User talk:JHK

Ok -- so I guess this is the new talk page.

For the record, I think that people who demonstrate unquestionable recalcitrance in accepting that they have a lot to learn (unless they are hopelessly stupid) should probably not accuse others of hitting the bottle because they hate dealing with the same atrocious errors and mistruths over and over and over and over....

Ed Poor Discussion

Not sure what you mean by "healthy attitude" toward sex or not "attacking" homosexuals. If healthy means accepting one's desires and acting on them in defiance of moral rules, it sounds like sex education that promotes immorality. If criticism of homosexuality as immoral is considered an attack (see hate speech), then your sex education, then the curriculum is forbidding the advocacy of morality: this is immoral.

Distributing condoms implies the acceptability of their use. For unmarried students, use of condoms could only mean out-of-wedlock sex, which is immoral.

Thank you for providing an 3 examples of the use of sex education to promote immorality. I will incorporate these into the article when I restore the text you arbitrarily deleted. --user:Ed+Poor

Ed -- do you not see that you are basing this all on your own a priori assumptions about what is immoral and what is not? Some religions have found it absolutely moral to stone an adulteress to death or kill a rape victim. I live in the English-speaking west. We have laws that say we can believe what we want. Whether or not you like it, your ideas of immorality are not universal. You can believe them all you want, but you cannot impose them upon encyclopedia articles.J Hofmann Kemp

J - Sorry to use your user space for this discussion, but Ed needs to be refuted, and its just too easy to do so.

"Distributing condoms implies the acceptability of their use." -- You could just as easily say "Building nuclear weapons implies the acceptability of their use." It is rather strange that most people who believe one of these statements don't believe the other.

"For unmarried students, use of condoms could only mean out-of-wedlock sex, which is immoral." -- It's not surprising that Ed doesn't want to imagine any of the uses of a condom which would not mean out-of-wedlock sex, but we can forgive him for that. Instead, let's try exposing the hypocrisy with this example: "We should not be teaching students about how use of alcohol impairs one's driving skills. For under-drinking-age students, use of alcohol could only mean underage drinking, which is immoral." Olof

Surreal. I thought this was 2002. Did I miss a "BC" somewhere? Since when is one person or group's denunciation of its pet dislike "the advocacy of morality"? Something about casting the first stone? David Parker.

For anyone interested in reading what Ed Poor described as, IIRC, my disrespectful response to him, it's on a new user page he created User:Ed Poor/unkempt -- apparently a dry witticism at my expense.J Hofmann Kemp

It's a POOR attempt at humor. I'll change it, because I don't want to give inadvertent offense. You're too im-POOR-tant a person for such POOR treatment. -- ed POOR

Important question!!

Question to sysops on deleting pages -- I would like to delete all the pages where we've changed and redirected to correct nomenclature, e.g. "Otto IV", "Peter III," etc. What do you all think?

Please don't. Have a look at the Wikipedia policy on permanent deletion of pages. Furthermore, both the pages you mention are linked to by other articles. These links still work because of the redirects. Sure, you could change them -- but isn't that more work than leaving the redirect? Deleting the page also will remove any editing history of those articles prior to your moving them. That's bad. Deleting the redirects also means that future articles that want to link to them will have a harder time -- having common alternate names as redirects makes it more likely that a link will work on the first try, without the wikipedian having to run a search for the correct title. In short, DON'T DELETE THE REDIRECT PAGES. Brion VIBBER

Thanks, Brion -- I actually had read the policy, but wasn't sure how to classify these pages. You're right in that it would be a lot of work to re-link everything -- which I was willing to do if necessary -- but I was wary because of the history thing. In my profession, we LIKE to keep history intact!! It's just that there are soooo many of these out there, and I can see a problem if someone were, for example to type in Henry IV in the address line -- where would that eventually redirect? France? England? Germany? (OK -- in this case, there would probably be links on the Henry IV page to all three -- but what if no one had gotten around to it??? Anyway, that's why I asked!

