Talk:Al-Walid I

Untitled
I've added material from at Tabari volume 23. One thing I changed was the previous statement that al Hajjaj had appointed all conquering generals. From at Tabari I specified that Musa ibn Nusayr and his retainer (mawla) Tariq ibn Ziyad conquered al-Andalus. Al-Hajjaj was in command in the east and I saw no reference to him in this volume of at Tabari appointing people in Ifriqiyah and al-Andalus. I also replaced Iberia with the Arabic al-Andalus.Gallador 18:14, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Added Arabic script, removed Arabic from the talk page. skoosh (háblame) 22:29, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Dubious tag - April 2015
You've inserted a dubious tag after Al-Walid's Arabic name in the lead, saying "Why is another Arabic-written name indicated in the Infobox? Either-or, but decide (or explain variations)." The Arabic name in the infobox and in the lead look identical to me. Maybe it's the typeface difference that is confusing you? - HyperGaruda (talk) 21:57, 27 November 2015 (UTC) - Easiest check: 1) number of words: Infobox has 3, lead has 4; 2) copy-and-paste name into search engine of the page: proves they're not identical. 3) Next step: do the same one word at a time - only one out of three does overlap!

Now go to a transliteration engine. I'm using http://www.stevemorse.org/arabic/ara2eng.html. Infobox name reads "LWLD BN BDLMLK", so al-Walid ibn Abdulmalik; lead name "LWLYD BN BD LMLK" al-Walid ibn Abd-ul-Malik or alike. Almost the same, but not quite. So back to my note, please unify or offer some explanation, like: in India they like the -ul- style, but that shouldn't apply to purely Arabic names. Anyhow, one encyclopedia, one article - two ways of writing the article's name?Arminden (talk) 00:43, 28 November 2015 (UTC)ArmindenArminden (talk) 00:43, 28 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Ah, I see. It appears that a space is missing from the infobox version. Also, you might want to find a better transliteration engine. For some reason yours does not recognise the letter ی, which is the same as ي, except that the former should only be used at the end of words. Both are usually transliterated as Y. I'll fix the problem in a mo. - HyperGaruda (talk) 06:05, 28 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I can't read Arabic, I just noticed there's a difference :-) Arminden (talk) 08:06, 28 November 2015 (UTC)ArmindenArminden (talk) 08:06, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

Short description
I edited the article's short description (SD) from Sixth Umayyad caliph (r. 705–715) to a more helpful Arabian prince and the sixth leader of the Umayyad caliphate (r. 705–715), but reverted this stating that "short descriptions should be under 40 characters wherever possible" and referencing WP:SD40. WP:BRD requires me to discuss here before processing further. The SD40 guidance does not require SDs to be under 40 characters but does state that 80% are, and that SDs should "avoid jargon, and use simple, readily comprehensible terms that do not require pre-existing detailed knowledge of the subject", and "be short – no longer than is needed to fulfill [their] functions effectively". I do not believe the original SD fulfilled these requirements, hence my edit; in particular, I don't believe that "caliph" is a common term in everyday English (I had to read its article to find out what it means) and because of that it is unclear what Ummayad is. I propose a shorter version (52 characters rather than my original 75) to hopefully satisfy the requirement for brevity whilst being more useful as an SD: Sixth leader of the Umayyad caliphate (r. 705–715). I'm open to suggestions for rephrasing whilst keeping the SD requirements of using "simple, readily comprehensible terms". Bazza (talk) 18:57, 11 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Thanks for bringing this here. Try to keep in mind what short descriptions are used for: when searching a term on a tablet or smartphone, they appear beneath the term as a way to disambiguate from similarly spelled terms. They longer they are, the longer the reader will do to pick the right article between the similarly spelled terms. Now ask the question: what are the chances that someone looking for al-Walid I does not know the word 'caliph'? And if they're in fact looking for some completely different 'Walid', say Walid Phares, isn't Sixth Umayyad caliph (r. 705–715) enough for the reader to quickly realize, even if they don't know the word 'caliph' or 'Umayyad', that this is not what they're looking for? Your second suggestion is already better, but still a bit long for this purpose. If you don't agree, hopefully we'll get some input from other editors. ☿ Apaugasma  ( talk  ☉) 19:26, 11 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your reply. You have assumed that SDs are only used by readers looking for something specific. WP:SD states that as the third of their three purposes:
 * a very brief indication of the field covered by the article
 * a short descriptive annotation
 * a disambiguation in searches, especially to distinguish the subject from similarly titled subjects in different fields
 * I use them for the first and second when I scroll through random articles (during which process I also update SDs, one of the Wikipedia app's suggested activities), and rely on "simple, readily comprehensible terms" to judge whether I want to view an article or skip to the next. "Sixth Umayyad caliph (r. 705–715)" did not fulfil that requirement, interesting though the article seems to be.
 * You state that my 52-character proposal is still a bit long, without saying what the limit is. It's not 40 characters, which is a suggestion at WP:SDFORMAT, not a mandatory instruction; even 100 characters is listed as allowable but subject to scrutiny, and the Wikipedia app's physical limit is 250.
 * As you suggest, we can wait a bit longer to see if anyone else has ideas. Bazza (talk) 09:50, 12 October 2022 (UTC)
 * It used to read "no more than about 40 characters" until very recently, that's where I'm coming from with this (I didn't realize it had changed). But is the way you use the SDs not rather more as an editor than as a reader? Readers do tend to look for something specific, and their interests should come first. Anyway, I'm personally OK with the 52 char description (though perhaps use 'ruler' rather than 'leader'), I just think the shorter one is better. Other editors are probably not very interested in this discussion at this point, but if we were to make this change to all our articles about caliphs, I suspect that editorial input would favor the shorter versions using 'caliph' rather than 'leader/ruler of the foo caliphate'. ☿ Apaugasma  ( talk  ☉) 16:11, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

Coin image background
Would it be possible to switch to a transparent background for the coin image in the infobox? &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 16:03, 19 July 2023 (UTC)