Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2022 March 27

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March 27

A female spy and a female journalist, looking for appropriate citations

Greetings,

Usually I avoid Biography articles still few keep coming on the way.

• Draft:Amina Dawood Al-Mufti a 20th century female spy article is under translation from Arabic Wikipedia. I am looking for English/ German/ French/ Hebrew language citations available if any.

• Draft:Aroosa Alam A prominent Pakistani investigative defence journalist in her own right. But surrounded with controversies that includes lot of spy–shaming from both sides of Indo–Pak border, controversies reportage as much as haystack to choose from citations becomes difficult. Looking for help in sorting appropriate citations.

If any one can adopt above articles and expand further is more than welcome since Bios are not my natural forte.

Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 04:32, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

Why namibia is a semi presidential country?

Blocked user. --Viennese Waltz 10:47, 28 March 2022 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Because namibia was a legacy of government system of either weimer republic or france. Prime minister enjoyed the same power as parliamentary countries like uk and bulgaria. Female prime minister is the now named saara. Whats the connection between france and namibia? It doesnt makes sense that france colonized namibia because of mutual government system. The womens right in namibia is excellent but having a female prime minister doesnt mean that namibia is a defacto parliamentary republic. 114.124.143.70 (talk) 04:55, 27 March 2022 (UTC) Why is it a semi-presidential country? Because it has adopted and evolved a particular form of government, and an authority on the subject (Reference 10 in the article on Namibia) considers that form to be semi-presidential. What is the connection between France and Namibia? There need not be a direct connection, and no-one has suggested that France colonized Namibia. When a country decides what form its government should have in future, it often considers the existing government systems of various other countries, and decides what elements of those it likes. Since France was one of the earlier countries to reject monarchy and (eventually) adopt a liberal democratic republican system, various other countries (either new, or also overthrowing monarchies) have taken France's form of government as an example to emulate. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.209.233.48 (talk) 09:53, 27 March 2022 (UTC) Namibia was taken from the German Empire by South Africa in the First World War and became a League of Nations Mandate, effectively a colony of South Africa, and didn't become independant until 1990. South Africa itself has moved from the Westminster system to a presidential model over the last century and seems likely to have had some influence in the way the Namibian constition was formulated, but other post-colonial African systems may have played a part too, they in turn having been influenced by the French model. Alansplodge (talk) 10:37, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

No sixth edition of the American Heritage Dictionary??

It has already been quite a while since the fifth edition was published, but I can't find ANY sites online talking about a sixth edition; not only as a book that has been released, but even as a book that they say is going to come out soon. Do they plan to stop making new editions?? If I were to guess a reason, I would guess it is because of the familiarity of online sites like Wikipedia, but I object because Wikipedia is not a dictionary (a very famous quote from its early days!) Does anyone know the reason?? (A special note for anyone who wants to respond to this question with "the sixth edition just hasn't come out yet" please note that extrapolating the pattern of when new editions come out suggests that the sixth edition should come out now.) Georgia guy (talk) 14:48, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

No-one here will know the answer. If the publishers (Houghton Mifflin) haven't announced that a sixth edition is on the way, no-one here will be able to tell you any different. Your only hope is to write to the publishers and ask if they are planning a sixth edition. --Viennese Waltz 14:55, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

If I may, "The sixth edition just hasn't come out yet" - our article American Heritage Dictionary mentions a 50th Anniversary Printing in 2018, which the publisher states is a "comprehensive update" of the 2011 edition. Exactly how a comprehensive update differs from a new edition, I couldn't say, but this comprehensive update in 2018 has perhaps disrupted what you might inductively assume to be a 10-yearly pattern of editions. Perhaps they regard it in the same light as a complete new edition, or perhaps it has bought them an extra five years before they feel the need to release the next one. Perhaps they are changing their workflow: having rolling updates instead of milestones is a trendy notion these days (I'm thinking of MS Windows as a prominent example of that).  Card Zero  (talk) 15:29, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

The branch of Houghton Mifflin that published the AHD was acquired by News Corp and merged into HarperCollins last year. The same branch also published Webster's New World dictionaries and HarperCollins already has the Collins English Dictionary, while the market is shrinking with Merriam-Webster being the last-standing fully staffed dictionary maker in the US, so I expect at least one of the three to stop being revised. Nardog (talk) 06:53, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Dictionaries (and encyclopaedias) are quite expensive to revise because of the necessary research involved, and paper copies are somewhat expensive to publish because of their size, so they can only be sold profitably at a cost acceptable to the public if a great many copies are sold. (Libraries, whether public or of academic institutions, are generally prepared to pay for more expensive volumes than are private purchasers.) In an increasingly online world, new paper editions of such works are therefore difficult to publish economically.

Online versions of dictionaries, etc., avoid some of the costs, but once a work is online it need not be revised in one overall tranche; instead it can be continually revised piecemeal: this effectively destroys the idea of "an edition" being a meaningful concept.

An example is The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1979), whose Second edition of 1993 was the last to actually be printed. The Third edition of 2011 was launched only online and, with continual amendments and additions suggested by many (unpaid) readers (even including myself) has nearly doubled in size since then, with a change of host server (from one owned by its former print publisher to one owned by one of the Editors) in 2021 being notionally declared as the Fourth edition. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.209.233.48 (talk) 17:00, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

The OED is the only major reference work I can find that still intends to complete a print edition; they are currently 18 years into working on the third edition, and only 1/2 way complete. Language may be changing faster than they completed. Even the venerated Encyclopædia Britannica announced that the 15th edition, published in 2010, would be their last print edition, with further efforts directed at their online edition. --Jayron32 17:17, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Regardless of the reason, the important thing is that eventually this might be resolved. (If Wikipedia were a dictionary [it's a famous quote from Wikipedia's early days that it is not] it could be resolved simply by using Wikipedia.) But please check out Wikisource. It collects published material that's in the public domain, and assuming it survives long enough it will have some dictionaries in it. Webster's Second should be in the public domain in 2030, right?? (For anyone who's aware of a dictionary that's already sourced in Wikisource please let me know.) Georgia guy (talk) 23:20, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

I'm aware of dictionaries available at Project Gutenberg. I'm also aware of Wiktionary, aren't you?  Card Zero  (talk) 00:07, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

Yes, and it gets changed by the minute. Georgia guy (talk) 00:17, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

Not so you'd notice. recently, somebody added Russophilic to the category for English terms relating to Russia. The same person added the derived term Guianan cock-of-the-rock to the entry for cock-of-the-rock, added an etymology section to tepa (a Chilean tree), added a link to tragifarce from tragedy, and an etymology to tragifarce. They also added an etymology to cedryl (a chemistry term), an etymology section to Pollokshields (which is a suburb of Glasgow), a link to microdegree from the entry for degree and an etymology for inderivatively‎. Before that, somebody else added a Ukrainian translation of play truant to the entry for that English phrase. So I find all this reassuring, because it's all just fussing around with the window dressing on a well-matured dictionary by this point in time.  Card Zero  (talk) 00:55, 29 March 2022 (UTC)