User talk:BlueCat976

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Hello, BlueCat976, and welcome to Wikipedia! My name is Ian and I work with Wiki Education; I help support students who are editing as part of a class assignment.

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If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me on my talk page. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:37, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

Peer Review

Wow BlueCat976!. The changes you made to the original article are miles ahead of where it originally was. The edited lead is clearer now and reflects the additional content you have added. Your description outlines the importance of the topic as well as delves a bit into the importance of your subjects as well! The article is clear as well. They are well organized and in a sensible order. Given how basically everything you added was new I figured this would be a non-issue but the Origin to the background to the real example was really well thought out. Can the two part function you begin in the Layout and Background section be continued more effectively in the following paragraph? You begin with the first function and then follow up with a second reason. The only questions I would have for coverage balance is are these trittys limited to Athens or were they distributed throughout Attica? Given that this is an overview of a political system and not directly involving itself with a narrative the content neutrality is appropriate. Many references could be found with ease in their cited sources and were reflected accurately. There are not an abundance of sources for this article but then again the article is very small and those sources which are included are professional in their nature. — Preceding unsigned comment added by AFineDouglasFir (talk • contribs) 05:45, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

Senet

Hi, BlueCat976. I notice you'll be working on Senet. I'll just note: the current sources (in "References" and "Bibliography") look like they're pretty good, so I suspect you'll be able to get more out of them than is currently used. I've added a couple more (Crist and Konstantakos) to "Further reading" which might be useful; but I'd steer clear of the others listed there (Bell, Falkener, and Grunfeld) as these will be less scholarly and up-to-date. Cheers. Phil wink (talk) 21:01, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Hello! Thank you very much for input, it is extremely helpful. Good to know - I was kind of concerned about the older sources.

Also, thank you very much for those additional sources - I found one other one by Crist but this one and the Konstantakos one are definitely going to be additionally helpful in my research. Cheers! BlueCat976 (talk) 21:06, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Hi again. I notice your in-process page. A few nitpicks you can take or leave. Disclaimer: I have not checked your sources; just winging it here. Also, I'm not involved with Wiki-education, and I don't care about anyone's grades; I only care about article quality, so take this for what it's worth.

• There's an article for Setne Khamwas and Si-Osire, but unfortunately this appears to be the story about Setne that you're not referring to, so probably not useful as a link. Also, there's a link for Khaemweset, who is the real person that the character of Setne is based on. Offhand, I'm not sure whether this is a close enough relationship to link. So possibly both these links will be worthless to you.
• "While it is not known which game..." because this has no citation, it sounds like WP:Original research, which we can't have here. However, I suspect that your sources really do say something like this, so best to tweak the statement (if needed) so that it correctly reflects the source, then cite.
• "original archaeological information" probably just use and link provenance?
• Strictly, "two sets of pawns (at least five of each) for each of the two players" would be 4 sets. Switch to something like "a distinct set of..."?
• "the senet boards themselves would indicate the direction of play" -- haven't read the source, but isn't this an assumed or reconstructed direction of play? I don't recall that the boards are quite explicit enough to be 100% sure about this.
• "There is some claim" & "Though it is thought that" sound like MOS:WEASEL words, which Wikipedians have come to hate. At their worst, they claim "everyone knows" while they really mean "I assert... and don't question me". Now, this is not what you're actually doing, but the words will make us suspicious. Better to say something a little more specific like "Some historians claim" or "Walter Crist argues" or the like.

Looks like you'll be making positive changes here. I hope you stick around and keep editing, even if you don't get a grade for it. Cheers. Phil wink (talk) 23:37, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

I really appreciate your investment in making sure my article is up to standard. I hope the improvements I make are up to par with Wikipedia's expectations, that is for sure. The nitpicky details are really what make an article good, so I appreciate you taking the time to give me ideas.

I did read in an article by Walter Crist (Passing from the Middle to the New Kingdom A Senet Board in the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum on JSTOR (wwu.edu)) that the game boards do indicate direction of play. That being said, I haven't read this elsewhere, so would you recommend I not include this or should I maybe specify that Crist believes... or claims... that this is the case? I was a little leery about citing something that I can't necessarily back up with another source. Thanks a ton! BlueCat976 (talk) 23:54, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

Senat board with path of pieces, as numbered by Piccione (2007, p. 54).

Oh, it should be included, the question is just: how positively should it be stated? I don't have an answer (and I haven't read all the sources), but I'll muse. I see the statement by Crist. I notice that Piccione (2007, p. 54) also makes an almost equally definitive statement, so maybe my skepticism is ill-informed. Ideally, you might find a 3rd scholar in agreement, and maybe say something like "there is broad scholarly agreement that..." and of course pop in all 3 citations. This (to me) helps indicate both that the millennia-old boards didn't come with little instructional pamphlets, and that we still can be pretty sure we know what we're talking about. I don't have Crist, Dunn-Vaturi & de Voogt to hand, but if that agrees about the direction of play, you're probably golden, because de Voogt doesn't believe anything that hasn't been proved to death. If we can't get to "broad scholarly agreement", then our 2 citations should at least get us to something like "Recent scholarship concurs that...". Just a suggestion; you may have better phrasing. Given that there is at least some (and maybe "broad") scholarly consensus on this topic, it will be very helpful to the reader to pop in the graphic above (or one like it). Not sure how easy it is to do graphics with the Visual Editor -- I do everything with Source... because I'm old. If you need, you can easily look at this talk page in Source and see the picture markup, improve the caption as you like, and copy it wherever you need. Cheers. Phil wink (talk) 02:11, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

P.S.: I've removed Patolli and Mancala from the See also section of the article; I encourage you to remove them from your in-process page. Dunno why they were there in the first place. Probably: "list of other old games I once heard of". No real connection. I'm skeptical of Tâb too, but yeah, I do see reasons that it might have been confused with Senet, so I let it live. Phil wink (talk) 02:17, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

"In a presentation..." : The paragraph is well-meaning garbage, and you'll be doing WP a favor by deleting it from the article. Reported informal conversation between some academics? Ridiculous. The editor didn't understand how WP works. And the first (broken) citation? Even if the link worked, are ontological musings by a video game researcher really a priority in this article? And the later link appears to be a pretty general introduction to "old games" with a little Senet thrown in... not something we have to resort to, given our other far better sources (not dinging Duggan, who is a good scholar, just this particular PPT is obviously pretty lightweight). Normally it's very bad form to delete cited statements. If anyone busts you for this (very unlikely) I'll back you up. Cheers. Phil wink (talk) 04:41, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

FYI: David Parlett (Parlett, David (1999). The Oxford History of Board Games. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-212998-8. — also reprinted and updated as Parlett's History of Board Games (2018), but with no Senet updates) also endorses the Crist/Piccione path. He also notes some other elements of gameplay, and is generally clear about the extent to which they're facts or speculations. He further references and quotes Wolfgang Decker: Sports and Games of Ancient Egypt at the Internet Archive (1993, p. 128-131). Cheers. Phil wink (talk) 20:47, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

College Credit?

I read your descriptions for the edit you did to Senet. You're doing this for a class? That's remarkable. The article looks better. ProofCreature (talk) 01:50, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, it is a pretty fantastic program. Its essentially in place of a research paper, which is awesome. And its nice to help out a public space for information like Wikipedia :) BlueCat976 (talk) 15:30, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

This seems odd to me. Not bad - just unfamiliar. Research papers are going the way the Dodo went (i.e. extinct). I guess our world is changing. Academies like colleges and Universities don't have the prominence or capability for disseminating information properly any more. ProofCreature (talk) 21:43, 23 March 2023 (UTC)