User talk:1234567: Difference between revisions

Jump to navigation Jump to search
Line 104: Line 104:
:::::If you just want to change a word here or there, it's probably easier for you to do it yourself than enter a great debate about it. This is a wiki, so nobody can claim sole authorship. But if you want me to rewrite a whole paragraph, it's probably easier if you explain what you want so that I can do it myself.[[User:1234567|1234567]] ([[User talk:1234567|talk]]) 04:50, 23 June 2013 (PDT)
:::::If you just want to change a word here or there, it's probably easier for you to do it yourself than enter a great debate about it. This is a wiki, so nobody can claim sole authorship. But if you want me to rewrite a whole paragraph, it's probably easier if you explain what you want so that I can do it myself.[[User:1234567|1234567]] ([[User talk:1234567|talk]]) 04:50, 23 June 2013 (PDT)
::::::Ok. I'll compile the comments and let you know here and we'll see what to do next. --[[User:Axius|Axius]] ([[User talk:Axius|talk]]) 07:10, 23 June 2013 (PDT)
::::::Ok. I'll compile the comments and let you know here and we'll see what to do next. --[[User:Axius|Axius]] ([[User talk:Axius|talk]]) 07:10, 23 June 2013 (PDT)
(outdent) hi 1234567, here are some comments. I'll just mention a few first so we can sort those first before moving to other issues.
1. I know you're dealing with a challenge of creating a story from old/archaic english or incomplete stories (missing information) but we cannot change things in quotes. Here's an example. If a source quoted John saying "The apple is red and falling". I cannot re-write that and change that quote in any way. People expect quotes to be accurate and exact (this is why they're called quotations). So I could not re-write that and quote John saying "The apple is red as blood and its falling while succumbing to gravity".
Quoting the following from the start of [[User:1234567/Sandbox_2]]:
:Co-Wives
:Aisha was jealous of the deceased Khadijah. She complained to Muhammad: “Khadijah is always on your mind, and you speak as if she were the only woman in the world! Why do you still think of that toothless old woman who is long dead, when Allah has given you someone better to replace her?” Muhammad retorted, “No, I have never had a better wife than Khadijah!”[1] Perhaps Aisha would not have minded about Khadijah if she had not also had to compete with living co-wives.
The sources mentioned are:
: Sahih Bukhari 5:58:164; Sahih Bukhari 5:58:165; Sahih Bukhari 5:58:166; Sahih Bukhari 5:58:168; Sahih Bukhari 7:62:156; Sahih Bukhari 8:73:33; Sahih Bukhari 9:93:576; Sahih Muslim 31:5971; Sahih Muslim 31:5972; Sahih Muslim 31:5974; Sahih Muslim 31:5976.
The two sources that may be talking about this are:
:Narrated 'Aisha: Once Hala bint Khuwailid, Khadija's sister, asked the permission of the Prophet to enter. On that, the Prophet remembered the way Khadija used to ask permission, and that upset him. He said, "O Allah! Hala!" So I became jealous and said, '''"What makes you remember an old woman amongst the old women of Quraish an old woman (with a teethless mouth) of red gums who died long ago, and in whose place Allah has given you somebody better than her?"''' ([http://www.usc.edu/org/cmje/religious-texts/hadith/bukhari/058-sbt.php#005.058.168])
and:
:A'isha reported that Hala b. Khuwailid (sister of Khadija) sought permission from Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) to see him and he was reminded of Khadija's (manner of) asking leave to enter and (was overwhelmed) with emotions thereby and said: O Allah, it is Hala, daughter of Khuwailid, and I felt jealous and said: '''Why do you remember one of those old women of the Quraish with gums red and who is long dead-while Allah has given you a better one in her stead?''' ([http://www.usc.edu/org/cmje/religious-texts/hadith/muslim/031-smt.php#031.5976])
The quote you that had does not match with the sources. So Aisha did not say anything like this to Muhammad: "Why do you still think of that toothless old woman who is long dead". No source has Aisha saying exactly that sentence. We cant change quotes. Brackets are sometimes used in Islamic sources but they are actually often insertions by translators (e.g. how some translators add the word 'lightly' while translating {{Quran|4|34}}). This is why the other source did not have those brackets.
The better way to do this would be to quote the source as it is:
: "Why do you remember one of those old women of the Quraish with gums red and who is long dead-while Allah has given you a better one in her stead?" (this sentence is used in the source)
As I said I understand your challenge of using these sources to create something readable but quotes cant be changed.
So that whole quote of Aisha is a synthesis. It is not what she said. Its a re-write and since its in quotes, the reader thinks this is exactly what she said in Arabic but thats not the case.
Continuing: According to Islamic sources, Muhammad's response to that quote was:
