Wikipedia : Requests for arbitration/Macedonia 2/Workshop

Proposed. Personally, I have received the impression that the editor in question has been a contributor to wikipedia as an IP. I indicated to him that I would be willing to see him added as a party, and he indicated he wanted to be. Please see Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Greek nationalist canvassing off-wiki for the conversation. John Carter (talk) 21:11, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I don't have any particular problem with this user, the question is where do we stop since everybody can claim "I've been editing as IP, let me in" this would not work well with the other proposal where it has been requested that participation be "limited to Wikipedia editors whose accounts were created prior to the opening of the case". Do you have any solution to keep this in line with the other proposal?

man with one red shoe 21:23, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

Comment - Actually, yes, I hope so anyway. I get the impression that, for better or worse, this one individual might be involved with bringing many of the others in. I could see how we would benefit from having someone represent the number of editors who want to be involved, and having someone like him, who apparently does have some weight with that community involved, might give anyone else who wants to make a statement a person they can contact and, I hope, trust, who could make any statements they might care to make for them. John Carter (talk) 21:35, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That's actually a good point, if new users need to present crucial evidence or arguments they can pass them down to people who are already part of the case, there's no need for any special representation.

man with one red shoe 21:42, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

Weakly support to add party, on the grounds of #3 of the

WP:5P. However one exception should not mean others too. This user is the only outsider that so far has shown interest in participating in the case here, when others just spam the talk pages. We should respect that. Shadowmorph (talk) 21:50, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

Attest to that: there should be no cabals: principle #2 of

User:Jimmy Wales. Shadowmorph (talk) 21:56, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

I would also stipulate that this party be the only newcomer allowed to join. However, having him here would give some of those who read his blog a chance to have someone they can trust to add information for them. I tend to think most if not all of them are less familiar with the rest of us, and might not be quite so willing or able to trust us than him. And, at least as opposed to me, he seems fluent in at least one of the local languages there. John Carter (talk) 22:12, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

While this newcomer has personally shown restraint in his comments, I oppose adding him. The principal reason is that he, inadvertently or not, initiated a wave of new one-topic users who bring nothing useful to Wikipedia, but only clog the talk page of the single article they were directed by SQRT to comment on. He did not direct them to be open-minded and consensus-building productive editors, but to express their nationalistic views (although warning them not to be too nationalistic with an indirect reference to sarissas) and oppose the naming of the article. I find recruiting one-topic editor warriors to be distasteful. The two sides in this arbitration are about equally balanced as it is. There is no need for the "masses" to have more voice than they already have. I have read the comments by the new editors at Talk:Macedonia and they are uniformly repetitive, uninformed on the Wikipedia issue, not helpful, and not willing to engage in consensus-building. Even SQRT's arguments have been made before. I see that his input has already been placed on the Evidence page. Shouldn't the evidence page be restricted to the named participants? (Taivo (talk) 22:41, 23 April 2009 (UTC))[reply]

Actually "Anyone, whether directly involved or not, may add evidence to this page". --Avg (talk) 22:50, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That remark is from the top of the Evidence page. Also, on that same page, "/Workshop provides for comment by parties and others as well as Arbitrators." On the top of this page, the second sentence says, "The Arbitrators, parties to the case, and other editors may draft proposals and post them to this page for review and comments." And, although Taivo is free to have whatever opinions he wants, I cannot see how having a balanced number of editors on both sides is at all relevant. ArbCom generally wants all the information it can get more than it wants to have a balance of voices talking to them. As someone who's been here before, trust me, they read the comments for facts and conclusions more than they do for the number of "votes" per side. John Carter (talk) 22:56, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. Taivo's comment illustrates perfectly the state of mind of the other side (other than "the Greeks" ChrisO listed) as being just anti-Greek. Beside the Greek side is more accurately the pro-UN until a resolution side. It's one thing attacking editors based on their edits. It's worse to judge newcomers in only racial (he is Greek) grounds. Taivo and ChrisO didn't read the "Anyone, whether directly involved or not" sentence. Besides the "masses" coming here only illustrates the validity of asseting the havoc and chaotic disruption ChrisO's move has initiated. Furthermore why should the "two sides" be balanced when ChrisO based his move on unbalanced statistics (ignoring the pro-UN side of English speakers)? Shadowmorph (talk) 23:28, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You have failed to read my comment and the reason why I personally oppose his addition. "I find recruiting one-topic editor warriors to be distasteful." Whether intended or not, he is the source of a group of one-topic editors swarming the Talk:Macedonia page responding to his call to come specifically and make their voices be heard at Wikipedia. His page was written in Greek, so you do the math about who he was summoning. He was not recruiting Wikipedia editors for the project as a whole, he was recruiting respondents for one specific article, one specific poll, one specific POV. That's what I object to. If he had not done that, I would have no objections to adding him. It is the "call to arms" mentality evidenced by summoning non-editors to make their uninformed mark on Wikipedia that offends me. (I would be just as opposed to adding a Macedonian who had done the same thing.) (Taivo (talk) 00:01, 24 April 2009 (UTC))[reply]

I did read your comment. You think the new user had wrongdoing outside the wiki, it's your opinion. Would you propose to him inaction and acceptance better? Anyhow,enough said, I was referring to your state of mind. My proof is your above explanation still having to resort to using the word "Greek". Shadowmorph (talk) 00:46, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

(ecx2) Support I wish to applaud John's tireless efforts to be open-minded and fair. What a breath of fresh air. But I think just saying thanks to John, doesn't do enough justice to the civility and fairness that he brought to this, often acrimonious, debate. By assuming good faith of SQRT, IMO, he is acting in the best traditions of Wikipedia and he is being sensibly inclusive. I respect that. Also thanks for the valuable insights on how Arbcom works. Dr.K. logos 23:14, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - Despite reading that "any user may edit this workshop page", I wouldn't do that while I'm being proposed to be added to the list: it's a matter of principle. However, I would like to clarify a few things because certain users like Taivo, seemingly supportive of ChrisO's questionable actions, repeatedly spread false information. A few days ago, after I came back from holidays, I saw a message in my mailbox about the current issue regarding Macedonia's Wikipedia entry. Although I contributed to many Wikipedia entries before, this was the perfect time to register an account in order to keep track of the case. I also posted in grk.forthnet.users (note: this is a newsgroup) a message, in case anyone else was interested in voicing his opinions. This newsgroup is also indexed by Google; someone took it from there and posted in several blogs/fora. Others also took it and repeated the same procedure, sometimes leaving the message intact, sometimes not. Some Wikipedians found this message in a certain blog and their poor command of the greek language led them to believe that a) this is my blog and b) I'm calling for waves of nationalists to flood Wikipedia. How odd is that! I do not claim to represent anyone, but since the english version of Wikipedia isn't very popular within the greek-speaking community, I believe that my voice would be a useful addition to the ongoing dialogue. This is the translation of the original newsgroup message (check the timestamp) and this is where I stand on the issue. Last but not least, I'm not aware of any rules that restrict the participation of users based on their nationality; I also don't see any other Wikipedians expressing interest in joining the list. SQRT5P1D2 (talk) 00:58, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I really don't get why it would make sense to add someone who, in terms of information we can verify, has had nothing to do with the dispute until the past few hours. If we get some sort of evidence that the user has in fact made IP contributions, maybe then. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 01:08, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I accept SQRT's description of his involvement here and his posting in the spirit of

WP:AGF. It is, however, a very clear example of the Law of Unintended Consequences. I still find distasteful the idea of asking people outside Wikipedia to come here just to voice their opinions. If he were recruiting editors with an eye for long-term contributions across a spectrum of articles, that is one thing. But calling for people to join Wikipedia just to comment on one specific issue is not within the spirit of the project. SQRT seems to have a good command of the historical literature relevant to Greece (at least) and his future contributions will be welcome. But "recruiting" to Wikipedia any Tom, Dick or Harry who has an opinion on Macedonia is not going to add quality editors for the long-term and will not really add any enlightenment to the issue. This is all I'm going to say on this matter. (Taivo (talk) 01:17, 24 April 2009 (UTC))[reply

I'm not sure why everybody is treating this issue as if being a participant in this case was a desirable privilege. This is not about whether this person is going to be granted the right to use these pages for his grandstanding (which is what he is apparently hoping to achieve). "Participants" in this case are those of us who have some concrete past involvement with the dispute, and who are putting our own past behaviour up for scrutiny by the committee. Basically, making yourself a "participant" here means stepping forward as a candidate to have your head chopped off. Why would anybody want to do that if they can avoid it? Fut.Perf. ☼ 14:41, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your kind remarks. I've been part of the dispute, since I've edited entries related to Macedonia in the past, before registering an account. This is not something that can be proved, but it can't be disproved either. Assume good faith. Now, I did not propose myself to be added to the list. I want to be added to the list, but it was my belief that someone else should propose me, if he feels that way. Another administrator did and I accepted. That should tell something about your speculation ("hoping to achieve", "grandstanding"). Who am I, the Queen (cue Seinfeld: "not that there is anything wrong with that")? I even hesitated to post here (see previous comments), as a matter of principle! Unfortunately, since some users distort the reality, I have to. This whole discussion is about one (1) user, proposed by others to be added to the list, with no other Wikipedians lining for a position. I see no reason to be afraid of a newbie: I won't bite. As for my head: count me in; I'll bring the soda. SQRT5P1D2 (talk) 15:48, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose, even more nationalists, do we need it? No. chan dler ··· 01:37, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - (again, sorry for posting in this section) Thank you. I respect people showing confidence in their own savoir-faire. However, you might find these useful: a) "Translation of the original newsgroup posting about Macedonia", b) Yet More Analysis 1.0 RC and c)

WP:CIV. SQRT5P1D2 (talk) 22:36, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

Fut.Perf. is requested to offer a full and unreserved apology to Avg

2) Fut.Perf. alleged [1] I have something to do with this[2] post (translation) on a certain blog. I categorically say I have nothing to do with this post and I consider this a straightforward effort from his part to throw mud at me. Unfortunately, although I specifically requested twice his apology, he's not offering one and he resorts to irony and personal attacks[3][4]. I kindly ask the Arbitrators to enforce this.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Apologies are not something arbcom normally rules on. — Rlevse • Talk • 22:40, 4 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by parties:

Proposed.--Avg (talk) 20:02, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The short answer is: No. I didn't "allege", I said I "suspected". Which is true. Fut.Perf. ☼ 20:07, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This is really appalling. I honestly do not know how I can protect myself from this. Again, I deny any relationship with this post and challenge you to prove your claims. Do whatever you think fit. I simply have not written this post so I really have nothing to fear. You're throwing mud at me all the time, but this has gone beyond any imagination. --Avg (talk) 20:12, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I can't fault Future Perfect in this instance. I asked him if the language sounded like that of anyone he knew, so that if there were an obvious suspect that party might be persuaded to admit their involvement. He indicated that the language and tone reminded him of Avg. He did not say that he thought it was Avg, he just named the party that first came to mind, saying that his statement was less than conclusive. I can't take that statement as an accusation. Avg has since denied in the strongest possible terms that the party who wrote it is him. I have no reason to question that statement. On that basis, the previous speculation on Future Perfect's part, prompted by my request, has to be seen as being just that, speculation. If anyone is to be blamed for this conversation, it is me for my initial leading question. John Carter (talk) 20:44, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I read the exchange and it is exactly as John Carter characterizes it. There was no "accusation", just a simple qualified response to a question about whether the Greek text sounded like anyone Future Perfect knew. Future Perfect was very clear that he was not accusing Avg of writing the blog itself, but just that the tone and language sounded like something Avg might write. At no point did Future Perfect accuse Avg of actually having written it and at no other point in this discussion does he make such an accusation. (Taivo (talk) 20:53, 28 April 2009 (UTC))[reply]

I do not want my name to be hanging in the air for something that I have not done and I do not condone. I had no other means to clear my name than to request Fut.Perf. to apologise publicly and fully for throwing mud at me. Instead I get irony and insults. He did write my name and he now has to apologise. In real life, if you say on a public forum, say on television that you "suspect" someone of being a criminal, does it matter if you then say that well, it was just a suspicion? There is a significant amount of damage already done and the mud cannot be taken off easily. Everybody will be looking at the other person as a potential criminal. In our Wiki-world everybody will now say, but of course, Avg would be one of the prime suspects for these practices. The profiling worked, again. Anyway, I still demand that apology. If Fut.Perf. offers it, I will consider this incident closed.--Avg (talk) 20:59, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Motion: Let's do less navel gazing.

man with one red shoe 21:34, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

This is ridiculous; the arbitrators cannot possibly force someone to apologize, any more than your parents can make you be sorry for taking cookies without permission. If you propose something, make an actual sanction, something the committee can actually enforce. This sort of tit-for-tat bickering is not what the workshop page is for, and I ask the clerks to remove this. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 04:22, 29 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There is a line which has been crossed. He could have said "I suspect someone, but I don't have proof". If he says a name in the open, then it automatically becomes an allegation. It is plainly false, so I demand an apology. Obviously he should also cease and desist from making such false allegations against me or other editors in the future. --Avg (talk) 06:34, 29 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Demand away, but the ArbCom cannot enforce such a thing. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 07:54, 29 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

Future Perfect answered the question asked, while making clear in the same post that he had no proof. This is obfuscation. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:27, 29 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Saying that "I believe X did it, by I have no proof", instead of keeping quiet and trying to gather evidence before accusing someone publicly, could also qualify as mud throwing; an attempt of discrediting parties opposed to your position. SQRT5P1D2 (talk) 12:37, 30 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Template

4)

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Comment by others:

Proposed temporary injunctions

Participation by newly registered editors

1) Participation in this arbitration, including the posting of evidence and comments on workshop pages and the associated talk pages, shall be limited to Wikipedia editors whose accounts were created prior to the opening of the case.

Comment by Arbitrators:

I think this is necessary, otherwise these pages will be overwhelmed with well-meaning but useless information and discussion. If new editors have something useful to add, they should contact existing editors or clerks.

chat) 00:38, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

This seems like a wise idea. I can think of many other places that are much healthier for a new editor to start with than arbitration. As noted by John V and others, if newer editors have something pertinent and helpful to add, it can be handled through others. --Vassyana (talk) 03:51, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by parties:

I've been made aware that Greek nationalist blogs are apparently urging readers to come to Wikipedia and campaign on the Macedonia article move (see [5] and [6] for more. New single-purpose accounts like SQRT5P1D2 (talk · contribs) are already appearing and posting reams of "evidence" to the arbitration case [7]. To avoid coordinated off-wiki disruption of this case, I propose that participation in it should be limited to established Wikipedians. -- ChrisO (talk) 18:34, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Blogs? This is nothing. This has been reported even by news channels in the Republic of Macedonia. So, while I agree with the proposal, I would advise you ChrisO to once again refrain from your one-sided rhetoric.--Avg (talk) 18:53, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Wholeheartedly support. Lord knows we don't want the whole bloody country posting here. We've got news shows telling people in the ROM/FYROM/whatever about this?! John Carter (talk) 19:02, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The headline is along the lines of "Macedonians succeed in changing the reference FYROM to Macedonia, but only virtually". (I don't speak Macedonian, but Google's Bulgarian translator can give you a basic gist of the story.) -- ChrisO (talk) 19:09, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I wasn't aware of the news channel report, so thanks for letting us know about that. You'll note that the proposal would apply equally to both sides. -- ChrisO (talk) 19:02, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I completely concur with this. One of the "new people" added their name to the participant list just an hour ago. He has been removed. Semi-protection of this arbitration that limits it to accounts already in existence a week ago is completely warranted. Since this applies to both sides equally and since there were about equal numbers of named participants on both sides, this is a fair and reasonable request. (Taivo (talk) 19:23, 23 April 2009 (UTC))[reply]

I agree, it's common sense, however having a whole country posting here in outrage would probably clarify once and for all that this a POV/COI issue and it has to be dealt as such.

man with one red shoe 19:30, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

You know what this actually is? The best proof of the level of disruption that ChrisO's move caused. If we get armies of nationalist IPs attacking or defending this controversial move, then I would at least entertain the thought that it was the move itself that brought them here in the first place? --Avg (talk) 19:35, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've got news for you - we already have armies of nationalist IPs waging war across Wikipedia on the Macedonia issue, the vast majority of them promoting a Greek POV and many tracing to IPs in Greece or Cyprus (see [8]). That's always been the case. -- ChrisO (talk) 19:44, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There is the occasional IP vandal, but there is a direct causal relationship between the blog posts, the news reports and your very move. And I'll mention again, as I will every time you use this filter, that it specifically excludes admins (and hence the dozens of reverts you and Future have done).--Avg (talk) 19:53, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Follow-up question - Would there be any value to trying to protect from new editors the various relevant mainspace article and talk pages as well? If and when certain people see themselves removed from these posts, I can easily see them vandalizing elsewhere. John Carter (talk) 19:56, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Macedonia itself is already semi-protected (and has been for a long time), but there may be some value in semi-protecting Talk:Macedonia. People are specifically being directed there by the blog postings of SQRT5P1D2, which are being reposted on other Greek blogs. I'd suggest keeping an eye on it to see how bad it gets. -- ChrisO (talk) 19:59, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose ChrisO remarks. It is wrong to attack and

the talk page; I was not believed though.Shadowmorph (talk) 21:14, 23 April 2009 (UTC). What difference does it make that User:SQRT5P1D2 is whoever he may be? Shadowmorph (talk) 21:20, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

There are good reasons for not letting new people join an arbitration case directly, for one they should familiarize first with Wikipedia's policies and how things work here. Even

man with one red shoe 21:32, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

This is not a vote anyways so there's no need for "stuffing the ballot", if new people really feel the need to provide crucial evidence or arguments, I'm sure they can contact some of the involved parties to pass those evidence/arguments to them.

man with one red shoe 21:40, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

Clarification:I opposed ChrisO's remarks, not the proposed temporarily injunction. But I weakly oppose that too. Shadowmorph (talk) 21:44, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Also new users shouldn't have to learn any firm rules. We'll just get him to learn

WP:5P by heart :) Shadowmorph (talk) 21:54, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

Actually

man with one red shoe 21:57, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

I'm very sorry but I have to post again here. Shadowmorph and others, I've already posted about this above. I'm not the owner of any blog (unless I'm a sleepwalker) and I could not find any "evidence" pointing to that. In this universe. I just posted in a newsgroup (check timestamp) and others took my post from there. The translation is here and I believe that there is nothing wrong with asking for anyone interested to participate in a dialogue. Let's not prejudge people and remember to assume good faith. Finally, regarding my abilities, I would like to ask everybody implanted with Wikipedia's policies during their embryo stage, to raise their hands. I thought that this was not a private members club. SQRT5P1D2 (talk) 02:46, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Apology: Please accept my sincere apologies.I'm sorry, I was mislead by the blogger who didn't specify a source. Very sorry, damn that web 2.0. I agreed with you about the "private members club" but I hope you understand the issues involved here. Don't focus on trying to prove "you are not an elephant" ;-) Try to focus on what actual evidence and suggestions you could present to the issues at hand that could be helpful to the ARBCOM (like facts, the use of policies, manners of conduct etc). A good thing to start on policies would be WP:Purpose and WP:5P the only firm rule. I hope I helped Shadowmorph (talk) 10:58, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

We've got another new user showing up--Dimorsitanos--and adding himself to the involved parties list. While SQRT's innocent posting may not have been intended to open the flood gate, I fear that this is just the tip of the iceberg. The clerks deleted the last person who added themselves to the list, but there are still comments on the evidence page from at least two previously uninvolved parties and a whole section on this page from a previously uninvolved user. I wait eagerly for the involved users to post over the weekend (as I will be doing myself). (Taivo (talk) 16:29, 24 April 2009 (UTC))[reply]

Please excuse my frustration, but we now have about one-third of the "evidence" on the evidence page presented by users who were not registered users at the time that this arbitration was filed. I'm sorry, but that is unacceptable to me. Does Wikipedia arbitration actually allow a newly-registered user to issue a notice to join the discussion outside Wikipedia and then allow all those new users to contribute their "evidence" to an arbitration? (Taivo (talk) 03:25, 25 April 2009 (UTC))[reply]

I don't see a need to request an excuse for the frustration. But, for what it's worth, just because the "evidence" is there doesn't necessarily mean that, if it doesn't say anything particularly useful, anyone will pay any attention to it. Were I an arbitrator, and I know I'm not, never have been, and probably never will be, I think all I'd do is look for any real evidence in their comments, and, if I don't see any, basically, well, ignore them. 14:23, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Stop the accusations/insinuations of racism now

2) It is very damaging to a discussion to bring accusations or insinuations of racism. There's not one racist comment on this page or talk:Greece or talk:Macedonia, at most there are accusations of bias caused by patriotism/nationalism. Making an intentional confusion between bias issues and racism is very damaging and I hope the arbitrators/clerks will impose a motion to stop these baseless accusations/insinuations.

In the meantime I hope editors of this page will restrain from using carelessly words like "race" and "racism".

Addition: if you have proof of racism, by all means, please bring it forth, but don't insinuate or make accusations without any hard proof.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. Please analyze this request quickly.

man with one red shoe 02:39, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

Agree. I would like to add "nationalism" as well please.--Avg (talk) 22:02, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Agree. These accusations are in blatant bad faith. As for Avg's comment above, nationalism is at the heart of this dispute, not race. -- ChrisO (talk) 22:14, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Agree. Avg, "nationalism" and "racism" are not the same thing. Apples and oranges. (Taivo (talk))

The United Nations uses the definition of racial discrimination laid out in the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, adopted in 1966:

...any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, color, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life. [11]

Are you suggesting that we don't talk about people who suggest distinguishing others based on national or ethnic origin? By the way, "

ethnic discrimination", which is the same thing as racism. One thing I will agree with is that it is counter-productive to accuse people (of racism or nationalism) without substantiating these claims. If a person, however, does believe that such a thing is taking place... we shouldn't muzzle then, now, should we? --Radjenef (talk) 00:30, 29 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

I agree with the proposal. There are comments which have been made which have indicated that there may be nationalist tendencies in some editors. Frankly, I myself don't doubt there have been. The question is whether we can reasonably say specific individual editors are nationalistic. That requires a higher threshold of proof, although, if enough evidence exists to prove such a contention, I think it could be presented. But it certainly does no one any good for some to accuse others of "racism" or "nationalism" when all the people making those comments really mean is that there may be a POV issue involved for the editors being described as nationalistic. It is perfectly relevant to say that an individual may have a POV which colors their judgement, if you can produce evidence to that effect. However, without such direct, specific evidence, I would hope that everyone refrains from either alleging someone else is biased or complaining when they themselves are indicated to possibly be biased by relevant evidence. John Carter (talk) 00:39, 29 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think you twist the meaning of the definition, it's racism if you distinguish between nations claiming that a nation is better than other, however that's not the case here, we (or at least I) smell bias, that's not racism. It's also associating yourself with Greek POV (that Macedonia doesn't have the right to use that name) you don't even have to be Greek to do that. Also we are not militating to reduce your "human rights and fundamental freedoms" we just note a bias problem and search for methods to eliminate it, I even mentioned that "disenfranchising" Greeks is not a solution, a solution would be to have for example a number of non-involved admins take a decision in this case. How is that reducing your rights?

man with one red shoe 00:46, 29 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

When an ethnic group is accused of "stonewalling", "building walled-gardens", POV pushing [12],

ethnic discrimination. --Radjenef (talk) 10:21, 29 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

You are wrong on couple of counts, for one I don't accuse individual editors of anything based on nationality if I accuse them of anything is for their individual behavior. Second, I can't stop noticing the parallel between the real-life name debate and the content decision in Wikipedia, this cannot be due unless there's some real-life POV leaking into Wikipedia, otherwise it would be only a name decision issue, however this is a drama (Greek or not :D ). I see a poll where 100% of Greeks are against "Republic of Macedonia" name in Greece article... yes, it might be wrong of me to see there a conflict of interest, but do you really claim that such thing as bias or conflict of interst can't exist? If this COI is possible and some people suspect it why would be so hard to ask some uninvolved editors to decide this issue? That's the normal solution in case of conflict of interests.

man with one red shoe 14:23, 29 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

Agree, but stop ethnic profiling and discrimination proposals too. It's better to deal with the source of the complaints too. Yes amongst the editors on both sides there are some that are biased on the case. So? That's irrelevant of the practices used here.

The whole of ChrisO's points were characterized by
ethnic discrimination. Speculations were targeted to one's ethnicity ("speaks Greek,hints Greek,"...Greek","...Greek"). In his evidence he just provided a list of possible Greeks, directly inferring their behavior as standard Greek behavior. Edit histories and other publicly available information were specifically digged into to seek for ethnicity. Clearly affirmative action
was taken, something an encyclopedia shouldn't have to do.

He said some editors used nasty terms but didn't narrow down. The opposite, he dubiously mentioned the Greek parliament(!) covered the vandalism. Because of one obscure edit that I wouldn't even describe as vandalism. That way he inferred that all Greeks use insults.

Proposals were made to ignore one specific ethnicity (and not any other involved one) in polls, to determine if an actual consensus existed (Fut.Perf's).

New editors were pre-emptively pointed out as Greek as a reason to be excluded from discussion off hand.
Stereotypes
were used to include editors in the Greeks (how else could I be found in a "stable core" when I have such few contributions, I don't know).
And lets not forget the Good Friday timing of the article moves.

I didn't say that ChrisO is a nazi of course. I didn't call anyone a racist too. Everybody is judged by their actions. One has have to prove where he stand through his actions and his words. ChrisO did base the core of his arguments on ethnicity (he didn't say nationality which would be mild but still discriminating). I'm sorry but what do the above constitute altogether? Can anybody say 100% that e.g. I am an ethnic Greek? No, so

McCarthyist list-making did occur and discrimination was repeatedly proposed as a solution to all Wikipedia's problems. How ironic, one might say "let's just kick the Jew's out of the wiki, 100% of them mess with the Palestine articles naming in the polls" (disclaimer:I don't actually believe the previous sentence, it is irony). Who, tell me, who wouldn't describe the previous sentence as racism?. Shadowmorph (talk) 13:28, 30 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

I'm willing to be less bold in stating my emotions, if I have too. I did remove parts of my evidence page myself that might be too personal or sentimental or irrelevant Shadowmorph (talk) 13:28, 30 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The word "ethnic" appears like 250 times in this discussion. It should have been zero but I wasn't the one who introduced it here.Shadowmorph (talk) 13:38, 30 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The fundamental problem is that this is not an "ethnic" issue, but a "nationalistic" one (they are entirely different things). When two sides cannot come to an agreement, then it is incumbent upon each side to examine the motivations of the other side to see if there is some common ground for agreement or movement. It is inescapable that a majority of people of one side of this issue are tied to a single real-world country, which just happens to have the same point-of-view. When examining the other side, there were no individuals who were tied to that country. These things must be taken into account when dealing with negotiations (or, in this case, the failure of negotiations). While individuals must be judged individually on their actions, when an entire national bloc acts in virtual unison, it is impossible to ignore. I keep asking for the all-important counter-example, but still find none. Dr.K broke ranks with his faction on one occasion and was willing to compromise, but his proposal was rejected and the national faction stood without any further attempts at compromising. It is not racism to characterize that unmoving faction, whose POV happens to coincide precisely with the national foreign policy of Greece as the Greek faction. It is not racism to point out that there is not a single person who identifies themselves as "Greek" on the other side of the issue. If personal decision-making were indeed part of the process, then we would logically expect to see Greek editors on both sides of the issue and a higher percentage of non-Greek editors on the "Greek" side. This isn't racism. It has nothing to do with "race", but with national identification. This isn't McCarthyism (a corollary of Godwin's Law). These are just the facts. (Taivo (talk) 13:54, 30 April 2009 (UTC))[reply]

Start your own motion, let take one thing at a time, now we discuss the racism accusation, there was no racist comment in any of the discussion pages related to this subject.

man with one red shoe 13:17, 1 May 2009 (UTC)[reply

Replace protection of Greece article with temporary injunction

3) The Greece article is currently still full-protected, scheduled until 17 May, because of the edit-war of March. It is undesirable for such a high-profile article to be fully protected for such a long time. It could be opened to normal editing again (perhaps with continuing semi-protection) if coupled with a temporary injunction against changes to the contentious Macedonia naming bits for the duration of this case.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

proposed. Fut.Perf. ☼ 13:10, 29 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Good idea. John Carter (talk) 13:37, 29 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Please.

man with one red shoe 14:43, 29 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

I would support it with clear injunctions against changing anything related to Macedonia. But the last time it came off protection, it was but a single hour before the protection had to be placed again. (Taivo (talk) 21:47, 29 April 2009 (UTC))[reply]

I am sure that the article could do without editing for a short time. It will not significantly affect the page nor any possible beneficial information to it. All I can predict is a major revert war as soon as the protection is lifted. However a permanent IP block on the page would be a good step. PMK1 (talk) 10:43, 1 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Support.--Yannismarou (talk) 19:27, 5 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

As protection was about to expire in any case, I reduced it to semi-protection, and extended it out another month. If the edit-warring starts up again, I'm sure we can find an admin to fully lock it up. Horologium (talk) 15:23, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

And I restored full protection, as the first content change was for a (previously uninvolved) editor to change the name of the country to the north. Oy. Horologium (talk) 10:33, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

Template

4)

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Comment by others:

Questions to the parties

How do other-language Wikipedias handle this conflict?

(Or, if they don't have this conflict, how do they avoid having it?) --83.253.240.46 (talk) 00:18, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The Swedish (my native) wiki uses Makedonien, the German (second biggest wiki after English) uses Mazedonien, the French (third biggest) uses Macédoine (pays) (I can only presume that pays means country). Three examples, you can just look yourself otherwise under "Languages" on the left side, it's somewhat mixed over the different languages. The reasons (on the Swedish Wikipedia) stated for the naming include "sovereign country is priority", the same goes for other countries that might be controversial outside of Sweden, Irland (Ireland), Kina (China), Taiwan (Republic of China/Taiwan) chan dler ··· 00:49, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I regret to say that I haven't actually looked into the matter myself, but here goes.

