#Pope Francis on #Wikidata

The good news of Wikidata is that it may become the repository of data on many subjects. The bad news; it can get it wrong.

Pope Francis is the new pope of the Roman Catholic church. He is not the pope of Catholicism. This is rather basic.

There are all kinds of identifiers associated. Ever heard of a "Viaf identifier", a "GND identifier", "SUDOC" or a "GND identity type" and really should they be so prominently displayed?

The picture is not of the pope, it is of the former cardinal. The coat of arms is the coat of arms of the former cardinal..

The picture in my blog is of pope Francis; he is smiling.. And yes, I can edit Wikidata.
Thanks,
      GerardM

Learning another language II

Learning to vocalise #Arabic can be done on the Internet. There are websites like Mount Hira where you find Arabic to the right, a transliteration to the left with an explanation in English underneath. What really helps is that you can listen to the recitation of a surah by line.

It is great but there is room for improvement. Improvement that can happen at Mount Hira but also at a Wikisource.

• Show all the text as text and not as graphics
• Allow for the Arabic text to be shown in fonts representing different writing styles
• Allow for the explanations to be shown in a language that can be selected

Learning to vocalise what you read is one use case, learning Arabic is another and learning the Koran is a third. Wikisource has the potential to be a place for all three objectives.

There are always people who are interested in reading the source documents about a religion, any religion. The great thing of Wikisource is that you can include the wikilinks explaining the terms that are ambiguous or obscure.

Typically these source documents are readily available and out of copyright. Including them in Wikisource will gain it more public. Wikisource is an obvious place because it has a reputation to keep up; the reputation that original documents are original.

Thanks,

       GerardM

#Scans, #transcriptions and #copyright

Wonderful news. This week the University of Oxford and the Vatican announced a plan to collaborate in digitizing 1.5 million pages of rare and ancient texts, most dating from the 16th century or earlier. All this will become available on-line and most likely a copyright will be claimed on these scans.

Sadly some countries claim that "sweat of the brow" is enough reason to prevent pictures or scans of works that are obviously in the public domain to become available as public domain. The usability of scans is however limited. It is only once the texts in such scans have been transcribed that you can easily read it and research it.

Both scanning and transcription is a lot of work. Both involve a lot of sweat of the brow. Where scanning precious books and documents requires specialists and equipment, transcription takes people willing to type the texts that they see in the scan.

When rights are reserved on scans using the "sweat of the brow" argument, the texts in these scans cannot be claimed in this way. These books are all in the public domain and transcribing them exactly from these scans serves one purpose really well. They establish the provenance between the original sources that are represented in these scans and the texts people refer to.

Having the original text exactly transcribed is one way of dealing with problematic translations and the resulting problematic interpretations. Having such transcriptions in Wikisource is well worth it.
Thanks,
     GerardM

#Arabic characters to display the #Qur'an

Readers of #Wikipedia are still expected to have all the fonts on their system necessary to display the texts they are about to read. The Arabic fonts on Ubuntu for instance are not enough to show all the characters used in printing the Qu'ran.

The technology used in printing is not necessarily the same as the technology used in displaying on a computer screen. The result is that several characters used when printing the Qu'ran are missing in Unicode. The King Fahd Glorious Quran Printing Complex has as one of its ambitions to bring the Qu'ran to the Internet and consequently brought several proposals to the Unicode standard and the ISO/IEC10646.

As you can see, quite a number of characters are missing for me. As reading the Qu'ran, requires a high quality font, it would be a gift to the world when the font as used and developed for displaying the Qu'ran becomes available under a Free license. This will ensure that everyone can see and read the Qu'ran as it has been handed down.
Thanks,
       GerardM

Blame the foreigner, blame the victim

Like many other countries, the Netherlands is governed by a religious and right wing government. In the Netherlands traditionally there is no party in overall control. The current government is in power because a xenophobic party will not vote the existing minority home.

The Christian party, nominally a party entertaining Christian values let it be known that it understands the fear of the foreigner and, that this sentiment should not be left only to the populist parties... By declaring their solidarity against Islam, they destroy their reason for being; the existence of special rights for religious practice, for their religious practice.

Yesterday we learned about this Christian message, it was probably meant to counteract the growing sense of unease in the practice of Christian values. Today there are massive demonstrations against the cuts in the psychiatric care. Such care is often needed to treat the refugees who fled their country for the abuse they suffered. Such care rehabilitates people and these people in turn take their place among the best and the brightest in the Netherlands.

Providing care to those who need it is a value that is part of any religion. By providing care to those who need it a good man distinguishes himself, never mind if he is religious. But when you claim to be religious, it must be problematic that the ultimate reckoning is not in this life.
Thanks,
      GerardM

Obviously, Jesus is white

When you look at the many images of Jesus, he must be white because he is mostly depicted as a young lily-white young male. When you consider that he was from a Semitic origin, such images do not show what he looked like. The crucifix at the Cathedral in Mexico City provides as powerful a illustration of a suffering Christ as any other crucifix.

Within the Christian churches, there have been many instances where later generations bemoaned the puritanical notions of their predecessors. They cut of the penises of Roman and Greek statues, they destroyed statues and imageries in several iconoclasms all in the name of their personal God.

At this moment there is a discussion about the existence of images of Mohammed. There are Muslims who belief that their prophet should not be depicted. At that they are as devout as the many Christians who belief that Jesus and other religious figures should not be depicted. Both Jesus and Mohammed cleaned out their temple consequently this type of puritanism has a great provenance.

There is no such thing as the Wikipedia. There are Wikipedias in over 270 languages and their communities have representations of many people and cultures. These include even more incompatible beliefs. In this day and age, there is an iconoclasm by Muslims who belief that Mohammed should not be depicted and in time honoured fashion they will strike out where they feel to be insulted.

Such a belief is not tolerant, and as a consequence such people have a problem applying our NPOV to what is an article of faith to them. Coming to an consensus is problematic because there is so little appreciation for the others conflicting pillar of faith.

Articles of faith are problematic in any Wikipedia. Fundamentalism is one reason why I do not edit the English Wikipedia.
Thanks,
      GerardM