User talk:Rjanag

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If the offer still stands...

...it appears that you also have at least one co-nom, if desired. Probably a few others that would volunteer for that too (if you want names, e-mail me!) I guess there's no better time to go through it :-) (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 23:00, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Many thanks ... draft responses for comment (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 12:22, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Truly, thanks ... working on the finalities as we speak type (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 10:48, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

..and thanks for the truly kind words in the nom. Much appreciated. (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 21:36, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Should I remove this response? I truly feel he's going down some kind of WP:SOAP path, but I'm WP:AGFing and responding politely ... (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 21:15, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I think you're probably fine...although if he keeps up you're right that it's probably best just to let him have the last word. It should be clear to the crats that he's harping over a really minor thing. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 21:23, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

July 2009 Ürümqi riots

Hey, that's great its at FAC, nice work! :) To be honest, I don't have opinion on the flag use - I added the reactions as they came in and flags made it easier as is the case with many other articles, so reading your comment I agree it makes it easier visually, rather than a load of text. But noting the other users concerns, it would make sense to either change them to the "link alt" thing. Bolding is fine but I think I prefer the first option, though I'm happy with either outcome. Sorry I'm not much use, I'm not really familiar with Wikipedia policies in this respect! Midway (talk) 23:50, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

• As only admins can do this, can you please set up an {{editnotice}} and eject the stuff which is currently seen at the top of the article when in edit mode? Cheers. Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 04:43, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Good idea, I'll get to it right away. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 05:13, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
    • fix "titlesof" to "titles of" :) Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 05:24, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Was it you who changed the italicisation of BBC News, etc? If so, was it at the prompting of any FAC comment? AFAIK, italics are usually reserved for traditional (ie paper) journals etc. Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 01:34, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Not sure. I changed all instances of BBC News, etc., to |work= (from |publisher= or |agency=) because that seemed to be what Template:cite news suggested. Based on my reading of it, it sounded like |agency= is only supposed to be used for the agency that wrote and supplied the article (i.e., it's sort of a replacement for |author=) and generally only when that differs from the newspaper/website where we found it (for example, a China Daily article that says the source is Xinhua, or something on ABC news that says the source is AP). Anyway, long story short, the italicization is probably a result of that change.

Of course, I haven't been working with this template for a long time so perhaps that is not the consensus on how things should be used. But that's what the documentation makes it sound like, so if the consensus is different we should probably update the documentation. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 01:57, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, '|work=' does italicise. I'll go and sort them out. Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 02:11, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

July 2009 Ürümqi riots info for Chinese views

Sorry about not getting back to you sooner. I didn't do much wiki editing over the break, but I've been doing way too much eding for the Haiti earthquake articles over the last week. I put together some info that could be used on this temporary page User:David_Straub/urumqiriotsedit. I think the main problem with the Urumqi riots at the moment is that it includes almost no information concerning government claims that the riots were orchestrated by a terrorist separatist group in Xinjiang. I don't believe the claims of the government, but most Chinese do. I think that adding one section that explains the views of the government by using articles from mouthpiece sources such as the China Daily would both informative and at least alleviate some of the concerns of Chinese that their views be heard. But I won't worry that this is endorsing their views. I think it is just more likely to reveal how ridiculous their claims are. Review what I put together and let me know what you think/want to do with it. I'm a little busy right now, so if you want to add some of the text to the main article, feel free to do so.

Actually, I down loaded an pirated copy of Colin Legerton's book, but I didn't read it yet. He's in CEUS. I took a class with him last year.

