Talk:José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero/Archive 2

President of Spain

"José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (born 4 August 1960) is the President of Spain."

• President of Spain? Spain is a constitutional monarchy. It should be "Prime Minister". - Mike Rosoft 09:26, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Spain indeed is a constitutional monarchy but the official title of the Spanish PM is Presidente del Gobierno or President of the Government. Nevertheless his official title, the office-holder is commonly referred to in English as the "Prime Minister". In Spain, the PM is often called simply Presidente and Spaniards will often translate the title in English to President which sometimes causes some linguistic confusion. --fdewaele 25 November 2005 11:35 CET
    • Yes, there is a confusion of terms. In Spanish, the word "presidente" may mean either "president" or "chairman, head of an organization". In Czech, the title of the head of government is "předseda vlády" (lit. "chairman of the goverment"; "předseda" is a translation of "president" - from Latin, "to sit before"). It is always translated "prime minister", and so it should be in this article. - Mike Rosoft 21:52, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Zapatancas' point of view

First, I want to thank Katefan0 for the interest he has placed in this article and in trying to solve the problem going on here for too long. To help solve it, I will expose my point of view about the subject. I am going to divide my exposition in the following points:

• General statement about what my intentions in the Wikipedia have been.
• My point of view about the supposed complains against the article: spelling, neutrality and general use of the English language.
• My opinion about SqueakBox behavior.

General statement about my intentions in the Wikipedia

First of all, I want to make clear that my only intention in the Wikipedia has been to increase the available knowledge about the current Spanish political situation. I have always tried to provide facts and, whenever it has been possible, I have cited sources supporting those edits I considered facts. As a logical consequence, whenever a user has removed something I considered a fact I have tried to recover it and to convince the user about the convenience of preserving what he has deleted (or to let him convince me he was right).

To provide a little evidence about this, I would include this link to the version of the article I consider that best summarizes what my activity here has been, as I provided most of the information there. It can be observed that almost every paragraph includes a reference.

To illustrate what I believe that has been my typical behavior when dealing with a user who had removed something I consider that should be preserved I include the following link. I posted that message in the talk page when a user removed the information about Zapatero’s supposed belonging to Freemasonry, a "rumor" stronger everyday in Spain.

My point of view about the controversial points of this article

I want to make clear that the confrontation here only involves SqueakBox and me, as there seems not to be other users actively interested in this article. So, by now, the strong complains against the article has been expressed by SqueakBox and nobody else.

Spelling issues

SqueakBox first edited the article on May 2, 2005. At that time, the article has been written using American spelling for almost two months (for example, this version of March 7, 2005 used only “American” words). It has included American words since the edit by Merovingian of March 15, 2004, when he included the term ‘organization’. At the time, the article was still a stub made of five paragraphs and 320 words that included two words spelled the British way: ‘modernising’ and ‘organisation’ (that is, the article included both forms organization and organization). As can be checked using the history page, from that day, and more or less until March 2005, the use of American words increased in the article until it finally became completely American.

Although SqueakBox found an article that used American spelling consistently, he changed the spelling of some words to British claiming that “EU articles should not be written in American”.

Other users did not accept that and the article continued to use American spelling (for example, take a look at this version of the article by Pbhayani of July 7, 2005).

On October 26, 2005, SqueakBox decided again to ask the spelling to be changed arguing that all articles about Spanish politicians are written in British English (something false, for example, the article about Aznar uses American spelling).

A request for comments was submitted whose results can be found in the file 2 of the archived talk.

JamesMLan contributed the following rules from the Manual of Style:

• Articles that focus on a topic specific to a particular English-speaking country should generally conform to the spelling of that country.
• If an article is predominantly written in one type of English, aim to conform to that type rather than provoking conflict by changing to another.
• If all else fails, consider following the spelling style preferred by the first major contributor (that is, not a stub) to the article.

As I reasoned in the talk page, I believe this rules imply that the article must use American spelling because:

• The article does not focus in a topic specific to a particular English-speaking country.
• The article was predominantly written in American English before SqueakBox decided to change it to British English. (And he is the only user who wants to change it).
• As I have said, the mix of spellings started when the article was still a stub. The major contributors to this article have been Pbhayani, Miguel and me (Zapatancas). All of us have used American spelling.

This reasoning, a little more elaborate, was posted by me on the talk page (Talk:José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero/Archive 2#Following_the_Manual_of Style). I expressed that, in my opinion, that closed the discussion. I received no answer from SqueakBox.

After that, however, SqueakBox has insisted on using British words, even though he seems unable not to mix spellings. In the article currently blocked (authored by him) there can be found the following British words: 'organised', 'legalised', 'normalise', 'criticised', 'organisers', 'unfavourable', 'rumours', 'honouring', 'legalising', 'travelled'. And the following American ones: 'minimize', 'criticized', 'organized', 'favor', 'favorable', 'traveled'.

Neutrality

Squeak Box has repeatedly accused me of being a POV warrior and the article of being NPOV. However, he has never reported a single non-neutral passage in the talk page.

On May 20, 2005, he introduced for the first time a NPOV tag. I asked him what passages of the article he believed to be not neutral. As it can be found in Talk:José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero/Archive 1#NPOV, he provided no positive answer. Therefore, I change the NPOV tag to its long form, which asks all the users accessing the article to report disputed passages.

Nobody reported anything. That prompted me to post a NPOV ultimatum in the talk page on July 6, 2005. After one month and two weeks, no disputed passage had been reported and I said that if in another week nothing was it was clear that the NPOV tag made no sense. Finally, Pbhayani removed the tag. As I have said, nobody had reported anything.

