Moderation Questions
The last iteration of the moderation discussion thread was a complete disaster. Numerous attempts to keep it on topic failed, and it became a general discussion thread with almost no moderation related posts at all. And those that were posted were so buried in non-mod posts that it became a huge time drain on the mods to sort through them. Then, when off topic posts were deleted posters complained about that.
This led to the closing of the mod discussion thread, replaced by the post report/pm approach. This has filtered out lots of noise, but has resulted at times in the General Discussion Thread turning into a quasi-mod thread. This is not desirable, but going back to the old mod thread is also not a workable option.
Therefore, I have created this new moderation thread, but with a different purpose and ground rules than previous mod threads. The purpose of this thread is to provide a place for posters to pose questions to the mods about how policies are applied; to bring to the mods attention posts they think are inappropriate and reach the level of requiring mod action; and for mods to communicate to posters things like changes or clarifications to policies, bannings, etc.
Now let me tell you what this thread is NOT a place for. It is not for nonmoderation related posts, even if the discussion originates from a comment in in a mod related post. It is not for posters to post their opinions about other posters or whether a poster should be banned. It is not to rehash past grievances about mod decisions from months or years ago. The focus of this thread will be recent posts that require action now. Or questions about current policies and enforcement.
So basically, this is a thread to ask mods questions. Which means, pretty much that only mods should be answering those questions. If a poster asks why a particular post was deleted or allowed, only a mod can answer that. Everyone else who wants to jump in with their opinion or their mod war story needs to stay out of it. It just increases the noise to signal ratio and does nothing to answer the question.
Everyone needs to understand that this thread has very different rules than the old mod thread and any other thread. Any non-moderation post will be deleted on sight. Not moved to the appropriate thread, just deleted. So don't waste your time crafting a masterpiece post about wars or transgender issues or the presidential election and then post it in this thread. It will be gone. Also, this isnt a thread for general commentary about our mods performance. Posting "browser sucks as a mod" or any such posts that don't actually ask about a policy or request a mod action will be deleted. Everyone is entitled to their opinion about the moderation of this forum. But this thread isnt for complaining about mods. You are free to go to the ATF forum and make your concerns about modding in this forum there.
So with that intro, this thread is open for those who need to bring questions about mod policies or bring inappropriate posts to the mods attention. Again, it is NOT a thread for group discussions about other posters or for other posters to answer questions directed to mods.
We'll see how this goes. If you have what you feel is an open issue raised in the General Discussion Thread, please copy that post or otherwise reintroduce the issue here.
Thanks.
my best advice is to read arrian - he is the original autist who starts up his work with a lengthy passage about his methodologies and motivations
all the works on alexander preceding him are lost to history - but that doesn't matter to much because arrian is very clear that they all tell very different versions of events
he tells us in his introduction that he's tired of all the confusion over who alexander was and what he did so he decided to read all the works and piece together his own version
I think there is significant amount of historical corroboration. We don’t have a lot of the direct texts but that’s not really surprising either because that tended to happen a lot. I think it’s really hard when you apply this sort of epistemology to ancient history, because you are pretty much left doubting every single historical figure exists. I mean there is probably a lot more historical corroboration for the work of Alexander the Great than the work of Jesus. We really don’t have many contemporary inscriptions of even Jesus’s birthplace, and we barely have any mention of him until Paul writes about him a decade or so after his death.
Yes we are missing the contemporaneous accounts, but they are referenced by later sources and also we have inscriptions and even a Babylonian daily accounting that mentions his passing on the day he died. Plus without him it’s hard to explain a lot of the cross cultural exchange that happens around that time period.
I actually think that if you are not a global historical figure skeptic any rigor you apply to Alexander the Great can’t be uniformly applied to other figures throughout history without coming across as arbitrary if you accept those other figures.
fascinating. what is the babylonian account of his death?
It’s just a very simple inscription in an astronomical journal that mentions his reign and at the end it says “the King has died”. It seems accurate enough precisely because it’s hidden (in plain sight) in a bunch of mundane data that they were already keeping.
In Greek times, the smaller the dick, the better.
A flaccid dick was a sign of control and self-restraint while the big ones were a often a sign of tension and the need for control. Its the reason why most sculptures and drawings show a member on the smaller end while enemies or creatures that of half man half animal displayed a large ferocious erect dick.
