User talk:Mahagaja/Archive 38

Verkündung der Wehrfreiheit 1935

Re: your comment on the Treaty of Versailles Talk page: the document is at my office where I'll return only on Weds. Scanning's a bit of a problem; I might photograph it if that would help, so I may yet take you up on your offer. The printing is some blackletter typeface that neither I nor a younger colleague could puzzle out, and I'm contemplating showing it to one of the seniors educated in Europe. Basically I'm hoping that nailing the terminology will provide insight into that milestone in 20th C. European history... though I've been told overtly that I'm naive (or worse) to seek subtleties in Nazi promotional texts. Anyway, I'd like to put it on that page. I'll update you ...meanwhile, thanks! -- Deborahjay (talk) 16:55, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

If it's Fraktur I should be able to read it with no problem. At least it's not handwritten; Kurrent gives me a headache even when it's very clear and neatly written, and of course it usually isn't. And it would be nice to know what it says even if there is no subtlety behind it. —Angr 18:12, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Roman Catholic Church

FAC has restarted, if you would like to vote, please go here [1] Thanks. NancyHeise (talk) 19:53, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Have a look at Syntax

Hi Angr, want to have a look at Syntax? There are some idiotic edits going on, and I've lost my patience in fixing them, so I'm going to just pull back and wait, but maybe a less involved voice can calm the person involved. AndrewCarnie (talk) 07:31, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

I'll look, but I doubt I can be much help. I stopped understanding syntax after it got more complicated than S → NP VP. —Angr 17:58, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

The edits there are amazing aren't they? People who go on and on about clarifications and styles and clearly know nothing about either just drive me crazy. Thanks for your support there... AndrewCarnie (talk) 22:54, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Consensus on reasoning for LGBT Project Articles

A new discussion you may be interested in:Consensus on reasoning for LGBT Project Articles. The Bookkeeper (of the Occult) 07:34, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Category Mariology

Your well intended new Category Mariology creates some content problems. As you know, mariology is the theological study of Mary, which methodically presents teachings about her and her veneration to other parts of the faith, such as teachings about Jesus Christ, redemption and grace. In other words, M is not just anything on Mary. After several sometimes bitter debates, we differentiated therefore between MARIOLOGY and VIEWS ON MARY, the latter referring to theological contributions, which may consist in a a few important sentences on Mary but not a theological system. I am happy to discuss this with you. Maybe I misunderstand you, and you can explain it better to me. (I wrote most(Luther, Calvin, Barth, ecumenical and much or Protestant views), of the articles you listed in your category) Maybe we can rename the category or whatever, we can not redefine mariology -:)) Cheers--Ambrosius007 (talk) 17:59, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't really know a whole lot about it. I only created the category because I felt we needed somewhere to stick all these articles about various people's and various denominations' views of Mary. If Category:Theological views of the Virgin Mary or something would be a better name, that's fine with me. —Angr 18:04, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

I had them in the category RC mariology, since the articles discuss this aspect as well, but somebody removed them with the equally justified implicit argument that they actually do not belong there. I think theological views on Mary is fine, because "blessed Virgin" it too evaluative for some, and we want to stay neutral. I like your addition and I am working on an enlarged methodological intro (what is mariology, relation to other theological sub-disciplines, major orientations, problems ---NOT content!) Thanks and Cheers--Ambrosius007 (talk) 14:15, 5 June 2008 (UTC) Hi, I have no problem placing all mariological articles under mariology, but I am opposed of placing some there and others not. The mariology article is the lead article for RC mariology and is based almost exclusively on RC sources.

As we discussed, the present category M is not really M; I liked your idea of "theological views on Mary". But if we keep the title, we probably should move all RC articles there. Fine with me. But not with others. Cheers --Ambrosius007 (talk) 19:02, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

I think we just paralelled our messages. -:)) My point is a simple one. The present Category Mariology is not mariology as we discussed earlier. It includes Marian view articles, which I composed with this perspective. If you take one or more RC articles and put it into this category, we should put all of hem there. Otherwise we have a conceptual mess. --Ambrosius007 (talk) 19:09, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

::""The article Mariology is about mariology in general, in all Christian denominations, not just Roman Catholicism""

Nope, because, ... there exists no Protestant mariology, that's the point here. Quote me ONE Protestant theologian, who wtote a mariology! Some reacted to RC mariology (Barth etc) but without a mariology of their own. If you would argue The article papacy is about papacy in general, in all Christian denominations, not just Roman Catholicism, I would ask which papacy in general? Same with mariology. Cheers--Ambrosius007 (talk) 19:18, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

It seems to me that when, with very good itention, you tried to create the category mariology, you overlooked the Wikipedia rule for new categories:

• To avoid redundancy, please browse the existing templates before creating a new template. You never created a definition or justification for this new category, which only duplicates existing ones. I liked the situation, which existed before your intervention. I also like your idea of renaming the category, which I did today, using the excact title of the lead article: "Protestant views of Mary" following your ides (If Category:Theological views of the Virgin Mary or something would be a better name, that's fine with me). As I said before, I have no problem of folding all articles into mariology, indeed, I would welcome that, which however, will be strongly objected to by other contributors. I also have no problem with abandening either the category mariology or the category mariology RC.