The first thing that we might want to remember is that this is by far the largest wikipedia. That means we get lots of editors from all over the world and that tends to make disagreements, even extreme ones, more likely.

Second, remember that most other wikis, with maybe exceptions in Spanish and French, tend to be limited to only a single country or a small number of countries. As a result, it is much easier and probably more likely that there will be less disagreement there, because there's more of a consensus to the best-known name.

Those are just guesses, but they are based on what I have seen in terms of other articles. Anyone with more concrete knowledge of this particular case is encouraged to add whatever direct information they might have. John Carter (talk) 00:23, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Magyar (Hungarian) labels the article Macedónia, but has Macedónia Volt Jugoszláv Köztársaság as the "foreign name" bolded in the first sentence and bolded in the first sentence of the section labelled "Neve" (Name). Macedón Köztársaság (Macedonian Republic) is listed as the domestic name in the second sentence of the "Neve" section. Except in these three sentences, Macedónia is used everywhere else in the article. There is no disambiguation page listed or linked to. On the map shown at Görögország (Greece), it is labelled simply as Macedónia. I checked the history on these articles and they have been stable for a very long time. [addition] The only notable piece of relevant vandalism on the Macedónia article was the insertion of the acronym "(FYROM)" in the first sentence. Of course, "FYROM" means absolutely nothing in Magyar. (Taivo (talk) 00:30, 24 April 2009 (UTC))[reply]

There's no need to do a case by case analysis. Just go to the country article and hover over the interwiki links. The large majority of them have ROM, fewer have M and a handful of them have FYROM or Macedonia (country).--Avg (talk) 00:46, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

For people interested in the general inter-wiki wide situation here it is.

"Republic of..." 81: / Spanish; República de Macedonia; / Italian; Repubblica di Macedonia; / Portugese; República da Macedónia; / Russian; Республика Македония; Afrikaans; Republiek van Masedonië; / Alemannic German; Republik Mazedonien; Amharic; የመቄዶንያ ሬፑብሊክ; Anglo Saxon; Cynewīse Macedonia; Aragonese; Republica de Mazedonia; Aromanian; Republica ali Machedonia; Franco-Provencal/Arpitan; Rèpublica de Macèdonie; Asturian; República de Macedonia; Azeri; Makedoniya Respublikası; Min Nan; Makedonija Kiōng-hô-kok; Belarussian; Рэспубліка Македонія; Bosnian; Republika Makedonija; Breton; Republik Makedonia; Bulgarian; Република Македония; // Catalan; República de Macedònia; Chuvash; Македони Республики; Cebuano; Republika sa Macedonia; Welsh; Gweriniaeth Macedonia; Esperanto; Respubliko Makedonio; Basque; Mazedoniako Errepublika; Võro; Makõdoonia Vabariik; Waray-Waray; Republika han Masedonya; Zazaki; Cumurêtê Makedonya; Faroese; Lýðveldið Makedónia; Irish; Poblacht na Macadóine; Manx; Pobblaght ny Massadoan; Hawaiian; Repupalika o Masedonia; Upper Sorbian; Republika Makedonska; / Croatian; Republika Makedonija; Ido; Republiko Macedonia; Bahasa Indonesian; Republik Makedonia; Ossetian; Республикæ Македони; Icelandic; Lýðveldið Makedónía; Javanese; Republik Makedonia; Kapampangan; Republic of Macedonia; Kazakh; Македония Республикасы; Cornish; Repoblek Makedoni; /// Swahili; Jamhuri ya Masedonia; Komi; Македония Республика; Haitian Creole; Republik d Masedoni; Kurdish; Komara Makedonyayê; / Latin; Respublica Macedonica; Bahasa Malaysian; Republik Macedonia; Mongolian; Бүгд Найрамдах Македон Улс; Norfolk/Pitcairn creole; Repablik o' Masedoenya; Norwegian (Nynorsk and Bokmål); Republikken Makedonia; Occitan; Republica de Macedònia; Uzbeki; Makedoniya Respublikasi; Dutch Low Saxon; Republiek Makedonien; Crimean Tatar; Makedoniya Cumhuriyeti; / Romanian; Republica Macedonia; Romany; Republika Makedoniya; Sakha; Македония Республиката; / Sami; Makedonia dásseváldi; Scottish; Republic o Macedonie; / Albanian; Republika e Maqedonisë; Sicilian; Ripùbblica di Macidonia; // Simple English; Republic of Macedonia; Slovenian; Republika Makedonija; // Serbian; Република Македонија; // Serbocroatian; Republika Makedonija; Tagalog; Republika ng Masedonya; Tajik; Ҷумҳурии Мақдуния; // Turkish; Makedonya Cumhuriyeti; Udmurt; Республика Македония; Ukranian; Республіка Македонія; / Uyghur; Makédoniye Jumhuriyiti; Venetian; Republica de Macedonia; Vietnamese; Cộng hòa Macedonia; Chinese; 馬其頓共和國; Classical Chinese; 馬其頓共和國; / Wolof; Réewum Maseduwaan; Korean; 마케도니아 공화국 [15]; Nahuatl; Tlācatlahtocāyōtl Macedontlān; Malayalam; റിപ്പബ്ലിക് ഓഫ് മാസിഡോണിയ; / Tamil; மாக்கடோனியக் குடியரசு; / Assyrian Neo-Aramaic; ܩܘܛܢܝܘܬܐ ܕܡܩܕܘܢܝܐ

"Macedonia" 37: // German; Mazedonien; Polish; Macedonia; Japanese; マケドニア共和国 [16]; Arabic; مقدونيا (translit: maqaduniya); / Guarani; Masedoña; Česky; Makedonie; Danish; Makedonien; Lower Sorbian; Makedońska; Estonian; Makedoonia; / Ewe; Macedonia; Farsi; مقدونیه (translit: maqeduniya); / Hakka; Mâ-khì-tun; Hebrew; מקדוניה; Georgian; მაკედონია; Latvian; Maķedonija; Lithuanian; Makedonija; Hungarian; Macedónia; Macedonian; Македонија; Egyptian Arabic; مقدونيا; Chechen; Македони; / Pashto/Afghani; مقدونيه; Piedmontese; Macedònia; /// Quecha; Makidunya; Saterland Frisian; Mazedonien; Slovak; Macedónsko; Silesian; Macedůńijo; Finnish; Makedonia; Swedish; Makedonien; Church Slavonic; Макєдоні́ꙗ; Telugu; మేసిడోనియా; / Urdu; مقدونیہ; Volapük; Makedoniyän; Samogitian; Makeduonėjė; Thai; ประเทศมาซิโดเนีย [17] compared to [18]; Nepali; म्यासेडोनिया; Armenian; Մակեդոնիա hy:Մակեդոնիա; Hindi; मैसिडोनिया [19]

"Macedonia (country)" 4: / French; Macédoine (pays); Netherlandic/Dutch; Macedonië (land); West Frisian; Masedoanje (lân); Limbourgish; Macedonië (land)

"Former Yugoslav..." 2: / Greek; Πρώην Γιουγκοσλαβική Δημοκρατία της Μακεδονίας; / Pontic Greek; ΠΓΔΜ

others 1: Galician; Macedonia (ARIM) - Македонија (ПЈРМ) (the second half is strangely in the Macedonian language?)

Note: The top ten inter-wikis are bolded. I have tried to get the flag/country data as close as possible. Please dont cut sick at if you have a minor issue. PMK1 (talk) 05:57, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for doing that work. So, to summarise, six of the top ten wikis use "Macedonia" by itself or with "(country)" as a disambiguator, and four use "Republic of Macedonia". Only three wikis use "Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" (not surprisingly, two of those are Greek wikis). I should add that many of the smaller wikis take their lead from the English wiki in terms of naming and article content, so the names of their articles may reflect this wiki more than it reflects any conscious choice on the part of the editors. -- ChrisO (talk) 07:40, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There are two very interesting observations here. First, the mk wikipedia had the name "Република Македонија" for the article since it was first created back in 2005. It changed its name to "Македонија" two days ago [20], just after the arbitration started. And suddenly, we hear that "Macedonia" alone is the preferred self-identification. But more on that on the evidence page.

Secondly, ChrisO just above accepts that "many of the smaller wikis take their lead from the English wiki in terms of naming". Even if I wanted to say that he was simply irresponsible in changing the name by not knowing the scale of the impact, he proves once again, that he knew the effect that en wiki has and he still did it, so it was a deliberate move.--Avg (talk) 16:25, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"So it was a deliberate move"... No can't be, I was under the impression ChrisO had moved it in his sleep... I don't really see what you're trying to achieve with your comment above. The move is not wrong, Macedonia in English == the country. chan dler ··· 16:39, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Wrong info should be fixed. 共和國 = 共和国 = 공화국 mean "Republic".--Caspian blue 16:50, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Avg, as for your comments doubting the influence of English Wikipedia over smaller ones; we will just have to see whether or not changes are made on the other wikipedias. Nobody here can predict the future; we will all have to wait. On your comments about "Republika Makedonija"; well when many

Macedonians refer to simply "Makedonija" they often refer to Macedonia (region); in that type of context. It is clear that on English Wiki that is unacceptable practise, (so it should be). Anyways as Fut.Perf. predicted somewhere you have steered the conversation elsewhere. (No Offence). PMK1 (talk) 00:14, 25 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

Perfect, why then did people change the article title in mk wiki, if not to push a POV in the arbitration case? It is very well known that a large percentage of the Slav Macedonian editors are active in both wikis. And it is quite funny that you, a Slav Macedonian, admit that many Slav Macedonians refer to Macedonia in a United Macedonia context. On your last comment, you know, efforts to create a chilling effect on opposing parties probably doesn't reflect good on you, as it didn't to the original accuser, in case you missed it.--Avg (talk) 02:51, 25 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It is not just English Wikipedia with a strong influence over the others. Take Dutch wikipedia which has "Macedonia (county)", with the two other wikipedias based primarily in Holland taking a similar stance (West Frisian/Limbourgish). The same could be said for Croatian/Bosnian/Serbian/Serbocroatian/Slovenian. Italian could also possibly affect Venetian and Sicilian Wikis. A change in Spanish wikipedia could very easily influence Aragonese/Catalan/Basque/Asturian/Quecha/Galician/Nahuatl. In turn the English Wikipedia could be said to have influence over Anglo Saxon/Simple English/Welsh/Hawaiian/Manx/Irish/Faroese/Cornish/Norfolk creole/Scottish/Afrikaans/Cebuano/Kapampangan. Russian also has possible influences in Belarussian/Estonian/Chuvash/Võro/Ossetian/Kazakh/Komi/Uzbeki/Crimean Tatar/Tajik/Udmurt wikipedias. One change in the Major Wiki could precipitate several changes. PMK1 (talk) 00:26, 25 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Mongolian also appears to use "Republic of Macedonia", not "former Yugoslav..." anything; at least mn:Бүгд Найрамдах Чех Улс is the Czech Republic, not any once Yugoslav state. That leaves two, both Greek-speaking. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:32, 25 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Here is the direct inter-wiki link [21] I would not stress if it is not 100% correct. I have restored it. PMK1 (talk) 04:52, 25 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Avg, before the move on mk wiki, I'm pretty sure Македонија was simply a redirect to Република Македонија. So the move would simply have been technical. In Macedonian, Македонија refers to the Republic of Macedonia in most cases, rather than the larger region. Balkan Fever 10:59, 25 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

mk:Македонија (регион) was moved to mk:Македонија on 6 Dec 2008[22] and back to mk:Македонија (регион) on 19 Apr 2009[23]. Details of the article names related to Macedonia over time can be found at mk:Македонија (појаснување). Andreas ^(T) 13:16, 25 April 2009 (UTC) It is also to note that the articles el:Μακεδονία (about the wider Region) and el:Μακεδονία (διαμέρισμα) (about the Greek region) were never moved. Andreas ^(T) 13:36, 25 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

German wikipedia & primary topic

To correct/expand the information above on how the German wikipedia handles this: It is correct that the article on the Republic of Macedonia in the German wikipedia is titled Mazedonien [24]. This is however not because the republic is seen as the primary topic, but because there is an alternative spelling in German for the greater region, Makedonien [25]. So the German situation is special and cannot be compared to the situation on en.wiki, and does not qualify as an example or a "count" as "support" or "oppose" for either preference on the en.wiki.

I further think it might be worth having a look at languages closely related to German (i.e. Dutch, Scandinavian languages) if they too disambiguate by alternative spellings and thus fail to provide a proper example here and might be counted as false positives in the above lists. Regards Skäpperöd (talk) 10:47, 7 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for this information. I wanted to note that the issue of the primary topic has not been covered by the above list. To try to cover that we can see how many have a disambiguation page at Macedonia with out the (disambiguation) in parentheses, in their respective languages

(33) Primary topic is a disambiguation page: arc:ܡܩܕܘܢܝܐ; be:Македонія; be-x-old:Македонія; br:Makedonia; bg:Македония; ca:Macedònia; cy:Macedonia; de:Macedonia; es:Macedonia; eo:Makedonio; eu:Mazedonia; fr:Macédoine; fy:Masedoanje; ga:An Mhacadóin; gl:Macedonia; ko:마케도니아; id:Makedonia; is:Makedónía; it:Macedonia; la:Macedonia; lb:Makedonien; nl:Macedonië; nn:Makedonia; oc:Macedònia; nds:Makedonien; pt:Macedónia; ru:Македония; scn:Macedonia; simple:Macedonia; sl:Makedonija; sr:Македонија; vec:Macedonia; vo:Macedonia

(19) Pages with titles that include "(disambiguation)": ast:Macedonia (dixebra); bs:Makedonija (čvor); cs:Makedonie (rozcestník); da:Makedonien (flertydig); he:מקדוניה (פירושונים); ka:მაკედონია (მრავალმნიშვნელოვანი); lv:Maķedonija (nozīmju atdalīšana); lt:Makedonija (reikšmės); mk:Македонија (појаснување); ja:マケドニア (曖昧さ回避); pl:Macedon (ujednoznacznienie); sq:Maqedonia (kthjellim); fi:Makedonia (täsmennyssivu); sv:Makedonien (olika betydelser); tr:Makedonya (anlam ayrım); vi:Macedonia (định hướng); uk:Македонія (значення); bat-smg:Makeduonėjė (reikšmės); zh:馬其頓 (消歧義)

The above are derived from from the Macedonia (disambiguation) page. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 11:58, 7 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Has any of the Greek or Macedonian editors considered to recuse themselves when it comes to this touchy subject?

If not, how do you argue that a strong national POV (over 90%-95% of Greeks with a specific opinion as claimed by the Greek side itself, and probably the same for Macedonians) does not tantamount to a

man with one red shoe 03:47, 25 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

You may have missed the comments by User:Tasoskessaris who was strongly opposed to the ethnic profiling of users. He pulled out of the straw poll but did not pull out of the arbitration. As for Macedonian editors, I have only noticed 3 or 4 involved with this current issue. I am sure that there are many other editors some who genuinely are not interested in pushing their national POV's and Edit warring and some who have not learned of this ARB case. PMK1 (talk) 05:02, 25 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The title should reference "

America, United States or even Iraq ...you get my point. My main objection was the concentration of data about ethnicities (for either group supporting or oppossin) in one page. Lists like that are a discrace. Of course the data can be retrieved if someone wan't to dig enough about it. If it was a list of Jewish editors, wouldn't that be a discrace? Besides the reasons of making this list are obvious Ad hominem. There is also the danger of this list appearing in outside wiki places. The IPs of editors have been accidentally shown in the past (Hussond recently in the talk page revealed it by not logging in) and the persons in the list might even become targets of direct real life attacks. WP:COI would be the case only for politicians or officials or spies that are actually real-life involved. Shadowmorph (talk) 10:25, 25 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

So the short answer is I will recuse when all Americans recuse in articles like Iraq or even Macedonia. Shadowmorph (talk)

Man with one red shoe. I must disagree with this. While the middle and end of Shadowmorph's comment drops into irrelevance, his concise first statement about

WP:COI is accurate. The three or four Greek editors who have been involved with this case since long before it was sent to arbitration are generally honest, thoughtful, and well-meaning individuals who have a legitimate voice to add to the discussion. (Taivo (talk) 13:41, 25 April 2009 (UTC))[reply

I don't know, again it's not bad faith or dishonesty, is bias. And is a larger issue in my view, I mentioned in other places this example: take the Chinese, they are numerous, they have a specific POV regarding Tibet, they would be able to filibuster, edit war (but not infringe any 3RR individually -- there's no need when there are many people doing it) and vote in straw polls regarding national POV issues, they wouldn't need to be "nationalists" they would simply see themselves as "patriots", they will be able to block any change that they don't agree with. The question is, can we find some way to avoid a national bias leaking into Wikipedia? (not that it didn't happen, but it can get worse then simply deciding what name to pick for Macedonia). Again, the problem is not ideas that people bring forth, the problem is where the sheer number of the editors makes a difference: edit wars, filibustering, straw polls. I personally would not accept the result of a biased poll, would Greeks accept results of a poll taken mostly by Turks when it comes to Greek history, islands, Cyprus, genocide of Greeks in Anatolia? (BTW, how about the genocide of Armenians, should we ask the Turks if it was a genocide or not?) I don't accuse Turks of anything, I don't "assume bad faith", but there are different POVs that are different distributed in different nations and we have to take that into account when we examine the results of straw polls (and whether is good to use them at all in such matters). In this case I was just testing to see if people of nations that are involved directly in this naming conflict if they are willing to recuse themselves, it seems that's not the case. Just asking... move forward....

man with one red shoe 18:47, 25 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

I regret to say that I have never known many people who do clearly prove themselves non-neutral who ever readily acknowledge it. Also, particularly considering that in most cases people with an interest in a country are most likely to read material about it, in most cases they can somewhat reasonably see themselves as more "expert" than most, and will on that basis be doubly insulted by someone saying they aren't objective. I actually do wish such people would recuse themselves, but, unfortunately, I'm not holding my breath for it. John Carter (talk) 19:04, 25 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I am a bit lost with all these discussions and points going on simultaneously and I don't really know when, where and if I have to bother answering all this stuff that's flying all over the place. But this point made by the man with the one red shoe is interesting and so I will reply. So here it goes: As Greeks or Macedonians we must recuse ourselves because we have our national POV. Perfect. But how do I know what is the background of the man with the one red shoe. He is obviously not revealing his name, nationality, allegiance, country, POV he may have etc. Why should such a user be in a more privileged position than another user who chose to reveal his name, country and many more details about himself. Should secrecy be assumed to be automatically NPOV? That's absolute hogwash and confused thinking. I respect PMK1, Balkan Fever, Macedonians, Albanians, Turkish people, Mongolians, Armenians etc. etc. I do not want anyone recused. The only one maybe that may neeed to recuse himself must be the man with the red shoe because he keeps coming up with these ideas for filtering out people based on their ethnicity while at the same time he does not reveal his. The level of this debate is falling like a brick. Dr.K. logos 23:44, 25 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Please no more of this ethnic profiling. The fact that people are Greeks or Macedonians of any background Greek or Slav does not automatically render them brain damaged when it comes to the Macedonia naming issue. People have ideas. Judge them by their ideas not by their ethnicity, race, sexual orientation or any other identifier or slogan. If that were the case then the Israelis and the Palestinians should never have to negotiate amongst themselves because they would have to recuse themselves from such a touchy subject such as the Palestinian problem. Gays need not be consulted about same sex marriage. Forget about asking blacks about contributing to racial discrimination related articles etc. etc. This is simply ridiculous. Editor apartheid is not the solution. Dr.K. logos 00:02, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I have to agree. I acknowledge that there are possibly several individuals from both "sides" in this argument whose contributions are, at best, dubiously thought through and considered. I would certainly welcome seeing most if not all of them recuse themselves. The fact that even some of the remaining editors will have rather intractable positions isn't that surprising. I think I've seen that in virtually every disagreement I've seen in wikipedia. In general, in those cases, there often can be some sort of compromise at least at some level. I have no objections to seeing some of the less reasonable participants in these discussions told to not take part, because in general their comments are less than productive. But I personally would seek their removal more for their incompetence and intransigence than because of their ethnicity.

Having said that, there is the fact that there seems to be a real difference of opinion on the naming issue between the two factions here. I honestly cannot think of any way to resolve that problem, but I don't think that it makes sense to tell thoughtful editors to go away simply because of their ethnicity. John Carter (talk) 00:12, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A few more thoughts following John's comment. I see no factions. At least, I think that counting heads is counter-productive. Allow me to illustrate this. Let's ban all US editors because their president recognised this country by its constitutional name and there are hordes of them in the english branch of Wikipedia. And no more oranges from Florida. Let's also ban UK editors, because of their country's "special relationship" with the US. Balkan editors should be banned too and, hopefully, relocated to Mars, eating their hearts out. Germans should have no say in this, because of the Holocaust (everything has to do with the Holocaust). Soon, we'll be left with an editor from some obscure observatory in Antarctica, trying to make sense of it all. All? What all? The Jews did it! SQRT5P1D2 (talk) 00:38, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) @John: I agree completely. It is relatively easy to detect intransigence or filibustering using logic. We don't need to employ ethnicity-based analysis for that. Editors engaging in such behaviour may be asked politely to stop. But disagreement is not a sin. I don't have to agree with everything the opposing side proposes, the same way that the so-called uninvolved or neutral editors don't agree on all points amongst themselves either. That's, after all, the reason we came to the arbcom. I am Greek, but that doesn't automatically make me a neutral party for the Palestinian-Israel related articles, because I may have a strong POV favouring one side or the other. My ethnicity has nothing to do with my neutrality on any issue. Intellectual honesty and analytical/cognitive skills are the most important parameters in any debate, not personal identifiers. But, to tell you the truth John, I am tired of making these points which I consider to be so plainly obvious. I wish we could argue about something really interesting instead of being stuck in a seemingly endless cycle of anti-intellectual ethnicity oriented debates which can only promote ignorance, editor apartheid and ethnicity-based cleansing of contributions. Dr.K. logos 00:58, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

One certain ethnicity cannot be blamed in what ever the case. People need to realise that for the past 20 years Greece has been promoting the idea that "Macedonia is Greek". I am sure that many users here (who are probably young), have been brought up believing that. I sympathize with them, they have been educated and brought up that "Macedonia is Greek" but on Wikipedia, Macedonia is not Greek. I think that the practise of ethnic profiling has served is purpose in this particular case and from now on is no longer necessary here. It served to provide evidence of the walled garden. PMK1 (talk) 01:29, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree PMK1 with your point that "the practise of ethnic profiling has served is purpose in this particular case". It was not only the Greeks that were profiled. Others, including even the Albanians, were also profiled as "involved ethicitities" Are you to tell me you are somehow "inferior" to the "superior" so-called "neutral" nationalities? Or are you inferior because you did not hide your ethnicity while others routinely do so and thus are considered automatically superior to you? Is a nicknamed user who hides all info about themselves an automatically flawless editor? So let's all hide our personal information so that we can reach a state of perfection. Perfection through information suppression. How zen. Or is an editor who provides no logical reason for supporting one side or the other better than someone who although Greek gave a logical argument to support their position? Or am I supposed to reject your opinion or your compatriots' opinions simply because your nation is involved in this dispute and for no other intellectual reason? Am I supposed to consider you a brainless automaton just because your nation is at odds with mine? The premise of ethnicity based analysis is offensive to the human spirit and it is a regressive step in the evolution of the intellect. Dr.K. logos 02:19, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I think for example a Chinese would be less passionate about the name used in Wikipedia for Republic of Macedonia and would me more likely to pay attention to the policies and try to work some compromise than somebody who think that if we use "Macedonia" name for the republic the Universe will implode, Greeks would be evacuated from Greek Macedonia and that part of the country would be glued to the Republic of Macedonia. A Chinese or somebody from South Africa would also be less likely to support using a name like "former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" in Greece page alone, when all the rest of the pages use a different name.

man with one red shoe 03:17, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

I do agree in some aspects with what Dr K and John Carter have recently said. There is no need to judge a user's neutrality simply by their membership to a certain community. But if you look at their arguments, the similarity (even repetition) of those arguments by members of the same community, the sheer numbers and activity of the members of that community when discussions about real-world disputes take place, it's different. There is a pattern. Others have gone into more depth about that and I'll leave it for them.

About the logical arguments, what we have seen is "uninvolved" (by nationality) users rebut the arguments of the one side with other (more?) logical arguments, not with "you are Greek so you are wrong". And it doesn't help that many of the arguments aren't very logical, and come from nationalist POV-pushers and trolls (I won't name individuals) rather than intelligent users (e.g. Dr K). Discussion gets flooded with off-topic rants (regarded as relevant by those who post them) and even ethnic slurs. The truth is if all editors from "involved" nationalities were to recuse themselves, we wouldn't have any morons, at the expense of some non-nationalists not participating.

Where are the (automatically involved) ethnic Macedonian editors anyway? It's basically me and PMK1, and two other Macedonians having been active at Talk:Greece or Talk:Macedonia but not at this arbitration (I'm not even a party to the case). Where are the Macedonians who have been canvassed in? Where are the Macedonians "defending national honour"? Macedonian users have had almost no influence on the recent discussions, while Greek users have made a larger impact, and this needs to be addressed in some way.

I'm not sure where else I'm going with this, so I'll wrap it up: Remove the users who rant and filibuster, address the arguments of those who actually contribute, see where it goes. That seems to have already happened though - the rants and the profiling stuff have been "noise" but legitimate arguments were nonetheless countered with other legitimate arguments. Balkan Fever 03:28, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I do agree with some parts in your post, but what about straw polls? Do they have any meaning in case of such strong POV?

man with one red shoe 03:35, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

They provide an insight into the problem: see Talk:Greece/Naming poll#Results summary by FP. They don't solve disputes, that's what discussion is for. Balkan Fever 03:53, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you Balkan Fever for your nice comments and I agree that polls cannot replace intelligent discussion in solving disputes. But I disagree that the results summary given by FP provides any insight into the problem, except if you count misleading claims as insight. FP's analysis is based on simplistic generalisations that ethnicity determines the POV or NPOV of an editor. But it conveniently neglects to account for the pre-existing history of the dispute which included such notable attempts at compromise as WP:MOSMAC. I did not participate in the formulation of MOSMAC and I don't know if you did but the presence of MOSMAC indicates that things cannot be simplistically attributed only to the Greek POV. There was dialogue between the various parties and there was some progress made in the form of that essay. Now FP and others abandon this effort and in a hurry they proclaim a new orthodoxy whereby MOSMAC and related efforts are replaced by slogans and ethnicity-driven allegations. It looks too manufactured to be believable. This new orthodoxy also would have us believe that the various ethnic editors who until now have been able to reach a level of accommodation with each other cannot any longer be trusted to contribute in solving the problem, since they are involved ethnicities, but everyone else on the planet can have a hand at solving the problem. As well, editors who hide their identity and other personal information are also assumed to be neutral parties as long as they are against the Greek position. Slogans such as walled gardens and nationalism replace intelligent conversation and propaganda reigns supreme. Bottom line: If the problem was so simple as the ethnic-based analysis proponents and practitioners would have us believe there would have been no MOSMAC. The mere presence of MOSMAC and the fact that many editors engaged in its development indicates that this dispute is not as simplistic as the current anti-intellectual orthodoxy would have us believe. Dr.K. logos 04:48, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Dr K., I disagree with the call for recusal (see above). I would hate to continue this discussion without your involvement, for example. I disagree with you, but I respect you. But I continually find your attempts to paint this as anything other than a nationalistic dispute to be weak, at best. This isn't ethnic profiling, which wrongly attributes negative actions to an ethnicity based on their ethnic status. Ethnic profiling is stopping a black driver on the highway when he is obeying the law just to see if he has drugs in the glove compartment. That's ethnic profiling. When there are two parties to a dispute and one party is nearly all Greek and follows the national policy of Greece right down the line, and the other party has not a single Greek, pointing out that fact is not "ethnic profiling". If this were not a national issue, then one could reasonably expect a mix of Greeks and non-Greeks on both sides of the issue. One would expect a certain number of Greek editors to see the validity of the other side as well. That is the statistical probability based on any issue that does not have nationalistic consequences. Not all Greeks think alike, are educated alike, etc. so on a straw poll for the, say, composition of Genghis Khan's inner circle, we would expect half of the involved Greeks on one side and half of the involved Greeks on the other side. We could even expect half the Mongols to align on one side and half on the other if it was an objective discussion without nationalistic implications. But the discussion of what to call Macedonia is strictly polarized. There is not one single Greek on the "Macedonia" side of the issue. Not a single one. That, without any other evidence, is enough to demonstrate that this is a nationalistic issue for the Greek editors participating in this discussion. Maybe there are Greek Wikipedia editors that disagree with the "Greek" position here. But they are not participating and have not uttered a peep in the discussions at either Talk:Greece or Talk:Macedonia. I have great respect for Greeks. I have shared cubicles with them at several jobs and have dated a couple of Greek women. So trying to paint me as "anti-Greek" is a mistake. But this is a nationalistic issue. The statistics of participation and choice of stance are irrefutable. (Taivo (talk) 05:11, 26 April 2009 (UTC))[reply]

In this latest chain of events, the ethnic editors from both sides are the least responsible. They understand the issue and they had worked a good compromise between them in MOSMAC and they were faithful to their word. It is a small amount of (supposedly) third party editors that caused this huge amount of disruption and policy violations. And I do not have a problem at naming ChrisO and Fut.Perf. as the two main perpetrators. I mentioned back then in the poll section and I will mention it now, Fut.Perf. ethnic profiling would automatically place an editor like ChrisO with no useful input in the debate and a history of disruption in many controversial topics in a higher ground than Dr.K. or Yannismarou, two absolutely sterling editors with no history at all of involvement in this kind of topics. And the reason being that ChrisO has simply stated that he is not Greek or ethnic Macedonian. Leaving aside the absolutely racist connotation that some ethnicities are incapable of producing intelligent discourse, let me turn the tables. How do we know where he is really living? How do we really know what is his ethnicity? What ethnicity are his parents? His wife (if he's married)? Has he a COI with the subject? Is he employed by en employer who has COI with this subject? Has any Greek or ethnic Macedonian had a conflict with him in the past? Are there a lot of Greeks or ethnic Macedonians in his neighborhood? Is he an agent? This is a very sad string of arguments and it must be stopped right now. At the beginning. We, as the community that collectively writes an encyclopedia, have to be absolutely adamant in that all editors should only be judged by their editorial merit. Any arguments based on the ethnicity of the editor should not only strongly be discouraged but be a punishable offence. In fact isn't that the case

already?--Avg (talk) 05:36, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

How is it racist to call out that there are Greeks who think they have the monopoly on the name Macedonia (which happens to be the common name in English of a neighbouring country) and they want that to be shown on Wikipedia. As the politically incorrect would say, a false stereotype never sticks. I've yet to see any evidence of that Macedonia is not the common name for the country, I've mostly complains about the move-process "ChrisO knew what he was doing", "The move was pre-planned", "ChrisO is a dangerous editor" from the registered editors and rants from IPs who try to argue that Macedonia referring to the country can not be verified or be neutral. chan dler ··· 06:10, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Chandler, please go back and see in which page the country article resides in right now. It is in the disambiguation page, not in a format of say

Macedonia (country), that could possibly have a remote sort of justification from being the common name. Macedonia is the common name in English for the Ancient Macedonia, for the region of Macedonia, for the Greek Macedonia and, even for Macedonia in Ohio. So your argument is simply irrelevant. And also, you know, we don't need to reinvent the wheel. Policies are here for a reason. If you do not understand why they are here please go and have a second read. It doesn't need to be explained again and again that without these policies Wikipedia cannot function at all. These are the fundamental principles for writing a collaborative encyclopaedia. Otherwise, ChrisO, you, me and whoever else can just post their articles on their site or blog and that would be all.--Avg (talk) 07:02, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

You don't know what common name is if you think it referrs to anything other than the country. Here's a example for you: A newspapers writes a story, "Forest fires in Macedonia"[26][27], No it's not Macedonia, Ohio (which will be described as Macedonia in Ohio), its not the region (which will be described as the wider region of Macedonia or something similar) nor Greek Macedonia (which will be described as "Macedonia the greek region" or "Macedonia in Greece" etc.). It is the country. (ancient macedonia will be referred to as Ancient Macedonia, just as Ancient Greece, or Ancient Egypt is). If you do a simple news search of Macedonia on English language news websites you'll find yourself with a bit of news about the country. Here's another example, if you say "I live in Macedonia" everyone will assume you're talking about the country, because thats the common usage of the word Macedonia in the English language. You think that's wrong, we already know that, but it doesn't change it. chan dler ··· 07:30, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

No chandler, encyclopaedia articles are not judged by what a newspaper or news site writes. Or all of them for that matter. Obviously news sources report news(duh). So not much chance you'll hear news about for example

WP:RECENTISM. --Avg (talk) 12:37, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

(ecx2) Taivo hi. Thank you for your nice comments. I enjoy talking to you and respect you as well, even though we do disagree on some points. I really don't see where you got the impression that I try to paint you as anti-Greek. I have never referred to you in this way at all, neither would I ever want to. I am very pleased that you dated Greek women. That's an application of ethnic profiling that I can agree with wholeheartedly. Back to the subject at hand however. The definition of

Ethnic profiling

states:

Racial profiling is the inclusion of racial or ethnic characteristics in determining whether a person is considered likely to commit a particular type of crime or an illegal act or to behave in a "predictable" manner.

