User talk:Mahagaja/Archive 60

bibiography

Discussion at User talk:Uncle G#bibiography you might find too silly, but wikt:User talk:SemperBlotto#bibiographer is a more serious discussion. Uncle G (talk) 14:28, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

I can't really follow the discussion, but Greek βίος "life" (< *gʷih₃wos) definitely has nothing to do with Latin bis "twice" (< *dwis). —Angr (talk) 12:15, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Elmore's rules

Re the Language reference desk, I wanted to reassure you that I see Elmore Leonard's "rules" much as I think he himself sees them: rules of thumb that he tends to find useful for himself, rather than ukases handed down for others as well. I posted them mostly as a humorous reply to an earlier statement that using "said" in fiction is "bland." Leonard's work doesn't suit all tastes, but I think a person would be hard pressed to call it bland.

Really, though, this comment is just a way of wishing you Merry Christmas. --- OtherDave (talk) 13:14, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Merry Christmas to you too! I'm glad you know the difference between rules of thumb and the Code of Hammurabi, but not everyone does. While good style is important, I also find it very sad to encounter adults who still slavishly follow the stylistic rules they were taught by oversimplifying schoolmarms when they were 9 or 10 years old. —Angr (talk) 13:27, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Just in case you don't know it (you probably do, but just in case...), I almost always find the Language Log blog entertaining. --- OtherDave (talk) 13:57, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I used to read that until I got fed up with it. Now I just read John C. Wells's phonetics blog. —Angr (talk) 14:01, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Replaceable fair use Images subcategory starter 2

Template:Replaceable fair use Images subcategory starter 2 has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. — This, that, and the other (talk) 01:00, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Free variation

The article Free variation has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Article should be deleted. Wikipedia is not a dictionary or a slang, jargon or usage guide. WP:Neologism.

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. The speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Securel (talk) 20:54, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Free variation

The article Free variation has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Article should be deleted WP:Neologism. Wikipedia is not a dictionary or a slang, jargon or usage guide. Securel (talk) 21:17, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. The speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Securel (talk) 21:17, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Nomination of Free variation for deletion

The article Free variation is being discussed concerning whether it is suitable for inclusion as an article according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Free variation until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on good quality evidence, and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion template from the top of the article. Securel (talk) 21:19, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia Ambassador Program is looking for new Online Ambassadors

Hi! Since you've been identified as an Awesome Wikipedian, I wanted to let you know about the Wikipedia Ambassador Program, and specifically the role of Online Ambassador. We're looking for friendly Wikipedians who are good at reviewing articles and giving feedback to serve as mentors for students who are assigned to write for Wikipedia in their classes.

If that sounds like you and you're interested, I encourage you to take a look at the Online Ambassador guidelines; the "mentorship process" describes roughly what will be expected of mentors during the current term, which started in January and goes through early May. If that's something you want to do, please apply!

You can find instructions for applying at WP:ONLINE. The main things we're looking for in Online Ambassadors are friendliness, regular activity (since mentorship is a commitment that spans several months), and the ability to give detailed, substantive feedback on articles (both short new articles, and longer, more mature ones).

I hope to hear from you soon.--Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 21:02, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Hiberno-Latin

Hiya, Template:Hiberno-Latin to 1169 and Template:Hiberno-Latin post-1169 were the result of a little discussion that Srnec and I had over at Fergananim's talk page. They were meant to replace the separate navigation boxes added by Fergananim, but I didn't get round to do most of them. I just noticed, however, that you've been busy adding another template which you've created yourself, apparently unaware of doing some double work. Regards, Cavila (talk) 22:29, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

I was sort of vaguely aware of it when I saw that {{Hiberno-Latin to 1169}} and {{Hiberno-Latin post-1169}} were already on some pages I was adding {{Hiberno-Latin authors}} to. But there were plenty of pages that neither of those templates were on, and instead just had manually written-out navboxes. If you want to add those authors to one of your two templates and then delete mine as redundant, that's fine. I have no especial attachment to it; I just wanted to get all those manual navboxes out of article space. —Angr (talk) 22:37, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Alright, I just hope it didn't give you any repetitive stress injury. Cavila (talk) 22:45, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Gaah! Please don't correct other people's spelling on talk pages; it's considered rude. Especially when (as in this case) the "correction" is wrong. I said "some pages I was adding [the template] to", i.e. some pages to which I was adding the template. —Angr (talk) 22:49, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Haha, I stand corrected. I thought you meant "too" here but must have been an unforgivably lazy reader. I'll blame it on the moonlight. Cavila (talk) 23:17, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Regional accents of English

