User talk:Benwing
Hi Benwing, I thank you for your editing for the LDA model. I have one question for "total number of words in all documents; sum of all values, i.e. ". I think that it might be incorrect because the documents can have a same word, so just summing the number of words without checking duplication might be incorrect. If I am wrong, please let me know.
What are your sources about the medieval vocieless alveolar retracted sibilant in Spanish and French? Skycomet (talk) 01:20, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
Umlaut
[edit]Hi Benwing,
thanks for getting involved in editing Germanic philology. Your material is good, and I'm glad to have it, but it would be good if you would check what has been done already before starting something new. For example, after a long debate we had agreed to use the word "umlaut" for i-mutation and merely note in passing that some linguists also use it for other kinds of vowel harmony. Your material on a-mutation is fine, but it belongs in an article under that title - which is where I have moved it. The point is, there are lots of kinds of vowel harmony, and lots of words that can be used for them. So the more precise usage which makes distinctions is preferable to one which says "umlaut" and other related terms are all vague words for any kind of vowel harmony. Very few linguists talk about "a-umlaut", the word umlaut was invented to describe vowel FRONTING, and there seems nothing to be gained about broadening the word to mean anything we like. Of course, variant use needs to be noted, which is why the umlaut article already contained a reference to "a-umlaut" as another possible terminology. But let's leave it at that. Besides, a-mutation can be more fully discussed in an article of it's own. Perhaps you can work that up in detail.
In a similar vein, your new article on i-mutation looks great, but it is unclear how it relates to the existing article on umlaut. Again, it looks a bit like you set to work without finding out what had already been done. We do need to think about related articles work together. --Doric Loon 20:35, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I'd like to thank you for your improvements of the Old English language article. An anonymous user (203.164.184.111) deleted all of your additional information on the pronunciations of <c> and <g>, and when I asked him why, his reply was that "I deleted that information because it was confusing and I did not agree with what it said." I have no idea what he's talking about, but I did ask for clarification on his talk page, despite the fact that he's an anonymous user.
Take care. --Whimemsz 21:27, Apr 30, 2005 (UTC)
- Just so you know: Talk:Old_English_language#Revert_wars...(the anon user, although using a slightly different IP, reverted the changes again, but they did give reasons on the talk page). --Whimemsz 21:14, May 9, 2005 (UTC)
Welcome to Wikipedia! Good to see more linguists around. - Mustafaa 23:34, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
You might be interested in this edit: [1] I've requested further explanation on the Talk: page. Jayjg (talk) 16:47, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
UT
[edit]Hey, thanks for your good work on linguistics articles! I didn't realize you were studying linguistics at UT! I was a linguistics major there when I was an undergrad, 1986-90. How do you like Austin? --Angr/tɔk tə mi 05:13, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
- Austin is a good place. It's getting a little too hot here but that's to be expected :) But I like cities and there's lots of activity here. What did you study for your Ph.D.? Benwing 06:18, 24 July 2005 (UTC)
- My Ph.D. is in linguistics, but it's from Cornell, not U.T. By the way, if you want to change the title of a page (like changing Anglo-Frisian nasal spirant law to Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law) the best way to do it is to click on the "move" tab. Cutting and pasting isn't so good because it doesn't preserve the history. --Angr/tɔk tə mi 05:21, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
- Thanks for pointing that out; I didn't even realize it existed. BTW what I meant was, what was your focus within linguistics? Benwing 05:40, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
- Well, for my Master's at Yale and then my first two years at Cornell my focus was on Indo-European linguistics; then I switched to phonology. My dissertation is on the prosodic phonology of the Goidelic languages. --Angr/tɔk tə mi 06:41, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
- Thanks for pointing that out; I didn't even realize it existed. BTW what I meant was, what was your focus within linguistics? Benwing 05:40, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Standardize article title spellings
[edit]re: Wikipedia:Standardize article title spellings: As the vote at Wikipedia:Standardize spellings clearly shows, there is pretty strong sentiment against any form of standardization of spelling on the Wikipedia, especially if it involves using the American English version of English spelling. Once your proposal is publicized, I have no doubt that it will not get anything close to a consensus vote, although it might not go down in flames in the same way that the Wikipedia:Standardize spellings proposal did. My personal opinion is that it would be much better to turn your proposal into a project for identifying missing redirects and duplicate articles, rather than rehash the issue. There are some nice tools that are already in use for some of the various maintenance projects that should make that task fairly easy to do. BlankVerse ∅ 08:55, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
Yes, I can see now that the tone of that proposal turned out the knee-jerk "I wil deefend my rite to spel inkoncistently too the deth" lobby, so I´ve removed any reference to adopting any particular spelling, since that is not the main point of my proposal. Benwing 04:04, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
Changing terminology
[edit]Benwig, I've just answered your notes on my talk page and on Talk:West Germanic strong verb. Now I see you have also moved Anglo-Frisian nasal spirant law. This is beginning to look like a re-naming frenzy, and while I don't object to these per se, I would suggest you slow down a bit. As far as the Nasal-spirant law is concerned, I have the strong impression that the term Ingvaeonic is badly out of fashion; we don't have a Wiki article on Ingvaeonic languages, for example, and every other possible variant of Germanic languages is in there. Can you point me to a RECENT authoritative source (last 30 years) which calls the law this? If so, fine. But if you DO make such a change, be sure to give credit to the previous terminology as an alternative (i.e. you should add "also called Anglo-Frisian..." to the opening sentence).--Doric Loon 07:52, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
One other thing: if you are going to change the title of an article, it is your job to fix all the links (including interwikis to other language articles). All the links to Anglo-Frisian nasal spirant law are still in place, so that's a job half-done. But most important: if you are going to move an article, you have to declare a reason on the talk page, and it is etiquette to do so first and wait for discussion before you make the move. --Doric Loon 18:47, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
- "renaming frenzy" is probably a bit out of hand, since we're talking about only two or three articles. i'll add comments on the appropriate page; but does wikipedia policy really require that i change all links going in? can you point me to where it says this? Benwing 21:00, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
Sure, "frenzy" was meant jokingly. It just had the feel of an awful lot at once: it was actually four articles you wanted to relocate all at once, which is quite a disruption in a relatively small field. The main thing is, when you want to make a significant change to an article that other people are working on, seek consensus first. As far as changing links are concerned, yes, I think that is the policy; at any rate I've seen enough people being flamed for not doing it. Obviously, it has to be done, and if you take it on yourself to move the page, who else is going to tidy up afterwards? --Doric Loon 10:05, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
But having said all that, I don't want to dampen your enthusiasm. You did seek consensus on Wandel, for example, and I agree with you, and as no-one else has worked on this so far, that means you have a green light there. Same goes (with reservations) for West Germanic strong verb - but don't underestimate how much work you will have to do if you start on that one! It's a giant. Can you write about Gothic and Norse? --Doric Loon 10:41, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
I can write about Gothic and Norse, if you need. i also have various of the classic books on old english with me, which have historical info on where the various conjugations (probably) came from. Benwing 01:28, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
Your Greek edits
[edit]Please explain these to me: in your Proto-Greek language edits, why did you include sound changes in "most or all later dialects"? Surely changes that involve most but not all later dialects do not belong in a Proto-Greek article, do they? For example, you state: "loss of /n/ before /s/, with compensatory lengthening of the preceding vowel". This is not true in Aeolic: παντ-ς > παν-ς (every) > Attic πας (long α), Aeolic παις (diphthong). You have also done some edits in Greek language which, while not wrong per se, are less than 100% right: for example you have stated that the Dative is lost. This is true in Demotic, but not in Standard Modern Greek (a subtle but important distinction). Your participation in the respective talk pages will be most welcome. There is an ongoing project to rewrite and integrate all Greek-language related articles, and I'm sure your contributions will be most appreciated. Cheers. Chronographos 06:32, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
I'll contribute to the talk pages as soon as I have time, probably tomorrow; right now I'm right at my bed time. I was under the impression that Katharevousa added some complex noun forms and such, but didn't realize it still had the dative. Presumably "Standard Modern Greek" is some artificial language that tries to keep some of the older forms of Greek? How often is it used? I thought the government decision from the 1970's or so was to use dhimotiki, and that katharevousa is pretty much dead now.
