text:
Nellie Bly

Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman (born Elizabeth Jane Cochran; May 5, 1864 – January 27, 1922), better known by her pen name Nellie Bly, was an American journalist, who was widely known for her record-breaking trip around the world in 72 days in emulation of Jules Verne's fictional character Phileas Fogg, and an exposé in which she worked undercover to report on a mental institution from within. She was a pioneer in her field and launched a new kind of investigative journalism.

Early life
Elizabeth Jane Cochran was born May 5, 1864, in "Cochran's Mills", now part of Burrell Township, Armstrong County, Pennsylvania. Her father, Michael Cochran, born about 1810, started out as a laborer and mill worker before buying the local mill and most of the land surrounding his family farmhouse. He later became a merchant, postmaster, and associate justice at Cochran's Mills (which was named after him) in Pennsylvania. Michael married twice. He had 10 children with his first wife, Catherine Murphy, and 5 more children, including Elizabeth Cochran who was his thirteenth daughter, with his second wife, Mary Jane Kennedy. Michael Cochran died in 1870, when Elizabeth was 6.

As a young girl, Elizabeth often was called "Pink" because she so frequently wore that color. As she became a teenager, she wanted to portray herself as more sophisticated, and she dropped the nickname and changed her surname to "Cochrane". In 1879, she enrolled at Indiana Normal School (now Indiana University of Pennsylvania) for one term but was forced to drop out due to lack of funds. In 1880, Cochrane's mother moved her family to Allegheny City, which was later annexed by the City of Pittsburgh.

Pittsburgh Dispatch
In 1885, a column in the Pittsburgh Dispatch titled "What Girls Are Good For" stated that girls were principally for birthing children and keeping house. This prompted Elizabeth to write a response under the pseudonym "Lonely Orphan Girl". The editor, George Madden, was impressed with her passion and ran an advertisement asking the author to identify herself. When Cochran introduced herself to the editor, he offered her the opportunity to write a piece for the newspaper, again under the pseudonym "Lonely Orphan Girl". Her first article for the Dispatch, titled "The Girl Puzzle", argued that not all women would marry and that what was needed were better jobs for women. Her second article, "Mad Marriages", was about how divorce affected women. In it, she argued for reform of divorce laws. "Mad Marriages" was published under the byline of Nellie Bly, rather than "Lonely Orphan Girl". It was customary for women who were newspaper writers at that time to use pen names. The editor chose "Nellie Bly", after the African-American title character in the popular song "Nelly Bly" by Stephen Foster. Cochrane originally intended that her pseudonym be "Nelly Bly", but her editor wrote "Nellie" by mistake, and the error stuck. Madden was impressed again and offered her a full-time job.

As a writer, Nellie Bly focused her early work for the Pittsburgh Dispatch on the lives of working women, writing a series of investigative articles on women factory workers. However, the newspaper soon received complaints from factory owners about her writing, and she was reassigned to women's pages to cover fashion, society, and gardening, the usual role for women journalists, and she became dissatisfied. Still only 21, she was determined "to do something no girl has done before." She then traveled to Mexico to serve as a foreign correspondent, spending nearly half a year reporting on the lives and customs of the Mexican people; her dispatches later were published in book form as Six Months in Mexico. In one report, she protested the imprisonment of a local journalist for criticizing the Mexican government, then a dictatorship under Porfirio Díaz. When Mexican authorities learned of Bly's report, they threatened her with arrest, prompting her to flee the country. Safely home, she accused Díaz of being a tyrannical czar suppressing the Mexican people and controlling the press.

Asylum exposé

Burdened again with theater and arts reporting, Bly left the Pittsburgh Dispatch in 1887 for New York City. She faced rejection after rejection as news editors would not consider hiring a woman. Penniless after four months, she talked her way into the offices of Joseph Pulitzer's newspaper, the New York World, and took an undercover assignment for which she agreed to feign insanity to investigate reports of brutality and neglect at the Women's Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell's Island, now named Roosevelt Island.

It was not easy for Bly to be admitted to the asylum: she first decided to check herself into a boarding house called "Temporary Homes for Females". She stayed up all night to give herself the wide-eyed look of a disturbed woman and began making accusations that the other boarders were insane. Bly told the assistant matron: "There are so many crazy people about, and one can never tell what they will do." She refused to go to bed and eventually scared so many of the other boarders that the police were called to take her to the nearby courthouse. Once examined by a police officer, a judge, and a doctor, Bly was taken to Bellevue for a few days, then after evaluation was sent by boat to Blackwell's Island.

Committed to the asylum, Bly experienced the deplorable conditions firsthand. After ten days, the asylum released Bly at The World's behest. Her report, published October 9, 1887 and later in book form as Ten Days in a Mad-House, caused a sensation, prompted the asylum to implement reforms, and brought her lasting fame. She had a significant impact on American culture and shed light on the experiences of marginalized women beyond the bounds of the asylum as she ushered in the era of stunt girl journalism.

In 1893, Bly used the celebrity status she had gained from her asylum reporting skills to schedule an exclusive interview with the allegedly insane serial killer Lizzie Halliday.

Biographer Brooke Kroeger argues:
 * Her two-part series in October 1887 was a sensation, effectively launching the decade of "stunt" or "detective" reporting, a clear precursor to investigative journalism and one of Joseph Pulitzer's innovations that helped give "New Journalism" of the 1880s and 1890s its moniker. The employment of "stunt girls" has often been dismissed as a circulation-boosting gimmick of the sensationalist press. However, the genre also provided women with their first collective opportunity to demonstrate that, as a class, they had the skills necessary for the highest level of general reporting. The stunt girls, with Bly as their prototype, were the first women to enter the journalistic mainstream in the twentieth century.

Around the world and general impact

In 1888, Bly suggested to her editor at the New York World that she take a trip around the world, attempting to turn the fictional Around the World in Eighty Days (1873) into fact for the first time. A year later, at 9:40 a.m. on November 14, 1889, and with two days' notice, she boarded the Augusta Victoria, a steamer of the Hamburg America Line, and began her 24,898 mile (40,070 kilometer) journey.

To sustain interest in the story, the World organized a "Nellie Bly Guessing Match" in which readers were asked to estimate Bly's arrival time to the second, with the Grand Prize consisting at first of a trip to Europe and, later on, spending money for the trip. During her travels around the world, Bly went through England, France (where she met Jules Verne in Amiens), Brindisi, the Suez Canal, Colombo (in Ceylon), the Straits Settlements of Penang and Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan.

Just over seventy-two days after her departure from Hoboken, Bly was back in New York. She had circumnavigated the globe, traveling alone for almost the entire journey. Bly's journey was a world record, though it only stood for a few months, until George Francis Train completed the journey in 67 days.

Novelist
After the fanfare of her trip around the world, Bly quit reporting and took a lucrative job writing serial novels for publisher Norman Munro's weekly New York Family Story Paper. The first chapters of Eva The Adventuress, based on the real-life trial of Eva Hamilton, appeared in print before Bly returned to New York. Between 1889 and 1895 she wrote eleven novels. As few copies of the paper survived, these novels were thought lost until 2021, when author David Blixt announced their discovery of 11 lost novels in Munro's British weekly The London Story Paper. In 1893, though still writing novels, she returned to reporting for the World.

Later work

In 1895, Bly married millionaire manufacturer Robert Seaman. Bly was 31 and Seaman was 73 when they married. Due to her husband's failing health, she left journalism and succeeded her husband as head of the Iron Clad Manufacturing Co., which made steel containers such as milk cans and boilers. Seaman died in 1904.

That same year, Iron Clad began manufacturing the steel barrel that was the model for the 55-gallon oil drum still in widespread use in the United States. There have been claims that Bly invented the barrel, but the inventor was registered as Henry Wehrhahn (U.S. Patents 808,327 and 808,413).

Bly was, however, an inventor in her own right, receiving for a novel milk can and  for a stacking garbage can, both under her married name of Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman. For a time, she was one of the leading women industrialists in the United States. But her negligence, and embezzlement by a factory manager, resulted in the Iron Clad Manufacturing Co. going bankrupt.

According to biographer Brooke Kroeger:

"She ran her company as a model of social welfare, replete with health benefits and recreational facilities. But Bly was hopeless at understanding the financial aspects of her business and ultimately lost everything. Unscrupulous employees bilked the firm of hundreds of thousands of dollars, troubles compounded by protracted and costly bankruptcy litigation."

Back in reporting, she covered the Woman Suffrage Procession of 1913 for the New York Evening Journal. Her article's headline was "Suffragists Are Men's Superiors" and in its text she accurately predicted that it would be 1920 before women in the United States would be given the right to vote.

Bly wrote stories on Europe's Eastern Front during World War I. Bly was the first woman and one of the first foreigners to visit the war zone between Serbia and Austria. She was arrested when she was mistaken for a British spy.

Death

On January 27, 1922, Bly died of pneumonia at St. Mark's Hospital, New York City, aged 57. She was interred at Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York City.

Honors
In 1998, Bly was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.

Bly was one of four journalists honored with a US postage stamp in a "Women in Journalism" set in 2002.

In 2019, the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation put out an open call for artists to create a Nellie Bly Memorial art installation on Roosevelt Island. The winning proposal, The Girl Puzzle by Amanda Matthews, was announced on October 16, 2019. The Girl Puzzle opened to the public in December, 2021. The New York Press Club confers an annual Nellie Bly Cub Reporter journalism award to acknowledge the best journalistic effort by an individual with three years or fewer of professional experience. In 2020, it was awarded to Claudia Irizarry Aponte, of THE CITY.

Theater
Bly was the subject of the 1946 Broadway musical Nellie Bly by Johnny Burke and Jimmy Van Heusen. The show ran for 16 performances.

During the 1990s, playwright Lynn Schrichte wrote and toured Did You Lie, Nellie Bly?, a one-woman show about Bly.

An opera based on 10 Days in a Madhouse premiered in Philadelphia, PA in September 2023. The music was by Rene Orth and the libretto by Hannah Moscovitch.

