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The West Bank/Judea and Samaria Problem

Personal work section notes. I get headaches and am as slow as a wet week, in dragging up diffs, and even have a geezer's trouble in following these arguments all over several pages, so I can't really make an adequate case. So I'll have to make my contribution in the next few days, according to the fashion I normally work after, when I did work, in the real world. Reflecting from principles, through to the problem, the evidence and conclusions. Apologies to anyone reading this. It's written to help myself get some order into this chat, not to guide others.

• An editorial split between those in favour of using 'Judea & Samaria' to designate (a) parts of, or (b) all, or (c) all of the West Bank and parts of Israel, and those who oppose the usage, except on those specific pages devoted to (i) Samaria (ii) Judea (iii) the administrative territory known in Israel as 'Judea & Samaria'.

• The 'Judea and Samaria' school holds that (a) these are geographical and historical designations predating the West Bank (b) used in a variety of sources published in Israel and abroad to denote the territory, or parts of it, known as the West Bank (c) and that opposition to the employment of these words in wiki constitutes an 'ethnic-based discrimination' against both Israeli and Jewish people.(d) specifically, that MeteorMaker, Pedrito and myself have conducted a campaign to denigrate or deprecate Jewish terms in the I/P area, a kind of ethnic cleansing of nomenclature, in a way that lends substance to fears our position is motivated by, well let's call a spade a spade, anti-semitism.

• The 'West Bank' school asserts that (a) these terms have an intrinsic denotative vagueness because they refer to different geophysical, administrative and political terrains depending on historical period, and that to use the terms of the territorially bounded and defined area known internationally as the West Bank creates cognitive dissonance (b) that these terms, as documented, were used under the British Mandate, then dropped for 'West Bank', which has remained to this day the default term of neutral usage internationally and in international law and diplomacy (c) that, after the Israeli conquest of the West Bank, in 1967, the terms 'Judea & Samaria' were pushed onto the political agenda by an extremist settler group, Gush Emunim, then adopted by the Likud government in 1977, and imposed by government decree on the Israeli mass media, which suppressed the international term, West Bank (d) that, as documented, the terms 'Judea and Samaria' have a potent ideological charge as appropriative nomenclature, renaming Palestinian land presently occupied, annexed or expropriated illegally by Israel (ICJ judgement 2004), over which Israel has no sovereignty, where Israel is establishing illegal settlements at least half of which on land with private Palestinian title, and with its own Arabic toponyms, and erasing the traditional native nomenclature by creating a neo-biblical toponomy (d) that reliable secondary sources explicitly define the term as partisan, even in contemporary Hebrew and Israeli usage (e) that the evidence for usage overwhelmingly documents the prevalence of 'West Bank' (northern, southern) in neutral sources, whose neutrality is affirmed also by the very sources that otherwise employ the words 'Samaria and Judea' adduced by the former school, (f) that if explicitly attested partisan Israeli toponymy and administrative nomenclature is allowed on non-Israeli territory, then by WP:NPOV criteria, automatically this would mean the corresponding Palestinian toponymy and nomenclature, often covering the same areas, would have to be introduced (g)that in this whole debate, the West Bankers have not even represented the Palestinian side, which is absent, invisible, while the Israeli side is being treated as though its national naming were on terms of parity and neutrality with international usage (h) that wiki criteria, WP:NPOV, WP:Undue, WP:RS, WP:NCGN etc. require that neutral terminology, particularly as evidenced by the overwhelming majority of reliable sources, be employed. (i) If we are to allow Israeli terminology to be generally employed in denoting territory over which Israel exercises no sovereignty, but is simply, in law, an occupying belligerent, a very dangerous precedent, with widespread consequences for articles where ethnic conflicts exist, would be created.

(ii)Note on language, naming as an appropriative act of possession and dominion.

'According to the aboriginal theory, the ancestor first called out his own name; and this gave rise to the most sacred and secret couplet or couplets of his song. The he 'named' (tneuka) the place where he had originated, the trees or rocks growing near his home, the animals sporting about nearby, any strangers that came to visit him, and so forth. He gave names to all of these, and thereby gained the power of calling them by their names; this enabled him to control them and to bind them to his will.'

Wa’-yitser’ Yĕhôwāh’ (Adonai) ĕlôhīm’ min-hā'ădāmāh’ kol-‘ha’yath’ ha’-sādeh’ wĕ'ēth kol-ôph ha’-shāma’yim wa’-yāvē ‘ el-hā'ādām’ li-r'ôth mah-yiqrā-lô’ wĕ-kôl ăsher yiqrā-lô’ hā'-ādām‘ ne’pfesh ‘ha’yāh’ hû shĕmô. (20) Wa’- yiqrā’ hā'-ādām‘ shēmôth….

‘And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them; and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. 20. And Adam gave names.. .'

Wa-‘allama ādama l-asmā’a kullahā,

'And He taught Adam the names, all of them.’ Qu’ran 2:31.

In Thomas Pynchon's novel Mason & Dixon, the narrator Cherrycoke recounts, against the huge backdrop of seismic shifts in the political and scientific world of that time, the story of the eponymous figures who have undertaken to draw a scientific map of the wilderness and terrain between Pennsylvania and Maryland:

‘what we were doing out in that Country together was brave, scientifick beyond my understanding and ultimately meaningless, - we were putting a line straight through the heart of the Wilderness, eight yards wide and due west, in order to separate two Proprietorships, granted when the World was yet feudal and but eight years later to be nullified by the War for Independence.”

Late in the novel, the Chinaman of the piece remarks:

‘To rule forever, . .it is necessary only to create, among the people one would rule, what we call . . Bad History. Nothing will produce Bad History more directly nor brutally, than drawing a Line, in particular a Right Line, the very Shape of Contempt, through the midst of a People,- to create thus a Distinction betwixt’em. –’tis the first stroke.-All else will follow as if predestin’d, into War and Devastation.’

The dispute here in wiki, like the historical reality it refers to, has its ‘Bad History’. In the novel, the apparently empirical task of defining boundaries is found unwittingly implicated in the later travails of American history, with its exceptionalism, erasure of native peoples, of possible alternative worlds, of Frostian paths never taken. American innocence and pragmatic realism, in the innocuous work of two surveyors, is swept up in the torment of power: cartographic principles embody an Enlightenment’s reach into the unknown, while, applied, to the ends of order and control, they inadvertently engender violent confusion and disarray. What is the ‘right line’ to take on nomenclature, when history’s line demarcating Israel and the West Bank was drawn by war, then the West Bank was occupied in the aftermath of war, and the world of Israeli settlers begins to redraw the map? One thing that happens is that the complexities have drawn editors into a minor war, as Pynchonesque as it is Pythonesque. There is one difference: most the cartographers say one thing, and Israel, the controlling power, asserts a different terminology. So what’s in a name?

Before the world was tribalized and invested by the collateral damage or fall-out from the Tower of Babel, God assigned to the mythical forefather of all, ‘man’ or Adam, the faculty to name the world, though God himself had exercised this right in naming the light (or) day (yom) and the darkness (hôshek) night(layĕlāh) (Gen.1.5) There was only one name for each thing, and in later European thought the primordial language employed in this taxonomy was to be called ‘the Adamic vernacular’. The thesis was that the pristine jargon employed by Adam, being pre-Babelic, represented the true name for every object: every thing had a proper name intrinsic to its nature. The Greeks, as we see in Plato’s Cratylus, were much prepossessed by the philosophical crux of the correctness of names (ὀρθότης τῶν ὀνομάτων): did names have an intrinsic relation to, or represent, things, or was the link arbitrary.. The Confucian school’s doctrine of the Rectification of names (zhèngmíng: 正名). In the Bible itself the Hebrew text is full of the magic of words, of the power of words themselves to alter reality, a belief testified to in Isaiah:

'So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please.'

Modernity, especially after Ferdinand Saussure (1916), has opted, correctly, for the latter position, and disposed of the magical force of naming. But nationalism, another product of modernity, reintroduced it, via the backdoor, in a new sense. Naming was an act of assertive territorial control, of defining ethnic rights over land, especially as Anthony Smith argues, ethnie are defined also by attachment to a specific geophysical reality, the ‘homeland’ that defines in good part their identity ). Since national identities are a political construct, the inculcation of a uniform language, and the use of its lexicon to define or redefine the landscape, are crucial instruments in forging a national sense of common tradition. Nationalism demanded toponymic unison, and linguistic conformity.

John Gaddis, glossing James Scott’s recent book on North Dakota roads and maps, remarks on maps that they reflect

‘what states try to do to those portions of the earth’s surface they hope to control, and to the people who live upon them. For it’s only by making territories and societies legible – by which he means measurable and hence manipulable – that governments can impose and maintain their authority. “These state simplifications,” he writes, are “like abridged maps.” They don’t replicate what’s actually there, but “when allied with state power, (they) enable much of the reality they (depict) to be remade.”

The idea of a nation as a territorial unit speaking one language over that territory is a parlously modern ideology, one engineered by nation-builders into a plausible if specious semblance of commonsense. As Massimo d’Azeglio is said to have remarked at the dawn of the Italian Risorgimento, ‘we have made Italy: our task now is to make Italians’, 95% of whom could neither read, write and nor often even speak ‘Italian’.

Imperialism, venturing into terra incognita to appropriate foreign land and incorporate it into an empire, went side by side with nationalism, which was a form of internal colonization over, and homogenization of, the disparate cultures that made up an historically defined territory. For the natives, their indigenous naming is ‘essentially a process of asserting ownership and control of place and landscape’

Daphne Kutzner, in her analysis of the role of Empire in classic children’s fiction, looks at the question from the perspective of the intrusive Empire and its refraction of imperial renaming as reflected in popular books, notes that

‘Naming a place gives the namer power over it, or at least the illusion of power and control. Colonial powers literally transform a landscape once they rename it and begin reshaping it.’

Terra incognita is the foreigner’s name for an ostensibly empty landscape which, had they taken the trouble to learn the local languages, would have revealed itself to be replete from every rocky nook to crannied gulley with ancient toponyms. The tendency was one of erasure, and, as with introduced fauna and flora , the landscape was consistently remade as it was renamed to familiarize the alien by rendering it recognizable, a variation on the landscape settlers came from. The new mapping, as often as not, represent as much the settler’s mentality, as the queerly new features of the foreign landscape under toponymic domestication.

Australia is somewhat the extraordinary exception, and broke with the gusto for imperial nomenclature. There, following the pattern set by the earlier land surveyor Thomas Mitchell and his assistant Philip Elliott that “the natives can furnish you with names for every flat and almost every hill” (1828), native names were adopted in a standarized English form for both euphony and their characteristic relation to the landscape, and indeed a resolution was passed as early as 1884 which established the priority of native names in international usage.

Often imperialism and nationalism go hand in hand. Napoleon’s troops, in 1796, could hardly communicate with each other, such were the grammatical, semantic and syntactical rifts between the various provincial patois at the time. By 1814, Napoleon had formed a European empire, and millions of provincials spoke the one, uniform language of the French state’s army. When two nations, or ethnie, occupy the same territory, the historical victor’s toponymic choices, dictated by the victor’s native language, and as articulated in bureaucratic documents and maps, usually determines what names are to be used. However, the presence of two distinct ethnie on the same national soil creates fissiparous tensions in nomenclature. Speaking of French and British conflict in Canada over areas, Susan Drummond, remarks that, 'Symbolic appropriation of a territory is a critical index of control’, and notes that, as late as 1962, the Québec cartographer Brochu, invoked the political dimension of place names as important, in the conflict with the majoritarian English heritage of Canada over the naming of the northern Inuit lands.

Again, in another familiar example, Alfonso Pérez-Agote notes that Spain has its Basque Autonomous region, Euskadi. But the original force of that name covers an area beyond the administrative and territorial units of Spain, and Basque nationalists evoke its symbolic territory, comprising also the Basque area of Navarre in France. Euskadi has, on one level, within Spanish administrative discourse, a ‘territorial political objectification’, and on another level, in Basque nationalism, a ‘non-administratively objectified’ territory extending into a neighbouring country.. The analogy with Israeli and Palestinian nationalism is close. In Israeli discourse, Israel or Eretz Israel can denote Israel and its outriding West Bank, while Palestine, which is the favoured term of West Bank Arabs for the land they inhabit, also can refer to the whole neighbouring territory of Israel as well.

The anomaly, in comparative terms, is that history has settled the question, whatever local separatist nationalisms, revanchist or irredentist, may claim, except for such places as ‘Palestine’. For there, while Israel is a constituted state, it emerged the victor, manu militari in a conflict that gave it control over a contiguous land, but has no recognized legal right, since that land is defined as and ‘Occupied Palestinian Territory. Acts of unilateral annexation, the extension of administrative structures, settlements, toponymic remapping, and widescale expropriation of land in Palestinian title, is not only not recognized, but judged ‘illegal’ by the highest international bodies of law. All major encyclopedias (Encyclopædia Britannica, Encarta etc.,), except Wiki, maintain a strict neutrality, and, in recognition of the fraught difficulties, adopt the neutral toponymic convention of ‘(northern/southern) West Bank’ in order to avoid lending their prestige to the partisan politics of the parties in this regional conflict.

(iii)The specific instance of Palestine and the West Bank

When the British wrested control over Palestine from the Ottomans in the First World War, and established themselves there to administer the region, Selwyn Troen notes that, 'naming also became part of the contest for asserting control over Palestine'.. As early as 1920 two Zionists advising the British Mandatory authority on everything regarding the assignment of Hebrew names, fought hard for the restoration of Hebraic toponymy, and when, with such places as Nablus, or indeed 'Palestine' itself, were given non-Hebrew names, they protested at the designations as evidence of discrimination against Jews. The point is made by the Israeli historian and cartographer Meron Benvenisti:-

'When the Geographical Committee for Names, which operated under the aegis of the Royal Geographical Society (the only body authorized to assign names throughout the British Empire, decided to call the Mandatory geopolitical entity “Palestine” and the city whose biblical name was Shechem, “Nablus” these Jewish advisers saw this as an act of anti-Jewish discrimination, and a searing defeat for Zionism.'

One pauses to reflect. We are being accused here of 'anti-Jewish/Israeli discrimination' for refusing to insert Israeli toponyms into the West Bank. Nothing is said of the logic of this POV-pushing, i.e. that a Palestinian reader might well regard a Wiki endorsement of suc h foreign nomenclature as a 'searing defeat', and adduce it as proof of 'anti-Palestinian discrimination' both by Zionist editors, and Wikipedia itself.

Since Zionism took root, and especially since Israel was founded, the making of a people, living in a defined territorial unit and speaking one language, has followed the universal pattern of modernity. The landscape, full of Arabic words, had to be renamed, often according to Biblical terminology, but, more often, by the invention of Biblical-sounding names. To do this, a good part of the 10,000 odd Arabic toponyms collected by Herbert Kitchener, T. E. Lawrence and others in surveying that part of the Middle East had to be cancelled, and replaced with Israeli/Hebrew terms, to remake the landscape and its topographic songlines resonate with historical depth. Hebrew is a ‘sacred tongue’ (Leshon HaQodesh:לשון הקודש), the Bible describes the conquest of Eretz Yisrael, and the dispossession of its indigenous peoples, who were not part of the chosen: the pattern is repeated in modern times, down to the renaming. The revival of Hebrew, with its potent shibboleths, understandably exercises a powerful hold over the new culture of the country.

The problem is, as Steven Runciman pointed out in the mid-sixties, that the part assigned to Israel by the UN deliberation of 1947 was the western, non-Biblical part, whilst the part assigned to a future Palestinian state, what we now call the West Bank, is precisely the area most infused with Biblical associations cherished by the Jewish people, with sites and names redolent of the founding myths and realities of their ancient forefathers. Israelis, in their secular land, mostly dwell where the Philistines dwelt. The Palestinians dwell where the ancient Jewish tribes once settled. The tensions simmer between the secular Israel, which thrives in its new Mediterranean world, and the religiously-identified Israel that aspires to return to a geophysical space where origins and the present, the sacred nomenclature of the Bible and the modern world of Jewish life, might at least, once more overlap, in an ‘Adamic’ harmony congruent with the kingdoms of Israel and Judah.

(iv)The Negev Precedent With the foundation of Israel, and in the aftermath of the 1948 war, the vast Negev and part of the Arava were captured, and Ben Gurion duly established a Negev Names Committee to ‘hebraize’ the landscape’s features, its mountains, valleys and springs. The area already had a rich Arab toponymy, and some on the committee thought these terms might be preserved as a ‘democratic gesture towards the Arab population of the new state.’ It was not to be. The nomadic Bedouin who dwelt throughout the area were rounded up and expelled by force. They had terms for everything, but with their uprooting and displacement, Benvenisti notes, ‘an entire world, as portrayed in their toponomastic traditions, died.' Ben Gurion wrote to the committee setting forth his view that:-

We are obliged to remove the Arabic names for reasons of state. Just as we do not recognize the Arabs’ political proprietorship of the land, so also we do not recognize their spiritual proprietorship and their names.

Political pressure and ‘the influence of patriotic arguments’ prevailed over those who, like S.Yeibin, thought the erasure of Arab names, many of which might preserve an archaic Hebrew origin. Yeibin thought this a disaster:-

‘With a clap of the hand they were wiping out an entire cultural heritage that must certainly conceal within it elements of the Israeli-Jewish heritage as well. The researchers did indeed endeavour to identify all those names that had a link to ancient Hebrew ones in an attempt “to redeem, as far as possible, names from the days of yore.” <

Any Arabic toponym in short only interested the topographers in so far as it might provide a clue to reconstructing the hypothetical Hebraic original that might lie behind it. This consideration, however, often created a mess of concocted pseudo-traditional names. The hebraization of such Arabic toponyms did not restore the historic past, but invented a mythical landscape, resonant with traditionalist associations, that had, however, no roots in Jewish tradition. The most striking geologic formation in the Negev, Wadi Rumman was rewritten as if that word disguised an ancient Hebrew Ram ('elevated'), whereas the Arabic term it was calqued from actually meant 'Pomegranate Arroyo', for example.

Reflecting on Benvenisti’s account in his larger study of language conflict in the Middle east, the Palestinian expatriate scholar Yasir Suleiman makes remarks that,

’By assigning Hebrew names anew to places on the map, the committee was therefore ‘redeeming’ these places from the corrupt and ‘alien’ Arabic names that they have acquired over the centuries’

and likens this process of linguistic erasure of Arabic and the reconstitution of Hebrew metaphorically to the nakba:-

‘The cartographic cleansing of the Negev map of Arabic place names and their replacement by Hebrew names is an enactment of the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians from their homeland’

The record is therefore one of a linguistic cleansing of Palestine of any trace of its long Arabic history, and, as we shall see, an attempt to remodel Arabic usage in the territories Israel conquered and controls, to conform with Hebrew. Toponyms can only retain some semblance of an Arabic form, if that form is suspected to camouflage, in turn, an original Hebraic name. Adapting the reborn Hebrew language to the alien realities of the Palestinian landscape, the obvious problem was that the nomenclature for much of the flora and fauna, not to speak of the landscape itself, was infused with the very language, Arabic, a revarnished Hebrew had to compete with. As early as 1910 Jacob Fichman, a member of the Language Council, stated that Hebrew:

‘will not digest the new names of plants, especially those which have been taken from the Arabic language’ and that these borrowed names ‘will always be like atrophied limbs’ for ‘despite the fact that the Arabic language is our sister language in the family of Semitic languages, it has no foundation in our |psyche ’

Hebrew was thus to be programmatically sealed off from Arabic, to prevent atrophisation, and cultivate purism by means of a fake Biblical antiquarianism. Theodor Adorno, writing in the melancholic aftermath of the Holocaust on the effects of cultural purism, once remarked on the purging of foreign words from German undertaken by nationalists intent restoring an ideal of cultural authenticity. He saw this as part of the pathology of nationalism in Germany. Foreign words were treated as if they were 'the Jews of language' (Fremdwörter sind die Juden der Sprache). In expunging the landscape and the human world of Palestine of its Arabic language, of landscape and culture, Zionism likewise treated Arabic as German or French linguistic purists treated loan-words in their own languages, or, later, actual Jews in their midst, as foreign bodies to be expelled, or expunged if a proper 'foundation for an authentically Jewish psyche' were to be successfully engineered. One would call this ironic, were it not so tragically melancholic in its unintended resonances.

(v)The West Bank. History and Naming The relationship between demographic displacement and the loss of one's landscape through the erasure of its traditional placenames in Palestine has been remarked on by Paul Diehl.

‘The exclusive attachment to territory is reflected in the naming and renaming of places and locations in accordance with the historic and religious sites associated with the dominant political group. Not only did the outflow of Palestinian refugees bring about a change in the Jewish-Arab demographic rations, it brought about the replacement of an Arab-Palestinian landscape with a Jewish-Israeli landscape. The names of abandoned villages disappeared from the map and were replaced with alternative Hebrew names . . Israeli settlements throughout the West Bank have taken on biblical names associated with the specific sites as a means of expressing the Jewish priority in these places and the exclusive nature of the territorial attachment. Modern Israeli and Palestinian maps of Israel/Palestine possess the same outer borders, but the semantic content of the name is completely different.. The means by which new landscapes are created to replace or obliterate former landscapes is a good example of the way in which metaphysical and symbolic attachment to territory is translated into concrete realities on the ground.’

In 1950, when King Abdullah, of the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan, unilaterally annexed the territory he had conquered in 1948, he changed the name of his country to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, which incorporated the remaining fragment of Palestine as aḍ-Ḍiffä l-Ġarbīyä, or 'the West Bank' of that kingdom. The usage is still current in German (Westjordanland). Though only Britain recognized his annexation, the word itself found ready acceptance in, and was not, 'forced on', the international community, as Binyamin Netanyahu argued.

In 1967, Israel conquered what the world knew as ‘The West Bank’, the Biblical heartland, and a decree calling it ‘Judea and Samaria’ was issued by the Israeli military on December 17 that year with the explicit definition that it would be identical in meaning for all purposes to the West Bank region to replace the interim terms 'Occupied Territories' (ha-shetahim ha-kevushim), and ‘the Administered Territories’ (ha-shetahim ha-muhzakim) in use since the immediate aftermath of the June war. The term 'Judea and Samaria' however was rarely used until Likud took power. The Labour Government never enacted a settlement policy, though Gush Emunim, an extremist settler ground with a fundamentalist ideology, pressed settlement, and propagated the terminology ‘Judea and Samaria’. When the Likud party, the maximalist, expansionist party with strong ties to both religious and ultra-Zionist groups and traditions, was elected in 1977, it imposed Samaria and Judea as the vox propria in modern Hebrew on the mass media, expressly forbidding the use of the international term West Bank. Notably, the government's imposing of these terms on Israeli usage was seen as a prerequisite for an envisioned settlement policy, since accepting the terms would predispose the public to accepting the policy.

Gideon Aran describes the achievement:

‘The importance of changing names in the process of conquering territory is well known. Assimilation of the name “Judea and Samaria” in normal and official language, as well as in jargon, attests to G(ush)E(numin)’s political and cultural achievements.'

The Camp David Accords negotiations of and the final agreement, in 1979, only underline how great was the linguistic rift between Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin's position and the American government intent on brokering an agreement.

‘Begin consistently proved to be the most extreme member of his delegation, insisting on seemingly innocent terms such as “autonomy” as opposed to “self rule,” on the labelling of the West Bank as “Judea and Samaria” in the Hebrew text, and on the use of the phrase “undivided Jerusalem.'

A huge amount of wrangling between the American negotiators and Begin revolved around this term.

‘for what must have been the tenth time, he (Begin) objected to the term West Bank, giving a lesson to the president on the geographic and historical appropriateness of the term and the importance of using the words Judea and Samaria.’

Begin refused to back down from his ‘rock-hard’ intransigence on using ‘Judea and Samaria’ and at the Camp David signing ceremony, (March 26,1979) several interpretive notes were required to be added as annexes to the basic documents, one specifically dealing with the West Bank, which President Carter annotated with his own hand with the words:

‘I have been informed that the expression ‘West Bank’ is understood by the Government of Israel to mean ‘Judea and Samaria’.

An ambitious programme of colonising settlement, toponomastic Hebraisation and cultural Judaization was undertaken, and indigenous Palestinians were shifted off their land, in a repetition of the Negev programme, which forms the precedent. The programme took wing especially after the unprovokedinvasion of Lebanon in 1982, whose key political objectives included ousting the refugee Palestinian resistance in the para-state on Israel’s northern flank from Lebanon, where the PLO projected a 'state in waiting' image that threatened Israel’s plans for long-term control over the West Bank. The war was, the head of the IDF said at the time, ‘part of the struggle over the Land of Israel. It aimed to further the isolation of Palestinians on the West Bank by depriving them of close support, halt the rise to political respectability of the PLO, which embodied Palestinian nationalist aspirations, and deprive that body of its claims to be a political partner in the peace process for Israel’s normalization of its relations with the outside world. One calculation, a minority view entertained by both Ariel Sharon and Raphael Eytan, however, was that, expelled from Lebanon, the PLO would be forced to return to Jordan, topple king Hussein, and establish a Palestinian state there to satisfy Palestinian national ambitions that Israel would thwart on the West Bank.

