User:Folantin/Userspace Folantin2

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NB: This is still under construction and rather rough

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[edit] A thought from Ovid

Nam genus et proavos et quae non fecimus ipsi
 vix ea nostra voco...

[edit] Nationalism in the real world and nationalism on Wikipedia

In the real world, nationalism is a political concept which covers a wide variety of territory. For instance, most people would accept that there is an immense difference between Garibaldi and Mussolini. It is not Wikipedia's job to decide on the virtues (or vices) of real-world nationalism or to be either nationalist or anti-nationalist. We merely report the facts and notable opinions about the facts.

Real-world nationalists are quite free to edit Wikipedia so long as they abide by the same policies as everyone else, especially WP:NPOV, WP:V and WP:RS. In fact, the Czech nationalist leader Tomáš Masaryk would probably have made a model editor here. Although he was a passionate Czech patriot, Masaryk was also an honest and objective scholar. As his Wikipedia article says:

He challenged the validity of the epic poems Rukopisy královedvorský a zelenohorský, supposedly dating from the early Middle Ages, and providing a false nationalistic basis of Czech chauvinism to which he was continuously opposed. Further enraging Czech sentiment, he fought against the old superstition of Jewish blood libel during the Hilsner Trial of 1899.

Were all our "nationalist" editors like Masaryk, Wikipedia's historical articles would be superb. Unfortunately, they aren't. All too many editors resemble another kind of nationalist, the type James Joyce portrayed as the "Citizen", an incorrigible Irish chauvinist in Ulysses:

From his girdle hung a row of seastones which jangled at every movement of his portentous frame and on these were graven with rude yet striking art the tribal images of many Irish heroes and heroines of antiquity, Cuchulin, Conn of hundred battles, Niall of nine hostages, Brian of Kincora, the ardri Malachi, Art MacMurragh, Shane O'Neill, Father John Murphy, Owen Roe, Patrick Sarsfield, Red Hugh O'Donnell, Red Jim MacDermott, Soggarth Eoghan O'Growney, Michael Dwyer, Francy Higgins, Henry Joy M'Cracken, Goliath, Horace Wheatley, Thomas Conneff, Peg Woffington, the Village Blacksmith, Captain Moonlight, Captain Boycott, Dante Alighieri, Christopher Columbus, S. Fursa, S. Brendan, Marshal MacMahon, Charlemagne, Theobald Wolfe Tone, the Mother of the Maccabees, the Last of the Mohicans, the Rose of Castile, the Man for Galway, The Man that Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo, The Man in the Gap, The Woman Who Didn't, Benjamin Franklin, Napoleon Bonaparte, John L. Sullivan, Cleopatra, Savourneen Deelish, Julius Caesar, Paracelsus, sir ThomasLipton, William Tell, Michelangelo Hayes, Muhammad, the Bride of Lammermoor, Peter the Hermit, Peter the Packer, Dark Rosaleen, Patrick W. Shakespeare, Brian Confucius, Murtagh Gutenberg, Patricio Velasquez, Captain Nemo, Tristan and Isolde, the first Prince of Wales, Thomas Cook and Son, the Bold Soldier Boy, Arrah na Pogue, Dick Turpin, Ludwig Beethoven, the Colleen Bawn, Waddler Healy, Angus the Culdee, Dolly Mount, Sidney Parade, Ben Howth, Valentine Greatrakes, Adam and Eve, Arthur Wellesley, Boss Croker, Herodotus, Jack the Giantkiller, Gautama Buddha, Lady Godiva, The Lily of Killarney, Balor of the Evil Eye, the Queen of Sheba, Acky Nagle, Joe Nagle, Alessandro Volta, Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa, Don Philip O'Sullivan Beare.

Thus on Wikipedia itself, "nationalist" has become shorthand for "ultra-nationalist POV-pusher".

[edit] How to spot a nationalist POV-pusher (NPP)

