Talk:Saafi people

NPOV issue in language section

The article currently says: "The Saafi also have a very rich and ancient culture of writing called the Raampa, and have contributed immensely to the old Serer Raampa writing tradition. The word Raampa itself comes from the Saafi language. It was a religious pictographic writing system used by the Serer people of which the Saafi are a sub-group. The Raampa tradition has also been adopted by some non-Serer ethnic groups." This was originally sourced to an article by one David Maranz, who is an anthropologist but not an expert in writing, who contributed it to a fringe web site. Tamsier, who wrote the text, agreed that the source was contentious and removed it, replacing it with a citation to Henry Gravrand's article "Symbolique et représentation serer traditionnelles" with a link to the journal.[1]]

Gravrand's article is, I believe, not a reliable source. Not only is Gravrand himself not an expert in writing (or proto-writing), the article doesn't seem to have had any significant impact on works on the Serer. Given all this I don't believe that any of this text on writing merits inclusion, here or anywhere else. I would expect any African writing or proto-writing to have received attention by people such as Peter Daniels, Fischer's History of Writing, etc. Any claims like this should have either multiple sources or a source from a recognised expert on the subject of writing systems. Dougweller (talk) 17:49, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

• As I reported here, the term "Raampa" simply does not exist. Drmies (talk) 19:19, 29 July 2012 (UTC)
  • Thannks. Referring to the images in the section, Peter Daniels has emailed me to say "If that example is a fair sample, then clearly it's not writing in the usual definition, since there is nothing to connect it to any particular language." Dougweller (talk) 20:28, 29 July 2012 (UTC)
• I take it Dougweller is referring to Peter T. Daniels? The article tagged since 2010 as relies heavily on primary sources and a bio article needing additional citations [2]? First of all we do not know he sent you that message other than having to take your word for it. That is not how Wiki works. Even if he did, those are samples I drew from scrach (based on the sources, terrible drawing but there you go), further there is nothing stopping you from citing him using a reliable and verifial source. As for Gravrand, or any body else, you know nothing about his qualification other than your own opinion. Anyway for other editors follow link by Drmies here is the that discussion at DRN, see also FTN comments between Doug and I, and my talk page. Anyway that's it for me. I think Doug has taken enough of my time already. Tamsier (talk) 21:36, 29 July 2012 (UTC)
  • Ha, right now I have more reason to believe Dougweller than you. But that's beside the point: no email is going to be cited in an article. That the biographical article needs work is just another ruse. You know, Henry Gravrand's article includes an Amazon link to prove that "He was one of the leading pioneers of interfaith dialog"--which also has nothing to do with the current dispute. No, the basic complaint remains: there is no reliable evidence of this writing system except for your word. Drmies (talk) 22:04, 29 July 2012 (UTC)
  • There were was already a source testifying that (Gravrand), I think you removed the third which is the Amazon link. As regards to the email/ Peter comment, there is no ruse, and as stated that is not how things are done in Wiki i.e. the email cannot be used on Wiki as a source. But a reliable & verifiable source must be cited e.g. a book, scientific paper (and that does not include emails). So you are practically paraphrasing my remarks. As regards to believe, I do not care about who you believe or don't believe. You are entitled to believe whatever or whoever you want, that is your prerogative. Your personal believes means nothing to me. All I care about is what the r/sources says. That's all I am interested in. Since you have stated in the discussion (see link above) that you are waiting for the ref I direct you at via interlibrary, you do not know what is reliable source other than the Eurocentric POV you and your co-admin are pushing. Would this have anything to do with the issue on my talk page [3] by any chance? I am surprised that you left it rather late to show your true colours. Ha, they always do. Oh, this was touching [4]. Anything to do with my disagreement with Doug on my talk page and on at DRN where I said I will be filing a complained in the proper forum to have Dougweller desyssoped? (see my talk page and DRN). I think I have wasted enough of my time and energy. Tamsier (talk) 00:11, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
    • There you go again, sidetracking to avoid the real issue (which is, as far as the evidence shows, that there is no such thing as "Raampa"). Feel free to waste your time and energy elsewhere. Good luck with your efforts at desysopping Dougweller, and if you want to add me to the case, go ahead. Please do let me know when you file the case; I'd love to watch that trainwreck. Drmies (talk) 02:11, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
      • Of course we can't use Peter Daniels[5] as a source, but his comments are valuable. If you(Tamsier) are judging him by his article you clearly know very very little about the history of writing, author for instance of Phonologies of Asia and Africa.
      • It isn't up to me to find a reliable source saying there is no such thing as Raampa writing or proto-writing, It's up to anyone who wants to claim it exists to find sources. And in all the verbiage above there's no evidence for one. Dougweller (talk) 05:05, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
• The contentious point has been re-edited [6] with additional ref. If the tag inserter is satisfied with the wording, he can remove the tag. If not, please explain with suggestions for improvement.Tamsier (talk) 13:00, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

I've removed the NPOV tag. I still would like a better source than an article which doesn't seem to be used much if at all as a reference by other academics.