Changing the realities of occupied territory by the manipulation of language, Hebrew, Arabic, and in controllable sources like the global Wikipedia, became a programmatic goal. The settlers were in fact 'colonists' in the old sense, but Israeli English usage has here prevailed in the politics of the culture wars to determine how the international community perceives the dynamics of that area. The corresponding Hebrew usage is complex (see Israeli settlements), but continuity with the biblical setlement of Eretz Yisrael is evoked by referring to Jewish settlers as mitnahalim. The root *n-h-l directly evokes a passage in the Book of Numbers where each tribe is assigned its portion on entering Canaan, or the Land of Israel, particularly as ' in the pledge by the tribes of Gad and Reuben that they will fight on the west side of the Jordan river to help the other tribes take possession of their assigned portions' Settlers, qua, mitnahalim are not colonizing anybody's land, in this usage: they are simply taking up their 'assigned portions' as those were marked out by God to the Chosen People.

Rashid Khalidi has remarked how the Israeli authorities themselves try to engineer the way Palestinians think in Arabic by tampering with that language's natural idiom in the Arabic broadcasts they authorize. Over Israeli Arabic channels, one does not hear Jerusalem referred to, as it is customarily in Arabic, and by Palestinians, as Bayt al-Maqdis ('The House of Sanctity') or Al Quds al-Sharif ('The Noble Holy Place'). Arabic usage as sanctioned by Israel speaks rather of Urshalim ('Jerusalem') or Urshalim/al-Quds ('Jerusalem Al-Quds'). The purpose is to diffuse a variety of Arabic names for places that are calques on the Hebrew terms chosen for the area..

This goes right through the bureaucratic language, a form of linguistic colonization that reinforces the physical occupation of the west Bank by cultural re-engineering. A new travel permit was imposed on the colonized Palestinians in the West Bank in 2002, and required of any of them wishing to travel in that area. This was issued, printed and released by Israeli authorities who call it in Arabic Tasrih tanaqul khas fi al-hawajiz al-dakhiliyya fi mantaqat yahuda wa al-samara. ('Special Travel Permit for the Internal Checkpioints in the Area of Judea and Samaria.'). Here, Palestinians who must travel in the West Bank, for them 'Filastin', are required to obtain a document which requires that area to be referred to by the settler term, 'Judea and Samaria'. It is this form of Arabic which they are expected to use in negotiating their way with Israeli authorities through checkpoints. But West Bank Palestinians simply abbreviate it and refer to their tasrih dakhili (Checkpoint permit), , thereby eluding the settler term imposed on them.

Michael Sfard indeed has spoken of Hebrew being mobilized to lend itself to the national emergency of occupying Palestine, and denying the Palestinians the liberty to be themselves. They are passive subjects of an activist language that wraps them about in bureaucratic euphemisms.

'It has been tasked with providing a soothing, anesthetizing name for the entire project of suffocation, for the blanket system of theft we have imposed on those we occupy . . Thus extrajudicial executions have become “targeted assassinations”. Torture has been dubbed “moderate physical pressure”. Expulsion to Gaza has been renamed “assigning a place of residence”. The theft of privately owned land has become “declaring the land state-owned”. Collective punishment is “leveraging civilians”; and collective punishment by blockade is a “siege,” “closure” or “separation".'

A proposal is now being made to apply the principle of Hebraization, as of 2009, even to those places within Israel which the world designates by traditional toponyms, such as Jerusalem (Yerushalayim) Nazareth (Natzrat) and Jaffa (Yafo). According to Yossi Sarid, the process, illustrated further by Knesset proposals to eliminate Arabic as one of Israel's official languages, constitutes a form of ethnocide.

(vi) Analysis of Ynhockey's suggestions

‘Mapmaking was one of the specialized intellectual weapons by which power could be gained, administered, given legitimacy and codified’

'Mapmaking is not, however, solely an instrument of war; it is an activity of supreme political significance – a means of providing a basis for the mapmaker’s claims and for his social and symbolic values, while cloaking them in a guise of “scientific objectivity.” Maps are generally judged in terms of their “accuracy”, that is, the degree to which they succeed in reflecting and depicting the morphological landscape and its “man-made” covering But maps portray a fictitious reality that differs from other sorts of printed matter only in form.'

After 1967 ‘Cartographers . .had many options, which tended to reveal their political proclivities. Those who were sympathetic to Israel labelled the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan Heights, and Sinai as “administered territories” and used the phrase “Judea and Samaria” for Jordan’s former West Bank. They also included all of Jerusalem within Israeli territory,. Mapmakers who were ideologically neutral generally referred to “occupied territory” and maintained the term “West Bank”. . . In the post-1993 period a Palestinian Authority has been established in the West Bank and Gaza, yet there is no actual independent state of Palestine. Most international maps have stayed with the terms “West Bank” and “Gaza” but maps published by the Palestinian Authority describe these areas as “Palestine.” Furthermore, Palestinian Authority maps usually leave out Israel and assign its territory to “Palestine,” with the added designation that it is “occupied territory.”Arthur Jay Klinghoffer, Harvey Sicherman, The power of projections: : how maps reflect global politics and history, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2006 pp.37-8

We are dealing with a defined territory and its naming. User:Ynhockey would make tidy distinctions, define the bound geographical territory (CIA Factbook) as just a political reality, and use Judea and Samaria for all other contexts. In his own work on Wiki, much of it admirable, we find many maps. Examine the following map he authored and uploaded, and which is employed on the Battle of Karameh

The central colour, a washed acquamarine tint, allows one to highlight the field of movement in the battle, and blurs the neat territorial division between the West Bank, and Jordan. But note that, in a wholly unnecessary manner, Israel is stamped in large bold characters and made to overlay the West Bank, which is placed diminutively in parentheses. Willy-nilly, the impression is that the West Bank is some territorial hypothesis or province within Israel. Whether Ynhockey meant to give the reader this impression or not is immaterial. Maps, as one source already quoted noted, reflect the cognitive bias of the mapmaker as much as an interpretation of a landscape, and here the bias is that the West Bank is under Israel, behind Israeli lines, a subset of that state. It is a fine example of what many cartographers and historians of cartography argue: the making of maps, and toponymic nomenclature in them, serves several purposes, to clarify, as here, a battle landscape, for example, but also to impose or assert power, or claims, or blur facts. Objectively, User:Ynhockey has loaded wiki with a map that cogs our perceptions, tilting them to an annexationist assumption. Indeed, unlike the Israeli government so far, his map actually looks like it has the West Bank annexed.

Further reading:-

• Mark Monmonier, No Dig, No Fly, No Go. How maps restrict and control, University of Chicago Press 2010

RfArb: Jerusalem

You are involved in a recently filed request for arbitration. Please review the request at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests#Jerusalem and, if you wish to do so, enter your statement and any other material you wish to submit to the Arbitration Committee. Additionally, the following resources may be of use—

• Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests#Requests for Arbitration;
• Wikipedia:Arbitration guide.

Thanks, -- tariqabjotu 20:17, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

I am not involved in the editing of the page Jerusalem. However, in light of arguments made that no policy exists to govern the edit of lede at that page, and in light of my experience editing controversial political, commercial and religious articles, as well as my proven ability to generate content reviewed for neutrality at WP:DYK, I should like to make my understanding of policy known. Lede is governed by a guideline which defers to WP:NPOV policy which in turn states a directive: "Indicate the relative prominence of opposing views" and this directive is paramount to the enforcement of WP:NOT policy section 2.11, "Wikipedia is not censored". We were reminded by United States President John F. Kennedy that "Athenian lawmaker Solon decreed it a crime for any citizen to shrink from controversy."

Now it seems that not only is there a controversy about Jerusalem, but a controversy about that controversy here at Wikipedia. We have a moral obligation, therefore, to represent this controversy in namespace, and as this controversy is fundamental in defining Jerusalem politically, it should be represented in lede. How shall we accomplish the goal of representing this controversy with an indication of the relative prominence of opposing views? The policy of WP:DUE gives us instruction in the very words of our founder Jimmy Wales:

• If a viewpoint is in the majority, then it should be easy to substantiate it with reference to commonly accepted reference texts;
• If a viewpoint is held by a significant minority, then it should be easy to name prominent adherents;
• If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small (or vastly limited) minority, it does not belong in Wikipedia regardless of whether it is true or not and regardless of whether you can prove it or not, except perhaps in some ancillary article.

Therefore reliable sourcing will indicate who states that Jerusalem is the capital of Jerusalem, and who opposes that view; reliable sourcing will indicate who states that Jerusalem is the capital of the State of Palestine, and who opposes it; reliable sourcing will also indicate any other entity who lays claim to Jerusalem and who disputes that claim as well. Arguments abound on both sides of this issue as to whether or not the other side does or should exist. Or whether policy does. Wikipedia should ignore such arguments, take the Arbitration Committee case, and make a strong ruling - no matter where that ruling takes us - for the sake of its own fundamental values. Thank you. ClaudeReigns (talk) 07:15, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Thank goodness someone has taken the trouble to act as the guardian angel of my thoughts on policy, since I am familiar with it only through empirical acquaintance with its general drift. The above effortlessly captures what I've always thought, and rarely seen applied. Thanks.

Apropos Kennedy's dictum, though, I've seen that quite often and always wondered at where he might have got that from. For it seems to conflict with one of Solon's provisions, which established the right of third parties to make a suit if the offended party, for whatever motive, refrained from seeking the redress of justice through a private writ (i.e. 'shrinking from controversy' here is not a crime.)

As far as I can see, Kennedy must have been alluding to a passage in Aristotle 's Constitution of Athens 8.5

ὁρῶν δὲ τὴν μὲν πόλιν πολλάκις στασιάζουσαν, τῶν δὲ πολιτῶν ἐνίους διὰ τὴν ῥᾳθυμίαν ἀγαπῶντας τὸ αὐτόματον, νόμον ἔθηκεν πρὸς αὐτοὺς ἴδιον, ὃς ἂν στασιαζούσης τῆς πόλεως μὴ θῆται τὰ ὅπλα μηδὲ μεθ᾽ ἑτέρων, ἄτιμον εἶναι καὶ τῆς πόλεως μὴ μετέχειν. Namely

Observing how factionalism frequently gripped the polis, while some citizens, out of idle insouciance preferred to leave matters to the spontaneous course of nature, he made a law tailored precisely for them, according to which whoever refrained from fighting with one or the other of the two parties when the city was riven by faction, was to be stripped of honour and deprived of his membership in the city.

If so, not so much a 'crime' as a punishment for mugwumping. Exactly Dante's solution in The Inferno

Mischiate sono a quel cattivo coro

de li angeli che non furon ribelli

né fur fedeli a Dio, ma per sé fuoro.

Caccianli i ciel per non esser men belli,

né lo profondo inferno li riceve,

ch’alcuna gloria i rei avrebber d’elli». 37-42 Nishidani (talk) 14:19, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

In light of what you've just revealed, I begin to dream of a fantastic tale surrounding the premise that he was telling the 4th estate through cryptic means that the onus of protecting the constitution fell to them, as he would be unable to defend it himself. What he said on April 19, 1961, just eight days before, would tie in nicely. National Treasure III: The Kennedy Silver. ClaudeReigns (talk) 15:29, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

..

Seasons greetings to you and yours
Dougweller (talk) 14:06, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks indeed, Doug. I spent an hour loading up a photo for you, of a nativity crib baked (and wholly edible) by my wife, and of course, being a twit technically, utterly failed to get results. Have asked for assistance from the man, but don't know if I can reciprocate your image. As a pagan of course, I generally postpone greetings until the New Year, but, all my very best for you, your family and friends. Nishidani (talk) 18:58, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

Seasons greetings to you, Doug, and yours, thanks to timely technical assistance from Nableezy!
Nishidani (talk) 06:58, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

note

hi Nishidani! hope all's well. good to see you here. see you. --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 16:02, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

LTNOS. Well? I suggest you consult the acronymic etymology of snafu! All the best for the new year, here and elsewhere, to you as well.Nishidani (talk) 17:20, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Formal mediation has been requested

The Mediation Committee has received a request for formal mediation of the dispute relating to "Jerusalem 2". As an editor concerned in this dispute, you are invited to participate in the mediation. Mediation is a voluntary process which resolves a dispute over article content by facilitation, consensus-building, and compromise among the involved editors. After reviewing the request page, the formal mediation policy, and the guide to formal mediation, please indicate in the "party agreement" section whether you agree to participate. Because requests must be responded to by the Mediation Committee within seven days, please respond to the request by 5 January 2013.

Discussion relating to the mediation request is welcome at the case talk page. Thank you.
Message delivered by MediationBot (talk) on behalf of the Mediation Committee. 22:51, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Answering your question

I owe you an answer to your response to my post at Talk:Jerusalem. I see no point in posting it on the talk page, as that page has degenerated into a kind of Mark Rothko painting of gray. So I answer you here:

The short answer is no, I do not support leaving the lead as it is. The long answer is more complex: From our point of view as editors, there seem to be oceans of differences between the various versions of the lead being batted about. From the point of view of the reader, they all say the same thing. The typical reader will read all of the following:

• Jerusalem is the capital of Israel
• Jerusalem is the capital of Israel but not internationally recognized as such
• Jerusalem is the seat of the Israeli government,
• Jerusalem is the declared capital of Israel.

as meaning precisely the same thing (though some versions might be a little confusing to her). If we are going to opt for a lead that prettifies and, like other articles on cities, focuses on the tourist attractions, then of these options, I would prefer the first or the third. But that is merely a personal preference; any of them would do.

But I don't think that is what we should do. Because the National Geographic approach to this article does not, in my view, do the city justice. Jerusalem is, and has been for the last 2000 years, the focus of conflict; the place where Jesus was crucified, where Maccabees murdered and were murdered, the world capital of hatred, intolerance, and brotherly love. Even in the days when Jerusalem was an Ottoman backwater provincial, Greek and Russian Orthodox monks were killing each other over who would sweep the second step of the Holy Sepulchre. The signs of war are everywhere on Jerusalem's face, from the stone walls of the Old City to the concrete wall around Abu Dis.

To describe Jerusalem as a place of conflict would mean not only rewriting the lead, but also performing a major edit on the entire article. There is, for example, nothing in the article about the ethnic diversity of the city, and the tensions that govern the daily lives of Haredim, secular Jews, Arabic speakers of different ethnicities, Copts, Gypsies, and so on. The section on economy does not begin to deal with the complexity of at least three micro-economies operating one within the other with relative autonomy. The section on culture is written from an entirely Israeli-Jewish point of view; if an Ethiopian Orthodox were writing that section, I assure you that the important cultural institutions of the city would be others entirely from those described.

Unfortunately, articles such as the one I envision cannot be written by a committee. It is one of the compromises we make when we choose to write for Wikipedia. Two editors are now crawling all over my article on Chamber music, muddifying every snappy sentence in the piece. Well, that's the price you pay.

Scrabble, anyone? --Ravpapa (talk) 06:48, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, Rav. It's the nature of the place, endeavours to write Chamber music end up flushed down the gurgler, and the result is a chamber pot-potpourri, somewhat on the nose, and, while of some interest to archeological scatologists (I confess my creaking shelves have a section graced by Dominique Laporte's Histoire de la merde (1978) and Ralph Lewin's Merde: Excursions into Scientific, Cultural and Socio-Historical Coprology (1999)), it does suggest to many of us that playing scrabble, or better still, shooting crap in a life real game would produce a better return on time invested.Nishidani (talk) 12:31, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Sure, that's why this page has 14 archives and counting. Happy New Year! - BorisG (talk) 12:47, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

My very best wishes to you too Boris, for the New Year, in any appropriate calendar. I'm dull today. Too much food and booze over the week and can't say anything intelligent for the occasion. But, perhaps only because of its title, I immediatly thought of Lermontov's poem on catching your note:

И если как-нибудь на миг удастся мне

Забыться, - памятью к недавней старине

Лечу я вольной, вольной птицей;

И вижу я себя ребенком, и кругом

Родные всё места: высокий барский дом

И сад с разрушенной теплицей; Cheers, mate.Nishidani (talk) 13:26, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Happy New Year's

Finna get high and forget about the old one. Here's to you lasting another one, old man, nableezy - 22:01, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

That's fucken offensive, you scumbag, wishing someone my age another year of voyeurism in a violent world!. . . .Nishidani (talk) 09:21, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

January 2013

Hello, I'm My76Strat. I noticed that you made a comment that didn't seem very civil, so it has been removed. Wikipedia needs people like you and me to collaborate, so it's one of our core principles to interact with one another in a polite and respectful manner. If you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page. Thank you. Please do not post messages here that clearly have no value other than their ability to aggrieve the target. --My76Strat (talk) 10:27, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

You have been blocked from editing for a period of 1 day for attempting to harass other users. Once the block has expired, you are welcome to make useful contributions. If you think there are good reasons why you should be unblocked, you may appeal this block by adding below this notice the text {{unblock|reason=Your reason here ~~~~}}, but you should read the guide to appealing blocks first.  Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 12:04, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

As an editor has pointed out to me that the matter that the comment might have been a joke, I have brought up the matter at ANI to get a second opinion from other admins, see Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Second opinion needed. Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 12:24, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Yawn. Hint, read the exchange in the preceding section, you lazy, but prissy fusspots. Nishidani (talk) 12:27, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

• Hi. The block does seem to have been a result of a misunderstanding, and it really does seem like your message to Nableezy was a joke and meant as a bit of "friends insulting each other" moral support, so I have lifted the block (as invited to do by Snowolf). However, as the subject in question is a somewhat delicate one and is very prone to misinterpretation, I think it was perhaps an unwise thing to say in public. Anyway, I wish a great New Year to you and yours too. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 14:19, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

More proof, if I needed it, that you rarely err. Sorry for the fuss involved. I/P readers and those who know this section of wikipedia know that Nableezy and I often insult each other, per the heading on his page, and that this started years back when he reprimanded me for being polite after I'd complimented him. My best wishes to you and yours in particular. And to the other chaps who, I know, were only doing what the rules ask. I wasn'pt at all annoyed. Amused, if anything, and wondering what that Chicago lout would think once he got over his hangover and switched on the computer. Sometimes, a little area expertise, or checking the page to see what admins are familiar with it, and cross-checking with them when in doubt, saves a lot of bother. Still, it's a nice, rather comical New Year's reminder of how fragile this place is. Cheers.Nishidani (talk) 14:58, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Nish, sorry about all this. Cant even see what you wrote, so send it through email. nableezy - 16:22, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

I dislike email re wiki stuff. Sounds conspiratorial. Everything should be before the public eye. Can't remember! I think I called you stuff like a jihadi, antisemetic scumbag, and told you, citing Tariqabjotu's recent administrative commendation your way, to 'piss off', and, just to egg the pud, to "get stuffed" as well. You know, the kind of crap you deserve for all of your well-poisoning, ultra-al-Qaeda, terroristic disruption on wikipedia, which, of course, as you know, translates as 'my very best wishes to you and yours, and thanks for the hard work you've put into this unforgiving encyclopedia to see that it isn't more of a trash dump for ethnic denigration and unilateral nationalistic cant than it is.' I'm beginning to think that being insulted here is something of a badge of merit. It means one must be doing something useful, given the people this slander comes from. Cheers, son, pal. Had a beaut day here, fine weather, magnificent food and wine. Nishidani (talk) 16:47, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Request for mediation rejected

The request for formal mediation concerning Jerusalem 2, to which you were listed as a party, has been declined. To read an explanation by the Mediation Committee for the rejection of this request, see the mediation request page, which will be deleted by an administrator after a reasonable time. Please direct questions relating to this request to the Chairman of the Committee, or to the mailing list. For more information on forms of dispute resolution, other than formal mediation, that are available, see Wikipedia:Dispute resolution.

For the Mediation Committee, --WGFinley (talk) 18:48, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
(Delivered by MediationBot, on behalf of the Mediation Committee.)

Notice of Fringe Theories Noticeboard discussion

Hello, Nishidani. This message is being sent to inform you that a discussion is taking place at Wikipedia:Fringe theories/Noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. Zero^talk 09:04, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Thank you thank you

for the elegance, felicity and verve of your prose on this page - I now quite forget why I came to be browsing here. And what a wonderful quantity of prose too! (So much, indeed, that I scampered through some of it only hurriedly and half-comprehendingly... you see! just when you hoped the people who don't read might leave you alone...) Thanks again for lifting my spirits in so unexpected a fashion. Dsp13 (talk) 17:39, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

That's very kind and generous of you. There's a fine line between a practiced writer's euphonious tolutiloquence and pattering garrulity of a crushingly boring geezer and at times, often, I overstep the mark. If brevity is the soul of wit, my wits are now inanimate. What's that limerick my father once recited to me, with a prescient admonition when he noted I was getting prone to verbosity?

There was an irate young poet from Japan

Whose lines always failed to scan.

When told this was so,

He said,'Oh, yes I know;

But I always try to cram in as many frigging words in the last bloody line as I fuckingwell possibly can'.

Cheers, and best for the coming year.Nishidani (talk) 18:06, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Near Eastern ancient DNA

I did not know about that article but you seem to be right. As far as I know there have not yet been any ancient DNA samples tested and properly published, with the possible exception of Egyptian mummies.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:26, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Just quickly agreeing :) --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:39, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia Relaible source noticeboard

This message is being sent to inform you that a discussion is taking place at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved.-- (talk) 15:34, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Fischel is academic historian and a reliable source under all Wikipedia cafeterias

I have difficulty raising my (coffee) mug to that. Has Starbucks taken over this joint?, or has a joint taken over the prose?Nishidani (talk) 17:37, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Clarification please

Can you quote the passage from the source that supports your recent addition that "From the contemporary Hebrew press it appears that the rioters targeted the Zionist community for their massacre." Ankh.Morpork 18:28, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Sure. 'However, it seems clear from the Hebrew press that the Zionist community in Hebron was the intended target.' Michelle Campos 'Remembering Jewish-Arab Contact and Conflict', in Sandra Marlene Sufian, Mark LeVine (eds.)Reapproaching Borders: New Perspectives on the Study of Israel-Palestine, Rowman & Littlefield, 2007p.56 Nishidani (talk) 18:39, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Your addendum "for their massacre" seems unsupported as I suspected. Please remove it. Ankh.Morpork 18:43, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Don't be silly. The article is about a massacre. The text says the Zionist community was the target. The target of what?, the massacre. Nishidani (talk) 18:46, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

I misunderstood your addition; I thought "their" was referring to the Zionist community and not the riotors. Perhaps you could make clearer the subject of your pronoun? Ankh.Morpork 18:58, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

This is not the place to discuss edits to the 1929 Hebron Massacre, for which we have that article's talk page. The distinction you make, though extremely improbable as a reading, - the text mentions no Zionist massacre, because Zionists, at that time, did not engage in such things - is, on reflection, an obscure hermeneutic possibility, (but only, perhaps the case here, if the reader thus construing it thinks the writer a particularly devious and insidiously machiavellian person, whose every word must be scrutinized and seized for evidence of an imbalanced mind) and therefore I will certainly rephrase it, though I would remind you that riotors is written rioters.Nishidani (talk) 19:14, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. Since you have slipped into your grammatical pedagoguery mode, as you are wont to do in our infrequent conversations, perhaps you could explain your use of a question mark followed by a comma in the middle of a sentence when writing "The target of what?, the massacre." Ankh.Morpork 20:11, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Much editing in this area, on the page you just edited after me, reminds of this passage, in the same book we are citing (and where you related as facts what the secondary source reported as claims in old newspapers - an elementary 'oversight')

From Israeli schoolbooks, to television and cinema, to rhetorical pronouncements on the floor of the Israeli parliament, the language of conflict, violence, and victimization are a central part of both the Israeli public discourse as well as the individual citizens' understanding of reality. Bar-Tal and Teichman's psychological studies of Israeli schoolchildren acutely illustrate this point. The Israeli state and dominant popular culture broadly depict Palestinians and Arabs as "primitive, uncivilized, savage, backward," as well as "murderers, a bloodthirsty mob, treacherous, cowardly, cruel, and wicked." The development, institutionalization, and widespread acceptance of this stereotype has been central to the struuctural institutionalization of a particular vision of the nation and its history'. Michelle Campos, 'Remembering Jewish-Arab Contact and Conflict,' in Sandra Marlene Sufian, Mark LeVine, (eds.) Reapproaching Borders: New Perspectives on the Study of Israel-Palestine, Rowman & Littlefield ‎2007 pp.41-65 p.53. And now back to the more illumining vulgarities of Luciana LittizzettoNishidani (talk) 20:29, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

I believe you may have violated 1rr; you reverted this edit and then modified my addition. Please revert. Ankh.Morpork 20:35, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

The modification isnt a revert, and the removal of false does not qualify as a revert under the 1RR either as it was an edit made by an IP. And even if it werent, if you would like to claim that an edit made today can be called a revert of a diff from August by all means, I would love to see that at AE. But the second edit is certainly not a revert, nothing about this reverses this. Nish, the complaint of violating the 1RR is frivolous, ignore it. nableezy - 22:13, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

(a) Since Nableezy in the past has told me where I have broken IR,- the Mor2 case reminds all to what absurd lengths wikilawyering can go to trip an editor on this - I take his interpretation to be correct.

