New subject: Nationalist POV-pushing on Wikpedia: what to do? (was Azerbaijan and Iran related articles)

8 Aug 2004

see below:

On 8 Aug 2004, at 05:21, fun(a)thingy.apana.org.au wrote:

...
  Message: 8
 Date: Sun, 8 Aug 2004 09:33:06 +1000
 From: David Gerard &lt;fun(a)thingy.apana.org.au&gt;
 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Nationalist POV-pushing on Wikpedia: what to do?
 	(was	Azerbaijan and Iran related articles)
 To: English Wikipedia &lt;wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org&gt;
 Message-ID: &lt;20040807233306.GA18928(a)thingy.apana.org.au&gt;
 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

 S.Vertigo (sewev(a)yahoo.com) [040808 05:43]:

  How about just protecting them, use a very
condensed
 version of the {{protected}} banner, (its just too
 much text and graphics people) and make people work on
 a proxy draft instead? 

 Hasn't worked - the anons don't talk, they just revert. Protecting one 
 page
 for a month did nothing - they just came back when it was unprotected 
 and
 started over.

 Nationalist POV pushing is becoming a real problem on Wikipedia.
 Particularly in cases where it appears semi-official, as with these 
 cases
 and with User:Levzur on Georgia-related articles. I suspect a series 
 of AC
 rulings as we go isn't really the best way to approach the problem. 
 What
 can we do abouthis sort of thing? Gdansk/Danzig is just the tip of it.

 - d. 
I'm going to say something EXTREMELY unpopular -- because _it needs to 
be kept in mind_ in this context:
(and no, I'm not trying to have a go at anybody with this)

IMHO nationalist POV has been a problem on Wikipedia for a LOOONG time:
U.S. nationalist POV, that is.

Examples?
I'll give you an example:
I've seen an article where it was disputed that the warfare use of 
napalm constituted chemical warfare, and where the caption to a famous 
picture showing the consequences of a U.S. napalm attack was changed -- 
the contributor simply disputed whether the U.S. had been responsible 
for the Vietnam napalm attack. Later _the same contributors_ suddenly 
discovered that there were copyright issues with the use of the 
picture... (See my previous email to AP I cc'd you on.)

But of course: It would have been a "Vietcong" trick, right? Bomb their 
own, have a photo shot, discredit the poor battered U.S. 
internationally...
Yeez...
I could not possibly make up a better real world example of George 
Orwell's [[Doublethink]] (of 1984, see WP article).
Really folks, I do rarely, in this day and age, ever see people whose 
moral compasses and standards of truthfulness are so *seriously* out of 
whack as a certain group of U.S. "patriots".

I do _not_ dispute that there are _big_ problems as regards non-U.S. 
nationalist POV -- and I don't have a magical solution to that.
But I also seem to remember some story about a chip and a beam, 
respectively... in some person's eyes...

What I'm trying to say is that, _especially_ with the inherent pro-U.S. 
slant that's simply due to the large number of U.S. WP contributors, 
it's IMPOSSIBLE for "the rest of us" to go it alone in trying to 
balance things out. Given the said slant, I would like to appeal that 
seriously minded U.S. NPOVers _help wherever they can_ and -- keeping 
the above in mind -- always seek to apply _more_ restraint and a 
_stricter_ standard whenever there is a possible U.S. side to an issue. 
It's probably the only way we're going to get a lid on U.S. nationalist 
POV.

And, yes, I too believe that it's utterly fruitless to start a 
discussion on which country's contributors have the worst nationalist 
POV offenders among them. But it can't hurt to keep the above in mind, 
can it?

Thanks and regards,
Jens Ropers

There are two types of IT techs: The ones who watch soap operas and the 
ones who watch progress bars.
http://www.ropersonline.com/elmo/#108681741955837683