ABOUT Penguin History OF ---
Should the correct ARTICLE name be The Penguin History of Europe or Penguin History of Europe like Penguin History of Britain ?--Htmlzycq (talk) 07:21, 30 January 2021 (UTC)
- @Htmlzycq: If there's a specific guideline at Wikipedia:Title about this, I can't find it now. But titles of books seem to usually include the "the", and I would expect that to be true of book series as well. Many of the more obscure articles about nonfiction books (e.g., Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt) omit the "the", but given that articles that receive more editor attention (The Lord of the Rings, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire) include them, I think it's conventional to include the "the". But I'm not 100% certain. A. Parrot (talk) 07:43, 30 January 2021 (UTC)
Code of Hammurabi
Hello! I saw that you recently reviewed the Sennacherib article and helped get it to FA. I have just (re)written the Code of Hammurabi article, which deserves FA if anything does. I was wondering if you'd be interested in mentoring for FAC? I'd be very grateful but of course understand if not!
I've been editing anon for a bit but this is my first time nominating an article for anything. Unless major work is needed I’d like to bypass GA and go straight to FAC.
Emqu (talk) 00:43, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
- @Emqu: I'd be willing, and at a glance the article looks comprehensive and reasonably well-referenced. But, if I may ask, how long were you editing anonymously before you made your account? I wouldn't recommend any new editor to go straight to FAC, no matter the quality of the article in question. A. Parrot (talk) 02:11, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
- @A. Parrot: Many thanks indeed!
- @Emqu: Well, if you've read other FACs and familiarized yourself with the process, it should be doable. My learning curve when I started on Wikipedia was very drawn-out, so much so that two and a half years elapsed between when I first buckled down to rewrite an article and the passage of my first FA, but I know a lot of people adapt more quickly than I do. One of the problems with FAC (as with all of Wikipedia) is that it's a lottery of what types of personalities show up, so you never quite know what to expect. I've never been an FAC mentor before, but I'll help you as much as I can.
- Regarding the article itself, I think it needs just a bit of polish before FAC. After giving it a once-over, I see a few potential problems:
- The writing style is a bit too discursive—sentences and section headings written as questions, sentences written in the first person ("We might reasonably expect these in prescriptive legislation", "Much has been written on what the Code tells us"). Wikipedia's house style is very detached and doesn't directly address the reader with questions or commands (for example, by saying "Note…") or use the first person.
- Perhaps as an extension of that tendency, there are a lot of parenthetical remarks. Parenthetical remarks may be useful in discussion comments like the one I'm writing at this moment, but in articles, they can usually be incorporated into the main text. In contrast, parentheses that do not contain actual remarks, such as the date ranges, Old Babylonian words, and references to particular lines of the Code in this article, are entirely appropriate.
- You may not need me to tell you this, but in any subject dealing with the preclassical ancient world, old sources (certainly anything from before World War II) should be treated with great caution. As far as I can tell, you use such sources appropriately (for descriptions of the artifact itself or as examples of how past scholars interpreted the Code), but be on the lookout for any bit of interpretation that is cited to an old source without being marked off as an interpretation from a particular time period.
- As a specific instance of the above point, I wonder about Driver and Miles, which is old-ish and cited many times in the text. But if current scholars treat it as a standard reference work for the Code, and you don't assert any positions based on it that current scholars reject, it should be fine. (One of the things nobody tells you about Wikipedia editing is that if you want to bring an article up to the highest standards, you don't just have to cite sources. Ideally, you'll be familiar with the terrain of the scholarly field, as it were, and know which positions are current, which are obsolete, and which are held by a minority or by that one scholar who is hugely influential but has some crank tendencies, etc. Your rewrite of this article gives me the impression that you do know the terrain, so you're in good shape.)
- The see also section should be limited to relevant articles that aren't linked in the body of the article itself. There are certain highly respected Wikipedians who think that a fully developed article shouldn't need a see also section at all, as any links that are truly relevant should be possible to integrate into the article proper. I don't entirely agree, but I think it's true most of the time, and in FAs that I've written, I've only ever linked to lists (Egyptian temple#See also and Ancient Egyptian deities#See also).
- There are a few passages that lack citations, e.g., the third paragraph of the Prologue section or the last sentence of the Legislation section.
- There's some kind of error in Citation 16. There's a script to warn you of errors like this; to use it, create a page titled User:Emqu/common.js and paste into it "importScript('User:Ucucha/HarvErrors.js');". If you're worried about the edit notice you get when creating that page, my common.js page has that same code, as do those of many other Wikpedians.
- @A. Parrot: That’s a generous reply, in quantity and sentiment. I appreciate it.
- You’re quite right, I do like parenthetical remarks. I have removed almost all of them, but have kept several Wikilinked "(see below)"s. Would you support that?
- "Legislation" paragraph four should no longer need a citation. I was wondering, where did you feel one was necessary for “Prologue” paragraph three? If it was about the nominal sentence, I was under the impression that non-contentious, non-text-specific grammar points didn’t need citations. anāku is the Akkadian equivalent of Egyptian ỉnk here. Or would the citation be for the final sentence?