Film and television
Bly has been portrayed in the films The Adventures of Nellie Bly (1981), 10 Days in a Madhouse (2015), and Escaping the Madhouse: The Nellie Bly Story (2019). In 2019, the Center for Investigative Reporting released Nellie Bly Makes the News, a short animated biographical film. A fictionalized version of Bly as a mouse named Nellie Brie appears as a central character in the animated children's film An American Tail: The Mystery of the Night Monster.

Anne Helm appeared as Nellie Bly in the November 21, 1960, Tales of Wells Fargo TV episode "The Killing of Johnny Lash". Julia Duffy appeared as Bly in the July 10, 1983 Voyagers! episode "Jack's Back". The character of Lana Winters (Sarah Paulson) in American Horror Story: Asylum is inspired by Bly's experience in the asylum.

Bly was also a subject of Season 2 Episode 5 of The West Wing in which First Lady Abbey Bartlet dedicates a memorial in Pennsylvania in honor of Nellie Bly and convinces the president to mention her and other female historic figures during his weekly radio address.

Bly has been the subject of two episodes of the Comedy Central series Drunk History. The second-season episode "New York City" featured her undercover exploits in the Blackwell's Island asylum, while the third-season episode "Journalism" retold the story of her race around the world against Elizabeth Bisland.

On May 5, 2015, the Google search engine produced an interactive "Google Doodle" for Bly; for the "Google Doodle" Karen O wrote, composed, and recorded an original song about Bly, and Katy Wu created an animation set to Karen O's music.

Audio drama
Nellie’s story was adapted into a Doctor Who audio drama by Big Finish Productions, released on 8 September 2021. The Perils of Nellie Bly was the second story in a three story box set, and was written by Sarah Ward. Nellie was portrayed by actress Sydney Feder.

Literature
Bly has been featured as the protagonist of novels by David Blixt, Marshall Goldberg, Dan Jorgensen, Carol McCleary, Pearry Reginald Teo, Maya Rodale, Christine Converse and Louisa Treger David Blixt also appeared on a March 10, 2021 episode of the podcast Broads You Should Know as a Nellie Bly expert.

A fictionalized account of Bly's around-the-world trip was used in the 2010 comic book Julie Walker Is The Phantom published by Moonstone Books (Story: Elizabeth Massie, art: Paul Daly, colors: Stephen Downer).

Bly is one of 100 women featured in the first version of the book Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls written by Elena Favilli & Francesca Cavallo.

Eponyms and namesakes
The board game Round the World with Nellie Bly created in 1890 is named in recognition of her trip.

The Nellie Bly Amusement Park in Brooklyn, New York City, was named after her, taking as its theme Around the World in Eighty Days. The park reopened in 2007 under new management, renamed "Adventurers Amusement Park".

A large species of tarantula from Ecuador, Pamphobeteus nellieblyae Sherwood et al., 2022, was named in her honour by arachnologists.

A fireboat named Nellie Bly operated in Toronto, Canada, in the first decade of the 20th century. From early in the twentieth century until 1961, the Pennsylvania Railroad operated an express train named the Nellie Bly on a route between New York and Atlantic City, bypassing Philadelphia.

Works
Within her lifetime, Nellie Bly published three non-fiction books (compilations of her newspaper reportage) and one novel in book form.

Between 1889 and 1895, Nellie Bly also penned twelve novels for The New York Family Story Paper. Thought lost, these novels were not collected in book form until their re-discovery in 2021.

 * Eva The Adventuress (1889)
 * New York By Night (1890)
 * Alta Lynn, M.D. (1891)
 * Wayne's Faithful Sweetheart (1891)
 * Little Luckie, or Playing For Hearts (1892)
 * Dolly The Coquette (1892)
 * In Love With A Stranger, or Through Fire And Water To Win Him (1893)
 * The Love Of Three Girls (1893)
 * Little Penny, Child Of The Streets (1893)
 * Pretty Merribelle (1894)
 * Twins & Rivals (1895)

title: Nellie Bly


text:
Time Indefinite

Time Indefinite is an autobiographical 1993 documentary film directed by Ross McElwee. It explores themes of grief, mortality, and the convenient disconnection of watching life through a camera lens.

The title comes from a passage from the Bible mentioned by a visiting Jehovah's Witness. McElwee is filming the interaction and focused on adjusting the exposure to try to catch the play of light over the man's face; distracted, he "hears" the phrase about 30 seconds after the man says it and understands it to refer to the unpredictable imminence of death.

Synopsis
In the film, director Ross McElwee gets married, finally putting an end to his family's worrying; his grandmother dies; his wife Marilyn has a miscarriage; and his father, a medical doctor, dies suddenly within a week of McElwee's wife's miscarriage. His mother had died of cancer ten years earlier and so McElwee returns to his father's house, where his father's housekeeper ministers to him about Christianity and faith.

McElwee goes to visit his friend Charleen, who is now living alone in a new apartment. She had lived on an island in an old two-story house abandoned by the U.S. Army; she and her husband worked to restore it and lived together there for years before becoming estranged. Charleen then lived there alone, but on returning home from a trip she finds that her husband has set fire to the house and died downstairs at the grand piano in an arson/suicide. Charleen has her husband's cremated remains in a bag inside a box and tries to get rid of them but can't bring herself to do it.

McElwee's brother is a successful doctor; on a visit to his brother's practice, Ross talks with his brother about their father's death, which took them both by surprise. Ross's brother receives a patient who has a large malignant tumor on her breast; the woman has had the tumor for years without seeking medical help. Ross's brother takes a slide of the tumor for his files; it has spread across much of her chest and is both multifaceted and multicolored. Ross incorporates his brother's interview with the woman—and the slide his brother takes—into his film, musing in voiceover about motivation and fatality and marvelling at the power of denial.

Eventually Ross abandons the film, only to continue it later: his wife is pregnant. The pregnancy comes to term and Ross and Marilyn go with their baby son to visit Charleen, who criticizes them for bringing children into such a hostile and unpredictable world but speaks to the passion that drives life and procreation. Ross and Marilyn dote on their son and seem largely unbothered by the criticism.

Year-end lists

 * 3rd – Peter Rainer, Los Angeles Times

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Time Indefinite


text:
Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography/Archive Feb 20 2003

hm, some good, some bad. It's good to aim for a 1-line header, in the form of a minor sentence, followed by a paragraph break something like:

 * John Smith (Octember 13, 1856 - April 45, 2002), Freedonian composer, novelist, freedom fighter and politician.

--- Tarquin 14:11 Jan 24, 2003 (UTC)

(with the years and dates linked. couldn't be bothered to type all the [ ]. of course typing this line has been more effort. but more fun ;-)

 * Yes. This is the current standard. DW's ideas are very arcane and insane. --mav
 * I don't know about insane, but I would say counterintuitive. I think most people gravitate towards prose as a means of describing a person's life; the "factbook" approach looks very dry & uninviting to me.  Better would be to tell a few good anecdotes & get the reader intrigued if possible.  (Ortolan88 is currently the wiki-master of this).  Koyaanis Qatsi

 * Master, or not, I wrote thousands of obituaries in my newspaper days and I am accustomed to doing what works for readers. I don't think that making every biographical entry look exactly alike works for readers.  I see that I have listed about 30 of the biographies that I worked on on my user page.  I don't know that any of them would be improved by this format.  What works for readers is immediate information on why this person is important and worth reading about.  You can look at anything I list, but maybe Slim Pickens, Jethro Tull (agriculturist), and Karel Capek can stand as examples of articles that would be rendered less interesting and readable by application of this formula.  Actually, this proposal to turn biographical articles into structured cells of a database will not succeed.  There are thousands of biographical articles written as more ordinary narrratives that won't be changed, and almost anyone who comes across one written in this style will be inclined to revise it into a more humane and interesting format.  Yes, paragraphs should be short, but that doesn't mean they should be tabular and tedious.  Ortolan88 18:13 Jan 25, 2003 (UTC)

DATE: 24/01/02

FROM: Tannin

TO: Anyone who is reading this

CC: N/A

SUBJECT: Wikipedia talk:Biography standards (DW's proposal)

MESSAGE: Imposing global format rules on entries can produce stilted, difficult to read, and ugly results. It also risks requiring that contributors spend more effort learning about an arcane set of formatting rules than they spend on setting out the relevant information in whichever way is most useful in the particular circumstance. There is sense in loose guidelines (though the suggested one is overly elaborate and restrictive), but imposing that rigid style on every biographical entry would produce a lot of turgid prose and be counterproductive. Tannin 14:16 Jan 24, 2003 (UTC)

 * Well we do have global format rules at our Manual of Style and Guide to Layout. But the standards expressed there are natural and very likely to be followed by newcomers before the newcomers even read those pages. And of course, there are plenty of people like me that will clean-up any additional formatting. As you make very clear, DW's ideas would make Wikipedia's biography section look like a collection of memos on the people instead of encyclopedia articles. --mav
 * I prefer prose for as much as possible, though I admit my *own* prose frequently needs work. I'm willing to work towards breaking sentences & paragraphs more but I fail to see the benefit of DW's proposal.  Koyaanis Qatsi

I also see a lot with links for the years so you can find you what happened on they year they were born/died. I don't know if that is usefull in practice though.

 * John Smith (Novtober 31, 1856 - April 54, 2002), Freedonian composer, novelist, freedom fighter and politician.

