Talk:Saffron/Archive02

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).
Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Contents

Minor Edition Problems

Greetings Mate, first of all thanks for this wonderfull and well done article. Below you will find just nit picking on wording and editing. Since I'm not an Wikipedia editor (this is my first talk), I may be completely off base.  :)

  1. On Modern Trade - "For example, they may look for threads exhibiting a vivid crimson colouring." - I think you can go wihtout the For Example here.
  2. On Gradding: "These are determined by finding the spice's crocin content. This is determined by finding the saffron's spectroscopic absorbance (Aλ = − log(I / I0), with Aλ as absorbance)." - The repetition caused by 'These are determined by' and 'This is determined by' does not sound good. I would change it for something like "The saffron's spectroscopic absorbance (Aλ = − log(I / I0), with Aλ as absorbance) is used to determine the spice's crocin content."
  3. On Gradding: "However, despite these attempts at quality control and standardisation, a rich history of saffron adulteration continues into the present." - You could just take that However on the start of the phras. You already used it on the second last phrase of the previous paragraph.  :) Samuel Sol 20:10, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
You're right. I fixed them. Thank you. Saravask 22:42, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

External links

A hidden URL http://vs.aka-online.de/globalwpsearch/ was just inserted into the article. The URL leads to a site that hosts advertising, is not Wikipedia-affiliated, and has nothing compelling to offer on the subject of saffron — instead, it only functions as a search engine, a function that Wikipedia already has through its search box and interwiki links. Please see WP:EL and WP:SPAM. Links to commercial sites are fine, as long as they have "meaningful" and "relevant" content about saffron that is not already in this article. Thanks. Saravask 15:42, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

I have to be honest

If this were still on FAC, I would now be objecting for "Too Many Pictures." This is out of hand, it looks like a photo-essay. Pick and choose. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 06:03, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Looks good. Saravask 17:33, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
It's really rather depressing to have had to lose so many fantastic images. The article has lost quite a lot of beauty. But I completely understand the reason for doing so, and it does help make the article a little less crowded in some areas. I still regret the removal of a few images, though; Image:Saffron stigmas crocus sativa corrected.jpg in particular (which used to be the top image of this article) deeply impressed me, and I'd expected it to appear on the main page if this article was ever nominated to appear there, but that will no longer be possible with it removed. Ah well, we do provide a link to the Commons, where they should all be available, so that'll have to do. -Silence 03:29, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps Image:Saffron stigmas crocus sativa corrected.jpg (which is nice) could replace Image:Crocus sativus saffron Anna Tatti stockxchng.jpg. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 03:47, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
Looks beautiful. But there's been a bit of controversy over whether Image:Saffron stigmas crocus sativa corrected.jpg even shows C. sativus flowers. See this comment by MPF. Saravask 04:03, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
This article already has a slightly non-standard "see also" section, so maybe you could add image links to that section? They're definitely worth prominently mentioning. --Michiel Sikma 22:13, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Article split

Unless people object, I plan on splitting just split this article into four two pieces:

  1. Saffron
  2. Biology and chemistry of saffron
  3. History of saffron
  4. Usage of saffron

My goal is to get the main article under 40 70 kb (it was at 90–91 kb when featured). History of saffron is up for peer review here. Saravask 03:54, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

A summary-style split-off of history certainly looks like a very good idea, and I have no reason to think biology and chemistry wouldn't work well too.
I can't put me finger on why, but I feel like Usage of saffron wouldn't be a good article on its own. I can't pinpoint why, though. Maybe because "usage" is a wishy-washy word. Maybe because the culinary uses and medicinal uses are (in today's world at least) entirely separate. Perhaps "Saffron in medicine" could be stand-alone, I'm not sure. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 04:01, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
  • "History" is the only one of those that really seems like a good and necessary article to me. "Usage" is a fine size, and "biology and chemistry" needs clarification and term-explanation on this article before we can even start worrying about splitting. -Silence 06:41, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
I have to ask, if it weren't for the maximum size recommendation, would the article be split at all? (I agree that "History" is the cleanest to separate.)--Curtis Clark 07:08, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

I also think that history is the most logical- and probably the only necessary daughter article.--nixie 16:32, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

I see. Saravask 19:30, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Some comments

"... I'd expected it to appear on the main page if this article was ever nominated to appear there ..."

