User talk:Pgallert/Archive2020 1

Precious anniversary
--Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:50, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

Re: Sperrgebiet
I am sorry for my errors at Sperrgebiet/Tsau ǁKhaeb National Park. Thank you very much for fixing them, and for teaching me something new about editing here. All smiles! 76.119.40.77 (talk) 12:45, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi Anonymous! Nobody needs to be sorry for a small mistake. Please continue your good work! --Pgallert (talk) 16:06, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

DYK nom?
Hi, Pgallert. Long time no see! Would you kindly nom Kitty Loftus? I think it's already a pretty nice article. A hook could be: Source: "Miss Kitty Loftus", The Sketch, 17 January 1894, p. 616
 * … that musical theatre actress Kitty Loftus was praised as "a tricky sprite and a fantastic elf"?
 * It was created by user:Jack1956, user:Dreamspy and user:Ssilvers

Thanks in advance. Please let me know if you can't do it. I hope you are staying safe and well! -- Ssilvers (talk) 04:06, 20 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi Ssilvers! Long time. I should have some more time than usual ;) so no problem. Cheers, Pgallert (talk) 06:46, 20 April 2020 (UTC)


 * Yay! Thank you very much!  Please let me know when you have it up. -- Ssilvers (talk) 07:03, 20 April 2020 (UTC)
 * ✅ Template:Did you know nominations/Kitty Loftus Still need to review something, though. Pgallert (talk) 15:09, 20 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks so much! I'm watching the nomination page now, so I'll respond to any comments. -- Ssilvers (talk) 04:21, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

DYK for Kitty Loftus
— Maile (talk) 00:04, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

DYK for Andrew Niikondo
&mdash; Amakuru (talk) 12:02, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

About that chapter
You two wrote: "Oral information transmission is not regarded as a way of publishing by Wikipedia, as its knowers are often believed to be too close to their narrative's subjects to follow a neutral point of view. In addition, passing on songs and stories is not seen as a reliable way of preserving knowledge."

I'm sure these are concerns, but doesn't that miss the main point? The main problem isn't that the sources are WP:BIASED (which is permissible) or that some oral stories change over time (the current version can still be reported as being the current version of the story), but that nobody else can actually verify whether the cited source said that.

If the source is "I saw Karp in the elevator, and he said...", then how can you determine whether Karp ever said what I claim he said? I don't think that it's possible for unrecorded information to fulfill the opening sentence of WP:V ("In the English Wikipedia, verifiability means other people using the encyclopedia can check that the information comes from a reliable source"). Even if we stipulate that Karp is a reliable source for this type of content, nobody can verify that I'm not lying about (or confused about) what Karp said.

WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:51, 31 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Hi WhatamIdoing! Great that you are interested in this topic! The thing is that of course not everything an indigenous person says, is indigenous knowledge (IK). The fact that "Karp said..." is not IK. The content of what Karp said might, or might not, be IK. And if it is IK (something like "You can make a strong rope from the bark of the Mopane Tree") then it is verifiable, because it would be the shared knowledge of the community. You could ask anyone else, and they would confirm.
 * Verifiability indeed is a big issue, but in a different way. Not sure if you have seen File:Indigenous Knowledge for Wikipedia - Bending the Rules?.pdf, particularly slide 17. Verifying IK is hard. But it isn't impossible—we have done it numerous times—and it is no harder than for an indigenous person to verify Western knowledge. Cheers! Pgallert (talk) 06:11, 1 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Slide 17 begins "Might have misunderstood the context, the meaning, then intended message, or a combination of these". That doesn't seem to be about how you can determine whether I've accurately reported the uses of Mopane bark.
 * Is there a reasonably clear line between folk knowledge and indigenous knowledge? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:45, 1 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi WhatamIdoing! Sorry, I was referring to my own pagination, bottom right. If you go to Commons and select "go to slide" then it is slide 48. Cheers, Pgallert (talk) 06:03, 2 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks. That slide seems much more relevant.  I don't think it's a fair comparison.  To verify a fact from a library-based source, a typical approach looks like:
 * Learn the relevant language (alternatively, find someone who can interpret for you).
 * Contact the library's reference desk and ask for help.
 * Wait for the library to send you the source.
 * I'm assuming here that the cited source hasn't been digitized, so it can't be accessed without someone touching the physical book, but it doesn't necessarily follow that the person must be sent to the book, rather than the book being sent to the person. I don't know if you've tried it before, but I've had pretty good success in getting reference librarians to verify the contents of sources for me by asking them to scan a relevant page or two for me.  Reading the whole book requires interlibrary loan or buying the book.
 * Your slide seems to be presenting indigenous communities as isolated groups with little or no formal education, internet access, libraries, telephones, and maybe even no postal service (since your hypothetical editor is traveling to the library instead of trying to get the book by mail). The indigenous people of my own acquaintance all live in a developed country with free public schools and a decent library system.  I don't think they find it any harder to get a book from the library than I do. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:31, 2 September 2020 (UTC)
 * In the communities we work with it is definitely harder. No electricity, no network coverage, no car and no public transport. Next post office 200km away. Also normally no identification document of any sort. And even if they enter a library somewhere, their traditional attire might scare the librarian so that they don't get the book (which would have to be read out to them in any case, even if it was written in their native language). That's why 'get the trust of the non-indigenous community' is part of the story. Some of our traditional leaders are now, after years, fully accepted in the non-indigenous environment, but that is in a country where such tradition is widely recognised. --Pgallert (talk) 07:07, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
 * In which case the comparison is irrelevant, because they're not going to be reading Wikipedia, and therefore will not want to attempt to verify anything in it.
 * Which brings us back to the practical point: How do you determine whether to trust me, in my role as a Wikipedia editor, if I post in an article that  has ?  How could you decide whether my knowledge is genuine or a hoax? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:52, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
 * They could have an offline Wikipedia on a Raspberry Pi, hooked to the solar panels of their local school, providing a local WiFi to their feature phones. And they could have software reading out the content. That's pretty close to the stuff we're doing.
 * How do you trust me on references to some dusty book that you cannot get on inter-library loan, or on some quote behind a paywall? There are some possibilities. You could ask someone who owns the book / paid the subscription. You could consider my block log or my talk page entries. With oral citations, you could ask a Wikipedian from, or a researcher in, that community. Verification must be possible in principle, not comfortable in practice. --Pgallert (talk) 05:59, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Given your definition of indigenous knowledge, it sounds like you're aiming for a step one broader You don't need to cite that the sky is blue status: the only indigenous knowledge that would be acceptable is something that everyone in a given culture knows.  The rule would actually sound more like "You don't need to cite that it's not okay for guests to dress like the bride at a Western wedding", because everybody from that culture knows that, so any Western editor could just tell another editor that everyone knows that's how it works.  Does that sound like a fair analogy? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:04, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Hmm, no. I think the bigger picture is that in societies without a writing culture, knowledge is simply stored in other things but books. Think of Homer's Iliad that was for centuries regarded as an encyclopaedia, additional to its function as poetry, or the Benin Bronzes that tell the history of the rulers of Benin, instead of just being decorative. There are modern-day equivalents to that, and for the sum of all human knowledge I want to be able to cite all relevant repositories. --Pgallert (talk) 07:05, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
 * It's not enough for everyone in the culture to know something, and for anyone in that culture to be able to tell you the fact?
 * This sounds like it might result in a double standard: What "everyone knows" can be orally transmitted for some people, but what "everyone knows" must be in writing for others. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:11, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
 * The more the pity this is only on a talk page of an editor, it has the smell of something that has ramifications well beyond what the two editors are discussing. Having done fieldwork in a predominately oral culture where the written material was in the hands of the powerful... I do hope this conversation can be considered as a very serious issue well beyond just these two editors, as it has ramifications across a whole range of policies, assumptions and issues that have played out on wikipedia for over ten years now. It really is almost a project in itself - but, that's another thing another day... JarrahTree 03:22, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi JarrahTree! Rest assured that I will continue nagging about this on various platforms. Little strokes fell big oaks, you know. The last broader discussion, though, was so hostile to the idea that I thought the time is not ready yet. I also noticed that the theoretical foundation of what I want to argue, different epistemologies, different life aspirations, is not well developed yet. That's what I'm currently working on. Cheers, Pgallert (talk) 06:56, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi WhatamIdoing! It is not everyone who knows these things, just the 'subject specialists': the fortune teller, the healer, and generally older people. In fact, due to urbanisation the group of knowers shrinks rapidly. Wikipedia would become better and more complete if this knowledge was included—not as a favour or recognition of indigenous knowledge but as a documentation what humans know, which is what we're here for. In principal I see no difference between  and , it references a knowledge repository. Cheers, Pgallert (talk) 06:56, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't think you'd want to cite an individual elder. We remove books (and, if necessary, whatever content they supported) when the book ceases to exist.  If we did a   style, then we'd have to delete that when the elder in question died.
 * JarrahTree, I'm over here because (a) he knows what I want to know, and (b) if I (and others) can ask some of the questions now, and make some of the obvious mistakes, then maybe, someday, the community here might get to look at a functional proposal. I'm still a very long way away from being able to create a functional proposal myself, and I share Peter's concerns about timing and prerequisites, but there might be a future somewhere. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:53, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I had the good fortune to interact with peter at at least 2x wikimanias (maybe it was 3); I also have a pervading interest in epistemologies other than the conventional overriding accepted western paradign due to post grad fieldwork; its very very complicated why I am interested in the discussion above. JarrahTree 00:58, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