Take care. David Straub (talk) 20:49, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for putting this together. To be honest, right now it looks like most of that information is more appropriate in the East Turkestan Islamic Movement article, as most of it is about ETIM and the history of ETIM rather than its putative involvement in the riots, and many of the China Daily/Xinhua articles you found don't actually say much about the riots beyond what's already in the WP article:

• Xinjiang riot hits regional anti-terror nerve just says that WUC might be affiliated with ETIM. (And that statement is sourced to Rohan Gunarata, about whom I remember Gardner Bovingdon had some titillating things to say ;) ). Other than the WUC-ETIM connection, it has little to say about the July riots.
• World Uyghur Congress behind Xinjiang violence: expert Just says that WUC instigated the riot, which is already detailed in the WP article (mostly in the second paragraph of the "immediate causes" section). I recall there used to be more about this in the article (I think there was a whole paragraph on stuff like the "something big will happen" phone conversation, or whatever (update: after some digging, it looks like I removed the "do something big" because the sentence it was in was plagiarized, and I never got around to re-adding it)), and it was gradually trimmed down as time gave us better perspective on all of it. This particular China Daily piece would be a useful reference to add to the section, but I don't think it has a lot of actual new content that needs to be added.
• Urumqi riots part of plan to help Al-Qaida Says that the riots were instigated by separatists and that WUC is affiliated with Al-Qaeda. The first point is already in the article; the second can be added.
• Al-Qaeda threatens Chinese abroad: covered in the International Reactions section

rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 21:07, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Made some additions, mostly of the terrorist connection stuff (since I think the rest of the stuff is either already covered, or more appropriate in the ETIM article which is now linked from this section). To be honest, for most of the summer I was pretty much ignoring the terrorism stuff because POV-pushers repeatedly trying to add the article to "Terrorism" and "Terrorist attacks" categories were leaving a bad taste in my mouth. Looking back now, it does look like you're correct to point out that some of that has gotten left out of the article, but at the same time I think there's only so much that can be said (essentially "the government says the riots were premeditated by terrorists and they're connected with international terrorist networks) and I don't think a whole section can be made out of it without repeating ourselves a lot. (Or becoming a mouthpiece for the crazy speculative stuff that was going on in forums in July, like "the rioters had sneakers on so they must have been PLANNING to riot"). rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 21:27, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

The article looks much better. Good job. I think the material added does balance out the article. We don't have to respect the views of the Chinese government and most Chinese, but it is important that their views are at least represented.David Straub (talk) 02:37, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I agree that it looks better, and I appreciate your taking the effort to find that material (and to press me to get it cleaned up!). Best, rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 02:44, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

July 2009 Ürümqi riots (Vmenkov)

Thanks for the invitation to comment on that article, but, after reading it, I don't think I can suggest any meaningful improvement or offer any meaningful criticism.

Well, OK, there is this one sentence, with a reference to a paper by Dru Gladney: "China's minority policy treats Uyghurs as a 'national minority' rather than an indigenous group." I am sure Dr. Gladney's paper (which I did not look at) probably explains what is meant by these words - he is a major writer on these issues, after all. But to a casual reader this statement sounds rather cryptic. I think that to an average person an "indigenous group" simply is an "ethnic minority" that is officially recognized as having a long-term association with a certain geographic area, and is officially granted certain special rights on account of that association. One would think that the (official) status of the Weiwu'er minzu in PRC -- with the XUAR on the maps, a 维吾尔民族简史 publsihed, an official bilingualism of sorts, and the policy of appointing members of the "titular nationality" to the (possibly figurehead) leadership positions in the region -- makes them just as "officially indigenous" to the region as the Nisga'a are to the Nass River Valley or the Buryats to Buryatia. So if I were to write this, I would perhaps try to explain what Gladney's dichotomy means.

Thinking of it, the preceding sentence "Uyghurs believe their ancestors were indigenous to the area, whereas government policy considers present-day Xinjiang to have belonged to China since the Han Dynasty", with its "whereas", implies a contradiction of the two point of views, even if it does not explicitly say that there is one. I certainly can imagine some kind of 维吾尔民族简史 talking about 我国维吾尔民族 happily living in the area in 100 BC (or wherever), in such-and-such commandery of the Western Han Dynasty empire...

Please feel free to ignore these comments, or to move them to an appropriate talk page elsewhere.

On an unrelated issue: could you insert proper Uyghur letters into Musa Sayrami, Yaqub Beg, Afaq Khoja, and Muzat River, sometimes when/if you have a chance? Official bilingualism or not, my Atlas of Xinjiang certainly does not have any 少数民族文字 in it! Vmenkov (talk) 12:05, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

That's a good point, it is a very complex paper, and I've kind of taken the sentence out of context (I was trying to avoid giving Gladney too much weight by going into a ton of detail on it). I'll try to see if I can explain it better—it's always tough to strike a balance between brevity and clarify!

