Talk:Mircea Eliade/Archive 3

message: Mirce Eliade is universally and exclusively known as a great scholar, one of the most influential religion scientists and an original and seminal writer and theorist. In the article, all these essential informations are massively obscured by an overflow of items dealing with Eliade’s ideological preferences. Basically, the entire article is being taken hostage by ideology. This is a matter of concern for many users: the present score of those having expressed unease on the talk page with the present WP:Undue weight of the article is seven against one. I am therefore proposing the creation of a separate article addressing the ideological orientations of Eliade. Such an entry will gather all the biographical, bibliographical and interpretational items dealing with this topic. The creation of a new entry out of the present section “Controversy….” represents an upgrading of this topic. Thus, readers interested in the ideological orientations of Eliade will find specific and focused information, while those interested in the scholar, thinker and writer will be able to follow their line of research. The present amalgamation of 70% ideology and 15% science is fallacious and untenable. Please give your comment on this proposal.--Timor Stultorum 11:26, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Sure, let's hide everything under the rug. Oh: and I don't know where you come up with those percentages. Dahn 14:52, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Addition: I recently bumped into this wikipedia guideline. Dahn 20:32, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

text: I don't agree with creating a separate article.  I personally think that having this information in the section called "Controversy..." is enough to allow both categories of people to focus on what they are interested in.  Besides, there are other, more important issues to fix in this article.  The biography is lacking further information both from his youth (his intense study methods, his radio lectures just to give two small examples) and from his later years (there isn't any mention of his death!).  The scholar section only seems to cover a part of what he worked on.  There is no section describing his fiction works!  Bottom line, your insistences with moving/shrinking the Iron Guard related information are at the moment pointless and just a waste of everyone's time and nerves.  Let's first have a more complete article, and then we can talk about what needs to be moved where, if that is still the case. — Daniel Mahu · talk · 15:44, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I support the idea of expanding the article with Eliade's many accomplishments, but at some point we need to discuss the long, rambling, and convoluted section that, when diagramed, reduces down to "some critics call Eliade an antisemite, but because some of his best friends were Jews, readers should not take this claim too seriously."--Cberlet 16:24, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It is long because I have gathered all possible evidence without commenting on them (except perhaps for the Sebastian quote, which I'm willing to rephrase). It was my goal to be as explicit about what Eliade thought on these matters, without attributing him things that were not his: in other words, if Eliade was an anti-Semite (which I personally do not dispute), he did a good job at hiding it. What that part does/should actually be diagramed to is: "most critics call Eliade an antisemite". I also fail to see where it is indicated that "most of his friends were Jewish" (or that it is relevant how many of them were); it is, however, a fact that Eliade was initially a philo-Semite (like many non-Nazi fascists), and that Sebastian, for some reason, had been accepted in Ionescu's group and was naively adopting its outlook on the world. If you want to look at it this way (and many have), it is a matter of scandal that Eliade chose between his Jewsih friend(s) and the Iron Guard, that he behaved in a disgusting manner towards Sebastian, and that he had the nerve to express his sadness that Sebastian died just before he (Eliade!) could tell him that there were no hard feelings betwen them ("I've just raped your wife, but I'm not upset, and neither should you be"). Dahn 17:17, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That was not at all his intent. There were hard feelings, and Eliade wanted to deal with them personally and get a chance to tell Sebastian he was sorry (and I believe he was). You should read his Memoirs before you call his sense of loss (in regard to Sebastian's passing) phoney. Sebastian himself, in his Journal, declares on numerous occasions that despite being shunned by Eliade, he still considered him a friend, and knew that "it wasn't the real Eliade" (paraphrasing) who was writing those nasty antisemitic diatribes and proclaiming the glory of the guard. (to a lesser extent, he felt the same about Nae Ionescu). Maybe Eliade didn't feel the same, but at the time when he was already in exile, and writing his Memoirs, he was genuinely saddened by Sebastian's death (such a stupid death too...). I don't see why you have to deny the man all traces of humanity. I mean for f's sake, he wasn't Satan incarnate. He made some pretty big mistakes yes, but he did have friends, and he did care about Sebastian (and Sebastian cared about him). Your rape remark is completely off-topic.--VMSolo67.71.159.94 15:49, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: VM, the topic here is differentiating between what can be listed in Eliade's actions and what can be deduced from them. I certainly agree that it was off-topic, but that was my precise meaning: I was pointing that listing Eliade's actions and noting that less than Cberlet's expects are incriminating for Eliade still does not mean that somebody is "hiding" Eliade's guilts/mistakes. Therefore, I did not indicate that one should entertain that opinion, but, for the purposes of what was discussed, I showed that the current text should not be read as either an apology or a castigation. Whether I do believe what I have theorized is ultimately irrelevant, and responding to it was truly off-topic, but, if you ask to know: no, I don't believe that he did that exactly, but I don't think that what he did was far from that. On a different level: even the harshest interpretation of what Eliade did would not indicate to me, nor serve to indicate to me that the man was Satan or that he had no traces of humanity. To me, it is rather indicative of precisely the trance of violent and modernist relativism that so many others fell into, right (Papini, d'Annunzio, Emil Nolde, Jünger etc etc) and left (Koestler, Picasso etc etc). In particular, it is also illustrative of the appeal of the collective mind to even the most individualist souls in Romanian culture (how many have talked about the frenzied and hypnotic immersion of Romanian intellectuals into extremism?). What I would rather say is that Eliade never did realize the harm he had advocated, and that his primordial interest has always been making himself look good. Were it not for the consequences his actions had, I would consider that his right and privilege. But, as I have said, all of this is nothing to the text we're discussing. Dahn 22:21, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If it helps, I think the article is improving. :-)  --Cberlet 20:44, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Well, now, if you would kindly check the kilometers of talk above and in the archive, as well as the tags placed in the article, the solution is to expand the other sections accordingly. I was able to add things relevant to other sections; if others can add relevant stuff to other sections, you've got the way out of this problem. Nevertheless, the only "solution" proposed here was moving or removing other content. If you are also proposing the latter, I'm afraid I for one am not at all interested. Dahn 12:47, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Request for comment 