- You’re right to query Driver & Miles, of course. However, in their huge two-volume work, there is actually very little expounding on the general nature and moral importance of the laws: most of the text is edition and commentary. What general statements there are are inoffensive and factual. Every serious commentator on the laws has read it, and despite its stature and length I don’t recall seeing it picked on for any but the most niche philological points.
- In terms of other big sources: Martha Roth is a great commentator. Her Law Collections (1995a) is the standard edition of this and other such texts. She’s in the "sceptical about actual use" camp, so takes more of a side than Driver & Miles, but always argues with due caution. Should fix her a Wikipedia page some day.
- Van De Mieroop’s Philosophy Before the Greeks (2016) has a lot of fans, and I consider myself among them. It is at points a little excitable, but mainly with cross-cultural parallels. I would ascribe that to his trying to straddle the academic/popular line with the book. I felt it would be a good cite for this very reason: it’s highly legible for non-Assyriologists, despite very much having its own theory. He’s very good on the facts of the Code, and where he gets more speculative, in "Jurisprudence", I tried to spell out his arguments rather than citing them as fact.
- On a side note, I almost didn’t read Kraus’ paper (1960), but it’s incredibly astute and full of pithy summaries of the problems with this text and others like it. Worth reading if you’re interested and are OK with German/Google Translate.
- @Emqu: The sentence in the prologue section that needs citing is "This gives a feeling of overwhelming length to the list." I also notice "Therefore, ethical concerns, even individual rights, may have contributed to Hammurabi's view of his laws' legitimacy. In this respect the document calls to mind theories of natural law" at the end of Underlying principles; check for other uncited passages. Opinions, impressions, and the like must be cited. In fact, there are very few circumstances on Wikipedia where things don't need to be cited (fiction plots, which can be verified simply by reading the book or watching the film or episode, are the best-established example). In this article you can summarize the Code itself without a citation, but even there, it wouldn't hurt to cite one of the translations of the text. Also, quotations must be attributed in the article text, in addition to being cited; I spotted a couple of unattributed quotations but forgot to mention it in my previous comment.
- @A. Parrot: I’ve removed the intra-page section links, and dealt with the quotations where the author was given only in the citation.
- I’ve scrapped the "length" sentence. As for the comments on ethical foundations: yes, those were my own thoughts. I have made it closer to a recounting of the stele’s "plot"; is it now acceptable?
- @Emqu: What about the last sentence of the "Law report" section, or the end of the second-to-last paragraph of "Jurisprudence"? Passages that simply summarize cited text, such as the opening paragraph of "Theories of purpose", are OK, but everything else needs support from the sources in an article like this. I know it's a very constricting way to write, but it's necessary because of the way Wikipedia works, where articles are mostly not written by experts who can speak ex cathedra, and every passage is—and needs to be, to maintain accuracy in the face of drive-by editing—open to challenge.
- @A. Parrot: Those instances and several others are now cited.
- What do you think about these sentences at the end of the second paragraph of "Language"? "In both protasis and... -ma can also have..." This is a non-contentious linguistic point, and I felt that the most convenient way to demonstrate it was to point to examples already in the document. However, I know you said that intra-page directions are generally frowned upon. Do you think it's OK here since it points to specific quotations? If not, what would you suggest? Emqu (talk) 14:50, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
- @Emqu: It may be an uncontentious linguistic point among scholars of Akkadian, but most people don't know Akkadian. Is there a source you can cite that discusses this use of the suffix? Given the nature of this sentence, it doesn't need to be one that discusses its usage in the Code of Hammurabi, but just generally how the suffix is used in Akkadian. A. Parrot (talk) 00:04, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
@Emqu: OK, I have time at last. Here are my final comments:
- There are a lot of duplicate links. The rule is that a term should be linked once in the lead, once in the body, and once in image captions and other supplementary stuff. (There is a script you can install to detect duplicate links, here.)
- "Writing on law" sounds strange. "Legal text" sounds more natural and seems broad enough to cover all the theories about its purpose.
- The body text doesn't state that the Louvre stele was taken as plunder; if it's significant enough for the lead section, it should be cited in the body, not in the lead. The other citations in the lead section are unnecessary, as they support text that is already supported in the body.
- "All these preoccupations surface in the Code, especially in the prologue and epilogue" is uncited. I know this sentence based on the text of the Code itself, but a citation is always preferable. If nothing else, you could cite it to a translation of the text, finding points where those preoccupations appear in the text.
- The sentence mentioning Urukagina should briefly say who he was and when.
- "Its dimensions are as follows" is a bit awkward. Rosetta Stone#Description has a good example of a fluid way to list the dimensions of an object.
- Is "Anum" is the spelling of the deity's name used in the Code? Wikipedia's article is at Anu, and it doesn't list "Anum" as a variant spelling. If the Code does use that spelling, keep it, but you might want to add it to the possible spellings listed in Anu's article.
- Ideally, even the summaries of the Code's text would be cited to a translated version, at least in the running text in the "Frame" section if not in the table of laws.
