User talk:Briangotts

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[edit] Input with Saudi Arabian Jewish history

Hi Brian, hope all goes well. Maybe you can help improve the History of the Jews in Saudi Arabia article. It links to smaller articles about Jewish tribes in the areas of present-day Saudi Arabia, such as Banu Awf, Banu Harith, Banu Jusham, Banu Najjar, Banu Sa'ida, Banu Shutayba and they all cited sources. Now User:Bless sins is requesting "sources" for the same information about the tribes in the History of the Jews in Saudi Arabia article, as well as making other requests for sources and whatnot. (If you like, and have a minute or two, see the discussions that have been taking place at Category talk:Jewish Saudi Arabian history.) Please help out in the History of the Jews in Saudi Arabia article. Thanks, IZAK (talk) 14:43, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The Military history WikiProject Newsletter : Issue XXII (December 2007)

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[edit] Brian -- I left you a question on Banu Qurayza

Peace, BYT (talk) 17:18, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Category Khazar Rulers

You recently undid my changes to Category:Khazar rulers where I uncategorized it as Category:Jewish royalty and Category:Turkic rulers. I realize that you act here as the watch dog for things Khazar but could you tell me

  • Was every Khazar ruler Jewish? If not then you can not add Category:Jewish royalty to Category:Khazar rulers.
  • Khazar rulers are already categorized as Category:Turkic rulers. There is no need to add Category:Khazar rulers as a sub category to it.
  • Finally you edited Kabars by adding a sentence pointing to the possibility of some Kabar conversion to Judaism, Christianity, Islam. These people were originally Turkic Shamansts. Then you edited the discussion page to make it part of a project about Jewish history. My question to you is about your selectiveness. Why didn't you add this article to other projects regarding the other religions mentioned in the sentence you added to the article?Nostradamus1 (talk) 02:45, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
Your edits to Kabars are not supported by the extant scholarly sources. Mine are. Please provide a reference to WP policy for your assertion that every item in the category must be Jewish in order for the category to be linked to Jewish rulers. I am not aware of any such. Briangotts (Talk) (Contrib) 03:11, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Artur Carlos de Barros Basto

Hi Brian: I came across this article: Artur Carlos de Barros Basto. It's interesting and needs some work. Thanks, IZAK (talk) 09:51, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] MONGO

I don't know what happened, but I've indented your second vote at 23:08 because you already voted yes at 18:09. hbdragon88 (talk) 23:14, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] My Rfa

Well, not this time anyway it seems...my effort to regain my adminship was unsuccessful, but your support was still very much appreciated. Let me know if there is anything I can do for you. Thank you!--MONGO 06:47, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Error in Image:Britain 500 CE.png

You've made an error in this map. The Danes did not inhabit Northern Jutland in 500 CE. In fact, Northern Jutland was more core Jutish territory than any other part of Jutland, and still is. The Danes inhabited the Danish islands, until the Jutes assimilated into the Danish kingdom a couple of centuries later, and formed the Danish kingdom which came to consist of the Jutes and Jutland, the Danes and the Danish Islands, and Scania and the Scanians. Please correct this. Thank you. SenseOnes (talk) 19:37, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Military history WikiProject coordinator election

The Military history WikiProject coordinator selection process is starting. We are aiming to elect nine coordinators to serve for the next six months; if you are interested in running, please sign up here by February 14! TomStar81 (Talk) 02:01, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The Military history WikiProject Newsletter : Issue XXIII (January 2008)

The January 2008 issue of the Military history WikiProject newsletter has been published. You may read the newsletter, change the format in which future issues will be delivered to you, or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Thank you.
This has been an automated delivery by BrownBot (talk) 23:16, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Khazars

Would you agree with the following compromise? I think the citations are easier to read; the fact and its source are stated with more specificity; the added ref's reflect the complexity of the Jewish-Byzantine relations and provide a better context for instances of persecution.

