(22-05-2025, 04:59 AM)BessAgritianin Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Let me answer from the side of solution finders.
When Champollion deciphered the Rosetta Stone, he was working outside the mainstream Egyptology.
Heinrich Schliemann, who famously discovered Troy- was an amateur archaeologist.
They both were mocked by the official science then, until they had enormous success in their work and achieved the goal, unachieved by the brightest wits then.
Like Schliemann Voynich solvers are often dismissed as cranks. Scientists complain over many "crank" theories, but offer no clear way to separate signal from noise.
Academics fear chaos, when they engage amateurs, but let us define what "good" looks like.
For example - launch a "Voynich challenge platform" and pose specific questions, like: Decipher this foil contents.
Does the proposed solution match the manuscript patterns.
Can on other sections the method be applied and results replicated, etc.
Then no one will be offended because will understand that his/her theory does not really work.
BR: Vessy
Right, right and right.
But I am afraid the "challenge platform" exists under the name "internet" already -- any hope for constructive critics is generally useless, especially in this forum here^^.
Apart from "it is not so" and "I dont see it, feed me" there will be no return.
Quote:I'd like to understand the authors' reasons for sending you their theories, instead of posting them on the forum. Aren't they aware of your attitude towards "solvers"?
I think some people consider this forum to be "hostile". So they may want to discuss their solution before posting it here.
Personally I think this place isn't hostile. People here are just honest, clever and critical thinking. At other places like Facebook you can put some mystical, illogical mumbo-jumbo and most probably you will get a few likes but none criticism.
It is generally reasonable that before going public people prefer asking "an expert" in a private conversation. The problem is that many of them aren't ready for criticism, they just want to hear "You are cool, you solved Voynich Manuscript"
People need to understand what "here's my solution, tell me what you think" means. If I were to take the time to read and critique every "solution" sent to me, it would be hours of work every day. Same for Rene. When I am asked by a journal to review a submitted essay, I need to consider the time commitment before responding, because if I'm going to take on that work, I intend to be thorough and constructive, which takes time. I already have a full-time job, so my discretionary time is quite limited. I simply cannot take the time to carefully read and thoroughly respond to every Voynich message that comes to me. And when I have responded, I have yet to find a "solver" who answers my response with anything other than defensiveness and sometimes anger. I have received threats and insults in exchange for my time. Hence my reticence to review solutions at all anymore.
If you aren't ready to submit your work to a journal or press that requires peer review, then you should post it in a blog or self-publish and summarize it here if you want feedback. And do the reading before you even start. Read Ray Clemens' book. Read Claire Bowern and Luke Lindemann's work. Read my work on the paleography of the manuscript. Watch Koen's videos. Check out the Voynich 2022 Conference Proceedings. Check out Nick's blog. And more (there's an enormous bibliography on Rene's website). Learn what we already know, or think we know, before you jump in with your own theories, because if your work is not consistent with what we know to be true about the VMS (or what we strongly suspect to be true), then you cannot possibly be "right." It is inconsiderate, and a waste of everyone's time, to send a theory out into the world that doesn't account for the actual evidence. Also, search the Ninja forum to see if someone has already proposed and discussed your idea!
(22-05-2025, 11:33 AM)Stefan Wirtz_2 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (21-05-2025, 05:58 PM)LisaFaginDavis Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I got three this week, twelve this month. I've received at least fifty in the last two years, with many more before that. [..]
By the way: is that the reason why digitalized VMS ( You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ) does not come with the useful page browser and all download options anymore?
It is quite un-nice to walk to whole script each time and make bad screenshots.
This link includes a simple download of single pages or the entire manuscript:
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In addition, if you scroll all the way to the bottom, there's a link to download the entire manuscript as a PDF, copy the IIIF Manifest URI, or open the manifest in the Mirador Viewer, which has additional functionality.
And if you want to be really fancy about it, you can parse the IIIF manifest code (You are not allowed to view links.
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Login to view.), to find URLs for each JPG in the code, such as:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (f. 1v)
The seven-digit number 1006077 changes sequentially with each page, so 1006077 is f. 2r, 1006078 is f. 2v, 1006079 is f. 3r, etc.
Champollion was not an outsider mocked by "official science" until he achieved his goal. He was highly educated, studied under the best in the field, and was not seen as a "crank" in the way you seem to mean it.
Perhaps you mean Ventris, who was more of an amateur, but he was not seen as a crank by "official science" either.
Both Champollion and Ventris were conscious about mirages appearing in their work, and Ventris was very concerned about falling prey to solveritis and was one of his own biggest skeptics. The average Voynich solver does not show this caution and self doubt.
(22-05-2025, 01:13 PM)LisaFaginDavis Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (22-05-2025, 11:33 AM)Stefan Wirtz_2 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (21-05-2025, 05:58 PM)LisaFaginDavis Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I got three this week, twelve this month. I've received at least fifty in the last two years, with many more before that. [..]
By the way: is that the reason why digitalized VMS ( You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ) does not come with the useful page browser and all download options anymore?
It is quite un-nice to walk to whole script each time and make bad screenshots.
This link includes a simple download of single pages or the entire manuscript:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
In addition, if you scroll all the way to the bottom, there's a link to download the entire manuscript as a PDF, copy the IIIF Manifest URI, or open the manifest in the Mirador Viewer, which has additional functionality.
And if you want to be really fancy about it, you can parse the IIIF manifest code (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.), to find URLs for each JPG in the code, such as:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (f. 1v)
The seven-digit number 1006077 changes sequentially with each page, so 1006077 is f. 2r, 1006078 is f. 2v, 1006079 is f. 3r, etc.
For those with bash and wget:
for i in `seq 1006074 1006279`; do wget -O ${i}.jpg You are not allowed to view links.
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it saves all the files as number.jpg instead of the default.jpg for each picture
Here is the link to my files ( sorted by Quire ).
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