User talk:Future Perfect at Sunrise

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Dodona

Probably should have asked you first, but I've blocked him for 3 months. Just couldn't believe he went straight back to Arvanites with more nonsense after you gave him a final warning to stop. Selective hearing, I suppose. Best, Moreschi ^{If you've written a quality article...} 16:10, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Fine with me. It's sad after all the efforts, but he seriously didn't seem to be getting it. Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:15, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Regarding the posted material on Arvanites and Polyphonic Music of Epirus, I am positive I stated where the material came from. I don't think that is plagiarism. (Epirjoti)

Language Map Greece

Why are we not inserting the map in the articles? Because of some user with their alledged claim that its wrong? They have provided no sources and have done nothing to fix the situation. Whereas I have found another source that contradicts their claims (see the discussion). I think its unfair that this user has to prevent us from using the map. Polibiush (talk) 04:09, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, they do have one point, the map in the present version has some minor factual errors, mostly misplaced locations. I hope to be able to make a replacement some time this weekend. Let's discuss the matter again then. Fut.Perf. ☼ 05:53, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Ancient map

You promised me a map from a modern source on antiquity and its friday!!!Megistias (talk) 12:00, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it's Friday!!! Yay, Fridayyyy! Working on it. :-) Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:08, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Which means it must be Caturday tomorrow. Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:27, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Albanians of Romania

Hello, I kinda need your help on this cos` I know that you are quite familiar with ethnicity and linguistics. I got into a sort of a fight with User:Dahn, the hole discussion was in Romanian, so I don`t belive that it will have any relevence to you. So, here`s the deal: last night for a few hours we fought over the use and value of a source. To be more precise in [[1]] at page 34(in the third column left to right) we found that "According to certain studies,there are approximately 3,000 Muslim Albanians in Romania.", however the author(George Grigore), while a credible source , does not state what sources state so(I have been accused of WP:OR by Dahn because I stated so)! He does have some sources for the Muslim comunity of Romania:

Ekrem Mehmet Ali, 1995, Din istoria turcilor(my note: "Turks") d o b r o g e n i, Bucuresti, Editura Kriterion;

Ð Mehmet Ablay, 1997, Din istoria tatarilor(my note: "tatars"), Bucuresti, Editura Kriterion;

Ð R. Florescu, 1976, Prezente musulmane ”n Rom‰nia / Muslims in Romania. Past and Present / Maca l i m Islamiyya fi Rumaniya. With a Preface by Iacub Mehmet, Mufti of the Muslim Cult in the Socialist Republic of Romania, Bucharest, Meridiane Publishing House;

So the first two are about turks and tatars....the next reference, that is about general muslim comunities in Romania...is from 1967! There are some notes that I might add: there were other arguments (like a speculation I made that maybe they were displaced as the article was published shortly after the Kosovo War, my bad) that were dropted and are irelevant. Another thing that I must mention is that in a short 3-4 hours I`ved been accused of : trolling, not respecting certain wikipedia policies like WP:VERIF and WP:NPA( althogh I didn`t attacked him, I just mentioned that I undid ONCE the article at the time), starting an edit war, laking experience and threatend to be mentioned on the noticed board. I must add that he did not insult me and that I did try to stop the aggresion, though I did got a little lighten-up myself upon his refusal of ameliorating his conduct. And in the end he refused to talk! So in a nutshell, we currently have the following issues:

• The given source does not state that it personaly made a study, nor does it gives the references upon the alleged studies were based on.
• If the hole of this arguments are based on the references that given on the bottom-right of page 34 of the "isim"(the institution that made the hole paper) article, then the most "fresh" of the sources if from 1976, and for demographics that is very old!

The source is credible: so I modified the page to state that there are "alleged" studies that state so(because it is clear that Professor George Grigore did not made those "studies" himself), but he modified it back!

