User:Sidatio/On Astarabadi

On Bibi Khatoon Astarabadi
Saidito, I find it very unfortunate to have to have arguments with you so frequently and in such a short span of time --- I am not here to waste either my time or anybody else's with arguments; this is not a talking shop. I fundamentally disagree with the two tags that you have added to the above-mentioned article. My work is insofar "original" that it brings together information from a variety of sources; there are no elements of speculation in there and certainly I am not proposing a new theory about who Bibi Khatoon Astarabadi may or may have been --- the entry is about someone who died almost 90 years ago. Secondly, what is "indiscriminately cites its references" supposed to mean in the present context? The two tags or mutually inconsistent! (This is not the first time that I have detected inconsistencies in your logic.) What is indiscriminate there? The work is in progress (as I have clearly indicated it in the article) and thus far it has costed me many hours of hard labour to bring its present contents together. The sources cited are as reliable as one can get; Ms Farnaz Seifi, for instance, is one of the most celebrated young woman-rights activists/journalists of Iran --- last year she spent some time in the Evin Prison and I find it very generous and courageous of her to have at all answered my questions (I do not live in Iran); the weblog Emshaspandan is her personal weblog and is a weblog of highest quality.

I therefore remove the two tags which, as I mentioned above, cannot have any bearing on the present article. May I suggest that we avoid conflict by minimising (ideally avoiding) personal encounters on these pages? I suggest that you leave the matter concerning the biography of Bibi Khatoon to someone else, since I believe that I so fundamentally disagree with your personal points of view that I am unwilling, in fact unable, to argue with you not only on this, but on any matter; I believe that I have already expressed myself very clearly on the page concerning The Indian Women. Thank you for your understanding. Incidentally, you may wish to have a look into the list of citations of the entry on, for instance, Charles Darwin to realise that I have not been indiscriminate in my citations. --BF 07:23, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Answer preserved here from editor's talk page

RE: Astarabadi
It seems you have serious ownership issues with certain articles. The tags in this case were justified. For example, in regards to the original research:


 * This book is considered by some as the first declaration of women's rights in the recent history of Iran. What verifiable source substantiates this?


 * This clearly testifies to Bibi Khatoon's wholehearted dedication to the cause of women's education in Iran. Whether it did or didn't, that seems to be the editor's opinion.


 * True to her usual style of writing, Bibi Khatoon's tone in this book is derisive. Again, the editor's opinion.

As far as the footnotes go - a lot of them aren't proper sources. This one, for example, is even an example of a footnote that is OR:


 * 18. The present writer has consulted neither Ta'deeb al-Nesvan nor Ma'ayeb al-Rejal. Some familiarity with this genre of the literature of the time suggests however that Ta'deeb al-Nesvan may not have been more than a prank by a member of Iran's aristocracy of the time.

Next, I'd like to point out that the GNU Free Documentation License grants any editor here permission to edit any contribution made, provided that editor adheres to Wikipedia's guidelines and policies. I'm sure you don't need to be reminded, but just in case, under every edit box, Wikipedia asks you to note, among other things:


 * If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly or redistributed for profit by others, do not submit it.

Finally, in the interest of civility, I will open up a discussion of the matter on Astarabadi's talk page. It might be easier to just have that discussion in a central place, though - while categorizing the List of Iranian women, I tagged a LOT of articles that need attention. If we can't resolve the matter ourselves, I'm willing to take the matter to dispute resolution.

Since you have a policy of blanking your talk page periodically, I will preserve this response on my own page under your entry. I'd like to close by offering you this piece of advice:

Don't take the edits of others so personally.