Hi Angr, as an early major contributor to this article you may wish to catch up on Talk:Regional accents of English. As a Wikipedian, I feel this article should now be subject to a heavy slash-and-burn because nobody is interested in addressing the blatant ignorance of policies that have remained tagged for a very long time. I'm not going to get involved in in-depth discussion about it as I learned my lesson already from being insulted, attacked, and bullied out of linguistics on Wikipedia a year ago by the reigning cabal. However, as a professional linguist, I just can't sit back and see this unsourced material being allowed to stay, and I'm quite prepared now to BRD and take an axe to it - all 100% within Wikipedia policies and guidelines. How do you feel about it? Regards, --Kudpung (talk) 07:07, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't know who's been bullying you or how, but I know that I too am fed up with the state of a lot of articles on regional accents of English (not just the overview article, but a lot of the specific articles too), full of unscientific and unsourced personal reflections by people who speak the accent themselves (or know people who do) but know nothing about linguistics. And I know that the other active linguists here - people like Aeusoes1 and Kwamikagami - will definitely support any effort to eliminate the bullshit and replace it with sourced, linguistically informed material. —Angr (talk) 11:31, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Oh dear! Looks like I might have put my foot in it. I think I'll just quietly slip away again from anything to do with linguistics. Sorry to have bothered you. Kudpung (talk) 11:59, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Huh? Why? I don't understand your sudden change of heart. —Angr (talk) 14:39, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Because the users you mentioned will almost certainly veto anything that is signed Kudpung and I don't want any conflicts of that kind where I am shortly to be going through hell at RfA - I have a record here that is as clean as a whistle and I have left linguistics alone for over a year. Kudpung (talk) 19:02, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

I know you disagree with us about the usage of a transdialectal IPA transcription on Wikipedia entries, but what you mentioned above is something quite different from that. I really doubt either of them would have a problem with your cleaning up the article. But, it's your decision. —Angr (talk) 20:25, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

All I would be doing would be to eliminate the bullshit, OR, and POV. I wouldn't be replacing it with sourced, linguistically informed material, because I am too heavily involved in a couple of other projects at the moment. But there is stuff on that page that is unsourced and grossly inaccurate, or even totally untrue. Most linguists would just laugh at it, but it would give serious Wikipedia detractors something to get their teeth into, especially in the light of the banner at the top of the talk page. Kudpung (talk) 13:42, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Even eliminating the bullshit, OR, and POV without replacing it is better than nothing. I can almost guarantee you neither Kwami nor Aeusoes will complain if you do that. —Angr (talk) 13:45, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Vandalism

I noticed you had previously told User:Jordanfyfe to stop his vandilism he recently vandalised Pope John Paul II. His edit was reverted but if you look at the history you should be able to find his vandalism. Her's a link to the history to assist you. I know that the Bot warned him but I don't think it needs to be brought to the Attention of a SysOp if you are not a SysOp let me know and I'll alert one.Etineskid (talk) 02:50, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

I've blocked him indefinitely, because his account is now almost 2 years old, meaning he could vandalize semiprotected pages. —Angr (talk) 10:37, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Thank you.Etineskid (talk) 21:01, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Linguistics and User:Supriyya

Hi Angr, I'd like to consult you for some help regarding the article and user in question. I have been told not to discuss this on the community page, so am getting in touch with you on your talkpage. I see that you were part of the community actively earlier; you don't seem to participate in the discussion anymore. Well, here's what's been happening. It looks like Supriya's got the linguistics story into New York Times. See this and this for evidence. I think we should get her to stop defaming the encyclopedia. She's instigating the media with her biased views. I have reasons to believe she pulled influence or she wouldn't have been able to get such a biased story into the national daily. Next, they'll say that biased articles like the deleted post structural linguistics should be on the encyclopedia again. We need to maintain the neutrality of the encyclopedia, and I need your help in doing so. Can we write to the NYT collectively to get those stories taken off from their website? ''FellowScientist'' (talk) 20:11, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

