User talk:Onceinawhile/Archive 3

DYK for Jisr el-Majami
&mdash; Amakuru (talk) 12:02, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

those map things
I more than doubled the resolution of Jerusalem 10K. Next I'll upload two 1:20K of the same place for 1930s and 1940s. Zerotalk 13:53, 2 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks I have been working on the Survey of Palestine article in the meantime. I think it is starting to look good. Onceinawhile (talk) 14:21, 2 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I added 1928 and 1942 1:20K maps. Incidentally at least 13 of the 1:20K maps were published in 1928 or 1929. I renamed "Category:Survey of Palestine 1930-1948 1-20,000 maps" on Commons to "Category:Survey of Palestine 1928-1948 1-20,000 maps" for that reason. However, I'm not happy with "1-20,000" either; it should be "1:20,000". Also it isn't true that all of the pre-1940 1:20K maps were in the coastal region, as this Jericho map and several others prove. Most of them are in the coastal region, though, can we wrote that instead on the basis that maps are reliable sources too? Zerotalk 14:58, 2 June 2020 (UTC)
 * thank you. The dash instead of a colon is because the commons system won’t allow colons in file names.
 * On the coastal region only point, doesn’t that relate to cadastral survey?
 * Onceinawhile (talk) 17:07, 2 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I see what you mean re the coastal point. I have amended it. Onceinawhile (talk) 17:10, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

New article
I am working on a new article "Declarations of State Land in the West Bank". Want to team up on it? You can put in your dyk list when its done:) I'll do a stub and go from there.Selfstudier (talk) 13:33, 4 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Cancel that, most of it is in Land expropriation in the West Bank :( Selfstudier (talk) 14:37, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
 * This topic does deserve a full article, particularly the Mandate part of it. Almost 10 years ago I started the article of Ottoman Land Code of 1858 on which this issue is founded. I would certain be happy to collaborate here. Onceinawhile (talk) 14:44, 4 June 2020 (UTC)


 * OK. It's a bit jumbled up in the expropriation article but I guess we can set up the outside article and then somehow link out to it from there. Btw, it was your Palestine Survey article/hook that set me off on this to start with.Selfstudier (talk) 14:55, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I put a draft here just for now until we have a stub. Selfstudier (talk) 15:25, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
 * , thank you. I have added some sources and will try to find some more. How would you feel about expanding the scope to the whole of the region, i.e. so that it includes the same practices during the mandate period and in Israel proper? Onceinawhile (talk) 22:19, 4 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Sure, the laws they are (mis)using go all the way back and they use similar in Israel (that's how they convince themselves it's all OK).Selfstudier (talk) 22:24, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

K, the article is here now.Selfstudier (talk) 13:02, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

DYK for First Jordan Hydro-Electric Power House
Cwmhiraeth (talk) 12:01, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

fyi
Wikipedia_talk:Edit_requests Zerotalk 12:37, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

General question
Why do people add sources to a reference section when they aren't used as reference in the article. Isn't that what we have a general "Sources" section for? I am asking you after noticing this edit of yours. Debresser (talk) 20:09, 17 June 2020 (UTC)
 * , because there is information in the source directly relevant to the article, and I intend to add relevant footnotes in due course. Onceinawhile (talk) 22:09, 17 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I see. Then why not wait till such time as you add the footnote? Again, just asking. Debresser (talk) 09:05, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
 * , because then I have to write a note elsewhere in order to remember, and then I have to remember where that note was. This way is much more logical. Also there is a chance that other interested editors will read it in the meantime. Onceinawhile (talk) 09:08, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your reply. Debresser (talk) 23:43, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Sykes-Picot
In this map, there are both a black dashed line and a red dashed line, some distance apart, around the E and S of Palestine. Do you know anything about that? Zerotalk 13:41, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I was not asked but I think it is just for practical reasons, so that the blue and red lines do not overlap.
 * Note it is not described as Palestine or the Holy Land in the Sykes Picot agreement but as Holy Places... 2A02:2788:925:F87E:E977:4E0:7431:CDAB (talk) 15:27, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
 * In all my reading around the negotiations, I don't remember this being a discussion. If I were to guess I would agree with the IP - I have always assumed it is for the same reason that the red and blue lines overlap, they simply wanted to make clear the boundaries of each territory, even if that means duplicating a line. Onceinawhile (talk) 20:19, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

DYK for Handala
&mdash; Amakuru (talk) 00:02, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

maps
Hi, I found the information I need here. Now I can make a script that takes a piece A of the 1940s maps with known borders in the Palestine Grid, and automatically constructs a piece B of maps.wikimedia of the same location at the same scale, and an animation C from A to B. The initial image A will need to be made by hand using the grid lines. Instead of C, we can explore javascript options and make a template for it. Do you see any issues? Zerotalk 12:01, 27 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi, I wonder whether the image A could also be made automatically, if POM would donate the full stitched map? If you zoom out on their stitched map it shows excellent regularity.
 * Onceinawhile (talk) 21:05, 27 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I expect they have it split into tiles rather than stitched, but that would do too. Zerotalk 01:28, 28 June 2020 (UTC)
 * See your email. Zerotalk 10:25, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
 * See your email. Zerotalk 10:25, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

Please see Template talk:Infobox settlement. Also use the Archives search for "Wikidata" at Template talk:Infobox person. I share many of the concerns raised. Zerotalk 06:35, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

DYK nomination of Survey of Palestine
Hello! Your submission of Survey of Palestine at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) at your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! CMD (talk) 17:20, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

DYK nomination of Hebraization of Palestinian place names
Hello! Your submission of Hebraization of Palestinian place names at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) at your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! BlueMoonset (talk) 17:31, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
 * The nomination has been marked for closure, and could be closed at any time. If you wish to save it, you need to respond immediately. Best of luck. BlueMoonset (talk) 03:49, 16 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you . I have had a go. Onceinawhile (talk) 06:35, 16 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Onceinawhile, your question there was answered later that day; please keep monitoring your nomination there going forward, because not everyone remembers to ping and not every ping goes through; for now, please stop by and continue work on the issues raised. Thanks. BlueMoonset (talk) 00:42, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

Barnstar
Sorry, I'm technically inept, and I'm sure one more competent than I (doesn't take much) can readapt to get the right, discreetly smaller image centered. Best regards Nishidani (talk) 09:21, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

DYK for Survey of Palestine
Cwmhiraeth (talk) 12:02, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

Maps
I've recreated the 1945 maps of Mandatory Palestine into an SVG file that can be editted. Right now I am mastering the map and on the same time making a map of population count in each locality (preview). Do you have any idea what kind of maps can be produced with this? I am planning on making a map for population density and religious affiliation.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 16:38, 20 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi, that is a great idea. I would think the other topic which would fit very nicely would be land ownership by Jewish / Arab / public. Onceinawhile (talk) 17:19, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

More maps
Regarding, how comes it says " Survey of Israel (1928)"? I didn't know there was a  "Survey of Israel (1928)"?

I could change it direct, but I assume it is from some central template, or whatnot, and we should change it there? Huldra (talk) 23:03, 20 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I suppose "Survey of Israel" means "Survey of Palestine" as the publisher and 1928 as the year of publication.Bolter21--188.64.206.107 (talk) 23:45, 20 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Well, it shouldn't. Even though SoI was a successor to SoP, it wasn't the same organization. We can use SoI on maps produced from 1948 onwards even though for quite a while they were SoP maps with overprints. Zerotalk 05:48, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

July 2020
Please stop attacking other editors, as you did on Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard. If you continue, you may be blocked from editing. Comment on content, not on other contributors or people. Please strike your comment. Infinity Knight (talk) 17:42, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

Maps
Hello, Onceinawhile. I noticed that your recent edit to Al-Khalasa added a link to an image on an external website or on your computer, or to a file name that does not exist on Wikipedia's server. For technical and policy reasons it is not possible to use images from external sources on Wikipedia. Most images you find on the internet are copyrighted and cannot be used on Wikipedia, or their use is subject to certain restrictions. If the image meets Wikipedia's image use policy, consider uploading it to Wikipedia yourself or request that someone else upload it. See the image tutorial to learn about wiki syntax used for images. Thank you.&#32;- Sumanuil (talk) 02:35, 26 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi thanks for your message. These are mislinks to commons – I will go through and fix them. Onceinawhile (talk) 04:45, 26 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Do you think it would be better to change the image filenames or the links? Zerotalk 05:12, 26 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi A number of these are maps where the page name matches the filename, but I had incorrectly overridden because most (but seemingly not all) of the “Al-“ villages had different cases. So for these that I am fixing they now match better. Onceinawhile (talk) 05:16, 26 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I have not been able to fix all of the redlinks yet:
 * Al-Khalasa and Auja al-Hafir have only one map
 * Al-Hamma, Tiberias, and Al-Mansura, Acre and az-Zakariyya are missing maps which I think are available.
 * Onceinawhile (talk) 05:30, 26 July 2020 (UTC)
 * please could you let me know how you identified the villages with redlinks? I made this edit to 400 articles; I would like to double check that all the rest are working. Onceinawhile (talk) 05:36, 26 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I regularly check the maintenance category "Articles with missing files", and they were listed there because of the missing maps.&#32;- Sumanuil (talk) 21:44, 26 July 2020 (UTC)
 * , that is very helpful. Thank you. I just took a look there myself – gives me comfort that the rest of the uploads worked exactly as planned. Onceinawhile (talk) 22:26, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Al-Hamma, Tiberias needs construction by hand because of its location. See here. It isn't on the PEF map. There is a map by Schumacher that could be used in place of PEF. For Al-Mansura, Acre, the overlay map breaks but the other three maps are ok and I'll send them. Zerotalk 08:43, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

DYK for Al-Zahiriyya al-Tahta
Cwmhiraeth (talk) 12:03, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Image frame alignment
In Special:Diff/971814668, you used Image frame with both align=left and align=right. What did you mean to do there? Jackmcbarn (talk) 18:42, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi, thank you - I have now fixed this. Onceinawhile (talk) 19:53, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

DYK for Hebraization of Palestinian place names
— Maile (talk) 00:03, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

Historical map series
I updated Template:Historical map series to allow 6 maps. See Talk:Kfar Chabad for an example. I didn't try to add that to the article infobox. Three things about this template are sub-optimal: (1) text doesn't flow around it, (2) it would be good if the "show all" option could be optionally suppressed, (3) how to put it in a figure with an overall caption? See User talk:Jackmcbarn. Zerotalk 14:35, 12 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi, I have added a frame there - does that solve your (1) and (3)? I will have a look into (2). Onceinawhile (talk) 14:51, 12 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I have asked here re (2). Onceinawhile (talk) 15:13, 12 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Zerotalk 15:55, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

Sorry
 Bloom6132 (talk) has given you a dove! Doves promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day happier. Spread the WikiLove by giving someone else a dove, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past (this fits perfectly) or a good friend. Cheers!

Spread the peace of doves by adding {{subst:Peace dove}} to someone's talk page with a friendly message!

I'm sorry for the things I said in the heat of the moment. Thanks for proving to be the bigger person! —Bloom6132 (talk) 21:32, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

WP PHO
Hi habibi, please tag your new articles with assessment tag and add categories to the mainspace. If you hesitate or don't feel like it ping me and i will take it from there. NB: GREAT JOB! ~ Elias Z. (talkallam) 05:35, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi hbb I am removing the PHO banners from paleo/neolithic archeological site articles. ~ Elias Z. (talkallam) 06:11, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
 * , I agree – I got a bit carried away there. Onceinawhile (talk) 06:15, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
 * No worries ~ Elias Z. (talkallam) 06:17, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Are you Paul Bedson? ~ Elias Z. (talkallam) 06:22, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi, no. Onceinawhile (talk) 08:18, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank goodness lol ~ Elias Z. (talkallam) 11:37, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

1948 villages
Thanks again for the amazing work (and Zero!) have done on the map-section of the 1948-villages!

I have one little point: this in effect means that there are 4 new files to put into each commons-category; I have started to do so (eg on Arab Suqrir), alas I am slooooow (and ~400x4 =~1600 edits).

Do you have any magic method to speed it up? cheers, Huldra (talk) 23:19, 2 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi, do you use Commons:Help:Gadget-Cat-a-lot? It is a very effective tool - perhaps the best one on commons. It makes moving files between categories very easy. It will reduce the number of edits from 1600 down to just(!) 400. For example it took less than 10 seconds to move all these four files in one go:   . Onceinawhile (talk) 06:59, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks, but sorry, I'm not very technical; I cannot see how to use? I have switched it on, (I get the little "cat-a-lot" post-it), but the problem is with: "select individual image thumbnails by clicking in the white space of the thumbnail description"? Which thumbnail picture, where? Huldra (talk) 23:30, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi, I struggled with exactly that question when first using it. What to do is: when on the category page (1) press the cat-a-lot button on the bottom right once, so that the post-it opens up, then (2) click once near but not on the filename of an image (e.g. immediately to the right of “.jpg”) and the whole filename area should turn yellow. Once yellow, it is “selected”. You can then select as many as you like, including holding down the shift key to select multiple rows. Onceinawhile (talk) 05:36, 4 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Mmmmmm, I get (1), but how do I get (2)? Eg: I search for "al-Bassa"; I get several files (which I suspect are uncat), Nothing happens when I click near their file-names?  Huldra (talk) 23:30, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
 * have you watched this video? It is clearer than I can be using text. If you follow exactly what they are doing in the video, is there a point where the same doesn’t work for you? Onceinawhile (talk) 05:28, 5 September 2020 (UTC)
 * About 2:13: how do you get that picture? Huldra (talk) 22:02, 5 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi, it’s just here Commons:Category:Baseball players if you scroll down. To be able to them yellow you have to have clicked the cat-a-lot button in the bottom right first. Onceinawhile (talk) 23:35, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

We have a much larger collection of map sequences for post-1948 locations, but they need a lot of work before they are ready. Zerotalk 07:48, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
 * May I ask that you add the cat.s while you are at it? Padres Hana are also uploading some, and not "catting" them, but he isn't as active/efficient as you two are! -> in short, I can manage his lot....
 * Also, are some of a larger area? ie can they be added to the subdistrict-level-cat.s? That would be useful, Huldra (talk) 23:30, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I don’t think it is possible to do this in bulk – the upload tool used, called ComeOn, requires that all have the same Summary, Licencing and Categories (except the description which was pulled from the metadata). Onceinawhile (talk) 05:43, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
 * did you manage to get Cat-a-lot working? Onceinawhile (talk) 20:53, 7 October 2020 (UTC)
 * No, I didn't; I'm just doing them one by one as they pop up, Huldra (talk) 21:47, 7 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi, that is a shame. Just rereading the discussion above, to double check, maybe try the following:
 * When you search for "al-Bassa", only afterwards when the search results are showing, press on the little cat-a-lot post it such that it "pops up" like in the picture above.
 * The post it should then take up maybe a quarter of your screen. Whilst the post it is still filling up your screen, if you then click on the black description text underneath each of the file's blue links, does it not turn yellow?
 * Onceinawhile (talk) 22:35, 7 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, and I get "4 files selected" in the bottom right hand corner (after I clicked on 4 files). Huldra (talk) 20:16, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
 * , that is excellent – you have got it working! Do you need any more help re what to do next? Onceinawhile (talk) 21:16, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Ok? Also, be aware that I edit on a portable: that pop-up thingy fills 3/4 of the right-hand part of my screen, Huldra (talk) 21:27, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi, me too (at least half the time). I am very glad you have it working now – it will save a lot of time in moving multiple files between categories. Onceinawhile (talk) 21:42, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Sorry, but that was Ok?, as in affirmative (yes! I need more help!) Huldra (talk) 21:46, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
 * , ha ok! If you give me an example of a task you would like to complete, I will talk you through it. Onceinawhile (talk) 21:52, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Ok, I have "4 files selected" in the bottom right hand corner, what next? How do I get these into the el-Bassa -category? Huldra (talk) 21:57, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
 * , ok, at the top of the pop up box there is a small white row which says “Enter Category Name”. Put “Al-Bassa” in there and press return or enter on your keypad. That will cause the list of blue links in the yellow box to change, and one of them will be Al-Bassa. On the right of Al Bassa (and all the other links) there will be + and - signs. Press the plus sign. Onceinawhile (talk) 22:07, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Whaw, finally, I managed it. I have done a few villages (as they pop up on my watch-list): there are a few problems though: the major one is that I want the village name first in the cat-list (it is a difficult to see "Suba" say, here, now I always get the "Historical map series for Israel and Palestine" first. Is there someway to get the village name first? Huldra (talk) 22:08, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi, that is great news! I hope you find it saves a lot of time in future. As to the order of the categories, unfortunately I don't know of any way to fix that automatically. Onceinawhile (talk) 08:19, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

Also, at Az-Zakariyya something has gone wrong with the maps? Huldra (talk) 20:23, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
 * , yes thank you for pointing out – I fixed it. Onceinawhile (talk) 21:15, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I think the 1940's one is still missing? Huldra (talk) 22:08, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

DYK nomination of Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions
Hello! Your submission of Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) at your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Yoninah (talk) 14:26, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

Jerusalem timeline
Hi. I was dealing with the Siege of Jerusalem page when a careful editor removed this: "Sack of Jerusalem (350 BCE) by Artaxerxes III, who retakes the city from Jewish rebels and burns it down", correctly noting that the linked article says nothing about Artaxerxes and Jerusalem. I dug a bit deeper, and found out that this line was adopted from the Timeline of Jerusalem, where loooong time ago you added a lot of good material, but also this:
 * 350 BCE: Jerusalem revolts against Artaxerxes III, along with other cities of the Levant and Cyprus. Artaxerxes III, retakes the city and burns it down in the process. Jews who supported the revolt are sent to Hyrcania on the Caspian Sea.

The edit is | here, 22:38, 17 September 2010.

That seems to be totally wrong, unless you can prove otherwise (there are no inline sources for the entire paragraph; 2010, I know, different times). I can see from good sources, not just from Wiki, that there have been several regional revolts against Achaemenid rule in the region around that time, leading to Persian interventions. During the one fitting the date, in 351-50, Pharaoh Nectanebo II successfully repelled the Persians. In a next revolt, taking place between | 350-347, King Tennes of Sidon (r. 351-347) and several allies managed to repulse two satraps, but was defeated when Artaxerxes arrived with an army of Greeks and Persians, burning down Sidon (he or the citizens themselves did it). Jews of Phoenicia who had been allied to Tennes were exiled to the south coast of the Caspian Sea. So in c. 347, not 350. In a | 1986 paper from the the Society of Biblical Literature, on p. 638, the expedition of Artaxerxes III against Tennes and his allies (so from c. 347) is cited as the cause for the destruction layers excavated at Hazor, Megiddo, Athlit, Lachish, Jericho - but not a word about Jerusalem. Then Artaxerxes again invaded Egypt in 343 and this time he defeated Nectanebo II, Jews from Egypt being sent either to Babylon or to the same location on the Caspian Sea as those from Phoenicia in 346.

There had been previous revolts and wars, one between Nectanebo I and Artaxerxes II beginning in the 370s and continuing throughout the 360s, starting off a wave of regional revolts. The son of Nectanebo I, Tachos/Teos, tried around 360 to take the war to the Persians, but failed. In the 1986 paper, it's the 365/4-362 revolt that is associated with the story of Bagoas/Bagoses. One of the Persian generals of Artaxerxes III is a certain Bagoas, and Nöldeke, Wellhausen and others identify him with Bagoses from Josephus' Antiquities (so says the Jerusalem art. of the Jewish Encyclopedia of 1906). Josephus writes how Bagoses defiled the Temple and had the Jews pay a tax on each lamb offered at the Temple for the next 7 years because the High Priest John/Yohanan had killed his own brother Jesus/Yeshua inside the Temple, and Yeshua happened to be Bagoses' friend (see the text for instance | here, Ant. 11.302-347 or | here, Book XI, Ch. 7:1-2). Anyway, the paper states almost as proven fact that the High-Priest-cum-governor from Jerusalem had also taken part in that revolt during the 2nd half of the 360s (pp. 637-8).

That's all I could find. Nowhere anything from this period about a siege of Jerusalem by Artaxerxes III ending with him burning down the city. Wherever else in Judea there are traces of Persian destruction, it's from the earlier war, in c. 362, by the previous Persian king, Artaxerxes II, not A. III. Also the Caspian Sea exile is from c. 347 (this one maybe comes close) and 343. Nothing fits.

This would also have been a third destruction of Jerusalem, quite memorable, and everybody only mentions two, 586 BCE and 70 CE.

So: can you figure out what the source was, and check again if you still trust it? For now I will amend both pages based on what I have found. Thank you, Arminden (talk) 21:48, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi, sadly I remember building most of the timeline from a variety of Wikipedia articles. It was right at the start of my time editing – I had only been around a few months, and this was perhaps my 25th edit in Wikipedia.
 * I have looked around in a few sources – the most specific I can find refers to “... calamity that befell Jerusalem and the temple at that time...” in Artaxerxes III Ochus and his reign. Onceinawhile (talk) 22:42, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

Thanks a lot, it makes perfect sense now, this would fit well the Temple desecration story from Josephus or who knows what. No burning down of Jerusalem, that's important now. Somebody probably overinterpreted those difficult two verses from Isaiah and presented their imaginative interpretation as historical fact. Don't worry, I started editing after you, I think, and didn't do it any different. Arminden (talk) 23:01, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

Quotations in footnotes
Dear Onceinawhile. You are an amazing Wikipedian, whereas I am still a novice. However, I found that you just like me often use quotations in footnotes (e.g. Philistines and Kadesh inscriptions). However, despite undeniably enhancing verifiability, they seem not to be well accepted among editors. Some deleted the quotations my footnotes (see Battle of Entzheim revision 18:55 29 June 2020). Some want me to change to a simpler citation style "In future, 'Burke (1949), p. 3' is all that is necessary." (Talk:Sir George Hamilton, Comte Hamilton). Certain AWB users apply "General fixes" to my quotations thereby "correcting" them, mainly by removing commas from dates in old-fashioned formats (e.g. "1 July, 1642" -> "1 July 1642"). One friendly, very experienced user on 28 Oct 2019 logged the bug T236729 "Genfixes removes comma from quoted date" in Phabricator, but its status still is "Open, Needs Triage". I wonder whether you have experienced similar problems. What could be done to make editors see the usefulness of quotations in footnotes? With many thanks, Johannes Schade (talk) 16:48, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Dear, thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia. You are making an excellent impact on the encyclopaedia.
 * I feel strongly about the topic of quotations in footnotes - so long as they don't cross the copyright line (a few sentences is fine), they provide instant verifiability particularly for contentious subjects. Importantly they solve the asymmetry in edit wars - for example, if an editor comes along to delete something you wrote a few years ago, it takes them just a few seconds to challenge the source, but can take much much longer to go back to double check the book where you sourced the sentence from. If the quote is already there then the playing field is level.
 * As you say, not all editors agree. Have a look for example at the discussion in these threads: Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive954 and Featured article candidates/Balfour Declaration/archive1. Enough editors agreed that the quotations were necessary, and the article has been recognized as a Featured Article for the last three years. Another example is Mandate for Palestine, recognized as a Good Article, in the same highly disputed topic area. There is no clear policy on the topic of quotations in footnotes, so it is up to consensus on any given page. Onceinawhile (talk) 20:15, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Dear Onceinawhile. You made my day yesterday. Thank you for your careful reply and the links provided. Yes, instant verifiability is what we need. The deleters seem to act mainly on an urge to remove "clatter". They say very few readers read notes. True. But if Wikipedia is not easily verifiable, it loses trust and therefore readers. We need a verifiability system that supports the main text with a few clicks and no clatter. Luckily, Wikipedia is not a paper book, but a collection of interactive websites. The notes and references should be hidden. I saw with interest your use of hidden tables. You might have seen that I also like them. Unluckily, enclosing in a hidden table does not work. I wonder whether I should not propose "hiding notes and references" on Village-Pump Idea-Lab. What do you think? With many thanks, Johannes Schade (talk) 12:01, 27 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Dear, many thanks for your message. I forgot to mention that there is an official guideline supporting the use of quotes-in-footnotes: WP:FOOTQUOTE, which states "A footnote may also contain a relevant exact quotation from the source. This is especially helpful when the cited text is long or dense. A quotation allows readers to immediately identify the applicable portion of the reference. Quotes are also useful if the source is not easily accessible. In the case of non-English sources, it may be helpful to quote from the original text and then give an English translation." Personally I think that consensus around sourcing of the highest-possible quality has continued to get stronger over the years, and will continue to do so.
 * On sources in tables, one solution is shown at Demographic history of Palestine (region), where small text is used to explain the source of the tables, with an end-of-article footnote linked to it. I am not even sure this is allowed now though, as there was a recent RFC on deprecating inline citations. I think the community does not like citations being structurally dispersed around an article.
 * Onceinawhile (talk) 16:00, 27 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Onceinawhile (talk) 16:00, 27 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Onceinawhile (talk) 16:00, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

DYK nomination of Russian Bank
Hello! Your submission of Russian Bank at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) at your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Binksternet (talk) 01:39, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

Phoenico-punic art
Hi habibi do you have an article about the Ford collection sarcophagi? Also can you help me populate Category:Phoenician art?
 * Hi I have been keeping an eye out for it, given their prominent place in the Beirut Museum. I haven't found the edicio princeps yet though. I am quite keen to build out articles on all the famous necropoli, as many of the most impressive Phoenician artefacts comes from there.
 * I will add more to that category.
 * Onceinawhile (talk) 10:53, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks a million, you're my go to guy here ~ Elias Z. (talkallam) 12:29, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
 * , I found it here:
 * Editio princeps: Charles Cutler Torrey. “A Phoenician Necropolis at Sidon” The Annual of the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem, vol. 1, 1919, pp. 1–27.
 * Surviving the test of time: "The highlight of the National Museum of Beirut is its collection of anthropoid sarcophagi"
 * Onceinawhile (talk) 16:57, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Surviving the test of time: "The highlight of the National Museum of Beirut is its collection of anthropoid sarcophagi"
 * Onceinawhile (talk) 16:57, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Onceinawhile (talk) 16:57, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

DYK nomination of Carpentras Stela
Hello! Your submission of Carpentras Stela at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) at your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! -- RoySmith (talk) 22:14, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

Pictures...
On another issue, do you know an easy way to split up books, and upload the pictures independently?