So maybe we should just have this whole article on dhimotiki greek, with a separate section describing katharevousa and "standard modern greek" and other such forms rather than interleaving this data. but i don't know for sure; i'm sure you are more familiar with the greek language situation. Benwing 07:57, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
- Sorry. I hope I didn't wake you up! :-) It's a little bit complicated really: what students are now being taught in compulsory schooling (ages 6-15) is modified (or standardized) Demotic (with some atrocious "standardizations" IMO!). Students do not have to learn anything else. In the Lyceum however, where most students actually go to so that they qualify for college, they are taught some Ancient Greek (or more, if they intend to sit for certain University admission exams), and the assumption is that a student who has graduated from the Lyceum (age 18) is free and sufficiently knowledgeable to incorporate elements of Katharevousa in their speech if they so wish. It's not an artificial construct, rather it is a flexible attempt to familiarize students with the whole spectrum of Greek language and literature, and let the language evolve according to its users' actual choices, and without artificial barriers. The attempt is far from perfect, but IMO it's altogether in the right direction. Indeed it is quite obvious that once Katharevousa was "abolished", the linguistic trend has been towards it rather than away from it. Feel free to participate in the talk pages whenever and to whatever extent you feel like. There is no rush and deadlines: we intend to be reforming the relevant articles gradually, and I'm sure your contributions will be valuable and most welcome. Oftentimes non-native speakers can offer better perspectives than native ones, as they may see the forest instead of the trees. Chronographos 08:51, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
Template:Book Reference
[edit]Hi, i've reverted the changes you make to the abovementioned template because
- 1. You failed to consult anyone regarding the change. Please note that changes made to template have wide impacts. Consultation is almost always necessary.
- 2. i presume you failed even to test out the template after you changed it. As a result, it is not displaying as you'd like it to be.
- 3. Even if it works as you want it to, i'm personally against making the year of publication a link. It serves no purpose and overloads the page with links. Linking the ISBN would suffice.
If you believe your changes are necessary, however, please discuss it at the template discussion page or some other appropriate venues (such as the Village Pump). Thanks. --Plastictv 08:15, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
OK, no problem. I certainly thought I tested the changes. I'd definitely never on purpose not do so. What may have happened is that I tested on the new things i created, Chapter Reference and such, and they have identical coding for the 'year' section, and so maybe I just assumed that it would work the same for the basic Book Reference. I looked at the old stuff I did and I still can't see what didn't go right and what I should have done -- can you explain it?
BTW I realize that you were within your rights to get angry, but you didn't, so major kudos to you. I greatly appreciate this. Benwing 08:13, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
I'm still confused about your point in #2 about it not working right. In fact, I just did a little test; I took the version that you rejected and put it back as the Book Reference template, and the year link works exactly like I wanted it to work -- the year was highlighted and clicking the link brings you to a page about the year. So what's the deal with point 2? If there's something else I messed up on, I'd really like to know, because my familiarity with these Templates is not great. Benwing 09:11, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
- Instead of appearing as a link to the year, say 2001, it would appear as a link to Year. Funny though, when i just tested it worked as you'd have it to. Anyway personally i'm still against linking to the year of publication (or to the author and publisher, if you haven't conceived that idea yet). It might make everything look messy. If you do believe in it, do discuss beforehand. You can also test templates using the template sandboxes X1, X2 or X3 to save you the trouble of reverting your changes. :) --Plastictv 14:40, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
"Confusing terminology: perfective vs. perfect"
[edit]Hi, while I didn't (and don't) oppose your addition of the "Confusing terminology: perfective vs. perfect" section to Grammatical aspect, I don't much like how you've gone everywhere and added text about it to various other articles and linked back to Grammatical aspect#Confusing terminology: perfective vs. perfect. For example, I really dislike paragraph you added about it to Perfect aspect:
- The aspectual nature of the English simple past is often called the aorist aspect or the perfective aspect. Note that, in this usage, "perfective aspect" is completely different from perfect aspect; unfortunately, there are usages where the two are the same. In general, there is a great deal of confusion over the term "perfective aspect"; see Grammatical aspect#Confusing terminology: perfective vs. perfect.
There are a few reasons I dislike it:
- It's not relevant. The article is about the perfect aspect, and doesn't once mention the perfective aspect; why does it need to discuss the confusion surrounding the term "perfective aspect"?
- It's confusing. This is partly because of its irrelevance: the reader asks himself "How does this fit in?" and does not find an apparent answer.
- It seems non-NPOV. Why is it unfortunate that "perfective" is sometimes used as a synonym for "perfect"? Maybe the unfortunate thing is that some people try to draw a distinction between the two synonyms. (I'm actually inclined to agree with your presentation, but it violates Wikipedia style.)
- It seems strained. Why is "completely different" in bold text? You sound like you're trying to convince the reader as much as inform him; and besides, bold text has a special meaning in Wikipedia, in that it's used to mark an article's names when they first appear in the text.
- This is a minor thing, but "perfect aspect" shouldn't be linked in that paragraph, because it makes it bold rather than a link (since it's the current article), which looks confusing.
I plan to modify the text at perfect aspect, but I've noticed that you've added similar text elsewhere, and would ask that you modify it yourself. One suggestion: perhaps rather than regarding the complication as being the confusion between "perfect" and "perfective," you should regard the complication as being the multiple meanings of "perfective"? I think that that could be explained much more easily.
Thanks for reading,
- Ruakh 16:06, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
Proto-Germanic
[edit]Thanks for clarifying your point of view. I think the text is acceptable now.--Wiglaf 08:59, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
Pronunciation
[edit]Hi Benwing. Seeing as you are a linguistics scholar, and a significant contributor to matters Greek, I was hoping that you could help me out. My user name, Xiphon, is very close to an Ancient Greek word, as I understand it. But how does one pronounce it? Bearing in mind that I am unskilled in the phonetic alphabet that is. Would it be akin to the "z" in english, followed by the pronoun "I"? As in zIfon? Thanks--Xiphon 07:02, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
TfD nomination of Template:Chapter reference
[edit]Template:Chapter reference has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at Wikipedia:Templates for deletion#Template:Chapter reference. Thank you. Phil | Talk 10:14, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
TfD nomination of Template:Chapter reference link
[edit]Template:Chapter reference link has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at Wikipedia:Templates for deletion#Template:Chapter reference link. Thank you. Phil | Talk 10:14, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
Hello, I see that you are interested in Ancient Greek and that you are a professional linguist. Do you think you could give us a hand in improving the article Ancient Greek phonology? One editor, Thrax, poromotes the idea that Ancient Greek (5th century BC) was pronounced the same like modern Greek, and that beta was pronounced [v] even in Homeric Greek. Although all other editors disagree with Thrax, none of us has enough expertise to do a thorough job in editing the article. Thanks, Andreas 15:53, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
Iran naming dispute
[edit]Please explain why you added in the dispute tags in the article's talk page. AucamanTalk 20:53, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
Just a note of thanks for your helpful additions to that article. Smerdis of Tlön 15:06, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
Old English weak verbs
[edit]Hi Benwing, you're a bit of an expert on Old English, aren't you? Any chance you could look at the article Germanic weak verb and do some work on the section "historical conjugations"? I would think Old English can stand here as exemplary for all the early Germanic languages, so we wouldn't need a full description of Old High German and all the others, but at least one medieval language does need to be described properly. --Doric Loon 21:25, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
_______________
Hello Benwing. I was reading the article on Germanic strong verbs, and I think I found a very small error. It is in the section on English, under the heading "Great Vowel Shift". I thought you would know whether the following sentence: "Elimination of almost all verb inflection in strong verbs, except for the third-person singular present ending -s (and the second-person ending "-(e)st", when used)," should really say "Elimination of almost all verb inflection in weak verbs, except for the third-person singular present ending -s (and the second-person ending "-(e)st", when used)." I am pretty sure "there was a simple mis-typing, when this sentence was written. Thank you. Janice Vian, Ph.D. (talk) 17:50, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
South Arabian
[edit]Are you sure regarding their phonology? Consonant-wise, perhaps to a degree (wrt to lateral fricatives, yes, at least), but I've generally seen very divergent phonologies from MSA as compared to the rest of Semitic. Note that South Semitic (both Ge'ez and the various dialects of Old SA) preserved lateral fricatives, too, yet were generally more conservative on vowels (and to a degree consonants, though interdentals & ghayin were lost in Ge'ez). — ዮም | (Yom) | Talk • contribs • Ethiopia 07:32, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
that was fast! no, i suspect you are right. it's been awhile since i looked at any references on MSA and i don't have any handy. i remembered a quote about this ("The World's Major Languages", p. 665), but i just looked it up and it refers to Epigraphic South Arabian, not the modern dialects. however, i've certainly read in various places that the modern South Arabian dialects are *overall* considered more conservative than the old ones. i suggest you rewrite this and add some more info, since it sounds like you have more experience here than i do.