  • The NPP's main aim is to set his own nation/ethnicity/race in the best possible light on Wikipedia. Of course, where there are good guys there have to be villains and the NPP has his pet hates among other nationalities, usually the traditional enemies of his nation. Feuding with the "enemy" takes up just as much of the NPP's contributions as promoting his own people does.
  • The NPP is obsessed with the the nationality of famous people. Like Joyce's Citizen, he really does believe in "Patrick W. Shakespeare" and "Brian Confucius". His aim is to claim as many celebrities as possible for the cause even if this sometimes means issuing them with retrospective passports. He doesn't actually care much what they did, just that they were famous. The Hephthalites, or White Huns, were basically a bunch of nomadic thugs who bullied the Sassanid Persian Empire in the 5th century AD. Nobody really knows what their ethnicity was or which language they spoke because they were illiterate. However, this being Wikipedia, the burning issue is whether Iranic or Turkic editors can claim them as their own. As User:Sikandarji, a scholar of this area, wearily remarks on the talk page: "The question of precisely what ethnicity the Hephthalites were is unlikely ever to be definitively resolved (it beats me why anyone should care, but for some people even the most distant link helps massage the nationalist ego)". A prediction: Wikipedia, circa 2765 AD - someone will claim that Hitler was really Manx. This editor will be a Manx nationalist. He will immediately be engaged in an edit war by someone claiming Hitler was Cornish. This editor will be a Cornish nationalist. A third editor will accuse both of them of racism for denying the obvious fact that Hitler was black. This editor will be black.
  • The flipside: if you can't claim a famous person as one of your own nation, make sure your hated rivals can't either. Frustrated by the fact that Shakespeare and Confucius clearly weren't Irish, Joyce's Citizen can take refuge in conspiracy theories to prove they weren't English or Chinese either.
  • Though he seems obsessed by history, the NPP is committed to anachronism.
  • Inability to comprehend WP:COMMONNAME. Here on Wikipedia we are supposed to use the most common English names for towns etc.
  • For the NPP, it is imperative to violate WP:POINT in the interests of higher truth. The NPP is a strong believer in equality. If things happened in his country's history that make it look bad, then in his generosity the NPP is quite happy to make sure such things happened in other countries' histories too, even when they didn't. For instance, most people associate the crime of apartheid solely with South Africa. Not on Wikipedia they don't. Here we share the oppression. And who needs facts when you've got allegations?
  • Use of sources. If at all possible, the NPP will avoid tiresome Wikipedia policies like use reliable sources and verifiability. He derives his knowledge from a higher power: barely remembered school history lessons and stuff he picked up from some bloke down the pub. When forced to find references for his claims, he almost always favours online sources, usually self-published by other NPPs. In the unlikely event he makes it to the library, the NPP will almost certainly have one special book which he will use as his Bible. "Timeo hominem unius libri" said Saint Thomas Aquinas. Don't be surprised if the book is one or all of the following: (a) not written by an accepted expert in the field; (b) published before the Second World War; (c) issued by a small press (i.e. probably vanity publishing); (d) doesn't actually say what the NPP thinks it does (without raping the English language).


[edit] How NOT to resolve such disputes

[edit] Genuine solutions

  • Insist on the enforcement of Wikipedia's policies, especially verifiability and reliable sources. Priority must be given to up-to-date sources which have been peer-reviewed and/or issued by respected publishing houses. Ideally, sources should be in English. This is an English-language encyclopaedia and the only language we can rely on all editors having in common is English. References in articles on controversial topics to sources in foreign languages (especially if they are not widely spoken) should be avoided if at all possible. Improving the quality of sourcing will inevitably improve the article. Intelligent general readers are not mugs and they can tell when POV-pushers have tried to hijack a page. Up-to-date referencing from books in English produced by well-known publishers (especially the presses of major universities) is more likely to persuade the intelligent passerby of its accuracy. (Another irony: over-referencing is likely to decrease readers' confidence in an article. It merely alerts them to the fact that POV-warring is going on and that someone is desperate to sell them their version of The Truth. This is one particularly ludicrous example: [1]).


[edit] Refs

[2] plus [3]. Finally ended here [4].


[edit] Something to offend everybody?

"The linguistic complexity of northeastern Europe and the political changes which have taken place since 1721 mean that several variants of place names exist, and the preference for one form over others is inevitably controversial. Since whatever choice is made will upset somebody, I have tried to balance consistency with the requirements of writing for a largely anglophone readership. Where there is a generally-recognised English form, modern or early modern, I have used it (Cracow, Moscow, Kiev, Malmo, Copenhagen, Samogitia, Livonia). Otherwise I have mainly preferred the form as it appears most frequently in contemporary documents. The greatest problems are posed by Livonia and Estonia, where I have preferred German to Estonian and Latvian forms, and Poland-Lithuania, where I have used the Polish form except for Royal Prussia (thus Danzig, not Gdańsk) and the Ukraine (which in this book denotes the palatinates of Kiev, Volhynia, Bratslav and Chernihiv), where I have used the Ukrainian forms. I have used the term 'Muscovy' to refer to the Russian state until 1667, when the acquisition of the right-bank Ukraine marked the start of the transition to the modern Russian empire. The choices are made entirely on academic grounds. Where strict adherence to these principles would involve absurdities, or where a particular form is solidly grounded in the English-language scholarship, I have departed from them. Thus the battle of Fraustadt (1706) does not become the battle of Wschowa, and I prefer Brest (Litovsk) (the Russian form) to Brześć (Litewski) (Polish). Nationalists may curse me and pedants may excommunicate me if they wish, but I am not writing for them". Robert I. Frost The Northern Wars 1558-1721 (Longman, 2000), Preface, page VIII

[edit] Another quotation

"An oral researcher, interviewing the local shoemaker in a village near Kaunas (Kowno) in 1885, recorded a most revealing conversation:

-What tribe do you belong to?
-I am a Catholic.
-That's not what I mean. I'm asking you whether you are a Pole or a Lithuanian.
-I am a Pole, and a Lithuanian as well.
-That is impossible. You have to be either one or the other.
-I speak Polish, the shoemaker said, and I also speak Lithuanian.

And that was the end of the interview".

Norman Davies God's Playground: A History of Poland

[edit] Most successful nationalist trolling ever?

[5]


[edit] Edits

[6]


Sed nescio quo modo nihil tam absurde dici potest quod non dicatur ab aliquo Vikipedianorum. Cicero on Wikipedia talk pages

[edit] New barnstar

The Tiresome Contributor Barnstar
For your tiresome contributions to [insert relevant articles here]. You just never give up, do you?