User talk:Pseudo-Richard/Talk Page Archive 2001-2

Articles for CSD
Hello Pseudo-Richard, I have nominated both Role of Jews in the development of capitalism‎ and Jews and banking‎ for speedy deletion under the A10 clause(the article already exists), as you have basically copy and pasted the Economic history of the Jews‎ and made it two separate articles. As you have already copy and pasted the article into your userspace, there is no reason to make two other articles with basically the same wording and references as the article currently up for deletion. Please see deletion guidelines, which state:AfD participants should not circumvent consensus by merging or copying material to another article unilaterally, before the debate closes. Such action may cause contention, extra process steps, and additional admin work if undoing any copying is necessary. Preservation is often worthwhile but copying causes an attribution dependency between articles that may require retaining some article history that would otherwise be deleted. If you see a debate leaning toward Delete rather than Merge, offer a specific proposal, negotiate with the other participants, and wait for the discussion to be closed. Even if the debate ends with Delete, you can ask the closing admin how to save material that might be used elsewhere, and the admin can advise on any further review steps that might be needed to justify that reuse. I believe you are acting in good faith, but this is a run-around that is against guidelines and is only causing further contention. Thanks. Dave Dial (talk) 00:23, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Economic history of the Jews
Sorry, i was not planning a rewrite. I have no experise on the economic history of the Jews and my own rule for editing WP articles is: I only write articles on topics I already have established expertise on, and I only contribute to articles when i have friends or colleagues who are experts and can direct me to the leading scholarship on the topic, so I have what I consiuder a minimum amount of expertise on the topic.

For what it is worth, insofar as i know anything about Jewish history, I think almost all of his sources were crap. If you are nt an economic historian, and don't mind some advice, I woud stick to books published in the past ten or fifteen years by major university presses (e.g. California, Princeton, Oxford ... Berghan is not a university press but is highly respected, ditto Routledge).

Noleander DID cite three good economic historians - Reuveni, Mosse, and Muller - but did not actuallyuse them in the article. Penslar and Neusner are also very good sources.

But, if you ar seriously considering a rewrite, I would URGE you not to writ one article on the whole economic historiy og the Jews. I think serious encyclopedic coverage would require four articles: Each of these articles would be notable, could be based on serious sources, and would be coherent and encyclopedic. But it is critical, in my mind, to start with reliable notabl sources. Slrubenstein  |  Talk 13:23, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
 * first, during the Rabbinic period - Neusner is a good osurce, but dated; there has been much more recent work done that superseeds him. This article owuld have to make clear tha the Talmus was not a historical account of how its authors and readers actually lived, about rather a kind of utopian world that an elite imagined, based on their interpretation of a much older text
 * second, an article on Jewish life in the medieval Muslim world.
 * third, an article on Jewish live in the medieval Christian world. (the laws and conditions of life in the Muslim and Christian workds were so different one article coud not weave them together)
 * finaly, an article on the modern world starting with the emancipation.

Also, concerning the role of Jews n the forming of capitalis, I guess you and i just have opposing approaches to editing. I do not believe in picking topics and then writing articles about them. I do not think as an editor I am the right person to pick a topic. What I do is look for topics that interest me in books or articls published by leading cntemporary scholars. Surely you know many books or article refer to tangential topics. But if I discover that there are several leading scholars writing on the same topic, then I conclude tha this is an encyclkopedic toipic and as long as I am enjoying reading the academic works, then I consier creating a new Wikipedia article. Now, I happen to have read a good deal on theounding of capitalistm - the debates between Frank, Wallerstein, and the two edited collections of articles that were published in Monthly Review (includng an important article by Sweezey) and then a number of articles critical of them, especialy Robert Brenner's famous article, and Weber of course - I think these are geneally considered to be the most significant views on the origins o capitalism, wouldn't you agree? If I had time, I would write an article based on these important sources, because I know they are the most notable. Now, if they bring up Jews, I would bring up lJews. My recollection is that they don't, but maybe I misremember.

