Comment by chx

3 years ago

Wikipedia has an article on Magyaráb people.

They do not exist. First a Hungarian aristocrat was hoodwinked by some locals for money in Egypt in the 1930s, then a Hungarian student spending two semesters Cairo in the 1960s rewarmed the issue to prove his worth and successfully sold himself as an expert of all things Arabic in Hungary -- he never managed to get even a degree -- then finally in the nineties a far right weekly dug up the story for nationalistic purposes.

Finally an expedition was sent in 2006-2007 which have found with absolute surety these people do not exist. Their report is linked from wikipedia.

I tried to correct the article, I tried to delete the article, it was refused saying it's notorious enough to have an article on Wikipedia ... ... ... seriously?

Similarly, Hungarian prehistory on Wikipedia is completely outdated. Most of the "primary sources" it lists are completely unreliable, they were not even written with the intent of being reliable history wise (the The Annals of Fulda and The Annals of St-Bertin being remarkable exceptions). It notes "their reliability ... is suspect" ignoring Tamás Hölbling absolutely tearing them apart in 2010 in his two volume massive source criticism book. They are much closer to a comic book today than a historical book. It completely omits all the remarkable archaeogenetic findings since 2008. It completely ignores an absolutely groundbreaking symposium held in 1999 (they brought together researchers Indo-European and Uralic both archeological and linguistic, this was never done before), second edition can be found at https://www.sgr.fi/sust/SUST242.pdf . Overall, the Wikipedia article reflects the scientific consensus of the 1970s or so.

I tried to fix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Abdallah_Jayhani because Gayhani is incorrect, one spelling which could be used is Ğayhānī (eg https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/islm.1998.75....) it got reverted with "The other names in the lead are not supposed to have custom alphabets or whatever they're called." Whatever, eh? But hilariously enough, Wikipedia itself has an article on the romanization of Persian and you can check that article and see for yourself that "G" in itself is never used to transliterate a persian letter no matter which scheme you pick... but whatever!

I gave up on trying to fix Wikipedia.

4 comments

chx

Reply
falseLiesandHi  3 years ago

Yeah, you should look into Arabic Numerals, the Hindu Nationalists took over the page and now writes as originating from India, which it doesn't and doesn't really originate from a single country at all, it comes from the silk road. But anyways, they use "sources" which result in he said she said arguments, and at one time just completely lists an old elementary mathematics book as their source. The level of inaccuracy in many wikipedia articles is frighteningly high especially maintained by "offical" channels.

You should read sources on how the jewish americans helped black americans. The sources flat out state that During the period Jewish American's did nothing to help black americans during the segregation and at times actively encouraged it.

  • Balgair  3 years ago

    I'll add a grievance here too. The Timeline of Japanese History article really tends to skip over the less than nice parts of Imperial Japan, especially during WW2.

    From ~1942 to 1945, there are no entries, for example. I know it's kinda covered in the Timeline of WW2 article, but the atrocities committed by the Imperial Japanese are not mentioned.

    Whitewashing is real on Wikipedia. I know its a tired meme, but you really do need to do your own research nowadays.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Japanese_history#2...

  • drc500free  3 years ago

    Jewish support for the civil rights movement is well documented, including strong participation in the March on Washington.

    Why would you bring that particular topic up out of the blue?