Benwing 07:38, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
btw the quote reads "Arabic preserves Proto-Semitic phonology almost perfectly (Epigraphic South Arabian is even more conservative), except for Proto-Semitic *p > f and Proto-Semitic *ś > s."
Benwing 07:41, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
actually ... please see these links:
it is claimed here that MSA has identical phonology to Proto-Semitic except for p > f.
Benwing 08:15, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
note that the above quote about "Proto-Semitic *ś > s" is wrong, so i wouldn't trust the quote in its entirety.
Benwing 08:19, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
West Australian Lakes
[edit]If you assume anything, you're lost! Check the wars on the subject of the word Java as a disambigatuation issue on wiki, and either weep at the xenophobia and "-centrism" of some of your fellow country persons (and limited geographic knowledge) or maybe smile instead :) ??? Lake Carnegie like many of the "mapped" lakes shows up on some maps of Western Australia, despite its ephemeral nature. The issue of whether one place or item in the us is better known than one in another country can bring out some particularly virulent responses so take care! :) SatuSuro 12:07, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
- And looking at your linguistic prowess, "insha allah" you dont offend local knowledge in other cultures or times as well ! :) SatuSuro 12:11, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
i don't think i was being xenophobic or ethnocentric; my judgment was based on the length of the respective articles, on the # of people in the vicinity of these two places, and on the ephemeral nature of the australian lake.
also, be careful heaping blame on americans for lack of foreign knowledge; this is a common stereotype but in my experience, people from other countries are just as bad. Benwing 02:46, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
- (A) I wasnt accusing you specifically of being either xenophobic or ethnocentric - I was pointing to the way the Java debate was conducted by some who didnt even know where it was - the island that is. - you clearly were weighing experience of being a citizen of the us comparing a location in another country - that could be a problematic distinction - not necessarily connected to anything to do with being xeno or ethno (mind you Austin and Dallas have issues don't they?)
- (B) Hey meant in good humour :) ? wikipedia seems to be full of a very large number of xenophobes from all countries on the planet :) - some with more of a sense of the ridiculous :)
- As for following up on Java - the disamgig war was conducted very much on individuals own limitations of experience and knowledge, and determining relevance/notoriety/popularity against the subjective limitations to me reminds me how we cannot really claim any one section of local knowledge against another... I have happened to live in Tasmania and Java - and the issues from having lived in those places became more acute Australian regional rivalries - Best Wishes SatuSuro 04:06, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
no worries. Benwing 04:23, 30 July 2006 (UTC) thanks and sorry for being so verbose, some poor friends have to archive quickly :) SatuSuro 04:33, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
Romanization, etc.
[edit]The piece on romanization in Standard Mandarin is now revised (anything that was in the "Romanization" section that was not incorrect, has been included in the revision). Also, on the basis of the ease of reading and the simplicity of writing it was better to deal with the "non-Chinese" before the "Chinese" in the two parts. Best to you. Lindsay658 07:59, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
Vulgar Latin
[edit]Hi, this is FA Review, on the verge of going into FARC. We wonder whether you're able to help reference the text. Tony 08:06, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
Strong pass
[edit]Thanks for the Strong pass article! I tweaked it a bit, but it was a great start. I assume you discovered Wikiproject Contract Bridge so if you wish to join, you're warmly welcome. Regards, Duja 08:20, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the heads up. I didn't actually know about the project. It's been a long time since I played bridge, but I definitely have a weak spot for forcing pass systems :) ... they make life much more interesting. Benwing 02:17, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
South Arabian -> South Arabic
[edit]You left a response on the Old South Arabian talk page 2 months ago in which you said that all sources you have seen say South Arabian, not South Arabic. But you didn't list any sources, which I would like for you to do. You also said you cannot view the Encarta entry. I have Encarta and searched for both terms and South Arabic has a lot more hits, while most of the hits for South Arabian do not refer to the language.
The following is from the Encarta article on Semitic languages "The South Peripheral group consists of the South Arabic dialects, now spoken in parts of the southern Arabian Peninsula (and in ancient times by peoples such as the Minaeans and Sabaeans)"...
Here are other sources [4][5] [6][7][8][9]--Inahet 00:57, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
African Languages: An Introduction (Heine and Nurse) p. 79 "South Semitic comprises South Arabian and Ethio-Semitic"
A Guide to the World's Languages (Ruhlen) p. 90 "the Southern group has two (South Arabian, Ethiopic)"
An Introduction to the Languages of the World (Lyovin) p. 188 "In addition, the so-called South Arabian languages (not the same as Arabic!) also belong to this subbranch"
The World's Major Languages (Comrie) p. 655 "(i) Epigraphic South Arabian ... is known only from short inscriptions written in a consonantal script. ... (ii) Modern South Arabian, a group of non-Arabic languages ..."
The Arabic Language (Versteegh) p. 10 "Epigraphic South Arabian was the language of the Sabaean, Minaean and Qatabanian inscriptions ... The modern South Arabian dialects, such as Mehri, probably go back to spoken varieties of these languages ..."
Every one of these is a modern book written by a linguist (rather than encyclopedia articles and non-technical articles, as you've quoted). Benwing 05:37, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
Bene Gesserit OR removal
[edit]I'm glad someone finally had the gumption needed to take care of that!
I had a look at some of your other pages; noticed & removed some vandalism to Injunctive mood.
Cheers! --SandChigger 15:49, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
Lancet surveys of mortality...
[edit]I've noticed your concern in the talkpage for this article; somehow, the user Timeshifter has been able to keep his, possibly, biased or flawed information; one user has even been blocked, while trying to correct his edits. Perhaps it's none of my business, but if biased, POV info is on the article, it should be promptly removed. I will try to help, if all possible, and I beseech you so you could, perhaps, do the same, if you wish. BishopTutu 16:51, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
- Yes, I agree. he shows a strong tendency towards edit warring and "wikilawyering" (using the established rules to intimidate others into accepting his POV). he seems not to understand or be willing to accept the NPOV rules or established principles concerning encyclopedic style. unfortunately he also has more willingness to invest energy in POV'ing than i do in correcting his POV. i'm going to see if i can find another editor who is more willing to fight him. Benwing 00:05, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
Lancet surveys of mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq
[edit]I don't understand why this is an encyclopedia article at all; an article about two Lancet surveys? Jayjg (talk) 03:19, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
- Well, these surveys are quoted very often in the media. the media focuses quite intensively (maybe even obsessively) on the number of us casualties, and the estimates of iraqi casualties often go alongside. usually either these surveys or the reports of the Iraq Body Count group, or both, are given. the difficulty here is that these two sources differ by more than a factor of ten in their claims. that said, i do think the entries are far too long; but i found it impossible to shorten them. Benwing 03:28, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
- btw i don't know the proper protocol for these discussions; whose page does it take place on, or does it ping-pong back and forth? Benwing 03:30, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
They can ping-pong back and forth. I don't really know what to do about it either, I just think a lengthy article about two surveys is ridiculous. Jayjg (talk) 17:48, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
Survey concerning Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam lead sentence.
[edit]Talk:Cat_Stevens#Survey: Ordering_of_names_within_lead_sentence
As an active editor at Cat Stevens, your input is requested for the purpose of establishing consensus. Italiavivi 00:44, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
ArabDIN characters
[edit]I noticed that you have added a number of ArabDIN characters to the Arabic grammar page. My browser refuses to display either the alif or the 'ain characters (as transliterated into Latin letters). It's MS Internet Explorer 6.0. Any ideas? I'd like to fix it, if possible, and write an appropriate box or template or whatever so that others with this problem can fix their browsers. Thanks. Cbdorsett 12:14, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
I dunno. I'm using MS IE 6 as well and it looks OK to me. what do you see instead? do you see square boxes? does it occur *everywhere* on the page or only in the places that i added something? i did add some fonts at one point, which made some unusual characters (e.g. Ethiopic) display better, but it should work without these. Try using the IPA or Unicode templates. Benwing 00:47, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
Timeshifter again
[edit]Hi Benwing, I note your discussion above with BishopTutu. I have tried editing these pages and have run afoul of Timeshifter before. He does pretty much what you describe, selectively conscripting (and imv distorting) wiki guidelines to intimidate me and muddy the waters for anyone else readign the talk pages. In the past I have not had an account, and my IP changes from time to time by itself. He's now begun using this to describe me as a "vandal" for not going along with his control and censorship of these pages, using the IP as his excuse. So I've created an account here so he can't do that. It's a shame that editors should be pressured into these things because of fraudulent accusations of "vandalism" but that's another story.