I know one thing I would never do: start by looking for anyone who mentions Jews and the beginnings of capitalism. That is cherry-picking. Start by finding the best books and articles on the origins of cspitalism, by the best scholars, and repreent them accurately. I cannot think of a better way to write a good encyclopedia. Slrubenstein  |  Talk 13:42, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

New article
Hi, comments are here: User talk:Pseudo-Richard/Economic history of Christianity, overall interesting topic, and I knew very little about it as of yesterday, so it was fun to read. As I said there the Calvin/Capitalism angle is very interesting, but would need development, as does Francis probably. Overall, pretty interesting. Cheers. History2007 (talk) 08:34, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

redirec
Hi, i just created this article, Sectarian violence among Muslims. The beginning of the title is identical to the one you made about christianity. But my article doesn't have any redirects yet. Did you make any redirects for your article? Pass a Method  talk  14:53, 23 April 2011 (UTC)


 * No... not that I can remember. I will take a look at your article.  Thanks for letting me know about it. --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 17:02, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Nice page!

 * Ditto! Congratulations! Student7 (talk) 13:42, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Reliable source?
You might find this interesting. Esoglou (talk) 18:58, 19 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Interesting... however, the caustic review of Carlton doesn't call his remarks about Palamism into question. The review suggests that Carlton is not as orthodox as he could be.  Carlton's criticism of the term "Palamism" are not likely to be objectionable to the reviewer. --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 19:04, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Interpretations of rules may be more severe or more benign, in line with who is being judged. See the concluding judgement here.  Esoglou (talk) 15:30, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Copyright problems with Port Jew
Hello. Concerning your contribution, Port Jew, please note that Wikipedia cannot accept copyrighted text or images obtained from other web sites or printed material, without the permission of the author(s). This article or image appears to be a direct copy from http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5002650793. As a copyright violation, Port Jew appears to qualify for deletion under the speedy deletion criteria. Port Jew has been tagged for deletion, and may have been deleted by the time you see this message. If you believe that the article or image is not a copyright violation, or if you have permission from the copyright holder to release the content freely under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License (CC-BY-SA) then you should do one of the following:


 * If you have permission from the author, leave a message explaining the details at Talk:Port Jew and send an email with the message to . See Requesting copyright permission for instructions.
 * If a note on the original website states that it is licensed under the CC-BY-SA license, leave a note at Talk:Port Jew with a link to where we can find that note.
 * If you hold the copyright to the material: send an e-mail from an address associated with the original publication to or a postal message to the Wikimedia Foundation permitting re-use under the CC-BY-SA and GFDL, and note that you have done so on Talk:Port Jew.

However, for textual content, you may simply consider rewriting the content in your own words. While contributions are appreciated, Wikipedia must require all contributors to understand and comply with its copyright policy. Wikipedia takes copyright concerns very seriously, and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. Thank you. Singularity42 (talk) 23:51, 23 May 2011 (UTC)


 * NOTE: These copyright problems have been addressed and the speedy deletion tag has been removed by Singularity42. --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 16:06, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Energies of the Spirit
I now have that theology book that you were interested in. I share your interest in the topic, so I'll start reading it at my leisure. But was there any particular information that you were looking to get out of it? --Phatius McBluff (talk) 15:19, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Removal of categories from user page
Hello. This is a note to inform you that I've removed the categories from your user page, User:Pseudo-Richard/Allegations of Jewish control of the media. Including theses categories appears to unintentionally violate the decision to delete the article in Articles for deletion/Allegations of Jewish control of the media. Let me know if this is a problem. Viriditas (talk) 11:07, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Chronological talk archive
Template:Chronological talk archive has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) - talk 14:33, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Paul Cuffee
Pseudo-Richard - I've created a first draft just to get us started. Let's try gathering references. I'm going to put commented references that I found to be reviewed later. Link is User:Pseudo-Richard/Paul_Cuffee_(missionary).--v/r - TP 14:42, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Economic history of the Jews


Pseudo-Richard, by starting from Noleander's deeply flawed article, you are disrupting wikipedia to make a point. If you had attempted to write an article from scratch with the above title, that would have been fine. Instead you have produced an article, or essay, riddled with the same kind of problems as before. I expect that there will be votes to delete this article and that you could be sanctioned yourself for deliberate disruption. Mathsci (talk) 08:01, 6 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Well, obviously we disagree. I have worked mightily to remove the flaws from Noleander's article to the point of either moving entire sections into separate articles or dropping them altogether.  I have carefully reworked every section in the article and researched the topic carefully (more carefully than Noleander did).  In the end, my article is really about a much narrower topic and actually a different one than Noleander's was.  His was about the purported link between Jews and money.  Mine is about antisemitism based on economic ground and using economic means.  I can see why his was deleted.  I don't believe mine suffers from the same flaws.  The topic of economic antisemitism is an important one.  See Antisemitism and History of antisemitism for a fuller exposition of the kinds of antisemitism. --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 08:10, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

