing to do. --Sugaar 21:40, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Your comments

About your comments.

1. Basques and Spaniards are as related as you can see in the sources that I have provided. Neither less, nor more. The majority of Basques and Spaniards belong to the same population group. About 90% of Basques and about 70% of Spaniards, one up one down. By the way, taking into account that there are about 40 million Non-Basque Spaniards, about 28 million belong to that population group (the Rb1, or Atlantic one). Taking into account that there are about 3 million Basques, and that including the Navarrese, there are about 2.8 million Basques that belong to that population group, a ten per cent of the Non-Basque Spaniards. In other words, for every Basque that belongs to that population group there are 9 Non-Basque Spaniards.

2. The 95% I have never seen. I have rather seen close to 90%. Anyway I do not think it is important to argue about that difference.

3. I loathe all types of extreme nationalists, be them Spanish, Basques or German nationalists: They all have the same kind of terrible and horrible type of leanings and a high propensity to lie and manipulate information to suit their agendas.

4. I am myself Basque on my mother's side and German on my fathers. I consider myself a Basque, a Spaniard and a German. And a lot of Basques like me consider themselves Spaniards, in spite of the fact that we have to live with the harrassment of one of the most violent minorities in Europe, the extreme Basque nationalists. Veritas et Severitas 21:57, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

As you noticed, I deleted most of those comments. The only difference would be 90-95% issue, what is surely matter of appreciation or sample.

If we're going to use the Y-chromosome haplogroups, as you know well, other peoples like Britons and, specially Gascons and Celtic peoples of the Atlantic are much closer to the Basque reference. In other aspects sometimes Iberians are closer to Basques and sometimes it's British people the closest ones. That's why I think that Western Europeans makes things a lot clearer and is NPOV.

On the rest, I'm not willing to discuss politics in Misplaced Pages. Just to mention that I cannot consider myself Spaniard nor French because I think of that as genocidal imperialism, not just in the Americas, Africa or Al Andalus but also in my (our) Basque Country. I believe we are entitled to decide our destiny democratically and rule ourselves as our ancestors did. While that's not acknowledged problems will surely continue one way or the other... it's a sad fact that we find through history at least since the arrival of Celts 3,000 years ago. --Sugaar 01:21, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

You have a response in the Basque article. Veritas et Severitas 03:20, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Machismo

I think some of our "new" falangists want to have another go at the machismo article again, see Estuve en comunicación con M., queremos resucitar el artículo sobre machismo, ¿te nos unes, amigo?--Albinomite 18:03, 1 December 2006 (UTC) where M is presumably your old sparing partner. Thought you'd be interested. Alun 22:32, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm not totally surprised but I think it's a distraction maneouvre. Marsiliano was quite uncivil and had some biased ideas on what machismo is (machista ideas) but while our new "friends" my also have machista ideas maybe it doesn't seem it's their true objective.

Maybe they are just upset at me and are trying to create confusion or dig in the only serious conflict I had in my previous history in Misplaced Pages.

I wonder why they act in such a provocative manner anyhow. They should know by now it's not productive. --Sugaar 01:11, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

this could be just too good

Mate, I have just had a flashback....I wonder if, actually, we know each other personally...are your initials in real life F.A.E.? Just curious....This could be too good! :D Mountolive 01:36, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Not at all: my real name is Luis. Why? --Sugaar 01:44, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Oh, sorry: I just thought for a minute that we actually know each other, but then I remembered that this friend of mine doesn't like Punk Rock :D But I had to ask because it would be just too funny if we knew each other, don't you think?

Anyway, feel free to delete this comment. I am sorry to have bothered you in your talk page. My apologies again for the cheeky question Mountolive 02:03, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Never mind, it's ok. I thought you were form Madrid or Andalusia from our other exchanges (and your Monteoliva nick, maybe your surname). Whatever... --Sugaar 02:16, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Strange autographs and threats

Please all new users with strange problems with me, sign in this section. Just to keep things in order, ok?