If there's actually more than one, then whoever's writing the articles about them should write a stub with links à la disambiguating pages (for instance, Henry IV) and make the links more specific when they have a chance. (But, a link to Henry IV will still work, just a little more roundabout, as long as the user knows which one they're supposed to be going to.) If there's only one, the redirect is enough. If no one had gotten around to it? Well, you can say the same about the absence of the articles in the first place -- then someone should get around to it. Brion VIBBER

Notes on Recent page Deletions

Deleted Deb's two newly created pages (Edmund, Edmund I) because the first she wanted to delete and the second was a duplicate of Edmund I of England

Also deleted newly-created Hedgeog the other day after transferring contents to correctly spelled Hedgehog -- even though it's household cyclopedia crap.

Otherwise, will continue redirecting. If anybody thinks this is not ok, I won't do it.J Hofmann Kemp April 1

Oh, right, thanks. I didn't spot that there was already an entry for Edmund I because I went to it from the British Monarchs page where he was listed simply as Edmund - so I thought I was correcting it when I put in Edmund I. (Does this make sense?) There are a lot of weird things on that British monarchs page. For example, I know that there are probably lots of Queen Annes in the world, but "Anne I of the United Kingdom" looks really strange when you see it on the page, especially when you have to use the full title when you are cross-referencing from another page. Anyway, I hope I haven't accidentally created any more duplicate kings! Deb PS why can't I get my name to come out looking like everyone else's?

Try typing three tildes instead of your signature -- that will automatically convert to your user name when you save ;-) You're right about the British monarchs page -- part of the problem is that the whole nomenclature thing is a bit reactive, and we haven't been very good about cleaning up old non-links. I'll try to do some clean-up searches this week. Right now, I'm trying to figure out how to refer to the Carolingian Emperors -- not Holy Roman...nut not really Roman! Lothar, Frankish King and Emperor?? David, Michael, Vicki, Deb, April...ANybody?? J Hofmann Kemp

- I remember reading X, King of the Franks in a couple of sources... other than that I must confess myself clueless. -- April

This is a slightly different subject, but I just noticed what you had been doing with Elizabeth II and I would like to comment that the Cunard liner's name is "Queen Elizabeth II" - not "Elizabeth II". That's why it's called the QE2 for short. So the entry for the liner really ought to be under "Q". But that would leave you with the problem of where to redirect the "Elizabeth II" entry, I suppose...?? Deb

Actually, I think it makes things easier -- if QE2 doesn't belong, then it's a simple redirect to E2 of England, rather than a see: E2 of England J Hofmann Kemp

Pardon me for barging in. The name of the ship has an Arabic 2 (not Roman II): I moved the article on the Queen Elizabeth 2 (or QE2) into RMS Queen Elizabeth 2. Let me know if this helps or not. Ed Poor, Thursday, April 18, 2002

Check the history of St. Hedwigs Kathedrale -- 66.47.62.xxx (Helga maybee?) created that page and 10 minutes later I moved all that text to the English spelling at St. Hedwig's Cathedral (yep, you forgot to redirect, so we both were cleaning up Helga's mess at the same time). Didn't know that Cathedral of St. Hedwig (Berlin) existed. BTW Google seems to like the page name I created more than the one you did. --maveric

What do you think about the fact that someone has redirected "Edward the Elder" to "Edward I the Elder of England"? This is clearly wrong, as the British Edwards had no numbers until the "real" Edward I a couple of hundred years later, but I'm not sure how to put it right. Deb

I just changed it back. Just put the text back into Ed the elder and redirected the Helga-like name to Ed the Elder as well. phew!J Hofmann Kemp

Hi, JHK! Yet another nomenclature question: where should Theodora, Empress of Byzantium really go? Something like "Theodora of the Byzantine Empire"? Was she the only one? I have this vague memory of Justinian II renaming his wife Theodora, but I could be imagining things. -- April

Justinian I, I think - would she be Theodora, Empress of the Eastern Roman Empire? The British consorts I've been putting in usually have either surnames or some kind of princess identifier to single them out, but Theodora was rather unique, wasn't she? I can't think of another well-known Theodora, so maybe "Theodora" on its own would be all right? Deb