Copying the above discussion to Talk:Economic antisemitism so that a wider audience may see it. --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 08:10, 6 July 2011 (UTC)
 * No! Pseudo-Richard you do not have not my permission to do so. I will remove any text you add written by me. Mathsci (talk) 08:12, 6 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Bah! Technically, you lost control of your text the moment you hit the "Save page" button. In theory, I don't need your permission to copy your comments anywhere I want.  However, it's not worth the heartburn.  If you don't want it on the article Talk Page, then I won't put it there. --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 08:17, 6 July 2011 (UTC)
 * (ec) This topic is about your conduct primarily so has no place on that article talk page. Continuing the general discussion here, the title you chose is irrelevant. An important point that came out in the AfD and in Arbitration/Requests/Case/Noleander was that it was perfectly possible to write a neutral and informative article with the title Economic history of the Jews. The point there was that in writing an encyclopedia that seems to be the main subject, much discussed in the literature, providing a context for other related articles. By not starting from scratch and using the same piecemeal essay style and topic headings, you seem to be attempting to rejig Noleander's essay. Am I right in thinking that you feel that Noleander was unjustly topic-banned by ArbCom? That is the impression you gave during the ArbCom case. Mathsci (talk) 08:29, 6 July 2011 (UTC)
 * It is true that I think Noleander was unjustly topic-banned by ArbCom but I qualify that statement with the observation that I have only a very narrow experience with his Judaism-related edits. I have seen only the Jews and money article and some of his edits related to Judaism and violence so I concede that others may have formed a different (and possibly more accurate) assessment of his alleged antisemitism.


 * The evidence offered by others regarding other topics such as "Jewish control of the media" is at least troubling and worthy of closer attention. I didn't bother trying to wrestle with those allegations.  My general feeling was that the evidence offered could be interpreted either way and I was inclined to interpret it charitably but I could see how it could be interpreted less charitably.


 * BTW, I have no great affection or loyalty for Noleander. I was extremely frustrated by his lack of collegiality at Christianity and violence.  My interest is not in rehabilitating Noleander, it is in salvaging whatever is worthwhile in his deleted article.


 * In my mind, I draw a distinction between Noleander's topic-ban and the deletion of his article Jews and money. I have a copy of Jews and money in my userspace and I periodically went back to it to look for salvageable topics and text.  I will say that I was surprised at how many times I reviewed the article text and said to myself "What the f...?  What the hell is that all about?"  There were deep flaws in Jews and money and I can see why so many editors wanted to delete it.


 * I'm not trying to salvage his article per se. I came to the conclusion some weeks ago that it was an unsalvageable disaster because it strung together too many ideas in a way that resulted in being an original synthesis and one that smacked of antisemitism to boot.


 * What I'm trying to do is salvage various subtopics from that article that are (1) encyclopedic (2) sourceable and (3) have not been given adequate treatment in Wikipedia. To this end, I have either created or made edits to History of investment banking in the United States, Jewish views of poverty, wealth and charity, Stereotypes of Jews, Stereotypes of Jews in literature, Port Jew.  I have recently made what I consider to be important edits to Antisemitism and History of antisemitism.  I am frankly astonished that there wasn't already text written about the forms of antisemitism and the historical development.


 * At the risk of being harsh, it seems that there are more people worried about what shouldn't be written about antisemitism than there are people interested in writing a good article about this topic. There's been too much crap about individual antisemitic incidents and not enough about the scholarly analysis and debate regarding the causes, motivations, and types of antisemitism.  We need more people willing to go to the scholarly sources and understand what the scholars think and debate about.  (OK, I should get off my soapbox now.)


 * I do kind of resent being accused of disruption. I feel it is a failure to assume good faith.  I certainly don't claim to be an expert on Judaism or antisemitism; however, I would like to point out that I created and made what I think are significant contributions to Antisemitism in the United States and History of antisemitism in the United States.  I think you'd have a hard time finding evidence to topic-ban me on the grounds of antisemitism.


