User talk:R Prazeres

Victorian Turkish baths
Hi R Prazeres, As I'm sure you know by now, I uploaded the first part of my revised page on VTb. I wanted to thank you, first for being so supportive, two years ago, of my suggestion to split Hammam into two. And second because I have tried to use your Hammam page as a structural model and hope I have not moved too far away.

But I also owe you an apology for not first sending you my comment on the Hammam Disambiguation Talk page. Quite apart from the fact (as was gently pointed out to me) that I had misunderstood the purpose of a disambiguation page, it was a lack of courtesy which I had not intended. Ishpoloni (talk) 12:26, 19 February 2024 (UTC)


 * Hi Ishpoloni, no apologies are needed, I don't think you've done anything wrong. Trying to improve articles is what Wikipedia editing is about, and you don't need my specific input unless there's something you think I can help with. The occasional error or misunderstanding is pretty normal, and that's what other editors (and talk pages) are for. Thank you for your continued work and I'm glad I was helpful in the past.
 * PS: The only immediate feedback I have for you at Victorian Turkish baths, if you weren't already planning to do so, is to add more citations for the last section (the "(...) today" section). Cheers, R Prazeres (talk) 18:13, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

Hello again. I'm not really sure whether the following should be on the Turkish baths (Disambiguation) page, or here on your page, so I've copied it to both, I'm afraid. It's my belated reply to your note on the former:

It's very unusual for me to take ten days to reply to something, but in this case I've had to think through my problem carefully and learn a bit more about Wikipedia, and I've finally realised that I asked the wrong question before. So let me start over by stating the problem. Anyone familiar with hammams will tend to look up hammam(s) in any dictionary or encyclopaedia, so they have no problem. Similarly, anyone familiar with Victorian Turkish baths will also have no problem. The ones with problems are those unfamiliar with these terms who wish to find out about one or other of them. Currently, if a searcher enters Turkish bath(s) s/he is willy-nilly redirected to Hammam. Fine if that is what is wanted, but not if it's Vtb that's wanted because s/he is still directed only to Hammam, without even a 'See also:' reference. But what is needed is a reference to both options so either one (or even both) can be chosen. You write " If someone is searching Turkish baths, it will currently lead them to Hammam, the assumed primary topic…" But while this might be so for the Islamic world, it is not necessarily so for those in the so-called Western world. Most of those wanting information about hammams will easily find it, those searching for the western or Victorian type will get nowhere. There is not even a 'See also:' reference to it at the end of the Hammam page, only a Main article link reached after reading more than half the Hammam page. (There is one to Hammam at the bottom of the VTb page!) Given the comprehensive revision of the VTb page, I see only two choices, not a primary one alone. Otherwise there seems little point in providing a VTb page which few are directed to. This seems to be borne out by a wiki guidance note which says "If no primary topic exists, then the term should be the title of a disambiguation page (or should redirect to a disambiguation page on which more than one term is disambiguated)." So to conclude (you will be pleased to see!) I suggest that the redirect from Turkish bath(s) to Hammam be removed and replaced by (the guidance note's second option), a redirect page straight to "a disambiguation page on which more than one term is disambiguated", ie, to Turkish bath (Disambiguation). This should enable searchers easily to make a choice of either of the two main general articles (plus all the smaller more specific ones) or both. Hammam (disambiguation) seems to serve its purpose perfectly. However, I wonder whether it might be clearer if one changed: "A hammam, or Turkish bath, is a type of steam bath…" into: "A hammam (often known in the West as a Turkish bath) is a type of steam bath…" though if I wasn't afraid of pushing my beginner's luck, I'd much prefer: "A hammam (often inaccurately known in the West as a Turkish bath) is a type of steam bath…" All the bestIshpoloni (talk) 09:00, 10 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the reminder, I've replied at Talk:Turkish Bath (disambiguation) to keep the discussion all in one place (and so other potentially interested editors can more easily see it there). Feel free to ping me in the future if you need my attention; I get notifications from potentially hundreds of articles, and sometimes I only have time to focus on a few, so it's not uncommon for me to miss new messages. Cheers, R Prazeres (talk) 16:21, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the open-ended neutral wording of your redirect notice. That is much appreciated. Ishpoloni (talk) 13:50, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