- "There was also inequality within these classes: law 202, for example, shows that one awīlum could be of higher rank than another" is unsourced.
- The timeframe of the "late Babylonian list of literary and scholarly texts" is worth specifying.
- "Commentators have contented themselves with observing similarities and differences…" This makes it sound as if there's a more thorough approach that they could take, but the commentators settle for this approach. I assume you're implying that the influence of the Code upon Mosaic and Graeco-Roman law is the ideal option but is infeasible because of the gaps in our knowledge, but it isn't entirely clear.
- "The horned crown shows that the relief was based on the figure of Shamash on the stele, not of Hammurabi" is unsourced. Yes, it's obvious, but we as Wikipedians are not allowed to assert something that secondary sources have not brought up. A. Parrot (talk) 04:13, 13 March 2021 (UTC)
- @A. Parrot: Thanks for this, and for all the edits. Just a handful of things:
- I would query an "Unneeded comma" edit you made a week ago. Without the comma it looks like the modern reaction comprised a) admiration at the Code's perceived fairness, and b) respect for the rule of law. The comma clarifies that both are objects of the "admiration", and that the perceived respect for the rule of law was Hammurabi's.
- @Emqu: I don't read it that way, but feel free to undo that edit if it seems to cause ambiguity.
- Plunder was mentioned in the body.
- I see. I missed it because it wasn't in the section on the Louvre stele, where I expected it to be.
- "Anum" is indeed the Old Babylonian version. The entry Anu does give it as a variant in the gloss at the start of the lead, correctly citing mimation.
- Aha, I see the Anu‹m› now. It might be worth adding Anum in bold in the lead sentence of the article on Anu; that's where variant spellings are listed if they're used in English.
- How would you suggest citing the line numbers? I have a footnote explaining that they reference the CDLI edition. Would you suggest linking to the footnote more frequently, or citing the edition in an sfnp after every line number citation, or perhaps hyperlinking each number to it?
- I'd say use an sfnp citation. Given that everything from CDLI is on a single webpage, it's not necessary to add that many footnotes, but it's generally good practice to have a footnote after every paragraph. So, for example, the two paragraphs of the epilogue section should each end with a citation to the CDLI page.
- Looking further, I still have some concerns about the translations. In some places it's ambiguous where your translations of the text come from. For example, do are quotations in the jurisprudence section drawn from Van De Mieroop, or are they passages that Van De Mieroop cites but that you quote from the CDLI page? The same with the quotations in the example column in the table of laws.
- One final concern is that the CDLI page renders phrases in a different order from the translations you give in the article. I'm assuming that the page is rendering the text very literally and reflecting Akkadian word-order, and that you're rearranging the phrases to sound more natural in English. I would say it's possible to get away with that if it's all you've done to modify those passages, but others at FAC might be more strict than I am. Wikipedia:No original research can be rough, especially at FAC level. A. Parrot (talk) 17:15, 14 March 2021 (UTC)
- @A. Parrot: Addressed these.
- All the translations are my own. I thought this was consistent with the "no original research" translation policy?
- @Emqu: Hm. It's acceptable, but as that page says, "Translations published by reliable sources are preferred over translations by Wikipedians." Does a text as well known as the Code of Hammurabi not have a standard translation into English that you could quote? Or were you worried about copyright problems? A. Parrot (talk) 00:36, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
- @A. Parrot: Roth's is in my view the best of the translations, and probably the closest to a "standard". I chose to translate myself to ensure there was no inconsistency or licentiousness. Nonetheless, I understand why having a sourced translation is desirable (and hadn't seen the verifiability article which recommends this). I have replaced my translations with Roth's, citing page numbers in each case for ease of reference.
Mysteries of Isis GA Reassessment
Mysteries of Isis, an article that you or your project may be interested in, has been nominated for an individual good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Charles Bélanger Nzakimuena (talk) 07:54, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
Promotion of Mysteries of Isis
Four Award
Four Award | ||
Congratulations! You have been awarded the Four Award for your work from beginning to end on Mysteries of Isis. Kingsif (talk) 15:01, 11 April 2021 (UTC) |
Tibesti thanks
Hey, I just wanted to leave a quick note of thanks re the Tibesti FAC. It was archived, but the sting is rather muted because I honestly had no idea what I was doing. When you came along and reviewed it I was like holy shit, we're big league now! But seriously, I really appreciated the review. I'm not sure my writing style nor the paucity of the sources on the Tibesti will ever be amenable to FAC, but I think we've at least got a decent article out there now. Cheers for all that and I look forward in admiration to your next article in which I have to click every single link to understand it :) Brycehughes (talk) 11:13, 21 April 2021 (UTC)
Egyptian god "Shay"
The Coptic etymological dictionary mentions in its entry on the Coptic word šai/šoi ("fate") the existence of an Egyptian god "Shay" ("šy fate, demon, the god Shay"). I can't find this god on Wikipedia and was wondering if you knew anything about them.--Ermenrich (talk) 15:00, 22 April 2021 (UTC)
- @Ermenrich: Yes, the article is at Shai. I really don't know more about Shai than the article says, though; he was a pretty minor deity. A. Parrot (talk) 16:41, 22 April 2021 (UTC)
Mysteries of Isis scheduled for TFA
This is to let you know that the above article has been scheduled as today's featured article for May 29, 2021. Please check that the article needs no amendments. A coordinator will draft a blurb - based on your draft if the TFA came via TFA requests, or for Featured Articles promoted recently from an existing blurb on the FAC talk page. Feel free to comment on this. We suggest that you watchlist Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors from the day before this appears on Main Page. Thanks and congratulations on your work. Gog the Mild (talk) 21:20, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
Thank you today for the article, introduced: "The Greco-Roman mystery initiations dedicated to an ancient Egyptian goddess may be little-known today, but they seem to be indirectly responsible for the vague pop-cultural impression that ancient Egyptian religion was something secretive and mystical. And what other religious tradition has to be studied by reading a bawdy novel about a man who's been turned into a donkey?"! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:10, 29 May 2021 (UTC)
Disambiguation link notification for May 23
An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Eye of Horus, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Nazar.
