+- The Voynich Ninja (https://www.voynich.ninja)
+-- Forum: Voynich Research (https://www.voynich.ninja/forum-27.html)
+--- Forum: Theories & Solutions (https://www.voynich.ninja/forum-58.html)
+--- Thread: Elephant in the Room Solution Considerations (/thread-5160.html)
RE: Elephant in the Room Solution Considerations - MHTamdgidi_(Behrooz) - 11-02-2026
(11-02-2026, 02:11 AM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If the peer review was positive, people would actively agree with the points made. This happens quite often on the forum. Both negative replies and lack of replies mean negative result, as far as I understand the very idea of the peer review. Most likely the ideas either don't appear substantiated or don't appear significant.
This doesn't prove you wrong, but this certainly means that your argument so far is not persuasive. By definition, otherwise there would be active support.
Well, that is your opinion and you are entitled to it. It may very well be the case that others on this forum have not felt persuaded by what I have shared, but I have also seen what some have been persuaded to take seriously and share, and for me some of them also seem odd and unreasonable.
Lack of response does not mean anything as far as reasonable engagement go, and I have yet to receive a reasonable engagement with the proposals I have been making, so that I can judge for myself the soundness of their evaluation or convince others of the value of what I have tried to share. Those that were shared, I responded to.
Silence equaling correctness of views not expressed seems like an unreasonable expectation in science. I can’t have a crystal ball in reading others’ minds, unfortunately. This is a problem with peer review expectations, as I have discussed on my work, having published both traditional and independent works, and been an editor myself, so I am aware of what has been packaged as “peer review” in academia, hands-on.
If you think people not engaging with my proposals means automatically my views did not have substantive value, that is just your opinion. There can be many reasons for not engaging with others, and as a sociologist of knowledge I am aware of that and it is not an equation of first degree.
RE: Elephant in the Room Solution Considerations - Typpi - 11-02-2026
(11-02-2026, 02:34 AM)MHTamdgidi_(Behrooz) Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If you think people not engaging with my proposals means automatically my views did not have substantive valueI just read through the whole thread and I saw quite a few people engaging.
I think the problem is you're extremely long winded and there's no quick summary of what you're purposing.
I just read the entire thread and I'm still a bit lost. Maybe summarizing all your points in a single post without being overly verbose might help people engage you with what you're looking for.
RE: Elephant in the Room Solution Considerations - MHTamdgidi_(Behrooz) - 11-02-2026
(11-02-2026, 03:16 AM)Typpi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I just read through the whole thread and I saw quite a few people engaging.
Thanks much for reading through the thread. At some point, one has to follow one’s (imperfect) preferred style, despite its not being to others liking. People come in different sizes and shapes, and I happen to write this way. That is one reason I think it is best that I discontinue taking more of others’ time, given that I think I have shared the basics of what I intended to share and sharing more would not make a difference anyway.
Believe me when I say I have seen and read much, much, longer material on this forum, and off-site, variously well-organized/expressed, or not, by those in the forum, and it never ever crossed my mind to judge their style of writing and stigmatize them by calling them long-winded or their text verbose, even when benevolently expressed. This is simply because I am most interested in what people have to say than judging their language skills. Nobody’s perfect, unless you think some are. I am used to reading long (and brief) material and I appreciate it when I find someone is trying to elaborate more on topics, even though they may express things in ways that is not my style.
What is unreasonable for me is to accept that simply because others decided not to engage with me, that automatically qualifies their views as being reasonable and evidence based. How can one even assume that, and even if so, regard it as being a fair peer review? I mean, some folks may have their own or another favorite view to defend, and so on. I cannot even know whether someone who never engaged with my views is right or wrong, and those who did share, I responded to. Peer review does not happen in silence, and to expect that to be a reasonable way of peer reviewing is odd and quite unfair.
I mean how can I judge someone being correct, when I have not even heard anything from them. Should such “peer review” evaluations also be “actually based on observations and some evidence”? What is the evidence for someone agreeing or not and passing a judgment at my views, when they never bothered to say anything substantive and verifiable? That does not seem scientific to me, as far as peer review is concerned, and it does not matter to me what their credentials are. We don't have gods in science.
I am grateful for the engagements made so far, however. I just feel that it is best not to take more of their time since I have already shared what I intended for whatever it is worth, and if I find more things to say I will just share it in a way that does not take time from this forum. I realize these exchanges themselves are also taking others' time, so hopefully I won't need to write more on this matter and it stops with this post.
