User talk:BabelStone/Archive 2013

Chinese translation?

Hi BabelStone - would your Chinese be up to translating a short stub article into Chinese for me? Prioryman (talk) 21:28, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Probably -- which article? BabelStone (talk) 21:38, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm nominating Icelandic Phallological Museum for Today's Featured Article but would like to increase its score. It's only 5 languages off being a "widely covered" topic. Would you mind translating the stub article at User:Prioryman/Icelandic Phallological Museum summary for the Chinese wiki? Prioryman (talk) 21:40, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Not really my sort of thing, but I'll see what I can do (this weekend). BabelStone (talk) 21:57, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

I've created a short stub article now at zh:冰島陰莖博物館. BabelStone (talk) 20:28, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

That's great, thank you - it's the 20th language now! Prioryman (talk) 20:56, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Chinese name of the Roman Empire

You said that "大秦 does not mean 'Big Empire'". Are those the Chinese characters used to denote the Roman Empire? If so, what is their transliteration in pinyin and what do these two characters mean each separately and in combination? Chinese merchants traveling along the Silk Road traded a lot of silk to the Roman Empire in exchange for silver to the point where Augustus Caesar's finance minister complained that the Roman Empire's silver reserves were getting too low from buying so much silk, so the Chinese must have had a name they used to denote the Roman Empire that they were trading so extensively with. I would like to find out what that name was. Thank you and best wishes to you. Keraunos (talk) 01:35, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

大秦 is the name. It means "Big Qin" where Qin is a proper name that is also the name of the Qin Dynasty. BabelStone (talk) 20:31, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Does the word "Qin" have another meaning in this context besides its use as the name of the Qin (state) and the Qin Dynasty? Keraunos (talk) 08:27, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

DYK for Mary C. Wright

Harrias ^talk 16:03, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Request for input on runic link

Hello, as you might be aware the peace symbol or the Campaign for nuclear disarmament symbol has runic origins. Specificially that of the death rune/Algiz/Todesrune. I am currently in discussion on the talk page of the Campaign for nuclear disarmament with another member who actively refuses to accept that this information about the symbols runic origins be included.

I would appreciate your input.

Here are the references supporting the runic origin of the symbol.

1. "Symbol explained", The Eugene Register- Guard, 12 February 1971
2. Foreign Policy in Focus - http://www.fpif.org/articles/a_sign_of_the_times
3. http://www.symbols.com/encyclopedia/24/247.html
4. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,909670,00.html#ixzz28e1dbekl "What's in a Symbol?", Time Magazine, 2 November 1970

Boundarylayer (talk) 02:08, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

thanks

sincere thanks for helping on the articles related to the compass report. i feel these additions are important, but it is difficult editing from a mobile phone, but i did my best. /)(\ . 174.141.213.10 (talk) 01:25, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

Use of fullwidth forms

Resolved

Please see Module talk:BaseConvert#Fringe feature. Since we have Lua, we can refine out templates. My talking point is about using Fullwidth characters as hexadecimal digits. Maybe you can say something more about the actual usage of Fullwidths (and so the relevance of my note). -DePiep (talk) 21:52, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

This issue was solved by the module script encoder: he normalised full-width forms into ascii characters. So the full width characters are managed by the hexadecimal conversion, as Unicode intended. Smart and correct, I'd say. -DePiep (talk) 17:30, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Han tu in Unicode

About Han tu in Unicode. I could not find Han tu or Han-Nom in the scripts in Unicode, today. What did I miss? Is there a ISO 15924 for it at all? Is it submerged in the han unification? There is something new for me ahead! -DePiep (talk) 20:26, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi, greetings. I saw you have put a merge on new article Han-Nom. I'm not sure that an AfD wouldn't be more appropriate as the author doesn't seem to understand the basics of the subject and the 2 footnotes do not say what is attributed to them. But anyway I warmly welcome the arrival of someone from Thornhaugh St in the subject area. Re DePiep's enquiry above I can deal with this if you haven't already done so. In ictu oculi (talk) 00:23, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

As a PS.. what's the intake these days for SEA studies? Is it still 1 or 2 a year for Vietnamese? Feel free to reply on my Talk page if replying. Cheers. In ictu oculi (talk) 05:18, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Sorry for not replying, but I have been away from Wikipedia since 9 March. DePiep, Han Nom are unified with CJK, and so are included in the CJK blocks, especially CJK-B and later. BabelStone (talk) 16:03, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, for the note. Welcome back. In ictu oculi (talk) 16:11, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