(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 05:57, 23 May 2021 (UTC)
DYK for Eye of Horus
On 2 June 2021, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Eye of Horus, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that in Egyptian mythology, the god Horus offered his own eye (symbol pictured) to be eaten by his father Osiris? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Eye of Horus. You are welcome to check how many pageviews the nominated article or articles got while on the front page (here's how, Eye of Horus), and if they received a combined total of at least 416.7 views per hour (i.e., 5,000 views in 12 hours or 10,000 in 24), the hook may be added to the statistics page. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
Cwmhiraeth (talk) 00:02, 2 June 2021 (UTC)
AfD for Ambrose and pagans
If I am understanding you correctly, you are saying I was wrong in interpreting P.Aculeus' approach to merging, then blanking, as gaming the system. (It's a. few paragraphs above your comments.) If you agree with him, and that is a legitimate approach, then I would be happy to go ahead and expand the section in the main article on Ambrose, then go and get the page up for deletion, and either before or after merging, blank its content, but still merge it. Its contents need deleting imo. It is heavily non-NPOV, and ignores the last 50 years of scholarship. I can fix that - if that's the right thing to do. In fact, I had already begun reworking the article when I was notified of the AfD. I do agree with Avilich that there really is nothing worth keeping in this article, and it really does create a problem in the meta-data on WP. I assumed he was right in saying the only viable approach was deletion, but I do also think it's an important enough topic that it needs to be somewhere. I want to merge the topic and delete its content, and it looks like you are saying that's fine. R U? I've never been involved in a deletion before. I don't have enough experience on WP to know what's right here. Help! Jenhawk777 (talk) 20:17, 13 June 2021 (UTC)
- @Jenhawk777: Yes, I think you and Avilich are getting tripped up by Wikipedia's technical definition of "deletion". See my latest comment in the deletion discussion, which tries to clarify further. But there's no need to panic. Just work on the Ambrose section at your own pace. If any inaccurate text is merged from the subarticle into the one on Ambrose (which I doubt will happen, considering how hard Avilich has pushed back against the idea), you can just eliminate it there via ordinary editing. A. Parrot (talk) 20:58, 13 June 2021 (UTC)
- Okay, I have read what you wrote here, and there, and it looks like I should just move on with editing the section in the main article on Ambrose, and leave this other one alone, so that's what I will do. It somehow seems wrong to leave what will be contradictory and outdated info, that will make the meta-data on WP disagree with itself, out there with no resolution, but you have shown up on some of my other article reviews and I respect and trust you. So that's what I shall do. I have already begun the research. Thank you for your help. Jenhawk777 (talk) 02:47, 14 June 2021 (UTC)
GOCE June 2021 newsletter
Guild of Copy Editors June 2021 Newsletter
Hello and welcome to the June newsletter, our first newsletter of 2021, which is a brief update of Guild activities since December 2020. To unsubscribe, follow the link at the bottom of this box. Current events
Election time: Voting in our mid-year Election of Coordinators opened on 16 June and will conclude at the end of the month. GOCE coordinators normally serve a six-month term and are elected on an approval basis. Have your say and show support here. June Blitz: Our June copy-editing blitz is underway and will conclude on 26 June. Drive and blitz reports
January Drive: 28 editors completed 324 copy edits totalling 714,902 words. At the end of the drive, the backlog had reached a record low of 52 articles. (full results) February Blitz: 15 editors completed 48 copy edits totalling 142,788 words. (full results) March Drive: 29 editors completed 215 copy edits totalling 407,736 words. (full results) April Blitz: 12 editors completed 23 copy edits totalling 56,574 words. (full results) May Drive: 29 editors completed 356 copy edits totalling 479,013 words. (full results) Other news
Progress report: as of 26 June, GOCE participants had completed 343 Requests since 1 January. The backlog has fluctuated but remained in control, with a low of 52 tagged articles at the end of January and a high of 620 articles in mid-June. Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Jonesey95, Dhtwiki, Miniapolis, Tenryuu and Twofingered Typist, and from member Reidgreg. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.