To be specific; Charles William Meredith van de Velde published a book in 1857, it is uploaded to commons,. That is nearly useless, unless they are uploaded individually and categorised. Looking at the contents, it has some pictures from places where we have no previous pictures from, say Kfarhamam.

I have uploaded some, one after the other, ,,, but it is sloooooow.

Do you know of any easier way of doing it? (I don't mind adding the correct cats to the files, afterwards, if neccessary!) Huldra (talk) 23:56, 12 October 2020 (UTC)


 * I don't know where you got those png images, but the best quality seems to be available like this: Down this huge file which is a 641MB zip file containing every image as a separate file in jp2 format. Unfortunately the files have numbers not meaningful names, so it seems that names need to be assigned manually. There are 193 images, usually 3-5MB. Once is the expert on bulk uploads so I'll let him/her suggest how to do that. Zerotalk 03:51, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Now I see that the images include pages of text as well as pictures. There are 101 pictures and two maps. Zerotalk 03:56, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
 * It is not so straightforward unfortunately. I tried this morning and it crashed my computer, as I ran out of both types of memory... Anyway, I did manage to get 24 converted and uploaded (as you can see File:LePaysdIsrael Vallee de Sichem.jpg, this one went wrong part way through).
 * Anyway, some thoughts on this:
 * Bulk uploading at this scale is easy using UploadWizard - it can take 25 at a time, and you can use the same descriptions etc., so if you have the file names done then the rest is automatic
 * The issue is getting the files in the first place. Zero's zip of jp2 files needs conversion into jpgs (commons doesn't accept jp2) - that is what blew my computer today
 * Another way of doing it is zooming into the archive.org viewer to a high resolution, then saving the image. This is probably the easiest way.
 * Onceinawhile (talk) 10:51, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
 * No, don't do that. I can convert to jpg easily. Zerotalk 11:28, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I'll send you both a file of jpegs tomorrow. Zerotalk 11:35, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Actually the conversion finished already, but I'm not satisfied. The image size (typically 7000 x 10000 or even larger) is much greater than the picture detail allows.  At full zoom the image pixels are about 5-10 pixels in size, I guess due to the printing mask of the originals. I will try reducing the size by about a factor of 2, which will make the file sizes more manageable without losing any detail. Zerotalk 11:54, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, that looks great. Zerotalk 11:58, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Sent. Zerotalk 12:27, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Great, thanks. I have uploaded them all: Commons: Category:Charles William Meredith van de Velde. I did not have time to make better file names – Huldra is it easy for you to change the names with your “filemover” powers? Onceinawhile (talk) 12:57, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Wonderful! Yeah, I can easily change the filenames, The numbering, (according to this), should also be included, somehow. Unfortunately, it may have to wait some time, due to RL thingies, cheers, Huldra (talk) 21:19, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
 * If anyone could provide the content register, here, in a format where I could copy/paste it, it would make my job getting the right names (like I do here) very much easier.. Huldra (talk) 23:25, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
 * , your wish is my command:
 * 1. Title page. Wady Fasail, le Torrent de Kerith. 2. Beirout, vue prise de la route de Schemlan. 3. Aberyh, village dans le Liban. 4. En Neby-Yunas. 5. Saida (Sidon), vue septentrionale. 6. Sidon, vue meridionale. 7. Le Chateau de saint Louis a Sidon. 8. Sidon, vue generale prise des jardins. 9. Le Nahr el-Auwly (le Bostrenus.) 10. Le Nahr-Sanik pres sa source. 11. Kalat esch-Schekif (Belfort des Croises.) 12. L'arrivee a Hasbeiya. 13. Hasbeiya. 14. Le mont Hermon, vu de Khalwet el-Biyad. 15. Le mont Hermon, vue prise de Thelthatha. 16. Site pres de Schuweiya (environs de Hasbeiya.) 17. Ruines d'un temple a Hibariyeh. 18. Kefr-Hamam (environs de Hasbeiya.) 19. Kalat-Aisafa, ruines pres de Kefr-Hamam. 20. Le lac el-Houleh (les eaux de Merom.) 21. El-Nahr Hasbany (le Jourdain superieur.) 22. Le Hasbany pres de sa source. 23. Djisr-Burghuz, pont sur le Litany (Leontes.) 24. Le Leontes au-dessous de Burghuz. 25. Ravin du Leontes pres de Belat. 26. Gorge du Leontes pres du Khatwh. 27. La vallee du Hasbany (vue meridionale prise d'Ibl.) 28. Kalat-Hounin. 29. Bint-Djebsil. 30. Ruines d'une synagogue a Kefr-Berim. 31. Ruines de Hazour ou Hazireh. 32. Kabr-Hairan (tombeau de Hiram, roi de Tyr.) 33. Ras el-Ain, environs de Tyr. 34. Sour (Tyr), vue generale. 35. Ruines de Tyr, (l'ancienne Cathedrale, partie S.E. de la ville.) 36. Ruines pres de Tyr, (au S. de la ville.) 37. Djisr-Kakaiyeh (pont sur le Leontes.) 38. Kalat-Tibnin (le chateau Toron des Croises.) 39. Ruines d'un temple a Belat (entre Tyr et Tibnin. 40. Kalat-Schemma. 41. Kalat-Karn. 42. Village de Mellia. 43. Kalat-Djedin (environs de Saint-Jean d'Acre.) 44. Akka (Ptolemais, Saint-Jean d'Acre.) 45. La ville de Khaifa, au pied du mont Carmel. 46. Athlit (Castellum Peregrinorum des Croises.) 47. Ain-Haud (village au pied du Carmel.) 48. La plaine de Jizrehel, vue de mont Carmel. 49. El-Mohraka (site du Sacrifice d'Elie.) 50. Ruines a Tantoura, (site de l'ancienne ville de Dor.) 51. Ruines de Cesaree. 52. Jenin (en-Ganim), tribu d'Issachar. 53. Sebustiyeh (Samarie.) 54. La vallee de Sichem. 55. Nablous (Sichem) et le mont Gerizim. 56. Yafa (Japho, Joppe), vue septentrionale. 57. Yafa (vue meridionale.) 58. Ruines a Ludd (Lydde.) 59. Jerusalem, et le mont des Oliviers. 60. Jerusalem, vue prise au N.E. de la ville. 61. Jerusalem, vue de mont des Oliviers. 62. Jerusalem, vue prise hors de la porte de Damas. 63. La vallee du Cedron. 64. La vallee du Cedron (Gethsemane), vue de nuit. 65. El-Azariyeh (Bethanie.) 66. Beit-Lahm (Beth-lehem.) 67. Les reservoirs de Salomon. 68. El-Khalil (Hebron.) 69. Le rocher de Masada et la mer Morte. 70. Le desert de Judee entre Masada et ez-Zuweirah. 71. Beit-Jebrin (Eleutheropolis.) 72. Ghuzzeh (Gaza.) 73. Le couvent de Mar-Saba. 74. Er-Riha, village pres du site de Jericho. 75. Kerawa, oasis dans la Ghor. 76. Le Jourdain, au passage de la route de Nablous a es-Salt. 77. Le Jourdain (passage entre Scythopolis et Pella.) 78. Beisan (Beth-San, Scythopolis.) 79. En-Nazirah (Nazareth.) 80. Le lac de Tiberiade. 81. El-Mejdel (Magdala), la de Tiberaide. 82. Le lac de Tiberaide vu du chateau de Safed. 83. La grotte de Banias. 84. Ravin du Nahr ez-Zaharany, au-dessous de Djurdjoua. 85. Djebea, village du Djebel-Rihan. 86. Chute du torrent de Djezzin. 87. El-Bekaa (la vallee de Coelesyrie.) 88. Esch-Scham (Damas.) 89. La riviere Barada (l'ancienne Abana), vue prise pres de Dummar. 90. Baalbec, vue meridionale. 91. Baalbec, cote oriental. 92. Kamoa el-Hermel (monument dans la plaine de Riblah.) 93. Kamoa el-Hermel (profils et details.) 94. Merj-Ahin (vallee alpestre du Liban septentrionale.) 95. Foret dans les hautes regions du Liban. 96. Les monts Hermon et Sunnin, vue de le crete oriental du Liban. 97. Les cidres du Liban. 98. Le torrent de Bscherreh. 99. Sources de l'Adonis a Afka (Apheca.) 100. [Map] Carte de la Palestine.
 * Onceinawhile (talk) 23:33, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Brilliant, thanks! Huldra (talk) 23:37, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Ok, done! (almost) ..those I don't know where is, are still in the "Category:Charles William Meredith van de Velde", the rest has been moved (and categorised) in  Category:Van de Velde, 1857. If you have any idea as to where, say Kerawa or Hazour ou Hazireh is, please tell.
 * There were some gems, say the 1851 pictures of Mi'ilya or Ein Hod: well worth the job! cheers, Huldra (talk) 22:21, 19 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I have put the missing ones here and will fill them in as I find them:
 * 1. Title page. Wady Fasail, le Torrent de Kerith:
 * According to VdV, a spring near the Jordan where Elijah was said to have rested and the crows nourished him; called Racka by the Arabs.
 * FOUND: East of Duma, Nablus, south of Ma'ale Efrayim and north of Fasayil. See File:Fasayil.png
 * 31. Ruines de Hazour ou Hazireh.
 * FOUND: Immediately north of Ayta ash Shab.
 * (Zero adds: on 1977 map, "Hazzirya" 2km NE of Ayta ash Shab. On PEF sheet 4, Od, Kh. Hazireh)
 * From PEF: "Hazzur (N d). — This is a rock-cut tomb with a masonry arch over the entrance; it is at the ruins of Kh. Hazireh. The masonry appears to be Roman from the cutting of the stones; at present the vault has fallen in and quite blocked up the entrance to the tomb ; the dimensions are given by Dr. Robinson ('Later Biblical Researches,' p. 63) before this accident. The arch is round; the stones rather large, but not bevelled, and the whole bears the marks of extreme antiquity. Beneath the vault the flat rock is cut away to form a sloping passage leading down to the sepulchre. This passage is four feet wide, twelve feet long, and at the lower end five and a half feet deep. Here is a low portal leading into an excavated chamber with a sarcophagus. The vault above is six feet broad by twelve long, and nine and one-third high. There is another sepulchre south-west of this similar to it, but having no vault over it. The following is Robinson's description of this place: 'The arch is round; the stones rather large, but not bevelled; the whole bears the marks of extreme antiquity. Beneath the vault the flat rock is cut away to form a sloping passage leading down to the sepulchre. This passage is 4 feet wide, 12 feet long, and at the lower end 5 1/2 feet deep. Here is a low portal leading into an excavated chamber with a sarcophagus. The vault above is 6 feet broad by 12 long and 9 1/2 high. There is another sepulchre south-west of this and similar to it, excavated in a flat rock, but having now no vault over it.' This vault was demolished the year before Renan went to Palestine. He suggests En Hazer as the ancient name of Hazzur." This name seems to have been eclipsed by Tel Hazor, albeit confusion remains - for example a number of commons photos of the Israeli Tel Hazor have been given camera coordinates which point to this place in Southern Lebanon e.g. File:TEL HATZOR AERIAL.JPG and File:מקדש מצבות כנעני.JPG
 * Kh. Hazireh PEF map 4 is on I, 239: "A few small columns and broken pieces" does not seem to describe it well, me thinks Huldra (talk) 22:51, 24 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Guerin, 1880, 117, Huldra (talk) 22:57, 24 October 2020 (UTC)
 * 36. Ruines pres de Tyr, (au S. de la ville.):
 * From the text: "Non loin de cet endroit, un peu plus vers le sud-est, ou voit une ruine curieuse dont nous joiguons ici le dessin (PI. XXXV). Ses murailles énormes semblent indiquer une place de défense ou un château fort, et l’un de ses arceaux, presque écroulé, semble révéler une origine qui remonterait aux croisades. Tout près de là se trouve un charmant jardin ombragé de tamaris, de figuiers et de mûriers, lieu délicieux de repos pour les voyageurs qui voudraient y dresser leur tente."
 * (Zero says: This is Tyre, Lebanon as shown on his image 191.)
 * (Onceinawhile says: agreed. I am trying to figure out exactly where in Tyre this is. I have asked here: User_talk:RomanDeckert)
 * 49. El-Mohraka (site du Sacrifice d'Elie.)
 * FOUND: Mount_Carmel
 * 75. Kerawa, oasis dans la Ghor.
 * TENTATIVE: I believe this is Al-Jiftlik (Zero says: In that vacinity, yes, but was it a village then? In the book image 191 he has "Archelais (Kerawa)". In his 1862 map, in the same place as much as is plain, he has two sites "el Basaliyeh (Archelais)" and SE from there "Kerawa". PEF and Mandate maps don't have a point locality but they show tracts of land called Kurawa el Masudy (PEF) and that one plus Qarawa al Fauwa (Mandate).)
 * 94. Merj-Ahin (vallee alpestre du Liban septentrionale.)
 * '''FOUND BUT NOT ON WIKI: This is known as Marj Hine or Merchhin.
 * VdV says in French: "Une seconde plaine, le Merj el-Ahmar, s’étend au S. du Merj-Ahin. C'est encore un plateau alpestre, plus grand, mais moins pittoresque que le précédent. Bientôt de nouveaux bouquets de pins et de cyprès d'une beauté ravissante (PI. XCV) nous amènent, par une montée non interrompue, au pied d’une immense chaine de montagnes nues et dépouillées, du sein desquelles s’élance un cône massif, tout éblouissant d une virginale blancheur." (Zero adds: I found it on his maps, after looking 100 or so times. On image 191, it is the most northerly place that is close to the border with Syria, inland from Tripoli. It's harder to find on the 1862 map but it's there, very close to the border. The "road going from Hermel to Donniyeh" in your link is here.)
 * I have asked at User_talk:Elias_Ziade
 * Onceinawhile (talk) 05:48, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
 * They are on the map in image 191, no? For example, Kerawa is Archelais and Tyr is Sour (Lebanon). Zerotalk 07:59, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi, agreed, but that map is not detailed enough to locate the specific locations. 1858_van_de_Velde_maps_of_Palestine_and_Jerusalem is much better. Onceinawhile (talk) 08:05, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
 * They are on the map in image 191, no? For example, Kerawa is Archelais and Tyr is Sour (Lebanon). Zerotalk 07:59, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi, agreed, but that map is not detailed enough to locate the specific locations. 1858_van_de_Velde_maps_of_Palestine_and_Jerusalem is much better. Onceinawhile (talk) 08:05, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

That is excellent! A few I suspected (like the Mount Carmel one) some of the other (eg Ayta ash Shab) were completely unknown to me. Incidentally, Victor Guérin (who I believe visited Hazour ou Hazireh); his books at archive have been completely mixed around :( That means my User:Huldra/Guerin is pretty useless/needs to be updated :( not only that, but each and every Guérin-link on en.wp needs to be updated :( I hope this is just a "glitch" and that they will return the old links....
 * Happy news! The Guérin-links are now "back to normal"! Huldra (talk) 22:32, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

While we are at it, there were a few others I wondered about, if you could check I would be grateful:
 * 03.En Neby Yunas: I cannot find any sign of this at present, but on van der Velde's map there is such a place just south of Damour; hence I have put it in the Chouf District
 * FOUND See Jieh. Onceinawhile (talk) 07:05, 22 October 2020 (UTC)


 * 14.Le mont Hermon, vue prise de Thelthatha ...is Nebi Safa(?)
 * Yes, oddly it is in the Jerusalem volume of SWP, p491. "A few feet above the village is the site of the temple, whence can be seen a great portion of the Hermon range." Zerotalk 00:27, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Nice find! There are notes on several other of the Lebanese village temples there, too, Huldra (talk) 20:33, 21 October 2020 (UTC)


 * 15.Site pres de Schuweiya (environs de Hasbeiya). I think this belongs close to a village not yet made on en.wp (but exist on ar.wp) (And was mentioned by Robinson in 1838, p. 138)
 * I agree. It is definitely ar:شويا_(حاصبيا). On google maps it is spelt Chouya. Onceinawhile (talk) 07:13, 22 October 2020 (UTC)


 * 38.Ruines d'un temple a Belat (entre Tyr et Tibnin) The only place I found matching that discription is just by Marwahin ..I do not think it is the same as 24. "Belat", which  I believe to be just be by Blat, Marjayoun?
 * Yes definitely. 38 is equidistant between Marwahin and Ramyah. And I agree 24 is definitely Blat, Marjayoun. I realized that VdV's route is shown on File:VanDeVeldeMap3.jpg marked in red, so we can be 100% certain. Onceinawhile (talk) 07:29, 22 October 2020 (UTC)
 * This one is a great find. There is another excellent picture in PEF here. The PEF also gives detail from Robinson, Guerin and Renan. Renan calls it "the most striking ruin in the whole country".in French here Onceinawhile (talk) 07:44, 22 October 2020 (UTC)
 * It is at coordinates 33.11482°N, 35.29061°W. Best on Bing maps satellite. Onceinawhile (talk) 08:07, 22 October 2020 (UTC)
 * This one screams for its own article, me thinks... Huldra (talk) 20:34, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I think you have been the first to write about this place in your edit here at Beth-Anath. Onceinawhile (talk) 22:49, 9 November 2020 (UTC)


 * 85.Djebea, village du Djebel Rihan. ..I can find it in "Djebel Rihan"; I think it is Jbaa? "Jebeah" is just north of Arabsalim on this map, which fits.
 * Yes this is definitely correct (you can see the consistent spelling at File:VdV1857 0191.jpg. Just north of Ain Qana. Onceinawhile (talk) 07:05, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

Cheers, Huldra (talk) 21:23, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

DYK for Russian Bank
Cwmhiraeth (talk) 00:01, 13 October 2020 (UTC) theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/they) 19:59, 8 May 2022 (UTC)

DYK nomination of Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions
Hello! Your submission of Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) at your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Yoninah (talk) 20:00, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

Missing cite in Stelae of Nahr el-Kalb
The article cites "Wilson 1881" but no such source is listed in bibliography. Can you please add? Also, suggest installing a script to highlight such errors in the future. All you need to do is copy and paste importScript('User:Svick/HarvErrors.js'); // Backlink: User:Svick/HarvErrors.js to your common.js page. Thanks, Renata (talk) 01:09, 22 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi, thank you. I have fixed this. Onceinawhile (talk) 06:52, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

"Joke"
My edit was not a "joke". Trump has been nominated multiple times for the Nobel Peace Prize. --Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 16:03, 30 October 2020 (UTC)
 * , these people are far right populists for minor parties (see Finns Party and Forum for Democracy). These are not serious nominations. His actions are not creating "peace" in the Middle East; that requires addressing the underlying issues. And he is inflaming tensions with China, which is a dangerously slippery slope and the greatest single threat to world peace. Onceinawhile (talk) 16:16, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

Balfour
I don't mind the revert, but I didn't see any consensus for this article to be exempt from MOS:LEAD. Can you point me at it explicitly? Cheers. The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!&#33;!&#33;) 12:58, 31 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi, I can't remember where in the discussion this was covered (it was three years ago after all), but this article went through two GA reviews, two peer reviews and two FA reviews and this is how it ended up. Onceinawhile (talk) 14:22, 31 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I guess compliance with MOS was overlooked at FAC then. No worries, it's not a big problem, but FAs should comply with MOS. The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!&#33;!&#33;) 14:33, 31 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Kingsindian mentioned it but suggested that the MOS does not constitute an absolute prohibition and it was let go.Selfstudier (talk) 14:58, 31 October 2020 (UTC)
 * No, indeed WP:MOS is a guideline, but I haven't seen any reason for this article to exempt from its compliance. Nevertheless it's of little interest.  I will be keeping an eye on it in future should further transgressions appear of course. The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!&#33;!&#33;) 23:53, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

DYK for Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions
Cwmhiraeth (talk) 00:01, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:05, 2 November 2020 (UTC) theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/they) 09:46, 8 May 2022 (UTC)

Aramaic
Hi Onceinawhile! FYI, the answer on ANI is not really satisfactory ("content dispute"). If have asked for page protection now. –Austronesier (talk) 09:17, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
 * , thank you. Agree there is no content dispute – the IP was just adding nonsense. Onceinawhile (talk) 09:35, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Al-Dalhamiyya
Hi, Just a note that the PEF-section map in Al-Dalhamiyya isn't particularly useful? Cheers, Huldra (talk) 20:59, 6 November 2020 (UTC)
 * , thank you - I have fixed it. Onceinawhile (talk) 21:01, 6 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Ummmh, yeah, but if you had a section taken further west on Map 9, that would could be useful? Huldra (talk) 21:06, 6 November 2020 (UTC)
 * interesting. See Talk:Al-Dalhamiyya. Onceinawhile (talk) 21:33, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