Han tu/Han-Nom proposed merger

So what exactly is being proposed? Han tu is only the "Han" aspect of Han-Nom. Perhaps Han tu can be merged with traditional Chinese characters, since it is just another name for the same thing. Unlike "Han-Nom", "Han tu" is not a word that is commonly used in modern times, either in Vietnamese or in English. It's basically wiki-jargon, a mistaken usage that has been copied from one article to another and so on over the years. If Han tu is moved to chữ nho (Classical Chinese), as seems likely, that could leave us without an article on Sino-Vietnamese characters themselves. Kauffner (talk) 04:39, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm not really sure myself. I'm not an expert on Vietnamese, but it seems to me that there are several articles about Vietnamese writing system and Vietnamese-usage Chinese characters that have overlapping content, and it would be less confusing if these articles were consolidated. BabelStone (talk) 16:12, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

Polyglot Chinese, Manchu, Mongol, Tibetan and Chagatai Dictionary

Someone should create the english language version of this article. zh:御製五體清文鑑. It was a major important work during the Qing period.Rajmaan (talk) 04:55, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that out. I am surprised there is not already an article on this dictionary. BabelStone (talk) 09:46, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Unicode templates

Leaving redlinks here encourages the creation of redirects, which is good. Per WP:REDLINK, redlinks should be used to signify that an article should be created, and in the case of unicode templates, most (if not all) of these characters are deserving of articles. Therefore, I will undo your edits. StringTheory11 (t • c) 20:44, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Not all Unicode characters are notable enough for articles. Having loads of redlinks in the tables makes them ugly. If you want to link characters that's fine, but please do so selectively. BabelStone (talk) 20:47, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Ugly to your eyes, not ugly to mine (and although I do not know for a fact, I would imagine most of us). The thing is, I would rather have an ugly good template that provides links and future links than a pretty less useful template that just provides apparence. Even if they're not notable enough for their own articles, they're notable enough for redirects. StringTheory11 (t • c) 20:49, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Then go ahead and create the articles and redirects. BabelStone (talk) 21:03, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Link removal among Unicode charts

Hello, BabelStone. I have partially reverted three of your recent edits to Unicode charts (here, here, and here) involving the deletion of multiple wikilinks. Your reasoning for these edits—which included the removal of 256, 128, and 48 links, respectively (a total of 432)—was that "linking all is bad as most are redlinks which show 'page does not exist' on mouseover instead of the character name". Out of these links, 72 were actually existing links rather than redlinks, and yet you proceeded to remove these as well. This is even more surprising than your completely unjustified removal of the 360 redlinks (see Wikipedia:Red link). I probably should have reverted these edits in their entirety, but instead I only restored the 72 links that you did not provide any explanation for: 19 in the first edit, 37 in the second, and 16 in the third. These edits should not be tolerated by any means; redlinks, as you should know, provide editors with access to pages that they may create, resulting in the expansion—not harm—of Wikipedia, meanwhile deleting actual links is harmful. It seems you have had this same problem in the recent past as well (↑); consider this your second warning. — |J~Pæst|  07:14, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Manchu people: Revision history

Manchu people: Revision history http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Manchu_people&curid=153021&action=history --Kaiyr (talk) 07:47, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Sumatran rhino distribution in 2013

reaction to 19:59, 19 May 2013‎ BabelStone (talk | contribs)‎ . . (57,610 bytes) (+350)‎ . . (Undid revision 555831218 by 94.209.208.221 (talk) may be true, but we need a reliable source to back it up) (undo)

Hi Babel Stone The map which I made of the current distribution of the Sumatran rhino, and to which I made a link in the wiki article, was seen and approved last April in writing by two top Sumatran rhino experts: Terri Roth of Cincinnati Zoo and John Payne, director of the Borneo Rhino Alliance. Follow the link given on the map for my background article. On the other hand, the current text is full of mistakes, based on a source from 2005. There are almost certainly no more Sumatran rhinos left in Tabin nor are there any left on Mainland Malaysia. And there is a population in the Danum Valley Reserve, Sabah, not mentioned in the current wiki article, and there is the newly discovered population (very small probably) West of Samarinda.