message: I would like to propose the merging of "Mircea Eliade" with "Eternal return (Eliade)", and concomitant header editing as the latter contains Eliade's philosophical/anthropological contributions.
--JamesSonne 22:12, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Phatius, you are certainly the best person to summarize that article (since you authored it). I would welcome your editing of a new section inside the "Scholar" one (you, with more grasp of Eliade's scholarly works than any of us here, are most likely to know how the overall "Scholar" should look in the end - so you probably know what should constitute a section of it and what shouldn't). My main concern was that, since we all seemed to have little actual awareness of his entire work, we would simply be pulling on a thread in the hope that it would get us somewhere, at the risk of ending up somewhere completely irrelevant. Again, I have no objection. Dahn 10:22, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

text: Thanks. Dahn 01:17, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge "Mircea Eliade" with "Eternal return (Eliade)" 

message: emerges from the  recent interventions of Phatius McBluff. His luminous initiative, if continued and developed, will surely help this poor article out of the present quagmire of semi-educated triviality. Of course, there will be things to discuss over one aspect or another of Eliade’s work and legacy. For instance, I would suggest that besides the theory of "eternal return", undoubtedly being one of the "most enduring and influential contribution to religious studies", Eliade has a crucial role in developing a dialectic of hierophanies and an onthology of the sacred, anticipating at the same time the critical value myths take in a desacralized world. 
Anyway, I think that for now it’s still premature to debate on all this, before this article ceases to be just another example of semi-educated enlightening the ignorants. Phatius try to break through is worth an applause. --Timor Stultorum 18:01, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  A gleam of hope for this article 

