Talk:Most Great Name

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[edit] Ahmad al-Buni

Umm, there is a wiki article on Ahmad al-Buni. See Ahmad al-Buni. Obviously those who proposed the deletion of this article have some apparent conflict of interest with their version of the same, perhaps? The article currently meets all wiki standards of verifiability. The claim that no one has heard of Ahmad al-Buni other than on a single internet blog is a serious oversight since there is a wikipedia article on him. Duh! The tag as such has been removed. In the future please double check wikipedia itself before placing tags. Ahwa85 11:17, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Shams al-Ma'airf al-Kubra Buni's Great Sun of Gnoses: http://www.antiochgate.com/9_buni_shams.htm

Of course there's an entry for Ahmad al-Buni, but the reference at the bottom of this article brought up no Google hits, leading me to think that it was a hoax, or at the very least unreferenced (and hence inappropriate for inclusion on Wikipedia). The link you provided brings up several hits, so I'm assuming it was either a misspelling or a rarely-used alternate spelling of the title.

As for a conflict of interest, I'll admit that I've never heard of Ahmad al-Buni. I found this page by looking at the contributions of another editor. Wyatt Riot 12:14, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

And who might that other editor be, if you don't mind? I believe there is a conflict of interest here, for sure and there is no doubt about it in my mind by whom and why. First I note that you follow certain people around these pages like a spy, tagging and that sort of thing. On this article, you hadn't even bothered to check to see if there was an article on Ahmad al-Buni but immediately tagged the article for deletion, claiming it was a hoax. Since you're not a bot, but purportedly a person, one has to ask just who are you to come out of left field and tag and designate articles as hoaxes and raise flags for deletion when you can't be bothered to do a simple search on wikipedia of a historical name. And, no, the name was not mispelled. Also not everything under the sun is a google hit. If you create and validate articles merely by google hits, no wonder everybody worth their salt has begun complaining about wikipedia's objectivity as a source. Google hits as an argument do not make valid, verifiable or objective scholarship. Google hits as an argument and lack thereof is pure laziness, not to mention, sloppiness, much like the inability to check for a simple historical name within wikipedia itself Ahwa85 05:44, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

The user is SecretChiefs3, the primary composer of this page. You can view his/her other edits here. When that user committed vandalism, of course I went through his/her past edits to look for more of the same. This is something that many users do, and I resent the accusation of spying.

The fact that there's a Wikipedia entry on Ahmad al-Buni has absolutely nothing to do with this article. It could still easily be a hoax, a fake piece of literature attributed to an otherwise notable author. And while I do agree that Google hits does not guarantee notability, the fact that searching for "Shams al-Ma'airf al-Kubra" gave zero hits made me suspicious. This combined with the other reasons mentioned ("'unsalvageably incoherent' but does not appear to meet the criteria for speedy deletion; no pages link here and neither the author nor others are willing to bring it up to code (meaning it will likely never get fixed)") is why I put the proposed deletion tag on the page in the first place. PROD, by the way, is an acceptable method for editors to determine the viability of an article; if nobody removes it within 5 days, it means that nobody is watching the page or really cares much for it, which means the article is unlikely to be fixed in any meaningful way.

As it stands, I feel that this is really a bad article. It needs serious work, both to make it fit within Wikipedia policy and to make it coherent to readers, and as of right now nobody has seemed interested in doing that. While I am usually an inclusionist here on Wikipedia, if given the choice to fight for a well-written or poorly-written article of marginal importance, I will always fight for the well-written article. Wyatt Riot 21:34, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Well written or not, this subject appears to be in an area you know virtually nothing about, so kindly stay away from it together with your proposals or find someone who does know something about it and allow us to augment it. Ahwa85 04:45, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Image

I do however think the image needs to be made smaller and a few alternative images scanned and put up as well. I don't know how to crop the image and make it smaller as uploaded here on wiki. If anyone else knows how, please fell free. I can upload other scanned versions directly from Ahmad al-Buni. Ahwa85 11:22, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

I believe you'll have to crop it in an image editor and upload it again. You may be able to set the size without cropping it, but that seems like a waste of bandwidth for everyone who visits this page. (They'll be downloading the large image and it's just the browser that's resizing, rather than downloading an image that's appropriate for web browsing.) Wyatt Riot 12:16, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for cropping the image. I would not have figured out how to do it. Ahwa85 08:59, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The poem needs to be put back in

Ali's poem needs to be put back in there since it is the image's Islamic source. Ahwa85 09:01, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

The problem is, the entire poem is used, or at least the article leads me to believe that. Unfortunately, that's against Wikipedia copyright policy as that translation is copyrighted by Denis MacEoin. It really needs to be removed and replaced with a free equivalent (perhaps a translation of your own, if you are able to provide one). On the other hand, if it's just a small portion of the poem or if the translator has released it into the public domain or via some free license like the GFDL, it can stay as is.

I'll remove it in a few days unless someone can provide more information about its copyright status. Wyatt Riot 13:33, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

??!! Of course the translation is in the public domain. And translations cannot be copyrighted. There is case law on this, as well as international conventions, so your stickling about it is just that. A translation of a poem by a holy Islamic figure cannot be claimed as the intellectual property of the translator. Also the very beginning of the book adds a disclaimer by the publisher that "other than for purposes of publication..." material in the book can indeed be quoted. Also I have slightly amended the poem's translation. If I hadn't mentioned the English source, right now you would probably be making hubris about verifiability or some such. Like I said before, it appears there is a conflict of interest in your association with this article. The poem stays Ahwa85 05:16, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Translations are can indeed be copyrighted, at least here in the U.S. (not sure where you are located), and fair use allows portions of a text to be reproduced, but an entire poem would not qualify. I've listed the article on Wikipedia:Copyright problems, so we can let an expert on copyright issues weigh in on the matter.

I should mention that you do not own this article and do not get to decide what stays and what goes. (For that matter, neither do I.) Wikipedia policy decides what's appropriate here. I added a welcome message on your User Talk page with some links to information regarding Wikipedia policy. Assuming good faith and civility are both part of that policy. I maintain that I have no conflicts of interest regarding this article or Ahmad al-Buni, or at least none that I am aware of. I am simply trying to make sure that articles adhere to Wikipedia policy. You're certainly welcome to view my own User Page (which includes offsite links by/about me) and my contributions on Wikipedia to see my interests. Wyatt Riot 14:25, 25 September 2007 (UTC)