Talk:Shagai

picture?

could someone please provide a picture of what is goat, sheep, horse and camel? I guess self-made photographic pictures would be the easiest way - I would do it myself, but I have no sheep bones and no camera at hand right now. Yaan 21:18, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the pic. I have a pic of the shagai on a CD to give a sense of scale. If that would be of use, please let me know here.Nhrenton 12:59, 20 November 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nhrenton (talk • contribs)

I know what size shagai are, but I am not sure other readers would. Maybe a statement like "about as big as dice" would help - or maybe the pic really would say more than words. Size comparison is one aspect I forgot about when taking the pictures. Yaan (talk) 17:16, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Merge Ankle bone shooting

The two articles cover the same topic (glossing over half a sentence mentioning fortune telling). I'm not sure if the material added over there "by permission with attribution" is compatible with the way WP uses GFDL, so that part may have to go anyway. --Latebird (talk) 17:37, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

I Say Don't Merge

Hi Latebird. I think they deserve their own article for their role as keepsakes and tokens of friendship. "Ankle bone shooting" doesn't like good English, though. Sounds as if we're hunting for tarsi . . . I'll check the article out. NHRentonNhrenton 18:42, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

The idea was to summarize the game rules from "Ankle bone shooting" here. No information will get lost that way. The two articles really are about the same topic, so there's no reason to have them both. --Latebird (talk) 19:24, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

The two could be merged, since they use some of the same pieces, but when the merge sign was put up the Ankle bone shooting article was almost entirely not about ankle bone shooting. I've tried to differentiate them, hope this is useful Vizjim (talk) 07:55, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

I've reverted your changes, as they are not based on any kind of consensus. I have also not seen any sources to confirm that we're dealing with seperate topics here. Any decent dictionary will tell you that the two terms are simply translations of each other. Divination and playing are different aspects of the same tradition. On a procedural point: please note that disputes are not solved by removing valid information from articles. You have failed to explain why all the different games currently explained over there are not supposed to be "ankle bone shooting", when in reality they all consist of shooting ankle bones. --Latebird (talk) 08:34, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

To quote from your favoured version: "Depending on the game the anklebones may be tossed like dice, flicked like marbles, shot at with arrows, cuaght in the hands, or simply collected according to the roll of a die." In other words, in reality the activities that version described do not all consist of shooting ankle bones. Therefore, the information I removed was relevant to the article "shagai" but not to that sub-set of shagai games commonly referred to in English as ankle bone shooting, as sourced in the links that you removed from the page. Vizjim (talk) 08:41, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

That just means that "ankle bone shooting" is not a very good page title to begin with. It artificially seperates a subset of all shagai games from the rest. Yet more reason to merge the two articles. --Latebird (talk) 08:51, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

As I've already said, I don't particularly disagree with the idea of a merge (don't particularly support it either), but until consensus is reached, there's no harm in making sure the articles are about what they say they are about. Vizjim (talk) 08:56, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Please also note that repeating a reverted edit while the discussion is still running with an edit summary saying consensus not needed makes it very hard to assume good faith on your part. I reverted to the status quo ante because the question is not resolved yet. --Latebird (talk) 08:59, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm not interested in an edit war: if you just want to own the article, good luck to you. You're clearly not interested in providing sources as requested, nor in dealing with the points raised above. Withdrawing from discussion - it ain't important enough to get bothered about. Vizjim (talk) 09:16, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

The sources supporting my arguments are already in the articles. They all talk about the same things, sometimes calling it "shagai" and somethimes "ankle bone shooting". The only "point" you have raised was an overly narrow definition of "shooting ankle bones", which you obviously have come up with yourself. Your removal of sourced information from ankle bone shooting left a stub that didn't contain any information not already covered in the intro to shagai. Since you don't seem to object to merging, I don't quite understand why you just eliminated that information there instead of moving it here. And if you really consider it "ownership" if someone insists on proper procedures and following policies, be my guest... --Latebird (talk) 09:37, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

fortune telling

The table with the possible combinations of four shagais is unsourced (I guess it is from some slip of paper that comes with a set of shagai from the souvenir shop?) and it also misses the combinations with 3 camels and one goat or sheep. Maybe someone can correct this? I would also like to see what the exact roles for rolling the shagai again are, but I guess there are none (beyond "if you don't like it, try again")? Yaan (talk) 13:40, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

This has bothered me long enough. I removed both the table and the "sourcing". If anyone finds reliable scholarly data on the matter, feel free to expand on the topic. --Latebird (talk) 11:53, 5 January 2009 (UTC)