Talk:Gomes Eanes de Zurara

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Attribution[edit]

The edit I made on 12 December 2011‎ added inline citations and attribution, per WP:V and WP:PLAGIARISM. This revert on 5 January by Walrasiad is a breach of both policy and guideline. The reason given for the revert was "Working on re-doing article. Restoring readable references to work with.", but the references are readable. If a list of un-formatted references are desired for "re-doing article" then a list can be extracted from the history of the article (as has been done in the collapse box below):

-- PBS (talk) 01:32, 8 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. Thanks for the effort. But those sections are plagiarized text. They are copied verbatim from an old Britannica article and are not in citation form. (just because it is public domain does not mean it is not plagiarism.) So they need to be redone regardless (and I intend to do so).
As for the references format, I understand your preference, but you changed the existing format wholesale without prior discussion here first. (WP:CITEVAR) Although I sympathize with your endeavor, I am not capable of working with citation templates in that form. I was the main resurrector of this article from its Britannica-addled state - I composed the section on the chronicles and I was the one who found, included and linked all those references (other than Britannica) - so I'd like to maintain them in a format in which I inserted them, at least to allow me to continue to working and complete the article. Unfortunately, I don't find the citation template you chose one I can work with comfortably, and so would prefer to restore the original format in which I introduced them. Walrasiad (talk) 02:21, 8 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
copying text verbatim from a public domain source is plagiarism unless it is properly attributed. It was plagiarise text until I properly attributed it (See Wikipedia:Plagiarism#Public-domain sources and Wikipedia:Plagiarism#Where to place attribution), now it is not. There are currently 11,919 articles incorporating text from EB1911 (see Category:Wikipedia articles incorporating text from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica), and there 10 of thousands of other PD texts in Wikipedia articles (see Category:Attribution templates). Providing the Wikipedia articles carry the correct attribution the text in those articles is not plagiarism.
The format of the article can be changed, just as you did when you made additions to this article, because before you added an edit to this article the only reference in the article (on 8 January 2011) used a template {{1911}}. You chose to use non template format for your additions to the references section if you wish, because it is not visible to the reader. I can justify the changes on other reasons as well to do with consistency in citations ... Your request above was that you can not work with the references in templates, so I have provided them here on the talk page in plain text. Instead of stating "I am not capable of working with citation templates in that form", why not take this opportunity to study the changes and learn how the templates work? Otherwise by the restrictions you are arguing for, you are restricting yourself to only working on articles which do not use templates (which would have included this article which was using citation templates before you made any additions). -- PBS (talk) 22:12, 26 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hm. I guess academics have a different definition of "plagiarism" than Wikipedia. Cut-and-pasting without explicit quotation symbols is plagiarism - classic plagiarism. Simply adding a reference footnote does not make it any less plagiarism. We use reference footnotes all the time. If a writer don't use explicit quotation marks, he is misleading a reader into imagining the passage is in his own words, in which an article was used as a source, when in fact it is not in his own words, it is just direct copying, i.e. plagiarizing. I would promptly flunk a student who dared to submit a paper which had a paragraph, or even a sentence, in that form. (Public domain makes no difference - it may be "legal" as far as the government is concerned, but it is still plagiarism.)

I know how templates work. But I definitely do not want to use them. It introduces a method of citation which I find a misery to work with. For starters, I need flexibility. I can make that flexibility directly. Citation templates introduce inflexibility and its format complicates citation and introduces obscurities. To give you just a few examples: the Monumenta Henricina is better known as the Monumenta Henricina not the names of the series editors (who vary from volume to volume, so misleading to cite a name who did not edit the particular volume). Dating becomes an immense problem, particularly for works of this age. Chronicle dates are uncertain, sometimes the edition cited is of a different date the original composition and I want to emphasize the latter rather than the former; it becomes more problematic and misleading if citing modern introductions & notes of a volume composed earlier. Very often I use translations rather than the original text, but have both on the same line. And, when working with chronicles, I frequently provide direct links to both the original language version and the English translation (translations of old works tend to be iffy, so I give the reader a chance to double-check in the original), which again I place with the same reference. For all this, I need flexibility. The template takes that away.