 * I don't claim that the Economic antisemitism article is complete or perfect. There are certainly a few paragraphs that I have doubts about and a few topics that I would like to see more written about.  However, it is an important topic and the article covers material that was inadequately covered in Antisemitism if at all.
 * What I feel is that, as long as my draft remained in my userspace, it was getting very little attention. The most useful comments that I got were from Slrubenstein and a few criticisms from Orangemarlin which I have attempted to address.  I think it would be more valuable to get more eyes on the article and get editors to comment, criticize or even boldly edit the article.  That is the Wikipedia way, after all.


 * --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 08:57, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

Mathsci wrote: "By not starting from scratch and using the same piecemeal essay style and topic headings, you seem to be attempting to rejig Noleander's essay."

Pseudo-Richard responds: Well, "rejig Noleander's essay" suggests that what I wrote is also an "essay". I don't think my article is an essay; I think it is an encyclopedic article and I think this would be clear if you actually read the article closely without any pre-conceived notions that it is just a rejiggered version of Noleander's essay. I threw out almost everything that smacked of essay, synthesis or original research. Please compare User:Pseudo-Richard/Jews and money with Economic antisemitism. There are a few common section headings but the organization of the two articles is significantly different. The thrust of my article is different from the thrust of his article. My feeling is that the most charitable interpretation of Noleander's article is that it strung too many ideas together. A less charitable interpretation is that he slipped in a few antisemitic points amidst the anti-antisemitism narrative. I don't think my article suffers from these defects. At least, I hope it doesn't. --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 09:12, 6 July 2011 (UTC)
 * (ec)During the ArbCom case, which largely centred around Noleander's article, it was described as unsalvageable, if I remember correctly. Your objective as I see it has not been to write a properly encyclopedic article on the "Economic history of the Jews", where economic antisemitism has its proper context, but instead to prove to other editors on wikipedia that a wrong was done against Noleander. What he wrote, and you have added to and modified, is an arbitrary essay. The ArbCom case ended about two and a half months ago. Noleander has moved on. You have received warnings on this page for trying to engage with him on matters which come close to his topic ban. The rejigging of this article, starting from Noleander's original, is another indication that you have not moved on. The AfD did not suggest a rejigging of Noleander's article. It suggested a rewrite from scratch. You appear to have disregarded the consensus that emerged both during the AfD and the ArbCom case. That seems to be the problem here. I think I gave a rough approximation of how the first part of a new article might look on a subpage during the case with User:Mathsci/example2. Why didn't you do something like that yourself? It's still possible (it is not a topic that I myself would write about in main space) and that is in fact what I suggest if you are interested in the topic. What you have written is a pot-pourri essay, not an encyclopedia article. Mathsci (talk) 09:21, 6 July 2011 (UTC)
 * We continue to disagree on what the AFD consensus meant. I think the surest way to find out is to AFD my new article.  If enough people read my article with an open mind and still think that it should be deleted, then I'll just have to go back to the drawing board.  Based on my research, however, the topics covered in my article are discussed by scholars (not just Foxman, Penslar, Krefetz but others as well; these are cited in the footnotes to my article with URLs to the online versions of the sources).  I have left a note for Sandstein here alerting him of the issue.  If he thinks my article should be speedied, I'm sure he will say so.  If not, then an AFD discussion might be the best way to go.  It's late here and I'm way past my bedtime.  Do me a favor and do a Google Books search on "economic antisemitism".  Also, look at the recent edits to Antisemitism and History of antisemitism.  If that doesn't convince you that this topic is encyclopedic and that the topics in my article are supported by the sources then I guess nothing will.  Good night.  Talk to you tomorrow (or later today, whatever) --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 09:37, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

Re: User:Mathsci/example2, that is an outline for an article on Economic history of the Jews. It seems to be a good start and I have run across a few sources that provide information that would be useful for that article. However. that is absolutely NOT the topic of my article and there would be no value in my trying to use User:Mathsci/example2 as the basis for my article. IMO, Economic history of the Jews was just Noleander's attempt to find a less POV title for Jews and money and that fig leaf failed. My title "Economic antisemitism" uses a phrase that is used by scholars and mentioned as perhaps the most potent form of antisemitism (search for it in Google Books). Mathsci wrote " An important point that came out in the AfD and in Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Noleander was that it was perfectly possible to write a neutral and informative article with the title Economic history of the Jews. "