My opinion: I don't think we need any more guidance than what we have already on Manual of style. There are too many reasonable ways of writing biographies to enforce a template. If we were to enforce standards, DW's suggestion is not one I would support, but I'd rather we scrapped the idea of biography standards altogether.--Camembert

One suggestion I have is that Julian dates not be adjusted and given as proleptic Gregorian dates, and that if they are, (and maybe if they aren't) that they be marked clearly as to calendar used (O.S. or N.S.) or some such abbreviation. It would help avoid confusion, especially as birth dates/death dates are being linked to the day pages. -- Someone else 22:31 Jan 24, 2003 (UTC)

 * This would be a bad idea since different countries adopted the Gregorian calendar at sometimes widely different times. For example (if memory serves) Russia was still on the Julian Calendar at the start of the 20th century! So having some period Russian-related pages in Julian and contemporary Western European-related pages in Gregorian, renders the day pages useless. If anything we need to standardize on Gregorian - otherwise events that look like they happened on the same day really aren't, just because a few countries held out for hundreds of years before they changed their calendars. --mav

 * The solution is to give it in both calendars if there's any question. Otherwise people seeking to verify our accuracy and finding different dates are going to quite validly question our reliability. If the consensus is to link to the proleptic Gregorian date, that's fine...but we should indicate which calendar the date is in. -- Someone else 22:49 Jan 24, 2003 (UTC)

 * As far as I know, except for the fact that the October Revolution took place in November, the variance of calendars has had little impact on history. Ortolan88

 * Which is an illustration that if you "convert" the dates of historical events they no longer correspond to the primary historical documents they generated. "Converting" birth dates is a bad idea for this reason.  It's not a matter of things happening on the same day unless they happen in the same year.  (And people generally didn't change their birthdate when the calendar changed.)  I doubt that anyone here is converting dates PREVIOUS to 1582 to Gregorian, so we certainly haven't standardized on giving only proleptic Gregorian dates.  I'm just encouraging that we specify which calendar we are giving a date in, in the time period in which there's any question. And yes, that will require a knowledge of when countries changed from Julian to Gregorian: Yugoslavia and Romania didn't switch till 1919. -- Someone else 20:25 Jan 25, 2003 (UTC)

Not to be rude, but the example at the top of the Talk page is in roughly the format listed as “DW proposes” on the reference page (Biography standards). Is someone confused? Or have the topical referents been edited out of one or the other page? For your reference, DW is alleged to have proposed: and Tarquin has exampled:
 * NAME: year dates, occupation.
 * John Smith (Octember 13, 1856 - April 45, 2002), Freedonian composer, novelist, freedom fighter and politician.

Now the difference between these two is visible; Tarquin's example in DW's format would be:
 * John Smith: Octember 13, 1856 - April 45, 2002, Freedonian composer, novelist, freedom fighter and politician.

While I would call this difference visible and perhaps significant, I don't think the changes can be described as rising to the level of “very arcane and insane”.

sign me confused
 * DW advocates line breaks and Tarquin does not. --Koyaanis Qatsi

 * See the full proposal at Biography standards. There is more to it than just the first line. Tannin

-Sure, but Tarquin only exampled the first line. I think a first line like that is good, because that's what I always look at when I find a biography page. It's how I know I've found the right John Smith. -Such a first line out to be followed by a new paragraph before the prose starts. The comment about breaking prose into paragraphs is perfectly true, though it ought to be part of the overall style guide. I'm curious still what part of the proposal is insane? I'm going to rewrite DW's proposal and make it clearer. Sue me. the librarian

-Having gone through that exercise, I have this to say: I don't think a format of "Guy's name, period he lived, why the hell he's in the wikipedia" followed by an empty line and then "Whatever in the hell you want that makes for a good entry" is overly restrictive. And since I never want to have to read an entire article to figure out of the person I'm reading about is the one I meant to look up, it is almost required, also a good idea, and ought to be the official style. -Any real format suggestion would describe how to handle normal edge cases like pseudonyms, foreign transcriptions, etc.the librarian

I like Librarian's biography of John Smith, and I see no reason why other bio's can't be written with a similar format: I mean it really struck a chord with me, so I hope we can all be harmonious about this and sing from the same page of music. --Uncle Ed

 * I also think that a general standard for biographical entries is a reasonable idea, but I wouldn't like to see it get too prescriptive. Apart from anything else, I don't propose to go back and amend the hundreds I've already contributed; I'd rather add new ones.  Let's not get too heavy-handed about it, though.  A standard format for an article is not as important as a naming convention. Deb 22:51 Jan 27, 2003 (UTC)

Fix all the existing ones? heehee. But no reason not to fix them up as you come across them. I'm also thinking that a unified Biography index would be cool. the librarian

 * there already is a biography list ... as the formatting existing articles: that's why there are http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiGnome ;-) -- Tarquin 23:06 Jan 27, 2003 (UTC)

 * Is that WikiGnome open source? I'd like to propose having it automatically ify the first occurrance of anything linkable in an article. Expecially all those dates are really annoying to ify manually all the time. Mkweise 00:00 Jan 28, 2003 (UTC)]] 23:37 Jan 27, 2003 (UTC)

 * the list of all biographies is List of people.

 * There is also Biographical Listing/A through Biographical Listing/Z.

 * Librarian's proposal, by my reading, can be reduced to the following:

 * Write about the subject. Keep the first paragraph short.  List important works.

 * Consider it done. It is a good example. I replaced the ''' with == (still kind of big in this browser, but hierarchical) and got rid of the HTML.  Like other efforts along these lines, it reflects the best of what is already in the Wikipedia and does not require wholesale revamping.   It should be mentioned in Manual of Style Ortolan88

 * Isn't it redundant to mention birth and death dates twice? I've already fixed hundreds of articles so that the month and day are with the years in parentheses after the person's name. I also prefer complete topic/definition sentences. --mav

 * I second that emotion. I generally compelete sentence fragments where ever they dangle, though redundant biographical dates I've generally just left alone, since there seems to be no clear standard one way or the other. Mkweise 02:30 Jan 28, 2003 (UTC)

 * fixed both problems.
 * I still think (born - died ) reads better than ( - ). Lots of those that mav changed were done in the brief period when that was the standard format :=). Ortolan88

 * If that's the consensus, then why not stadardize on the former when giving complete dates, but use the latter when giving only years? Although, I'd prefer (born ; died ) over (born - died ). Mkweise 07:32 Jan 28, 2003 (UTC)

A flurry of talk-page-type comments and argumentative remarks on the article page has pretty well buried the slowly developing proposal. Ortolan88

I'm convinced several (I'll be polite and not say all) like to hear themselves talk. One says "not be restricted" but ZOE is running around doind exactly that: ENFORCING HER format as she interprets policy. If she hadn't screwed up my hard work and asserted HER POWER to do it, I would,t suggest any standard format. Second, all those who think anything current is good, think again. Wikipedia is a failure. Read your own Woe is me articles on attracting visitors and how to worship Google. READ what I said: We are talking first line set. We are talking about marketing. Anyone with a marketing degree or years in a successful marketing position, PLEASE STEP FORWARD. Sorry, but Slim Pickens is horrific on the eyes and my first two lines recommendation is talking visuals. However, while I'm at it, try the only place in the world named London (brillant for an encyclopedia) for an opening visual that drives any researcher (THE client/customer/market -- or is Wikipedia just a playground?)  away thinking this is one dumbass, unprofessional, worthless sight. Please, instead of shooting off at the mouth. Look at articles and think....DW

And, shit, we are not talking about what YOU prefer. We are talking about changing something that currently isn't working.

AND, look at the FORMAT and even content for Amedeo Modigliani or any of the dozens of Montparnasse / Montmartre artists I've done, then go to Paul Cezanne, who is one of the greatest artists in the world (painting sold for US$60 million, ranks 4th all time). Ask yourself this: If a stranger clicks on Cezanne will he/she go WOW, what a great site! Or will they dismiss Wikipedia out of hand and leave permanently? (And using its a "work in progress" is bullshit). I write tons of articles I don't give a damn about, Modigliani is one of them. Or, if you like Cezanne, try Juan Gris, it is even better!...DW

DW, your last revision of Modigliani reads:

 * Amedeo Modigliani (July 12, 1884 - January 24, 1920), painter and sculptor.

which is pretty much the agreed cconvention. So what's the problem? The current version adds a "was a". The "was a" is redundant and reads badly, there's nothing wrong with opening with a minor sentence. -- Tarquin 23:19 Jan 30, 2003 (UTC) PS I really like Slim Pickens, I think Orto is right to give real name first, and "better known as ..." or "known by the stage name..."

 * Whose convention? The convention is that the first line of every article be a complete sentence.  And it was a struggle to get DW to concede to THAT much above, because he wanted the dates in the body of the article and not in the first line.  The only OTHER addition I've done besides make it a complete sentence is to say that he was an ITALIAN painter, which for some reason, infuriates DW.  -- Zoe

 * The "was a" is not redundant, and reads better. In my humble opinion, complete sentences are always better than incomplete ones, in the context of encyclopaedia articles. But not necessarily in less formal writing, of course... -- Oliver P. 05:41 Jan 31, 2003 (UTC)


text:
Talk:Horses (album)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 18:16, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

title: Talk:Horses (album)


text:
Talk:Richard Wagner/Archive 2

Comment
Last edit, which attempts to place Wagner's attack on the Jews in historical context (nothing wrong with that) slips over the line in suppressing information that was in the article, such as the fact that Wagner's "Jewish friend" Levi was forced to convert to Christianity to continue conducting at Bayereuth. Many other examples.

