Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 08:30, 15 December 2006

For discussion prior to 1 August 2006, see the Archives:

• User talk:Briangotts/archive 2005
• User talk:Briangotts/archive 2006

I will generally respond to comments on the commentor's talk page.

Could you do me a favour?

I´m an user of es.wikipedia, and I´m working on es:Vikingo, where your image Image:Viking expansion.png would be great. Can I upload it to commons to allow all wikipedians using it? or even better, could you upload it, so it won´t be neccessary to keep the file in english wikipedia?

Thank you, and sorry for my my poor english level.--FAR 15:06, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Thank you indeed!--FAR 15:41, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Muslim Guild POV-pushers trying to get original article deleted to protect their POV Fork

Striver's POV-pushing cohort User:Burgas00 has, in a fit of his POV-pushing zeal, nominated Beit_Hanoun_November_2006_incident for deletion here. The cowardly bad faith POV-pusher wouldn't even sign his own name to the deletion request either. I thought you should be warned of this. RunedChozo 22:10, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Image:Early_Rus.png

Could you take a look at the question at Image_talk:Early_Rus.png? Thanks! Vmenkov 22:54, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

"Jew" page and "Crimean Karaites" page

(1) At the "Jew" page under "Ethnic Divisions", please change the word Gruzim to Gruzinim in the phrase "...and such smaller groups as the Gruzim..." I don't have an account here so I don't have the permission to modify locked pages. (2) Concerning the "Crimean Karaites" page, I asked for an update to the existing sentence: "At the time of this writing (March 2005), genetic testing is being conducted to ascertain their ethnic origin." As we discussed, I am the first and apparently only person to conduct genetic research on the Crimean and Polish Karaites, but unfortunately I could not find more than 8 qualifying and willing people to participate. They had to be men and unrelated paternally to any other in the study, and I had to approach Karaites living outside of eastern Europe because those who are still there have clung to the Khazar myth and are hostile to Jews. I cannot claim that my research is anywhere near statistically significant. However, it does prove a relationship exists between at least some Crimean Karaites and Middle Eastern peoples, and does provide avenues for further exploration (such as the question of whether the Karaite family we found to have haplogroup Q obtained it from a Turkic ancestor). Since there are a limited number of Crimean Karaite paternal lines to begin with, because of heavy interbreeding within the group, the 8 lines I studied are examples that probably reflect many other families. The debate over whether Karaites are kin to other Jews is effectively resolved in favor of Yes. Any person wishing to dismiss such a relationship will expose himself to be either an apologist for Seraya Szapszal's fraud or someone who was misled by the apologists. It is most potent in combination with the historical evidence showing many Crimean Karaites used to live in Istanbul. In the future if I can locate other bona fide European Karaite men I can expand the study; if another genetics team wants to continue the study that is also welcome. - Kevin Brook

Vote

Please vote 67.70.70.33 22:13, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Allow me

		The Working Man's Barnstar
		For your excellent work on Sviatoslav I of Kiev, please keep it up! Khoikhoi 21:40, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

The Military history WikiProject Newsletter: Issue IX - November 2006

The November 2006 issue of the Military history WikiProject newsletter has been published. You may read the newsletter, change the format in which future issues will be delivered to you, or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Thank you.

This is an automated delivery by grafikbot 22:03, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Svyatoslav

It's been a pleasure to work with you on this article. I can't think of any days specificially associated with Svyatoslav. The feast days are for saints, you know, and he was a pagan whose life is not very well documented, too. --Ghirla 15:06, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

I will work on Khaganate until the end of the week. In the meantime, could you take a look at Talk:Birka. There is a heated discussion on this page. --Ghirla 10:17, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Scotland Whisky Region Maps

The problem I have with the map is that it is incorrect. If you must ad a map, use one that is correct. Speyside is completely wrong on your Map. Islay is not even on the map. The Islands are not a region and the delineation between Hoghlands andlowlands is WAY off. Why keep adding it when it is wrong?--ScotchGuy 01:24, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Please remember this policy. The tone of your message was unnecessarily hostile. If you had looked at the map you would see that it had been revised entirely. As for your contention that Island single malts do not exist, I refer you to The Island Whiskey Trail by Neil Wilson (Glasgow: Angel's Share, 2003.) Briangotts (Talk) (Contrib) 02:00, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

ScotchGuy 13:43, 13 December 2006 (UTC)I really don't care what you think of my tone. There's also a policy against adding erroneous information and reposting things over and over. Why are you so god-aweful eager to add a map (that is wrong) - because you made it? I refer you to the SWA who are the official "keepers of the regions". There is no Island region.