Also, Khirbat al-Muntar, on SWP map 4 ''Kh. el Muntar'' is just east of the present SWP-map in the article? Huldra (talk) 23:28, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

DYK for Carpentras Stele
—valereee (talk) 12:02, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

Nomination of West Bank bantustans for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article West Bank bantustans is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Articles for deletion/West Bank bantustans until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Jr8825 •  Talk  17:58, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

Memories :) Selfstudier (talk) 14:56, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Bantustans
I would say that it is by no means clear that the deleters have cleared the bar for deletion, they would need a rough consensus and since  there are quite a few keepers, it seems to me the likely outcome is no con/do a rename. You never know what a closer will do of course but a straight vote count seems not the right thing here, those alleging a fork have made a very poor case and it is notable that many of the "outside" voters are keepers. If it is deleted, so be it, then at least we know what we are dealing with. It's your article so I'm not going to criticize your tactics but personally I would not discuss a rename before a decision. I would rather know if Wikipedia is willing to delete an article like this based on that discussion.Selfstudier (talk) 00:03, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi, thanks for your message. I look at it like this. So far there have been at least four delete voters who have approximately 500-1000 edits, were created or reactivated reasonably recently, and have edit histories of which the majority were semi-automated edits. My guess is that more of these accounts will turn up, which is great as they can be taken to SPI when the time is right. But not in enough time to have a fair vote here, so I have accepted that the outcome will be unfairly skewed and there is nothing that can be done.
 * As to the article, I don't mind having two articles frankly, or maybe three (one on the process of "encystation" of whatever we want to call it). I do think the current article name is the common name, but a good alternative is to have it as a disambiguation page for each of the related concepts. One thing I do feel strongly about is that this issue is right at the heart of the IP conflict and deserves to be properly elucidated.
 * Onceinawhile (talk) 00:15, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Onceinawhile (talk) 00:15, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Onceinawhile (talk) 00:15, 20 November 2020 (UTC)


 * You'll get no argument from me on that last part.Selfstudier (talk) 00:20, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
 * If they do delete it (and the delete process is contaminated by 4 obvious socks there), aside from the canvassing, make sure you have a back up copy day by day so that if that occurs, you can place it in the fragmentation section of the Israeli Occupation of the West Bank. I cut that back only because of the usual numbers game commanded by the permabanned chap, but it would have been better to  WP:IAR. Over 14 years I have noted very frequently that the POV crowd (a) is totally unfamiliar with the topic literature (b) screws articles by pushing to break them down and disperse them (bantustanization of the theme) on the hunch that passing readers don't click through to see the sister articles. In any case, well done. It was overdue, and I for one will see what I can do to expand it further. There's a huge mass of material out there.
 * One further point. The Bantustan analogy is not analytically correct except in the sole sense of dismembering by geophysical dislocation a Palestinian community, not by creating several statelets. The essential point, made decades ago, was to get Palestinians to police themselves and administer their poverty in whatever patches were left to them, without Israeli aid. South Africa basically financed its bantustans, whereas in thed West Bank and Gaza international communities are expected to pick up the tab etc. Nishidani (talk) 21:20, 20 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Yes this is the point our deleting friends are not getting, deliberately or otherwise they are painting the word solely in a SA context and thence to Apartheid, which as you say is inaccurate. Our usage is different, the word is imagery and not at all intended to be the SA version and does not of itself imply Apartheid. Still, we will need to rename at the end to get away from this misconception.Selfstudier (talk) 15:08, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi, just reading your post above, I come back to a comment I made on the AFD page – an analogy with the term “pogrom”. Every event labelled pogrom has a number of differences with the events in 19th century Russia – there is no such thing as an analytically exact pogrom. The same is true for the widened use of the term bantustan – the core of it is about noncontiguous enclaves ultimately controlled by its surrounding parent country, allowing the latter to maintain control without representation. Who does the financing doesn’t change the core at all, particularly here given the financing arrangements are there because of a 50 year legacy. Onceinawhile (talk) 10:29, 22 November 2020 (UTC)


 * This says "Guided by the Allon Plan (1967), the Sharon Plan (1977) and a plan by the World Zionist Organization (1978)". Any idea what that last one was?Selfstudier (talk) 13:07, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
 * , could it be the Yinon Plan? Onceinawhile (talk) 14:05, 22 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Drobles plan apparently, no page for it, this fellow.Selfstudier (talk) 16:05, 22 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Well, what do you think about a rename, any ideas, or you prefer to wait for someone else to suggest/do it? If you want to keep Bantustan I prefer Bantustanization since we are describing a process as well as a condition.Selfstudier (talk)
 * Hi I am open minded. We could open a discussion to get some ideas? I am happy to go with consensus. My views are: I prefer the title to focus on the place rather than the process (all geographical places have history sections), I prefer shorter vs longer, and I would like to find the commonname. Onceinawhile (talk) 14:36, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't see the need for a rename. To the contrary since it is thoroughly documented that, also in the context of the intense ties between the two states when South Africa was a boycotted (BDS) pariah nation, Israeli politicians, upper echelon IDF people, and policy makers constantly had the SA practice in mind as they elaborated and deepened their 'Separation' policies, it is the only valid name for the page. Self is correct that the more accurate term, resolving these doubts, lies in a renaming as 'Bantustanization', a point I would also have made had not so much time been wasted trying to save an obviously pertinent article addition to wikipedia). Even Chomnsky has no problems with the SA analogy with bantustans. He gave a talk late in 2000 or thereabouts in Israel in which a lengthy descriptive passage was read out from a standard source regarding Bantustans. His audience, he states, many liberal Israelis, silently sat through it, no one leaping to their feet to challenge the tacit analogy. I.e. overall the analogy is compelling, despite differences (all analogies accept that differences exist in details) It can be  found on, from memory, p.198 of the book I introduced to the sources for the page, and if anyone wishes to carry it into a note, they can find it there). Whatever, there's still a lot of work to be done enlarging the content and adding sources (I hope now that some leisure is available for serious work that we all reread what we have to tweak etc) and until it gets closer to GA criteria, it is best to put name proposals on the back burner, even if a change to Bantustanization of the West Bank shouldn't be problematical even at this stage.Nishidani (talk) 14:42, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Also to reply to Oncenawhile earlier: I am interested in the development of concepts, and that is why emphasized this aspect, though of course, there is much else. We are dealing with an article that treats an historical process, hence Bantustanization is almost mandatory. The ramifications of enactment are naturally also crucial to the article's thrust. No problem otherwise.Nishidani (talk) 14:53, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm not sure which editor you mean
Let me know and I'll take a look tomorrow. Doug Weller talk 20:06, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi thanks for dropping by. I mean this edit. There was a subsequent mini-dispute on the page over whether this editor should be allowed to participate. I think it comes down to the old letter and spirit of the law question. Either way, it has opened my eyes to a running theme of new accounts using a large number semi-automated edits to reach the 500 ECP mark. Onceinawhile (talk) 21:14, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Pretty obvious. Let me know if you spot others, meanwhile I'm mulling over what to do about it. Doug Weller  talk 13:16, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

reply-link
Hi, I saw two recent edits of yours with edit summary "Replying to Selfstudier" that were actually replies to other people. I don't know how reply-link works; was that your slips or is there a bug that needs reporting? Zerotalk 12:04, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi, thanks for pointing this out. I hadn't realized. It happens when I am commenting on a comment but someone else (in this case, Self) has commented in between. So I click on reply link at the bottom, then change the name in the comment itself. I didn't realize the edit comment still has the name of the editor immediately above in it. It is a very convenient tool by the way - saves a few seconds each time. Details are at User:Enterprisey/reply-link. Onceinawhile (talk) 12:09, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

DYK nomination of West Bank bantustans
Hello! Your submission of West Bank bantustans at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) at your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! As a minor note, one quote includes the text "the o≤cial Oslo II map", which I assume is a typo for "official"? CMD (talk) 17:31, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

A goat for you!
I just came to Wikipedia to look up something and thought to check up on WP friend, who had a link to the bantustan's deletion, and so I'm drawn in. Not retired, yet, and have no Basic Income so not going to be drawn back into WP editing. Good luck.

Alatari (talk) 13:49, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi, an edit a day keeps boredom away (and helps to build the world's best open source knowledge sharing project)... Good luck to you too. Onceinawhile (talk) 14:56, 25 November 2020 (UTC)



:)
Oncewhile, haha

December 2020
11Fox11 (talk) 02:42, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

Request to strike untruth
I don't like to use the word lie but sadly I am afraid you told a rather bold untruth about me. I at no point confirmed anything about citation, and as a matter of fact never even commented on how widely cited Motro was. Could you please strike the untruth that I "How helpful of you to confirm that the source is widely cited". I think everything would go a lot better if we were honest.AlmostFrancis (talk) 03:54, 7 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi, thanks for your message. I did not mean to imply that you said that directly - you did not comment on it I agree. I was referring to your having provided a useful additional source which referenced Motro's article and built on her work. It has been very interesting to read articles by parties involved in drawing up these maps. I will make my language more precise per your request. Onceinawhile (talk) 09:08, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Them bantustans again
I really think we ought to de-emphasize the "West Bank" aspect and tilt the material especially in the lead (title has to wait) to "Palestine". People looking at West Bank and promptly start talking about Oslo, A's and B's when Gaza is a bantustan and East Jerusalem is being turned into them as well. One overarching idea behind the creation of these "islands" is the prevention of a de facto State of Palestine. You see what I am getting at? Selfstudier (talk) 12:48, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

More like:

The bantustans,  figuratively described as the Palestine Archipelago''', are proposed enclaves for Palestine under a variety of US and Israeli-led proposals to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.


 * Hi, I respectfully agree and disagree with your point here. In fact, I agree strongly. And also disagree. I do think it is very healthy that all of us seem to have slightly different views here; hopefully it will help us land an optimal outcome. My basic thinking is that, yes, Gaza is definitely structured as a bantustan / enclave / canton etc, and is often labelled as one. Israel blocks its sea and air, so despite being coastal it is actually an enclave. But that grey area means it is different than the West Bank. Equally true is the Egyptian border, which whilst operated by the Egyptians in conjunction with Israel, is still technically not under Israeli control. My overriding view here is that is better to write about things that are 100% rock solid, with no credible counterarguments, than to expand onto riskier ground which could undermine the whole thing (which coincidentally, is advice that Israel should have listened to in 1967)...
 * I also think the situation in Gaza is easy to understand from the article Gaza Strip, and doesn't need duplication. It is not denied in Israeli propaganda, rather just deflected with the Hamas card. The situation in the West Bank is obfuscated by propaganda (there isn't an equivalent "evil enemy" card to play there) and the nub of the issue there is not explained clearly enough anywhere else in our encyclopaedia. There is also the future-looking point. Israel's direction of travel is to move further and further away from Gaza over time. In theory it has the potential one day to be truly autonomous and not under the ultimate control of Israel as it remains today. But the West Bank bantustans do not have that potential, irrespective of what fantasies people like Kushner are able to dream up. Onceinawhile (talk) 13:07, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Nothing needs to be added in the article re Gaza beyond what is in there already, it is de jure part of State of Palestine. whatever anyone wants to call it specifically. That's not my point, my point is that East Jerusalem (strictly part of West bank although one might not think so from this article) and Gaza are part of Palestine, the West Bank aspect is incidental to what this entire process is about. It's political and economic not just geography.Selfstudier (talk) 13:19, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi I agree with you. I consider EJ differently because it has been annexed. The whole "permanent resident" situation deserves its own article though, as that situation is equally obfuscated.
 * I think of this article about being about a single place with a single legal arrangement. The arrangements in EJ and Gaza are different, despite being part of the same overall "playbook".
 * Perhaps we could have an article about the "Fragmentation of the Palestinians" or similar which brings together the overall process of separating the overall Palestinian community into its various groups (including the refugees, the Israeli Palestinians, the EJ permanent residents, the Gazans and the West Bankers in their bantustans)?
 * Onceinawhile (talk) 13:58, 9 December 2020 (UTC)


 * What you say is true as far as it goes but we do not discuss the "legal arrangements" for the area in the article, what are they? At least half of the sourcing we are using discusses Gaza, East Jerusalem or Palestine in toto, particularly the Trump plan. With your approach then this article simply becomes yet another Oslo article and the objections being raised against the current title would then have some validity. I think this is in part why CMD is confused about the focus of the article, with your explanation I would join him in that confusion. Frankly, I don't really care about Israeli legal arrangements, there is only one legal arrangement, namely occupied territory, all of it, and the continuing taking of this territory (for settlements, roads, parks, checkpoints, whatever) is what is creating the bantustans, not whether Israel has illegally annexed it or not.Selfstudier (talk) 14:43, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Reading break https://ecfr.eu/publication/the-end-of-oslo-a-new-european-strategy-on-israel-palestine/ Selfstudier (talk) 14:57, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi, thanks for this. I particularly enjoyed the reading break.
 * I just had a go at summarizing all the suggestions so far at the talk page. Makes for interesting - if a little overwhelming - reading.
 * On your questions above, by legal arrangements I just mean "non-annexed and pseudo-Oslo". EJ is annexed and Gaza has moved further away from Oslo as I believe that Hamas does not consider itself as operating under the PNA framework (I raised a question on this at Talk:Hamas, as I would like to understand what legal basis the Hamas government is operating under if not an Oslo-derived one) . Or to put it another way "within Israel but in permanent legal-limbo", although as I think of it here, although many of the Israeli ultra-right would be quite happy for Gaza to declare independence, in practice I doubt Israel could accept that because it presumably wants to permanently control Gazan waters/airspace/imports etc.
 * As to the article becoming an Oslo article, personally I don't see that. The article is about the concept of these bantustans, and today they are partially there under Oslo albeit that is supposed to be a temporary arrangement so they are there but in legal limbo. Onceinawhile (talk) 10:26, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
 * On your questions above, by legal arrangements I just mean "non-annexed and pseudo-Oslo". EJ is annexed and Gaza has moved further away from Oslo as I believe that Hamas does not consider itself as operating under the PNA framework (I raised a question on this at Talk:Hamas, as I would like to understand what legal basis the Hamas government is operating under if not an Oslo-derived one) . Or to put it another way "within Israel but in permanent legal-limbo", although as I think of it here, although many of the Israeli ultra-right would be quite happy for Gaza to declare independence, in practice I doubt Israel could accept that because it presumably wants to permanently control Gazan waters/airspace/imports etc.
 * As to the article becoming an Oslo article, personally I don't see that. The article is about the concept of these bantustans, and today they are partially there under Oslo albeit that is supposed to be a temporary arrangement so they are there but in legal limbo. Onceinawhile (talk) 10:26, 10 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Off to have a look at your rfc material, haha. Anyway I am not talking about major changes, just a "tilt" so that someone coming along and reading the lead doesn't get the idea that this is only about Oslo. Greyshark's comment...support in general, but what is this article about? future hypothetical borders (then probably delete it per WP:CRYSTALBALL)? the current areas controlled by State of Palestine (known as A+B in the past)? simply Palestinian territories (A+B during 1990s to 2012)?Selfstudier (talk) 10:53, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I added in the rfcbefore ie the prior discussions, idk if you want to format them prettier or anything.Selfstudier (talk) 11:04, 10 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Looks like the clan had a get together, if we wait there will be a list going down the page all saying "Palestinian enclaves" :) Selfstudier (talk) 13:45, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Al-Mansura, Acre
Hi, Is there any reason what there is no "1940s with modern overlay map" for Al-Mansura, Acre? Cheers, Huldra (talk) 20:49, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

And did the "modern overlay" slip up on Danna, Baysan? Pleas see, Huldra (talk) 22:02, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi, I can’t remember the reason re Al Mansura but I do remember that one was not produced. On Danna, I don’t think it is a slip up, but rather that there are simply no modern roads in the area (the overlay shows roads primarily). I will remove the file from the page as it is clearly not additive. Onceinawhile (talk) 22:28, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Ok, but I don't see why an overlay map wasn't made for Al-Mansura, Acre, and there seem to be a dam(?) + road(?) for the Danna map? (Anyway, this isn't very important, just if you have time to spare) Huldra (talk) 22:58, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
 * The overlay for Al-Mansura fails because it is too close to the border and map tiles are not provided if they lie entirely in Lebanon. It would be possible to make something manually, or the script can be modified to fill in missing tiles as blank. I'm thinking... Zerotalk 00:59, 14 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Ok, -also, on Al-Khunayzir: the "Tell el Khaneizîr" it was named for is just left off the part SWP map 9 that presently is in the article? Huldra (talk) 20:34, 14 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Hmm. I just looked at this one. It is odd. The SWP location doesn't show up on the SoP map (there is an SoP triangulation point nearby, but not a tell). Nor does it show on a satellite map at the same place. We have the Khunayzir spring on both maps, but it seems to start further north on SWP than on SoP. All I am imagine is that SWP made a mistake. Tell el Qurud on the SoP map does show up on the satellite images. Are you sure it was named for the tell and not for the spring? Onceinawhile (talk) 21:50, 14 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Khalidi doesn't say, it could be both? The villagers were bedouin. The area marked "al Khunneizi" on the 1939-map is slightly different: it is south of "Tall Abu Faraj", while the tell and spring is E/NE on SWP map9. Still, within 1 km of each other. Even if SWP is wrong, it seems as it is obviously there that the name comes from, hence it would be nice if it (both the tell and the spring!)  was included this section of the  SWP9 map, Huldra (talk) 21:33, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Abu Zurayq, Ein Hod and Atlit are missing? And on Arab al-Fuqara, the SWP7 map does not include Mukam Sheikh Helu? (the section is to the west of the Mukam) Huldra (talk) 21:27, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi, thank you. It is very helpful to have a list of missing ones, so please do let me know of any others that you find. On Arab al-Fuqara, I can't find the Mukam on either the File:Survey of Western Palestine 1880.07.jpg or File:Survey of Western Palestine 1880.08.jpg; could you point out where it is? Onceinawhile (talk) 23:43, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
 * The village/settlement Sheikh Helu is marked on map 7, NE of the present part of SWP 7: just follow that dotted line from Birket Sufra, (that is was a Mukam, comes from SWP) Huldra (talk) 20:51, 25 December 2020 (UTC)
 * , I see it now - I think the Mukam is in the cemetery on File:14-20-Hadera-1942.jpg immediately north of Hadera. It is labelled Esh Sh Hilu. Onceinawhile (talk) 11:06, 26 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Note to self: Hmm, the article Qisarya → Caesarea lost it's "infobox" for the -48-villages along many merges/redirs. Huldra (talk) 23:50, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

Liberia
Hey could you please improve the page Colony of Libera Kanto7 (talk) 09:11, 26 December 2020 (UTC)
 * , there is no article there - do you mean the early 19th century American_Colonization_Society? I agree it should have its own article. Onceinawhile (talk) 10:57, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

Here is a good link Colony of Liberia Kanto7 (talk) 11:13, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

Please improve this page. I feel like the Colony of Liberia needs it's on page as the page called Military Administartion in Ethiopia exists and it has barely any info Kanto7 (talk) 11:15, 26 December 2020 (UTC)
 * , I wouldn't normally take instruction (we are all volunteers here) but it is a subject I find interesting, so I have updated the page as suggested. For future reference, please read Be bold - you should feel free to make these changes yourself, and then discuss afterwards. Onceinawhile (talk) 12:59, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

Reserves
National parks and nature reserves of Israel This article is very annoying, yes it admits that some of them are not in Israel but the title.... As you are aware the legal gymnastics required to spin this as somehow not being COGAT control, the entire legal set up is completely distinct from the parks that are actually in Israel. This has to be non-NPOV doesn't it?Selfstudier (talk) 12:07, 27 December 2020 (UTC)
 * , fully agree and I had been thinking the same. I think an article named Parks and nature reserves in the West Bank would be a very worthwhile endeavor (I don't think they are technically called "national" parks in the WB). Onceinawhile (talk) 16:27, 27 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Hmm, they have Golan sites in there as well. I am sorely tempted to tag for NPOV and confusing/misleading.Selfstudier (talk) 16:38, 27 December 2020 (UTC)
 * For your library Israel’s Takeover of Palestinian Sacred and Heritage Sites in the West Bank Forty Heritage Sites and the Occupation Practices of Dispossession and Appropriation Selfstudier (talk) 18:46, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

DYK nomination of Idalion bilingual
Hello! Your submission of Idalion bilingual at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) at your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Yoninah (talk) 01:26, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

External source about you
For your orientation, your editing is criticized in https://david-collier.com/wiki-antisemitic/. A link was posted to Help desk. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:42, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks . It's a shame really, if he has the time to go through things in such detail he should really contribute at the pages themselves. Every single edit he highlights was properly sourced and well reasoned; if he disagrees he should bring his own sources and come and discuss. But it seems his agenda is not to support our project. As I wrote many years ago at WikiProject Israel Palestine Collaboration, "our encyclopedia has the opportunity to become the subject's most balanced reference point, with a truly bilateral narrative"; that only works if people with opposing views choose to collaborate and build rather than to try to undermine. Research written about this blogger from a few years ago states: "Overall, Collier’s blogposts exemplify the discursive categories typical of an extreme ideological perspective. These include outright denials of Israel’s human rights violations beginning with the displacement in 1948 of the indigenous Palestinian population (Pappe 2006); the shifting of blame for the conflict through discourses that claim (for Israel) the right to self-defense, and which imply that Palestinian violence is a random expression of Arab anti-Semitism rather than resistance to decades of dispossession, discrimination and humiliation; dehumanization of Palestinians as a people who routinely sacrifice their children in order to kill Jews; a strong antipathy for anyone supporting Palestinian human rights; and frequent resort to ridicule... But propaganda thrives on the repetition of catchy slogans such as these, and the constant exchange and recirculation of misleading information - Collier’s comments reappear across a range of social media - arguably spreads and entrenches already strongly held Zionist beliefs, inflaming antagonism towards pro-Palestinian supporters and muting their messages. The possibility of free and fair debate is severely limited." Onceinawhile (talk) 17:20, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I also saw that WP:Help desk post. and am at a complete loss to find any fault with your editing on the page Nebi Musa riots. Your editing was (and likely still is) an ideal example of editing in a minefield.--Quisqualis (talk) 23:05, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
 * In my opinion the articles you have created like the Balfour Declaration are some of the best on Wikipedia. I hope you take it is a badge of honor that a propagandist is denigrating your work. Im The IP  (talk) 13:45, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Notice of Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents discussion
There is currently a discussion at Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is RM and RFC. Thank you. Shrike (talk) 21:47, 2 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Also you pings at the talk page didn't work at least for me Shrike (talk) 21:48, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

Ho hum
Shall we do something about Mount Hebron?Selfstudier (talk) 23:02, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

Notification
I am posting on your edits at Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement. 11Fox11 (talk) 08:19, 6 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Replying here to reduce clutter at AE. Re, "would you mind taking the time to review the two-month discussion more broadly?" yes I mind, especially when you don't provide a link to the discussion you want me to review. I'm tempted to say "admins are lazy" but the truth is that I just used a half hour of my kid's 1.5 hour nap to review this case, setting aside many other tasks I should have been catching up on during that time. I realize you're a volunteer too, donating your time to improving Israeli-Palistinian articles, and I really don't want to get in your way there. You know your situation and context better than anyone else. Instead of asking someone completely unfamiliar with everything to review a massive discussion, you could describe it briefly with a couple of quotes or links so we can verify you're not making stuff up. Less is more. Or better, in my book, just respond to the diffs directly by acknowledging that you can see the problem in your own behavior and then make a commitment to fix it. That's by far the best outcome. Nap's over, I'm off to change a diaper now. ~Awilley (talk) 00:57, 7 January 2021 (UTC)
 * , I enjoyed reading this comment a lot, thank you for the way you wrote it. Honestly I don't envy you - the job of an admin can be thankless at times, which is probably one of the reasons that we continue to struggle with admin recruitment. I suspect it is particularly thankless at AE, which has always seemed to me to be like a game to some editors. If I was to try to intermediate a dispute in some other heated topic area I honestly don't know how I would do it; they are endlessly complicated and people can argue forever.
 * Anyway, I will reflect on your request and revert. In the meantime, if you do have any wider interest in what is going on here, during the next nap time, the most interesting things to read would be a couple of links earlier on this talk page: and . Onceinawhile (talk) 01:32, 7 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Just a note of solidarity. I'm distressed to observe the usual tactical shenanigans thrown in the way of perhaps the most urbane, courteously collaborative and scholarly I/P editor we have. Don't expect fairness in these deliberations. Arbs, as opposed to those who use these venues to take scalps to punish informed editors for writing up what everyone inside the discursive framework of the IP microcosmos knows, cannot be expected to grasp the context, i.e. that making Holocaust analogies with Palestinians is ingrained in so much anti-Palestinian attitudes.
 * Jodi Rudoren Netanyahu Denounced for Saying Palestinian Inspired Holocaust Haaretz 21 October 2015
 * Chemi Shalev, The IDF General Who Challenged Netanyahu’s Suffocating Holocaust Analogies Haaretz 6 May  2016
 * What Chelev noted is being repeated in your case, i.e.
 * "Within minutes of Golan’s speech, the right wing spin machine leaped into action, inflating his words, taking them out of context, blowing them up to diabolical proportions. Rather than challenging Golan’s assertion that disturbing trends in Israeli society evoke associations to Germany and Europe in the 1930s, which is what he actually said, his words were twisted to suggest that he had compared the IDF to the Wehrmacht, Israel to the Nazis and Palestinians, by logical extension, to persecuted Jews about to be carted off to concentration camps. With the ground thus prepared, politicians started piling up on Golan, accusing him of defiling his own IDF, defaming the state and aiding and abetting BDS. The self-induced mass hysteria quickly turned into a virtual witch-hunt, which I can only assume Golan was also prepared for, because it is part and parcel of the ominous trends that he was warning against"
 * Best regards Nishidani (talk) 10:47, 7 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Best regards Nishidani (talk) 10:47, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

I'm flabbergasted to see the process against you at the AE board! I cannot imagine an editor who is more able to keep his cool than you are. It seems to me that some users are successfully gaming the system by carefully going through their enemies edits and collecting evidence and then initiating trials. I think this is underhanded. The right way to go about it is to first warn users that you think their behavior is over the line and then, if they don't change, start a trial. The user who filed the suit against you used a similar strategy against me. They did not tell me what they thought was improper, but when they had enough evidence they launched a trial. It's a shame that the administrators are unable to stop this. These attempts by editors to snipe others are very unpleasant. Im The IP (talk) 11:53, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

@Onceinawhile, To avoid having 17 more tabs open in my browser, I lifted the following from the "Statement by Levivich" at the AE thread, since he helpfully included short relevant quotes. Yeah, the context isn't all there, but it's something to work with.