 * This is why I was justified in removing that sentence; it was false! Levi was not forced to convert to Christianity.  Wagner asked it of Levi as a favor; Levi refused.  Yet Wagner still had him conduct his operas at Bayreuth for the rest of his life.  I wasn't removing anything factual, and that's a fact. --Clutch 23:06 Jan 31, 2003 (UTC)

Also, it is not only Jews who consider Wagner anti-semitic, virtually anyone who actually reads the article would come to the same conclusion. Such as Wagner's statement, in the second paragraph, of the:

 * involuntary repellence possessed for us by the nature and personality of the Jews

I know nothing about Wagner, nor care, to tell the truth, but I am very suspicious of this last edit. For those who feel the way I do, Wagner's attitudes towards Jews are the most salient points about him. Someone who does know or care needs to step in and keep the NPOV going. Ortolan88

 * Without putting that quote into the broader context of European civilization as it existed at that time, and without reading the WHOLE article, that quote, on it's own, is a very misleading representation of what the article actually says. Wagner did not justify hatred of Jews; he spoke against it. Acknowleding an existing fact (ie, widespread antipathy to Jews) is not the same as supporting or condoning a fact. If you want facts, read the WHOLE article; Wagner said his goal was better understanding between Jews and Gentiles so they could work together in cooperation, without animosity.  --Clutch 23:26 Jan 31, 2003 (UTC)

Please don't worry about the NPOV, Clutch is in charge of it. 62.30.150.99
 * Well, I wasn't worried about it, but I am now. Tokerboy

 * Good. You should be. He needs watching. 62.30.150.99 18:24 Jan 31, 2003 (UTC)

Clutch has a long history of trying to change this article to conform to his twisted POV. He also has a history of making outrageous POV statements in other articles. He's fairly slick though and has thus so far avoided a ban (although it was pretty close). Because he viciously and repeatedly attacks everyone who points out his shenanigans, most people don't speak out about him. I can only encourage you to post to the mailing list -- the more people do so, the more Jimbo will eventually be forced to react. --Eloquence 21:16 Jan 31, 2003 (UTC)

 * Yeah, I saved him once. Next time, he can sink or swim on his own. (Aside to Clutch: "You hear me, boy?") --Uncle Ed 21:24 Jan 31, 2003 (UTC)

 * Provided noone acts with undue haste, I will always be able to defend my edits, Ed. --Clutch 23:06 Jan 31, 2003 (UTC)

Clutch's view of how this article should read will probably prevail in the end, because others will get sick of reverting his constant, dripping-tap revisions. That's how he works. He pretends to be reasonable and pretends to be the fount of all NPOV, and what he's actually doing is very slowly converting this article, and others, to his own very special POV. All under a polite cloak of disinterested academic respectability. Resistance is useless. 62.30.150.99 11:03 Feb 1, 2003 (UTC)

I don't claim to be a particular Wagner expert, not do I have a particular point of view on the controversial matter that has seen so many changes and reverts. And I don't intend to comb through this entry in detail - frankly, I'm not that interested in Wagner.

I changed one para.: ''Wagner is today perceived as anti-Semitic. Wagner is not alone in this regard, as religious antipathy between Jews and Christians has been an on-going issue for almost 2000 years. During the 20th century, some of his writings were misused by the Nazi party, who took them out of context.''

Reverted back to: ''Wagner promulgated several anti-Semitic statements during his lifetime, in conversation as well as essays such as Das Judenthum in der Musik (1850). Wagner was not alone in this regard, as anti-Semitism was widespread in the European intellectual world of the 19th century. However, some of his comments were extreme enough to draw criticism from his contemporaries. During the 20th century, this anti-Semitism has become a large part of public perception of Wagner and his works, mostly because of the appropriation of his music by Nazi Germany.''

Why do this? Because the second para is simply better. It's more informative, it doesn't read like an apology for Wagner, it just sets out the facts and lets the reader draw her own conclusions. In particular, it sets Wagner's views in their proper social context (the first para tries and fails to do that - it sounds like special pleading), and above all it lays stress on the really important thing about Wagner's anti-semitism, which is to say that it became a public perception. It stresses the perception, which is the key point.

I'm three parts tempted to read over the three or four para which follow and see if there is any reason to keep any of the rest of this section. There is a very good argument to be made that Wagner was a musician. He was not a politician or a statesman or a sociologist or a philosopher - he was a musician. No-one has heard of Wagner because of what he happened to think about Jews or universal suffrage, or the case for government intervention in the ironmaking industry. The only reason anyone is interested in Wagner today is because of the music he wrote. Now in writing a biography, we are entitled, and indeed required, to make mention of various side-issues. It is appropriate to mention that Mozart was a Freemason, it is appropriate to explain that Handel was a speculative promoter as well as a composer and performer, it is appropriate to mention Wagner's views on Jews. We need to mention these things in passing, just as we mention birth and death dates and sometimes mention families of famous people. But the political views of a composer are peripheral to the things that make him famous enough to deserve an entry in Wikipedia. It is equally as absurd to wallow around for para after para debating Wagner's political views as it would be to waste half a page writing about Einstein's flute lessons or Winston Churchill's butterfly collection.

It is tempting to do that - take out the rest of the extended discussion of this all but irrelevant issue - but in the interests of keeping the peace, I won't. Which is perhaps a mistake. Musician's biographies should be about the music, with only the minimum necessary extraneous information. Tannin 10:24 Feb 1, 2003 (UTC)

PS: Disclaimer for the record: I find a good deal of Wagner difficult to listen to and, frankly, tedious. But from time to time I stumble across a work that leaves me almost breathless with admiration. Oh? What's that? I didn't make my views on his political opinions plain? Exactly. I don't have any. I don't have a view on John F Kennedy's taste in wallpaper either. Tannin

Clutch: in what way is the para you replaced POV? Please explain this to me (and indeed to all of us), as it seems to me to be both more informative and very much neutral. Tannin

 * If you remove the paragraphs following it, I will be satisfied with the paragraph under discussion as you have left it. Otherwise, saying that "Wagner promulgated anti-Semitic statements", as well as characterising them as "extreme" is definately POV. Also I have never seen a source for the statement that he drew criticism from his contemporaries; it is an unverified assumption that someone put in. --Clutch 11:13 Feb 1, 2003 (UTC)

I think we are making progress, Clutch.

I had my own doubts about the "drew criticism" sentence - not from any particular knowledge (I'm no Wagner expert), just that the sentence seemed to have that indefinable hollow ring to it that always sets my antennae quivering. So I checked with the resources I have at hand. The Oxford dictionary of music, in a fairly lengthy entry, does not mention Wagner's anti-semetisim (or lack thereof) at all. Schonberg's The lives of the great composers, however, does mention it in a little detail, quoting Wagner's description of the Jews as "former cannibals, educated to be business leaders of society." Schonberg also includes the following quote from the contemporary Viennese critic Eduard Hanslick:

''Wagner is lucky in all things. At first he raves against all monarchs; and a magnanimous King meets him with flattering love and prepares for him an existence free from care and even lavish. Then he writes a phamphlet against the Jews; and all Jewry, both in and outside of music, pays him all the more zealous homage''. (p. 244)

I think that counts as a criticism from a contemporary, though I would rather see, say, three or four seperate instances before regarding the point as proven. However, we should carefully note that Schonberg does not seem to see these views as a particularly important aspect of Wagner's life: his racial opinions are simply one part of the overall ecentricity fading into madness that overtook Wagner, especially later in his life, and are mentioned in the same breath as Wagner's sudden vegetarianism, his "writing reams of prose on every concievable subject", his dressing in violently clashing colors, only allowing the softest silk to touch his skin, his writing of Beethoven that it was lucky his skull was so thick as otherwise, given "his inner world of such conspicuous delicacy", his brain "would have gently dissolved". (Schonberg, p. 247) (I've quoted a little out of context in that last bit - Wagner's passage is not quite as bizarre as I've made it seem - but it's still weird enough to raise your eyebrows quite a distance.)

 * There were a few protests held at early performances of "Die Meistersinger", over Wagner's republication of "Judaism". However, I don't have any references handy at the moment. -- CYD

I do think that the reluctance of Israelis to perform Wagner is important enough to mention - particularly given that there seems to be (if I read the last para aright) a softening of attitude gradually taking place.

Anyway, I've taken, more or less, that first para and most of the last one, and cut out the stuff in-between. I'm not completely happy with my wording, but I think it's gettting close. What do you think?

Tannin 12:17 Feb 1, 2003 (UTC)

 * I really liked your edit and think it was a great improvement over what was there before. I have done some more edits, and I hope they meet your approval. --Clutch 12:51 Feb 1, 2003 (UTC)
 * Alas, only partially so. "He made chauvinistic remarks about many things", yes. However saying "but the comments that were critical of Judaism have been used to tar him as an anti-Semite" is misleading. One cannot "tar" as an anti-semite a man who wrote that Jews were educated "former cannibals". To say that Wagner's comments "were used to tar him", in the light of that particular comment, is like saying that "Richard Nixon's membership of the Republican Party was used to tar him as a Republican".
 * The problem with including the bit about Wagner's essay calling for greater understanding and cooperation, and explicitly condeming violence and bigotry is that (given the assumption that it is in fact true - which I don't know from my own reading but accept your word for) we then need to include a balancing statement showing why the essay was nevertheless anti-semetic. And that will probably call for a counter-balancing statement, followed by a counter-counter-balancing statement, and so on - and we wind up right back where we started, with an entry that is supposed to be about a musical composer called Wagner, but winds up being about the political views of a man who played no role in politics. Einstein's flute lessons again. Just the same, I'll leave it to others to deal with that para - I don't want to get bogged down in this topic which is of only peripheral interest to me. But I will change the last para to a form that reads better and avoids expressing an opinion but, as is proper here, simply lays out the facts and lets the reader draw his own conclusions. Tannin

Wagner said a lot of stupid and hateful things, about a lot of different people. Even a cursory reading of his life is sufficient to show that he was seriously disturbed - I mean, how seriously are we supposed to take the comments of a man who thought Beethoven's brain would have leaked out if his skull hadn't been nice and thick? Picking out just one particular obsession of his amongst so many others (even though it is no doubt his single worst feature) removes balance from the entry, and distorts history. Either tell all, or just summarise. Tannin

Just some thoughts for all the people involved in this article and the ensuing edit war. Cheers. Danny 14:06 Feb 1, 2003 (UTC)
 * 1) Wagner had many bizarre ideas, as Tannin points out,
 * 2) However, he was somewhat excessively hung up on Jews and the dangers they posed, given that Jews constituted just 1 percent of the total German population.
 * 3) In contrast, on a personal level, he usually was quite civil with his Jewish acquaintances.
 * 4) So were so many other intellectuals in his era (hung up on Jews, that is): Wilhelm Marr wrote Victory of Judaism over Germanism; Fritsch wrote the Antisemitic Catechism; von Treitschke wrote negatively about Jews too, etc.
 * 5) This was all part of a larger debate over whether to rescind Emancipation.
 * 6) In his conclusion to Judentum Wagner wrote--"There is only one way of redeeming  the Jews from the terrible curse that hangs over them--annihilation."
 * 7) While it is pretty clear that he meant the eradication of the Jewish religion, many people misinterpreted this as meaning actual physical annihilation.
 * 8) One of those people was Hitler, who frequently cited Wagner as an inspiration (I don't have my Mein Kampf here but I can look it up).
 * 9) Of all the people involved in the debate in the mid-nineteenth century, Wagner is probably the best-known today.
 * 10) Anti-Semitism was only a secondary feature of Wagner's greater legacy and contribution to European culture (my POV).
 * 11) History is not something that can be painted black or white. People are far too complex for that.