kind regards

Michiel Hegener

journalist / cartographer

the Netherlands

www.michielhegener.nl

Hi Michiel, thanks for the message. The problem is that although you know that your map has been approved by two rhino experts, we on Wikipedia need all information to be reliably sourced, and there is no evidence to us on Wikipedia that the map is reliable. If the map had been produced for a zoo website, for example, that would give us reason to trust it, but as it is only available on your personal website we cannot just trust that it is accurate. I suggest that you continue the discussion on the talk page of the article rather than on my personal talk page so that other interested editors can have their say. BabelStone (talk) 09:14, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Best talk page header ever. Just saying.  — TORTOISEWRATH 05:35, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

List of polymaths

I agree totally. That article has had me feeling disconcerted since I first encountered it, but I think you've hit on precisely the reason why it is problematic. Coretheapple (talk) 17:51, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the support. I have been uncomfortable with the article since I first saw it a couple of years back, and have several times considered nominating it for AfD, and for some reason today was the day when I got round to actually doing something. BabelStone (talk) 23:11, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

I could never put my finger on the problem myself. The sourcing is reliable, so yes, that really can't be disputed. But the issue is that, sourcing notwithstanding, it's still a subjective judgment. The "List of Renaissance men" article may have the same problem; I'd be curious to get your opinion on that. Coretheapple (talk) 23:16, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Hmm, I wish you hadn't pointed that one out to me! If polymaths is kept then Renaissance men should merge with it. If polymaths is deleted then Renaissance men is next in the firing line. BabelStone (talk) 00:17, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

That article is worse. If some newspaper reporter calls me "the renaissance man of Wikipedia" I get on the list! It's inane. Coretheapple (talk) 00:28, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Jomolhari (typeface) article

Hi, would you kindly review this new article I've created and make any changes or additions you think would be helpful. Even delete the article if you think it doesn't belong here. Thanks. Chris Fynn (talk) 15:03, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

Looks good! I've had a quick look through and can't see anything much to improve. Of course the article should stay as Jomolhari is a notable Tibetan typeface. BabelStone (talk) 15:09, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for Jin Guangping revert

Thanks for fixing my mistake!

I just created the article Official Communications of the Chinese Empire and searched for "Chinese" + "emperor" + "memorial" and put the link where I thought it would be useful. In a number of cases I found that a reader might well not know what a "memorial" was.

Glancing at your user pages, it seems that you work in this area quite a bit. If you have time, you might look at the new article (Official Communications of the Chinese Empire) and make any improvements you think of.

I plan to go back and add a section on public edicts, and do an article on the Kangxi Sacred Edict, which is redlinked already in several articles.

Cheers in any case ch (talk) 17:00, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

No problems -- I'll take a look at Official Communications of the Chinese Empire when I have time. Thanks. BabelStone (talk) 18:31, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

Kazi Dawa Samdup

I've just started this too: Kazi Dawa Samdup - This morning I was very surprised to discover that there wasn't already an article, so I began one. Do you happen to know where I can find a copy of his Tibetan-English Dictionary (Calcutta, 1919). I've searched in vain. Apparently the Preface has some interesting biographical information. Chris Fynn (talk) 17:28, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Fantastic article! You should nominate it for Did you know?. I'm afraid that I don't know where you might find a copy of his dictionary. BabelStone (talk) 20:31, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Your Han-Nom merge tag, again

Hi. Kanguole has (correctly in my view, and with consensus of other participants) agreed with your tag (as do I) but after discussion changed your merge tag on the duplicate article to merge with Talk:Chữ nôm, this has been agreed by 4 editors but your review/input is requested. In ictu oculi (talk) 05:06, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

IP 91.155.236.125 edit warring on Runes and several other pages

The IP-editor has now been blocked for 48 hours for tendentious editing, with a note that if he/she continues to push his/her fringe theories the blocks will be quickly escalating. Thomas.W (talk) 13:42, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. BabelStone (talk) 15:15, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Names in bibliographies

I wonder if you have an opinion on Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(geographic_names)#Bibliography_and_place-names

Templates

Hey BabelStone

I'm sending you this because you've made quite a few edits to the template namespace in the past couple of months. If I've got this wrong, or if I haven't but you're not interested in my request, don't worry; this is the only notice I'm sending out on the subject :).

So, as you know (or should know - we sent out a centralnotice and several watchlist notices) we're planning to deploy the VisualEditor on Monday, 1 July, as the default editor. For those of us who prefer markup editing, fear not; we'll still be able to use the markup editor, which isn't going anywhere.