As to the substance of things, there are certain ideosyncracies, typically Protestant or typically Catholic, mariology falling into the latter category. It is not taught at Protestant theology classes nor is it a part of Protestant theological textbooks, for the simple reason, that views of Mary differ greatly from RC. Like there is a Catholic theology on the papacy (Petrine Office) there is no Protestant equivalent, although there are views on the Papacy. POV? In a narrow sense, you may be right, but then, this would apply to many Christianity articles, in which Catholic views are not even mentioned. Often for the same reason, there is no Catholic equivalent ( or if there is one, Catholic authors are to lazy to write about it -:))

Which brings me back to the beginning, if we separate Catholic and Protestant views on popular request, what go into the category mariology? Cheers--Ambrosius007 (talk) 12:27, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Thank's for the constructive proposal. The content of the article "Mariology" reflects similar arcticles in theological encyclopedias, as it deals mainly with definition, methodology and relation to other theological disciplines. Therefore I do not want to water down the title. Theological views of Mary would be different subject, a compilation of views on M, which already exist in other arcticles.

A Category Theological views of Mary is a nice idea. It would allow for including the Isalm view, which I parked with the Virgin Mary. But then the day after tomorrow someone would say, RC professor John Doe and others did not have a mariology but he had theological opinions of Mary, and would add 20 RC articles there. With the subject matter mainly RC, this might in time growd out the few Protestant articles, which I want to highlight, but not as mariology.

What if we make Protestant views of Mary a sub to mariology (next to RC) and include in mariology (1) biblical concepts (annunciation, magnificat etc) and dogmas like (Virginity of Mary, Theotokos), and (2) Early Fathers (Eastern and Western like Cyril, Ambrose, Augustine etc. I am thinking along those lines. But each solution has its shorttcomings. Thank's for thinking and helping along You know more about categories and I might know more about his particular subject, but together we find a solution --Ambrosius007 (talk) 16:19, 13 June 2008 (UTC) Well, to be honest, it's difficult, but I would include in the Category M those aspects which are shared by Christians to some degree: biblical references, early beliefs and practices and the teachings of the Fathers (up to about 450)

--Ambrosius007 (talk) 16:45, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

I was talking about articles --Ambrosius007 (talk) 16:54, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

I was talking about articles

• on biblical events like the wedding at Canan, the Annunciation, Mary's response (Magnificat), visit to Elisabeth, virgin birth (Christmas narratives)
• Patristic figures revered by all Churches, like Cyril, Ambrose, Augustine I added Mariology sections to some but not all of them)

The mariology article is essential as a lead to RC mariology, because it exlains the methodology and location of mariology within RC theology. If you like to use it in mariology as well, go ahead, but not at the expense of RC mariology.--Ambrosius007 (talk) 17:15, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

One article is content, the other methodology, together they are too much long. Why not two articles?

There are two separate issues, this article and the category mariology. --Ambrosius007 (talk) 17:36, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

I just saw your contribution to Protestant views of Mary. Please think of the reason, adsked there and by myself, why you created a (in my view redundant) category mariology, what you mean with mariology, and why you think this was not redundant in light of existing templates. Thank's. Until tomorrow, have to go.--Ambrosius007 (talk) 18:18, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Please stop biasing Syntax against prescription and accidentally sabotaging literary quality of the text

Since you, as well as Professor Carnie, are in fact a language expert to some extent which I am not aware of at the present time, I appreciate your willingness to give the jargon – laden, unintelligible language article Syntax your time and attention, and because of your understanding of many of the issues which revolve around linguistics I actually would like you to involve yourself with the task of rewriting parts of, or in fact rewriting the entirety of this unusable article entry.

I apologize for not posting explanations for my edits on the article talk page on an immediate basis, but I keep running out of time on this terminal and I certainly will provide all relevant information on that talk page as soon as I can. Unfortunately, you have made the unwise choice of taking the Professor's request for you to "calm" me down too much to heart, and as a result you have decided to approach this article with a closed mind by erasing 8 carefully considered edits [including the posting of a jargon warning banner template] wholesale in one swipe, apparently without reading any of the edits by so much as looking at a diff display page.

