Talk:Naser al-Din Shah's slide

Sourcing problems

... are described here. Unless some more pertinent sourcing can be found, this is a prime candidate for AfD. Andreas JN466 23:04, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

A bunch of overgrown infants getting hysterical is not evidence of anything. That worthless individual who writes about me at the end has his facts mixed up. It was the orginal version that was totally unsourced and most of the material to which there are legitimate objections was added by the creator of the drawing User:مانفی (which, by the way, I have tried to get deleted). I accepted the source gven by him for his own additions on good faith as I do not speak Persian. Paul B (talk) 13:32, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

Comments on the linked wikipediocracy "critique"

The page number Wikipedia gives is wrong, and Wikipedia describes this account as "somewhat sanitised" – an assertion that is again, unsourced (if anything, this 1891 account sounds rather more realistic than the fanciful scenario depicted in Mattbuck's "educational drawing").

The drawing is not by Mattbuck. The 1891 account is sanitised because the author says the clothing was scanty "to say the least": an obvious hint that he really means naked - since the only thing that is beyond scanty is naked. This should be obvious to a half-wit. If the page number is wrong the solution is to correct it. Since the drawing, which is indeed fanciful, is not used in the article at all any comparison to it is utterly irrelevant.Paul B (talk) 13:46, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

There are other warning signs: the article says that this sort of thing is known as a "Naserian slide" ... yet at the time of writing, Google finds only two matches for this phrase, both on Wikipedia.

That's a reference to the expression in Persian, which I accepted in good faith from the original editor User:مانفی, so you wouldn't expect it to be on the internet in English. Paul B (talk) 13:46, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

has some uncited statements, and seems to disguise the fact that one of its main sources describes the thing as a legend.

This is an outright lie. The source does not describe the object as a legend, it says that that that according to legend he used it every day. The fact that it existed is not in dispute at all, as there are several sources. The way the source is used in the article is introduced with the phrase "it is said..." Of course 'legend' here does not mean 'made up'. It just means that it's a story. Paul B (talk) 13:50, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

Of course no one is suggesting that slide looked anything like the drawing, but that's a complete irrelevance and red herring. If I create a made-up drawing of a Viking longboat that doesn't look anything like a real one, that does not somehow evidence that Viking longboats are legends. The whole Wikipedidiocy thread is confusing the silly drawing with the content of the article. Paul B (talk) 13:53, 30 November 2012 (UTC)