The latest 'edit war' initiated by Timeshifter began here: (cur) (last) 23:13, 16 January 2007 74.73.39.219 (Talk) (lancet letters about graph)
That was me adding new information from letters published in the Lancet journal which indicate that the main graph that has been sitting atop the Lancet page for many months is inaccurate and misleading. I've added this information, along with links to the articles in the Lancet. Timeshifter then suddenly deletes the whole graph (which has been there for months), along with my new sourced information about its errors. I put it back. He deletes. Etc. Etc. His reasoning has shifted several times. First he says he deleted it because the graph is now known to be erroneous, and because the Lancet authors have conceded these errors it has to be removed. But it's only know because of MY edit! How will anyone know of these errors if he keeps censoring it? But that's the point isn't it? He doesn't want people to know. Next he claimed he had to remove it because it violated WP:RS, on the grounds that the Lancet website requires an account to access the articles. That was bogus. Then he just keeps shifting the excuses and keeps deleting it.
Now he's accusing me of "vandalism" and threatening to have me blocked for 3RR violations, for the crime of putting back sourced material he keeps censoring. From the comments above I can see that you seem to know exactly what's going on here with this Timeshifter, so I'm wondering if you can step in here.Seigfried4220 14:33, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
Style guidelines for sound pages
[edit]Hello, Benwing. Recently CyborgTosser and I discussed and came up with proposed style guidelines for all the individual consonant and vowel pages wherein the Occurrence section would have a table rather than a bulleted list. You can see the discussion here. So far nobody else has commented on the proposed guidelines and I believe it's safer to get a solid consensus before undergoing the work to change so many pages. If you could comment on what has been proposed, even if it's a simple yay or nay, this would help us out quite a bit. Thank you very much. Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 06:43, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
Hey Ben,
[edit]I'm not chasing you outside of that talk or anything, but I really felt insulted by your coments (three times now) there. Look, let's start on the right foot, if possible: You ask many questions, I'll try to respond to the basic: Time (as you know better) is not always proportional to abstand. Greek, Koine Greek, Ancient Greek (and most probably XMK too), are mutually intelligible to the extent that Britannica says: no other language has been documented to have such continuity, and that Pericles' Greek to mine, are "recognizably one and the same". Now, according to the three theories for XMK, it was rather close to Greek. Furthermore, it was later absorbed within the language I now speak (the one the Bible was written in for the first time).
Now there are numerous examples I can give you, where Macedonian (S) irredentists/pseudoscientists etc claim that their language descends from XMK (also cited by Danforth in the article), which is absolutely malakies per all linguists. Feel free to give a browse to Macedonia (terminology), which includes the same 2 sentences with the same sources, and has become WP:FA. I'm the main contributor there, but that part, wasn't written by me, or by any other Greek; plus it passed a storm of hundreds of objections in the WP:FAC (here. So, this all, is scrutinized to the last detail, and if not relevant for the "dispute" article, then I really don't know where it would be more relevant. That's why I removed your tag. NikoSilver 01:02, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
In case you were wondering which comments of yours enraged me, I copy them below:
- someone ignorant of linguistics (but probably having a pov to push) put this claim in without understanding the reality
- unlike you, i have no axe to grind or pov to push
- btw it seems you really have an axe to grind.
I'm really sorry you feel that way, but even if I did, that's definitely WP:NPA, so let's be WP:CIVIL. OK? NikoSilver 01:18, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
Seigfried4220 (74.73.39.219) deleted your material from template.
[edit]Hi Benwing. You added some good info to this template: Template:Summary of casualties of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. See this revision difference.
Seigfried4220 (74.73.39.219) just deleted some of it with this edit summary: "deleted opinionated assertion about what the differences reflect". Here is the revision difference.
The sentence he deleted was this one: "The differences reflect differing methodologies as well as differing definitions of the types of death counted."
I like that sentence which is why I left it in when you first put it in. It is a good, simple, NPOV, and necessary introduction to complex casualty stats. I have deleted other info of yours, so I am not kissing your butt. Just pointing out how Seigfried4220 operates. --Timeshifter 06:00, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
- I deleted this sentence because it is an opinion that that is all the differences reflect. They could reflect quite a few other things, and could even have very little to do with differing methodologies or different definitions or types of deaths. For example, if you look at the criticisms section of the Lancet study page, many believe most of the difference between the Lancet study and all others is that the Lancet study is wrong. I think opinions about what the differences reflect should be left up to readers. If you want a statement saying these studies use differing methodologies and include different types of deaths, that would be fine. But implying that this explains the *difference* in the figures is an opinion.Seigfried4220 06:08, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
- So we get to the root of the problem. Seigfried4220 wrote: "many believe most of the difference between the Lancet study and all others is that the Lancet study is wrong." And? So what does that have to do with Benwing's sentence? It is a big stretch to read as much as you read into Benwing's sentence. You screwed up, because you thought I wrote the sentence. LOL. Then you write: "If you want a statement saying these studies use differing methodologies and include different types of deaths, that would be fine." That is exactly what Benwing's sentence said. --Timeshifter 06:18, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
- My reasoning above stands regardless of who wrote the sentence. There is debate about what the difference reflects. Saying the studies use different methods is not the same as saying that is what the difference in their figures reflects. I doubt Benwing wants you and me taking up space on his talk page with more bickering so I'll not respond to you here anymore.Seigfried4220 07:00, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
- Sorry to embarrass you further, but Benwing's sentence is still innocuous. --Timeshifter 07:24, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
Hey guys. Seigfried, i see your point. my intention was that "differing methodologies" could include the possibility that the way the lancet authors collected their data was flawed. but i see now that this isn't quite the right word here; maybe "different methods of collecting the data" or something more general would be better. i think it might be useful to mention that the methodologies are different -- the fact that one is based on counting and the other on extrapolation could be useful for someone to form their opinion about the validity of one or the other study. but i'm not attached to this particular sentence. Timeshifter, if you want the sentence in then maybe you should reword it so it addresses Seigfried's concerns. (however, looking at the current template i see that it's already stated that the methodologies and types of deaths counted are different.) Benwing 23:56, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
- "highly disputed" could be added. It is a common phrase on wikipedia pages. The sentence being discussed is not essential since some of the differing methodologies and types of deaths counted are mentioned in the template already. --Timeshifter 01:07, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
incorrect?
[edit]What is it you're saying is incorrect, in this edit? Each member of family of continuous uniform distributions is the uniform distribution on some interval [a, b]. As a and b vary, the distribution changes. Are you suggesting that family of distributions, parameterized by the two numbers a, b, is an exponential family? Michael Hardy 00:12, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
- OK, I've replied to your comments at talk:exponential family. You've missed the point with amazing completeness. Michael Hardy 00:20, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
from learnportuguese
[edit]Hi! :) I'm really interested in the Portuguese language. I found your page through the talk page of an article on Brazilian Portuguese. Just put a watch on my user page and talk page if you want. I am American, by the way. Um, if i get this right, Quero aprender Português porque quero ser jornalista (for radio). :) learnportuguese 23:07, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
AfD nomination of World's largest universities
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An article that you have been involved in editing, World's largest universities, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/World's largest universities. Thank you. GreenJoe 00:25, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
Speedy deletion of Template:Book reference link
[edit]A tag has been placed on Template:Book reference link requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section T3 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a deprecated or orphaned template. After seven days, if it is still unused and the speedy deletion tag has not been removed, the template will be deleted.
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Thanks. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:18, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
Rathole tunnel
[edit]![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/dc/Nuvola_apps_important_yellow.svg/48px-Nuvola_apps_important_yellow.svg.png)
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to the top of Rathole tunnel. neonwhite user page talk 19:30, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
Albanian pronunciation
[edit]Here is a little response to your question on the Albanian Talk Page: First, the letter is ç not ch. For some dialects ç and q have merged and xh and gj have merged. Some dialects of Albanian as well have a slight aspiration to the voiceless stops. Honestly, the palatal stops do not sound that much different from the postalveolar affricates anyway. I could barely tell the difference. Also, the r (single r) in Albanian varies a bit by dialect and depending on its position and following vowel. It isn't always a strict alveolar flap. Regards. Azalea pomp (talk) 08:51, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
Name change for "Iraqi Health Ministry casualty survey" page
[edit]I was hoping you could take a look at a point i've made on the discussion page here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Iraqi_Health_Ministry_casualty_survey
Changing a title of a page seems like a big deal so I was hoping to get others to agree first. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Stradov (talk • contribs) 23:56, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for changing it Benwing. I've tried to add some material actually on the study rather than just a bunch of criticisms which is basically all it had before. Hopefully it doesn't all get butchered by you-know-who.Stradov (talk) 10:07, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
I agree with you
[edit]Hello Benwing, I just wanted to let you know that I agree with all of the points you made on Talk:Israel_and_the_apartheid_analogy#undue_weight_and_plans_to_fix_it. I am in favor of all of the changes that you have suggested.WackoJackO 23:57, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
Hi
[edit]Thanks for XEmacs and wow you speak a lot of languages.--75.2.19.152 (talk) 12:40, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
- You're welcome. Benwing (talk) 06:13, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
Shanghainese tone
[edit]BW, we don't write something, then say it's wrong with a "see below" for the correct description. We certainly don't edit war over it when someone catches it; accusing them of edit warring over a single edit shows that you're not to be taken seriously.
