Wikipedia article on Belly Dance

[Yame]

Speak of the devil! Just earlier today my husband pointed out to me that the belly dance article on Wikipedia is seriously lacking in sources/citations.

 

[Roshanna]

BTW, There is no article at all on Badia Masabni. This seems like a pretty major omission, and there are references to her in various other pages that are currently red links. Does anyone feel like creating one? There is a lot of information about her on Shira's site...

 

[shiradotnet]

BTW, There is no article at all on Badia Masabni. This seems like a pretty major omission, and there are references to her in various other pages that are currently red links. Does anyone feel like creating one? There is a lot of information about her on Shira's site...

I know you mean well, but I'm kind of cranky about Wikipedia articles (and those on some other web sites) that are basically just rewrites of stuff people found on my site.

The Wikipedia article on the song "The Streets of Cairo" was one such thing for a long time - they just took my article and rearranged the words a little. Over time, it has added a bit of stuff that's not in my original, but for years it was basically all stuff that originally appeared in my article. And it's especially obnoxious because now when you search for the song title the wiki article comes up higher than mine in search results on google, even though a lot of it was taken from mine.

So I'm not a big fan of people using my site as their primary source of information to create a Wiki article - if my site is the primary source anyway, why not just link to what I've got?

 

[Kashmir]

They may have changed their policy - but it used to be you couldn't link to authoritative sites (such as yours). You had to write an article - which could then be mushed about with. There is a lot to be said for intelligent and knowledgeable editorial control. This is really lacking in Wikipedia.

 

[Roshanna]

I know you mean well, but I'm kind of cranky about Wikipedia articles (and those on some other web sites) that are basically just rewrites of stuff people found on my site.

The Wikipedia article on the song "The Streets of Cairo" was one such thing for a long time - they just took my article and rearranged the words a little. Over time, it has added a bit of stuff that's not in my original, but for years it was basically all stuff that originally appeared in my article. And it's especially obnoxious because now when you search for the song title the wiki article comes up higher than mine in search results on google, even though a lot of it was taken from mine.

So I'm not a big fan of people using my site as their primary source of information to create a Wiki article - if my site is the primary source anyway, why not just link to what I've got?

Sorry Shira! I absolutely didn't mean to suggest that people should plagarise or rewrite your content (it didn't really occur to me that people might do that, and I certainly don't condone it), but that your site would be a good starting point to hunt down suitable references etc. for putting together a summary page on Badia. I believe it is also now possible to link to authoritative websites as references on wikipedia, unless I've misunderstood the rules (entirely possible!). :redface:

 

[Ariadne]

It sounds to me like someone needs to go to the "The Streets of Cairo" article on wikipedia and plaster links to Shira's original article all over it in the citence.

 

[Sophia Maria]

At first glance it doesn't seem to be too bad, but if you read a couple of more times and think about what an article like this should include, you'll notice it's weaknesses.

Gotcha. Also, Kashmir, that was helpful. I still maintain that it really isn't that bad. Despite the glitches in accuracy, it's good enough and respectful enough for wikipedia, which should be used as an introduction to a topic or reference point only. I personally really like wikipedia, but always recognize that it will be flawed in many places. I'm just happy it's at least going in the right direction.

It's at least better than the "history" sections on some belly dance instructors' home pages.

 

[Roshanna]

I'd just like to say that having made numerous edits in the past few weeks (mostly rearranging sections, adding new headings, and correcting sentence structure and links, so far... ), none of my edits have been reverted or overwritten. There have been a few vandalisms and nonsense edits (eg someone claiming that bellydance originated in South Africa) in that time, which were reverted very quickly by a user who seems to be keeping an eye on the page and getting rid of obvious crap.

So, if you've been put off by the possibility of your work being reverted or turned back into nonsense, I think this may now be less of a problem than in the past. I definitely think it's worth having a go at fixing it up a bit, if you can be bothered.

PS, I've created a page for Badia but it's extremely bare, pretty much just one sentence and what info I could find on birth and death dates etc which was very contradictory...

 

[Roshanna]

Well, I seem to have far more enthusiasm for this task than anyone else (maybe because I've not had the chance to become jaded and discouraged yet), but I've done quite a bit of work on the page today whilst recovering from a heavy night out yesterday

I completely rewrote the "Technique and movements" section, which I think is now much more represetative than it was, though still with room for more detail. I've also added two completely new sections, "Origins and history of belly dance in the Middle East" and "Social context of belly dance in the Middle East", which are sort of incomplete, but what is there so far is much better referenced than any of the existing content was. I've tidied up some other bits, too.

Only time will tell whether Wikipedia is ready to accept fact-based content on bellydance, I suppose, but I'm pleased with the improvements I've made so far. I'm still hoping some more of the knowledgeable dancers out there might also have another go at fixing things - I suspect some of you have much larger book collections to refer to than I do

 

[Crow]

Wow, great work Roshanna! I just logged back in after almost a month, and the improvement is very noticeable.

I am still not convinced that there isn't a case for merging the two articles. Even though there will be differences in the dance styles, they all fall under the same umbrella. But then again, we have pages distinguishing Russian from French Ballet, so...

Anyway, if no one says anything in favour of the merge I'll can the proposal.

 

[Jane]

Totally improved! Great work!