Recently, on November 16, 2005, he included the NPOV tag again. He did not report any single passage in the talk page. He has not done yet.

However, he has removed the following passages justifying in the edit summaries that they are not neutral:

• "The opposition People's Party considered the decision [of accepting the participation of Gibraltar as a partner in the discussions about its future] a surrender of Spanish rights over the colony, but Zapatero justified it as a new way to solve a 300 hundred years old problem." That paragraph expresses the views of the People Party and of Zapatero about a decision by the Socialist Government. Both points of view are treated as point of views (that is, not like proven facts or universally accepted stances) and they are treated fairly. Why is the paragraph NPOV?

• "It is believed that Zapatero is a Freemason. Among the major proponents of that theory is Ricardo de la Cierva, a prominent, right-wing Spanish historian." SqueakBox justifies the removal of the passage because it is "speculation about freemasonry". The passage is exactly saying that it is believed Zapatero is a Freemason. That is, the passage does not say Zapatero is a Freemason. So, the passage to be POV should be either false (that is, nobody believes Zapatero is a Freemason) or the number of people believing should be negligible. Ricardo de la Cierva is sure Zapatero is a Freemason so there are people who believe it (that is, the passage is not false). The number of people who believe is not negligible either. Things like "Zapatero masón" (Zapatero is a Freemason) can be found in street graffiti, in political posters, in banners in the demonstrations against the government, in the programs of radio stations opposed to the Government or in TV programs. If the keywords "Zapatero+masón" are searched in Google, the search engine provides 14,100 links if only the results in Spanish are returned. Thus, I believe that "Zapatero is believed to be a Freemason" is an objective fact and, because of the very definition of non-neutrality, it cannot be POV.

• "As a student, he [Zapatero] admired the agrarian reforms of Mao Tse-tung as well as those in the Soviet Union." SqueakBox claims this is communist POV. In the version of the article of May 13, 2005, that passage also appeared with a cite pointing to the page 71 of the book "Zapatero. Presidente a la Primera" by Óscar Campillo Madrigal (probably the biography about Zapatero most sold to date). So, or SqueakBox has evidence proving that biography is inaccurate or I believe that passage cannot be removed alleging it is POV.

I want to emphasize that SqueakBox has never reported any single disputed passage in the talk page so it could be discussed effectively in order to make a better article. The passages I have just mentioned were deleted by him alleging POV only in the edit summary, after removing them. And I do not believe any complain against them could not have been solved better bringing them to the talk page.

Use of the English language

I have never hidden I am from Spain. I have no problem recognizing my English is far from perfect and, consequently, I have never complaint if somebody has corrected any of my mistakes.

SqueakBox posted on July 14, 2005 this: "BTW Well done Pbhayani for an excellent job. When I tried to clean up Zapatancas' English he reverted me so it is great sopmeone else has done both that and removed the POV, SqueakBox 17:30, July 14, 2005 (UTC)" ([Talk:José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero/Archive 1# NPOV ultimatum]). He claims I revert the article to unintelligible English (he did yesterday, November 24, 2005, in the Administrators' noticeboard). He also claims that I revert to "Spanish English", as can be seen (here).

The truth is that dozens of users have taken part in the improvement of the article. Some of them were Spanish speakers but a lot of them were English native speakers. Especially, Pbhayani, who was an English speaker, worked very hard in the article. The result of his work can be found in his version of July 7, 2005. As it can be observed, the structure and content of the current article and that version are extremely similar, as few variations have taken place since then. As it has been said, SqueakBox define Pbhayani's work as superb.

SqueakBox has provided some examples as proofs of the "terribly bad" English (he calls it Spanish English) of the article:

• "[…] it discriminated citizens for its sex". That passage was first introduced on the version of March 7, 2005. Nobody corrected it until November 24, 2005, including SqueakBox himself. So, if it is a mistake so terrible (and not a simple slip of the tongue easy to fix), why nobody, including all the English speaking editors of the article, has been able to fix it for eight months?

• SqueakBox has also criticized the incorrect use of capitals. He claims that the header “Personal Life and Youth” introduced by the first time in the version of November 16, 2005 from the IP address 140.247.42.158, located in Massachusetts (USA), is an example of Spanish English because only the first word of a header is capitalized according to the Wikipedia style. That was the style the article has used for months and it was used before SqueakBox arrived in May. Since November 23, SqueakBox removes almost every capital he finds in a header, introducing mistakes as he does not understand that common nouns are capitalized in English when they behave like proper nouns. For example, he changes European Union to European union or ‘Spanish Civil War’ to ‘Spanish civil car’ (that is, he has several times written car and not war). The very Wikipedia articles can be used to learn that European Union is written capitalized (it is the name of political institution) and that Spanish Civil War must be also capitalized (it is the name of a war).

SqueakBox behavior

First of all, I want to make clear that I am trying to express my opinion. I do not try to offend anybody with this section.

My opinion about SqueakBox is that he acts in bad faith. He is from Britain, but he claims to live in Honduras, far from his family and, probably, alone; perhaps because his family and he are not in good terms. I believe that he does not like his life and that makes him feel bitter against the world. As so many people in the "real world", I think he wants to forget his internal pain making others feel miserable.

In my opinion, the following facts prove this:

• When he first come to this article, it was divided into several parts because it had become very long. There exist the main article on Zapatero, and others like "Zapatero’s foreign policy", "Zapatero’s domestic policy" and so on. He substituted those articles with redirects to the main article and, although he moved some of the data in the extended articles, an important part of it was lost. He did not ask the opinion of those who had invested their effort into creating those articles. He has never explained why he did not ask those articles to be deleted if he believed them so useless. (In fact, they can be still accessed.)