It is this insistence that the behaviour of editors can be predicted based solely on their nationality that constitutes the profiling. There is disagreement among editors even on the definition of the term Macedonia and how confusing the term is, or what it means and what criteria should be used to define it. Couple this to the fact that the naming policies of Wikipedia are not completely clear and you have pedictably a big problem. That there is no Greek editor who disagreed with the use of the term "FYROM" may be due to the fact that MOSMAC was a well established and respected convention that worked in practice and was respected by most editors versed in all matters Macedonia until Future decided to abrogate it. Respecting MOSMAC became a rallying cry for the Greek editors who also became uneasy by FP's precipitous actions and persuaded them to vote along the same lines. There are Greek editors who abstained from voting. So not all Greek editors supported the "FYROM" term. Terefore there are plausible reasons for this seeming conformity among Greek editors other than slogans and ethnic profiling innuendo. It's always nice talking to you, nevertheless I'll try to end this here since I think I addressed the main points and my typing skills always try to remind me to make discusssions as brief as practicable. Take care for now. Dr.K. logos 06:32, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Dr. K, no, you never called me "anti-Greek", but other, less well-mannered editors here have. I would gladly like to know of any Greek Wikipedia editors who have not lined up on the same side as all the involved Greek editors. Until I actually have an example of a Greek editor who disagrees with the Greek national position vis a vis this issue, however, their behavior has been 100% predictable. So far every single new self-identified or clearly Greek editor has lined up on the same side with all the other Greek editors. Please, show me a counterexample. And MOSMAC was not a "success". It clearly states that in Greek-related articles there was no consensus, but nearly everywhere else Republic of Macedonia or Macedonia was to be used. This whole arbitration did not start with ChrisO's action, but in the failure to find any kind of consensus at Greece for the use of Republic of Macedonia rather than the non-self-identification (and non-Wikipedia-approved) "FYROM". That's the failure of MOSMAC--it did not definitively establish a single Wikipedia-wide policy. This issue was already headed for arbitration with or without ChrisO's action. That nearly always goes unmentioned in the comments being made by the Greek editors on the Evidence page. ChrisO's action is only the opening act--the main show was already scheduled--"(Republic of) Macedonia" at Greece. (Taivo (talk) 08:49, 26 April 2009 (UTC))[reply]

Just to explain myself, I was talking of examples like this one:
1. directly interested party - check
2. real-life POV - check
3. only reason he cares about the issue - check
(and everything is self-admitted, there are probably many editors that are not that honest and push their agenda in a hidden way)

I don't know if this is COI as defined in Wikipedia, I actually started to believe that it isn't, but it's at least bias and demonstrated interest in promoting a POV. I have more examples where editors show the reasons for using another name than "Macedonia" that are based on real-life POVs, I don't even have to go far, in the Evidence page of this case there are a number of arguments made why "Macedonia" name should not be used for the name of the republic, arguments that are not based on Wikipedia's policy, but on real-life political considerations. What we should actually discuss are things like: do we use the common English term? Do we need disambiguation? How to disambiguate if we need it? None of these things should be political, this should be relatively easy to decide, the very fact that this is a "controversy" it shows that POV from real-life is dripping into Wikipedia and there should be a way to limit this. My interest and effort in this case is not to promote a specific solution or to disenfranchise Greek editors, but to find some principles that can help us in such cases of strong POV and in finding ways to achieve NPOV, I personally think that's a weakness of Wikipedia that it depends on a "consensus" of interested parties, and thus actually gives a strong incentive to biased parities to join the discussions with bad effects for NPOV stand of Wikipedia. Maybe I'm just too pessimistic about the way things work here, I will try to limit my participation to this case since I feel I've wasted your time for nothing.

My question is misguided, please ignore it from now on.

man with one red shoe 10:53, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

@Dr.K., my statement was in relation to how the ethnic profiling did reveal the existence of a walled garden. By stating "it served" (past tense); I was trying to convey the notion that it should no longer be related to this case anymore (except for the complaints about it perhaps).

Anyways, nobody was saying that "You are a Greek who voted with the Greek national POV; therefore your vote does not count". Users (most notably FP and ChrisO) were merely making the point that people from a similar background all had the same Point of Veiw on this issue. PMK1 (talk) 11:17, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Americans all have 100% same position on

Osama Bin Laden (as do Greeks and me). So we should desregard that POV then? I don't get it. Of course all Greeks would be aligned, the dispute is with Greece. Just like Serbians are aligned about Kosovo and Georgians about South Ossetia. All the points I read here lead nowhere. There will always be a POV and an opposite POV. If we diregard the one, shouldn't we disregard the others? Aren't Fut.Perf, ChrisO and others aligned? Why should their ethnicity matter? I sure don't care about who they are in real life. All opinions are created equal Shadowmorph (talk) 22:11, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

I don't know how we turned this discussion to Osama, but in any case is not opinions about Osama that should be presented. Wikipedia should present facts, and I assume it needs to present the same facts in US, Greek or any other articles with no "walled gardens" where the facts would be presented according to a national POV. In case an US article would present something that would go against anything else in Wikipedia, let's say many Americans would claim that his name is "Osama bin Evil" that being the American form of his name, then we'd look at that as POV suspicious and I wouldn't shy from asking admins to impose in US page the standard that's used in the rest of the articles. It's not POV and opposite-POV it's POV and NPOV.

man with one red shoe 02:21, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

Where is some proof, in the English speaking community, that the word "Macedonia" does not usually refer to the country?

I am interested in hearing something from the other side of the story. PMK1 (talk) 11:20, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I have detailed arguments in my evidence[28]. Temporal context of citations in books[29], inside Wikipedia[30], related Google searches coming from major English speaking countries[31][32][33], important places by Google[34]. Add also the practices of neutral officials[35]. Of course the pre-1992 history of use of the word, that is still used by elder English speakers.That is difficult to prove online since there was no Internet then. Prior to 1992, Republic of Macedonia was always called Yugoslavia, their inhabitants Yugoslavian (e.g. basketball players).Shadowmorph (talk) 13:46, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Inter wiki use is irrelevant as it would have depended upon the reference to the former name of the article. Also we have heard that Australia annd S. Africa still dont recognise ROM as ROM. Where is some say, reference to the English speaking community upon which this encyclopedia is based? Thanks. PMK1 (talk) 14:20, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Actually much of Shadowmorph's evidence is worthless for determining what the most common meaning of "Macedonia" is. I have talked in my evidence posting about how meaningless Google numbers are. Since most of his argument is based on Google and not upon any real-world data, it can be ignored. His "neutral observers" are anything but. They are international organizations that have, based on pressure from the government of Greece, simply acquiesced to Greece's naming demands in order to keep Greece as a member. In order to join the organizations, Macedonia was forced to accept the naming injunctions demanded by Greece. These are not "neutral observers". Shadowmorph is unable to present actual English-language evidence that the most common usage of "Macedonia" in English is not for the country. When you look at English-language atlases, there is only one American publisher that does not use simply "Macedonia" as the name of the country.

Published atlas usage is the most reliable indicator of what common usage is. Shadowmorph claims that history references more commonly use "Macedonia" for the ancient region. Of course they do, just as all news media use "Macedonia" for the modern country. But the question isn't what do history professors use, but what do common English speakers use. They look at atlases and watch the news. The vast majority of English speakers have never cracked open a history book except for the few minutes required to study for an exam in the 6th grade. This Google Books search for "Macedonia" reveals that the majority of books labelled "Macedonia" deal with the modern country and neither with the region, nor the ancient kingdom. Even the books dealing with the naming controversy simply have "Macedonia" in the title. The attempts to show that there is some great ambiguity are disingenuous and are just playing with Google numbers. Google numbers are inherently unreliable. (Taivo (talk) 15:02, 26 April 2009 (UTC))[reply

So the bad Greeks could handle some officials by what way, threatening them? But not all like CIA?. Have you noticed I narrowed some Google searches only in English speaking countries? Ok, I get your point now, Google is broken (!) Shadowmorph (talk) 22:18, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oh and if one looks the first page of results in the above link by Taivo, one finds "

Alexander the Great (song) or Alexander (movie) rather than Alexander the Great. This is the reason we call it a -pedia you know! Shadowmorph (talk) 23:30, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

(outdent)This question puts the burden of proof on the wrong side. The burden of proof lies in the hands of those who want to bring about a change, in this case, the contested move of the article from

Republic of Macedonia to Macedonia. So, according to the rules, it is incumbent on those who support such a move to prove beyond reasonable doubt or disagreement from neutral outsiders, that such a move is clearly mandated by policy. I think I can honestly say that, while a reasonable case for the move has been put forward, that case does not seem to have met the standard of proof required to defend the move. The fact that several neutral parties oppose the move indicates that it has not met that standard. I would remind everyone I came into this discussion opposing the "Greek" faction, and am now, based on what I see as being reasonable and just interpretation of policy, am now on the same side with many of them. But, I repeat, the burden of proof (or defense, call it what you will) lies on the parties making the change, and, in this case, the change in question was the move of the article to Macedonia. John Carter (talk) 16:18, 1 May 2009 (UTC)[reply

Question for Avg

In your 19:06 29 April 2009 post at Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Macedonia_2/Workshop#Abuse_of_administrative_privilege_by_ChrisO_(4) you show links to three rulings concerning ChrisO from the Kosovo case of 2006. Do you have anything more recent? — Rlevse • Talk • 01:51, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry to jump in but since I also used the same diffs about ChrisO's history of bad conduct in my evidence, I can provide a little here. ChrisO has made several Kosovo related admin actions here Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Macedonia#Log_of_blocks_and_bans, in essence evading the Kosovo ARBCOM, logging those bans at the Macedonia ARBCOM. I am not qualified to make any assertions whether they were correct or not, I'm just pointing out to them.

There are also a number of other past incidents/allegations involving ChrisO that might be worth looking into, but again I can't say anything about those because I don't know:

Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 13:36, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't quite understand the question. This has to be an old ruling because it proves that ChrisO engaged in ARBMAC blocks being involved from the get go. If it was newer, ChrisO could claim he became involved later. Now he can't.--Avg (talk) 21:19, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The ruling was in 2006 and about edit warring and not using rollback in content disputes. The ruling shows past history. Do you have Kosovo-related recent instances of ChrisO doing this? The ruling doesn't say he can't block someone if the block is justified. Sorry in advance if this is posted elsewhere, there's a lot to sift through in this case. — Rlevse • Talk • 22:49, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Just to clarify, the Kosovo ruling proves he's an involved party in the dispute. The part where he's instructed not to block anyone while involved is in the ARBMAC decision, where Kosovo is explicitly mentioned. Again, he was an involved party (see Kosovo arbitration), ARBMAC had forbidden involved admins to do blocks (see decision) and ChrisO did many ARBMAC blocks (see ARBMAC log) while an involved editor. This is the sequence of events.--Avg (talk) 02:13, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That's a very misleading summary, Avg - no surprise there, I suppose. The blocks in question relate principally to straightforward vandalism (page blanking, vandalising the text of articles and talk pages) and sockpuppetry. See for instance the blocks under

WP:ARBMAC#September 2008 - November 2008 of a sock farm that I discovered. They relate mostly to Kosovo-related vandalism and sockpuppetry rather than Macedonian issues and they have been very infrequent (only three in the last year, excluding the sock farm I mentioned above). As far as I'm aware, ARBMAC doesn't prohibit dealing with routine issues of vandalism and suchlike. The arbs will no doubt be able to clarify this point. -- ChrisO (talk) 02:55, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply

It is true that I was one of the two parts involved in changing the template. The difference is that I posted on the discussion page, stating the change, explaining that using simply "Macedonia" to refer to the country is not correct (the country's article at the time was still named Republic of Macedonia), and that the template's name should be either FYROM or RoM. I chose the first one, but did not object to the second either; (in fact I proposed it). On the other side, ChrisO just kept reverting it, without saying anything, without posting, without justifying his actions to anyone (just like the RoM article name change). When ChrisO changed the name on the RoM article to "Macedonia" as well, the name of the template and that of the article were the same, and now, of course, the anomaly ceased to exist. I understand what you mean when you say POV pushing, I should have written Republic of Macedonia instead of FYROM (although I proposed that too), or at least create a link, just like ChrisO linked his template "Macedonia" to the RoM article, making it valid (and after the article name change, to "Macedonia" article). I don't know how to create links, but that's not an excuse. I believe that I only disrupted a disruption, trying to correct it, however, if you find my actions disruptive, I will accept any punishment you may find suitable. I must stress however that my intentions were not to disrupt Wikipedia, or impose my view on others. ChrisO accused me of edit warring well after my evidence section was posted on the evidence page. He did this in support of himself, because it was he, in fact, who started all this, and changed the template's name in advance of the article name change in order to create facts on the ground, or simply to make the article name change more justifiable. Isn't changing a template bearing a country's constitutional name with " whatever I think right" a disruption? Is it not a pointy, biased edit? After I understood that the change was part of a bigger scheme, and not a mistake as I thought originally or POV editing, I let it rest. If I aimed at disruption, I wouldn't have acted in this fashion. Finally, I must point to the absurdity of the accusation by ChrisO, himself being accused, and instead of providing arguments and evidence in support of his innocence, in turn accusing me of the same thing. The fact remains that ChrisO is the one who created this problem, "cutting the Gordian knot" not just once with the article name, but in this case also. Regards, Alfadog777 (talk) 13:02, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Admins actions against things like vandals and BLP violations are exempt. Avg, you need diffs and logs to prove your point, not hyperbole and unsubstantiated claims. — Rlevse • Talk • 03:04, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the clarification. Just a thought - if the Arbcom continues to pass discretionary sanctions, might it be possible for the Committee to state explicitly in such cases which types of "involved" admin actions continue to be permitted? It would certainly help to avoid confusion later on. -- ChrisO (talk) 03:25, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Rlevse, this is somewhat an original interpretation from your part. Or actually, you believe ChrisO too easily. This is not plain vandalism and BLP issues (where did you find those anyway?). It is about discretionary sanctions. For this kind of decisions, the process has always been to refer the matter to an unbiased, third party, who can make a clearer decision. Now this ARBCOM may decide that involved admins are allowed to pass discretionary sanctions, but until then, this is not the case. Perhaps an additional Principle on what involved admins can and cannot do could clarify this situation? So I actually agree with ChrisO's proposal above.--Avg (talk) 12:10, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Avg, I was making a general statement. I did not say the edits you are referring to were or were not valid. Again, Why don't you post diffs here so we all know exactly which ones you're talking about instead of just making accusations? — Rlevse • Talk • 12:22, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, please see the following: [36] "disruption by repeatedly posting political rants?" Who says it is disruption and who says it is rants? They may have been, but certainly an involved editor, who is actually supporting the other side of the dispute, cannot make this call and block a party of the opposing side. Again, I'm not examining if the editor in question was disruptive, he may well have been and actually some months later he was proven to be a sockpuppet. The issue is that ChrisO shouldn't make this call. Also here [37] "edit warring". This was not even a 3RR. And ChrisO leaving a message to the user's talk page about "biased editing" and making reference to the discretionary sanctions (not vandalism or so)[38]. Actually, in both cases the blocks preceded the warning that ARBMAC made obligatory before a sanction can be taken against a user ("Prior to any sanctions being imposed, the editor in question shall be given a warning with a link to this decision"). So these users were blocked without a warning. For another reason, I have to give a special mention to this one[39]. This user was repeatedly labelling the country a "banana republic"[40] and he was rightfully blocked. Now see this: (the part "Collective insults to an ethnic group")[41] --Avg (talk) 12:28, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In the case of Косовска Митровица (talk · contribs), the editor posting off-topic talk page rants, I had already asked him to desist. This was his response. He was blocked again shortly afterward by FPaS for edit-warring, and was later blocked permanently by Khoikhoi as a sockpuppet of a banned editor. In the case of Hereward77 (talk · contribs), he already had a history of blocks for edit-warring (before and after I blocked him) and notifying him of the sanctions was clearly a necessary step. As for 3RR, note that "Disruptive editors who do not violate the rule may still receive a block for edit warring." Finally, Amorphisgr was blocked for vandalism to articles. Nobody is accusing FPaS of that - the two examples aren't comparable. -- ChrisO (talk) 13:12, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

ChrisO, the point is that you were (and still are) an involved party. You cannot justify a bad call by discrediting the opposing party. They may have been in the wrong, they may have not, but you, you were not in a position to impose the discretionary sanctions. Actually this whole discussion reinforces my belief that the primary issue is the abuse of admin tools. If you cannot understand that in disputes where you are involved you cannot use the tools, then this is quite a serious issue.--Avg (talk) 13:21, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think we'll let the arbs be the judge of that. -- ChrisO (talk) 13:24, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

My guess is we probably will, ultimately. But it has been my understanding that this page was to serve, among other things, as a place where all parties could discuss matters that are being proposed to the ArbCom. And I've noticed you use the same sort of phrasing before. Are you trying to imply that you believe people should not be allowed to discuss your actions, and that you consider only ArbCom's opinions worth noting? I ask that because that is the impression at least I get from your repetition of this same statement. John Carter (talk) 17:17, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

No, I'm simply pointing out that we can talk all we like here but it's the arbs who will decide on the rights and wrongs of the issues that have been raised - not us. And in answer to your question, when it comes to Avg, I don't consider his opinions worth noting, considering his long history of tendentiousness, wikilawyering and assumptions of bad faith. Fut. Perf. has already documented this quite well. [42] I see no reason to take a bad-faith editor seriously. -- ChrisO (talk) 23:28, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Question for Alfadog777

WP:POINTy disruption since the templates are non-existent could even be called vandalism. Care to elaborate? See [43], [44], [45], — Rlevse • Talk • 13:08, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply
]

No, let's be clear what you did: you repeatedly replaced a working template with a non-existent one. You must have known what you did, because it produced a very prominent broken link in the middle of the article. You didn't go to the template and try to change the link; you simply got rid of it. You did this three times, despite being reverted by three administrators - that is very clearly edit-warring to advance your own point of view. -- ChrisO (talk) 07:38, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I will be as clear as possible about this. I do not know how to create, replace, repair, alter or anything else about links. If I was reverted by three administrators, as you say, then they should have bothered to explain what I did wrong in the discussion page, after reverting me. They, and you, should know this. It is highlighted across Wikipedia, discuss and be civil. I did both, you and they did neither one. You accuse me of attempting to advance my own point of view. What did you attempt? You changed the name well in advance of changing the name of the article "Republic of Macedonia". I dare ask why? Explain your motives, explain your actions. You answer yet again with accusations. Try answering the real questions here. Why did you threaten instead of talking to me? Why did you change the name template before changing (against consensus) the name of the article? Why did you accuse me well after I posted in the evidence page? Last, but most important, why did you disregard the opposition's opinion so blatantly in every single aspect of this case, concerning the naming of the article and the template? I answered when I was called to do it, explaining my motives and assuming full responsibility of my actions before the committee, I suggest you did the same. I believe the difference between my actions and yours is evident here, so try defending yourself with arguments and proof instead of accusations. Regards, Alfadog777 (talk) 17:47, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Question for parties

At Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Macedonia 2/Evidence#National Perspective Is a Critical Element in this Failure of Consensus, Taivo said "There is not a single self-identified Greek in this discussion who is not against "Macedonia" as a label either at Macedonia or at Greece. Indeed, at Greece, there is not a single self-identified Greek who is not against "Republic of Macedonia". There are very few non-Greeks in that same camp." I would like input on:

How true is this statement?
How critical do the parties feel national perspective is in this case?

— Rlevse • Talk • 21:58, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Answer by Fut.Perf.

It is undoubtedly true, see my breakdown of the poll results (which I continue to maintain is accurate). Experience from years of debate confirms the same picture. There are a handful of cases where Greek editors (some of our best: Macrakis (talk · contribs) and Giorgos Tzimas (talk · contribs) come to mind) have declined to get involved in the dispute, which may indicate they silently disagree with the majority Greek opinion. I'm not aware of any Greek editor who has ever overtly taken part in these debates on the "other" side.
Incidentally, I recall an incident that maybe illustrates the intensity of the national group factor, and group pressure: there was a Greek user back in 2006 who dared to stray from the national line insofar as he casually used the term "Macedonia(n)" in talk page discussion for the Slavic side without the usual signs of disparagment [46]. He was immediately seized upon by a group of other Greek editors (Avg first among them), who accused him of being a (Slav-)Macedonian agent provocateur falsely posing as a Greek, with the argument that No True Greek could ever hold an opinion such as the one he expressed [47]. (I was later able to confirm the person's identity, who turned out to be a genuine Greek academic and expert student of Macedonian history).
This fact it is the absolute center and focus of the whole case. We wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the ethnic polarisation. Greek editors push the "former Yugoslav" and "anti-plain-Macedonia" line, because that is what people in their country think is politically desirable in the real world. Nothing else. Of course, we get similar situations in other disputes too, all the time. Greek editors systematically push "Greek" views, Albanian editors push Albanian ones, Korean editors push Korean ones. People have learned to accept that as the normal state of things, which it shouldn't be. The interesting and exceptional case here is that we are not dealing with a fight between two or more factions, but with a single faction dug in in a trench warfare situation against everyone else. That's why it's a good testing case of how the power of such POV-pushing factions can be effectively curtailed. (Note that of the two immediate triggers of this case, the original dispute at Greece and the Macedonia page move, the first is of course much more strongly polarised than the second. In the second case, there have been legitimate arguments against the move also from non-Greek editors (but the ranks within the Greek side are just as closed as elsewhere, of course.) Fut.Perf. ☼ 22:14, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Clarification by Taivo

My syntax is a bit convoluted above (I'm a professor after all). Here's what I'm asserting in my Evidence and that our arbitrator seeks comment on:

At Greece: All Greeks want "former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia", no Greeks want "Republic of Macedonia" or "Macedonia"; most non-Greeks don't want "former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia"
At Macedonia: All Greeks want "Republic of Macedonia", no Greeks want "Macedonia"

(Taivo (talk) 23:32, 9 May 2009 (UTC))[reply]

My evidence page should be clear on how critical I feel that the nationalistic position has been to the stonewalling at Talk:Greece and Talk:Macedonia. I will provide further discussion if you feel it is necessary. In the answers which follow from those who subscribe to the Greek national POV, you will note that not a single one of them can identify a single Greek editor who supports the use of "Macedonia" at Macedonia or "Republic of Macedonia" at Greece. The self-identified Greek editors are still in perfect lock-step. (Taivo (talk) 07:00, 11 May 2009 (UTC))[reply]

Reply to Shadowmorph: Your list is highly POV. The "UN" position is not NPOV--it reflects a uniformly Greek position within Wikipedia and is espoused only by self-identified Greek editors. It is vandalism when Greek editors rampage through the pages of Wikipedia replacing "Republic of Macedonia" or "Macedonia" with "FYROM". It also assumes that there is WP:Consensus vis a vis "Republic of Macedonia". This is not the case. There is no consensus on the naming of Macedonia because of Greek stonewalling. Your list is far from accurate and is, itself, an illustration of a POV slant. (Taivo (talk) 13:07, 11 May 2009 (UTC))[reply]

Reply to Avg: But the national POV of the Greek faction is highly biased--it is "former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia". You try to hide the fact that Greek nationalists are replacing "Macedonia" and "Republic of Macedonia" throughout Wikipedia (I just reverted one instance today) with "FYROM". You are throwing this red herring of the name of the Macedonia article around so as to mask the real subject of this arbitration--the name of Macedonia at Greece which the Greek faction insists must be FYROM. (Taivo (talk) 07:43, 12 May 2009 (UTC))[reply]

Reply to Dr K: In theory, you have a good point. But the problem is practice. It doesn't matter what logical arguments are mustered against the Greek POV concerning Macedonia. The Greek editors invariable come up with "logical" arguments and wikilawyering of their own and all the Greek editors then fall in lockstep behind whatever argument has been put forward. Statistically, all logical arguments cannot favor the Greek POV, there must be a mix of logical arguments on both sides, yet there has not been a single anti-Greek argument put forward by any Greek editor. It's not a coincidence that all Greeks oppose the naming of Macedonia against everyone else in whatever article they are discussing. If it were simply a question of logical arguments, then there would be some logical arguments on the other side of the coin and statistically there would be Greek editors lining up on the side of those logical arguments. Name a single logical argument put forward by a Greek editor that supports the name "Macedonia" for the country or even supports "Republic of Macedonia" at Greece. You can't name a single one. That's why the nationalistic arguments will not go away no matter how hard you try to downplay them. Once you can name a single Greek who is "in the other camp", then you have an argument. And, by the way, there are plenty of Americans who do not think that George Washington was a saint and, believe it or not, there are Americans who would look with sympathy at Al Qaeda. That's because Americans do not work as a unitary, nationalistic bloc. The same cannot be said for the Greek bloc in anything to do with Macedonia. (Taivo (talk) 05:36, 18 May 2009 (UTC))[reply]

Answer by Yannismarou

To answer your first question, as far as the Greece article is concerned, I'll copy here one of my FoFs: "A held straw poll ended in a polarised result: half of the respondents, mostly Greeks but also some uninvolved outside nations, advocated "former Yugoslav...", the other half, most of them from uninvolved outside nations, advocated "Republic of"." As far the RoM move, it's obvious that ChrisO's move was opposed by all Greek users, but also various "uninvolved outside nations" editors as well.
What I can say for sure is that all sides here (and I wouldn't like here to promote ChrisO's, Husond's and Fut's divisive and polarizing attitude) have their arguments, and as Carcaroth wittily stated "there are some very good arguments being presented on all sides here". Most of the users sharing the same views with me invoked policies, and strove to present coherent and convincing arguments. The altera pars represented by prominent Wikipedians did the same. It is up to you to judge them! Is "national prespective" crucial here? Maybe! But is it the only crucial factor here? Is it "national prespective" which led ChrisO to fully endorse a stance, which IMO is fully supportive to the ethnic Macedonian POV? Is it "national prespective" which made Husond to promote what I regard as a ethnic profiling? Is it "national prespective" which made Fut.Perf. to adopt a battleground attitude, and attack users who opposed his views?

