User talk:Jonathan Kaplan1938

Chocolá
I'm not too familiar with the article topic, but I'll try my best to help.

You probably should include some references from independent sources, like newspaper articles, to establish notability.

I think you could probably change some of the titles in the further reading into footnotes. To see how to do that, look at Inline citation and Footnotes. Citation templates is also a good place to look for how to cite things. In your case, you probably would want to take a look at cite book. The Manual of style states how an article is supposed to look.

If you have any other questions (or if you need me to clarify something) contact me on my talk page and I'll see what I can do. Happy editing, Midorihana ~いいです ね？ 21:45, 13 January 2008 (UTC)


 * To make the footnotes display, type in the following:

Chocola (reply)
Hi Jonathan, thanks for your comments at my talkpage, and also thanks for your welcome expansions and improvements to the Chocolá article! It's always a pleasure to have knowledgeable and credentialled contributors adding to wikipedia from their field of expertise. I myself haven't a formal degree in this field, only a long-standing interest and some familiarity with the sources and region.

There should generally be no issue for you to add material based on your own research, with however a couple of provisos.

Firstly, the material needs to have been (notably) published, ie on the public record somewhere, so to speak. This requirement stems mainly from our local policies of Verifiability and No Original Research, which are essentially designed to ward off spurious, speculative and 'hobby-horse' additions. Per verifiability, it's required that statements (whether of fact or of interpretation) are traceable and attributable to some reliable source that can be verified, and that furthermore the statement fairly reflects the degree of its standing and acceptance among the wider body of field literature. "No Original Research" disbars the mention of novel claims that have not been (verifiably) published previously, since wikipedia is not a research outlet but rather supposed to be more like a compendium of the knowledge and interpretations that have already circulated in the field's published literature. Thus it's generally OK to use a published paper that is putting forward a new interpretation that differs from the current 'status quo' view(s), as long as it's attributed and identified as such; but not OK for an article to put forward a novel synthesis that cannot be found in any reliably published literature.

In your case, there's clearly no problem to quote from your own published research, particulary when (as you note) a lot of info on this site originates from that archaeological project. However, unlike a journal paper, wikipedia tends to steer clear from 'in press', 'unpublished notes', and 'personal communication' types of sources- preferring instead published sources where these are available. That said, a lot also depends on the nature of the statements being added- the more controversial or novel the view, the stronger is the requirement to back up the statement with verifiable sources. Again, I don't think there's any issue here with your edits to this site's article.

Secondly, so long as one is mindful of our Conflict of Interest and Neutral Point of View (NPOV) policies, writing based on one's own published research should not be an issue. Other editors may potentially chime in on occasion with the intention of seeing that balance and proportion are maintained; any content here is liable to challenge from time to time, sometimes the challenge is informed sometimes not- so if you're prepared to discuss and work around any alterations there should be no problems.

As far as your comment that there are perhaps different scholarly takes on the site's importance (and indeed a whole range of things), the way we try to address that is to document what those varying views are in the article, attributed to their sources, and (insofar as possible) in the relative proportion to their currency within the field. Note that, when I amended the so-called 'importance' rating on the WikiProject Mesoamerica banner on the article's talk page, that's not directly a reflection of how 'significant' the site is to Maya scholarship. Those ratings are really only an aid to prioritising the WikiProject's scope and workload, and as such 'importance' would be better-named as 'priority', but was arbitrarily named the former only due to historical reasons. The assignment of values to these project ratings is a judgement call, this page attempts to describe the relative values and rationale- I've bumped the rating up to 'high' for Chocola for focus.

You raise an interesting question, here's my take on it. While it's good practice to avoid excessive repetition across articles, each article should be able to stand on its own and provide sufficient information within the article itself to give the reader a solid-enough understanding of the topic and where it fits in, without having to flip back-and-forth between different articles. So for an article on a given Maya site, it would be appropriate to include sufficient background information on its milieu and regional interactions to place it in some overall context. Somehow, without reprising an entire reconstructed history and description of the Southern Maya lowlands, the Chocola article would benefit from at least a summarised description of the main points and regional influences that may colour interpretations of findings at the site itself. Actually, what you have identified is the need for a separate article on the Southern Maya lowlands itself to be commenced (we lack one currently), which can contain all that detail and synthesis at the regional level. The Chocola article can then address specific relevant highlights of its regional setting, and at the same time cross-reference with the overall regional article which contains a lot more detailing of the background. We actually are in need of a whole suite of articles on various identified subregions of Mesoamerica, those that we do have tend to be either quite brief, or extracts from the top-level articles (Mesoamerica, Maya civilization, etc.) We have top-level/overviews, and quite a few specific sites, but comparatively few developed articles that give any depth to a regional assessment and reconstruction.