Pseudo-Richard responds: That may be true but I don't want to write an article about "Economic history of the Jews". I don't know enough about it and I'm not that interested in it. My interest is in antisemitism, not in economic history. I'm only interested in economic history to the extent that it is necessary to understand antisemitism. The title "Economic antisemitism" is exactly the scope of my article; not "Economic history of the Jews". --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 09:42, 6 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Pseudo-Richard asked me for an opinion. I have none about the merits of the new article Economic antisemitism as regards its content, but procedurally I think that is sufficiently distinct from the deleted article Economic history of the Jews so as to preclude speedy deletion under G4. If it is considered deficient, a new AfD would be needed. The charges of disruption leveled at Pseudo-Richard appear unwarranted to me; see WP:AGF.  Sandstein   09:57, 6 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Given Pseudo-Richard's last response—that he has no interest in ""Economic history of the Jews" but wants nevertheless to write about "Economic antisemitism"—Sandstein's previous analysis, written before Pseudo-Richard added a later response, seems incorrect here. I cannot see how Pseudo-Richard can claim expertise in one topic matter, which is largely historical and draws from exactly the same sources, but ignorance on or lack of interest in the other larger topic. That is quite an unreasonable position to take, since there is no reason to believe he has any expertise whatsoever in either topic. That is not how wikipedia is written. By modifying Noleander's essay and not writing the material from scratch, he is disrupting wikipedia to prove a WP:POINT. This article-rewriting has to be viewed in the context of Arbitration/Requests/Case/Noleander. Mathsci (talk) 10:15, 6 July 2011 (UTC)
 * If being an expert was a requirement to edit an article, Wikipedia would be Citizendium. Wikipedia is "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit" (provided the policies and guidelines are followed).  I contribute what I know and what I learn.  If what I write can be improved, I welcome the contributions of other editors in doing so.  Despite the assertions of some editors to the contrary, that is how Wikipedia is written.  It is the Wikipedia way.


 * That said, it is probably an overstatement to say that I have "no interest in the economic history of the Jews". I have spent some time reading about the economic history of so-called "Jewish selection of occupations" in order to wrestle with the topic of supposed Jewish over-representation in certain professions and occupations.  There is the concept of the "inverted occupational pyramid" which certainly touches on economic history.  There are claims by some scholars that the usury/moneylending narrative is a distortion of the actual occupation of most Jews at the time.  Many (maybe even most) scholars just assume that these assertions are true.  I have found a few who take issue with them.  I would certainly welcome help in presenting these topics in an NPOV and encyclopedic way.  I just don't see why I need to take on the work of writing an article about the larger topic of "Economic history of the Jews".  Wikipedia is a volunteer effort and I have already bitten off quite a huge chunk in improving antisemitism-related topics.  While I have a general interest in history, my focus is more in religious history (look at my contributions log) than in economic history per se.  For now, I will leave it to others to take up the task of writing the article Economic history of the Jews. --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 15:11, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

Slrubenstein's edit
This was originally a reply on your talk page, When you copied it to Talk:Economic antisemitism, you did not ask Slrubenstein's permission nor did you indicate either in the edit summary or on the talk page that it had been copied over. Please stop making edits of this kind. Similarly copy-pasting sections of one article to another is deprecated. Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 20:51, 6 July 2011 (UTC)


 * As stated before, I don't actually need anyone's permission to copy anything from Wikipedia. The warning "If you do not want your writing to be edited, used, and redistributed at will, then do not submit it here.", shows up when you edit any page in Wikipedia, not just the article pages.  That said, my usual practice is to put a comment  indicating the original source of Talk Page comments that I copy or move. I consider that common courtesy.   I may have failed to do so with Slrubenstein's comment. If so, it was an unintentional lapse.  I will fix it.  In the future, why not let the author of the text in question complain for himself?  As for copy-pasting from one article to another, would you show me which policy page indicates that doing so is discouraged or forbidden? --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 20:58, 6 July 2011 (UTC)
 * This seems like wikilawyering. You should have indicated in your edit summary, "copied from my talk page" or made a note above the entry when you added it (as you have now done). Mathsci (talk) 21:16, 6 July 2011 (UTC)


