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In the media

Ahmadiyya Jabrayilov: propaganda myth or history?

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By Andrew Lih, Andreas Kolbe, Loic Youth and Gamaliel
Ahmadiyya Jabrayilov in France with his awards. Allegedly.

Armenian site panorama.am reports (Nov. 6) on the deletion of the biography of Ahmadiyya Jabrayilov in the Russian and French Wikipedias. The historicity of Jabrayilov, described as a "celebrated Azerbaijani activist of the French Resistance" and a personal acquaintance of Charles de Gaulle in the English Wikipedia, has been questioned, and the English article currently includes both a hoax warning and a (sourced!) subsection pointing out that the article's equivalents in the French and Russian Wikipedias were deleted.

There is not much love lost between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and the panorama.am article seems not devoid of glee when it reports that

Clearly, opinions differ as to whether Jabrayilov is a historical figure or a Soviet propaganda creation; a related discussion on the English biography's talk page has been ongoing for some months, at a very leisurely pace. AK

Media reacts to five million article milestone

Last week, the English Wikipedia hit five million articles with Cas Liber's article Persoonia terminalis, a shrub native to eastern Australia. The A.V. Club remarked:

Some media outlets noted that Wikipedia is a work in progress. The Daily Telegraph noted that "Wikipedia's 5 million articles still cover less than 5 per cent of all human knowledge". Quartz wrote that those five million articles "cover just a tiny sliver of all human knowledge". G

In brief

  • #bencarsonwikipedia: Quartz reports (Nov. 6) on a new Twitter meme prompted by the revelation of US Presidential candidate Ben Carson's bizarre and inaccurate theory that the Egyptian pyramids were constructed by the Biblical patriarch Joseph as grain storage. (It is, of course, the universal consensus of historians and archaeologists, and also written by the ancient Egyptians themselves, that the pyramids were tombs of the pharaohs.) Twitter users used the hashtag #bencarsonwikipedia to post equally inaccurate ideas, such as "The Great Wall of China was originally created as an aquarium for giant eels" and "A pony must eat 57 apples before it becomes a horse." G
  • Wikipedia has some fascinating yet far-fetched stories: Following Wikipedia's five millionth article, a group of Wikipedians and Wikipedia users picked out some of the most informative, entertaining or trivial articles in the encyclopaedia. The list in the Washington Post (Nov. 5) ranges from sexually active popes to the ten-foot "Demon Cat" to extreme ironing. LY
  • Wikipedia gets a toilet as a sign of appreciation: Wikipedia fan and craigslist founder, Craig Newmark, has donated a toilet to the Wikimedia Foundation, as reported in the Huffington Post (Nov. 4). Newmark, who believes Wikipedia is a "big deal", donated a third toilet to the headquarters' gender-neutral bathroom. "I am a proud supporter of Wikipedia and I encourage you to make donations to support their work too." LY
  • Wikipedia's "Wiki Loves Africa" contest enters its second year, focusing on culture and fashion: The contest runs from October 1 to November 30, as allafrica.com reports (Nov. 2). Wiki Loves Africa is an annual competition that invites people from across Africa and beyond to celebrate the diversity, richness and complexity of this continent. Every year, the competition has a new theme – with this year's theme being Wiki Loves Africa Cultural Fashion and Adornment. The new Galaxy Tab S tablet computer is one of many prizes for the winning contestants. F, LY
  • 12 commandments of Wikipedia: CIO magazine presents (Oct. 28) six dos and six don'ts that people, organizations and brands tempted to make edits to Wikipedia pages related to them should observe. AK



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  • Pyramids - tombs is probably a poor word. To cite... um.. Wikipedia:

... a pyramid was a resting place, rather than a tomb, providing the occupant with all the requirements both physical and mystical for the journey of the ka to the afterlife to become an akh, ...

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 18:37, 7 November 2015 (UTC).[reply]
  • Looks like we have another case of Wikipedia contradicting itself. The intro to Egyptian pyramids states "Most were built as tombs for the country's pharaohs". Gamaliel (talk) 18:59, 7 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Does anybody else think that Stevo's pic looks phoney?
  • The Ahmadiyya Jabrayilov story/article reflects a bigger problem of what to do with Communist propaganda sources. Sure we could completely disallow these as not being reliable sources, but then there would be almost no "reliable sources" on 50 years of Soviet history (at least for the smaller, internal stories; wars, spaceshots and such are a different matter), and a big chunk of mainland Chinese history. This type of problem has come up at Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya and Pavlik Morozov and Stjepan Filipović. The 2 first-named articles now look like they've handled it pretty well. Smallbones(smalltalk) 19:07, 7 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • The thing is that he did exist and is not a myth. It's largely about what to write and how without risking WP:Original research. Brandmeistertalk 12:50, 9 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
      • Since the shit hit the fan, just wait and see what mainstream write. Staszek Lem (talk) 03:33, 11 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]


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