As for Shanghainese, it simple tone system is not due to the lack of the MC tone split. That's true of Wu in general, but Shanghainese is simple in comparison to Wu. What makes it simple is the partial merger of the 3 tones of MC, and the development of word rather than syllable tone. The articles cover that; your "more accurate" addition misses the mark. kwami (talk) 01:44, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
PIE nouns
[edit]Thank for your tremendous work with the declension tables! Does Ringe (2006) really call *mḗh₁n̥s a "Narten root noun"? Sounds logical, but I've never heard "Narten" applied to nouns, only to the type of present tense. --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 15:08, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
Re: Verb tables
[edit] Hello. You have a new message at Anypodetos's talk page.
- I took the liberty of changing "is pronounced as" to "becomes" because we don't really know what anything was pronounced in PIE. Feel free to change it back if I got you wrong. --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 08:31, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
Nomination for deletion of Template:Section:Chapter reference after author
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Nomination for deletion of Template:Section:Book reference after author
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You are now a Reviewer
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Thanks for expanding the article on Egyptian Arabic significantly!
[edit]I'm just sending you this message to show my appreciation for your efforts in expanding the article on Egyptian Arabic. I remember reading it a couple of years ago, and your and Mahmudmasri's contributions have surprised me. Continue your great work! :D I'll be adding new stuff as well and help finding references to the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Neqitan (talk • contribs) 03:02, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
Nomination for deletion of Template:Section:Author link and year
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Nomination for deletion of Template:Section:Author link
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Your recent edits to Gibbs sampling
[edit]Nice work! Quantling (talk) 13:25, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
- I modified your edits to the Gibbs Sampling article section on variations to more sterilely discuss benefits and costs. If you think I've done it wrong, please further edit. —Quantling (talk | contribs) 18:14, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
Hidden Markov model
[edit]Your latest edits to Hidden Markov model are very professional looking. If it's an original write up by you, then very good! However, if it is more or less verbatim from some source, then unfortunately it has to go. (Perhaps you already know the Wikipedia:Non-free content rule, but I would be remiss if I didn't double check.) Thanks again for your quality changes to this and other articles. Quantling (talk) 12:31, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
Some things are inherently plural
[edit]This is worse than moving The Beatles to The Beatle. One can use the noun "Beatle" in the singular, as when one says Paul McCartney is a former Beatle. But there can be no such thing as just one exchangeable random variable. Michael Hardy (talk) 04:37, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
- Your comment about "exchangeable random variable" doesn't make much sense to me. Logically, if you can have a "sequence of X's", then you can have an "X" which is sensibly defined as "one of a sequence of X's". Certainly, whether or not you think singular "exchangeable random variable" is incorrect, you understand what is meant, and if you do a search on "exchangeable random variable" you will see plenty of examples in the singular with exactly the semantics I just described. In other words, whether or not you prescriptively think such usage is "incorrect", descriptively speaking it obviously exists and is well defined, so there seems little point to me in insisting that the Wikipedia article be named according to the plural when the standard practice is to use the singular whenever it exists. Benwing (talk) 05:33, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
Looking at the first several google hits, I'm failing to find what you say is there. Can you point to one or more specific pages on which you find that usage? Your comment that starts with "logically" is specious. Two say two or more random variables are exchangeable is to assert that a certain relationship among them exists. How can that apply to just one random variable in a way that's not vacuous? Michael Hardy (talk) 17:32, 3 October 2010 (UTC)
Newish article
[edit]Please see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Statistics#rich get richer which relates to the article you started at The rich get richer (statistics). Melcombe (talk) 09:21, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
Normal distribution
[edit]Hi Benwing, sorry for my earlier criticism of your edits in the Normal distribution article. I see that the lead now became better owing to you.
As for the article itself, it has been one year now since I've been editing and watching it; ever since there was a suggestion (see Archive 3) to push it towards the GA status. The article went a long way since then, and is now much closer than it used to be. Currently it is lacking thorough referencing, and maybe in the quality of prose (something I’m not good at fixing, not being a native speaker) — particularly the “Occurrence” section is not as clean as it should be. I wonder if you feel up to the challenge to help with these issues? It would be nice to have a GA article on a topic which is actually important (not the stupid ∞ monkey theorem). // stpasha » 23:48, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
Bayesian stats
[edit]Hi, you appear to think that I'm trying to remove information about Bayesian statistics from the confidence interval page because of some philosophical belief. This is not the case. My general view is that Bayesian statistics is correct and frequentist statistics is a good fallback plan when the Bayesian statistics are too hard to calculate or are strongly influenced by the prior despite the desire for an uninformative prior.
What I am trying to do is remove statements that are incorrect or misleading. My point on the talk page is that you can not use bayesian statistics to make statements like, "the probability that the Rangers will win the 2010 ALCS is 0.6". You are very careful and do a great job of not saying this on the talk page. On the article some of your edits imply that you can make statements like this. An example:
In the above poll, for example, one common-sense interpretation might be that we are 95% confident that the actual number of voters intending to vote for the party in question is between 36% to 44%. Although this interpretation may be a reasonable point of departure in understanding confidence intervals, it is technically incorrect (note, however, that it is similar to the type of reasoning that can be employed with Bayesian credible intervals)
I'm sure you know what you mean, but a reader might be excused form thinking that Bayesian statistics allows you to make a statement like, "There is a 95% probability that between 36% and 44% of the voters want to vote for the party in question." But the actual statement that you can make is, "conditional on agreeing that without the poll we would think that [blah blah blah] and on the data in this poll, the probability [blah blah blah]." It is as important a distinction as the point being made about the confidence interval at that exact part of the article, so I think it only makes sense to compare the two on equal footing.
Your recent edit was much better, but still washes too much away in the "introduces its own subtleties." text. While I realize that you know what is meant by it adding an element of subjectivity, that doesn't mean that the reader will.
But to get into the subtlety of Bayesian statistics right there in the middle of the middle of this article that isn't about Bayesian statistics seems inappropriate and unfocused. I just don't see how to do it. If you can find a way (and I'm open to that, you are a very good writer) I'm fine with it. Otherwise, I think it makes more sense lower down in the article or in its own article. 018 (talk) 15:19, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
- I was actually just trying to explain that I'm not pushing some Bayesian or freqnetist POV, I'm just trying to make the article clear. Please don't accuse me of pushing a POV, if you do you are wasting time and just plain wrong.
- The point is that we are really being very precise with what some might view as a downfalls in the freqentist perspective, so I think it doesn't make sense to be any less precise in the downfalls in our writing about the Bayesian view. You wrote on my talk, "Rather than constantly reverting my changes because you find some small fault in them, please try to be constructive and figure out how better to express the basic issue!" I actually trying to address exactly this point above--I don't see how you can include the Bayesian thoroughly (which I think is essential) and keep the article clear and on topic. So I'm saying that it is fundamentally something that just can't go there in a good article (that I see). The only way I see to make it work is to have a seperate section--but that is already there. If you want to include it in that section, I'd suggest you start an RFC. I'd be very interested to see where it goes. 018 (talk) 15:27, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
- I'm saying that when you present Pr(A|B,C) you had better make sure that the B and C are in the statement. Your suggestion that they are implied is the error in Bayesian statistics akin to thinking that you can reverse probabilities in freqentist statistics (i.e. go from Pr(A|B) to Pr(B|A) as you can in Bayesian statistics). I don't understand why you would want to make one error when pointing out that you shouldn't make the other. 018 (talk) 03:22, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
- First, thank you for continuing to talk. I appreciate that if you have a strong prior, Bayesian statistics makes a lot more sense than frequentist statistics (having been there before). However, I can't make any sense of the comment you made about frequentist statistics having a particular prior. There are not priors in frequentist statistics. Also, if we are going to talk about the article specifically (rather than how we are editing or our biases) can we move it back to the article space? I'd move the part of your comment that is relevant there myself but I've noticed that many editors find that jarring. Would you like to repurpose your text on the page (perhaps in a blockquote)? I will tell you my two objections now though. (1) It is WAY too long to be an aside in the middle of a paragraph who's topic sentence doesn't say anything about Bayesian in it, (2) I don't understand why having the two sections that compare/contrast to Bayesian don't give a sufficient amount of information. Generally, I like the current version where the fact of an alternative with different assumptions and conclusions is mentioned without getting into the long amount of text required for a compare/contrast outside of the sections used for compare/contrast. 018 (talk) 15:36, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
- Again, I'd rather talk about specific edits on the talk page. However, you brought up many other issues. One is, why not be Bayesian all the time and use non-informative priors? The answer is two fold. In the case of the poll, the usual non-informative prior is a beta(1,1) But This prior is actually (slightly) informative and there are cases where it matters (usually low n) and can even mater a lot. (as in people get red in the face arguing about (1,1) vs (0+delta,0+delta) which looks bizarre as a prior but the posteriors look very different than when it is (1,1) and n is small.) If you model something that could be poisson distributed with a beta, then the number of successes could be very small even with n is large and, again, the prior matters. Then you start to think about what the prior should say... lots of chin scratching. In the mean time the frequentist down the hall has got an answer that doesn't involve a five page description of priors, the choices involved, the meaning of those choices, and a sensitivity analysis. What's worse, he has about the same answer as you, and he didn't have 3 pages describing the calculus of the posterior.