By the way, I've had a go at the Uyghur names. Some require a bit of guesswork, since Romanizations of Uyghur are not consistent throughout history (for example, the "a" in "Muzat River" could be either ئا or ئە, which in ULY are written a and e respectively but have often just both been written a). The only one I couldn't figure out just yet is Musa Sayrami (it could just be that the macrons are confusing me, but also it's a pretty old name), so I might have to ask a friend for help with that one. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 17:28, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for Syrami and others! I was surprised to see that for Muza(r)t there are two spellings - with and without an r - in Uyghur as well; I thought it was an artefact of careless transcriptions. And there is even an interwiki, ug:مۇزات دەرياسى - of course, to a perfectly empty page! Vmenkov (talk) 01:16, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Hm, you are probably right then. I pretty much just guessed Uyghur names based on the Latin transcriptions and on the Chinese, which often (but not always) are derived from the Uyghur in a more or less systematic way. I hadn't even noticed the interwiki. But now that you've pointed that out, I corrected the Muzat transcription to match what's in the interwiki, which is more reliable. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 01:58, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Does this help clarify the Gladney quote? rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 00:03, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks; I guess it makes a bit more sense now: it implies to the reader that (according to Gladney, at least) recognizing an ethnic group as an "indigenous" one would require the transfer of land ownership /land control to a governing body specifically representing that ethnic group (and not just linguistic/cultural autonomy, availability of bilingual education, affirmative action, etc within the ethnic group's traditional territory). In other words, no Nisga'a Treaty, or even Gwaii Haanas National Park for the Uyghurs. (One can wonder how common this kind of recognition is world-wide, outside of the US and Canadian Indian bands that have appropriate treaties with their respective federal governments. E.g. Basques are certainly "indigenous" to the Basque Country, and the region has a high degree of autonomy, with its government actively promoting the Basque language and culture. But I am pretty sure that any Spanish citizen residing in the region, regardless of ethnicity, has equal right to purchase land, or to vote for / be elected to local governments controlling the land use... But in any event, such a discussion would be a topic for the Indigenous peoples article, and not for the article in question). Vmenkov (talk) 02:42, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

FAC-thought (Urumqi-riots)

I'm thinking... just in case the FAC goes through... We're gonna have to find a picture that's suitable for the front-page... I don't think any of the ones we have right now are good for that... (unless you want the damn map, but that'd be kinda cheesy...) Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 03:41, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Hm... I bet we could grab a screenshot from Ccyber's video? rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 04:18, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Well... there is this: File:WLMQ Cellphone screenshots 2v1.jpg. Or was that deemed too extreme or inappropriate for some reason? Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 04:28, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't think it's inappropriate; mainly we just removed it when the video became available, since the video is the better option. (I don't know if they've ever used video for the TFA image, though.) All in all, I think something from that video is the only thing in the article that would really work. For example, the picture of the APCs in September looks good and rioty, but it's not from the actual riots (and we wouldn't want to be accused of making the same sort of flubs that people made in July showing pictures of the wrong riots), plus I think there would be an anti-China POV issue with showing a picture of the crackdown and not showing a picture of the riots. The picture of Kadeer, of course, is a no go since she's just the scapegoat (I'm sure the PRC government would be overjoyed, though, if we put that picture on the front page with the riots article :P). And yeah, other than that all that's really left is the map, and as you say it would be a bit cheesy...plus I think Raul doesn't like using flags and maps.

