User talk:Warshy

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Welcome!

Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia. Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! By the way, you can sign your name on Talk and vote pages using three tildes, like this: ~~~. Four tildes (~~~~) produces your name and the current date. If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my Talk page. Again, welcome!

Essjay 06:05, May 31, 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for the welcome and for the tips, Essjay. I am on a learning curve regarding how to publish stuff here, but I'm making some progress. I've figured out already at least one of the ways to sign a new page, such as Warshy 15:26, 31 May 2005 (UTC) Thanks again.

Contents

[edit] You cannot reword a quoted document

You cannot reword a quoted document because it doesn't conform to Wikipedia style or because you don't like the wording! - Jmabel | Talk 22:46, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Explanation to Mr. Mabel

I wasn't trying to reword the document. I was trying to correct a link that was incorrect. There was no Wikipedia page about the Viaux coup attempt the link alluded to. Instead, the link was pointing to the Rene Schneider page, where the Viaux coup attempt was also mentioned, with a material to an existing Wikipedia page about Robert Viaux.

What I didn't know how to do, and what you have now done in correcting my misguided attempt at correction, is to make the Wikilink name, that points to a different page, not appear in the reading text of the page. You then later explained to me what you had done, which I didn't know how to do, in the following manner:

"Wikilinks have two parts: the display text and the target. When the two parts are identical, you just use the one piece of content (e.g. Georges Danton). If, however, you want to display text that differs from the target, you do it like this: Danton. That will display visibly as just "Danton", but will link the same place. This is also very useful when referencing a section of an article, thus ethnicbreakdown of the breakaway province."

Thanks for the explanation. Now I know how to do it, and hopefully, someone else reading this, will not fall into the same wiki "trap."warshy 12:08, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Greek

Thanks for your message. No, unfortunately I do not read or write Classical Greek, but I am willing to learn. Happy new year! —Viriditas | Talk 20:02, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Scholem

I honestly don't remember what my source was for the information about Scholem, most likely I translated bits from the Hebrew language Wikipedia. I don't speak Italian. I may also have opened a book, but I can't think what book it was (this was before Wikipedia started putting such an emphasis on sourcing). And I added a tidbit of information from my own knowledge, the fact that he was married to Fania (the two were neighbors of my grandparents). --woggly 05:33, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Take another look at the history of the article, you might find it enlightening. You can track the evolution of the article by clicking on the dates in the history page. Yes, I did create the article in December 2004, but I wrote nothing about the division into three stages. This is what I wrote: [1] A few weeks later, another user, Anyfile, who apparantly speaks Italian but not the best English, added a lump of text to the bottom, which he/she had translated from the Italian Wikipedia: [2]. I then revisted the article and attempted to touch up the English and blend the new text into the old, adding the comment some corrections, still needs major cleanup and fact checking: [3]. By tracking the article from "diff" to "diff" (from one edit to the next) it should be possible for you to identify which editor is reponsible for precisely which sentences in the text. You can ask Anyfile about the Italian. --woggly 15:23, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks for your help

I appreciate your support; I was already at wits end. Having already reverted it twice and seeing that my words are falling on deaf ears, I decided to call it quits until tomorrow. The reverter seems to be knowledgeable but his understanding of the differences between Litvaks and Hasidim and all the forms of Orthodoxy is probably less then my understanding of the differences between Sunni and Shiites.

Sometimes it’s lonely out there when you edit and it’s good to know that there are people who will stick up for someone when they're right. Itzse 18:44, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

You're welcome. Your edits on that case were right on the mark, and I was happy to see someone with the guts to go there and do it. I was still studying that entry (and still am, as a matter of fact), so I wasn't at the state where I thought I could change anything there yet. But when I saw your changes they made absolute sense, and then the guy compounded it by reverting everything without even considering, as you explained. But I saw right throught where that guy was coming from. Actually, any time. I am Jewish history buff, but especially 16th through 16th centuries, so if you need help with anything related to it or to Jewish History in general, please feel free to ask for my help. I will look into it, and even research it if needed. On the technical side of Wikipedia I still have a lot to learn, too. But I'd be glad to look into stuff, or help, if you need. Regards, warshy 15:15, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for your offer; here in Wikipedia more then ever no one can go it alone. You gotta be bold if you think that you're in the right and the main thing is to go about it right. Thanks again; and now that I know that you're a history buff we'll have plenty of opportunity to help each other. Itzse 19:20, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] User:Toffeenose

Hi,

This account is clearly used for vandalism.

I have reported him to :

Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism

Hopefully, he'll soon be out of Wikipedia.