My point? I'll not argue that all the users who share the same views with me did everything properly or that they avoided mistakes. If our/their conduct was improper in certain occasions, then probably "national perspective" played a role. But users of the other side also committed serious mistakes in terms of conduct and use of adm privileges, although they are not "ethnic-Macedonians". As a matter of fact, we reached a point that their presence overshadowed ethnic Macedonians users! Thus, if "national perspective" is the mortal sin of the one side, which the mortal sin of the other side?--Yannismarou (talk) 22:59, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Answer by Avg

Please allow me to make a comment which I think is very relevant. Taivo's comment is implicitly trying to discredit one of the two opinions because an ethnic group is behind it. Now, the fact that editors from a certain country are found to have a similar opinion in the said issue, does this mean by default that their opinion is wrong and should be discredited? Couldn't it mean that they're more educated about the issue since it is closer to them? To be specific: All Greeks know that more than one Macedonias exist, since they have their own Macedonia, which is actually larger and more populous than the country, so for them it is blatantly obvious that disambiguation is needed. Ask the Bulgarians. They all know their own Macedonia, so they would also agree. Ask any historian. They would also agree that Macedonia also means the Ancient Macedonia. For these groups, the support for the disambig page would be 100%. For other groups it may not be 100% since they may not know all the meanings (although as it became apparent most of them do and actually support the disambiguation). People who know from first hand the plethora of meanings of the word Macedonia simply cannot accept the fallacy that some people try to impose here that Macedonia only means one thing. It is absurd to try to put the blame on them for actually knowing.
It is completely secondary. Why can't people look at the content of the arguments? If a national group was supporting a heavily biased version, then this should be condemned immediately and these people marginalized. But here, it is impossible to claim that supporting the fact that disambiguation is needed is "nationalist Greek POV". This is a very legitimate (and at least for me by far the most logical) argument.--Avg (talk) 23:57, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment, are you able to answer the question or will you continue to dodge it? Answer please; there is not a single self-identified Greek [on Wikipedia] who is not against "Republic of Macedonia". The answer is very simple. PMK1 (talk) 06:57, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

We cannot infer that for the whole of them or all the future editorsShadowmorph ^{^"^} 09:59, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply

So let me reverse the tables for a sec, because if we continue this way here we'll be left with the idea that the most important division in the world is between Greeks and non-Greeks. Can you find me any Slavic Macedonian editor who is supporting "former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" over "Republic of Macedonia"? Should I then say that all Slavic Macedonian editors are nationalists? My answer? Not. I will hear their arguments. However, just because I am a Greek Macedonian and I support a certain opinion which may or may not be the majority opinion on Greece, I'm automatically labelled a nationalist.--Avg (talk) 00:12, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That is much better. Get strait to the point and not the usual politician style answers which much of one side has been giving lately. PMK1 (talk) 05:40, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Here is a proposal from a self-declared British editor[48]. The distinction to Greeks, non-Greeks, regarding disambiguation of Macedonia, is purely artificial. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 14:00, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Answer by Shadowmorph

My laconic answer:
Hasty generalization is a logical fallacy of faulty generalization

National position is mostly irrelevant if a position is based on policy. A position that is (falsely) attributed as national or nationalistic is the one saying "FYROM is a neutral (NPOV) term". That is the position of the neutral UN and Republic of Macedonia officially agreed to it once upon a time. Of course the "Republic of Macedonia should be the name of the country article" is not the Greek national position. It is a position based on policy that used to be supported by both sides but now is not. "Macedonia main topic should be a dab page" is not a national position of any country but the position of historians. Incidentally (as per my evidence) Brittanica uses the big bold title "Macedonia" (just that) for all the related entries [49]. The compromise "Macedonia main topic should be the region or the kingdom" together with "Use constitutional form of the name Republic of Macedonia for the country" is not any national position but common practice in conflict regions around Wikipedia (unrecognized entities, disputes about the name of an entity - as per my evidence[50]). I proposed the last one to find consensus, nobody seemed to care for that anymore.

Definitions

pro-
UN
edits (using the term f.Y.R.O.M. in whole long form) cannot be described as vandalizing
pro-WP:Consensus editors (using "Republic of Macedonia") cannot be described as pro-Greek
pro-Macedonian(Greek) nationalistic position is to oppose any non-Greek use of the word Macedonia e.g. "Skopje". (sometimes use "Fyrom" like a word or adjective)
official Greece: use "Macedonia" in the long name but add a geographic qualifier like "North Macedonia", "Vardar Macedonia" etc; perceives that as a compromise.
official Republic of Macedonia: use "Macedonia" alone as the name but also be open to double name formulas (one for usage by Greece only e.g. Macedonia-Skopje the other for international use); will also seek compromise.
anti-Greek position is to refuse any use of the word Macedonia that is related to Greece
pro-Macedonian(ethnic) nationalistic position is the above and also to use only the English word Macedonia with no qualifiers to refer to the country (sometimes also affiliate the country pseudohistorically to Ancient Macedonia)
pro-Bulgarian?, There exist
Macedonians (Bulgarians). They shouldn't be left out. Bulgaria holds a small part of the Macedonia (region)
,

reason for the above list, NPOV

I try to demonstrate that there are multiple POVs, not only national, not just "the Greeks" and "the rest". Isn't that the very essence of this question to the parties? The NPOV category would be the WP:consensus, using the self identifying, descriptive, non ambiguous name for the country, that doesn't blatantly oppose the self-identifying terms of other nearby entities or disregards their people completely. Shadowmorph ^{^"^}

I removed the comment because it was inappropriate, there's no need to respond to something that has been deleted.

man with one red shoe 14:06, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply

No hard feelings.The above rationale should be mentioned anyhow. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 19:49, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comments that have been edited and deleted (usually immediately) by the author should not be commented upon. That is simple courtesy to a person who is writing and thinking at the same time. (Taivo (talk) 19:57, 11 May 2009 (UTC))[reply]

I know, I have also made the same error sometime. Everybody including me should calm down before pressing "save page" :-). Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 20:07, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Answer by Man with one red shoe

1. I consider that evident. For example in Talk:Greece/Naming poll there's no self-identified Greek (from what I know) to have voted against "former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia". I called on editors: show me one Greek to have opposed that name but nobody responded to my request.
2. I think this is very important, Greeks admit freely to a strong POV in Greek population, one editor here claimed that >95% are against calling the neighbor country simply "Macedonia" or even "Republic of Macedonia", but when they come and edit on Wikipedia they claim a miraculous impartiality. I find that hard to swallow. I also find hard to swallow that most of the Greeks interpret WP policies in one way and international editors in other way, this polarization is a clear indicator of POV leaking from real-world to Wikipedia in my view, actually the whole "drama" is the best indicator that this is a political POV fight, not a simple content decision.

man with one red shoe 07:16, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply

Reply to Shadowmorph: let me make some comments about your list:

pro-UN -- it has been repeated over and over again that UN names have no bearing on Wikipedia when it comes to article names or how to refer to countries in articles, however mostly Greek editors push the UN name because they consider it an acceptable compromise, "smallest evil" in their view, even though it doesn't satisfy them completely because it still contain the name of "Macedonia", they are basically choosing the claiming that these "pro-UN" filibusters don't have anything to do with Greek POV pushers, is incorrect.

pro-consensus Which consensus? These again are people (as we notice in this very page) who claim a non-existent consensus (and when it comes to how to name the country in Greece even Greek editors claim lack of consensus) to protect a status quo that's in their interest, again claiming that this has nothing to do with Greek POV is a bit of departure from truth.
What you call official Greece, pro-Macedonian(Greek) are just different variants of POV which require different degrees of hiding of "Macedonia" name when it comes to the name of the Republic, we don't really care that some people don't want to use "Macedonia" at all and other (official or not) want to pair it all the time with "Former Yugoslav..."

So you see, all these categories are in fact only one category: POV pushers. There is of course a NPOV (neutral point of view), using per WP policies and guidelines the common English name and the self-identifier name when the common English name cannot be used. ChrisO by his move muddled the waters too much, if he didn't do that, now we'd discuss only about the unacceptable and shameful push of "Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" name in

man with one red shoe 14:34, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply

Policies don't just say "use common name--that's it"; they make many mentions to "dealing with geopolitical contexts" using "conflict resolution", go along "naming conflict" guidelines etc. Most imporantly if it is difficult to find a better name, "leave it" and focus to constructive editing and content. Even if there was no consensus on Republic of Macedonia (people showed there was until some changed their mind suddenly--but I wasn't around); still the pro-Consensus editors seek to find a new consensus name, opposed to having a name chosen, by an admin, an arbitration or anybody else. Possibly e.g. "Macedonia (republic)". I know that fatigue was actually a strong case for not changing any names for years that's why new views are always needed. Macedon was one of them, I wasn't tied to any previous discussions so I boldly moved it. However my move can be undone, like it is supposed to be in a wiki. Macedonia right now cannot be--I have never met such a case elsewhere in Wikipedia, a name chosen and locked into position without trying to find a common understanding among all users. I do believe that consensus building should not be abandoned and it should include figuring out the names for all the articles. There are only so many possibilities, I don't think anyone ever discussed them all in one place. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 20:03, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

1. I agree that policies are not clear cut, otherwise this would have been solved long time ago, however I would feel much more comfortable if people who interpret the policies would not be the very POV fighters from this debate, in any case not single purpose accounts that all they do is edit/debate about Macedonia name or Greek national causes on Wikipedia. 2. I doubt is possible to find consensus when a part of editors have a specific interest and will always vote against against a decent solution (see the situation on

man with one red shoe 20:23, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply

on top and the careful selective quotation.)

All your points above are very well said. Speaking for myself I didn't even know what an AfD, a RM and an arbitration in Wikipedia was before Easter. I hope to leave SPA status behind me but right now I consume my time here, just like anybody else. I didn't chose that to begin with. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 20:33, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Answer by SQRT5P1D2

How true is this statement?

While certain parties showed in their comments their true colours regarding the "factions" strategy ("Greeks against everybody else, let's get rid of the bad Greeks and grecophiles"), I will just state the obvious. The results are always sample-dependent. That's what junior high statistics taught me.

-Is our sample representative?

-Is there any reliable way to validate the characteristics of the sample?

These are the real questions. Claiming that "why, of course, X always do that", is an unfounded argument for an untenable theory; it's simply an attempt to disguise POV-pushing against policies.

How critical do the parties feel national perspective is in this case?

ChrisO wrote that "with Macedonia, there's only one country using that name for itself and the territory is uncontested by anyone" and I responded:

-Here you are (originally posted here): "Skopje, February 2008 - Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia's Prime Minister, Nikola Gruevski, lays a wreath on the monument of national hero Georgi Delchev, to which a map of the so-called "Greater Macedonia" is attached; the map includes a considerable part of Northern Greece, including Greece's second-largest city Thessaloniki, and the Halkidiki peninsula. This is no less than 30% of the territory of Greece - a 55-year-old NATO member. Can this be the behavior of a friend and perspective ally?" - This is taken from a full page ad in major newspapers (“Washington Post”, “The New York Times”, “Le Monde” etc). There are also some really interesting school books for you.

(The same irredentist map appeared in a recent poster for another Delchev event with Gruevski! Note the provocative use of an official,

WIPO protected greek state symbol

So, how critical is national perspective when the prime minister of a neighbouring state bows to maps claiming a large part of your country's territory? How critical is national perspective when a quarter of a region's population, living in a third of it, has irredentist claims against other countries? How critical is national perspective in reaction to state-sponsored propaganda and the endorsement of pseudohistory, from schools to everyday life?

I'd say critical enough.

How critical is for Wikipedia to stay out of political games? SQRT5P1D2 (talk) 15:40, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Reply to BalkanFever - Indeed, several parties want to hide the ugly truth, to justify their POV-pushing; however, you chose the wrong person to pick on. If reality is "ranting", then insults are a prize. As long as I am here and to the extent that policies allow me, propaganda will be exposed. SQRT5P1D2 (talk) 11:39, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Answer by BalkanFever

To answer 2) As you can see from SQRT5P1D2 in his rant, which by the way is a rant circulated on Wikipedia by almost every Greek nationalist troll, national perspective is the problem. Balkan Fever 08:45, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Answer by Heimstern

The results of the straw poll show that it is clearly the case. As for its importance, I've already mentioned this, so I'll just quote myself (from my statement concerning the acceptance of this case): "Where two separate consensuses form, one consisting almost entirely of people with a vested interest in a certain nationality, the other consisting of more or less everyone without any vested interest in that country, something is broken." —Preceding unsigned comment added by Heimstern (talk • contribs) 08:59, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Answer by Ev

As fas as I can tell, it is true. See either Húsönd's visual conclusion or Fut. Perf.'s results summary (note also that Cédric Boissière, while a self-declared French user, gives the impression of being a true grécophile [51] :-)
As Fut. Perf. mentions above, this is the central element of the whole case (and of various other cases brought before this committee). That a significant number of editors try to have our articles reflect their national & cultural perspectives is an everyday reality we have learnt to take for granted in most of Wikipedia's hot spots. Deacon of Pndapetzim spoke of Eurovision trends (April 2009). For a similar situation, see the stonewalling by Persian/Iranian editors at Shatt al-Arab (April & May 2007).
We need to take this situation into account, and find mechanisms to handle such distortions effectively & efficiently, without subjecting our neutral editors to the gargantuan waste of time it usually takes to sort each individual case. – We need to encourage editors in general (and administrators in particular) to dismiss culture- and politics-based arguments irrelevant for Wikipedia's purposes; we need to issue topic bans and disruption blocks more liberally. (It's my fault too: I have the bad habit of commenting in discussions, instead of remaining "uninvolved" and helping to smooth discussions by acting as an administrator only).

Best, Ev (talk) 20:55, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Reply by Tasoskessaris

With all due respect to my friend Taivo, I have to ask him a few questions: If Americans are polled regarding the War of Independence, how many of them are going to support that it was illegal and that the British were the rightful government of the United States? Further how many Americans would agree that George Washington was a traitor who rebelled against the legitimate British government? Same goes for the September 11 attacks. How many Americans are going to support Al Qaeda, if polled? Does that disqualify the American editors from contributing to these articles? Do we have to run a progrom against them and countless other ethnicities and others for whom there are innumerable motherhood or even hot-button issues and yet, somehow, are able to productively contribute to this great project regardless? Obviously not. The golden rules here are:

WP:AGF and judge the editors by the content of their edits not by their, purported, ethnicity. If the edits of the Greek editors are found to be bad faith and illogical then let's focus on that. Let's examine the content of the Greek editors' edits. Are the Greek editors advancing logical arguments? Or are their arguments ridiculous? If they are ridiculous it stands to reason that it should be relatively easy to refute them by logic and not by using ethnicity based arguments. Using ethnicity based arguments instead of logic is a morally and intellectually bankrupt way to analyse editors' contributions. Dr.K. logos 04:20, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply

Reply to Taivo. Dear Taivo. It doesn't matter that a few Americans may not follow the majority on the points I made about George Washington, the British or Al Qaeda. The fact remains that the vast majority of Americans will support George Washington, and be against the Brits and Al Qaeda. That by definition makes them a block. A few apostates here or there will have no effect on the reality of a nationalist American block. Hell, I support the vast majority of Americans on all of these three points. Does that make me part of the American block? Or does my Greek ethnicity automatically disqualify me from belonging in the American block? Is membership in a block dependent on intellectual affinities or solely upon ethnic affinities? A block is a block. Be it monolithic or with a few dissenters, it doesn't make much of a difference. Same goes for the Greek block. Macedonia is a region of Greece. It stands to reason therefore that you won't see too many Greeks agreeing to use Macedonia to represent RoM in the Greece article, especially because the term Macedonia is in dire need of disambiguation, so much more when used in the Greece article where the native Macedonia exists. Now we go to FYROM. It seems it is massively, but not quite monolithically, preferred by the Greek editors for use in the article of Greece. There are many reasons for this. MOSMAC may be a main reason. Nationalism maybe another. But if the opinions of the Greek editors are backed up by solid arguments, based on Wikipedia policies, it really doesn't matter if they are suspected to also be nationalism inspired. At the end of the day everyone in Wikipedia lives or dies by the strength of their arguments, not by their ethnicity blocks or other affinity identifiers. Blocks, monolithic or not, are irrelevant in this or any other discussion, because the concept of a "block" and the concept of "logic" are mutually orthogonal. Being a member of a block does not correlate to the logic (or intelligence) of your arguments. Dr.K. logos 06:35, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Questions about disambiguation discussions

I've asked this question on the evidence talk page. Posting a link here to make sure people see it. Could answers please be placed on the evidence page. Thanks. Carcharoth (talk) 14:41, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Question about evidence

If there is potentially crucial evidence to the case, currently not publicly accessible, should parties and arbitrators have the right to know? If yes, under what circumstances? SQRT5P1D2 (talk) 17:52, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think this question is already covered by the following one of yours.--Yannismarou (talk) 13:08, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe in a way. But it covers only a part of the question. For example, this one could refer to parties not related in any way with organization X. It's not only about COI. SQRT5P1D2 (talk) 13:43, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Somehow I feel that you don't ask a question but try to insinuate things (you do the same in the next question too). Do you talk about editors involved in this case talking privately between them, do you want to know what they discussed? I think that's a useless endeavor, first of all nobody is forced to reveal private discussion, second of all anybody could invent or forge emails and messages to their own desire, so maybe you should drop this useless line of "investigation".

man with one red shoe 14:04, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply

I'm not an investigator but a party. If other parties have the right to ask legitimate questions, then I have the same right. If some like these questions and others don't, it's a different story. Arbitrators are not detectives but judges. If a question has the potential of bringing relevant evidence to the table, parties won't judge this. Since this is an open case, me, you or anyone else, can't predict the outcome. Now, if we'd go back to the factions theory ("the X side is evil"), put the blame on my duties as the Panultimate Captain of GTT (Grecophile Trolling Team)... SQRT5P1D2 (talk) 14:38, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Your question is problematic because Wikipedia deals with public information, you ask about private information, how do you suggest we obtain it?

man with one red shoe 14:46, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply

Although my phrasing covers every angle ("should", "what circumstances"), I'm adding this bit about your specific question. ArbCom can establish future principles when dealing with cases. As a matter of fact, it can also be the recipient of confidential information. This essay has more information. SQRT5P1D2 (talk) 15:06, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

My complain is also due to the fact that your question is too hypothetical, if you know something you should ask more clear, for example "Should we know what ChrisO and Fut. Perf. discussed privately before the move?" Then arbitrators can determine if that's a "crucial" info or not, and what should be done about it. It's also unclear, do you know the info and you want to make it known to the arbitrators or you want to fish some private info about editors and their private discussions by asking arbitrators to ask for such private details? (which would be unacceptable in my view). So, depends what you want, I bet even arbitrators cannot respond to such a general and hypothetical question and they will probably ignore it, which is not what you want, right? So, be more specific (it would also clarify your intention and people won't accuse you of things that you don't like)

man with one red shoe 19:37, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply

SQRT, MWORS makes a good suggestion. Also, some people are seeing insinuations and some don't understand exactly what you want in your two questions and this should be avoided. Rephrase your question. If you are unsure of anything at all feel free to contact me directly. — Rlevse • Talk • 20:33, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Rlevse, I read that you also asked arbitrators about it and my questions were considered legitimate. If some people see other things, that's what they see. As a matter of fact, only a few parties had a completely negative attitude regarding these questions, despite my carefully chosen phrasing. If the Workshop is not the proper place to discuss generic questions, that's different. But since principles are formed when dealing with cases, I thought that this was the proper place to discuss about it.

While I'm not into fishing or hunting and privacy is of utmost importance to me, if for the benefit of the Community we should focus to MWORS's specific question (essentially a product of my generic question), that's perfectly fine. After all, other administrators and editors asked the same question in the talk pages and elsewhere. So, if there are parties collaborating off-wiki, admitting that they knew about each other's actions beforehand, what should be done about it? Should ArbCom ask them to provide records of their private correspondence, if they agree? SQRT5P1D2 (talk) 10:51, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Question about involvement

If there are involved parties, currently or in the past affiliated in any way with organizations promoting political agendas, should parties and arbitrators have the right to know? If yes, should they be a part of a case regarding encyclopedic terminology? SQRT5P1D2 (talk) 17:52, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In layman's terms, if someone works/collaborates or worked/collaborated with X and X promotes a certain POV regarding Macedonian-related issues, there is a conflict of interest (

WP:NPOV). SQRT5P1D2 (talk) 12:07, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply

I would remind you, SQRT, that outing another editor is a very serious matter—and not one to be approached flippantly. Contact an Arbitrator privately and explain in full what you intend to do. The workshop isn't the place to be posting comments like the two above, however—which could be quite easily interpreted as suggesting you intend to reveal an involved editor's real-life conflict of interest.

AGK 12:16, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply

If what you mean is that ChrisO's real name is Nikola Gruevski, well then we already knew that. Balkan Fever 12:29, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Disagree. My belief is that ChrisO is FutPer's sockpuppet, who's real name is Nikola Gruevski, and who is often fooling aroung to the detriment of the project. Otherwise it would have been too obvious. I'm also pretty sure that NikoSilver is the sockpuppet of Branko Crvenkovski, who wants to destroy Gruevski's fame in Wikipedia. As for me? Hi, hi, you'll never learn!

Seriously now: SQRT, if I understand correctly, you argue that an involved party works or worked with an organization promoting a certain POV regarding Macedonian-related issues, and there is a conflict of interest. In this case, I believe you should be very careful, and I think that AGK gave you the right direction. If you think that these affiliations critically influence the NPOV stance of the editors in question, then the best solution is to contact by e-mail the ARBCOM and present convincingly and in detail your evidence.--Yannismarou (talk) 12:56, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

AGK, thank you for your suggestion. However, I'm asking a question that those who will judge the case, thought that it was perfectly legitimate. I also believe in public resolutions. BalkanFever, I welcome your irony but I believe that your comment has no place here. If you'd like to remove it yourself and replace it with a useful contribution, please do so. SQRT5P1D2 (talk) 12:41, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm a strong advocate for full accountability and transparency where possible, but occasionally, we must sacrifice that for the sake of our editor's privacy. Please use a little tact when juggling with the identity of an editor; privacy is an area where our on-Wiki actions can quite easily spill out of the Wikipedia Bubble and into real life. If you'll insist on pressing ahead with this, then beware that a number of individuals have been banned from the project for publicly "outing" project contributors. We have an Arbitration Committee partly because we need some things to be handled in private.

AGK 12:47, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply

After all, the "judges" here are the Arbitrators. They decide, and they must have full knowlegde of all relevant evidence. After all, they have the support of the Community, and we are supposed to trust them and have confidence in their integrity and judgement. I thus think that AGK's proposal is the most logical one. I'm also in support of full disclosure, but when two "goods" are conflicting, there should be some kind of compromise. The compromise here is IMO "full disclosure to the ARBCOM members".--Yannismarou (talk) 13:04, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

To all: I understand and share your concerns. I read again and again the questions, hitting the preview button numerous times. However, my phrasing was careful and others believe the same. I do not juggle or insult: I just ask. Nobody is obligated to answer or react in any way. Nobody should feel threatened, if she/he has nothing to hide. It's really that simple, nothing more, nothing less. And everybody knows how to seek assistance, when reaching a sensitive area. SQRT5P1D2 (talk) 13:24, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If your questions are innocent queries and not insinuations, and you ask them without intending to break Wikipedia's communal norms on editor privacy, then I'm relatively satisfied.

AGK 14:25, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply

I'm also satisfied that we resolved this. I already explained what I think about the "thin meatspace line" - and "AGK" is conveniently four keys to the left from "AGF" :) SQRT5P1D2 (talk) 14:51, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

SQRT, knock off this line of questioning. Don't do anything to out someone. — Rlevse • Talk • 20:35, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

(see also response to the previous question) If I didn't make it clear until know, one more time: I have no intention of violating established policies (

WP:OUTING). Even in the absence of established policies, I abide by common courtesy and common sense. SQRT5P1D2 (talk) 11:01, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply

In my opinion, SQRT, since your "questions" here clearly insinuate that some of the participants in this arbitration are motivated by their past affiliations "with organizations promoting political agendas", you've already violated common courtesy. --Akhilleus (talk) 11:45, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Akhilleus, thank you for your comment. We're all entitled to our personal opinions, but I would like to ask you to assume good faith. In any case, this question was considered legitimate, as it should be. When I clarified it, I mentioned

WP:COI. This could refer to anyone, Greek, Italian, German, Spanish, British, administrator, editor; anyone, really. It's not a question directly accusing someone. We've discussed the role of "national perspective" and we should also discuss the issue of potential conflict of interest when ethnic identity is not involved. There is nothing wrong with that, while the Community tries to ensure NPOV. As you probably know, in the past there were several incidents; organizations, pressure groups and lobbies are always trying to influence high-profile sites like Wikipedia. SQRT5P1D2 (talk) 12:36, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply

). Names that are not common and do not appear in verifiable reliable sources are therefore excluded from consideration.

Proposed final decision

Proposals by ChrisO

Proposed principles

Purpose of Wikipedia

1) The purpose of Wikipedia is to create a high-quality, free-content encyclopedia in an atmosphere of camaraderie and mutual respect among contributors. Use of the site for other purposes, such as advocacy or propaganda, furtherance of outside conflicts, publishing or promoting original research, and political or ideological struggle, is prohibited.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. Standard wording. -- ChrisO (talk) 20:18, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

Conduct of editors

2) Wikipedia users are expected to behave reasonably, calmly, and courteously in their interactions with other users; to approach even difficult situations in a dignified fashion and with a constructive and collaborative outlook; and to avoid acting in a manner that brings the project into disrepute. Unseemly conduct, such as personal attacks, incivility, assumptions of bad faith, harassment, disruptive point-making, and gaming the system, is prohibited.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. Standard wording. -- ChrisO (talk) 20:18, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

Core purpose of Wikipedia

3) The core purpose of the Wikipedia project is to create a high-quality free encyclopedia. Contributors whose actions are detrimental to that goal may be asked to refrain from them, even when these actions are undertaken in good faith.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. Principle taken from the Stefanomencarelli case. -- ChrisO (talk) 20:18, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

Naming conventions 4)
verifiable reliable sources
in English call the subject.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:
Proposed. Principle taken from the Ireland article names case. In this case, naming has generally been determined by what Greek editors deem to be politically acceptable to them rather than what is easiest for readers, and the naming has followed formal diplomatic terminology used by specialists rather than the common naming used by the rest of the population. -- ChrisO (talk) 20:18, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

Use of common names

5)

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names)

makes a clear distinction between the common name of a person or thing and its formal name, defining a common name as "a commonly used name, the word "common" being used in the sense of "in general use; of frequent occurrence; usual, ordinary, prevalent, frequent." (Oxford English Dictionary, common:10a)."

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. Documentation of English-language usage (presented here) indicates that the term "Macedonia" by itself is overwhelmingly used to refer to the country rather than to the region or the Greek province, and that the formal term "Republic of Macedonia" and the reference "the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" are infrequently used in contemporary English works. -- ChrisO (talk) 07:34, 22 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In response to Fedayee: I'm not making any analogies to any other places in this proposed principle; it's a simple reiteration of what policy states. -- ChrisO (talk) 22:29, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"Oppose'. Clear and direct relevance of this proposal as stated above to the case at hand has not been explicitly established. Also, as noted by others, the comparatively simplistic presentation here is inadequate to describe this more complex situation and could reasonably be seen as being perhaps misleading for a situation as complicated as this one. John Carter (talk) 22:28, 6 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

The analogies you had posted are a little too simplistic and not adequate for this particular case. While Azerbaijan is an interesting comparison, there are still relevant differences. Azerbaijan articles direct to the republic and Azarbaijan with the a directs to the Iranian province, in fact the latter redirects to Azerbaijan (Iran) and that's how the conflict over the term Azerbaijan was settled. In this case both Macedonias are rendered the same exact way. - Fedayee (talk) 23:36, 25 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Which presentation would better fit wikipedia? Common usage would be the first entry on a dictionary. Also, obviously some involved parties overeact to the presentation. Maybe they should get over it. I really don't know.--Vanakaris (talk) 22:10, 6 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Use of formal names is deprecated in article titles

6)

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names)

deprecates the use of full formal names for people or things in article titles: "Using a full formal name requires people to know that name, and to type more."

