[WikiEN-l] Re: Bot for generating articles on cities in Israel

Wed Sep 17 01:16:16 UTC 2003

Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
> --- Adam Raizen <araizen at newmail.net> wrote:
> 
>>>The ethnic makeup of the city is 80.5% Jewish and
>>>other, and 20.0% Arab (15.4% Muslim and 4.0%
>>>Christian). There are 450 new immigrants.
>>
>>What's unclear about it? Also, do you think that
>>there are too many 
>>statistics, or too few? There are a lot more
>>statistics available, but I 
>>don't want to clutter up the pages with a bunch of
>>useless statistics.
>>--Adam Raizen
> 
> 
> What do you mean "Jewish and other"? Are all
> christians there arab? are there no arab jews? Are you
> treating Jewish as an ethnicity or a religion? It
> looks like ethnicity from the context.
> LDan

My explanation from [[User talk:AdamRaizen/Ramla]]:

 >It's other non-Arab. This is the CBS's category, and it doesn't
 >break it down any further. In general, other refers to people who are
 >married to a Jew, or whose father or grandfather was Jewish, and thus
 >immigrated under the Law of Return, but aren't considered Jewish by the
 >Rabbinate. Culturally, they're basically the same a secular Israeli
 >Jew, so the category makes some sense.

Arabs who convert to Judaism are very rare, and I'm nearly certain that 
they're considered Jews in these figures. Likewise, non-Arab Muslims and 
Christians are negligible.

 > Are you refering to the fact that Judiasm, according
 > to the laws therof, is transfered from mother to child
 > (as written at [[Judaism#Who_is_a_Jew]])? If so, I'd
 > suggest that you chage
 >
 > The ethnic makeup of the city is 80.5% Jewish and
 > other, and 20.0% Arab (15.4% Muslim and 4.0%
 > Christian). There are 450 new immigrants.
 >
 > to
 >
 > Tje ethnic makeup of the city is 80.5% Jewish by
 > ethnicity and 20.0% Arab, consisting of 15.4% Muslim,
 > and 4.0% Christian. There are 450 new immigrants since
 > the last time the census was taken.

Distinguishing between Jewish ethnicity, Jewish religion, and who the 
State of Israel considers as Jewish is not an easy task. I'll add "See 
[[Population groups in Israel]]." to the end of the ethnicity paragraph, 
so that we can refine and expound the categories there in detail.

I don't see how your proposed change is an improvement (or even a 
change, really). The categories "Jewish" and "Arab" are clearly 
ethnicities (with some complications for "Jewish") as specified by "the 
ethnic makeup", but no one considers "Christian" or "Muslim" to be 
anything other than a religion, so there shouldn't be any confusion there.

By the way, for reference, the exact category names used by the CBS are: 
"Jews and others (percent)", "Arab population (percent)", "Muslim Arabs 
(percent)", "Arab Christians (percent)", and "Druze (percent)".

 > Yes, I do think a table would be easier to read, but
 > there should also be some content in paragraph form.

Is there any more support for tables, even though it breaks with the 
style set in Rambot's articles?

 > I'll try to find content to put in the articles that
 > is automated. So far, I've found
 > http://www.iula.org.il/cities/citind.htm, a list of
 > links to the websites of all of the big cities in
 > Israel, but that's it, and it probably would go into
 > the table.
 > LDan

This is great. I'll be sure to include those, under "External Links".

--Adam Raizen