User:Dbachmann/Wikipedia and nationalism

This is an essay.

It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.

Wikipedia's policies of WP:NPOV and WP:ATT (and WP:UNDUE, which is a corollary of the two combined) allow any two editors in fundamental disagreement to work together productively, provided they are intelligent and have a certain minimal social competence.

In most cases where fruitful collaboration breaks down, except for patent silliness, at least one party is strongly motivated either by an irrational sentiment of either religion, nationalism, or, psychologically probably related, the cranky (nerdy, ADHD) mind caught in pseudoscience^[1]

Religion, nationalism and pseudoscience overlap:^[2]

Religion and pseudoscience in topics like Creation science;
religion and nationalist feelings in ethnic nationalism (including supremacism and irredentism or national mysticism), such as Hindutva, Islamism, Zionism or "America and Christianity".
Nationalism and pseudo-scholarship, finally, in various topics surrounding Historiography and nationalism (in particular ancient history) and historical revisionism.

Religiously motivated editors are most welcome on Wikipedia, since they will mostly invest their energy in covering the faith of their choice in brilliant detail. Problems will arise only when their religious motivation spills over in topics of either nationalism or political conflict, or science and scholarship. Since my involvement on Wikipedia is mainly with the humanities, my involvement with the complex outlined above has been mostly with pseudo-scholarship motivated by nationalist or ethnic ideology. Since the population of Wikipedia editors is generally strong in scientific education, pseudoscientific edits, be they motivated religiously or just by crankiness, are as a rule recognized and neutralized very quickly. Since there are far fewer editors with a background in humanities, pseudo-scholarship related to linguistics, ancient history, archaeology etc. have a much greater chance of passing. This is a systematic problem of Wikipedia; there is no straightforward remedy, but it needs to be recognized and taken seriously.

Distribution

In my experience, edit-wars involving nationalism on Wikipedia can be ranked roughly as follows:

significant
- Macedonia, Greeks arguing with ~~Slavic~~ ~~FYRO~~ ~~Bulgaro-~~ ~~Skopjean~~ Macedonians over who has the historic right to use the name "Macedonia".
- Serbia/Croatia/Bosnia related issues.
- Indo-Pak/Indian nationalism, mostly Hindutva (Indigenous Aryans, Aryan Invasion Theory), but also some Dalitstan and other "communalism", and Pakistani patriotism.
- Assyrian/Aramaeans/Syriacs/Chaldean/Chaldean Christians and related articles
- some Turkish nationalism (vs. Greeks, denial of the Armenian genocide etc., and Pan-Turkism, Turko-Scythia, Turko-Sumerian etc.)
- some Iranian
- some Irish vs. British
- persistent Afrocentrist (Race and Ancient Egypt, Olmec alternative origin speculations)
- some Armenian
occasional bursts of activity due to individual editors
- various Slavic, Polish vs. Russian, Polish vs. German (Gdanzig)
- scattered Albanian, particularly relating to Kosovo and Greek minorities in Albania
- Kurds
- occasional Hungarian (vs. "Finno-Ugric")
- occasional Baltic (vs. Russian, "Balto-Slavic")
- occasional Dutch
- the occasional Germanic mysticist, white supremacist or Neo-Nazi (Stormfront)

Arbitration

known arbitration cases surrounding nationalist editors:

Arbitration Committee proceedings

Case requests

Request name	Motions	Initiated	Votes
Covert canvassing and proxying in the Israel-Arab conflict topic area		6 November 2024	0/2/0

[edit]

Open cases

Case name	Links	Evidence due	Prop. Dec. due
Backlash to diversity and inclusion	(t) (ev / t) (ws / t) (pd / t)	10 Oct 2024	24 Oct 2024

[edit]

Recently closed cases (Past cases)

No cases have recently been closed (view all closed cases).

Clarification and Amendment requests

Request name	Motions	Case	Posted
Amendment request: Palestine-Israel articles (AE referral)	Motion	(orig. case)	17 August 2024
Arbitration enforcement referral: Nableezy, et al	none	(orig. case)	7 November 2024
Clarification request: Referrals from Arbitration Enforcement noticeboard to the full Committee	none	none	7 November 2024

Arbitrator motions

No arbitrator motions are currently open.

Dbachmann (Afrocentric/Indian)
Hkelkar 2 (Indo-Pak reloaded)
TinMing (Taiwan)
Certified.Gangsta-Ideogram (Taiwan)
Transnistria
Zeq-Zero0000 (Arab-Israeli)
Mudaliar-Venki123 (Indian castes)
E104421-Tajik (Perso-Turkic)
Freedom skies (Indian)
Occupation of Latvia March 2007
India-Pakistan March 2007
Armenia-Azerbaijan February 2007
Piotrus-Ghirla (Polish/Russian) February 2007
Hkelkar (Indo-Pak) December 2006
Kven (Kven?) November 2006
Ulritz (German/Dutch) November 2006
GreekWarrior November 2006
Kosovo October 2006
Zeq (Arab-Israeli) March 2006
AndriyK (Ukrainian) January 2006
Stereotek (Turkish) October 2005
Rajput (Indian) February 2006
Antifinnugor (Hungarian) February 2005
IZAK (Israeli) January 2005

Notes

^ the only difference being that religion and nationalism are recognized by society as super-individual causes, while the crank experiences the same feelings with regard to his chosen topic, but is perceived as an eccentric loner by society.
^ These connections show that religion and ethnic pride are probably identical at a fundamental level (human group behaviour, development of religion).

Distribution

Arbitration

Notes

See also