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. Note that "Republic of Macedonia" is a full formal name, and "the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" is not a name at all but a reference. -- ChrisO (talk) 07:34, 22 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

Use of verifiable reliable sources

7)

WP:NPOV requires that common names be used "as found in verifiable reliable sources" (with reference to Wikipedia:Verifiability

Proposed. Note that some editors have attempted to use names such as "Republic of Skopje", "Vardarska", etc, that have no common usage and do not appear in English-language sources, except pejoratively. See evidence at

WP:V. -- ChrisO (talk) 07:34, 22 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

, and searches from external sources. WP:DB also states that "If there is extended discussion about which article truly is the primary topic, that may be a sign that there is in fact no primary topic, and that the disambiguation page should be located at the plain title with no "(disambiguation)""

Purpose of disambiguation

8) The purpose of disambiguation, as defined by Wikipedia:Disambiguation (WP:DAB), is to resolve "conflicts in Wikipedia article titles that occur when a single term can be associated with more than one topic, making that term likely to be the natural title for more than one article." Disambiguation is not a means of promoting, endorsing or rejecting one party's point of view.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. -- ChrisO (talk) 07:34, 22 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

With respect, I think you're misinterpreting what this proposed principle is about (and it should be read in conjunction with #Disambiguating with primary topics immediately below. What I'm getting at here is what the purpose of disambiguation is - I've changed the section header to clarify this. Disambiguation is to resolve ambiguity. It's not meant to be used for other purposes. We only disambiguate where necessary, not as a way of making a POV point. In this case, disambiguation has been misused as a way of promoting a POV, hence this proposed principle. -- ChrisO (talk) 22:36, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

It's an oversimplification in this particular case. A better use of the disambiguation page is much more viable. I see there is a map on the disambiguation page which is a good thing and this idea can be pushed a little bit further. Having two or three major columns, in one having the actual former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia with its picture and the intro of its main article with smaller characters. Also having Greek and Ancient Kingdom intros with their individual columns. Each column having their maps and a text taken from their main's intro. Then the rest, less notable Macedonias at the bottom as a list. This way both will have information about their Macedonia's in the main article (which will be a better suited disambiguation page) more than the name. Obviously the solution of the disambiguation to primary topics is outside of the Arbcom mandate. - Fedayee (talk) 23:36, 25 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Disambiguating to primary topics

9)

WP:DAB

mandates that "When there is a well-known primary topic for an ambiguous term, name or phrase ... then that term or phrase should either be used for the title of the article on that topic or redirect to that article."

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. -- ChrisO (talk) 07:34, 22 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

Determining primary topics

10)

WP:DAB identifies a primary topic as one that is "much more used than any other topic covered in Wikipedia to which the same word(s) may also refer (significantly more commonly searched for and read than other meanings)" and provides several objective criteria for identifying a primary topic, including the number of incoming links from Special:WhatLinksHere, usage statistics from http://stats.grok.se

Proposed. Note that WP:DAB's statement about "extended discussion" is conditional - "may be" - and does not exclude the possibility that extended discussion may be caused by external political factors, as are plainly at work in this case. It is clearly secondary to the main criterion of a topic being "much more used than any other topic". -- ChrisO (talk) 07:34, 22 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It's not at all outside the Arbcom mandate. This statement of principle is simply a reiteration of what policy states, and an invitation to the Arbcom to confirm that policy mandates a particular approach to disambiguation. -- ChrisO (talk) 18:32, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment to Fedayee: Nothing in this arbitration is outside the Arbcom mandate. The mandate given in this particular arbitration is broad and covers the entire range of issues concerning the name of Macedonia and its reference in Wikipedia. (Taivo (talk) 22:47, 27 April 2009 (UTC))[reply]

Comment by others:

Outside of Arbcom mandate. - Fedayee (talk) 23:36, 25 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Exclusion of external political factors

11) The fact that a party may object to the use of a particular term is not in itself sufficient reason to exclude Wikipedia's usage of that term. Standing policy and guidelines exclude consideration of partisan political considerations.

Wikipedia:Naming conflict#Dealing with self-identifying terms#Wikipedia:Naming conflict

(NCON), a guideline linked from WP:NPOV, disallows subjective considerations of whether an entity has a right to use a particular name.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. -- ChrisO (talk) 07:34, 22 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

Independence of Wikipedia's editorial voice

12) Wikipedia's "editorial voice" is its own, governed by Wikipedia's internal editorial policies, not by the conventions of any external agency. Wikipedia is not subordinate to the points of view of any state, international organisation or group. Their views or conventions do not dictate Wikipedia's editorial approach to an issue, other than as directed by Foundation policies concerning legal issues.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. -- ChrisO (talk) 07:34, 22 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

Usage is not endorsement

13) Using a particular term does not imply endorsement of that term.

Wikipedia:NCON

disallows any endorsement by editors of a particular name for reasons other than the criteria stated by NPOV: "Wikipedians should not seek to determine who is "right" or "wrong", nor to attempt to impose a particular name for POV reasons."

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. -- ChrisO (talk) 07:34, 22 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

Self-identifying terms

14) Autonomous entities (groups, people, communities) customarily adopt whatever self-identifying term they prefer. Because

Wikipedia:Naming conflict

explicitly excludes subjective political criteria from consideration in article naming and prioritises the use of self-identifying terms or the nearest English equivalent. It is therefore inappropriate for editors to engage in a dispute by rejecting a self-identifying term for political reasons or to seek to impose an opposing party's point of view on an article.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. -- ChrisO (talk) 07:34, 22 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

Conflicts of interest

15) Greek and Macedonian editors have clearly defined opposing ideological stakes in the dispute, and therefore have a potential conflict of interest in editing articles relating to the dispute. Wikipedia:Conflict of interest states that "Where advancing outside interests is more important to an editor than advancing the aims of Wikipedia, that editor stands in a conflict of interest." Editorial activities that promote external causes for reasons relating to the ideology of the editor's ethnic or national group represent a conflict of interest between Wikipedia's objectives and nationalist ideological goals.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. -- ChrisO (talk) 07:34, 22 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In response to Fedayee, it's actually quite straightforward. If an editor's actions are intended to promote outside interests associated with that editor, and if those interests conflict with the aims of Wikipedia, the editor has a conflict of interest. In this case, it would indicate that Greek or Macedonian editors, subscribing to the Greek or Macedonian national viewpoints, stand in a conflict of interest if they act in a way that promotes their national group's viewpoint rather than advancing the aims of Wikipedia. -- ChrisO (talk) 10:17, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

That's a misunderstanding of Wikipedia's Conflict of Interest guideline and such a misunderstanding is at least troublesome. From this broad conception almost everyone can be accused of having a conflict of interest. This guideline should only be restricted to Wikipedians who have a documented case of real life advocacy and interests which contradict core policy beyond mere ethnicity. - Fedayee (talk) 23:36, 25 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Consensus (or lack of) does not override policy

16) Wikipedia:Consensus#Exceptions, a policy, states:

Consensus decisions in specific cases do not automatically override consensus on a wider scale – for instance, a local debate does not override the larger consensus behind a policy or guideline.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. The relevance to this case is that a lack of consensus on the application of policy, or a consensus among one group of editors to act contrary to policy, does not override the applicability of policy in the first place. In this instance, a number of editors have apparently reached a consensus that the use of common terminology as mandated by

WP:NC

, both policies, is unacceptable to them. That does not override the applicability of the NPOV and NC policies.

Comment by others:

Consensus is not immutable

17) Wikipedia:Consensus, a policy, states:

Consensus is not immutable. Past decisions are open to challenge and are not binding, and one must realize that such changes are often reasonable. Thus, "according to consensus" and "violates consensus" are not valid rationales for making or reverting an edit, or for accepting or rejecting other forms of proposal or action.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. The previous naming was essentially based on a political compromise between editors - not the principles set out in

WP:NC. The fact that previous discussions had resulted in an informal compromise formula is not a binding factor; the naming has to be weighed against what is required by policy, not simply what is politically acceptable to editors. (Note the principle cited in #Naming conventions - "names of Wikipedia articles should be optimized for readers over editors". Our individual political views are not meant to dictate what the reader sees.) -- ChrisO (talk) 19:20, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

Opposed. The fact that one administrator on his own chose to ignore a compromise which already existed is in itself an indication that that administrator places his own opinion, which seemingly disagrees with that consensus, above that of others, and that is a very unfortunate characteristic for any administrator to have. John Carter (talk) 23:22, 29 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest you re-read this principle, John. It's established policy - if you don't like it you're welcome to go to

WP:CCC puts it. The fact that a particular approach has been taken in the past does not mean that the same approach must always be taken in the future. That's a generally applicable principle across Wikipedia, not just in this case. -- ChrisO (talk) 23:35, 29 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

Oh, I don't disagree with it. I just wonder whether it's an appropriate thing to cite in a matter where there even now seems to me no consensus for the change you made on your own without consulting anyone but perhaps your best friend in the matter, particularly when the circumstances which prompted this case being opened were when an involved administrator with what many/most parties involved consider a clear bias decided that he, despite policies and guidelines to the contrary, determined that he was in such a clear position to dictate how policy should be applied without any consultation that he was able to alter content despite existing policies and guidelines stating an involved party should never do so. I contend that this proposal is factually completely irrelevant to the case, given its circumstances. That's all. John Carter (talk) 23:41, 29 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

I agree with this. Let me offer a hypothetical comparison. If the country were to change its name in the future (and I know I recently said that nobody should speculate, but here I am) we would no doubt have editors (perhaps most of them Greek, but that's largely irrelevant for this scenario) proposing to move the page - whether it is located at

Republic of Macedonia - to the new name. In that hypothetical scenario, however, I guarantee that we will not see FP or ChrisO opposing with an argument like "there was a consensus for the article to be located here". If they were to oppose (who knows, they may even support), they would use arguments based on policies and guidelines. But what do we see from those opposing ChrisO's move? Balkan Fever 09:58, 30 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

Boldness

18) Wikipedia:Be bold, a longstanding guideline, provides that:

"The Wikipedia community encourages users to be bold when updating pages ... problems are more certain to be fixed, and will probably be fixed faster, if you are bold enough to do it yourself."

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. This principle underlay my actions in moving the page. -- ChrisO (talk) 10:42, 25 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Strange that you are proposing this since you went against the whole other text of that guideline that you didn't mention.

Of course, any changes you make that turn out badly can be reverted, usually painlessly

...there are some significant changes that can be long-lasting and that are harder to fix if the need arises

Let me remind you that the page was move-protected. It is still move protected, others cannot revert the move. Only administrators could (not appropriate for "anyone can edit"), but guess what, they can't either because you said that you would accuse them with wheel warring. And one more thing, I thought that WP:BOLD was for simple content editors and you know the new-commers, not the administrators. Bold administrators might be a dangerous thing since they have an advantage in power. Just imagine a bold admin moving

Republic of Kosovo and then locking it with move-protection. As in "this administration has made bold actions"... sounds authoritative for a wiki. What about the boldness of the others, you know the "everyone can edit" people. They can be bold in their personal websites only? Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 10:20, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply

Meat puppetry

19)

Wikipedia:Sock puppetry

, a policy, states:

"Do not recruit meatpuppets. It is considered highly inappropriate to advertise Wikipedia articles to your friends, family members, or communities of people who agree with you, so that they come to Wikipedia and support your side of a debate."

Proposed. This is in relation to #SQRT5P1D2 has solicited meatpuppets, below. -- ChrisO (talk) 09:20, 25 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

Comment - "The term meatpuppet" is derogatory and should be used only with care" (

WP:CANVASS (limited posting, neutrality, nonpartisanship and openness), as in my case. SQRT5P1D2 (talk) 19:25, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

Outing

20) Wikipedia:Harassment, a policy, states:

"Posting another person's personal information (legal name, date of birth, identification numbers, home or workplace address, job title and work organisation, telephone number, email address, or other contact information, regardless of whether or not the information is actually correct) is harassment, unless that editor voluntarily posts this information, or links to this information, on Wikipedia themselves."

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. Various false accusations of

outing have been made in the course of this dispute - see #Outing has not occurred below. -- ChrisO (talk) 10:51, 25 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

Openness to change

21) Editors should be open to the prospect of change and to reevaluate past positions in the light of current circumstances and facts.

Proposed. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." Or as Keynes said more pointedly, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?" A willingness to constantly question and reassess one's own position and to be willing to change course is essential. A refusal to reassess or to insist on "a foolish consistency" in the face of facts to the contrary is fundamentally incompatible with developing an up-to-date encyclopedia. -- ChrisO (talk) 22:10, 29 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

Administrator communications

22) Administrators are required to explain their actions. When an administrator takes an action that is likely to be controversial or to raise questions, he or she should explain the action in advance or at the time, in a location that the affected editors are likely to see, so that they will understand what has been done and why.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed, wording taken from the MzMcBride case. I take seriously the communications obligations of an administrator, which I discharged in this instance - see #ChrisO provided a contemporaneous policy rationale for his action below. -- ChrisO (talk) 23:14, 29 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

Proposed findings of fact

Locus of the dispute

1) The dispute concerns the name of the country Macedonia, whose name also overlaps with an historic region and a Greek province. Greece and Macedonia have disputed the use of the name for many years, and this conflict has been reflected in disputes on Wikipedia over the use of the name Macedonia.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. Evidence is at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Macedonia 2/Evidence#Locus of the dispute. -- ChrisO (talk) 07:37, 22 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

Persistent vandalism and disruption

2) Articles relating to or simply mentioning Macedonia have been and are being subjected to frequent vandalism and disruptive editing, invariably to promote a Greek point of view on the naming issue.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. Evidence is at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Macedonia 2/Evidence#Persistent vandalism and disruption. -- ChrisO (talk) 07:42, 22 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

Ethnic polarisation

3) Discussions on Wikipedia concerning the use of the name Macedonia have been characterised by ethnic polarisation, with Greek and international editors forming opposing consensuses.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. Evidence is at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Macedonia 2/Evidence#Ethnic polarisation. -- ChrisO (talk) 07:42, 22 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

Singling out editors according to their ethnic affiliation will have dangerous precedents. - Fedayee (talk) 23:36, 25 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It's a straightforward factual observation. It's not the first time we've had this kind of polarisation on Wikipedia articles; we can't ignore it when it happens. -- ChrisO (talk) 09:27, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Persistence of the dispute

4) Disputes on Wikipedia about the use of the name "Macedonia" have been ongoing since at least October 2003. The most recent straw poll on the issue took place in March-April 2009. The dispute remains unresolved.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. The earliest discussions I can find on the issue are at [52] and the recent straw poll is at [53]. This illustrates well the interminable nature of the dispute. -- ChrisO (talk) 19:25, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

Treatment of other overlapping names

5) A number of other countries share names with geographical regions and provinces of neighbouring countries. These include

Republic of China, Dominican Republic / Dominica

).

Proposed. The full list of countries is given at List of sovereign states. Note that there is no overlap between the name of the country Macedonia and any other country, and that where country names overlap with that of a region (but not another country), the country is invariably prioritised as the primary topic. -- ChrisO (talk) 19:25, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Just to clarify, this isn't a proposed principle; it's a finding of fact. It's an indisputable fact that we generally don't disambiguate country names simply because they may overlap with a geographical region. It may well be that we can draw a general principle from that, but for now I'm simply stating what the current situation is. -- ChrisO (talk) 21:17, 25 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

And just to clarify the above statement clearly and prominently uses weasel words. To quote "It's an indisputable fact that we generally (italics added by me) don't disambiguate country names simply because they may overlap with a geographical region." Note not only the very early usage of a blatant weasel word but also the apparent attempt to minimize anything that isn't a nation with the term "geographical region." While there is a fact buried in that comment somewhere, the fog of language makes it hard to see. John Carter (talk) 21:21, 25 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I say "generally" because I can think of one specific example where a country name has been disambiguated to distinguish from a regional name - i.e. Republic of Ireland / Ireland. I won't pretend I fully understand the reasons why that terminology has been chosen, but I note that it's (a) a heavily politicised dispute and (b) the subject of a previous arbitration case which did not resolve the naming issue. But generally, as I said, where a country shares a name with a geographical region or another country's province, the country's name has been given priority. I note you've not disputed that fact. -- ChrisO (talk) 21:51, 25 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose There are other factors to consider as well, beyond those mentioned above. We would not want to set a policy/guideline/ruling which might well be problematic in a subsequent development elsewhere. Also, there are the matters of countries which are recognized only by a select few other countries to consider. I think the idea for naming expressed above is, perhaps, too simplistic to be practically useful in the long term. John Carter (talk) 18:43, 25 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Agree. People tend to look for countries, not for regions. We could list a great many regions that share the common name of a country--Mongolia, e.g., so that our list of disambiguation pages as primary targets could grow to disagreeable lengths. Most people aren't looking for the regions, however, since most people think in terms of the world being divided up into sovereign nations, not geographic regions. The "unrecognized" or "barely recognized" countries are not a problem. They do, indeed, also have common English names and articles in Wikipedia--South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Transnistria, to name but a few--and the target of Abkhazia is not a disambiguation page, but the country. Wikipedia needs simple rules for this because it is a very simple principle. No shading required. (Taivo (talk) 19:15, 25 April 2009 (UTC))[reply]

Further Comment: Overuse of disambiguation pages is a danger. Simplification in Wikipedia is a requirement for a general audience. Thus, "Macedonia" will lead to the simplest meaning--the country. At the country page, a simple disambiguation tag will lead to the disambiguation page or to the ancient kingdom (the second most common meaning). This is exactly parallel to what happens with Rome--typing "Rome" leads to the city with a simple disambiguation tag leading to the second most common meaning (although it actually may be the more common search destination)--the ancient empire. A similar situation occurs at Mongolia, where the broader region is only accessed by a disambiguation tag at the country's article. Contemporary common English usage should override historical usage. (Taivo (talk) 22:52, 27 April 2009 (UTC))[reply]

Oppose. Of course there other things involved. Some are conflict areas, some are stable ones. I have made a table[54] of the cases that ChrisO forgot. Most of them are about a region and not about a country. If you want please expand it. I will paste it here for convienince. If it is clustering this comment, anyone feel free to delete it. There is no debate on Luxembourg no name is disputed and no regional conflicts. In all other conflict areas except Azerbaijan the main page is never about a country. Shadowmorph (talk) 22:33, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

How Wikipedia treats other conflicts

Common name article	what it is about:	countries	provinces of countries
America	disambiguation page	United States of America
Micronesia	greater region	Federated States of Micronesia
China	cultural region	People's Republic of China
Taiwan	island (region)	Republic of China	Taiwan Province
Ireland	the island (region)	Republic of Ireland	Northern Ireland
Korea	a formerly unified...	Democratic People's Republic of Korea
Central Africa	core region	Central African Republic (similar name)
Nagorno-Karabakh	landlocked region	Nagorno-Karabakh Republic
Abkhazia	disputed region	Republic of Abkhazia
Azerbaijan	a country	Republic of Azerbaijan	Azerbaijan (Iran)

On America, the common name of the country would be the "United States", seeing how a consensus for that name hardly would've been possible without majority of US Americans agreeing. On China/Taiwan I personally think they should be located at China and Taiwan (this is how it's done at my native wikipedia). On Ireland, I don't know if the Republic as just "Ireland" is the common usage in English, do the Irish them self (perhaps excluding the loyalists in NIR) use Ireland for the country or the island? My experience from the UK side is they seem to use "Republic" (this experience is mostly from 5 live in a sporting sense, but also tv shows), it is very possible that in the USA "Ireland" == "Republic of Ireland", it is also very possible that to most non-native English speakers "Ireland" == "Republic of Ireland" (by just hovering over the inter-wiki links there seems to be a fair number just using translation of "Ireland", but without checking they can be redirects or faulty links etc). On Korea, well I would argue that the common name of neither of those countries is Korea, but rather South and North Korea (even though you sometimes here South Korea being called Korea, though I can't recall if this is in English I've heard that). On Central African Republic, personally I've never come across this country in English usage, but perhaps just as "Czech Republic" its just the common name. On Nagorno-Karabakh, unrecognised country so I wouldn't put them in the same category. On Abkhazia, that article is about the country. chan dler ··· 08:06, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The constitutional and self-identifying name is Ireland (not "Republic of") or Eire in Irish and in their constitution

Eire is an article about the word to refer to the region, even though it always refers to the country when used commonly. Central Africa and Micronesia are not less important because nobody talks about them. This is a wiki"-pedia". Nagorno-Karabakh is unrecognized; but "Republic of Macedonia" is also partially recognized with that name and partially with the UN term. You're right about Abkhazia redirecting, but the articles talks about the "disputed region governed by" not about the unrecognized republic; I think it shouldn't redirect there. In the Taiwan case the common usage rationale is broken. You are half-right about Korea; the common usage reasons don't apply there but the self-identificating name that has been such a cornerstone here is broken in that case. Off course you can't find a completely equal situation elsewhere, only analogues. Additive in our case is the issue of the 300BC's Macedonia, (which is hardly insignificant) Shadowmorph (talk) 08:40, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

on Ireland, yes I know the self-identifying name is Ireland, but I was more referring to how they actually use, for example do Irish media use "Ireland" for the country or island. I'm not saying Central African Republic or Micronesia are less important, only that I've not even heard about them in English so I don't have any knowledge on their common names in English. In the Korea case I would say I'm not half, but fully right, their common names are North and South Korea. I don't think self-identification can't always trump common name, for example "Greece" vs "Hellenic Republic" or "Switzerland" vs "Helvetic Confederation". How Abkhazia is handled seems somewhat similar to how Kosovo is handled, neither in really the best solution Imo... (I'm guessing most Greek editors would dislike that format for Macedonia, where that would mean more or less Republic of/Region/Historical Macedonia would all be in one article) chan dler ··· 09:03, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In theory we could have consensus on Macedonia (region) being the main article at Macedonia Shadowmorph (talk) 10:24, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

We are not governed by editors' personal preferences. When it comes to identifying the primary topic for a term, we are governed by the criteria set out in

WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. Macedonia (region) is not the predominant focus of incoming wikilinks, nor does it have the most user traffic (5 times less than the country, in fact), nor is it the primary meaning in common English. I've noticed that our Greek editors prefer to ignore these criteria, however. -- ChrisO (talk) 19:36, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

We should also not ignore

Google bomb). I wonder if you would say the same if the situation was reversed. Wikilinks on the other hand is a different case. Tell me how many times you would wikilink to a modern country in one of the many related articles. Compare that with how many times you would wikilink to the ancient kingdom in an article about ancient history. My guess, once or none. Proof to that: Aristotle

, the teacher of Alexander and a person very closely related to Macedonia, doesn't contain a single wikilink to any Macedonia or even Macedon !. That is the wikilinks discrepancy or wikilinks bias. Besides I was told once here that we shouldn't focus on the use inside Wikipedia, but outside. It was Fut.Perf or Taivo if I remember correctly. Wikilinks is evidence but not crucial evidence.

"Greek editors" ...are you talking about me?

(outdent) There is another factor to consider in this particular case which I do not believe is necessarily relevant in any of the other cases named. That is the comparative size of the country of Macedonia to the broader area of Macedonia. The

Republic of Macedonia is 25, 713 square kilometers, with a population of 2,114,500. The Greek region is larger than the independent country, both in area (34,177 - about 33% larger), and population (2,625,681 - about 20% larger). Based on that information, it could well be that, in terms of what are generally described as standard encyclopedia articles, like cities, wars, biographies, the name of the region of Greece may well be referenced more often than the name of the independent country, making the region at least in a way the more common name. And there is at least one other country in roughly the same situation, East Timor. It occupies only about 50% of the island of Timor, and has maybe about half the population. I tend to think that it might be the most directly relatable nation, and I note that it has the directional firmly embedded in its name. I tend to think on that basis that it makes sense that neither the country nor the region be given the space Macedonia, but that be used as a disambiguation for the various uses of the name. John Carter (talk) 15:30, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

No, the common name of East Timor is East Timor the common name of the region in Greece is NOT Macedonia, but rather "Macedonia the greek region" or something similar. The fact that it might be bigger or more populous has no weight on common name usage, because it still isn't referred to in English as simple Macedonia, which the country is. chan dler ··· 16:04, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Completely irrelevant, John. We have very clear directions in policy (

WP:PRIMARYTOPIC) for determining what constitutes a primary topic. The criteria you suggest have no policy basis whatsoever and are contradicted by what policy actually requires. A large part of the problem in this dispute has been the way that some editors have systematically ignored policy or invented rationales that have no basis in policy. As an admin, you should not be encouraging this behaviour, let alone indulging in it yourself. -- ChrisO (talk) 20:01, 29 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

No, ChrisO, I have actually read that page. There is no clear indication from the text what should be considered the primary topic. The fact that you as an individual jumped to conclusions based on insufficient evidence in the text of that policy, and state something which is stated nowhere in the policy itself, is behavior you should not be indulging in. But, then, this whole case was prompted by you indulging in behavior you should not be indulging in, so I guess that shouldn't be a surprise. John Carter (talk) 22:25, 2 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Wrong again, John. Nothing that I have done has prompted this arbitration case. It was agreed to and scheduled in advance on

WP:PRIMARYTOPIC does provide a clear set of criteria that have been agreed by a consensus of the community (that's what a policy is). In the absence of any other criteria specified by that policy, that is what we have to use as our lowest common denominator. Your own suggested criterion appears nowhere in policy and plainly does not enjoy consensus. -- ChrisO (talk) 22:50, 2 May 2009 (UTC)[reply

Chris, remember that the case was filed because of your actions. That prompted the case having to be filed early, or have you forgotten that? And reading the topic, the "tools that may help determine a primary meaning..." Notice the word "may", which is hardly conclusive. On that basis, it has to be said that no primary topic is explicitly clear through that policy. I don't necessarily have trouble believing that you forgot the circumstances of the filing, though, given your apparent troubles reading policies. That might explain a lot right there, actually. John Carter (talk) 23:02, 2 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The timing of the case was Yannismarou's decision, not mine, and it would have been filed whether or not I had acted, as agreed by the editors on Talk:Greece. Your views about the conditional language of the policy are missing the point, I'm afraid; you're welcome to propose whatever criteria you like on Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation, but our existing criteria are clear enough. You're certainly not going to get consensus for new criteria that appear to be designed to produce a result that favours one side's POV. -- ChrisO (talk) 23:15, 2 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

Agree. There may be an exception when the subnational entity is a major subdivision of an English-speaking country. But I mention this pre-emptively; the exception has been disputed, and applies only in one case, which is not this one. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:17, 25 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Previous attempts to reach consensus have failed

6)

Wikipedia:Manual of Style (Macedonia-related articles)

(WP:MOSMAC) was proposed to find a common approach to this naming issue, but failed to achieve consensus.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. For the record, I was the original proposer of WP:MOSMAC, back in May 2007, and I spent a lot of time (apparently to little effect) trying to find a consensus on the issue. -- ChrisO (talk) 19:25, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

Outing has not occurred

7) An editor's country, language or nationality does not constitute personally identifying information as defined by

WP:OUTING

. If an editor has previously voluntarily self-identified his or her country, language or nationality, noting that information does not constitute outing.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. See

WP:OUTING. We have had various accusations of outing from a number of Greek editors (who, oddly enough, seem to be the only ones making such claims). I think we need to make it clear that compiling previously disclosed non-personally-identifying information as at User:Husond/Straw Poll does not constitute outing. -- ChrisO (talk) 10:59, 25 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

Strongly Oppose. I don't know who defines what is outing and I wasn't in that list for what is worth. But in support of those included without being asked, I strongly oppose. I have made it clear that my opinion is strongly against making lists of editors for whatever reason. If list-making is ok, then people might make lists of others like Jews or communism supporters etc. It is irrelevant if the info is readily found, and it is not always that case. Anything can be found with proper digging into. The lists could be dangerously copy-pasted off wiki. This is Wikipedia, not McCarthyism!. List-making is bad manners to say at least Shadowmorph (talk) 22:43, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Strongly Disagree. This is not even what happened here. Nationality was inferred by clues of varying level of reliability. Not all editors that were characterised as "Greeks" say so in their pages. They very well might not be Greeks at all. I'm not even getting into my very strong disagreement in principle with this practice, since it was covered by Shadowmorph.--Avg (talk) 02:20, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Let's keep it one issue at a time, if you consider that the list was wrong or that it was not appropriate you can discuss that in your sections, but in this section we discuss if it was "OUTING" or not.

man with one red shoe 04:37, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

The list was compiled using exclusively public information that anyone has access to. Anyone, anywhere can read any user's contribution history and would generally come to the same conclusions that were listed here. The opposition to this finding has nothing to do with anyone's policy violations, but rather stem from an "I don't like it" mentality from those who found the information damaging to their POV. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 07:22, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Support, no WP:OUTING per evidence and logic.

man with one red shoe 04:37, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

Strongly Agree. If an editor sends me a private email saying he's Greek, it would be outing for me to mention that. If an editor posts anything publicly on Wikipedia that identifies him as Greek, it is not outing for me to mention that. Anything posted on Wikipedia is already public information. That's not outing to reorganize and list public information. (Taivo (talk) 04:44, 27 April 2009 (UTC))[reply]

Agree, no outing has occurred, again here (as in the whole dispute) it seems one side is against the "outing" because it shows how the opinions clearly line up based on nationality and they understand that it doesn't help them. chan dler ··· 05:00, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Reorganize and list public information. Isn't that what McCarthy did? And did that user with the Japanese name stated "publicly on Wikipedia that identifies him as Greek". Was everyone in that list asked about it and concurred to release that detail? Wasn't some digging required to out them? It was not public information for all of them. Do you think English people knew that Rizos01 "hints Greek" or that his dated 2007 edits and the speculation about them was common knowledge? I'm curious if ChrisO used some special admin tool, I don't know about, to dig out all that information. Shadowmorph (talk) 05:32, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

How about Self-Outing? Just a question about the "other side" of the list that didn't seem to mind. Was it common knowledge that User:Heimstern was not in fact German? I think he had to out himself in that case. Shadowmorph (talk) 05:35, 27 April 2009 (UTC).[reply]

Of course he was first speculated as German from what? The

lhama on his page? Wouldn't it be outing if he was infact German, since he hadn't stated that himself? How about all the others in the list. Do they all concur on outing that information? Shadowmorph (talk) 05:38, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

Shadowmorph, all this information is public information. There is a difference between "publicly available" and your use of "common knowledge". There is no secret to the word for "Greek" in Japanese. It can easily be found in any Japanese-English dictionary. It may not be "common knowledge", but it is "publicly available". Husond may have had to look it up, but it was neither secret nor private. (ChrisO did not make the list, Husond did.) Outing requires the exposure of private information, such as something communicated by email between editors or over a beer. Anything that is public is, well, public. You can't "out" public information. And, no, that's not what McCarthy did. You are simply using his name as a defamatory comment because you are wrong about the outing issue and are seeking to reframe it by tying it to a name in history that carries a negative connotation. To reiterate, "outing" requires the exposure of private information, not the listing of public information. (Taivo (talk) 06:13, 27 April 2009 (UTC))[reply]

Since my username and nationality seem to have come up here: Husond made a common error of thinking I might be German because of my username. By choosing that username, I invited that mistake to be made. If someone determines from my username that I am a German star who runs in a home, that is not OUTING, regardless of whether it is correct or not. Perhaps part of the reason why my nationality is hard to guess might be the fact that, unlike certain other editors here, I am not a

single-purpose account: my edits exist over a fair variety of articles throughout Wikipedia. I'm not here to push a POV. Some others here clearly are. More on this when I post my evidence. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 07:29, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

Yes, Husond used a special admin tool. It's called a brain. -- ChrisO (talk) 22:38, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the insult Shadowmorph (talk) 13:06, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

Agree Reposting of self-identifying information is not outing. // Chris ^{(complaints)•(contribs)} 17:06, 6 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Reaper7

8) Reaper7 (talk · contribs) has violated Wikipedia:No personal attacks by accusing other editors of bigotry and utilising terminology conveying ethnic hatred. [55], [56]

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. -- ChrisO (talk) 23:46, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Rubbish, first link you provided I am referring to the Republic of Macedonia's TV station's involvement in the article here: [[57]] Kanal 5 I believe the name is, lol. Second link is me mirroring the heading of ChrisO but for the actual TV station. ChrisO later had to edit his own title (again using the insulting term, Greek Nationalists) to include my link, this time with a more neutral here: [[58]] This is not the first time Chris O has changed a title in haste lest I add.. Sorry to ruin the attempt, but accusing me of bigotry and ethnic hatred had to be punished by using the facts as I just did. I am sorry ChrisO, but sometimes you try far too hard to push your own nation's POV and this is why I believe the outcome of this arbitration will not suit you aims. Reaper7 (talk) 19:04, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

He also accused people of ignorance [59], [60], or just implied it [61] and he accused editors of lying: [62]. Moreover he insists in using the "Fyromian" term which is considered offensive by many and clearly is not English.

man with one red shoe 02:07, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

Support all points expressed above. John Carter (talk) 14:38, 25 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. (Taivo (talk) 06:17, 27 April 2009 (UTC))[reply]

Support, thoroughly disruptive activities from this account. Really he's such a minor player in this affair that I wouldn't normally bother doing evidence and FoF's on him and all that, but he provides a good example of the type of everyday minor disruption we get from the run-of-the-mill drive-by POV warriors. See also evidence section for a few more diffs. Fut.Perf. ☼ 17:22, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

SQRT5P1D2 has solicited meatpuppets

9)

meatpuppets, specifically Greek-speaking Usenet users, to support his position on Wikipedia [63]. His post has been reposted on numerous Greek blogs [64]

.