RE: Elephant in the Room Solution Considerations - Typpi - 11-02-2026
(11-02-2026, 04:08 AM)MHTamdgidi_(Behrooz) Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Thanks much for reading through the thread. At some point, one has to follow one’s (imperfect) preferred style, despite its not being to others liking. People come in different sizes and shapes, and I happen to write this way.
That's completely fine... But you also then have to understand that nobody "has" to accept your style and it makes discussion very ambiguous and inaccessible to a majority of people. The more accessible you make your writing the more people will tend to look at it.
Sometimes you have to compromise.
I don't know what's stopping you from making a summary.
I saw people have had similar complaints in the few very pages of this thread and they still hold true.
Maybe just answering these questions directly would help?
1. What are you trying to achieve with your posting here? (Support, help, peer review, praise, show new theory.. etc)
2. What is your theory behind the VM/text/authorship etc?
3. What evidence supports that theory?
4. How does this compare to other theories?
RE: Elephant in the Room Solution Considerations - oshfdk - 11-02-2026
(11-02-2026, 02:34 AM)MHTamdgidi_(Behrooz) Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If you think people not engaging with my proposals means automatically my views did not have substantive value, that is just your opinion. There can be many reasons for not engaging with others, and as a sociologist of knowledge I am aware of that and it is not an equation of first degree.
It is true that some posts generate more interest for reasons other than the significance and persuasiveness of the content, so the relationship is not linear. However, if both the arguments were persuasive and the ideas significant, I would expect some positive reaction. There are hundreds of people reading this forum.
Personally, as I already said, I find the ideas not impossible and I'd say extremely important if only there were strong arguments supporting them.
RE: Elephant in the Room Solution Considerations - eggyk - 12-02-2026
(11-02-2026, 04:08 AM)MHTamdgidi_(Behrooz) Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I am grateful for the engagements made so far, however. I just feel that it is best not to take more of their time since I have already shared what I intended for whatever it is worth, and if I find more things to say I will just share it in a way that does not take time from this forum. I realize these exchanges themselves are also taking others' time, so hopefully I won't need to write more on this matter and it stops with this post.
Hi Behrooz, I looked through much of this thread and I personally think that one of the reasons you may not be gathering as much traction or discussion for your ideas is that they are all posted in this thread, instead of their own thread within their respective forum areas. I would imagine that some users gravitate more to the area they are most familiar with, such as provenance and history, imagery, or astronomy + astronomy. Therefore some very knowledgeable forum goers likely haven't had the opportunity to answer your posts within a space dedicated to a single topic (as opposed to on page 18 of a 21 page multi-topic thread).
Your ideas may be worth persuing, or they may not be. Each of them deserves its own place to stand up to or fall to peer review. Personally I would be more likely to do such peer review in the seperate areas of the forum. Some days i just want to look at imagery, some days i just want to look at text analysis, you know?
(22-12-2025, 08:14 PM)MHTamdgidi_(Behrooz) Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I find it helpful to apply to my study of the VM what we call in sociology the “phenomenological” approach. Even though that term crosses disciplinary boundaries for good reasons, in sociology we use it to refer to a procedure whereby we study something inductively, in each step always questioning not just what we are studying, but also our own notions of it that we have taken for granted. So, in each step, we ask, even regarding obvious terms or notions, “what do you mean by that?”
(22-12-2025, 08:14 PM)MHTamdgidi_(Behrooz) Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Does the VM exist? What is it? Why is it? How did it (and our efforts in knowing it, or not) come about historically?
Now, in terms of a response to your post near the beginning of this thread, I actually agree with the general concept of what you were saying there. I find this to be an important factor in the potential understanding of the VMS, namely the need to constantly re-check and re-verify the working assumptions of the research on an ongoing basis. If we are currently taking something for granted that we shouldn't, it could be the difference between success and failure. The only way to prevent that is to go back down to first principles, questioning all of our axioms regarding the VMS, no matter how "obvious" they may seem.
Unfortunately, doing so is genuinely frustrating to those who have worked on this, and understandably so. Having someone new come tell you "hey, that thing you're doing in your field of expertise may be fundamentally wrong!" is frustrating at best and offensive at worst. If this is to be done, it needs to be done the right way and with caution, as I learnt very recently myself here: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(27-12-2025, 09:29 PM)MHTamdgidi_(Behrooz) Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.But I also wish to share a note regarding the issue of length, or wall, of a post, that has been raised. I must say that I have been puzzled by that reaction at the length of my two posts, or its content, which I thought were written accessibly.