• He has accused me of using the sock puppets SqueakingPig and SqueakingPigAttacksAgain that have vandalized his user page. That is false, he has no evidence and I have never been blocked and I have told him so thousands of times. He do not care about that, of course, because he has said I must prove my innocence (I believe it is others who would have to prove I am guilty, that is what happens in democracies, at least).

• He posted this in May referring to me: “His vicious personal attack has been removed. I expect an immediate apology. If he replaces it or writes something equally nasty he will be repeorted, I am not far from trying an Rfc. His right wing views, which are found in all his encyclopedic writings, are very clear from his latest edits. Wikipedia is not a place to launch a passionate defence of the PP and an attack on Zapatero. Zapatancas appears to be a POV warrior trying to manipulate wikipedia for his own political ends. There is absolutely no nedd for excess articles, and particularly not excessa articles that Zapatancas won't let anyone else edit, --SqueakBox 14:19, May 12, 2005 (UTC)”. As I have said, I only want to provide information. I have never prevented other users from editing nothing. If I have changed other editor’s contribution, I have tried to explain my decision respecting his/her effort.

• This post is also full of false accusations: “This article is hopelessly biased against Zapatero (my opinion is by Spaniards more patriotic to the USA than their ownm country and region). When I changed it I got loads of persoanl attacks, and am uninclined to reedit until the atmosphere of intimidation here improves. Don't remove the NPOV unless you can answer my objections, --SqueakBox 15:46, May 20, 2005 (UTC)”.

• More insults: “Who sent you the message. There is a troll on this page. We know who he is, and his rule over this page is shortly to end. The artiucle is a pile of crap, but he uses sockpuppets and nasty insults to get his way. By all means change anything you like, with my full and energetic support. Ya basta, SqueakBox 15:48, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)”

• More insults mixed with nonsense: “This article does not conform to wiki stanmdards, is full of original research, and has had the spelling changed to US English, so it needs both a cleanuop tag and an NPOV tag until thesde problems are thoroughly sorted. At present this article is a disgrace to wikipedia. SqueakBox 13:56, 16 November 2005 (UTC)” This article does not have original research at all. As I have said, some of its versions included almost a source per paragraph.

• SqueakBox complete justification of why he included the NPOV tag in November: “[…]Is Zapatancas really claiming the article is clean? conforms to a neutral point of view? contains no original research? if he claims such things I dispute these claims, and will not accept his removal of legitimate tags without cleaning up the article, making it conform to NPOV, and without his original research in it. […]”SqueakBox 13:22, 18 November 2005 (UTC).

• SqueakBox’s view of the discussion about the spelling to use: “treported the passage. Viajero had a look and agreed with me. Noen of the people who took part in the recent discussion agreed with you. Now we have ity confitrtmed Spanish kids learn Brit English it is easy to see thatb you don't know how to write in American English. You tried and it was a disaster. I archived the discussion out of space issues, as per standard procedure. What is this talk of my defeat? I thought the discussion ended with a clear consensus to use Brit English, which also follows policy (which are the rules we are duty bound to follow) which states that we should use that English which was initially used, which was clearly British English. BTW the policy also prohibiyts using sockpuppets to vandalise the user page of other users. I suggest you rwead the policies pages, as I have done, and then follow them, as I do, SqueakBox 14:15, 22 November 2005 (UTC)”. Clear consensus? Viajero agreeing with him? (Viajero did not take part in the discussion) I do not know how to write American English? Perhaps, but as I explained I often check my edits with the American English version of the Microsoft Word spell checker. So, how can a user who is acting in good faith say I mix spellings when I have checked several times the whole article with a computer?

Many other examples could be given.

Conclusion

To finish, I only have to say that my only aim when I decided to become part of the Wikipedia community was to share my knowledge with others. That is why I have edited the article about Zapatero. As I am Spanish, even though I do not master English, I could contribute knowledge very difficult to find for English speaking people.

I have invested a lot of effort trying to write a good article and trying to preserve information that those who do not like plurality would prefer to remove.

I honestly believe that SqueakBox has acted in bad faith, that his main aim has been to harass other users (in this case, me), that he has never contributed anything useful to this article and that this article could be one of the best in the Wikipedia if it had not suffered his activities.

For all this, I ask SqueakBox to change his behavior and, if he does not, I ask the Wikipedia community to help stop why I consider to be a damaging, unjustifiable attitude. Zapatancas 13:22, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Zapatancas and his death threats and why I won't have anything to do with the death threat troll

You forsook the right to ask for anything when you opened SquealingPig and SquealingPigAttacksAgain. Unmless you profuselhy apologise I will not co-operate with you in any way or read what you have to say. You have to take consequences for your past actions. I have never acted in bad faith but you clearly have. I am extremely angry at your deviant behaviour and ask you either to apologise or withdraw from this discussion. On the other hand you're threat to erase me if I continue working at wikipedia I meet with the deepest contempt. I have no intention of stopping working here due to Zapatancas' death threats. He has no right to demand anything with his death thereats, which he must withdraw and apologise for if we are to move on. He is far and away the worst and most deviant editor I have come acroiss in over a year of editing, and I for one will not back down to his death threeats. The day wikipedia gives way to it's bullies is the day it goes down the tube. I will continue to defend wikipedia from scum like SquealingPig, and will continue to edit this article to make it better, and will converse with anyone other than Zapatancas about this article or about what to do with deviuant users who create sockpuppets like SquealingPig AttacksAgain. Zapattancas lying accusation that I was behind the attacks on my own page is a truly demented idea from the person really responsible. Giving way in any poinmt to Zapatancas would be like giving way to terrorism. He should have thought about wanting a say in this article before starting to edit as SquealingPig. Now is too late, SqueakBox 13:58, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