Declaring this the winning post of the Greek discussion for being the most unintentionally hilarious by a significant margin
Just went back to read it again for the serotonin
Well done, formula72. You have earned much favor ♥
formula72
large ferocious erect dick
I think there is significant amount of historical corroboration. We don’t have a lot of the direct texts but that’s not really surprising either because that tended to happen a lot. I think it’s really hard when you apply this sort of epistemology to ancient history, because you are pretty much left doubting every single historical figure exists. I mean there is probably a lot more historical corroboration for the work of Alexander the Great than the work of Jesus. We really do
i'm with you, but i just personally am very annoyed that the way history is taught a lot of this stuff is given out as gospel rather than "well there used to be 4 competing versions of this but we now go with the one arrian decided would best make the greeks look awesome"
as an exercise, i asked gpt this morning what hard evidence there was of alexander that was contemporary of his time, gpt then listed all this "contemporary stuff like arrian's account and coinage" to which i responded that arrian wasn't contemporary and to the best of my knowledge neither were any coins - to which gpt agreed "oh yeah you're right i did just make that up"
as a history buff who spent a lot of time in asia, their common viewpoint is we don't really have any history, just stories, and i tend to agree with them
very little of much of anything is known and what we do know is often because of some historical work written 2-3 centuries afterward
like asians love to meme really hard showing charts and timelines of various european history that look like this
820 - there's a bad viking raid
821 - nothing
822 - king has a daughter, don't know her name, never hear from her again, maybe she died or just a daughter so who care
823 - king had a son, we think he died because we never hear from him again
824 - nothing
825 - nothing
826 - the king met with the pope
827 - the king had a son
828 - maybe that son was actually born this year
829 - there was a minor rebellion in an unstated area
830 - they went to war with their neighbor
831 - nothing
832 - king dies, the son is crowned - no idea who the regent was
833 - nothing
834 - noting
835 - there's a viking raid that's bad
836 - nothing
whereas they still have detailed government records like granary storage history etc etc
when they have a han dynasty palace that was destroyed in a fire and never rebuilt, they don't just have a general idea of where it was but precise contemporary maps corresponding with the ruins along with detailed architectural plans, whereas we can only guess what the great lighthouse used to look like based on making a composite of the conflicting descriptions, the chinese would have detailed blueprints with exact dimensions and type of material used
like the lighthouse of alexandria, even though the base still exists and the lighthouse itself was used up through the 14th century, we still have no idea what actually looked like to the point where we give a height range of somewhere between 100 and 600 feet tall - that's just insane
in china they are currently using the old blueprints to rebuild the daming palace - it's still under construction but they've already finished a lot such as the main gate for the entrance
it was burned down in a violence towards the end of the tang dynasty in the early 10th century and through piecing together detailed descriptions, preserved blueprints, and retracing the excavated ruins they are able to rebuild it with extreme confidence they are replicating it faithfully
there's no way we could rebuild even our most famous structures which last 4 more centuries than that did in the west with any certainty at all because we really didn't bother to keep very good records on much of anything, this is also why famous people in the past tend to all be grouped together, when you think of the famous greeks or romans it's always a group of people who knew and interacted with each other - this was not some "great men produce other great men" but rather all we have are little tiny snapshots of specific time periods and regions because the rest is a blank
cicero or plato are unlikely to be nearly as prominent in even their own time as they are today and we also tend to falsely attribute a lot of stuff to those
aristotle has had so much stuff falsely attributed to him that today we just call the stuff we no longer believe he wrote as pseudo-aristotle simply because if he didn't write it, then we have no idea who did
yeah but again it doesn't list him by name so yet again it requires a leap of faith
also don't forget that the only reason why we even have most of greek history today is only because of the arabs
this is why the oldest known depictions of those greek philosophers has them dressed like medieval arabs
here's socrates
also don't forget that the only reason why we even have most of greek history today is only because of the arabs]
No, that is a mischaracterization of both history and your own provided link. The primary preserver of Greek knowledge was the Roman empire.
However, as the western Roman empire fell and we entered the middle ages, we'd see the Islamic golden age, which played a big part in the preservation and development of Greek intellectual ideas. The contributions to math, to use one example, was significant and we use their number system to this day. In the fractured nations of western Europe during this time period, Greek was mostly a dead language.