First of all, please don't edit other people's comments on talk pages, as you did to the previous thread on this page; it's considered uncivil. Second, I don't see anything in those NYT articles that's defamatory of Wikipedia. (But if it's true that "The encyclopedic nature of Wikipedia, combined with its rigid adherence to a 'neutral' point of view, are factors that might make women less inclined to contribute", then there's nothing we can do - we're not going to stop being an encyclopedia or stop being NPOV-driven just to attract more woman editors.) Third, even if NYT did print something defamatory of Wikipedia, it's laughable to think that Supriyya has any influence at all that she could use to get it printed. Fourth, because of freedom of the press, it would be both abhorrent and futile for Wikipedians to try to get NYT to remove something from their website. Wikipedia is not censored and doesn't condone censorship of other websites. —Angr (talk) 10:15, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Well, Angr, it is my duty and responsibility to warn you. I would myself alert the community if I were you, because I see a storm coming. I have reasons to believe the linguistics community is under danger. And well, the argument that the NYT poses and Supriyya poses is that there need to be more women on Wikipedia since it is a democratic project and that a project can't be called democratic without women in it and their perspective in it! Damn them! I mean where is it written in the policies that Wikipedia is a democratic project? Aren't you the guys who started it with Jimmy Wales and don't you have ownership rights on the encyclopedic website? We need to convince them that it is a myth to think that Wikipedia is a democratic project. It is not. Only experienced editors should edit it! Women are also not meant to get into science and Internet projects because their role is different. Women must NOT join Wikipedia in my view. They are not experienced enough to edit and they mustn't try to be experienced or they can damage the encyclopedia. The few that exist need to be banned and I strongly propagate this. As long as Supriya and the NYT are concerned, they are going to make it a 50:50 population in terms of gender, and also get the "women's" flawed perspective into the encyclopedia! We simply can't have democracy because things will really be difficult then for the rest of us here. Perhaps if we can present legal documents about your ownership of Wikipedia we can get them to stop ranting on about this "democracy" crap. It is not a democratic project. I am desperate that this message is conveyed. Please take action and don't give up, Angr. We can all do it together. You sound defeatist and over our coming conversations on your talk page, I intend to inspire you to revolt with me against Supriya and the NYT. ''FellowScientist'' (talk) 16:36, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Category stuff

Sorry, your first edit summary made it look like you weren't aware C in NA was a parent category (apparently not the case :) ). Had been editing on assumption that pages don't generally go in both child and parent categories. Anyway, just wanted to ask if we have it as policy somewhere that the lead article of a category should be added to the category's parent as well. I tried looking in the WikiProject but didn't get very far... Thanks,

-- Joren (talk) 11:44, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure what it says in the policy or guidelines, but I've always understood it that if an article X and a category X are on the same topic (usually, this means they have the same name), then the article belongs in all the categories it would normally belong in, even if category:X didn't exist. For example Michael Jackson belongs in Category:Jackson musical family even though that's a parent category of Category:Michael Jackson. (But other articles inside Category:Michael Jackson that are more specific, like Death of Michael Jackson, don't belong in the parent categories.) So Christianity in the United States belongs in all the usual categories for any "Christianity in Fooland" article, just as if Category:Christianity in the United States didn't exist. This way, if someone's looking for the article, they can go straight to Category:Religion in the United States and find the article right there alphabetized under C, alongside other articles on specific religions in the United States that don't have their own subcategory. Otherwise, the list of articles shown at Category:Religion in the United States would include (say) Jainism in the United States (which doesn't have its own subcategory), but it would exclude Christianity in the United States, making the user have to click through yet another category level to find it. Yet it makes sense that Jainism in the United States and Christianity in the United States should be in the same category, since they're at the same level of generalness. —Angr (talk) 12:05, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

I see, that does make sense. I did eventually find something at WP:EPON, by the way, for eponymous categories. Thanks for your time explaining!