Moreover, I don't see any benefit of this template. I don't consider linking within the page to a reference on the same page to be an asset, but rather a drawback. It adds "too many links" ("blue link exhaustion"), drowning out the actually useful links in the footnote. In reference notes, I often go the extra mile to ensure that they are appropriately linked to additional useful sources of information. I much prefer to reserve linking within the notes directly to sources outside of the page, rather than inside - that is, a direct link to the exact citation on the specific page in an eternal text (e.g. in Googlebooks), or to the Wiki articles on the author (not the reference), so a curious reader can readily jump to his Wiki article and read more on the author's background to get a better idea of why he came up with the argument, who he was influenced by, who he was arguing with, etc. And, of course, links to Wiki articles on any new additional things that are mentioned in the notes but not in the main text.

Citation template add links that serve no purpose. Its on the same page. Scroll down if you're interested. There's already a name and date - that's what the name and date are for, to help you find it, it is simple. Instead, the template obscures and overwhelms the actually useful links to other articles and external resources.

If a large part of the blue links in the footnotes are just going to take you to the bottom of the same page, it is gives the impression that all blue links in the footnotes are just as pointless, and thus prevents readers from clicking to actually useful sources of external information. In other words, nobody is going to bother clicking on a blue link in a footnote if he imagines it is just going to take him to the bottom of the page.

Your citation template is inflexible, unhelpful, not useful and even detrimental to the article. For these reasons, I will not, I refuse, to use it.

As you noted, I introduced all the references on this page. And I believe those references were composed quite adequately - pretty standard academic style, not in some bizarre style that might require being revamped.

Now, per WP:CITEVAR, "defer to the style used by the first major contributor". I am admittedly not the first - whoever cut-and-pasted the Britannica article back in 2005 was the "first". A few diffs for illustration:

  • Full sum of contributions since initial cut-and-pasting at article (before I came in): [1]
  • What I contributed: [2]
  • What others have contributed since: [3]

It seems that, beyond the late Mr. Prestage (God bless his soul), I believe I have been practically the sole actual contributor of content to this page.

Now, let me be clear that I am not trying to claim ownership of the article. I'd be happy to hand it over to someone else. I just know I can't and I won't, contribute further to this page so long as that citation template is there. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be any Wiki editor out there interested in improving the content of this article, at least not since 2005. If I don't work on it, it is likely no one else will, and it will remain in this neglected, plagiarized state for the next seven years.

I am sorry if I sound stubborn, but I am very meticulous and careful with notes and references. And anything that mars my fexiblity, or garbles them, or impairs my ability to work with them as I'd like, for no useful end, is not something I have patience for. I never contribute to articles with citation templates. They are never worth the trouble.

If your concern is merely referencing the plagiarizng pieces, I would be happy to introduce them manually myself. Indeed, I'd be happy to reword that entire section (already fiddled with it a bit) so that the plagiarism is not so blatant. But please, no template. Walrasiad (talk) 12:26, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion about what is or is not plagiarism on Wikipedia, has been long since thrashed out and discussed to death I suggest that if you are interested look through the archives of Wikipedia talk:Plagiarism (Special:PrefixIndex/Wikipedia talk:Plagiarism). This is not an academic publication and the raison d'être is not to advance the frontiers of human knowledge or to gain recognition for the author, it is to produce a compendium of all human knowledge. If editors quote a public domain source by placing text in quotation marks then the text can not alter (see WP:MOSQUOTE), but by including the text as text we can edit it and develop it like an other text within Wikipedia in the usual way. If you want to improve the wording or the EB1911 text or add to it, I will applaud, however you should not remove the {{1911}} template or the citations to it unless you are certain that the text and structure of the article are no longer dependent on the original EB1911 article. A major reason for the {{1911}} template is for the hidden categories it automatically includes into the article which helps editors maintain articles such as this which include PD text. For example I came to this article because this article was in the Category:Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica that may need Attribution -- it did! -- PBS (talk) 00:25, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Unreliable sources in Section "Chronicles of Discovery and Conquest of Guinea"[edit]

