[WikiEN-l] Nationalist POV-pushing on Wikpedia: what to do? (was Azerbaijan and Iran related articles)

Sun Aug 8 16:32:46 UTC 2004

On 08/08/04 14:37, Jens Ropers wrote:

> 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".

Heh. You do realise I'm not American? (Australian living in London.)

- d.