As he refused to talk, there is no way we can stop this without mediation and as stated above, you seme to have the required experience: so if he is wrong, please make him stop my edits; if I am wrong, then explain to me were, and I will stop modifing the page.Please respond quick, if you can of course. AdrianCo (talk) 17:14, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi, Future perfect. Let me just touch the main points that i do believe make this discussion futile and its proponent turn around in circles without seemingly wanting to inform himself on the basic tenets of wikipedia.

For starters, what he did first was to erase the number cited from the source, because, you see, it looked to big to him. He wasted several pages of written text to tell me that the reference was not precisely indicated, and that it is not reliable - both of which, as it turns out, he has come to see were not the case. I have indicated to him that the source is academic, that it fits the most rigorous criteria outlined in WP:RS, and that (contrary to his repeated speculation about the impact of the Kosovo War being responsible for this "too high" number - go figure!), the author is a Romanian scholar. At any point in this discussion, the info was attributed, and not presented as an absolute truth. It does so even more at the moment, where, due to AdrianCo's persistent attempts to have the info questioned or rephrased into a weasel-worded manner, it is attributed directly to that Romanian scholar (which, to my mind, is too much on the safe side and too much of a concession to a person that wants this detail removed or trivialized at all cost).

Note that this person attempts to do the following: from a short source text that does not provide page-by-page references (nor needs to), he looks at the titles of books and makes personal speculations about whether or not the info could be found in the sources used by the source! He then pretends that, because he finds it unlikely, he can question the scholarly source and present the researcher's argument as a reference to "alleged studies" - because, you see, if he is not aware of them, they must be alleged. Adding that "alleged" is WP:OR, because this user manifestly draws on his own conclusions to dismiss a source that is not dismissed by any criterion on wikipedia. It is also unfair representation of the source, thus going against WP:NPOV. Even more so, the info presented, as you will see from the text, does deals with tatars and Turks, because the author indicates that the number of Muslim Albanians in Romania may be higher than recorded due to the fact that many may be counted as Turks/Tatars - since it takes two to tango, I don't for the love of me understand why AdrianCo cannot see it as part of a text on Turks or Tatars. Furthermore, given that the source is reliable and the author has academic status, the info may just as well not be present in any source cited, but in altogether different studies - if simply mentioned in such a source, there will be enough reason to cite it in a wikipedia article.

Furthermore, he repeatedly asks me why I would think that, "as nationalist a people as the Albanians are, why would they discard their national identity?" Leaving aside the several fallacies and the stereotype contained in this phrase, a possible answer is indicated by the source itself and passed into the article in question not one phrase after the info he keeps removing/twisting around. With or without that, the essential that this person is missing, although he repeatedly claimed that I am the one in breach of WP:V (!), is the very first line of that policy: "Wikipedia is about verifiability, not truth". The info is verified in the source cited, and the source cited is beyond reproach. That is all that wikipedia cares about, and this is why I shan't be spending any more of my time explaining myself to this guy. Dahn (talk) 17:48, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

(ec) Response to Adrian, before reading the response from Dahn:

• I don't know where you get the idea from that the most recent source was from 1976. Since these Muslim Albanians are said to be closely integrated with the Turkish-Tatar communities, I don't see why the two recent sources, about Turks and Tatars, could not be the ones that contain the relevant figures. Why don't you go and look them up?
• Of course, the fact that the writer doesn't disclose which source exactly he got that figure from is somewhat unsatisfactory, but since you yourself grant he is generally a reliable scholar, and by quoting the estimate he has to some extent endorsed it (as being at least plausible), I don't see anything wrong with a statement like "According to one estimate<ref>Quoted in George Grigore....</ref>...". By quoting the estimate, and especially because he isn't explicitly attributing it, he is making that estimate his own, so we can quote it as if it were his.
• I fully agree with Dahn that "alleged" is not a good solution. It has far too negative overtones; basically it carries a strong implication that there are reasons to doubt the claim.
• The article as it currently stands lacks a source for the other, much more prominent figure, the "477" in the lead. If that's a census figure, I'd recommend integrating it into the demographics section with an explicit attribution, because numbers of self-reported members of a minority doesn't automatically mean really existing numbers. So, I'd arrive at something like: "In the census of 2002, 477 persons described themselves as ethnic Albanians. According to one estimate..." etc.
• By the way, the article also comes across as self-contradictory with respect to the religious affiliations. Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:05, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

