User talk:Conversano Isabella/Hermesvilla - Sandbox

This one is going to be on my back burner for a bit. But one thing for you to figure out is the issue of geographic place names. We English speakers insist on saying "Vienna" instead of "Wein" (as in the museum...try to find a link to the actual location of the place if there is one...) I don't know how you want to solve that one, but try for terms understandable to English tourists if we were to grab a guide book, I guess (we all know what the Hofburg is, for example, but we insist that, for example, Munchen is Munich and Wein is Vienna. Yet Salzberg is Salzberg.  I don't know why.  We're just weird!)

I am simultaneously helping out on Finnhorse (another non-native English speaker, who is translating stuff from Finnish, no less!) and another editor is doing a push for featured article status for Appaloosa, where I need to stay alert there. Finnhorse alone will eat my wiki-life until Pitke gets done with this round of edits. (Kind of a cool article coming together, I'm learning more about the history of Finland that I ever knew before!) Oh yes, and I actually do have that thing called a day job. And real horses looking mournfully at me, saying, "mom, when are you going to ride us?" Montanabw (talk) 06:26, 22 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Did a quick run-through. I'm seriously impressed, what an interesting place with a fascinating history!  I put in a bunch of hidden text, you can see it in the history or in the editing window, marked by  It's a handy way to discuss article content without cluttering up the page view.  Mostly, I spotted a few things where the English needs to be clarified, or where there is information that people unfamiliar with the history of the Habsburg monarchy (particularly the bit on the "Sisi myth") won't understand without a little bit more context... (I have a degree in history but haven't studied that of the 19th-century Habsburgs to any great extent, this was all new to me -- what an interesting woman!). Go ahead and edit as you see fit, feel free to toss my hidden comments once you've read them, and if you have new comments, either put them into hidden text or just explain things to me here.  Check the wikilinks I added for concepts like murals, hacking, etc... be sure I have the nuance correct.  If nothing else, all this writing is sure expanding your English grammar, isn't it?  :-P  ;-)    Montanabw (talk) 22:23, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Oh my god B. you help me so much with my english! I take french classes as well as arabic. I do a dressage clinic in summer in France, and I want to do it in french. On verra .... Andreas Hausberger 10:43, 24 March 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Conversano Isabella (talk • contribs)


 * LOL! You see, while I do pretty good at one language, I cannot speak any others worth beans, so we're even.  I admire anyone willing to tackle Arabic; different language AND a new alphabet to boot.  I once took a brief stab at Russian, at least the alphabet sort of looked like an alphabet! You may have heard the following joke:  "If you speak three languages, you are 'trilingual,' if you speak two languages, you are 'bilingual,' and if you speak one language, you are American!" :-P    Montanabw (talk) 01:18, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Sisi Myth
Here is more info on that subject: http://www.hofburg-wien.at/en/things-to-know/tour-of-the-hofburg/the-sisi-myth.html  and    http://www.brandstaetter-verlag.at/Buch.aspx?buch_id=103236   --Andreas Hausberger 22:16, 25 March 2010 (UTC)  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Conversano Isabella (talk • contribs)
 * Will see what I can pull; someone should add some of this to her biography here on wiki, IMHO, maybe note these sites on the talk page for that article too?  Montanabw (talk) 01:18, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Maybe we edit her bio as well ;-) --Andreas Hausberger 17:57, 27 March 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Conversano Isabella (talk • contribs)
 * AHHHH! =:-O  I don't have the guts to dive into historical articles without testing the water very carefully with a cruise by the talk page!  Looks like on that one, they can't even agree on what to name it ( see:Talk:Elisabeth_of_Bavaria ) You must be braver than I am! (grin)  Some of the editors in the history area make me look like I'm lazy and careless! (MIlitary history buffs are the most challenging, though!  It took a fellow horse editor over a month to get Horses in World War I just to GA status; and it's an incredibly good article!)  ... maybe when this article is up, the bit about the Sisi myth, with citation, could be snuck into Elisabeth_of_Bavaria and no one would get upset about it and long as we are quiet and don't draw any undue attention...shhh...   Montanabw (talk) 00:11, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Replacing the old with the new article?
Does the article look fine? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Conversano Isabella (talk • contribs) 08:39, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Note my edit summary. I think you are close. There needs to be two things.
 * 1) More footnotes in the text. Annoying perhaps, and you don't need them to be as extensive as for Wahl, but if we don't have a few, the taggers will come along and be annoying, so throw in a few (you might as well get used to learning how to make them work anyway...) and it will help.
 * 2) I think we need a different word than "compulsion" in the statue description; it's the wrong term, I think. While Google translation gives us "compulsion," a compulsion sort of implies someone's inner nature to do something not entirely under their control -- "the vampire had a compulsion to drink human blood" (grin), or being very strongly controlled mind and soul by another (like a zombie is compelled...) .  Or, in horse land, a Thoroughbred can be compelled to run by a jockey, or, if it is not allowed to express its natural sprit to run, it can develop stable vices which are a type of compulsion--the horse develops a compulsion to chew wood, to stall-walk, etc...In humans, we call this obsessive-compulsive disorder.  Does that make sense?  Here, I think Sisi didn't have a "compulsion" in either the inner urge or the forced by others definition, here we are dealing with something like "duty" :  OUTSIDE pressure from others that Sisi was facing--whether from her childhood or her marriage, it was not a part of who she was, nor was she so controlled that she had no choices at all.    When I ran the word "Zwang" by itself, Google gave me the following alternative terms:"compulsion, force, pressure, coercion, obligation, constraint, restraint, duress"  So help me get a sense of what the artist was examining -- Sisi's sense of obligation or duty to be a part of the court even though she hated it???  Or was it more of a feeling that she was coerced or forced to be there?  Or would " constraint/restraint" be more accurate because she just found it very annoying and restrictive?  I'm not certain of the best word without a better understanding of the situation.  (Yes, your English vocabulary is really getting a workout, isn't it?)  I suppose we could also ask a couple of the German speakers with English fluency here too... I kind of know user Wandalstouring,a German who is quite fluent in English and here on and off...  Montanabw (talk) 23:51, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Sisi's sense of obligation or duty to be a part of the court even though she hated it??? Yes, you named it! "Obligation" would be the best therm!Andreas Hausberger 09:17, 1 April 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Conversano Isabella (talk • contribs)
 * I'll have to mull over "obligation" or "duty" I wonder if there is a guide book already in English that describes the statue's themes (thinking...will look).  It would be nice to be accurate with our description of the artist's intent.  "Obligation" and "duty" are pretty close to synonyms; "obligation" implies a slightly stronger degree of being bound to do something than "duty", but "duty" is the simpler and more poetic term...hmmm.  Stay tuned.  I suppose if we pick one and then find the travel guide with the other, we can always change it...   Montanabw (talk) 22:05, 1 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Follow up: Did I find the right statue?  :  http://www.ulriketruger.at/html/gespol_projekte3.htm
 * Yes you did :-) --Andreas Hausberger 14:34, 2 April 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Conversano Isabella (talk • contribs)