Setting those regional articles up is a long-term goal; you'd be quite welcome to kick off a Southern Maya lowlands article if you had the time and inclination. My suggestion would be, if you prefer to flesh out the Chocola article some more, is to make a start on some background context passages there. We can always transfer material to build further upon into other/new articles later down the track, and the 'hierarchy' of scope between articles is something that's subject to ongoing change and improvement. If investigations at Chocola are answering (or posing) questions that have a regional or pan-cultural scope, these can certainly be covered in its article, but also perhaps mentioned at other relevant articles too. You might also like to take a look at one of our best-developed Mesoam. site articles, Chunchucmil, for some ideas on the direction and scope. As always, myself and other active members of WP:MESO would be glad to assist with any editing or other general queries, so pls feel free to drop us a line on our or an article's talk pages; WP:MESO's project discussion board is also somewhere where comments and queries can be directed.

I hope the above addresses your queries, would be glad to clarify anything. The main thing, as is said around here 'be bold' in updating, the content and relationship between articles typically develops over time. Kind regards, --cjllw ʘ  TALK 02:22, 18 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Hi Jonathan, don't worry I quite understand the pressures of time, so no rush or expectation- whatever and whenever you can, that'd be great.


 * To create a section heading within an article, at the appropriate juncture you simply enclose the heading title on a new line between equals-signs, like so (need to have the same number before and after):




 * then start writing the text of the section from a new line immediately below. By increasing the number of equals-signs you increase the indentation of the header level; eg three ='s   will produce a 3rd-level (sub)header, and so on. By convention on articles we start with 2nd-level headers, then 3rd, 4th and sometimes 5th level, if a section needs to be further broken down. The Manual of style describes this, and other common markup techniques.


 * To create a new article, follow any of the methods outlined at WP:CREATE.


 * Best, --cjllw ʘ  TALK 03:12, 18 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Jonathan, I also chimed in on your recent test-work on CJLL's talk page here. Welcome to Wikipedia, Madman (talk) 20:29, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Your recent edits
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Pictures at Chocolá
I peeked at your recent comment on madmans page about how to get a photo onto the Chocola article. I went ahead and fixed it. I placed it in the section on archaelogical excavations, but if you want it in a different section just move the image code. The code to insert images is the second field is the size in pixels, the third is the alignment and adding the thumb field allows you to include an image caption. You can read more about how to use images at WP:IMAGES.·Maunus· · ƛ · 16:59, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Duplicate images uploaded
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Yes, please do move the Stephens material to Stephens article
Jonathan: Yes, please do move the Stephens material from Chocola to the Stephens article. That is secret of this interlinked encyclopedia: one doesn't have to cram everything in one article. The material needs to be referenced, of course, and it's still quite essay-like.

Speaking of links, I've added a number of links to the Chocola article - they are needed.

By the way, an excellent archaeological site article is Chunchucmil. It was written primarily by a member of the research team there.

Finally, I think those photos, drawings, and map are a welcome addition. Thanks, Madman (talk) 02:22, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Images
Sorry I wasn't able to answer you sooner; real life got in the way. :( The images are really nice though, great job! Midorihana ~いいです ね？ 03:41, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Southern Maya article
Yes, I saw you had created the Southern Maya area article when I saw the huge cuts made in Chocola. We are constantly vigilant. : )

Anyway, I thought I'd add a couple of formatting niceties, but will wait until you're finished before I help out further. Keep at it, Madman (talk) 05:17, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Hey, how about some (more) photos??
I was wondering if you would feel comfortable asking Prof. Coe for a photograph we could upload to Wikipedia. There's a smallish article in Wikipedia -- like nearly every one here, it could be improved -- but it's missing a photograph. As you may know, we can't use 3rd party photos unless they're available for anyone else to use. While a typical head-shot photo would be nice, a group shot with him and, say, Diehl or Grove or Schele or Pohl, etc etc would be very useful.