JHK, OK, I'll take it off! Space Cadet

Hi Julie! I'm going through the list of Wikipedians and moving user pages out of the article namespace. I noticed that you still have your old personal page at J Hofmann Kemp, and an old talk page at Talk:J Hofmann Kemp. Do you want to keep the content of those pages, or shall I destroy them for you.... mwahahaha... er... *ahem*. --Stephen Gilbert

How should we handle the marginal (at best) "contributions" of Helga? They seem to be polluting the average quality of the history-related articles. Everyone seems to have been going ballistic lately about the marginal additions of the infamous 24 and Helga seems to be using wikipeda to magnify the relative importance of marginal historical characters in a similar manor as 24 was using the 'pedia to magnify his idiosyncratic terms and definitions. The only real difference is the obvious uselessness of many of Helga's entries. Of course, I might be missing something here.... --maveric149, Sunday, April 21, 2002

Looks like I was missing something -- Helga doesn't frame entries around a good definition and only gives the reason why somebody was important (however marginal) half way through the article and oftentimes given in a passive tone. --maveric149

Ok, I moved your old talk page here: user:J Hofmann Kemp/Talk Archive. Now you have an anti-crank link. ;-) I'm going to simply redirect J Hofmann Kemp to point to your user page; you can always fish the content out of the history if there's anything you want. --Stephen Gilbert

Appreciate your help on List of French monarch but don't cut Merovingians and Carolingians for now as I need them to help my work. I will do the chopping myself. Thanx again --Ktsquare

Hi, Just a small q. Is there an earlier or archaic form of the first name "Archibald". The following was my conservation with Gianfranco to start you off. Thanx Ktsquare

quote---> Hi, just a small question when I read my collection of family trees of House of Savoy: What's the English word for Arcimboldo, (Archibald, I guess). Thanx. Ktsquare

My vocabulary doesn't tell me, but since Arcimboldo is an elder form of Arcibaldo (which is Archibald in English), I believe you can use this, unless in English too there is a (probably) early medieval form. Arcimboldo was little used, it is mainly known because of the painter's surname. Please, let me know in case you find it :-)--Gianfranco

<----end quote.

I would like to apologize for my remarks several months ago. All that "unkempt" and "lab rat" stuff seems so childish to me now that I've had time to reflect on it. I would rather be a respected colleague of yours than yet another irksome pest. Would you please forgive me? --Ed Poor

Hi, J, and... prego! :-)))

I was always lurking what was happening to Copernicus and to the page about the monetary reform, but I hoped that we could have gained some more knowledge about this particular side of Cop's studies: the law that we know after the name of a not famous economist, had been already drafted by no less than Copernicus. This could perhaps be a theme to expand, IMHO, rather than to merge with other ones. But we are dealing with borders and not with data, I admit.

There was nothing wrong, obviously, in your attention to correctness and precise definitions (I can even become fastidious in this, so I'd eventually be the last one to disagree), I was only disturbed by the new nationalistic wave, and certainly not commenting your edits, with which I totally agree; I was safely relying, instead, on your praesidium for a while... :-))) I hope we can keep safe that page without having to protect it.

A note: if I can express my opinion from this other corner of... an eliocentric planet, I do believe that Wikipedia IS already a credible body of information. Thank you and other serious contributors (most of them) :-))) --Gianfranco

Thanks for the moral support. Vicki Rosenzweig

Hi J, I know you speciality is medieval europe, but I'm not sure what other historians we have. The user 67.193.76.178 has been modifying several articles to reflect the opinion of a Dr. Norman Golb,Professor of Jewish History and Civilization of the University of Chicago, about the origin of the Dead Sea scrolls. I don't think that this is a resolved matter, if its not, this user is violation NPOV by considering the opinion of this professor fact. Can you take a look, or tell to whoever could be more qualified? AstroNomer 21:50 Aug 29, 2002 (PDT)

I'm a bit concerned about the Netherlands royal family. There were two articles, under "Queen Juliana" and "Princess Juliana", which I've joined together under "Queen", but I'm thinking it should just be "Juliana" - or maybe "Juliana I"? The same is true of "Queen Beatrix". I don't know much about Dutch history. Do you know if anyone's working on it? Deb

