User talk:Kohlrabi Pickle/Archives/2021/April

Edits regarding radio stations

Hi there, apparently radio stations by SPH have been redirected because of lack of independent and verifiable content. Is there any idea how to resolve this so that at least the radio stations can be there? Thanks. TheGreatSG'rean (talk) 17:38, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

Hello, TheGreatSG'rean, thank you for your message. I've looked through the pages you are referring to. I think that you are correct: the redirect amounts to a deletion, and the correct process for that is AfD. It is therefore my opinion that Onel5969 was wrong to revert your edit. You can re-revert their edit (being careful about WP:3RR; I'm not typically in this situation so I can't remember how many reverts are permitted), and if you like, you can take it to ANI. There are three things I'd say about this:

First, you may get vindicated at ANI, but at what cost? There are a number of editors (and I have no idea whether Onel5969 is one of them) on Wikipedia who thrive on conflict and are frequent flyers at dispute resolution channels like ANI and ARBCOM. For most people, going through those channels involves a lot of work looking into different policies, thinking about how other editors interpret them, and also a lot of stress. The editors I am referring to are belligerent and relish the process. Admins at these channels are also (for understandable reasons), like magistrates in lower courts. They are "case-hardened", not inclined to take well to pointless appeals or to give you the benefit of the doubt unless you are well prepared and can present your position well. This is understandable because they spend a lot of their time dealing with problematic cases and are overworked.

Second, you may get vindicated at ANI, but what next? The correct process for this kind of move is an AfD, rather than a redirect (which I imagine is only for uncontroversial instances). I see that Justlettersandnumbers has replied to your comment on Onel5969's talk page (courteously) acknowledging that you are free to revert the redirect, but also indicating their intention to AfD these articles if you do so. I've not done any further research on other sources, but I think that these articles are likely to fail at AfD as they currently stand.

Finally, it gives me a lot of heart pain to say this but I think the core of the matter is that we are unfortunately a very small community of Singapore-related-article editors on Wikipedia, and we are stretched thin. My forte is quality and not quantity. I am much more effective at pulling a single article up to GA or FA than tidying up reams and reams of existing articles. Many of these old articles that were created a decade ago are no longer good enough to keep up with the quality of Wikipedia articles on other topics, and a big chunk of them would not even pass muster at AfC today. It is quite inevitable that unless we can fix these articles up, that we will start losing them one after another. This is a bigger issue than these articles on radio station, and we at WikiProject Singapore should really think about how we can get more people to do quality editing or tidying up on Singapore-related articles.

I am sorry that I could not be more helpful but I hope this added some perspective anyway. Please let me know if I can be of any more help. Kohlrabi Pickle (talk) 05:54, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

Thanks so much Kohlrabi Pickle, appreciate it. I have since referred this to a few editors in the Singapore community, will try to touch the articles up before restoring them. Would it be a good idea to transfer them to "Drafts" first to preserve the articles? Thanks. TheGreatSG'rean (talk) 07:06, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

TheGreatSG'rean, that's quite a good idea, actually, if you're confident that you can find the sources. The process is outlined at WP:DRAFTIFY, and in any case, it is a potential outcome of an AfD discussion, so I'm thinking Justlettersandnumbers wouldn't object. Kohlrabi Pickle (talk) 15:02, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

Alrighty, I will do so then. Thanks for the help, appreciate it. TheGreatSG'rean (talk) 15:05, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

Happy to help, all the best! Kohlrabi Pickle (talk) 15:11, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

Kashmir shawl

Hi Kohlrabi Pickle, can you tell me where this content came from? Please note that you are supposed to declare when you are WP:copying within Wikipedia. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 09:24, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

And what is a sentence like "The Kashmir first appeared in French fashion magazines and portraits in 1790" supposed to mean? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 09:26, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

Kautilya3, it came from my sandbox, here: [1], i.e. I wrote it. The portion you quoted contains a typo: it was meant to be "The Kashmir shawl" and not "The Kashmir".

I also don't appreciate your tone. It is "what does X mean", not "and what is X supposed to mean". When you addressed me rudely at the RfC, I let it pass because I understood that a subject like that can evoke strong emotion. I don't intend to make a habit of it, and I ask you to reconsider in the hope that we still have a chance at working collaboratively. Kohlrabi Pickle (talk) 10:13, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

Some of the content you included in the above article appears to have been copied from this article, which is not released under a compatible license (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International is not a compatible license). Copying text directly from a source is a violation of Wikipedia's copyright policy. Unfortunately, for copyright reasons, some content had to be removed form the article, and I also cleared the associated sandbox. Content you add to Wikipedia needs to be written in your own words. Please let me know if you have any questions. — Diannaa (talk) 14:25, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

Hi Diannaa, that’s fine, thank you. I cannot see what text you removed. Was it a list of factors? I recall thinking that I could not paraphrase that without altering its meaning. Would it work if I put that portion in quotation marks? Kohlrabi Pickle (talk) 14:44, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

There were several different passages I had to remove. Quotation marks is not a good alternative for the things I removed.