Excellent, JarrahTree. That means that I've found two people who know much much much more than I do.

Are you using the same definition of Indigenous Knowledge that Peter is, or are there complexities that I should know about? (His definition seems to be IK = information a group acquires by living in the same place for centuries.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:57, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

I think the major hurdle is in the term publication. The knowledge itself is communal. "Publishing it" can in an oral context only mean that something is narrated again, or performed again, or again manifested in an artefact. If nobody records the narration / performance then it is not in a 'tangible format'. However, if the knowledge is still in the community then it could be published again, an on request, it would. That's just the function of the elders: To disseminate this knowledge, also to trusted outsiders. So if my current hypotheses are correct, this would indeed be the only way to verify traditional knowledge: Go to the community and ask an elder (any elder) if it is correct. Because, if we reference a book about that community or a recording of a performance we cannot say if that item is still correct. But well, how to adapt that for Wikipedia is still a big question. Per our mission, we should: It is all human knowledge we aim for. If today's Wikipedia is not suited for that then it should be changed. --Pgallert (talk) 11:45, 9 September 2020 (UTC)


 * It might be more functional to use an intermediary: indigenous community → fixed record → Wikipedia.
 * Can you give me an example of using an artefact as a source?
 * (Too many threads. I also want to talk to you about the problem of reputation.  I don't want a system in which a new Wikipedian from an Indigenous community can't add information, but if that person tells the information to me, I can add it.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:47, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Oh dear this has a sense it has been gone through elsewhere before. There have been discussions (probably not easy to find) in the last fifteen years about the problems of indigenous knowledge and functional positions within an encyclopedia such as this one... also the problems of oral history in any context.  There is also a vast literature in anthropology and also cultural studies about orality and verfifiability of the information.  Peter I have sent an email, please check or reply !  Sorry to bother you both, I think I am at bit of a tangent to your exploration of ideas. JarrahTree 01:57, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi JarrahTree, I answered your mail some days ago. Maybe your account is linked to some older email? --Pgallert (talk) 05:54, 10 September 2020 (UTC)


