Talk:Aladdin

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Aladdin article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Archives: 1: 3 months

Western Asia Low‑importance

	Asia portal This article is within the scope of the WikiProject Western Asia, which collaborates on articles related to Western Asia. To participate, you can edit this article or visit the project page for more details.Western AsiaWikipedia:WikiProject Western AsiaTemplate:WikiProject Western AsiaWestern Asia articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Fictional characters

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Fictional characters, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of fictional characters on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Fictional charactersWikipedia:WikiProject Fictional charactersTemplate:WikiProject Fictional charactersfictional character articles

Folklore Mid‑importance

	This article falls within the scope of WikiProject Folklore, a WikiProject dedicated to improving Wikipedia's coverage of the topics of folklore and folklore studies. If you would like to participate, you may edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project's page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to discussion.FolkloreWikipedia:WikiProject FolkloreTemplate:WikiProject FolkloreFolklore articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Children's literature Mid‑importance

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Children's literature, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Children's literature on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Children's literatureWikipedia:WikiProject Children's literatureTemplate:WikiProject Children's literaturechildren and young adult literature articles

Mid

This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Tasks you can do:

Here are some open tasks for WikiProject Children's literature, an attempt to create and standardize articles related to children's literature. Feel free to help with any of the following tasks.

Add {{Portal|Children's literature}} to the See also section of related articles.
Tag the talk pages of related articles with {{WikiProject Children's literature}}
Join WikiProject Children's literature and list yourself as a Participant in the project.
Cleanup: A cleanup listing for this project is available. See also the list by category, the tool's wiki page and the index of WikiProjects.
Deletion discussions: listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Literature
Notability: Articles with notability concerns, listed at WikiProject Notability
Rate the Unassessed articles in the Children's literature WikiProject.
References: Add references to Unreferenced BLPs.
Requested articles: Create a requested article on literature
Stubs: Improve a stub-class article

edit

Anthropology: Oral tradition Low‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Anthropology, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Anthropology on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.AnthropologyWikipedia:WikiProject AnthropologyTemplate:WikiProject AnthropologyAnthropology articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the importance scale.
	This article is supported by Oral tradition taskforce.

NPOV

I didn't realise Jews were infallible:(although propagating negative stereotypes does no one any good)

The original full text includes a very antisemitic episode, usually omitted in the bowdlerized versions, in which the naïve Aladdin is cheated and exploited by a treacherous Jewish merchant, and is saved by the Jew's honest and upright Muslim competitor.

Surely these members of society are capable of committing crimes, fictional or not, no more or less evil than the rest. Is ANY depiction of a contemptuous black person an act of white supremacy?

Response: While there are those among any nationality or race who will commit wrong doings, they do not create these stereotypes. Rather the existence of a stereotype pushes individuals until they emulate it. This, in addition to the fact that it is perhaps a bit unnecessary to include nationality/religion/race with a criminal of certain practice. This inclusion seems to serve no narrative purpose other than to rally the reader, actively or passively against a common enemy. This is antisemitism in practice.

Need a source for a plot element?

So apparently someone with no knowledge of the story has butted in and demanded a source for "though many adaptations for the story limit Aladdin to three wishes, there are no such limitations in the original." So, Jusdafax, how about you bother to read the story and stop undoing a common sense edit. Your ignorance is painful. What is your next great unedit - demanding that someone cite a source for the sky being blue. This kind of nonsense is ridiculous. Now I am going to replace the edit, and if YOU have a PROBLEM, YOU come HERE and DISCUSS IT with ME before changing it. 47.150.234.2 (talk) 05:21, 21 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@47.150.234.2: it seems you're new here, so you should read and understand our verifiability policy. With few exceptions, everything entered into a Wikipedia article must be verifiable in a published reliable source. The Bold, revert, discuss cycle is fundamental, which means if someone challenges something that you add to an article, the burden is on you to supply the source. Telling them not to remove content you added without discussing it is not how that process works, and demanding that they go do their own research ("bother to read the story") is not an acceptable response. In this particular case, you want to add a claim that "many adaptations incorporate a limitation of three wishes", and your response to a request for sourcing is to claim that this is common knowledge. You should read this essay about what constitutes "common knowledge" here. To verify your claim would require one to have read multiple different versions of the Aladdin story, in order to know that "many" of them have this particular plot point. This can in no way considered to be "common knowledge". We absolutely do not require editors to be subject matter experts in order to edit an article on a given subject.

To support your claim, you must provide "many" examples of versions of the story that have the three wishes plot point. Alternatively, you may wish to reduce your claim to say that "some versions" have this limitation, in which case you may only need to provide a couple of examples. Or you may want to name some specific versions, such as "the 1992 Disney film Aladdin". Finally, the tone of your response to Jusdafax's request for sources is unacceptable. Civility is one of the five fundamental principles that Wikipedia operates under. If you continue to respond to normal processes like asking for sources with this level of incivility and hostility, your time here will be short. I commend you for opening this discussion on the tak page, which is an appropriate step, but I hope that you will moderate your tone so that you can continue to participate collegially and contribute further. CodeTalker (talk) 15:44, 21 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Setting

A great deal of "virtual ink" has been spilt over the setting of the original story (China or Muslim Middle East?). But provided we make it clear that the original text of the story is inconsistent, and that in fact different "re-tellings" set it in "Chinese" or "Middle Eastern" versions of Fairyland - is speculation about historical/geographic background either notable or indeed relevant? Just a thought - but one that is (probably) just worth thrashing out before we redo this section. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 01:07, 21 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Andersens Tinderbox

Why is there no mention of Andersens Tinderbox as an adaptation? It seems to me that besides having 1) a magic object, 2) rags-to-riches and 3) a magician who sends him underground to retrieve the magic object there is a fourth crucial and rather non-obvious, highly original element preserved by Andersen 4) transportation of the Princess to the boys’ room with raunchy implications in both tales. 2.86.149.188 (talk) 19:20, 27 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

A very old "talk" entry seems to answer this one!

Alternative plot lines

There are numerous versions of the story - in general I don't think these are in themselves particularly notable, at least not here. Point is that [trying to include all of them] could quite easily overwhelm the article, and be more a source of confusion than anything else. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 00:21, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Although we have since added a good deal about "versions" of the original tale rather than stories that simply have features in common. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 05:04, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Still more Disney

For all its faults the (silly) Disney version of the story has been the "best-known" version since "that" cartoon came out. This very sad - since of course the storyline is not improved, not to mention other features - but it is patent fact, and, alas, not an opinion. A whole generation of (especially) Americans are in fact unaware of any other retelling, to the extent that historically this article has been frequestly edited to bring it into line with Disney. Most English speakers are aware of the difference between "best" and "best-known", one imagines. Soundofmusicals (talk) 08:35, 31 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]