Hi R Prazeres, Help! I'm submerged! I've just seen [] and don't understand anything apart from the first three red sidelined paras. Do I need to do anything in response, ie, with regard to the 'good-faith creator' bit? I've realized that this is the page now reached on searching for 'Turkish bath' in place of 'Hammam', but searching for the plural 'Turkish baths' still redirects to 'Hammam'. Is this correct? Best wishes. Ishpoloni (talk) 08:04, 26 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Hello again. I hope you have had (are having, or are about to have) a good summer holiday.
 * Please forgive my writing to you again but I am totally depressed. I find that someone has closed the discussion on changing the 'Turkish baths' redirect to the DAB page and I don't know how to re-open it or appeal. I feel I've totally wasted four months of my 90th year in digest-formatting 30 years' research into three-quarters of an article which people are now actively directed away from.
 * I see no form of consensus which accords with any definition of that word in any of my dictionaries.
 * The views of the person closing the discussion relate, as do those of three other contributors, to a totally different and completely irrelevant question, ie, which primary term to use when there are a number of synonyms in consideration, eg,
 * Hamam, Hmam, Hamâm, Hammam, &c, because 'Victorian Turkish baths' and 'Hammam' are not synonyms but completely different subjects. Another example might be a choice between between U.S.A., USA, United States of America. The number of people searching for each alternative is completely irrelevant.
 * The actual problem is quite different, ie, How to ensure that two completely different subjects (which are often incorrectly identified by a common phrase) can be found "quickly and easily, whichever of the possible topics" is being sought. (DAB Guidance notes). Change has been chosen by those understanding what the actual problem is. This is what DABs are expressly intended for. There is no redirect from 'loganberry' to 'apple' because, of the two fruits, more people search for 'apple'.
 * I'm afraid I don't know how to get this changed, or re-opened so I can have another try at explaining what the issue is that we need to discuss. Please, can I appeal, once again, for your help. Ishpoloni (talk) 13:03, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

Serial copyvio by sockpuppets of Vvven
Hi R Prazeres, you may recall that I posted on your talk page regarding my concerns about user LaGuairabeach being a sockpuppet of indefinitely blocked editor Vvven, the prolific editor who added tons of copyvio all across WP under that username and several others, not to mention various IPs. Well, my suspicions were correct, as you can see by this investigation. This guy Vvven was (is) a huge pain in the ass, and I've wasted many hours trying to repair damage done by him. I have no doubt that he'll be back, considering his editing history, if he isn't already. I wanted to alert you that if you come across new, poorly written content in articles relating to Spanish history that appear to be modified machine translations of Spanish text, there's a possibility it was his work. Carlstak (talk) 14:02, 30 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Thanks, I'll keep an eye out when I'm looking at page histories. Cheers, R Prazeres (talk) 16:26, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba
Hello! it's been a while since I talk to someone here, so I'm unsure how the notifications work. I left you a message on the talk page of the mosque regarding our recent edits. Thanks! Fernando 12:52, 18 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Thank you, in this case I do see notifications on the talk page over there, and you can indeed ping someone as you did already, to make sure they notice a new discussion concerning them.
 * I've replied over there, but I'll add one minor piece of advice separately here: in the future, if you're making multiple significant but different types of changes to an article, especially to a long article, I recommend splitting this into more than one edit. For example, use one edit to revise the infobox, then another edit to revise images; or do the changes in stages (e.g. first half or first sections of the article in one edit, second half in another). This is not an official policy, it's just a recommendation to make it easier for others to keep track of what you did, and it can make it easier to adjust rather than revert. (In this case, I initially tried to manually restore some images after your edit, but it quickly became too complicated to keep track of everything that had changed; so once I saw some problems, it was safer to revert and then manually restore what was clearly constructive.) R Prazeres (talk) 17:57, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Correction: forget most of comment above! I looked again and you already did split those two edits . It was still difficult to track everything done in the second edit, but there's probably not a clearly better way to do it, so nevermind that. Sorry for the confusion, R Prazeres (talk) 19:00, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

