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

Mon Aug 9 19:14:11 UTC 2004

On Sun, 8 Aug 2004 14:37:15 UTC, Jens Ropers 
<ropers at ropersonline.com> wrote:

> IMHO nationalist POV has been a problem on Wikipedia for a LOOONG time:
> U.S. nationalist POV, that is.
>...[snip fine example of malicious idiocy from a US source]
> ...
> 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".

Really?  You don't follow the various Middle East discussions much, do 
you?

>...
>  
> 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.

This, though, I have to consider a wee bit presumptuous.  This particular 
list is infested with Americans, and I'm not sure I can even exhaust the 
fingers of one hand in counting all those who are notably "conservative" 
in the US sense, let alone rabid right-wing nationalists. The first one I 
think of is no rabid nationalist, but a peace-maker.  As for the 
hot-headed American who dismissed the above posting as another 
anti-American rant: he contibuted, as apparently his most recent political
posting, a reply to some rabid nationalist loony concerning Michael Moore.
Perhaps what we really need is that all of us who reply to American 
loonies (which I admit I don't often do because my main WP interests are 
outside the polical-rants subjects) need to sign everything with "(US 
citizen)".  Would that help the perception problem?

-- 
Dan Drake
dd at dandrake.com
http://www.dandrake.com

Whoever tries to imagine perfection simply reveals his own emptiness.
 --George Orwell