User talk:BabelStone/Archive 2018

Mahajani (Unicode block)

OK, I accept. But then, give a good idea also.
Anish Viswa 12:40, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, I should have given a better explanation in my edit summary. A screenshot of the table on the Wikipedia article is a snapshot in time of one user's experience using one particular font. If the Unicode block is updated with new characters then the screenshot becomes out of date. The link at the top of the table labelled "Official Unicode Consortium code chart" enables users to view the official Unicode code chart for the block, which is much better than editors showing users what it looks like on their machine. BabelStone (talk) 13:54, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Bopomofo neutral tone mark

Hi BabelStone, I was reverted a few days ago by user Weijibaaike who changed my edit for the Bopomofo neutral tone diacritic to something using U+30FB KATAKANA MIDDLE DOT which I think is a hack that shouldn't be used on Wikipedia. I am convinced that U+02D9 DOT ABOVE should be used in horizontal layout and U+0307 COMBINING DOT ABOVE in vertical layout. Even the latter displays fine using your BabelStone Han font v. 10.0.2. What do you think? Could you intervene without sparking an edit war? Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 20:59, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

I noticed your original revert, but not Weijibaaike's subsequent revert. Katakana Middle Dot is definitely the wrong character to use, so I have raised the issue on the talk page. BabelStone (talk) 00:00, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

Guanzi printing plates

Dear BabelStone,

On this website I found images of guanzi printing plates owned by the Administration Institute of Cultural Relics of Dongzhi County and a few in a private collection collection, I have e-mailed the author but as that usually comes to no avail I would like to ask you if by any chance you've ever studied these banknotes? And if you have, that you still have some photographs of those printing plates left in some dusty old album that's collecting cobwebs and would probably be better stored on Wikimedia Commons than some long forgotten shelf. 😅 Did you study Ancient Chinese printing plates in general if I may ask? As I see that you're the creator of all the Wikimedia Commons Chinese banknote categories that I am not the creator of. Regards --Donald Trung (Talk) (Articles) Respect mobile users. 10:14, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

There is an ongoing conversation on Wikimedia Commons regarding the status of scans of modern reproductions of these banknotes, are you by any chance versed in Chinese/Taiwanese copyright laws? --Donald Trung (Talk) (Articles) Respect mobile users. 16:07, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

Hi Donald, thanks for your questions. I am not an expert on ancient Chinese bank notes and printing plates, and have never studied them, although I am interested in them and take photographs whenever possible. I think all my photos have already been uploaded to Commons, but I will check if I have any new photos from my 2016 trip to China. As to copyright, all I know is that China has a 50 year rule for photographs. BabelStone (talk) 12:29, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

A Dictionary of Current Chinese/ Xiandai Hanyu Cidian

Hi- how do I apply to transfer the content of Xiandai Hanyu Cidian to A Dictionary of Current Chinese without 'loosing page history' as you say? Thanks! Geographyinitiative (talk) 07:02, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

Hi, please read Wikipedia:Moving a page which explains how to move a page. If you have any further questions please ask on the talk page of the article you want to move. BabelStone (talk) 10:23, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

West (name)

Hi User:BabelStone, sorry to ask if your busy, but can you add a short summary of the origin of the West (name) for the article please? I've found a reliable source (here [1]), but couldn't find the white pages from the name's countries of origin (England and Germany) or much on the family history of Kanye West, or the wider African-American usage of the surname.

The reason I'm asking is phrasing and presentation of articles is not a strong point for me and I've seen your edits to another article which was phrased and presented very well. If your busy editing, please get back at some point to let me know. Cheers, --Theo (contribs) 11:55, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Hi Theo, thanks for asking. Sure, I'll give that a go, although it is nothing special ("from the west side of town" or "from the west of the country" as I recall). BabelStone (talk) 15:29, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, it's mainly because I'm not good at paraphrasing, it would end up too similar to the sources' wording and in not enough detail. The Munshi surname article is a great example of well written. Can you look for the British and German white pages results for 2018, and any reliable sources documenting the African American history of the name and the history of Kanye West's family please? I don't know where to find it, thanks again. --Theo (contribs) 18:04, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Chinese characters for transcribing Slavonic

