User talk:DariusMazeika

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Hello there, welcome to the 'pedia! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. If you need pointers on how we title pages visit Wikipedia:Naming conventions or how to format them visit our manual of style. If you have any other questions about the project then check out Wikipedia:Help or add a question to the Village pump. Cheers! --maveric149

Hello Darius, welcome here. I just noticed, that your article Trakai is identical with the stuff on http://www.trakai.lt. Do you have permission to use this stuff? Please read Wikipedia:Copyrights for further information. -- Cordyph 12:40 Feb 26, 2003 (UTC)

Hi again. I am sorry for overwriting your contents with a copyright infringement notice, but I will restore the articles (Trakai and Kernave). This is an excerpt from the copyright policy: "In the second case, if you incorporate external GFDL materials, you need to acknowledge the authorship on the history page or talk page and provide a link back to the network location of the original copy." So, just leave the message on the Trakai talk page as is, and place the resembling message onto the Kernave talk page. Sorry for the inconvenience, but reading a sentence like "After visiting Kernave once, there is an urge to visit it again and again" made me suspicious. You should change these sections in order to become encyclopedic content.
Now I am going to restore your articles. Have a lot of fun on Wikipedia. -- Cordyph 14:23 Feb 26, 2003 (UTC)

Hello! Great work on Watercolour, however, I just noticed that there is already an article called Watercolor painting. These two articles should probably be merged, to include information from both of them, and the other redirected. I will go ahead and merge them at Watercolor painting; hopefully you can assist in the process of integrating them. Thanks! -- Wapcaplet 12:17 3 Jun 2003 (UTC)

The merging was pretty easy. Your article focused mostly on the history of watercolor, and the other article was about technique and watercolor paints, so the two complemented each other well. Great work! -- Wapcaplet 12:50 3 Jun 2003 (UTC)

p.s. - you're probably right that we should use both spellings for redirect pages. I changed to the American English spelling for the merge, since the existing article is spelt as such. -- Wapcaplet

1 An image uploaded by you
2 Trakai
3 Karaite Judaism
- 3.1 Newness
4 Dėl lenkiškų pavadinimų lietuviškiems miestams
5 Cochineal

[edit] An image uploaded by you

You uploaded the image Image:Cochineal.jpg, and we need to know more about it. Who took it, or where did you find it? What kind of license it has? What do you remember about these things? It is useful to read the copyright basics in Wikipedia and about mandatory copyright tags. -Hapsiainen 00:28, Mar 19, 2005 (UTC)

I found out that the image was released in Texas beyond History website. Since you didn't write that you are the author of the picture, I believe that you took it from there. But publishing the picture in Wikipedia doesn't fit in the scope of the permissions given by the site. The image here is probably a copyright infringement, so I have listed it under Wikipedia:Possibly unfree images. -Hapsiainen 14:21, May 31, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Trakai

I don't know how exactly erasing the former name of the town makes the article on Trakai more NPOV, but if you insist... On the other hand, I wouldn't mind some explanation. Halibu tt 06:10, Jun 26, 2005 (UTC)s

I replied in Talk:Trakai. Halibu tt 06:46, Jun 26, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Karaite Judaism

Would you be maybe able to get a somewhat official statement from the Karaim Cultural Association representative on whether Karaite religion is a sect of Judaism or not ? Lysy 28 June 2005 16:50 (UTC)

Thanks for the message. I believe there might be different groups of Karaites throughout the world with different views on this ? --Lysy (talk) 5 July 2005 09:36 (UTC)

Yes, this can be the case. But I find the opposite view quite inadequate and even offensive - too many facts are ignored and even false interpretations take place (like labeling Karaims Jews by nationality). The worst thing is, that this bul..it reappears again and again in several pages related to Karaims / Karaites. It seems to me, that Karaims (Turkish ancestry) and Karaites (Jewish ancestry) have to be separated to different pages, as well as their religion pages, with interlinking to topics related to genesis of these religions. This would reflect nowadays situation much better. My intuition tells, that oppposition can be very tough - even impossible. It's always difficult to deal with people, who ignore facts. DariusMazeika 5 July 2005 09:56 (UTC)

Well, there are separate pages for Karaims and Karaites (both redirects), but you are right that the way it is now seems very one-sided. It would be best to have some Karaims involved into this themselves instead of letting others write about them. --Lysy (talk) 5 July 2005 10:05 (UTC)

What I understood from the conversation with Karaim representitive, she knows very well what wikipedia is, but she feels very sceptic and upset about the relevance of information. I know this myself - when a large and a smaller groups are involved in disputes, it's next to impossible to get get a well ballanced and NPOV articles. It seems that it won't be solved between Karaites and Karaims themselves only - we will end with even worse mess it is now. I will try to ask her for more Karaim involvment in Wikipedia when I have next chance. DariusMazeika 5 July 2005 10:43 (UTC)

I'll try to contact Karaims in Poland and maybe get some support from them. Anyway, I'm an outsider here and do not know much myself on the topic, but currently it really seems strange and confusing the way it is explained on WP. --Lysy (talk) 5 July 2005 12:04 (UTC)

Do you think it would be possible that Lithuanian Karaims could try to work on the article and defend themselves ? As you can see from the discussion page there seems to be fierce opposition even to the fact that there may exists any other point of view than American-Jewish :-(. --Lysy (talk) 8 July 2005 08:53 (UTC)

Well, there are only about 200 active Karaims in Lithuania, most of them even don't know what Wikipedia is now how it works. They voice would be erased by oposition majority and they will be voiced by ideas they don't associate with. The only hope it seems to be the outsiders. Meybe Dirgela would help - I believe, he's a master of NPOV articles. Maybe some people with serious academic backgrond would try to defend facts, not someone's highly biased POV. But no one wants to deal with fanatic people Karaite authors look like :( . On a weekends I am usually abroad, so my internet access is very limited, so I will not participate until Monday in the discussion page. I am urprised, that American Jews, not local Jews are trying to propogate this biased and false information into Wikipedia. Surprise, surprise - I was always wondering who was standing under those strange statements... DariusMazeika 09:50, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

I am still not happy with current version - it still states "Karaims = Jews", and the facts are ignored:

Karaims do not speak any of Jewish languages
Karaims do not share Jewish traditions
Religion does not describe the nationality. If I am a Catholic, this does not make me an Italian or Pole. If I am atheist, this doesn't mean I have no nationality.
The article ignores the idea or even a possibility of evolving Karaim religion into something original, what Karaims share now. Strange, that the same article doesn't make assertions, that Christianity and other religions which have roots in Judaism are "sects of Judaism". This is strange, because the relation between Karaite Judaism and Karaim religion has been lost several ages ago.

I am not keen in discusing the disputes on wikipedia - I have rarely done this before, I will try discussing this on Monday. DariusMazeika 19:42, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

I know. Initially I assumed pure ignorance, but later I realised that there're too many people who do not recognize that there may be any point of view other than American/Israeli-Jewish. Sad, but then any dispute is pointless. Some support from the Karaims themselves would be helpful, but their community in Poland is even smaller than in Lithuania. So far it's good that at least the article admits that some Karaims don't consider themselves Jewish (and then immediately explain that they are wrong). --Lysy (talk) 20:25, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Newness

Darius, I don't know whether or not this is the appropriate section to insert a comment, or not, please forgive me if it's not. I did not mean my comment to be insulting. A quick lesson in English idiomatic expressions: "throw the baby out with the bathwater" in English means, "dismiss something important in the process of dismissing something unimportant". I did not mean to disparage either you or Lysy. By means of clarification, I have found your contributions, as well as your talkpage interaction with Lysy to be verging on trollishness with respect to the topic of whether or not Karaites in general, and Karaim in particular are "Jewish". My firsthand experience with Crimean Karaites (approximately 85% of the "Karaims" community), is that they identify themselves as not only Jewish, but as the only legitimate inheritors of "true" Judaism. While I have no problem with mentioning that some modern-day Karaim in Lithuania do not identify themselves as Jewish, based on my own interaction with Karaim from Israel, must vociferously object to any blanket statement that this is a common belief among all Karaim. Beyond that, the Crimean Karaites, aka "Karaim" are the only group of Karaites for which any claims of "non-Jewishness" can be found. The vast majority of Karaites insist not only that they are Jews, but that they are the inheritors of the purest form of Judaism. That aside, you might be interested to note that there have been Karaites who have become Rabbanites and Rabbaites who have become Karaites in every age since the original schism occurred, even up until today, without any doubt ever entering anyone's mind on either side that both are Jewish. Tomer ^TALK 08:22, July 13, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Dėl lenkiškų pavadinimų lietuviškiems miestams

Kas dėl lenkiškų pavadinimų lietuviškiems miestams wikipedijoje, su kuriais susidūrei straipsnyje apie Trakus, tai nėra tik su tuo straipsniu susijęs faktas. Kaip jau galbūt pastebėjai, lenkiški pavadinimai pridėti prie absoliučiai beveik visų Lietuvos miestų, miestelių ir kaimų kurie tik turi straipsnius vikipedijoje. Ne tik prie tų, kur daug lenkų, kaip pvz. Trakai, bet ir prie Šiaulių, Panevėžio, netgi kokių Marcinkonių straipsnių ir netgi prie straipsnių apie miestus, kurie niekada nebuvo Lenkijos-Lietuvos valstybės dalimi tiesiogiai ir neturėjo lenkų ponų sluoksnio (Šilutė). Panaikinus šiuos pavadinimus vienas ypač į kalbas nesileidžiantis lenkų nacionalistas be jokių diskusijų juos grąžina (būtent kalbu apie vitkacą). Čia reikia bendro sprendimo, nes kitaip ir bus tokia betvarkė, kadangi minėtas žmogus kiek suprantu nori parodyti, kad lietuvių tautos esą išvis nebuvo, o čia visur buvo lenkai. Tas pats žmogus nuiminėjo ir lietuviškus pavadinimus nuo mažosios Lietuvos miestų dabartinės Lenkijos teritorijoje. Taigi, čia reikia bendro sprendimo, tam tikslui yra straipsnis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naming_conventions/Vote_on_city_naming; neaišku, kada ten pavyks ką nors nutarti, reikės vėliau balsavimą padaryti. DeirYassin 10:22, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

Aš perskaitysiu tai, kas siūloma, ir prabalsuosiu už tai, kas man atrodo optimaliausia. Dėkui. DariusMazeika 18:38, 17 July 2005 (UTC)