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[smjjames]

I just realized Quetzalcoatl was almost certainly a real creature. A superpower possessing psychic dinosaur that decided to help Aztec civilizations, then got bored and fucked off into the ocean.

Ever heard of the quetzalcoatlus?

Yep. Fuck that, psychic dinosaur.

Maybe not the psychic powers, tho.

Psychic. Dinosaur.

In all seriousness though, you really think a tiny weird salamander inspired an awesome revenge myth?

The pterosaur was named after the Aztec god, not the other way around. Also, pterosaurs are not dinosaurs

[Hanslanda]

No, the weird South American​ salamander with the neck frill. Quetzalcoatl. Not the enormous pterosaur. I doubt the Aztecs knew about those.

[smjjames]

South American salamander with the wierd neck frill? No idea what species you're talking about. Quetzalcoatl is the Mesoamerican feathered serpent, not salamander.

Also, it's the god of wind, and you know what else comes from the east? Hurricanes.

[Hanslanda]

Axolotl! That's what I meant! The water monster, as they say. Carry on your regularly scheduled WTFs.

[Lord Shonus]

Driving home today, suddenly there's a loud bang. After a second or two, I realize that my passenger wing mirror must have got clipped by someone opening a door heedlessly into traffic, because it is shattered against my passenger window, and when I got home (another two blocks or so) there was a very clear, sharp line on the housing. It probably would have been best to stop and see what the hell happened, but this isn't the best neighborhood and getting into a fight would not have improved things any.

[Tawa]

Today, I decided to read the Wikipedia page for Majapahit.

With pages about historical nations, I oftentimes skip down to the Culture section before tackling the history. But this particular culture section is... questionable. Everything past the third paragraph in this section is rather bizarrely written. It cites only two sources, one of which is an account by a companion of Zheng He and the other of which is a translation of the account. The grammar is awful, containing pervasive tense agreement problems, and the article also makes a number of assertations that seem rather outlandish to me (I get the distinct feeling that the claim that the Majapahiti stabbed anyone who touched their heads is... exaggerated.)

I would have edited it myself, but I'm not really familiar with the topic at hand, so I decided to look at the history to see if someone was already doing work on the article, or if it was a recently added or changed section so that I could roll it back or at least check what was there before. I discovered that that section has existed for about three years. Upon closer examination, I found that the majority of the content on the page--including the culture section--was added by the same guy, who appears to be an Indonesian fellow with a tenuous grasp of English.

I think I'm just going to find a better source on this one.

[Baffler]

Today, I decided to read the Wikipedia page for Majapahit.

With pages about historical nations, I oftentimes skip down to the Culture section before tackling the history. But this particular culture section is... questionable. Everything past the third paragraph in this section is rather bizarrely written. It cites only two sources, one of which is an account by a companion of Zheng He and the other of which is a translation of the account. The grammar is awful, containing pervasive tense agreement problems, and the article also makes a number of assertations that seem rather outlandish to me (I get the distinct feeling that the claim that the Majapahiti stabbed anyone who touched their heads is... exaggerated.)

I would have edited it myself, but I'm not really familiar with the topic at hand, so I decided to look at the history to see if someone was already doing work on the article, or if it was a recently added or changed section so that I could roll it back or at least check what was there before. I discovered that that section has existed for about three years. Upon closer examination, I found that the majority of the content on the page--including the culture section--was added by the same guy, who appears to be an Indonesian fellow with a tenuous grasp of English.

I think I'm just going to find a better source on this one.

You see that a lot with articles about things that're important to the local history of some other place that have had their articles in that local language translated into English. It's almost always a native speaker of local language that does it, and their grasp of English can be... tenuous. Take the article on the Manchu people or Iranian architecture as examples.

[smjjames]

To the credit of those who did the Manchu people page, it's chock absolutely full of sources.

While you definetly shouldn't use wikipedia as the basis for your paper or whatever, I find that it's a generally decent place that points to sources. Still have to check how good the sources are obviously.

[Tawa]

I'm just reading it for fun. I would never use Wikipedia for a paper, although I know about the source trick.

You see that a lot with articles about things that're important to the local history of some other place that have had their articles in that local language translated into English. It's almost always a native speaker of local language that does it, and their grasp of English can be... tenuous. Take the article on the Manchu people or Iranian architecture as examples.

Oh, yeah, definitely. Although I must say that the Manchu writers made up in effort what they lack in language (and even that seems to be handled a lot better than the Majapahit page; the worst I'm seeing in the Manchu page is a lot of run-on sentences, compared to "If someone was touched on his head, or if there is a misunderstanding or argument when drunk, they will instantly draw their knives and stab each other.") and the Iranian architecture page seems to mostly just have vaguely nationalistic praise of the style sprinkled throughout and a few superfluous sections at the end.

At least neither of those pages faced bill wurtz-inspired vandalism

[smjjames]

The Iranian architecture page does have a few odd spots like ' the roundness of the city of Baghdad in the Abbasid era'.

[Rolan7]

To the credit of those who did the Manchu people page, it's chock absolutely full of sources.

While you definetly shouldn't use wikipedia as the basis for your paper or whatever, I find that it's a generally decent place that points to sources. Still have to check how good the sources are obviously.

Unless you're writing a paper about the unreliability of Wikipedia

I jest, though, Wikipedia is an amazing resource for finding credible sources, and it's almost always accurate enough for lay conversations.  Wiki-diving with friends is great.

[Draignean]

The Iranian architecture page does have a few odd spots like ' the roundness of the city of Baghdad in the Abbasid era'.

Jesus, that's cthonism if I've ever seen it. Baghdad puts on a little weight and people can't stop talking about it... 

[smjjames]

The Iranian architecture page does have a few odd spots like ' the roundness of the city of Baghdad in the Abbasid era'.

Jesus, that's cthonism if I've ever seen it. Baghdad puts on a little weight and people can't stop talking about it... 

Subterraneanism? I tried googling cthonism and didn't get any definitive hits.

[Draignean]

The Iranian architecture page does have a few odd spots like ' the roundness of the city of Baghdad in the Abbasid era'.

Jesus, that's cthonism if I've ever seen it. Baghdad puts on a little weight and people can't stop talking about it... 

Subterraneanism? I tried googling cthonism and didn't get any definitive hits.

iirc, it's just stone or earth. I was more drawing for allocthon for my random demi latin, which now that I'm re-reading the definition of, doesn't make a ton of sense.

Locus-ism? Locism?

[Rolan7]

Today I learned "autocthon" (like the monument in Stellaris) can mean "An original or indigenous inhabitant of a place; an aborigine".  Stellaris apparently uses it to mean the first colonists.
The Greek etymology seems to be self-soil...  I guess that makes sense.