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Lamest Edit Wars

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Re: Lamest Edit Wars

#21

Post by smcl »

duskwuff wrote: post #16
jamestimmins wrote: post #7

It's striking how many of these are arguments over what nationality to ascribe to someone born in X, whose parents are from Y, but now lives in Z. I'm surprised Wikipedia doesn't have a formal scheme for referencing what is apparently a common source of contention.

It gets extra-spicy when editors start debating what nationality a person was, using names of countries which didn't even exist when the subject of the article was alive (e.g. people born in Central/Eastern Europe before WWI).

If you like your wikipedia spicy, you may enjoy the story of Croatian-language wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croatian_Wikipedia

Re: Lamest Edit Wars

#22

Post by frereubu »

smcl wrote: post #15

Quite a few of these disputes were about nationalities, which is interesting as I encountered this recently. I noticed on one page that someone famous was quite unusually described as "British" when "Welsh" was more accurate. A bit more digging and it turned out to be the work of a user who had made a few contributions changing "Scottish" and "Welsh" to "British" with comments like "corrected the nationality, Welsh i…

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

Re: Lamest Edit Wars

#23

Post by frereubu »

jamestimmins wrote: post #7

It's striking how many of these are arguments over what nationality to ascribe to someone born in X, whose parents are from Y, but now lives in Z. I'm surprised Wikipedia doesn't have a formal scheme for referencing what is apparently a common source of contention.

I've noticed that when talking about national teams the BBC has started to refer to things like "the England team" and "the England player" to get around the potential controversy of calling someone "English". And I don't say that to disagree - I think that's probably a better formulation given the relatively recent global freedom of movement, and lack of control that young sportspeople have over where their parents bring them to live.

Re: Lamest Edit Wars

#24

Post by smcl »

frereubu wrote: post #22
smcl wrote: post #15

Quite a few of these disputes were about nationalities, which is interesting as I encountered this recently. I noticed on one page that someone famous was quite unusually described as "British" when "Welsh" was more accurate. A bit more digging and it turned out to be the work of a user who had made a few contributions changing "Scottish" and "Welsh" to "British" with comments like "corrected the nationality, Welsh i…

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

Born and lived in UK for most of my life. I generally agree but it really varies. Thing is, there are interesting discussions to be had around the past, the present and the future of the various nationalities in the country ... however much of the time the people most enthusiastic about taking part in them are not the kind you have a good conversation with.

Re: Lamest Edit Wars

#25

Post by leipert »

tgv wrote: post #11
smodo wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, before the metaverse, a persons geographical position and date of birth allowed for some inference of context. You get a 4D coordinate, so to speak. Doesn’t seem very strange to me?

But, of course, place of birth doesn't determine nationality, and also not necessarily modern nationality. I know a few families whose children were born in France, but have the Spanish nationality, and one of them changed nationality (not to French). Polish borders have shifted a few times, to highlight another problem. I think the problem comes from trying to keep the text short.

> place of birth doesn't determine nationality

Depends: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jus_soli

In most of the Americas it actually does.

Re: Lamest Edit Wars

#26

Post by satiric »

Some how it seems fitting that this article itself had lame edit wars, and there were even lame edit wars about the section mentioning that this article had lame edit wars.

Re: Lamest Edit Wars

#27

Post by michaelt »

smodo wrote: post #10
tobr wrote: post #6

> Was Chopin French, French–Polish, Polish, or Polish–French? An aside, but maybe this wouldn’t be as much of an issue if not every biographic article had to start with “ ( ) is a ”. I never understood why nationality should be considered more important than the reason someone is notable.

Well, before the metaverse, a persons geographical position and date of birth allowed for some inference of context. You get a 4D coordinate, so to speak. Doesn’t seem very strange to me?

It depends whether you're trying to follow the "inverted pyramid" writing style [1], which aims to strictly put the most important things first.

Some would say, when describing Tim Berners-Lee, the fact he invented the web is more important than the year of his birth, his middle name, his knighthood or his nationality.

Wikipedia does get his invention of the web into the first sentence of the article [2], which is good - but not before "Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee, OM, KBE, FRS, FREng, FRSA, DFBCS, RDI (born 8 June 1955), also known as TimBL, is an English computer scientist"

Of course, it's might not be practical for Wikipedia to follow the inverted pyramid style, as it might invite edit wars about what counts as most important.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid_(journalism) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee

Re: Lamest Edit Wars

#28

Post by yellowapple »

doesnt_know wrote: post #18

> Various supporters of the US Libertarian party (founded in 1971) argue that they own the meaning of the word "libertarian", that placing it next to "socialism" is a contradiction in terms, and hence that libertarian socialism (described circa 1850) cannot possibly have existed. An edit war and request-for-deletion war ensues. That doesn't sound very libertarian of them.

I've been permanently banned from "the" libertarian subreddit specifically for suggesting that libertarian socialism is a thing that exists. It's almost as if their cries about things not being "real libertarianism" is and always has been good ol' gaslighting and projection.

Re: Lamest Edit Wars

#29

Post by zht »

leipert wrote: post #25
tgv wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But, of course, place of birth doesn't determine nationality, and also not necessarily modern nationality. I know a few families whose children were born in France, but have the Spanish nationality, and one of them changed nationality (not to French). Polish borders have shifted a few times, to highlight another problem. I think the problem comes from trying to keep the text short.

> place of birth doesn't determine nationality Depends: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jus_soli In most of the Americas it actually does.

In most of the world by landmass and population it doesn’t
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