Hello. I noticed you were the the uploader on Wikicommons of the Slavonic character images, which I'm now using. I've written up a new article about them at Chinese characters for transcribing Slavonic. I think it'd be an interesting article to include on the front-page "Did you know..." if the article could be brought to reasonable shape. If you have some knowledge on the topic, your contributions would be appreciated! Sfjyu (talk) 00:37, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Hi Sfjyu, I already noticed the page you created, which is looking good. I do not know more about the usage of these characters than is given in the Unicode proposal documents. Great Brightstar asked me to upload the images (here), so perhaps they can help expand the article for DYK. BabelStone (talk) 10:09, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Regarding your edit and comment on Unicode

Hey BabelStone. Regarding this edit and comment: 1) you say "previous editor's own web page", which is not accurate. The website is not a personal web page, and a knowledge sharing platform. Yes, I wrote the answer there, and yes, I linked to it, because it's one of the two sources you can find about this specific piece of information. Since my writing was more focused on the matter than the other one, I chose to link to that. Whether the author of a source is also the editor of a wiki page is not a criteria in WP policies when it gets to referencing to external information. 2) Where you say "as the figure of 1,111,998 is derived by simple arithmetic from the two already mentioned figures of 1,112,064 and 66", well, if it was so obvious, previous authors would have added it to the article already. The reference you removed from the page (which I believe was biased on the authorship of the external reference) explains more on why this number is important, and why this would be considered the "number of character Unicode can encode". So, in short, IMHO, your biased decision reduced the quality of the article. Would love to hear your side of this story.

Tangut changes in Unicode 11

I've started working on Unicode block history for the upcoming release. I'm confused about the number of new Tangut characters. The beta data and L2/16095 show 5 new characters (U+187ED-F1) but L2/17-362 and L2/17-360 note 6 (U+187ED-F2). I haven't found minutes changing it from 6 to 5. Do you know if this is documented anywhere? Also, were the proposed glyph changes to existing characters accepted? Thanks. DRMcCreedy (talk) 16:15, 31 March 2018 (UTC)

Hi, the beta data is correct. L2/17-360 and L2/17-362 refer to six additional characters at U+187F2..U+187F7 targeted for Unicode 12.0. I cannot see any mention of U+187ED-187F2, but if there is it must be a mistake. BabelStone (talk) 17:35, 31 March 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. That clears it up. DRMcCreedy (talk) 18:00, 31 March 2018 (UTC)

A Chinese hoard from 2009

Well I found another newspaper article on a Chinese coin hoard, if you ever decide to start writing about these I could create a comprehensive list of newspaper articles regarding them, maybe you can archive this discussion and use the link if you ever decide to write about Chinese hoards (which are numerous and often quite interesting), as I'm not exactly versed in writing about coin hoards I would be glad to help you find sources as I often encounter these while researching the currencies themselves. --Donald Trung (talk) 19:52, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

Note that Chinese coin hoards can be as large as 5.6 metric ton, this is probably because Ancient Chinese coinage was made from copper alloys (usually bronze or brass), in your many travels to China have you ever had the privilege of inspecting hoards yourself? (not necessarily coin hoards, just ancient Chinese founds). --Donald Trung (talk) 00:57, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

"Tangut coins" images

Hello Andrew (@BabelStone:),

I had recently come across this article again and saw that you used a lot of illustrations of coins with Tangut inscriptions, did you by any chance create them using Microsoft Paint? If so, would you be willing to give permission to the OTRS of Wikimedia Commons so I could upload them to Wikimedia Commons? As my phablet (Microsoft Lumia 950 XL) doesn't support Tangut characters I can't read the inscriptions on it, however I were to use your illustrations and add them to the Western Xia coinage article it would greatly help people like me who don't have Tangut character support.

Yours faithfully,
--Donald Trung (talk) 16:42, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

You cause vandalism

You vandalise Wikipedia! 2A01:119F:21D:7900:89A7:4322:8B46:1724 (talk) 10:03, 28 June 2018 (UTC)

Please try to discuss things in a civil manner. --Donald Trung (talk) 10:48, 28 June 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for updating about Liu Xia (intellectual)

Thanks a lot for update. I edited lede a bit, because all news agencies, including the BBC you cited, said Liu Xia was under house arrest not since 2017, but since 2010, so just for 8 years, that is essential term. --PoetVeches (talk) 16:50, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

A page you started (Gulbenkian Prize) has been reviewed!

Thanks for creating Gulbenkian Prize, BabelStone!

