File talk:Early-Historical-Israel-Dan-Beersheba-Judea.png

I don't know how to do a proper accurate conversion of the original vector PostScript source to vector SVG, because the PostScript code involves "clipping", and I haven't been able to get clipping to work in SVG. Attempting to trace the raster PNG would almost certainly end up being rather crude. Also, the fonts are going to be a pain -- "flattening" them to vector outlines would bloat the size of the SVG file rather significantly (and would certainly not facilitate internationalizing the non-Hebrew text), while attempting to leave the text as text in the SVG would probably make it very difficult to duplicate what is seen in the PNG. AnonMoos 09:16, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Don't worry about not being able to do it. The {{Convert to SVG}} template is a to-do flag for the whole community (and in particular, myself), not a private message to you. I'll have a go at performing the vectorisation myself and remove the template only if I discover that it really is impossible. — Erin (talk) (FAQ) 13:16, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

from en.wikipedia

Is it just me, or is this entire map a HUGE POV? Themalau en:Themalau 21:59, 12 January 2007 (UTC) -- 23:37, 12 January 2007 Moyogo

What do you mean? I gave sources on the image description page. AnonMoos 06:04, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

The problem is, it says it's 'historical' when it's actually 'biblical.' If your source is the bible, say biblical. If your source is from historians and (more than one) historical work, then say 'historical.' I think the image should be deleted for being POV in the caption. -Quasipalm 01:45, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Whatever -- There are extremely few external sources in existence which cast any light on the 10th-century B.C. Canaan-Israel area, and archaeological findings have been quite meagre in almost all respects, so the Bible is almost the only historical source we've got for this particular time and place. The only reason why the "empire" of David and Solomon (an "empire" which was not actually very large in terms of territories directly ruled) could exist at all was that both Egypt and Mesopotamia were somewhat weak during this historical period. The fact that the "great powers" were somewhat feeble in their capabilities for "force projection" meant that there was an opening for the Israelites to consolidate their state without too much outside interference -- but of course this also means that surviving Hieroglyphic and Cuneiform records throw very little light on the political situation of the Canaan-Israel area during this period. (It also meant that as soon as Egypt recovered a little international power and the Israelites lost their unified leadership and split into quarreling sub-kingdoms, in the late 10th-century B.C., then the Israelite "empire" fell apart with great rapidity.)

The account of David and Solomon's kingdom in books II Samuel and I Kings of the Bible could be considered to contain certain legendary or folkloric features, and some editorializing emphasis on the importance of the centralization of legitimate monotheistic worship in the Jerusalem temple was certainly added a few centuries later (around the time of the reign of king Josiah of Judah). However, these Biblical books also contain lots of names, places, descriptions of administrative tribal territories, and specific and circumstantial accounts of various political and military events -- and there's no real reason why scholars can't circumspectly sift through this material to separate out the nuggets of historical material from certain later accretions.

If you're upholding Biblical Minimalism of the Copenhagen School, then frankly I find that to be just as "POV" as Biblical literalism... AnonMoos 07:13, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

I’m sorry if I’ve upset you, but there are several reasons the version I uploaded is better:

1 Captions should be written inside the articles themselves – not inside the images. This has several benefits. The biggest benefit is that each Wikipedia entry can write it in the appropriate language and context of the article. (The image you uploaded has English captions, no matter if it is used in other language wikis -- it's impossible to translate.) Another big benefit is that others can edit those captions as they see fit – removing any bias that may or may not be present in the image you uploaded.

2 The title – Historical Israel – is clearly inferior to a caption that clearly states the source of the work. Your argument that ‘the bible is the only document that applies, so it must be presented as factual’ is frankly silly. Perhaps we should also allow photos of the red sea to include captions noting that historical documents prove it was parted by Moses. I’m not for removing the Bible as a source, simply labeling its use where appropriate.

Lastly – I’m not upholding any POV – I’m upholding a neutral stance that allows the image to be used in many contexts on many pages – in it’s original form, it’s too POV to be presented in many contexts. Also, updating images is common on Wikimedia – especially if there is a POV dispute – as the editor's note box on Wikipedia says, "If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly or redistributed for profit by others, do not submit it."