- Now imagine a regulatory environment for, say cars, where the regulator has to be sure too many fatal accidents don't happen. So the regulator forces designers to test their cars and meet some threshold. Here, the frequentist view is totally fine, it has to do with repetition of the experiment and the many manufactures do the same experiment for every car, every model year--so the regulator is totally fine using some large n approximation and a frequentist approach.
- Finally, I'll point out that voice recognition software that I've interacted with is bad to almost minimally functional and Bayesian assumptions may be getting in the way i.e. if you assume markovity of words then the words that have low probability communicate the most to the listener because they have the highest information content, but are also the ones that the classifier is most likely to get wrong... so is the Bayesian analysis helping or hurting? Maybe getting lots of the words wrong but the really important words right would be better than getting the low information words right and the high information words wrong. In an extreme case, imagine a classifier for spoken words that puts text an air traffic controller says on an airplane pilots display. Almost always the controller will be saying, "everything is fine." so the prior of that will be really high. But, say, sometimes they issue a dire warning to East traveling aircraft to dive (and the opposite to the West traveling aircraft), so that will have a low prior. You can imagine that is a bad situation. Now, say the East traveling aircraft is too low to the ground and a controller says, for the first time ever, that an East traveling aircraft should climb... all of a sudden everything hangs on the prior that somebody threw in there 20 years ago and thought was "uninformative." In addition, you already know that if my bank can't understand me saying numbers into a phone (uniform prior) that there is no way this locution gets translated correctly and the pilot who is too low to the ground is told to dive. Again, if the programer thought to include "altitude relative to the ground" in the posterior, then this might work out okay, but if they didn't then you will assign a (subjective) probability that is absolutely wrong. 018 (talk) 15:41, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
- Sorry, I thought I said before, I'd rather talk about the article on the article talk page. I also think I agree with Melcombe, so convincing the two of us together should be about as easy as convincing just one of us.
- Part of the problem is that I think our conflict is irreducible. I don't want lots of yamering OR anything that doesn't give enough detail about alternatives in the middle of a section that doesn't regard Bayesian statistics in the first place. The intersection of those two is either a wikilink or the empty set. You appear disappointed with a wikilink, and I think Melcombe and I agree that it isn't the best solution. I also disagree that Bayesian statistics make up so much of the article that it deserves a paragraph in the lead. The lead should be a definition and a short summary of the article. Including something that is just not a big part of the article doesn't make sense.
- If you really want to push the point (which I think would just be a waste of time given the outcome Melcombe already mentioned at statistical inference) I think you should do an RFC. 018 (talk) 23:31, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
- I didn't say our conflict is irreducible. I said "I think our conflict is irreducible." I basically made this same point when this started but I'll point out (in the language of this discussion) that just because a subjective probability is almost one doesn't mean that an even in the complement of the event won't happen. In particular, I think you are a very good writer and so you could surprise me.
- However, when two editors agree that an edit your are proposing isn't a good one, then there is no consensus to include it (again, I'm open to the possibility that you might make some great suggestion. I'll add there is also the possibility that other editors show up and agree with you, or that we have misread Melcombe). That is how consensus editing work--sometime the consensus is against you and you just have to move on (I am familiar with this because this happens to me often). If you can't move on and think that you could get consensus if more editors joined the discussion, you can explicitly ask more editors to join the discussion via an WP:RFC. 018 (talk) 17:14, 23 October 2010 (UTC)
- First, thank you for continuing to talk. I appreciate that if you have a strong prior, Bayesian statistics makes a lot more sense than frequentist statistics (having been there before). However, I can't make any sense of the comment you made about frequentist statistics having a particular prior. There are not priors in frequentist statistics. Also, if we are going to talk about the article specifically (rather than how we are editing or our biases) can we move it back to the article space? I'd move the part of your comment that is relevant there myself but I've noticed that many editors find that jarring. Would you like to repurpose your text on the page (perhaps in a blockquote)? I will tell you my two objections now though. (1) It is WAY too long to be an aside in the middle of a paragraph who's topic sentence doesn't say anything about Bayesian in it, (2) I don't understand why having the two sections that compare/contrast to Bayesian don't give a sufficient amount of information. Generally, I like the current version where the fact of an alternative with different assumptions and conclusions is mentioned without getting into the long amount of text required for a compare/contrast outside of the sections used for compare/contrast. 018 (talk) 15:36, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
- I'm saying that when you present Pr(A|B,C) you had better make sure that the B and C are in the statement. Your suggestion that they are implied is the error in Bayesian statistics akin to thinking that you can reverse probabilities in freqentist statistics (i.e. go from Pr(A|B) to Pr(B|A) as you can in Bayesian statistics). I don't understand why you would want to make one error when pointing out that you shouldn't make the other. 018 (talk) 03:22, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
Pronunciation of Leibniz
[edit]I've responded to your comments on Talk:Gottfried Leibniz#Pronunciation. I should have done a better job explaining in the first place, since it seems to be a common mistake by English speakers with some knowledge of German pronunciation to assume that it is pronounced [ˈlaɪpnɪts]. In fact, perhaps counterintuitively, the actual German pronunciation is [ˈlaɪbnɪts]. By the way, the only reference I can find showing the pronunciation with /p/ is Merriam-Webster, which I don't consider to be a reliable source for German pronunciation. --Iceager (talk) 14:45, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
Albanian numerals
[edit]You can find a summary of different authors on Albanian numerals here. Aigest (talk) 08:31, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
Pronunciation of Mozart
[edit]Hi, I responded to your comment on the Mozart talk page. Opus33 (talk) 17:16, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
Albanian verbs
[edit]I'll try to find some works on that. Bests Aigest (talk) 08:09, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
- Albanian grammar by Victor Friedman Linguist
- Albanian grammar by Xhevat LLOSHI, Prof. Doctor of Linguistics
- Albanian verbs by Geoff Husić
These are online sources regarding Albanian verbs. Are they useful? Aigest (talk) 09:14, 8 December 2010 (UTC)
Hebrew
[edit]Benwing, can you look at the article Dukus Horant and help me with the Hebrew characters? I have three problems. For some reason I can't get the colon right in the fourth line, so the lines are all indented to the same place. If possible, of course, it would be better to have them right justified instead of left justified, but I can't see how to do that either. And then, the three dots which I have put in (also in the translation) should not be there - we actually want a protected space, so the two stichs of each line are clearly separate, and ideally the the second stichs should be tabbed to the same place. If you look here: http://homepages-nw.uni-regensburg.de/~dug22463/Transitions.pdf on page 34 (of the PDF - 78 of the article) you will see what I am trying to copy. --Doric Loon (talk) 13:17, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for your message - I answered on my own page. --Doric Loon (talk) 11:17, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
Irish
[edit]While I'm neutral to whether your recent additions to Irish phonology ought to be present in the article or placed elsewhere, it would be helpful if you provided a fuller citation than "Sihler (1995)." Thanks. — Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi] 05:27, 16 February 2011 (UTC)
Okay
[edit]I understand that you hold the opinion that the Choctaw etymology is incorrect. But being false or a minority view doesn't make something Original Research. Original Research is adding the unreferenced view or speculation of an editor. The Choctaw etymology is widely reported and well referenced whatever its validity. That is why I and others have restored the material. I suggest you find a published statement saying that the etymology is no longer taken seriously and add that comment with a reference to support it. μηδείς (talk) 22:41, 16 February 2011 (UTC)
Please take care with what you say about others.