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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors at 12:37, 26 June 2021 (UTC).
Your GA nomination of Eye of Horus
Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Eye of Horus you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Cinadon36 -- Cinadon36 (talk) 06:00, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
Your GA nomination of Eye of Horus
The article Eye of Horus you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Eye of Horus for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already appeared on the main page as a "Did you know" item, or as a bold link under "In the News" or in the "On This Day" prose section, you can nominate it within the next seven days to appear in DYK. Bolded names with dates listed at the bottom of the "On This Day" column do not affect DYK eligibility. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Cinadon36 -- Cinadon36 (talk) 07:02, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
Section headings in date pages
Hello, A. Parrot. I saw this edit of yours at March 19, which introduced spaces into a dashed date range. Was that an accident? MOS:DATEFORMAT quite clearly calls for non-spaced endashes in that scenario, and your edit changed the format from a Manual of Style-compliant heading to a non-MOS-compliant format. Sdrqaz (talk) 13:49, 12 July 2021 (UTC)
- @Sdrqaz: I went through a slew of date pages that day, mainly wanting to replace all the hyphens in the date ranges with dashes, and I saw in the edit notice that everything on those pages is supposed to be formatted the same way as Wikipedia:WikiProject Days of the year/Template. It uses spaces around the dashes, so even though that's not what I'd normally do, it's what I did. If you want to remove the spacing I added, I won't object (though I'm afraid you'll have a lot of date pages to go through, ranging from early March to early July), but it seems like something you may have to take up with WikiProject Days of the Year. A. Parrot (talk) 14:17, 12 July 2021 (UTC)
- Ah, I see. That is bizarre, to say the least. I'll leave a note at the WikiProject, in that case. Because of that template issue, I've had to go through all the day pages: I think I'm still only just halfway through. Sdrqaz (talk) 14:27, 12 July 2021 (UTC)
Sweet potato cultivation in Polynesia
Hi there, thank you so much for your review of the Sweet potato cultivation in Polynesia article! I've attempted to fix the main issues you addressed in the review (by either adding additional material or moving text from different sections). Let me know if you still have any concerns, and if so I'd be happy to address them. --Prosperosity (talk) 12:39, 16 July 2021 (UTC)
Writing Articles on Deities
Good morning, I was very impressed by your Isis and Hathor articles and I would like to bring some of the articles on deities in my area of interest up to the same standard, especially since many of their pages are extremely lacking. So far I have rewritten Shapash and Shuqamuna and Shumaliya (though there's very little material to work with on the latter), though I'm not experienced enough to know where best to take them from here or whether there's anything more I should do in future articles. Do you have any advice on making a good deity page that you wouldn't mind sharing? StainedGlassSnake (talk) 10:23, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
- @StainedGlassSnake: I don't know if I have any advice about deities specifically, only about general article writing. The first thing to ask is whether you feel like you've covered all the important points you find in the sources, and whether there are any points the reader might be left wondering about—see the quotation from Ling.Nut at the top of my user page. For an obscure subject, you may have seen all the reliable sources and still not have a very thorough picture, in which case there isn't much you can do about it.
- One thing that isn't much discussed by Wikipedians offering writing advice is article structure. Some subjects can be difficult to organize into sections in a coherent way; I recently struggled quite a bit with Eye of Horus. The organization of Shapash is kind of strange—it has sections for Shapash's cult and mythology, but then it has sections about Ugaritic incantations and then about Syria (a geographic division), the Iron Age (a chronological division), and the Bible (a mostly-geographic division that would technically fall under the Iron Age). It seems like you're implicitly treating her as primarily an Ugaritic goddess and relegating other attestations of her to the geographic/chronological sections, but the section on cult mentions evidence from outside Ugarit. If the article focuses on Ugarit, it should be made clear that the main sections on myth and cult are about Ugarit, and other attestations should be put in one or two sections (one for non-Ugaritic cultures that worshipped Shapash and one for the Bible, a product of a culture that didn't worship her). But assuming there isn't much more to say about the Ugaritic evidence than is in the article now, I'd be inclined to have just two major sections, one for myth and one for cult throughout the Near East, with the small section on the biblical evidence standing on its own. In either case, I think the section on incantations should be combined with the one on her cult; invoking a deity in a spell is one of many ways to interact with that deity, and the section on cult seems to incorporate all the other types of interaction with Shapash.