Image:Smile-tpvgames.gif

Tovojolo 18:19, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the prompt action. The vandal is now gone! I'll learn for the future from your edit here, and I also just learned how to add a nice smiley! Image:Smile-tpvgames.gif Thanks for teaching me these two useful tools. Regards,
warshy 18:23, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Glad to help.

We'll defeat trolls and vandals for ever !

Image:Smile-tpvgames.gif

Tovojolo 18:28, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] User names and authenticity

Hi Yuval,

Welcome to WP! FWIW, I don't find your question naive at all. In fact it is very interesting and I definitely cannot address it with any authority or confidence. If I may though, I'd like to spontaneously share with you some of my personal observations regarding the matter:

  • I sign with my personal, actual name for multiple reasons (in no particular order):
  1. Relational authenticity: I think it adds authenticity to my comments on talk pages. At least this is often my own feeling when dealing with other users who happen to use what appears to be their real names as opposed to a fabricated sign-on. For instance, I am currently engaging in a somewhat difficult discussion with another user whose sign-on is not his real full name; however, during our discussion, he has signed his appends using his full name; thus, I now address him by his first name and feel that I am able to engage him with more care and respect. I guess, in other words, a real name helps me engage others more authentically, as people capable of relations, perhaps as a Buber "thou." I hope for others my use of my actual name does the same.
  2. Cautions civility on my part: It forces me to stick to reality. Occasionally, my thoughts show poor judgment and I'm tempted to respond to another in anger or with sarcasm or in other ways lacking maturity or wisdom. By using my real name, it reminds me to respond in a manner consistent with the actual persona with which I desire others to perceive me. Perhaps put another way, using my actual name forces me to be more vulnerable and thus more thoughtful than a fabricated name does.
  3. Neutral long-term identifier: My actual name is a very consistent way to reflect who I am over time. In a certain sense, my name -- from birth to death -- is a simple handle for referring to myself. There have been times when I've wanted to choose a sign-on name that reflects something that is important to me at the time; so, for instance, on another Internet system I use the sign-on, "ekayano_ayam," which is a Pali term referring to Buddhist mindfulness meditation as being a direct path to the extinction of suffering. But I've come to the view that such fabricated names are limiting and confusing. For instance, in this particular case, "ekayano_ayam" is limiting because my on-going interests are not always focussed so strongly on mindfulness, e.g., other times I'd like to focus on the issue of compassion or domestic violence or American politics, etc. In addition, it can be confusing to others, such as my parents (who are increasingly tolerant of my Buddhist pursuits but who have no ways of relating to a name such as "ekayano_ayam") or Christian and Jewish neighbors (who now send e-mail to my ekayano_ayam id about gardening and community resources, etc.). To give another example, someone else who is currently highly engaged on the WP Buddhism articles has a fabricated user name suggesting risk taking and seems to be an epithet used in Hollywood action movies; not infrequently, his name causes me to wonder about his commitment to Buddhism and thus, more applicably, the depth of his understanding of Buddhist issues.
  4. WP Buddhism norm: I think the norm for WP Buddhist contributors actually is to sign with real names. For instance, the person who first welcomed me to WP and who provided much-appreciated mentoring support for me early on is User:Nat Krause. In addition, a person for whom I have enormous respect in regards to his scholarship is User:Stephen_Hodge. Other very important recent contributors include User:Peter_jackson, Clay Collier (who signs his talk posts with his real name although his sign-in name is User:Spasemunki), Rudy Harderwijk (whose sign-in name is User:Rudyh01 although his user page identifies his whole name and he signs his posts "rudy"), Dr. Tony Page (user id: User:TonyMPNS but his user page provides his real name -- again, like you seem inclined to do) and User:Peter_morrell. So perhaps there are WP subcultural influences regarding this matter as well.
  • Conversely, I sometimes don't use my personal, actual name -- that is, I don't sign on, I simply use an IP address of whatever computer I am on in the followign situations:
  1. Safety: For reasons of personal safety and the safety of my family, I don't want some former clients to find me. Thus, I use my actual name but I've tried to keep my home state obscure. (And I know that each of the states I've lived in has multiple people with my actual name.) The reason is that, over the years (as a social worker involved in domestic violence and child abuse cases), I have often had to testify, provide assistance and engage in other activities that worked against the intense personal self interests of some interpersonally violent and mentally unstable persons. One person met me at his driveway with a rifle. One set his dog on me. Another threatened to track me down and kill me and my family. Another repeatedly said that if he knew my address he would make false child abuse reports against me. Others have sexually abused their own kin.... Etc. And, of course, it's one thing for them to be a threat to me (which is part of the job); it is a completely different thing for them to be a threat to my family. So, when people are concerned about personal safety matters (real or perceived), I can understand that they choose not to present their actual identity.
  2. Separating edits from my user page content: At times I don't want my user page's information to cloud reasons for my edit. So, for instance, in the past, I've made minor changes to articles related to child development and I didn't want my user page's overwhelming emphasis on Buddhism to alienate anyone who might want to discuss a change I've made. In addition, I recently offered some possible citation material on the page of a politically sensitive topic; I didn't want anyone who might see my offer as part and parcel with political views that then might be conflated with Buddhism, etc. Thus, to distance my Buddhist interests from highly unrelated Buddhist topics, I've avoided using my actual name (which here is correlated with a heavily Buddhist user page).
  3. Safeguard other personal matters: I've made edits (essentially wrote) the current article Child Protective Services (CPS) based on my experience in such work. However, after I made the edits, I realize I didn't ask my supervisors for permission to do so. (As it is, my CPS workplace never stipulated that I needed to seek such permission; however, I would deeply regret if I unintentionally wrote anything that my supervisors would assess as reflecting poorly on our agency or institution -- although, of course, on WP I feel compelled to maintain neutrality in all edits). So, in my naivete, to distance my agency from complicity in anythign I personally wrote (again, not to be deceptive about my intentions but out of respect for others' work), I decided to delete my entire contribution and then reintroduce from an anonymous IP (now, not so anonymous: User_talk:24.40.128.94). I then had additional concerns about this (e.g., that such would be seen as duplicitous on my part) so I then deleted my entire contribution (from the IP address this time) again. Someone else however decided to reintroduce the majority of my edits, deleting a few tangential comments I had made in the article that the subsequent editor felt might have reflected POV. While I think this turned out okay, it underlines for me that I initially was highly ambivalent about using my real name since such might have unintentional consequences for the institution and its people with whom I work.

