On 7/29/07, Hello all <wikipedian51(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 7/29/07, K P <kpbotany(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Actually there are all sorts of nationalistic interests alive and
functioning quite well on Wikipedia--how arrogant of the Israels to
want to join the crowd?
Most every Pashtun article on Wikipedia is written from a
Persian-nationalistic perspective, and attempts to change that run one
afoul of those largely responsible for supporting this
silliness--although these editors are falling by the wayside one by
one, because, generally nationalists have one-tracked minds. In the
meantime, there are some very poor, rather silly, and some very unique
(okay, POV) articles on the history of Afghanistan and Pashtuns, that
have very little to do with anything but the Persian declaration that
that section of the world is theirs, always has been, and always will
be. The Brits would have liked that to have been true about 100 years
ago, admitedly. Ironically much of the information is copied en masse
from the bery Brittish biased Encyclopedia Iranica, which, when
challenged, is met with the rallying cry of nationalism, "scholarly
source, scholarly source."
So, how dare the Israels do on Wikipedia what every one else is doing,
or how dare they announce that they are doing it when everyone else is
so cleverly hiding it?
KP
So you're arguing that Wikipedia should do nothing if Iran's Foreign
Ministry is trying to rewrite articles to its liking?
Well, isn't that what it seems like when Persian rewrite all Pashtun
articles to make them the Persianization of Afghanistan on Wikipedia?
There seems to be a mix-up (quite understandable if anyone tried to
figure out what Pashtuns are by reading Wikipedia) about Pashtuns.
Pashtuns are Afghans, not Persians. It's really only on Wikipedia
that Pashtuns are the history of the Persian people.
Well, what are we supposed to do about it? I can't do anything, I'm
only one person, and the moment it was realized that I wouldn't accept
the Persianization of the history of Afghanistan, I was run out of
there. Of course the editor who did most of the running is now banned
for something he didn't do, which just makes the whole situation
absurd.
I never said anywhere that there are "no identifiable organizations
responsible and no specific identifiable articles where it's going
on."
It's not Pashtun-POV pushing. But, again, I can understand and see
why the confusion is so easy to come by when all of our Pashtun
articles have been so heavily Persianized. They do share a lot of
history in common, but every person remotely related to the Persian
Empire does not have to have every inch of Afghan washed out of him or
her, and every word of Afghanistan's history is not one with Persia's.
Afghanistan is not a synonym for Iran. Pashtuns, in spite of
Wikipedia, are not Iranians.
But none of this is really the point. The important point is that
this goes on not just in the Afghanistan subsumation by the Persian
empire, but all over Wikipedia, and without much done about it. That
Israel is open about doing it (apparently their being open about it
means they're not doing it, so we don't have to actually worry about
it), shouldn't be a rallying cry to indignity against Israel for what
they're doing, but an opening to why Israel feels necessary to respond
to Wikipedia in this manner. And, I believe it is necessary because
of the rampant nationalistic POV pushing on Wikipedia.
KP