However, even your own linked article states very clearly how it was the eastern Roman empire (aka Byzantine empire) that preserved much of the original Greek ideas and texts whose rediscovery (aka pillaging) and translation would reintroduce these ideas to western Europe, something that happens as the Islamic golden age is on the wane. And while it is not stated in your article, this is also fuel for the renaissance which in a sense would become a golden age of its own.
No, that is a mischaracterization of both history and your own provided link. The primary preserver of Greek knowledge was the Roman empire.
However, as the western Roman empire fell and we entered the middle ages, we'd see the Islamic golden age, which played a big part in the preservation and development of Greek intellectual ideas. The contributions to math, to use one example, was significant and we use their number system to this day. In the fractured nations of western Europe during this
Abū l-Walīd Muhammad ibn Abmad ibn Muhammad ibn Rushd (Averois for us) was widely considered "the" expert on Aristotle to read from even in Dante time, contemporaries of Dante refered to him as "the commentator", so that's kinda why we go with the "Islam is how we got the Greek texts"
Abū l-Walīd Muhammad ibn Abmad ibn Muhammad ibn Rushd (Averois for us) was widely considered "the" expert on Aristotle to read from even in Dante time, contemporaries of Dante refered to him as "the commentator", so that's kinda why we go with the "Islam is how we got the Greek texts"
and fyi, this is from the poster most incentivized on the entire site to want to downplay arab influence and play up italian dominance 😀
this is why the oldest known depictions of those greek philosophers has them dressed like medieval arabs
I don't know what you mean, but there are plenty of statues of Greek philosophers that predate this painting. And the statues obviously do not depict the philosophers in the style of medieval Arabs. Here is one of many examples:
https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/new...
And here is a Roman fresco in Ephesus that depicts Socrates:
also don't forget that the only reason why we even have most of greek history today is only because of the arabs
this is why the oldest known depictions of those greek philosophers has them dressed like medieval arabs
here's socrates
Your link does not say at all "the only reason we have most of greek history today is only because of the Arabs"
It says many classic Greek texts were recovered from the Byzantine Empire before its fall. It says nothing about Arabs protecting them for posterity.
Also, the Muslim world was dominated by Turks and Persians (and Mongols) most of the last 1,000 years. The Arabs themselves played little part in the big scheme of things for most of this period. They certainly weren't protecting Ancient Greek texts for posterity, much less being the "only reason" we know Greek history.
I see I am a slow pony.
this is also fuel for the renaissance which in a sense would become a golden age of its own.
chinese strongly believe that the renaissance occured largely due to the mongol empire providing a direct conduit to transfer ideas and technology from china to the west
there's actually a lot of really good scholarship that supports this in chinese and the best in english i've read is this
his main thing is stuff like the moldboard plow revolutionized european agriculture and that boost in productivity allowed for more of the population to not farm as well as allowed populations to explode as areas of land which were previously unfarmable were now made into productive farmland
he tends to drift from topic to topic, which hurts his case and demonstrates he's just collecting random tidbits that support his case, but nevertheless his argument is quite persuasive
there's obviously a lot of pushback on his ideas, but a bunch is silly, like the wiki entry on the book has a snippet of criticism with the main point being him mentioning to adam smith getting his main ideas of laissez faire from the french who got it from the chinese but that's a pretty clear paper trail of that being the reality so it feels like a lot of the critique is just copium
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laissez-fa...
