Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/User:PolishPoliticians/Proposed decision

Since I'm not an arbitrator, I'm not allowed to post on the project page, I just hope folks read this talk before sentencing. I'd like to speak on the defendants behalf here.

I recall a real life binding mediation case (sorry, I don't have a link for you, but it's not that important), where a man was basically shouting at german holidaymakers and calling them nazis and everything. Ouch. The local shopkeepers and inhabitants had already Had Words with him, and finally, in exasperation they turned to a judge.

The thing is, the man in question turned out to have actually been tortured by the real Nazis.

The end result came as a bit of a surprise to some: the Judge ended up telling off the prosecution!

This case looks a bit like that. The real Nazis -with a massive army- rolled into Poland (together with their russian allies), and effectively Did Bad Things to the country. I can imagine that even today, Polish folks might be a bit ticked off if you start using the same names the Nazis used for things, and in fact, using the german(nazi)/english? names for places might well be seen as an invocation of Godwins law as it stands.

So the defendant in his POV may well have simply been reverting vandalism. (and vandalism of the vilest sort at that!)

Kim Bruning 08:32, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

When I was 6 years old, in about 1949, (in the United States) I was beaten up on the way home by a young Jewish boy because I have a German name. I understand his attitude, probably fueled by inappropriate dinner table talk at home, although my father and his father were friends. In his innocence, he was teaching the Nazi's a lesson. I still however disagree with such immature actions and condemn them, both in real life and on Wikipedia. Fred Bauder 13:52, Aug 21, 2004 (UTC)

Calling a city by its German name, under the impression that the German name is more commonly used in worldwide English than the Polish name, is not vandalism, as it is a good faith edit. In any case, one does not need to make random accusations of Nazi sympathies in order to revert vandalism. Similarly, one can be ticked off without calling all and sundry Nazis.

Taking offence at the innocent use of the German language is intolerant. There are 120 million speakers of German. Some of them are Polish. Very few of them are Nazis. If someone was tortured by the Nazi party sixty years ago, is still traumatised by the experience, and is thus unable to react to German people or the German language online without making shrill accusations of Nazi sympathies, then they are unlikely to be a productive member of Wikipedia, and should wait until they have combated this anti-social tendency before attempting to contribute. Martin 15:39, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Well, at the time of this mediation, wikipedia did not exist. The current generation dutch people who brought the charge were of an opinion similar to yours, and it is precicely this opinion that the judge told them off for.

This man had had that part of his character utterly destroyed by the nazis (the real ones, not the toned down caricatures you see in hollywood movies), never to be reclaimed, even though for the rest he managed to behave normally. The judges' solution was to allow this man his peace. What else could he do, lock him up till he died of old age? It was a legally a mediation, so that option was not available, even if the judge had wanted to order such a terrible thing.

To return to the matter at hand, I think that if the wikipedia still exists a century from now (we were planning on that, right?) then a century from now, we'd probably still have this problem. I think I've heard reasonable estimates in the ballpark of something like 1000 years for the events from 1939-1945 to fade away appreciably.

I think it might be a little impractical to start banning every well-meaning pole for that duration of time. Kim Bruning 16:03, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

My proposal is the same as the ruling from the judge. Let's not provoke here. We're supposed to be neutral and peaceful. Let the polish folks have polish names for the polish city names, and make redirects for the german/english names, else there shall be no end to it. >>this is the current situation

I hope you'll consider my dissenting opinion. Thank you for your time! Kim Bruning 16:03, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

"every well-meaning pole for that duration of time" does not cause Wikipedia problems. Which is fortunate.

I do understand your position, and I sympathise witb it. The judge in the case you mentioned has different motives to us. Our motives are the creation of a great encyclopedia. The extraordinary generosity with which the priviledge of editing Wikipedia is a means to that end, not an end in itself. Martin 19:43, 18 Sep 2004 (UTC)

After some researching, I find that the wikipedia situation (like ie.Gdansk) is less bad than it appeared in talk. It'd be nice if we could get PolishPoliticians to accept a compromise on this situation. Kim Bruning 16:41, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Separately, User:Szopen is proposing an out from the situation at: User:Szopen/NamingWar. Looks like people are working on it! :-) Kim Bruning 20:44, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

This is just an attempt by a reasonable and right-minded Wikipedian which remains unnoticed by the worst edit warriors. Just have a look at this page. There are dozens of similar edit wars ongoing right now, with no activity on the corresponding talk pages. It is extremely frustrating to create an article and afterwards see these jerks turning it into a battlefield. PolishPoliticians is just one of them. This situation is unchanged for one or two years now. Sometimes I would like to see all of them before the AC - but then they technically broke no rule, so I think it is not a case for the AC. -- Baldhur 23:27, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)