The "Prime Directive" with which we all must approach the writing and editing of these encyclopedia entries must always be to let the reader decide for themselves what opinion the reader will adopt with regard to the subject of the article, instead of rigging article entries in order to attempt to brainwash unsuspecting readers into blithely accepting whatever conclusions are considered to be acceptable to those who conceived the article.

I believe that your writing contributions could potentially improve this unreadable article – but before you continue to edit, ask yourself just one question: After the many readers who are coming up behind us examine both this article and many of the previous versions of this entry which were entered before the current version, can you honestly say that your philosophical approach to this subject matter is consistent with an unbiased, neutral treatment of the subject? Put in a different way, are you really, as Professor Carnie suggested, an uninvolved voice on the subject?

Let me suggest to you my suspicion, without trying to assert it as though it was already an established fact. You are already way too close to this issue. I am not a mind reader, but you seem to be already committed to making sure that this entry reads in a way (and this is unencyclopedic) that is inappropriately sympathetic to the linguistics experts who populate the field today, as opposed to language experts from past decades and centuries who were far more willing to be prescriptive in their approach to matters which involve education, literacy, spelling, grammar, and syntax.

Maybe you want this article to have a description – only bias. Let's do each other at least one favor: I will not adopt preconceived biases against you if you will show the same consideration toward me. If you in fact harbor an anti-prescription bias, you need to step back from this article. If, on the other hand, you are both able and willing to edit and write without injecting your own opinions into the final product (no matter what biases you may have), then in that case I would be more than willing to write with you. In any event, please give your thoughts and reactions to me by registering them both on the user talk page that I am using, as well as on the article talk page. 198.252.8.202 ^TalkHistory 17:14, Wednesday June 4, 2008 (UTC)

I am not biased against linguistic prescriptivism, and neither is the article. It's just that it's irrelevant to the topic of syntax. You might as well bring up linguistic prescriptivism in an article about baseball in the 19th century or an article about a South American species of fish. What you call the "Prime Directive" is known as writing from the neutral point of view (NPOV) here at Wikipedia, and pointing out that syntax is not concerned with linguistic prescriptivism is an objective fact, not a violation of NPOV. In fact, the two are so utterly unrelated that it would probably be better for the article not to mention prescriptivism at all than for it to explicitly point out the fact that the two are unrelated. My main reason for reverting your edits, though, has nothing to do with the wording of the discussion about prescriptivism. Rather, the reason I reverted is that for all your talk about making the article more readable, what you actually do is the opposite. You replace simple, straightforward sentences with unnecessarily complicated and prolix ones (as I mentioned on the talk page). You wrote, "Since linguistics experts who study syntax attempt to explain and describe grammatical structures as they are actually used by native speakers, instead of determining which way to form sentences in any given language is correct, this area of research does not deal with the societal function of linguistic prescription today", which is self-contradictory. Other changes you have made have either been neutral (replacing only perfectly fine wording with a different perfectly fine wording, for no discernible reason) or are worse than previous wording. In short, I'm not seeing any changes you've made to the article that have actually been an improvement. —Angr 18:25, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Categorial Grammar

Hi Angr, actually, there are no "verbs" in categorial grammars, what there are are functors from NPs to Sentences, so the category of an intransitive verb is (NP\S), and the category of a transitive verb is (NP/(NP\S)). There is no "V" category. Those things aren't clarifications, they are the actual categories... Given the mathematical nature of the system I don't know any way to make this clearer. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.228.145.199 (talk • contribs) 18:03, 5 June 2008

Well, is there any way to explain it so that someone with only a traditional understanding of grammar can at least follow what's being talked about? The article categorial grammar doesn't really explain the slash/backslash notation very well, and if someone with a Ph.D. in linguistics (like me) can't understand the explanation, it's not really an adequate explanation yet. —Angr 19:02, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

(The above comment was from me btw.) I've tried to make it clearer on the syntax page. I'm not qualified to fix the categorial grammar page. AndrewCarnie (talk) 06:22, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Brythonic in Ireland

Hi Angr. I started a new section on the talk page of the British language (Celtic) article. Thanks for changing tack in our conflict and adding the citation tags, by the way: I think this is a helpful thing to do. --Setanta747 (talk) 01:31, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Speakers of...

