User:Robert McClenon/Notes in Cuneiform

Notes in Cuneiform

This page contains material that is kept because it is considered humorous.
Such material is not meant to be taken seriously.

This is an essay on the deletion policy.

It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.

Some of the sandboxes that are referred to MFD for deletion discussions make about as much sense as notes in cuneiform. One of the objectives of this essay is to comment on what should be done with notes in cuneiform that have been found by an editor poking around in the sandboxes of other editors. There are at least two options if cuneiform is found in the sandbox of an editor. The first, which is likely to be wisest, choice is to leave it alone, either because it is in a sandbox, or because cuneiform is obscure, or for any other reason. The second is to find an Assyriologist to decipher the cuneiform, and Wikipedia is a reasonable on-line community in which to look for a scholar with any obscure background.

It may be found that the notes in cuneiform are a record of an exchange of jugs of oil and measures of barley for silver. It may be found that the notes in cuneiform are a record of the schedule for the digging of irrigation channels from the Tigris.

It may be concluded that the notes in cuneiform are a letter from a Babylonian priestess reporting that she had a dream in which Inanna told the priestess that her grandfather Enki had said that Shamash said that Hammurabi should be advised to publish a better code of laws. We know that is what Hammurabi is known for. If the letter is genuine, it may be historically significant, and should be verified by a reliable source, and should be described in article space, but only after it has been published. Wikipedia is not a journal for primary publication. Then again, it may be concluded that the notes, which do indeed purport to be a letter from a priestess advising that Hammurabi should publish a better code of laws, were written in 1990. If so, they are a hoax. Wikipedia does not publish hoaxes (at least not willingly), and its rules about publishing stories about notable hoaxes follow its policies that it only reports what has already been reported by reliable sources.

It may be found that the notes in cuneiform state that a member of the Bundesrat has been in bed with a nanny. In that case, it may be unfortunate that they were ever taken to the Assyriologist for deciphering, because they are a biographies of living persons violation. The species of the nanny is not important. If she is H. sapiens, the allegation of adultery is probably a BLP violation. (Captain van Trapp got his nanny in bed by making her Frau van Trapp.) If she is C. aegagrus, the allegation of bestiality is still a BLP violation (regardless of the issue of the legality of bestiality in Germany).

My conclusion is that it probably isn't useful to determine the meaning of the notes in cuneiform. It is likely to open up a Pandora's box, if it doesn't contain the Mesopotamian version of the Pandora myth. Leave the notes in cuneiform alone.