 * 11:49, 15 Nov: Your strategy seems Trumpesque - throwing around unsubstantiated nonsense in the desperate hope that something will stick.
 * 21:28, 24 Nov: Shrike, stop with the bullshit propaganda please ... Have some empathy and humanity.
 * 12:02, 1 Dec: Reenem, a more elegant solution than this wishy-washy bullshit would have been an apology.
 * 12:41, 1 Dec: Reenem, settlement freezes? That is your idea of a concession? OK, since I have clearly lost this debate I will now concede to you that I will stop breathing.... .... .... I have decided to start again. What a fantastic concession I have made. It should go down in history as a concession that Onceinawhile has made to Reneem.
 * 12:46, 1 Dec: By the way, I froze my breathing a number of additional times between this comment and my previous one; I do hope you appreciate these concessions I am making.
 * 00:51, 2 Dec: I find your continued attempt to minimize the occupation with your personal unsourced musings to be deeply distasteful, and wholly anti-Palestinian in effect (I am assuming good faith in terms of your intent). Again, ignorance is not an excuse for obfuscating the suffering of others ...
 * 17:49, 10 Dec: Is a little patience really too much to ask? I guess you must be worried that people reading about the West Bank bantustans might see what Moshe Dayan had in mind when he proposed it half a century ago - we better hide it quickly, huh.
 * 07:43, 12 Dec: It shows that you do not understand what NPOV means in Wikipedia.
 * 14:57, 12 Dec: Wikipedia does not use whitewashed titles for such situations - we use the common name. Do all those editors proposing simply "enclave" believe that the Palestinians should be treated differently from other groups who have lived in subjugated/oppressed enclaves, such that the title of the article describing their living arrangements should not reference this subjugation/oppression at all? Do those editors really think it is right to single out the Palestinian people in this way?
 * 16:30, 14 Dec: Plus, some editors have track records of voting without contributing to the discussion. In this thread, Drsmoo and Shrike have both made comments about neutrality which fail to address the policy of WP:POVNAME, which has been mentioned frequently above. Since they have are unwilling to explain their positions, in light of pre-existing information which undermines it, their votes are meaningless and can be ignored.

Now the purpose of an article talk page is to discuss improvements to the article. A commonality in the excerpts above is that you are discussing other editors. In some limited cases (like sock-puppetry) that is acceptable, but generally it's not helpful. It derails discussion, inflames emotions, and impedes the formation of consensus. What I want from you is a commitment to focus on content instead of contributors. ~Awilley (talk) 05:07, 9 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi thanks for taking the time to work through this. I have quite enjoyed the timing of this AE discussion, insofar as it came about after the two-month article discussion had cooled, and so has provided an opportunity for real reflection without distraction. The drama of the last two months on this one article has been to an extreme I have never seen before, obviously off-wiki (two attack pages and one newspaper article with an attacking contributor) but also on-wiki (an AFD, an RFC, two RMs and an AE). And today, with all this juxtaposed against seeing my DYK about a mostly-forgotten artifact of once great significance up on the front page, I am reflecting on the two extremes of what we might call important knowledge.
 * To your point above, you are correct, I agree, and I commit. What I have been reflecting on is, since I have been committed to those principles for many years now, even in the most heated of wiki-situations, where exactly did I make errors of judgement. I have struggled to find answers by assessing and contextualizing my individual talk comments, because I cannot help but see mitigating context in every one, and that is not really the point here. The question is in the round, the intensity was very high, and I allowed my own emotions to rise unnecessarily. I feel pleased that I also allowed them to cool on my own; I did not "fight" the emerging consensus on the latest RM, and in fact when I opened the RM I was pretty sure I knew what the outcome would be, but wanted closure.
 * Sorry if I am going off track. The point is that yes, I agree, and I commit to redouble my focus on content instead of contributors. Onceinawhile (talk) 12:29, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

. Feel free to ignore this,  if only on legitimate WP:TLDR grounds.

The residual effect of a Catholic background unfortunately makes me feel Sunday without a sermon is somehow not quite Sunday. May I be permitted a reflection on this ugly little incident? There is an Italian proverb: Lanciare/tirare il sasso e (poi ritirare) nascondere la mano (throw a stone  and hide one’s hand). It refers to behaviour where the first person to trigger an escalation intervenes so deftly that their role as provocateur is lost to view, while everyone focuses on the behaviour, the reaction, of the person hit by the stone, and it is he or she who is threatened with being hauled to the pillory.

Thought I do not believe the person who threw the stone here thought of his remarks in terms of the motivation implied by the proverb, his remark did skew Once’s coolheaded argument about analogies (ghetto/Warsaw for instance) as implicitly antisemitic. Has there ever being a single instance of a public discussion of Israel and its occupation where someone hasn’t tried to shut down the conversation by derailing it into an innuendo about the participants’ ulterior motives? i.e., by raising the spectre of antisemitism? This has become the default mode of parrying criticism of an occupation, by endlessly suggesting that whoever raises the topic must pass some quarantine inspection for their general attitudes to Jews, before they dare venture to comment. It carries with it a strong sense of the ethnic ownership of the arguments: the word ghetto refers to ‘our’ history: use it of Palestinians and you are preying on ‘our’ sensitivities, an open wound. This is what Michael Rothberg ('From Gaza to Warsaw: Mapping multidirectional memory in Criticism, Fall 2011, Vol. 53, No. 4,pp. 523-548) would call a zero-sum game in an absurd rivalry over remembramce that occasionally leads to polemics where each party endeavours to secure a singular position in what is a kind of competitive claim to victimization. Analogy between distinct ethnic realities is thought of as humiliating rather than enlightening.

No. No one owns language, and no ethnic proprietorial right can be imposed on history. Ghetto itself has been used as a generic term for lower class slums, run-down metropolitan ethnic enclaves, since the late 19th century. The Warsaw analogy was notoriously evoked by an IDF officer two decades ago, and has emerged cconsistently since, so that even a Jewish MP at Westminster was moved to make the comparison after a visit to Gaza in  2003. Whether that analogy is heuristically helpful or not is another question: but in itself there is no intrinsic slight or animus present in the comparison. To assert the contrary is tantamount to adopting the instrumental view that ‘our’ unique history is, uniquely, outside of the framework of comparative analysis, must be understood in its own terms, as defined by its own heirs, and those outside the pale who meddle with it are somehow spurred to do so by ethnic hostility to Jews. This, and it is extremely commonplace, locks down rational argument by restricting what can and cannot be said, and subjecting all discussion to prior vetting of the anti-antisemitic credentials of the participants before they can be tolerated to speak of the topic. It is astutely Orwellian, astutely, because the claim is advanced ostensibly to defend a human right to dignity and respect while actually serving a political function of clamping down on free speech and, indeed, imposing strict parameters even  on academic research.

In the I/P area, article construction has three sides(a) editors who do extensive research and write up sizeable articles on that basis; (b) tweakers who pass by to adjust a word or two, a sentence; and   (c) editors who sit on them as POV monitors, predominantly to ensure (and that is a useful function) that material regarding  Israel (not Palestine) is  treated neutrally. A large part of what the third group does consists in drawing up, over time, extensive lists of remarks made by this or that editor for eventual inclusion in a formal complaint at ANI or AE. The purpose is to get rid of category A, which, offline, is seen as an offensive group of ‘anti-Israeli’ fanatics forming an insidious cabal to shame by distortion Israel’s rightful place in the world. This absurd fiction is as fantastical, though certainly no where as toxic, as the sort of pathological thinking that generates antisemitic conspiracy theorists themselves Since, oddly, despite the reported ‘toxic’ nature of the I/P area, you rarely see any of the mania and venom reported in so many ANI/AE complaints, the evidence to indict, and thus rid the project of editors in category A has to rely on the fine-print of WP:NPA, a policy which, if translated into a mandatory warrant for extreme nicety of language to avoid any possibility of offense, would effectively eviscerate intelligent article construction. For the topic generates by its nature controversy, and clashing perspectives are never ironed out by adopting the strict rules of conversation in a 19th century Victorian parlour.

All one needs to game this and turn the policy into a ruse to get rid of editors whose work or attributed POV one  might detest, or regard as politically harmful for the image of a country, is to play the semantic fusspot, urge the bowlerization of normal language to the point where any remark that smacks of an ‘attitude’ is potentially devastating to one’s feelings. I.e. if I respond to an editor who, against both English usage,  and logic, thinks that ‘de facto’   can be used  of a future scenario, by dismissing this (after reasoning why) as an example of muddled thinking, then  my use of ‘muddle’ is a personal attack and I have so seriously disturbed the courteous atmosphere of wikipedia that my presence here endangers the project. That is argumentatively, in rhetoric, comparable to a device called hyperbole, but which we now customarily call 'going ballistic'. If Once responds to an innuendo that his use of ghetto or Warsaw is antisemitic by inverting the assertion (an acceptable rhetorical method in argument) that immediately justifies halling him to court as a suspected antisemite, or as a provocateur. That the evidence here is nugatory is beside the point. One can do this several times, on frail or frivolous 'proofs', and have the case dismissed. But then another logic kicks in: 'there is no smoke without fire' so, somewhere down the line, in an nth case of a report again an otherwise content-focused and generally equable editor, the odds will run to secure a verdict against him, and blot his record, making log-checkers in future arbitration instantly wary of the sanctioned person. That strategy has long been in place here, and it is utterly cynical. This is the third-dimensional chess aspect of wiki reports on 'disruptive' I/P editors.

In the real world, in any serious forum of adult argument, this level of pertinacious linguistic witchhunting to fudge up evidence that one’s interlocutor should suffer a social sanction, or be excluded from the company, would be regarded as itself a breach of good manners, an attempt to poison the well by ostracism, or as a crafty ‘topping it the cry-baby’ (to use a 18th century idiom), something that merited only the censure of silent disregard.

The purpose of this place is to write articles, not to make it so amenable to politically correct (which often translates into politically biased )  monitoring and sanctions that editors must learn to monitor every jot and tittle of their language to avoid laying themselves open to attack  and sanctions. If you do that, very shortly, you will find yourself unable to think, because thinking can’t function incisively if it is bound up, hamstrung, knackered, by some prior obligation to take into consideration aforethought the extreme sensitivities of any or everywhere, regardless or whether they have some familiarity with your chosen field of research or (as is almost always the case) know almost nothing about it. The fundamental thing in judgment is to familiarize oneself beforehand with a thorough knowledge of the discursive field embedded behind the talk page arguments, not to ply the worry beads dithering about social sensitivites: unfortunately, 90% of comments there show no grasp of the field, but only of potential political side-effects in terms of national images. Nishidani (talk) 15:16, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

DYK for Idalion bilingual
— Maile (talk) 00:01, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

Nice map
in hereSelfstudier (talk) 19:29, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

New message from Narutolovehinata5
Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 10:19, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

What's in a name?
"Ambassador to Israel, the West Bank and Gaza" Selfstudier (talk) 19:42, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

more reliable, I guessSelfstudier (talk) 19:47, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

Aw ;)Selfstudier (talk) 19:51, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

Your remarks in the Beit Shearim Talk-Page, where you mentioned 3 articles being "an overkill"
Onceinawhil shalom. With respect to your comment on Talk:Beit Shearim, please be apprised that one article deals specifically with the necropolis (system of burial caves), which is located near, but not in Beit Shearim. The necropolis is a World Heritage site, not the village ruin itself. The other article specifically refers to the village Beit Shearim, which is different from the necropolis itself. The village is the place mentioned in historical records. As for the third article (which is NOT an overkill, as you thought), the article deals with a Moshav (modern agricultural village) by that name and which has NO CONNECTION to the ancient site and sits a great distance afar off. See Beit She'arim. There is a disambiguation link in each article.Davidbena (talk) 02:53, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

A pdf file written by Mazar on Beit Shearim
Hi Onceinawhile. If you write to me, I'll send to you a very important pdf file that I just now received from Zero0000 on Beit Shearim, written by the archaeologist Benjamin Mazar.Davidbena (talk) 17:31, 30 January 2021 (UTC)
 * ✅Davidbena (talk) 23:20, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

Palestinian enclaves
24 hours is the limit at 1RR DS pages, not "26," as you noted, so I'd appreciate it if you would strike your untrue accusation of a 1RR violation at this talk page. Bad faith, and false, accusations of edit warring poison the discussion, and I only made tweaks to language that had already been updated since my last edit. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 13:36, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

Move and redirect target change
With regards to your move of Beit She'arim (moshav) and amending of the redirect, it looks like you made no effort to repair the incoming links to Beit She'arim, which largely reference the moshav, e.g. Highway 75 (Israel) or Jezreel Valley Regional Council. You also failed to update the link on Jezreel Valley Regional Council (which I have fixed). These are all actions expected of you if you make such changes.

In the meantime, I have turned Beit She'arim into a disambiguation page, but there are still several links pointing at it – could you correct these please.

Also, seeing as Beit Shearim refers to the subject as 'Beit She'arim', it possibly should be moved to a suitable title (perhaps 'Beit She'arim (Roman-era Jewish village)' for consistency). Number  5  7  12:30, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi, thanks for this. We are in the middle of a debate about the content of these various articles, but appreciate your prompt – I have fixed the links. FYI many of them were not in reference to the moshav. Number57 has made a suggestion about the title – what do you think? Onceinawhile (talk) 13:02, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Advice
I don't know if you have followed the developments in Islam in Israel. I feel hounded by a user that is reversing most of my edits, on this page and others. Now a new user has been created to continue his work.

Do you have any suggestion how to handle this? I'm not interested in edit wars. Jokkmokks-Goran (talk) 16:47, 13 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Once, just use your page for this, forgive me. I have added the ARBPIA notices on that page (1 revert in 24 hours). It might take a difference but don't count on it. Lots of editwarring/sock activity in IP area.Selfstudier (talk) 19:56, 13 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I have just had a look; the editor in question crossed 1RR (see WP:A/I/PIA) so you could justifiably take them to WP:AE. The editor may argue that there was no ARBPIA banner at the time, but the sanctions explicitly relate to "any edits made to content within the area of conflict", banner or not. I am not a fan of 1RR reports at AE, particularly if they may have been inadvertent, but hounding is really unacceptable behavior.
 * Personally I don't think there is anything particularly controversial in your edit, and this editor may well not have even read it properly. I suggest you wait a little to let any passions cool, and then implement your edits more slowly and for the main deletions, in smaller chunks. For the ones which may possibly be controversial, bring them to the talk page, and work them through. If the editor fails to discuss, follow WP:DISCFAIL. Onceinawhile (talk) 21:51, 13 February 2021 (UTC)
 * WP:A/I/PIA says "The presence of the templates is required before the General Sanctions can be enforced on primary articles." And similarly for related content. Zerotalk 07:20, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

Palestinian enclaves
I appreciate the recent talk page section you opened. I think it might show good faith if you started off with your own examples of others arguments you recognize. I've added my own paragraph to the section. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 17:26, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

Final warning
I respect your decision to continue to avoid answering the question, even though I don’t understand it. No, Onceinawhile, just no. They said they did answer it, and that's that (whatever it was). Please don't feign respect. You can say that their answer sidesteps whatever the question actually is, but not that. Look, you must immediately tone down on the passive-aggressive retorts. You are a hair-breath away, from being banned from the above page. In fact, if anything, you should try to convince me why you should even be allowed to continue editing it, despite having already received a logged warning about misconduct concerning it. Note that, as it stands, I'm leaning toward a prohibition over probation. Because, clearly, it continues to be a stumbling block for you. In any case, I am logging another warning for you, which should really be seen as a final warning. Please, you need to keep it in check. Thanks as always, El_C 22:52, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * , I don't know how to respond. My respect was genuine. I proved it by moving on - I did not repeat the question. I don't know what I can say? Maybe you and I use the word respect differently? I use it to mean "accept". I don't know what to do here. Onceinawhile (talk) 23:07, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Onceinawhile, your response above does not inspire confidence, I'm afraid. It doesn't matter what you meant, what matters is how it came across. And I'm telling you that it came across poorly. How it came across was:  thanks for another non-answer, rather than: sorry, I am finding your answer to be insufficient, still. What you do, in the way of convincing me to err on the side of leniency, is exhibit a genuine understanding of this, responsively. Because, currently, you are falling short. El_C 23:15, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * , the last time we interacted I accepted the warning, because whilst I disagreed with some of the details the spirit of it was fair - I had allowed emotions to creep in to my talk page comments. I took the hit, and saw it as a learning opportunity.
 * But I don't feel at all good about this, because your post accused me of "feign"ing. That suggests that I am being punished further because you chose to assume bad faith. Perhaps in order to apply DS you need to take such views, but here your assessment was wrong.
 * I think there is good evidence for that from the context of the rest of the talk page discussion - ever since my earlier warning, while other editors have continued to behave aggressively, I have kept my cool. Time and time again. I continually focused on the content and the core of the discussion, and I have been the only one actively working to bring the temperature down.
 * As to the specific edit, the words "even though I don't understand it" are there specifically to prove what I meant by respecting it - their function is to show that it was meant as genuine respect for the editor's right not to answer my question, however much I would have liked them to. Then I immediately pivoted into the underlying point, again to prove that there were no hard feelings and let's move on. This is how I talk to my family and my colleagues, and never once has it been said with anything other than a feeling of constructiveness.
 * One of the biggest challenges on English Wikipedia is that while we all speak the same language, we use words differently according to our respective global cultures. I cannot always judge that perfectly. Onceinawhile (talk) 23:53, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * As to the specific edit, the words "even though I don't understand it" are there specifically to prove what I meant by respecting it - their function is to show that it was meant as genuine respect for the editor's right not to answer my question, however much I would have liked them to. Then I immediately pivoted into the underlying point, again to prove that there were no hard feelings and let's move on. This is how I talk to my family and my colleagues, and never once has it been said with anything other than a feeling of constructiveness.
 * One of the biggest challenges on English Wikipedia is that while we all speak the same language, we use words differently according to our respective global cultures. I cannot always judge that perfectly. Onceinawhile (talk) 23:53, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * One of the biggest challenges on English Wikipedia is that while we all speak the same language, we use words differently according to our respective global cultures. I cannot always judge that perfectly. Onceinawhile (talk) 23:53, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * One of the biggest challenges on English Wikipedia is that while we all speak the same language, we use words differently according to our respective global cultures. I cannot always judge that perfectly. Onceinawhile (talk) 23:53, 19 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Onceinawhile, again, it's how it came across, not your intent. I don't need to say something to the effect of: it came across as feigning respect. As a retort, it feigned respect. That was my read of it. Naturally, I'm happy to trust all of your best intentions. Anyway, I don't think this is working out. Maybe give it one last go before I make up my mind...? G'luck! El_C 00:03, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
 * To your request, yes I certainly accept that good communication is not about what is meant but about what is understood. Sometimes miscommunications happen between two people, particularly when communicating in written form, and they are resolved via acceptance, apology and learning. I accept that my words have been interpreted by you and Jr8825 as feigning respect. If Wikieditor interpreted my comment in the way that you have done, then I apologize. And I am trying to learn.
 * But as for punishments, the question must be a slightly different one. Not what is meant, nor what is understood, but whether the original speaker could have reasonably known - before writing it - that their words risked being misinterpreted. I have already explained what was in my mind when writing it, and I did not see that it could be interpreted as you have said. I simply would not have written it if I did.
 * If I understand you correctly, you are saying that if I ever again fail to correctly interpret how my words are going to be understood, by any and every person who chooses to read them, then I must be kicked out of this part of the project. How can I write anything under those circumstances? Judging exactly how our words are to be interpreted by other people is incredibly hard, and we can only ever hope for 99%. For example, in this conversation you made exactly the same mistake as I did at the talk page - you chose your original words Please don't feign respect a little too loosely, in a manner which caused offense, and have now clarified in a reasonable manner. Yet you are suggesting that if I make such a mistake, even once more, my editing career in this area of the project may be over.
 * Achieving 100% perfection in interpreting how others will read my words is simply impossible. I agree with your broad theme, but this is simply too subjective an area to draw a bright line as you are proposing to do.
 * Onceinawhile (talk) 00:29, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Onceinawhile, I wasn't suggesting an ARBPIA WP:TBAN as a remedy for this. That would be outright draconian. What I referred to was a Palestinian enclaves WP:ABAN. Sorry if I failed to make that clear. What I expect from you at this point is what I also stressed to Wikieditor19920 here, which is utmost fīnesse. If you don't think you're up for it, there's no shame in that (on the contrary). There are many other articles on Wikipedia, ARBPIA and beyond. Finally, not to exceed do-as-I-say not-as-I-do, but I am acting in my capacity as an uninvolved admin speaking to you. I am not in the weeds of the topic area or subject, with all the potential negative fallout that may arise out of long-term interactions there among disputants (seemingly intractably or near-intractably). I didn't seek out this this matter (and, in fact, initially resisted looking into it, until another admin nudged me to do so), participants have sought me out. So, I think you can cut me some slack. El_C 00:54, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I had seen that post and was surprised by it, given the pattern of the notifying editor's edits at the same discussion.
 * In my book you can have all the slack you want. You are not on a warning as I am. I only raised it as an illustration of the impossibility of 100% perfection from the perspective of every possible reader.
 * I have been so thoughtful about my talk page editing since my warning a month ago. On this fraught page, if you read the last month of comments, I promise you will not find another editor who has shown as much finesse (I like your word) as I have. Whilst others were losing their heads, I kept my cool and explicitly refused to get drawn in. Then in a month of comments I accidentally misjudge other peoples' interpretation of one half-sentence, and I get another warning and a permaban threat. It sets an impossibly high hurdle.
 * Onceinawhile (talk) 01:35, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

Onceinawhile, it is what it is. I'm not omniscient and can only act on the evidence that is before of me. If you can find an admin who is willing to do more (intensively, extensively), I'm happy for them to take the lead on this. As a possibility, expect a nominal error rate to may be a factor, in general, as you do with all things. I'm not expecting perfection from you, so you should, in turn, not expect it from me. I just expect you not to slip again on that page, at least not for a long while.