Your writing style is who you are and I think that it's fine (even if long-winded
) . However, in a moving thread such as this where the subject drifts over time, it becomes difficult to follow. Even though each individual post is generally followable, newcomers to the thread have to navigate pages of long posts, each discussing something different. If someone was interested in the text near the pleiades being "Botrus", could you honestly tell me without looking which pages of this thread are relevant, and which are not?I genuinely think that your post sizes are entirely appropriate if the subject is well defined. That way everything in the post continues to be firmly on a specific topic and is then more informative and easy to discuss.
In any case, don't feel like what you are saying has no value. If it had no value at all, we wouldn't be on page 21.
RE: Elephant in the Room Solution Considerations - MHTamdgidi_(Behrooz) - 12-02-2026
(11-02-2026, 03:42 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.(11-02-2026, 02:34 AM)MHTamdgidi_(Behrooz) Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If you think people not engaging with my proposals means automatically my views did not have substantive value, that is just your opinion. There can be many reasons for not engaging with others, and as a sociologist of knowledge I am aware of that and it is not an equation of first degree.
It is true that some posts generate more interest for reasons other than the significance and persuasiveness of the content, so the relationship is not linear. However, if both the arguments were persuasive and the ideas significant, I would expect some positive reaction. There are hundreds of people reading this forum.
Personally, as I already said, I find the ideas not impossible and I'd say extremely important if only there were strong arguments supporting them.
@oshfdk
I appreciate your reading my posts and offering your views. I greatly admire those like you who are not convinced easily AND express them in more or less detail so that we can have a conversation about it, since in silence nobody can even judge if judgments made are reasonable or not.
I am exactly like you in this and perhaps even more so than you may imagine. So, when you see me offering a plausible proposal, you should rest assured it is not an impulsive proposal, but a result of lots of back and forth in my mind about it.
My thread has been a process, rather than a final-result reporting act. I have actually learned a lot of new things since starting the thread, myself or from others. I have not shared many things I even had learned before starting the thread since I want to be more sure about them, and I have learned new things since, which I have not also shared, since I am still trying to fully convince myself in the exactly the same spirit as yours.
When I say I have become even more convinced, it is not a statement made loosely. I mean it and if I follow up with my procedure without distractive comments about the length or size or organization of how I say things, perhaps you will also see more light at the end of the tunnel.
Your feedback and that of @eggyk (not entirely, but partly, in his case) has made me a bit more hopeful that at least a few are willing to consider the substance of what I am sharing here. So, I may continue, depending on whether more distractions occur. I am not here to waste anybody’s (and my) time, for sure.
So, please note that I am not expecting you to agree or not, yet, since I have not even shared many things I had planned to share, previously learned, or being newly found. But I do appreciate your sentiments, since I can see they are genuine and based on careful reading of my posts.
This is just an open-ended process of learning for me as well. But, I can confidently say that so far, my previous and new findings are reinforcing my hypothesis about the authorship of the manuscript.
RE: Elephant in the Room Solution Considerations - MHTamdgidi_(Behrooz) - 12-02-2026
@ eggyk
I appreciate your reading back in my posts. I can see that you are also trying to understand what is happening to this thread. I disagree with some things you have said, but agree with others, and the value of what you shared is that we can discuss things in an evidence-based way, in the sense that now I understand why you may say this or that.
Regarding your point about not segmenting my thread may explain why others may not find and engage with my findings, I respectfully disagree, and your point to me demonstrates that you have not considered the very reason why I started this thread in “seeing the whole elephant (in the room).”
First of all, things can’t be so cleanly separated, and those who wish to find things, can find that a lot of times things have been mixed up, and that actually says a lot about why splitting the elephant does not help seeing the whole.
Breaking the text, image, physical, or historical material into parts will just defeat my purpose. It just won’t work. The length of my posts (beside my writing style) have also to do with the effort I am making to incorporate and appreciate other contributions in this forum and elsewhere.
The elephant is not just the Voynich manuscript, but includes how we go about understanding it. Even the distractive comments about someone’s writing style, when it becomes obsessive and preventive of engaging with the substance of what people say is part of the elephant, as far as I am concerned.
For me, these cannot be separated. Having empathy toward a contributor, or not, that is, understanding (or not) why he or she is trying to contribute rather than judging them based on matters of form or style, is a part of the elephant. Empathy is not just a moral issue, but goes to the heart of what can help us solve the VM puzzle, since without putting ourselves in the author’s shoes, we cannot succeed in knowing why the authorship happened.