 * As I said, I usually try to do that. Sometimes I forget.  So sue me. --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 21:36, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

Sandstein stated in closing the first AfD, "The article is therefore deleted, but all editors are free to recreate it from scratch in a way that avoids the deficiencies identified in this discussion" (my emphasis). Your edits started with the existing article, here. That is not what Sandstein's closure recommended. Since you seem not be taking into account either Arbitration/Requests/Case/Noleander or the outcome of the previous AfD, perhaps the next step, rather than a second AfD on your later version of the same article, might be a request for clarification from ArbCom. Mathsci (talk) 21:16, 6 July 2011 (UTC)
 * If you insist... go ahead. I think an AFD would make more sense, though.  ARBCOM ruled on Noleander's topic-ban.  The ruling didn't say that all his contributions should be deleted.


 * The AFD deleted the article. If deleted article content is substantially restored with no credible argument that the new article has addressed the concerns that led to the first deletion then the new article should be speedied per G4.  Sandstein didn't see a reason to speedy it.  Attempting to speedy it now would amount to forum-shopping.  If Sandstein had responded more negatively, I would have asked to have the article moved back to my userspace to be worked on some more.  (I'm still not satisfied with it and am still working on improving it.)


 * If you believe there would be a consensus to delete my new article, then an AFD should accomplish that for you. I expect that some of those who voted to delete Noleander's article will not vote to delete mine because of the significant work I have put into writing an article that doesn't suffer from the flaws of his article.  Of course, my opinion of what the flaws were may be different from the opinions of other editors such as Orangemarlin.  However, my personal projection is that an AFD on my article will result in either a consensus to "Keep" or at least "no consensus to delete".  If you feel I'm wrong, I can't stop you from nominating the article for deletion.  Frankly, an AFD might do the article some good as it would get more eyes on the article and hopefully some useful feedback on how to improve it.


 * --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 21:36, 6 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Some kind of request for clarification or an amendment might be appropriate, but only time will tell. Mathsci (talk) 00:11, 8 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Well, of course, you are free to do whatever you feel is appropriate and necessary. However, on reflection, it seems to me that this is not really the kind of thing ARBCOM deals with.  ARBCOM rules on conduct, not on content.  It almost never rules on content except in rare instances.  What they were ruling on was the allegation that Noleander consistently slipped antisemitic text into his edits, distorting sources on at least one occasion.  He was topic-banned for that conduct.  As I've said, I didn't think Noleander was doing it deliberately but I was in the minority on that one.


 * ARBCOM did not rule on any specific text written by Noleander. If you had an allegation regarding his violating the topic ban or if you wanted to allege that my editing followed a similar pattern to his, that might be a legitimate request for a clarification.  I don't see what the grounds for your request for clarification would be in this case.


 * The Economic history of the Jews article was deleted per the AFD process which was closed by Sandstein. That is why I asked for his opinion.  He was the one who evaluated the consensus of those !voting on the AFD.  If his response to my request had been different, I would probably have had to accede to it.  In summary, I think AFD is the way for you to go.  I don't think you'll have much luck with ARBCOM.  Personally, I don't think you'll succeed with an AFD either but it's impossible to predict how many editors will feel that my new article is worth keeping.  Having Slrubenstein criticize it is not a good omen.


 * --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 02:23, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Women in the Church
I thought of you when I came across this declaration by the Patriarch of Lisbon, since it is a good short summary of the Church's attitude on women in the Church and the priesthood question. I believe you do not know Portuguese, but if only you could read Spanish, or even Italian, you could work out what the Portuguese text says. Esoglou (talk) 14:12, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Non-free files in your user space
Hey there Pseudo-Richard, thank you for your contributions. I am a bot, alerting you that non-free files are not allowed in user or talk space. I removed some files I found on User:Pseudo-Richard/Antisemitism and the Left. In the future, please refrain from adding fair-use files to your user-space drafts or your talk page.


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Orange Marlin
Thanks for the message. I had no idea, and appreciate your telling me. Slrubenstein  |  Talk 20:01, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Proposed RFC on Economic antisemitism
As for the rest of your message, you raise questions about my views of you, and my views of the article, and in the process you make claims about the general level of Wikipedia editors.