- If you're not sure what further improvements you can make, you could try Wikipedia:Peer review, an open-ended process for requesting other editors' input, though unfortunately it always has a long backlog. If you think you've covered all the main points on a subject in a reasonably clear and neutral way, you can nominate the article at Wikipedia:Good article nominations, though be sure to read the good article criteria first. A. Parrot (talk) 02:25, 30 July 2021 (UTC)
- These are very helpful thoughts, thank you. I've reorganised the page on Shapash so that sections on Ugarit, Syria, and Iron Age Phoenicia are nested inside the section on Cult, which is followed by the Myth and 'in the Bible' sections. I'm happy that I've brought together pretty much every academic source covering her cult in Ugarit, of which there aren't too many, though there may be sources I am not aware of dealing with the sun deities in Bronze Age Syria and in Iron Age Phoenicia, and plenty of ink has been spilt regarding the sun in the Bible (though I think I've covered the points most relevant to the presumed Israelite solar deity and their possible relation with Yahweh). I would ideally have liked to add media, but I couldn't find any fair use depictions of the seal, bowl, or ivory I mentioned. There's room for an infobox, too, but I am not overly fond of them, as they usually elide a lot of important nuance to reduce a deity down to a 'domain' and particular 'equivalents' and there's very little to say about her family or cultic centres. Still, the paucity of information and the lack of media do seem like obstacles to developing the page into a good article candidate.
- Another thought, though-- material on the sun deity in Iron Age Phoenicia does comment on similarities with Egyptian solar iconography. I wonder if this would deserve a paragraph. Do you know of any material about this from the Egyptian side? StainedGlassSnake (talk) 10:42, 30 July 2021 (UTC)
- @StainedGlassSnake: Sorry for not replying for a couple of days. I know that the Egyptian winged sun emblem was adopted and adapted in the Near East, but not much more than that without going digging through my sources. I do have a book about Near Eastern use of Egyptian imagery: Egyptian Iconography on Syro-Palestinian Cylinder Seals of the Middle Bronze Age by Beatrice Teissier. It's available here, and given that it's a university website I assume it's available legally. A. Parrot (talk) 22:58, 1 August 2021 (UTC)
- No trouble at all. Thank you very much for the recommendation-- there's some very interesting Syrian sun disc and winged goddess iconography, and the usage of the Canaanite-Mesopotamian sun symbol within the solar disc is notable, though it might be too tangential for the article on Shapash. Either way, much appreciated, I certainly know a lot more about Egyptian iconography than I did a few days ago! StainedGlassSnake (talk) 14:57, 4 August 2021 (UTC)
Atenism
The ancient Egyptians had no one scripture, but Egyptian religious beliefs and practices usually eveolved by incremental steps, often with syncretistic identifications between old and new (Amon-Ra etc). In that context, Atenism was more of a radical disruption. AnonMoos (talk) 08:11, 11 August 2021 (UTC)
- @AnonMoos: Of course it was a radical disruption, but the concept of heresy hadn't yet been invented to describe such a thing. A. Parrot (talk) 14:42, 11 August 2021 (UTC)
Talk: Ancient Egypt
I am not sure how to respond to this. I effected the change yesterday on the grounds that no further discussion had taken place and there was consensus in favour of using Kushite kings only. I also removed a citation present as it was a weak, if not outright unreliable, source. This morning Charles manually reverted the change and added a new citation, but left a false edit summary [disguising their revert as 'added citation'] and no talk page notice. It's telling that the whole book is cited, rather than any material in it. I was writing a comment on the talk page, but have scrapped it because... see start of post. Mr rnddude (talk) 04:10, 17 August 2021 (UTC)
- @Mr rnddude: I don't know either. The problem is that while I stand by my reasons for wanting to remove the phrase, I don't see any policy we can appeal to for resolving this argument. It's a matter of editorial judgment, which an unreasonable editor can easily ignore. And after Talk:Ahmose-Nefertari and Talk:Mysteries of Isis, where Charles was clearly arguing against sources and policy and didn't suffer much hindrance, I'm not eager to be involved in another dispute with him. I suppose you could try Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard if you want more outside opinions, though I've never been involved in a discussion there and don't know very well how it works. A. Parrot (talk) 05:23, 17 August 2021 (UTC)
- I mean the policy basis is going to be WP:CON, that is what dictates most content. I saw the Mysteries of Isis thing, I'm grateful that the FA co-ords saw through it. I don't know, I'll come back to it. I may request DRN or open an RfC. The outcome of the latter would be binding. Mr rnddude (talk) 06:00, 17 August 2021 (UTC)
Precious anniversary
Nine years! |
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--Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:33, 24 September 2021 (UTC)
September 2021 Guild of Copy Editors newsletter
Guild of Copy Editors September 2021 Newsletter
Hello and welcome to the September GOCE newsletter, a brief update of Guild activities since June 2021. Current and upcoming events
September Drive: Our current backlog-elimination drive is open until 23:59 on 30 September (UTC) and is open to all copy editors. Sign up today! Drive and Blitz reports
June Blitz: From 20 to 26 June, 6 participating editors claimed 16 copy edits, focusing on requests and articles tagged in March and April. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here. July Drive: Almost 575,000 words of articles were copy edited for this event. Of the 24 people who signed up, 18 copyedited at least one article. Final results and awards are listed here. August Blitz: From 15 to 21 August, we copy edited articles tagged in April and May 2021 and requests. 9 participating editors completed 17 copy edits on the blitz. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here. Other news
June election: Jonesey95 was chosen to continue as lead coordinator, assisted by Dhtwiki, Tenryuu, and Miniapolis. New maintenance template added to our project scope: After a short discussion in June, we added {{cleanup tense}} to the list of maintenance templates that adds articles to the Guild's copy editing backlog categories. This change added 198 articles, spread over 97 months of backlog, to our queue. We processed all of those articles except for those from the three or four most recent months during the July backlog elimination drive (Here's a link to a "tense" discussion during the drive). Progress report: As of 18:26, 24 September 2021 (UTC), GOCE copyeditors have processed 468 requests since 1 January and there were 60 requests awaiting completion on the Requests page. The backlog of articles tagged for copy-editing stood at 433 (see monthly progress graph above). Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Jonesey95, Dhtwiki, Tenryuu, and Miniapolis. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.