Yes, you are correct that what I said about the need for a “phenomenological” method, questioning what we take for granted, is not easy on any of us. Thanks for reading my point carefully there. But, I really don’t think we can make progress in the VM research without putting ourselves in the subject matter of our studies, questioning our own methods or views as well, or even how we receive a newcomer to this forum. We can’t separate our own likes or dislikes, beliefs or biases, from the research process, and that can make us uncomfortable.
But I have also learned that often, a negation of an idea does not make it go away entirely, but, if it is a useful point, it will HAVE to come back in some way to see the whole elephant. So, I have learned in my own research to welcome such moments when something does not fit or explain things, and even when I find something negates my earlier findings. I see those moments as wonderful opportunities for new learnings, than losses.
So, I have no problem at all with hearing reasonable critiques. But silences, I can’t do anything about and never ever will they mean to me as being proper peer reviews. How could they? Those who remain silently judgmental are not doing themselves a favor, since it is only expressing them that can subject their own assumed “peer review” judgments and abilities to the test of being peer reviewed. I mean, do you think that someone offering (or not) an opinion qualifies it as being correct and a “scientific peer review”! You think peer reviewers don't deserve being seriously peer reviewed themselves?
What has really struck me as odd ever since I joined this forum is this continual obsessive commenting on the length of my posts. In some ways it is actually quite interesting; in others, it is hurtful and those who use pseudonyms may not feel the hurt as much if they were themselves the target of such comments.
Some are so focused on my writing style and its length that they don’t seem to be interested in the substance of what I am saying, regardless of their views, pro or con. As imperfect as my writing style (in a forum context) may be in others' views, I do NOT think it is so hard or opaque that others can’t follow it. Solving the VM puzzle requires integrative attention spans, not short ones. I can’t do anything about it. Without patience and integrative attention, nobody can solve this puzzle, sorry to say.
This seems odd to me because I would never EVER do such a thing to others in this forum or elsewhere, judging people’s writing styles and use words or labels to stigmatize them and what they offer, simply because they don’t have time to read them, or do so fully, or carefully. Sorry, I am not into summary sound bites. Not my style. My posts may be longer than others, but are short enough to be copied and pasted in google AI for a summary, for those who are interested to do it for their own needs, without asking me to repeat myself.
Let me just say here that, as far as I am concerned and the way I see it, I think the continual focus on labeling someone as “long-winded” and “verbose,” finding such excuses not to engage with the substance of what someone is saying, is an indication that some sort of ad hominem put down is going on in disguise, funny-faced icons used or not. I find it insulting, sorry to say, and those who continue to use them are displaying their own self-defeating ways of going about learning things.
This is a very well moderated forum, judging from others I have seen. In my view, sometimes, inadvertently or not, ad hominem attack take on a disguised form to avoid more moderation scrutiny and benevolent funny-face icons are used to disguise them. By labeling someone "long-winded" and "verbose" you are directing attention away from the substance of what they are trying to say and minimizing their contributions.
I don’t think labels such as “long-windedness” or “verbose” (especially when they are used without substantive engagements) serve any purpose other than continual replacing of character judgment for substantive engagement, especially when it is done in the context of double standards, not applied elsewhere, when authors of even longer, and even less accessible, narrative or statistical, texts are not labeled the same way, sent to the bucket or not.
I mean, can you visit some other posts on this site where much longer texts are shared without anyone resorting to such labels immediately? For me even these observations are part of the whole elephant we wish to see in this forum. They are red flags for disguised ad hominem comments.
If folks think that the resources they wish to learn from will be packaged neatly for them and summarized, they have not seen what is out there, especially in academia. So, navigating different writing styles of researchers is, in my view, a basic skill all need to learn in research. It is the alphabet of research undertaking.
I have never EVER let any writing styles in ANY material I read to stop me from learning useful information contained in them. I will hunt for their useful information no matter who they are and how they say it. I will leave nothing unscrutinized, and will dig as much as I can for what is useful in them. I understand that they are not offered in a silver platter for me.
An eager researcher that wishes to learn something at all costs, will not complain about why an author writes this way or that way. For decades, or centuries, people have tried to learn what the Voynich manuscript is all about without even understanding a word of it. That should be the spirit of those who read research material, which are supposedly even more accessible than the VM.
I hope I have addressed the general spirit of what you kindly shared, and in the interest of not making this longer, I stop here.