 * could you please send again to (  ) - sorry to bother... it would be really great to know what item is being referred to as well if at all possible, chapter ? JarrahTree 09:02, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
 * ✅ The "chapter" is not available online. For educational purposes :) I can scan and mail it. A pre-release, different title but pretty much the same content, is here: commons:File:Indigenous_Knowledge_for_Wikipedia.pdf. --Pgallert (talk) 15:53, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
 * There are a few problems with intermediaries. The main issue is that much of the context is lost—too much to still interpret it correctly. Then there's the problem of transcription and notation: There is an "alphabet" for dance moves and a notation for music, but currently none for drumming, and no way to transcribe gestures. But that brings me back to the original point: Why would the copy be more valuable than the original? What is in your digital camera that suddenly gives reputation to a song?


 * Regarding artefacts, think for instance Talking knots: If they are what we think they are then they would be a source for the financial state of ancient businesses and individuals. Cheers, --Pgallert (talk) 05:54, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Category:1999 disestablishments in Namibia


A tag has been placed on Category:1999 disestablishments in Namibia requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the category has been empty for seven days or more and is not a disambiguation category, a category redirect, a featured topics category, under discussion at Categories for discussion, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Liz Read! Talk! 00:06, 3 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Liz, could you double-check this? It looks like this cat was created four days ago, which means that it can't possibly have been empty for seven days yet. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:50, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I created the cat for John Meinert Printing, somewhat misreading one source saying "sold 1999". Now it rather seems that the name rights were sold and the company was dissolved earlier. Sorry for the extra work. --Pgallert (talk) 06:51, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

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Be more careful next time
Following this, I thought by now you ought to know the first x to accomplish y isn’t indicative of notability, also being featured on a Forbes list isn’t also an indication of notability & finally, I believe the conflict of interest in that article is rather glaring for any editor with experience in anti spam/upe related activity, It’s literally the first thing you see when you open the page. So next time be more careful when removing tags from an article. Ensure you fundamentally understand something before taking action. Celestina007 (talk) 13:04, 3 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Celestina007, your patronising tone is not appreciated. The sources of the article are somewhat fluffy, and an editor not yet experienced writing in an encyclopaedic voice produced a somewhat fluffy article from these. That's not the end of the world, not a reason to conduct a one-person AfD on it, and not a reason to start an edit war over a template. If anything, it will alienate a somewhat problematic but new editor. --Pgallert (talk) 08:51, 4 October 2020 (UTC)
 * It isn’t my intention to sound in a manner you do not appreciate so please let’s get that out of the way.
 * First, the article meets one or more criteria outlined in WP:DRAFTIFY hence I moved it to draftspace not as a “one person AFD” but as a matter of necessity. The second and weightier reason being an editor with a COI should in the first instance use the WP:AFC process to submit their articles so in summary any which way you see my actions thus far, they have been in accordance with policy.
 * Out of sheer curiosity i have to ask though, can you really not see the glaring COI in that article or do you deliberately not want to see it? Celestina007 (talk) 09:28, 4 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Well, maybe I'm not my brightest today. The COI I do not see. He has uploaded a picture under copyright, claiming it to be his own work. If it was indeed his then it would be a red flag having a one year old staged pic available. But it is from New Era and should probably go.
 * I can make a number of guesses based on contributions, none of which I am at liberty to discuss here due to policy, but I see no employment by Munana and don't think they are that person. The unreferenced information in the article comes from social media, anyone could dig that up. Again, I don't think the article is among Wikipedia's best work but I would simply blame that on inexperience, not ToU violation. --Pgallert (talk) 20:14, 4 October 2020 (UTC)
 * BTW, as I clearly have raised an objection you are required to move the article back to main space, per WP:DRAFTIFY. Maybe you didn't notice that? --Pgallert (talk) 20:41, 4 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Peter, I think you could move it back yourself, if you wanted to. It looks like Jessamyn has added a number of citations to the page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:57, 19 November 2020 (UTC)