What's important here, though, is that the VisualEditor features an interactive template inspector; you click an icon on a template and it shows you the parameters, the contents of those fields, and human-readable parameter names, along with descriptions of what each parameter does. Personally, I find this pretty awesome, and from Monday it's going to be heavily used, since, as said, the VisualEditor will become the default.

The thing that generates the human-readable names and descriptions is a small JSON data structure, loaded through an extension called TemplateData. I'm reaching out to you in the hopes that you'd be willing and able to put some time into adding TemplateData to high-profile templates. It's pretty easy to understand (heck, if I can write it, anyone can) and you can find a guide here, along with a list of prominent templates, although I suspect we can all hazard a guess as to high-profile templates that would benefit from this. Hopefully you're willing to give it a try; the more TemplateData sections get added, the better the interface can be. If you run into any problems, drop a note on the Feedback page.

Thanks, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:32, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Your merge tag on Han-Nom

FYI this was carried out by a 6-1 consensus. There is a related RfC on the effect of your proposed (and implemented) merge at Template talk:Infobox Chinese. Thanks for your expertise, if you have time. In ictu oculi (talk) 02:27, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Help with Pawo Tsuglag Threngwa

Hi Babelstone, some jerk has deleted the article on the 16th century history Pawo Tsuglag Threngwa mistaking it for advertising apparently. I can't figure out how to undelete it. You are better at this sort of thing than I am, can you help? Tibetologist (talk) 22:38, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Think I just figured it out. Tibetologist (talk) 22:44, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

This is a query concerning the entry about my background. My current understanding is that the references in the entry shouldn't be to primary sources, but to independent sources. In view of this, perhaps the entry should just be deleted. Let me know if this seems reasonable.

GregoryStump (talk) 13:14, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

MfD nomination of User:BabelStone/Stump

User:BabelStone/Stump, a page you substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:BabelStone/Stump and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of User:BabelStone/Stump during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. Huon (talk) 14:43, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Character Encoding

Noticed, your revision of the Character Encoding article, change from string to repertoire. A repertoire is a stock of plays, dances, or pieces that a company or a performer knows or is prepared to perform. How does that make sense, would you please explain, why do you think that repertoire is more suitable? --> — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.34.43.34 (talk) 12:34, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your question. "Repertoire" is the standard term for the set of characters in a given character encoding set -- see for example Unicode Glossary: Character Repertoire. On the other hand, string is a particular instance of a subset of characters in a character repertoire ordered in a particular sequence. A character encoding standard map characters from a defined character repertoire of a fixed number of characters, not from any variable number of characters in a random string. If you want to discuss this further it is best to do so on the talk page of the article where other interested editors can participate. Thanks.

BabelStone (talk) 16:59, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

File:British Museum Olduvai handaxe.jpg

Dear Babelstone, I would like to use the wonderful picture you took of the hand axe in the British Museum in a book we are publishing on the origins of people. We will obviously credit you in full, but I would also be very happy to send you a copy of the book when it is printed (so you can see how your generous contributions to Wikimedia are being used!). I can send you details by email if you would like to contact me at cathy(at)cathybaxter(dot)com. Kind regards, Cathy Baxter — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.65.84.61 (talk) 21:12, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Hi Cathy, thanks for contacting me. I would of course be happy for you to use my picture of the Olduvai hand axe (or any of my Wikimedia photos) in your book. BabelStone (talk) 23:04, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Books and Bytes: The Wikipedia Library Newsletter

Books and Bytes

Volume 1, Issue 1, October 2013

by The Interior (talk · contribs), Ocaasi (talk · contribs)

Greetings Wikipedia Library members! Welcome to the inaugural edition of Books and Bytes, TWL’s monthly newsletter. We're sending you the first edition of this opt-in newsletter, because you signed up, or applied for a free research account: HighBeam, Credo, Questia, JSTOR, or Cochrane. To receive future updates of Books and Bytes, please add your name to the subscriber's list. There's lots of news this month for the Wikipedia Library, including new accounts, upcoming events, and new ways to get involved...

New positions: Sign up to be a Wikipedia Visiting Scholar, or a Volunteer Wikipedia Librarian

Wikipedia Loves Libraries: Off to a roaring start this fall in the United States: 29 events are planned or have been hosted.

New subscription donations: Cochrane round 2; HighBeam round 8; Questia round 4... Can we partner with NY Times and Lexis-Nexis??