Sidatio 11:23, 7 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Sidatio, I have no ownership problem. I hate however undue interference. You take for example "The present writer ..." Well that is the way one puts things when one has not consulted the original text(s) (as for "The book is considered ...", I did not invent that statement, it is the opinion of all who know Bibi Khatoon; if you care to consult the sources that I have cited, then you will see that on one thing they all agree and that is exactly contained in this statement). Now you must know a thing or two before tagging articles. Firstly, the book in question is out of print and I am not in Iran to borrow it from someone and I have no time to delve into the libraries of the history departments --- the local history department has to borrow it from elsewhere and who should pay for the expenses? given the fact that I am not working for the history department; my footnote serves to reflect this fact and will make that those who have consulted the original text to correct my possible error(s) of judgement. Secondly, I have found an on-line bookshop which sells that book, however does not have a PayPal option and wants credit-card number; the on-line bookshop being an obscure one, I cannot give my credit number away, so have remained without the original text. Now, I have written to various people in Iran who might know about details, but none has responded, except Ms Saifi --- as you may have heard, it is at present dangerous for people in Iran to write to strangers abroad for the possibility of being accused of spying or being agents of foreign powers. Yesterday I wrote to Ms Seifi that either she or some of her colleagues should go through the biographies of amongst others Bibi Khatoon and correct the shortcomings. This is the background against which I am struggling, and as if there were not enough problems, you come along and accuse me of having ownership problems. Far from it. What ownership problem? Did you add something to the contents of the biography and I objected to that? No, you juts tagged it, putting two mutually exclusive tags at the heading of the article. Now you want to open a conflict page! That is what you seem to be doing: creating conflicts, then opening conflict pages; or opening pages for deletion of pages related to women; since two days you have started feverishly tagging women's pages with the aim of undermining the Iranian and Indian Women pages.


 * Please do whatever you believe to be best and let nothing stand in your way. I can only tell you that I have neither the time nor the patience to get involved into such games. Last time it cost me three weeks to convince a self-righteous man who by claiming to know Persian changed spellings in various texts, and that is enough for me for many years to come. If you have anything new to add to the present biography, please by all means do that. If on the other hand your aim is to make those who do their best to make a real contribution to Wikipedia (to their best ability) leave the place, then please tag all my articles as much as you want. I will certainly leave Wikipedia for good, as I am not here to argue constantly with others. Now you should know what you should be doing. I am just fed up with constant harassment by the self-appointed "guardians" of Wikipedia, of whom you seem to be a worthy representative (you will realise that before long you will be watching over pages which will not be updated by your zealotry and that of your like-minded colleagues; on the other hand, by your own admission, you won't care even if Wikipedia disappeared tomorrow). I am even writing these lines at the expense of my actual research work elsewhere, just to keep the memory of a dead woman alive. If you wish the conflict resolved, please keep away from me. Otherwise, wish you luck with your destructive approach, as I will be leaving for good (this is not an empty threat, as I am absolutely fed up, and you should know why). As you can see, already this correspondence between us has become longer than the biography of Bibi Khatoon itself, a total and absolute waste of time by any standard or measure. --BF 13:05, 7 August 2007 (UTC)


 * p.s.) My eyes just fell on the following in your text:
 * "* If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly or redistributed for profit by others, do not submit it."
 * It is funny that you should feel necessary to pretend that you may have edited my text. You just tagged the text, that is all. You must have known this simple fact! Incidentally, no one has thus far "edited mercilessly" my texts, though that will not say that my texts are perfect, far from it; I simply do my best without any pretension - am and have always been open to constructive criticism. --BF 13:40, 7 August 2007 (UTC)


 * You know, if this keeps up, I'm going to write a series about my life and times on Wikipedia. From dealing with tax protesters, to taking on overzealous webmasters of celebrity websites, to the current mountain made out of a molehill before me, it's been a new twist every week!


 * I am, by NO means, any kind of "guardian" of Wikipedia. The statement about how I would not care if Wikipedia disappeared tomorrow is accurate. My life does not, nor will it ever, revolve around this website. However, since it is around and appeals to my love of research and my desire to better myself through knowledge, it's a good place to have a hobby. Having said that, I will address some of the issues you raised with your latest message:


 * In re: tagging - At this point and time, my current main project is the categorization of the List of Iranian women. In the process, I identified several articles that I felt could benefit from a little attention, and tagged them for future reference. It was (and still is) my intention to finish the categorization first, then return to the tagged articles to see if I could help restructure or otherwise improve these articles. In the interim, the tags were to supposed to not only "mark my place", but were intended to help attract attention to these articles to see if consensus could be reached on their perceived issues. If, in the event that I could not gather an appropriate consensus or I could not improve the articles on my own, the next step would be to take the matter to the members of Wikiproject:Iran.