Anyway, I am not going to otherwise immerse myself further in this dispute at this time. If you think I've exceeded my AE purview in this matter, you are free to seek any clarifications you see fit from the Committee at WP:ARCA, including asking for my admonishment or censure outright. But that's the thing with WP:ACDS (the d stands for discretionary), I've got to make decisions according to my interpretation of the matter at hand.

Significantly, in the vein of two-steps-forward one-step-back, I submit to you that your choice of words regarding threat and permaban (and "permaban threat"), isn't a good look and that, as an approach, it is not serving you well.

To sum up, again, if you don't think that you're up for it (for whatever reason), I'm good with that. I wish the best for you, of course, but it's really all the same to me how you choose to proceed. Regardless, I hope it all ends up working out amicably. El_C 01:57, 20 February 2021 (UTC)


 * , I would like to know what “I just expect you not to slip again on that page, at least not for a long while” means. I have received a Final Warning – a very powerful term – for a half-sentence misinterpretation in a month of comments. Are you suggesting, for example, zero misinterpretations in a year?
 * There are editors in the IP area who would like nothing more than to get rid of those editors with whom they disagree; you have seen the off-wiki attack pages I believe. If you set something too strong here, it will be a self fulfilling prophecy – not because of what I do or don't do, but because it will encourage those editors to choose to interpret my words in the most extreme ways possible. Someone will say they were offended by something I didn't mean, and I am done for.
 * I have also been thinking hard about the word "finesse". In my culture finesse is a very important part of life, and business. Believe it or not, but in my culture I respect your decision to continue to avoid answering the question, even though I don’t understand it is an example of finesse. It broadly translates – in my understanding of long form standard American English – to "I completely accept and acknowledge your right not to answer my question, even though I would have done so if it was me." It is the act of "drawing a line" and moving on, which is an important element of elegant communication; without finesse the sentence wouldn't even have been used and we would have moved on leaving uncertainty as to whether there had been hard feelings. If you heard me speak you would be able to hear the tone in it. Anyway, I have acknowledged and apologized above for how it was interpreted. The reason for this reflection is that I am thinking hard about implementing finesse without creating further misunderstandings. The type of delicate and skilful language which I consider true finesse can be ornate and rhetorical, which creates complexity in assessing others' interpretations.
 * So please don't require 100% perfection from the interpretation of every possible reader. I am doing my very best but there must be a reasonable amount of breathing space to account for very occasional oversight or misinterpretation.
 * Onceinawhile (talk) 02:32, 20 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Onceinawhile, I'm not really inclined to debate this further, honestly, or to quantify strict parameters. Despite the sophistication exhibited by some of your assertions (which I am impressed by), I am still not finding you to be responsive enough to several of my salient points, so I'm just about ready to wrap this up. You think that sentence is fine, I have evaluated it otherwise — again, it is what it is. You are welcome to bring it up for wider review, though I would advise against it (and not for my own sake, believe it or not, truly).


 * I should note that already days before this, I have decided to take a firmer stance toward many of the more contentious AE topic areas, in general (diff). So, I'm trying to self-correct in my own way, and I suppose we'll just have to see how it all goes.


 * Anyway, I am not expecting perfection from you, and will look dimly upon any attempts to GAME you with respect to this final warning for this page. That said, again, at the risk of repetition, if you don't think you're up for it, that's totally fine. But I'm finding that going over and over the nuances of the nuances regarding this is somewhat of a circular pursuit, which I submit to you isn't a productive use of either of one of our time. El_C 02:59, 20 February 2021 (UTC)


 * so we can finish this, please could you kindly clarify:
 * I am still not finding you to be responsive enough to several of my salient points - which ones have I not fully addressed please? I am trying to address everything carefully.
 * if you don't think you're up for it - I thought I had already answered you and provided the requested commitments on this, but perhaps I don't understand what you mean?
 * My main concern here is that, although I was pleased to see you state that I am not expecting perfection from you, your handing out of a "final warning" shows that you have expected perfection with respect to the specific matter of this half-sentence-in-a-month. I have been trying my absolute best, so I feel really hard done by to have the Sword of Damocles placed above my head.
 * Like you, I have run out of time, and need to take a break from this for a few days. I will respond to any further comments then. In the meantime, would you consider inviting a second opinion?
 * Onceinawhile (talk) 03:23, 20 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Negative, Onceinawhile, I am done with all the back and forth about this for the immediate moment. If you are unable to respect that, then perhaps we are at an impasse, after all. This is, perhaps, one of the most contentious and contested pages featured on the ARBPIA topic area, and quite possibly, the entire project, overall. Adopting exceptional (extraordinary, even) measures so as to ensure a collegial environment is of paramount import, I challenge. So, I'm sorry that this is proving difficult for you, I really am, but I gotta ration my time wisely. El_C 03:35, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Just my two cents: I believe that Onceinawhile the most diplomatic of all those on the opposing side of the debate, so I for one am surprised that they are the only one against whom a warning was logged. I won't say that El_C was incorrect in their assessment of the exchange above—I would've preferred Onceinawhile take my first answer without repeatedly asking the same question—but I'm also struck that this interaction was pointed out as most problematic, especially when another editor repeatedly accused others of holding an Israeolocentric point of view and of evaluating sources according to whether they are anti-Israel or not. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 22:45, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
 * At Palestinian enclaves, the vast majority of votes were for Option A among 3 options. There is clear consensus for Option A among the three. I believe your latest edit violates the consensus-required restriction. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 00:11, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi, I believe there were 7 votes for A and 8 against it, in a total of 15 votes. I acknowledge that you perceive it differently. Irrespective of which of us are right, it is not for either of us to assess the RFC consensus; that must be done by an uninvolved editor. Onceinawhile (talk) 00:22, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
 * It was not a for-or-against proposition. It was "Here are three options, pick one," and Option A garnered 7/15, whereas Options B and C each garnered less than 3. This is an obvious consensus around a single option as opposed to the others. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 00:33, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Consensus isnt a vote, a thousand people saying ignore the sources should be ignored by a closing admin. You do not decide what consensus is, especially since you dont get the most basic concept that it is not a vote.  nableezy  - 13:50, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Wikieditor is also incorrectly claiming the right to decide the consensus, having made one of his usual "contributions" to it, at Arab states–Israeli alliance against Iran RFC as well. Chutzpah.Selfstudier (talk) 15:17, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah, just like the "right" to "claim" that water is wet, where you insist there's no consensus even as a majority of editors continue to disagree with you? If these sanctions were enforced seriously, and  would already be banned from this page. These editors consistently ignore consensus, revert on the basis of "no consensus," and are pathologically unable to accept a discussion result that doesn't go their way. This is childish tantrumming at its worst. Learn when to take the L and move on so we don't have to resort to AE to enforce basic rules. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 17:25, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm just going to be clear with you on this: you present yourself as being diplomatic and complain about the fact that you were warned, but when the rubber hits the road you engage in the same disruptive behavior as Nableezy and Selfstudier, and refuse to accept an outcome when it isn't the one you preferred. That's why your overtures for "collegiality" come off as insincere. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 17:31, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
 * "I believe that Onceinawhile (is) the most diplomatic of all those on the opposing side of the debate"
 * "I'm just going to be clear with you on this: you present yourself as being diplomatic and complain about the fact that you were warned, but when the rubber hits the road you engage in the same disruptive behavior as Nableezy and Selfstudier"
 * So, Onceinawhile, from being in your judgment, the most diplomatic of the rest of the disruptive ratbags, myself included, has in the twinkling of an eyelid, just become somebody feigning to be diplomatic, now 'come(s) off' (all this echoing El C's choice of words) as 'insincere'. I find this whole thread beyond my comprehension because Onceinawhile is exceptionally diplomatic (of course, in my view). If his every word is to be subject to weighing in the balance for a sanction whisking him off into limbo, by the same token a linguistic lout like myself should already be somewhere between the 9th ditch of the 8th circle, scratching my leprous sores, and the fourth zone of the 9th circle, iced in a backflip contortion next to Caesar's murderers in Giudecca.
 * A 7/8 vote doesn't translate into a consensus. Technically it is a split vote in wiki working practice because, given the aleatory nature of whoever drops in to add their voice, the verdict can run from a consensus judgment to no consensus according to the reading of the closing administrator (this itself can also add an element of randomness and subjectivity) to the process. Until that occurs, nothing can or should be done, no trumpets blown. Certainly, editors who assert their right to call the shots differently shouldn't be hectored, as has been Onceinawhile, relentlessly. Nishidani (talk) 18:59, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
 * claps and laughs at the same time*. I just wish truth was a defense in the NPA policy sometimes.  nableezy  - 22:43, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Have you seen this?
They mention you: https://www.jewishpress.com/news/israel/project-wiki-exposes-how-wikipedia-is-breeding-armies-of-anti-semites/2021/01/01/

--Supreme Deliciousness (talk) 00:11, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Welcome to the esteemed group of Wikipedia editors who have made the news. I wouldn't take it personally. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 07:55, 21 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Hi thanks for sharing - I hadn't see it but had seen the original blog post a couple of months ago. I had never heard of this guy before, but have done a bit of googling (see ). Every single one of the "claims" he suggests are mine are in fact those of the academic community. If he really feels there is something untoward going on, he should become a scholar and challenge these views where they originated. Or if that is too much effort, he can just become a Wikipedia editor himself, and bring us all the other academic sources that he has read that we hadn't seen. I am joking of course; he doesn't seem to be the type who holds academia in high regard.
 * Onceinawhile (talk) 20:56, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * You don't need to explain yourself. I'm fully aware of where these accusations are coming from.--Supreme Deliciousness (talk) 21:58, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Collier is also a literal racist, so I don't think he has the best intentions with his rant on Wikipedia. X-Editor (talk) 05:20, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
 * This is Canvassing on a grand scale. Have there been dozens of accounts signing up over the last few weeks, working up their 500 edits/30 days to oppose any actions attached to your account?   Is Collier a major influencer? Alatari (talk) 10:00, 18 March 2021 (UTC)


 * Wow, this is incredible... FunkMonk (talk) 10:16, 18 March 2021 (UTC)
 * yes it has been a strange period. These things make collaboration more difficult, because they stoke a lack of trust and encourage a battleground mentality. I have counted three different sources of "grand canvassing" in the area in recent months – the Collier blog at the top of this thread, the Saltzberg efforts behind the Ha'aretz article that Alatari linked to, and the IDF itself with the IDF Spokesperson's Unit saying in a formal statement "our office occasionally looks at Wikipedia entries when the subject matter is relevant to the messaging we want to get across. We do this in order to better understand what information is given to the average individual on the internet and to find misinformation that should be dispelled. It is our hope that our tweet will inspire some of Wikipedia’s editors..."
 * Onceinawhile (talk) 10:51, 18 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah, for years I have noticed an influx in certain POV-editors late each summer/autumn; I somehow connected it with the recruiting drive/courses "for making the Zionist views heard on Wikipedia" that were/are held in the summer. Now it seems to have moved online, to zoom-meetings.
 * The good thing is that they rarely last long, but of course: while they  do, they can serve as  "cannon fodder" in wikipedia edit wars. ("You are editing against consensus!!")
 * I see that one of them (lets call him "The Creep": he used Wikipedia to "promote" his family).... Now he wants to teach others how to edit Wikipedia. (He should have taught himself, first. He was topic-banned from the IP area). Anyway, "The Creep" complains that I treat the West Bank under Jordanian rule (1948-67) differently from the West Bank under Israeli occupation (1967-). Why do I not call them both "occupations"? Apparently I have a "double standard" .....against Israel. The West Bank was annexed to Jordan during 1950-67: ie, anyone on the West Bank could travel wherever s/he wanted in Jordan, had equal rights w.r.t. voting, etc. While post-1967? Can a person on the West Bank travel anywhere in Israel? Can they vote in Israeli elections? Have they the same rights as Israeli citizens? Lol, of course not. But I have apparently a double standard when I use different words...for different situations. No wonder "The Creep" was topic banned from the IP area.
 * Heh, I got (some of) his self-puffery deleted from Wikipedia; articles about non-notable family members. I gather that is the main reason why he list me as one of the most "anti-Israeli" editors on Wikipedia. Lol! Such unselfish and dispassionate behaviour.
 * Anyway, I think that we should try not to get into too many discussions with these editors: it is an utter "time-sink". Lets concentrate on the editing, and try to ignore it when they try to "personalise" edit-conflicts. Those POV-attacks off-wiki just show that they have run out of arguments, IMO.  Huldra (talk) 23:27, 18 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi, quite right. On your middle paragraph above, I just finished watching a wonderful short film which just came out today on Netflix: The Present (2021 film). It's up for an Oscar in a non-international segment, which is an impressive achievement. Onceinawhile (talk) 23:37, 18 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Ok, thanks; I hadn't heard about it, but I will try to get hold of it, (Always interested in hearing about new (or old) interesting books, articles or films!) Huldra (talk) 23:42, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

Arab Christian major rework
Im going to refresh to you the Wikipedia policies here:

1) As per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Consensus#No_consensus"In discussions of proposals to add, modify or remove material in articles, a lack of consensus commonly results in retaining the version of the article as it was prior to the proposal or bold edit."

I actually went over all of the edits JJNito did and chose to try to fix things and not remove all his work despite the above violation he committed. You and JJNito however are reverting with vague reasons such as "JJNito spent lots of months doing this" which is not a reason for reverting as per wikipedia policies.

2) As per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Editing_policy#Try_to_fix_problems Do not remove content or change the whole content. Rephrasing to more accurately represent the sources is the way to fix things otherwise you are exhibiting ownership behavior. Caution is needed when removing or rewriting large amounts of content because JJNito nor you nor anybody own this nor any article here in Wikipedia. This is a WP:HANDLE and WP:OWNBEHAVIOR violation and as per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ownership_of_content#Examples_of_ownership_behaviour

3)When I made partial reversal I invited the people involved in the major reword to look into the long discussion that has been ignored and hence the reason for adding back things that were taken out and taking out things that were already discussed that should not be in this article.

You are ignoring my invitation to reopen the discussion in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Arab_Christians/Archive_8 that you and JJNito chose to ignore and go over consensus building talk. You and JJNito have both chosen to revert my edit twice with reopening the discussion which shows your and his inability to understand the policies of consensus violating https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Consensus#Through_discussion.

If you revert again and choose not to reopen the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Arab_Christians/Archive_8 discussion I will report you for disruptive editing and violating the specified policiesChris O&#39; Hare (talk) 22:03, 12 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi, thanks for this. I looked through the archives and couldn’t find any consensus supporting your position. I have found three editors who disagreed though. Sorry if I have misread. As to the discussion, I opened a discussion at the talk page two hours ago, only a few minutes after your initial revert. I would like to discuss with you there – I am sure we can find common ground. The key to resolving this will be focusing on sources. Onceinawhile (talk) 22:27, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

'''I looked through the archives and couldn’t find any consensus supporting your position. I have found three editors who disagreed though.'''

Three editors that disagree with me? This whole discussion was me and Syphax98 so you must be hallucinating on something when you looked at the discussion. I provided Syphax98 dozens of sources that he tried very hard to ignore and kept on denying them and kept coming back with nothing and asking me for more sources. He requested for comment and got nothing because he had nothing and was just pushing a point of view without any reliable sources.

And if you dont support my "position" aka sources you are welcome to elaborate and open the discussion again. Im not here in Wikipedia to present my "position", im here to present sources and stick to wikipedia's policies.

JJNito I suspect is doing the same thing with his newly published book aka major edit. He is trying to make it seems as if All Melkites and Orthodox Christians are mostly non racially Arab by toning down that Maronite are indeed non racially Arab and bring down numbers to contradict, distort and confuse the reader into believing ALL Arab Christians are the same, at least thats the tone the newly worked article now has.

Lebanese Melkites and Lebanese Orthodox Christians are indeed also non racially Arab and descendants of the Canaanites. When it comes to the Syrian Christians and some Palestinian Christians its way more mixed there since the evidence points out at least half of the Greek Orthodox Christians from Syria are descendants of Arab tribes that converted to Christianity early on in the 1st-2nd century AD.

Also lots of “Syrians” today from what used to be the Tripoli Eyalet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tripoli_Eyalet later part the Beirut Vilayet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beirut_Vilayet and “Palestinians” or “Israeli Arabs” today from what used to be the Sidon Eyalet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidon_Eyalet later part as well of Beirut Vilayet that are being called of “Syrian descent” or “Palestinian descent/Israeli Arab descent” in the post 1945 Middle East as well as the diaspora just because those territories ended up being part of Syria in the north and Israel (before Mandatory Palestine) in the South.

So for example, someone like Teri Hatcher, whose ancestors left Ottoman Syria before 1917 from Latakia which was of the Tripoli Eyalet for like 500 years and then part of the Beirut Vilayet before the fall of the Empire in 1917 its considered of “Syrian descent” just because that area ended up as part of what is today Syria.

However when her ancestors immigrated it was part of the Beirut Vilayet-Tripoli Eyalet which makes her actually of Lebanese descent not Syrian since those areas were part of the larger “Lebanon” aka Beirut Vilayet.

Everybody whose ancestors migrated from what was the Beirut Vilayet should be called of Lebanese descent since all that area was inhabited by Christians of Lebanese descent. Only those whose ancestors migrated from what was the Vilayet of Syria outside of the Vilayet of Beirut as can be seen here https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/Ottoman_levant.png

Only those whose ancestors migrated from what was the Vilayet of Syria outside of the Vilayet of Beirut as can be seen here https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/Ottoman_levant.png should be called of “Syrian descent” or "Palestinian descent"Chris O&#39; Hare (talk) 23:33, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

Another for your lib
2019 Selfstudier (talk) 16:45, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

Wouldn't it be good if checkpoint 300 was a wl (with a really good pic)?Selfstudier (talk) 20:12, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi, I thought the same; commons:Category:Checkpoint 300 doesn’t have any good pictures though. There may be some elsewhere in commons just not labelled. Onceinawhile (talk) 20:17, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Is this allowed? For this?Selfstudier (talk) 20:27, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
 * , I was looking at exactly the same photo for the past 10 mins. Huh. Unfortunately the answer I concluded was no. Unless we can find a way to contact the photographer and ask him to amend the licence.
 * By the way I found an Arabic version of the article: ar: حاجز 300. I also found a Hebrew one, and have just connected them. Onceinawhile (talk) 20:31, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Hum, only these and Selfstudier (talk) 20:52, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
 * , how about these two? The note at the bottom says they are under CC4.0. Onceinawhile (talk) 21:02, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
 * , how about these two? The note at the bottom says they are under CC4.0. Onceinawhile (talk) 21:02, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

Need your help!
I did some editing on Ashkelon, and as one can see; the Ottoman/Mandate era has two different maps; and frankly: I think it looks messy. What if the "the ruins of the ancient city" was separate, further up? Under "Crusaders, Ayyubids, and Mamluks"?

And then "unite" the PEF map with the "Switcher"-map? (as normal)? And all on the right? There many many more wonderful pictures from Majdal that could be added, perhaps take a "gallery"-section before the "Israel"-section?