Islamic Art
Greetings, I wanted to apologize for my hasty removal of content. You are completly right that the paragraph is much more than that. I was not paying enough attention.

best regards VenusFeuerFalle (talk) 23:51, 21 May 2024 (UTC)


 * No worries, I figured as much, and the sentiment is of course right; that generalization is often repeated with insufficient context. R Prazeres (talk) 23:57, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

A barnstar for you

 * Thank you kindly! R Prazeres (talk) 18:33, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Turkey
Hello R Prazeres! The Core Contest is now over, so please feel free to edit Turkey. I didn't have time to work on architecture during the context. Bogazicili (talk) 18:34, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Minor pedantries
Hi RP. Really minor stuff, I enjoy and respect too much your contributions to mention it elsewhere & other than briefly.

I only have my cellphone to go online from for now. Adding an interval before long words helps keep the outlook balanced. Doesn't harm others, helps phone editors, so please kindly leave them there.

URLs disrupt the ref details, are for the machine, not the human. I consider that they, along with the ISBN and other numerical IDs, belong at the very end, only followed by the access date if at all. Author, title, page etc. are for the human editor, who looks them up and works with them. So here too, re-placing them more to the front helps no-one.

Quotation marks for the ref name serve no purpose if the ref name is one "word" (no spaces). They're just ballast, as are long & detailed ref names.

I'm happy to yield to better counter-arguments, but if it's just about preserving old habits - I'm constantly changing mine once I learn about better ways, so no.

Wiki is for the user, rules are subject to constant improvements (slower than I'd like them to, but they are). If respecting a rule is sometimes a disservice to the user, I'll happily ignore it. Anything else would be Bismarckian militarised bureaucracy, which led to nasty outcomes in far too many respects :)

Thank you and keep up the good work! Arminden (talk) 06:56, 24 June 2024 (UTC)


 * Hi again Arminden. Forgive me, but I don't think I understood what you're saying about ref URLs, ISBN, etc. Which edit or issue are you referring to? R Prazeres (talk) 07:05, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Dome of the rock
Hi! I quoted the exact text from the source: "In objective point of view, apart from wooden material context of the Dome of the Rock, its well-designed proportion and primary pointed form became consequently a design model for the construction of pointed domes, such as Muntasir mausoleum or Qubbat al-Sulaybiyya (862 AD) at Samarra in Iraq which was later erected as the second earliest sample of the pointed domes" Hu741f4 (talk) 07:06, 24 June 2024 (UTC)