About the general quality of Wikipedia editors, all I can say is: no one can make good contributions concerning the contents of articles on scholarly topics, unless one has access to scholarly tools (including an adequate library) and know how to use them; web-resources alone are in my view not only insufficient resources for most scholarly articles, they are bad resources. If many people are editing articles on topics about which they have no expertise, or no access to expertise, or do not know how best to take advantage of expertise, then this is a great failure of Wikipedia. On the article talk page I wrote that Wikipedia is the encyclopedia anyone can edit, and in a subsequent edit you concurred. But it appears that we disagree over what this means. Anyone can volunteer to join the army. The army has the resources to identify people's strengths and assign to them appropriate tasks, or to give people the training for their tasks. Wikipedia too is voluntary - that is all that "the encyclopedia anyone can edit" means, it means our workforce is all volunteer. Unlike the army, Wikipedia does not have a hierarchical structure, so there is no formal mechanism for identifying expertise and assigning volunteers to appropriate tasks. In other words, unlike the military, Wikipedia is an experiment in self-governance. I think this is a great experiment, But self-governance does not mean no governance. It means we assume the responsibility to govern ourselves, individually and collectively. So our means are in stark contrast to those of the army. But the outcome - good governance - should be the same (or for the idealists among us, even better!) By this I mean, the right people doing the right job. Volunteers must take the responsibility of assessing their own expertise and ability to research new topics effectively (i.e. lots of people can take a university course and some will fail, some will get Cs and some will get As - which ones will you turn to when you have a question about the matter of the course?) When someone edits the contents of an article on a topic that they are not expert on, or do not have access to the proper scholarly resources or do not know how to use them, they are obviously acting irresponsibly; I consider their edits a form of vandalism. Our only hope is that eventually WP will attract editors who actually do know about the topic and know how to learn more, who will fix up the mess.

Note: I am not referring to people who edit for style. One need not have to know anything about Jews or anti-Semites or history, yet their expertise might be in language, and they might be the perfect people to improve the style of the article.

Note too that people have different skills. Just because a conscript is not a great shot with a rifle does not mean they get kicked out of the army. That person surely has other skills and will be given a different job. Again at Wikipedia we have to govern ourselves. I this is not one's area of expertise - one just has to find the topics one DOES have expertise on, and wok on those articles.

Everyone can edit. But each person should edit the article that is right for them.

These are my general views.

As to my views of you, I think you misunderstand me. I am not saying you are a good or bad researcher, I am saying that you are not the appropriate researcher for this particular article.

As the article itself. I think it is better than Noleander's article but if you read my evidence against Noleander I try to show the importance of reading the whole book and providing context. I still have concerns about this article. I also still am not convinced that most of the content is better placed in the articles on History of the jews and on Antisemitism.

My only motive for an RFC is to involve more experts that is on history, Jewish history, economic history, and anti-semitism. based on our own comments, I thought you would support this. Slrubenstein  |  Talk 20:01, 16 July 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't have time to respond to all the points you made above. I'll try to do so later.  For now I will simply say that, while we agree on much of what you wrote, we disagree on the final conclusion.  Or at least, that I am any less appropriate than the other people who edit antisemitism-related articles.


 * I do want to respond to the last point. You wrote "My only motive for an RFC is to involve more experts that is on history, Jewish history, economic history, and anti-semitism.  based on our own comments, I thought you would support this."  To which my response is: "Yes, I do support it.  I just thought the RFC process might benefit if we collaborate on the wording of the RFC as the results of an RFC are strongly influenced by what issues are raised and how they are framed."


 * --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 20:29, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

I agree concerning nay possible RfC. As for my comments - at WP there is ever room for valid differences of opinion. Slrubenstein  |  Talk 21:16, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Edit to Eastern Orthodox Church
If you agree that it is a vandalizing falsification, would you please undo this triple IP edit by someone in Serbia who thinks "annointing" is correct English. It makes Timothy/Kallistos Ware say on page 287 of The Orthodox Church that the Orthodox Church denies transubstantiation as a heresy. Only snippets of this book of Ware's are available on Google Books, such as these, but Ware is quoted on transubstantiation in this book, which suggests that, before this latest IP edit, the Wikipedia text was substantially correct. A quotation from the preceding page (286) of Ware's book is given in this book, in which Ware speaks of "the transformation of the bread into the sacrificed Lamb" (emphasis added).