New ideas: OCLC innovations in the works; VisualEditor Reference Dialog Workshop; a photo contest idea emerges

News from the library world: Wikipedian joins the National Archives full time; the Getty Museum releases 4,500 images; CERN goes CC-BY

Announcing WikiProject Open: WikiProject Open kicked off in October, with several brainstorming and co-working sessions

New ways to get involved: Visiting scholar requirements; subject guides; room for library expansion and exploration

Read the full newsletter

Thanks for reading! All future newsletters will be opt-in only. Have an item for the next issue? Leave a note for the editor on the Suggestions page. --The Interior 20:42, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

SVGs of obsolete Simplified Chinese characters

Thanks to your BabelStone Han font I have been able to create Scalable Vector Graphics of the 335 obsolete Simplified Chinese characters in the Consolidated Table of Proposed Characters of your Proposal to Encode Obsolete Simplified Chinese Characters (N3695) and uploaded them to the Commons. Could you add some information in English and Sinitic languages to the Commons category page? That’d be nice. I might add German and French translations of this information later, and maybe also also Dutch and Italian ones. —LiliCharlie (talk) 02:30, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for uploading the glyphs images, I think that is very good idea, and the images may be useful for Second round of simplified Chinese characters. BabelStone (talk) 18:13, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

ISO scripts

You are right about the Modi and Mult scripts being shown 323 and 324 now, but the normative datafile does not reflect this at the moment (it says 323 twice, a curiousity). I expect this file to change (under the date "2013-10-12"), since 324 makes more sense. An auto-solving issue. -DePiep (talk) 07:22, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

I reported the mistake in the normative data file to Michael Everson, who is the registrar for ISO 15924, and he swears that he has now corrected the mistake in the data file, but when I downloaded the file again just now the mistake is still there. BabelStone (talk) 18:08, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

I worked from an earlier downloaded datafile, that's where I got the double number from (with doubts). Best reasoning says that the different numbers are OK, and that the datafile will follow. With that, the enwiki is OK now. -DePiep (talk) 18:22, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Hi

Your edit of "Object Number 28" got me going. Do feel free to join in Victuallers (talk) 11:09, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I'm snowed under with other stuff and deadlines I'm struggling to meet so have very little free time for Wikipedia at present. Good luck, and I'll keep an eye on what you're doing. BabelStone (talk) 21:11, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Categories

Category.:Thanksgiving food., Category.:Christmas food., can I put these categories in Category.:Foods.. And can I make a category Delicacy for pages like Wasabi? ZSpeed (talk) 13:32, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

I suggest you ask at Wikproject Food and drink. BabelStone (talk) 22:25, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Mongolian (Unicode block)

Hi BabelStone,

Actually, on Win7 using FF, the Mongolian chart is not rotated at all. Since Mongolian script says there is not yet vertical support for Mongolian, I figured it had to be done manually. Which OS/browsers support Mongolian, then? — kwami (talk) 20:39, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

You're right. Vertical layout works with IE (screenshot) and Chrome (screenshot) but not with Firefox which I don't normally use. I don't know if there is any way to modify template {{MongolUnicode}} to support Firefox or whether we'll just have to wait for Firefox to catch up with IE and Chrome. At any rate rotation doesn't mix with the MongolianUnicode template. BabelStone (talk) 22:22, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

IE is usually so bad with typography that I didn't even check. And I just uninstalled Chrome because it was so buggy it was almost useless. (It couldn't even display the text on the buttons in its own uninstall window.) But you're right, IE does display it correctly for me too. — kwami (talk) 22:41, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Does Firefox support the CSS 3 writing-mode property? —LiliCharlie (talk) 13:29, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Seems not from Bug 145503 which has been active for over ten years. BabelStone (talk) 16:09, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

The Wikipedia Library Survey

As a subscriber to one of The Wikipedia Library's programs, we'd like to hear your thoughts about future donations and project activities in this brief survey. Thanks and cheers, Ocaasi ^{t | c} 15:13, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

DYK for Tangut dharani pillars

The DYK project (nominate) 00:01, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Cambridgeshire

Sorry about those. I think I see what caused the problem. Should be easy to fix. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 01:39, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, I was going to leave you a note as looking at your recent contributions these are not the only examples of people whose only connection with Cambs seems to be that they went to Cambridge University. BabelStone (talk) 01:42, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

I use a deep category tree, and apparently Category:Alumni of the University of Cambridge and its daughter categories are deep under the Category:People from Cambridgeshire. It would never have occurred to me to check, honestly. Ah, well - easily fixed, as I say. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 01:44, 30 December 2013 (UTC)