A remedial lesson for AnkhMorpork on how to parse elementary English, and avoid seeing blackguard mischief in conscientious source-based edits.

(b)'As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport.' Gloucester at King Lear Act IV, Sc.1,ll.36-7

There are two propositions in Shakespeare’s analogy:

(a) Wanton boys kill flies for their sport.

(b) Gods kill men for their sport.

‘Their’ in both cases unambiguously refers to the subjects (wanton boys/gods) of the transitive verb (kill). No native reader in his right mind, unless he was trying to do a Monty Python caricature of a dimwitted primary school teacher, would take their to refer to the respective objects of the verbs, as if wanton boys kill flies because the flies were sporting, or gods kill men because men engage in the Olympian games.

the rioters targeted the Zionist community for their massacre.

Rioters (subject) targeted (transitive verbs) the Zionist community (object) for their massacre (complement defining the purpose or scope of the subject’s action) therefore, mutatis mutandis, does not imply the Zionist community were engaged in a massacre which the rioters revenged, by killing them.

The title of the article refers to a massacre of Jews. The lead states that the massacre in question was conducted by rioters. Had I intended to phrase this to mean the massacre by the rioters was in revenge for the massacre of Arabs by Jews rumoured to have taken place in Jerusalem, I would have written rumoured massacre, and not for their massacre which asserts a fact without historical support, unlike you, who made this (ungrammatical, cf. 'reported of') edit, confusing the source list of claims as narrative facts, abusing the source (as you wrongly 'suspected' I had) while violating WP:NPOV. That compelled correction, and you now use my correction as evidence I ignore IR. You're quite welcome to rewrite:'The rioters took the Zionist community as the target of their massacre', if unsatisfied. And now, do me the courtesy, as you undertook to do several months ago, to stay away from this page, with these inane provocations. Thank you. Nishidani (talk) 14:21, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:Palestinian people

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Palestinian people. Discussion regarding the Historical history regarding the Palestinian people could use your contribution. Previous discussions on the same topic (or closely related topics) show you are well versed in expertise in the field. Lazyfoxx 02:53, 14 January 2013 (UTC)Template:Z48

Have made some suggestions on the specific aspect of linguistics. I can't afford much time on wikipedia at the moment. If you have further specific enquiries where I might be able to help, drop me a note. Please be very careful about WP:OR, and paraphrase sources, optimally academic, closely and you can rarely put the wrong foot forward.Nishidani (talk) 20:55, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Great contributions as always Nish, I appreciate your contributions on the page, and wish more editors who frequent the Palestinian article were like you and showed the strong dedication to improving article and sourcing material extensively and appropriately. Lazyfoxx 21:33, 14 January 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lazyfoxx (talk • contribs)

Your comment on AE

Regarding your comment: without commenting on the rest, I think you're being a bit cynical when you state that any tiny infraction results in sanctions. I'm ignoring the 1RR violation, as I think Lazyfoxx's explanation seems sincere; but as he's been blocked already for canvassing I can hardly ignore that he's canvassing again, however limited the canvassing might be. As he was told his edits might be considered canvassing and he rejected the concern, it's fairly clear stronger measures are needed to prevent future canvassing. KillerChihuahua 21:48, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Killer. I appreciate it when admins do go an extra kilometre to clarify. If you look at Lazyfoxx's request on my page and my response, there is a considerable time lag. Since I am caught up in offwiki business I don't edit that many pages of the 700 bookmarked, but I keep my eye on them. I looked at the relevant page, and studied behaviour. I gave advice on the talk page some days later, mainly to Lazyfoxx whose inexperience shows, and who needs it. He may have canvassed technically, but to withhold assistance to an otherwise legitimate request would have been indecent.

I, like Sean.hoyland and several others, see, daily, a large amount of poor editing by otherwise experienced editors which, if I were more a meticulous master of legal fine print and intent on engaging in sniping wars, I'd report. But, as my record shows, I have almost zero complaints to ANI and AE in six years because I regard this obsessive tracking, time-stamp checks, automatic team-support for a ban (or no sanctions) there as a devastation of the primary aim here, in its time consuming and conflictual argufying about trivia. Over a half a century ago, a boy pimped on some of us for 'smoking' at a public school. The headmaster lined us up and belted us with six canings each. The grass felt smug. As we left the headmaster's room, he was called in, and thrashed, as well, for pimping, which wasn't a formal offense. A wise old man, the headmaster understood that (a) the boy who 'dobbed us in' did it from enmity and for advantage , not out of any intrinsic care for the school and its rules or aims (b) his behaviour undermined the esprit de corps we were drilled to feel and displayed socially and on the football field. (c) by doing so, he saved the kid from being punched up (by analogy, by punishing for poor 'form' the malicious accuser as well, the other side sees justice done in the round and refrains from reacting personally in an equally regrettable manner). I think most admins do a good job. I also think their wikipedian training and workload tends to make them ignore the whole picture, and miss much of the astute gaming which our corrective processes lend themselves to. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 09:18, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

I could be misunderstanding you, but canvassing has nothing to do with your actions at all. You could support his position, oppose his position, respond, not respond- it does not matter. Canvassing is his contacting you. Everything after that is irrelevant to the charge of canvassing. and he did indeed contact you. I understand you feel your response was useful; but this isn't about you. Regarding the "other side" - I stopped reading your post there. Please do not treat Wikipedia as a battleground, with "our side" and "the other side" - and if you do see anyone flouting policy you can file a report at AE (if an ArbCom decision is involved) or WP:ANI in any case. That you shrink from doing so is your choice. You can report without making yourself a regular complainer you know. There are currently 4,145,196 articles on the English Wikipedia, and less than 700 active admins. There is a disparity; we cannot watch everything or even always read through everything wherever there is a problem. We count on other editors to help; when you refuse to give evidence about which you are aware, as Sean did, or avoid AE and ANI in an attempt to distance yourself from POV pushers who are wiki-lawyering their way through the system, you are failing in that. This is all volunteer of course and you do as you wish, but consider that. Regarding "pimping" - I take it where you are it is a form of tattling? In the US it is used to refer to a man who manages whores for a living - if you're selling women, you're pimping - although a more recent slang sense means dressing flashily but well, as pimps dress. This secondary meaning extends to cars, whence the term "pimp your ride", and to other things. This information may help you avoid miscommunication with Americans in the future. KillerChihuahua 13:44, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Reminds me of the scene in Beneath Hill 60 where communications get waterlogged and exchanges between headquarters and the sappers on the frontline stuff up.

I'm not defending myself. What Lazyfoxx did was a patent infraction, and merited censure. Three months? I doubt it. Why? because a very large number of identical infractions occur, but are not reported. I see them frequently. I don't report them because I choose not to. That restraint has a cost, and a benefit. (a) User:Evildoer187 on User:Tritomex's page here invites him to comment at American Jews; invites him to reexamine the Ashkenazi Jews page; Request for comment on the List of indigenous peoples page; and nudges him here to look again at it; Tritomex was given the courtesy of being reminded by User:Nableezy that he was canvassing editors he apparently thought favourable to his views, instancing his request to User:AnkhMorpork and an identical appeal to User:Jethro B, after he had experienced difficulty getting a very badly sourced edit on the Haj Amin al-Husseini ‎page, where three editors who have worked that page for several years were challenging his attempt to introduce poor sources; An exchange takes place, in which Tritomex cited exactly the same policy section Lazyfoxx cited in his own defence, ie. he quoted, as did Lazyfoxx, "it is perfectly acceptable to notify other editors of ongoing discussions, provided that it is done with the intent to improve the quality of the discussion by broadening participation to more fully achieve consensus.". Annoyed by Nableezy's notification he removed it from his page. Under your rule, had he been reported, he would have got 3 months, and saved a lot of editors at Genetic studies on Jews a huge amount of time trying to reign in his POV WP:OR pushing.

Tritomex also canvassed here User:Jethro B to intervene on the Ashkenazi Jews page. Not in my realm, Jethro replied, and I breathed a sigh of relief only then to find Jethro B fronting up with several several substantial edits within the hour, here, here, here, here, and here in particular where Jethro B quickly hatted a note I made on the odd fact that all of a sudden several people identifiably on one side were stumbling onto the page to back Tritomex, here, and here. All I understood from that was that my attempt to introduce world class scholarship on Ashkenazi and Yiddish, early european population demographics, and minority genetic studies was a feint for, yawn, my putative antisemitism (WP:AGF violation). Odd how out of the blue so many people understand the intricacies of historical linguistics, medieval Ashkenazi history, european demographics, and genetics, and within minutes can come down all on one side, at least one of them openly canvassed. Tritomex canvassed User:BritishWatcher here to add his weight to a discussion at Jerusalem. User:MeUser42 in turn solicited his opinion for comments on the same page. Well, I could go on all night if I extended checks to several other editors I've seen doing this. But, as I say, I don't personally and I regularly counsel all editors who ask me about these things, not to run to mummie every time they see an infraction, but to engage the offender and try to reason with her, on talk pages. It saves you guys a lot of work. If one really had a mind to, a lot of sensible uncomplaining editors could make that AE page fibrillate hour by hour, something highly inadvisable if only out of consideration of, as you say, the exiguous number of people asked to cope with administering this enormous enterprise. A lot of things escape your (generic) notice because many editors understand how parlous it would be to game this area by turning it into a form of relentless snarky attrition.

As to 'pimps'. I used words there from three English dialects, cockney slang, Australian slang and New Zealand slang to give piquancy to the tale. It looks like the use of one of these was offensive to you as an American. Well, for 40 years, I've compiled lexicographical data, though a native English speaker, on American usage almost every other day, since I almost invariably find words, from Time to the New York Times, to the Washington Post, and authors as varied as Burroughs, Updike, Jack Kerouac, and Philip Roth. I don't remind American ladies who speak of falling on their fannies or complaining of a sore fanny, that non-American anglophones understand that as referring to a 'cunt', anymore than I might feel perplexed on reading how Angstrom imagines Eccles, the minister, being told by his wife that Rabbit had 'slapped her fanny' (her cunt?, no. It's set in the US, therefore 'her buttocks:Rabbit, Run in J Updike,A Rabbit Omnibus, Penguin, 1991 p.173) or Earl Springer's lament about how a man 'gives (a woman) his life and gets a boot in the fanny (his cunt?) for his pains' (Rabbit Redux p.384). I don't get flustered at reading about 'dinks' with Russian rifles (Rabbit Redux p.329), or imagine that the image is one of 'a person given a lift on a bicycle' (dink) holding a kalashnikov. When I hear someone is sniffing scag (Rabbit Redux p.300) I don't conjure up images of a tear in someone's pants emitting an erotically sniffable odour. I.e. we all have different backgrounds here, and no one is obliged to tailor his idiom, or to check out the nationality of an interlocutor preemptively in order to ensure misunderstandings in idiom don't cause offense.Nishidani (talk) 21:14, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

pimptastic. nableezy - 21:34, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Yeah? Ya reckun? Just wait till I'm reported at AE for a slip up. I think Killer will have good grounds to whack me for a six, send me to porridge, belt the liven shit out of me, kick me up the coit, oops, fanny. . .:) (And I wudn't hold it agin'im). Nishidani (talk) 21:41, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

No, not even close to offended. I'm notoriously hard to offend; you have to really work at it. I was merely offering some information which I thought you might not have, and which might be of use to you. KillerChihuahua 22:26, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Phew! I been complained of so often, and reported so often that every time I see that yellow band pop up as I link to wikipedia to announce someone has dropped a note on this page, my instinct is to think:'Oh Gawd. Who's notifying me this time that I'v been reported?'. Cheers, Killer, and thanks for the effort of clarification.Nishidani (talk) 08:24, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Your opinion is welcome

I think that everything on Wikipedia should be subject to a Full Cavity Search. Do you agree or disagree? ClaudeReigns (talk) 14:25, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Ah, that gives me a free pass down memory lane, to a nook of half-century old memories of my father's unlimited supply of limericks.

There once was a young woman called Stone

who went to the dentist's alone.

In a fit of depravity

he filled the wrong cavity;

now she's nursing her filling at home.

Nishidani (talk) 14:51, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

LOL! ClaudeReigns (talk) 15:12, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Freudk

Historylover4 back? Dougweller (talk) 13:18, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

The Invention of the Jewish People

The Invention of the Jewish People is 1RR article. It appears that you broke again the 1RR with two reverts. I have no intention to report anyone, including you due to my personal convictions, yet you have violated Wikipedia rules.--Tritomex (talk) 20:18, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

I don't report anyone either, out of personal convictions, either, so I'm glad to a fellow spirit in this regard. Could you provide the diffs? I'm not good at this, as my record shows. If I have violated IR there, well evidently I am obliged to revert, or (a film I wish to see is starting now, Preferisco il Paradiso with Gigi Proietti, so I mightn't be here when evidence comes in. If I have broken the rule (I hope Nableezy or someone else present can check) I'll revert tomorrow morning, or someone else, yourself included, can restore the prior text in my absence. Thanks for the tip-off, if correct. Nishidani (talk) 20:29, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

You did not, or at least I cant tell what this would be a revert of. That, as best I can tell, is an edit, not a revert. Which leaves only one other edit made (which is a revert). nableezy - 02:59, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. Now that I've adopted a principle of self-suspension for a month for any inadvertent infraction of 1R, it seems this has suggested to some I can be kept off wikipedia by advising me I have done so every other week, translating a form of self-correction into a perma-ban. Would whoever notifies me next time check to make sure I have broken the rule? rather than suggesting I have and expecting I piss off again? Thanks Nishidani (talk) 04:39, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Although I have no intention to be seen as coming in bad faith but as I was asked to come again and as I was mentioned by nableezy let me explain that by Wikipedia guidelines, quote: "A "revert" means any edit (or administrative action) that reverses the actions of other editors, in whole or in part, whether involving the same or different material. It can involve as little as one word." Your first revert was partial revert of Dlv999 edition, while your second revert was a total revert of my editions. --Tritomex (talk) 10:09, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm absolutely sure you are not in bad faith. I trust you on this, and I apologize if it seemed from my second comment that I might be (woke up after a vivid dream after 2 hrs sleep at 3.30 am, and after analysing it for 20 minutes, was too wide-awake to go back to sleep and made that comment at an unearthly hour).

The reading you and some others make of 1r effectively means that no editor on a page that comes under this kind of ARBCOM sanction can edit that page, in any way, more than once a day. Simply put, 'any edit that reverses the actions of other editors, in whole or in part,' operationally means this because everything written on a page is the cumulative result of what (other) editors have written in the past. If that is the intention then editing those pages is a total waste of time, as is one's presence on wikipedia. Secondly, to avoid creating needless harassment for people like us, professional or amateur editors who volunteer to write articles, they should further clarify by eliminating the bureaucratic bullshit such a reading would suggest, and write instead:'IR means no one can make more than one edit to any page under a 1R sanction within 24 hours.'

To be specific, the edit you count as a revert was a copy-edit, and having trawled the AE page now, I found this illuminating remark made by Bbb23 'To me a copy edit is one where no substance is changed, i.e., grammar, formatting, rewording but only syntactially, etc., but if any substance is changed, and particuarly if it's the source of dispute, then the change of even one character would be a revert.'

I simplified pre-existing language,while retaining all the substance. It is not therefore, in this reading, a revert.

In any case, I'm grateful to you for raising this, and for the generous restraint shown in not leaping, as many others have done in the past, at a well-intentioned edit in order to get rid of me, but simply averting me here of a potential problem. Perhaps in the absurd pettifogging that blankets all commonsense understanding in this area, this equivocation re IR should be ironed out. If they mean, on 1r pages, no one can touch a page twice in a day, even to correct spelling in the first or second edit, they should say it. With the ambiguity hanging over these pages under 1 R sanction, they have inadvertently left us in a state of paralysis that has crippled the possibility of intelligent and comprehensive improvement of any article in a controversial area, condemning the area's coverage therefore to languish as trash.Nishidani (talk) 11:16, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Well, I agree with you that the rule is absurd. Even for 3RR, it is hard to understand what would be wrong if you work on an article and edit it 20 times in a single day (unless the edits are done consecutively, in which case they qualify as one revert). Obviously the both 1RR and 3RR are there to prevent edit wars, and I guess these rules are deliverately considered as lesser evil. While I disagree with such blunt rules, I don't agree that they mean 'one edit'. If an edit is pure addition of text, then it does not qualify as a revert. I also don't agree that this leads to paralysis. Yet it does impede and slow down improvement of articles. I guess it would be useful to suggest amendment to these rigid rules. BorisG (talk) 16:10, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Nish, a revert is an edit that reverses, in whole or in part, another edit. A copy-edit is not a revert. Your first edit was not a revert. You did not reverse Dlv's edit, you modified it. And Tritomex, you werent mentioned by me. nableezy - 17:25, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

'Another edit' made when? Articles are a mosaic of edits. I never know when I decide to change something, if that was added today or yesterday or the day before- Check the MOr2 appeal case recently, which (I only noted it by chance and rely on memory) one piece of evidence was an apparent 'revert', which turned out to revert an edit made weeks before. I dunno but, fuck, I think experienced editors have a right to spend more time reading books, editing in the new content, and building an article than tweak, then checking the edit history, then, before editing again, seeing if the page's been touched, and where . .I can't at my age think that way: it's like being asked to check a timetable twenty times a day instead of booking a flight. My penal profile here over the last year looks horrendous, and if you look at the nitty-gritty, it's over piddling niggling on issues like this. Bah, I get annoyed when I see myself whingeing. I really should give it the flick pass.Nishidani (talk) 20:28, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Thank you

Thank you for correcting my Latin. The quotes were taken from notes made on a night-time flight to Israel/Palestine and I did suspect the second one was wrong... but couldn't find the original. Thanks for caring.Padres Hana (talk) 08:18, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

No problem at all. In fact, I owe you an apology for interfering with your page. Evidently, you were reading Cicero's Pro Milone, from which all three are taken (in this order (a)=32 (b)=53 (c)= 11). 32 'cui bono' is actually a citation from Lucius Cassius (Cicero, Philippics 2:35), whom Cicero quotes here. With some rude temerity I put a question mark after the translation of Inter arma enim silent leges. I think that should read: 'In times of conflict, the law holds its tongue/stays quiet/keeps mum, and doesn't expect to be applied.' Best regards. Nishidani (talk) 11:57, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

In truth, to my regret, I am unable to read Latin - the volume I have is parallel texts, transaltion by N.H.Watts (1931). To quote "West Wing": "Toby what you don't know would stop a team of oxen in its tracks." I like the poetry of "When arms speak..." but I can see it is not a literal translation. You comment on the size of the mob: I notice that Cicero claims that Clodius's country cottage had room for 1000 armed men in the basement... When arms speak - please let me be a long way away. Lord save me from "bloody men". Padres Hana (talk) 19:11, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

When arms were supposed to be about to speak, I put myself in a dangerous spot in Israel. I wanted to see if my pacifism was principled or just a charade. I never found out, though I did beat up an American rapist, in an incident that had nothing to do with war. I'd stop the wildebeest flow in the Serengeti with my nescience, out-Tobying Toby. We all piggyback on Newtonian shoulders. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 18:11, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

So much more to read - and so little time. I like the sound of OTSOG. But what has set me off is your reference to pacifism: When my beloved son joined the army my joke was "three generations of pacifists..." Referring to my great-uncle, my grand-father, and my father. They experienced full-on war (the bloody men) and became pacifists. My pacifism is entirely hypothetical and never been tested. The last time I tried to kill someone was on the school football-pitch when a Jewish fellow-pupil called me a "dirty Arab" (neither of which were true - though I imagine I am now unclean in the eyes of all major religions). Once I was sitting on him I was at a loss as to what to do next. The closest I have been to industrial scale violence was being stuck in traffic at Qalandia, February 2001, watching the soldiers shooting at the boys throwing stones. I have always felt slightly uncomfortable saying that Palestinians should not engage in armed struggle: my brother was not shot dead, I was not alive when my father was in prison. The only argument that seems to stand up is "where has it got you?" But I have found the "good fight" in Wikipedia - yes I am depressed by some of the idiocy so blatantly displayed. I do not have the wit, strength or courage to go for face-to-face battles but imagine myself as a reverse-termite undermining the nonsense with book-sourced facts (stubborn things) which have to be ommitted to make these narratives stand up. Bravo alaykum. Padres Hana (talk) 22:04, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Well my descent, apart from decent and evil murderers of an earlier age, comes from men who participated in every war that came up, from the Boer, through WW1 to WW2, jumping at the chance to volunteer for a free trip, a kind of imperial rebate for taxes paid, to interesting parts of the world, and a long vacation from humdrum work. You might be familiar with The Old Man, played by The Dubliners, which sums up your family's experience well. I was the first in the family to break that particular chain of sneaky complacency, and my bemedalled father approved. Best wishes Nishidani (talk) 14:44, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

On a bleaker note: what do you say to folk who say "Look at what Israel has achieved through the use of violence" ? Padres Hana (talk) 20:19, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Jerusalem RfC discussion: rounding up step one

Hello. This is a boilerplate message for participants in the moderated discussion about the Jerusalem RfC - sorry for posting en masse. We have almost finished step one of the discussion; thanks for your statement and for any other contributions you have made there. This is just to let you know I have just posted the proposed result of step one, and I would like all participants to comment on some questions I have asked. You can find the discussion at Talk:Jerusalem/2013 RfC discussion#Judging the consensus for step one - please take a look at it when you next have a moment. Thanks — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 17:19, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Palestinian people article

If you do not self revert your restoration of challenged sources, I will be seeking admin intervention. You didn't participate in the discussion or even allow it 20 minutes. You supplied no policy based reason for your restoration in violation of WP:ONUS. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 22:13, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Nish, I dont think there is any basis for you to fully self-revert, but I do think you should remove the source that was added here. It was challenged, deal with the challenge before restoring it. I dont think you need to, or even should, remove the other sources, as those were added months ago, and its on NMMNG to gain consensus to change that. nableezy - 06:56, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Jerusalem RfC discussion: step two

Hello. This is to let you know that we have now started step two in the Jerusalem RfC discussion, in which we will be deciding the general structure of the RfC. I have issued a call for statements on the subject, and I would be grateful if you could respond at some time in the next couple of days. Hope this finds you well — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 16:35, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Reversion

Rather than the usual message about reverts, I thought you might like a quick look at an article mentioned on Jimbo's talk: What If the Great Wikipedia 'Revolution' Was Actually a Reversion?. It's not worth skipping lunch to read, but it's short and has some interesting points about the human condition. Johnuniq (talk) 00:47, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Johnno. Worth reading, if only to remind oneself of how even experienced scholars and journalists who use but do not contribute to the construction of wikipedia haven't the faintest idea of how it actually works, and the epistemological innovations, costs, overheads and advantages, its peculiar culture involves. Reversion to 'type', or stigmergic accumulation, are poor analogies. There is a decisive difference between the scholarly mastery of a field behind the comprehensive writing of an article, and an article drafted by a mix of experts, amateurs and POV-pushing dickheads and the odd assortment of idiots, nongs and drongos contending line by line for NPOV, precision of coverage of all angles with WP:Undue in mind, etc. They didn't quite have in the past these self-correcting and self-destructive mechanisms of recursive review, bot uniformization, the continual defragmentation of error. Keller might rather have imagined, if he wanted precedent: a decentralized, anonymous collective of trained obsessives like those of Aristotle and his school, of philological cotries around Aristarchus of Samothrace or Bronze-bellied Didymus, or the Library of Alexandria, all working however in an open universe of contrarians, banausic carpenters, often competent enough to kibitz on the structure and note how the ivory tower of expert artisans is often jerry-rigged with shonky timber and compacted sawdust from the mills of makeshift wood-merchants, while the whole imposing edifice had constant need of repair from termite infestation. I'm particularly reminded of Aristarchus because he had to bring textual uniformity among a vast array of manuscripts of Homer, like someone having to look over print-outs of an 'edit history' page at various stages of composition, to find out what information was reliably included or maliciously excluded from the tradition of composition. Whatever, while starting Niall Ferguson's Civilization last night, I noted with pleasure that he had the honesty, unusual in academics, to acknowledge that, other than the resources a huge number of prestigious archival foundations and libraries furnished, he had benefited from the resources of wikipedia and Questia ('which also make the historian's work easier'p.xxviii). A keen eye can note this on many a learned page these days. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 10:33, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Place names in the I/P conflict

There was some slight objection over my use of a place name by the subject of a bio (he grew up there). It got me thinking about the standards by which we name places in the I/P conflict. Nur Masalha considers the renaming of places to be tantamount to cultural genocide. Rosemarie Esber considers the I/P conflict to be the result of the execution of the Partition of Palestine (with many groups playing a part). I am starting to form an opinion that perhaps any contested territory which had a common English place name prior to the partition should be kept intact in the interests of neutrality with attention to Masalha's concerns. However, I am unsure if there are any places which can be uncontested for the purpose of using a current place name. Is all of it contested? Or are there parts of the territorial dispute which can be considered resolved? ClaudeReigns (talk) 20:45, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

If by 'common English place name' you mean 'a place name naturalized into customary English usage', there are many: Nazareth, Bethlehem, Acre, Hebron, Gaza etc.etc., and that usage should prevail. The Palestine Exploration Society men and their epigones had acquired 10,000 native Arabic toponyms covering ever furlong, league, cliff-face, gully, wadi, hilltop, slope garden in that small land, as you must yourself know given the eponymous ancestor lurking behind your handle, Claude! They linger in the archives, and folk memory.Nishidani (talk) 21:22, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Jerusalem RfC discussion: step two question

Hello everyone. I have asked a question about having drafts versus general questions at the Jerusalem RfC discussion, and it would be helpful if you could comment on it. I'm sending out this mass notification as the participation on the discussion page has been pretty low. If anyone is no longer interested in participating, just let me know and I can remove you from the list and will stop sending you these notifications. If you are still interested, it would be great if you could place the discussion page on your watchlist so that you can keep an eye out for new threads that require comments. You can find the latest discussion section at Talk:Jerusalem/2013 RfC discussion#Step two discussion. Best — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 04:44, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Hi there. This is just a quick message to let you know that unless there is significant ongoing discussion, I intend to wrap up step two in a few days, probably on Thursday 31st 28th February. I invite you to have a look at the discussion there, especially at question five where I have just asked a question for all participants. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 13:38, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

French needed

Hi, Long time not see! I have a request...: Al Ameer son wants to try take the Bani Zeid to GA-status, and I am trying to help. The place is a merger of two villages, Deir Ghassaneh and Beit Rima. Now, Victor Guérin visited both in 1863, and described them, alas in French, see Talk:Bani_Zeid. If anyone can do better than google.translate, it would be much appreciated!, Cheers, Huldra (talk) 17:11, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! Cheers, Huldra (talk) 23:57, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

I see you are "in retirement", but I hope it is not lasting? We need you! Especially on the Nabi Salih-page; again it is Victor Guérin. He visited the village in 1863 and 1870 (...I think?).. and he writes something about visiting a grave/shrine? Which cannot be anything but the "Shrine of Salih"(?) Anything Guerin writes about that would be significant... Modern writers who have described the shrine have missed any Guerin-ref. (Which might have to do with archive.org "missing" the page the info is on! I had to get a scan from a "real" hard-copy, and upload it. Therefore, the pages are a bit strange)

Hope you are well, take care, Cheers, Huldra (talk) 18:39, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

As Theodor Fontane might have put it, 'zweitens ist es eine grenzenlose Rücksichtslosigkeit gegen Huld(r)a.' (Effi Briest,ed.Kurt Wolfel, Reclam, Stuttgart 1973 p.28) Apologies, intense travel, busy etc. Will fix it sometime later this week.Nishidani (talk) 13:16, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Jerusalem RfC discussion: step three

Hello all. We have finally reached step three in the Jerusalem RfC discussion. In this step we are going to decide the exact text of the various drafts and the general questions. We are also going to prepare a summary of the various positions on the dispute outlined in reliable sources, per the result of question nine in step two. I have left questions for you all to answer at the discussion page, and I'd be grateful for your input there. Best — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 08:53, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Request for clarification regarding Jerusalem RFC

A request for clarification has been submitted regarding the ArbCom mandated Jerusalem RFC process. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 01:27, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Jerusalem RfC discussion: finalising drafts

Hello. We have almost finished step three of the Jerusalem RfC discussion, but before we move on to step four I would like to make sure that all the participants are happy with the drafts that we have chosen. The content of the drafts are likely to dictate what ends up in the actual article, after all, so I want to make sure that we get them right.