message: :I’ve carefully read your edits and found them very pertinent. Thanks to your contributions, this entry begins looking like decently encyclopaedic. My above suggestions referred rather to a general characterization of Eliade’s scientific work in the lead. You already improved the lead of the article, providing essential information about the main merits of Eliade’s work, mentioning the study of hierophanies and the eternal return, that is the "what" and the "how" of an ontology of the sacred. I wonder if a more general description of Eliade’s scientific work as "semiotics of the religious phenomenon" would bring further information. More generally, if we take a look at some serious encyclopaedia, we find Eliade depicted as "one of the leading religion scholars" (Brockhaus and Meyers) and as an "historian of religions and man of letters, distinguished for his researches in the symbolic language…" (Britannica) --Timor Stultorum 15:53, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Excellent. You’re right: describing Eliade as a “semiotician of the religion” would be too reductionist. As for the appraisals of your contributions, sure, decent persons feel uncomfortable with praise, and I am ready to excuse me for this. However, if you visit this talk page, you’ll understand the background and the reasons of my enthusiasm in regard to your contributions: since I was and I still am by now not able to contribute more than some words on the talk page, you are the only one to bring some substance to this article, which otherwise risks to sink into semi-educated triviality… So, please keep on working. A last point for now: my concern as to what should go into a "general description" of Eliade's work regarded less the "Scholar" header and more the lead section of the very article. The reader should be offered brief information about the reasons why this Eliade is worth an encyclopaedic entry: who was the person, what did he, how important is his work, why. IMO, every of these points is briefly addressed in the lead section, except how important. (Surely, appraisals are a delicate issue, especially in the WP, but describing Eliade's work as "leading" or "seminal" or "important" is amply backed by the scientific community)  Cheers, --Timor Stultorum 12:27, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I note you continue to troll and misrepresent the others' points. Dahn 12:32, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  What should go into a "general description" of Eliade's work in the "Scholar" header? 

message: After some thought, I've added the following to the header info on Eliade:He was a leading interpreter of religious experience, who established paradigms in religious studies that persist to this day. As a tool for interpreting religion, his theory that hierophanies (events that manifest the Sacred) form the basis of religion, splitting the human experience of reality into sacred space/time and profane space/time, has proved a far more widely applicable than the older term "theophany", which denotes the manifestation of a god.Shamanism, p. xiii His most enduring and influential contribution to religious studies was possibly his theory of "eternal return", which holds that myths and rituals do not simply record or imitate hierophanies, but actually participate in them (at least to the minds of the religious). In academia, the eternal return has become one of the most widely accepted ways of understanding the purpose of myth and ritual.Shamanism, p. xiiiI think this is reasonably neutral (making it clear why Eliade deserves an article, while stopping short of promoting his ideas).
--Phatius McBluff 23:47, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: The header for the whole article

message: Hi, I am Mayuma, this is my user name in Ro.wiki. I have been researching in several archives on a book on Mircea Eliade and I have studied the question of the interview given to Adrian Păunescu. Eliade taped the interview and he rejected the additions made by Păunescu himself for his montly magazine, Flacăra, so I think u shouldn t rely on this statement in your article Eliade praised the communist youth.
:If anything, that would vouch an addition to the text, not a removal. Provided, of course, this can be backed up from a reliable source, and not just postulated. Dahn 10:00, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Hi, I Am Mayuma

message: Actually I can quote from his Securitate Forreign Intelligence file, I wanted to do it in my book first but I can give here some hints. My real name is Iulian Baicus, I am Assistant Professor at Faculty of Letters at Bucharest University, and Paul Cernat is my fellow colleague, but I am researching at CNSAS right now. Mircea Eliade was reluctant to give that interview so he had taped it and when it was published, he refused to recognize several statements added by Adrian Păunescu. In some of the worst passages he stated that Nicolae Ceauşescu should receive the Nobel prize for peace cause he is the most valiant leader in Eastern Europe. Eliade protested against Păunescu manner of conducting the interview in a letter sent to Radio Free Europe. I have the precise page from the file I took my information. From your article one could think Eliade was a sort of admirer of Adrian Păunescu and of the Romanian communist youth. If you agree I can state this in the article I will quote the exact name of the SIE file and the page.
:No, I'm sorry. You will have to quote it with a secondary source (as is the quote via Cernat). If Eliade did indeed publicize the protest, it should be present in such a source. It is a question of reliability, not one of confidence. Dahn 21:03, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, when it is published, you are welcome to cite it for what it says. Dahn 15:16, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Hi, I Am Mayuma