[edit]Hi, thank you for your thoughtful comments at my talk page. But I need to warn you, in particular, that you must not cast aspersions on others or make personal attacks against them, such as by calling them "a horrible POV warrior who seems to have no interest in reforming", without at the same time providing evidence for your assertions in the form of diffs. Thanks, Sandstein 11:00, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
- Hi Benwing. I would add that you've implied that I was sanctioned for POV (and/or described me as a "POV warrior"), and for "watch my back", when neither is true. I also don't really edit in this topic area. Would you mind just removing any references to me from your comment to Sandstein? Thanks. Jayjg (talk) 02:07, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
Hello and very sorry to take so long to respond. I was out of the country and it turned out there was no Internet access anywhere near where I was staying; I've been very busy catching up since I returned and only just now have gotten back to Wikipedia. I'm aware you're no longer much involved in editing contentious I/P articles, and I think your behavior since being sanctioned has been unusual and extremely admirable; most editors in similar situations, it seems, have just quit Wikipedia in disgust. Instead, you continued working on other areas of WP and made a genuine attempt to follow the suggested path towards having the topic ban removed (e.g. working on improving the quality of important articles to move them towards Featured Article status). You also were willing to admit that you may have gone too far in your editing behavior.
My mention of your "watch my back" comment was not to suggest that you were sanctioned specifically because of this. What does seem to be the case is that your comment triggered a great deal of heat and helped push many people towards the opinion that you needed to be sanctioned. Similar thing goes for the other "offenses" I mentioned. As I said in my comment, I think the focus on "actionable offenses" is misplaced. I've thought somewhat about this and it seems to me that the problem is that people keep making an analogy between Wikipedia and a democratic society. In such a society, individual rights (e.g. self-expression) are defended for their own sake, and are weighed against (and often, justifiably so, considered more important than) overall societal goals. (You might say something similar about a university, where professors (in theory at least) have specific academic freedom to pursue research without political interference from the university, even if the university thinks it is embarrassing or detrimental to their bottom line.) I think a better analogy is with an organization such as a corporation or army. The overall goals of a society are diffuse and often hard to quantify, whereas corporations and armies have specific, measurable goals (maximize profits, control territory). Similarly Wikipedia has the specific goal of producing high-quality, well-sourced, unbiased articles. In a corporation, e.g., no one has an intrinsic "right" to work on any particular project or have any particular idea of theirs be investigated. If someone's participation in a project is harming that project, or the company's overall interests, they will be reassigned or even let go of, whether or not this harm is their "fault"; the company's benefit needs to take priority over the individual's benefit. I see Wikipedia topic bans as something similar, necessary sometimes for the benefit of an overall article quality.
As for potentially referring to you as a POV warrior, perhaps there is a less emotionally-charged or more euphemistic term that could be used instead of "POV warring", e.g. "agenda-focused editing" or something. Essentially what I'm referring to is an editing pattern that seems to involve edits that consistently favor one side or another (especially when it's not obvious that such edits are needed to fix bias in the other direction), along with aggressive patrolling of the articles in question and a general willingness to get one's way by outlasting contrary editors in a "war of attrition". IMO these last two behaviors are the most problematic, as in practice they drive away all but a hard core of editors willing to engage in similar behaviors. I haven't reviewed your contributions at the time in detail to see whether they fit this pattern. All I can say is that a number of people seem to have made accusations of a similar sort, and you were sanctioned for behavior that appears to be of the sort that I'm mentioning.
However, the reason I mentioned your name in this context is specifically to indicate someone who has changed their behavior and moved away from this sort of tendentious editing; in other words to indicate that topic bans don't necessarily drive away the "good" editors that we want to keep, who have lots of good things to contribute and are willing to learn from their mistakes. I think this is an important point to make, and offhand I don't know of anyone else has come back from such a severe topic ban.
(Whether an indefinite topic ban was warranted in the first place is another issue. I think these should really be last-resort options; much better to use temporary bans of increasing severity, only of a few days at first, to impose a "cooling-off" period and allow the involved party/parties to reflect on their behavior and its results. I have no idea about the prior history of any sanctions against you, and I don't see any obvious way to figure this out other than a lot of digging through old discussion pages and such. There isn't even any mention of you on WP:ARBPIA that I can see.)
Benwing (talk) 00:57, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
- Hi Benwing. I appreciate your thoughtful response, which did help clarify and ameliorate some of what you said. However, my point was that a) I don't think that specific parts of your comments were accurate, particularly as stated, and b) in any event, no-one wants to be talked about when they're not around and not involved in an issue, particularly when it's a public conversation. Can I request that, if you won't remove any references to me (which is still my preference), could you at least commit to not commenting about me again in situations in which I'm not involved? That would seem to be a minimal sort of common courtesy. Oh, and if you don't mind, I prefer to keep discussions in one place, so I'll keep an eye out here for any response. Jayjg (talk) 02:14, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
- Hi, sorry to be late in responding, somehow the "new message" notice didn't appear (or disappeared before I noticed it). I completely understand your concerns about being mentioned. The reason I don't want to remove your mentions is that it sets a potentially very constraining precedent -- naturally, no one really wants their name mentioned in a controversial context, and what is to prevent everyone from making a similar request? We're talking about an issue that is definitely related to behavior by a specific set of people, and if I can't mention those people specifically I don't see how I can make a coherent point. At least one of the two mentions of you is in a context where I was specifically talking about potential long-term effects of topic bans. In a context like this there's no way to avoid mentioning past topic bans. What I do promise is that I'll think carefully before mentioning you in the future and make sure that it's necessary and truly relevant to the situation in hand. I'll also notify you if I mention you. In any case it's unlikely I'll be wading into this issue in the near future. As I mentioned before, I don't have the time or stomach to fight against POV-pushing editors and there doesn't appear to be the administrative will to stop them. As long as this continues I don't think my future editing attempts are going to be any less painful than before; better to just stay away. Benwing (talk) 03:59, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
Your page moves
[edit]Hello! Recently you moved/renamed 'Olekha, Nyenkha, Chocangacakha, and Lakha. I was wondering if you'd reconsider these moves because -kha means "language" (the new titles are redundant and may not be real terms) and there is no ethnic group with an identical name. For example, Dzongkha, Standard Hindi, and Urdu do not have "language" after them. The Wikipedia:Naming conventions (languages), first line, indicates no suffix is necessary. What do you think? JFHJr (㊟) 04:48, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
Template language
[edit]I happened to find your post at [10] when searching to see if anyone had done what you propose. I'm a former computer science academic who has also recently started template 'programming'. It is indeed an appalling language. In the area that interests me (WP:PLANTS) there are 'taxobox' templates which are known to have odd behaviours, if not errors, but which have simply defied debugging to date. Even if you can only produce a separately mounted tool which converts a more sensible syntax to Wikimedia template code, this would be really useful. Ideally it would be two-way. I've found a template with 11 successive occurrences of "}"! Peter coxhead (talk) 09:20, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
History of Old Norse and Icelandic vowels
[edit]Hello, Benwing. Thank you for your much-needed recent contributions to Old Norse#Vowels, and in particular you nicely resolved the dependency of the height of a, ę and ǫ on the construction used. However, I have a couple concerns about the new table I'd like to discuss. Firstly, I think the orthographic information should be left to Old Norse orthography (which has gaps), so that any changes will not have to maintained in multiple articles. Secondly, I think that the table should be split (annoying, I know) for the following reasons:
- The Proto-Germanic -> North(west) Germanic information is more relevant to Proto-Norse, which itself is relatively deprived of content.
- The Old Icelandic information is more relevant under Old Norse#Old Icelandic or History of Icelandic, except the 1st grammarian-era column because of its similarity to the general vowel system of the time.
- There is a tendency to bias the article towards Old Icelandic which has taken work to offset.
- Having a thinner table will allow us to double up the columns on each half-table, saving vertical space.