Template:Khazaria

Brian, I don't know much about Khazaria, so I let you rule on this. I do not like bulky templates, but it's only my personal opinion. I normally create templates when I feel that articles on a certain subject may be lost to our readers, because they are almost linkless and categorization is of little help. In other words, I use templates as a surrogate for "see also" section, which I find generally annoying. If some area may be covered by existing categories, it's better not to clutter the template with a simple list of items. But I'm sure you know as much and more! --Ghirla 19:44, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Animated world history

I'm not familiar with Cassell's Atlas (goes to look it up right now). Well, I guess my goal is to reproduce the best of Cassell's most comprehensive work in a free (as in GNU liscensed) electronic medium. I'm strong on programming skills (in theory at least, if not in practice), but weak in the artistic department (though I've been wrangling around with the GIMP these last few days, tweaking with a 39-frame series of the Roman republic/empire). There's a lot I could learn from you, I think (like what programs you use).

My visions are grand and will probably need trimming down to a practical size. With the proper programming setup, I should be able to mark and name arbitrary geographic regions on an image, then use a script to control a simple program to overlay all the pretty colors we like to see. I think I'm imagining a unwieldingly high level of customization, but I won't know until I try. So far, I've found GMT to offer the kind of controls I'm looking for, but those tools aren't geared for animation (yet; if I could gain the right kind of UNIX programming skills, I'm sure I would wind up working with the GMT programmers to the point where my influence would inspire an animation plugin or something). Xaxafrad 18:35, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Actually most of the maps I've created for Misplaced Pages have been with very basic tools like Paintbrush. I essentially take PD map images from elsewhere on WP (Misplaced Pages:Blank maps is a good tool, see also the map on the topography page), then edit them in png format on Paintbrush.

Cassells has a series of world maps showing the major states in any given time period. the maps are color coded (green for hunter-gatherers, beige for pastoral nomads, pink for simple farming cultures, light brown for chieftaincies and complex farming cultures, purple for state societies and dark brown for empires. certain long-lived empires (Roman, British, etc.) are delineated in unique colors.

If you look at Image:World 820(1).png, that was largely based on a cassels' map for that year.

Suppose we drafted a series of individual maps for each time period, then had them animated to show changes over time. It would'nt be useful to show expansion and shrinking of most states since they took place over too short a period of time, but it would be useful to show the general progress of urbanization and state formation around the world. Briangotts (Talk) (Contrib) 22:12, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Masawaiyh

I noticed that you have removed my edits on Masawaiyh as dichotomies. I'm not an expert on this subject, but what I have read, Masawayh or Masawaiyh was a Persian Nestorian Christian. None of the books that I have seen on this subject refer to him as Assyrian, and there is nothing contradictory in being Christian and Persian, there were many Christian Persians at that time. So how sure are you about this? Cheers. :) --Mardavich 22:26, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

I have only ever seen him referred to as Assyrian, or rather as a Syriac-speaker. To my knowledge Persians of the period did not customarily write in Syriac or Aramaic. Briangotts (Talk) (Contrib) 22:31, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply, tomorrow morning I'll see if I can find something on this in the college library. Cheers. --Mardavich 22:38, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Funny you should write

Brian, I was just noticing your recent map that you mentioned on Ghirlandajo's Talk page. I like the detail on that one, and went on to review all the maps you've put together.

I am particularly impressed with your extensive "Source" listings. Most historical mapmakers here in wiki-land seem to ignore this critical documentation (or perhaps lack it all together).

What program do I use? Inkscape. It's freeware and is very powerful. The best thing is that my maps are very very editable. I notice that you, like I, make changes to your maps, so Inkscape comes in very handy. Yes, there is a learning curve, but it's worth it in my opinion. And, yes, it's probably a bit harder to develop a multi-color map, but again it's worth it.

Regarding your maps, I would urge you to use the standard colors listed at Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Maps. In particular, I think it's important to use the standard color for bodies of water and "#FFFFD0" (a light tan or cream color) for the land -- whenever possible.

I also list my own guidelines on my user page, if you're ever short of reading.