Wikipedia editor Nick Moyes just reviewed your page, and wrote this note for you:

Ha - it seems ironic that I should be retrospectively 'New Page Reviewing' this old article you created in 2011. Ironic, because back in 1991 I won a "Highly Commended" in the Gulbenkian Award for Imaginative Education Work for the UK museum I worked in. (weirdly this article suggests those prizes only began in 2003. That was certainly not the case, though there's no online evidence that goes sufficiently far back to prove this point). ...Just thought I'd drop this random and unverifiable fact into this otherwise rather pointless page review note! Regards

To reply, leave a comment on Nick Moyes's talk page.

Learn more about page curation.

Nick Moyes (talk) 00:01, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

Old Uyghur alphabet

I am writing a full list of all Chinese cash coins and came across two (2) issued by the Uyghur Khaganate written in the Old Uyghur alphabet, is there a way I can transliterate the Latin "Köl bilgä Tängri Boquq Uiğur qağan - Il tutmiš yarliğinga" into Old Uyghur script? --Donald Trung (talk) 09:21, 2 September 2018 (UTC)

Not at present. If you really wanted, you could approximate it by transliterating into Mongolian which shares many of the same letters, but it is probably best to leave it in Latin transliteration. BabelStone (talk) 21:52, 2 September 2018 (UTC)

Thank you, you're right, that's like trying to write Etruscan with ita derivative, Latin, it shares a lot of similarities but it's not 100% accurate. There are just so many scripts in China and India, at least the Indian ones are still used today but the ones from China aren't, I'm just happy that Tangut and Manchu have Unicode forms because those scripts do have more than just two inscriptions. Well, have a great day. --Donald Trung (talk) 05:07, 3 September 2018 (UTC)

Unicode redirects

I saw you involved in some of the recent redirect changes of the form Unicode n, so I wanted to let you know that I nominated these for discussion at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2018 October 11#Unicode 0, in case you want to comment. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 15:29, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the notification, I have commented on the discussion.BabelStone (talk) 09:38, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

Tangorin

[2]

?

I can't see it, and until today I used it (the dictionary, not the "handbook") multiple times daily for the better part of a decade. Did it suddenly get blocked out in Japan or something?

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 10:55, 16 October 2018 (UTC)

I don't know. The site works for me, so best not to remove it from the article. BabelStone (talk) 12:58, 16 October 2018 (UTC)

First Table of Standardized Forms for Words with Variant Forms; pinyininput

Hello sir! I am humbled to see you make additions to the new page I made at First Table of Standardized Forms for Words with Variant Forms. If you have a better translation for the title of that document or a more scholarly appraisal of that document, please revert or change anything I have written there. Also, I don't know what your pinyin input method is, but I sincerely recommend you change to this one: [3]! Come over and visit us working on the Chinese-English dictionary on en.wiktionary sometime! I have been adding information about second-round simplified characters to that dictionary. Geographyinitiative (talk) 12:52, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

Sir, thanks again for your help on the above page. I have made a few more changes and additions since my last writing here. I created the page as part of Wikipedia Asian Month. Also, I would like to ask/invite you to participate in Asian Month if you have time. Did you make four or even one or two new articles related to Asia this month? If you did, please submit them at the Asian Month page. Having a real scholar involved in Asian Month should help raise the profile of this annual editing drive. Thanks again for your time! Geographyinitiative (talk) 12:44, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

Sorry if I came off as rude or abrasive in the previous two posts- please remember, I'm a Wikipedia & Wiktionary editor; how good can my social skills really be? Here is more information about Wikipedia:Wikipedia Asian Month (different from the above link; explains the rules of the editing drive). I did five articles last year and six articles this year- I'm most proud of: Xiandai Hanyu Guifan Cidian, First Table of Standardized Forms for Words with Variant Forms, Wuying Pagoda Geographyinitiative (talk) 13:08, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

I apologise for not replying to your earlier messages, but to be honest I was not happy when you told me that I should change how I write Chinese on the computer as this is absolutely nothing to do with you (and quite offensive to me personally as I sometimes use a pinyin input method that I wrote myself -- but I do not go around telling other people to use it!). It was kind of you to invite me to contribute to various projects that you are involved in, but I am very busy, and only have limited time available for Wikipedia, and I am quite able to decide on my own what projects I want to work on. Good day! BabelStone (talk) 13:38, 26 November 2018 (UTC)