 * I agree with Danny and Tannin's recent comments, and will work to incorporate them into the main article. RK
 * Excellent. I was going to pop a note onto Danny's user talk page just now saying "good summary", but seeing it was 48k already I changed my mind. :) Go to it RK. Tannin

A couple of questions: -- Miciah 20030208 1539
 * 1) Wesendonck or Wesendonk?
 * 2) Should 'fliegende' in 'Der fliegende Holländer' be capitalised? Twice it is, twice it isn't. What did Wagner write?

-- I German, nouns are capitalised. The English custom of capitalising (almost) all words in book titles, etc., is foreign to German.

In German, consequently: Der fliegende Holländer.

S.

title: Talk:Richard Wagner/Archive 2


text:
Rhein-Sieg-Kreis

The Rhein-Sieg-Kreis (Rhein-Siech-Kreis) is a Kreis (district) in the south of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Neighboring districts are Rheinisch-Bergischer Kreis, Oberbergischer Kreis, Altenkirchen, Neuwied, Ahrweiler, Euskirchen, Rhein-Erft-Kreis, the urban district of Cologne. The federal city of Bonn is nearly completely surrounded by the district.

History
The district as known today was created in 1969, during the reorganization of the districts in North Rhine-Westphalia, by merging Sieg District with the District of Bonn (from which Bonn itself was separated in 1887 to become an urban district). Sieg District was created in 1825.

Geography
Geographically Rhein-Sieg District covers the valley of the river Sieg and also, since the merger with the District of Bonn, that of the Rhine around Bonn, as well an area in the most easterly part of the Eifel.

Politics
[[File:Germany Rhein-Sieg-Kreis Kreistag 2020.svg|left|thumb|District council with 86 seats as elected in 2020 Municipal elections are held every five years, in which the district administrator (Landrat) and district council (Kreistag) of the Rhein-Sieg-Kreis are chosen. The last election took place on 13 September 2020.
 * 3 seats
 * 18 seats
 * 19 seats
 * 1 seat
 * 1 seat
 * 5 seats
 * 1 seat
 * 34 seats
 * 4 seats]]

District council
The district council consists of 86 seats, half of which are chosen directly in 43 constituencies. The remaining 43 seats are distributed via party lists, resulting in a proportional representation.

On 3 November 2020, the Christian Democrats and the Greens announced their coalition agreement, renewing their 21-year governance.

District administrator
The district administrator is Sebastian Schuster. The Christian Democrat received 53.18% of the vote.

Coat of arms
The red lion is the symbol of the dukes of Berg, who owned a large part of the district. The black cross in the shield is the symbol of Cologne, because another part of the district was owned by the bishops of Cologne. The yellow sword is the symbol of Saint Michael, the patron of the mighty Michaelsberg Abbey in Siegburg.

Demographics
Number of 1st and 2nd generation foreigners in Rhein-Sieg-Kreis by top 10 country of origin per 31 December 2007

title: Rhein-Sieg-Kreis


text:
Talk:Physical Quality of Life Index

Untitled
Where can I find the most recent list of the PQLI.

Kelly Kartchner

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.190.151.36 (talk • contribs) 21:16, 20 February 2003 (UTC)

title: Talk:Physical Quality of Life Index


text:
Emeritus

Emeritus (female version: emerita) is an honorary title granted to someone who retires from a position of distinction, most commonly an academic faculty position, but is allowed to continue using the previous title, as in "professor emeritus".

In some cases, the term is conferred automatically upon all persons who retire at a given rank, but in others, it remains a mark of distinguished service awarded selectively on retirement. It is also used when a person of distinction in a profession retires or hands over the position, enabling their former rank to be retained in their title. The term emeritus does not necessarily signify that a person has relinquished all the duties of their former position, and they may continue to exercise some of them.

In descriptions of deceased professors emeriti listed at U.S. universities, the title emeritus is replaced by an indication of the years of their appointments, except in obituaries, where it may be used to indicate their status at the time of death.

Etymology
Emeritus (past participle of Latin emerere, meaning 'complete one's service') is a compound of the Latin prefix e- (variant of ex-) meaning 'out of, from' and merere (source of 'merit') meaning 'to serve, earn'. The word is attested since the early 17th century with the meaning 'having served out one's time, having done sufficient service'. The Latin feminine equivalent, emerita, is also sometimes used, although in English the word emeritus is often unmarked for gender.

In academia
A tenured full professor who retires from an educational institution in good standing may be given the title "professor emeritus". The title "professor emerita" is sometimes used for women. In most systems and institutions, the rank is bestowed on all professors who have retired in good standing, while at others, it needs a special act or vote. Professors emeriti may, depending on local circumstances, retain office space or other privileges. The adjective may be placed before or after the title (e.g., "professor emeritus" or "emeritus professor").

Other uses
When a diocesan bishop or auxiliary bishop retires, the word emeritus is added to their former title, i.e., "Archbishop Emeritus of ...". The term "Bishop Emeritus" of a particular see can apply to several people, if the first lives long enough. The title was applied to the Bishop of Rome, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, on his retirement. In Community of Christ, the status of emeritus is occasionally granted to senior officials upon retirement.

In Judaism, emeritus is often a title granted to long-serving rabbis of synagogues or other Jewish institutions. In some cases, the title is also granted to chazzans. Rabbi Emeritus or Cantor Emeritus is largely an honorific title.

Since 2001, the honorary title of president pro tempore emeritus has been given to a senator of the minority party who has previously served as president pro tempore of the United States Senate.

It is also used in business and nonprofit organizations to denote perpetual status of the founder of an organization or individuals who made significant contributions to the institution. Phil Knight, for example, is the co-founder of Nike, and after decades of being the CEO, he is now the emeritus of the company.

Following her decision to retire from Democratic leadership, the House Steering and Policy Committee voted to grant Nancy Pelosi the title of Speaker Emerita in recognition of her service as Speaker of the House, while newly elected Speaker Mike Johnson referred to his ousted predecessor Kevin McCarthy as Speaker Emeritus.

title: Emeritus


text:
Talk:Snake handling in Christianity

Merger proposal
I propose merging Snake handling in religion into Snake handling in Christianity. Most of the material in the Snake handling in religion page is about Christianity, including the separate sentence on the Ophites which were a Christian sect. That could easily be folded in. As for the one sentence on Hopi snake-handling rituals, that could easily be folded into the kachina article. Snake Handling in Christianity is a far superior article to Snake Handling in Religion, which really only adds two sentences of value.DynaGuy00 (talk) 03:14, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

 * Well, the previous split was performed by User:Scyrme as part of reorganisation per the above discussion. This doesn't seem to be a topic that needs a WP:broad-concept article overview though. Agree that the two sentences should be accommodated elsewhere. Snake handling is now a disambiguation page, and links can be listed there for navigation purposes. --Paul_012 (talk) 10:24, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

✅ DynaGuy00 (talk) 00:17, 30 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Merge - I agree that there is not really a subject beyond snake handling in Christianity. The couple of mentions elsewhere are not enough for an encyclopaedic article, and that this page is really the main page on this subject. I think User:Paul_012's response looks like a !vote to merge too. This request has been open over a month. I have just got here, but it has probably been long enough for User:DynaGuy00 to request closure. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 17:44, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

"Snake handling in religion" listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Snake handling in religion and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. –LaundryPizza03 ( d c̄ ) 19:29, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

Cruelty
Whilst the article is reassuring on the safety of observers and, in most cases, the fondlers; nowhere does it mention this is gross cruelty to animals, nor of any prosecutions for such by the multifarious governments in the United States.

Extra: on the previous Talk Page, there was a suggestion referenced to the reputable History Channel that the practice was brought over by Calvinists from Europe.

Now my opinion of Calvinism is unprintable, but apart from it's inherent unlikelihood  ---  Pressies are just not that sort of people  ---  one would have to produce evidence of the practice being used in Europe during the Renaissance and later, for it to be then exported by loons.

Claverhouse (talk) 02:58, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

 * Watch the commentary ("loons"). Aside from that, you'd need reliable sources to make additions on animal cruelty issues. —  The Hand That Feeds You :Bite 20:20, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I would postulate that exhibiting shy animals such as snakes, and playing about with them without their consent is implicitly cruel. Claverhouse (talk) 23:06, 25 May 2024 (UTC)
 * That's original research. We can't just conclude it ourselves, we need reliable sources which state it. —  The Hand That Feeds You :Bite 11:57, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

Featured picture scheduled for POTD
Hello! This is to let editors know that File:Handling serpents at the Pentecostal Church of God. (Kentucky) by Russell Lee. - NARA - 541335.jpg, a featured picture used in this article, has been selected as the English Wikipedia's picture of the day (POTD) for July 16, 2024. A preview of the POTD is displayed below and can be edited at Template:POTD/2024-07-16. For the greater benefit of readers, any potential improvements or maintenance that could benefit the quality of this article should be done before its scheduled appearance on the Main Page. If you have any concerns, please place a message at Wikipedia talk:Picture of the day. Thank you! Kentuckian |💬 05:27, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Snake handling in Christianity


text:
User:Flocou64

Is economic competition a factor of progress or alienation?

Introduction.