Your Southern Maya area article could benefit from images as well. I'll look around myself for some appropriate ones.

Just a thought or two. Thanks, Madman (talk) 03:36, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

P.S. Don't worry about signing your edit summaries with Madman (talk) 03:36, 24 January 2008 (UTC) since they don't "resolve" into your signature.


 * Thanks for the speedy response. No, you don't need to do any further formatting regarding Chocola, although as you can see here in Wikipedia-land, there's always something that can be improved.


 * Regarding a map, I can put one together for your SMA article, perhaps starting with maps on the Chocola website. Here are some examples of my work:
 * SE Mesoamerican Formative Period sites
 * Early Mesoamerican Ballgame sites
 * Olmec Heartland Overview
 * Classic era sites
 * Mayan Language Migration Map


 * Regarding capitalizing the "Area", that's called a move. Wikipedia tends not to capitalize things like that, but I guess I don't see a problem with it. I'll get to that tomorrow.


 * In order to keep track of things, editors add them to their "watchlist". See Help:Watching pages for more information.  I bet CJLL has 500 or more pages on his watchlist.


 * Anyway, let me know about the map. Yours,   Madman (talk) 05:35, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
 * You can send me an email by clicking the "E-mail this user" link on the lower left whenever you're on my User talk page. I would, of course, rework the map into the style I've used for the other maps above, although the map would be a collaborative effort between us (i.e. you critique, I edit).  : )  Yours, Madman (talk) 22:40, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Map news
I haven't forgotten about the map for the SMA article. In fact, there will probably be two maps. I should have a first cut available by the weekend. Thanks, Madman (talk) 19:21, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
 * [[Image:Formative Period southern Mesoamerica 2.svg|right|400px|thumb|:Image:Formative Period southern Mesoamerica 2.svg]]Here is a map of the more important sites within the Southern Maya Area. I made a couple of editorial decisions while making the map, including not including Chiapa de Corzo as well as some of the sites around Izapa.  I did not include Chiapa de Corzo because it increased the size of the map so much that the clustered sites around Izapa and Takalik Abaj were almost on top of each other.  I also did not include several small sites which did not have a Wikipedia article (e.g. El Jobo, El Sitio) for the same reason.

I am planning on creating a larger map that will show the entire Southern Maya Area. Let me know your thoughts. It's easy to make changes, and I have a couple I'd like to make once I've seen it rendered here in Wikipedia.


 * Also, can you give me some information about that map you sent me?? I would like to use that as a reference.  It's an upcoming book, isn't it??  Madman (talk) 13:36, 7 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Great, I'm glad you like the map, I do plan on making a regional map that would show Chiapa de Corzo and the Isthmus of Tehuantepeca and the Olmec heartland.  I'll put something together for your review and correction.
 * Regarding the multiple jade sources, I took them from the map in this article. I have only passing knowledge of this myself, but I do understand that there were multiple jade sources along the Montagua, nearly every one of which has a slightly different color.  If you have better data, I could try to incorporate/use that.


 * And finally, I: think that the Kaminaljuyu article is really top drawer. Chock full of info written in an encyclopedic style.  Congrats, Madman (talk) 03:32, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Hey, check out this larger Southern Maya Area map. It's a rough draft, needs work, but this is my basic concept.  Feedback??Madman (talk) 04:47, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Another note of welcome
A belated welcome from me as well, and thank you for your contributions here. Cheers, -- Infrogmation (talk) 19:51, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

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KJ Ceramic sequence
As mentioned on CJLL's talk page, I find wiki-tables difficult to write. It's rather counter-intuitive. By the way, do you know if these are radiocarbon or chronological dates? Madman (talk) 23:48, 27 January 2008 (UTC) By the way, thanks for uploading the Monument 65 photo. I just love photos like this -- they visually enliven the article as well as helping the reader better understand the matter. Madman (talk) 23:53, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

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