You two guys are becoming EQUALLY ANNOYING. You two both made one fine mess out of this once great article. The blame goes to both sides. - fdewaele 25 November 2005, 15:30 CET

Excuse me but how is that so? I have not vandalised anything in the wikipedia, Zapatancas has made 2 vicious attacks on my user page. There is no justification or equality in such attacks. Also please source youer claims that I have made the article worse with diffs or don't make such claims, SqueakBox 14:51, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Mediation

Is the only solution. I am willing to go through mediation on the condition that a developer checks the edits of SquealingPig and SquiealingPigAttacksAgain and see if they are located from the same place as those of Zapatancas. That way if I am wrong I apologise and if he is wrong he does, SqueakBox 14:51, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Redirects

It is very important that all these get fixed, and that editors don't start deliberately editing direct links and making them into redirects as one editor was doing yesterday. Such behaviour is in direct contradiction of wikipedia policy, and could be used as evidence of one editor stalking another, ie the stalker deliberately undoes the fixed redirects of the stalked, reverting them back to redirects. Stalking is something the arbcom have recently condemned, SqueakBox 14:58, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

What redirects are you talking about? Zapatancas 09:27, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Please slow down

Dumping reams of text into this page is less than useless; I didn't even read it. It's much more useful to take your points one by one. Please take it piece by piece. Also, I'd remind everyone to comment on content, not on contributors. I realize sometimes this can be difficult to do when you get angry, but try. · Katefan0^(scribble) 17:19, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Katefan0, I understand your point of view and I also understand that it is easier to look the other way when another person is being unfairly attacked. I also believe that the situation going on in the current article probably has no parallels with any other in the rest of the Wikipedia. I would like to ask you two hypotetical questions (although of course they are related to the current situation):

• Do you believe that a person resented against the world (they exist, don't they?) can use the Wikipedia to hurt people? The Wikipedia is anonymous and it is easy to find vulnerable people. There are a lot of users who have worked hard to write good articles and it is so easy to delete their contributions, to claim that what they have made is useless, to align with the side that looks stronger when a POV discussion is taking place against them and so on. It is so easy to hurt others' feelings in the Wikipedia!!! How is a harssed person supposed to defend his/her rights?

• Would you believe with no place for doubt that a person who never answered, even though he was asked repeatedly, what he believed to be not neutral in an article where he had added a NPOV tag, can be interested in the content of the article? And if that same person adds again a NPOV tag some months later and does not report anything again?

Those were the two hypothetical questions. Now I ask you a "real" question: what are the issues regarding content? I have no idea. I only know that this article is a "pile of crap" and a "disgrace for the Wikipedia".

Zapatancas 09:27, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm not interested in hypothetical questions. I'm interested in discrete content disputes. I'll ask again. Please outline specific information that you would like to see changed. Take it a point at a time. · Katefan0^(scribble) 15:43, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Katefan0, I must recognize that yesterday I finally understood what your strategy here is. You have probably solved conflicts in the past where two users seemed to hate each other but, finally, they solved their differences and cooperated in writing a better article. In fact, I can understand that because something similar happened here before SqueakBox first "edit". Another user spent months recovering an old version of the article whenever anybody changed something. When it was eventually possible to communicate with him, he claimed that he had never used the talk page because he did not know how it worked. Once it was possible to solve the problem through dialog, every point of the new article he disliked was discussed and he stopped his negative behavior. And probably, his point of view (once he exposed it) helped improve the article.

Perhaps of that previous experience, I am especially sure that SqueakBox acts in bad faith as it seems strange to me that it has not been possible to change his negative attitude after months of reasoning. But as I understand your skepticism and I am grateful for your interest in solving the problem here I promise I am going to forget all the evidence pointing to SqueakBox's bad intentions.

Because of that, I am open to discuss every content dispute constructively. I would like to "outline specific information that I would like to see changed." However, I cannot because SqueakBox until now has never exposed what he does not like. I cannot explain why I do not agree with him because I have no idea why he disagrees with me.

So, I believe that if the current situation in this article is to change it must be him the first person to explain clearly what he dislikes, in order to allow a serious dialog to start. Zapatancas 08:43, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Well, it takes two to tango so to speak. I'd like to hear from SqueakBox also what his problems are. I can speak at least to one point. Apparently whether to use Americanized or Britishized spellings has been an issue. The WP:MOS is fairly clear on this. Articles on American subjects should use American English; articles on British subjects, should use British English. Articles that focus on a topic specific to a particular English-speaking country should generally conform to the spelling of that country. There is some wiggle room here since Spain isn't an English-speaking country, but I think it can be argued successfully that Spain teaches Britishized English spellings and pronunciations and so therefore, probably, British spellings should be used. It's true that when there's no clear way to determine whether something is more "American" or more "British," often the first-used spelling style is retained. But in this case I think British spelling should be used regardless. In any case, the spellings should be harmonized -- no "center" and "centre" in the same article. · Katefan0^(scribble) 17:18, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Well, I am happy that, at last we start to talk. Katefan0, you are right in what you have said but I believe it is incomplete. I have already explained above in this page my point of view (in Talk:José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero#Spelling issues). I summarized here my conclusions:

• When the article was a stub of 320 words and contained three British words, a user introduced an American one. The use of American words increased and increased until March 2005, when all British words had disappeared. SqueakBox first "edited" the article on May 2, 2005. He claimed the spelling had to be changed because Spain was in the European Union and changed some words from American to British (that is, an article in pure American became a mix of American and British). Nobody paid much attention to him at that time and the use of American English was kept in the article. In October, the conflict restarted and an RfC was asked. No consensus was reached.
• The Manual of Style of the Wikipedia provides clear rules to decide what spelling must be used. Those rules are:

1. Articles that focus on a topic specific to a particular English-speaking country should generally conform to the spelling of that country.
2. If an article is predominantly written in one type of English, aim to conform to that type rather than provoking conflict by changing to another.
3. If all else fails, consider following the spelling style preferred by the first major contributor (that is, not a stub) to the article.