Just for the record, I am adamantly opposed to the idea that this article should be nominated for the main page TFA. From past experience, I’ve learned that main page featuring effectively inaugurates an extended period of "special extended featured article mutilation" (a telling transmogrification of a phrase I've often heard to describe FACs). I don't want this article being swarmed by an inundation of dross, cruft, and utter crap. Yes, I am aware of WP:AGF — but that doesn’t mean that we should naively believe that all non-vandal contributors know exactly what the hell they think they are doing when they add their own "two cents" to a featured article like this.
  • I've also inserted an image gallery. I imagine this is a rather harmless thing to do, but others are free to chime in. I’ve also included therein the two dubious images. Saravask 01:46, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
I'm of two minds about this, but I tend to agree (and must admit that I assumed all FA would eventually appear on the front page). When Black pepper appeared, I was able to make a substantive edit, but then, I cleaned up a lot of vandalism and cruft in the ensuing weeks.--Curtis Clark 04:25, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
It took weeks to clean up the cruft? Why not just revert to the pre-TFA version (immediately before it appeared as Today's featured article on the main page), then look through a before-and-after TFA diff (before and after it was on the main page) and retroactively incorporate only the useful changes? Addressing your last comment: no — given that usually seven or more articles are promoted to FA status in a given week (for example, note this week's new featured articles) and many new nominations for TFA each week (note how many were nominated just in the last week), there are many dozens of FAs that have been around for many months — or even years — without being on the main page. Saravask 22:30, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
There were a lot of good edits with a few blatants and cluelesses scattered among, so it was easier to watch and revert, and there were a number of us doing that. But being on the front page attracts bad attention as well as good.--Curtis Clark 00:22, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Notes section

While it's good to have lots of notes, it is taking up a lot of vertical space, which looks bad to me. The references section is handled quite well I think, splitting them up into two rows, and I'd like to do the same thing to the notes, except my wiki-fu is weak, and I can't quite grok the markup. Could someone help out? Fieari 15:49, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Notes are dynamically generateed via m:Cite/Cite.php — there's no actual material in the "Notes" section to collimate or organize. Saravask 23:12, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Gallery

I removed:








I oppose the addition of this gallery. Wikipedia is not a collection of images without text. These don't even have captions. Add as many images in the body text as you want to illustrate your point. All the other images should be moved to wikisource, just as we move large collections of quotes to wikiquote. savidan(talk) (e@) 16:28, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

I will have to agree here — the gallery is a bit out of place. They serve no useful purpose as one can see them in the wikimedia page anyway. --BorgQueen 16:34, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
Agreeing (though I've seen gallery sections becoming increasingly common on Wikipedia articles recently, surprisingly). The gallery was created because there are so many fantastic and illustrative free-use images we have, but there's simply not enough room in the article to use a lot of them without causing bloat. Many of the images are even good enough to go on the top of the article (or have been on the top in the past) or on the main-page should it be featured, but that isn't possible if they're not used in the article somehow, of course. But it's true that Wikipedia is not an image gallery; that's the whole point of MediaWiki, so we should use it as such rather than setting a poor example for other articles with an abundance of images. Note that this matter has been discussed and touched on before a few times, such as in the Talk:Saffron/Archive01#Notes_section_as_a_gallery.3F discussion. -Silence 16:44, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
OK. Then I'll add images (w/ captions) to the "Notes" section, as was done at Kerala#Notes. Any problems w/ this? Saravask 23:17, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Tidying up the main-page box

I immediately noticed some glaring errors in Wikipedia:Today's_featured_article/March_20,_2006, which will be appearing on the main page in 9 days. Most obvious is the bizarre broken sentence "Saffron, which has for decades been the world's most expensive spice by weight.", but there are also numerous subtler errors (like not italicizing saffron in "The word saffron") and poor space usage. The overall effect of this box will be too bore to tears 99% of Wikipedia's readers, who will turn off as soon as the rambling discourse of the summarized intro begins with a lengthy series of botanical definitions ("The flower's three stigmas (the distal ends of the plant's carpels) and parts of its style (a stalk connecting the stigmas to the rest of the plant) are often dried and used in cooking as a seasoning and colouring agent.", when simply "Components of the flower are often dried and used in cooking as a seasoning and colouring agent." would work just as well for the main page's purposes!), which, though completely fine and appropriate for the article itself (since it will continue to use that terminology throughout the page), is very poor choice for the Wikipedia article. Even more heinous from an aesthetic perspective is the brutal error of using the exact same image for the main-page as is used at the very top of this page, even though we have dozens of even more beautiful and illustrative images available to use instead! Tragic. Luckily, admins can help edit to fix all of these errors before the thing actually appears on the main page; if I was one, I'd do it myself rather than bitching about it. :P -Silence 20:12, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