-- Joren (talk) 16:45, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Ulster Gaelic Dialect

A tag has been placed on Ulster Gaelic Dialect, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a redirect to an article talk page, file description page, file talk page, MediaWiki page, MediaWiki talk page, category talk page, portal talk page, template talk page, help talk, user page, user talk or special page from the main/article space.

If you can fix the redirect to point to a mainspace page, please do so and remove the speedy deletion tag. However, please do not remove the speedy deletion tag unless you are fixing the redirect. If you think the redirect should be retained as is for some reason, you can request that administrators wait a while before deleting it. To do this, affix the template {{hangon}} to the page and state your reasoning on the article's talk page. Feel free to leave a note on my talk page if you have any questions about this. DASHBot (talk) 12:00, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Thracian

Angr, this is not really a Wikipedia question, but you are the person I first thought of who would know the answer. I am reading a passage (in Martin Opitz actually) which claims that the old Thracian language was Celtic. I think the modern consensus is that this is not the case. But can we definitely rule it out? Certainly, in the Humanist period it was generally believed to have been Celtic - a fact which might indeed inform the Wiki article on Thracian, if only as a point of trivia. --Doric Loon (talk) 22:44, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

I've never heard this claim. Galatian is the only Celtic language I know of spoken in that neck of the woods. As for definitely ruling it out, well, it's impossible to prove a negative, but if there's no positive evidence indicating that it might be Celtic (such as loss of PIE *p or the change of *ē (including < *eh1) to ī, or the presence of clearly Celtic lexemes like windos "white"), no one will take "you can't prove it isn't" seriously as an argument. —Angr (talk) 19:16, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, that's what I thought. Opitz is interesting because for his time he had some sensible insights, though he wasn't a philologist. He recognized that the Getae weren't Goths, for example, which Vulcanius didn't. I'm writing a commentary on Opitz, and it's interesting to add as a footnote whether modern linguistics agrees with him or not. --Doric Loon (talk) 13:42, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

The question is, what would Opitz have meant by a "Celtic language"? He precedes Edward Lhuyd, who I believe was the first person to postulate a relationship between Goidelic, Brythonic, and Gaulish. —Angr (talk) 13:58, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Sure. He certainly wouldn't have been thinking of Goidelic or Brythonic. He was thinking of Asterix. And he did seem to know that the Celts had been spread right across Germany, and not just in Gaul. (We have a Keltenschanze in our Bavarian village. When my kids were small they sometimes got teased about being Ausländer. I taught them to answer: "We Celts were here first"!)--Doric Loon (talk) 14:17, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

76.178.113.225

76.178.113.225 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

I have taken the liberty of boxing up a couple more of his little rants-disguised-as-questions, and I've told him to stop it. If he keeps it up, I'll ask for a block. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:17, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. And sorry about accidentally only removing your answer instead of his rant in the first place. —Angr (talk) 22:36, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

I sized up the situation quickly. My Mom didn't raise no dummies, nohow. :) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:40, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

'imperfective' in Hebrew grammar

Just a short thought on this post of yours, Angr. Seems to me there has always been, and yet still is, a disagreement among Hebrew and English grammarians on this particular aspect. That said, if this cannot be brought in to the conceptual approach on the English aspect, the aspectuality of other circularities in definitions collapses by its own weights as for its linguistic reference that already has the clear definition on what a perfect and an imperfective aspect are; a form for a pitch in their classes. So now could you perhaps give one example on each of these aspectual situations (or for perfective, imperfective, perfect, and imperfect if you prefer) in order to differentiate these from each of their aspectual time frames to encode the differential aspects? Thanks. Mr.Bitpart (talk) 17:23, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Parable of the great banquet

In the Parable of the great banquet, what's the benefit of using p tags instead of br tags? Jason Quinn (talk) 15:45, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

It's just standard HTML practice that paragraphs of text are marked with <p> tags, while <br> tags are used for other line breaks (e.g. within cells of a table). Look at the source HTML (not the Wiki markup) of any Wikipedia page and you'll see that paragraphs are always enclosed in <p>...</p>, not separated by <br><br>. —Angr (talk) 14:21, 24 April 2011 (UTC)