• If we apply those rules to this article, my conclusions are the following:

1. The article does not focus on a topic specific to a particular English-speaking country.
2. The article was predominantly written in pure American English and it had been for almost two months, before SqueakBox decided to change the spelling of some words to British English (that is, a user did not aim to conform to the type of English predominantly used).
3. The mix of spellings started when the article was still a stub. The major contributors to this article have been Pbhayani, Miguel and me (Zapatancas). All of us have used American spelling.

• As a cosequence American Spelling should be used unless a consensus of active users preferred another spelling.

I have provided a lot of references to previous versions, comments and all that in the section Talk:José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero#Spelling issues and a more ellaborate reasoning. I want also to make clear that "my" last version, previous to the currently blocked one, used only American spelling as the article have done almost always in the last months since March 2005.

In my honest opinion, I believe my conclusions follow a pure logical path, at least if the Manual of Style is a superior guide for all the Wikipedia users. So, if British Spelling is to be used instead, I believe I "deserve" :-) to be explained where the mistake in my reasoning is. Zapatancas 08:37, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, I'm sorry, but I'll continue to disagree with you on this one. Your argument stands primarily on the fact that the article isn't focused "on a topic specific to a particular English-speaking country," backed up secondarily by references to what to do if that question isn't clearly answerable. But I believe that question is in fact clearly answerable and pertinent to this topic. The article is not focused "on a topic specific to a particular English-speaking country" -- but, it is focused on a topic specific to a particular country that very clearly teaches British English. That satisfies the first point and therefore I believe we need to go no further. I think the rest of the stuff about who used what language first is nothing more than wikilawyering, given the strong case that can be made to support the primary rule. I suspect that most folks would agree that this article properly should use British English, regardless of what past folks used. · Katefan0^(scribble)/my ridiculous poll 16:01, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Katefan0, I am from Spain and saying that British English is clearly taught in my country is not very exact. A little piece of evidence is provided by me :-). In fact, in my opinion, it is more correct to say that most Spanish Schools use English books made in Britain than that Spanish students are taught British English. Moreover, English teaching in Spain is very bad and Spaniards do not learn to communicate in English at school. Besides, the influence of American English is far higher in Spain than that of British English and American spelling is more similar to Spanish. Probably, the schools that really provide a good English education devote some time to explain the differences between both variants.

I must disagree with you in that "most folks would agree that this article properly should use British English, regardless of what past folks used." You can find the contributions of those people who took part in the RfC about the spelling in Talk:José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero/Archive 2 and you can verify that most people believed that there was no clear reason why the article should be written in a specific variant (in fact, I think the only person defending that was SqueakBox). One of the most interesting contributions was that by Angel Riesgo (who is Spanish but lives in Britain):

Why the issue of using British or American English in the article on Rodríguez Zapatero should be so important is beyond me. Anyway, for what it's worth, I would like to point out that the style of English taught in Spanish schools is almost universally British English. When I was at school, we used to use British books by Longman or Oxford University Press and teachers would teach us words like "colour" or "metre". The -ize spelling is, however, more usual than -ise probably because British EFL books also favour that spelling, which is acceptable in British English (and used in most printed books, although not in the press). At any rate, English is not an official language in Spain, so I don't think one should assert that Spain-related articles in English Wikipedia should necessarily adhere to British spelling. But it is true that the EU always uses British spelling in its English-language publications, if that is relevant at all. --AngelRiesgo 19:35, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

That is, Angel Riesgo points out that in Spain is really taught a mix of British and American English (as the -ize suffix is preffered) and that he does not believe articles about Spain must use a specific variant of English. Zapatancas 09:13, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

This link points to today's edition (December 2, 2005) of the English edition of "El País", the most sold Spanish newspaper and the only one with an English version as far as I know. It uses American spelling. Zapatancas 12:49, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Hm, that's interesting. Well, I've stated my opinion and will leave it at that, though it does appear there's some questions left unresolved here! I still feel that British English is, while perhaps not as ubiquitous as I had assumed, is still used more often than Americanized English, in Spain. I still think that makes a strong case for using British English in this article, particularly since the EU uses British spellings in its publications as the anon noted above. But, this isn't really a big enough point to haggle over extensively if you ask me. · Katefan0^(scribble)/my ridiculous poll 15:32, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree that the discussion about the spelling is becoming ludicrous and surreal and that too much effort has been already wasted in it. But I cannot resist the temptation of providing an additional piece of evidence!!! I found an old English textbook of mine this weekend and, as you can imagine, I started perusing it to discover what spelling I was taught. What I found was that lessons included at its beginning original English texts (from newspaper articles, books, etc.) and some of those texts used British spelling and others American spelling (for example, throughout the book both forms "neighbor" and "neighbour" could be found). Moreover, the textbook included sections to explain the differences between English and American variants (you know, truck and lorry, candy and sweet, tap and fawcet, t... and bathroom,...) and it was true that the "-ize" spelling was preferred (it was the only one used). So, in my opinion, the conclusion is that the aim of the Spanish education system is to teach English, what includes teaching the differences between variants. That is, in theory, both American and British spelling are taught. (In practise, neither of them is learnt.)