1)I did only once state that thing about nationalism! Dahn inflated it! I did not did so repetedly, but quickly dicarded it as it was my mistake, how many times must I say so? AdrianCo (talk) 18:18, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

2)There are also many other problems in what Dahn wrote...but to make everybody happy, what is wrong with a formulation like: "according to scholar George Grigore, there are supposed to be various studies show that about 3,000 members of the Romanian Muslim community may in fact be Albanian" AdrianCo (talk) 18:22, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

I personally don't like having names of authors explicit in the article text, unless they are extremely notable. Also, "according to" and "are supposed to" are redundant. Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:29, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Playing down one's person scholarship by infusing needless doubt when an information is already attributed, and implying that the person may be wrong because, to you, the info may not be found in the sources used by the source, is in breach of wikipedia guidelines. "Supposed" is exactly the same as "alleged" in this respect: it is one editor's attempt to editorialize with what he thinks about the nature of the information. In this case, both words and all their synonyms are infringements of WP:WEASEL. Furthermore, wikipedia's policies on verifiability do not and cannot possibly ask users to verify the verifiability of a source that is already reliable (with a reliability you yourself do not question). Dahn (talk) 18:34, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Then how about a formulations such as : "there are some scholars that claim there are various studies show that about 3,000 members of the Romanian Muslim community may in fact be Albanian". If i remember, you, Future Perfect, had a similar problem not a long time ago: Dodona, or someone else, but I think it was him gaved a source, a dictionary of some sort, that stated that the "albaninans were Epirotes"(or something close), you refuted him by saying that the problem with the source is that the author, while credible, does not give us the place were he took his research from, and that "this is the problems with dictionaries", I think you recall better than I. I think this is the case now, the aricle is not a very profund research on albanians, but a more general view on muslims world-wide, and the problem is that he does not give us the source, but maybe Dahn knows it, as he says that it is clear and verifieble where those studies came from. AdrianCo (talk) 18:42, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

I would appreciate it if AdrianCo would not twist my words. I'm also growing really tired of improper analogies (a dictionary is not an article, and there is no indication that the dictionary itself was reliable, or that the user in question was not using it to say what it did not say - neither of which is the case here) and of circling around the issue by moving the problem around (now using the exact same weasel-worded approach, but not mentioning the author). I'm also getting tired of canards such as the claim that now the article is too focused on Muslims (!) - with the implied fallacy that is. alas, common among POV pushers that one should trim an article that exposes something they cannot refute, but dislike to see. I for one consider the matter closed. Dahn (talk) 18:52, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Ah... i did not say anything about muslim-centrism, where did you get that, Dahn? AdrianCo (talk) 18:58, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Future Perfect, would you please read this edit summary? Could then inform this user of what wikipedia is not? Thank you. Dahn (talk) 19:01, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Not a battleground, i know, so please give us your prefered formulation Future... AdrianCo (talk) 19:03, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Just one more thing, I rememberd, another exemple of Dahn`s statemants: he said that the number appered to great to me(sic).Here was what the article looked like before I edited it, after numerous edits by Dahn:[2] "Around 3,000 Romanian Albanians adhere to Islam." AdrianCo (talk) 19:13, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Okay, can you two please just give the article a rest now? I'm sure you must be over 3rr anyway, I don't dare to count. If you want a concrete proposal for a new wording from me, let me sleep over it and give it a try tomorrow. Fut.Perf. ☼ 19:33, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Well?It`s just a phrase. I would like to make a note though: the article is from 1999! Now, the UN makes demographic estimates so often just because a time span of more then 2-4 years can mean serious differences in ethinicity(and the 2002 census appears to me as a more recent source thent those cliamed in the isim article(if they exist)). Anyhow, it`s just a sugestion to mention this as well of course. However I am still waiting for your decision on the issue I had with Dahn("various sources show" vs "various sources claim" vs "Romanian scholar...claims there are variouse sources" vs "in a 1999 study....(any of the 3 mentioned above)" vs any other formulation that you prefer). AdrianCo (talk) 14:55, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Two issues