There is no hurry, but I would like hear what you think about it? Huldra (talk) 21:29, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi, I agree with all your points. It is overcrowded and would benefit from some streamlining; and a gallery would be a good idea.
 * The piece I have not figured out is how to tell the history of the city. The article is focused on the modern city, so it should give a balanced account of the histories around Askelon (the ancient city), Al Majdal, Hamama, Al-Jura, Al-Khisas and Ni'ilya. I think it is best solved by creating new articles for Ashkelon (historical city) and Al Majdal, and having the Ashkelon article focus clearly on the metropolis as a whole. Onceinawhile (talk) 00:18, 23 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah, possibly you are right: a new, comprehensive article about the history is needed. Alas; it will take 2 months+ before I have time to emerge myself in the topic. (There are some wonderful pictures from the Matson collection on commons, look at Al-Jura and Al-Majdal, Asqalan).
 * Also, quite a lot should be added from the Petersen-book (do you have it?), eg about the Mash'had Nabi Hussein (destroyed in 1950 at the orders of Moshe Dayan (link)
 * Having said all that: the Ashkelon article is "only" 70 K large, there isn't an urgent need to split; so we could continue to work on it (without splitting). (Eg, there should be an article about Ashkelon mosque; see Petersen, pp. 111-112)
 * Having said all that: the Ashkelon article is "only" 70 K large, there isn't an urgent need to split; so we could continue to work on it (without splitting). (Eg, there should be an article about Ashkelon mosque; see Petersen, pp. 111-112)


 * This discussion should perhaps continue on the talk-page of Ashkelon? Huldra (talk) 22:39, 23 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi, these are all excellent points. I think this is a very good way to proceed. I am also busy elsewhere right now, but it will be a good project to do together when the time is right. Onceinawhile (talk) 22:48, 23 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Ok, but then I am back to my starting point -perhaps fixing the maps now? That shouldn't be too big a job -before a major overhaul, say, this summer? Huldra (talk) 22:29, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Also, you are most welcome in helping in at User:Huldra/Great Mosque, Majdal, cheers, Huldra (talk) 23:07, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

DYK nomination of Sursock Purchases
Hello! Your submission of Sursock Purchases at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) at your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Guerillero Parlez Moi 04:50, 25 March 2021 (UTC)  Guerillero  Parlez Moi 04:50, 25 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Onceinawhile. I just noticed your work on this very important but neglected story. Thanks very much indeed. Fine work. Nishidani (talk) 09:31, 25 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I have found some close paraphrasing issues on Sursock Purchases, can you please respond to the DYK nom -- Guerillero  Parlez Moi 18:41, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

A10
Nakba is A10 because it duplicates an existing article.--Geshem Bracha (talk) 10:40, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

Category:Nakba has been nominated for deletion
Category:Nakba has been nominated for deletion. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Geshem Bracha (talk) 12:22, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

DYK for The Present (2021 film)
— Maile (talk) 00:02, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

DYK for Sursock Purchases
&mdash; Amakuru (talk) 00:02, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

Jerusalem population chart
Many people won't be able to see the difference between the two shades of green. There is some guidance at WP:COLORCONTRAST, though it is most aimed at text. Cheers. Zerotalk 01:19, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi, thanks for this. I have fixed it. The program I am using for the chart has reasonably poor functionality - it needed a workaround to get a sensible set of colors. Any chance you have seen any research which looked at the Ottoman registers for 1600-1800? It would be great to be able to fill that gap in. Onceinawhile (talk) 09:12, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

mail
Zerotalk 07:13, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

Category:Nakba has been nominated for merging
Category:Nakba has been nominated for merging. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Marcocapelle (talk) 07:41, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

Sheikh Jarrah
Given the ongoing furore, I am wondering whether this article might be better titled SJ evictions or similar. The current title makes it sound like a normal landlord tenant type affair and it obviously isn't. I leave it you, anyway.Selfstudier (talk) 23:24, 18 May 2021 (UTC)
 * , good point. Many commentators have pointed out that characterizing it as just a “property dispute” is POV. Onceinawhile (talk) 04:32, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

DYK for Nakba
&mdash; Amakuru (talk) 00:02, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

DYK for Nakba
&mdash; Amakuru (talk) 00:03, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

DYK nomination of Sheikh Jarrah property dispute
Hello! Your submission of Sheikh Jarrah property dispute at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) at your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! ezlev tlk / ctrbs 23:36, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

British annual reports on the mandate administration
and Once: It seems to me that we are not making enough use of the annual reports, which are loaded with detailed information. The versions at unispal.un.org are only snippets; for example the 1934 report at unispal stops at page 12 of the full report that runs to 307 pages. The 1938 unispal snippet has 34 pages out of 452. And so on. The full reports also have long sections on Transjordan. I have library access to all of the full reports but so far only managed to scrounge PDF files for these: 1920–1925, 1929, 1934, 1936-1938. Of course you are welcome to them. The last published report was 1938, so that means I'm missing 1926–1928, 1930–1933, and 1935. If you can manage to find any of them that would be great (a possibility is the League of Nations archive, which I find very hard to navigate). Zerotalk 13:57, 17 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Like this one, right? https://biblio-archive.unog.ch/Dateien/CouncilMSD/C-452(I)-M-166(I)-1925-VI_EN.pdf It used to be you could access the unog directories directly, I remember getting some out that way when I was making the article Permanent Mandates Commission (Palestine). They have stopped that and I agree it is not so easy to track the things down now although they must be in there somewhere.Selfstudier (talk) 17:25, 17 June 2021 (UTC)
 * I only get a file or directly 404 notification with that link, Self.Nishidani (talk) 17:38, 17 June 2021 (UTC)
 * ) It was adding the paren to the link, I took it off, should work now. They are all in the physical UN library Report by H.M. Government in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to the Council of the League of Nations on the Administration of Palestine and Transjordan for the years 1924-1938. 15 volumes. Don't think that helps much though.Selfstudier (talk) 17:46, 17 June 2021 (UTC)
 * I realize you heads are streets ahead of me -let's say a marathon to avoid understatement - with research techniques, but has anyone popped an email inquiry at the Dag Hammarskjöld Library there? Nishidani (talk) 18:03, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

The version of the 1924 report at https://biblio-archive.unog.ch/Dateien/CouncilMSD/C-452(I)-M-166(I)-1925-VI_EN.pdf is further enlightening as it is also abridged. See the second page for a LofN note to that effect. So, while it ends on page 58, the version published by the UK government as Colonial No. 12 has 98 pages. I think I got it from Hathitrust. I haven't sorted out the differences but one example is that the longer version contains texts of ordinances that the shorter version doesn't have.

Speaking of Hathitrust, can you all please poke your browsers at this catalogue entry. I see only "Limited (Search Only)" for each entry, but I know this can vary according to the country of the viewer. In particular someone in the USA (or with a VPN in the USA) might be able to see more. In the event that it is possible to view the document but not download the whole thing, send me mail ;). Zerotalk 03:59, 18 June 2021 (UTC)
 * , I can’t view any of it unfortunately. Onceinawhile (talk) 06:11, 18 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Idem. Italy only gives one the same flick pass you cop.Nishidani (talk) 06:36, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

Interesting article
hereSelfstudier (talk) 10:37, 26 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Or this link; first part was (mildly) interesting, second part: pretty predictable stuff from the head of Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, Huldra (talk) 21:01, 26 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks both for this.
 * I quite like this point: For other displaced and defeated peoples, an independent state – though it sometimes constitutes only a small part of the larger homeland that was lost – has been a source of consolation, a home in which the displaced rebuilt their lives, and on which they focused their national aspirations. They could continue to dream of the realms of the past with a nostalgia tempered by the awareness that a return to them was impossible. This was the case, for example, with the Armenians, the Greeks who were dislodged from Asia Minor or Northern Cyprus, and millions of Germans who were expelled from Eastern Europe during and after World War II. which is definitely true. Palestinians would have by and large moved on and focused on the future if they had been allowed to build a sovereign nation. But they haven't and they won't be, so his suggestion is pointless; bantustans do not work.
 * He then goes on to contradict himself: Until they attain sovereignty of some sort, the Palestinians will not be able to develop a critical discourse about their past – and without such discourse it will be difficult to get the Israeli public to pay heed to the Palestinian narrative. For the sake of a more stable existence, therefore, the two peoples must make painful but essential historical decisions, and their practical decisions must be accompanied by an effort to reshape collective consciousness and memory. He says Palestinians need to do something that he says is impossible.
 * I certainly like the idea of obligat[ing] both sides to consolidate a collective memory but the more important thing is to see the here-and-now for what it really is. South African Apartheid was a competition of narratives as well, but in the end it was accepted that – irrespective of the history – the present day was unacceptably inhumane.
 * Onceinawhile (talk) 23:37, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

Kafra, Baysan
Hi, I just moved Kafra to Kafra, Baysan (in order to prepare for a Kafra, Lebanon article).

Alas, that messed up the maps, which now have been removed. How can I fix that?

Cheers, Huldra (talk) 20:05, 1 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi, I fixed it; just needed the "| name=" parameter added. Onceinawhile (talk) 23:11, 1 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks! And I cleaned up the Kafra-aricles; they were a total mess over at wikidata. Mostly: they mixed up Kafra, Baysan and Kafra, Lebanon. We still have arz:كفرة though; according to translate.bing.com it says "Kafra is a village in the British Mandate on Palestine. Kufra is located in an administrative area called Bint Jbeil district"
 * Oh well, to much mess at en.wp for me to bother too much about arz.wp! (but there should be a place where we could report this, though?) Cheers, Huldra (talk) 21:28, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

DYK??
Hi,

I have just started articles about three Lebanese villages.

Could they possibly become a DYK? Say, with the handle "Did you know ..that the three villages Safad El Battikh, Ayta al-Jabal and Kafra in the Bint Jbeil District in Southern Lebanon were all mentioned in the 1596 Ottoman tax-records? I am not sure, though, that they have enough text? (I used to have DYK-check: have no idea where that went), Cheers, Huldra (talk) 23:54, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
 * , hi Huldra, I just checked and they were all below the 1500 word count, but I added a sentence to each and they now all qualify. Onceinawhile (talk) 07:26, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

City of David
Why does this page exist? Selfstudier (talk) 15:54, 14 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi, I guess because politics and some archaeologists say it does. Onceinawhile (talk) 16:54, 14 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Hum. What is it, actually? Is it a Israeli settlement inside a Israeli national park? Is Givati dig included there?Selfstudier (talk) 18:38, 15 July 2021 (UTC)
 * , it's an area which has been ringfenced by a settlement group, and within it there is a Palestinian village and an archaeological area. The Palestinian village has a number of Israeli settlers within it, similar to what is happening in the sensitive areas of Sheikh Jarrah. Onceinawhile (talk) 18:49, 15 July 2021 (UTC)
 * The "area" is what I am interested in, what is the legal construct? What is it that has been ringfenced, Palestinian property?Selfstudier (talk) 19:13, 15 July 2021 (UTC)
 * , see the second page of this Onceinawhile (talk) 19:43, 15 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, that's good, I can figure it out from there, I think, the usual, state land declaration, park, generic displacement illegality. It needs to be spelled out clearly in the article.Selfstudier (talk) 22:09, 15 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Still humming and hahing over what to call it, it seems the "area" (which I have not been able to locate a precise definition of and you cannot locate on a map) is, in the first instance located within the Jerusalem Walls National Park and then a part of that which appears to be entirely within Silwan is frequently referred to as the "City of David archaeological park", less frequently and apparently promotionally as "City of David national park" (the Elad crowd refer to it as that but there is no such national park afaics). So I'm thinking "City of David archaeological park, Silwan" as a contender for the name, do you have any ideas?Selfstudier (talk) 16:00, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Correction, "City of David archaeological site" gets way more hits than those two, so perhaps that.Selfstudier (talk) 16:03, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Another way might be to merge all the non archaeological stuff into Silwan and put the archaeological stuff into List of archaeological excavations in Jerusalem (maybe we don't need "List of") which would describe it perfectly minus the politics (call it Silwan/CoD in that article, we can't do that in a title, right, the "/" I mean?).
 * In answer to your question, the page exists because of the historical site called by that name (i.e. City of David). That should be our primary focus. If there are political notions involved here, I, personally, know of none. Even our Muslim brothers and friends recognize David as a prophet. BTW: There are more than 500,000 entries on JSTOR for the "City of David." And our friend thinks that the name is "misrepresented"!?Davidbena (talk) 18:20, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
 * That's your primary focus, not mine. I agree that the mound of ancient/historic Jerusalem is where Silwan is. I know of no historic site called City of David, show it to me on a well sourced map, you can't even show me the current CoD on a map never mind any supposed historic one. People have been looking for it (and evidence of King David) for ever and can't find it. Biblical sources are of no interest to me unless backed up somehow. I am very interested in archaeology minus the politicoreligious claptrap that some people insist on dressing it up in.Selfstudier (talk) 18:32, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Well, if Wikipedia required "reliable and verifiable" maps of all archaeological sites mentioned on Wikipedia, you would be right. As it is, there is no such requirement; only reliable and verifiable scholarly work - with or without their divergent opinions. Be well.Davidbena (talk) 18:46, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Repeating yourself here and at the article talk page is unnecessary.Selfstudier (talk) 18:51, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Palestinian enclaves
Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Palestinian enclaves you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Ganesha811 -- Ganesha811 (talk) 15:41, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia Wars and the Israel-Palestine conflict...please fill out my survey?
Hello :) I am writing my MA dissertation on Wikipedia Wars and the Israel-Palestine conflict, and I noticed that you have contributed to those pages. My dissertation will look at the process of collaborative knowledge production on the Israel-Palestine conflict, and the effect it has on bias in the articles. This will involve understanding the profiles and motivations of editors, contention/controversy and dispute resolution in the talk pages, and bias in the final article. For more information, you can check out my meta-wiki research page or my user page, where I will be posting my findings when I am done. I would greatly appreciate if you could take 5 minutes to fill out this quick survey before 8 August 2021.

Participation in this survey is entirely voluntary and anonymous. There are no foreseeable risks nor benefits to you associated with this project. Thanks so much,

Sarah Sanbar

Sarabnas I'm researching Wikipedia Questions? 20:52, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

In case you haven't seen this:
https://www.academia.edu/49925414/The_Origins_of_the_term_Palestinian_Filasṭīnī_in_late_Ottoman_Palestine_1898_1914?email_work_card=view-paper Zerotalk 05:30, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the interesting case study
Hi, just wanted to drop a quick thank you for tagging me in an interesting case study. While researching, one of the things I have found impressive is just how far the conflict spills over into other areas - including topics that might seem irrelevant to the uninitiated outsider. The article on hummus comes to mind as a humorous example of that :) If any others come to mind, I'd appreciate a tag as well. All the best, Sarabnas I'm researching Wikipedia Questions? 15:21, 1 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi, if you work your way through WikiProject Palestine/Popular pages you will definitely find some articles that fit the "spillover" definition. One that stood out for me was Talk:Murder of Aya Maasarwe. This tragic event had absolutely nothing to do with the conflict at all, yet our community managed to have a long drawn out debate on the victim's identity. Onceinawhile (talk) 15:42, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

Names of large numbers
Removing a 15-year-old tag - well done! I'm not sure I've ever removed an older one, although I've been close. I wonder what the oldest hatnote in wikipedia is? - DavidWBrooks (talk) 11:39, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi, thanks! I think it is my record too :-) Onceinawhile (talk) 15:31, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

Quick Q
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wadi_Hilweh&action=history

Why to there and not Silwan? Any objection if I change it? Selfstudier (talk) 11:30, 8 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi, no objection, I created it before I fully understood the CoD / WH (in fact I am still trying to understand it). I wonder if what might be even better is a new Wadi Hilweh article, explaining the history and boundaries of the area. Onceinawhile (talk) 14:04, 8 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Some merit in that. A principal problem is that if one simply says "City of David" then what is meant by that. If you take the biblical version (ancient Jerusalem) that is an area you can also describe as WH, whereas the Elad version of CoD is whatever Elad chooses to say it is at any point. eg King's Garden (al-Bustan area of Silwan), afaics is not part of the historical ancient "City of David" but the KG development project promoted by Elad seeks to include that in their tourism/archaeology park version of CoD. Do you see? Selfstudier (talk) 12:28, 9 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes I agree. Maybe best to have three articles, similar to the way the confusion at Naharayim was sorted:
 * City of David (Bible)
 * City of David (Elad)
 * Wadi Hilweh
 * Onceinawhile (talk) 13:40, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

-- Emperor of Oz&#39;s New Clothes (talk) 17:32, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

Wikiproject tags
Hi buddy, can you please add WP:PHO tags to your new Phoenicia-related articles talk pages? This will help with inventorying them. el.ziade (talkallam) 08:36, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi, yes I am sorry, and thanks for fixing. Onceinawhile (talk) 11:59, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Hobbi we are peers, and I am grateful for your amazing contributions. Sorry if I sound like a stuck-up. el.ziade (talkallam) 06:07, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

Buddha
Onceinawhile, your recent move of Buddha is based on a discussion from 2018. It has caused a malplaced disambiguation page and a boat-load of links to be fixed. Should this perhaps be discussed again to be sure that it has consensus? Leschnei (talk) 13:04, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

Mea culpa
I have been trying to clean up the Lebanese populated localities; in that connection I subdevided villages the South Governorate according to their district:
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Populated_places_in_the_Sidon_District
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Populated_places_in_the_Tyre_District
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Populated_places_in_the_Jezzine_District

Ugh, then I see that I should not have added the "the"; I should have called them
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Populated_places_in_Sidon_District
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Populated_places_in_Tyre_District
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Populated_places_in_Jezzine_District

(You notice when you look at: ...all the South Governorate districts comes up under "P")
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Populated_places_in_Lebanon_by_district

Is there a quick metod to change the cat (of some ~ 90 location)? Huldra (talk) 23:48, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi, I have fixed the alphabetizing issue: ,,. You'll see it works now at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Populated_places_in_Lebanon_by_district
 * I don't know how to remove the "the", but would recommend Categories_for_discussion
 * Onceinawhile (talk) 00:00, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Have done so; Huldra (talk) 20:55, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Mission de Phénicie
Hi,

I see you uploaded the pictures from Mission de Phénicie to commons; I am trying to "cat" them, and I have a question: Do you know where is from? It really reminded me of this; made in the same style/period? cheers, Huldra (talk) 22:10, 4 October 2021 (UTC)


 * your wish is my command. See this photo from the Louvre. Also see Commons:Category:Mosaique de Qabr Hiram.
 * It turns out that your observation was made 120 years ago by Étienne Michon. See Michon, Étienne. “L’INSCRIPTION EN MOSAÏQUE DE LA BASILIQUE DE MEDEBA ET LA MOSAÏQUE DE KABR-HIRAM.” Revue Biblique (1892-1940) 5, no. 2 (1896): 263–67. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44100214 Onceinawhile (talk) 22:15, 4 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Excellent! Now, next question; where is "Qabr Hiram"? The only thing I have seen called that, is the Tomb of Hiram; and that doesn't look like a church (-ruins) to me?,
 * Also, the "Medaba" refers to the Madaba mosaics, no? cheers, Huldra (talk) 23:00, 4 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi Renan’s description of his discovery is here. This is also summarized here, which in English says "It was in Tire and its surroundings that Renan's mission discovered many remains, notably the site of Qabr Hiram. What intrigued him was the presence of this tomb in this region and its shape. Excavations began around the tomb, a necropolis was discovered, wine presses and the remains of an ancient village. An unexpected discovery came to prove the importance of the site; a few yards from the mausoleum, one of the soldiers noticed the foot, barely emerging above the ground, of a column bearing a Greek cross. After a few blows of a pickax to clear the pillar, he came to a pavement of a small Byzantine church, which was entirely covered with a mosaic, very well preserved and under a minimal thickness of topsoil ranging from 30 to 40 centimeters. The excavation work lasted four days and the mosaic appeared in its brilliantly beautiful form, with an inscription in Greek dedicating the church to Saint Christopher (of Canaanite origin) and dated to 575."
 * So this church was found underground near the site of the tomb. Renan says it was 300 meters away from the tomb, towards Tyre. This puts it in Hanaouay; according to googlemaps there is a place called Al Nassim Resort (النسيم السياحي منتجع) right on top of it.
 * Onceinawhile (talk) 09:32, 5 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Ah, excellent! I see that SWP has a lot about it, too: pp. 61-64, on p64 they write: "M. Renan also discovered near the site of Kabr Hiram a Greek church of the year 701 (Sidonian era, i.e. about A.D. 580), with a beautiful mosaic, now in the Louvre."
 * Imagine, living in an era where you could dig up nearly 1500 year old mosaics, and transport them to your home country (apparently just because the Emperor, Napoleon III wanted them...)
 * Anyway, I will expand the Hanaouay a bit, then! Huldra (talk) 22:43, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Palestinian enclaves
The article Palestinian enclaves you nominated as a good article has been placed on hold. The article is close to meeting the good article criteria, but there are some minor changes or clarifications needing to be addressed. If these are fixed within 7 days, the article will pass; otherwise it may fail. See Talk:Palestinian enclaves for issues which need to be addressed. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Szmenderowiecki -- Szmenderowiecki (talk) 17:01, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

Precious anniversary
--Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:38, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

The Times They are a Changin'
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/palestinian-west-bank-mahmoud-abbas-palestinians-ramallah-b1955362.html Selfstudier (talk) 19:39, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Don't edit other people's comments
Inf-in MD (talk) 02:33, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
 * That was an edit conflict – my comment accidentally undid the previous edit. Thanks for pointing out. Onceinawhile (talk) 07:38, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

Not clear edit summary
Who is "Ice" in your edit summary ? Shrike (talk) 07:21, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Typo for "Inf". Must be autocorrect. Onceinawhile (talk) 07:35, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

Up your street?
U like this sort of thing, right? (if you didn't see it already) Selfstudier (talk) 18:14, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks. That is interesting. Onceinawhile (talk) 18:22, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

What happens when...
socks have a free hand Selfstudier (talk) 22:12, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
 * That is frightening. A visual illustration of an echo chamber. Onceinawhile (talk) 22:14, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

DYK for Phoenician metal bowls
Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 00:02, 22 December 2021 (UTC)


 * theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (they/she) 01:03, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Indeed
Apologies for my mistaken corrections, I was reading the Haaretz article, which had a different spelling, presumably a paraphrasing. My guess is that with shin/tuf is referring to biblical term Phlishtim? A small note, templates don’t work in edit messages, so you’d need to type User:Example instead of. I take your point re avoiding a broad stroke of “two sides” or treating people as monoliths. Thinking more thoroughly, I’d like to know what the government terms are, during the negotiations proceedings for example. I’ll save more thoughts for the talk page itself. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 01:33, 4 January 2022 (UTC)


 * Hi many thanks for your note here. I agree with you – the spelling in Israel Hayom was more like Phlishtim, but they and all other outlets used Palestinian in their English translation. Could very well have just been a typo in Hebrew – it was a verbal interview after all.
 * Re your question "I’d like to know what the government terms are, during the negotiations proceedings", the most instructive explanation I have seen re the topic is that of the IDF officer responsible for drawing up the enclaves on the Oslo maps: The process was very easy. In the agreement signed in '93, all those areas that would be part of final status agreement—settlements, Jerusalem, etc.—were known. So I took out those areas, along with those roads and infrastructure that were important to Israel in the interim period. It was a new experience for me. I did not have experience of mapmaking before. I of course used many different civilian and military organizations to gather data on the infrastructure, roads, water pipes, etc. I took out what I thought important for Israel. Since it is now widely considered that even the new Israeli government will not negotiate with the Palestinians (arguing that a negotiated outcome is "impossible"), the government terms today are almost certainly the same as they were at Oslo – keep everything important for Israel, and the Palestinians can keep the rest. As to what "the rest" is, well it seems that successive US and Israeli administrations have simply not spent the time to understand what the resulting enclaves feel like from a Palestinian perspective and thus why no Palestinian leader would ever be able to acquiesce to them. My personal view is that the Palestinian leadership would be willing to find a compromise on everything else (Jerusalem, refugees, etc) but to agree to a permanent state of being divided and surrounded by their century-long oppressor is impossible. Onceinawhile (talk) 03:23, 4 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Hi one other quick topic - your comments mention hatnotes a couple of times. I have double checked Hatnote versus Help:Explanatory notes - I believe you mean the latter rather than the former? Onceinawhile (talk) 19:28, 4 January 2022 (UTC)
 * @Onceinawhile hey there! Reading both, I completely agree. I meant explanatory notes. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 19:45, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Shaftesbury
Re this, since he didn't write it why is it relevant? It is nothing like his writing and if anything misrepresents him by association. Zerotalk 13:48, 14 January 2022 (UTC)


 * Hi I left it mostly because I feel unsatisfied about not having got to the bottom of it. I agree it is probably right to remove it until we are certain. Have a look at:
 * Onceinawhile (talk) 16:39, 14 January 2022 (UTC)