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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:43, 30 September 2021 (UTC)
Telephone numbers
Hey I am sorry about those telephone numbers. I don’t know I think my device is glitching or something. Thanks for reverting me.CycoMa (talk) 00:42, 1 October 2021 (UTC)
- @CycoMa: No problem. I thought it might be something like that. A. Parrot (talk) 04:26, 1 October 2021 (UTC)
Re: URFA/2020
Hi A. Parrot, in an edit summary at WP:URFA/2020, you stated that you were not sure if you should declare FAs you wrote as "Satisfactory". I want to reassure you that the project encourages FA writers to review and mark "their" FAs as Satisfactory. This tells future reviewers that someone is maintaining the article, and they might ping you if they have any questions or concerns in their review. Would you like another reviewer to assess the articles you marked as Satisfactory and ping you when they leave notes on the article's talk page? Z1720 (talk) 23:39, 2 October 2021 (UTC)
- @Z1720: Not necessarily; I mostly want to keep other editors from expending their time on articles that are being maintained (and that haven't changed much since their FACs except when being improved to better reflect the sources) when there are so many others that need attention. I was mainly unsure about whether I should add these articles to the table at Wikipedia:Unreviewed_featured_articles/2020#2010–2015 Kept or FAR not needed. Should I? A. Parrot (talk) 23:44, 2 October 2021 (UTC)
- No, please keep them on the list for now. Articles are moved to the "Kept or FAR not needed" section after three reviewers mark them as Satisfactory. It's great that they don't need to be reviewed right now; since these are post-2010 promotions, they probably won't be reviewed anytime soon anyway so there's no worry that they will take attention away from other articles. If you have time, we'd really appreciate it if you could review other articles. Here are some Ancient Egypt articles that might interest you: Abuwtiyuw (promoted 2012), Ancient Egyptian literature (promoted 2009), and Shepseskare (promoted 2015). Z1720 (talk) 00:23, 3 October 2021 (UTC)
Question
Can I ask you a question?--Ahmed88z (talk) 19:54, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
Are u African? Are U Egyptian? Ahmed88z (talk) 21:25, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
- @Ahmed88z: No, I am not Egyptian or African. Why does it matter? A. Parrot (talk) 21:27, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
I thought you were Egyptian because almost all of your edits are about Egyptian history. After that, I thought that you were affiliated with the Afrocentric group, after you unjustly objected to my latest Edit Ahmed88z (talk) 00:57, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
- @Ahmed88z:: I objected to your edit because it was clearly meant to imply that Seti I was anatomically "Caucasian". You didn't supply reliable sources supporting that claim, and you won't find any if you look. It was once widely believed that people could be classified into separate "races" based on the shapes of their skulls and other physical features, but the consensus of anthropologists for several decades has been that divisions between "races" are artificial and arbitrary; one culture will perceive and categorize race in a different way from another culture, and there's no way of objectively measuring such a subjective concept. See Historical race concepts#Decline of racial studies after 1930 for some of the history of how anthropologists changed their views about race. Moreover, the ancient Egyptian race controversy article is dedicated to discussing the history of the controversy, not to stating what racial category the Egyptians belonged to. It can be a finicky distinction, but it's one that Wikipedia editors decided on many years ago. Please do not use that article to argue that the Egyptians belonged to any particular "race". A. Parrot (talk) 02:02, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
Okay, Thanks Ahmed88z (talk) 12:01, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
the map
Do you have a problem with it too?--Ahmed88z (talk) 15:53, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
- @Ahmed88z: That map is from 1913. It is not based on current scholarship. See Wikipedia:Reliable_sources#Age_matters. No current source that I'm aware of would claim that Punt or Khartoum were within the Egyptian Empire. A. Parrot (talk) 15:56, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
- I have formatted your comment. You do not need to ping a user on their own talk page, they receive a notification automatically. Our own article, citing Nicolas Grimal, a respected Egyptologist, says that Thutmose III invaded Nubia no deeper than the fourth cataract, which is nearly two hundred miles north of Khartoum. That is supported by Betsy Bryan (2003) on p. 236 where she says that the furthest south that evidence of Thutmose III's activities exist is Jebel Barkal, near Meroe. Punt itself wasn't a part of Egypt, citing Kenneth Kitchen, a historian:
[m]ilitary action in Punt was probably logistically unrealistic, and could offer no advantage over peaceful trade
. Do you have a scholarly source that would dispute either claim? Mr rnddude (talk) 16:30, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
- I have formatted your comment. You do not need to ping a user on their own talk page, they receive a notification automatically. Our own article, citing Nicolas Grimal, a respected Egyptologist, says that Thutmose III invaded Nubia no deeper than the fourth cataract, which is nearly two hundred miles north of Khartoum. That is supported by Betsy Bryan (2003) on p. 236 where she says that the furthest south that evidence of Thutmose III's activities exist is Jebel Barkal, near Meroe. Punt itself wasn't a part of Egypt, citing Kenneth Kitchen, a historian:
@Mr rnddude: The Egyptologist, Zahi Hawass, said that Thutmose III reached the sixth waterfall, which is located north of Khartoum - there is also a documentary for Al Jazeera Documentary Channel documenting the work of an archaeological team in the city of Khartoum that discovered military activity in the north of Khartoumdating back to the era of the new kingdom of Egypt
I have a link to this documentary if you want it--Ahmed88z (talk) 12:21, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
If I give you evidence that Egypt ruled Punt and reached Khartoum, would you accept the map?