M of Magencio was here. I am building an ETA terrorist sympathizer case against said person. His edits dilate his terroristic intentions.--Magencio 11:19, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Ahah so you remove the warning, then I also am free to do the same. An eye for an eye then you morisc relic.--Balino-Antimod 07:37, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

You are of course free to remove warnings. A warn it's a notification for your information and consideration, in the hope that the warned acts are not repeated in the future. Wether you remove it or not, it is patent in the page history. Nevertheless removal of properly issued warnings is seen as "trying to hide evidence" by some. No consensus on this, as far as I know, anyhow. --Sugaar 07:42, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Even though you are impressed of our leader's linguistic ability, you are still not allowed to post comments on our pages. Also it not legal to defend ETA (or kale barroka), not even on wikipedia. Beware! Legio Semper Fidelis--Magencio 10:06, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm not so impressed as you seem to believe. Anyhow, who is "your leader" and who are "you" (plural)?

I would gladly avoid contact with "you" if you did the same. I find a waste of time to teach you manners. Nevertheless, as slong as you vandalize my page, make personal attacks and threats of legal or illegal nature, I am somewhow obligued to warn you of your uncivility and even to report you you adminship if necesary.

Aditionally, you are no one to delete my comments to Baliño, Albinomite, LaBota or whoever. You can surely edit reasonably your own user talk but you are no one to intervene in other's user page, much less to vandalize mine or make threats and PAs. I have already warned you and I hope I don't have to do that again. You must take notice and read the policy and guidelines unless you want to cause harm to yourself. --Sugaar 11:04, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

"Cause harm to myself." Are you threatening me? I will surely report you.--Magencio 11:24, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Don't be ridiculous: it's the same of "you can be blocked" of the warning templates. I just hate to be so aggresive and used an alternative phrase. What I meant anyhow is that, if you don't abide by Misplaced Pages's policies of civility, you will surely get in trouble yourself. --Sugaar 11:34, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Basque people

cross-posted to A R King's talk as well) Hi,

I put a note on jmabel's talk page about this, but he may not be online. I know nothing of the Basques except that they are the descendants of people either driven from their lands or assimilated by the Indo-European speakers .

I don't have time to participate in the discussion. I'm sorry. --Ling.Nut 03:59, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Never mind but thanks for your interest anyhow. --Sugaar 04:45, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Vascones

Hi, Sugaar. I was the one who said on the talk page that the Latin singular of Vascones would be Vasco. I was originally speaking simply from my familiarity with Latin, without knowing whether the form was actually recorded, but, since you ask the question, I have checked and found that the form Vasco does exist. I've cited a source on the talk page. Do you want me to correct the article, or do you want to look into it further? Andrew Dalby 14:13, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

If it's not too rude of me to come into this conversation (which I couldn't help "overhearing"): it seems to me that Gascon and Spanish b/vasco are unlikely to have developed directly from Latin vasco, a nominative, since the normal source is the accusative. So for example in Castilian the expected outcome from Latin vasco (gen. vasconis) would be b/vascón rather than b/vasco. Can you suggest how to account for that, Andrew? Cheers, Alan --A R King 15:06, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Very interesting discussion, gentlemen. But I think the correct place to discuss it is in the talk page of Vascones, where the problem has arisen. I'll be around. --Sugaar 15:40, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I suspected so. Why don't you move it there, Sugaar. --A R King 15:48, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, I posted there. Andrew did too. And I'm looking for a map of Gulf of St. Lawrence right now. You are also the best qualified one to "move" (or rather repost) your own opinion, rather than I saying "A.R. King said this or that in my user page". --Sugaar 16:36, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Okay. --A R King 17:48, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Template

Hi there! You recently said I proposed a "censorship template"? I'm curious as to what you're referring to; I've found this one but that's probably not it. Yours, (Radiant) 13:38, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Agh! It wasn't you but User:Nkayesmith (see here). My bad! You did very well in asking, because I was trusting my memory and I was wrong. You have such a "radiant" signature that I got it stuck in my memory instead of the right one.

