Talk:Abramo Colorni

Abramo Colorni is currently a World history good article nominee. Nominated by Andre🚐 at 20:30, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

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Short description: Italian-Jewish polymath (1544–1599)

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Biography

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A fact from Abramo Colorni appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 19 October 2024 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that Renaissance-era weapons designer Abramo Colorni performed magical illusions and card tricks for his patrons?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2024/October. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Abramo Colorni.

Wikipedia

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by AirshipJungleman29 talk 22:54, 3 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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Comment or view
Article history

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Scotographia, 1593, Latin, Prague

... that a 1593 work by an Italian-Jewish engineer and polymath might have inspired Joyce's Ulysses?

Source: https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Age_of_Secrecy/yy_CCAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=jutte+secrecy+%22joyce%22&pg=PA217&printsec=frontcover

Reviewed:

Created by Andrevan (talk). Number of QPQs required: 0. Nominator has fewer than 5 past nominations.

Andre🚐 19:01, 6 September 2024 (UTC).[reply]

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: - Offline/paywalled citation accepted in good faith Interesting:

Image eligibility:

Freely licensed:
Used in article:
Clear at 100px: - Cannot be read at the main page size

QPQ: None required.

Overall: Approved w/o image (t · c) buidhe 13:46, 8 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Born and died in Mantua

Currently, the prose of the article does not mention that he was born and died in Mantua. Previously this was in the infobox and it has the following references in Wikidata, Catalog of the German National Library, and Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani Treccani's Biographical Dictionary of Italian People. I believe this means the infobox is useful, not useless, as it provides sourced information that currently is not covered in the prose. I can add this to the prose, but I also think the infobox should be restored, @JayBeeEll and @David Eppstein, and I do not agree that it is useless. Andre🚐 22:57, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If you think it is useful, all you need to do is write it as a Wikipedia infobox rather than as a Wikidata infobox. If you put half as much effort into editing as you do into arguing you would have done it already. But infoboxes are supposed to summarize article content. If it should be in the infobox, it should be in the infobox because it summarizes the same claim somewhere else within the article text. Why don't you use the sources you list to add it, to the text of the article? —David Eppstein (talk) 23:16, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I added it to the text of the article already after I wrote that. So you will not revert the infobox if I restore it? And the 2018 RFC you cited says that it is ok to use the Wikidata infoboxes if they are accurate. Can we agree this one is? If not, why not? Andre🚐 23:17, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Infobox removal

Is there a policy that proscribes the use of Wikidata generated infoboxes (or infoboxes full stop, for that matter)? We have loads of Wikidata generated infoboxes (see Template:Wikidata infoboxes) and articles that use them (see w:Category:Articles with infoboxes completely from Wikidata), so it's not clear what's meant by [we] should not be importing data from other projects [...] in this instance. The edit summary mentions (WP:DIB) which is an essay (and is also refuted by other essays such as WP:DIBR). Please direct me to any relevant policy guidance. -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 10:21, 21 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The most recent community discussion I am aware of is Wikipedia:Wikidata/2018 Infobox RfC. In my view, there is no value in including any information that is not reliably sourced, and sourcing standards for content in infoboxes must be at least as high as for content in the body (with the caveat that any ambiguous information is not suitable for an infobox at all). The sourcing for the year of birth is not great: the article cites a review of some other book, and the review says "ca. 1544-1599". The Wikidata year of birth is sourced to a database entry that cites a dead link as source. Per the core policy WP:V, we need to do better than this. —Kusma (talk) 18:29, 21 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That material is sourced in the body also. I am not sure why the link is dead - it used to work. Ultimately the source is the Daniel Jütte book which is the most authoritative source for biographical information on Colorni, although sometimes it does say ca. 1544 as it is hard to pin down a birthdate in the 16th century, but in other places named without the ca. And some sources such as the 1906 Jewish encyclopedia say he was born around 1530, but that seems to be incorrect. I suppose to be very precise we should use circa as well for the date of birth in the lead. Which I have now done, [1], and the infobox can do as well. Andre🚐 20:54, 21 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the link to the 2018 Infobox RfC. This is very interesting and helpful. In so far the discussion here goes, it is important to clarify that the Wikidata generated version of the infobox can be edited locally (if needs be); additional parameters can easily be added, and unwanted fields can be excluded (without needing to muck about in Wikidata). When these tools work well, they can be really useful. If you see potential for improvement, please bring any ideas (or criticism) to the the template's Talk page . Cheers, Cl3phact0 (talk) 10:33, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

But more broadly I agree that there is no project-wide proscription on these infoboxes and the infobox should be restored. However, I was waiting to hear from @JayBeeEll since he was the one who reverted my restoration of the infobox. Andre🚐 21:03, 21 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with what David wrote above: If you think it is useful [then] write it as a Wikipedia infobox rather than as a Wikidata infobox. [I]nfoboxes are supposed to summarize article content. If it should be in the infobox, it should be in the infobox because it summarizes the same claim somewhere else within the article text. I have no objection in this case to a Wikipedia infobox containing appropriate content sourced in the article (that can be changed by edits to Wikipedia, rather than by edits to a different website). JBL (talk) 19:14, 22 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I have added a manual infobox. Andre🚐 21:39, 22 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Scotographia

@AndreJustAndre Can you add/do you know the exact publication history of the Scotographia? I looked around for digitizations and it seems to have been published in both Latin and Italian, which the page does not mention. And, according to this post, "the Scotografia was published in Prague in 1593 by Sciuman in two different editions, which had the same content but a different format: the present one in oblong 4to, the other in oblong 12mo. The reason for this double edition is related to the nature of the recipients of the work: The larger book was intended for the princes of the European courts, while the smaller one had a more "operational and practical" function, since it was to be used, as Colorni himself says, by the court officials who were responsible for the immediate decipherment of the codes".

Both Italian versions include a title page with the date 1593. This appears to be a fragment of the 4to Italian, as do this and this. And this and this are the Italian 12mo. This is a Latin 12mo(?), but when was it published? Is there a Latin 4to? GordonGlottal (talk) 14:33, 8 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

OK so this is a Latin 4to. The chart material is still in Italian, which means this could actually have been either. But neither Latin edition has a publication date. GordonGlottal (talk) 14:56, 8 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, I do not have the exact month and day just Prague in 1593. The Italian version is the original. Andre🚐 21:07, 8 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the changes and additions. Meticulously researched as always. Andre🚐 21:11, 8 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]