Proposed. A very clear breach of

WP:MEAT that has already resulted in numerous IP editors and SPAs turning up to protest. Note that WP:MEAT specifically prohibits "the recruitment of new editors to Wikipedia for the purpose of influencing a survey, performing reverts, or otherwise attempting to give the appearance of consensus is strongly discouraged" and compare to SQRT5P1D2's request to uninvolved Greek people to "vote here" [65]. -- ChrisO (talk) 09:21, 25 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

Comment - While technically true, I believe that it is reasonable to give someone who we would have to assume has done several good edits as an IP but had not created his account until the 20th the benefit of the doubt whether he knew such an act would be contrary to wikipedia policy. To bring any sort of sanction against him on the basis of violating policies there was no good reason to know he existed, particularly regarding such an emotional issue, would I believe send a very strong, and very bad, message to anyone else who might choose to create a user account, effectively telling them that they have to toe the line of every policy from the second they create an account. Also, I have to question whether the phrasing of the above proposal seems to be blaming one party for the actions of others, which is at best a very weak argument. John Carter (talk) 18:30, 25 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

SQRT5P1D2 claims that he is an experienced editor who has "contributed to many Wikipedia entries before" using his IP address and he certainly seems to know his way around Wikipedia. It's not credible to view him as a brand new user who has no knowledge of Wikipedia's principles. Your comment about "sending a message" is thus something of a strawman - we do expect people who have been editing for some time to abide by policy, and by his own admission SQRT5P1D2 falls into this category. Finally, you're misreading the finding of fact - it doesn't blame SQRT5P1D2 for anybody's actions. It specifically focuses on SQRT5P1D2's own actions, which as you've acknowledged yourself are a "technically true" violation of the prohibition against canvassing. -- ChrisO (talk) 09:52, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I never even implied that I thought of him as a "brand new user who has no knowledge of Wikipedia's principles", as you stated. I truly regret your attempting to rephrase the statements of others. Please however know that there are several editors I know of who are likely more experienced, certainly based on their edit counts, than this user, whose understanding of policy is at best weak. Taivo has some about 6000 edits in over a year's time, and he indicates in these pages that he didn't know there was a difference between policies and guidelines in wikipedia here. To assume that this editor, who presumably has fewer edits, would necessarily know the rules when Taivo doesn't even know the fairly basic difference between policies and guidelines is I think a dubious assumption. On that basis, I think, barring a clear statement to the contrary from the party, at the very least the phrasing should be altered to include a "possibly" or "probably involuntary", to prevent the appearance of prejudicial phrasing and attempts to lead the arbitrtors. Also, as he stated he invited all comers, not just those who agreed with him, although I expect he knew most would, I find the use of the word "meatpuppets" at best dubious, because he had no way of knowing they would agree with him. John Carter (talk) 21:38, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

AFAIK, assuming good faith is a core principle of Wikipedia and the term "meatpuppet" is derogatory and should be used only with care. All I did was informing people about the case, as I was informed by others. I did not ask them to support any position; quoting myself "whoever wants to participate". People that contributed to Macedonia-related articles in the past were celebrating Greek Easter (there are established Wikipedians like John Carter, supporting that you took advantage of the holiday season). They were informed by my original newsgroup post, while you accused me of recruiting people through my blog (!), presenting no evidence that a) I have a blog and b) I'm engaging in these actions. You shouted ""Greek nationalist canvassing off-wiki". How's that for assuming good faith and being civil? In any case, since the jury is out, you remain involved in the case. That means that your actions are also part of the scrutiny. When supporting conspiracies, you should be more careful; after all, it would be more practical to conspire using private communication means. If other Wikipedians do that, I feel sorry for them. If I have anything to say, whether I'm right or wrong, I'm not afraid to say it publicly. SQRT5P1D2 (talk) 13:28, 25 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

ChrisO's rewording (adding the word "uninvolved"), attempts to distort my original message. I myself offered the translation, while he spread false rumours. By now, I'm used to him making this type of accusations. This public newsgroup is read by people contributing to Wikipedia and Macedonia-related articles. While ChrisO took advantage of the holiday season (most people are absent for ten days or more during Greek Easter) and acted the way he did, I posted a public message informing fellow Wikipedians what happened, in a civil manner. They can make up their own minds and were not instructed to act in any way. I have my own arguments, they may have theirs. That's the difference between public actions and conspiracy theories. Conspiracy requires action behind the scenes. That's what people repeatedly violating

WP:NPOV don't seem to understand. Instead of bringing arguments and evidence to the table, they try to support their position by discrediting and ridiculing others (an example). Since this open case concerns the english branch of Wikipedia, somehow they try to convince others that greek-speaking editors are the root of all evil. I rest my case about this. I'm sure that those that will have the final say, don't condone such practices. SQRT5P1D2 (talk) 16:17, 25 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

See

WP:CANVASS. We disapprove of solicitation even when it is not behind the scenes; it casts doubt on the fundamental assumption of our srawpolls: that the self-selected !votes represent Wikipedia as a whole (except for the large portion who don't care about any given issue). Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:21, 25 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

I saw

WP:AGF). As for transparency, I couldn't be more transparent than that. If I wanted to hide something, I would post this privately on a massive scale and certainly I wouldn't include my own nickname in the message. Or I could open another account, use proxies and so on. But I don't have anything to hide, or anything to fear, despite the intimidation attempts. Use of privileges is one thing; abuse is another. SQRT5P1D2 (talk) 21:52, 25 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

Some thoughts after reading John's comment (note: John, I've already wired the money from my ultra-secret greek-lobby account). I understand the implications after registering a user account. There are rules. Wikipedia has rules. Also, Wikipedia has to follow real-world rules, written or not, because it's not an entity isolated from the rest of the universe. I'm certainly not a know-it-all and I've already made some mistakes (for example, my contribution to the evidence section; although the arguments stand, ARBCOM needs other type of information and this will change soon). I also understand that

WP:BITE should be in every administrator's handbook. Unfortunately, several members from my welcoming committee forgot theirs. At least, I always try to remember that there are people behind their monitors. SQRT5P1D2 (talk) 23:40, 25 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

Why do I get the feeling that some people are prejudiced against Greek editors? ChrisO, editing sporadically (despite the accumulation of edits) doesn't make you an expert on everything related to Wikipedia, as you focus on other things, like the phrasing of an entry, the quality of the sources etc. I don't know my way around Wikipedia. I learn my way around Wikipedia, since registering an account and deciding to be more involved, mostly in english language articles in arts and humanities. I knew how to hold the wheel, now I learn how to shift gears. In addition, as stated by others (also some administrators), even experienced administrators like you, were in violation of policies (for example

Stealth canvassing. It is not "excessive cross-posting" because he didn't indiscriminately send announcements to uninvolved editors in the form of spamming; he posted on a usenet newsgroup where some interested people might read. It is not "campaigning" because he did not use a non-neutral tone (see: "be rational and leave nationalism outside of the field" in [66]). It is not "votestacking" because this is not a poll where editors would vote or try to reach a consensus; this is ArbCom. It is not "stealth canvassing" because he openly admitted posting it, because he translated it and because usenet is open by definition. Q.E.D. SQRT5P1D2 (talk) 17:38, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

It must be prejudice. There's no other conceivable reason experienced editors should disagree with so many temperate, calm, and neutral editors, is there? "Curses, foiled again". </irony> Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:29, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've been told that I want to participate here because I "hope to use this for my grandstanding" (glad to see that experienced administrators have

WP:AGF compatible crystal balls), with references to "head chopping", I've been told to "shut up", my contributions in the article namespace have been distorted and so on. Therefore, I don't welcome your irony although you're entitled to your opinions about Greeks. I'm not here to judge you. SQRT5P1D2 (talk) 17:38, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

whose involvement with Wikipedia has been almost entirely been focused on editing a handful of Macedonia-related articles and this arbitration case.

SQRT5P1D2 is a Macedonia-focused single-purposed account

10)

single-purpose account

Proposed. SQRT5P1D2's contributions demonstrate this, and SQRT5P1D2 has acknowledged that his/her account was created specifically for the purpose of participating in this case.[67] -- ChrisO (talk) 19:01, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

Comment - If I was another person, I would be very flattered about other administrators' repeated attempts to ridicule me, insult me and distort everything related to my account, actions and contributions. However, other people will judge this. Last week I registered my acount and I've already created a new article for the acclaimed SmartGeometry Group, which IMO is a good start, while I improved the phrasing and translated the huge discography section for an ECM artist (Savina Yannatou). In addition to these, my limited free time is spent learning policies and guidelines, while I juggle with business and family affairs in real life. Here you'll find my contributions in the article namespace. And no, I don't have anything to do with the Kennedy assassination either. SQRT5P1D2 (talk) 17:30, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Radjenef is a Macedonia-focused single purpose account

11)

single-purpose account

whose involvement with Wikipedia has been almost entirely been focused on editing a handful of Macedonia-related articles and this arbitration case.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. Undeniably true, as Radjenef's contributions demonstrate. -- ChrisO (talk) 18:10, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There is a perfectly good explanation for this: "Hello? I am a

newcomer!" If you look at the very logs you rely on, you will see that (prior to this arbitration) my logins have been few and far between. Of course "think hard before calling a newcomer a single-purpose account" seems to mean nothing to ChrisO. To be honest, the only explanation that I can give to this sudden hostility, is vindictiveness for the fact that I have exposed his blatant policy violations. I believe I have a lot to offer to wikipedia; particularly in the area of categorical quantum mechanics where there is currently no article at all! Keep this attitude ChrisO and you might even succeed in scaring me away... NOT! --Radjenef (talk) 23:34, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

Being a single-purpose account is not automatically a bad thing, as

grain of salt. -- ChrisO (talk) 23:46, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

Oh, you can ad hominem me all you want. That doesn't detract a bit from the validity of my arguments. In fact, experienced or not, I am still the one with an untarnished name, not you [68], [69], [70], [71], [72], [73], [74].

Agreed. I would also like to present his edit summary and sympathy for the sentiments of this edit. (Taivo (talk) 23:51, 27 April 2009 (UTC))[reply]

I am sorry, what you said didn't come out clearly. I take it that you agree with my decision to revert that act of vandalism, right Taivo? I also believe that everyone appreciates the fact that I responded in a courteous manner. Is there anything about my alleged "sympathy" that you would like to expand on further? --Radjenef (talk) 00:42, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Vandalism should be reverted, of course, but expressions of sympathy for the feelings of the vandal are something else entirely. The standard "rev vandalism" in the edit summary is quite "polite" enough. (Taivo (talk) 04:39, 28 April 2009 (UTC))[reply]

It is one thing to express the fact that I understand a person's frustration towards ChrisO's misconduct. It is a completely different thing to have that statement misconstrued in an apparent bad faith attempt to show that I somehow sympathize with vandals! Ever since I exposed ChrisO's latest faux pas, I have been systematically attacked by a swarm of people from the side that calls itself "unbiased". Whatever the case, I feel threatened and perceive a heightened level of hostility in these pages. Maybe I am wrong; I am confident, however, than ArbCom will factor everything into its analysis of the facts. What I cannot help wondering, is whether these people would have found an excuse of banning my account as disruptive, were this discussion taking place in a regular talk page. --Radjenef (talk) 08:06, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

Nick ts has edit-warred

12) Nick ts (talk · contribs) has edit-warred disruptively on 2008 Greek riots and has continued to edit war after a block ended.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. One of those unfortunate people who spend their time on Wikipedia repeatedly deleting references to Macedonia on the grounds that "THIS COUNTRY'S NAME IS FYROM, NOT MACEDONIA" (sic). Contributions here, block log here. -- ChrisO (talk) 18:59, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. I might change the comment from saying he continued to edit war after being blocked to continuing to edit war after a block ended, as it makes it clearer that he didn't continue the edit war as an IP or something. John Carter (talk) 19:13, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the suggestion, I've changed the wording accordingly. -- ChrisO (talk) 20:04, 29 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

Alfadog777 is a Macedonia-focused single purpose account who has edit-warred

13) Alfadog777 (talk · contribs) is a single-purpose account whose involvement with Wikipedia has been almost entirely been focused on editing a handful of Macedonia-related articles and this arbitration case. He has edit-warred disruptively on List of national animals to push a Greek nationalist POV.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. Another Macedonia name warrior (note edit summary here), who has edit-warred disruptively to replace a template with a broken, non-existent one to promote a nationalist POV. [75], [76], [77] -- ChrisO (talk) 08:18, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. A look at this user's edit summary only shows Talk:Macedonia, Talk:Macedonia naming dispute, and this arbitration as the focus of his/her editing. (Taivo (talk) 11:39, 28 April 2009 (UTC))[reply]

Comment by others:

ChrisO's move was based on a reassessment of policy and usage

14) ChrisO's move of the Macedonia article was based on a reassessment of policy requirements and real-world usage of the disputed terminology.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. I have set out the background to this at

Republic of Macedonia. However, after User:ΚΕΚΡΩΨ proposed to move the article to "Former Yugoslav Republic in Macedonia" in March 2009, I reviewed the assumptions that I had made about the policy basis for the article remaining where it was, and found that the case for moving the article to a shorter name was compelling. Reappraisals of assumptions and reviews of evidence are essential for the improvement of Wikipedia - see the proposed principle at #Openness to change above. -- ChrisO (talk) 23:04, 29 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

ChrisO provided a contemporaneous policy rationale for his action

15) ChrisO posted a detailed rationale for the article move, with reference to applicable policies and evidence of real-world usage of terminology, immediately after the move was carried out.

Proposed. As the principle cited above in #Administrator communications requires, "when an administrator takes an action that is likely to be controversial or to raise questions, he or she should explain the action in advance or at the time, in a location that the affected editors are likely to see, so that they will understand what has been done and why." I fully met this obligation by posting a detailed explanation of why the move was necessary, what the relevant policies were and what they required, and evidence of real-world usage of the terminology in verifiable reliable sources. Henrik and J.delanoy, both admins uninvolved in this dispute, both stated following my posting of the rationale that "I fully endorse it. I find your reasoning persuasive" [78] and "Agree with above, this was an excellent decision". [79] -- ChrisO (talk) 23:23, 29 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

Real-world usage of terminology

16)

Data on usage of Macedonia-related terminology

indicates that the term Macedonia is primarily associated with the country of that name.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed.

Documentation of usage compiled by Fut. Perf. and myself was the factual basis for which the move was carried out; put simply, the term "Macedonia" (by itself, no "former Yugoslav Republic") is used by the overwhelmingly majority of media outlets, other encyclopedias, atlases, maps and guide books to refer to the country. -- ChrisO (talk) 12:02, 2 May 2009 (UTC)[reply

Strongly support. My own real-world (not cyber-world) examination of atlases and maps in the U.S. market showed exactly that as well. All but one U.S. publisher of atlases use "Macedonia" exclusively. (Taivo (talk) 12:33, 2 May 2009 (UTC))[reply]

Oppose, not a fact. As per my evidence section. Once again I repeat, using Google is part of policy

WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. It appears right under the ones ChrisO used. And Google Books is not cyber-world it just scans real books. Books are real-world. I used a sample of 15,500 books, not just 50 books in my evidence. The fact: The word Macedonia in books has a wide context. Besides real people are the ones that use the internet. I wanted to avoid bias so I narrowed down to specific English speaking countries and specific data. Pieces of statistical data are just data no matter who compiles them (I didn't only use searches but some other tools by Google as well). And something you forget, Wikipedia is not an Atlas. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. There are things in an encyclopedia (subregions with 2.5 million people, ancient kingdoms) that an Atlas doesn't list, atlases primarily list only countries and need no disambiguation in most cases. News sources are also biased to modern news and references to modern countries and whole countries (not subregions) and not to ancient countries. A news source would also use "Balkans" to refer to the region, widely. It would probably not specify the specific region "Macedonia" to avoid confusion and the need for explanations of geography. Shadowmorph (talk) 09:06, 4 May 2009 (UTC)[reply

, was inconsistent with real-world usage.

Inconsistency with real-world usage

17)

Republic of Macedonia

Proposed. This is a key point:

use the most easily recognized name" for things. The usage data indicates that our use of terminology was inconsistent with the vast majority of verifiable reliable sources in English. -- ChrisO (talk) 12:02, 2 May 2009 (UTC)[reply

Strongly agree. That has been demonstrated with my own listing of U.S. atlases and ChrisO's and Future Perfect's more comprehensive research involving atlases, encyclopedias, news media, and other sources. (Taivo (talk) 12:39, 2 May 2009 (UTC))[reply]

Not entirely certain this is a pertinent finding in relation to the article title. It certainly is a correct and pertinent finding with respect to our usage in text, i.e. the avoidance of plain "Macedonia" in favour of ubiquitous qualifiers (which the Greek editors have also long tried to enforce), but when it comes to the article title I don't think it's that clear-cut. Anyway, I doubt the committee will go this far into content decisions anyway, so perhaps this is moot. Fut.Perf. ☼ 13:08, 2 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sure you are right that the committee will not go that far into the content issue, but this proposed FoF is intended to draw the committee's attention to the real-world situation regarding terminology. -- ChrisO (talk) 13:19, 2 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

Reaper7 has engaged in original research

18)

original research on Macedonia naming dispute, using sources to make an assertion by inference.[80][81]

Proposed. This is a clear-cut case of

WP:OR. Reaper7 has attempted to use two Danish sources to make a statement about Denmark's official position on the Macedonia naming dispute. Neither of the sources he cites makes any mention of the naming dispute or of Denmark's position. Reaper7 is attempting to infer the Danish government's position from those sources, using the sources to make a statement that is not supported by the sources themselves. For the discussion with Reaper7 on this issue, please see User talk:ChrisO#Warning - action will be taken against you for your poor behaviour (note the very aggressive attitude and the clear warning from Fut. Perf., which Reaper7 promptly disregarded.) -- ChrisO (talk) 13:57, 2 May 2009 (UTC)[reply

Comment. Sorry, ChrisO, but this proposal is pretty weak. We've all looked at similar data and made similar logical assumptions based on the limited information that is sometimes available on-line. We read something, we make an edit, if no one objects it means they made the same inference. But this proposal has nothing to do with the Macedonia issue except that it occurred in a Macedonia-related article and was performed by a party to this proceeding. Reaper's "over-the-top" reaction, however, is a different matter. (Taivo (talk) 16:25, 5 May 2009 (UTC))[reply]

Comment by Reaper7:

I just got a warning from ChrisO for 'Original Research.' I was editing the list in the Macedonia Name Dispute page and I had just removed a reference used fort he Dutch position as it was a dead link. Then I noticed the two GOVT references on this page: [[82]] both point to Denmark using FYROM or FYR Macedonia yet Denmark was in the list under 'List of countries to be sorted.' I moved Denmark to countries which use FYROM, ChrisO immediately reverted stating you need a source that states how Denmark uses the name, not infer it yourself from a random document. I then informed him, the 'random document were two Danish Govt Pages that were already there as references concerning Denmark and reverted. ChrisO then proceeded to revert and dish me out with an 'Original Research Warning.' This time he changed his story and stated: you are inferring Denmark's position, but the documents you cite do not say anything about whether Denmark recognises the constitutional name or not. This is interesting. Most of the list is made up of Embassy pages using the word Macedonia, and immediately they are on the list, under countries who recognise the Republic of Macedonia. I wonder how many of those editors received warnings from ChrisO? I am going to make this action of ChrisO stick as his behaviour in general has downgraded the neutrality Administrators are supposed to have. Reaper7 (talk) 13:58, 2 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose per Magioladitis' comment here. As a matter of fact, truth seems to be closer to Reaper's position. I read in Danforth that Denmark recognized RoM in 1997 as FYROM, and I found no source telling me that it later changed its stance. As a matter of fact the documents Reaper provided, and the Danish mfa itself [83] seem to confirm that Denmark's stance remain the same.--Yannismarou (talk) 15:37, 4 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It's unfortunate that you seem to be joining Reaper7 in engaging in original research by synthesis. I'll walk you through this, since you apparently don't understand the meaning of original research.

WP:SYNTH tells us "Do not put together information from multiple sources to reach a conclusion that is not stated explicitly by any of the sources." What Reaper7 has attempted to do is to use two documents that say nothing about Denmark's position on the naming dispute, and use those to infer what Denmark's position is. What you need is a source that states explicitly what Denmark's current position is. It's a pity that you apparently think basic rules of content sourcing don't apply in this case. -- ChrisO (talk) 12:20, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply

Comment - While this has nothing to do with the case, I think we had enough with the battleground mentality, in order to disqualify "opponents". For old EU members like Denmark, nothing changed since 1993. According to the article: "On 16 December 1993, two weeks before Greece was due to take up the European Community presidency, six key EC countries—Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom—recognised the Republic under its UN designation.". That's it. Denmark recognised officialy the UN provisional name (FYROM). The burden of the proof lies upon those who believe that Denmark changed her position (mail their MFA at um [at] um [dot] dk). If they have any relevant sources, then they should add them. SQRT5P1D2 (talk) 02:17, 3 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - [84] and [85] are the best official sources I found (both from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark website). I was curious because they use both Macedonia and FYROM on the same sentence. So I called them up (I called the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark). They confirmed that FYROM is the official name they recognized the country. They did not provide me any more documentation or urls for this. My opinion is that nobody (except the people in the 2 countries) really cares about the name. But Denmark is bound by UN and EC conventions. GoingToPluto (talk) 09:31, 5 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Disgusted My edit of Denmark's stance has been put back to where I originally put it and was warned for. It is agreed now I was right and my edit reinstated. Why do I still have this warning from ChrisO?? Reaper7 (talk) 09:06, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

So ignore it and move on with your life. (Taivo (talk) 11:23, 9 May 2009 (UTC))[reply]

Or, alternatively, "So remove it." There's nothing that says you can't remove warnings from your talk page. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 11:35, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

And Reaper7 isn't telling the truth anyway. His edit was not reinstated. Someone added a different reference to Denmark, but Reaper7's original research wasn't used. -- ChrisO (talk) 11:39, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Denmark made up her mind in the '90s and nothing changed since then. It's simple as that. If no news exist, it's because there are no news. Be rational. SQRT5P1D2 (talk) 12:12, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Reaper7 has engaged in disruptive canvassing

19) In direct response to the finding of fact above (#Reaper7 has engaged in original research), Reaper7 (talk · contribs) has disruptively canvassed "friendly" editors to support his position, ignoring advice that he should not do so.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. Reaper7 has posted messages to the user talk pages of

inappropriate canvassing, specifically campaigning and votestacking. It's also an incredibly dumb thing to do in the middle of an arbitration case. -- ChrisO (talk) 14:18, 2 May 2009 (UTC)[reply

I am afraid the warning you handed me has now been documented and reported, the wording you used, everything. In your own words, it was an incredibly 'dumb' thing to do when you are already under investigation for your behaviour especially when this whole arbitration is due to your actions. I told this would be the outcome if you continued to abuse your power as an adminstator and told you I would inform editors of your behaviour on your on talk page here: [[92]] I am afraid it is up to all editors now to see that you erratic behaviour with all Macedonia related articles and editors within them is never ending. I think the sooner your admin privileges are stripped from your account, the sooner we can calm the situation down on pages you have turned into battlegrounds. It is important all editors who believe you have disrupted the Macedonia article]] witness your behaviour towards me and my sensational warning you decided to hand me today. neutrality is the key. It is not canvassing alerting editors to your behaviour - a favourite word of yours! It is evidence now and they will use it to prove the point I and they are already making if needed. That you are a poor, and bias administrator who has been totally disruptive in pages concerning your home nation and have abused your powers as an administrator. Reaper7 (talk) 14:47, 2 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

My "home nation"? You think I'm a Macedonian? -- ChrisO (talk)

I think you believe you are when you log-on to wikipedia. Your bias to one side has brought about this arbitration.

I am sure you will get over it, I have been accused of being Greek in the ethnic profiling, remember? Reaper7 (talk) 21:36, 2 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: Too strong wording to accurately reflect reality. Reaper's posting fulfils two of the four critera of inappropriate canvassing: it was biased and partisan (?), but at the same time it was limited and transparent. The last characteristic is the most important IMO, and for this reason I'll reluctantly oppose the FoF.--Yannismarou (talk) 15:44, 4 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

15:06, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Question - ChrisO, I don't know about others, but who told you that I'm a "friendly" party to Reaper7? Is it because we beat AEK and got the cup? :) Let's not go down to the route "guilty by ethnic affiliation" again. And don't you think that you abuse the term "canvassing"? If a Wikipedia user wants to notify a few people about something publicly, this is not "canvassing". If he spams dozens of editors, yes, it's canvassing. Please, tone down a bit. SQRT5P1D2 (talk) 01:50, 3 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed remedies

Note: All remedies that refer to a period of time, for example to a ban of X months or a revert parole of Y months, are to run concurrently unless otherwise stated.

Reaper7 banned

1) As an aggressive advocacy account who has disrupted Wikipedia discussion - including the proceedings of this case - with a persistent vitriolic battleground attitude, Reaper7 (talk · contribs) is banned from Wikipedia for 6 months, and permanently topic-banned from all edits relating to Macedonia naming issues (including both content edits and contribution to discussions).

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. Reaper7's conduct - including his contributions to this arbitration case - have been pretty much textbook examples of

treating Wikipedia as a battleground. -- ChrisO (talk) 15:02, 2 May 2009 (UTC)[reply

Continued injunction against Macedonia-related article name moves

2) On conclusion of this case, the present injunction against moving articles relating to Macedonia shall be continued in force until a fresh consensus-forming process reaches a definitive conclusion within a defined timeframe.

Proposed. Given that there is clearly no agreement on the article naming, and none will be forthcoming until a definitive conclusion is reached, it would be sensible to continue the present injunction against Macedonia-related article name moves until such a conclusion has been reached. There is otherwise a high probability of disruption following the case. -- ChrisO (talk) 15:30, 2 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Strongest possible opposition - It should be noted that the proposer of this matter is, in effect, asking that his own move, which was itself arguably in violation of wikipedia policies and guidelines, be somehow "grandfathered in" until such time as a consensus is arrived at. That unilateral action itself seems to have been very disruptive on its own, and I cannot see how it serves any purposes to allow it to continue indefinitely. Would have no objections to the proposal if the extant

Republic of Macedonia before the proposal were enacted, however. John Carter (talk) 14:20, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply

. There are two reasons for this, one practical, the other policy-based:

Consensus process regarding the country article Macedonia

3) On conclusion of this case, a fresh consensus-forming process, possibly with an ensuing poll, is to be held in order to form a valid consensus deciding between "Macedonia", "Republic of Macedonia", or any other new naming proposal. The committee will name a task group of three experienced, uninvolved administrators who will be charged with overseeing this process, closing it and determining a consensus from it, with due account taken of the principle outlined in (4) below. This process shall be required to reach a definitive conclusion within four weeks of the conclusion of the task group being named.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed as an alternative to Fut. Perf's

Republic of Macedonia pending a discussion about a move back to Macedonia

Practicality. Fut. Perf's proposal envisages up to two moves - one back to

Republic of Macedonia followed by another to Macedonia. This would unnecessarily increase the amount of drama, since many editors would oppose both moves. A solution which would involve only one decision point would be preferable and would involve less drama. It would also seem to be common sense - when the Gordian Knot

was cut, it wasn't then re-tied to facilitate a debate about whether to cut it again.

