User talk:Twilightsojourn

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Welcome!

Hello, Twilightsojourn, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome! -- Jeff3000 04:03, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

1 Be Bold!
2 Thank you!
3 unicode
4 Image:Speedcubing-Twilightsojourn.jpg
5 Persian names
6 Image:Dvcode giftset box.jpg
7 Image:Da Vinci Code DVD cover.jpg

[edit] Be Bold!

Hi Twilightsojourn,

I noticed your comments on Talk:Mírzá Muhammad `Alí. I started editing wikipedia about one year ago, and I also had the same questions. I soon found that wikipedia is much less organized than you first expect. There are pages out there with nobody paying attention to them, and in general, nobody will argue or revert your work unless you distort the truth, usually with some kind of agenda. Even with major content change/cleanup, most of the time people will appreciate the help. So if you see something that needs to be cleaned up or re-written, just go ahead and do it. Someone will let you know if it's less-than-desirable work. Good luck. Cuñado - Talk 23:13, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thank you!

Thanks for being so welcoming! I really appreciate the guidance that you (plural) are sharing with me. Jeff3000, those seem like great links -- thanks for putting them all in one place, so I didn't have to track them down independently, like I had done before! And Cuñado, thanks for the insight -- I was just playing it safe, as I've been around Wikipedia long enough to see people getting upset about all sorts of things -- but I think you're right. I'll try and follow the advice from both of you, and I hope I can be of assistance, and make the Wikipedia project the best it can be!

Thanks again! --Twilightsojourn 17:29, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] unicode

Hi Twilightsojourn,

As to your question about coding... I'm really not an expert so I can't claim too much accuracy on all this. I know that Explorer browsers do not read code as well as Firefox. Explorer turns many symbols used in Arabic transliteration into squares. But if you use the template: {{unicode}}, then they will display correctly. This is part of the reason that we only use the strict version of transliteration, which has underdots, in the first line of the article (never, never in the title). Another reason is that it would be arduous to implement, and inconsistently applied. If you want the words to display correctly in all browsers, you must write {{unicode|Mírzá Ḥusayn-`Alí}}, and not just Mírzá Ḥusayn-`Alí.

In other words, just ignore the dots, unless it's in the first paragraph. See Mírzá Abu'l-Fadl for an example. If you want to discuss this with other editors, you can bring it up on: Talk:Bahá'í orthography. Cuñado - Talk 01:24, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Image:Speedcubing-Twilightsojourn.jpg

First of all, it's a lovely picture (though oversized a bit). Since you've chosen Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 License (which can be replaced by cc 2.5), I took the liberty to resize it to 640x433, and upload the picture to the commons [1].

I hope you like the result.
Best regards, Yuval Y 01:32, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks so much for your comments! The reason for it being so big originally was because I had simply uploaded the photo at the fullest resolution I had, though I think what you did with the resizing works well, and looks great. Great job, and thanks for letting me know! Take care, Twilightsojourn 06:20, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Pleasure =) Btw, would you like me to change the commons one to cc 2.5 ? Yuval Y 14:04, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

They don't appear to be any different -- is there any difference I should know about? Otherwise, I see no reason why not. Thanks, and take care, Twilightsojourn 19:51, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Just a small bureaucratic issue, {{pd}} is much worse... ;-)

Seems nice to know you a bit or something.

Best regards, Yuval Y 20:11, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

It's nice to have talked with you, too! If you feel like saying hello again, be sure to swing by my talk page. :-) (Just so you know -- I just added your previous comment to my talk page, to maintain the continuity of the conversation.) Take care, Twilightsojourn 18:28, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Sould we continue talking on both pages, or just one of them? Besides, do you have ICQ, Messenger or whatever such? Yuval Y 19:59, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I personally prefer to have a copy of comments on both talk pages, as I find it easier to follow a conversation. Different people have different styles, though, I've found.

I'm actually most accessible by e-mail -- and you can hit the "E-mail this user" link on the left-hand side of the page to send me a message, if you'd like (when viewing my talk page/user page). It would be nice to hear from you! Take care, Twilightsojourn 20:35, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Persian names

Could you review the newly-minted "Persian names"? Appreciate any contributions you see need to be made. I think, if we're going to add diacritical marks, we should keep them to the current academic standards. Mille grazie, MARussellPESE 03:08, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Thank you so much for thinking of me! Honestly, though, I am no expert on the subject, though I will certainly do what I can to touch up the text that is already there. With regards to the specific diacritical marks for the names, I think that they should be added -- however, I'm not positive as to what the proper academic standards would be for them, so unfortunately, it looks like I won't be able to help too much in that department . . . sorry! Thanks again for thinking of me, and hopefully I can be of more help in the future! Take care, Twilightsojourn 05:16, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Arabic/Persian transliteration marks used in academia have evolved since Shoghi Effendi selected the one Baha'is use. While I prefer it, and I think more accurately presents Persian pronunciation, the formal standards are different. (The academic ones seem more "Arabic" to me.) I'm looking to Cuńado for the formal diacriticals.

I added the link in the respective articles because these titles were "bestowed", not out of a sense of grandiosity, but for the same reason they were assumed, namely to mitigate the mind-numbing confusion that that naming practice resulted in. Persian names were particularly difficult because of the omnipresence of "Muhammad", "Ali" and "Hussein" in given names.

e.g. Siyyid Ali Muhammad-i-Shirazi could still not be specific enough, and with its eleven syllables a mouthful. Much easier to just call him the Bab. (Bingo! One syllable.) And a unique name in the country. (By the way the wikipedia article has him as merely Siyyid Ali Muhammad. There have to have been, literally, thousands of individuals through time with that given name. There were probably scores of contemporaries with it.)

Same with Mirza Hussein Ali-i-Nuri. Nine syllables down to four: Baha'u'llah. (And I wouldn't hazard a guess at the number of contemporary Mirza Hussein Ali's there were.)

As an aside, my Scandinavian ancestors were not much easier to follow until they picked up surnames: Knut Knutsen, Worf-son-of-Mogh, etc. Hence people like Eric the Red.

Could you put them back? MARussellPESE 12:55, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay in responding -- I haven't logged in over the past few days.

Thanks for your response. I understand what you are saying, and I think that you raise an interesting point. I feel that the best way to approach this question is to examine the reason/purpose for the bestowal of the titles in question. You make a good point about the lack of specificity in the names without a geographical suffix, but I disagree with the idea that the titles Ghusn-i-Akbar, Báb, and Bahá'u'lláh were given primarily for the purpose of conveniently shortening the original names to make them more pronounceable. Between fulfilling prophecy and designating the inherent meaning of such titles, the significance appears (at least to me) to be a greater one than the one suggested by the Persian names article. That is why I feel the link should not be included, as it seems to overlook what appears to be the more important reason for the titles being given.

What do you think? And what would you say to starting a discussion about this on one of the pages in question (I'd say the Bahá'u'lláh article, as that would probably get the most traffic and be the most noticeable, and therefore have the greatest opportunity for consultation)? We could copy-and-paste what we've discussed already, and then ask for people to provide their input. I wouldn't mind my comments being posted on the Talk page, if you wouldn't. And in the meantime, I'll leave the links as you've reverted them. Thanks, and take care, Twilightsojourn 07:02, 2 October 2006 (UTC)