Does this make sense? Perhaps too much information? I hope something in this resonates for you. If you have additional thoughts, I'd be interested in hearing them. And, once again, welcome to WP. I wish you the best, Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 17:51, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Larry,
Thank you very much for your very thoughtful reply. Everything you say makes very good sense in both directions, both for giving authenticity personal signs in certain situations, or for eschewing them in others. I had not thought about all these different scenarios you describe, and in that sense yes, my question did have to it a certain natural naivete. Since I don't have either the professional or the spiritual issues you describe (I am a simple IT support analyst in real life), I guess for me personally, I don't see a problem keeping my WP persona the way it is. Thanks again for making aware of all types of considerations every person must make as s/he begins to engage more fully with this new ethos called WP. Best regards,
warshy 19:58, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
Yuval - Thank you too for your kindness and thoughtfulness. Best wishes, Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 17:05, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Masoretic text

Thanks for your encouragement! My issue with the article as it was was that it was supposed to be about the Masoretic text, but in fact it was actually mostly about 50% (pretty randomly selected) of the old JE article on Masorah -- which meant, it seemed to me, (1) it wasn't really telling the story of the Masoretic Text itself very well at all; and (2) it was very confusing, promising one thing, then talking about another; and randomly missing out about half of the JE article to boot made it even harder to follow. So I thought I'd see what I could do.

The most useful source I've found for the detail on what texts there seem to have been in use at the different times is the article I've cited by Menachem Cohen. There's also another article by him [4], covering much of the same ground at a slightly more introductory level, focussed on addressing why the idea of a "Bible Code" may not hold much water.

The broad time divisions pre-Akiva, post-Akiva and Masoretic seem to be pretty traditional. The Dead Sea Scrolls have perhaps shown that a lot more of the versions in circulation seem to have been rather closer to what became the MT than was perhaps imagined in the C19; but they've also confirmed that there definitely were also Hebrew texts at that time close to the Septuagint and the Samaritan Pentatech version. Anyway, the broad picture seems to be supported in the summaries given by the Introduction to the New English Bible in the link I quoted, and by the NIV translation group [5].

Beyond that, some of the specific material on the Dead Sea Scrolls I've lifted from the talk page, some of the text about the Masoretes from the Masoretes page, and some of the text about Masoretic period from further down the MT page itself (it's originally from the public domain JE article). So someone could probably do a Documentary Hypothesis-style analysis on where different bits have come from!

(BTW the Haas reference looks suspect: she doesn't seem to be a great authority, and bits of the claim though not 100% wrong, aren't 100% right either, at least from more authoritative stuff I've found through Google).