So far, there hasn't been much interest in the process of choosing which drafts to present to the community, and only three editors out of twenty submitted a drafts statement. I have used these three statements to pick a selection of drafts to present, but we still need more input from other participants to make sure that the statements are representative of all participants' wishes. I have started discussions about this under question seven and question eight on the RfC discussion page, and I would be grateful for your input there.

Also, there have been complaints that this process has been moving too slowly, so I am going to implement a deadline. If there haven't been any significant objections to the current selection of drafts by the end of Wednesday, 8 May, then I will move on to step four. Questions or comments are welcome on the discussion page or on my talk page. Best regards — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 03:56, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Nishidani. You have new messages at Faizan Al-Badri's talk page.
Message added 12:35, 8 May 2013 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Faizan -Let's talk! 12:35, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Jerusalem RfC discussion: step four

Hello everyone. We are now at step four of the Jerusalem RfC discussion, where we will decide the details of the RfC implementation. This is the home stretch - the RfC proper will begin as soon as we have finished this step. Step four is also less complicated than the previous steps, as it is mostly about procedural issues. This means it should be over with a lot more quickly than the previous steps. There are some new questions for you to answer at the discussion page, and you can see how the RfC is shaping up at the RfC draft page. Also, when I say that this step should be over with a lot quicker than the previous steps, I mean it: I have set a provisional deadline of Monday, 20th May for responses. I'm looking forward to seeing your input. Best regards — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 12:56, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Notre nouvel ami commun

Salut Nishidani, ne tombe pas dans la provocation de "Montage Verte". Il n'est pas là pour contribuer ni même pour introduire des pov-pushing. Il ignore juste l'histoire et préfère s'en distancer. Il n'y aura rien de constructif qui débouchera de discusisons avec lui et encore moins de tentatives de lui faire prendre conscience de la réalité...

Ceci dit, merci pour ton soutien dans le 1RR avec Tritomex. Pluto2012 (talk) 18:58, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

'Montagne' dans la bouche des 'boches' se prononce un peu comme birk. Quant à 'vert'? Ça veut dire 'manquant de maturité'. Voilà, nomen est omen. Soutien? Touche pas à mon copain! Nishidani (talk) 19:11, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

About time ...

... we did something about archiving this page, as it's now about 360k. If you want to do it yourself, I'd suggest—given your loquacity—that you copy about half of this page to the latest archive, then start a new archive. However, I think your time is far too valuable to waste on routine jobs such as archiving, which can be done perfectly well by a bot. If you're worried about the bot archiving the section at the top (or indeed any other specific section), that can easily be prevented (as I do on my own page). Let me know if you need any assistance, but be aware I can only edit intermittently for now, so you may have to wait a little while for a response.

--NSH001 (talk) 17:56, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Nish, I havent done much charity for the old in some time, so Ill lend a hand. Im going to move the Judea/Samaria text to a subpage and transclude it here so that it looks exactly the same but doesnt make this page huge. Ill also archive anything older than say 6 months to /Archive 15. nableezy - 19:24, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Done, I removed the reverting section too, not sure if you wanted that here as a record or not. If so let me know and Ill bring it back. nableezy - 19:31, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

And put User:Nishidani/JS in your watchlist. If you want to modify that section modify that page, this page will reflect that one. nableezy - 19:35, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Well chaps, well done. I'm fucked if I know what 'transclude' means, but I won't even check what you do. Blind faith that you don't question the young when they do you a good turn. Now that I think (of it), is there a bot one can feed-drip into the cerebral cortex to archive old memories? They really are becoming a gerontocrappy nuisance, and squatting there, stop new information from seeping in?Nishidani (talk) 19:40, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes there is. Its called marijuana. nableezy - 19:45, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Oh yeah, I remember, minus the 'u' but pronounced the same, it was the name of the first girl I went to . . .but there ya go, I'm drifting back again, getting potty and making a hash of memories, of the Trojan elders, feeling like a white haired shadow roaming like a dream, worried about strolling about with trousers rolled as a lean and slippered pantaloon, offending you with this last allusion, effendi, because you hate Sheik Zubayr. So I'd better snuff it: 'out out brief candle', as the little bookworm said to himself while picking his nose, though when he grew up he learnt, to come back to your admirable pharmacopoeic suggestion, that it meant marijuana.Nishidani (talk) 21:37, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

'48 war winner

Hi Nishidani,

Thank you for your support on the article. Regarding this : "The 1948 war was won before it was started.", it is pure WP:OR from my side and I will never talk about it in any article but I tend to disagree.

If you check carefully the rise of power of the Arab armies after they decided to enter the war beginning of April (after Deir Yassin), you can conclude that if they had taken this decision on 1st December, they would have overrun the Yishuv.

With 4 more months of preparation, they would not have intervened with 20,000 troops but with more the 50,000 (what they had gathered in July, ie 4 months later).

That is particularly true regarding the South front where the Egyptians decided to intervene even later only a fews days beofre 15 May and gathered "only" 10,000 troops. Haganah could only oppose 5,000 men (Ha'Neguev and Guivati brigades). With 30,000 troops, they would have taken Tel-Aviv without doubt and the Arab Legion would certainly have come from Lydda and Ramle to prevent the massacre and protect the Israelis.

So, I am convinced that Yishuv had right, as my "beloved Benny" says, to fear extermination. Yishuv won because the Arabs were particularly disorganised and too much confident but as Gelber points out, if they would listened Safwat (ALA's commander) and military adviser at the Arab League, they would have won.

It is true that in any case, Palestinians had lost.

Pluto2012 (talk) 09:54, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

We'll always disagree, but that is no problem. Morris's premise from the outset has been to describe a general 'war' with several regional powers in conflict. If however, you read 'BPRPR', and separate as distinct fronts of action the confrontation with the external powers, where Israel suffered most of its casualties, and the 'internal front' (everywhere in Palestine outside of Jordanian-held territory) you get a different picture. I.e. isolate the Palmach/Haganah 'battles' with Palestinian villages, several hundred, as he recounts them, and it is a turkey-shoot of invasive forces with strong strategic coordination and logistics attacking and sweeping through isolated villagers fighting more or less uncoordinately for their own patch of traditional land. That's why his method, which collapses into one narrative two different types of military operation, gives the interpretation you have. The real victory was won against Palestinian villages on territory Israel designed to take, not on the borders with Syria, Lebanon, Egypt or the Jordanian enclave: that was where 700,000 civilians were driven out, and where 13,000 Palestinians were killed in fighting. In almost all of those encounters, - though it's only my impression, I've never had the time to do the close research on this which would buttress my view more particularly- there, there was nothing like the lethal hazards of fighting either on the Jordanian or Egyptian fronts. It was a turkeyshoot, with poorly armed villages falling like dominos. Jordan was under orders from Britain not to intervene there, and the rest of the armies were inefficient, and had major logistical problems, as witness the immense farce of the Syrian-Iraqi forces in the north, forced to tramp south after their initial sorties were rebuffed, and cross the Allenby Bridge.

Still, we agree to differ. I made my personal comment in response to Kantor's equally personal view, not to influence the article. It's not a WP:OR infraction to note what one thinks, desultorily, on a talk page. If anything, it clarifies for others the difficulties. What we believe on the evidence of our reading in private doesn't in your case, and I hope, in mine, influence what we do here, which is simply transcribing as the peon-secretaries of scholarship, what the best RS say. Cheers, pal. Nishidani (talk) 12:07, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

"We'll always disagree"

Well... It seems we agree on how the status of Jerusalem should be described according to wp principles ;)

Pluto2012 (talk) 18:18, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Should have added on this issue:) I'd be a lost man if I had no interlocutor whose disagreements with me command respect, because familiarity tells me they are deeply informed, unequivocably honest, sturdily empirical and thoroughly reasoned. Cheers, pal. Nishidani (talk) 18:45, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Jerusalem RfC discussion: final countdown

Hello again, everyone. I have now closed all the questions for step four, and updated the RfC draft. We are scheduled to start the Jerusalem RfC at 09:00, 23 May 2013 (UTC). Before then, I would like you to check the draft page, Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Jerusalem, and see if there are any errors or anything that you would like to improve. If it's a small matter of copy editing, then you can edit the page directly. If it's anything that might be contentious, then please start a discussion at Talk:Jerusalem/2013 RfC discussion#The final countdown. I'll check through everything and then set the RfC in motion on Thursday. Best — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 16:11, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Jerusalem RfC has started

Hello again everyone. We have finally made it - the RfC is now open, and a few editors have chimed in already. The discussion is located at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Jerusalem. I'm sure you don't actually need me to tell you this, but please go over there and leave your comments. :) You are the editors most familiar with the Jerusalem lead dispute on Wikipedia, so it would be very useful for the other participants to see what you have to say. And again, thank you for all your hard work in the discussions leading up to this. We shall reconvene after the results of the RfC have been announced, so that we can work out any next steps we need to take, if necessary. Best regards — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 13:20, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Herod

Although vast legions of authors called it Herodian, it probably wasn't. Look for "Building the Western Wall: Herod Began it but Didn’t Finish it" at here. Also I took your initial in vain on some talk page somewhere. Zero^talk 15:14, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

I added that on the basis of Burgoyne's remark on Barclay's Gate: 'enough is visible to show that the jambs and massive lintel are integral and contemporary with the surviving masonry of the Herodian closing walls.'(p.109)

The problem therefore was to find a link for Herodian. Still point taken. You're the editor, and I just barge about like a drunken bull in a chinaman's 店, hoping the broken shards I create will be useful to the shopowner when he repairs the joint. Nishidani (talk) 15:28, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

I just noticed there is an article Isra and Mi'raj and it is quite long. We need some overlap, but how much? Zero^talk 10:23, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

I saw that too, but my practice at least is not to read related wiki articles, even those I link to, while writing up something. I only read the related articles when I've finished drafting what the sources I've dug up tell me. It's a methodological caution against reduplication, copying and pasting for ballast, and, consequently, the danger of taking on board much material and sources that have not been independently verified or checked.

As to the second point. When we have a complete overview of the relevant material, it can be pared down to the bone. Isra and Mi'raj are important, as I see it, because the article is on Buraq and the creature has different itineries, according to different legendary versions and elaborations, and we have to clarify that in miraj versions he climbs, with Muhammad on his back, the ladder to heaven, or becomes a chariot (cf. Ezekiel) bearing the prophet to heaven, or, in local and broader legends (isra') he is tethered at some physical site on the Noble Sanctuary, and that the essay then concentrates specifically for the bulk of its material on the last point. Nishidani (talk) 10:44, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

Comments

Just so you know, my username is actually kind of misleading. I'm not of the nationality suggested by it, though I can read the language in question. And I admit that I have not read any of those writings you discussed (though I'm certainly aware of Herder's work); however, they certainly do seem consistent with my point of view. I would say that my ideas come less, though, from any readings at all than from personal experience. Living in a foreign country has led my to constantly deal with wrong stereotypes of what everyone is sure my views are. And then there's just my deep-seated individualism. But either way. I guess it's a bit of a matra with me that state =/= people. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 00:57, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Couldn't agree more. I've lived in foreign countries most of my life - so that, fortunately,the one where I happened to be born, itself, now feels like one. Shouldn't have presumed to intrude there, but the temptation to correct what I thought was a serious misunderstanding of editors got the better of me. Today's resolution is . ., etc.! Cheers Nishidani (talk) 08:48, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Legal aid!

So Stanley Fish has finally off most of his large collection of books, The question is, can a distraint order be placed on the proceeds, so that purchasers can get part of their money back for the missing 32 pages between pp.55-86 of his Doing What Comes Naturally, Clarendon Press, 1989? . . .On second thought, it dealt with Derrida, and was therefore probably a cheap rhetorical device to illustrate the principle of sous rature (and coincidentally save on print, ink and paper). No answer needed. Nishidani (talk) 11:17, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

The proper response to a compliment

My mother always told me is "thank you." But strike if your modesty compels it. It's good work whoever did it, and synthesis is often more difficult than creation, or something like that.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 17:49, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

As usually, mums turn out right. Sorry Alf (Alpha). I didn't give it the thought due,- I was rushing to get a pack of smokes before the tobacconists closed, and before my wife got upset at my tardiness at sitting down to dinner- and should have asked you for permission on your page before acting. Of course I was flattered, but above that, I saw what it might be read (not intended) as implying something about the work of others, which it didn't of course. That's why I said mea culpa, which was also addressed to you. I really do appreciate the esteem, it's just that I'm bad at coping with it, in part because one of the places I grew up in preferred reverse or backhand compliments, to avoid embarrassing either the person who expressed a kindly word, or the recipient of the attention. I.e., 'that's not a bad job of work, though if eunuchs were still around, they'd probably do a better job with their cocks': 'Yeah, right-oh. you can drink like a fish - I'm thinken of minnows of course': 'You're a good sport, even if ya couldn't tell footy from footsie': 'You're not half bad, as deadshits go': 'Jeez, that's a nice mustache you've grown - reminds me of a rat peeking over a broom.' I'd better stop, or write an encyclopedic article on it. Best regards, Kitab, and thanks from the heart.Nishidani (talk) 19:37, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

It'd be an interesting article, I'm sure. And you'd do an excellent job writing it, unless some POV-warrior CAMERA-esque pre-frontally lobotomized fanatic were there to do a better job with one typing hand tied behind their back! (I'm trying out the reverse compliment thing, here. Sorry if my first efforts are lousy...) Your striking in no way offended me, don't worry.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 19:47, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Note to offended parties: The above comment is a joke. If you find the joke offensive, inappropriate, or hard to comprehend, please discuss the matter with me rather than the user on whose talk page I have, without his consent or collusion, placed this joke.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 20:07, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Careful! not of me. Supervising eyes often take this delightful pratice the wrong way. I got in more shit than Biggles struggling up Turdcreek in a barbedwire canoe after sending Nableezy some New Years greetings. See the New Year greetings section and the follow-up below up further up this page! Nishidani (talk) 19:58, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Unbelievable. Of course we all have too much time on our hands, or what would we be doing here, but some people really have too much time on their hands.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 20:07, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

May 2013

Please do not attack other editors, as you did to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Israeli Violations of the Ceasefire of 21 November, 2013 (2nd nomination). Comment on content, not on contributors. Personal attacks damage the community and deter users. Please stay cool and keep this in mind while editing. Thank you. pbp 20:43, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

WP:DTTR, Purplebackpack89. Be nice.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 21:11, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

No, the editor was quite right to reprove me for classifying them in a group, and so I apologize. I can assure you I always edit here with a wry sense of detachment, and I didn't attack editors as much as I expressed my frank disapproval of two whose presence there, and vote, was predictable (most experienced editors know who will invariably turn up to swing the vote on Adfs regarding Palestinians) and who, in my experience, do not judge matters on their merits. We are obligated to edit even this dreadful area neutrally: it is a moral obligation not to edit merely for one side. Nishidani (talk) 21:41, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

I read it, and it clearly wasn't an attack. One's nerves do get frayed in the area. I've had to clear it from my watchlist for the most part, and I appreciate the few people, like yourself, who understand neutrality and also have the stomach to keep up the good work. Nevertheless, PBP should certainly not have dropped an automated template on you for any reason, let alone that one.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 21:48, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

He's almost a half a century younger than me, and entitled to some time-saving device. That's one heck of a busy generation there, ya know, and they do well to take short cuts. :) Nishidani (talk) 21:51, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

You see, this is a performative demonstration of why you can edit articles about Palestinians still and I can't.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 21:56, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Well you're fairly young, and if it gets to you, choose a real life over futile pain any day. Perhaps I should write a sonnet for you, on the lines of what Yeats wrote of my generation finding itself in the wrong place, i.e.'This (I/P war zone) is no place for younger folks'. And, Alf. Thanks for the heads-up on WP:DTTR. In 7 years I've never read beyond a few lines of any policy page, well, perhaps one or two, and am always amazed and often delightfully surprised at discovering, or being directed to things like that through the infinite nooks and crannies of wiki policy tweaks. That's a beauty. Nishidani (talk) 22:03, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes, Yeats knew his stuff about aging. It's not "Among School Children," but this one still gives me chills:

Some think it a matter of course that chance

Should starve good men and bad advance,

That if their neighbors figured plain,

As though upon a lighted screen,

No single story would they find

Of an unbroken happy mind,

A finish worthy of the start.

Young men know nothing of this sort,

Observant old men know it well;

And when they know what old books tell

And that no better can be had,

Know why an old man should be mad.

— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 22:12, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Wonderful, and since I must hit the fart sack at this witching hour, nice lines will accompany my dozing off, not as the blessed figure there, but more like the figure Shakespeare depicted in Jacques's speech, who has entered into his 'sixth age' when

His big manly voice,

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound.

One last thought. The line 'they know what old books tell' immediately called up like an incantation the verses (somewhat blimpy and pathetic in tone, admittedly) written by Siegfried Sassoon.'The Grandeur of Ghosts'. Cheers.Nishidani (talk) 22:24, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Lovely. Thanks, and sleep well.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 22:31, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

• To show how much of an even-handed guy I am, I nominated an article that laundry-lists all Palestinian rocket attacks this year for deletion pbp 23:00, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

I just noted your deletion proposal for the other article this morning, while editing what I wrote below, which makes what I wrote below a waste of your time. You need not read it, or reply. But for the record.

All the more evidence that I did right to apologize for my injurious oversight. Now bear with me for a dull lecture. One of the formative books of my youth was The Destruction of the European Jews by Raul Hilberg (whose wiki bio I thoroughly revised and rewrote). One thing in it irremediably change the way I look at the world. Why? Because it implicitly showed that a vast industrial and bureaucratic organization lay behind the killing (deletion) line where the real work of extermination was done. Most people were transport economists, railway officials, statisticians, architects, engineers, ordinary police, logistics analysts, and the like who, when given a task ('organize the rerouting of 6 trains on such or such a line going East, on day 6' or 'organize from a fuel depot oil for such and such a transport train at such and such a station sufficient to cover a 200 mile journey' etc). Each did his job efficiently, perhaps most had not the foggiest idea of the big picture. They were carrying out their functions by the rule-book, fixing things, making sure that some like cog in the machinery of society at that time was dutifully oiled and attended to. Good citizens do their jobs. Excellent citizens who retain a larger curiosity while doing their job note patterns, think about the meaning of their assignments, work up a picture of what's going on. One out of 10,000 might have twigged what his absolutely innocuous paperwork helped complete:one out of 100,000 might have asked for a transfer, once the ghastly full picture flickered into the periphery of his consciousness. But most didn't ask questions.

To use this in our recent context is an example of hyperbolic analogy which I normally shun with profound distaste. I don't think there is any direct analogy there with the I/P conflict. I do think however that the Hilberg's magisterial, severely empirical analysis of that period bears on the world we live in (or I live in). It told me to avoid being attached to a short-sighted functionalism, to look at the larger picture, the power balance, the clash of interests, even in something as simple as noting in a supermarket where the fruit I might buy comes from, and which corporation produced it.

One can do one's job here, look at a borderline article just created, measure it against policy, and make a reasonable call for delete. Or one can try and figure what the larger picture is in terms of WP:systemic bias, WP:NPOV, particularly since this area is devastated by politics and partisanship. I pride myself on the fact that several editors who do take an interest in this area, to ensure NPOV, do not automatically line up on any side. They judge things from their merits. I think particularly of User:sean.hoyland and User:Dlv999 who have an acute eye for bias, never react by pavlovian counter-measures but carefully evaluate and make even-handed proposals, irrespective of which side is involved. Even I myself, a rabid agent of fanaticism, in the first Adf on these two articles, commented at first, and withheld my vote, hoping that a reasonable perspective on balanced article presentation of both sides in these lists would prevail. No. Save for one or two decisive votes like yours, most voting was automatic and POV. Some 22 wikipedians identify themselves as Palestinians. I've only ever seen two active in 7 years. The count on the other side runs by nationality or cultural links into several hundred (most of whom wisely wouldn't touch this area with a 10-foot pole). This is a WP:TLDR, and tedious, but it may explain, if you are interested, why I wrote what I wrote. The record shows any Palestinian article of borderline status is very easy to delete. The same is not true of the Israeli-victim articles, if only because I, like many others, have no interest in moving they be deleted. (The one you just passed for deletion will be conserved: they always are). Regards Nishidani (talk) 10:52, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

On copula+infinite (to be)+past participle. Examples from an area where I am used as a consultant at times. Disruptive or distractive at the Jerusalem Rfc

Readers of Kant, using one of the standard versions, will encounter language like this:-

(1) 'By transcendental idealism I mean the doctrine that appearances are to be regarded as being, one and all, representations only, not things in themselves, ,'Patricia Kitcher, Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason":Critical Essays Rowman & Littlefield 1998, p.194

Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason writes:

(2)'Ich verstehe aber unter dem tranzendentalen Idealism aller Erscheinungen den Lehrbegriff, nach welchem wir sie ingesamt als bloße Vorstellungen, und nicht als Dinge an sich selbst,ansehen . .'Jens Timmermann (hrsg.) Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Felix Meiner Verlag, 1998 p.484 (A369)

In Werner S.Pluhar’s recent translation, the same key passage runs:

'By transcendental idealism of all appearances I mean the doctrinal system whereby we regard them, one and all, as mere presentations and not as things in themselves’ Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Hackett Publishing Co., Indianapolis, Cambridge 1996 p.401

As one can see here the form -copula+infinitive+past participle - is not futurative. It is a passive form used stylistically in preference to the active present tense in which the subject (a generic 'we') stands out, rather as one writes 'One' instead of 'we'. This erasure of a presumptive collective subject in favour of a neutral passive mood, is as common in philosophical texts as it is in legal discourse.

• Gerald James Larson Karl Harrington Potter, Ram Shankar Bhattacharya (eds.), Sāṃkhya: A Dualist Tradition in Indian Philosophy, (Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies, vol.4 Princeton University Press ,1993) Motilal Banarsidass 1987 p.231 If effects are 'to be regarded as of one kind, then in the absence of a specific type of cause the effect could be produced.'