Found stuff
OK, I found a tourism site and some stuff on the Elisabeth sculpture, check what I did and be sure I got it right. The tourist site will eventually need to be replaced by something we can actually link to -- for some reason wiki has blocked access to the site as spam...but maybe the English language site for the Vienna museum or something can provide the same info...we can just swap out the footnotes. Now that you see the two ways to do footnotes (one way for a unique citation, the other for a citation used several times), maybe you can tackle that...or else I can do it for you and in return you can ride my fat horse! LOL! Montanabw (talk) 23:32, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Riding your horse? That's a deal! ;-) Great job B.! Andreas Hausberger 05:06, 2 April 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Conversano Isabella (talk • contribs)
 * Dang, if only...of course, then there is fat and out of shape ME...so I really suppose that I must do my own riding, as that is the only exercise that interests me in the slightest...except that I get sidetracked by fixing the fence, mucking the barn ...wait! What I really need is STAFF!  I'll trade you footnotes and you send over your barn manager!  (and a housekeper, and a cook, and a secretary, and...).  Oh heck, just find me a winning lottery ticket!  LOL!   Montanabw (talk) 17:22, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Go live after we check this little hiccup?
I think I'm about done. I did run into one thing that, naturally, Google is useless to answer: at http://www.ulriketruger.at/html/gespol_projekte3b.htm, (which I footnoted as  it says, " 2006 wurde die Skulptur von der Gemeinde Wien in den Lainzer Tiergarten zur Hermes-Villa versetzt, entgegen der ursprünglichen Vereinbarung."  Google says something to the effect that the statue was moved in 2006 from one place to the other, which was against some sort of understanding or agreement...was it moved TO the Hermesvilla or FROM the Hermesvilla?  Or what?  Can you explain?   I think this may need to be clarified, as it appears to be a big enough deal that the artist is not happy about it... Montanabw (talk) 17:58, 2 April 2010 (UTC)
 * "2006 wurde die Skulptur von der Gemeinde Wien in den Lainzer Tiergarten zur Hermes-Villa versetzt, entgegen der ursprünglichen Vereinbarung" that means that the authorities in Vienna moved the sculpture to Hermesvilla against previous agreements.Andreas Hausberger 05:08, 3 April 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Conversano Isabella (talk • contribs)
 * So it's now at the Hermesvilla, that clarifies it for me. I guess if the artist is not pleased, it's not our problem, then.  ;-)   I'm OK with taking the rewrite live.  On the talk page, it would be good to add that little template about how a bunch of the material came in from German wiki, when you go live, let me know and I'll make sure all that little stuff is added.   Montanabw (talk) 20:06, 3 April 2010 (UTC)