If you look at the current economic situation throughout the world, you can wonder whether the neoliberalism is really advantageous for everybody. Does the competition which results from it between the companies support to their development or does it create a gap between the industrialized countries and the poor countries? Two principal poles are opposed in connection with this subject: on the one hand capitalists, for which the current situation seems rather favourable, and on the other hand those which think that the neoliberalism only corresponds to the wishes of a small part of the population. Those would like a more social, more equal world. The first ones can be represented by the economic forum of Davos, while the seconds ones are by the social forum of Porto Allegre. If an answer were to satisfy the two kinds of thoughts opposed today, a real change depends nevertheless from the good willingness of the richest countries as the others don’t have enough influence to control the situation. Those already took a step while being invited in Porto Allegre, indeed the idea of a more equal globalisation starts to touch certain spirits as for example the banks which invest funds in the developing countries. All these elements show the relevance of the question "Is competition synonymous with development or allienation?" The goal here is not to answer this question - there is no all made answer -, but to draw well with light certain points which seem significant in connection with this subject.

Summary of the expert’s interview.

Name, first name:  Lenoir Lucien Formation: bachelor in commercial and consular sciences. Currently administrator of a company

Mr Lenoir thinks that all the economic sectors are not prone to competition. Moreover, in each branch of industry, competition is divided in two plans: on the one hand competition between the large companies, and on the other hand competition between SME. It generally applies horizontally, by levels because the first ones rather compete for parts of market while the second ones try to be characterized by quality from their services. He says that this spirit of competition does not prevent SME from growing, all is a question of will. If you ask what is liberalism in accordance with him, he answers that on the one hand there is school of liberalism (A Smith), which says that the economy answers the natural laws. But now, a new kind of neoliberalism is known: it is the State or powerful financial groups which lead the economic trend. A to him the laws of the economy are more complicated than the natural laws (the law of the strongest): as the most resistant companies with the greatest capacity of adaptation take a lead in the market, it is more linked to Darwin’s theory. Mr Lenoir also thinks that the current neoliberalism is more close to capitalism that liberalism was at the beginning. The State only intervene in economic affairs as a supervisor of excess. According to him, the large companies do not lead the world economy. Indeed, they are not masters of themselves: they depend on the will of the investors. Because of their requirements, the companies must often eliminate from not-profitable activities. With regard to the ultra-liberal economic system of the USA, he thinks that the American policy is too protectionist. Consumption and the debt have been belonging to their way of thinking for a long time. Moreover, the task is easy as the exchanges take place in dollars on the international markets. When he is asked whether the goal of each company is not to reach nearly a monopoly, he answers that temptation is large, but that that is not beneficial long-term. When you are the first, you tend to fall asleep and at the en you are made catch up with. Moreover, such a situation would be very bad for the consumers, more especially as they do not have any means of protection.

Argumentation and against-argumentation.

Economic competition.

The free competition constitutes one of the pillars of liberal economy. According to J Rueff, competition is not the result of the behaviour of individuals; it answers rule of ethics, practices. It can be even regulated by a country legislation. Its positive effect is that it is the spearhead of technical progress. It can constitute an stimulus which is strong enough to reveal to the man abilities which he wouldn’t have suspected in him. For this reason, it plays a role of factor of selection which will decide survival of the company.

Alienation

JJ Rousseau was the first to talk about it like " the normal being" of the man who has became social. Then Marx took again this concept while placing it from the point of view of the social relationship of work and production. Because of the technological developments, a conflict between the machine and the man emerged. Rather than to dominate the machine, he became controlled by it. The contribution of the worker becomes negligible compared to the multiplied value of the production equipment. Nowadays, the man tries to contribute to the research and the improvement of quality, thus contributing to technical progress and thus satisfying his needs for self-achievement.

Social conflicts.

Any company is characterized by the coexistence of various social groups which are in competition. Where the interests encroach and are opposed, competition between these groups can generate conflicts. The conflict from itself is beneficial for the group because it enables him to ensure its own defence, to be aware of its existence and to claim its difference, and thus to ensure its own survival.

The war. The war between States resulting from the will from a State to extend the territory of its competition constitutes an expression of the internal conflicts of a society. The feeling of insecurity, or the expansion forces which will be generated inside a society will be managed by mobilizing the whole State against an external enemy.

Determinism.

This doctrine recommends that the existence condition of a phenomenon are given in an absolute way. Thus, all the events, and in particular all the human actions (FREUD), dependent and are determined by the totality of the former events.

Malthusianism. This doctrine developed by MALTHUS, talks about competitive relationship existing between the population on the one hand and the resources on the other hand, thus emphasizing the distortion which exists between the multiplying power of the human race and the capacity to produce means of subsistence. Thus if an area seems more populated, it is because this area produced more means of subsistence.

The competition like factor of selection.

According to Darwin, the natural selection constitutes the spearhead of evolution. Thus, when the resources are limited, the more adapted species, which have the highest capacities of reproduction, will survive while the others will disappear. The man, during his history, sometimes wanted to defy this natural selection by applying an artificial selection aiming at selecting people supposed to be of a higher race. (i.e. nazism)

Here now the opinion of the group on these various ideas.

A question which can be raised is as follows: "Are the brakes necessary to the development of humanity? Is the war, with all that it implies, necessary to this development?" It is a rather delicate question; it can’t be said that war is something good but it can’t be denied that it is sometimes necessary. Firstly it is a barrier to the multiplying power of population, which would involve misery and hunger in the world. In the short run perhaps it brought misery but in the long run, perhaps it helped to avoid misery. The problem with the war is the drifts to which it can lead. Fortunately, the man has a certain morals which always prevailed to put an end to the conflicts which afflicted humanity. Also, people need a stimulant in their life. One of the more important stimulants is obviously the natural needs for the body. If the stimulants were removed, the man would not be even able any more to think. The needs for the body help us to reflect, to innovate, which maintains our mental activity. The need and the desire are the spearhead of all human actions. Let us speak now about competition in itself. In the current world, the state of competition really became a way of life; everyone wants to be the first, and only the best ones succeed. Perhaps competition is a bit too high nowadays but one thing is clear, it is necessary because it motivates people. May be it is better that it is present in excess rather than by defect, otherwise that would lead to the sleeping of human spirit. Indeed from time immemorial, it made it allowed the man to exceed his own limit, and thanks to that he did acquire all his knowledge.

Relationship with the trade of engineer.

Everyone knows that many engineers are very quickly up to direct a team, even a company. Indeed, an engineer will have to do a management work, and there is only one step between management and competition, which he will undoubtedly cross very quickly even without realizing it. Even before having its place he will be confronted with competition. Among a choice of candidates, he will have to prove that it is the best and that the company has to choose him. Then the same principle will apply when it will be promoted to a more important job. Also, the bond with the trade of engineer could be of methodological order: indeed, when a scientific task is entrusted to him, he will have to present the best  scientific step, he will have to work with the most valid models. If he wants that the fruits of its research is likely to arrive on the market, he will have to rise among the others, to be distinguished. Moreover, in this branch, there is no place for the chance, all must be calculated, perfectly controlled. It is thus seen that there are especially two types of competition related to the trade of engineer: the hierarchical competition (inside a company or between companies) and the economic competition, which are overlapping one in the other.

Conclusion.

Economic competition can be dangerous if it is led to the extreme. Indeed if the single goal of a company is to have the greatest part of the market, to make the most possible money and to crush the adversaries, competition is seen negatively. On the other hand a competition which remains in the standards is necessary to the correct operation of a company. As mentioned above, the men need stimuli, otherwise they would no goal anymore in the life and they would stop thinking. Competition stimulates the man, it obliges him to think, create, develop. A good example of the positive effect of competition is the development of safety for the car. The company want to create the surest car in order to be in advance compared to its competitors, and that benefits the users. Nevertheless there remains a major problem: according to international competition, the least developed countries are injured and a ditch grows hollow between the rich countries and the poor countries. The ones want a policy of great profit whereas the others want a more social policy. Economic competition is thus an ideal; it is to capitalism what the social equality is to the Socialists. It is a value which is defended more or less according to people's. Finally, it can be said that economic competition is not bad in itself. It is like all things, the way you it will make it have positive effects or negative effects. Coucharière Florent, FSA11, Gr 1122

title: User:Flocou64


text:
Talk:Frederick Marryat

Untitled
Actually, I dropped the endless HMS on every ship name after typing them all in on the first draft, because it looked repetitive and useless. Going back and looking at the books in my library, I see that the abbrevs are almost never supplied even when they would be handy, as in detailed accounts of battles with ships of multiple navies intertwined. Manual of Style doesn't seem to comment tho, just wants to make sure we don't italicize the abbreviation. Stan Shebs 21:28 Feb 20, 2003 (UTC)

 * Didn't he also write "The Poacher"? Adam Cuerden 03:47, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Graham Greene was a fan: http://chronicle.com/temp/email2.php?id=BbnjmnBwjkWnBrTGX9TwykrSVrmtqr9Q

Mr Midshipman Easy was autobiographical?
Much of that story borders on the outlandish. Semi-autobiographical, maybe? --Badger151 01:39, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Marryat is supposed to have been the origin of the story concerning the American women who made panteloons for the "Limbs" of their piano to preserve modesty. I have not found a firm source for this one.Saxophobia 17:44, 26 August 2007 (UTC) Try "Diary in America" - his book from 1839 that is still in print. Barnaby the Scrivener (talk) 13:51, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

B-Class?
Wouldn't this article be better rated as Start-class? It is a well-written article, but I think it could use some work. Does anyone feel differently?--Heno (talk) 17:30, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
 * After seeing some other B-Class rated articles, I'm rescinding my comment about this article, which seems to meet the criteria.--Heno (talk) 02:24, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Photo
That photo is of Thomas Huxley, not Marryat. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.193.219.127 (talk) 11:35, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

 * Agreed. I've removed it. It also looks dubiously sourced William M. Connolley (talk) 11:48, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Useless Link
The link to one of his works with Edward Howard redirects to a page full of a surprising number of dead folks named Edward Howard. If anyone knows which of these was his contemporary, feel free to patch that directly through. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.16.219.175 (talk) 03:42, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

 * Thanks for pointing this out. I've changed the link to Edward Howard (novelist). Barret (talk) 22:05, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