 * In re: your opinion of my intentions towards the Iranian and Indian women's populations: Your opinion, I'm afraid, is completely without merit in this instance. Were it true, I would not be attempting to give these notable women the best possible representation on Wikipedia. Flawed articles, after all, have a tendency to reflect poorly on their subjects.


 * In re: your desire to leave Wikipedia: I accept no responsibility for your decision. The choice to leave is your own. For what it's worth, I find your desire to highlight your country's seemingly downtrodden gender noble. It's a little disappointing, however, to see that you seem to take offense to so-called "outsiders" wanting to chip in and help with editing issues. It also doesn't seem right to refer to discourse about the pages in question as "conflict pages". A difference in opinion isn't a conflict until one or more sides make it so. For what it's worth, I much prefer discourse.


 * I believe that's all that's addressable about your comments. Should you have anything further, let me know and I'll start a special page for the conversation. It seems our exchanges DO tend to get a little long-winded nowadays.

Sidatio 14:14, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Dear Sidatio, thank you for your thoughtful response. Next month will be seven years since my mother died and I have still not got over it and that essentially for one reason: she died without having realised her true potential for the mere fact of having been a women born at the wrong time and in the wrong place. Iranian and Indian women are not an issue for me; I have a universal outlook and if you look, you will see that I have been working on the biographies of British women (last Sunday I extended the biography of Muriel Bradbrook, and before that extended the biography of Lady Jeffreys; in fact I made a huge effort to get the photograph of Lady Jefferys in Wikipedia as well as that of Dame Mary Cartwright). In contrast to what you state, I absolutely welcome input from others to the articles on which I happen to have worked. It happens however that it is very difficult to come by good sources of information for writing biographies of in particular Iranian women (earlier I explained to you the reason for that). You just cannot imagine how much effort I have made in bringing the biography of Bibi Khatoon to its present form; every name, every date, etc., that you see there has required enormous amount of work; I have managed to place Bibi Khatoon into a context where one can see a little bit of her background, and a little bit of what she has done. I have some evidence that she even collected money and arms for the constitutional revolutionaries; there are letters of her to Members of Partliament, pleading with them that they should stand strong and be ashamed of themselves if they betryed the trust that people had invested in them. Now, just make a Google search and you will get the impression that this woman may even not have existed at all. This is a shame to humanity not to Iranians only. When Bibi Khatoon opened her school, she was accused of the worst things. Her teaching music at school was portrayed as leading women into wrong ways; she was accused of having drinking sessions (drinking alcohol that is) with her pupils. In fact two months after the opening, the fundamentalists managed to close down her school and it took some effort to get it reopened. Please read the advertisement that I placed there last weekend. She offers discount to students from poor background, she offers one free place to every two girls from the same family. Her advertisement looks more like a declaration than an advertisement: look at the last sentence; does anyone make such statement in an advertisement? I am very well aware of the shortcomings of the present biography, however I am constantly gathering data to improve it; naturally any input is welcome.

Now as for the list for Iranian women. A woman in Iran cannot be a judge; a woman's testimony in a court of law counts as half of that of a man --- if say for establishing a crime the court needs two witnesses, that implies that if the witnesses are women, there should be four witnesses. I am constantly worried that my e-mails to women in Iran may cause them problem. And in the middle of all these, twice in the span of 8 weeks I have been confronted with moves to remove the Iranian Women page from Wikipedia. What would you think if you knew the things that I know? My first impression is that women cannot even have a page of their own on Wikipedia --- I checked, and one of the people who has proposed the removal of the women's page is certainly a man; put this in the background of men having decided for centuries over the head of women for women; pushing women into scarves and burkas, are again what men believe to be best for women, no one seems to care to ask women what they want. From this perspective, I strongly believe that only women on Wikipedia should have the right to decide on the fate of women's pages on Wikipedia --- men have for far too long forced their will on women, and let us make a new beginning on Wikipedia by breaking this deplorable tradition. --BF 17:01, 7 August 2007 (UTC)


 * First and foremost, let me state that I am deeply sorry for the loss of your mother. Regardless of the necessity of death in life, it is always tragic when a person loses the woman who gave them life.