There's also a problem with the wording of "Within the general context of Serer symbols and symbolism, some agree pretty much with that view, who postulates that, the mere fact of coming from a Serer heritage does not necessarily equate to having the ability to deciper the symbols, but require initiation and patience". It doesn't really read very well. Also, 'some' is a word we try hard to avoid, see WP:WEASEL. Dougweller (talk) 14:53, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Feel free to reword it to your liking, I don't own the article. As for "some", I've seen many good and featured articles used the word in a similar context, and was advised years ago that its safer than placing a number or using words like most, etc. But feel free to reword. As for source, I don't know whether you are referring to "Le Symbolisme sereer : Mythe du Saas et symboles" published & reviewed under "Le symbolisme serer". If you are referring to this, here are the works who have cited it (in) Google books. Tamsier (talk) 17:44, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, I've done that, feel free to rework it. You forgot to put the title of the article in quotation marks, doing that and adding Gravrand comes up with [7] - I'd been using the longer title before. Dougweller (talk) 18:11, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

No you haven't changed the meaning. That's fine [8]. Tamsier (talk) 18:40, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

• Note that Google Books has a snippet preview of Vol. IX of Psychopathologie Africaine, [9] so the OCR'd text of Gravrand's Le Symbolisme Serer is searchable. –92.4.165.211 (talk) 01:31, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Searchable to an extent, you only get a few snippets. You don't find Raampa, but in any case this disagreement seems settled now. I will note that I have the full article now and it doesn't back the material that has now been removed by Tamsier. Dougweller (talk) 06:02, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Ah, nevermind then. Does it really support the set of symbols and translation that is directly lifted from Maranz's pheonicia.org article and reproduced here? –92.4.165.211 (talk) 14:07, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

No, it doesn't. I don't know where the 'xook' etc come from though, but the symbols aren't drawn in the Gravrand article nor does it mention the names given to them in this article. The names themselves, eg Xoox, Kor, etc seem authentic. Dougweller (talk) 16:08, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

What paper do you have? The IP's link above?Tamsier (talk) 18:52, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Saafi people

I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Saafi people's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "Serer symbols":

• From Koox: Gravrand, Henry, "Le Symbolisme sereer : Mythe du Saas et symboles", « Revue de Psycho-Pathologie » vol. 9 N^o 2 Dakar (1971) (Published and reviewed under the title "Le symbolisme serer" [in] Psychopath. Afric. 1973, IX, 2, 237-265 [in] Pyschopathologie africaine) - (Link retrieved : 25 July 2012)
• From Serer creation myth: (in French) Gravrand, Henry, "Le Symbolisme sereer : Mythe du Saas et symboles", « Revue de Psycho-Pathologie » vol. 9 N^o 2 Dakar (1971) (Published and reviewed under the title "Le symbolisme serer" [in] Psychopath. Afric. 1973, IX, 2, 237-265 [in] Pyschopathologie africaine) - (Link retrieved : 21 July 2012)
• From Roog: Gravrand, Henry, "Le Symbolisme sereer : Mythe du Saas et symboles", « Revue de Psycho-Pathologie » vol. 9 N^o 2 Dakar (1971) (Published and reviewed under the title "Le symbolisme serer" [in] Psychopath. Afric. 1973, IX, 2, 237-265 [in] Pyschopathologie africaine) - (Link retrieved : 25 July 2012)

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 18:40, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Deleted material on Serer Symbols

I have the article as a pdf and it has no images. I also have it as a Word document and can't find the "the late honourable man devoted his life to farming, hunting and fishing". It's possible I missed it somehow, and if Tamsier, who added it originally and replaced it today, can find it and quote it I'll be happy to replace the text - but the images seem to come from a fringe paper and can't be replaced as their source doesn't seem to be Gravrand. Dougweller (talk) 15:06, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