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Illustrator?
ULAN describes him "English draftsman, caricaturist, and copyist, 1792-1848". Did he illustrate some of his own fiction? --P64 (talk) 18:34, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

defender of the slave trade
emeritus professor of history at UCL Catherine Hall refers to Frederick Marryat's writings in defence of the slave trade. how do i reference a blog? https://lbsatucl.wordpress.com/2013/05/09/displaced-memories-of-slavery-and-slave-ownership-2/ The idea is likely in one of her books but I don't have it https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/legacies-of-british-slaveownership/reconfiguring-race/D9C5BAD21523EA0C13B035DD7B5525B4 Drobbler (talk) 16:54, 11 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Hi . The Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery is a reliable source and although this is a blog, Catherine Hall is clearly a reliable source too, so I think this would be fine to use as a citation. (You might get a warning about Wordpress, but it doesn't stop you publishing it - unless the site is also blacklisted, which I don't think this one would be.) Laterthanyouthink (talk) 01:43, 12 May 2022 (UTC)

 * thank you. I'm new to editing, and am not sure how to cite a source. can anyone help? Drobbler (talk) 22:57, 16 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Hi . Have a read of WP:CITE, and the cite web section will refer you to the template for general online sources, Template:Cite web. They can be created manually quite easily, but since someone directed it to me a while ago, I have been using the citer tool, which speeds things up, and in the case of your url above returns (set to dmy dates):

 * It is pretty reliable, but always needs checking afterwards, as it occasionally switches title and website or makes other minor errors. For the above, I would remove or shorten the ref name (depending on whether it needs to be used more than once), and also wikilink the website, as we have an article for it. Have a go at adding to the article using this, and feel free to ping me if you have any further questions. The help desk or teahouse are also good places to get answers, and often sooner than the talk page of most articles. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 01:22, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

 * very helpful - thank you. Will get a grip on it Drobbler (talk) 20:10, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

title: Talk:Frederick Marryat


text:
Talk:Phoenicians

''I (Infrogmation) cut the following from the main article; while I can't speak to all the points, I know enough to say that the points relating to ancient Mesoamerica are wildly inaccurate. ''

Pliny recorded that once Uba Numidian king intended to establish a stock farm of purple Murex in the west, 12,000 kilometres distant from Cadiz, apparently in Central America.

There are very colourful Maya paintings that depict naked men belonging to a different race, with the drawings of Murex shells on the coast. They are all captives with reddish hair, quite white-skinned and circumcised. The latter detail must have referred to the members of a Semitic expedition, because Indians did not practice the circumcision. Almost identical statues have been found in Mexico, Sardinia and Susa (Iran). All the three of them represent the same naked woman with the same hairstyle, wearing a similarly braided veil, all lifting up her breasts: they must have belonged to the Phoenician goddess Ishtar. The first one can be seen in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Cagliari, or in the book of Parrot-Chehab-Moscati (1977). The second one is a wooden figure in the Museo Nacional, Mexico, see the book of Z.A. Simon (1984: 95). Another little statuatte was part of the great Maya Exhibition that had visited Toronto (Royal Ontario Museum) and other cities. It has a greenish or turquise color, depicting a man holding a lion-cub, in the style of Gilgamesh.

We have a similar situation regarding the the early mentioning of the potato's name in the Near East. The Treasure Trove, or the Origin of the Tribes, a very ancient Syriac text translated by Carl Bezold, mentions an edible root called khamotz. This word seems to be the equivalent of the Mexican (Nahuatl) word kamotl or camote. The Spaniards may have borrowed it as camote, similarly to the words 'coyotl,' 'ocelotl' or 'chocol-atl,' now coyote, ocelot and chocolate. These "coincidences" and "out-of-place" findings can be explained easily by the travels of the Phoenician mariners. There are many authorities now who have admit these possibilities of pre-columbian transatlantic contacts in their scholarly publications. However, others have still consider all evidence as mere coincidence.

There were reports, printed in some books before 1945, regarding many rock inscriptions on the eastern shores of South America. According to those claims, the inscriptions have been deciphered in Phoenician: they contained information and directions how to reach gold mines in the interior. However, these vague news have not been confirmed yet by experts on epigraphy. One of these Phoenician texts is quite well-known from modern books, regarding the short inscription of some castaway mariners in the reign of Badesir, son of Ithobaal or Jethbaal.

 * There was a series of similar stuff put in by te same anon poster at the same time. I worked through a fair bit of it, but there is more to go - as it seems you are discovering! Keep up the good work. Tannin 21:40 Feb 20, 2003 (UTC)

Moved from main article: -

Phoenician chronology
The date for the foundation of Carthage is not agreed upon by all sources. They are ranging between 900 to 800 BCE, mainly round figures, indicating approximate dates. The alleged foundation of Carthage was 814 BCE. This may come from a misunderstanding, a relative date before Rome's foundation. This is the birthdate of Carthage's constitution, according to Cicero, The Republic, II, XVII-XXX.

Iulius Solinus, a Roman historian recorded that the destruction of Carthage in 146 BCE took place after 737 years of its existence, Carthago post annos 737 quam fuerat extructa exciditur. Also see Reese's Cyclopaedia under Carthage, or Rollin's Ancient History Volume I, Rollin's Roman History, Volumes III-V, or Ancient Universal History, Volumes XV-XVI. The date 146 BCE is not debated by any scholar. Therefore, reckoning with 737 full years, Carthage was founded in 883 or 884 BCE. Josephus Flavius Contra Apionem (Against Apion), Book I, 17-18 contains an important list of Phoenician rulers, including some high priests of Baal.

Josephus Flavius tells that the whole time from the reign of Hirom (Hiram), till the building of Carthage, amounts to the sum of 155 years and 8 months. Since then the temple was built at Jerusalem in the twelfth year of the reign of Hirom, there were from the building of the temple, until the building of Carthage, one hundred forty-three years and eight months. The subtracting of Josephus works well, at least in this simple exercise. This sort of confirmation may indicate the possibility that he has got the total as a first-hand information, and the reader should not be bothered if other details of the list would not add up so perfectly. According to this, King Solomon started to build the temple in 1029 BCE, probably at the beginning of the 12th year after Hiram's accession. Hiram reigned 34 years (1040-1006 BCE), and died at the age of 53. Therefore, he was still alive twenty years after the beginning of Solomon's fourth year, and 1 Kings 9: 10-14 is right. The above list of Josephus confirms that Carthage was founded, or perhaps re-founded and enlarged, in 883 or 884 BCE. This took place in the seventh year after Pygmalion's accession, by his escaping sister Elissa, as Josephus tells. His father Mettinus (Matgenus or Mutgo, the priest of Baal, who is Mattan in 2 Kings 11: 18) and Queen Athaliah were slain in 891 or 890 BCE. Therefore, the Bible and the non-Christian Josephus who has cited these from Dius and Menander of Ephesus, agree accurately. Josephus, Wars VI, X.1 claims that David settled in Jerusalem 477 years and 6 months before its destruction by Nebuchadnezzar. The latter date is traditionally 587 BCE, therefore Josephus has placed that event at the beginning of 1064 BCE. It is well-known that, after this, David was king for 33 years in Jerusalem, till 1031. (Before his death, he appointed Solomon as king in 1032 BCE.)

A masterpiece entitled Ogygia of O'Flaherty (1685: 83-85) correctly lists several key dates of world history. From the Fall of Troy, or Troja excisae (2767 Anno Mundi) to the Milesian (Gaidelic) conquest (A.M. 2934) we can calculate 167 years of difference, so they correspond to 1183/2 and 1016/5 BCE, accordingly. From the latter he claims 133 years to Carthage's reconstruction, and 263 years to Varro's date for the foundation of Rome. Also, 1016 less 133 years yield 883 again, and 1016 minus 263 years give us the traditional 753 BCE. Considering all these, the foundation of Carthage can be placed in 883 BCE.

- For further explanation, please see Talk:Carthage. - Hephaestos 05:27 Apr 29, 2003 (UTC)

title: Talk:Phoenicians


text:
User talk:Jaimenote

Re:

 * Thank you for the awesome work you did on the new Hanna Reitsch page! Her life is fascinating to me.

I did not edit the article Hanna Reitsch. You probably want User:Maury Markowitz -- CYD

Hello Jaimenote,

I do apologize if you took my note badly. On re-reading it, it was a bit harsh. I was insulted at the implication that we do not think outside of the box, because, for the record, I happen to agree with you on gender identity being a social construct. But Wikipedia has a commitment to a neutral point of view (NPOV), which means that as editors, we can't just insert our perspective - no matter how valid and appropriate we may feel it is - into articles without attributing it. I.e., this is a valid belief held by some people, but we must make explicit who it is held by (or who it is not held by).

Also, I did not delete your text... that was Martin, who in fact actually moved it to, i think, Gender role, because the Gender page was only intended to direct people to the page they thought was appropriate and not to actually discuss the idea of gender (i.e., a disambiguation page). I'm not sure if this is the right thing to do, but this is how we operate on Wikipedia - someone does something, and if it's controversial, we discuss it with an eye to resolving the conflict (rather than merely trying to get my own side across). Or, at least, we should do it this way - it doesn't always happen, as people have varying levels of commitment to this idea. But that's the way we should be.

Finally, sorry for starting off on the wrong foot. I hope you stick around on Wikipedia and contribute more to the project. Graft

-- 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 Naming conventions or how to format them visit our manual of style. If you have any other questions about the project then check out Help or add a question to the Village pump. Cheers! --maveric149

I think the less I know about your dreams of tits the better! Just a tip: To sign, use three tildes, which the software will convert. A fourth tilde adds time and date. jimfbleak 07:59 21 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Since you're interested in birds, perhaps you might like to do an article or two? We are very thin on North American species. Green-winged Teal will give you an idea of the consensus style, and I'll help out if needed.

Meanwhile, mid-morning, time to go and do some real birding. jimfbleak 09:16 21 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Joseph Duncan
Hey there. I was reading the talk on the Joseph Duncan article. If you would like help on researching sources for the article, I would really like to assist you. And by the way, I think you did a very nice job on it. eveningscribe 02:12, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

NAm
In the UK in January, daylight hours are still short enough that birding time is a bit restricted. Saw my 12th British American Wigeon yesterday though. jimfbleak 06:05, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

title: User talk:Jaimenote


text:
Talk:Gender identity

Use of "assigned" throughout

 * The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The use of the phrase "assigned at birth" and "assigned sex" is redundant and implies that there can be a different sex from the one a person is born with. Bypassing any opinions on "gender" as it is used in this article, it is biologically impossible to change one's sex. There is a WP article on this distinction (again, I am writing this in terms of the current WP world and do not intend to make a political/moral statement about this topic).