I understand what you're trying to say about Astarabadi, and she sounds like a noble woman who underwent a lot of persecution in her life to try and better the lives of others. She sounds like an excellent role model for others trying to "break the mold" in that situation.

Having said that, Wikipedia aspires to be an encyclopedia - not a collection of biographies. The emphasis is on verifiability and a neutral point of view over trying to spread the message of obviously decent people such as this person. In so doing, Wikipedia and other encyclopedias preserve neutral, informational knowledge - one of the most important kinds of knowledge there is, for it is as free of the taint of any kind of point of view as possible.

As to women having their "own page" on Wikipedia: No one is saying they can't. To the contrary, I think there should be lists of notable people. The problem here is maintainability. The list you propose is maintained manually. This takes valuable manpower away from the truly important task at hand, which is maintaining the articles themselves. If the articles are categorized, the list is maintained automatically. You can see that list [|right here]. The only ones that are missing are the ones who have yet to be added. Also, they are cross-referenced by occupation, for those looking for role models from a particular profession.

This is one of the chief reasons I believe you're taking the whole thing a little too personally. I have to stress, the list isn't going away. It's just being categorized. This is just a personal observation, but perhaps you're allowing the fact that you created the current list to cloud your judgment of the matter? Just about everything imaginable is involved and improved over time. It's nothing personal; even Alexander Graham Bell's telephone has been heavily modified and improved over the ages, and it's led to making this vital tool more widespread in the world, as well as improving the quality of the product and related products. So, too, can the categorization of your list improve the overall quality of the list itself by, for example, not having just anyone come along and add some redlinked individual, which could bring down the credibility of your list. It will also help to improve the quality of the individual articles, both present and future, because you would then have the time to work on those articles.

I can't stress this enough - this is nothing personal against you, Iranian women, ANY women, or any person anywhere. This is simply an efficiency move to me. If you take this as anything other than an advocation of efficiency, I sincerely apologize. That is, however, what it is.

Sidatio 17:39, 7 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Firstly, thank your for your kind sentiments. Secondly, I did not create that Women's page --- in fact I am relatively new to Wikipedia. Thirdly, as for moves towards efficiency, I am not against that. Fourthly, I do not quite understand why you raised the point of "verifiability", and "neutral point of view". Of course, like any human being I have my opinions and preferences in life, but could you please let me know where I may have deviated from these principles that you refer to? You may be referring to my statement that "The book is considered by some ..." If so, as I mentioned earlier, that statement is not made up by me; consult all the references that I cite, and you will see the same or similar statements in all of them; moreover, if you, or anybody else for that matter, believe that this is not the case, then please change the text and present the appropriate reference which supports the contrary point of view; I certainly will not object to such move. Further, please note that I have not tried to write a hagiography for Bibi Khatoon, leaving aside the fact that I believe that misrepresenting historical facts are crimes, not only here but everywhere; I have searched long and recorded the things that I have obtained and found worth recording. Fifthly, as they say (it comes from Proverbs), the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The problem with Iranian women, in particular, is that the transliteration of their names is not unique. Consequently, if you do not know the exact spelling of their names, then soon you will conclude that the particular name that you were looking for has no entry in Wikipedia (for instance, "Forough", "Foroog", "Forouq" and "Forooq" are all transliterations of the same Persian name; multiply this number by the number of the variant spellings of "Farrokhzad" and you will readily realise that the chance of correctly guessing the appropriate spelling on Wikipedia of "Forough Farrokhzad" is indeed very small). This makes the List of Iranian Women indispensable: knowing merely the sound of the name is sufficient to find the name from the list by looking through it. This has happened to me almost always. This problem is not unique to Persian; in principle any language which does not rely on Roman letters is confronted with the same problem on the English Wikipedia. You should realise that my advocacy of the page is largely for its functional utility which cannot be compensated until such time as the search engines have become so clever that they can correctly guess a name even if one may have used an "incorrect" spelling (the search engine on Amazon.com, for instance, is rather clever in coming up with a list of relevant books even if one has typed the name of the book, or of its author, incorrectly); the search engine on Wikipedia is at present one of the worst of its kind. And lastly, I do not consider anything personal; however, I am very much aware of the existence of a real thing called misogyny --- there are real people out there who have a visceral hatred of women and they cannot help it. --BF 18:53, 7 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Believe me - if I were a misogynist, I wouldn't have fallen in love with (and then married) a woman who is clearly superior to me! ;-)