I notice that large parts of the Wikipedia article (before this IP edit) are identical to what is found in this self-published book. I take it that the identity of words is not a copyright violation by Wikipedia, but instead a wholesale copying of Wikipedia by the author of the book. Esoglou (talk) 15:39, 20 July 2011 (UTC)


 * I have reverted the IP editor's contributions but I think the previous text needs elaboration. I have added text copied from Transubstantiation but that text is unsupported by a reference.  If you could help find a source to support it, that would be great. --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 17:47, 20 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for intervening. Even on the Transubstantiation page I had better refrain from retouching what you found there.  I can't think of any directly accessible reliable sources that support the whole of the text that you copied, but some such sources are quoted in the blog-type Orthodoxy and Transubstantiation.  They show that in the past the highest authorities in the Eastern Orthodox Church did use the term "transubstantiation" (in Greek, metousiosis), as can be seen in the decisions of the 1672 Council of Jerusalem and, perhaps even more clearly, in their insistence on it in the course of their 1715-1725 correspondence with the Non-Juror Bishops of the Church of England, whose 39 Articles obliged them to reject the same term.  In the 19th century, the term was used in the official catechism of the Russian Orthodox Church.  But in recent times (is it just possibly because of anti-Romanism?) Eastern Orthodox generally dislike it.  In spite of official Roman Catholic statements that transubstantiation is only about what is changed (the reality, not the appearances, of the bread and wine), and that transubstantiation is not about how this change takes place, they interpret transubstantiation in the way that the Roman Catholic Church expressly disclaims.  (As a curiosity, the Council of Jerusalem used the Aristotelian terms "substance and accidents", the Council of Trent did not.)  The final phrase in the text that you copied, the phrase about terms in more common use among Eastern Orthodox, is what Meyendorff, who is quoted at the end of this source, says.  In the absence of official Eastern Orthodox declarations, we can only cite the views of Eastern Orthodox theologian-writers and trust that nobody will produce an Eastern Orthodox theologian-writer who says the opposite.
 * Before saving this, I have looked at the Talk page of the Eastern Orthodox Church, and I see that Elizium23 has already drawn your attention to this source. Esoglou (talk) 19:53, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Jesus
I appreciate your attention (I am very sorry to learn the troubling news regarding Orange Merlin). I wish to think that an RfC is not necessary. I certainly do not think it should be necessary with regard to the Jesus article: my edit served only to restore a longstanding consensus version. The edit I reverted was made recently, by a new editor, and without discussion. So reverting it is pretty normal.. I truly hope In ictu oculi does not turn the Jesus article into the kind of battle ground he is creating at the Yeshu article - and yes, the conflicts at the Yeshu article might need an RfC. But the RfC would have to limit itself to behavior. The Talmud is a complex text in another language and there is a massive body of scholarship on it, and we have very few editors knowledgeable about that literature. The underlying problem with the Yeshu article is, we simply do not have enough editors qualified to comment (let alone work) on it. In fact, we may have none.

Concerning Jesus - did you know that many Pharisees who lived around the time of Jesus had Greek names or Greek derived names (Greek names spelled out in Hebrew letters)? Tarfon, Antigonus, Abtalion ... Alexander was a popular name at this time. This of course does not mean that Jesus was given a Greek name rather than a Hebrew name, or a "Hellenized" Hebrew name, when he was born. We have no idea. It probably is not likely, but we have no idea. This is not "my" point, but one brought up by many editors who have made major contributions to the Jesus article.

And our editing principle is one that I think is pretty common in Wikipedia articles: any topics that are complicated (involving controversial classing points of view, or simply issues that require space to explain because of their complexity) are dealt with in the body, and not in the lead. Jesus' birth name, given that ALL sources that offer a view on the matter are speculating, is one such topic. Putting this speculation in the lead serves no purpose, and will mislead casual readers into thinking that we really do know what Jesus' original name was. People will think it is a "fact."

But I am really just rehashing articles that are presented at length in the talk page archive. I am just sharing with you reasons for why the article, so carefully edited, has in its stable form not made any suggestions about Jesus's original name in the lead. All I did was restore the stable consensus version, one reached through a lot of discussion. Slrubenstein  |  Talk 17:14, 24 July 2011 (UTC)