Happy mapmaking!!! MapMaster 04:51, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

The map

Hi, Brian. I am pleased with the newest edition of your map. I have some comments, but they are not essential:

• Are you sure that early Pskov may be qualified as a Scandinavian settlement (it is red in your map)? At least nearby Izborsk was a tribal centre of the Krivichs, with no traces of a Varangian presence (although it was burned to the ground simultaneously with the settlements of the Rus' Khaganate, towards the end of the ninth century).
• Per Tatiana Jackson and the Machinskys, Alaborg was situated on the Syas River rapids, immediately east of Ladoga. The Syas River flows from Lake Ladoga southward, in parallel to the Volkhov. There is a minority opinion that Alaborg was pre-historic Olonets but it does not enjoy much support.
• I don't understand why you persist in spelling Rostov as Rostofa. This is a ridiculously distorted Slavic name, used in several quite late Scandinavian sources. The original Norse name for Sarskoe Gorodishche is not known. I also don't understand the question mark and the frame at this point of the map. --Ghirla 14:39, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

1. Re:Pskov: I based this on the fact that Olga of Kiev's family were supposed to be prominent Varangians who settled there. Given that she married Igor in the early 900's, it's not unreasonable to classify Pskov as the situs of a Varangian settlement at least in tradition. I don't know how the archaeology measures up. Christian definitely identifies it as a Rus Khaganate site, as do (I believe) Franklin and Shepard.

2. Re:Izborsk being burned with the Rus' Khaganate sites; I imagine that the line between Slav and Varangian was not particularly clear-cut in many areas and that there were "Viking-ized" Slavic ruling classes in some regions just as there were Slavicized Viking rulers in others. It was probably more of a spectrum than a clear cut "I am Viking, you are Slav" dichotomy. Not that that affects the map, it's just a thought.

3. Rostofa- this is clearly what Norsemen called the town in later times. Sarskoe G. is a more modern designation so I don't see why it would be a more appropriate name. However, I will add a note to the map description discussing the issue since you think it is important.

---Briangotts (Talk) (Contrib)

Russian History Project

Brian, I don't take such projects seriously. One doesn't have to spam thousands of project banners on talk pages of articles written by others if he really wants to improve their coverage. I have seen most such projects fall apart rather quickly after much ado with banners and assessment scales. I suppose it was Mr. Lokshin who introduced this practice to Misplaced Pages and I recall that he regrets it now. Probably I'm getting lazy with time, but I don't feel myself able to embark on the series of the Rus' history articles. It would require examination of too many sources, too much time and too much energy, now that I have some other projects to pursue. Kievan Rus, however, needs serious expansion, so I plan to tweak it after we are through with the khaganate. Best, Ghirla 09:05, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Your input is requested

Your input would be appreciated at this Request for Comments. Kelly Martin (talk) 15:49, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Added your name to the Cartographers's list

I've added your name and a link to your gallery to Misplaced Pages:Wikipedians/Cartographers. --DelftUser 14:56, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

FAC alert

Thanks for the heads up! Adam Cuerden 22:02, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

First Christianization of the Rus

I finally started this article, which I view as a useful appendix to the Rus' Khaganate. I'm not wholly satisfied with its title. Can you think of a better one? --Ghirla 01:19, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Removal of facts

Regarding this, I am afraid this is not a good editing practice. Those places need inline citations and/or footnotes explaining them. I have restored them, please don't remove them but replace with either inline citations to a source making such claims or to your reasoning based on existing sources.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  21:41, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

This was a very unconstructive edit, bordering on v-word. Please don't revert edits by others in the future.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  00:45, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Image:Mountain jew.JPG

Please provide reasons for wikipedia to believe that Image:Mountain jew.JPG shows what the caption says. `'mikkanarxi 19:50, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

I've added a citation. This vendetta you appear to have embarked on does not become you. Briangotts (Talk) (Contrib) 20:17, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Vendetta? Did I post this image for deletion or even tagged it? In fact, what I did was a defense of this image with obsolete tag. Don't you know about this copyright frenzy in wikipedia that aimed to delete all old russian images, armed with 'bots? Also, did you offend me in some way somewhere so that you have a reason to expect vendetta? I am not aware. `'mikkanarxi 01:02, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps I was hasty and misjudged your intentions. If so I apologize. Briangotts (Talk) (Contrib) 03:58, 15 December 2006 (UTC)