Regarding the use of British English by the EU, the truth is that Spanish is also a European official language, so every official document produced in Brussels must have a copy in Spanish that is the one valid in Spain.

Finally, I must confess I never thought a discussion about spelling could become so tricky :-). Zapatancas 08:45, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Unprotected

I've unprotected; it's been protected several days. Please, everybody, try to talk constructively and don't edit war. Comment on content, not contributors, even those you have a history with. Thanks. · Katefan0^(scribble)/mrp 20:22, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Removal of POV check

I have removed the POV check tag because nobody has provided any information about any controversial passage. I myself asked Mike Rosoft (the user who added it if I am not wrong) what he believed that could be not neutral but he has not answered me although he has accessed the Wikipedia in the past days. The discussion about the supposed POV has been constant for almost a year. But if the supposed complaints about POV are analyzed the conclusion is that most of them come from the user SqueakBox and that his real goal was to attack, insult and harass those users who have taken part honestly in the improvement of this article. This has become evident in the last month, when he did not even try to justify his behavior after Katefan0 blocked the page so the "conflict" could be solved through dialog and not by edit wars. Zapatancas 14:54, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Freemasonry

I'm going to change the part about Zapatero being believed to be a Freemason. I was frankly surprised to read that -- I had never before heard anything about that issue, although I live in Spain and follow Spanish politics quite closely.

User Zapatancas himself admits it to be a rumour, and not a very extended one in my experience. It is however very plausible that Zapatero might in fact be a Freemason, given his family antecedents. Many of his ideas are also coherent with Freemason ideology. But the text gives the impression (in my opinion at least) that it is a widely held idea.

I think the following text is more representative of reality:

Ricardo de la Cierva, a prominent right-wing Spanish historian, among others, believe that Rodríguez Zapatero is himself a Freemason.

If no one objects I will make the change shortly.

bml 16:22, 2 January 2006 (GMT)

I don't object your decision and I even like it :-). In any case, I would like to note that relations between the Spanish Catholic Church and Spanish Freemasonry had been really bad historically (well, they have killed each other sometimes) so, even if it is false that Zapatero is a Freemason, the fact that an important social player in Spain like the Catholic church believes it can have an important influence on the Spanish political life. In my opinion, perhaps the reason why the radio station COPE, owned by the church, is being so active against the Socialist Government could be related to that situation. Zapatancas 17:01, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Zapatancas 17:01, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Suicide bombers

I must tell that the passage about Zapatero's declarations regarding the sucide bombers can be considered the pure truth. So please, don't delete them. I provided long ago this reference. I know that Libertad Digital is very right-wing, but in this case they are reporting the truth. It was also reported by other media, the problem is that not all of them have their old articles available on the Internet.

That passage had already been discussed here. The discussion can be found in the second file of the archived talk. In any case, if anybody has any doubt after examining the offered data I am open to discussing anything. Zapatancas 16:34, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Minor changes

I have added some extra information in the Politics with EU and Latinamerica. I think (and have also changed it) that info about Poland should be included in the EU section (as Poland is a member of EU) Mabuimo 20:03, 17 January 2006 (UTC)mabuimo

Nice one, SqueakBox 15:24, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Zapatancas new harrassment

Zapatancas made this edit [1], implying that this is his/her article and that if I attempt to edit it I am harrassing Zapatancas, apparently I can be blocked merely for editing this article. I urge him/her to read the bit that says If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly or redistributed by others, do not submit it, and as I want to edit but am not allowed to I am instead sticking the cleanup and NPOV tags on the article until it can be cleaned up and made NPOV, SqueakBox 16:06, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Clean-up

Have cleaned the article up, removing bad speling, incorrect names and titles, anti-ETA and anti-UK POV and the use of the word terrorism, and so have removed the tags, SqueakBox 22:01, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Blatant vandalism

SqueakBox has mixed spellings again. An RfC was conducted to solve the problem peacefully. He has decided not to respect its result. He has claimed in the past (here) to respect the American Spelling, that is, the spelling that has ensured a consistently written article for more than a year. His actions only intend to harass a user, me. Zapatancas 14:14, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

I've requested the article to be protected here Zapatancas 14:16, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

What do you mean mixed spellings. I can't see any? And what do you mean by not allowed, certainly it is not vandalism. By that reason yopu would yourself be a vandal as this article has had mixed spellings since the day you changed the original British spelling. Whatever, this is not a vandalism offence nor is it reason to promote thye weasel terroist word which is equally not allowed or the anti-ETA POV, see NPOV, SqueakBox 15:12, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Blatant vandalism? This? What am I and everyone else missing./ Please bring your arguments to the page if you want to revert changes made by other users, don't call those changes blatant vandalism, that serves nobody. Please explain in detail how my edit is blatant vandalism, SqueakBox 14:51, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

You are mixing spellings even though you know that the article uses American English. Mixed spelling is not allowed. Zapatancas 15:00, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

No I'm not mixing spellings. Please give an example? SqueakBox 23:36, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Is this the spelling conssensus reached in december you were referring to? SqueakBox 15:41, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

ETA

Repeated use of the weasel word terrorism is actually discouraged at wikipedia so it isn't okay just on this article. Besides using the word terrorism half a dozen times in relation to ETA is blatant POV, which again has no place in this article, SqueakBox 23:37, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Devious argument

Devious argument used to justify SqueakBox's vandalism.

There is a difference between treating all points of view fairly (even Al Qaeda's) and inventing things. Nobody denies Spain is suffering from terrorism or that ETA is terrorist. Not even the very ETA. Why should it? It started killing in 1968, at that time Nelson Mandela justified the use of violence against the apartheid. They have been proud for years of using terrorism against the "cruel" Spanish government and they are not going to deny now what they have said for decades.