According to Al-Masudi many Jews fled from Byzantium as a consequence of persecution under Romanus Lakapenos. [1] These were joined by other Jews fleeing from Sassanid Persia (particularly during the Mazdak revolts),[2] and, later, the Islamic world. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Schlcoh (talk • contribs) 18:26, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

  • No. The persecution under Lekapenos was relatively late, and Golden, Brook et al cite other persecutions. It is not reasonable to limit the scope in this way.Briangotts (Talk) (Contrib) 18:42, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Again, we're looking for references supporting the specific statement "The original Jewish settlers were joined by waves of immigration fleeing persecution in the Byzantine Empire", not generally about persecutions of Jews in Byzantium. It's OK to add some references to the latter (in addition to refs supporting the specific fact) but it must be more complete than the current one to reflect the variety of scholarly opinion. Schlcoh (talk) 18:59, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
  • You continually ignore the references to both Golden and Brook (both of whom meticulously document their sources) to Jews fleeing Byzantine persecution to go to Khazaria. Your criticisms are simply not supported by the text of the citation in this article. Briangotts (Talk) (Contrib) 19:49, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
Moreover, I will thank you to strike your accusations of 3RR against me from the various user talk pages on which you have made them, since as I have demonstrated they are baseless. Briangotts (Talk) (Contrib) 20:01, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Concerning the 3RR I don't mind apologizing if that's important to you, although I disagree my claim was incorrect in essence. Your first deletion of my edit may not have been exactly a "revert" according to the 3RR rules, but certainly that was the effect. In any case, I apologize and I'll do so in "The Evil Spartan"'s talk page. The only reason I mentioned that at that page was because "The Evil Spartan" accused me of 3RR and asked her/him what the difference from your editing was. (Incidentally, that was the only other user talk page I mentioned 3RR in connection to you. If you've seen anything like that in other talk pages I don't know how it happened, so please let me know!)

On the disputed passage, I'm also willing to leave the sentence as it is, even though the provided documentation does not justify the level of certainty suggested by the sentence(a single primary source, secondary literature, one of which if from the 1890's). Something like "According to......" would be more appropriate for an encyclopedia. However, the additional references on the state of Jews in Byzantium in the reformulation I suggested earlier MUST be included. I list them here again: for general information on the status of Jews in the Byzantine Empire see e.g. Ostrogorski, G. History of the Byzantine State, Rutgers University Press (July 1986), pg. 161; Cohen, M. R. The Voice of the Poor in the Middle Ages: An Anthology of Documents from the Cairo Geniza, Princeton University Press (September 26, 2005) pg. 112; Norwich, J. J. A Short History of Byzantium. Vintage, 1998 pg. 89; Geanakoplos, D. J. Byzantium: Church, Society, and Civilization Seen through Contemporary Eyes University Of Chicago Press; New Ed edition (February 15, 1986), pg. 268; Mango, C. (Ed) The Oxford History of Byzantium Oxford University Press, USA (December 5, 2002) pg. 13.; Browning, Robert. The Byzantine Empire. Catholic University of America Press, 1992. pg. 54; Cameron, Averil, Byzantines and Jews: some recent work on early Byzantium, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 20 (1996) 249-274 (especially 272-274) and books dealing with exactly this subject e.g. Kohen, E. History of the Byzantine Jews: A Microcosmos in the Thousand Year Empire University Press of America, 2007 and the two classics Bowman, Stephen B., Ankori, Zvi The Jews of Byzantium 1204-1453 Bloch Pub Co (December 2001); Starr, Joshua, The Jews in the Byzantine Empire 641-1204 Burt Franklin (1970); Schlcoh (talk) 22:37, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Your post above is replete with factual misrepresentations and evidences a lack of familiarity with WP policies. I am not going to go through it in detail. Suffice to day that my edit was not a revert. A revert is restoring back to the way the article appeared before. Restoring and adding sources per a demand for such sources is not a revert. There is no such thing as a "kind-of" revert. If you wish to add these sources then go ahead, but please do so by putting author and page number in the footnote and then adding the full citation to the references. I do not believe that any of them contradict the main point of the paragraph; namely, that Jews were persecuted in Byzantium, that some fled from that persecution and that some of those who fled ended up in Khazaria. None of these is a controversial point. I see no reason why any of these sources must be included per your assertion. We do not list every source that ever discussed every point in every WP article. Briangotts (Talk) (Contrib) 22:45, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Great!

