User talk:Rtelkin

A belated welcome!

Here's wishing you a belated welcome to Wikipedia, Rtelkin. I see that you've already been around awhile and wanted to thank you for your contributions. Though you seem to have been successful in finding your way around, you may benefit from following some of the links below, which help editors get the most out of Wikipedia:

Also, when you post on talk pages you should sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); that should automatically produce your username and the date after your post.

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! If you have any questions, feel free to leave me a message on my talk page, consult Wikipedia:Questions, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and ask your question there.

Again, welcome! Aristophanes68 (talk) 22:08, 6 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Changing era notation

I have reverted your changes to Julian calendar and Gregorian calendar where you substituted BC and AD by BCE and CE on their first occurrence. Looking through your contribution history and at some other edits you have made, I see that you have made similar changes to many other articles, so you obviously believe the issue is important.

Please read WP:ERA:

You should not change the established style of an article without first obtaining consensus on the Talk page that there is a good reason related to the article's content.
An article should use the same notation throughout. If there is agreement to change the style it should be changed throughout, not just on the first occurrence.

FWIW I see no good reason to change the style in these articles (or indeed in most of the articles you changed, except perhaps those specifically related to Jewish topics). But by all means open up a dialog on the talk pages. --Chris Bennett (talk) 23:11, 25 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

To Chris: Are you saying, then, Chris, that we wish to continue to define the events of the world in terms of "Christianity" by using "BC/AD" instead of the neutral, scholarly, and common practice "BCE/CE"? I say this as a university professor, where presumptions of neutrality in reference works is vital to the credibility of the source. There are so many articles on this database that assume Christian definitions for what should be Hebrew definitions (i.e. substituting "Old Testament" as a standard instead of the correct "Tanakh" or "Hebrew Bible" when the issue at discussion occurred long before there even was a Christian? Specifically, The Christian version of the Hebrew Bible employs an order placing the Book of Malachi after Chronicles; an article even went so far as to assume that a figure's appearance in "Malachi" made it the last appearance of that character in the Hebrew Bible, which is of course what's under discussion when we talk about "Old Testament" figures. Unless the article is talking about a specifically Christian Origin, an "Old Testament" context error is not only ignorant and imperialistic, but inappropriate and just plain wrong.

I've been changing BC/AD notation to CE/BCE notation every time I spot the error in neutrality, and it is an error in neutrality whenever "BC/AD" are used as an encyclopedist's reference code. My impression was that Wikipedia strived for neutrality, but that doesn't appear to be the case here. It shouldn't take a town hall meeting to decide whether a dog needs a haircut. BC/AD are dead at the scholarly level because they subsume the world to Christianity. It's time to kill them at the popular level too, so we do not perpetuate a Christian dominance of culture which not only attempts to install Christian interpretations at the schoolroom level across the country, but does nothing to "out" the fact that Christians reinterpreting Hebrew (not "Jewish") compositions is a large part of the supercession of not only the Judaic religion with "Old Testament" contexts as definers for what is not old to Jews, but to Hebrew identity itself, which originates in the very texts that are often reviewed from a Christian context, thereby superceding their true origins. For millenia this has occurred; Hebrew identity & Judaic thought have been subjugated to the contextualization Christians have given it. And once the contextualization is down on paper, we end up with writings that justify eliminating the Hebraicism from Judaic thought. Take that to the popular level, and we end up with fictions such as "Elders of Zion," and sooner or later mobs take over where words leave off. Or General Grant expels the Jews from Mississippi, Tennessee & Kentucky. (How many folk do you know of that know of that occurrence? Who in the US knows about the anti-Semitism which crossed the Atlantic? How many people are there that still blame the Israelis for a lack of Mideast peace despite the offer made to the Palestinians by Ehud Barak at the beginning of the century? Christianity hides many secrets in the fine points of its control, points which most Christians would be aghast to know, but never learn, because the reference documents are mostly skewed in their favor. Now that's a fifty-cent lecture for sure!

In trying to help restore neutrality re: dating to sources, there is resistance which should not be unless the subject is the dates themselves. How about a wiki-wide project to change every BC/AD authoritative reference to BCE/CE? The problem is just one reason academia disallows Wikipedia sources for students performing actual research. It's just not neutral enough. And moderators complain at the installation of neutrality...for bureaucratic reasons.

How utterly frustrating. Rtelkin (talk) 01:01, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This has nothing to do with "defin[ing] the events of the world in terms of Christianity" or "mobs tak[ing] over where words leave off".

WP has established an editorial policy on this matter, which you appear to be unaware of. If you wish to pursue it there is nothing to stop you from trying to change the era in these articles by following that policy. Waging a one-man campaign without trying to build consensus, as you are currently doing, will, sooner or later, only cause a fight.

There are many WP policies, some quite fundamental, that I disagree with. I think this one is entirely sensible, and your remarks above illustrate very clearly the reasons why. Many people, and not just Jews, passionately hold your position: that the AD/BC notation is an unwarranted expression of Christian cultural dominance. Many Christians, equally passionately, hold the opposite position: that the BCE/CE notation is a direct attack on their deeply-held Christian beliefs. These two positions are inherently irreconcilable -- but both systems are currently used. If one is to succeed with a project that aims at universality via neutrality, like WP, the only sensible way to achieve true neutrality is to mandate neither position, but allow both as appropriate, and that's what the WP:ERA policy does.

Your other point, that "BC/AD are dead at the scholarly level", is simply not correct. BCE/CE is widespread in North American universities, and in Israel, but most academic writing in other parts of the English speaking world still uses AD/BC. And the scholarly world is not the audience for WP. By far the majority of the English-speaking public grew up with AD/BC and is simply unaware of the term BCE/CE. WP is really not an appropriate vehicle for propagandizing the public into using what is for most a new and unfamiliar system, as you propose.