Here's what I propose we do to settle the POV dispute:

Remove the title entirely -- let it be titled in the particular article.

Remove the caption entirely -- let each wiki translate it accordingly, and caption it to frame it in reference to that particular article.

I think would remove any POV concerns expressed here. -Quasipalm 14:18, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

---

Whatever, dude -- Keeping longish text captions out of maps may in general be the preferred Wikipedia style, but I consciously made an editorial decision with respect to this particular map that what is represented by the pink and dark red areas may be easily misinterpreted, so that I preferred to put some basic text into the map image itself, in order to avoid having the proper interpretation of the map depend on external resources (e.g. an image caption in an article, or the description of the map on its image description page) which could rather easily become separated from the map image itself. Internationalization of the map image will be greatly facilitated when and if somebody manages to convert the PDF file to an SVG (which is kind of beyond my current technical abilities). AnonMoos 17:45, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

You made the wrong editorial decision. It seems you did so to ensure that an image was inseparable from a caption that you feel is above the standards of ruthless editing on Wikipedia. (If you think I'm wrong, feel free to respond with another "whatever, dude" and explain to me why the bottom caption is above the concerns of internationalization.) -Quasipalm 19:23, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

That's nice, you disagree with a decision I made. However, "facilitating internationalization" should not be fetishized to the point of overriding what's best for the English-language version of the image -- and as I explained before, converting the PDF to SVG will do far more for the internationalizibility of this map than will monkeying with the title caption in the PNG. And yes, one reason why I put the map title in the image file was to discourage "ruthless editing" by all EXCEPT those who have a detailed knowledge of the specific subject-matter of this map (a group which, by your own admission, does not include you). AnonMoos 06:33, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Meanwhile, neither the "cleanness" of the map nor its internationalizability is greatly facilitated by you changing one caption to accord with your particular personal agenda, so that raising the issues of visual "cleanness" and internationalizability would seem to be something of a red herring on your part. AnonMoos 17:45, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

That's why I suggested we just remove the title entirely. You seem to be ignoring that suggestion. -Quasipalm 19:23, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

That's because I see no merit to your objections to the current title. If you had a detailed knowledge of the topic covered by this map, then I would respect that knowledge even if we disagreed radically about the conclusions to be arrived at from the data. However, since you don't have such knowledge, I have the opposite feelings towards your attempts at intervention. AnonMoos 06:33, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Furthermore, you don't seem to have read what I wrote above about the Bible being the ONE AND ONLY SPECIFIC AND DETAILED HISTORICAL SOURCE AVAILABLE FOR THE UNITED MONARCHY PERIOD. A map of "the political situation in the Canaan/Israel area ca. 950 B.C. based exclusively on non-Biblical sources" would be pretty much a completely blank map.

Frankly, the combination of your dogmatic attitude of "If it's in the Bible it must be pure fiction" with your lack of knowledge of the relevant subject areas involved in the map means that it will be quite difficult for you to come up with informed and constructive proposals with respect to this image. AnonMoos 17:45, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I said no such thing. I want a biblically sourced image to be presented as such. This is fitting with WikiMedia's standards. And again, you start mindlessly insulting my knowledge of 'relevant subject areas'. Please, inform me of your own historian's credentials if you're going to be so quick to exclude everyone but those at your level of supreme mastery of ancient Israeli history. -Quasipalm 19:23, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Since you seem to have no particular specific relevant knowledge beyond a general "village-square atheist" ideology of vague anti-Biblicism, whatever I know about the subject is more than you know. However, I have given specific citations on the image description page for a long time now to a particular historical scholarly reference work which was written by several gentlemen with better formal academic scholarly credentials in the area than either of us have. If you had perused this work before launching your personal campaign against this image, a lot of this somewhat pointless discussion might have been avoidable. AnonMoos 06:33, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

P.S. -- It's funny to note that the map's creator (presumably you) used 'biblical israel' commonly to describe this very map! As far as all of the other views on that webpage, I'll leave that be for now and assume you're editing in good faith. -Quasipalm 19:29, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

No, that is in reference to a quite different map which was used as a reference for polemical Usenet discussions of 3-4 years back. It was based on some of the same basic underlying vector outline data, but had a rather different overall purpose, and quite different annotations and captions. AnonMoos 06:33, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Moved here from User_talk:Quasipalm by User:Quasipalm, and replies