• "influenced by factors such as price, finery, purpose of wear, the intended wearer, constituent raw material, weaving technique, patterning present, and dyeing technique."
• " In Kashmiri practice, this involved each weft going over two warps then under two warps."
• " As a result, Kani shawls sported intricate designs, such as the buta."
• " By the 13th century, Kashmir's shawl industry was producing high-grade weaved fabric for sartorial purposes."
• " As a result, although the shawls were a status symbol for men in India, they were exclusively worn by aristocratic women in Europe."
• " went on to own a collection of between three and four hundred shawls" (this one I re-worded to "eventually collected three or four hundred shawls"— Diannaa (talk) 14:52, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

Diannaa, thank you for this. I will work on paraphrasing them. May I ask you to look over the changes when I’m done? Kohlrabi Pickle (talk) 14:57, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

Yes.— Diannaa (talk) 14:59, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

Hi @Diannaa, I'm proposing the following changes:

1. Can this be put into quotation marks? I.e. Skarratt (2018) indicates that the Kashmir shawl has been understood differently over time and place, depending on "price, finery, purpose of wear, the intended wearer, constituent raw material, weaving technique, patterning present, and dying technique".
2. Kashmiri weavers used a distinctive technique, passing a weft over-and-under two warps.
3. This facilitated intricacy and detail, which enabled complex patterns like the buta to be woven onto the shawls.
4. By the 13th century, Kashmir shawls had risen in status and quality and were commonly used as statements of fashion.
5. Kashmir shawls thereby came to play different roles in the two societies: a status symbol for Indian men, and a luxury garment for European women of nobility.
6. (I inferred from your comment that this is now fine.)

Please let me know if this works. Kohlrabi Pickle (talk) 15:50, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

Those amendments look good. I wish there was a way to re-word the first one as well. How about "...depending on various factors such as the material used and its cost, the method of construction, the intended use, and the status of the wearer." If you don't think that will cover all the main points, please use the quotation instead.— Diannaa (talk) 15:59, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

Hi @Diannaa, I'm concerned that we lose some meaning there, so I'm in favour of the quotation. Please can I ask you to put these into the article, as I can't see where these passages were taken from? There are a couple of small changes to points 1 and 2 indicated in bold and italics below.

1. Can this be put into quotation marks? I.e. Skarratt (2018) indicates that the Kashmir shawl has been understood differently over time and place, depending on "price, finery, purpose of wear, the intended wearer, constituent raw material, weaving technique, patterning present, and dyeing technique".
2. Kashmiri weavers used a common twill weave, passing a weft over-and-under two warps.

Thank you for all your help.

@Kautilya3 Please can you see whether this addresses your concerns? Kohlrabi Pickle (talk) 16:17, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

Dyeing technique falls under method of construction. You've already mentioned twill weave in the same paragraph. I have added the amended text to the article. I got an edit conflict – it's not at all clear why you could not wait for my reply.— Diannaa (talk) 16:33, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

@Diannaa I'm sorry for the edit conflict. I saw an edit summary on the deletion log saying that you had unhidden the previous version for me to see. I thought that was a message that I should make the changes myself.

As regards the proposed changes in my last comment, the first was just for spelling (dyeing rather than dying) and the second was for accuracy. I read the Skarratt again and he indicates that the weave itself is plain, not distinctive. It is the discontinuous wefts that are distinctive.

On point 1, I still think that the paraphrased words modify the meaning of the Skarratt article, but it's a minor content disagreement and we can go with your version. Kohlrabi Pickle (talk) 16:54, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

Practically every sentence I test can be found in dozens of web sites, e.g. [2] or the sentence I flagged earlier [3]. I have no confidence that this content was actually written by you. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 18:55, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

@Kautilya3 These websites copy from Wikipedia, not the other way around. This explains why the text links to dozens of sources rather than just one. Diannaa should be able to confirm this.

A search of the first link yields hits to Google Arts and Culture (which attributes the text to Wikipedia), Wordpress (where the text comes complete with wikilinks), a few blogs, some wiki mirror pages, deadlinks, and some websites of shops selling shawls. The content itself (elaborated in the body) is cited to references 1 and 4: the articles of Skarratt and Maskiell.

The sentence you flagged earlier is in much the same boat: an auction site, a site selling shawls and I can't even tell what the last site is. The content is cited to a biography of Empress Joséphine.

As you can see from the sandbox edit history here: [4], I wrote this content over 3 days. (The history is now hidden or you could even see these sentences taking form.) If you look at other articles I've written (on quite a range of different topics), you'll see that the writing style matches. All my citations are in the references section, and they are far better sources than any of the websites on Google. I have in my computer copies not just of every source I referred to, but also excellent sources that I didn't refer to, because I didn't have the time to integrate their content into the article.

If you have some particular evidence in mind, please let me know and I can try and supply it. Kohlrabi Pickle (talk) 01:20, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

I did not exactly say that you were copying from those web sites that pop on Google. But it is possible that both you and the other sources are copying from some common source that none of you have revealed. The evidence is for example your lead sentence:

The Kashmir shawl, the predecessor of the contemporary cashmere shawl, is a type of shawl identified by its distinctive Kashmiri weave, and for being made of fine shahtoosh or pashmina wool.

You presumably wrote this in your draft after 26 March. But stuff like this already appeared in a blog post on 11 March [5]:

The Kashmir shawl, the predecessor of the contemporary cashmere shawl, is a type of shawl identified by its distinctive Kashmiri weave, and for being made of fine shahtoosh or pashmina wool.

That is a word-for-word copy, including punctuation! -- Kautilya3 (talk) 06:18, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

My drafts are from March 2020, and that blog post is from March 2021. That same blog post also copies word for word from shalwar kameez and pheran, complete with wikilinks. It is extremely demoralising to be accused of plagiarising my own work. Dealing with this accusation in trickles makes it worse. Please don't post on my talk page again. Kohlrabi Pickle (talk) 06:53, 7 April 2021 (UTC)