Speaking for myself, a secular humanist atheist (despite my name!), I do not feel any sense of Christian domination when I see an AD/BC date, any more than I feel that an AM date implies I should believe that the world was created only a few thousand years ago, or that an AH date implies that I should believe that there is no God but God and Muhammed is his prophet. To me, these eras encode something about the history of the related calendar; I find that interesting and worth understanding and preserving -- but nothing more. Each system is appropriate in certain contexts. Ipso facto, the BCE/CE system is also appropriate in some contexts -- but not everywhere.

In most WP articles I really couldn't care less which system is used, provided it is used consistently and correctly. In the cases of the Julian calendar and Gregorian calendar articles, however, I feel that BCE/CE system is not appropriate, because the articles deal in part with the history of these particular calendars, which is closely bound up to the history of Christianity. But, I repeat, if you really think the point is worth pursuing, WP:ERA gives you guidelines for doing that. And if you want to change the policy, by all means get a discussion going on that too. But you might want to read WP:eras and related threads first. --Chris Bennett (talk) 03:01, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

BC/AD vs. CE/BCE

I was a fan of the Metric System, too. But peer-reviewed (i.e. "real") academic papers, I suppose, are not going to go quoting Wikipedia anyway, for fear of being laughed out of the room. Just saves me the job of common-sense editing, because I have no desire to do battle with the forces of Xtianity or any other religion unless it's meaningful, & I see from replies that it is not. Cheers & thanks for the feedback. Someday factual sites will fight religious bias with the zeal that we "freethinking" atheists do now. Rtelkin (talk) 01:55, 7 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Weeping Angels

Please don't try to explain the mechanics of fictional characters--we can only summarise the explanations of reliable sources. DonQuixote (talk) 04:20, 15 March 2017 (UTC) And what, exactly, constitutes a "reliable source," O Man of La Mancha? I ask this mostly because I expanded a reference from one DW episode to its occurrence in an earlier DW episode, with link to that earlier episode's Wikipedia entry intact, but was informed that my referenced reference needed a source, although it had indeed, & quite obviously, provided one....Rtelkin (talk) 07:12, 12 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Edit summaries

Hi, I notice that you have been signing your edit summaries. This is just a friendly note to let you know that you don't need to sign edit summaries at all. --AussieLegend (✉) 04:32, 28 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'm a bit thick, here...when you say "your edit summarised," What do you mean? The box where I explain how I fixed something or made it better? I was under the impression that I had to sign any editing I did to anything, as a note of responsibility... Thanks. Rtelkin (talk) 14:44, 5 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

(talk page stalker) I can field that one: Signing isn't about responsibility, it's about simple identification.

Wikipedians are asked to sign their messages on Talk pages (like this one), to identify what's written as coming from them. But if they forget, a helpful bot will come along and add the signature for them anyway. That's possible because every edit made on Wikipedia — whether it's in the main article namespace, the Talk namespace, or anywhere else — is logged with the identity of the editor (if they're logged in) or the computer they made the edit from (if they're not). Since edit summaries are listed in the edit history (logs) of the page that was edited, they're already shown with the editor's identity listed right next to them.

In truth, Wikipedia could automatically sign Talk page contributions for everyone, instead of having the signature be self-applied. The reason it doesn't work that way is largely historical in nature, since the four-tilde signature is a feature that dates back to when the software was new and far less advanced than it is now. Point is, you only need to sign your personal contributions on Talk pages, and you never need to sign your edit summaries as they're already automatically logged with your username. And it just plain looks weird when you do attempt to sign them, as you can see from looking at the log of your contributions. -- FeRD_NYC (talk) 14:00, 14 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Your email to me

Regarding your email to me, nobody is "sabotaging" your contributions. Wikipedia has certain policies and guidelines with which all editors are expected to comply and many of your edits have not been in compliance, which is why they have been reverted or edited. When you edit a page, any of your contributions are subject to review and may be changed or deleted by any editor. If you can't accept that then maybe you should consider editing somewhere else. That you claim to have a PhD is not relevant. Editors come from all walks of life and having a PhD doesn't make you any better than anyone else. Nor does it exclude you from being a fanboy. Regarding age, because this seems to be something you are concerned about, as I explained in my edit summary (which you will note was not signed, because that's something that is both unnecessary and pointless) ages of fictional characters are considered trivial information. {{Infobox character}} used to have a field for age but it was deleted for that reason. It's something we don't include in articles, which is why it was deleted. I understand that it's something that fanboys might like to read, but Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, not a fansite. If you don't know what we expect in an encyclopaedia, go to a library and look at a decent printed encyclopaedia. A formal tone is required (another issue with your edits) and everything should be treated from a real world perspective. In the real world, fiction exists in a perpetual "present" so the ages of fictional characters are generally unimportant, which is why we don't include them. --AussieLegend (✉) 01:45, 6 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

ArbCom 2017 election voter message

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Referencing is important

Hello, I'm Bri. I noticed that you made a change to an article, Craps, but you didn't provide a reliable source. It's been removed and archived in the page history for now, but if you'd like to include a citation and re-add it, please do so! If you need guidance on referencing, please see the referencing for beginners tutorial, or if you think I made a mistake, you can leave me a message on my talk page. Thank you.

You also might want to stop putting tildes in your edit summaries. You can see what it looks like to other editors here. ☆ Bri (talk) 19:41, 1 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

April 2018

Please do not add or change content, as you did at List of Star Trek races, without citing a reliable source. Please review the guidelines at Wikipedia:Citing sources and take this opportunity to add references to the article. Thank you. DonIago (talk) 19:33, 20 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

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