So, I propose a PGmc->PNorse table for Proto-Norse, a PNorse->Primitive Old Norse->12th C. Old Icelandic table for Old Norse#Vowels, and a Later->Modern Icelandic table for Old Norse#Old Icelandic or 12C->Later->Modern Icelandic table for History of Icelandic. If the table proves otherwise useful as-is, it could be recovered from history. ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 12:58, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
- Usually I like tables that take a long historical view, as it makes it easier to see the change over time. If you strictly split tables, it makes it hard to cross-correlate. However, I'm not opposed to a two-way split Proto-Germanic -> Old Norse and Old Norse->Modern Icelandic. Even in a split like this, though, I think it's better to include significant overlap in the tables, even though that makes maintenance more difficult. In this case, this would mean that the Proto-Germanic -> Old Norse table would look more or less like the current table, sorted by Proto-Germanic vowels, while the Old Norse -> modern table would be sorted by Old Norse vowels and show the outcomes in various modern languages, including ideally Swedish/Danish/Norwegian/Faroese as well as Icelandic. The Old Norse table would have a column on the left indicating the Proto-Germanic sources of different Old Norse vowels, e.g. for y, u (+i-mut), i (+w-mut). I actually went ahead and created these two tables (a lot of work esp. to get the outcomes for Faroese and Swedish in place!). The modern-outcome table should have all of Swedish, as well as Danish and Norwegian, but I don't have good references on hand to easily
add these. Benwing (talk) 10:15, 17 May 2011 (UTC)
- I agree that a long historical track is useful, but it's a little over the scope. It could go in North Germanic#History, though, and leave each article to document its history. That would lend the separate histories to descriptions in terms of mass shifts and their dates, the content not suited for a table but redundant if the table already exists. ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 20:25, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
- But there's still the problem Old Norse has of not addressing early Old Norse, which means at least not addressing the transcriptions of any runestone article. So it's probably better as you have it. ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 14:33, 21 May 2011 (UTC)
templates
[edit]Hi Ben,
We used to have a language template like the one you just created. However, it was deleted due to problems with server loads. I don't know exactly what the problems were, but I thought it best to delete your template until it can be clarified. It might no longer be a problem, but it might still be. — kwami (talk) 11:39, 21 May 2011 (UTC)
laterals
[edit]Actually, laterals aren't a manner of articulation at all, let alone sonorants. They're only on that table because they're so commonly listed on the y axis of inventory charts along with manners of articulation, much as VOT and different airstreams often are, though if you look at languages with lots of laterals, you'll often find that they're given a column rather than a row, as if they were a place of articulation. (E.g. at Halkomelem.)
It may be that, whatever we decide for the apical-laminal problem, laterals may fit in with the solution. — kwami (talk) 08:26, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
Also, what is your source that only alveolar sibilants are grooved? AFAIK, that tends to be a characteristic of all sibilants, at least in English. — kwami (talk) 10:41, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
- Yeah, I've been looking at SOWL too, but they say they don't know which sibilants are grooved, if maybe all are, or if it varies between languages. So distinguishing /s z/ as 'grooved', in contrast to all the rest, doesn't seem justified from their description. I've reworded some of the articles to say 'hollow', meaning the pit in the middle of the tongue rather than the groove in the back of the tongue. Hopefully that's accurate. — kwami (talk) 23:58, 27 May 2011 (UTC)
Postalveolar consonant
[edit]Thank you for your rewrite of the article Postalveolar consonant. I think the article now gives a better idea of what they are like without confusing different terms. Munci (talk) 21:20, 25 May 2011 (UTC)
CounterPunch
[edit]As someone who has edited the CounterPunch article in the past, you might want to comment on this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:CounterPunch#Moving_on BobFromBrockley (talk) 10:39, 13 June 2011 (UTC)
History of the English language
[edit]Thanks for working on this article. The main thing still lacking is sources. Can you add a few? WCCasey (talk) 05:21, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
Voiceless alveolar retracted sibilant
[edit]What happened to the content though, I can see tha talk page you moved but the main article is now a redlink. Akerbeltz (talk) 15:14, 18 June 2011 (UTC)
IPA symbol names changed
[edit]Hi, about the changed names in {{IPAsym}}. Could you take a look at this question? -DePiep (talk) 20:56, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
Choctaw/OK
[edit]Howdy, Benwing. If you care to join in, the Choctaw/okeh discussion is once again hotting up over at Talk:Okay. —Scheinwerfermann T·C06:55, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
You deleted verifiable evidence from the "Etymology of Okay" article that ran contrary to your favored theory. At the moment, I'm not sure I can work with you given your lack of discretion when editing. You may want to have a look at the discussion page, before I flag the page as lacking neutrality. Terms like "resurrected", incessantly belittling qualifiers for other theories, do not seem to me in keeping with the wikipedia spirit, which surprises me given your experience and evident knowledge.
I'm also not quite sure what the long parenthesis on the appearance of the Webster's dictionary, or the claims regarding the Black Panthers have to do with the question at hand... the latter seems much more like an attempt at an ad hominem argument?
My apologies. I'm a bit of a hothead, and I am annoyed that you deleted the citation from the book published in 1784, half a century prior to your earliest citation. (You did treat a few other earlier citations with the respected lexicographer Cassidy's comments, however, you did NOT treat this earliest one, verifiable at the online archive...) Perhaps this was just an oversight?
Hope we can keep this friendly. :flowers: Any further discussion should treat the earliest known citation, which is now quite logically at the beginning of the article.
Are you still at UT Austin? lovely town! (I'm in Lyons, France though some of my early linguistics training was done at LSU Baton Rouge.) SashiRolls (talk) 15:49, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
Egyptian Arabic
[edit]Thanks for discussing the subject about the transcriptions. I'll explain the reason for my edits on my talk page. --Mahmudmasri (talk) 12:37, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
Please, read my discussions at my talk page and at Egyptian Arabic talk. --Mahmudmasri (talk) 15:38, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
I have replied on my talk page regarding MSA usage in Egypt. --Mahmudmasri (talk) 06:35, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
Gallo-Italic
[edit]Can you look after Gallo-Italic? There has been a flurry of edits recently through an opinionated IP (apparently of Italian origin and ideologically motivated) removing Hull's view and changing the article to deny the mainstream view (at least outside of Italy) that Padanian is (in origin) Western Romance, not Italo-Romance, and its current hybrid "look" a result of secondary influence from the south. Also, I fail to see the relevance of German- and Italian-language sources for the question of "Gallo-Italic" vs. "Gallo-Italian". Eventually, the terminological confusion needs to be addressed, and the divergence between the page title and the intro solved. I don't think "Northern Italian languages" is an appropriate title, as the article explicitly excluded Venetian; "Northern Italian languages", if at all, only makes sense as a a term if it is used to include Venetian, in opposition to "Gallo-Italic". I was considering reverting the article wholesale to its state of June and renaming it to "Gallo-Italic", but I wanted to seek you out first, as you seem to be much better versed in the subject. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 01:32, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
- Thank you for your great work. As for Hull: Personally, I like the term "Padanian" for its neutrality, even if it may have appropriated by a political movement in the meanwhile. But "Padanian" does not in itself say any more than "language varieties spoken in the Padanian plain". It takes no inherent stance on the affiliation or independence (or not) of the language variaties so named. Every other term is too loaded with specific ideas about these language varieties. More important, however, is Hull's claim that "Padanian", including Venetian, used to be less Italian-like and more Gallo-Romance-like in the past (say, the High Middle Ages), and had especially close ties to Rhaeto-Romance (in the sense of Romansh-Ladin-Friulian). Interestingly, there appear to be relic words and names that suggest strongly that the palatalisation of /k/ and /g/ to /t͡ʃ/ and /d͡ʒ/ in front of /a/, a characteristic innovation of most of Gallo-Romance and in particular, Rhaeto-Romance (Romansh-Ladin-Friulian), was shared by "Padanian" varieties at least as far south as the Po. I think this view is notable and serious because I have heard other specialists confirm this, and it should be mentioned in the article, as it used to be before the IP came along and removed all mention of Hull and his view. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 02:54, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
- Could you support me at Northern Italian languages again? There's a bunch of IPs plastering tags and templates all over the lede, a behaviour which strikes me as quite trollish and childishly defiant. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 17:30, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
- Your version has now been completely replaced with an older version. I'll undo the reversion. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 20:23, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
Classical Arabic interesting information
[edit]Hi Benwing. I read your added information regarding a Mecca dialect vs Classical literary dialect. It's very interesting. I was always wondering about the origin of ى pronounced /aː/ and why not write it ا. It is even more interesting to read about the re-phonemicization.
That makes Literary Arabic used today a constructed/an artificial language by all means, which is essentially Mecca dialect artificially phonemicized to Classical Arabic then artificially phonemicized again to approach some of the Modern dialects phonology traits for simplification. After all that, reciting Koran today is with a slightly different pronunciation from Literary Arabic (which even differs regionally) and absolutely different from Mecca dialect artificially phonemicized to Classical literary dialect.
Are there available web-links to read further about that? --Mahmudmasri (talk) 04:09, 5 September 2011 (UTC)
Speedy deletion nomination of Laboratory phonology
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