This shouldn't be a TFA for the reasons pointed out above. Also, I don't know who nominated this or wrote the blurb (it wasn't me). Saravask 23:01, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
I know it wasn't you, and I certainly remember your saying that it shouldn't be on the main-page, though I don't entirely understand your reasoning (since Hugo Chavez actually underwent relatively little vandalism or changing; the vast majority of the significant changes to Chavez while it was on the main page wree, in fact, made by me!, and thus were of the same style and nature as the ones that had been made over weeks past). If you feel strongly about it, you might be able to prevent its appearing on the main page by pleading to Raul or something. But that has little to do with my points above, which is that if it does appear on the main page, we should certainly remedy these glaring errors in the text that is to be featured on the mainpage!! -Silence 00:07, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

inaccurate info

hello. "Historians believe that saffron first came to China with Mongol invaders by way of Persia. Yet saffron is mentioned in ancient Chinese medical texts, including the Pun Tsao ("Great Herbal") pharmacopoeia (pp. 1552–78), a tome dating from around 1600 BC . Compiled under Emperor Shen-Ung...", this piece of info is not correct:

  1. the work is generally atrributed to the descendents of Shen Nong, not compiled under his instruction
  2. the work is written at its earliest 200-300 BC

Maybe someone would want to verify the info? Cheer.--K.C. Tang 03:16, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, but most of your info (your date, your claim that he didn't write it or order it written) doesn't seem to be correct, per Hayes. I've made fixes ([1]) using Hayes' Principles and Methods of Toxicology (Google book search results). Saravask 05:45, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Speaking of which the lead says most expensive for centuries, but looking at the history it seems to go back and forth and say decades without any of them noting in the edit summary. The main page blurb says decades, and I would have fixed it to centuries if I new for sure which was correct. - Taxman Talk 04:56, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

It should only read "decades", not "centuries". Saravask 05:56, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
An anon changed it from "decades" to "centuries" ([2]). Saravask 06:02, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
forgive my bluntness: but would you be persuaded if i show you some Chinese sources? i'm a bit frustrated...i don't know how i can persuade you since you don't read Chinese :(--K.C. Tang 09:39, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
Sure, I can be persuaded if you can provide a source proving that Hayes is wrong. Saravask 18:04, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
i try to find some english sites which can provide the info, but the english sources seem not very reliable...here is an entry from a Chinese encyclopedia, it is rather detailed and accurate... but then you don't Chinese... do you happen to know some Chinese reader whom you trust to verify that?--K.C. Tang 02:52, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
I think I'm willing to trust you on this — it seems reasonable to believe that the Chinese (and Chinese sources) will know more about their own history than what a non-Chinese guy named Hayes wrote in his book (while not even providing any notes or primary refs). Still, maybe you could at least post a brief translated excerpt here? Maybe (as you asked) someone else watching this knows Chinese? Saravask 02:58, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
thanks for your trust first, you may also take a look at this site, search with key words "shennong bencaojing", and you can see a brief but rather accurate description of the work. Anyway, you've produced a great article and everyone is benefited. Cheer.:)--K.C. Tang 02:52, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
a simple way to deny Heyes' claim is to point out that the earliest record of Chinese writings are the oracle bones, which date no earlier than 1600BC. So you see it's a bit strange to say that the work was "written" by some legendary figure 2700BC. Frankly, i even doubt that if there is references to the plant in the book... the plant is called "Tibet red flower"(藏紅花) in Chinese, as the plant is believed to have first arrived Tibet from India during the Ming Dynasty...another "Great Herbal", the Compendium of Materia Medica, mentions it...is it possible that Heyes confused one work with the other?--K.C. Tang 15:14, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

wow

This article is stunningly good.--Deglr6328 05:22, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Is there a "best among featured" category? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by [[User:{{{1}}}|{{{1}}}]] ([[User talk:{{{1}}}|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/{{{1}}}|contribs]]).

