Talk:Antikythera mechanism

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Contents 1 original article of D. J. De Solla Price 2 Greek translation again 3 RFC 4 Alan Partridge 5 Which date? 6 Mass production?

[edit] original article of D. J. De Solla Price

hello, we need a reliable link to Price's original article on the Scientific American as the old link is not valid anymore.Anyone has knowledge of other links?

[edit] Greek translation again

Re. this round of reverts [1] - I was honestly not aware of the previous discussion, but having checked it, I cannot see any meaningful consensus for keeping the Greek translation was established. The only reason the "mediation" ended the way it did was that reasonable people withdrew from a dispute where the importance of the issue stood in no relation to the persistence of the other side. That's probably what I'll do too, but just for the record, I fully agree with ChrisO, Wareh and Mikka back then. There's no good reason for keeping the Greek translation, it's poor practice and looks unprofessional. Tassos, if you must persist and revert, I won't stop you, but please don't cite that old discussion as if it had established some consensus in your favour. Fut.Perf. ☼ 23:31, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Hi FuturePerfect. Thanks for the opportunity to clarify this. I am not trying to imply consensus, as it is clear after reading the arguments pro and con, that Mikka and I essentially agreed that the matter was not worth pursuing further and the rest of the participants agreed to this. I simply wanted to point the past debate to your attention to avoid any arguments over the edit summary fields and to hopefully avoid opening a new debate. Τάσος. (Dr.K. 05:59, 17 October 2007 (UTC))

Okay. Well, sorry, but I will re-open it. Back then, Mikka, SteveBaker, ChrisO, and Wareh all told you they thought the translation was really useless and not in line with what we normally do. Now I'm telling you the same. Five to one. Everybody has just been too polite to press the matter against your insistence, but on the merits of the issue it's always been essentially a "consensus-minus-one" against the inclusion (you being the "minus-one"). If the matter is so minor, don't you think it might be time for you to take the other people's opinion on board and let us remove it? Fut.Perf. ☼ 06:24, 17 October 2007 ~~ (UTC)

I'd just like to reiterate my original position that the translation is useless - it doesn't tell us anything more than that the Greeks use the same term as everyone else for the Antikythera mechanism. What value is given to the reader by telling them that? -- ChrisO 08:01, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Well here I am doing what I feared most: Rehashing the old debate: So I'll do it by cutting and pasting sections of the old debate to this: Quote:

It costs Wikipedia about a millionth of a US cent to store and transmit it - and we've just blown that by writing all of this debate. However, this edit war is a waste of everyone's time and the argument needs to end here and now so that the protagonists can spend their precious Wiki-hours doing something more productive. IMHO: Leave it in there...it's not actually hurting our readership or the guy who doesn't want it there. SteveBaker 18:57, 15 June 2006 (UTC) I agree entirely with your comments, I'm just pointing out that Tasoskessaris is mistaken in his assertions. :-) -- ChrisO 19:05, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Do I need to copy and paste the arguments pro and con as well? Dr.K. 12:05, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

But I do have to recognise that all of the participants in this debate are gentlemen: You Future, Steve Baker, ChrisO, Wareh and Mikka. Let's therefore have an agreement: To quote Mikka (from the old debate), let's take this to the Village Pump. Their decision will be final. Fair? Dr.K. 12:21, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't really see what the village pump has to do with it. It's a decision to be made about just this article, so whatever discussion needs to be done can be done here. The village pump doesn't normally "decide" things. Of course, if you want more outside voices, we can try to get a few; the normal way would be an RfC. Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:30, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Sure Future. Sorry about the Village suggestion. I just took it from Mikka and didn't really examine its function in depth because I don't examine things in depth if they have to do with process. Process logistics is not my cup of tea so to speak not to mention that I trust capable administrators like yourself to take care of these things so that I can write about things I have fun with. Let's clear this matter up so that everyone goes home happy at the end of the day. Thanks for your assistance and if it's not too much trouble can you start it up and let me know what happened? I'll try to participate in this forum but with one caveat: I can't repeat things I said before. So could you tell everyone to read up on the past discussion? Thanks for your elegant approach to this and take care. Dr.K. 18:09, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I'll put up an RfC flag and see if anybody comes to comment. Just for the record, I've checked Wikipedia precedent again, by looking at various articles in Category:Archaeological artefacts, and the common practice seems to be clearly not to include translations in local languages if these are simple translations of descriptive phrases rather than proper names. The precedent quoted back then, Phaistos Disc, has had the Greek translation removed in the meantime. An interesting exception-that-proves-the-rule is Kurgan stelae - it has local terms, but it does so because these are exactly not simply translations but different names. The only (isolated) real exception I could find was Pyxis of Čierne Kľačany. Fut.Perf. ☼ 19:58, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Excellent framing of the issue/background. Great aesthetics also. I loved the lightbulb. Thanks again Future. Dr.K. 20:30, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I was in a bit of a hurry so I didn't see all your message. Thanks for the info. It's very fitting that you divulged the information about the only exception. It is a very honourable thing to do, especially because it is an obscure article. Well done. Take care. Dr.K. 21:59, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] RFC

There is a (minor but long-standing) disagreement over whether the lead should contain a translation of the term used for the article subject in the local language of where it was found and kept, i.e. Greek. There was a previous discussion about this last year, see above under #Mediation. Main arguments then and now were:

• Pro: It's useful practical information and in line with Wikipedia conventions of allowing local aliasses in article leads (as e.g. in placenames)
• Contra: It's not a local divergent proper name, but merely a literal translation of a descriptive phrase, and as such useless since Wikipedia is WP:NOT a dictionary.

Fut.Perf. ☼ 19:58, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Alan Partridge

User:217.130.15.170 tried to remove "Alan Partridge" from the article, but I added it back in as it has been there since 23:01, 5 January 2007, originally added by User:Martin Allen [2] and appears to be a legitimate ref. —Viriditas | Talk 10:50, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Which date?

I am looking for somewhere to flag a conflict between the page on the Antikythera wreck and this one. The wreck page has the original find happening in October 1900 -- Price and quite a few other sources agree with this page in dating it near Easter. I am not qualified to comment or pontificate, so I just flag. McManly 07:54, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mass production?

Are there any plans to mass produce reproductions of this thing? It doesn't seem like it would be very difficult or expensive with modern technology. It would be a lot more interesting that most of the useless bric-a-brac people have. Do people know enough about how it works to create working copies? Herorev (talk) 06:12, 19 February 2008 (UTC)