message: I Am the Walrus. Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds. Biruitorul 02:59, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Destroyer of Worlds -- that a song by Bathory (not Erzsébet)? Turgidson 03:32, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Hi, I Am Mayuma

message: The article as it stands gives no background an perspective on Eliade's views. It even seems that he pioneered the idea of sacred-profane dichotomy as the core of religion, while he was almost 40 years late.--BMF81 21:22, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: As I have said in my edit summary, the detail does not belong in the lead, and is probably irrelevant to this article. Also, as far as I can tell, this article does not appear to state that he initiated the theory. Furthermore, neither of two articles cited have a direct connection to Eliade, which means that adding them here may fall under the section of WP:OR referring to using published material as a means to advance a position not explicitly present in that material. Dahn 22:21, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Hagiography

message: Was he ever married? If not, would a "| spouse=none" line in the infobox be appropriate? Biruitorul 15:56, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: He was married twice. I was thinking of adding that in, but the sources for this info can also be used for many other topics, so I was going to add them all at once. Until then, what I could find is that his first wife was named Nina, and his second Christinel. There is a mention of Christinel's maiden name somewhere (I will look for it again), but I couldn't find a similar one for Nina. If I got it right, it seems that Nina Eliade died (when?), leaving Eliade to remarry. Christinel Eliade died in 1997. Hope this helps. Dahn 19:03, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Indeed. Some searches have revealed that he married Nina Mareş, a divorced woman, in January 1934, also taking in her daughter Giza (perhaps adopting her?). Nina died of cancer near Lisbon on November 20, 1944. He married Christinel Cotrescu on January 9, 1950, and she died on March 9, 1998. Sources available upon request, or searching Google/Google Books. Biruitorul 19:28, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Marriage?

message: Hey Dahn and company--
Sorry I haven't followed through with those books I said I'd consult for the Eliade article. I can certainly access them, but I'm back in college now, and everything's been so hectic that I haven't had time to think much about Wikipedia. Dahn, I notice that you recently made numerous revisions to the Eliade article. I didn't have time to look through them all, but your editing of the sections on his scholarship seem fine.
Anyway, this is just to let you know I probably won't be doing much with the Eliade article for a while. I still have some things I intend to work on, but they'll have to wait till later. --Phatius McBluff 17:43, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry for the delay in replying, Phatius. I too keep postponing the additions I promised, but I'll soon look for more essential material on his literary output. All in due time, and hope to see you back soon. Dahn 18:15, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  I'll be going dark 

message: I take issue with the deletion of the references to Yakov Rabinovich's work from the legacy section of this article. Rabinovich, whose works are available online and may be easily consulted through the links which were deleted with the references, has in fact systematically applied Eliade's archetypalism in two books, "Faces of God" and "The Rotting Goddess." The removal of these legitimate references was an act of vandalism.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.136.245.176 (talk) 22:11, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There are no references in any serious context that would group the two of them in one sentence or paragraph - neither secondary, tertiary or, hell, primary. To be fair, there is one .ru site which, I see from the caption, yields a "Rabinovich Eliade", but I cannot check to see if it's the Rabinovich in question, given that Firefox tells me it is detrimental to my computer's health. Furthermore, Mr. Rabinovich appears not to satisfy any notability guideline, and the only one of his works I was able to find online appears to have nothing to with either Eliade or scholarly literature, but rather with bloggery. Furthermore, what was removed were not "references" (as opposed to this), but a large paragraph advertising Rabinovich. Wikipedia is not a soapbox and not a blog. Dahn 16:32, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

text: Note: I also see the IP who signed the comment above has been pushing references from Rabinovich under the name "Rabinowitz" into several other articles. Well, users seem to have convened to have them removed in at least one article, and all the arguments against this source are to be found here. There is little left to say. Dahn 06:11, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