Vincent de Gournay, a French Physiocrat and intendant of commerce in the 1750s, popularized the term laissez-faire as he allegedly adopted it from François Quesnay's writings on China.[13] Quesnay coined the phrases laissez-faire and laissez-passer,[14] laissez-faire being a translation of the Chinese term wu wei (無為😉.[15]
and you'll find things like this mirrored elsewhere - the best historical non-fiction i ever read was andrade's gunpowder age https://www.amazon.com/Gunpowder-Age-Mil... and of course it goes into great detail the transfer of gunpowder and other technologies to the west and how then they were improved upon greatly in the west, it also talks about not only gunpowder but a lot of military doctrine such as fire by rank which had a long history in china due to the prevalence of the crossbow and was first introduced to europe by the dutch who presumably observed the chinese employing it - in fact the earliest known document in europe discussing it is a letter from one dutchman to another where he gives instructions in how it works and how to drill his troops in it and even includes a note that he should not disclose this to anyone until his troops have mastered it because it's such a wild idea that he's certainly going to be ridiculed - by firing by rank was revolutionary in the sense that it allowed for continuos volleys of lead, which meant that the downtime between volleys became non-existent so the threat of cavalry staying out of range and just waiting until they all fire to charge in largely disapeared and then in turn this meant that they didn't need as many pikemen to stand guard to protect the musketeers from cav which then meant more musketeers which meants more firepower and less reliance on professional soldiers (it takes years to properly train a pikeman to wield his gear, work in formation, and not drop his pike and run at the first sign of danger, it takes about 2 weeks to train a farmer to point and shoot a musket "safely" from a distance - so it was absolutely revolutionary and ended the era of pike and shot
sadly 99.9% of chinese history has never been translated to english due to a general lack of interest - so nearly all modern sinologists outside of china are forced to rely upon english language works which are filtered through limitations of them being heavily restricted to accessing original sources so they tend to rely on the works that were either written by or inspired by the jesuits
the jesuits were not interested in granary storage records nor some domestic squabble between an emperor and his uncle which led to skirmishing but never resulted in outright rebellion and warfare - they were instead focused on the big hits and most importantly, since their primary purpose of being there was to spread the gospel and they were utterly failing in that regard, they clung desperately to any hope they could find that the non-religious chinese would begin subscribing to a higher power of a deity - thus why they looped in "the mandate of heaven" into all their writing
in chinese history, it was a minor footnote, a throwaway line of no significance at all, but to the jesuits, they felt like this justified their mission and thus they'd tie in the concept of the mandate of heaven into all their writings
this is basically as if some chinese scholar today decided that the tea party was a significant event, so much that every time a new president was elected, the phrase they used to declare the winner was "and then the american people drank a cup of tea in toast of biden" and they made it into this huge thing with modern consequences where whether or not americans drank tea or dumped it into the harbor was their way of signaling their approval or lack of about the current president - but this is far too generous, you see i had to choose an example you're actually familiar with - to make it more akin to the mandate of heaven, we'd need to find something really obscure only the foremost scholars would have ever heard about such as george washington's love of hoecakes
so now every president from there on out is given the blessing of the hoecake, where chinese journalists today when writing about the upcoming election will posit whether or not trump or kamala has the blessing of the hoecake - to them this is inherent to american politics despite that most americans don't even know what a hoecake is nor why it'd be considered imortant
if you want proof that the mandate of heaven is a nothing burger, look at the wiki entry on it in english
it's exhaustive
now check the chinese version and keep in mind chinese is a much more efficient language for using up space where a single character can take the place of a dozen letters
just a snippet
and normally the chinese entry on anything ancient chinese is 10x longer than the english one
the brevity here is no accident, it truly is a nothing burger that the jesuits just ran with and then all susbsequent western scholars relied upon their works instead of the original texts and thus the cycle of citogenesis began
I don't know what you mean, but there are plenty of statues of Greek philosophers that predate this painting. And the statues obviously do not depict the philosophers in the style of medieval Arabs.
i'm sorry it was not my intention to say that's the only info we have on him, just that the overwhelming majority of statues/texts come from after the arab revivals
the point still stands that the oldest extant statue of socrates dates to the 1st century, a mere 500 years after his death
furthermore, the vast majority of busts of him i've seen in museums are all dated to the renaissance - this is true for most of our marble statues but people see marble and just assume it's from that time
early roman statue work was terrible - here's some examples of contemporarily made busts of emperors
being busts of the emperors made in the time of the emperors, it would have been the best artists available
look at how creepy they are, they are still a long ways away from the very lifelike and polished marble busts we're accustomed to, this is because the overwhelming majority of the stuff we see in a museum is old but not of the same time period of that person and done at a later time when artists had developed their craft much further
This isn't really correct either. You are cherry picking.