 * I have uploaded the 1840 version from The Times: File:RestorationJewsTimes1840.png. Incidentally the title isn't the same as what you quote from Hoffman. I can't see the right page, does he give the date? I still can't identify the "periodical publication entitled Memorials concerning God’s Ancient People of Israel" that the Times says it comes from. That is ambiguous; it could be the name of the periodical or the name of the article. I have searched for both and I didn't find any mention of this article in a source that claimed to have seen it either. Shaftesbury used biblical quotations in his letters, but sparingly. By comparison, this one almost entirely consists of Biblical quotations one after the other. It is plausible that Shaftesbury helped to distribute it, though I know of no evidence. It isn't plausible that he wrote it. Bonar and McCheyne might have, but their book doesn't feel like that either. Zerotalk 06:52, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
 * thank you. The best I have found is:
 * Albert Montefiore Hyamson, “BRITISH PROJECTS FOR THE RESTORATION OF JEWS TO PALESTINE.” Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society, no. 26 (1918): 127–64
 * See pages 136-137. Apparently it was first mentioned in the March 9, 1840 edition of The Times.
 * I have also found and
 * Henry Innes, I imagine, may have been a child of James Innes-Ker, 5th Duke of Roxburghe, whose father was called Henry Innes.
 * This book contains a footnote stating "Memorials of Israel, by Henry Innes"
 * And the UK government's 1920 review of Zionism mentions: "Henry Innes's Letter to the friends in Scotland of God's ancient people the Jews, including a correspondence with Dr. Herschel the Chief Rabbi of the Jewish Synagogues in London. Innes believed in 'Israel's return from his dispersions', but imagined that conversion to Christianity was the condition precedent." (Zionism/Montefiore, Shaftesbury, and Mordecai_Noah)
 * Onceinawhile (talk) 19:04, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Good searching. I looked at The Times of March 9, 1840, and it has on page 3 what Hyamson reports plus one sentence "The memorandum and correspondence which has passed upon the subject have been published." Zerotalk 02:13, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
 * WorldCat shows quite a few works probably by the same Sir Henry Innes. Zerotalk 02:47, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Palestinian enclaves
The article Palestinian enclaves you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Palestinian enclaves for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already appeared on the main page as a "Did you know" item, or as a bold link under "In the News" or in the "On This Day" prose section, you can nominate it within the next seven days to appear in DYK. Bolded names with dates listed at the bottom of the "On This Day" column do not affect DYK eligibility. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Szmenderowiecki -- Szmenderowiecki (talk) 02:21, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

DYK for Palestinian enclaves
&mdash; Amakuru (talk) 12:02, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

Bruxton (talk) 04:52, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes, well done, well done, Once. When you went for DYK for that article, I was totally skeptical that it would ever pass, not for the quality - that is self-evident. So, this is proof not only of your tenacious meticulousness of method, but also of the fundamental soundness of Wikipedia, however at times the machinery of discussion looks shonky in its occasional randomness of outcomes.Nishidani (talk) 10:07, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Thank you . Getting the article to be so balanced, well researched, and therefore robust was due to the efforts of many, particularly you, Selfstudier and NSH001, as well as those who stress-tested it including Drsmoo, Shrike and Wikieditor19920. It was a good learning experience, in particular that this is one of a handful of topics on the conflict where there is only one (depressing) side to the story, and no counterarguments. Onceinawhile (talk) 10:30, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
 * You're too kind, but I haven't done very much. Before today, I hadn't touched this page since May 2021, and what work I have done is mostly down to my little girl (I anthropomorphise my ETVP script as a little girl. She keeps bugging me about why I haven't given her a name yet!) Meanwhile, I've thought of a few more fixes I can get her to do, but they'll have to wait, as I go into hospital (yet again) for surgery on Sunday. --NSH001 (talk) 22:35, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Hi you are very modest. Your efforts improved the article time and time again, in a way that the rest of us aren’t able to do. Thanks for all your efforts here and at other pages. Good luck with the surgery in Sunday and let us know how it goes. Onceinawhile (talk) 23:04, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I'll update my talk page re the surgery. Meanwhile can I put in a plea for everyone using the citation tools to generate cites (doesn't matter what format they're in, my wee girl will fix them) to make sure that they include the author(s) and the date. Some citation tools will do this for books and academic journals (but they're not perfect). But the rest are hopeless, and I have to keep a lookout for missing authors/editors/dates, and look up the sources to add them manually. That's what takes up my time. I'm firmly of the view that a cite without a date or without any authors is worthless, unless the cited page itself doesn't specify the date (use ) or author(s) (use  ). Off to bed now. --NSH001 (talk) 23:34, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Location of Umm al-Amad, Lebanon
Hi, do you know the exact location of Umm al-Amad, Lebanon? On wikidata there are two co-ords, I think the southern-most is correct, no? Huldra (talk) 23:38, 9 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Hi Huldra, I have removed the incorrect one from Wikidata. The correct (remaining) shows up on google maps next to a sign saying “Archaeological site of Oum el-Amed”. Onceinawhile (talk) 00:00, 10 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Great, thanks! (and sorry this comes a bit late; I have been on a wiki break), cheers, Huldra (talk) 22:04, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

DYK for List of Egyptian obelisks
Cwmhiraeth (talk) 12:02, 12 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Thank you! 49.198.51.54 (talk) 20:34, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

Bruxton (talk) 14:21, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

Phoenician metal bowls
I just came by to thank you for this amazing article. You never cease to amaze me! el.ziade (talkallam) 23:58, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

Administrator's Noticeboard/Incidents
There is currently a discussion at Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. Drsmoo (talk) 05:09, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

AE block
To enforce an arbitration decision and for this comment ("frightening," "concerted attack"), and for misuse of an article talk page for making these sort of allegations, you have been blocked from editing for a period of one week. You are welcome to edit once the block expires; however, please note that the repetition of similar behavior may result in a longer block or other sanctions. If you believe this block is unjustified, please read the guide to appealing blocks (specifically this section) before appealing. Place the following on your talk page:. If you intend to appeal on the arbitration enforcement noticeboard I suggest you use the arbitration enforcement appeals template on your talk page so it can be copied over easily. You may also appeal directly to me (by email), before or instead of appealing on your talk page.  Reminder to administrators: In May 2014, ArbCom adopted the following procedure instructing administrators regarding Arbitration Enforcement blocks: "No administrator may modify a sanction placed by another administrator without: (1) the explicit prior affirmative consent of the enforcing administrator; or (2) prior affirmative agreement for the modification at (a) AE or (b) AN or (c) ARCA (see "Important notes" [in the procedure]). Administrators modifying sanctions out of process may at the discretion of the committee be desysopped." El_C 10:44, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

We can discuss each others' perspectives on the sentence that you objected to, but last time you didn't have time to discuss in detail and I suspect you won't have time now either. You have made your judgement against my choice of words, but did not provide any explanation.

You admitted your own wording mistake when we discussed a year ago, having written "Please don't feign respect". In your ANI post just now you wrote about "their camp", which is not appropriate language for any of us to use. What do you think my camp is? Other established editors who build high quality articles in a difficult topic area? I also reacted when reading the sentence The problem with issuing a TBAN to an established ARBPIA editor... and would ask you to reconsider it. You did not mention what I consider to biggest problem to be, that established editors in the area contribute hugely to this project.

Sometimes we all use language too loosely, and that is wrong. So long as no disruption is occurring (which it most certainly was not), we should each be given an opportunity to discuss, consider, and resolve any concerns. I acknowledge we have an onus on us to be careful; as I said to you a year ago, I am trying. In the last year I have given a lot to this project, with a good article, multiple DYKs, and about 5000 edits. You said a year ago that I am not expecting perfection from you, but now you appear to be. Onceinawhile (talk) 11:56, 15 March 2022 (UTC)}}


 * Onceinawhile, you cannot appeal an AE block in the usual way, see details in the AE block notice. In answer to your question: broadly speaking, your side is pro-Palestine, while the opposing camp is pro-Israel. I see nothing inappropriate in calling that WP:SPADE, but you are free to bring this before the Committee for, I dunno, my lack of decorum...? While I doubt they'd censure or admonish me for it, it is your right to try. Beyond that, this brief time out is, in fact, a boon, which I don't think you realize. Had this complaint been posted at AE, you'd likely get indef TBAN from all of ARBPIA and that would be that. El_C 12:10, 15 March 2022 (UTC)


 * are you saying I need to appeal at WP:AE itself? I have never done this before. And are you saying you will not address my points above until then? If so, perhaps you could just clarify one thing at the ANI discussion. Your Final Warning (excerpt above) was explained as relating to "I just expect you not to slip again on that page, at least not for a long while." This matter relates to a very different page and topic, and it was a very long while later. Please could you ensure other admins are aware of this, so we do not get too far down a rabbit hole. Onceinawhile (talk) 12:17, 15 March 2022 (UTC)


 * It's all ARBPIA. Again, your appeal options are detailed in the block notice. BTW, that ARBPIA TBAN may well end up happening, regardless, seeing as another admin had just commented in support of that. I'm just not gonna be the one to impose it, to be clear. El_C 12:19, 15 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Please could you address my point about final warning in my post above? Onceinawhile (talk) 12:52, 15 March 2022 (UTC)


 * To what end? You've been warned about ARBPIA lapses after my Feb 2021 final warning, like on August 2021 (AE), so I wouldn't hinge everything on its particulars. If I were you, I'd go for a less WP:NOTTHEM approach, though of course you need not take my advise on that (and you may request that I stop advising you altogether, totally up to you, I would not view it as a slight). El_C 13:12, 15 March 2022 (UTC)


 * I am taking a NOTTHEM approach. I have not mentioned the petitioner once.
 * The August 2021 matter was my complaint against another editor's actions; it was subsequently commented that a month does not make something stable, so I accepted that I probably should not have reverted the move either and perhaps we were both wrong. It was a grey line, and a very specific and technical matter which we all learnt from.


 * I am asking for you to clarify what your final warning related to for the benefit of other admins. It is important because the petitioner and another admin stated in the ANI discussion that there was a "breach of a final warning".
 * Onceinawhile (talk) 13:26, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

Onceinawhile, what do you mean? You are the petitioner here, not really addressing your own conduct sufficiently. You want me to spell out the narrow circumstances of that final warning? That I started it by saying that an ARBPIA TBAN would be "draconian" (i.e. only an WP:ABAN was on the table)? Here, I guess. But you should know that I regretted saying that as the conversation continued, because I felt you were NOTTHEM bludgeoning, much like you are doing now.

You may or may not care for my advise, but I'll give to you at least one more: the spirit of NOTHEM would have been to take a more flowingly introspective approach overall, rather than getting bogged down in the weeds of a particular dispute from a year ago. Because the impression people might get is you trying to navigate procedure rather than getting to the heart of the matter.

But you know what? Maybe I'm the one who has gotten it wrong here. We can see what others have to say. You are of course entitled to a robust defense of your own choosing, which I don't intend of standing in the way of. El_C 13:44, 15 March 2022 (UTC)


 * thanks. I am going to do the introspection in the appeal. I was hoping that you would clarify your position first, as you have not explained anywhere what the block is for, and the original editor’s complaint includes numerous incorrect statements. My judgement is that my mistake was the use of the phrase "concerted attack", which I now see can have implications which I did not mean. I do not wish to accuse (and actually I do not believe) there was any unusual coordination between the editors. My choice of words was wrong (this may help explain what I thought I was saying, but I did not think carefully enough) . Personally I think it would have been appropriate to first assume good faith and ask me what I meant by my words.
 * Thank you for clarifying re the ABAN warning. Please could you clarify this at the ANI thread? An admin has got the wrong impression, and others might too. :Onceinawhile (talk) 14:06, 15 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Onceinawhile, please stop asking me to clarify that on your behalf. I'm not gonna do that. You can state whatever you like in your appeal, which I'm happy to refactor for you. The reasoning for the block were spelled out in the block notice. If you think they fell short, you are free to address that, also, in your appeal. Finally: Personally I think it would have been appropriate to first assume good faith and ask me what I meant by my words. Okay, so it was inappropriate and a failure to assume good faith on my part. Got it. But, to me, that feels like NOTTHEM, yet still. Sorry, I don't really have much else to add right now. El_C 15:10, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
 * I have copied your appeal Shrike (talk) 08:24, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

{{unblock reviewed|decline=Block has expired. SQL Query Me! 16:11, 27 March 2022 (UTC)|1===Arbitration enforcement action appeal by Onceinawhile==

''Procedural notes: The rules governing arbitration enforcement appeals are found here. According to the procedures, a "clear, substantial, and active consensus of uninvolved administrators" is required to overturn an arbitration enforcement action.''

''To help determine any such consensus, involved editors may make brief statements in separate sections but should not edit the section for discussion among uninvolved editors. Editors are normally considered involved if they are in a current dispute with the sanctioning or sanctioned editor, or have taken part in disputes (if any) related to the contested enforcement action. Administrators having taken administrative actions are not normally considered involved for this reason alone (see WP:UNINVOLVED).''


 * Appealing user : {{userlinks|Onceinawhile}} – Onceinawhile (talk) 19:14, 15 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Sanction being appealed : One week block, imposed at here


 * Administrator imposing the sanction : {{admin|El C}}


 * Notification of that administrator : The appealing editor is asked to notify the administrator who made the enforcement action of this appeal, and then to replace this text with a diff of that notification. The appeal may not be processed otherwise. If a block is appealed, the editor moving the appeal to this board should make the notification.

Statement by Onceinawhile
I made a mistake. And the block was a mistake too.

My mistake was to use a phrase which was too strong, and too easily misunderstood. My choice of wording was poor. I was trying to summarize in half a sentence something that happened four years ago, and I used unnecessarily elaborate words which I had not fully thought through. I certainly did not mean to make an allegation (and actually I do not believe) that there was any unusual coordination between the three editors back in 2018. Two links to support this: (1) an explanation of why I did not anticipate the word "concerted" being read literally, and (2) proof that in almost 40,000 edits here I have never used the word "concerted" before and so had never really thought through its implications.

The block was a mistake because:
 * It was made extremely quickly without me being given a chance to provide my own view or remedy the three words I had written. The notifying editor and / or the blocking admin could have saved a lot of time by asking me to clarify my words. I believe over many years of building high quality articles in a difficult topic area, I should have earned the right to have administrators hear me out before making these kind of judgements.
 * All parties involved appear to have incorrectly thought that I was operating under a final TBAN warning, which as kindly acknowledged here, was not the case. I was given an ABAN warning over a year ago on a very different article and topic, in a very different situation.
 * The original post at ANI included a number of false characterizations about editing at the page in question. Since those were not given as reasons for the block, I will not distract from this by addressing them. But they served to create an overall misleading sentiment, which will have affected the decision to block. Exactly the same thing happened at the AE which got me the unrelated “ABAN warning” a year ago – it was submitted with multiple falsehoods (by an editor who turned out to be a sock). Perhaps a case of Brandolini's law, an article that I wrote.
 * It serves no purpose, other than stopping me in the middle a discussion about maps of the Golan, and stopping me from thanking the two other people who came to my talk page today, one to thank me for what he called my “amazing article” about some bowls,, and the other to inform me that my DYK about obelisks was one of the most viewed of the month. The last time I was blocked was eight years ago, and that block was quickly rescinded. Perhaps I have an overall “mistake rate” of one a year. I am trying my best guys; I am not perfect, but I am trying to be.

Since the spectre of a TBAN warning was raised, I should also point out that such a warning would be equally inappropriate:
 * A TBAN warning should be a last resort, for editors who are being disruptive, not handed out in response to a first mistake in a year.
 * Judging exactly how our words are to be interpreted by other people is incredibly hard, and we can only ever hope for 99%. With the 1% of mistakes that as humans we will make, we simply need a chance to immediately remedy them. I have made this same point to El C a year ago, and again today, and he has stated a belief that in doing so I am WP:NOTTHEM bludgeoning. So I apologize, but I do feel very strongly about this.
 * It would mean that if I ever again misjudge how my words are going to be understood, by any person who chooses to read them, then I must be kicked out of this part of the project. I could not write anything under those circumstances, and certainly could not risk engaging with any editors who would like to see me topic banned. I pride myself on being a thoughtful and collegiate partner to other editors in a difficult topic area, and as I have always said I prefer working with those who have a different perspective to me because we build more impactful articles together. As I wrote many years ago at WP:IPCOLL, "our encyclopedia has the opportunity to become the subject's most balanced reference point, with a truly bilateral narrative"; we cannot make that happen whilst living in fear.

El C was kind enough to write "But you know what? Maybe I'm the one who has gotten it wrong here. We can see what others have to say.", and I appreciate his open-mindedness. For the avoidance of doubt, rescinding the block would not change the fact that I made a mistake, which I fully accept and apologize for. Onceinawhile (talk) 19:14, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

Statement by Drsmoo
I just don't see how one can claim that "I remember finding the concerted attack frightening", is anything other than an intense statement of us-vs-them and tendentious editing. Regarding alternate definitions of concerted, the word was applied to the cumulative actions of three different editors, so it can't be claimed that it was meant in the singular sense. The usage fits the standard definition perfectly. And even, for the sake of argument, if a conspiracy wasn't being alleged, it's still being referred to as an "attack" and "frightening". How is one supposed to edit constructively with someone who views standard edits that reflect another viewpoint as "frightening" and an "attack"?

I also resent and reject the claim that there were "false characterizations" in my post, there weren't.

It may be worth pointing out that hostility and personal attacks are absolutely nothing new from this editor, I have personally, (along with others) been the recipient of a large amount of vitriol from this editor over a long period, some of which has been recorded in noticeboard posts, some of which remains strewn across talk pages. As an example, being baselessly called a racist just over a year ago (which is partially what inspired the previous warning), along with all of the other vitriolic comments Onceinawhile made across that talk page.

The below are some examples copied from an AN/I filed back in 2016(!), so this is nothing new:


 * "Telling NMMNG not to attack another editor is like telling a child they can't have cake. It only feeds his aggression. The best way to deal with editors like this is to ignore them."
 * “I worry about people when they feel the need to project their own self-importance to unknown strangers. Numerous psychological studies have shown that such behaviour belies a deep lack of underlying self confidence. It probably goes without saying, but I am here for you if you ever need anyone to speak to.”
 * "Since you have gone back to making vacuous statements, I will proceed with the changes. You can then amend."
 * "you made a stupid revert about something totally irrelevant, and noone can be bothered to deal with it.”
 * "You made a revert, and now you're being pushed to explain yourself you try to hide behind "ask the original editor". Pathetic." Drsmoo (talk) 02:05, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

And here is the A/R/E submission from roughly a year ago, particularly, the additional examples posted by Levivich, the aggressive editing has continued. Drsmoo (talk) 02:25, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

Discussion among uninvolved editors about the appeal by Onceinawhile
''Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator. Administrators may remove or shorten noncompliant statements. Disruptive contributions may result in blocks.''

Result of the appeal by Onceinawhile

 * This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.



}}

Location of appeal
Hi thanks for your question. I don't know the difference between the two – the block was at AN, so that seems more natural, but should it matter either way? Onceinawhile (talk) 10:15, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Sorry, it took too long for you to answer. Too many people have already responded to the appeal at AE at this point. Also, using the AE appeal template at WP:AN is always at best awkward, because it's designed with the WP:AE noticeboard in mind. Had you asked me, I'd have told all of that and you could have adjusted the format of your appeal accordingly. Oh well. So, yeah, while I'm unhappy that someone else made the venue choice for you (an action for which I warned them against), it is what it is now. El_C 10:30, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
 * OK, many thanks . I found Selfstudier's point insightful. Drsmoo and I have had our difficulties. As a new editor in 2011 I complained about his conduct and he was blocked. He then took me to AN in 2011, in 2015, and many times in 2016. I have made many attempts at resolving our relationship, which have not been reciprocated. Onceinawhile (talk) 10:36, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Again, ping me if you'd like me to refactor anything for you to add to your appeal (make it clear what). Anyway, I'm seeing more it's-them-not-me (WP:NOTTHEM) from you directly above, but you do as you will. Lord knows I tried. El_C 10:44, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Hi I really tried to act fully on your advice. I thought I was following your advice to the letter by being crystal clear, at the beginning and the end of my appeal, that I acknowledge my mistake and take full responsibility for it . Whatever happens here, I want to learn. Could you perhaps tell me what I could have said in my appeal that would have fully addressed your NOTTHEM concern? Onceinawhile (talk) 10:57, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
 * To actually acknowledge [your] mistake and take full responsibility for it rather than qualifying it with a but them counter at every turn. That is not "full," in my view, it is partial at best. El_C 11:01, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
 * where I have qualified my acknowledgement and acceptance of my mistake? I am happy to withdraw anything you consider is a qualification. Onceinawhile (talk) 11:20, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Many times, the latest being many attempts [etc.]. Anyway, I don't really want this 'venue thread' to turn into a parallel mini-appeal, so let's not spit that discussion further. Thanks. El_C 11:36, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
 * I need explanation so I can learn and be better. Just for this one example, please could you explain how that statement (that I have tried to reconcile in the past) qualifies my acknowledgement and responsibility for my mistake. Once I understand this I can then attempt to refactor what I have written. Onceinawhile (talk) 11:50, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
 * I've covered that in my statement and multiple times on this talk page, which I think suffices for the time being. El_C 12:01, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

El_C. I've watched this, and the prior episodes of this on-going interpretative incomprehension between Onceinawhile and yourself for years now, disconcerted as a linguist at the, well, frankly, madness of this Kafkian interaction. Everyone knows that Onceinawhile is one of the finest historically minded editors in this impossible area, and since the minefield he works in has been accumulatively criss-crossed with intricate tripwires about what can and cannot be said or implied by him, each new tripwire being the result of piddling complaints that have some undoubted rationale nonetheless in the recondite niceties of policy perfectionism, Onceinawhile has been forced to gyrate with an absurd gymnastic discursiveness that, as you read it (WP:NOTTHEM), cannot but feed your own sense of fedupedness, ergo: ban him for life from the IP area where he excels over what seems to me to be pettifogging punctilio. These humilitating convolutions can't but remind one of Catherine Zeta-Jones's gymnastic ballet in sneaking past the lasar-protected system in Entrapment, which is the mot propre inadvertently set in place by this reciprocal talking at cross purposes.