In these cases one is not advised to assume a form of cognition in the future, but rather to frame what would be the case under certain conditions, or to commend the proper way to interpret or perceive matters whose status is subject to doubt or various hypotheses. Nishidani (talk) 21:42, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Personal attacks (1ST7/ POV-pushing incompetence (Nishidani)

Please stop with the personal attacks on Talk:Itamar. This includes making accusations about my behavior and motives without evidence and insulting my command of the English language, both of which are personal attacks according to Wikipedia guidelines. --1ST7 (talk) 19:02, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Your replies to my remarks indicate either that you do not understand English with any degree of sophistication, or choose not to. Doing this means that texts are messed up, and capable editors are forced to waste time on the trivial drudgery of fixing mangled work, rather than adding content. The first thing you did there was exercise a right to I revert by destroying an hour's successive editing over the whole page, a blanket revert you now admit restored information that was dubious or irrelevant. The rest of your editing was to prettify the settlement's image.

I documented that you twisted my words. Indeed, I should have taken this to a complaint forum, because you explicitly said an edit I made passed off suspects to a murder, released for lack of evidence, as indeed murderers. I did no such thing. This means you don't understand simple English, or don't care too much about what is being edited and discussed, as long as your view prevails. To state the obvious, and protest directly that you are wasting not only my, but other editors' time when you persist in poor editing and POV pushing, is not to indulge in a personal attack. Read WP:NPOV. We are obliged to edit fairly, taking both sides of a conflicted reality into account, and it is tiresome to have to cope with people who refuse to do that.Nishidani (talk) 20:17, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

I never "[admitted to restoring] information that was dubious or irrelevant"; I said that there were two arguments present and that your reasoning for removing content about Joseph's tomb would mean that content about Yitzhar in the lead should be removed also. I never said that you accused Gadi Tene and Yaron Degani specifically of murder; I said that you wrote that two settlers murdered a Palestinian man (your text read "Farid Musa Issa Nasasrah from Beit Furik was murdered near Itamar by two settlers") when it was never proven that he was killed by settlers, as the only two who were charged were released for insufficient evidence. I'm sorry that I wasn't clear enough about it and that there was evidently a misunderstanding, but that is not an excuse to make some of the above assumptions and attack my English. You claim that the "rest of [my] editing was to prettify the settlement's image", but every single edit I made in the article afterwards was directed at adding references where there was a "Citation needed" and fixing the text accordingly so there's no original research. Wikipedia policy states that "belittling an editor's intelligence, knowledge, command of the English language, talent, or competence" is a personal attack, which is what you are doing when you say that I "do not understand English with any degree of sophistication, or choose not to" and suggest that I "can't distinguish elementary points" of the language. Focus, according to the guidelines, should be on the article's content and not on an editor. I am asking that you cease attacking my language and motives. --1ST7 (talk) 21:50, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Your first step was to blanket revert the text after a dozen reasoned edits I had made - no care taken to evaluate the merits of each or any specific edit- you simply don't do that to the work of editors of long experience. You are a POV-pusher for a national interest, and a poor editor, also because engaging with you in English is to talk at cross-purposes. Nishidani (talk) 07:01, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Proof of your incompetence, carelessness with sources, indifference to verifying texts, and use of WP:OR (making personal claims about the truth of RS), by examining your most recent assertion above.

I (1ST7)said that you wrote that two settlers murdered a Palestinian man (your text read "Farid Musa Issa Nasasrah from Beit Furik was murdered near Itamar by two settlers") when it was never proven that he was killed by settlers, as the only two who were charged were released for insufficient evidence.

Note 61 to the statement I wrote runs:

‘In the Nablus area, next to the settlement Itamar, two settlers murdered a Palestinian, Fareed Nassasra, a resident of Beit-Fourik, and wounded three others.’Daniel Dor, Intifada Hits the Headlines: How the Israeli Press Misreported the Outbreak of the Second Palestinian Uprising, Indiana University Press, 2004 p.11.

I.e. You attribute to me a statement which the source says. The correctness of my edit's reportage was verifiable. You didn't verify, or check to see if it was substantiated even by other sources. I.e.

(a) Farid Mussa 'Issa Nesasreh.28 year-old resident of Beit Furik, Nablus district, killed on 17.10.2000 in Beit Furik, Nablus district. Additional information: Killed by a settler from Itamar while harvesting olives near the settlement. B'tselem, 'Palestinians killed by Israeli civilians in the West Bank, 29.9.2000 - 31.10.2012,'

In other words, you eliminated a University published RS, took out all reference to settlers, on the basis of an inference from a later court case which dropped charges against the settlers suspected of the crime. It is not our business to inquire, and absolve, and then rewrite history. We write according to RS, neutrally. I This alone shows you ignore all wiki protocols, cancel neutral edits whose sources you don't examine, repolish the text to favour one narrative, and do so while then failing to understand the objections to your behaviour on the talk page. Coping with, cleaning up, the mess you make devours what little time many of us have to actually edit. I repeat: either you don't understand English, or you are incompetent to edit on wikipedia.

So do the encyclopedia a favour and edit elsewhere, where POV pushing is not required.Nishidani (talk) 10:01, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

ANI notice

Hello. There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. --1ST7 (talk) 21:04, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Shabbat attacks/ a pro memoria

At Yitzhar's talk page, a query was raised some time back about a report in Arutz Sheva that Palestinians exploited shabbat to attack settlers. User:Ajnem asked:

But in earnest,personally I should like to know if there is anything to those arson attacks - and on Shabbat - or if the settlers are just making them up and spreading it.' (Ajnem (talk) 12:33, 4 May 2013)

One doesn't know if Palestinians exploit the Jewish sabbath to attack settlers. I wouldn't exclude it, but the contrary is certainly well documented, i.e., that settlers from highly observant communities are said to use their sabbath to attack Palestinian villagers.

• Amira Hass, 'Murders don’t justify stripping Palestinian rights,' "It is known in the village that 'the assailants operate on Saturdays, in a different place each week," Bani Jaber said. "`When does Saturday come?,' our children ask their parents in fright. People thought that we were next on the list, so last Friday those who were still here decided to leave." at Haaretz, 20 April 2011
• Joel Greenberg ‘Israeli Settlers' Zeal Forces Palestinians To Flee Their Town,’ New York Times October 21, 2002 But settlers have also made violent forays into Khirbat Yanun itself, coming with increasing frequency over the past year, 'especially on the Jewish sabbath and holidays, villagers said. The settlers would threaten residents at gunpoint, hurl stones from rooftops, smash windows and vandalize property, according to the villagers. They described huddling in their homes with frightened children as settlers pounded on doors.

Either they are closet secularists, or there must be a ruling that enables one to get round halakha.Nishidani (talk) 19:25, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Hi. I did some research on that and found some videos [1]. I vaguely remember that the settlers got a ruling from their rabbi that allows them to take videos on shabbat. As they claim – and possibly think – that they only react in self defense to Palestinian attacks, the shabbat shouldn't be a problem. I'll check if I can find any rulings dealing with it. Settler rabbis have a tendency to make their own halakha. Cheers, Ajnem (talk) 07:12, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Oh, thanks. It's just a private speculation, but I think many of the hilltop youth are guided more by charismatic figures like Avri Ran, and their readings of the Book of Joshua than Maimonides. As to settler rabbis sometimes making their own halakha, the one example I recall concerns Ezra Nawi. I think, haven't checked, it's on that page. The issue went to court. Must have breakfast!Nishidani (talk) 07:18, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Breakfast comes first, but now that you got me interested in the issue, I'll check eventually, the ruling in the Ezra Nawi case may be a guideline. Cheers, Ajnem (talk) 08:04, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

'Breakfast comes first' sound like a very modern and ingeniously wry version of that dazzling incipit to Pindar's First Olympian: 'ἄριστον μὲν ὕδωρ ' (water is best)! (which it is at the moment, since the tomatoes must be watered).

Here's the passage, to save you the boredom of reading that long page:-

his lawyer questioned the plaintiff regarding the fact he had filmed the event on Sabbath, whereupon the settler replied that he had a rabbinical ruling on halakha or Jewish law, which determined that Sabbath may be desecrated if the aim is to stop a goy from stealing hay and straw, as were the Palestinians in the area, which belonged to the settlers. Nawi was convicted by the Magistrate's court and sentenced to probation and a fine of NIS 500. It emerged that the halakhic judgement had been written by the plaintiff's father a day before the trial. On appeal, the conviction was overturned by a District Court when his lawyer Lea Tsemel showed that the land concerned was owned by Palestinians.' Cheers. Nishidani (talk) 08:59, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Overturned, yes, but only because it turned out the land was not "Jewish". It is an interesting question. I wonder what the halakhic ruling looked like to convince an Israeli judge. Shabbat is a pretty serious matter, but the way the passage quoted above has it, it would not be allowed to desecrate the Shabbat if the aim is to stop a Jew from stealing hay and straw, which is probably not what was intended. Pindar, on the other hand, is not one of my priorities. To be frank, I've all but forgotten him since I'm out of school. Cheers, Ajnem (talk) 12:15, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

I once tried to add some details on the Sabbath, halakha and goys. It has a very interesting history, esp. in Italy (Jewish doctors employed in Italian hospitals in the mid 18th century etc). Unfortunately the circumstance was the Israel Shahak, where any attempt to thoroughly rewrite seems or seemed to engender huge edit-wars and battles over policy, esp. regarding the 'telephone incident'. If you're not familiar with that, I suggest you glance at it. The controversy that followed has an intricate history, but eventually brought about some changes in official policy. As far as I understand it, Shahak's point (irrespective of the veracity or not of the incident) was correct for rulings prior to that date.Nishidani (talk) 14:34, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll look at it. Ajnem (talk) 16:47, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

See now . 'Gentiles in Halacha' at Enlightenment, education, and freedom from religion, esp the section on the Sabbath. That clearly supports, without mentioning Shahak, the exposition he adopted in his books. It can't be used however for that article because it does not mention him by name, and to connect the two would be WP:OR. I think however that for anyone with a curiosity about these issues, and particularly anyone astonished at the paradoxes of settler behaviour, it does provide a very good technical outline of halakhic rulings on this delicate area, and allows outsiders to see the doctrinal grounding for acts the secular world often finds outrageous or incomprehensible. To the contrary, within their worldview, they are being utterly loyal and consistent. Nishidani (talk) 16:25, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Technical

This article was deleted on the strength of a split 8/7 vote (counting keep and move and merge votes). The problem now is that one (putting aside User:IranitGreenberg's vote: he was topic banned two days later for POV pushing) of the deciding votes was by User:Soosim, who, it emerges from today's Haaretz, was operating on behalf of NGO Monitor, i.e. abusing wikipedia to promote an agenda. Questions were raised about the propriety of that closure (delete). Is this a grounds for reconsidering the issue with a request for undeletion? As it stands, at least one of the 8 was voting in terms, not of policy, but as part of a political battle against any media that harms what they believe to be Israel (or Zionist) interests.Nishidani (talk) 16:44, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Probably not, but you can check with the deleting admin or raise it at deletion review (WP:DRV). nableezy - 18:49, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Nishidani. You have new messages at Al Ameer son's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

--Al Ameer son (talk) 06:40, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

RE: 1RR

No, if a person moves to another place (where he wasn't born), he's an immigrant. It's a matter of facts, not opinions. Arafat was born in Egypt, it doesn't matter where his parents came from. With the same arbitrary criteria, there aren't Jewish immigrants in Israel because their ancestors supposedly came from there in the first place. As you can see, this reasoning is absurd. If you don't like the fact that the PLO leader wasn't born in Palestine, it's your problem, not mine.--Michael Zeev (talk) 19:49, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

No. Your problem is that you have a fair to good knowledge of English (no native English speaker writes, as you and a few other editors in this area do, 'edition' for 'edit'), but that's it. No ear for proper usage. A five year old child who, bereaved of his mother, is sent back to his parents' homeland is not 'immigrating'. He is being 'sent back home' or left to his relatives' care in Jerusalem. Children travel on their parents' documents, (so you must ask yourself what documents, as an Ottoman Palestinian resident in Egypt, did Arafat's father use at the time, etc.) do not go through customs, sign immigration papers, ask for registration. Patrick White was an Australian writer, who happened to be born in London. His Australian father then moved back to Australia. I have two biographies of him. There is no mention of White emigrating while in the cot to Australia. etc.etc.etc. But I'm wasting my time. RS determine these things. If you can find me a solidly grounded, quality biography of Arafat that says something like 'aged 5 Arafat emigrated to Palestine', by all means illuminate the page.Nishidani (talk) 20:04, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

If a child from a familly of New-York go studying to California, he doesn't immigrate when he comes back to New-York. This is the same in the case of a Russian child who would go living and studying in France.

The case is true for Arafat and it is also true for Ahmad Shukeiri whose father who was a member of the Arab Higher Committee and a member of the Nashashibi party who lived in Palestine. When Shukeiri came back he didn't emigrate in the sense of Joan Peters and her propaganda.

Of course, the reasonning is not valid for Zionist Jews who settled in Palestine more than 2000 years after their ancestors had left : Aliyah is the immigration of Jews from the diaspora to the land of Israel / Palestine.

Pluto2012 (talk) 06:59, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Navboxes on author pages

Since you have over 100 edits at Charles Dickens, you might want to participate in the discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Novels#Derivative_works_and_cultural_references_templates regarding including navigation boxes for adaptations of and related subjects to an authors works on the author's bio page.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 16:13, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Request for a review

Greetings Nishidani. I hope all is well with you. Can you take some time out of your busy life to review the Gospel of the Ebionites article? JC has expressed some concerns about it on the talk page Talk:Gospel of the Ebionites#Question of POV, and I would like to get your perspective. Please leave any comments or constructive criticisms you may have to futher improve the article below Talk:Gospel of the Ebionites#WP:FAR. There is a good chance this article is going to WP:FAR, and I would like to be as prepared as possible. Thank you. Ignocrates (talk) 18:11, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

My pleasure. Might take some time. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 18:59, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Take all the time you need. The article will probably be laid waste when it is featured on the main page on July 14th, and it will take some time to clean up that mess. I'm expecting to be tied up in arbitration soon with JC over the whole Ebionites thing again (the promotion of this article to FA has apparently rekindled his ire), so don't be surprised if you receive a notice that the case has been reopened. Ignocrates (talk) 15:09, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

Sorry I'm a little late. Uh, got caught up in AE and had to reread or consult several old books thoroughly to check that my memory hadn't failed me. You know, the usual stuff. I'll get round to it pretty soon. No, don't be pessimistic. What you have done: revisit the whole modern literature, format according to a single system; impose the highest standards for sourcing, etc. and is admirable. At a glance there are shortcomings of course (apart from the using style and grammar points which is all I've listed so far), but you have provided all future editors with a superlative base for development. I still have some distractions: imagine a geezer struggling under lightening and a downpour to cover his maturing tomato plants!, and other work, but I'll get to it before the fatal date, and my words will be highly appreciative. From memory, for the moment, relook over the proportion of detail in the lead (excellent) to the sections below. In some places the lead, which is summary, contains as much as the development section it is supposed to hint at. If John's reading this, well, bury the hatchet. I tended to concur that some years ago, you were dead right on a few key issues. Michael Price was the disturbing element, and I haven't seen him around. Ignocrates is his own man, certainly with this recent work, and always was independent. My problem was and still is, that I don't trust synthetic sources like reference books or encyclopedias, as you do, John. One really does have to go after the technical literature to evaluate the primary sources, and, above all, one has to remember that a large part of the early primitive documentation on 'sects' , and its later use by basically Christian historians, is contaminated, and hostile to the Jewishness of Jesus. This eurocentric-christocentric bias is still in RS. I think Ignocrates has worked through this with equilibrium, on the Ebionite gospel, and painstaking care for the relevant erudition. We all have bees in our bonnets, and private POVs, but what he has done here, compared to the past, is a qualitative leap that has trumped the Nishidanis, Michael Prices and John Carters there. I hope User:in ictu oculi can pitch in as well. As for arbitration, just drop it. As for exchanges, just ignore each other except when a specific textual issue limited to the refraction of modern sources in the article is at stake. Cheers.Nishidani (talk) 15:41, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

One additional piece of information: John's recent appearance on the GEbi talk page was probably a reaction to the FA promotion in terms of the timing; however, it should be viewed in the context of a greater plan he has been discussing for at least a year now. As I indicated here, this is all part of a plan User:John Carter/Guidelines discussion to eliminate secondary sources as references and replace them with a restricted, pre-approved list of tertiary sources consisting mostly of religious dictionaries and encyclopedias. He apparently sees me as a threat to the implementation of these plans. Imo, that is the reason for the strong reaction. Ignocrates (talk) 16:07, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

I'll look into it. If that is so, I haven't had time to check the links, then it's wrong-footed and will fail. I wouldn't worry about it, or waste time on it. As any reader knows, the only interesting work to be done here is article creation, and being sucked into futile technical debates just withers the will to research or write for wikipedia. Cheers, pal.Nishidani (talk) 18:40, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

Ignocrates, in all honesty, your irrational assumptions and failure to AGF about the reasons for my actions above are nothing less than appalling. Accusing me of some sort of grandiose plan like you do above is laughable, and I think demonstrates your own paranoia more clearly than anything else. The Guidelines discussion, as I indicated, is something at which I am just throwing out ideas. My goals, if any, haven't been actually dealt with yet, and they are (1) how to deal with material, like that on the Talk:Saint Peter page, regarding theories which have had some long historical acceptance of a sort but little if any now, (2) how to deal with non-notable or marginally notable revival groups, of which they are apparently a wide number of, particular "pagan revival," and (3) whether and how to make synthesis of some marginal material, like pseudoscientific material, capable for inclusion. DGG and I have discussed that in the past, with unfortunately no ideas of where to go. Other discussions I linked to on that page, which were apparently not seen by Ignocrates, include Talk:Scientology discussion about an academic theory about Scientology in one good source about what might be called a mystery religion which might not itself discuss those matters, Talk:Deism discussion about how much weight to give non notable revival groups in articles about original groups, similar discussion about the Christ myth theory, about lumping together ideas which might not be related in enough independent sources to establish notability, and the others I referenced on that page. There is a bit of a need for discussion of these matters. The paranoic jump to conclusions Ignocrates makes above is a very strong indicator of his own emotionalism, and I think really can't be seen as anything but just that, paranoia. And, BTW, I came to this page primarily because I wanted to say you would be welcome in the discussion above, but, because of disruption of a previous attempt at guidelines by certain parties, I was hoping to get some veteran input, including that of HiLo48, who in the few times we have interacted has regularly disagreed with me and called me names, about how to deal with such questions.

P. S. FWIW, I tend to think not that specialist encyclopedias are necessarily the most reliable, like I said, but I do think that it is almost unacceptable for us to say that our content shouldn't include theirs. Also, as I indicated to Jayjg, in addition to trying to get together on WikiSource a lot of the old Hasting Encyclopedia articles, in part because of the high quality it allegedly has. A lot of those articles, including Buddhist articles, my first reason for seeking to include them, use non-English characters. Any help on them would be appreciated as I finish them as well. John Carter (talk) 22:43, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

The delegate is asking participants for a succinct summary at Wikipedia:Featured_article_review/Gospel_of_the_Ebionites/archive1 if you would care to comment. Ignocrates (talk) 22:05, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

As you are in the process of reviewing the article, can you also help out with the removal of tendentious tags? Thanks. Ignocrates (talk) 18:34, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Also please note that the edit summary for the above somewhat surprisingly rational comment from Ignocrates also contained the cledarly prejudicial and I believe copletely unsupportable claim of "tendentious tag-spamming" as per here. Ovadyah/Ignocrates seems to be once again indulging in one of his most frequently resorted to dubious tactics of, basically, trying to preemptively prejudice the opinions of others whose assistance he requests, which is generally regarded as being very dubious behavior itself. John Carter (talk) 19:13, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Can you take a minute to weigh in with a WP:3O at Talk:Gospel of the Ebionites#Neutrality tag? The discussion is about the proper weight for the Boismard material. I changed my summary of the ABD article to a direct quote of Petersen in a note. Should this content be (1) a minority view in the main text, (2) a tiny minority view in a note (as it is currently), or (3) not even worth mentioning (perhaps included as a citation or not even that much)? Thanks in advance. Ignocrates (talk) 18:40, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

AE

I lost track of how many times I warned you about this sort of behavior. So as per your request, see: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement#Nishidani No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 08:10, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

I've lost track of the amount of times you distort my editing record. It is not per my request. It was per your repeated threats. You have consistently threatened to report me to AE, for over a year. You repeated the threat recently. Since you once mocked, several times, another editor for announcing he would go to AE, and didn't, I asked you when you made your latest threat, to carry it through and not just keep repeating the ominous drone to take me out one day. What you dislike in others you were practicing yourself. You've finally done what you kept threatening to do. All I did was appeal to the principle of consistency which you decry when breached by others, but breach yourself. I may or may not respond to your report. It's so silly, patently silly, - really, do you ever read books? do you ever keep abreast of Israeli scholarship? What you deplore in me is said every day in the mainstream Israeli press- that I don't know if it's worth the time. By the way, insinuating I am an anti-semitic baiter of Jews should not pass off as a breach of 'decorum' as per your formal complaint. Antisemitism is not a breach of decorum. It is a flagrant exhibition of racial animosity, and if I am guilty of that, as you suggest, you should not try and pass what would be utterly contemptible, even latently murderous in so far as it would be 'incitement' as though it were simply bad manners. Nishidani (talk) 12:56, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Question

Hi Nishidani,

I wonder what "hearsay" did you mean in this comment " and Russian Eurasia(300,000 non Jewish Russians) according to hearsay some 3400 years ago"? Thanks. 94.76.244.157 (talk) 01:31, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

oral epic in the vernacular.Nishidani (talk) 07:12, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Gospel of the Ebionites

Still waiting on your input regarding the comparative attention to be given the various existing and proposed sources. Also, you might find Keilana's comments rather interesting as well. John Carter (talk) 21:30, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Interesting observation

Here is an interesting opinion piece on why we need to take a more multilingual approach to our scholarship to avoid Anglo-centric bias. Ignocrates (talk) 02:04, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. There's no doubt that an historic, not so much anglocentric, as christo-centric bias inflected much of the 19th-20th century scholarship on Christian origins, and that this is fast coming to an end, much to everyone's relief. Eusebius tells us that the bishops who headed the Jerusalem see were all Jewish down to Hadrian's edict, i.e. for more than a century after Jesus's death. Mind you, it's not a one way street and often 19th century scholars were more opened minded that their epigones a century later. I read a while back a good article by Elliott Horowitz here on the Persian conquest of Jerusalem in 614,, invaluable not so much for the data, which are well known, as for the analysis of how our political obsessions or allegiances twist or suppress stuff. I think scholarship on ancient origins is out of the trough. Unfortunately all over these articles on ancient religion, many editors still read things politically, and not for the sheer excitement of what recent studies have brought to light. I once suggested, without an arrière pensée, that we put Jesus on the list on notable Jews. It was greeted dourly. No one contests that, unlike Christians much later, he was born, raised and died a Jew. Many Christians and Jewish people seem uncomfortable with the fact, which means we still have the history of antagonism hanging over us blinding us to a perspective that would suggest a deeper ecumenicalism than the superficial one in vogue (I'd be on the sidelines as a pagan, of course) Nishidani (talk) 19:46, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Interesting. I don't see how that is remotely relevant to the current discussion. FWIW, I agree that we should definitely be willing and agreeable to nave more foreign sources. If anyone were to give me a good reliable translation of the RGG in German, for instance, I would wholeheartedly support it. It can be and often is the case that foreign language sources are among the best and most recent material. There is unfortunately a question in some cases, like for instance with some languages, though, about whether the material there is even remotely neutral, or whether it is just POV pushing for the ethnic group that uses that language. If one were to check the best, most reliable reference sources, like the Encyclopedia of Religion or Religion Past and Present/RGG, one will see that several of the articles are actually translated form other languages, the original languages the leading experts use. I really question exactly how relevant any of this is to the article in question, though. Also, I think you should note that it was Ignocrates who has twice in recent months requested arbitration, and thet the most recent request at NYB's talk page was the one I was acting on. So, honestly, when I do file the request for arbitration regarding his conduct, which would also include my own, it will have been, basically, at his prompting. I think we both look forward to your input on the above article. John Carter (talk) 18:04, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

My comment to Nishidani is a general observation about scholarship, and it was intended as an fyi to him personally. That is why I left it on his user talk page. Please stop interfering with my conversations with other editors, and stop stalking me. Ignocrates (talk) 18:34, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Ignocrates, much as this might surprise you, despite what may well appear to be a rather pronouncedly bloated ego, these repeated irrational complaints about "stalking", particularly considering that I have myself recently commented on this page, are themselves a rather clear violation of the guidelines for unfounded accusations. And considering your own rather obvious history of stalking me, regarding pages which you yourself have never edited or apparently had any direct interest in, like your repeated accusations of misconduct on my part regarding the Jesus Seminar and other fairly clearly unfounded accusations at Jayjg's talk page and elsewhere, and what seems to me to be a rather obvious recent history of accusing others of doing things which you yourself have more clearly done, I have to say that this again very poorly founded accusation of stalking is itself probably the most obvious violation of guidelines. John Carter (talk) 18:51, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