Sorry to bother you I see you have a lot of work with the whole Kosovo thing going on right now, but I really need two pieces of advice. I can surely take things in my own hands, but I really need to know what you think and what you'd advise me as you're practically the only admin that knows what's the problem with us. So by the virtue of importance

1. Nostradamus - I think you saw what I posted on the Administrator's noticeboard, but you didn't give your opinion on the subject. For some reason he keeps trying to force his own view to lots of articles. He has really messed up the whole Turkic-Turkish thing. Not only what happens in Turks in Bulgaria (I'll describe it a little later), but he's continuously forcing his view that practically all Bulgarian and Wallachian rulers were Turkic - although in all cases there is a dispute among historians on the origin of those people and the Turkic (Cuman) theory is certainly not prevailing. So bla bla bla (I'm getting too lengthy) just look at his contribs and the Cumans article where I removed a repeating sentence and was labeled a vandal once again. As for Turks in Bulgaria he keeps calling everything that doesn't suit him as some communist etc etc propaganda and at the same time he keeps adding the stuff about Turkic people in it despite the fact that they have nothing to do with the Turks in Bulgaria. Yeah, I think I'm too lengthy - just look at the article if you have the time and Nostradamus contribs. If I'm wrong in this case, please, tell me, but I'm getting the impression he just dislikes Bulgarians judging from the tags he put on the article about the country.
2. This image - what should I do if I question what is allegedly displayed on the image. This is certainly a controversial matter and should I (the one who questions the image) should provide some sources that the content is mis-presented. I do not question that it comes from the source given, but I question 1. The credibility of the source and 2. The way it represents this image - Bulgarian soldiers (although you cannot tell this by the photo, but you can see a German uniform) have cut the heads of Macedonian partisans (it is a clear case of Bad guys killing the good). This is certainly POV and such an image can cause every reader to have this Bulgarian aggressors as the Devil's servants.

Sorry for the lengthy questions and just tell me if you don't have the time or the nervs to look it all up :) --Laveol ^T 21:36, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

A little update - despite I pointed out there's almost an exact sentence in the article Nostradamus still restored it. This is in connection with him forcing his own view: Look: The Cumans were the founders of three successive Bulgarian dynasties (Asenids, Terterids, and Shishmanids), and the Wallachian dynasty (Basarabids). is what he's adding and It is generally believed that the Bulgarian mediaеval dynasties Asen, Shishman and Terter had some Cuman roots. is a sentence located at the end of the History section of the article. Am I the only one feeling that the second one is more like NPOV? --Laveol ^T 22:39, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm afraid I really won't have much time dealing with this. Just a few notes. The "Turkic"-"Turkish" distinction is pretty much anachronistic when applied to pre-modern times, as far as I know. Please be careful to not project it back into a time when these groups were all called simply Turks, and a more specifically Turkish nationality connected with the Turkish state didn't yet exist. How to deal with such historical groups in modern terminology is a thing intelligent people might legitimately disagree about. On the Turks in Bulgaria article, I just noticed Nostradamus removing a section about "Turkification". That section indeed strikes me as very heavily tendentious, certainly not up to quality standards of modern historical scholarship. About those "Cuman" dynasties, I really couldn't comment without spending a considerable amount of time first reading up on stuff. As for the photo, again, I wouldn't know, you'd have to provide some argument about what other groups besides Bulgarian police forces were there (uniforms, etc.) Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:32, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Ummm could you give me a hand about the Turks in Bulgaria issue - Nostradamus doesn't seem to be willing to discuss anything. I removed both of the contested items with a will to discuss things and eventually figure this out. We've already asked him a close to a million questions and given him enough reasons for why the section about Turkic people is irrelevant, but what he did was to ignore everything we've wrote and just restore the section, leaving a comment that we should provide reasons. Is this an arbitration case and if not - could you point me to an admin who might be available and willing to assist us. --Laveol ^T 08:52, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Arrgghh. Looking into it. Thanks for doing the sensible thing and removing both contested passages, they are indeed both of terrible quality (and the anon who reinstated the one was of course our banned friend Jingiby :-( Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:36, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, it just didn't work. Nostradamus re-aded the section with a new name. And it is even more POVish than the one before. No discussion, no nothing. --Laveol ^T 08:29, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

