User:Donald Trung/Letters to Gary Ashkenazy
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This page exists to share the e-mails I have exchanged with Mr. Gary Ashkenazy (Hebrew: גארי אשכנזי) from Primal Trek (or Primaltrek) requesting him to upload his images to Wikimedia Commons. Gary Ashkenazy participates in a number of coin forums using the nickname “manymore" which I have also attempted to contact him with, but also with no response.
I have never been employed by Mr. Gary Ashkenazy and have no vested interest in linking to Primal Trek, this page only exists because I believe that off-wiki contact related to Wikimedia projects should be published on-wiki.
June 5th, 2017
[edit]"Dear Mr. Ashkenazy,
I am here to request something of you if you’re interested, I want to write more about Chinese coins, and charms on Wikipedia and have already started referencing your work, unfortunately there aren’t that many images available so I would kindly like to ask if you are willing to upload pictures of all of your Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Ryukyuan coins and charms to Wikimedia Commons so the Wikipedian community could share your work and knowledge with the world.
Thank you for your time.
Yours faithfully,
Mr. Trung (徵)
Sent from my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL with Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱."
Titled: “Cultural preservation.” (June 10th, 2017)
[edit]On June 10th, 2017 I sent this letter to Gary Ashkenazy through his public e-mail 📧 listed as “chinesecharms@gmail.com” which is this person’s preferred method of direct communication. As of the day I pasted it here I have not received any communications back from Gary Ashkenazy.
“Dear Gary,
I would like to suggest to you to upload pictures of every Chinese coin and charm in your possession to Wikimedia Commons for historical and cultural preservation. It’ll essentially be gratis hosting and if for any reason you'd ever lose Primaltrek all the information would still be accessible by future generations.
Yours faithfully,
A long time reader.
Sent from my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL with Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱.”
I had accidentally sent this with my Gmail instead of my Microsoft Outlook account, for this reason I didn't use my name in at the sender, but like the previous electronic letter I have not received a reply from Mr. Gary Ashkenazy. Yes, I did try to advertise Wikimedia Commons as a gratis hosting service for Gary Ashkenazy’s images, but let’s be honest images of historical artifacts are fully within Wikimedia Commons’ scope, and Wikimedia Commons is a lot more likely to exist 100 (one-hundred) years from now than Gary Ashkenazy’s Primaltrek/Primal Trek.
Sent 📩 from my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL with Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱. --Donald Trung (Talk 💬) ("The Chinese Coin Troll" 👿) (Articles 📚) 09:32, 21 December 2017 (UTC)
Consulted methods of contact
[edit]- I contacted Mr. Gary Ashkenazy here
- Primal Trek - a journey through Chinese culture (“ABOUT ME” by Gary Ashkenazy on May 1, 2011)
- Skinny Rooster 🐓
- CoinTalk
- Coin Community Forum (Dutch Google)
Korean cash coins on Wikimedia Commons
[edit]Chinese cash coins on Wikimedia Commons
[edit].png)
Too much to list here, please see Category:Coins of China by period. The completeness of Chinese cash coins surely is disputable, but as a general rule I would say that Wikimedia Commons has more images of Chinese cash coins than Gary Ashkenazy’s Primaltrek/Primal Trek largely thanks to the photographs of Jean-Michel Moullec uploaded by Baomi, but Gary Ashkenazy’s Primaltrek/Primal Trek still has better quality images of Chinese cash coins. I think that Wikimedia Commons will be the superior platform for finding images of Chinese cash coins, but that Gary Ashkenazy’s Primaltrek/Primal Trek will remain the internet’s preferred reference for Korean mun coins for the foreseeable future. Also note 📝 that all the Wikipedia articles I have expanded largely based on both Gary Ashkenazy’s Primaltrek/Primal Trek and David Hartill’s “Cast Chinese Coins” have made Wikipedia the superior source because it also integrated information from more sources PLUS THEM, if you're looking for anything other than specific variants and/or images, so in general Wikimedia projects win 🏆 when it comes to information about Chinese and other cash coins, but are still lacking the images, this is why I value my work more on Wikimedia Commons than on Wikipedia as my work on Wikipedia is as good as “complete” while there are so many images that are lacking on Wikimedia Commons that Gary Ashkenazy’s Primaltrek/Primal Trek and various other websites have.
Letter concerning Chinese charms
[edit]On December 30th, 2017 I contacted Gary Ashkenazy who has written a plethora of articles on Chinese charms, on Primaltrek / Primal trek, and 41 more articles on his Primaltrek-blog / Primal trek-blog. He (Gary Ashkenazy) has hundreds of images of Chinese charms on Primaltrek / Primal trek, so I requested him to upload them here on Wikimedia Commons.
“Dear Gary Ashkenazy,
Can you please upload your images of Chinese charms to Wikimedia Commons, a user by the name of Baomi is interested, you can upload them to this category:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Chinese_numismatic_charms
And you can contact Baomi through this link 🔗:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Baomi&action=edit§ion=new
Yours faithfully, Mr. Trung (徵)
Sent 📩 from my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL with Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱.”
This letter 📨 was sent because Baomi wanted to have more images for Category:Chinese numismatic charms to use for Mandarin-Chinese Wikipedia, most unfortunately Gary Ashkenazy doesn't release his images on Primaltrek / Primal trek with a free to use license, so I can only import images of scans like these or these, and such. I really hope that Gary Ashkenazy will upload all of his images of Chinese charms to Wikimedia Commons, when it comes to Chinese charms there is almost nothing here. Personally I don’t like Chinese charms or the idea 💡 of “good luck 🍀 coins” as I believe that they’re all backwards superstitions, but the history behind them is interesting and though I do not plan on writing ✍🏻 much about Chinese charms myself (even though I use website’s like Vladimir Belyaev’s Charm.ru for Chinese numismatic articles), I think that the work Gary Ashkenazy on Chinese charms does should be imported, but that their descriptions fit more in the “information 🛈” panels of their images on Wikimedia Commons than as a Wikipedia article.
Sent 📩 from my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL with Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱. --Donald Trung (Talk 💬) ("The Chinese Coin Troll" 👿) (Articles 📚) 15:27, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
Notification: I uploaded all your images of banknotes to Wikimedia Commons (02 D. 01 M. 2017 A.)
[edit]
“Dear Gary Ashkenazy,
I want to inform you of the fact that I’ve uploaded all images of Chinese banknotes hosted on Primaltrek to Wikimedia Commons, if you’re curious where you can find them check here:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Banknotes_of_the_Republic_of_China_(1912-1949)
Category:Banknotes of the Republic of China (1912-1949)
The fact that they are now hosted on Wikimedia Commons means that they can now be freely used by other people, as these images were already in the public domain I would like to notify you that you (Mr. Gary Ashkenazy) wasn’t the copyright © holder in the first place.
Yours faithfully, Mr. Trung (徵)
Sent 📩 from my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL with Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱.”
I think that it would be a nice courtesy to contact the creator of the PD-scans to let them know that I have imported their images to Wikimedia Commons. Though some would consider this “gratis advertisement” (especially the Wikimedia Commons “community”), many website owners might consider this to be intrusive or even outright “(intellectual property) theft”, but as these images are all in the public domain sir Gary Ashkenazy can't really complain about them being uploaded here. 😅
Sent 📩 from my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL with Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱. --Donald Trung (Talk 💬) ("The Chinese Coin Troll" 👿) (Articles 📚) 08:59, 3 January 2018 (UTC)