With regard to your inflammatory edit summary, the word is pejorative, not perjorative. Learn how to spell. Ignocrates (talk) 18:57, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Learm how to abide by policies and guidelines, which are more important than spell checking. Please yourself learn how to engage in civil discourse and actually making on-topic comments, something that after several years editing a few articles here you have still apparently not bothered to do. John Carter (talk) 19:02, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Btw, I just did an edit count on the Jesus Seminar and Talk:Jesus Seminar pages. You made 12 edits to the article and 7 to the talk page. I have zero edits on both pages. Next time you make statements about subjects "like your repeated accusations of misconduct on my part regarding the Jesus Seminar" you might want to make sure they aren't so easily disproved. Ignocrates (talk) 19:12, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Ignocrates, I agree and acknowledge that you never made any edits to the page. However, although you have made no edits to the page this page reveals the amount of attention you have given it, and basically proves that your own allegation of your noninvolvement is another of what seems to be an ongoing attempt on your part to misrepresent your own history, which is I think in the eyes of any disinterested outsider an extremely serious cause for questioning your basic honesty and possibly your ability to remember your own history. John Carter (talk) 17:19, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

And, despite your having made zero edits to the page, you had the absolute arrogance and gall to complain to I think it was Jayjg (maybe Dougweller) on his user page about my tagging the article. That, Ignocrates, is just one example of your own long term habitual harrasment of others. Has it ever occurred to you that policies and guidelines apply to you as well, or like with so much else regarding you over your history, do you still somehow think that you can add your personal opinions to an article if you have brought it up to FA? Have you ever actually made any attempt to review the policies and guidelines, I wonder? If you had, you probably would have noticed WP:RSUE, the policy page which already specifically says non-English language sources can be used? And, by the way, Ignocrates, I have noticed that your often frankly juvenile attempts to point out the spelling errors of others is among the most transparent and ridiculous examples of posturing I have ever seen. You have, apparently, apparently never bothered to learn basic policies and guidelines. Comments made on a talk page are not as important as the woeful inability to adhere to basic policies and guidelines, which you have regularly displayed. Given your own repeated recent howls of "defamation," and the rather laughable attempts on your own user talk page to indicate that, somehow, you believe that others consider you perhaps a bit more than marginally competent to edit around here, other than apparently Nishidani, I find the rather petty, vindicative, and basically useless repetition of such comments wildly amusing. If you could ever learn to aim your bile a bit more clearly, and to actually maybe find out something about the people you contact, like Keilana's gender, for instance, the number of times you would find yourself being more legitimately reprimanded would probably drop dramatically. But there is more than sufficient evidence that you are too blinded by your own hatred of someone who found that the POV nightmare that was your Ebionites article was basically a piece of trash, and that your own fragile ego apparently now motivates you to try to minimize the legitimate concerns of others with such petty sniping. It would be interesting to see if you could ever grow up, but at this point the evidence seems to be that you can't. On that basis, and given your own history of drawing and being drawn to people with similar obvious POV problems, like LungSalad, Michael, who you developed a very interesting about-face on, first requesting input against him, and then becoming best friends with him after your own dear POV material was being questioned, Ret. Prof., and a few others who never learned how to behave either. Honestly, unfortunately, I think that ArbCom will be required to look into the conduct of some of the editors at early Christianity, and, honestly, the staggering amount of vindictive and irrational harassment you have leveled at me over the years, on Jayjg's and Dougweller's talk pages, your clearly unsupported allegation that all I want is for reference books to be used, and so on, I have to say that your own completely unacceptable conduct, particularly when you choose to collude with other POV pushers, makes it basically required that the conduct of the POV pushers will have to be looked at. If you had ever looked at the ArbCom pages, you would see that. Honestly, Ignocrates, your own conduct is of such a transparently poor level of quality, both before and after your name change, that I honestly think that those who have endured the silly, spiteful, shenanigans you so regularly indulge yourself in deserve more honor and respect than the vindictive little SPA who apparently is driven by irrational biases. And I have to say your apparent failure to even recognize how policy does permit foreign material is probably one of the best examples of your own poor level of research. John Carter (talk) 15:09, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry, John. This is ranting. I had strong disagreements with Ignocrates earlier, as you know. I have never assumed however that he was in bad faith. Secondly, the work he is producing commands my appreciation for the quality and breadth of its coverage of excellent sources. I would strongly advise you not to take this to arbitration, because, quite recently, the language you are adopting, the vehemence of the j'accuse mode, is unacceptable, particularly in an administrator, and will almost certainly tell against you if this reaches a reviewing committee. By the same token, I would ask Ignocrates rqually to suspend any action he might be tempted to take, if only to do me a personal favour, and allow a cooling off period until, well, September. Tempers have frayed, and good men should desist from interacting with each other to see if silence and self-restraint can heal what looks like a profound rupture. Talking this over further is pointless, and at cross purposes.Nishidani (talk) 15:33, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Tempers flared on Ovadyah/Ignocrates' part shortly after you withdrew from the discussion. I have started to gather some of the numerous attempts at harassment and really blind vindictive prejudice Ignocrates has displayed at me on the talk pages of Jayjg, Dougweller, and others, where he has, basically, gotten no support for his own often hysterical, and sometimes completely unfounded, allegations. Among them was his frankly insane allegation that I should be de-sysoped because I admitted to having suffered some seizures for a year or two after having gotten a concussion from a mugging which knocked me out completely for two days, caused a bump on the head the size of my open hand, and required me taking anti-seizure medications for about four months. I would very strongly suggest that you review his own edit history at Talk:Jayjg, Talk:Dougweller, and elsewhere, and see just how often he himself as engaged in at least as bad, if not worse, behavior. If I am myself de-sysop'ed, fine, that is another matter, and as I have said from the time I got the mop I would willingly withdraw it if any admin thought such was called for. But I do myself strongly believe that the pompous, posturing, and often rather clearly delusional conduct of Ignocrates, his sometimes obvious hypocrisy (one recent instance of which is his comments inviting review in which he said not much had been written on the GoE recently, and then later on the article talk page after I had one of the reasons not much has been written might be thee is nothing new to say), and similar conduct which could perhaps reasonably be seen as, well, hypocrisy. If you want to urge individuals to engage in self-restraint, then I think you might benefit from reviewing Ignocrates' own behavior since you withdrew from active participation in the discussion, because I believe you will see how rarely if ever he has made any discernible effort to do that himself. In fact, I believe that there is strong evidence that he has gone out of his way to engage in repeated harassment, possibly because I am the one person who did not withdraw from questioning the horrible mess he made the Ebionites article, and my absence might make it possible for him to return to the POV pushing he had indulged there without such opposition.

Regarding quality of sources, honestly, some of them are from good publications, but one of the problems we have is that, sometimes, good journals publish ideas which have rarely if ever gotten much support beyond them. Another concern, perhaps less founded, is that I personally have seen in his previous edits a rather strong tendency to dramatically overplay the statements of the sources, in sometimes rather obvious OR/SYNTH violation. I think it would be useful if individuals actually reviewed the sources, and saw whether the sources are being used for passing comments in the sources, or whether the sources are being perhaps cherry-picked. This is particularly unfortunately the case with early Christianity, where a lot of reasonable speculations can be published, but which remain little more than speculation, and which often are rerely if ever repeated. Those are serious concerns as well. In general, highly regarded reference sources are also, generally, counted among the best sources, particularly as they are the only types of sources which are "overview" type, like our own articles are supposed to be, rather than articles in journals which often are primarily there to promote some new or non-standard view or opinion, sometimes based on an unusual view, or perhaps a decided minority view, of a given item or interpretation of it. Yeah, a lot of them have problems too, and sometimes individual articles or groups of articles are criticized in reviews. Unfortunately, some of those review criticisms can themselves be seen to be potentially clearly biased, and that is a problem. One of the reasons I am working on getting the bibliography of reference books set of articles was to see what reference sources exist, what they cover, and where they are discussed. That's one of the reasons for my suggestion that we need some sort of MOS on the topic, which would also deal with how much attention to give to all of the 20,000 or so distinct Christian groups sources say exist out there today, and all those which have existed in the past. John Carter (talk) 17:12, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

It's very simple. Almost all articles on Judaism, Islam and Christianity on wikipedia are unreadable. Just looking at them, even promoted ones, gives me indigestion. That's because people feel so intense about them, and usually the interest is ethnic or religious self-defensiveness, or hostility to the other. I'm quite aware of the problable personal interest Ignocrates has in several of these articles. That was at times problematical in the past. It is not problematical now, because the methods he has adopted show high dedication, willingness to search out all available relevant sources, and readiness to deal with all angles. My only real problem in the past with Ignocrates was the temporary alliance with Michael Price, which spoiled my sympathies for a while. Price shouldn't be anywhere near that kind of article. I don't see him here, and in any case, the Ignocrates whose recent work I am examining seems to be an exemplary wikipedian (all of whom have POVs, like myself, but all of whom are fully aware of the sacrifice those personal beliefs must suffer before the secondary literature's authority). I really do think you should desist John. I was shocked to hear of the accident you suffered, you've been a great help to me personally in the past when I was 'got at', and I don't forget things like that easily. I do think you come over to third parties as rather upset, intensely annoyed, and it is not clear why. I don't believe in enmity, and I'm one for burying the hatchet (not between an adversary's shoulders). It would give me considerable displeasure to see you risk a desysopping over just this Ebionite/Ignocrates business, where, permit me, I think you judgement is too influenced by the past. Best wishes and do reconsider. I have, of course, no personal interest in this, have never corresponded with Ignocrates and say this simply because it's frankly how I see the best interests of you both and wikipedia.Nishidani (talk) 17:29, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Regarding the content on Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, honestly, with only a few exceptions, like maybe Maximus the Confessor, about whom virtually nothing is known in the first place, I agree with you. I also wholeheartedly agree that the content over the contentious religions, like the big three, are impossible. For the most part, so far as I can see, that is because there has been so damn much written about them, from so many perspectives, even in reference sources, that it is all but impossible to write anything on them. Some articles, like the Two by Twos and Messianic Judaism, suffer from the lack of truly independent sources of any kind. I also believe you haven't noticed the often hysterical complaints which Ovadyah/Ignocrates has regularly left on the talk pages of Jayjg, Dougweller, and others, most of which seem to be written at a time when I or others have made comments made on article talk pages suggesting indicated changes which he can't dismiss as flippantly as he often likes, making them apparently a form of misdirection and an ongoing conduct question to present before ArbCom. Also, his almost constant obnoxious, posturing, preening delusional self-aggrandisement, and fairly clear attempts at ownership-type behavior, are extremely problematic. Regarding my being de-sysop'ed, ultimately, I honestly wouldn't mind seeing it happen. I only became a sys-op to edit protected templates, and most project banners are done now. Honestly, though, I doubt I will suffer from any ArbCom review, given the extreme amount of really irrational, and sometimes I believe clearly insane, unfounded and sometimes laughable accusations and impugnings of me Ovadyah/Ignocrates has made would be taken into account. ArbCom can only review conduct matters, and, frankly, Ignocrates' conduct in general is among the most appalling I have ever seen. And, if not, at this point, I think WikiSource and the lists of encyclopedic articles are probably among my more important tasks anyway.

Also, I guess I should note that after a few months medical examination indicated no reason to suspect any permanent damage. Also, I mentioned my own beliefs above because, strange as it may seem, implicit in them is getting all the facts about everything right, because I am, basically, gambling on the results of the current available information, so it is important to get the information right. Yeah, I do take into account some speculation regarding physics and the like, but, hell, I minored in physics, with a major in religious studies, so I do think I know something about that topic as well. A lot of people, including a lot of priests, disagree with me, and I've heard from others some have called me a heretic or worse, but I can live with that. John Carter (talk) 16:49, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Jerusalem RfC: breakdown of results

Hello again everyone. Now that the Jerusalem RfC has been closed and there has been time for the dust to settle, I thought it would be a good time to start step six of the moderated discussion. If you could leave your feedback over at the discussion page, it will be most appreciated. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 09:38, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

I Need Some Help

I submitted another editor's work to the admin, but my form (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Edit_warring#User:Tritomex_reported_by_User:MVictorP_.28Result:_.29) is less than perfect, owing to the fact that I am a noob. I want to do things right, however, but I am pressed for time. Can you help me with my synthax? Of course ignore if this is bothering you.MVictorP (talk) 13:26, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I only go to A/1 or A/E when hauled there, or in very rare cases, since, as everyone should know by now, my long-term advice is to never dob in, except under extreme circumstances, other editors. I suggest you withdraw the complaint. I think of course Tritomex is a single-minded POV-pusher who doesn't understand the rules, but then, there are many like that, and one has to live with it, unless it gets unmanageably destructive.Nishidani (talk) 13:35, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

I understand and accept your position. However, as a new-commer, I can't believe that such obviously sujective individuals, with such ill-will can be tolerated. It's like tolerating foxes in the henhouse. This isn't an opinion forum (where it would be okay) - it's a place of knowledge.

Thanks anyway, and I also wanted to command you for your general work on the "Khazar" page.MVictorP (talk) 18:14, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

It's an informal rule that newbies should never rush into arbitration. It signals a lack of understanding that we are here to write and edit articles. The best way to show good faith as a newbie is to choose a neglected topic, uncontroversial, and reading up on the subject, to make a couple of dozen substantive edits. Straying into difficult pages wracked by controversy, usually ends up in a rapid ban. Most henhouses here are wire-anchored in concrete rules, and foxes, as any farmer knows, end up just pissing on them as they pass, and trying to get a yelping stir out of the dog in the kennel on the other side. I'm tempted to pun on echidna and kiddenya, with a moronically silly allusion to a fragment of Archilochus, but I'll refrain. Nishidani (talk) 19:06, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

I'll ponder on that. Thanks, again. MVictorP (talk) 21:07, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Religion articles

I have to say I agree with you about the problems of Christianity and Judaism, and even, which might surprise you, how obnoxiously arrogant and self-righteous both have historically been (along with Islam) in dealing with anyone else. I commented to I think Dougweller some time ago, maybe in private e-mail, that we need to differentiate between "Israelite religion" and "Judaism", like the reference sources do. Adding some more information about the sometimes obvious ties to other Mesopotamian and other religions as well. The only way I can really think to do that is to get together as many academic sources, either reference or college-level texts, together for everyone to review. The sources ALA has called "outstanding reference sources" are not necessarily the best, and they even indicate in their statements that being "user-friendly" is one of their main selection criteria, but I hope that they also try to ensure that those which have real serious content problems don't get included. And, by and large, the reference department of libraries tend to prioritize buying them, so most of them should also be comparatively easily available. I just finished yesterday going through an itemized list of the articles and subarticles of the 2nd edition of EoR for the letter "I". The subject and sub-subject summary for just that one letter in that one source winds up being about 18 pages long in Word, which is why they aren't getting produced and added here as fast as I would like. But I am still working on them. That source, which has clear University of Chicago Eliade bias, and the RGG/Religion Past and Present, which has clear Religionsgeschichtlicheschule bias, might even not themselves be able to get together a really fair article between them, but with the others we might be able to get something getter. Also, FWIW, the old Hastings ERE has a lot of content on even the religions of peoples who had been exterminated prior to its publishing. I'm not at all sure if your own beliefs, whatever they are in the broad field of "paganism" are covered there, but I know most of the indigenous religion material around here either doesn't exist or basically sucks at present, but I certainly would have no reservations about maybe trying to give them some material here, if you wanted any help. This is, by the way, not an attempt to try to get you to change your opinions. It is just, unfortunately, based on the bad level of content on most religious subjects we have here. John Carter (talk) 18:20, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

computer iliterite seeks hilp

For whatever reason, the various numerous attempts to upload the old Hastings Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics from archive.org to the wikimedia commons over the past two weeks have all failed miserably. I remember that you tend to spend some significant periods of time on the computer, possibly long enough to maybe upload them in the background while doing other things. If you would want to commit yourself to dealing with such lengthy files, having them there would make it possible to put the articles from them on WikiSource, and even though some of them are really appalling by modern standards, like "Aborigines", a lot of the others, like Poussin's articles on Buddhism, have been called in reviews of more recent encyclopedias maybe the best things ever written on the subject. The article on Theosophy, written by Mme. Blavatsky I think, is another article from that source still considered a bit of a high water mark in the field. If you have time, and I know from experience how much time that can take in this matter. John Carter (talk) 18:30, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Cripes. I'm that pathetic techwise. I don't have a cellphone out of sheer dislike at the way them things punctuate one's solitude. I had to ask Nableezy to upload a snapshot of a Christmas cake my wife baked, in order to send Christmas greetings to Doug (see above), that after an hour of trying to follow instructions. I don't even have a scanner, other than a specialized synaptic zone, which is fairly reliable but not downloadable. I know nothing about computers, other than using them as typewriters, and clicking on links. I keep the computer on all day, but prefer to read off-line. To reply to your query re paganism, I just don't have (religious) beliefs and have an aspergerlike incapacity for any form of group identity, except in the solidarity of pub drinkups and restaurant conviviality. I like problems, not answers. Sorry, John, that I can't help in this. The idea is a good one, and I like HastingsNishidani (talk) 21:18, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

If you don't have religious beliefs, honestly, I think you might be among the best people to deal with religion here. FWIW, I tend to be, if this makes sense, someone who holds with the Omega Point idea that God is whatever it says it is at the end of time, which has possibly/probably already happened (in his/its view anyway) and that, personally, at a best guess available now, Christianity of the type I espouse seems to be at least temporarily the winner, although that could clearly be wrong. And I obviously understand being useless on the computer myself. I have gotten a few of the other later volumes up today, somehow I dunno, and I hope that I can turn some of their more important articles into pages on WikiSource. Strangely, volume 2 starts with the article on the guy I got my real name from. A lot of that content is, admittedly, really outdated, but for a lot of us even some of these possibly weak articles will help some of us structure some of our articles and groups of articles here, and that would be a big step in the right direction. John Carter (talk) 21:38, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

My long-term goal regarding religion, if it matters, is basically (1) to get together good lists of encyclopedic articles from encyclopedic sources, so we know what has to be covered here, (2) to ensure that we have most of the topics covered in encyclopedic sources covered here, preferably to the degree of WEIGHT as they are given other sources, including those that aren't encyclopedic, depending on the total amount of weight they receive, and then, (3) to go to the Gale directory of periodicals and broadcast media and other similar sources and get together lists of such sources which meet RS standards for each of the religion based Projects/groups. Maybe, in time, if I live that long, I might be able to try to do the same with Africa, South America, the Pacific Islands, and a few other areas. Logically, that seems to me to be the best way to go. The amount of time it takes, though, is why I edit so infrequently and do so little article development directly myself. John Carter (talk) 22:19, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

I tithe my time for community work here. But each hour feels like a waste of time better spent at my desk on stuff I really know well. It's punishing to have to spend months wrangling on articles that, really, even if quite complex, would only take a week to start and complete to GA standard if one was left alone or could work in a properly collaborative community, so I'm reluctant to spend more than is necessary on wiki work, since I have obligations to my own interests.

The best advice a friend gave me was:'if my party wins power, I'll join the opposition' (and he did). If Christianity is winning (a statement I can't understand because I don't know what Christianity is referred to. I've never though evangelical fundamentalists are 'Christian'. An islamic postulate of a Christian order converted because he met an old priest who told him he had learnt to pray only because an imam he was visiting happened to be at prayer, and asked him to join him in his own way. He never knew what real devotional prayer was until, embarrassed by his own ritual mumbling, he listened to his companion from the other faith speak to Allah (the word denotes the same as the Christian/Judaic God). I just read this: Danna Harman Conficted Identities, conflicted land| Arab terrorist for a father, ultra-Orthodox Jew for a mother, Haaretz, July 21, 2013. I'm profoundly moved by the story, and agree with Shani's concluding words, and the Nimer Ahmads of the world. 'Nite, John.Nishidani (talk) 22:29, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

I understand how useless it can feel to be working here, believe me. And I agree a lot of fundamentalists could probably be counted as more "cultural reactionaries" than Christians. There is a real problem in general differentiating between "cultural" religion and for lack of a better word "religious" religion. One such example, which to the best of my admittedly limited knowledge may not have gotten much attention here yet, can be found in Asafa Jalata's article "Being in and out of Africa," in the Nov. 2009 issue of the Journal of Black Studies, available on JSTOR, which includes references to other sources for its information. I think the broad topic of the possibly racist religion matter it discusses is significant enough for inclusion here, and it does also provide some indication as to why the Kebra Nagast has been taken on by the Rastas, as well as the old Ethiopian Orthodox Church, and some of the ongoing racial problems faced in Ethiopia. If you have the time and inclination to do so, I would very much welcome someone else like maybe you looking it over and maybe indicating what material related to that topic belongs here. Unfortunately, the "Ethiopianism" it describes doesn't yet have a clear and obvious article here yet, and given the breadth of the topic, it can be difficult to see which if any articles that might be here may already cover aspects of it. John Carter (talk) 15:39, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

John, with all the things (other than looking after two post-operative cases) friends have asked me to look in here, I haven't had the time or decency to reply to a query sent to me by a distinguished scholar (retired) concerning a crux in Simplicius's commentary on Aristotle's Physics, that I've been helping him through in my very spare time. I really have to rein things in. I'm only saying this on-line because sometimes my lack of helpfulness to other editors might appear to be indifference. Best Nishidani (talk) 15:50, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

First, I think it worth noting that you seem to be one of the few people around here that academic seem to lean on for support, and that probably says more about you than anything else. The Wikipedia Library is offering a few free subscriptions to databanks for qualified editors who can't access them otherwise, and if there are any available there that you don't have access to yet, but might want, they might be useful. I found the Highbeam Research site wonderfully useful, for instance, although they haven't seemed to been renewing it lately. But you might be one of the best people for such subscriptions, if you don't already have access to those databanks of course. John Carter (talk) 16:19, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks John. But it's not a data-bank problem, Simplicius, but rather an interpretative crux concerning ta pssage in classical Greek in Simplicius of Cilicia and the corresponding Aristotelian concept in the Physics. It's not quite my field, but I just happen to know a bit more Greek than the scholar whose field it is. It just needs a couple of hours of detached thinking (probably to come up with a wrong answer or one that leads to further problems, as is usually the case!). Well, fuck it, I must switch this damned computer off and look at the crux instead. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 16:31, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Just for the record, I think most people realize that user talk page comments are not intended to be statements before a court or anything, and most of us realize that many don't devote the same degree of care to such comments which aren't intended to be part of the encyclopedia. Although, I do have to commend you on your attention to detail anyway. John Carter (talk) 20:17, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Operation ATLAS

Hi Nishidani,

would you have reads reliable sources stating that the aim of this operation was to poison wells of Tel Aviv and it was instigated by the Mufti ? Except Bar Zohar (whose reliability on this topic is relative).

Thank you, Pluto2012 (talk) 20:11, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

(I've been away). I looked into that some years ago while doing the Husseini article and drew a blank, beyond Bar Zohar's book. I thought it very odd that it does not figure in so many sources for that period. Given Schwanitz's remark at the bottom of the page, the main text looks like an extended assumption given as fact, but that's before checking through the sources. I'll begin to look into it, but nothing in my private stocks mentions the incident.Nishidani (talk) 16:33, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Khazars

The template is suppose to only display when the page is actually protected. I have removed it manually. -- KTC (talk) 09:13, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi. This is about the "Uses by Antisemites..." section in the Khazars article, an article I know you invested a lot of time in, and did a quality job IMO. My problem is - I can't read you on the Talk page. I can read the words but I can't figure what you think, subject-wise. On one hand you attack the omnipresence debates about Jewish matters that pervert many little-related articles, and on the other you defend it in a drone-like manner, stressing the importance of the law's letter rather than its spirit. Just telling it to me square would simplify things a lot.

I intent to correct the disputed part myself if I have no reasons not to do it. I think I did communicate mine enough, and I think rational opposition to them has been little to inexistant. Thanks in advance! MVictorP (talk) 13:45, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

You have no consensus. let me construe English for you.

Controversy surrounds modern theories on a hypothetical Khazarian diaspora's possible impact on the formation of Ashkenazi Jewry, an argument that has lent itself occasionally also to polemics regarding Antisemitism.

This is WP:summary style per WP:Lede for the last section of the Khazar page, which deals with (a) the history of the theory and (b) its occasional use in polemics regarding antisemitism.