Policy.

disambiguation

used to handle secondary topics. The basis for discussion should be whether this is a case where an exception should be made, not whether the default should be followed.

I have also proposed a timeframe for this to happen: we need to have definitive closure on this issue, not an indefinite timeframe that would result only in further stalling and footdragging. -- ChrisO (talk) 15:30, 2 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

A transparent consensus process should concern the undisputed determining factors regarding the primary topic for the term "Macedonia" (

WP:PRIMARYTOPIC). SQRT5P1D2 (talk) 01:33, 5 May 2009 (UTC)[reply

Proposed enforcement

Template

1) {text of proposed enforcement}

Template

2) {text of proposed enforcement}

, a binding policy, particularly if the editing is done without prior discussion. Ignoring consensus in such a way is extremely disruptive.

Proposals by Radjenef

Proposed principles

Ignoring a long standing consensus without prior discussion is extremely disruptive

1) Wikipedia operates by

consensus

Proposed. --Radjenef (talk) 22:58, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Problematic. "Fatigue" does not equal "consensus". Consensus is a general agreement, not just a lack of argument for a period. Items that violate Wikipedia policy, even a new policy, are subject to change if a true consensus has not been reached and the item is simply the result of a "ceasefire". (Taivo (talk) 03:21, 24 April 2009 (UTC))[reply]

ChrisO himself referred to the status quo ante as a consensus [93]; an arbitration decision also referred to it as a long-standing consensus [94]. Besides, whatever happened to discussing changes like these before making them. --Radjenef (talk) 09:32, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You are making proposals here for future policy. That is what I am commenting about--not past actions or statements. (Taivo (talk) 11:19, 24 April 2009 (UTC))[reply]

Ah, ok, understood. I didn't equate fatigue with consensus though. --Radjenef (talk) 12:29, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

[This was not an arbitration decision. Please get your facts right. -- ChrisO (talk) 00:19, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Disagree In my experience consensus is something elusive that is invoked by people who want to preserve a specific status quo that suits them. If at the present there's no consensus (and there isn't as most of the people agree) invoking a past consensus is useless and tiring. Besides, the policies are clear, NPOV principle trumps any "consensus".

man with one red shoe 04:52, 29 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

). Ethnic profiling is a very dangerous path to take that threatens users' privacy, civil rights and sets a precedent that could lead to a horrible slippery slope.

Ethnic profiling is counter-productive

2) It is more important to pay attention to what people are saying (i.e. the validity of their argument) as opposed to where they are from. Decisions in wikipedia were never based on the number of flags appearing on either side (

assume good faith, is in the content of their arguments ([95], [96]

Proposed. Some evidence can be found here [97]. I strongly object to the ethnic or racial profiling of people's views in wikipedia. I find the practice offensive to say the least: it's degrading; it's like saying it doesn't really matter what so-and-so says because of where they were born. Furthermore, even if some users have provided information in previous edits that could link them to an ethnic group, speculating as to a user's ethnicity based on the character codes or phrases they've used is way out of line. To be honest, I think that meticulously hunting these things down in the archives, speculating and aggregating everything in an easy to access table is an unhealthy attribute for a wikipedia editor. Clearly their time could have been better spent. --Radjenef (talk) 22:58, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Disagree. This principle should not be used as an umbrella to protect national POV pushers.

man with one red shoe 04:55, 29 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

Policies supersede editorial guidelines

3) Wikipedia policies are binding on all cases. Editorial guidelines are not binding; they are meant to advise editors on how to proceed in cases where a policy might be unclear. In cases where a policy and a guideline suggest different methods of proceeding, the policy will always take precedence. The fact that an editorial guideline is referenced from within a policy does not automatically elevate it to the status of a binding policy.

Proposed. --Radjenef (talk) 22:58, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Wikilawyering. This is just trying to add layers of importance to words that are nearly synonyms in actual English usage. I seriously doubt that the multiple editors who wrote Wikipedia policies/guidelines were aware that their choice of vocabulary would be used in a legal sense. (Taivo (talk) 03:24, 24 April 2009 (UTC))[reply]

This is not wikilawyering;

WP:NC

, chose to put this on top:

normally be followed by all editors. Any edit to it should reflect consensus. Consider discussing potential changes on the talk page first.

Shortcuts

Similarly, the multiple editors who wrote

WP:NCON

chose to put this on top:

common sense and the occasional exception. Any substantive edit to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page

.

They explicitly and purposely used a more relaxed language for guidelines. The words are clearly not synonyms. --Radjenef (talk) 09:22, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Please see Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines#Policy and guideline pages, which makes it clear that policies by definition take priority over guidelines. John Carter (talk) 20:05, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Disagree, this doesn't make much sense when the policy itself says something along the lines of: use the guideline in case of disputes.

man with one red shoe 04:58, 29 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

to be more precise, we will see: "title an article using the most common name of the person or thing that is the subject of the article. Make the title unique as described in the disambiguation guideline." This means that editors are required to use the most common name of a person or thing that does not conflict with the names of other people or things.

Policy mandates the use of the most common non-ambiguous name

4) If we look at

WP:NCCN

Proposed. --Radjenef (talk) 22:58, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Problematic. There is virtually no name on the planet that is not ambiguous. Athens, Greece or Athens, Georgia; Macedonia or Macedonia, Georgia; Paris, France or Paris, Texas; Moscow, Russia or Moscow, Idaho. In the vast majority of cases, the most common meaning should be the contemporary meaning of the most important element. Thus, Paris, France is a larger city and a national capital; Macedonia is an independent country; etc. This should be the primary place where a name focuses. Other secondary uses should be found on a disambiguation page. But the most important element should be the primary place where a search for that name goes. (Taivo (talk) 03:30, 24 April 2009 (UTC))[reply]

So, you are assuming that the Republic is "the most important element" just because it is a country whereas Macedonia (Greece) is a region. This sounds very arbitrary and is not referenced anywhere in wikipedia's policies. I beg to differ. --Radjenef (talk) 09:39, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, an independent country is more "important" than a subordinate region because it will be the focus of much more cross-referencing and searches. For example, in the front of a typical atlas you see a list of countries, not a list of subordinate regions. You will see a list of world capitals, but not a list of regional centers or towns. Larger and more independent is always more useful than smaller and subordinate. (Taivo (talk) 11:26, 24 April 2009 (UTC))[reply]

Then we disagree on our definition of "important". In this case, the "subordinate region" [sic] has a larger population, richer history, covers a larger area and has received more scholarly citations than the Republic. I don't see why countries should automatically be considered "more important" than regions with regards to naming. This isn't stipulated by any policy. In light of this, let's wait and see what ArbCom has to say about this disagreement. --Radjenef (talk) 12:47, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It doesn't mean that, it means "use the most common name and make it unique" like in "Macedonia (country)" or "Macedonia (region)" not "use the second common name that doesn't conflict" -- this is your invention, I personally cannot deduce it from that sentence.

man with one red shoe 03:42, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

So, I take it that you disagree with ChrisO's move to trash the disambiguation. Thank you! The problem with your argument is that the burden of proof would be on you to prove that "Macedonia (country)" is more common than "Republic of Macedonia" or "former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia". "Macedonia (country)" is so ambiguous that there is no way of actually showing this. At least I don't think there is. If you can prove me wrong then please, by all means, do! --Radjenef (talk) 09:53, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"the burden of proof would be on you to prove that "Macedonia (country)" is more common than "Republic of Macedonia"" -- I'm sorry but this makes no sense.

man with one red shoe 13:26, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

In "Macedonia (country)", "Macedonia" would be the ambiguous base name, and "country" a disambibuating qualifier, see

WP:D#Links to disambiguated topics and Help:Pipe trick. Andreas ^(T) 13:37, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

Disagree with this part "most common non-ambiguous name", the policy doesn't say that, looks to me that he introduced "non-ambiguous" to serve his POV.

man with one red shoe 05:00, 29 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

MW1RS, you're right.

WP:NCCN says nothing about a name being "non-ambiguous"; unfortunately this is yet another example of editors inventing new criteria that don't exist in policy. Plenty of terms have multiple meanings, but it's usually the case - as in this instance - that one particular meaning predominates. The name "Macedonia" is perfectly non-ambiguous when used in relation to the country, as that is its primary meaning in English - there is no other country called Macedonia. -- ChrisO (talk) 20:18, 29 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

Comment by Shadowmorph: ChrisO, as an admin you should know the policy better and not oversimplify things. I have been here for only a month and I have better understanding of the spirit of the policy. Here is what I see:

Convention: Except where other accepted Wikipedia naming conventions give a different indication, title an article using the most common name of the person or thing that is the subject of the article (making the title unique when necessary as described in the following section and in the disambiguation guideline). The naming conflict guideline may help resolve disagreements over the right name to use. Where articles have descriptive names, the given name must be neutrally worded.
—
Wikipedia:NCCN#Use_common_names_of_persons_and_things

Any proposal to change between names should be examined on a case-by-case basis, and discussed on talk pages before a name is changed. However, debating controversial names is often unproductive, and there are many other ways to help improve Wikipedia. An incomplete list of controversial names includes: Roman Catholic Church vs. Catholic Church; BC/AD vs. BCE/CE; Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia vs. Republic of Macedonia vs. Macedonia; Palestinian Arabs vs. Palestinians vs. Palestinian People.
—
Wikipedia:NCCN#Controversial_names

Rationale and specifics: See
Wikipedia:NCCN#Controversial_names

We are lead to this other accepted Wikipedia naming convention

Wikipedia:Naming_conventions#Places, which in turn refers us to Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(geographic_names)

. There we are given some other instructions

The above also redirected us to naming conflict to resolve disagreements. It specifically mentions Macedonia related subjects when saying this:

A name used by one entity may well clash with a name used by another entity... ...These overlapping meanings can be resolved by proper disambiguation
—
Wikipedia:Naming_conflict#Overlapping_names

In the end, if all else fails, just leave the article at its original name.
—
Wikipedia:Naming_conflict#Ambiguity_persists

The above text existed since before April 2009, prior to your move and it is an official policy. That policy of course now includes this text:

The Wikipedia community has found it difficult... ...the distinction between the country which describes itself as the Republic of Macedonia and the various other uses of Macedonia [2]. These two disputes have been brought to the Arbitration Commitee, which has sought resolution by suggesting improvements to the process of reaching consensus rather than by issuing definitive name rulings. Other long-standing problems have been settled through compromise or voting.
— Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(geographic_names)

All the above attest to the fact that the matter is not so simple as you put it. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 07:27, 7 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

Editorial guidelines advise the use of the most common non-conflicting English-language name

5)

WP:NCON

clearly states that when the name of a non-human entity conflicts with the name of another non-human entity, editors are advised to consider English-language equivalents and use the most common one: "If the name of an inanimate or non-human entity is disputed by two jurisdictions and one or more English-language equivalents exists, use the most common English-language name."

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. --Radjenef (talk) 22:58, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. The most common self-identification is more important than an externally-imposed name that may be offensive. "Zaire" is the most common name after "Congo" for Democratic Republic of Congo, but it is inappropriate since it is no longer the name of the country and is linked to the previous dictator. (Taivo (talk) 03:48, 24 April 2009 (UTC))[reply]

Why is it offensive? Honestly, if you can find me a credible external source claiming that "Republic of Macedonia" or "former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" is offensive, I will name you man of the day! I also disagree with your unproven premise that "self-identification is more important". --Radjenef (talk) 10:01, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't say that "Republic of Macedonia" was offensive, just "former...". You are making proposals on this page, therefore I find your proposal unsatisfactory since it violates the principle of self-identification that is clearly spelled out at

WP:NCON. It is for the ARBCOM to decide. (Taivo (talk) 11:23, 24 April 2009 (UTC))[reply

I agree that this is for ArbCom to decide. It might help your case if you could find a credible external source claiming that "former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" is offensive. You haven't done that yet. As far as "self-identification" goes, I believe I have made my argument clear in [98], so I won't bother repeating it here. Also, I believe that the sentence I quoted from

WP:NCON in my proposal takes precedence over the "self-identification" clause. --Radjenef (talk) 13:04, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

Oppose this time you got the quote right, but you still kept a misleading title, where did you get the " most common non-conflicting " part? What does "non-conflicting" actually mean, and which object gets to keep the "conflicting" name, and on which criteria? Would that be the country or it would be the Greek province?

man with one red shoe 03:56, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

Oppose since this is - as usual in this dispute - an invented criterion with no basis in policy. The actual criterion that Radjenef is misquoting states simply "use the most common English-language name". No doubt Radjenef would prefer it to be otherwise, but we have to go with the policy as it is, not a fabrication that serves Radjenef's POV. -- ChrisO (talk) 00:55, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

Proposed findings of fact

Return to the status quo ante is not out of line

1) ArbCom is probably not here to rule on content. However, if after these proceedings are over, an administrator decides to return things to the status quo ante by reverting ChrisO's move, then that action will not be out of line. This will reset consensus building processes and allow them to proceed tabula rasa.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. --Radjenef (talk) 02:13, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose, since this would be pointless if it is determined that the policy rationale behind the move is correct. It's also pointless for a different reason - consensus building failed some time ago with the abandonment of the

WP:MOSMAC proposal, and consensus building since then has been impossible due to the continued obstruction, wikilawyering and overt POV-pushing of a number of editors working as a faction. -- ChrisO (talk) 23:52, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

Oppose. There are no "consensus building processes". That is the point of this arbitration. The nationalist bloc of editors will continue to do what they have done at Greece and Macedonia for months--block each and every attempt at consensus-building and compliance with Wikipedia policies with wikilawyering, filibustering, etc. (Taivo (talk) 04:42, 28 April 2009 (UTC))[reply]

Oppose -- there's no such thing as "consensus building process" in that page, returning to previous status would not help consensus and might be against the policies that ChrisO detailed. Besides, in a fight between consensus and NPOV, NPOV has priority per WP policies.

Comment by others:

ChrisO's misuse of his administrative privileges has been severely disruptive

2) Based on principle 4.2.1.1, backed by evidence in [99].

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. --Radjenef (talk) 02:34, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Disagree. Far more disruptive of Wikipedia, and preceding any action by ChrisO, was the widespread vandalism by Greek editors across a wide spectrum of articles. This has been documented several times in this arbitration. (Taivo (talk) 06:23, 27 April 2009 (UTC))[reply]

Let me get your argument straight; are you agreeing that ChrisO's actions were disruptive, yet arguing that one wrong justifies another? Also, are you accusing all Greek editors of vandalism, or are you saying that "just because some of the vandals were Greek, all Greeks probably are"? This persistent attempt of throwing everyone in one ethnic sack and accusing them collectively as if they were one is wrong. --Radjenef (talk) 10:19, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm no fan of Chris's action, but "severely disruptive" goes too far, especially since it's the stonewalling nationalists who are really causing the disruption here. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 06:53, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Are you arguing that ChrisO should be indemnified because other people are disruptive as well? Disruptive users exist on both sides of this dispute, as was demonstrated by evidence [100], but that alters nothing with respect to ChrisO's conduct. In fact, how's that [101] for stonewalling by ChrisO himself! --Radjenef (talk) 10:45, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Disagree. He moved a page according to most common use in English, if there wouldn't be a huge POV against that name his move would not even qualify as "BOLD".

man with one red shoe 05:07, 29 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

Disagree. The cited "evidence" provides no evidence of disruption whatsoever. In fact, as I've pointed out in my evidence, I actively sought to prevent disruption resulting from the move. -- ChrisO (talk) 20:55, 29 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Support. I've stated my reasons in Fut.Perf's (understatement) proposal here. Still the statistical evidence by Fut.Perf.[102] show signs that the interests of readers are progressing into chaos after event #3 (ChrisO's move). We'll have to wait and see more. The result of his action being specifically mentioned as an endorsement of the name by Wikipedia in TV stations reports and newsblogs would qualify as disruption too. Shadowmorph (talk) 22:45, 29 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Suport I have already stated why previously. Reaper7 (talk) 21:37, 2 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

ChrisO and other editors have acted in a manner that is unbecoming of a wikipedia editor

3) Based on principle 4.2.1.2, along with [103].
Clarification: By other editors I mean User:Husond, User:Future Perfect at Sunrise, as well as all editors (from either side) who have been proved to be vandalizing or otherwise blatantly disregarding wikipedia policy.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. --Radjenef (talk) 02:40, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Disagree. The stonewalling of the group of editors attached to the Greek POV at both

WP:IDONTLIKEIT, and all manner of other filibustering techniques to avoid actually coming to consensus or compromise. (Taivo (talk) 06:27, 27 April 2009 (UTC))[reply

You are launching terrible accusations without citing any findings of fact. You are also taking these accusations and applying them to an entire POV, citing common ethnic background amongst many of them. I would like to see you providing evidence to substantiate your assertion that all editors disagreeing with your POV "blocked any form of consensus-building based solely on wikilawyering,

WP:IDONTLIKEIT, and all manner of other filibustering techniques". Finaly, I want to add that accusing others of unbecoming behaviour doesn't in any way vindicate ChrisO. Such a reasoning would be fallacious; I was expecting better from a scholarly person such as you, Taivo. --Radjenef (talk) 09:56, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

"And other editors"? Names, or that part of the finding is meaningless. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 06:51, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I am sorry, I was tired last night, you are right it is ambiguous the way I've phrased it. I promise I'll revise it. --Radjenef (talk) 09:58, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, there's some names, sure, but there's still some unnamed ones in there, apparently. This won't make a good finding. Now mind you, I disagree with your characterization of their behaviour, anyway, and I really doubt the arbs will make a finding like this, as "acted in a manner that is unbecoming of a wikipedia editor" is much to vague and scolding-like (most of their findings list specific behaviours, such as incivility, edit warring or battleground treatment). Heimstern Läufer (talk) 10:20, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Disagree. This is based on the "Bordering OUTING" accusation. "Bordering" something is nowhere present in any policy. "Bordering crime" has no real meaning, it's a crime or it isn't.

man with one red shoe 05:10, 29 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

4) As is presented in the evidence page [104].

ChrisO committed a serious violation of wikipedia policies by attempting to change the wording of a policy he is accused of violating

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. --Radjenef (talk) 02:13, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry but I think this falls right into the Wikilawering definition. You know that he didn't do

man with one red shoe 18:11, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

Honestly, if another person accuses me of wikilawyering without rationalizing that claim with sound arguments, I think I am going to start giving people spelling lessons. Humour aside, however, I believe that it doesn't really matter whether I accuse ChrisO of

WP:OUTING violation but about his editing of the policy he was accused of violating. My side of the house has been repeatedly accused of wikilawyering, POV pushing, etc. You've really got to love the irony in all of this, for it is your side of the house that has (in this very arbitration) exhibited underhand tactics, personal attacks and a polemic POV against all Greeks. In fact, this arbitration is a microcosm of what has been happening in these articles for years! --Radjenef (talk) 00:26, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

Let me explain one more time: trying to make a rule that you didn't break clearer by performing a minor change is not an evil act, trying to make it appear so is Wikilawyering in my opinion. You seem to not understand the key issue here: changing the rule would not have protected him if he broke it because his behaviour is measured against the rule at the time of his actions, so any change he made would be irrelevant for judging his past behavior therefore there's no real conflict of interest here (unless you claim that he intended to break the rule in the future which makes no sense). Taking this into consideration how do you keep your accusations? I suggest you retract them and appologize to ChrisO for baseless accusations.

man with one red shoe 20:25, 29 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

The change is here: clarifying "personal information" to "personally identifying information". Since the page already has a clause: unless that editor voluntarily posts this information, or links to this information, on Wikipedia themselves which covers all the alleged infraction, he did not violate it; he attempted to clarify a vague rule, which (if read literally) might include referring to people by their account names (that's personal information, isn't it?). "Private" would have been better, but let's be serious. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:49, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

As I said in the edit summary, it's a trivial clarification of terminology to match legal terminology (as I understand it, "personally identifying information" is the standard legal term). It doesn't change what is covered by the policy. Really, this sort of point-scoring is just what you get when the Bad Faith Brigade is in action. -- ChrisO (talk) 18:07, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Your edit summary might have said it's trivial, but that doesn't make it so, neither does your reference to "personally identifying information" in your

WP:BOLD again? This is getting a bit repetitive, don't you think? I believe we should just let the facts speak for themselves and let ArbCom come to it's own conclusions. --Radjenef (talk) 23:54, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

To make it clear for everybody, do you still accuse ChrisO of OUTING? Because if you don't it's irrelevant what he edited and how. With or without that change it's clear that no private info was made available that was not already available for everybody.

man with one red shoe 00:11, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

To make it clear for everybody, it doesn't matter whether I accuse ChrisO of

WP:OUTING because other people have accused him of the same thing already! --Radjenef (talk) 00:49, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

False accusations are false whoever makes them. -- ChrisO (talk) 00:59, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe they are, maybe they aren't, that is for ArbCom to decide, but this finding of fact is not about that... this is about you editing the policy. --Radjenef (talk) 01:08, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Wikilawyering If there is no definition of this concept this example should be used to define it.

man with one red shoe 05:15, 29 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

There is precedent of a sort for this sort of "charge". Jossi was initially accused, and found to have done, something similar in the ongoing Scientology arbitration. Whether this is of the same scale is another matter. John Carter (talk) 15:34, 29 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

John don't know about any precedent, but correct me if I'm wrong, ChrisO's actions would be judged by the rule at the time of his actions, right? So any change he made to the rule would apply to future actions that might be incident to that rule. Giving that the case against him for OUTING is so weak and the change so minor I doubt anybody can make a sane claim that he changed the rule to take advantage in the future. Since the change doesn't serve his past behavior there's really no conflict of interest here. Am I wrong in my interpretation?

man with one red shoe 20:32, 29 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

Understood, and I'm not sure I disagree with you. The only point I was making was that there is a precedent for such statements. Personally, I don't myself think that there is sufficient cause for this one in this case. John Carter (talk) 16:11, 3 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Move along, nothing to see here. There was no need for him to edit the policy to get off the hook, because there was already a solidly documented prior consensus that he never violated it in the first place. His proposed edit was a trivial clarification (which has in the meantime been reverted, but for entirely independent reasons.) There never was any text of that policy, under any rational reading, that would have prohibited referring to people's apparent national affiliations as evidenced by their Wikipedia profiles. Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:48, 29 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed He has been totally disruptive. Reaper7 (talk) 14:56, 2 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

ChrisO attempted to game the system

5) ChrisO attempted to game the system by carefully timing his move of the Republic's article in order to have ArbCom freeze its name. Evidence provided in: [108]

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. --Radjenef (talk) 01:47, 27 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Seems a reasonable conclusion based on the conduct of ChrisO in the matter. John Carter (talk) 14:07, 28 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Obviously.--Yannismarou (talk) 14:08, 28 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. ChrisO did not try to game the system since the system was already broken in terms of consensus building with the proponents of the Greek national POV. Consensus-building is impossible when one party to the dispute is unwilling to participate in constructive discussions that get anywhere. It has been clearly demonstrated here the level of wikilawyering, filibustering, and stonewalling that the proponents of the Greek national POV are willing to use in order to prevent a useful and fair consensus over the naming of Macedonia. "Gaming" a broken system is therefore logically impossible (especially a system that was broken by massive gaming from the other party). ChrisO's move was entirely justified and he provided the evidence for it. (Taivo (talk) 14:32, 28 May 2009 (UTC))[reply]

Comment by others:

Proposed remedies

Note: All remedies that refer to a period of time, for example to a ban of X months or a revert parole of Y months, are to run concurrently unless otherwise stated.

Sysop status

1) ChrisO should either be desysopped, or his administrative powers should be restricted to articles outside of this dispute. This would mean him having no administrative powers over Greek and Macedonia-related articles. Related findings of fact include: [109], [110], [111], [112], [113]

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. I feel that, because of ChrisO's partisanship, Macedonia-related articles would be better off without his administrative interference. --Radjenef (talk) 03:00, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Disagree. What Radjenef means is that it would be easier for the Greek POV to prevail in Macedonia-related articles without a strong editor standing in their way. (Taivo (talk) 06:28, 27 April 2009 (UTC))[reply]

I believe that I am the person most qualified to explain what I mean when I say something. Being as it were, Taivo is not me, so he shouldn't be telling us what I "mean" or "do not mean" to say. In short; please do not put words in my mouth. Wikipedia has procedures that prevent either side from hijacking articles (

WP:DISPUTE). I am sure that there are many unbiased administrators who could prevent that from happening. ChrisO is not one of those people because he is partisan; the "strong" person in the middle should not be partisan! Does anyone find that hard to agree with? --Radjenef (talk) 11:11, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

Support "Strong editor" as used by Taivo, (sorry Taivo), is just code for an editor acting as a superhero or a
We Don't Need Another Hero. Let's get real. Dr.K. logos 16:49, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply
]

Whether "strong editor" is the right phrase to use or not, the point is to eliminate another editor who does not align with Radjenef's POV. (Taivo (talk) 04:47, 28 April 2009 (UTC))[reply]

Support desysoping. Taivo's own opposition could just as easily be seen as being to not elimiate another editor who does align with Taivo's POV. I very strongly urge that editor to address the facts and rationales, rather than continuing to raise these objections seemingly solely based on his apparent agreement with the actions of ChrisO, and maybe even actually address some of the policy and other issued raised by others. John Carter (talk) 14:06, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Disagree desysopping somebody for doing the right thing would simply limit admins' power too much (would also ignore two principles WP:BOLD and WP:IAR which both deal with doing the right thing) As I said before this was a simple page move, if there wouldn't have been such a strong POV against the name this would have passed unnoticed or at least the discussions would have been less heated. Maybe we should examine the strong POV and its pushers before we desysop somebody who used ironclad reasons to move a page. Till now I've only seen outrage that the move was against "consensus" but I haven't seen a refutation of the reasons that ChrisO detailed when he moved the page.

man with one red shoe 05:30, 29 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

Partially because, bluntly, his policy rationale was just, basically, an excuse for him to move it. There had apparently been a fairly large agreement that the page should stay at the old name,

WP:ADMIN, the primary requirements of being an admin are the trust and confidence of the community. ChrisO has I think demonstrably lost much of both by his recent actions. John Carter (talk) 19:26, 29 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

This is nothing more than an assumption of bad faith and is grossly misleading (ironic coming from someone who's complained about "misrepresentation"). You have no grounds to claim that the policy rationale was just an "excuse" - that is utterly bogus. I set out a clear policy rationale, accompanied by objective evidence, here, which I've spelled out again here in this arbitration. I was and am sure of policy. The problem we face here - which you appear to be ignoring - is that applying policy has been systematically blocked by a nationalist group of editors. And I might add that neither you nor any of the other complainers have made much effort - if any - to discuss whether the policy rationale was valid. You've spent (or wasted) your time complaining about process while ignoring policy. In doing so, you're doing nothing more than facilitating the continued filibustering that's prevented any progress for the last two years. -- ChrisO (talk) 21:41, 29 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

ChrisO, please remember policy

WP:ADMIN#Misuse of administrative tools states "Administrators should not use their tools to advantage, or in a content dispute (or article) where they are a party (or signifcant editor), or where a significant conflict of interest is likely to exist. With few specific exceptions (like obvious vandalism) where tool use is allowed by any admin, adminstrators should ensure they are reasonably neutral parties when they use the tools." There is very little doubt in the minds of many editors that your actions, as a party who had been involved in the long term regarding this content, in moving the article without prior discussion probably violated this policy. In fact, this has been pointed out before, and I haven't seen any real evidence from you that your actions have anything like the indicated gross policy problems like vandalism to justify your having indulged in acting contrary to that policy. John Carter (talk) 16:18, 3 May 2009 (UTC)[reply

Strong Oppose I agree with the spirit of

WP:UNINVOLVED, which would indicate that ChrisO has been deeply involved in this matter and should not have made the move. However, we are talking about Eastern European conflicts. ChrisO is one of perhaps 4 admins (the others being FuturePerf, dab, and Moreschi, who appears to be inactive lately) who understand and are at least occasionally editing in this sphere. Asking the only 4 admins with knowledge and good judgment to recuse themselves from acting in this area would be turn over this whole set of articles to the POV editwarriors (on both sides). De-sysopping or a topic ban are simply unacceptable options. // Chris ^{(complaints)•(contribs)} 16:55, 6 May 2009 (UTC)[reply

2) Irrespectively of what is decided with regards to administrative rights, ChrisO should be topic banned from all Greek and Macedonia-related articles for a period no less than six months. Related findings of fact: [114], [115], [116], [117]

Topic ban

Update: In light of 4.2.2.4, I think a longer ban would be in order. --Radjenef (talk) 15:03, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. --Radjenef (talk) 03:08, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Disagree. ChrisO has engaged in no disruptive behavior. He took a bold move that was needed based on Wikipedia policy, but would have been impossible because of the refusal of the Greek editors to reach any consensus or to compromise on the issue of Macedonia. (Taivo (talk) 06:30, 27 April 2009 (UTC))[reply]

Correction. ChrisO took a POV pushing move that was based on his new personal interpretation of Wikipedia policy. He did it by taking the law in his own hands, because he saw that there wasn't a

snowball's chance in hell of being able to pull this off through the regular channels of discussion and consensus: Moving the article to the name "Macedonia" [118] wasn't even near consensus as it was opposed by people on both sides of this dispute! [119] --Radjenef (talk) 11:33, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

The reason for no snoball's chance in hell? Not because the move is against policy or wrong, but because of greek disrupting editors. chan dler ··· 05:08, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What Chris did most certainly doesn't merit a topic ban. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 07:10, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Disagree. Bogus reasons. ChrisO explained why he moved the page, other people don't attack his explanations, they attack his action based on technicalities.

man with one red shoe 05:34, 29 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

Um, sorry to disagree with you, but gross violation of policy and guidelines, such as a heavily involved admin doing something that policies and guidelines say only uninvolved admins should do, is a bit more than just a "technicality". John Carter (talk) 16:45, 7 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I can understand that to some limit, but if nobody attacks the reasons of his move then that it remains a technical issue, let me remind you of

man with one red shoe 20:13, 7 May 2009 (UTC)[reply

I thought that bans apply when people go against policies. I didn't read any policy that states that moving a move-protected page and then guard it from being reverted by uninvolved admins is ok. Besides, what do you mean nobody attacked the reasons of his move? Haven't you read the talk page and specific arguments that there is no main topic? Does a single admin have the sole power of interpreting policy? I am just a small editor but I did notice that the same pieces of policy ChrisO had other parts as well, some of them specifically refraining renaming of the Republic of Macedonia article (check my comment above [120]). Being a shadow gets me ignored all the time. I did "attack" the reasons for the move, so I guess that at least counts as one. I did see many other parties do likewise. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 01:04, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Your comment in "Policy_mandates_the_use_of_the_most_common_non-ambiguous_name" is based on a misquote. Nowhere in the policy says that, somebody has introduced "non-ambiguous" word inside the quote in a fraudulent manner, even after I pointed out that that's a misquote I still see people who remained with the misconception that the policy says something that it doesn't say.

man with one red shoe 02:36, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply

I am sure I made no comment regarding the word "non-amiguous". I have read the policies and I have quoted all the relevant parts from the policies that give the spirit of it. You haven't said anything about all the rest of the things mentioned in the policies. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 11:49, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

(response to man with one red shoe) The biggest problems I have regarding citing

WP:IAR are that, basically, (1) I don't know that I've ever seen the ArbCom rule in favor of someone on that basis, although I haven't myself seen all that many cases, and (2) there is a serious question in this case whether the change was basically good for the project. Yes, he resolved a problem, but at the cost of violation of rules regarding involved admins acting in cases, and, quite possibly, in violation of existing rules regarding naming guidelines. Frankly, if this were as unambiguous as ChrisO has repeatedly tried to present it as being, I don't think anyone would have any problems with it. The problem is, of course, it isn't that unambiguous. And, yes, even some of the evidence he produces to support his argument is at best dubious quality. This is not saying that there isn't a case for the name "Macedonia" for the article on the independent country of that name. The problem is, there is a fairly good case for it not having that name as well. And a radical action like this by an involved party, possibly/probably in violation of policy, is going to be seen by quite a few people as in and of itself being damaging to the project. And, of course, what strikes many people as being the best reason to support this proposal, myself included, is the really stupendously stupid timing of the move. To move the page after an arbitration has been agreed to, but before any action is taken, and at a time he himself has more than once indicated he knew was a holiday which would be expected to make certain editors inactive, makes it, in the eyes of many, all but impossible to AGF of him but, rather, to think he was trying to "pull a fast one" on everybody. It has been noted that some of his arguments are not as strong as he indicates, and that this name is itself serious questionable according to policy and guidelines. But he went ahead and did it anyway. One thing a sysop needs is to have the trust of the community. At this point, if nothing else, I personally have no reason to trust ChrisO, because, basically, his actions have been so, well, not only contrary to policy but, yes, stupid. Such poor judgement could itself be cause to consider de-sysoping someone. John Carter (talk) 19:33, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply

I see no evidence of "loss of trust by the community". The community does not consist of a few discontent Greek editors, and I have no expectation of being elected President of Greece any time soon, so I see no need to defer to a partisan POV. I'm not sure why you seem to think that you personally speak for the community - I certainly haven't seen a great rush of non-Greek editors lining up to condemn me. This isn't like the Ireland situation, where there are multiple prominent meanings of the term and very significant ambiguity exists. If you look on a map, or in an encyclopedia, or read a newspaper, or watch a television broadcast, and see or hear "Macedonia" mentioned, it is overwhelmingly likely that the term will be used to refer only to the country. This is clearly demonstrated by the

documentation of usage

compiled by myself and FPaS, which demonstrate that there is a clear common English language name as found in verifiable reliable sources. The reality is that Wikipedia's usage was clearly out of sync with common English usage but we have no process-based way of acting on that fact, because of the way that a nationalist faction of editors has insisted on having a veto over the naming of the country.