This really does represent Wikipedia at its best. Nice work folks! — Matt Crypto 11:04, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree; this article is amazing! Kudos to all those who have worked on it. -Big Smooth 22:42, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Vandalism

There's vandalism in the first two sentences of the article ("Saffron (IPA: ['sæːfɹən]) is a piece of shit spice. It sucks almost as much as this Wikipedia site does."), but I don't seem to be able to edit it out. Maybe this is because of the way the first paragraph is protected when it's on the main page? (The main page text is fine.) Anyway, I don't seem to be nearly as competent at using the delete key as I thought, so someone else should probably take care of that.130.132.199.75 07:23, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

You can refresh your browser — I think it has been taken care of. Saravask 07:48, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Safranbolu

Someone added info about Safranbolu's annual festival to the "Biology" section — this is bad. I moved (a reworded version of the) info to History of saffron. Otherwise, addition of more information (about things whose mention may be neglected in this article) is always welcome. Saravask 18:14, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Iodoform-like fragrance?

I'd say most people have no idea what iodoform smells like. Could someone who has actually smelled saffron make a better comparison please? —Keenan Pepper 18:23, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Um, iodoform smells like saffron? ☺ Seriously, I've heard it likened to cigarette butts, but I don't smell the similarity.--Curtis Clark 18:46, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
A cultural difference, perhaps. In some countries, iodoform is still a common disinfectant. Having said that I agree another comparison rather than iodoform and hay would be desirable, if we can find it. --BorgQueen 19:22, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
Blame him — "Very intensively fragrant (reminiscent to iodoform, but much more pleasant) ..." PS: Iodoform smells like tincture of iodine, which has that strongly "medicinal" smell. And yes, I've smelled saffron — I just don't want to do original research by devising my own unsourced descriptions of saffron's aroma (it's a very hard aroma to put into words :-)). Saravask 21:31, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
Could we upload a .snf file for people to download and smell to get the full effect? We have audio files for featured articles about songs, why not olfactory files for ones where there's an important smell? :f -Silence 21:47, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
Lol, I so wish that were a real format. —Keenan Pepper 22:14, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Portuguese saffron

I grew up in a partially Portuguese home, so I learned about assafroa early on, but only recently did I learn that "Portuguese saffron" [3] was actually safflower, not saffron. I've added this information to the page, but sadly, other than commercial links like the one I just gave (which are likely to be transient) I don't have a good reference for this naming to put in the article. I've added a note and hopefully my footnote here will suffice. If not, then I'll see what I can do about finding an offline source. -Harmil 20:38, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

You are free to add commercial links under "External links" as long as the information-to-advertizement ratio is very high (or, ideally, infinite) and it comes from a (at the very least) semi-respectable source. But if it has vast swathes of spam and ads, is from an untrustworthy site, or does not contain any info not already in this article, then don't add it. See Wikipedia:External links and WP:SPAM. Saravask 21:31, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

question on labor-required

First, let me say that this is a really great FA. But I have a question about the line Some forty hours of frenetic day-and-night labour are needed to pick 150,000 flowers. I followed the refs all the way to the originating BBC article and it is clear that the woman was talking about her whole family, so it wasn't 40 person-hours. Is there any sense of how many person-hours are required? Thanks, BanyanTree 23:41, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I think the focus is on how many hours of total labor (whether all that labor be done by one person alone or the 40 hours are split up among an entire family) it takes to make one kilo of saffron. So I guess the answer is no — I haven't seen any figures on how many hours each individual person works during a season. Saravask 00:04, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Deleting all the external links

I feel bad about letting some commercial links (no matter how informative they may be) while saying no to others — therefore, I'm thinking about just deleting the whole "External links" section. What do others think? Saravask 06:39, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

I strongly disagree. Every article should have a good set of external links to provide a means of reading more about the subject to those who are interested. What I don't see, however, is why the external links have to be in a reference format. Wouldn't it be best if they were just links along with a description? --Michiel Sikma 09:37, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

HTML bug on low resolutions

There seems to be a small bug in the article that makes one part of it difficult to read on a low resolution. See here how the "see also" section looks on my computer: http://whahay.net/pubaccess/Saffron-bug.png (you might need to copypaste the link into the address bar before it will load). Maybe someone could think of a way to fix this? --Michiel Sikma 09:33, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../s/a/f/Talk%7ESaffron_Archive02_6c42.html"