Dan Drake" dd@dandrake.com wrote:
Message: 2 Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2004 19:14:11 +0000 (UTC) From: "Dan Drake" dd@dandrake.com Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Nationalist POV-pushing on Wikpedia: what to do? (was Azerbaijan and Iran related articles) To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org Message-ID: vhIsdqY67dTD-pn2-0ig5CprxYtIw@localhost Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
On Sun, 8 Aug 2004 14:37:15 UTC, Jens Ropers ropers@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?
I do. And IMHO the Middle East would be one prime example of what I said. I would have agreed with you a few years ago, however.^W^W^W^W^W^W^W^W^W^W^W Must. Not. Get. Political. :-|
...
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?
I wouldn't have sent the above email to this list if I didn't actually think it to be "infested" with numerous seriously minded NPOVers (as I wrote).
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