HI Deb -- I vaguely noted that, too. Frankly, I don't see any reason not to have them exactly as all the others -- It's Victoria of the UK, and should be Beatrix of the Netherlands. At least that's how I see it, but what do I know? a tired of defending herself J Hofmann Kemp

You sound really fed up. To paraphrase a British politician, don't let the less capable grind you down. I still think you're doing a grand job. Deb

I agree - you have been a major asset to the project and have helped it along greatly. It also looks like the person who has been a thorn in our collective side for so many months now has burned all her remaining bridges (I still say we should have blocked her many months ago - then maybe we would not have lost certain other people who are major contributors). --mav

My preference would be to keep it under "Queen Juliana", but I do agree that "Juliana of the Netherlands" would be closer to our standard naming convention. "Princess Juliana" would be worse; she is now known as such, but the most important period of her life, and the one that gives us reason to have her in the encyclopedia, would be the period of her queenship. Simply "Juliana" would, I think, have too much risk of being ambiguous, and unnecessarily so. "Juliana I" (either or not with "the Netherlands") sounds strange to me as long as there has been only one. So my vote would go to "Juliana of the Netherlands" if consistency is considered most important, "Queen Juliana" if 'normal use' is considered most important. Andre Engels

Brava! I love what you did with Henry I of France. Encore! on some of the other people's pages, where their spouses or progeny should be mentioned somewhere (so they can be found in a search on their name) but don't merit an article. Encore! -- isis 2 Sep 2002 Thanks, Isis -- glad to know I'm not pushing a minority agenda! J Hofmann Kemp

Cribbed from other resources? Everything is from other sources without exception. However, it is a matter of info gathering, cross-checking and rewriting. I do not copy the 1911 ency. and paste. Plus, I know a fair amount of French/Scottish history, and genealogy. Because genealogy is the 2nd largest (to sex only) in no's of websites, if one can set up useful and desireable info for those millions of family historians, I see it as a plus drawing them to Wikipedia and hopefully contributing.

P.S. If you wish to espouse education on the web where names and any personal info means nothing, you should attach a university name as well as your publications.

DW -- One of the things about the Wikipedia that's very cool is that there is among most of us an atmosphere of trust and cooperation.

Credentials removed by request from Jules

As for genealogical websites, most are crap. The fact that they are available in abundance doesn't make them good or accurate. One exception is http://www.genealogie-mittelalter.de/, because it actually cites extensive scholarly research for what's there. Just so you know, genealogical websites are weakest where then give people names and titles, because most of the databases used by genealogists aren't designed to handle people who have no last name -- you end up with names like Tassilo Agilolfing, Duke of Bavaria -- it's not really their name in any historical sense; or you get Somebody count of somewhere, and then a bunch of assumptions that the son is also count of somewhere -- but the truth may be that the title or office was not heritable. Mostly, they're pretty weak overall and shouldn't be relied on when there are decent scholarly works available. J Hofmann Kemp

Could I prevail on you to clear up a couple of points in the list of children in William I of England, please? I had a lot of trouble sorting out the different info about birth and death dates and titles: My main confusion is over Alfonso/Alphonso and Castile, Leon, and Gallicia -- would you please, please, please correct what I put there, in terms of both historical accuracy and Wikipedia naming conventions? -- isis 3 Sep 2002

I'll be happy to do what i can but it may take a day -- although my own feeling is that, if their biggest known accomplishment was to marry or breed, I don't much care! J Hofmann Kemp

I don't really care all that much about them, either, but I do care about me, and I'd hate to have my name on a contribution that was really stupid, and I don't even know enough to know whether not knowing Castile from Gallicia is stupid or not. Thanks for agreeing to help, and there's no hurry on it. isis

Call to the Militia --

Could some of you perhaps try to reason with DW (who may also be 209.202.xxx.xxx) As far as I can tell (unless it's a major coincidence), he's brought in his friends Olivier and Suzanne to help ram through a bunch of French articles. Mast are pretty good, but both Zoe and I have asked that they try to stick to the format we've used for historical biography, with no response. There have also been questions about sources and images -- no response. It wouldn't matter if the articles were all neutral, but DW tends to put in phrases like "he had the morals of a tomcat" -- it's bad writing and without some kind of citation, it isn't appropriate.