• I have the article as well. I may have missed it too, but it would be very odd if we both did. In the meantime, I have reverted the edit that restored these symbols. Perhaps Tamsier can give us a page number. Here's another possibility: it's not there, and the claim that it was there is very false. Drmies (talk) 15:33, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

1971 paper, pp 5-11, 26Tamsier (talk) 16:37, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Quotes please as we all presumably have the paper from {sychopathologie Africaine, 1973, vol. IX, 2, 237-265. That's the published paper, I don't know what the 1971 paper is. Dougweller (talk) 17:13, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

If it was in this new 1971 paper then why didn't you cite it in the first place? You must have been aware that these things weren't in the 1973 paper and were therefore lying when you used it as the source for the raampa images. Eladynnus (talk) 17:18, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Let's not accuse people of lying. The reference provided does mention 1971, "Serer symbols">Gravrand, Henry, "Le Symbolisme sereer : Mythe du Saas et symboles", « Revue de Psycho-Pathologie » vol. 9 N^o 2 Dakar (1971) (Published and reviewed under the title "Le symbolisme serer" [in] Psychopath. Afric. 1973, IX, 2, 237-265 [in] Pyschopathologie africaine). I'm not sure what the 1971 means, but it clearly says it was published in Psychopathologie Africaine, 1973, vol. IX, 2, 237-265 and that's the definitive reference. Dougweller (talk) 17:39, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

It is a puzzling reference. Something is published in 1971 in Revue de Psycho-Pathologie, and then "published and reviewed" in 1973 in Psychopathologie Africaine. But I can't verify that there is (or was) a journal called Revue de Psycho-Pathologie, though there may be a Revue de psychopathologie africaine--which, if this really were a peer-reviewed journal, has a very low number of Google hits. this (2/3 down in note 20) seems to oddly combine the two--with a strange capital for "Revue" given that only the "Psychopathologie africaine" part is italicized. The website for Pyschopathologie africaine is a bit puzzling as well--fortunately there is an index, here, which lists the 1973 article we all have copies of. This can be put to rest if we can get a copy of the supposed 1971 article; I'll ask ILL what they can do. Drmies (talk) 19:42, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

In the meantime, should the raampa on the other articles be allowed to stay up? I removed most of them but they've all been restored. Eladynnus (talk) 20:33, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

No they should not. Dougweller and I have some serious doubts about this supposed 1971 article, and search results such as this are enough of an indication that there is a problem. I will revert those reverts of your reverts, with a link to this discussion. I think it's time we deal with this, esp. since no one has come forward to point to, for instance, an actual index of the 1971 issues of this supposed journal or, even better posted a PDF of it somewhere. Drmies (talk) 23:19, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Not a problem. You guys do what you think is best. Here is that 1971 paper mentioned in Gravrand's Pangool which I bought in 1971 [10]. But no big deal. Drmies, I notice you moved Koox (the Saafi deity) to Roog (the Seex deity) due to Eladynnus' request. Surprised but no big deal. Tamsier (talk) 00:33, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

So are you willing to take back all the things you said on the talk page? Eladynnus (talk) 01:18, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Tamsier, I don't need Eladynnus, whom I don't know, to see that the same is the same. We can't have the same article for two names if it's the same thing. Note, for instance, where Cochon de lait goes to. As for the 1971 paper, you didn't show us the paper, just a mention of the paper in a book by the author. I'd love to see the actual paper. Drmies (talk) 02:41, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

In footnote 40 on p. 125 of Pangool Gravrand cites the same "1971" reference, but lists the journal as Revue de Psychopathologie africaine, so Revue de Psycho-Pathologie is Revue de Psychopathologie africaine. Look online for other papers under Revue de psychopathologie africaine (e.g.) and you'll find they're also listed at Psychopathologie africaine (see index). They are all unsurprisingly the same journal. I doubt it's a coincidence that the "1971" ref in Pangool has the same publishing details as the 1973 paper: volume, issue, location and title (mostly; he alters the titles of several other refs in Pangool as well e.g. he cites "La Sorcellerie en pays sereer" which corresponds to "Naq et sorcellerie dans les conceptions serer" in Psychopathologie africaine). --92.4.165.211 (talk) 17:03, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't know if he's going to come up with the quotes asked for or not. After being warned for calling me a friend of Hitler he put up a semi-retired template. He's convinced somehow that I'm anti-African, which is just bull. Dougweller (talk) 17:42, 22 August 2012 (UTC)