SqueakBox has invented that ETA denies being terrorist to justify his harassment. Zapatancas 09:47, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Well that isn't an argument it is an attack based on a fantasy harrassment from a known vandal. terrrorism is a weasel word and just because one wants to defy wikipedia consensus is no reason to change it. Given that I am allegedly harrassing you how come it is you who commit acts of wanton vandalsim and them=n blame your victim, SqueakBox 13:13, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Common name usage

In English he is commonly called Zapatero. he is not known as Rodriguez Zapatero. Therefore we must call him Zapatero and not Rodriguez Zapatero every time we mention him, SqueakBox 23:36, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Devious argument 1

Devious argument used to justify SqueakBox's vandalism.

User:Cantus changed it (here). If you had acted in good faith you would have discussed that with him. Show other users a little respect. Zapatancas 09:47, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

I haven't committed vandalism, unlike you. Just stop lying, okay? I would also point out that Cantus is a reasonable user not a vandal so please don't compare your shenannigans, bvandalism and edit warring with that honourable Chileño, SqueakBox 13:10, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

If you had acted in good faith you would have discussed that with him. Show other users a little respect. You don't have to seek out someone's permission to change thjeir edits. That is where you are misunderstanding wikipedia, SqueakBox 15:16, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Common format

Political parties like the PP and the PSOE are always shortened in subsequent references throughout wikipedia, therefore they need to be called that here as well, SqueakBox 23:36, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Devious argument 2

Devious argument used to justify SqueakBox's vandalism.

The use of the terms Socialist Party and People's Party (or Popular Party) are very typical in the English press; where, in fact, the acronyms PSOE and PP are rarely used. Even in Spain the "extended" form is often used. Where is the problem in using typical expressions understood by everybody? SqueakBox tries to justify his vandalism and intimidate other users by preventing them from using valid expressions through brute force. Zapatancas 09:47, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Wiki standard is to use PP and PSO, both of which are habitually used in the Spanish and English media. Presumably vandal Zapatancas merely opposes me because he wannts to build up his imaginary case of being harrassed (I think your English is giving you problems, you are the victomario not the victima), SqueakBox 13:16, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Capital letters

It is not alright to capitalise words like Terrorism and Socialism in the middle of a sentence' it is plain bad English, SqueakBox 23:40, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Devious argument 3

I couldn't care less if 'socialist' is capitalized or not. But to claim that George Orwell's English was bad is another devious argument. Here it can be found the text of Homage to Catalonia, written by him, where the term socialist is always capitalized. Zapatancas 09:47, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

If you dont care about wikipedia that is your problem not mine, George Orwell has nmothing to do with this, SqueakBox 13:18, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Failure to debate

Zapatancas, please debate your points here. Edit warring while refusing to engage in a ny talk page debate is not wikipedia procedure. I have made my argumenht. You are reverting me while refusing to engage in debate, behaviour not normally welcomed at wikipedia. If you want to ahve a case in your pursuit of me I suggest you engage here, SqueakBox 14:55, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Devious argument 4

Vandalism is always reverted. To be taken seriously the first rule is not to vandalize any article. Zapatancas 09:47, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Arbcom

Zapatancas has taken me to arbcom as an alternative to debating on this page. Se Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration#SqueakBox + Zapatancas. The fact that he has chosen that course of action rather than debate is very sad. he has also twice this week asked for the page to be protected in order to prevent me from editing the page. rather than cloudy the issue I urge him to engage in debate about any changes he wants to the article here rathjer than merely edoit war while doing his or her best to erase me from wikipedia. This is the same Zapatancas who has seen fit to vandalise my user page here, SqueakBox 22:01, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Devious argument 5

When an article is protected nobody can edit it, including me.

SqueakBox has claimed one thousand times I am a troll. Why is he afraid of proving that before the ArbCom? Zapatancas 09:47, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

100% Proof, and I don't wantn you to stop everyone editing the article , SqueakBox 13:07, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Zapatancas devious arguments

Indeed, SqueakBox 13:19, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Conclusion

Zapatancas' conclusion that all my 5 arguments are devious and therefore he cann just revert every edit I make to this article is, IMO, a devious conclusion designed only to justify his reverts. Drop your hostility and personal attacks, read some wikipedia style guides (I have read the lot, have you?) and then come up with some workable compromise as reverting everything I do here is not a reasonable compromise and this issue can only be sorted out by reasonable compromise. His wanting the article protected and his insistence there that unless the article is protetcted or I allow him to fully revert all my edits he will just keep reverting all my edits indicates that he is still not ready to engage in rational and adult debate. Erasing me from wikipedia is not the solution Zapatancas, and your belief that it is the only solution is getting in the way of (estorbando) this article SqueakBox 15:00, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Medal

Zapatancas now claims the medal someone awarded me on my user page was a WP:NPA and his vandalism cleaning it up was necessary to protect wikipedia, SqueakBox 13:48, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

SqueakBox is insulting other users by calling them "rather strange". To remove personal attacks is not vandalism. It is to vandalized other user pages as you did here against my user page. Zapatancas 13:54, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

The trolling behaviour is entirely onesided. Now this individual accuses me of vandalising my user page [2]. I think it takes a special sort opf person to think along such warped lines, and in this case is ridiculous as Zapatancas himself vandalises my page, SqueakBox 14:13, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Weasel words

Congratulations for removing the weasel word terrorism from your reverts. Now perhaps you can see my edit was made entirely in good faith and that your wholesale reversal of it wasn't. You have actually let me make a new edit for the first time in 6 months. Well done! Progress at last, SqueakBox 14:53, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

I want to remind you that before the ArbCom you will have to source all your claims. So, please, be careful when you say things like that I (that is, a user who accesses the Wikipedia no more than twice per week on average) does not allow you, (that is, a user who spends ten hours a day on the Wikipedia) to edit an article.