I make mention of verifiability and neutral point of view merely to illustrate that this is an encyclopedia, and its contents are meant to be encyclopedic - and I'm sure you're well aware of this. In the case of the aforementioned article, it just seemed like there were minor issues with what is known as peacock language. The link provided explains the concept better than I can. I'm not accusing you of writing those particular phrases that way on purpose; I just include the link to show how the above-mentioned phrases could be construed as such. Personally, I prefer the term "original research" to "peacock language", because the latter seems to be more of an accusation. But I digress.

I know you've done your very best to write an authoritative article on the subject, and you've done a great job. The tags were not meant to critique you or anyone; they were meant to raise questions and a discussion about certain aspects of a fairly well-written article. With minor cleanup, it certainly has potential to be raised to Good or even Featured status, as do quite a few articles on that list.

Speaking of the list, I apologize for crediting you as the author - I should have said "significant contributor". Regardless, it's clear you have a vested interest in the list. I'll say it again; if it comes to pass that the list does not pass its AfD, it is my intention to see that list live on as an automated category. Did you take a look at that list? I believe there were only four articles and two occupations in the whole category. Now look at the representation they have!

As to the potential editing of Iranian-related articles - I wouldn't dare to dream that I could read Persian, and would refer such issues to an experienced editor fluent in the language.

Sidatio 19:11, 7 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Thank you. I apologize if I ever mistook you for a misogynist. But of course you realise the problem of communication on Wikipedia; one knows people only through several letters put together, constituting the usernames; one cannot see (the whole body language is missing) and one cannot hear.


 * As I said earlier, I have absolutely no problem if people wish to change in my texts. If the language is peacocky, again please change it by all means. I am also not against constructive criticism. The way I interpreted your two tags was that they suggested that the entry had no place in Wikipedia (that is what at least one of the tags in fact said --- please read the texts inside the tags). I was aware of your placing a tag for peakocky language in the biography of Forough Farrokhzad, but as you can attest to I did not object to that because I did consider that as a correct evaluation of the situation on your part. Incidentally, it is a real pity that Forough Farrokhzad died so young so that it is very difficult to make an objective judgement of her quality as a poet. However, it is true (and I testify to that) that some of her peoms are just divine. She had also a wonderful voice and there are some of her poetry read by her which are publicly available and one can listen to (there is a link on her page to a site in Germany where one can hear her various readings of her poetry --- they are of a very bad sound quality, however); one will have to have a heart of stone not to shed tears on hearing her, and this not for any cheap sentimentality but for the reason of realising that what one hears is not earthly, but divine --- something one recognises as innate and not gained through one's personal experience. From this perspective, a case can be made that Forough Farrokhzad in fact richly deserves all that peackocky language. Recently I included a translation of a poem by her by Fatemeh Keshavarz (who is a very special human being with a very deep sense for poetry) in Forough's biography which you may have seen --- it may be that she is translating Forough's poetry, which would be a very good news. There is a link in Forough's page which leads to a site which presents English translations of some of Forough's poetry --- the one time that I looked there I did not like the first poem that I randomly picked so that I did not look further. You may wish to have a look there if you wish to gain some idea about Forough's poetry (assuming that you are not already familiar with her poetry).


 * Kind regards, --BF 21:01, 7 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes, it is tough to ascertain the motives of a person when you can't see or hear them. To that end, I must apologize to you. It's clear that you don't take ownership of your articles so much as you are intensely passionate about the subject matter. It's that kind of passion that keeps these notable people remembered. Society nowadays is quick to forget the arts and even quicker to embrace the latest trivial news about celebrities who contribute nothing notable to the greater good of humanity.