The sources in said section seem unreliable. One is sourced from "Reynolds, Jason, and Ibram X. Kendi. Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You. Little, Brown and Company, 2020", a non-fiction book by author Ibram Kendi. Ibram Kendi is not an authority on the history of Portuguese colonization, making it an unreliable tertiary source.

Another is sourced from "Rosenberg, Matt. “Prince Henry the Navigator: The Man Who Led Portuguese Exploration.” ThoughtCo, 15 Jan. 2019, <www.thoughtco.com/prince-henry-the-navigator-1435024.>", an Internet article, another tertiary source.

The third source is from "Azurara, Gomes Eannes de. “The Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea.” Internet Archives, 31 Dec. 2014, <archive.org/details/chronicleofdisco02zura/page/n9/mode/2up.> ". While it may be a primary source, it lacks a corroborating reference to another secondary source that synthesizes it, and it seems to not really explicitly verify all the other stuff written in this section.

The final sources are from the National Park Service and the Southern Poverty Law Center. The National Park Service and the Southern Poverty Law Center are not reliable sources and authorities on the medieval history of Portugal and the history of Portuguese colonization.

Considering a lot of the suspect content in the section, such as its anachronistic views on scientific racism (which was really only an extant phenomenon by the 19th century) and its poor writing such as a lot of weasel words, the reliability of the said "sources" are even further suspect.

The section desperately needs a rewrite and attention from experts and inclusion of more reliable sources such as peer-reviewed sources and verifiable synthesis of primary sources. Or it might be better if said section is to be deleted, as the section title is obviously only copied from the first header in the section "Chronicles" below, meaning that it does not really add much to the overall flow of the article. The user who edited it seems unwilling to engage with the source material anyway. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:4450:81C8:3E00:156C:C885:DB:91D4 (talk) 15:05, 14 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Ibram Kendi and his books are not authoritative sources on the topic[edit]

While Ibram X. Kendi is indeed an accomplished professor, he and his books are not authoritative sources on the history of Portuguese colonialism due to differences in expertise. Any weasel or blanket attributions such as "Zurara's work is the oldest recorded example of anti-black racist ideas" or "Zurara has come to be known as the original racist" would require references to more rigorous authoritative secondary sources (peer-reviewed) with synthesis of primary sources to be verified, rather than simply quoting a political commentary book.

Please do not reference Ibram Kendi again. Neko Cherise Sapphire Star (talk) 16:46, 14 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Is Gomes de Zurara a controversial figure?[edit]

I have heard him described as the father of racism through his description of Africans as beasts suitable for capturing and subjugating. 2601:243:4:E90A:A8E6:2F7B:9BBB:1DED (talk) 07:00, 10 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, see The Lie That Invented Racism at https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oIZDtqWX6Fk and the podcast Seeing Whiteness of the Center for Documentary Studies. --Espoo (talk) 06:38, 21 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
No, he is not a controversial figure. American author Ibram X. Kendi randomly plucked him out of history as the "inventor" of race, which is nonsensical and fallacious. If you look through the edits on this article, you'll see editors persistently try to include Kendi as a source for this, all of which get reverted due to Kendi's claims being unreliable and unsupported. The idea here is to pinpoint the concept of race to a specific person or time so as to facilitate present-day racist attitudes against white people. Any rigorous study of the history and development of racial concepts shows that they developed over time, commencing sharply around the end of the Middle Ages due to Western Europe's advances in technology and capabilities relative to Africans, Asians, and others. 2600:1700:428:2E00:FDB1:BE90:FFBD:388A (talk) 19:17, 29 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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