In short, I think you erred in arrogating to yourself the discretion to go ballistic if the latest trip wire was grazed. Ridding Wikipedia of a superlatively knowledgeable and, almost invariably, consensus-building contributor means all perspective has been lost. When you stated:'broadly speaking, your side is pro-Palestine, while the opposing camp is pro-Israel,' you should have taken the hint from your own words. I have always read, for example, the Che Guevara photo on your page as implying an analogy between 1948 and Che's theory of wars of liberation. Perhaps I am wrong. The opposition, as often noted, between 'pro-Israeli' and 'pro-Palestinian' is politically insulting and instrumentally tactical: those who see things in stark binary oppositions are tempted to ignore the merits of specific edits, and take them as predictably biased towards a cause depending on whose perceived camp the editor in question is in (WP:AGF is violated). Just recently, I can't recall where, Onceinawhile found himself arguing against several editors whom, in your description, belong to the same 'camp' (as opposed to several editors who are somewhat obsessive about historical details). He stuck by his guns, and argued intensively for his point of view, precisely as he does in interacting with you. Patience. No harm done. Best practice should have been to be somewhat more detached, given the fact you two do not get along, and ask another arbitrtator or two to look at the crux. It is obvious over the years escapes both of you. It is also obvious that few people on the planet would have the sitzfleisch to scrupulously examine the rubbled mountain of ancient exchanges that has been piled up from the molehill of nugatory discursive infractions Onceinawhile has been systematically accused of by those who dislike his presence here. That, for example, saying recalling one was 'frightened' at the way three editors some years ago, one a notorious sockpuppet, appear to act in a 'concerted' fashion is somewhat pathetic: people in the real world shouldn't be 'frightened' by such petty noxiousness, any more than someone should think they are acting rationally, and in the high interests of an encyclopedia, by jumping at such a confession as appalling evidence that the editor who wrote that en passant should be hauled before the execution platoon and have his wiki career 'liquidated'. Jeezus.Nishidani (talk) 12:49, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Nishidani, there's a time and a place for nuance, and this ain't it. I can't help when someone is unable to act in their own best interests, as hard as I try to lead them there.
 * As I said at ANI, grouping editors in good standing alongside a globally banned user without distinction with that 'concerted, frightening' attack,' and doing so in passing, on an article talk page... That is a salient fact that no amount of eloquence or verbose can diminish.
 * Please, I do not want to discuss this here. The appeal is currently open, so you're invited to make your case there. I don't get to decide on its outcome. I'd plead for less partisanship from all involved, but that's probably a pipe dream. El_C 13:16, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
 * @El CNishi was actually banned from AE for his comments there Shrike (talk) 14:13, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Oh, shit, sorry. El_C 14:15, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
 * I wrote that one comment here because I was permabanned from AE by Sandstein several years ago and certainly not, as Shrike says, for my comments there (meaning something outrageous or inflammatory. I'm still mystified on what basis this was done, and only guess it was because my analytical 'longueurs' were considered disruptive). The 'fact' is not salient. It's piddling. You are dead wrong on 'sides'. To say editors are 'pro-Palestinian' is to imply they are 'anti-Israel': that is the way language works, by antonymic innuendo. The same is true of 'pro-Israel'. Cases certainly exist of both types. Editors who never show any comprehension of the other reality and single-mindedly push a POV with remarks or edit-summaries that express contempt for the other (as in Tombah's recent aside)  merit certainly 'pro-Israel/or, alternatively 'pro-Palestinian labels. That is to mirror the vice of the conflict itself, which consists  of two parties who refuse to listen to each other and read deeply and fairly the intricate history of their countries. To bundle under the same polemical brandname activists and scholars fascinated by the glaring abyss between factual accuracy and political misrepresentations is dangerous.  In confusing this precise distinction, you are  inadvertently admitting to a flaw in the way you view things there, in my view. I no more give a fuck for the PA, Likud, Hamas or all the other corrupt or toxic shitheads in that area than I do for my own country. And, nuance is everything, context is everything. I'm a partisan for quality scholarship wherever it goes. You've lost perspective here. Apologies for adding this final note. Nishidani (talk) 14:26, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Sorry, but I have to respond to this at AE
 * "I didn't expect Selfstudier, Zero0000, or Nishidani to take issue when I indef TBAN'd one of the appellant principal opponents at the time, Wikieditor19920. It makes sense that they wouldn't."
 * Dear EL. We all have different memories. I won't rehears mine, but when I've seen a resolutely 'pro-Israeli' editor who, in my view, is a more than worthy contributor to the project and yet faces a topic ban, I have consistently pleaded on their behalf, most recently with Davidbena. And that is true of Nableezy, Zero etc., in other cases. We are not a 'cabal' working in lockstep.Nishidani (talk) 14:55, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Idk when you were AE banned or what for, how would you appeal? I have not seen Sandstein there myself any time in the recent past. Perhaps you might try a short commentary and see if anyone objects? Selfstudier (talk) 14:31, 17 March 2022 (UTC)


 * I would,He can appeal per WP:BANEX Shrike (talk) 14:35, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Well, he should try, you can object and then we will see what's what.Selfstudier (talk) 14:36, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Are you suggest that user will violate active AE restriction? Shrike (talk) 14:41, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Says he who unilaterally filed Once's appeal for him, lol. Selfstudier (talk) 14:45, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
 * No good deed goes unpunished, I thought I making him a favour Shrike (talk) 14:54, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
 * No. I never appeal on principle, even when I was permabanned for an outrageously flawed judgment (citing diffs without checking them)  back in 2011. AE is a necessary evil here, but recourse to it should be for exceptional cases of threats to the encyclopedia's objectives (Which  is absolutely not the case here, given he quite extraordinary erudition and tenacity with which on his own, and in the face of relentlessly pugnacious hostility by several editors, Onceinawhile wrote and brought to FA status The Balfour Declaration.  None of those editors who have repeatedly asked he be sanctioned have any record of that kind of constructive dedication.) Deliberate disruptiveness combined with non-performative hanging around and niggling behaviours etc. Nishidani (talk) 14:40, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Well, EL_C is very well known for efforts at AE and he was not aware of your restriction so perhaps time served and all that. Selfstudier (talk) 14:51, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

I don't think I've lost perspective, Nishidani, I'm just not interested in getting into a drawn out thing with you about the epistemology of it; like, which side supports which positions, how each views their opposition, pro/anti, etc. And even if the s-word itself should be uttered. But I do think that I have a nuanced understanding of ARBPIA and other DSs (not to be un-humble, more than most). Knowing how and when to employ nuance is, well... nuanced. Obviously, the rulers are shit, that isn't really in dispute, at least between you and me.

But there are still positions, concerning the masses of people. Historical and political and economic positions. I don't know what else you expect me to say that you wouldn't consider "piddling" or "dead wrong." I'm not going to apologize for trying to maintain an environment conducive to collaboration, in any of the DS areas. But, if the appeal succeeds, then I'll certainly be re-evaluating all that. Which may well happen, who knows. El_C 14:54, 17 March 2022 (UTC)


 * you should know that the pro-Palestinian comment really shocked me. Nishidani summed it up well.
 * Look at User talk:Debresser/Archive 16 here, a situation you were involved in. Reference Debresser's comment to me, and my comment about him on the same page. Or look at Talk:Golan Heights, the discussion I was busy with when your block came - I was busy pushing to add an Israeli Government talking point, not currently in the article, that part of the Golan was part of Mandatory Palestine. And, following Drsmoo's comment just now at AE, I have found another couple of examples of my attempts to repair my editing relationship with Drsmoo.
 * The sense you will have gotten of the IP area from working at AE and ANI is completely different to the reality of our day-to-day editing. You see the worst of it, with hyperbole and embellishment. The drudgery of collaborating to build perfectly balanced high quality articles in perhaps our most difficult topic area never gets seen at AE. You don't even have the responsibility to assess it when pushing to ban editors, because at AE admins do not need to follow the advice at WP:PUNITIVE.
 * Onceinawhile (talk) 16:29, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

El C, this doesnt really belong on AE as it isnt pertinent, but I also find the characterization misleading. There are approximately 0 editors who can objectively be said to advocate "views that usually favour the Palestinian position versus those which usually favour the Israeli one" of things here. I'm probably the closest to that, and it has earned me the undying love of various pro-Israel websites on the interwebs, but there is legit not one single person who can objectively said to do that. There is certainly an internationalist one, but no, definitely not a Palestinian one. Nobody advocates for Hamas' position the way Likud's is here. Or the PFLP apropos Jewish Home. People certainly do push a right wing Israeli position, but no, nobody is writing Tel Aviv is in occupied Palestine and being treated as though they were a serious editor here. Thats been the problem with trying to divide people in to these groupings and think of this as the Palestinian side vs the Israeli side. The West Bank vs Judea and Samaria conflict is representative of that in this regard. You had one group advocating for the use, in Wikipedia's "neutral" voice, terminology that was very much identifiable with one "side". Nobody advocated for the language used by the other "side". Nobody would say occupied Palestine for Ramallah much less Jerusalem, much less Tel Aviv. That would be advocating "views that favour the Palestinian position", but it simply does not exist.  nableezy  - 22:30, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
 * I agree with all Nableezy said here. And one reason for this state of affairs, I assume, is that there simply are no Palestinian editors in the IP area (at least that I know of), while there a countless (self-identified) Israeli Jews here. The last (self-identified) Palestinian who was active was User:Tiamut; and she gave up because she found the attitude towards her was just "too poisonous"; I cannot recall any outrage when she was hounded of wikipedia, Huldra (talk) 22:24, 18 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Well, just for the record, before Once is guillotined, I'd like to see diffed the entire record showing he can't work with other editors as has been claimed. Because my recollection over the decade is one of tedious yawning over the extreme lengths he has always gone to on talk pages to persuade and find compromises with editors who one knows will or (most have left) would not relent unless they got their way. You can see this in the Balfour Declaration archives. What appears to have gone wrong is that this, to me, excessive striving to find clarification and compromise with somewhat inflexible editors, got transferred to debates with El_C on policy. That was Once's error. His problem is not with other editors: it is his perfectionist drive to keep his block log nose clean.  Far cleaner than is possible in this kind of area where goading reverts under spurious pretexts, talkpage stonewalling and sheer bloody-minded POV pushing have  been commonplace Nishidani (talk) 22:47, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

NOTTHEM
As Nishidani points out, I have been trying to understand El C's interpretation of NOTTHEM for some time. El C does not wish to discuss further, which is fine.

Can anyone else help me understand? I would like to be able to give El C comfort that I have listened and learned.

My specific question at the moment is how [the] statement (that I have tried to reconcile in the past) qualifies my acknowledgement and responsibility for my mistake.

Explanations of any examples from my appeal would be appreciated too. I thought I was 100% clear that I fully accept and take responsibility for my mistake.

Onceinawhile (talk) 16:37, 17 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Not everyone would agree with my interpretation. There is a playground called WP, there are adults and children in the playground. How do you tell the difference? Selfstudier (talk) 16:49, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Simple. The adults are admins, the children are those in the sandpit. A few are absorbed in building castles, while most muck about, or throw sand in the builders' eyes and then scream 'he hurt my feelings (doing something I can't do)'. Deeply sorry to see you go, Once. In one fell swoop, the area has lost 20% of its craftsmanship. Don't dig a deeper hole by remonstration. Shit happens, as the genius who fucked Iraq and destroyed the Christian communities of the Middle East once quipped.Nishidani (talk) 20:47, 17 March 2022 (UTC)


 * What the heck is even going on here? Great, another prolific content creator chased away from Wikipedia due to rigid bureaucracy. FunkMonk (talk) 17:12, 27 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your support . Fortunately it was a one week block and no more. When this was all happening I was thinking about trying to build consensus at ARCA (which I have never edited before) around stopping the execution of well-meaning editors who make (very) occasional mistakes. Too many good editors have been lost across many important subjects. Most of them make the mistake I almost made and complain too hard against the perceived injustice – I learnt just in time that such complaints make things worse not better, and accepted the original decision without reservation.
 * Now I am through it I can’t help but be tempted to just move on and focus back on the content building. I enjoy building an encyclopedia not fixing a flawed justice system. I worry I don’t know enough about the history of how we arrived here to be able to propose solutions that will attract the support of the majority of administrators. What I might try to do though is build a list of high quality editors who have left the project permanently due to such situations, which at least would help those with more knowledge than me assess the scale of what has been happening. I would like to do it across all AE areas, not just ARBPIA. If you think this would be a good idea, any ideas for a venue for such a list would be appreciated. It would need to be only constructive to the project, and not antagonistic in any form.
 * Onceinawhile (talk) 21:16, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

Please copy to AE
Please could someone copy this to the AE. Onceinawhile (talk) 13:12, 18 March 2022 (UTC)


 * I have been trying hard to understand ’s advice. Some key snippets which I think I now understand are: WP:NOTTHEM and bludgeoning problems [in discussions with admins]… adoption of novel ideas that concern warnings, sanctions… just a bit [of]… self-restraint [in discussions with admins].
 * I simply did not understand that this was prohibited and sanctionable behavior. I was wrong. In both interactions with El C, a year ago and now, I let my desperation to retain my dozen years of clean sanctions record get the better of me. Because of this mistake I am now risking losing access to the area which I have poured my heart and soul into over 12 years - this is my fault and noone else’s.
 * Please could my AE statement of 15 March be struck, all except for the second paragraph (starting “My mistake was…”) and the last eleven words of the final sentence (starting “I made a mistake”).
 * Onceinawhile (talk) 13:12, 18 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Hi, you can't edit at AE, is that it? I didn't realize that.
 * So you want this copied over as a statement from you and then you want the strike instruction executed, is that right?
 * Selfstudier (talk) 13:39, 18 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes that is right. Yes please. Onceinawhile (talk) 13:40, 18 March 2022 (UTC)
 * The advice is probably pointless since almost uniquely, with a nigh unblotted record for 12 years of collaborative work, construction from go to woe of FA and innumerable DYK articles, it is deemed unconscionable that you evoked in glancing fashion a six year old memory that pained you at the time, you are to be booted off wiki as an impediment to the 'project'. The only meaning of the word 'project' there is (a) Never query an admin's judgment, (b) shut up and comply, no matter how petty the point may be. People who make those decisions are programmatically under no obligation to know the record, or judge content: one complaint, if technically readable as a violation of a rule, though nugatory in terms of the functionality of wikipedia, can get you executed. The few of us who have watched your work, appreciated its superlative quality, and your discursive amenity even with the numerous sockpuppets and idlers who have campaigned to punish you for working in this topic area, can't be witnesses for the defense, because any remarks made in your favour will be automatically dismissed as support from the 'cabal', rather than a disconcerted protest at the way carelessness in contextual judgment and failure to grasp how rare it is to find erudite contributors here, have trumped all sense of decency and proportion. I can hear more than a few champagne corks popping off-line. This is neither your fault, nor that of the admins. It is just one more reminder that wikipedia forums can be amazingly brilliant and utterly stupid in an algorithmically random fashion, much as the world is, though the tendency over time is for the bad to throw out the good per the law of entropy. Best wishes, dear fellow. Nishidani (talk) 14:01, 18 March 2022 (UTC)


 * I do not think Nishidani is helping you as much as s/he thinks they are. You can always question an admin's judgement, but how you do it matters.  I think it helps if you understand how admin think.  I can only speak for me, but I've been an admin for 10 years.  1.  We don't care about the topic you edit it.  I only act as admin for topics I don't edit, say India, Israel, or The Troubles.  I don't have a preference in the content, I just want people to edit it well, and in a neutral way.  That's why I can admin in those areas.  What I DO care about is solutions.  Not punishment, no retribution, not humiliating, just SOLUTIONS.  If someone is making editing in an area difficult, then the solution is to block them for a bit, so they have a reason to "play nice with others".  If that doesn't work, you topic ban them.  If that doesn't work, you indef block them.  It has nothing to do with content, it is all about behavior.  We admin have so much to keep up with, so many things to do....plus, we want to edit articles as well, so we don't have infinite time or patience.  We just want solutions that make problems go away.  It isn't personal (we don't know you, it can't be personal).  If you want to question me about something I did, ask as you would a neighbor or friend, and you will get a polite answer.  Admins are humans, no different than you.  Some are nicer than others, but most are mainly looking for solutions to problem, so that people that do not cause problems can edit without difficulty. Dennis Brown - 2&cent; 18:56, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Dear Dennis. Whenever my views on admins are expressed, I've said for over a decade the same thing. It is a nigh impossible job for overtasked people, and, being thankless, with a lower level of intrinsic pleasure, particularly if one has to wade through screeds by myself. Therefore, I've always said, even if you are convinced their judgment is skewed, shut up, take it on the chin, and sit out your time in porridge. That's what I did, and, when the error, if it is such, was noted by other editors, an appeal was made on my behalf, and the sanction often reversed. That is my advice here.
 * My words above were focused neither on yourself nor El_C, but rather on the lesson I drew from memories of the intricate history of Once's interactions with other editors, and whoever takes him to task over rules. I admit I know nothing about wiki's rulebook. I do presume I can detect genuine erudition and either amenity or enmity in conversations. Amenity in the I/P area is rare, I certainly have had historic failings there, but Once is not a problematical collaborator in that regard. He errs by an excess of perfectionist driving for consensus on, often, minutiae, and that is a style that irritates many, but not someone familiar with the way classical scholars fling their respective philological punctilio at each other, to the long term benefit of our understanding of antiquity.
 * How admins think is not uniform, as you suggest, but varies, as one would expect. The same goes for judges in courts of law in the real world. I don't know your style through unfamiliarity - since I don't haunt arbitration forums. Admins whose style I am familiar with span a vary broad range, from the ultra-legalistic precisian to the   between-the-lines-contextual readers of conflicts arising between editors. All my advice to Once consists in was that he recognize (a) that the peculiar web of linguistic cautions built up over time in his regard, whose drift he has failed to grasp, means that replying means he runs ineludibly  a high risk of digging an even deeper hole for himself by inadvertent use of words that might sound to others self-justifying, and (b) therefore, as the servant on the roof the Aeschylus' Agamemnon states in deciding to keep his mouth shut, βοῦς ἐπὶ γλώσσῃ μέγας βέβηκεν: (a lumbering ox stands (hereonin) on my tongue', Greek idiom for 'I'll hold my tongue'). As it is, his grindingly Socratic elenchus style can easily look to admins like the exchange between Socrates, badgering Callicles into a corner,  and driving him into a huff of silence. He should be like Callicles, and just walk away  from the semantic drama. Well, apologies for another tirade. Back to battling with a garden suffering from the dustbowl effect of a winter drought, and promising no pliancy before an urgent hoe wielded by a sodbuster who dreams of tomnatoes ripening there. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 14:47, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Another request to copy to the AE
Please could the below be copied to the AE discussion. Many thanks. Onceinawhile (talk) 00:28, 19 March 2022 (UTC)


 * thanks for your latest comment. El C’s “WP:NOTTHEM and bludgeoning problems”, which form the core of all three paragraphs of his initial statement here, relate exclusively to the discussions I have had with him in his capacity as admin. El C’s most recent paragraph starting “The fact is that…” makes the same point again - I made a big mistake by distracting from my apology for the three words, and not realizing that such distraction itself is sanctionable. By appealing the block for the three words, I have given the impression that my apology and acknowledgement is being qualified. Presumably this exact mistake of mine is the basis for your comment that l seem to lack the overall understanding of what kind of behavior is acceptable and not acceptable - by appealing, I have made it harder for people to see my understanding of the mistake I made. My fault.
 * I do not want to keep making the same mistake. So I believe I should not provide the evidence to address your “overall understanding” point, or to address your suggestion of ongoing disruption of editors wanting to edit peacefully - if I do so, I will be continuing to make the same sanctionable mistake of qualifying my apology. I have manoeuvred myself in to a Catch-22, and I have to accept the consequences. Onceinawhile (talk) 00:28, 19 March 2022 (UTC)
 * I just wiped out, thanks to this cranky computer, an extensive comment on the linguistic catch-22 logic that has cemented itself around you due to the hallucinating WP:NOTTHEM protocols being relentlessly tightened round your tongue these last years. No doubt readers of this page will be relieved at not having to sigh TLDR. Whatever, I don't think you need to say more. Your liberty to speak, rather than directly edit on page, is so effectively muzzled that virtually anything other than rituals of self-humiliation is denied you. I presume the problem is a high sense of honour which, when infringed, rallies to defend its integrity. Well, one can never convince others of things like that when the language of discursive interaction is too contaminated by prior misperceptions to allow comprehension, per qui s'excuse, s'accuse. Most of what is achieved towards civilization is driven by narcissistic cathexes that are, paradoxically for the colloquial world, positive (as opposed to the pathological self-regarding narcissism of common usage). Virtue, the striving for flawless perfection, etc. See C. Fred Alfoldi's great book on the topic (1988: Narcissism:Socrates, the Frankfurt School and Psychoanalytic Theory). Those who grasp this shouldn't allow themselves to be swept up in self-defensive justifications of what they do -especially when one's interlocutors are not interested - but simply quietly turn the other cheek, and focus only on, in this case, the construction of content which will speak for itself by its unchallenged excellence. From now on in, be less amenable to replying - let whoever henpecks away at you waste their time - and, if allowed back, plug away at what you do best, writing superb articles. Best wishes.Nishidani (talk) 08:50, 19 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Hi Once, just checking, you pinged Dennis and he appears to have taken this into account, do you still wish it copied to AE? Selfstudier (talk) 10:28, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

Kuntillet Ajrud inscriptions
Just found this. Interesting, but did you know you copied some of my text into it? I doubt it, but didn't you know that when you copy from another article it's a legal requirement to mention it in the edit summary? And I don't see a source for the last sentence. Doug Weller talk 08:35, 29 March 2022 (UTC)
 * thanks for pointing this out – I would normally have put it in the edit summary but must have overlooked it as there is no edit summary box on article creation. I have now added the CWW attribution. Onceinawhile (talk) 08:57, 29 March 2022 (UTC)
 * No problem. I was amused to see some of it was mine. I user the Chrome extension Who Wrote That. Doug Weller  talk 09:48, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

Byblos syllabary photograph
On the article page for Byblos syllabary, you posted a color picture of one of the objects. I had not previously seen a color photograph of these. I was wondering where you were able to get this and if there are other color photographs of this and the other objects somewhere? Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 18ainrete (talk • contribs) 19:05, 30 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Hi I took that photo myself in the museum where it is on display (the National Museum of Beirut). Unfortunately I do not know of any other photographs of the other examples - I think most of the rest are in the archives at the National Museum of Beirut. Onceinawhile (talk) 21:14, 30 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much. I did not know they had any of these on display there now. They all used to be held in the American University of Beirut Library. 18ainrete (talk) 20:24, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Historical map
Hello, on the map File:Palestine Land ownership by sub-district (1945).jpg, the French description do not reflect the English historical translation. Indeed the French annotation reads "Réparation de la propriété agraire" which can be translated as "Distribution of the agrarian property", which relate to the cultivated land as of 1945 and do not describe ownership over all territories.

The white area is public land but also leased land, and foreign ownership was very common, evaluated as around 8%. I think there should be an extensive description of those "non-Jewish areas", in fact not mentioning it is misleading, as a significative pourcentage of land ownership is omitted. --Vanlister (talk) 11:01, 25 April 2022 (UTC)


 * 1945 Palestine Mandate Village Statistics summary page.jpg
 * you can see the full land breakdown here. Onceinawhile (talk) 11:08, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
 * , this is an historical statistic with no description, this is not the full land ownership breakdown, it is a primary source about "village statistics".--Vanlister (talk) 11:19, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
 * It is the underlying data source of the image you referenced at the top of this thread. It means you can see through the possible discrepancy you raised and get a clear picture of your underlying question. Onceinawhile (talk) 11:23, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
 * There is no question, what is your point? You took a primary source and made a false assumption, what are you talking about?--Vanlister (talk) 11:29, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
 * In your post you mentioned: …which relate to the cultivated land as of 1945 and do not describe ownership over all territories… The white area is public land but also leased land, and foreign ownership was very common. The data I provided allows you to see the entire picture – it is the full dataset, which I thought it what you were hoping to see. Onceinawhile (talk) 15:13, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Avoid the perception of Canvassing
Just an FYI that selectively notifying participants, while in the middle of a discussion, and particularly when the “ideological factions” are so well known could be perceived as Canvassing. To be clear, I actually don’t have any objection to your or the previous editor’s contributions in these instances, but notifying specific users is something I have always avoided for the reasons below : canvassing—leaving messages on a biased choice of users' talk pages to notify them of an ongoing community decision, debate, or vote. While friendly notices are allowed, they should be limited and nonpartisan in distribution and should reflect a neutral point of view. Please do not post notices which are indiscriminately cross-posted, which espouse a certain point of view or side of a debate, or which are selectively sent only to those who are believed to hold the same opinion as you. Remember to respect Wikipedia's principle of consensus-building by allowing decisions to reflect the prevailing opinion among the community at large. Thank you. Drsmoo (talk) 11:14, 25 April 2022 (UTC)


 * are you referring to this comment? Onceinawhile (talk) 11:20, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

I’m referring to pinging specific uninvolved users in the middle of a discussion. Please see above for more clarification Drsmoo (talk) 11:29, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
 * I was already watching and had even edited the article earlier on the same day. Zerotalk 12:38, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Drsmoo first raised this issue at ElC talk page and I said there that I thought it was something of a reach. ElC declined to comment. Selfstudier (talk) 13:33, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks for letting me know. Onceinawhile (talk) 15:38, 25 April 2022 (UTC)