I think the screenshots already uploaded are a bit small, since it's really four crammed into one. But we could probably hold a brief discussion on what part of the video we want to take, and then have a tech-y person get a higher-resolution screenshot of that. (I don't think we need to worry about taking care of that, though, until the FAC is over :) ) rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 04:35, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

True. Just putting this into one more brain before it escapes mine :P Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 05:21, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Pick a frame, and I'll get you a high-res image. Just give me the time in milliseconds. :) -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 05:23, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

"leading schools" and "athletic directors"

Rjanag has changed the correct "athletic directors" to the incorrect "athletics directors." This is my first encounter with Rjanag. He may be British, in which case "athletics" is sometimes heard. In the United States (where I have been editing for nearly forty years) it is "athletic director." And the article title in Wikipedia is "Athletic director," so some other Wikipedia editor than Rjanag got it right. Google Search has the margin 10 to 1 in favor of "athletic" (2,560,000 to 263,000). It's equally lopsided in Google News (8,760 to 1,096). Elsewhere, Rjanag has removed my "leading American schools" -- which was a neutral, necessary, descriptive, definitive cultural shorthand -- in articles about the members of a body of, well, *leading* American schools. Again, it's a question of editorial or cultural "ear," as well as age and professional experience. "Leading schools" is an ancient term and locution, often emanating from headmasters' conferences (especially in the UK), but also often encountered in writing about schools, education, education history, in school directories, in journalism, in descriptions of school associations, and so forth. If eight of the most famous prep schools in the United States compose what Andover's "The Phillipian" has characterized as a "mirror of the Ivy League," then the innocuous phrase "group of leading American schools" is not only permissible, it is necessary, a definer, a describer, a clarifier. Rjanag may work tirelessly in Wikipedia, clearing out the undergrowth. But he doesn't know everything about everything, and in some areas he should try to learn. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Micheldene (talk • contribs) 04:23, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Please don't talk to me in the third person, it's both condescending and obnoxious. I will be willing to engage in rational discussion with you once you are willing to do the same. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 04:35, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

If you would excuse the intrusion on your user page, Rjanag, I agree with you and your removal of peacock terms. And now I will take this to the article talk pages, where Micheldene should have brought his/her condescending statements in the first place. Cheers, --BaronLarf 05:04, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Not terrible, but a bit of your own medicine

Your very first message to me, a person unknown to you, was titled "Warring" (a concept I'd never heard of) and was itself worse than condescending. It was reactionary, bullying, preremptory and, given your howler about "athletic director," wrong. You demanded to know why I was everywhere undoing your work. I don't know about "undoing." I don't "undo" individual Wikipedia contributors. You were wrong about "athletic director" and you're wrong about the conventional, formulaic, innocuous, and often necessary phrase "leading schools." When you begin to understand that idiomatic fact, I'll change my present opinion that you're incredibly thin-skinned about editorial disagreement. (Incidentally, there isn't enough good writing in Wikipedia for you to be chasing off the professional writers you accidentally attract.) Now, let's start over, beginning with your apology for the bullying tone of that initial message to me.Micheldene (talk) 05:18, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

(Others are watching Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 05:21, 24 February 2010 (UTC))

I'm not really in the mood for arguing over "how mean" various messages were or comparing our credentials, so let's please just focus on the content issues at hand. Another editor has already commented at Talk:Eight Schools Association and at Talk:Choate Rosemary Hall#WP:PEACOCK saying that he thinks "leading" is not necessary, so why not continue the discussion there? rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 05:28, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

User talk:Thoughts in space

During all my time as a patroller I have never encountered the tradition that warnings are only given "per spurt of vandalism". Could I please get an elaboration about what you are trying to achieve here? Also the account is clearly a vandalism-only account, I fail to see the constructiveness in your attempt at prolonging the existence of this account on Wikipedia. --Saddhiyama (talk) 16:21, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

During all my time, users have been given a chance to respond to warnings--i.e., to hear them and stop their vandalism. Unless the vandalism is so bad that it warrants a 4im, there's no point giving a user 3 or 4 warnings before he's had a chance to see the first one. I agree that this account is a useless account and will probably never do anything constructive, but we should still be fair when dishing out warnings. Trampling people under our heel, even if they're useless people, doesn't always reflect well on the project. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 16:34, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Concerning your last part when it comes to dedicated vandals I can only say I disagree wholeheartedly. But let us leave it at that and hope this user has learned their lesson and hopefully abandoned the account. --Saddhiyama (talk) 16:43, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

ANI

Your edit is being discussed here. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 05:39, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, I saw it just as you were sending this message. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 05:41, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Please sir can I make some changes?