First one is fantastic. Even with all the damage, the personality really comes through.
the date of that statue is unknown and given that it was "discovered" in 1506 the chance of it being a modern forgery are exceedingly high
michelangelo began his career forging works to be sold as roman and greek era productions that have been "found" - it was incredibly common in that era and if you read the biographies of many of the great artists of that era, they all got their start first forging ancient works before finally setting off on their own
again, i don't consider that cherry picking, we know forgery was incredibly common during the 16th century, we also know that you can't reliably date that stuff - we can do certain things to help narrow down the decision but we can't ever tell for certain, malcolm gladwell's blink deals with modern forgeries which even duped museums and were only identified as forgeries by humans saying "something isn't quite right" despite that all the scientific tests agreed they were ancient statues
occam's razor would agree with me, why would an emperor choose such a terrible artist for their bust when such other talent was available, more importantly, why is it that all the ancient stuff with bonafide histories having been preserved since ancient time are all ugly as sin but the stuff some 16th century duke "finds" while digging a well is a miraculous piece of utter splendor rivaling the statue of david? probably because michaelangelo made that for the duke and the duke wanted to show he had some awesome roman statue adorning his foyer rather than some gauche modern thing made by some rando who is named after a ninja turtle?
this is also why you can buy ancient roman and greek coins on ebay for a couple dollars because they are all forgeries because eastern europe is covered in factories that produe them - hence why the only coins that have any real value are those with historicity attached to them where they are linked to a specific dig site instead of "idk we found these in my yard/attic"
the date of that statue is unknown and given that it was "discovered" in 1506 the chance of it being a modern forgery are exceedingly high
michelangelo began his career forging works to be sold as roman and greek era productions that have been "found" - it was incredibly common in that era and if you read the biographies of many of the great artists of that era, they all got their start first forging ancient works before finally setting off on their own
I do not agree with you at all. The idea that the Laocoön is a forgery by Michelangelo or some other Renaissance artist has been widely rejected. I will send you a PM with more details.
will happily accept double secret art historian info not for the prying eyes of the public - you probably forgot it, but when i was asking if your spouse had a sister i was very serious 😀
even so if it is legit, at best they can only guess the manufacturing date to a 300 year timespan and have no idea if it's the original or a copy or a copy of a copy, which underlies the uncertainty of it all - for all we know even if it is legit, it's quite possibly from a much later period than the claudio-julian era they believe it is from
and again, i can't stress enough this contemporary work of a roman emperor is supposedly made 200-500 years after the statue you listed
it's incredibly difficult for me to believe that there would be that much variance in among the best sculptors in the world who'd have been commissioned by the emperor to make a bust of them
rickroll,
You are just deliberately choosing second rate work. Do you think all this stuff is hack work or forgeries as well?
i'm sorry it was not my intention to say that's the only info we have on him, just that the overwhelming majority of statues/texts come from after the arab revivals
You have certainly not provided any evidence the "overwhelmingly majority of statutes/texts come from Arab revivals." The wiki link you provided states that much knowledge was recovered from the Byzantine Empire before it was defeated by the Turks.
The guy Lucium was talking about was a Iberian Muslim who spent much of his life out of favor with the local Muslim rulers of the time, for obvious reasons. And his work made little impact in the Islamic world, as there was little interest in science and philosophy. The interest came from Westerners who discovered his work later. According to Wiki:
"His legacy in the Islamic world was modest for geographical and intellectual reasons. In the West, Averroes was known for his extensive commentaries on Aristotle, many of which were translated into Latin and Hebrew. The translations of his work reawakened western European interest in Aristotle and Greek thinkers, an area of study that had been widely abandoned after the fall of the Western Roman Empire."
-Obviously individual Muslim leaders and thinkers contributed to the cannon of knowledge in the civilized world, especially during the Dark Ages in Europe. But I think you are going way overboard in your praise of "Arab revivals"
rickroll,
You are just deliberately choosing second rate work. Do you think all this stuff is hack work or forgeries as well?
good stuff, they mostly have the creepy eyes though 😀
i've actually seen every one of those in persion 😀
i thought for certain that hadrian and marcus were made much later but it appears i was mistaken
for real though, caracalla in pharaoh's garb is my all time favorite though it's like some claymation monster in an 80s b horror movie just needs some titties, drunken teens, some kitschy catch phrase he utters as he kills his victims and the circle will be complete, i've also seen that in person but sadly while i had been drinking, i was no longer a teenager and there no titties to be found that day