Angr, thanks for the input and followup on my recent Language Ref Desk query. You might appreciate the quandary that sparked it: At my workplace we have several departments based on language groups, notably French, Russian, Dutch, and soon branching out to German and Spanish. Unfortunately, in Hebrew, the gender-inflected adjective for these languages is identical whether referring either to a department or a country, both nouns being feminine. This has created ambiguous names ("the French/France Department," "the Dutch/Netherlands Department," etc.). Were the adjective changed to the word for "-speaking," this would be an inadequate solution, however, as the intention is not "The X-speaking Department" but rather, "The Department for X-speaking Countries"... which is unwieldy. The French have it nice and concise: pays francophones, which is why I was seeking more options along these lines. I haven't found an optimal solution yet, and meanwhile am trying to live with (live down) the interim usage. Ironically, there's no separate department for "Anglophone countries," as after Hebrew, global English is the principal language for our texts (with yours truly as translator-editor). -- Deborahjay (talk) 21:36, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, why not do what universities do: Department of French, Department of Russian, etc.? We have a similar situation at the translation company where I work: technically I work in the Department of Translation into English and German, but everyone just calls us die Engländer (the Englishmen/English people), which is a bit silly since of the 8 of us, only 1 is actually from England. —Angr 04:21, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Australian Judges

Hi. If you read carefully, in this thread there are two other images being nominated for deletion: Image:Justice_Heydon.jpg and Image:Justice_Gummow.gif. I guess you missed them. Cheers. --Damiens.rf 07:04, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

I saw they were mentioned, but since they didn't have IFD tags on them I wasn't sure if they were "officially" nominated for deletion too. —Angr 08:42, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

semi-protection

You said, "TFA should not be protected". Wikipedia:Main Page featured article protection says it can be semi-protected but only for short periods if there is an extreme level of vandalism. Just FYI. 129.120.86.21 (talk) 17:04, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Feature Article Candidate Roman Catholic Church

This is a formal notification. Ignore if you have no further objections

The nomination of the above article was archived by the Featured Articles Director, with the comment that the page had again grown too long. He has asked that all remaining objectors produce a list of their specific problems with the article in its current form. These will then be addressed by the article's editorial team before re-presentation for FA status.

Can you therefore please post a complete list of any specific remaining objections you may have on the article's talk page at: Talk:Roman_Catholic_Church. If possible can we have this list in by the end of June, so that editors can begin to address them all in detail in July. To prevent the nomination again becoming over-long, we would ask that you raise ALL of your remaining concerns at this stage, making your comments as specific and comprehensive as possible. It would help if all your comments were gathered under your name in a single heading on the page. Thank you. Xandar (talk) 02:06, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

"solistic"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinfonia_concertante68.148.164.166 (talk) 10:33, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Linguistics, communication, and what amoebas call masturbation

This kind of discussion (for want of a better word) will go on forever if we let it. Should we continue to feed it? garik (talk) 17:16, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Probably not. —Angr 17:32, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Capitalization

Hi, at one point you commented that Webster's dictionary says, that Mariology should be usually capitalized. I could not find that in Webster's online. If you have a link that will settle the issue. Thank you. History2007 (talk) 17:25, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't have a link. I looked it up in the dead tree edition. It says "usu cap" meaning descriptively that it usually is capitalized, not prescriptively that it usually should be capitalized. —Angr 17:31, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Ok, thank you. I also think it is best capitalized just as Christology is. Thanks. History2007 (talk) 20:01, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Veropedia

I was interested by what you said about veropedia and can appreciate your sentiments regarding the advertising. But do you have any proof that Veropedia editors change wikipedia in ways which favour their sponsors? Just out of interest... Sillyfolkboy (talk)

No, but the message is meant as a warning to make sure it doesn't happen, not as an accusation that it has happened. —Angr 17:15, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Fairy muff then! Sillyfolkboy (talk) 17:30, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

"bulk-producing"

Thanks to your reply on the Language ref desk just now, I intervened in Wiktionary and corrected that incomplete definition. May you never have to learn about these things the (ouch!) hard way, as I did...! -- Cheers, Deborahjay (talk) 07:28, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Supriyya again

I thought you might be interested to know that she's back, and now seems to be trying to turn the linguistics section of the language article into a rival to the linguistics article. #sigh# I'm too busy today to do anything much about it. garik (talk) 14:27, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

She's vandalizing Linguistics again... #double sigh# AndrewCarnie (talk) 05:49, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Laughing man image

Angr,
Thank you for deleting the Laughing_man image. I was starting to wonder whether or not I was not understanding the policy on images on userspace. Good to see that I wasn't. Thanks again. Just say "NO" to WP:FUR 20:30, 27 June 2008 (UTC)