Get a grip man. My edit was perfectly proper. I don't have to discuss edits with you; nobody died and made you head of the wikipedia. The edit was not even controversial except in your head.

If you bother to read WP:LEAD guideline this is the style that leads are supposed to follow wherever possible.

In fact, it's unbelievably clear policy, WP:NAD says (and I did not write this bit):

"However, sometimes, a Wikipedia article (particularly stubs) will be badly written. Its introduction will say something such as "Dog is a term for an animal with the binomial name Canis lupus." or "Dog is a word that refers to a domesticated canine.". Such articles are not dictionary articles. They are badly written encyclopedia articles, that should be cleaned up in accordance with our Guide to writing better articles. Simply replace the cumbersome phrasings such as "is a term for", "is a word that means", "refers to", with the very simple "is": "A dog is an animal with the binomial name Canis lupus." "A dog is a domesticated canine."

It's all there, you just haven't read it.- Wolfkeeper 05:45, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Your edit was so poorly considered, you accidentally removed the most important part of the the article subject: the fact that it refers to suburbs in France. After your edit, it could have been misread as being about any place.

And overall I do not believe your edits are an improvement. This article is not only about the suburbs, there is also information on the word itself. Your rewrite would be more appropriate in an article titled Suburbs in France or something like that. If you believe the article's scope should be changed and the article should be moved, you can start a discussion on the talk page to suggest it, but you shouldn't just go around changing articles to conform to your narrow view of what Wikipedia should be. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 05:51, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Except the word is not restricted to outskirts in France, wiktionary:Banlieue nor did your revert make the article say that; and so that was not why you reverted the edit anyway.- Wolfkeeper 05:58, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Incorrect, it refers almost exclusively to suburbs of French cities. The wiktionary page has no examples of other usages, and besides it's only a wiktionary page, it's not a reliable source on the matter. Removing mention of French from the first paragraph is not at all constructive. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 06:31, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Comments in edit summaries

Just in case you didn't know, comments in edit summaries are seen as more problematic than comments in text because they are part of the server logs and can only be removed by WP:OVERSIGHT. This is not always appreciated, so you're not the first to be bitten by this (as I was myself). Guy (Help!) 10:41, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Entropa

Dear Rjanag, if wiki should became a valuable resource of proved information you should also let research work have done. Who knows, that all other quoted sources are verified, if you don't let have them checked by someone. I am tired of adding my corrections to the article again and again. I cannot do more, then adding valuable sources and research. Please give me a concrete advice, proved by academics, that adding the 2 footnotes and the one sentence is incorrect. Since you mentioned my both IP addresses, yes, I am working not always on the same place, sorry, and I also do not have time for endless discussions in this so called "Talk Page". Do you really want to protect the Entropa entry from verified sources? Then I must say, I am very sorry for wiki and you should have let checked all the sources by a wiki watch man to verify all entries including footnotes. Thank you 85.127.163.176 (talk) 15:50, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

No, we should not "let research work be done"—Wikipedia does not accept original research. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 16:16, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

You are just terrible

I think that you are holding back and censoring verified sources on Wiki entries. 85.127.163.176 (talk) 15:56, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

You have been given ample opportunity to engage in discussion with other editors, but instead you are continuing to edit war when numerous editors disagree with your changes. If you want something to be added, start a discussion at the talk page and make your suggestion. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 16:16, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I know, that I made formal mistakes in communication, but I did not have time to check all the rules of wiki how to make entries and communicate them. I am very sorry for this, since I am a normal user and no computer freak. I cannot do more then apologize. And since all this procedure was already cosuming too much time, I think I have to give up. Thank you for your kind help and support. 85.127.163.176 (talk) 16:28, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

It doesn't take a "computer freak" to know how to talk to people. You were given several warnings, and didn't bother to "apologize" until the page was protected. If I hadn't protected it, I imagine you would still be edit warring. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 16:30, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

I did not think, that I have to apologize, because my intention was good, but just I did not understand all the warnings. And I did apologize before above. Now I really cannot follow this anymore, I have also other things to do. Thank you. 85.127.163.176 (talk) 16:37, 28 February 2010 (UTC)