4 ms·

Quite a few of these disputes were about nationalities, which is interesting as I encountered this recently. I noticed on one page that someone famous was quite

by smcl 3y ago

Quite a few of these disputes were about nationalities, which is interesting as I encountered this recently. I noticed on one page that someone famous was quite unusually described as "British" when "Welsh" was more accurate. A bit more digging and it turned out to be the work of a user who had made a few contributions changing "Scottish" and "Welsh" to "British" with comments like "corrected the nationality, Welsh isn't a real nationality". The person had also made edits to some Russian rugby team, so I suspect it was motivated by both Scotland (narrowly) and Wales (heavily) beating England in a rugby competition that year :)

frereubu 3y ago
Having been born and lived in the UK for my entire life has given me an intensely low tolerance of arguments about nationality. These things may be very important in practical terms - e.g. whether the UK remains part of the EU, or Scotland remains part of the UK - but the quality of discussion around them is about as interesting as reading the entire talk page of a Wikipedia edit war over and over (and over) again.
- smcl 3y ago
  Born and lived in UK for most of my life. I generally agree but it really varies. Thing is, there are interesting discussions to be had around the past, the present and the future of the various nationalities in the country ... however much of the time the people most enthusiastic about taking part in them are not the kind you have a good conversation with.
  - frereubu 3y ago
    Yeah, it's a fascinating area to talk about if you're with genuinely curious people - for example I think there are some really interesting discussions going on about the changing notion of being "British" in the context of second- and third-generation immigrants - but the quality of the debate is so often terrible that I'm very wary of starting conversations as people can get worked up very quickly.
    - smcl 3y ago
      I dunno if I want a "debate" or anything, but certainly the ability to openly consider things like, for example, what an independent Scotland might look like. As it stands pro-indy people often declare it'll be a riproaring success from the start, while anti-indy Scots fear-monger about Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP being some sinister totalitarians and from south of the border you get some pretty condescending stuff about being a "third-world country". That's just one example, but I imagine it's not uncommon across various subjects. My friends are all pretty level-headed and good to talk to, but online things tend to get very tribal and center around these exaggerated points as if there's a referee keeping track of the points you scored on your "opposition".
NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
Nationalistic edit-wars are the worst, and these are most likely to rage all the way up through ArbCom decisions. I visited Catalonia once fifteen years ago, and so for a while I had an interest in Barcelona and Catalonian topics such as Antoni Gaudí. Now, I knew about the Catalonian independence movement, and the history of oppression by Franco and so forth. So it was no surprise that the nationality of Gaudí was controversial. If you put that he was a Spanish architect then someone would soon come along and change it to "Catalan architect" and of course, that could not stand more than a few days before a nationalist would change it back to "Spanish". So we compromised on "Antoni Gaudí was a Spanish Catalan architect", and this phrasing withstood most scrutiny, and we managed to tamp down the edit-war on that particular lead sentence. Other nationalistic edit-wars of note include the naming of the FYROM (Macedonia and "North" Macedonia), Armenian genocide denial, the Israel-Palestine conflict, of course, and many many others.
- int_19h 3y ago
  One that I vividly remember because I tried to mediate it was the edit war over the name of Pristina (capital of Kosovo) - whether it should use the then-traditional phonetic English spelling "Prishtina", Latin Serbian "Priština" (either with or without the diacritic), or Albanian "Prishtinë". It got bad enough that at some point the article used double naming throughout.

by smcl 3y ago

frereubu 3y ago

Having been born and lived in the UK for my entire life has given me an intensely low tolerance of arguments about nationality. These things may be very important in practical terms - e.g. whether the UK remains part of the EU, or Scotland remains part of the UK - but the quality of discussion around them is about as interesting as reading the entire talk page of a Wikipedia edit war over and over (and over) again.

smcl 3y ago
Born and lived in UK for most of my life. I generally agree but it really varies. Thing is, there are interesting discussions to be had around the past, the present and the future of the various nationalities in the country ... however much of the time the people most enthusiastic about taking part in them are not the kind you have a good conversation with.
- frereubu 3y ago
  Yeah, it's a fascinating area to talk about if you're with genuinely curious people - for example I think there are some really interesting discussions going on about the changing notion of being "British" in the context of second- and third-generation immigrants - but the quality of the debate is so often terrible that I'm very wary of starting conversations as people can get worked up very quickly.
  - smcl 3y ago
    I dunno if I want a "debate" or anything, but certainly the ability to openly consider things like, for example, what an independent Scotland might look like. As it stands pro-indy people often declare it'll be a riproaring success from the start, while anti-indy Scots fear-monger about Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP being some sinister totalitarians and from south of the border you get some pretty condescending stuff about being a "third-world country". That's just one example, but I imagine it's not uncommon across various subjects. My friends are all pretty level-headed and good to talk to, but online things tend to get very tribal and center around these exaggerated points as if there's a referee keeping track of the points you scored on your "opposition".

NoZebra120vClip 3y ago

Nationalistic edit-wars are the worst, and these are most likely to rage all the way up through ArbCom decisions. I visited Catalonia once fifteen years ago, and so for a while I had an interest in Barcelona and Catalonian topics such as Antoni Gaudí. Now, I knew about the Catalonian independence movement, and the history of oppression by Franco and so forth. So it was no surprise that the nationality of Gaudí was controversial. If you put that he was a Spanish architect then someone would soon come along and change it to "Catalan architect" and of course, that could not stand more than a few days before a nationalist would change it back to "Spanish". So we compromised on "Antoni Gaudí was a Spanish Catalan architect", and this phrasing withstood most scrutiny, and we managed to tamp down the edit-war on that particular lead sentence. Other nationalistic edit-wars of note include the naming of the FYROM (Macedonia and "North" Macedonia), Armenian genocide denial, the Israel-Palestine conflict, of course, and many many others.

int_19h 3y ago
One that I vividly remember because I tried to mediate it was the edit war over the name of Pristina (capital of Kosovo) - whether it should use the then-traditional phonetic English spelling "Prishtina", Latin Serbian "Priština" (either with or without the diacritic), or Albanian "Prishtinë". It got bad enough that at some point the article used double naming throughout.