I believe you forgot about this......

Cut-n-paste involving Uhrana (history) and Ohrana (history). I can has history merge :D?

My mad adnim skillz. Let me show you them. Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:56, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Kthxbai. BalkanFever 08:04, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Confused

User:Dimboukas seems to like putting Greek Macedonia above the Republic of Macedonia in Macedonia. [3][4]. I reverted him once - I don't know why, because it is a dumb superficial thing, but it begs the question: why would he change it in the first place? I honestly have no idea how to handle a confusing situation like this. BalkanFever 08:45, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

How about rotating it every so often? Or is not being on top at all times such a threatening prospect? ·ΚέκρωΨ· (talk) 08:47, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Good lord. Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:50, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

I hope

I hope its not someone familiar,[5],[6]Megistias (talk) 13:17, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

And he changed computers,[7]Megistias (talk) 13:24, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

popit

Poppit isnt new and he falsely nominated my image for deletion.[8]Megistias (talk) 18:12, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Map

Thanks for taking the initiative of redrawing the map. Your work is appreciated. You might want to consider locking articles in the future if annonymous users start to revert again. Polibiush (talk) 23:32, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Please take look...

...at Talk:Kosovo#PROPOSAL FOR THE HISTORY SECTION and Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Disruption on Kosovo article, potential abusive sockpuppets. I think protection is the way to go. BalkanFever 08:08, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Update: this has increased the size of (the already long enough) history section. And it doesn't seem very NPOV....BalkanFever 10:03, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Brace yourself

I knew I should have changed it back BalkanFever 10:36, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Question?

Are these two the same thing: Macedonian language and Slavic language (Greece)? If they are then fine, but if they aren't then can the latter (Slavic) be added to Image:MapOfMacedonianSpeakers.png as a claim for describing Macedonian language speakers? _{El Greco}^(talk) 16:16, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

As you are certainly well aware, it is a somewhat politicalised topic, but the international academic literature basically agrees that, yes, the Slavic idioms spoken in Greek Macedonia form part of the Macedonian language. That is the case even though some of their local speakers may use different, local names for it, and may not identify ethnically as Macedonians (ethnic group). I was discussing this with Niko right now.

Even though linguists are generally aware of the political and theoretical intricacies involved, as far as I can see, counting the speakers in Greece among the worldwide speakers of Macedonian faithfully reflects what's usually done in the literature. Open any linguistic encyclopedia or catalogue of languages of your choice and look up what countries "Macedonian" is spoken in. I bet you a pound of moustokouloura that it will include Greece. Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:25, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Ok, just checking. _{El Greco}^(talk) 16:32, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

"Mouses"

Yeah, I knew all along it's "mice". I don't know how it slipped, and I can't correct my edit summaries retroactively. I know you know I know and I know you know I hate I can't change it and I know you know that if I didn't post this redundant message I wouldn't be able to sleep tonight. Afta. NikoSilver 18:17, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Dude, for lolcat-style communication "mouses" works just fine. Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:29, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Heh, and the real non-sentimental argument should be: "every time you disregard people's self-identification..." Glad you chose not to deal with it in the end by combining the two and by acknowledging that the line is not clearly drawn. The mice are so happy! NikoSilver 18:36, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Minorities in Greece

Okay, I'll warn that IP for the image removal and I've protected the page for a week. Thanks for the message and good call on not taking any admin action yourself. Take care and don't hesitate to message me if you need anything, friend. Scarian^{Call me Pat} 20:13, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

What does this do?