If I give you evidence that Egypt ruled Punt and reached Khartoum, would you accept the map?--Ahmed88z (talk) 12:15, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
- @Ahmed88z: There needs to be widespread agreement among scholars that Egypt's rule extended that far before Wikipedia can treat it as fact. If a minority of scholars support the idea while others disagree, our article text should say that the disagreement exists. But this map doesn't express that kind of uncertainty, so including it would still mislead readers. A. Parrot (talk) 17:18, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
No problem Ahmed88z (talk) 21:20, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
ArbCom 2021 Elections voter message
December 2021 GOCE Newsletter
Guild of Copy Editors December 2021 Newsletter
Hello and welcome to the December GOCE newsletter, a brief update of Guild activities since September 2021. Current and upcoming events
Election time: Our end-of-year election of coordinators opened for nominations on 1 December and will close on 15 December at 23:59 (UTC). Voting opens at 00:01 the following day and will continue until 31 December at 23:59, just before "Auld Lang Syne". Coordinators normally serve a six-month term and are elected on an approval basis. Self-nominations are welcome. If you've thought of helping out at the Guild, or know of another editor who would make a good coordinator, please consider standing for election or nominating them here. December Blitz: We have scheduled a week-long copy-editing blitz for 12 to 18 December. Sign up now! Drive and Blitz reports
September Drive: Almost 400,000 words of articles were copy edited for this event. Of the 27 people who signed up, 21 copyedited at least one article. Final results and awards are listed here. October Blitz: From 17 to 23 October, we copy edited articles tagged in May and June 2021 and requests. 8 participating editors completed 26 copy edits on the blitz. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here. November Drive: Over 350,000 words of articles were copy edited for this event. Of the 21 people who signed up, 14 copyedited at least one article. Final results and awards are listed here. Other news
It is with great sadness that we report the death on 19 November of Twofingered Typist, who was active with the Guild almost daily for the past several years. His contributions long exceeded the thresholds for the Guild's highest awards, and he had a hand in innumerable good and featured article promotions as a willing collaborator. Twofingered Typist also served as a Guild coordinator from July 2019 to June 2021. He is sorely missed by the Wikipedia community. Progress report: As of 30 November, GOCE copyeditors have completed 619 requests in 2021 and there were 51 requests awaiting completion on the Requests page. The backlog stood at 946 articles tagged for copy-editing (see monthly progress graph above). Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Jonesey95, Dhtwiki, Tenryuu, and Miniapolis. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.
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Distributed via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:02, 6 December 2021 (UTC)
GOCE April 2022 newsletter
Guild of Copy Editors April 2022 Newsletter
Hello and welcome to the April newsletter, a brief update of Guild activities since December 2021. Election results: Jonesey95 retired as lead coordinator. Reidgreg was approved to fill this role after an 18-month absence from the coordinator team, and Baffle gab1978 was chosen as an assistant coordinator following a one-year break. Dhtwiki, Miniapolis and Tenryuu continued on as long-standing assistant coordinators. January Drive: Of the 22 editors who signed up, 16 editors claimed 146 copy edits including 45 requests. (details) February Blitz: This one-week effort focused on requests and a theme of Africa and African diaspora history. Of the 12 editors who signed up, 6 editors recorded 21 copy edits, including 4 requests. (details) March Drive: Of the 28 editors who signed up, 18 claimed 116 copy edits including 25 requests. (details) April Blitz: This one-week copy editing event has been scheduled for 17–23 April, sign up now! Progress report: As of 11 April, copy editors have removed approximately 500 articles from the backlog and completed 127 copy-editing requests during 2022. The backlog has been hovering at about 1,100 tagged articles for the past six months. Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Reidgreg, Baffle gab1978, Dhtwiki, Miniapolis and Tenryuu To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.
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Sent via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:42, 13 April 2022 (UTC)
Disambiguation link notification for April 18
An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Tomb of Tutankhamun, you added links pointing to the disambiguation pages Kohl, Ay and Theodore Davis.
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