I move and RfC that the statements containing these phrases should be reworded to reflect definition and the intended wikivoice here. An example:

 * "Different amounts of these male or female sex hormones within a person can result in behavior and external genitalia that do not match up with the norm of their sex assigned at birth."

 * To: "Different amounts of these male or female sex hormones within a person can result in behavior and external genitalia that do not match up with the normal attributes of their sex."

Again, even the WP article on assigned sex is about the determination of a person's sex, and this sex cannot change. Gender is a separate beast here. I do think that perhaps for wikilinking purposes, it can be included once in the article, but it makes no sense to me to have it repeated in this fashion over and over, especially given that it could confuse the uninitiated reader about the accepted distinction between gender and sex.

- Dmezh (talk) 01:13, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Except that even anatomical sex can be altered through hormones and surgery. Newimpartial (talk) 03:27, 20 August 2018 (UTC)

 * Oppose. The determination of sex at birth, as described in the article on Sex assignment, makes no argument about the ability to change sex, and is relevant to the article throughout. Replacing the term with simply "sex" reduces accuracy. For example, the article discusses the gender identities of individuals assigned female at birth, with XY chromosomes, and lacking typical male anatomy. That is to say, their assigned sex, their chromosomal sex, and their anatomical sex are not all the same, and the sex as assigned at birth was relevant to the study. Removing mentions to it would be, frankly, egregiously non-neutral. --Equivamp - talk 01:37, 20 August 2018 (UTC)

 * Oppose. WP articles need to reflect the reliable sources on their respective subject matter. In this case, the term used is "assigned sex" - there are reasons for this that so agree, including sex determination in intersex cases (roughly 1% of births) and "errors" - but even if I didn't agree with the usage, it would still be correct because it is used by essentially all recent, reliable sources on gender identity, or is also worth noting that the article on sex and gender outlines the terms of a debate; it does not outline pat definitions to be employed mechanically elsewhere. Newimpartial (talk) 01:48, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Comment. I think the correct solution here would be to replace "sex assigned at birth" with "gender assigned at birth". Changing it to just "sex" would probably be confusing, since people can change their sex (at least anatomically), thus a person's current sex may not be the same as their sex at birth (depending on which definition of "sex" you use). Kaldari (talk) 03:10, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
 * But it isn't WP's job to replace the terminology used in Reliable Sources with something editors feel might be better. Newimpartial (talk) 03:27, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
 * "...a person's current sex may not be the same as their sex at birth": which is one reason that the clarificatory "sex assigned at birth" is used... -sche (talk) 16:11, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

 * Oppose per sources which demonstrate the "assigned (fe)male at birth" and "assigned sex at birth" is common: American Psychological Association, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, World Health Organization, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, American Academy of Pediatrics NBC News, Washington Post, Cosmopolitan, WBUR, Entertainment Tonight, NYTimes, and Newsweek.  Eve rgr een Fir  (talk) 04:07, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Comment: People who are assigned a sex are also assigned a gender. A person assigned male is usually assigned as a boy. A person assigned female is usually assigned as a girl. It's why "gender assignment" is the WP:Alternative title for "sex assignment." Well, other than the fact that the sex and gender distinction is commonly disregarded. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 19:14, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Oppose. SAAB is a set phrase. ARR8 (talk) 04:42, 10 September 2018 (UTC) (summoned by bot)
 * Oppose; use the language used in the most (and MED-) reliable sources, as others have said. Individual instances might need to be changed to "assigned gender" or the like. -sche (talk) 16:11, 16 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Oppose. The assignment of sex at birth (and the idea that it is not always clear-cut) is well-established in medical literature, and the arguments posed here against that terminology are WP:OR at best, even if we accept their underlying logic (which I do not thing is at all well-cited or established.) --Aquillion (talk) 20:47, 16 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Oppose, as an example, intersex people are "assigned" a gender - whether or not it is the one they later identify with - so trying to claim that there cannot "be a different sex from the one a person is born with." as per the proposal, is clearly unsupportable - Arjayay (talk) 21:04, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

 * The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Follow-up
The opinions above seem to overlook a key aspect: the phrase "sex assigned at birth" sounds bureaucratic (which it is) and incidental (which it is most likely not). The identity dissonance is between one's gender and their actual genitalia, in contrast to one's gender vs. the ink stains (i.e. male/female) on their birth certificate. For this reason I think it should be "sex assigned at birth". 166.48.82.76 (talk) 04:02, 15 August 2021 (UTC)
 * But the reliable sources on the topic don't agree with you. Hmmm. What should we do? Newimpartial (talk) 11:56, 15 August 2021 (UTC)
 * With all due respect, you have proven to be nothing but biased in your redaction of this topic. It is amusing to me that it is allowed for activists (LGBT) to edit and dictate what is written or not on this page. The criticism wikipedia has received regarding this matter has not been unfounded and is clearly visible here. The fact that there is no
 * criticisms page regarding this issue when public debate is at an all time high and there is clear division regarding this matter (both by the general public and professionals in the medical field) is both amusing and sad. I have read the talk page regarding this topic and the way editors are handling this issue gives clear indication of the leftist bias that has been reported throughput the media. I know this will be erased as will other matters regarding criticism of how this has been handled. For such reason I will be leaving Wikipedia behind and moving
 * to Britannica which multiple studies have found is a more objective and neutral source of information. I hope all the people here the best and may all of you learn that having a chokehold on how information is portrayed won’t change actual-factual truth.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.15.147.136 (talk) 01:13, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

Use of "assigned" throughout
This remains a problem as sex is determined by the presence or absence of a 'Y' chromosome, and nobody can change their DNA. Nothing is assigned. Only identified. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.113.21.168 (talk) 16:21, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

 * Most of the time sex is assigned at birth on external genitals and in the case of intersex people this can lead to mistake. That is why is assigned not determined as right a birth they decide feature of the body that in very rare cases can be misleading. Harriet45 (talk) 22:41, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

 * I think our anonymous friend is just having a bit of fun wasting our time here, if their other reverted edits are anything to go by. Anyway, this claim that it is based on chromosomes is very obviously just silly. Nobody is routinely genetically testing babies before issuing them birth certificates. Some people only find out that their sex chromosomes are not what they expected when they either have fertility problems or do a 23 And Me to find out if they really are 1/16 Italian, like their grandma said, and find out something else entirely. The article already uses the correct standard terminology and changing it would only be a confusing obfuscation. The suggestion is no better now than when it was rejected back in 2018. (See above.) --DanielRigal (talk) 01:00, 24 November 2023 (UTC)
 * No thats still determined noy assigned. It just ha a a tiny margin of error.
 * Futhermore is there any evidence that being intersex has anny correlation with having a transgender identity ?
 * Because this is a textbook bait and switch. 120.22.66.149 (talk) 21:31, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Inclusion of John Money?
The recent dispute over whether to refer to Money as "controversial" in the lead is probably reflective of a larger problem. I considered simply removing his mention in the lead section (though not the rest of the article), but I'd like to open this for discussion beforehand, as I feel that my negative opinion of him may result in some bias on my part. I do not think he should be mentioned in the lead. Love, Cassie. (Talk to me!) 16:02, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Rarely, if ever, do articles engage in assessing people who are only mentioned in passing. Even just labeling "controversial" raises the issue in readers' minds of "why? Does it have to do with his popularizing the term 'gender identity', the topic of this article?" Easily confusing. If others want to not mention him at all, I don't mind either way. Crossroads -talk- 16:51, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm pretty sure that everybody regards him as controversial but for completely different reasons. I've never heard of anybody having a positive opinion of him but, again, for many completely different reasons. Distaste for him might be the only thing that pro and anti-trans groups all agree on. I agree that saying "controversial" without additional explanation is not providing any value to our readers and might give a misleading impression. It is better to avoid mentioning him more than is actually required. I'm inclined to agree that he belongs in the article but not to the extent that he merits mention in the lede. DanielRigal (talk) 17:42, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
 * John Money is also the driver for the WP:NPOV template in the "Case of David Reimer and contrasting case" section of the article. Reference this discussion in the archive. CaptainAngus (talk) 01:02, 23 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I fear that this is so difficult for the same reason that my draft for an article on Kalvin Garrah never got off the ground. It is incredibly difficult to find neutral information on Money, since he seems to mostly be notable for controversy. I suppose I'll try to fix it, any help will be greatly appreciated. Love, Cassie. (Talk to me!) 13:23, 23 May 2024 (UTC)
 * "Six of them changed their gender identity to male, five remained female and three had ambiguous gender identities (though two of them had declared they were male)."
 * This is one passage that stands out to me, it doesn't seem to fit with the definition of gender identity generally used in the article, but I don't know what the policy is as to what to do about that. Love, Cassie. (Talk to me!) 13:38, 23 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Is the sentence, or even the entire "Other cases" subsection, even needed? To me, the flow of the "Factors influencing formation" section is as follows:
 * Nature versus nurture--Discuss the factors on formation of gender identity
 * Case of David Reimer and contrasting case--Deep dive (515 words!) into one particular historical case
 * Other cases--As it currently stands, this section just throws some more observations out there, doesn't really add or draw any conclusions
 * Biological factors--Discuss the contributions of biological factors on gender identity
 * Social and environmental factors--Same for social factors
 * It looks like 1/3 of this section is devoted to various cases, which, to me, is less important than discussion on contributing factors. How would you feel about a restructuring where the 'David Reimer' section is moved to the end, maybe slim it down per WP:BECONCISE, and remove the 'Other cases' section per WP:IRRELEVANT? Might make for a better presentation on the theme of 'factors influencing formation'. CaptainAngus (talk) 02:35, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Gender identity