Why did he do this? changing the number of the block,what does this do?Megistias (talk) 20:20, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

User:88.252.64.238

Can you please block Special:Contributions/88.252.64.238 or atleast lock the pages that the user has edited. The user continues to make POV edits in these Cyprus related articles, not to mention change the name of templates to those that don't exist, and has been warned multiple times. _{El Greco}^(talk) 01:00, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

I've blocked for a day, explicity not because of the POV pushing, but because the edits were technically harmful. For him to want "... is a town in Northern Cyprus" in the lead of location articles strikes me as a legitimate position, indeed, I'd say it makes a lot of sense. So please be careful not to level "vandalism" warnings against him when it's just a mixture of not-so-out-of-the-ordinary tendentiousness with technical incompetence. Fut.Perf. ☼ 06:27, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. _{El Greco}^(talk) 16:07, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Actually, now the ip user appears to be Special:Contributions/83.66.22.10. _{El Greco}^(talk) 16:20, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

And that one turns out to be a longterm banned sockpuppeter anyway. Bingo. Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:22, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

One of your edits in October

Larissa (disambiguation) - why did you remove the persons? --KnightMove (talk) 01:16, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Because these were entries where the dab term was merely a person's first name. I don't see much sense in including those in such pages. There are thousands and thousands of individuals named Larissa. I can't see that a list of such people either contributes to encyclopedic coverage of "Larissa" as a first name (as per WP:NOT a directory of random information), or that it has a useful function specifically on a dab page. Can you imagine a reader typing "Larissa" in the search box, and expecting to come out at Larissa França? People in western cultures are not normally identified by only their first names; readers know that they need a person's family name to identify them. Fut.Perf. ☼ 06:13, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Proposed Kosovo naming guidelines

I've drafted a set of naming guidelines for Kosovo, loosely along the lines of the earlier WP:MOSMAC, which I created ages ago. Could you possibly take a look and see what you think? It's been a pain drafting them, and I'm sure I've not got everything right first time around, but I would very much appreciate your views in the light of your experience with ethnic conflicts. Please see User:ChrisO/Wikipedia:Manual of Style (Kosovo-related articles). -- ChrisO (talk) 01:40, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

You might want to take a look....

Wikipedia:WikiProject Illyria. Creator:ArberBorici. BalkanFever 08:48, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

language map greece

Great map. Just wondering with what program you made it with. Polibiush (talk) 22:02, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Inkscape. It's a bit involved until you get the hang of it, but with a bit of practice it does get the work done. Fut.Perf. ☼ 22:14, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Its good but the map looks as if only those languages are spoken in those areas........Megistias (talk) 22:16, 25 February 2008 (UTC)'

Arrrrrrgghhhh, not again... :-p No, it doesn't, not with the right caption. Seriously, without wanting to offend you, I believe that concern is only an issue when seen with the eyes of those overblown national sensitivities about ethnic homogeneity characteristic of the Greek mentality. People elsewhere in the world generally understand that more than one language can be spoken in the same location, and if the map caption simply tells them that this is the case, they'll be cool with it. Fut.Perf. ☼ 22:23, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Ethnologue has a legend just for this reason i stated below and they dont have greek sensitivities.So it would be good if you put one in.Megistias (talk) 22:41, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

We'll do all that. Either as a legend within the map or in the caption. Let's first finish talking about getting the map itself in its final shape. Fut.Perf. ☼ 22:47, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Without wanting to offend your work as well you should understand that most people on the planet earth are idiots.They wont think of this as you put it.Thats why people put legends in maps.Megistias (talk) 22:28, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

I believe that concern is only an issue when seen with the eyes of those overblown national sensitivities about ethnic homogeneity characteristic of the Greek mentality. You took the words right out of my mouth ;) Polibiush (talk) 22:38, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