RE: Elephant in the Room Solution Considerations - eggyk - 12-02-2026
(12-02-2026, 06:54 PM)MHTamdgidi_(Behrooz) Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Regarding your point about not segmenting my thread may explain why others may not find and engage with my findings, I respectfully disagree, and your point to me demonstrates that you have not considered the very reason why I started this thread in “seeing the whole elephant (in the room).”
First of all, things can’t be so cleanly separated, and those who wish to find things, can find that a lot of times things have been mixed up, and that actually says a lot about why splitting the elephant does not help seeing the whole.
Okay, that's fine. The consequence of doing it this way is that the aspects of the elephant become harder to find and discuss. I'm not saying to split your theory, but I am saying that peer reviewing certain aspects of your theory will be far more likely to occur if you were to do so in some way.
For example, if you made a thread to discuss whether the Pleiades-Botrus substitution stands up to scrutiny, you can discuss the specific details of that aspect there, and then state in the thread that what is being debated is part of your overall theory (with a link to this thread). In that sense, the theory isn't "split", but its more that the full elephant remains here, but the trunk, legs, ears and tail become visible elsewhere. If people find those parts of the elephant, they may be directed here to discuss to whole.
If you don't want to do that, that is completely fine. It's just my opinion on how best to promote the theory and my reasoning for why some of the issues you face occur. We can agree to disagree on that.
(12-02-2026, 06:54 PM)MHTamdgidi_(Behrooz) Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Let me just say here that, as far as I am concerned and the way I see it, I think the continual focus on labeling someone as “long-winded” and “verbose,” finding such excuses not to engage with the substance of what someone is saying, is an indication that some sort of ad hominem put down is going on in disguise, funny-faced icons used or not. I find it insulting, sorry to say, and those who continue to use them are displaying their own self-defeating ways of going about learning things.
Me saying "long-winded" was not said as an insult or as a critique! If you look at my threads, they tend to be long-winded. I was actually trying to be supportive by acknowledging the subject (the length of your posts, which was the subject of the quote I responded to) and showing that at least I do not have any issue with them. If the subject had never been raised, I would not have brought up the subject, similar to how you wouldn't for others.
(12-02-2026, 06:54 PM)MHTamdgidi_(Behrooz) Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.So, I have no problem at all with hearing reasonable critiques. But silences, I can’t do anything about and never ever will they mean to me as being proper peer reviews. How could they? Those who remain silently judgmental are not doing themselves a favor, since it is only expressing them that can subject their own assumed “peer review” judgments and abilities to the test of being peer reviewed. I mean, do you think that someone offering (or not) an opinion qualifies it as being correct and a “scientific peer review”! You think peer reviewers don't deserve being seriously peer reviewed themselves?
No, I don't think that. I will say though that in order to demand peer review for a theory, that theory must be as accessible as possible. Just as navigating the various styles of others is a skill, so is communicating to the various styles of listeners.
Lets say that you want my peer review on your theory, where do I genuinely begin, and what do I peer review? So much has been said by so many people that I would struggle to summarise the whole thread, let alone critique it in whole. Something that I would be genuinely interested in seeing is a set of links to the posts you find important to show (like a contents), so me and others can parse the content more easily.
Anyway, I don't mean to derail your thread. I just wanted to be supportive.
RE: Elephant in the Room Solution Considerations - Typpi - 12-02-2026
(12-02-2026, 06:54 PM)MHTamdgidi_(Behrooz) Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I hope I have addressed the general spirit of what you kindly shared, and in the interest of not making this longer, I stop here.
Writing long posts and being overly verbose is a good thing if you actually have information to share. The problem is (and I mean this nicely as possible) there is very little substance in the posts. You could shorten this entire post to just:
---
I think my long posts are necessary because the Voynich Manuscript can’t be understood by splitting everything into separate topics. People focusing on my writing style instead of the content are missing the point, and sometimes it feels like an indirect personal attack.
I want people to engage with the ideas, not judge the length. Silence isn’t useful feedback, and calling my posts “verbose” doesn’t help anyone. Real research requires patience, empathy, and willingness to question our own assumptions.
I’m open to reasonable critique, but dismissing my work because it’s long is unfair and counterproductive. That’s the main issue I’m trying to address.
---
Secondly, you have to understand by the way you're going about this makes it extremely hard to follow. People have explained this over and over to you and you refuse to compromise while at the same time complaining about the "silence"
If you want more engagement you NEED to change your writing style.