On the Masorah itself, the JE article is pretty good, though the structure I find makes it harder to read than it should be. There's also a useful article in the New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia (now also out of copyright), and Google Books finds a good page in the "Text and MSS of the OT" article of the International Standard Bible Encylopedia (1994) -- which makes me wish the page before, on the transmission and collation of the Masoretic text, was there to consult as well! The Schaff-Herzog article "Text of the Old Testament" has some material too.

(There may also be some other online sources that I've seen or checked, but not remembered here).

Also, I haven't read it yet, but this article on ancient scribal practices looks interesting, though not entirely on-topic: [6].

So: it's not all condensed from one particular place; but I hope what I've written is pretty mainstream, and fair and balanced, and not making any new sytheses.

But it would be good to have another pair of eyes on the article. If there's anything I've written that doesn't look right to you, then do please question it. If there's anything that doesn't flow, or needs re-writing, then do please re-write it (I suspect I'm not the greatest editor in the world). And if there's anything that should be expanded on, or that you think that there are some good references to support that could be included, then please, do go ahead. I'm just trying to make the article as useful and informative as I can, and I'm aware that I'm maybe not the best writer in the world, so if there's any help you can give I'd be delighted.

All best, Jheald 20:58, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Threats and the 3RR

Regarding your threat in this user summary, I must insist that you refrain from making threats against myself or any other user in this or any other editing dispute.

If you are not already aware of it, I also am obligated to bring to your attention Wikipedia:Three revert rule, which prohibits you from exceeding three reverts on the same article in a 24 hour period.

If you wish to discuss the article in question, we can do so on that article's talk page. But there is no requirement that I do so prior to editing this article, especially regarding such a minor matter. There is no requirement that the article remain in your preferred state prior to such discussion. If this was a requirement, then if you check the edit history, you'll see that you are the one who would be required to start discussion, because that sentence was worded according to my preferences for three years until changed by Octavian history in December 2007. Gamaliel (talk) 17:07, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] 3RR vio on Marina Oswald Porter

I have blocked you for 6 hours for repeatedly reverting on Marina Oswald Porter more than 3 times in 24 hours. The discussion page for that article has not even been used. I appreciate that the other editor came close to this, but stopped just short. I will give that person a stern warning about 3RR.

Even if you are really sure you are correct, repeat reversions of other peoples work are not acceptable. If you disagree with this block then you can have it reviewed at by entering {{unblock|reason}} 1 != 2 17:24, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

What is "vio"? I did not revert it three times, the other person is the one who did it. Look at the history of the page: I was the to first suggest the discussion page, not him. He refused to go there! I completely disagree with this unjust, unjustified, and wrong decision.
warshy (talk) 17:32, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Vio is short for "violation". You undid the actions of other users 4 times [7] [8] [9] [10]. The other user has not even made 4 edits today and has been warned about their danger of reaching this limit. Just as you were warned about reaching this limit in the thread above.

Like I said, if you think this block is not just you can ask for review. 1 != 2 17:37, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

I have not refused to engage in discussion. I merely ask that you be civil during that discussion. If you are willing to refrain from further rude remarks, I have no objection to you being unblocked. Gamaliel (talk) 17:34, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Since Gamaliel does not object to unblocking, if you agree to reach a consensus on the talk page before further editing to the page I will be happy to unblock. 1 != 2 17:39, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Who are you? This is kind of ridiculous: I was the first one to reasonably suggest we go to the discussion page, whereas he just went and blocked me! Incredible.
warshy (talk) 17:44, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
Perhaps I am reading this sentence incorrectly, but you seem to be saying I am the one who blocked you. I did not block you, nor did I even request that you be blocked. Gamaliel (talk) 17:46, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

I am an admin. I am the one who blocked you, not Gamaliel. While you did suggest going to the discussion page, you kept on reverting. If you simply agree to reach a consensus(and respect that consensus) before editing the page further then I can unblock you. I expect this from both of you by the way, not just you Warshy. 1 != 2 17:49, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

You must be some kind of bad, biased admin. For example, I cannot even edit the unblock reason page as you state. I did not revert his changes 4 times as you say. He started this reversion streak by reverting a formula I had already agreed to since yesterday, by user Octavian history. Again, I was the one who first suggested going to the discussion page. He not only REFUSED to do that, he went straight to you. Unbelievable.
warshy (talk) 18:05, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
I did not go to anyone. I never requested that you be blocked. Please stop making things up. Gamaliel (talk) 18:17, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

I tried to come to an agreement. But since you won't agree to the alternative you can just wait out the 6 hours. You put the {{unblock|reason}} template on this page and it will be automatically placed in a category for admins to find you. I am not being biased, I am really not even familiar with the subject or either of you editors, frankly I think it rather poor taste to make that assumption. 1 != 2 18:08, 10 January 2008 (UTC)