I've tried to talk to this person, but he refuses to talk to me because he thinks I'm a German revisionist -- his last shot to me was to demand my credentials after implying that I had made them up.

I'll stop whining here, but I thought we were a community -- this guy seems to be a loose cannon with no respect for anybody else. J Hofmann Kemp

which articles has he been working on ? user:anthere

these. I think most of them have been patched at this point, but please go ahead and give it the look-through. :-) How are things at fr.wikipedia.com? --KQ 11:13 Sep 4, 2002 (PDT)

they are going fine. Very quiet right now. School (so, basically, life !) started back yesterday. That's usually a busy time for everybody. Preparing striking season :-)

Can't do anything for you in term of "tomcat". I am hopelessly ignorant in history (though I remember learning at school how much Philippe d'Orléans was famous for being a "débauché notoire"). As for the pictures, they come from http://www.beloit.edu/~arthist/historyofart/gothic/reimscath.htm but I can't see any copyright. user:anthere

Hi, JHK. Why Muckleshoot? LOL. Good question. When I started working on Wikipedia, I thought that I would stay away from my fields of professional interests (Jewish history--I work in the Education Department of New York's Museum of Jewish Heritage) and deal with things that interest me, hoping that I could learn more about them by studying them and writing about them. About 10 years ago, I was an editor for a book called the The Encyclopedia of the Peoples of the World by Henry Holt. It is not a very good book, but working on it really impressed on me how so many ethnic groups are being lost and how many cultures are disappearing. I guess Muckleshoot, Banawa, and some of the other articles on smaller ethnic groups are my meager tribute to their vanishing cultures. As for Muckleshoot in particular: there is very little information on them (as opposed to the Tlingit, Haida, Kwakiutl, etc.), I found their salmon rituals interesting, and I happened to have some information on them at the time. Unfortunately, I am getting sucked back into the things I do from nine to five, thanks to the Holocaust and biblical canon debates. Too bad. There's so much else I'd like to learn about. Danny

I hate to keep imposing on you, but you're the one I know of who knows this stuff. This question is a general one, but the specific application at hand is in William Marshal, so I'll ask it in terms of that: What is (or should be) the Wikipedia convention for using "fitz" to distinguish persons with the same name? Should I spell it "Fitzwilliam" (as I did), or "FitzWilliam," or "fitzWilliam"? Should I use a patronymic for the senior one (= call William senior "William fitzJohn Marshal") or leave the elder alone and label the younger (as I did and as I think I've most usually seen done)? -- isis 4 Sep 2002

Ooh -- I'd never even thought about it. This one might well be beyond me. I think the best thing to do would be to get a good biography of the Marshall and check the family tree in the back. In the meantime, I'll check around. Of course, we could transfer the current article to William the Marshall... I'll see if I have anything, although I don't have a ton of Anglo-Norman stuff on hand. J Hofmann Kemp

The question isn't who the people are -- the great William Marshal was the son of John Marshal and the father of William Marshal, who is often called William fitzWilliam to distinguish them. The question is about spelling "fitzWilliam" and whether to call the elder "fitzJohn" (which I don't recall ever seeing); it's the same question as asking if we call the elder "Sr.," too, or just label the younger one "Jr.," which I think is the custom. -- isis 4 Sep 2002

I understood that -- just thought that, in absence of actually knowing, it might be a good thing to look up in a couple of other sources and see how it's been handled. ;-) J Hofmann Kemp

Nothing I have on hand is helpful: They all refer to the old man as "William Marshal" or "the Marshal" or "Old William" and to his son as "the son" or "the second William." The Internet has lots of places that call the younger one "Fitzwilliam" or "FitzWilliam" or "fitzWilliam," but they call the Good Knight's daughters "FitzWilliam," too, and that can't be right. If there's no convention, then if you and I decide how to do it and do it that way, the youngsters will follow our example, and it will become the convention. I vote for "fitzWilliam" for the son and nothing for the father; what's your preference? -- isis 4 Sep 2002

Illegitimi non carborundum. -- Zoe