I'm going to delete that vote in a minute. I can't really vote for you because your candidature was presented really late and I had no time to study it but at least I won't vote against you for the wrong reason. --Sugaar 15:54, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. For what it's worth, you have two weeks to study the late nominations, because I believe there were several last-minute ones (although not as much as last year when we had some 60 nominatinos total. (Radiant) 16:31, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Sure. But I've been paying attention to the issue since early November and I think I will have not time nor energies to ponder the late candidatures. You have a lot of votes anyhow. Also some other negative votes re. you were emphasizing issues like sysops' excess of freedom above policy (aka abuse of power) that make me think I could end voting against you for the right reasons if I think too mch about it. So maybe better let it go. --Sugaar 16:42, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Basque people cleanup?

Hi Sugaar. I was looking at the Basque people article, which has a template on it asking for it to be cleaned up, and I started thinking that I could go through it and clean up the language a little bit. It is not that bad so there wouldn't be a lot to change, just a couple of grammatical details here and there. I would like to do this without touching anything remotely controversial, just style and grammar. That way, the overall quality of the article would be improved, and perhaps that would help us to get the template(s) removed, and also just give it an overall aspect of maximum respectability as far as form is concerned, if you know what I mean. I'd like to check on your opinion first, though. Do you think this is a good moment for me to do that? Since we've had misunderstandings before, I don't want you to misinterpret my intentions! Cheers, Alan --A R King 18:28, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

No problem, really. Maybe others may have problems but I really don't. If you touch something that is questionable we can always discuss it later.

The article definitively needs a cleanup and I've been trying to do some of it already. I would like it to become a GA class article soon in the future.

One of the things I've proposed is to split the history in a different article (so it's not so long) but haven't got any replies yet. --Sugaar 18:36, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Just to let you know I've started the cleanup, but I'll go one section at a time and the rhythm will depend on availability of my time. I've started with the introduction. --A R King 20:18, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Albinomite has been blocked!

I hope you're happy now! Because of your machinations you got him into trouble and now he's blocked! He deserves from you and the wiki community an apology.--Cupidon 22:14, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

And who are you? His new sockpuppet?

I have not machinated anything. Only denounced PAs, vandalism and what looked like conspirative talks. I have other worries than being at the heels of a bunch of people that don't seem to know what they want. Misplaced Pages is an open access site that is based in assumption of good faith, I imagine that he broke that principle but I don't know the details of his ban.

As you seem to be part of that group, let me tell you one thing: Misplaced Pages is great because it follows WP:NPOV and other associated principles. Becuase it is partcipative and multi-sided. If you want an ideologically defined "wikipedia", you should try something separate. Obviously it won't have the same success, because most people is not interested in an ideologically based encyclopedia but in approaching truth as much as possible.

As Machado wrote:

Not your truth but the truth
and come with me in search of it,
yours: keep it for yourself.

--Sugaar 04:22, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

He got blocked indefinitely for making racist and inflamatory comments on the Black people talk page. He managed to make a personal attack and a racist comment about Michael Jackson at the same time. I think he got an instant ban. I don't know if he was reported to an admin, or if an admin just noticed. Albinomite and his little meatpuppet entourage have been exceedingly aggressive and offensive, it was only a matter of time before one or all of them got blocked. I toyed with the idea of reporting him, but then I've never reported anyone before and I don't want to ever do it. I figured one of them was heading for a block soon just by their general obnoxiousness, I thought it would be User:Balino-Antimod as he seemed to be the most agressive. Whatever, it was comming anyway, if anyone makes posts like that they are likely to get a block, it's his own fault, no one forced him to make this racist comment. I had warned him several times that he and his meatpuppets were heading for a block if they couldn't be more constructive. Alun 06:57, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

On one side I'm glad. On the other side sad: such kind of people should not even exist: it's irrational. En fin.

What's the difference between a sockpuppet and a meatpuppet? --Sugaar 11:59, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Have a look here WP:SOCK#Advertising_and_soliciting_meatpuppets. Cheers, Alun 12:37, 5 December 2006 (UTC)