Wikipedia talk:Centralized discussion/Macedonia/international organizations/Archive 1

Argument against Proposal C

Proposal C is just another variation of the "Let's follow Greek political policy at Greece and use FYROM". It has been effectively argued at the section on Greek-related articles that there should only be one way to reference Macedonia throughout Wikipedia when it is unambiguous. This is just as true here as it is at Greece and Macedonia and elsewhere throughout Wikipedia. In these cases of international organizations, there is absolutely no valid "disambiguation" argument since there is only one sovereign state named "Macedonia". (Taivo (talk) 09:42, 16 June 2009 (UTC))

I would appreciate it if you didn't turn proposals into straw men while explaining what they are a variation of. Proposal C presents a very valid argument against the misquoting of international organizations. This has nothing to do with Greece and everything to do with the Republic; if we don't go by this proposal we will also be misquoting the Republic itself. You claimed that there is only one sovereign state named "Macedonia", but I say that there is none, because even the Republic itself doesn't call itself plain "Macedonia". If you have evidence of the contrary, I'd be happy to see it. As far as I know, the Republic might self-identify de jure in its constitution as "Republic of Macedonia", but its de facto self-identification with regards to the UN (and other international organizations) is "the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia". [1] --Radjenef (talk) 17:23, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

See discussion in the next section; this is still factually wrong. Fut.Perf. ☼ 17:32, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

"Misquoting"?

Another old canard that's being brought up again, I see. In what sense would any of these proposals "prevent us from misquoting an organisation"? Of course, whenever we are quoting an organisation (or the country), we will always use the exact wording of the source, like everywhere else, so what's the point? But most of the time we are not "quoting" the organisation. We are talking about the organisation, and that simply has nothing to do with quoting it whatsoever. Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:52, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

It is a matter of internal consistency and factual accuracy of the article. We have to stick to one consistent way of referring to the Republic within the same article, while at the same time being able to quote international organizations accurately. While we're at it, you might also want to check out this, where the Republic signs an official UN document as "the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia". I believe this means I can bring back the rationale against misquoting the Republic. Please let me know if you still want to argue against it; I am always willing to discuss. --Radjenef (talk) 17:12, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

The claim that the republic "formally uses the provisional reference, without referring to its constitutional name, in all of its relations with the UN and other international organizations" is still factually wrong. As far as I am aware, it signs documents under the UN appellation only where they are authored in common with other countries, such as treaties or common declarations like the one pointed out by Radjenef [2]. However, whenever it addresses the United Nations alone, in any document authored by itself and spoken, as it were, in its own voice, it will invariably use the constitutionan name. See multiple documents here, e.g. [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8]. Here we see the same on the bilateral level: a bilateral exchange of notes with another country that uses the UN appellation, filed with the UN registry, where the editorial frontmatter added by the UN uses the "f.Y.R." term, the other country also addresses Macedonia as "f.Y.R." in the text ("[...] presents its compliments to the Embassy of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia [...]"), but the Macedonian embassy in its own letter refers to its country as "Republic of Macedonia" throughout. You will find the same pattern in its dealings with the EU. For instance this official report prepared by the Macedonian government for the EU. here you can see that Macedonia even formally protests whenever it is addressed by the EU as "f.Y.R.". Apparently it has a habit of doing this as a matter of routine [9] Fut.Perf. ☼ 17:31, 21 June 2009 (UTC)