The issues and restrictions of Wikipedia aside, have you ever considered a website dedicated to such people? I won't even pretend to know if that's possible in Iranian culture (I'm not even quite sure if you live there or not), but if it WERE possible, I'd think you and a few others from the Iranian project would do a fantastic job of keeping the achievements of these people archived for future generations. The thought comes to mind because of what you said about the lack of sources when searching Google for this article. You do good work here, don't get me wrong - but with your own web project, you wouldn't be as exposed to ne'er-do-well vandals and overzealous editors. Plus, you'd have total creative control!

It's just a thought I wanted to run by you. Either way, I hope you continue to contribute material to Wikipedia. If I can find some of Forough's poetry in English, I'll be sure to pick some up. As far as the rest of the tags on the rest of the projects go, I'm sure it'll be taken care of satisfactorily in due course - it's an ambitious project you Iranians have going! If you like, I'll be happy to help out where prudent and appropriate. Sidatio 21:45, 7 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Just one more thing, and that will be the last for some time to come. On the page of Forough Farrokhzad you see a photograph of the stone on Forough's grave. If you can read Persian, then you will see that it says: "Forough Farrokhzad, daughter of Colonel Mohammad Farrohkzad, ...". The name of the mother is missing! When I first came on the Wikipedia page of Forough, I didcovered that the biography also did not mention the name of the mother! This would not have been as bad were it not that it proved almost impossible to find the name of the mother anywhere. It took me a great deal of effort to finally get hold of the mother's name. This is incidentally nothing specifically Persian, as a survey of the Wikipedia entries will show you; most of the people seem to have had a father but no mother. A case in point is Ulrike Meinhof; what you see there as "Ingeborg" is due to my call, but no one seems to know the maiden name of Dr Ingeborg Meinhof (see the talk page of the biography). And this in 2007 in the heart of Europe. Am I surprised? No! --BF 22:09, 7 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I wrote that the above would be my last message for some time to come, but you posed new questions. To be brief, no I do not live in Iran --- have not been there for almost 30 years. Your suggestion is very nice, but I am a professional scientist who has absolutely no time for blogging and doing the activities that you are suggesting; in a sense all my present activities on Wikipedia are at the expense of something else on the professional level. Now, as for blogging and the rest are concerned, it seems that Iran has a very vibrant blogging community (there are more than 700,000 personal blogs out there). Look at this please: . This is a woman's periodical published in Iran -- its name is "Zanestān"; if you know Persian, then you will realise that the name is extremely provocative --- "Zan" means "woman" but "Zanestān" rhymes with "Zemestān" which means "winter"; in fact there is more to it; in my opinion it even contains some sexual innuendo, even if the name literary means "the place of women" (language is very central to Iranian culture; you may not believe it, but even the lowliest man on the street can recite poetry for you for hours, all by heart --- in is against this background that you will have to look at the name "Zanestān"). It has articles of highest quality and, insofar as I can see, all by women. This generation of women in Iran is very special --- over 70% of the university students are women. Just imagine what the children of these women will do, being brought up by very educated and able mothers. A similar thing happened in Europe during the reformation: priests married and got children and gave education to their children for free. If you look around, you will see that most of the secular intellectuals in the West come from families rooted in the church --- and this had been a long tradition in the Jewish community. In short, I do not know what I could do that these young and able people cannot. The only problem is that all the energies of these young and highly-educated women is at resent being dissipated for gaining their basic rights. This means that people abroad need to compensate for what these women could have done otherwise. As you may have noticed, I have relied both for the biography of Bibi Khatoon Astarabadi and the biography of Forough Azarakhshi on information from Emshaspandan (the weblog of Ms Franaz Seifi), which means that these women already do something, but not enough --- they seem to have absolutely no exposure to the people outside Iran --- most of people seem to know Iran's president and have heard about his provocative statements; no one seems to know what these young, able and courageous women are doing inside Iran.


 * In spite of what I wrote hereabove, if you have any constructive suggestions, please pass them on to the Iranian group on Wikipedia (I do not know them but have the strongest impression that User:Zereshk is a very capable, thoughtful young man doing a great deal of solid work on Wikipedia). As far as I am concerned, I shall continue to do the little that I am doing at present (in fact I will have to cut on my activities here or things will get out of control). Kind regards, also to your wife (and if I have been writing to the wife, to your husband --- I read that you share the same account on Wikipedia). --BF 23:48, 7 August 2007 (UTC)