Thanks for writing quickfire! I have been wondering about the name of the tradition for ages. A French professor from Rouen once told me that quickfire was one of the Norse traditions that were kept by the Norman aristocracy in Normandy. BTW, IIRC, the quickfire was the reason why the Swedish king Anund Jakob was called the "coal-burner".--Berig (talk) 16:35, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

You appear to have given kveikja ("kindle") in a declined form and I have added a nominalization instead. I have been trying to find a page of Grágás online where it talks of the crime - but in vain. The important thing is that there's an English name for the article.--Berig (talk) 17:52, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Military history WikiProject coordinator election

The February 2008 Military history WikiProject coordinator election has begun. We will be selecting nine coordinators to serve for the next six months from a pool of fifteen candidates. Please vote here by February 28! --Eurocopter tigre (talk) 12:25, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Quickfire

Updated DYK query On 17 February 2008, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Quickfire, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

--BorgQueen (talk) 10:11, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The Military history WikiProject Newsletter : Issue XXIV (February 2008)

The February 2008 issue of the Military history WikiProject newsletter has been published. You may read the newsletter, change the format in which future issues will be delivered to you, or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Thank you.
This has been an automated delivery by BrownBot (talk) 04:01, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] My RfB

I wanted to personally thank you, Brian, for your support in my recent RfB. I am thankful and appreciative that you feel that I am worthy of the trust the community requires of its bureaucrats, and I hope to continue to behave in a way that maintains your trust in me and my actions. I have heard the community's voice that they require more of a presence at RfA's of prospective bureaucrats, and I will do my best over the near future to demonstrate such a presence and allow the community to see my philosophy and practices in action. I hope I can continue to count on your support when I decide to once again undergo an RfB. If you have any suggestions, comments, or constructive criticisms, please let me know via talkpage or e-mail. Thank you again. -- Avi (talk) 16:27, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The Military history WikiProject Newsletter : Issue XXV (March 2008)

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[edit] Image:Flag of Schleswig-Holstein 1845-65.png

Greetings Briangotts. I notice that you've created this image, but unfortunately it seems to be based on a misunderstanding, so I'm here to ask you to delete it again. I have a feeling that you might have picked up this error from FOTW or a website copied from it, as I believe that I saw the same error there a year or so ago.

Before the 1848 war, what is now referred to as the Flag of Denmark was for all intents and purposes an insignia representing the person of the Danish monarch and used only by his army and navy but in all countries and territories under his sceptre. This position was challenged around 1843 or so when a group of pro-German separatists in Holstein and Schleswig began to advocate independence and designed several banners to symbolise their course, the most common of which was the blue-white-red tricolour now used by Germany's federal state of Schleswig-Holstein. King Christian VIII reacted somewhat in a panic and simply outlawed all other flags save his own, a decree which remains the basis for Denmark's contemporary law about the same subject.

In addition, the file name is misleading. First of all, Schl. and Holstein were not a separate legal entity before 1865 but two, and the administration in Copenhagen strongly defended that the two regions held different political statuses. This can be seen e.g. by the different legal systems used, by the fact that only Holstein was a member of the German Confederation but not Schl. or Denmark (German nationalists tried to change this) and that the administration in Copenhagen considered Schleswig to be governed by the Danish law of succession but Holstein by the Salic law. These different statuses was one of the most important reasons for the outbreak of the 1848-51 war. So the flag shown here is simply the Danish monarch's own flag, as used by his army and navy in Denmark, Holstein and Schleswig, it is a not a stylistic duplicate of it used by a different legal entity. As I've seen others pick up the error that this was a flag with a legal status of its own, please delete this image again to avoid further confusion. Happy editing. Valentinian T / C 18:53, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