It means

• The theory argues that a diaspora of Khazars from that Jewish state may have influenced the rise of Ashkenazi Jewry.
• This theory has often been enunciated by Jews (Abraham Eliyahu Harkavi,Joseph Jacobs, Samuel Weissenberg, Maurice Fishberg, Yitzhak Schipper, Samuel Krauss, A.N. Poliak, Salo Wittmayer Baron, Ben-Zion Dinur, Arthur Koestler,Raphael Patai, Paul Wexler, Shlomo Sand Eran Elhaik (all notable and distinguished scholars) and antisemites (Burton J. Hendrick,Lothrop Stoddard,John O. Beaty, Wilmot Robertson, Hiram Wesley Evans,David Duke, some unnamed Arab polemicists in the 1960s, and David Duke -all distinguished ignoramuses mainly on the lunatic fringe of American racism, and in addition Levi Gumilev) alike, and has been dismissed and supported by Jewish and non-Jewish scholars.
• Controversies exist on both the Khazar-Ashkenazi theory, and on its uses by antisemites.
• These things are peripheral to the subject having only an 'occasional presence' in most serious books, as Léon Poliakov, formerly the outstanding world historian of antisemitism, has little to say on the subject. It doesn't figure in classical antisemitic literature. It's an American marginal pamphleteering or soapbox obsession.
• The meaning is - and this is what you persistently fail to understand in my carefully manicured syntax - the Khazar-Ashkenazi theory has had and still has serious support by men of considerable literary and scholarly standing, Jewish and non-Jewish, who do not associate it with antisemitism. Notwithstanding this fact, a fringe gallimaufry of idiots at times use the argument to deny Jewish connections to Israel. So the self-evident sense of the sentence is:'There is nothing intrinsically antisemitic in the hypothesis, but it has been used to that end.' Or, as Hamlet put it, 'There is nothing either good or bad (in the Ashkenazi-Khazar hypothesis) but (biliously racist) thinking (at times) makes it (look) so (to ignorant eyes).'

You have failed to see this, which any normal practiced reader of English would know how to evaluate. It's your reading problem that is defective, not the text's phrasing. Sorry to be harsh, but this is, you tell me, your second language, and you've missed what is obvious to native ears.Nishidani (talk) 14:15, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

I will pass over the condescendance (I don't think it affects me like you believe it would) to tell you this: The Khazarian hypothesis (and its ancestries) has been adopted ("adopted" doesn't meaning the said hypothesis were true nor false) mainly by people whose purpose was to attenuate anti-semitism before the advent of zionism. Post-zionism, the hypothesis could still be used to diminish the logic of antisemitism, but this was overshadowed by the fact that it lessened Jewish claims on Palestine based on their genetics - zionism.

I don't need to bring you sources or documentation for that, have I? Of course I could, but that would be rethorics. Besides, you know it it is true, truer and more objective than the dressed-up shit that's still in the article. The point is: the section is a political one in an article where there shouldn't be any.

Ask yourself what the disputed section bring to the article, versus what its removal would do. I for one believe that it is much more of a political debate than a neutral one. And thanks for you polite correspondence. MVictorP (talk) 15:04, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Fous le camp.Nishidani (talk) 16:29, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Here, just for you. Make good usage of it and come back when your ass' clean then, and only then, we'll talk about more wordly matters. MVictorP (talk) 11:55, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Civilisation

I wonder if you would have a few minutes to have a look at the above article. A few suggestions could go a long way and the importance of the article is pretty obvious.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:29, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

Jeezus, Andrew. I see what you mean. That needs a real mop-up, and rewrite. I just rewrote off the top of my head the lead, for the moment.I've got it bookmarked and will keep an eye on it, and try to help, as time and energy allows.Nishidani (talk) 21:10, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

Onya mate. I get the feeling not many people are watching it and maybe even just having more people doing small things will make a difference.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 21:42, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

Request for help in foreign characters

Hi. I just saw that the entire old Hastings Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics is now uploaded to commons, which means that I can start adding some of the articles to WikiSource. I have gotten at least a few articles ready for there, but have also found that they tend to use a lot of foreign characters with which I am at best dubiously familiar, including a lot with "special characters" which don't appear in my word processing program. If and when I add them to WikiSource, after a bit further review myself, would you be perhaps interested in maybe checking on whether I am using the correct characters in some of these cases, if I give you the page number of the article from the original and a link to the file that the material appeared in originally? John Carter (talk) 16:56, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

Let me check an example. I wouldn't have a clue about the technical side if things stuff up. People send me stuff in various languages, and half the time it comes through garbled, even something as simple as classical Greek, though every text I send throughj gmail comes out clear. This is true even of pdf files at times. I never enquire. My computer works this stuff without problems, but when I get outside, things screw up. Go figure, as young people say.Nishidani (talk) 19:05, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

1920 Nebi Musa riots

Suggest you look at Talk:1920 Nebi Musa riots. Zero^talk 10:21, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

NPOV/N

Your name was mentioned here WP:Neutral point of view/Noticeboard#Gospel of the Ebionites in case you want to add anything. This is still about Marie-Émile Boismard and his conjecture about a Hebrew gospel source underlying the Gospel of_the Ebionites#Relationship to other texts. Maybe you can bring some clarity to this seemingly-never-ending dispute over neutrality. Best. Ignocrates (talk) 22:18, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Nishidani. You have new messages at Al Ameer son's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

--Al Ameer (talk) 16:44, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Anyone can read Haaretz premium articles if they look at their print version, which is done by replacing the url up to the .premium final part with the text "http://www.haaretz.com/misc/article-print-page/". For example, to view the "Archaeologists race to save Gaza's ancient ruins" article, edit the original URL, http://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/.premium-1.542490, to http://www.haaretz.com/misc/article-print-page/.premium-1.542490 .     ←   ZScarpia   20:19, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Gospel of the Hebrews

I know that you are probably not looking forward to this, but I think it would be useful if someone were to review the relevant academic sources relating to the topic of the above article. Specifically, I have seen more than one source which says that the works discussed by Jerome and the others as the GotH almost certainly were not the same work, and seem to have been written in different languages, and I do not see that reflected in the content of the article as it stands. I could be wrong, but that is the basis for my request for your review of material, if you so desire. John Carter (talk) 18:44, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

I dunno. Many modern scholars consider Jerome's assertions about his access to such sources a fraudulent claim. Why? Personal impressions, really. It's all hypothesis, and a large part of the history of discussion is complicated by the fact that Christian scholars historically, though things have changed recently, have been reluctant to factor in the idea (utterly reasonable) that the primary documents of the early Church's various groups probably circulated in Aramaic or even Hebrew versions. Christianity is just a (radical) form of Judaism, almost all foundational Christians were Jews, and most of the early community were converts to the form of Judaism Christianity took. Close resemblance breeds what Freud called the narcissism of minor differences, and theological councils ratified them with elaborate dogmata. We don't know what the GH was. We know nothing, there are no certainties, only drifts in academic opinion, that changes every generation. As long as these articles clarify that we are dealing with positions by interpretative groups, and hypotheses, I don't really care for the rest. The most important thing to me is that editors write from top to bottom using the best wiki criteria, good citational templates, standard and cutting edge academic analyses, and clear language. When that is done, any editor who disagrees with a sentence, or formulation, or emphasis, on the basis of an independent review of the sourcing, is left with the simple option of directly editing to adjust the text. In the texts you refer me to, this can be done, by anyone. They're not like the messes I have to read where structural reorganization is like pushing a motherload of diarrhoea up Mt Everest with slippery fingers. I wouldn't worry about it, John. Whatever defects there may be in these articles, they're easily fixable by direct addition or subtraction or phrasal modifications. (Apart from the fact, mate, that I'm dead weary of wikipedia at the mo'. Cheers.Nishidani (talk) 14:29, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Nishidani, can you respond to the proposal in the RfC (or paste these comments)? That way we can keep all the comments in one place. Thanks. Ignocrates (talk) 23:04, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

For what little it might be worth, one of the objectives of trying to get ArbCom involvement on this is to get some sort of guidelines for religion put together by editors knowledgable about how to put together guidelines, not just regular religion editors who tend to, not unsurprisingly, have biases of some sort, and maybe to get some form of discretionary sanctions on early Christianity, which seems to be the most contentious part of the contentious topic of Christianity, which has recently been counted one of the ten most combative areas of wikipedia. (I sincerely hope it never gets to number one in that list.) If those events can develop, then I personally tend to think that what you hope to see happends. And, I sincerely hope that your weariness of the battleground here abides a little in the near future. Also, like I recently told Blofeld, I was kinda stunned to see all the encyclopedias curtrently being stored at commons here. If you ever wanted to just take a bit of a break and maybe just put together an article from one of them that we don't have yet, that would maybe be worth the time. God knows that there is an awful lot of material in many of them, including major articles, that we don't have here yet. John Carter (talk) 16:47, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

the massacre of Kfar Etzion after their surrender- let us continue in the wp:drn

It seems that the discussion is stuck, and the next step is wp:drn. Please have a look at [2] Ykantor (talk) 12:55, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Friend, have you ever asked yourself why on every page you work, the discussion gets stuck? Nishidani (talk) 13:00, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Will it be possible for you to agree to the mediation. If positive, will you please put your name here. Ykantor (talk) 15:14, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Hello! There is a DR/N request you may have interest in.

This message is being sent to let you know of a discussion at the Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard regarding a content dispute discussion you may have participated in. Content disputes can hold up article development and make editing difficult for editors. You are not required to participate, but you are both invited and encouraged to help find a resolution. The thread is "Kfar Etzion massacre". Please join us to help form a consensus. Thank you! EarwigBot ^{operator / talk} 00:52, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Sumimasen...

Maybe of interest. Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Louis-Fr.C3.A9d.C3.A9ric_Nussbaum_.28trans._K.C3.A4the_Roth.29.2C_Japan_Encyclopedia Zero^talk 08:50, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Re: Your RSN post

Hi! Your posting was one of the most thought-out and reasoned comments I've read on Wikipedia for a long time, and all of your points were most welcome. I think your participation on Talk:Battle of Shigisan would probably be even more welcome/relevant. My replies to your many points, though, would likely clutter up that thread more than is necessary, so I'm going to reply here.

The Hyakunin isshu translation is certainly a blooper; the Ariwara no Narihira mispelling just editorial oversight on a lapsus calami;

You're right there. The Hyakunin Isshu issue is not a problem for me. I wrote my dissertation on the topic and have quick and easy access to hundreds of better sources, so if someone shows up and adds bogus material on the subject and cites Nussbaum, I won't have much difficulty fixing it. Narihira is a bigger problem. The "Narihara" misspelling is very widespread, and I suspect the Nussbaum (possibly the original French) to be the source of it. GBooks indicates that since the English version of Nussbaum was published, incidences of the "Narihara" spelling have increased nine-fold, whereas the number of books giving the correct spelling has only tripled.[3][4][5][6] A fairly significant incident took place between September 2012 and February 2013 involving me and another user, and that user's attempts to cite as a source someone who genuinely believes it is "Narihara".[7][8] To this day that user is claiming that a page in which I pointed out that this was wrong was an "attack page", even though the real reason it got deleted was that I discovered RSN and realized I didn't need subpages anymore. Basically what I'm saying is it would save us a whole lot of trouble if Wikipedia wasn't forced to include misspellings that appear in "reliable sources" without referring to them as misspellings unless such has appeared in other reliable sources. Wikipedia is actually a more widely-used resource than Nussbaum, and so even without violating WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS we actually can slow the spread of disinformation by preventing the inclusion of inaccurate data.

on a thing like Kujiki, a generic source like Frédéric cannot be used because it is subject to academic dispute, and in these instances, one must always have recourse to secondary specialist sources, never tertirary sources that push on opinion;

Actually, there isn't much of an active debate. Virtually all scholars say it was composed in 806-936, with some variation on whether the preface (and the false attribution to Prince Shotoku) was original or added later. Some scholars, who appear to be on the fringe even though User:Shii appears to agree with them, claim the work work originate in the 8th century, but there's a reason no general reference work gives any significant weight to their arguments. After carefully researching all this, I was floored by Nussbaum's 1644 claim (which, I failed to note on RSN, fits nicely with his claim that the Tsugibumi was written exactly 1,000 years earlier). I also hope by "never tertirary sources that push on opinion", you mean books written by one person who is not a specialist in the area and relied on secondary sources. I used several tertiary sources in order to establish due weight on the matter, since Shii had written the article based on secondary sources that appear to be in the minority.

'The battle of Shigisen' is English usage, yet 信貴山 is read 'Shigisan' in modern Japan. I don't think he should be used here either, and I don't think indeed that that English wiki article bears a proper title: its only justification is that none of the other current Japanese terms have stabilized to allow one to be ascendent.

You are right, of course, and if this was Hijiripedia the article would probably be merged into Soga no Umako or Mononobe no Moriya, since it appears that virtually no reliable sources in either English or Japanese have given the battle a name. GBooks and GScholar searches indicate that all the Japanese names are extremely obscure.[9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16] Absolutely nothing about the incident is known beyond a 2-page description in the Nihon Shoki.

A cursory glance at this obscure episode (the Nihonshoki doesn't appear to name it, by the way (Sakamoto Tarō, Ienaga Saburō, Inoue Mitsusada, Ōno Susumu (eds.)Nihon Shoki, Iwanami Koten Bungaku Taikei 68, vol.2 pp154-171, unless my quick glance through it missed something, doesn't appear to mention any name for the battle.

You know, back when I was still arguing with Curtis and Phoenix over what the article should be called, I went to Aston's translation of the same, and he didn't give the battle a name either. We can be pretty sure based on our mutual searches that our one ancient source describing the incident doesn't give it a name, and the near-complete lack of any discussion under any "name" in either Japanese or English indicates that all the names are late creations. The Isshi Incident, on the other hand, took place only a few decades later, was in a way a kind of "sequel" to the Shigisan battle, is very well-established as a name, and said name follows the same pattern as the Japanese names for the Shigisan battle. I'd therefore be willing to guess that modern scholars borrowed the name of the Isshi Incident and created a similar name for the earlier incident. I noticed this by searching Japanese Wikipedia for "の変" and trying to find the earliest instance of it. Any chance you could check up Nihon Shoki to see if it mentions "乙巳の変" or some equivalent, or if the notes mention the name? The only Nihon Shoki I have access to at the moment is the English translation...

When was the term coined?

Do you mean the Japanese ones? Or the English name? As far as I can tell, English Wikipedia is the closest thing to a reliable source that refers to it by the name "the Battle of Shigisan", and most of our best sources merely describe it as a battle that took place at Mount Shigi (or Shigi-sen). As I noted above, the Japanese terms are likely all just as made-up as the English ones, but "丁未の変" at least follows a certain logic in tying it in with "乙巳の変".

One thing I do know is that this was undoubtedly the traditional reading of an ancient text source, because

• George Sansom,A History of Japan to 1334, (1958)1974 p.49
• Edmond Papinot, Historial and Geographical Dictionary of Japan, (1899,1906,1910) Tuttle reprint 1972 sub. Soga no Umako, p.597
• James Murdoch,History of Japan, 1903, p.137
• Charles William Hepner, The Kurozumi Sect of Shinto, 1935 p.9

Now all of those extremely erudite Meiji (or close to Meiji) Japanologues write 'Shigisen', and it is not a slip but reflects, undoubtedly, their transcription of original sources, as edited by Japanese scholars.

My reasoning for agreeing with you is that my kanji dictionary says that the kan-on is さん and the go-on is せん, and other reliable sources tell me that kan-on came into being starting in the late-Nara period. Therefore, if this is true, then should the mountain be mentioned anywhere in the Kojiki, Nihon Shoki or Man'yōshū it would have been pronounced as せん, unless it's in a poem and pronounced やま. I'm reminded of that famous poem by Empress Jitō (again in the "Simple Poems by One Hundred Poets" :P ) that mentioned ama no kagu-yama. Also, we know Sansom knew more Japanese than to accidentally spell it "Shigisen" just because his Anglophone predecessors had, and it would be an unbelievable (and therefore unacceptable) coincidence to think that all these authorities just happened to accidentally misspell a word that they really knew was pronounced as "Shigisan", especially given the other evidence. Also, since you corrected my misprint on "its", I feel obliged to point out that Sansom may have been born in the Meiji period, his book in question was not "close to Meiji" by any stretch. If we had had this conversation in 2004, the book would have been published half-way between the end of Meiji and the present day. :P

If you pronounced that shigisen they’d probably hear that as a reference to the Kintetsu branch line from Kawachi-Yamamoto station (信貴線)!

Would I be right in assuming you joined me in Googling "しぎせん" to see what came up? :P

(a) it's pointless to have a blanket dismissal of a fairly good general encyclopedia

Why I'm not asking for the whole book to be dismissed. But I honestly find a new error every time I read an article in there in an area I have some knowledge of, and therefore I need to be able to remove the same mistakes if they show up on Wikipedia. If/when that happens I'll cite secondary sources written by specialists that directly contradict Nussbaum, of course!

(b) but on tricky issues, they should not be used, unless there is no other source.

I actually think that if there's a tricky issue, and no other source can be found, then the information should not be included in Wikipedia. If it's completely uncontroversial, and reliable Japanese sources all say the same thing, and Nussbaum is the only source in English, then I understand using an English source over a Japanese one, but not if a significant number of good Japanese sources contradict it.

Shigisan should really be, in my view, Shigisen, on the basis of the evidence above.

Talk:Battle of Shigisan is where this was being discussed, and it's largely winding down now after 3 moves in less than a week. If you want to open an RM and argue it out with Curtis and Phoenix, you can be my guest. I'll probably support you, of course. "Battle of Shigisan" isn't a Japanese name, and neither the kanji nor any discussion of their pronunciation currently appears on the consensus version of the page (I've convinced Phoenix on that point, but yet to implement it).

By the way 'Shigisen, sounds to me like it might have meant 'Snipe-Hill' (鷸)? Well, no matter. Just an idle thought.

The thought hadn't occurred to me, but I thought I might be able to prove Curtis wrong in his claim that no Japanese text pronounces it differently than しぎさん, if I could find some waka or the like that spelled it しぎのやま or しぎやま. I then found that there is apparently another mountain (in Fukushima Prefecture, I think) called 鴫山 (しぎやま). You may well be right in believing 信貴 is just 'ateji, so.

Cheers.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 12:29, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm busy with autumn pruning,burn-offs, jam-bottling, and haven't much time to reply as would be proper. My own working principle is, never use general (as opposed to comprehensive specialist-written encyclopedias), but only academic secondary sources, with occasional exceptions, As for Sansom, he mastered classical Japanese in the Meiji period, under an extremely tough school, and his first translation came out before the end of that period. That is why I think of him that way. Yes. Shigisen should be put up for merging. Technically, there is not enough material for it, and it must almost in obligatory fashion be incorporated into one of those two articles you mention. I have a sneaking suspicion that Shigisen might derive from the Kujiki, since the authentic parts appear to conserve Mononobe traditions. That is something to be checked out at leisure. Best regards Nishidani (talk) 13:38, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Minasan, both the English and Japanese texts of Nihon Shoki can be searched here. You can browse the text there too. Zero^talk 03:08, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Zero. Ooki ni (Thanks) as they say in Osaka.I couldn't search it for Japanese terms though, but that's because I'm senile. Did remind me that like an uncouth lout, I'd forgot to reply to Hijiri's request, though.

Any chance you could check up Nihon Shoki to see if it mentions "乙巳の変" or some equivalent, or if the notes mention the name? The only Nihon Shoki I have access to at the moment is the English translation...

乙巳の変 The term is simply based on the fact that 645, when the coup and palace murder occurred (which led to the burning of those earlier sources like the Tennōki (天皇記) und Kokki (国記), and to which the term 乙巳の変 refers, the year was the 42nd (kinoto mi 乙巳) in the sexagenary calendrical cycle, and this is noted in the Nihonhoki the chapter after the incident is described. 是年也,大歳乙巳 (Iwanami edition as cited above, vol.2 p.281)

For the year 587, the Nihonshoki mentions only three incidents indicative of civil strife. Once the order came out to attack Mononobe anti-Buddhist faction, which had also been manoeuvering to elect a different emperor, we are told that

• (1) Mononobe no Moriya (物部守屋) mustered troops from 志紀郡 (shiki no kohori) at his house where he had built an inakï (稲城) or rice(-seedling) stockade/fort (toride). His soldiers were so numerous they spilled out over the plain (野) near his house in the Kawachi area east of Osaka (澁川 (Shibukah(w)a/衣摺 (Kinusuri, now Kizuri). The ohomurazi’s army (大連軍) were finally beaten only after a fourth assault, and were dispersed, fled, changed their names or otherwise were lost to history. The kanbun just has, in writing of the event's aftermath 平亂 (turmoil quelled).
• (2) The lonely retainer Yorozu (萬 'Myriad') made then a single-handed resistance, leading to his suicide and his wonderful pooch’s guarding of the corpse (a change from the dog-killing gusto of samurai in later times)
• (3) A report that several hundred corpses were found at Yeganokah(w)ara (餌香川原=恵我川), looking like a drybed execution site of prisoners captured.

There is no mention of a hill or mountain. So the mystery of Shigisen remains. Sorry I can't help much. I only have the resources of a personal library.Nishidani (talk) 12:24, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

To search at that site you have to select English or Japanese from a drop-down menu. It does work. Zero^talk 12:46, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

That's what I did fuckit, and it didn't work, but only because my brain hates this kind of frigging digital fandangoing! Still, just reading a solid book, with an intuition got me the reply Hijiri wanted, which I'll now note above.

Maybe some character-code thing. When I copy-pasted some kanji from the book and searched for that, it worked. No matter, the earth continues to rotate obliviously. Zero^talk 13:39, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Well, hit the fartsack with the reflection that Nishidani's head's spinnen in Pythagorean harmony with that hypothetical rotation of the planet. Now, where's them fucken clippers for the maple tree? Nishidani (talk) 13:52, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

ANI notice

Hello. There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you.--Bbb23 (talk) 01:08, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

DRN- Kfar Etzion massacre

Will it be possible for you to reply to the volunteer question at DRN- Kfar Etzion massacre ? Ykantor (talk) 04:05, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

GEbi independent review

Nishidani, it's not like you don't have enough to do, but do you intend to complete your independent review of the GEbi article at some point now that FAR is closed? If so, it might be useful to let the Arbitration Committee know about that now that the John Carter case is going to be accepted (and probably renamed). That nugget of information will matter, particularly if they decide to quick-close the case by motion, as the issue of an independent review was raised during the request for arbitration. Thanks. Ignocrates (talk) 18:42, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't know why, but this year, apart from my real interests,and gardening and wiki dabbling, I have been hit by requests by friends for assistance that range from checking neo-Platonic sources to Russian logic. I did and do indeed intend to review that. But I have, apart from volunteer work tutoring a community of monks in languages they require, several requests for assistance in book drafts and translations. My wife is threatening to take me off life-support (her extraordinary cooking) if I don't get out and thoroughly mow, hoe, prune and put into suburban order a rampant garden.That's basically why I haven't had time to get round to that. I apologize. I will, but can't promise a when-by date. It's all Zero's fault. He sent me to a Japanese page just as I was thinking I just might eke out the time to do that, and a huge time warp swallowed my attention there.Nishidani (talk) 19:10, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm wondering if the volunteer work has anything to do with that dinner you mentioned earlier? I would agree monks really should be able to read their church documents of course, and most of them are written in Latin, damn it, Also, to further pile on requests of input from you, I've started working in earnest to get ultimately all of the PD reference sources included in the "reference books" of the first and second editions of the EoR on to WikiSource, and have around 70 to 80 articles of varying lengths from the Hastings Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics at least ready for inclusion in WikiSource. We want the garden to look good, to keep your wife cooking for you if nothing else, but we do look forward to the time when she maybe drops the threats to less extreme measures. ;) John Carter (talk) 19:18, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Hard to remember what dinner I was talking about. When I'm not dining, I'm either having breakfast or lunch. Drop me a note when those wiki sources go up. I'll try to look at them, but, damn it. It's years since I read War and Peace, and whatever time I have free, is tempted into that. Cheers pal.Nishidani (talk) 21:12, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Ya don't look retired to me

SOB SOB PALESTINIANS SOB ='(.

Irrelevant. The whole notion of Judaization of Jerusalem is absurd. It's a propaganda campaign being waged by the PA and the waqf to deny any Jewish history in the city. Also, your userpage says that you're retired, but apparently you meant to write "Retarded". =) 174.44.174.192 (talk) 09:40, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Ebionites 3 arbitration case opened

You recently offered a statement in a request for arbitration. The Arbitration Committee has accepted that request for arbitration and an arbitration case has been opened at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Ebionites 3. Evidence that you wish the arbitrators to consider should be added to the evidence subpage, at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Ebionites 3/Evidence. Please add your evidence by October 1, 2013, which is when the evidence phase closes. You can also contribute to the case workshop subpage, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Ebionites 3/Workshop. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration. For the Arbitration Committee, Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 08:33, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Requesting information on one of your earlier comments

I am having some difficulty finding exactly where you made a comment in which you referred to several of the leading recent sources relating to the Gospel of the EbionitesHebrews discussing the work of a Dominican of about a 100 year ago relating to the Gospel. Do you remember where you made it, as I believe it is relevant evidence? John Carter (talk) 15:01, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

I wouldn't have a clue. I can only remember writing a note about the uses in modern source from 1990s of a paper, proposing a minor theory, published by a Frenchman in the late 60s. I think 1968, in one of the three pages where Ignocrates's work was being discussed. I must do a hospital round now. If you can't find it in my contribs, then I'll have to scan them later to dig it out. I'll try to do that later this evening.Nishidani (talk) 16:24, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

Found it, so no need to look for it. Hope everything went well on the rounds, although I guess I might be interested to know if you have any really strange cases you see. You know, like a wing full of reincarnations of Adolf Hitler or Jesus or Jim Morrison or whoever else is the favorite of the unhinged lately, which I guess might include Justin Bieber. In that particular case, I might suggest one large mortar round administered orally (or otherwise), so it's probably a good idea I don't do that sort of task myself. John Carter (talk) 17:24, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks John. Yeah, par for the course these days. No strange cases, but, mind you, I've always got on well with many defined thus. Shared a boarding house with someone who once threatened to murder me, and was friends with a chap who actually tried to do so in Israel, and my best friend was diagnosed schizophrenic. All good people, unlike Hitler or Jim Morrison (never liked that bastard, esp. after his wife's revelations about their sex life, which wasn't much better from what Hitler expected from the women who suicided after trying to cope with his (putative) predelictions).Nishidani (talk) 20:20, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

Giacomo Bini

Greetings, old chap. As you can see, I tidied up the article a bit, but it could do with a few wikilinks elsewhere. AWB wanted to put an orphan tag on it, but I stopped it doing so, despite what the (automatic) edit summary says. Perhaps you could add a few links to him, as I think you are better placed to do so than I am? Thanks.