Frankly, your actions on this image could be considered incredibly rude and arrogant with respect to the prevailing way of doing things at Wikimedia Commons, since you didn't even have the basic courtesy to deign to condescend to reply in any way to my extensive comments at Image talk:Early-Historical-Israel-Dan-Beersheba-Judea.png, but instead just imposed your unilateral personal agenda on the image without further discussion. Also, the caption you imposed on the image, "Biblical Israel" is rather meaningless, since the Bible covers many centuries, during which borders fluctuated wildly; also, the expression "Biblical Israel" may suggest the descriptions in the Bible of the theoretical and visionary Land of Israel, rather than the descriptions in the Bible of territories actually ruled over by Israelite kings at various periods (which are two quite different sets of things).

Since I've declared the image to be in the public domain, there's nothing preventing you from making your own revised image and uploading it under a different name -- but trying to unilaterally hijack the currently-existing image to impose your own personal agenda without proper discussion (the way you did) is quite rude and arrogant with respect to the prevailing way of doing things at Wikimedia Commons. AnonMoos 08:38, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree with AnonMoos - do not go around arrogantly deleting images you feel are incorrect. Either fix the image to what you feel is best (leaving the original) or contact the creator of the image to see about any corrections. This kind of behavior will only lead to scrutiny in the future. Rarelibra 12:53, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Fixing images with better versions is common on Wikimedia -- I've seen it happen several times. For simple things like color correction, to uploading SVG versions, to fixing POV titles and disputes, as is the case here.

As for AnonMoos' claim that I am pushing an agenda -- the fact is this image has a POV problem and it's easily corrected by cropping the image in a way that would serve all projects that use this image well. Not to mention the benefits of multilingualism.

Lastly, saying 'Biblical Israel' is meaningless because "the Bible covers many centuries" is actually quite funny -- tell me, how many centuries does "history" span, and how is that title more specific? -Quasipalm 14:26, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Dude, moving my comments from your user talk page to this page could itself also be considered quite rude on your part, since what I was discussing was mainly your behavior, and discussions of your behavior will generally belong on your user talk page.

The phrase "Early historical Israel" is about as specific as it needs to be, since it means the early phase of the history of the Israelite Kingdoms, and the core of the the early phase of the history of the Israelite Kingdoms would generally be understood to be the reigns of David and Solomon.

By contrast, the caption "Biblical Israel" would be quite ambiguous in many respects, some of which I have already outlined above. If you don't know which centuries are covered by Biblical history, then I don't really feel like enlightening your lack of knowledge in the context of this particular discussion -- and it would certainly seem that you should avoid messing with what you don't understand well enough to constructively change. Your current combination of ignorance and overconfidence in your abilities to "fix" what you seem to know rather little about presents a rather unattractive contrast. AnonMoos (talk) 17:11, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Read No Personal Attacks and I'll further discuss this issue with you -- until then, I'm finished trying to get you to engage in a productive discussion. -Quasipalm 17:48, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Pointing out that your conduct has been somewhat lacking is not a "personal attack". A "productive discussion" is somewhat difficult, since (by your own admission) you don't possess the relevant knowledge which would be necessary to discuss the issues raised by this map in an informed manner. AnonMoos 06:09, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Atlas reversions

Sorry, but I side with AnonMoos - I think that Quasipalm is being POV and offensive at his attempts to overrun and replace a perfectly good, historical image. There are no problems with the reference on the image instead of the article itself - it is for the IMAGE (which can be used in a multitude of articles). Please cease your actions, Quasipalm. If you want to add your image IN ADDITION to AnonMoos to the Atlas, feel free. But DO NOT attempt to remove or replace AnonMoos's work. It offends the creator of the work, especially in the way that you are approaching this. Rarelibra 03:59, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

I have no real objection to Quasipalm uploading his own version of the image (and even if I did, I couldn't do anything meaningful about it), but nothing that Quasipalm has written on this page has been convincing to me, so that I very much do object to Quasipalm swapping in his own version of the image for factually-uninformed ideological reasons. AnonMoos 08:17, 16 October 2007 (UTC)