What you say about Schleswig and Holstein as separate entities makes sense. However, when you say that the white Scandinavian cross flag was not the flag of these territories because it was only the flag of the Danish monarch, are we not quibbling over semantics? We identify the Danish flag as the "Flag of Denmark" despite the fact that, as you point out, it was the flag of the Danish monarch and Denmark as a nation had no flag per se. by the same token wouldn't it be the flag of the Duke of Schleswig and Holstein, in the person of the Danish king? As you note, the flag was in use in those territories and all other flags were banned. It seems to me that if what you are saying is true, the proper remedy is an explanatory note in the page of the flag rather than outright deletion. Briangotts (Talk) (Contrib) 20:10, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
The image description can be fixed and I've done so, but the file name remains problematic. The phrase Schleswig-Holstein in this context conveys the impression that the image has to do with the secessionist administration which used this name, but which outlawed all use of this flag and the colour combination red/white. The Copenhagen administration talked of "Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenburg" (if one supported the union/status quo) or alternatively "Denmark and Schleswig" / "Holstein and Lauenburg" (if pro-Danish). The phrase "Schleswig-Holstein" was used if one was pro-independence. Secondly, the year 1865 cannot be correct, as Denmark formally surrendered the territories to Prussia and Austria in 1864, and the Danish flag would not have been used in Holstein after 1863, nor in Schleswig after Denmark was kicked out of the province by early 1864. Valentinian T / C 21:20, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
If you are ok with a description fix, then what name would you suggest for the file? I am amenable to changing it. Briangotts (Talk) (Contrib) 21:22, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
I've updated the image description because the former text was incorrect (not one duchy, but two major ones and one minor one, and not a separate flag approved by an entity named "Schleswig-Holstein"). We already have "Flag of Denmark.svg" which is used throughout Wikipedia, so I don't see the increased informative value in keeping this image. During Danish rule, Holstein, Lauenburg and Schleswig had no authority to adopt flags of their own. They were ruled by an absolute monarch and absolutism in the Danish context meant in both theory and practice that the monarch held all actual authority and power. His flag was used exclusively from the 18th century - 1843/44 when it became rivalled by the blue-white-red tricolour and a few other flags. These were suppressed by 1845 and the Danish flag was used exclusively 1845-48. In 1848-51 the tricolour returned as the flag of an aspiring state which was dissolved in 1851, after which the Danish flag again was the only flag allowed, and this situation lasted till 1863/64 when both the tricolour and the Austrian / Prussian flags were used. I can't imagine an easy file name that conveys more information than plain "Flag of Denmark". Valentinian T / C 21:45, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
What you say is not unreasonable, but I don't think I have authority to simply delete the file. You should put it up for deletion, and restate your arguments here. I will not oppose it. Briangotts (Talk) (Contrib) 02:45, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
AFAIK Db-author applies to both text and images but I might be wrong. I simply noticed that you were an admin and IFD seems to have been overworked for some time. Valentinian T / C 13:41, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The Military history WikiProject Newsletter : Issue XXVI (April 2008)

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[edit] Deuteronomy issue rereloadedJews chosing their own hangman

Hello, maybe you are interested in this issue. Your input is welcome. Cheers, Str1977 (talk) 20:13, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:WikiProject Ancient Germanic studies/Runes

Hi Brian. I know that you don't often edit runic articles, but I thought you might have some opinions to share in a new work group that I have started.--Berig (talk) 17:29, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! Any suggestions and opinions from you will be most welcome!--Berig (talk) 17:57, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The Military history WikiProject Newsletter : Issue XXVII (May 2008)

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[edit] Question about Image:Hephthalite.png

Hi Brian. Do you remember whom your sources were for your Hephthalite map? I'm getting ready to update Image:East-Hem_500ad.jpg and documenting my sources, but I haven't seen those borders in any other maps of the Hephthalites. Respectfully, Thomas Lessman (talk) 16:21, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for the response, that should help. I don't think I've found any maps with borders similar to my "DK Atlas" either. Anyway, thank you Brian, and good luck with the move! Respectfully, Thomas Lessman (talk) 13:49, 9 June 2008 (UTC)