You continue mixing spellings and introducing other mistakes. Devious arguments are never sufficient to hide vandalism. Zapatancas 16:10, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

The arbncom will only be interested in the personal attacks. The evidence overwhelmingly points to you being SP and I am very glad that someone else is finally going to investigate. At last. False claims of vandalism are normally considered attacks. You access the wikipedia more than twice a week (at least 10 times this week) and I don't remotely work 70 hours a week on wikipedia, what a ridiculous claim, SqueakBox 16:59, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

False claims

Don't make false claims of vandalism when no vandalism has occurred [3] Such behaviour is the sign of a POV troll falsely labelling an edit as vandalism because they find it disagreeable. You need to shape up your attitude Zapatancas as you cannot create consensus with lies, and your lying claim of vandalism means you have to change that behaviour in order for us to find consensus, I am not making lying claims that you are vandalising so you need to (a) actually read the relevant page on vandalism) and (b) withdraw your lying claims, as if you wants a resolution to this editorial dispute you must first of all stop making false vandalism claims. Otherwise I will, quite reasonably, assume that you are still taking SquealingPig as your model on how to behaviour, ie you are not interested in this article or encyclopedia but only in attacking me. In order to integrate as a normal member of wikipedia Zapatancas must stop making what he knows to be fake vandalism accusations as the person making them in these types of circumstances is indulging in trolling and is not serious in the edits they are making to the article. If you want to be taken as a serious editor start acting like one and desist now and forever from false claims of vandalism, something of which I am completely innocent, SqueakBox 13:51, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

I read your rant, and I am still in the dark about how you were accused of vandalizing and why you aren't guilty of such....... and it makes it hard to agree with you. Please explain both.

KV 17:50, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

False vandalism accusations are to be found here, here, here, here, while here he accuses me of destroying his work, here and here opf harrassment, whereas there has been neither harrassment nor vandalsim going on, vandalism is deliberately destroying a piece and is always reverted on site by a variety of users whereas [v this] ios a normal edit meant to help the wikipedia. My rant is because I am at the end of my tether about Zapatanmcas, his vandalism of my user opage and his sockpuppets [4] [5], which were indeed acts done purely to harrass me, eg [6], [7], [8], [9], 12:54, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

See other users comments [10] [11], SqueakBox 12:56, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Professor

Please source Zapatero was a Professor not a teacher. Profesor the Es word translates as teacher and I dont believe he was a Professor, ie this needs sourcing SqueakBox 14:52, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Thank you SqueakBox for proving again you have never read the articles and you are not interested on the subject. Only on harassing. Zapatancas 15:34, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

? SqueakBox 01:42, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

[12] edit by Zapatancas shows I am right. Who did you claim wasn't reading the article? Be assured he was not a Professor, a lecturer and a Professor are worlds apart in the English language. I am concerned that you are letting your hatred of me cloud your judgement. Please lets keep in mind that accuracy in this article of a living person is essential and claiming he was a Professor is simply a mistake, SqueakBox 15:09, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Read the definition by the Wiktionary. I cannot teach you your own language. Thank you for reading a couple of lines of an article, you are making progress. Now, you have to read the rest. Zapatancas 15:18, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

current

Why is this article tagged as current? According to El Mundo and RTVE he isn't anywhere in the papers. I have thus removed the current template, SqueakBox 01:42, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Of course Zapatero is not a current event. The article is completely outdated for more than a year. Well, since you started your harassment to be exact. Zapatancas 15:18, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

In that case you sshould not have put aa fake current tag on the articvle, confusing our readers into thinking something was happening to him. Editing your flaky was not harrassment so I started nothing. You began the attacks with your SquealingPig socket puppet and thus here we are here. At least I can leave the article in reasonable shape, knowing you wont be able to edit it for a year with your semi-comprehensible English and strong anti-Zapatero POV. Phew, a job well done! SqueakBox 02:08, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Solana

Who put in Javier Solana is PP? He is PSOE. If you revert me Zapatancas please ensure that you don't continue propagating this which you know to be untrue. I also dont believe you can accuse me of sabotaging the article or editing purely to harrass you with this one, eh? SqueakBox 01:54, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

I knew you did not read the articles. But it seems you do not even know what the article is about! Zapatancas 15:18, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

It was a cheap and flaky attack and I have removed it, SqueakBox 01:56, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

"ZP" nickname

The ZP article used to contain:

ZP is a popular nickname of the Prime Minister of Spain José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. Those two letters were included in the Socialist electoral posters used during the 2004 electoral campaign and are an acronym of the slogan 'Zapatero Presidente' ('Zapatero President').

which should probably be worked into this article somehow. --Piet Delport 10:43, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Agreed, SqueakBox 14:00, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

The truth is that the article contained that information in the past but SqueakBox removed it (see here). No wonder he is going to be banned from this article for a year. The saddest thing of all is that he claims his "contributions" to this article (such us changing "citizen" to "citisen" or using "its sex" when it should be "their sex") are some of the best he has done in the Wikipedia!!! Zapatancas 15:06, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Your death threat edit looks like it will come to pass eh? Just your watch your back very carefully for the rest of your life as you never know when the tap on the shoulder will be the police wanting to know why a PP activist is making death threats on wikipedia against someone who would not let him stitch up Zapatero. The El Pais will love it. Meanwhile you have to live with the fact that you have threatened someone to death, you have committed serious criminal offences in Honduras, etc, SqueakBox 16:26, 3 June 2006 (UTC)