--NSH001 (talk) 06:28, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

Thank goodness, I can trust that a staffer in the geriatric unit can clean up my messes. Thanks pal. No. It's been an uphill struggle ferreting out info, and links. What you see is what I scrounged up. Happened to give him a lift when I saw two friars hitchhiking one day, and had a fascinating conversation in the car. Thank goodness my wife drives. I spent most of the trip chatting with the passengers in the back seat! Nishidani (talk) 13:08, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

Formal mediation has been requested

The Mediation Committee has received a request for formal mediation of the dispute relating to "Kfar Etzion massacre". As an editor concerned in this dispute, you are invited to participate in the mediation. Mediation is a voluntary process which resolves a dispute over article content by facilitation, consensus-building, and compromise among the involved editors. After reviewing the request page, the formal mediation policy, and the guide to formal mediation, please indicate in the "party agreement" section whether you agree to participate. Because requests must be responded to by the Mediation Committee within seven days, please respond to the request by 9 October 2013.

Discussion relating to the mediation request is welcome at the case talk page. Thank you.
Message delivered by MediationBot (talk) on behalf of the Mediation Committee. 15:15, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

If this was your edit while not logged in, it has been reverted because it wasn't clearly from you. If that's what you want to do, please repeat the edit while logged in. Regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 13:37, 3 October 2013 (UTC) (as member of the Mediation Committee)

Thanks TM. Just the usual disruptive stuff. See also here, the same IP vandalizing, from Southern England and here, from ostensibly Culiacán in Mexico. While the rat's away, the lice will play. My original edit was signed, and one of the usual jerks undid it. You have restored what I wrote.Nishidani (talk) 16:22, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Ebionites arbitration

Would welcome any comments you might have one the proposed decisions in this case. I personally would be very interested in any opinions on the possibility of some sort of guidelines for content under discretionary sanctions and guidelines for religious content as well, although I must admit that is more of a persona request. John Carter (talk) 16:46, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

What page is that one, John? I get lost with the endles forking, and so many other pages begging attention on my list. I would say that I would be extremely wary of anything smacking of 'content guidelines'. But I'll look if you point me to the relevant page. Nishidani (talk) 21:32, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

FWIW, "content guidelines", at least as I would envision them, would deal with such things as:

1) how to deal with content related to revival movements in articles relating to original movements noted under that name, like modern Deism, which SFAICT is generally described in RS as still being considered by outsiders more or less Freethought, and isn't mentioned in any independent RS I can see yet as "deism".

2) How to deal with WEIGHT relating to subjects where there exist multiple lengthy (longer than our own) articles or other material in print reference sources, where perhaps one recent reliable print reference source gives a topic a lot of weight, but others little if any, all being long articles relating to the same basic subject, without any apparent developments in the field to prompt such.

3) probably matters related to NOTABILITY of, for instance, Baptism in Catholicism (or Eastern Orthodoxy, or Protestantism, or whatever)

4) and, generally, how to deal with matters where there seem to be some significant differences of opinion or views about a topic between the academic community, the relevant religious communities, and/or the popular culture, particularly regarding where to place such material.

Of the lot, I think that the third point might be the most important, because I've seen several reference sources which seem to think the differing views of important topics are important enough to give more than one a separate article, and also at least a few more focused reference sources which give lengthy articles on the views of a given topic within one group, not mentioning any others, while other such sources do the same from other group's perspectives.

And I think the discussion is at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Ebionites 3 and subpages. John Carter (talk) 21:55, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for this. I have done all I can do. The rest is up to the Arbs. Ignocrates (talk) 17:20, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Gilad Margalit

Hello my friend,

Could you please have a look at this article. It was written by an Israeli contributor and I think English is not his first language. Your support would be more than welcome :-) Pluto2012 (talk) 19:49, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Been away for four days, but, yes, of course I'll take a look. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 18:25, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Request for mediation rejected

The request for formal mediation concerning Kfar Etzion massacre, to which you were listed as a party, has been declined. To read an explanation by the Mediation Committee for the rejection of this request, see the mediation request page, which will be deleted by an administrator after a reasonable time. Please direct questions relating to this request to the Chairman of the Committee, or to the mailing list. For more information on forms of dispute resolution, other than formal mediation, that are available, see Wikipedia:Dispute resolution.

For the Mediation Committee, Sunray (talk) 16:13, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
(Delivered by MediationBot, on behalf of the Mediation Committee.)

Hebron massacre

Your last edit left a partial sentence. Also please review my deletion about the women and children, since I can't see the source. The information is in another section already. Zero^talk 13:13, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. Sorry about that. Urgent calls to attend the homecoming of a newborn nephew while making the edit. The ref to the women and children is in Laurens which I restored but at the other section. There are a lot of problems here. The sourcing is dicey. Greenberg is cited but is nowhere visible, I think. RS issues, etc.Nishidani (talk) 13:17, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

My report

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you.

Yambaram (talk) 17:32, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

This may concern you, 'concern' also in the sense of worry. I don't worry about it. That's the way things work in the I/P area, and one just has to learn to live with it.Nishidani (talk) 20:01, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

If you re-read my report without ignoring anything, you'll see that it's about other topics other than ARBPIA. Regarding that article you linked here, yes, it does concern me. I keep seeing talks about the subject on the internet, especially from antisemitic/anti-Zionist websites, but see no results. Where are these paid university workers? Wikipedia needs them urgently. If I were one of them, I'd do my job proudly. Well, sometimes I really wish I could get paid for my work here. Yambaram (talk) 21:48, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

In other words, you thoughly approve of editors being subsidized by their governments to influence the content of articles. Well done. Thanks. Nishidani (talk) 21:59, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

Looking at his Talk Page, Nishidani, Yambaram has had conflicts with other Editors besides you two. I'm not sure why you were singled out. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 22:03, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

He was probably singled out because he makes useful contributions to Wikipedia, that is becoming blasphemy these days. Lazyfoxx (talk) 22:12, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

• (b) Barak Ravid 'Think tank: Israel's poor international image not the fault of failed hasbara,' Haaretz Dec.30, 2012
• (c) Nir Hasson 'The right's latest weapon: 'Zionist editing' on Wikipedia,' Haaretz 18.08.10
• (d) Robert Mackay 'Wikipedia Editing for Zionists,' New York Times August 20, 2010
• (e) Rachel Shabi and Jemima Kiss, 'Wikipedia editing courses launched by Zionist groups,' The Guardian, 18 August 2010
• (f) Elad Benari, Zionist Internet Struggle to Hit Wikipedia,’ at Arutz Sheva, 3 August 2010
• (h) Ravi Somaiya, Wikipedia: 'A New Battleground in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,' The Daily Beast/Newsweek 31 August, 2010
• (i) Avi Issacharoff, 'Palestinians prepare to battle 'Zionist editing' on Wikipedia,' at Haaretz Aug.29, 2010
• (j) Nir Hasson West Bank Settlers Take To Wikipedia, 18 August 2010
• (k) Oded Yaron, 'Aligning text to the right: Is a political organization editing Wikipedia to suit its interests?,' at Haaretz June17, 2013
• (l) Aliyana Traison, 'Wikipedia founder: Israel-Palestine is heavily debated, but we're vigilant on neutrality,' at Haaretz 5 August 2011

In short, that is why people like myself get reported regularly. The idea of neutrality for those who subscribe to this means toeing a national line, and if blow-ins like myself don't toe the line, it's bad for wikipedia.Nishidani (talk) 22:20, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

Radical Governments hiring officials to "influence" Wikipedia, that is one of the many reasons very few in my country take Wikipedia articles seriously. Lazyfoxx (talk) 22:55, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, I got caught in a conflict where there was no possibility of neutrality. Even saying you're staying neutral implies to some people that you are taking a side. Completely ridiculous. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 00:11, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

Shame on you for indirectly saying that I'm a paid worker or whatever you think, I obviously have no way of proving you wrong but all I can say is that you're disgusting me. No Nishidani, I only approve of editors making Wikipedia a more balanced source of information, with no POV pushing to any side, nothing more or less. When there's stuff to be fixed, then yes, I want people to interfere, whether voluntarily or in a subsidized way. Liz and Lazyfoxx, my charges against him are not only related to my Jewish state, but include 1)his clear manipulation of articles, 2)his unexplained deletions of paragraphs and the like, 3)the use of sock puppets, and 4)his unacceptable language and constant lies.| It's not a coincidence he has already been blocked twice from the Israeli-Palestinian area at ARBPIA - because of this!. You're blindly supporting him. Yambaram (talk) 00:33, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm not blindly supporting him, I'm knowingly supporting him. I don't know about his editing in this I/P subject area you edit in but I've worked with him in other subject fields and it was a pleasure. If he has violated some WP rules, I'm sure the Admins or ARBCOM will review the evidence and render some sort of judgement.

But let me just say that it takes a lot of nerve to come to his Talk Page and make these accusations against him. He has every right to delete your comments and ban you from posting here. Liz ^{Read! Talk!}

You're also knowingly denying his dark side. You came here, just like you were at the incidents board, to protect someone. And it takes even more nerve to actually commit all or even some of the accusations I charge Nishidani with. If he deletes this section or bans me from editing on his talk page it won't mean much to be, however it will be another very telling action about him. Yambaram (talk) 10:32, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

Yambaram is right. He just targeted the wrong man. Nishidani must be a sock of Henry Laurens. He always refers to scholars when he writes a comment. That's boring. Pluto2012 (talk) 13:06, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

The dark side?? Cripes, now, I'm not only a sockmeister, but a wiki incarnation of the dark side, and this is stellar combat in which a manichaean apocalyptic duel, featuring, folks, Yambaram as the Jedi, and me as a Sith functionary, along with Zero (note the negativism in his handle, which means both 'nothing' and, in modern Greek, with a slight phonic varation, 'to know' (ξέρω), combining absolute nihilism with omniscience typical of the entropic dark energy of the universe. No, sorry, the sith must be the arrayed minions functioning as my cosmic sockpuppets). Stay tuned for the next dramatic episode from an imagination inflamed by too much television, and too little reading.Nishidani (talk) 13:49, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

Just for future reference, given the context, this promise sounds ominously like a public declaration of an intent to WP:CANVASS for outsiders to come to the I/P area and challenge a number of editors there out of sheer personal dislike for the putative 'character' of people like myself ('Nishdani’s behavior, motives, and, after all, personality, truly disgusts (sic =disgust) me.')

I feel the need to say, I edit on Wikipedia 100% independently. I don’t know what the outcome of this report will be, but what I do know is that I’m going to let as many people as possible know about the biased articles and editings that are taking place on Wikipedia by them. Currently, in too many Israeli-Palestinian related articles, a few users with a certain opinion always outnumber their opposing sides in discussions and votings. So the least I can do, besides fighting over it, is inform people of the situation. Regardless of the result of this report, I’ll be paying close attention to Nishidani and Zero0000’s activity, and I kindly ask more people to do the same thing for the sake of Wikipedia’s future. The articles the two consistently edit, especially Nishidani, will also be better watched by me and hopefully others.(No diff link available due to its erasure, but = 17:29, 25 October 2013 (diff | hist) . . (+11,927)‎ . . Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents ‎ (→‎A report against two users for their violations: new section). Nishidani (talk) 16:09, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

What do you all want? Nishidani if your objective here is act like a child and get me to laugh then you've achieved it. I said it above and I'll post it again: "I only approve of editors making Wikipedia a more balanced source of information, with no POV pushing to any side, nothing more or less. When there's stuff to be fixed, then yes, I want people to interfere, whether voluntarily or in a subsidized way." Yambaram (talk) 16:19, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

Please review WP:MEAT with respect to your statement here

• "what I do know is that I’m going to let as many people as possible know about the biased articles and editings that are taking place on Wikipedia by them. Currently, in too many Israeli-Palestinian related articles, a few users with a certain opinion always outnumber their opposing sides in discussions and votings. So the least I can do, besides fighting over it, is inform people of the situation."

Whatever your intent, you are in my view making the situation in the topic area worse, rather than better. Sean.hoyland - talk 16:37, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

Why are these trolls not banned once for all ? Pluto2012 (talk) 19:45, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

Ils vivent dans l'oubli de leurs métamorphoses. Point de rancune. Il faut avoir de la patience et, surtout, pas trop de zèle. Amitiés. Nishidani (talk) 20:01, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

Because some editors are good at finding ways to play the system, some editors even have professional training to do so, which makes seeking arbitrations towards them difficult. Lazyfoxx (talk) 19:58, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

I think Yambaram and Tritomex were probably acting with what they regard as good intentions. Nationalism and indifference to reality go hand in hand I guess, to paraphrase Orwell. It's seems more of a competence related issue, drawing invalid conclusions from evidence. Believing that the evidence demonstrates things like "Zero0000 is dangerous" or that Nishidani is operating sockpuppet accounts when it clearly demonstrates no such thing is very puzzling. I have to say, the topic area is a constant source of amazement. It's like another planet. Extraordinary things that make no sense to me happen everyday. Sean.hoyland - talk 20:30, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

We Irish tell against ourselves the joke that starts by asking why we are so like mushrooms. Because we're raised in the dark, and fed on bullshit. It happens however to be the general condition of mankind. If the manure has elements that fertilize a certain sensitivity to others, then, one likes to think, the mushroom can 'flower'. Come to think of it, there's a Chinese variety that's called a 'flower mushroom' (花菇: huāgū). Nationalism, to continue the metaphor, is a conceptual form of nyctinasty, and the last part of that Greek compound evokes, to an English (as opposed to an Australian) ear, the essence of its effects.Nishidani (talk) 21:09, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

You know guys, everything in my life has been going so great recently from so many aspects, I'm just not going to let a group of hard left-wing wikipedians spoil another successful day of mine. A few of you need to keep this kind of hatred to yourself, it won't get you far other than infect more people with it. Amazing how so many of you just "happened" to go to Nishidani's talk page in the past 24 hours, and then ambush me. Of course none of you wants to address any of the numerous charges which I demonstrated with clear links with diffs in my report against Zero0000 and Nishidani. If you all dare to falsely accuse me of having gone through "professional training", calling me a "trol", and trying to insult me in other ways here, then you don't have the right to tell me not to say what I think about Nishidani, or "be honest", as Zero0000 said when he called Tritomex the worst editor he's met in 11 years on Wikipedia. Because what you did before is called double standard, a term very often associated with Israel interestingly... Sooner or later I'll file a case at WP:SPI against Nishidani and the sockpuppets I believe to have been at his possession. You can now keep saying your pathetic gossip about my, keep degrading yourselves, I'm outta here to enjoy this Saturday night in Tel Aviv :) Yambaram (talk) 21:50, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

I've fond memories of nice times in Tel Aviv, as I have of Gaza, Jerusalem, Beit Sahour and a lot of other places over there. So enjoy a beer or whatever. Don't waste your time on the SPI business, it will only despoil leisure better spent getting on with your life. One thing though, as a matter of curiosity, when you do get time. Why of all edits did you single out the following diff which earned me a suspension for refusing to revert myself adding I was banned 'because of this!'. Did you ever follow up your Sherlockian deerstalker investigations to find out what happened immediately afterwards to the playfully malicious editor in question, Luke 19 Verse 27, and to his colleague (AnkhMorpork sometime later) in that tagteaming duet that kept falsifying sources there? Of all of the crap I have to deal with that was an odd one to pick on as though it were proof of POV pushing. My edit wasn't incorrect. It was simply that I was supposed to revert to a version that falsified the known facts as reported in reliable sources. The suspension was correct, and was a punishment I accepted paying because I found it impossible, though violating the 1R rule, to restore an untruth to wikipedia. Nishidani (talk) 22:28, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

Yambaram, perhaps you should take the time to consider whether you are mistaken in the things you believe about the world, other people, yourself, anything and everything and do that everyday. It's more interesting that way. One of things I like about Wikipedia is that it gives people a structured opportunity to do that by reading sources with the added bonus of a concrete result, an improvement to a global encyclopedia. Don't waste your time tilting at windmills. You will get it wrong over and over again. It causes conflict, wastes time and the charity's limited resources. You probably can't imagine how funny it is, from my perspective, to be referred to as a "hard left-wing" or for someone to think that I have any hatred at all for anyone. You may as well say that I'm a zebra motivated by a hatred of cheese. If you want to know a Wikipedian's views about an issue because you are concerned about something, ask them on their talk page and they will probably tell you. I'm not someone who subscribes to the "assume good faith" view because I've decided, after looking at several articles in detail, that it is not necessarily a sensible strategy in this topic area (at least not for editors with less than 500 edits). For one example see these results for an article and talk page that incorporate the results from SPI reports to identify socks [17] and [18]. Nevertheless, assuming bad faith is not a sensible strategy in this topic area either. If you are interested in helping identify sockpuppets in the topic area, that would be great. There are many and they cause many problems. But first, learn how to do it. Study previous cases. SPI is a precious resource. Please don't waste it. Sean.hoyland - talk 07:57, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Oh boy! 'I'm a zebra motivated by a hatred of cheese.' That wun's gunna stick. It has all the earmarks of rising to notoriety as the earlier Aristophantic τραγέλαφος ('goat-stag'). You'll have to wear it now, and I'll call it Hoyland's handle! And riff on it, tyrophobic onager etc. Nishidani (talk) 08:49, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Sorry but my response ended up being quite long, again. You may read it here if you want

Lots of points to respond to. Nice to know you also had good times over here, I had assumed you've been to Israel in the past. I chose that specific diff and wrote "because of this!" for I just thought it was an excellent example to show that extreme POV-pushing and a twist of the truth, for which you were even punished. You claim you refused to revert the truth, which I'm not going to investigate and I believe you, but as much as I'd like to AGF on your side all the time, I know there's sometimes more behind it. Sean.hoyland, thank you for your input, I like these tips and even implement them often, or at least keep them in mind. If you were suggesting that I change my views because they aren't right, then I just ask of you to try understanding other peoples' opinion, without necessarily agreeing with them. I do hope we both learn at least one thing from this discussion. I'll report the sockpuppets anyway, because I'm not the only one suspecting and because I myself donated money to the wikimedia foundation so I can allow myself you use these precious resources once. With regard to the references I made (hard left wing, hatred) I intentionally said it was only a few of you, don't worry Sean.hoyland of course I see that you're balanced. However, Lazyfoxx, Liz, and Pluro2012 talked trash and behaved like it too. And it tells a thing or two about their personality. You also said that I shouldv'e written to Nishidani on his talk page to express my concern, so I'll do it now also, as well as possible: Nishidani, if I may guess, I imagine you as a middle aged British man of Palestinian decent, possibly the son of refugees with relatives in Palestine. I think your political opinion leans toward the radical left anti-Zionist side, so much that it becomes anti-Jewish too. What's my point here? You can have your own beliefs, but it's being reflected in your editing, and affecting not less than millions of wikipedia readers. You're not only editing articles in a pro-Palestinian way, but it's been months now since you started promoting the theory that Ashkenazi Jews are for the most part Khazar converts, and almost no one is able to stand in your way, as you deliberately edit the pages "Ashkenazi Jews", "Khazars", and "Genetic studies on Jews". A naive reader could think that nearly all Jews, and Ashkenazim in particular, are converts, mainly from Khazars. Thus, they'd think, these Jews have no right to the land of Israel whatsoever, as they're also presented terribly in Israeli-Arab related articles. You want that happening and you manage to do it. (In reality, this Khazar theory may be true for as little as 5% of all Jews, but you're shaping in an un-NPOV way, and that I have a problem with). This is it, serious injustice is taking place, and I as well as others hate injustice. A disclosure, I'm an Ashkenazi Jewish Israeli who deeply cares about my country, so just imagine how I feel when I see these false delegitimizations of the reality. It's destroying me from the inside and is in the process of destroying my country and people from the outside. Antisemites and Israel haters all over the world look for this kind of information and devour it, and those who promote these theories on Jews and provide it to them, without reporting it in a balanced way, also have blood on their hands when the results start to appear, even if they didn't directly participate in the violence. I cannot ask you to not edit specific articles, but I'm frustrated with the path it's all going, it's a sensitive topic for me and so I know I may sound a bit silly. I'll try to spend some time this week and go over the three articles I mentioned, to ensure neutral and better quality.

Yambaram (talk) 23:02, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Here's the bit I don't get: Why would any grown and educated person waste a minute "engaging" with a self-described teenager/right wing Israeli/resident of Tel Aviv whose command of written English is sub-standard and throws his weight around like, well, only a politically-motivated teenager can? The meta point is this is one of Wikipedia's biggest problems - yet the ignorant teenager is their most frequent customer. A true pickle.Dan Murphy (talk) 23:23, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Regardless of their true ancestral origins, it makes me laugh when people say that because Ashkenazi Jews have some genetic ancestry to the Levant, that then they are entitled to the Land of Israel/Palestine, that not only screams POV but is also logically inaccurate. Did you know that nearly all genetic ancestry of Native Americans descend from Northeast Asians? Does that entitle all Native Americans in North America to Siberia even though they have settled North America for thousands of years? Did you also know that many Scotsman in Northern Scotland have significant Scandinavian ancestry from the age of the Vikings, does that entitle them to settle Norway? Southern Europeans as a whole also show significant genetic similarity with those in the Caucasus region, does this entitle them to colonize Georgia and Armenia? Let's make another closer to home assumption here, let's say we genetically test some Egyptians and find that they have markers that originated in the Levant. The New Kingdom of Egypt reigned in the Israel/Palestine region before the Kingdom of Israel, by Israeli logic, the land belongs to Egypt and not Israeli's or Palestinians, because Egyptians not only had the first kingdom there, but also have some genetic ancestry from the region. The basis of having some genetic ancestry from a region is one of the poorest arguments justifying the colonialism of Palestine by and creation of Israel by Jews. Lazyfoxx (talk) 23:33, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Requested help with Greek and Hebrew characters

I've started work on the old EB article on the Mandaens, starting at wikisource:Page:EB1911 - Volume 17.djvu/571 and following pages. Unfortunately, it uses a lot of Greek and Hebrew characters, and I don't know either really well, and the resolution on the side-by-side display isn't enough for me to be able to really be sure of getting the right ones. If you have any interest in maybe checking on them, it would be greatly appreciated. John Carter (talk) 19:24, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Cripes, if it doesn't give even a hint of the original script, that is going to be a huge amount of work, John. It means for every term, one will have to do research. Of course I'm interested, the problem is time, which unfortunately (I have several manuscripts to translate and edit, apart from my own work, hence my low profile recently) I don't have much of. Surely there must be some technical solution here, software or whatever, that would at least provide people with an image or something like that? Have you checked around in nooks where the digital genii hang out? Nishidani (talk) 21:48, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Editor of the Week

		Editor of the Week
		Your ongoing efforts to improve the encyclopedia have not gone unnoticed: You have been selected as Editor of the Week, for irreplacable conscientiousness and depth of knowledge in contentious areas, despite adversity faced in them. Thank you for the great contributions! (courtesy of the Wikipedia Editor Retention Project)

User:John Carter submitted the following nomination for Editor of the Week:

Some might consider Nishidani to be one of the less likely candidates for this, but I would disagree. He has been, probably less than fairly, subject to a ban from a topic in which he tended to support one side over another, but, unfortunately, that topic is one which attracts a lot of POV pushers, and, perhaps less fortunately, the POV pushers on the other side tend to outnumber by big numbers those comparatively fewer individuals on the not-favoring-Israel side. He is however one of the few editors I know of who has had, apparently, a reasonable classical education, unlike say me, and has regularly displayed in my own eyes both an amazing talent at both acquiring and reviewing sources regarding sometimes difficult content, and also the kind of depth of knowledge of a lot of things and overall neutrality regarding most issues which we very seriously need around here. And, yeah, he has indicated his retirement on his talk page; I and I think a lot of other people would be very, very disheartened if one of our more capable and experienced editors were to permanently leave the project. I think a review of his user page shows some of the other reasons why I believe his presence here is really irreplacable. John Carter (talk) 17:02, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

You can copy the following text to your user page to display a user box proclaiming your selection as Editor of the Week:

{{subst:Wikipedia:WikiProject Editor Retention/Editor of the Week/Recipient user box}}

Thanks again for your efforts! Your contributions truly are valuable. Go Phightins! 00:36, 28 October 2013 (UTC)