text: You have just confirmed why the addition was self promotional material, and why it went against several other criteria (such as reliable sources, notability and neutrality). For one, there are no reliable sources concerning your interest, your expertise or even discussing your work, Mr. Rabinovich. Wikipedia editors don't generate reality, they record it. As far as I am concerned, the material is not suited and the discussion around it is over. Dahn 19:52, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Rabinovich

message: ...and she mentioned that she came to this article looking for information about Eliade as an author of fiction and found that, as far as that aspect of his work, it might as well be a stub. I've never read any of his fiction, but she tells me that he was a good enough fiction writer that he'd be a pretty important writer if he'd done nothing else. In general, she's someone whose literary judgment I trust, so I presume she is correct.
My ignorance here is pretty thoroughgoing, so I have nothing to bring to the article on this front myself, but could someone who knows his work add a relevant section? - Jmabel | Talk 07:25, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think I qualify as one of the people who know his work (I just know some of his work), but I'm more or less working on this myself. From my part, I'll come up with something based on critical commentary by New Years'. Dahn (talk) 09:32, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Just popping in again. I will be in no position to seriously edit this article until I get off on Winter Break. (I'm a college student.) But I'd be glad to look into his fiction writing (I'm not promising I will.) I think the problem is that the contributors to this article are mainly familiar with Eliade's academic work, so we tend to think of Eliade solely as an academic. Yes, perhaps we should look into Eliade's fiction-writing. But it would be even better if we could get someone who's already studied Eliade's ficting to work on this article. Maybe we could post a notice on the talk page of some Wikipedia project related to literature, asking if anyone can help with this article. Just a thought. --Phatius McBluff (talk) 20:32, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, I have access to two works by the leading Romanian literary historians George Călinescu and Eugen Lovinescu, and some of the links above also detail some aspects of his literature. It's going to take a while sourcing from them (they are rather large and I want to do a thorough job), but, from my part, I'll be adding to that section in a little while. Dahn (talk) 20:39, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  So I was talking to a friend... 

message: This article defines Eliade's "eternal return" as the re-living of events (for instance, by ritually telling or reenacting myths). I based that definition on the following statement made by Wendy Doniger:
"He [Eliade] taught us that myths (and, to a great extent, rituals) retold and reenacted in the present transport the worshipper back to the world of origins, the world of events that took place in illo tempore, "in that time"; this basic idea of what he called (after Nietzsche) "the eternal return" has become a truism in the study of religions..." (Wendy Doniger, "Foreword to the 2004 Edition", Shamanism
I think it's fairly obvious that Doniger's definition of "eternal return" is equivalent to the one given in the article:
"One of his most influential contributions to religious studies was his theory of Eternal Return, which holds that myths and rituals do not simply commemorate hierophanies, but, at least to the minds of the religious, actually participate in them."
Doniger was/is Eliade's disciple, friend, and successor. Therefore, I assumed that her definition of Eliade's "eternal return" had to be correct. However, check out this statement by Eliade:
"I am delighted that this little book is to be republished in the Harper Torchbook series, especially because it has given me the opportunity to restore the original title. The manuscript that I began in May, 1945, was headed Cosmos and History. It was only later that I changed its title to Archetypes and Repetition. But finally, at the suggestion of the French publisher, I made Archetypes and Repetition the subtitle, and the book was published in 1949 as The Myth of the Eternal Return (Le Mythe de l'éternel retour). This has sometimes given rise to misunderstandings. For one thing, the archaic ideology of ritual repetition, which was the central subject of my study, does not always imply the 'myth of the eternal return.' And then too, such a title could lead the reader to suppose that the book was principally concerned with the celebrated Greek myth or with its modern reinterpretation by Nietzsche, which is by no means the case" (Eliade, "Preface to the Torchbook Edition", Cosmos and History: The Myth of the Eternal Return [NY: Harper & Row], p. vii).
OK, now I'm confused. Could someone help me interpret this passage? Is Eliade saying that re-living mythical events isn't always a case of "eternal return"? If so, what constitutes Eliade's "eternal return"? By "the myth of the eternal return", does Eliade mean only myths like the Greek myth of eternal return, which says that history repeats itself in cycles? (You can ritually re-live myths without believing that history repeats itself in cycles.) This seems to be the interpretation of Eliade's "eternal return" given by this freelance scholar's website. But it directly contradicts Doniger's interpretation.
--Phatius McBluff (talk) 06:12, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: First of all, Phatius, please excuse my tardiness in replying. Now, concerning the issue at hand: looking over the quotes you provide, I must say I don't see a major contradiction. Before I elaborate, I should of course say that most of what follows is speculation based on a narrow window of evidence, so the issue could perhaps be investigated further. But, as we stand, what I see is Eliade dissatisfied by the fact that his idea was/could be understood as tributary to either the Greek myth it compliments, or to Nietzsche's terminology. As far as I can tell, he is merely stressing that it is neither, but not in fact saying that there is absolutely no similarity between the two/three terms. From what I gather so far, he says: "Yes, it is kinda like eternal return as coined by the Greeks - the idea is the same, but the analogy was always imperfect." Sounds right? Dahn (talk) 22:17, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: If I understand you correctly, when Eliade says, "The archaic ideology of ritual repetition [...] does not always imply the 'myth of the eternal return'," you think he means specifically the Greek myth of the eternal return. That's my impression too. At any rate, since the only published definition of Eliade's eternal return that I have is Doniger's, I'll leave the article as it is unless I find some more info. Thanks for your two cents. --Phatius McBluff (talk) 04:20, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Possible problem with our treatment of "eternal return"

message: I think it would take a lot of intellectual effort to not see the influence of Kafka on his fiction. Is there any word on how he reconciled this with the anti-semiticism?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.92.15.232 (talk) 08:46, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kafka 

message: This is currently the longest non-list article on Wikipedia. For shame.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 168.230.48.248 (talk) 00:02, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Long 

message: I've noticed some words in the article that don't seem to exist in Wiktionary or any dictionary that i've looked up. Like depolitisation in Polemics and Exile, or sacrality which is mentioned a few times in the article. Could someone please try and find out if these words really exist?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.242.160.173 (talk) 15:54, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Non-Existing Words

message: for some reason, when you go to the notes at the bottom of the page, you can see footnotes 1-6 and then the next footnote is 192.  i suspect there is a wiki-coding snafu around footnote six, but i can't figure out how to fix it.  could one of you do it?  Katsam (talk) 07:33, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: No, look again. A user turned the notes section into a scrolling section, and it was already divided into three columns. All things considered, it was a pretty good idea, but I can see why it can be confusing. Just drag down the scroll to the right and you'll see 7 etc. Dahn (talk) 16:40, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  footnote problems 

message: Just to let you know, I've noticed a few spelling mistakes throughout the article, and I will try to sort them out. Any changes I make will be for that reason. Ross Rhodes (talk) 20:02, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: That is the common practice on wikipedia. Since neither variant is wrong,. and this is the preferred one, you're wasting your time. Dahn (talk) 17:27, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

text: STOP: this is getting ridiculous. First of all, you should NEVER change words within quotes, unless they are obvious misprints. Secondly: random changes from "psychopomp" to "psycho pomp" show that you have you no clue about at least some of the changes, and are doing whatever it is you're doing by ear. Please, having to check these is hard enough. That you get no results "therefore they must be wrong" is a most absurd argument. Please, stop. Dahn (talk) 17:25, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Spelling check 

message: I've noticed that the word anti-Semitism has been written as antisemitism, so I'll be changing that as I check the article.
:That is the common practice on wikipedia. Since neither variant is wrong,. and this is the preferred one, you're wasting your time. Dahn (talk) 17:27, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Anti-Semitism

message: The following words I cannot find out what they are meant to be, as I cannot find them in any dictionary, please help me find out;
====Biography section====
*Semiologist - No result
*Epiphanic - closest result: epiphany
*Hierophany or hierophanies - closest result: hierophant
*Theophany - No Result
====The scholar section====
*Cosmogonic - closet result: cosmogony
*llud - closet result: Illus
*Kalpas - closet result: kalpaks
*Tehom - No Result
*Paradisiac - closest result: paradisiacal
Spelling check is currently un-finished
:STOP: this is getting ridiculous. First of all, you should NEVER change words within quotes, unless they are obvious misprints. Secondly: random changes from "psychopomp" to "psycho pomp" show that you have you no clue about at least some of the changes, and are doing whatever it is you're doing by ear. Please, having to check these is hard enough. That you get no results "therefore they must be wrong" is a most absurd argument. Please, stop. Dahn (talk) 17:25, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Words to be checked

message: *Cosmogonic - closet result: cosmogony
*llud - closet result: Illus
*Kalpas - closet result: kalpaks
*Tehom - No Result
*Paradisiac - closest result: paradisiacal
Spelling check is currently un-finished
:STOP: this is getting ridiculous. First of all, you should NEVER change words within quotes, unless they are obvious misprints. Secondly: random changes from "psychopomp" to "psycho pomp" show that you have you no clue about at least some of the changes, and are doing whatever it is you're doing by ear. Please, having to check these is hard enough. That you get no results "therefore they must be wrong" is a most absurd argument. Please, stop. Dahn (talk) 17:25, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: The scholar section

message: Please, take a look at this: http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Mircea_Eliade#encyclopedia
Who was the first? :)   —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.87.13.67 (talk) 09:55, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Wikipedia allows sites to mirror its content. I'm sure just about any article there matches a preceding wikipedia one. Dahn (talk) 10:09, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for explanation! 
*Translation from the Bulgarian Wikipedia
*Translation from the Catalan Wikipedia
*Translation from the Czech Wikipedia
Hope there's useful information in these translations! Ross Rhodes (T C) Sign! 19:06, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

text: Well, my suggestion was actually about using sources. Dahn (talk) 10:09, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Plagiarism 

message: All I can see is  an unreadable "Romanian pronunciation" (ˈmirt​͡ʃe̯a).  Can this be cleaned up for universal viewing, and can some-one put in the English pronunciation?211.225.34.177 (talk) 01:30, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: There's an IPA help about right in the link. Technically, while there is a commonplace Englishified variant of the name (or maybe even a couple), that is no more an "English" version than an incorrect version. I for one have suggested adding an IPA key to that as well, but I can see why other editors would not want to encourage the perpetuation of faux diglossia. Dahn (talk) 04:07, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't see IPA, much less "help about right in the link" (?).  If you mean hovering over the garbage, there is nothing that came up.  As for an English version:  The man lived in the U.S., so it would be nice to know how his name was pronounced in English -- at least a hint??  Is his last name something like Ell ee add' es,   or El lee' uh deez  or Ee lee a−dz'  ?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 211.225.37.47 (talk) 05:05, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, it's garbage... Have you tried clicking on it, perchance? And what is it that you mean how his name is pronounced in English? If you mean "how the English/Americans tend to pronounce it"? As long as it would probably incorrect, anything goes, but I suppose they pronounce it Meer che' ah Eh' lee ad or Ee' lee ad. If you mean the native pronunciation, it something like Meer' cha Eh lee' adeh. That is rendered here in the IPA, that is to say the International Phonetic Alphabet, whose very name implies that it is uniform all over the world - may be you are not familiar with it, but we can't really replace it with a more user-friendly version of whatever "English pronunciation" means to you personally, can we? Especially not when clicking the internal link will lead you in one move to a table with how the universal phonemes are rendered in the Romanian spelling... Try it, really. Dahn (talk) 10:25, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

text: well I'm in America and I heard an old librarian lady pronounce his name Meer-see-ah El-y-ah-dee. I don't know all the English/American variant pronunciations, the pronunciation that should be clarified in the article is the native Romanian pronunciation first of all. Alex (talk) 11:02, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  pronunciation of his name