 * Hi Hu741f4. Thank you for the response. That quote isn't very clear and if you read more of the article it seems to suggest pre-Islamic pointed domes already existed (although the authors aren't using very clear wording either). Quoting the beginning of the same subsection: "Historically, the use of the pointed domes as the earliest form of domes was totally unknown in Islamic architecture. In fact, such an architectural item rooted in long-term developments of both ideology and form by various pre-Islamic civilizations and cultures which inhabited in this particular region (Creswell 1958; Grabar 2006)." It then goes to speak of the "the earliest samples" by referring to various ancient (pre-Islamic) cultures. You also cited Hillenbrand 1994 without a page number; can you clarify where the author make this claim? (As I couldn't find it when I looked). Thanks, R Prazeres (talk) 07:18, 24 June 2024 (UTC)
 * The authors nowhere claimed that these pre-Islamic domes were pointed domes. These were false domes lacking proper geometry of a truly pointed dome. I think they simply mean that these pre-Islamic domes influenced the construction of pointed domes (for example the ogival domes of ancient persia). They clearly stated, citing Hillenbrand, that Qubbat al-Sulaybiyya was the second earliest sample of the pointed dome, the first being dome of the rock. Hu741f4 (talk) 08:06, 24 June 2024 (UTC)
 * The wording suggests otherwise, but even if I'm wrong (which is plausible), then it's not clear enough to cite for this claim. The solution would be to find another high-quality source that states this more clearly. If Hillenbrand says this, please provide the page number. R Prazeres (talk) 08:12, 24 June 2024 (UTC)
 * The author writes "...Qubbat al-Sulaybiyya (862 AD) at Samarra in Iraq which was later erected as the second earliest sample of the pointed dome" after discussing the pointed dome of the Qubbat as Sakhra, which clearly implies that the first sample was the dome of Dome of the Rock. Hillenbrand discussed it in
 * Chapter V, The Mausoleum
 * (pp. 253-330), Do you have access to this book? Hu741f4 (talk) 09:06, 24 June 2024 (UTC)
 * We've already covered what Ashkan et al says, and I'm sorry but that's at best a dubious reading of their text, so it's not acceptable. Yes, I have Hillenbrand's book, both in print and online, and nowhere can I see him make this claim. Again, if you have a specific page number where he says this, please provide it. Otherwise, we cannot cite an author to support a claim they do not make. This would become a WP:OR/WP:VER issue. I've also tried (briefly) looking for the same claim elsewhere and couldn't find it so far. R Prazeres (talk) 17:02, 24 June 2024 (UTC)
 * What does this passage from the paper mean: "...Qubbat al-Sulaybiyya (862 AD) at Samarra in Iraq which was later erected as the second earliest sample of the pointed domes"? Hu741f4 (talk) 18:24, 24 June 2024 (UTC)
 * As I said above, the "earliest samples" they speak of appear to be pre-Islamic, so the "second earliest" seems to refer to Islamic-era domes. If that's not what the authors intended to communicate, then they did a poor job of communicating, and it's not up to us to decide for them. I'm not going to dwell on this further. I take it from these responses that you have not found the claim in Hillenbrand's book. Lacking any other reliable sources saying this, the claim does not satisfy verifiability. R Prazeres (talk) 18:55, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Algerian Style
Hello Prazers, i found some edits from you in some articles; can i ask you why? Those structures have algerian style which is a comnination of heritage from ancient times and islamic influence; i don't think is right to define it like a nationalistic matter as this is frequently used in wikis like italian, french, spanish, moroccan style ectera. Lord Ruffy98 (talk) 19:51, 18 July 2024 (UTC)


 * Hi, I assume you're asking about the reverts like this. "Algerian" is not a style and your edits do not conform to what is commonly described in reliable sources, which is what Wikipedia is based on. The article you have been linking, Architecture of Algeria, is about the history of architecture in Algeria, covering multiple styles and periods, and not about a single "Algerian style". "Italian", "French", and "Moroccan" are not usually defined as styles either, unless it's a context where it refers to a local subvariety or subcategory of wider style (e.g. French Gothic architecture). Many of the articles you edited already define the specific styles or periods of architecture that are relevant to the monument. I hope that clarifies the issue. Cheers, R Prazeres (talk) 20:20, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Also, please do not repeat edits after they have been reverted, as you did here. This violates Wikipedia's policy on edit-warring (see Edit warring). You can use an article's talk page to further discuss the issue and look for a consensus. Thanks, R Prazeres (talk) 20:25, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
 * That's true but there are many examples of those "not national styles" which were used under styles architecture and i didn't saw any notes of those not being ok so i didn't think that was a violation or anything wrong as for the other ones was permitted. Lord Ruffy98 (talk) 14:23, 21 July 2024 (UTC)