We will clarify that in the caption. It seems you aren't the only one to have that concern. Polibiush (talk) 22:19, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Btw F.P., the Albanian, Slavic, and Romance languages look very accurate, you obviously did your research. Just look at whether we should add rhe Turkish language in some of the islands. Polibiush (talk) 22:22, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Dutch lakes

I'm halfway through fixing them and now I'm confused - can you hold off for a few minutes? Neıl ☎ 15:10, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Need help

I was wondering if we(you,to be more precise) could block the Skanderbeg article.Lately people have been changing it according to their own agenda,making him serbian,illyrian,and God knows what else.I don't know if such an action(block) is possible but,until further notice, seems like the wisest thing to do.Thanks in advance.Amenifus (talk) 10:33, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Map assistance

Tell me what you need on your map ??

Also - I put in several other move requests - you'll see I am up against a wall here with germanic users insisting to keep articles in german when there is a suitable English translation for English wiki. Rarelibra (talk) 14:36, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Just wanted your expert advice on how to improve the design. Color scheme, how to place the legends, that sort of thing. How do I best link up the legends with the color blobs? Especially in the cases where it's several small blobs all over the place - is it okay if I just place a legend right in the map near the most visible of the blobs, as I did now, or is it better to have a list of color codes with legends at the bottom? Or do I link the legends with the blobs through joining lines? Also, what is the expert's opinion about the idea of coding one of the blob groups with a color gradient? (there's a serious issue behind it, it's supposed to be a dialect continuum, and the identity of the dialects in between is politically contentious.)

Regarding the map - I took a look and it looks fine the way it is. I don't understand the insistence for a legend when the areas are clearly marked and understandable. But if a legend is needed, you can create one to coincide with the various colors and place it in a corner, typically where there is less 'real estate' to cover up (on this map, I would say the lower left in the ocean area). I don't like the idea of assigning a color gradient to a politically contentious continuum, unless there is an established standard for the representation of such colors (like the standard of blue for hydro features, green for vegetation, etc - no matter what language a map is in, it is intuitive to understand the usage of those colors). So if there is a color standard for such, then follow the standard. If you are attempting to create one, then you will always have the critics come forward. My maps aren't always perfect - but they fill the void until someone improves upon them or offers me constructive support to improve mine. But things get twisted out of context - I was accused of being racist by someone once because he said "the text on my African maps was smaller than that on my European maps." My God, was I shocked to see such an attempt. So be prepared. Nice work, though! Rarelibra (talk) 15:10, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

About the lake names, I agree in principle that translations are common practice, but I'd always check that against a less rigid, more practical application of WP:USEENGLISH: if a non-translated version is actually the more common in English usage, I'd stick with that. For instance, "Lake Chiem" seems rather rare compared to untranslated "Chiemsee". Perhaps it's because in German these are one-word units, English sometimes adopts them untranslated. Also, in the case of some items in "X-er See" (like Plauer See), the format "Lake X-er" just grates in my ears, as a native speaker of German. The suffix -er is a derivative suffix that turns the underlying placename into an adjective, and that makes only sense syntactically if the adjective comes before the noun "See". Plauer See could be "Lake of Plau", but "Lake Plauer"? Well, some English speakers apparently do that, but you'll have to excuse me, my linguistic gut feeling just breaks down at that point. Fut.Perf. ☼ 14:51, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

So what you are saying, then, is we can go to French wiki, German wiki, etc and change "Lac Michigan", "Michigansee", "Lago de Michigan" back to "Lake Michigan" (etc. for all English name lakes) because they would be referred to more properly and can easily find the non-translated version more common? It is ludicrous to imagine these don't have translations - because they do! :( Rarelibra (talk) 14:55, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't think the comparison with the other wikis is particularly helpful. The logical other side of the coin of WP:UE is that other, non-English wikis will have their own conventions about how much to translate and how much to borrow in a native form. That's very much a language-specific, cultural thing. Incidentally, de-wiki happens to have de:Lac de la Gruyère, and de:Category:See in Nordamerika is pretty evenly split between names in -see and names in Lake.... Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:01, 26 February 2008 (UTC)