:I did not feel jealous of any of the wives of the Prophet as much as I did of Khadija though I did not see her, but the Prophet used to mention her very often, and when ever he slaughtered a sheep, he would cut its parts and send them to the women friends of Khadija. When I sometimes said to him, "(You treat Khadija in such a way) as if there is no woman on earth except Khadija," he would say, "Khadija was such-and-such, and from her I had children." ([http://www.usc.edu/org/cmje/religious-texts/hadith/bukhari/058-sbt.php#005.058.166])
But according to you, his response was:
:Muhammad retorted, “No, I have never had a better wife than Khadijah!”[1] Perhaps Aisha would not have minded about Khadijah if she had not also had to compete with living co-wives.
That quote ("I have never had a better wife than Khadijah") is not present in any of the sources.
I have not heard of anyone saying its ok to re-write quotes this is why me and Sahabah were surprised when we saw this. For a website like ours where everything is scrutinized with a microscope, we cannot do anything like that. So as it is, this changing of quotes is not acceptable for our site. I know you havent done this intentionally. You really wanted to write something that the reader finds interesting, but to maintain integrity, accuracy and quality we have to be careful in how or what we write. If it was a short story we were writing or a script for a movie about Islam, it would be another issue.
This is just one issue and its very worrying because of the quantity of work you have done. Here's another example. You wrote:
:At one stage he announced a revelation from Allah that he must not marry any more women “no matter how beautiful.”[3]
This exact quote is not found in the Quran and the link you used was [http://www.usc.edu/org/cmje/religious-texts/quran/verses/033-qmt.php#033.052]. The Quran cannot be paraphrased.
So its this re-writing, re-arranging, paraphrasing original quotes that is worrying.
Another example:
:But the revelation is of no great importance, for “Allah lifted the restriction stated in this ayah and permitted him to marry more women … Aisha said, ‘Allah’s Messenger did not die until all women were permitted to him.’”[4]
The reference given actually says:
:Then Allah lifted the restriction stated in this Ayah and permitted him to marry more women, but he did not marry anyone else, so that the favor of the Messenger of Allah towards them would be clear. Imam Ahmad recorded that `A'ishah, may Allah be pleased with her, said: "The Messenger of Allah did not die until Allah permitted (marriage to other) women for him.''
So you have changed the quote. "All women" is not the same as "other women".
I want to try our best to save your content. As I've said before many times there's a lot of good information you have gathered from these sources and this kind of work has possibly not been done by anyone. You have showed a lot of passion and interest in this topic and we love that. But these issues need to be addressed before content like this is acceptable for the site.
2. Minor issue (#1 above is the real problem): Image of stoning is not appropriate here: [[User:1234567/Sandbox_2]] and will need to be removed. This was something we'd talked about before. (for one, caption doesn't mention Aisha and its relation to the page. It does make the page appealing and I understand your attempt but we use images only if directly relevant)
For #1, I feel its a serious problem. There are many other instances where we saw this happening and some of them we cant even check because we don't have the sources and we haven't looked at everything because of the quantity of the content. I'm honestly not sure what can be done other than going back to the sources and making sure its all OK. What is also sad that we had talked about this before ([http://wikiislam.net/wiki/User_talk:1234567/Archive] where I said how we must only quote the sources e.g. "assumptions, deductions, opinions, things that are not present directly in a text", "we make sure the reader knows that this was an actual quote") and now the same problems exist and we have new content that is not right.
The only solution is go through the content and make sure quotes are exact and if they are not, they have to be carefully/neutrally worded. For example we would write "Muhammad replied" instead of "Muhammad retorted" (another issue that we had talked about before on the old talk page: [[User_talk:1234567/Archive]]). But again I feel this solution is difficult because of the amount of content and the common occurrence of the problem. Sahabah saw these problems and I agreed with him (that we cannot change quotes in any way. Again see my example of John in the beginning). Let me know what you think. --[[User:Axius|Axius]] ([[User talk:Axius|talk]]) 18:52, 26 June 2013 (PDT)
Autochecked users, Bureaucrats, Editors, oversight, recentchangescleanup, Reviewers, rollback, Administrators
19,746

edits

Navigation menu