There is also clear evidence that the change was good for the project.

WP:NC#Use the most easily recognized name

.

As for the timing of the move, I refer you to

If there's a better way to do something than what the rules say, do it the better way." -- ChrisO (talk) 02:31, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply

Strong statement against ethnic profiling by ArbCom

3) ArbCom should issue a strong statement condemning ethnic profiling. Editors should be cautioned, under the threat of sanctions, that such practices are unacceptable. People should be judged on the merits of what they have to say, not on their ethnic background.

Proposed. --Radjenef (talk) 03:14, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. While this is a nice thought, in this case, the ethnic makeup of one side of the discussion was so heavily skewed in one direction that it becomes part of the discussion. It was not a random group of editors who interpreted policy differently. It was a solid wall of Greek editors who stood shoulder to shoulder with their homeland in its foreign policy. That becomes a major factor in understanding why consensus could not be reached at Greece. One part of the meaning of ethnic profiling means predicting behavior based on ethnicity. In most cases it is not accurate. But in this case it was 100% accurate--not a single Greek opposed the national position. (Taivo (talk) 06:35, 27 April 2009 (UTC))[reply]

I'm sorry, but this proposal is nothing more than rubbish. It's been demonstrated several times that the way the straw poll broke down into two opposing camps along national lines is highly relevant to the case, and the side that doesn't want that fact exposed is trying to censor it by slinging mud at those exposing the fact and now apparently trying to get sanctions on them. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 06:49, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I strongly support this. Rubbish? Of course not. It should be of outmost importance to condemn such practices. The condemnation should also include any kind of list-making of editors in general. For the history, I wasn't in that poll but it broke down because of opposing POVs, not because of ethnic backgrounds. By the way, what is the practical position of those opposing this "rubbish"? Should we make an official

five pillars

it's all in there. And didn't Heimstern just used the word exposed?. Therefore it wasn't "public information"?

The part that I find really hard to understand is why the "supporters" of ChrisO's move find it weird that there were Greeks in that poll, and that they were aligned. It was a poll about the content of the article Greece - who did they expected to vote there and in what way? I found more interesting that the other side was equally aligned. Shadowmorph (talk) 11:00, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

First off, I said the fact of the bloc polling was exposed, not anyone's personal information. As for your second paragraph, I admit I'm dumbfounded. You consider it normal for all members of a certain nationality to align on a matter and unusual for "the other side", consisting of a number of different nationalities, to hold the same opinion? I just don't know where we could start to have a meeting of the minds here. The point of NPOV at Wikipedia is that you leave your national interests, biases, whatever at the door and completely ignore them in favour of neutrality. That's clearly not happening among the pro-Greek editors. Maybe the reason "the other side" is so aligned is because we're committed to ideals having nothing to do with nationality, but rather to things like neutrality and consistent nomenclature throughout Wikipedia. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 11:25, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That's the problem! The moment you segregate users into ethnic groups, you immediately assert that one ethnic group acts based on national interests and biases as opposed to what they argue to be correct. That is inherently an

African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955–1968). That doesn't automatically imply that every African-American editor brings "bias" and "[racial] interests" through the door when disagreeing with your POV. Neither would it be acceptable to pin all of these editors (self-declared or otherwise) in a list, together with a note saying "these people are stonewalling the discussion". If a user wants their details (self-declared or otherwise) not included in a list, then that is a fact respected in virtually every jurisdiction in the world. --Radjenef (talk) 14:32, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

Heimstern, let me ask you a hypothetical question about an area you are not indifferent about: Supposedly the rest of the world would speak some other language (say Roman, so this would be Roman Wikipedia). In that scenario think of the US as the only country opposing the monopolization of the name by a hypothetical country called "Republic of California". Imagine that hypothetical country was the former Mexican province of Baja California. Imagine that they initially had embraced this flag

or this as their own. Then imagine that people from all over the world out of indifference started calling them just "California" and ignoring or doubting parts of the history of the US state, making allusions that it is their own. Furthermore their president was taking oaths[123], under a map of California that looked like this map. How would the Californians handle that case? Remember that in that scenario they would be called by everyone as "American Californians" and Californian would be reserved for the hypothetical country's residents. I'm trying to give you a taste of the realities of the Balkans in the past 20 years (not to mention the wars). Shadowmorph (talk) 16:00, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, we know how they reacted for a mere advertising campaing[124], imagine if it was the real deal! Shadowmorph (talk) 16:03, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

First off, please don't tell me you were planning to shock me with the thought of this Baja becoming Republic of California idea. I thought of this very scenario on my own several days ago. Was planning to write it up myself, but you beat me to it! Thanks for saving me time. :-)

Secondly, I'm afraid your argument is entirely based on emotion (specifically national/regional sentiment). If indeed Baja decided to self-identify as the Republic of California and the people started calling themselves Californians, I might be annoyed. Maybe even mad. But such feelings have no bearing on Wikipedia naming. If most reliable sources in English called this country "Republic of California", that would be the correct name, even if I continued to call it "Baja" myself. If English sources went so far as to call the country "California" and to rename my own state, to "American California", "Alta California" or whatever, it would be correct to have the article at California be about the independent republic, regardless of how much I resented it. Discussing which is the common English term in this Macedonia case is outside the scope of this thread, but my point is that under the scenario you name, the situation would be exactly the same as here. No one's feelings about a name bear any weight. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 04:32, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It wasn't meant as a fright of course. Well, Macedonia does have a long history. Most arguments about common usage just ignore the history books (those about the period of 600BC to 1945) altogether. They even ignore other evidence (like the Google searches in my evidence) that show a much different common usage favoring Macedonia (region) (and Macedonia, Ohio in the US usage). Shadowmorph (talk) 09:27, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Strong support I am not going to cite any reasons because I already made many statements about this abhorrent practice. If anyone is interested they can check my contributions or ask me for a few links. Dr.K. logos 16:43, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose as obvious and disingenous nonsense. Isn't it interesting that the only people protesting about this are all members of a clearly defined ethnic faction? This is nothing more than an attempt to discourage efforts to point out the obvious - that this is an ethnic-nationalist dispute dominated by a national faction (see also #Political influence of Greek editors). -- ChrisO (talk) 19:14, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I am protesting ethnic profiling and as far as I know I am not a part of your "red channels" list. Unless you are now deducing that perhaps I belong to that ethnic faction, too? What exactly are your criteria for inclusion? "Whoever opposes me, I just throw in the sack"? We all know who attempted to alter wikipedia policies to avoid being accused of violating them, while the arbitration is underway: [125]. So far, I have only seen underhand tactics like these from your side of the house. --Radjenef (talk) 20:24, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I restate my support. I oppose remarks by ChrisO and Fut.Perf. that this finding of fact is "disingenous" or "nonsense". He said "it is interesting that the only people protesting are all members of a clearly defined ethnic faction", again speculation with racial connotations. Besides the remarks were made about that ethnic faction, who should protest, the Iranians?. Comments by Radjenef and by John Carter elsewhere debunk that theory. Not to mention the people from Romania and Sweden that were "forgot" to be mentioned in the aforementioned ChrisO/Husond list. Future Perfect has gone as far as to include in his evidence, justification for "collective...", "inane, obtuse and clueless argumentation", that basically is just calling people stupid (but trying to hide it with complex wording) and possibly infers about all Greeks. He included me Shadowmorph, a new user, to "stable core of a handful of editors". I made 10 edits of NPOV nature in one article (Macedonian language) in 2008[126]; then I resurfaced only in April's Fool 2009 so I guess I'm a fool. I edited only a mere handful of disambiguation pages when I was caught in the middle of this with ChrisO's moves. Well since I made the statement of being Macedonian (Greek), I guess he included me just to prove that all Greeks act the same. Also, how does ChrisO actually knows that I'm only Greek. I could be American too. Shadowmorph (talk) 10:06, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

We don't need any new umbrella to protect obvious POV pushers. It's enough that we are slapped around with "AGF" when the issue is "bias" not "good faith". When a simple page move creates so much drama you can't ignore bias issues. The parallel between the real-live naming drama and this drama in Wikipedia is too perfect to ignore the real cause of it and who has interests to promote some specific names.

man with one red shoe 05:39, 29 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

When it is raining insults, people need "umbrellas" :) It is not just a page move, it is relevant to the

Republic of China article or changing just the two first words in Abkhazia, from "disputed region" to "autonomous country". Imagine the drame in the cases above. Because the dispute is about the name the "page move" (wiki-term for renaming) is related to the dispute. I think that covers it. Shadowmorph (talk) 06:09, 29 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

I do agree with you this problem is present in many other national pages, we need some tools to deal with people who have conflict of interests and vote and edit war in a concerted way. It's especially needed when the drama from outside of Wikipedia leaks into simple content decisions in Wikipedia. Picking a name would not be such a difficult issue if it were not for editors with national interests.

man with one red shoe 13:59, 29 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

ArbCom cannot do this. There is no existing policy against this (and no, neither our harassment nor our outing policies covers this), and ArbCom cannot legislate new policy; only enforce existing policy. 12:38, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

4) ChrisO's move of the Republic's article should be reverted, or allowed to be reverted, before any extensions to the article renaming injunction come into effect. As per [127], [128] and [129].

Reverting ChrisO's move of the Republic's article

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. If his action is now "checked" but not "reversed" by ArbCom, then the system will in effect have been gamed. --Radjenef (talk) 02:02, 27 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. Not permitting the dubious move which factually started the arbitration as it did occur would definitely give the impression that the move is considered acceptable, and I believe there is sufficient evidence that it is not necessarily thought of as such. John Carter (talk) 14:12, 28 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. Consensus-building is impossible when one party to the dispute is unwilling to participate in constructive discussions that get anywhere. It has been clearly demonstrated here the level of wikilawyering, filibustering, and stonewalling that the proponents of the Greek national POV are willing to use in order to prevent a useful and fair consensus over the naming of Macedonia. ChrisO's move was entirely justified and he provided the evidence for it. Future Perfect has provided further evidence that the move has actually helped Wikipedia users in getting to the information they were seeking faster, without having to go through a disambiguation page. The opponents of the move have provided no such evidence that users have been inconvenienced. (Taivo (talk) 14:35, 28 May 2009 (UTC))[reply]

Comment by others:

Proposed enforcement

Dealing with ethnic profiling

1) Users who make attempts at ethnic profiling should at first be warned that such actions have been deemed inappropriate by ArbCom [130]. If they persist, then any uninvolved administrator can ban them for a short period of time. If they are repeat offenders, more extensive measures might be in place.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. By the way, I think this should not apply to attempts at ethnic profiling that happened before the ArbCom decision, since the practice had not been explicitly deemed inappropriate at the time. --Radjenef (talk) 03:25, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It's reasonable that some form of enforcement should be taken about that. Shadowmorph (talk) 06:25, 29 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

Template

2) {text of proposed enforcement}

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Comment by others:

Proposals by Man with one red shoe

Proposed principles

Editors should not use potential offensive non-English terms.

1. Editors should not use potential offensive non-English terms. "Fyromian" is not an English term and can be considered offensive by some, per

WP:TALK

good practices, editors should use English when they communicate in Wikipedia, thus this term should be avoided even in talk pages. Same thing goes for "Skopjans" when it doesn't refer only to people living in the city of Skopje. This term is OK probably in Greek Wikipedia, but is not the English term for "Citizens of Republic of Macedonia" and it can be deemed offensive if used as such, in any case is not an English term and is not the self-identifying term either which in the absence of an English term would be acceptable.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed.

man with one red shoe 02:35, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

I actually agree with you. There's always ways of making a point without having to resort to ridiculous made up names. I take it that "person from fYRoM" would be an ok thing to use in a talk page, though, to be on the safe side, I usually refer to people from the Republic which is even more neutral (I always try to be extra careful not to offend people). --Radjenef (talk) 23:07, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Agree Fyromians and Skopjans are not acceptable terms and they should never be used to indiscriminately identify people from RoM. Dr.K. logos 23:23, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, with the asterisk that "Skopje" in order to refer to ROM should not be construed as offensive, as per diplomatic norms. Same with "Athens" for Greece. Of course on the other side, "Grecomans", "Christian Turks", "Atheneans" and even "Ethiopians"[131](!) should be avoided as well. The list is endless. --Avg (talk) 05:27, 25 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In "news speech" like "the government in Skopje..." is fine, but if somebody uses "Skopjans" and they refer to people from the Republic of Macedonia and not necessarily Skopje is not OK, just like is not OK to refer to Greeks as "Athenians". Otherwise I see a consensus emerging about this, should we include "Pseudomacedonians" and "Bulgaromacedonians" and other such non-English terms?

man with one red shoe 06:37, 25 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

Generally agree with Avg. However Athenian usually refers to

here, it is very offensive. "Christian Turks" again should be only used when refering to Ethnic Turks who are Christians. PMK1 (talk) 01:34, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

Agree. Both sides should avoid nasty terms, however insults can be made in other ways to. General etiquette should be prescribed. Shadowmorph (talk) 22:48, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Support as something obvious.--Yannismarou (talk) 09:56, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

Makes sense. Balkan Fever 08:22, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"FYROMian" and "Skopjan" are offensive terms. Nor are they English terms. Just to let people know Skopje is a city not a country. PMK1 (talk) 14:27, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This makes sense and I agree with what Shadowmorph says that both sides should be civil. Kyriakos (talk) 12:35, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"Long held consensus" cannot be used as an excuse against a change that follows Wikipedia's policies.

2. "Long held consensus" cannot be used as an excuse against a change that follows Wikipedia's policies. Since now it is a debate and the case is in ArbCom it is clear that there is no longer any consensus, the past consensus (if it ever existed) is dead and irrelevant now and cannot be invoked as an argument against a change that's based on polices and new realities.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed

man with one red shoe 03:19, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

I believe that the argument on consensus was referring mainly to ChrisO's conduct which happened before this case was brought to ArbCom. If you are saying that his actions were so disruptive that they completely shattered consensus, then I am inclined to agree with you; that move was a disappointing thing to see from a wikipedia administrator. In short, consensus can be used to judge conduct prior to ArbCom, but the old conensus probably won't be used to prevent change in the future. --Radjenef (talk) 13:22, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The point I'm making here is that there was such a strong consensus before the move it would exist after the move too, we don't see it here. Since there's no consensus, invoking past consensus is only Wikilawyering and holding on the straws, but you seem to agree with me. I didn't make this point to save ChrisO from responding for his actions, I'm just pointing out that since there's no consensus after a move the illusory consensus before the move was probably just status quo, nothing more.

man with one red shoe 13:32, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

Ah, I see, so you're saying that there was never a real consensus to begin with. Well, you are entitled to your own beliefs. You do, however, realize that both the arbitration decision [132] and ChrisO's view [133] was that there was a consensus, right? --Radjenef (talk) 22:57, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

They are entitled to their opinion, in my opinion it was just a status quo. If it were a real consensus there would have been a consensus against his move, can you claim that? But I've noticed that in other discussion too, the "losing" party always claims consensus somehow, maybe because they lack other tangible arguments (like clear policies or references).

man with one red shoe 23:15, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

While I can and do agree with the idea of the proposal, I would myself change the phrasing rather a lot. In the event of real-world changes which make the prior consensus irrelevant, like

Malcolm Little becoming Malcolm X, I can easily see how the prior consensus might be irrelevant now. However, this proposal could potentially lead to real problems of having individuals declare, seemingly on their own, that the prior consensus is invalid because they personally disagree with it. In most cases where there isn't a clearcut obvious need for a change, it would make sense to me to at least establish that the old consensus is no longer a consensus through at least minimal discussion to verify the current lack of consensus first. John Carter (talk) 20:47, 25 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

Paradoxical. How can a change be according to policies, when enforced without prior consensus when WP:Consensus is also a policy? Changing against consensus is also against policies. Your proposal is a paradox, isn't it? Shadowmorph (talk) 22:51, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"consensus" is many times an empty word used by POV editors to support the status quo that is convenient for them, I don't see this situation to be in any way different. Using "consensus" as a club to beat down everybody who wants to make a change is ridiculous.

man with one red shoe 02:11, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

Agree, and the corollary is that a lack of consensus cannot be used as a way to block the implementation of basic policy requirements (and you don't get much more basic than

WP:NPOV). See also #Consensus (or lack of) does not override policy. -- ChrisO (talk) 01:02, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

, the second one follows logically.

Policies, such as NPOV and article sourcing, can not be overridden by straw polls. "Lack of consensus" as shown by a straw poll should not be used as an excuse to ignore policies and NPOV considerations.

3. Policies, such as NPOV and article sourcing, can not be overridden by straw polls. "Lack of consensus" as shown by a straw poll should not be used as an excuse to ignore policies and NPOV considerations. First sentence is almost word-by-word from

WP:POLLS

Proposed

man with one red shoe 03:19, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

I saw this as a given, myself. Clearly agree to what is basically just a restating of policy. John Carter (talk) 19:59, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Absolutely. -- ChrisO (talk) 01:03, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

Wikipedia doesn't need POV-driven walled gardens.

4. Wikipedia doesn't need POV-driven walled gardens. We don't need in Wikipedia to use Chinese POV when we talk about Tibet in China related pages or Palestinian POV when we talk about Israel and so on, there's no reason to use Greek POV (per my evidence this is a Greek POV) in Greece page when we refer to the country, in all the rest of the pages is called either "Macedonia" or "Republic of Macedonia" however in talk:Greece it has been insisted by most of the editors who oppose the "Macedonia" name to call it "former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia", this is unacceptable, "Republic of Macedonia" is enough disambiguation for Greece article.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed

man with one red shoe 14:42, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

Agree. Where possible walled gardens should identified and broken up. PMK1 (talk) 11:31, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: It is almost impossible to do in this imperfect world. Aren't some other articles walled gardens too?

Obama, George Bush, Iraq, Creationism, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints etc etc. So what should we do? Make lists of involved editors who are Democrats, Republicans, Iraqi or lists based on editors' religions? Then what, ban those editors? Shadowmorph (talk) 23:02, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

I have no extensive knowledge about those articles, but do they use POV terms or info that are not used in the other articles, something similar to "former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" in Greece page, when the rest of the Wikipedia uses other term? If that's the case then my point is a very valid point and indeed we should find methods to de-POV those pages too.

man with one red shoe 23:45, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

That argument is simply the old

WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS argument - it's invalid by definition. We fix problems with what is in front of us, without worrying about how we're going to fix other unrelated problems. Needless to say, none of those articles you mention have anything to do with the Macedonia situation. -- ChrisO (talk) 01:05, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

I've actually worked on LDS-related articles (Book of Mormon specifically) and the LDS editors are quite willing to work toward consensus and compromise. It's not been overly difficult to come to appropriate NPOV compromise wording after everyone butts heads for a little time. There is not a single issue that has proven to be a place where consensus is impossible. So, please, do not include the LDS articles in this statement. The Greek intransigence here is like nothing I've ever seen before in Wikipedia. (Taivo (talk) 04:31, 28 April 2009 (UTC))[reply]

I didn't "include them" anywhere, it was a metaphor. I'm totally respectful of other peoples religions unlike others (not you Taivo). The only reason I wikilinked to it is because of the obviously not common name of that article's title. Please understand, I don't know anything about any of those articles, just wanted to make a point. I know next to nothing of the book you talk about. I know only about the

book of Mozilla :D I'm sure everybody is ultra nice everywhere else. I haven't seen anything like this too. ChrisO's move == severe disruption of Wikipedia. Shadowmorph (talk) 13:17, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

It wasn't ChrisO's move that started this issue with the name of Macedonia and "the severe disruption of Wikipedia". It has been a problem for a long time with the stonewalling of supporters of the Greek POV against Wikipedia policy. The Greek vandalism of other Macedonia-related (and other) articles was already underway before ChrisO's move. Too much is being made of ChrisO's move. This issue was already going to arbitration. Yannismarou just decided to move it up a few days before it was already planned. (Taivo (talk) 22:11, 3 May 2009 (UTC))[reply]

I've worked both with the Mormons and the creationists/intelligent design people. Actually, I've worked with pretty much anybody who considers themselves a Mormon, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Scientologist, Bahai, Jain, Zoroastrian, or whatever. With very few exceptions, all the religion editors are much more interested in communicating the facts, good or bad, about their faiths than are the more POV pushing nationalist editors. User:Moreschi/The Plague indicates that one of our more regular breaker of walled gardens agrees with that point. John Carter (talk) 22:31, 3 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

~~I claim that US Dpt of State policy regarding~~

Macedonia was (i) designed according to the objective of undermining/delaying the EU integration process (ii) driven by the grudge (of course in a very small scale) US held against Greece for their stance on the Serbia issue. This is the US POV; simple stuff.--Vanakaris (talk) 21:36, 3 May 2009 (UTC) claims silly, unverifiable, irrelevant to past evidence etc--Vanakaris (talk) 02:11, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply

~~For Macedonia itself we can use a simple formula~~

~~Country = Borders + Nationality)~~

They are striving for a Nationality. That is the Macedonian POV. Nobody has any objection to that. And all want the well being of the people there. All this mess was the result of poor design regarding the Nationality. It overlaps their neighbors’.--Vanakaris (talk) 21:37, 3 May 2009 (UTC) theories silly etc--Vanakaris (talk) 02:11, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Please be so kind as to imply what the Greek POV is about. I sincerely am not aware of any. It does not exist. At least no more than the Italian POV, the Vatican POV, the Swiss POV, the Gay POV and of course the Greek Chauvinist Junta POV.--Vanakaris (talk) 21:38, 3 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Simple the Greek POV is not to call the neighbor "Macedonia" or even "Republic of Macedonia", even Greeks here admit this readily. As for other POVs, yes, there's no place in Wikipedia, read

man with one red shoe 22:31, 3 May 2009 (UTC)[reply

1.Anybody from around the globe could say "macedonia" and mean one of at least three different places (in spacetime :-), one of three being ancient macedonia). It happens that 2 of them places are greek. That is a fact, not POV. 2.Lets assume that macedonian greeks are POV-driven. Not all greeks are macedonians. For example I am lesbian (from Lesbos, not to be confused with between women activity). Why should you call me POV-driven then? 3.Lets assume again that macedonian greeks are POV-driven. So what? Since they whould only try to show the obvious in this case, something like: Those macedonians are macedonians. Which macedonians are macedonians? Those macedonians or the others macedonians? => macedonia should be disambiguation page.--Vanakaris (talk) 22:39, 4 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The issue here is much more simple than what you are saying. When an English speaker hears the word "macedonia", generally they think of the distinct modern country. When they hear the word "macedonian", they most often think of someone from the aforementioned country. I do not know about other languages, but really, for the sake of this case, they do not matter, as this is the English Wikipedia. J.delanoy ^gabs _adds 00:01, 5 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That assertion by J.delanoy is an oversimplification. You can check my evidence Shadowmorph (talk) 07:24, 5 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

We could also check FP's evidence... Balkan Fever 08:45, 5 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

And FPaS's evidence is confirmed by ChrisO's current usage evidence which shows pretty conclusively that people are going to Macedonia mainly because they want the country, not the ancient kingdom or the region. Dab page usage has dropped since people are going exactly where they want to be with simple "Macedonia". (Taivo (talk) 04:11, 9 May 2009 (UTC))[reply]

Proposed findings of fact

Greek POV pushing and potential COI in this case

1. Participation in talk:Greece and talk:Macedonia per evidence presented by ChrisO has been lopsided, Greek editors aligned their positions en masse to the Greek POV.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. For example in

WP:COI I don't think it's OK to have editors who use POVish (and potentially offensive) names like "Skopjans" or "Fyromians" or "Psedumacedonians" hide behind the "Assume Good Faith" shield and overwhelm straw polls, discussions, and edits in main pages. Even more dangerous is the fact that nationals tend to watch "their" pages and Wikipedia will continue to have this kind of issues when some people under the cover of AGF (and thus no COI) will continue to promote their national POV by sheer number overwhelming the main space and talk pages. Assuming no COI automatically even in the face of counter-evidence will only encourage this kind of behavior. I see this is a weakness of Wikipedia and the possibility of developing parallel realities in different pages because they are watched by different demographic. To be more precise, the problem is not with the ideas presented by people who have bias or conflict of interest, I can discuss any ideas presented by no matter who, the problem becomes painful in straw polls, edit wars, endless filibustering and vandalism

where the number of editors aligned to some POV matters.

Maybe I'm wrong for seeing things this way, if that's the case punish me for "ethnic profiling" and move on...

man with one red shoe 20:38, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply

The point seems to me to be a reasonble one. A few situations come to mind which might be among the reasons for it, and those may not necessarily be generally bad things. The first is that I get the impression more Greeks regularly edit wikipedia than Macedonians. If that is true, then there would be a clear imbalance in their favor, as there would be more Greeks responding than Macedonians. The same imbalance may exist for several other national or subnational articles as well, possibly involving several outside of the Balkans. Based on my own limited experience with these topics, I have no doubt that there are imbalanced numbers of respondents to ethnic/national issues in several areas of wikipedia. Having said that, though, I'm not really very sure how to address the problem in a fair, unbiased manner. John Carter (talk) 19:48, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I frankly don't know, I assume that asking (more) 3rd party editors to participate in the content decision or use solutions used in other pages would make sense to de-POV a specific page that's too closely watched by some nationals. Since I wrote this I realized that "COI" as defined by Wikipedia is rather narrow and probably doesn't include this type of cases, the case for bias remains though.

man with one red shoe 22:54, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply