Talk:Saffron/Archive 1

message: ...needs to credit the translator. Doops |  talk 08:35, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I moved the footnote down to follow the quote. Saravask 16:24, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ovid quotation... 

message: The article states "Safranum is also the root of the Italian zafferano and Spanish azafrán," but I suspect that the Spanish was direct from Arabic, which with the definite article would be as za'faran. Spanish has a number of other direct borrowings from Arabic that also include the definite article: algodón and azúcar come immediately to mind.
The other possibility is that the Spanish added the Arabic article to the Latin word, but considering how much trouble they underwent to expel the Moors from Iberia, that seems unlikely. Because the statement is referenced, I won't change it.--Curtis Clark 00:57, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I see now what you mean. I removed the claim that the Latin term is the root of the Spanish term. It was not in the source. This wording thing can get very tricky. Thanks. Saravask 01:41, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Etymology 

message: :"The history of saffron cultivation reaches back more than 3,000 years."
...
:"Written records show that saffron has been used medicinally in the treatment of 90 illnesses for over four millennia from the Mediterranean to the lands of Babylon and Sumeria. "
I realize that "over four millennia" technically is "more than 3,000 years", but you know what I mean... —Bunchofgrapes  (talk) 05:37, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks. Good catch. I got the first fact from Deo (2003). The second fact, however, was there before I began my edits. Feel free to remove it — I can't find anything about "90 illnesses" and "four millennia" in Willard or anywhere else. I agree with you about my overloaded attempts at transition and flow. Saravask 05:42, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: OK. Don't hesitate to let me know if any of my copyediting seems too zealous. In general I think you've built up a brilliant structure and research base, but have "too many words"  here and there. (I'm also happy to see how well the FAC is going - see, I told you food was easier than politics, and you didn't believe it! ;-) —Bunchofgrapes  (talk) 05:55, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

text: Oddly enough, I just found sources that contain info pertaining to the (just deleted) second statement:. Saravask 16:04, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

text: "A 15 cm depth planting gives optimal saffron thread yields in Italy, a major producing country. Meanwhile, Italian flower and corm harvests are optimized when mother corms are planted 2–3 cm apart and are planted 8–10 cm deep in their furrows."
Is this saying that in italy, you'll get the best threads at 15 cm, but more flowers and corms at 10 cm? It's a bit confusing. Maybe this is more detail than is called for? —Bunchofgrapes  (talk) 20:12, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes. All this comes out of Deo 2003. I know it sounds contradictory at first. But one depth is reported by Deo to give optimal saffron thread yields while the second gives optimal corm and flower yields. Corm yield determines how many plants growers can rely upon in the next season, while saffron yields determine grower's income for that same year. These are two different things, and presumably have different optimal depths. I think it should stay in so that readers may get some understanding of some example planting specifics used by certain growers. Saravask 20:18, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yup. Makes sense once explained. PS I like the new lead picture, good choice. —Bunchofgrapes  (talk) 20:24, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Funny, I was just about to make a new section on this Talk page to discuss how much less eye-catching, interesting, and pretty the new lead image is, and how I'm disappointed that it was replaced in this edit by a much plainer image that is, photographically speaking, of much lower quality (poorly-framed, less color contrast than the other images, the flower sticks straight out at you rather than being at an angle so you can't see it projecting outwards, not well-focused), and moved the much more interesting image that was there before to the very bottom of the page, hiding it in the "notes" section of all places! My only question is: why? -Silence 21:29, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, I liked being able to see the whole plant, and I like the composition and narrow focal depth of the one on top now. Just my gut feel, nothing I'd ever fight for. —Bunchofgrapes  (talk) 21:55, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Another internal consistency Question 

message: I have been wondering: do we need the disambiguation link at the page's top? I'm not sure if the other uses of "saffron" are similar enough to cause people confusion. Should it be removed? Saravask 18:01, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  
dab link needed?
 

message: The image had been at 240px for several weeks. I tried enlarging it to 300px. Bunchofgrapes rightly reduced the image size. However, I think that the image need to be at least 240-250px in size so that we have good detail and resolution. As a compromise, I've slightly enlarged the lead to 250px (it was 300px before). We need better resolution than what 200px gives. Let me know if there are problems with this. Saravask 22:44, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Perfectly fine. —Bunchofgrapes  (talk) 22:55, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks. I just reduced the image size further, to 240px (what it was before). Saravask 23:01, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lead image size 

message: I've seen it other places, too, but the following is a quote from a contemporary in John Major’s History of Greater Britain published in 1521.  He writes about the “Wild Scots”: 
"From the middle of the thigh to the foot they have no covering for the leg, clothing themselves with a mantle instead of an upper garment and a shirt dyed with saffron."
--Fire Star 06:52, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I wonder if the dye isn't safflower instead. I would imagine that saffron would be outrageously expensive to import to the Highlands, and difficult to store because of the humidity. Safflower has been commonly used as a dye for many centuries.--Curtis Clark 16:05, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I have seen reports that Henry VIII of England sought to outlaw the practise of his Gaelic subjects (espe. the newly conquered Irish) dying their clothing with imported Spanish saffron, as it was considered a substantial drain on his balance of trade and tax base. --Fire Star 17:52, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

text: The passages from Henry sound more like sumptuary laws than balance-of-trade, since the quantity of cloth in an item of clothing was also controlled.--Curtis Clark 06:27, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  A source for medieval Scottish use of saffron 

message: The Notes section has a lot of white space on the right, and the article contains some excellent images that occasionally get in the way. We may as well use the Notes section as a vertical gallery of excess images, right? Melchoir 10:13, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: No. -Silence 11:36, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Why not? Melchoir 19:54, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: There's plenty of room for all the images currently used on this page and more. The only reason it looks like there's no room is because of poor layout choices and a heck of a lot of redundancy (i.e. countless images of the same subject matter used for decorative purpose, which I don't mind at all, and several images which are actually the exact same picture cropped in different ways, which I do mind quite a bit). Wikipedia does have "gallery" pages except in very unusual situations; that's exactly what Wikimedia Commons is for. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and an atlas, not a miscellaneous image repository. Plus a little white spaces in articles isn't such a bad thing; noone will perish if not every lengthy TOC is floated or every lengthy Notes or References list made beautiful with images and charts and other fancy tricks. While I don't object to interesting layout experiments, it's generally true that simple is best. -Silence 21:27, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Er ... there's only one image in the article that is a cropped version of another; all the other images are otherwise completely distinct and taken from different sources. This includes the fresco images. Even the detail of the saffron harvester was an image taken under different lighting conditions than the yellow-colored "Saffron Gatherers" fresco. The Goddess image is (although it appears similar) is from a completely different fresco altogether. Those four images indeed come from three different frescos from three different sites. Saravask 21:31, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

text: I put a nice fresh image of a flower in the notes section — it should make the reading of footnotes a more pleasurable task. Saravask 23:36, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm aware that the two "Saffron Gatherers" fresco images are under different lighting, but they're still the exact same fresco. If this was an article about the fresco, two such images would certainly be warranted; but this is not an article about the fresco, it's an article about the plant, and we can't devote so much time to a single fresco for such a general article. Besides which, if you're worried that removing any of the excessive number of images in the Greco-Roman section will remove some valuable information conveyed in their captions, then the real problem seems to be that you're either not putting needed information in the actual article text, or you're repeating far too much information in image captions that's already available in the prose paragraphs! Image captions should be as short as possible, conveying only the most necessary and immediate facts about the image; descriptions and overall significance should be left to the actual article text, to avoid redundancies. -Silence 01:17, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

text: OK, that seems reasonable. We might also consider other solutions to the lengthy notes section: since the entire section is pretty much of a uniform length, why not compress it into a two-row section? Possibly even a three-row one. -Silence 01:17, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I've tried doing this several times, but it does not work. The automated numbering restarts from one upon the start of each new column; this screws up the number match between footnotes and inline cites. Saravask 01:40, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Notes section as a gallery? 

message: Removed this pic :Image:Saffron Crocus sativus two flowers.jpg which doesn't appear to be Crocus sativus (note short stigmas) - MPF 14:49, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I reinserted it before seeing this comment. I just removed it. Thanks. Saravask 20:23, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Misidentified pic

message: I will be using BCE/CE notation in this article. There is nothing that is POV or "anti-Christian" (see a message left by a BC/AD proponent on my talk page for these remarks) about such usage. BCE/CE notation is used by the National Geographic Society, the Smithsonian Institution, the College Board, and by numerous style guides and scholarly journals (such as the American Journal of Philology). Consult Common Era for evidence of this. Much like the metric system, BCE/CE is increasingly growing into common acceptance as a more religiously neutralan NPOV alternative, and I have found no paucity of its usage in my reading. On the other hand, I and many others find anno Domini (from the Latin: "in the year of [our] Lord") to be exceedingly insulting to Hindus, atheists, and others. BC/AD thus needlessly antagonizes a large portion of Wikipedia readers. But I'd like to hear what others have to say, especially from BC/AD advocates. Saravask 20:54, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: NPOV, eg?  How is "year zero" set for the BCE/CE system?  Is it less POV than the Julian calendar, ab urbe condita, the Chinese calendar, the Jewish calendar, the Muslim calendar, the Mayan calendar ... -- ALoan (Talk) 19:40, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Eeesh. I don't know about year zero. Maybe someone else can answer that one. But my main issue was with the term "Anno Domini" in "AD". It namedrops one religious figure while excluding all others. Saravask 19:44, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, as Common Era says, "The Common Era (CE), also known as the Christian Era and sometimes the Current Era, is the period of measured time beginning with the year 1 until the present. The term is used for a system of reckoning years that is chronologically equivalent to the anno Domini (AD) (Latin for "in the year of [our] Lord") system, but with less overt religious implications." (emphasis added) Clearly covert religious implications are better than overt religious implications... -- ALoan (Talk) 19:53, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

text: It's too late. I already converted it. It's not that big a deal for me, and everyone is so far objecting to CE/BCE. Meanwhile, no one objected to AD/BC except me. So I guess since CE/BCE is also less well-known (as User:Silence pointed out), I will leave the AD/BC in. I won't bring up the issue again, and it should stay like this. Saravask 20:07, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  BC/AD vs. BCE/CE 

message: I see people are taking issue with my image placement. I tried to accomodate, but I have two requests:
# Images placement must strictly alternate from left to right. This gives a more pleasing and balanced feel to the page.
#:Since they are illustrations, I think they would be better all on the right, as this makes it easier to read the text. mfc
# Images must not be duplicated (someone ended up duplicating the Knossos fresco image) and must be placed in the appropriate sections. Someone tried moving the saffron threads image to the "Cultivation" section while moving the whole-plant image that was there to the "Varieties" section. This is bizarre, since that section deals with spice thread varieties, not cultivar varieties. Saravask 21:03, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: But I don't want to appear obstinate. I can always be convinced to change my mind ... Saravask 21:20, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: "Images must not be duplicated" Oops, sorry. "Copy" != "cut"--Curtis Clark 00:40, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Image positioning 

message: Typographers know that text justification is one of the hardest things to get right, and programs such as Adobe InDesign go to a lot of trouble to automate as much of it as possible. And justified text absolutely relies on appropriate hyphenation. 
Thus, justification is totally out of place on web pages: There is no hyphenation, and because the text reflows with different viewport widths, it is impossible to optimize. There is absolutely nothing wrong with right-ragged in web pages.--Curtis Clark 03:41, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh gosh - that looks just plain wrong... -- ALoan (Talk) 03:55, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It's gone. Saravask 05:26, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Justification is not justified 

message: This is a long article at 81 kb. I'm pondering whether to split this article up by creating a daughter named "History of saffron". I'd then move all history-related content there, then heavily summarize that "History" section here by leaving two or three paragraphs. Saravask 21:33, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: You could almost split out "Usage" as a third article. But history is a good candidate to separate first. In terms of Featured Article, though, which part do you think would be the best candidate?--Curtis Clark 21:50, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: History. I'm going to hold off until the FAC is over, however. Saravask 21:58, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article split 

message: Also Safranbolu can be added in one of the articles. It's a city in Turkey. Its name came from Saffron (Safranbolu), the city is an important place in history (not too much nowadays) for saffron growing.--Ugur Basak 21:54, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'll try to mention it in History of saffron. Saravask 21:58, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Safranbolu