User talk:Rollo

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Contents 1 Grande Arche 2 Soros 3 Biases and so on 4 RER rewrite 5 RER stations 6 Unnecessary cleanup tags on RER Line articles 7 CTRL - metric/imperial?

[edit] Grande Arche

Hi there. Nice work on Grande Arche! :) -- Tarquin 11:24, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Soros

Hi. I saw that on User:ChrisO's page you've said that "Edit on Soros/Yugoslav connection makes lots more sense". As I am interested in the topic, could you tell me which edit it was? Nikola 07:37, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I am no expert on this subject. The article was Eduard Shevardnadze, the section about his political downfall. Rollo

[edit] Biases and so on

I'd written the following for talk:Vilnius letter, but found it to be too personal and too wordy. I think, if I put it here, you can make rid of it when you've read it (or glanced through it, or whatever...).

"I agree with you, with regard to attribution. I would like to write that I agree very much. With the exception of the first paragraph/section, that in my (personal, of course!) opinion has to be a non-distortive summary of the most important points of the rest of the article. And there, in that summary, there is also little place for the reasoning necessary to interpret the bare words of the declaration. It's actually the same situation with UNSC resolutions and for instance peace treaties. You must first have the knowledge to interpret, before you can make the interpretation, but for many reasons, not the least readability,[1] Wikipedia articles needs a sumarizing introductory paragraph.

"There are however problems with attributions. Chiefly that a summary of generally expressed opinions may be much more informative (or at least information dense) than a long list of quotes that then requires the reader to do the summary himself. But also that governmental aides often comment off the record, which then can not be caught in quotes, but rather in a gradually changed "spirit" of the public debate. And thirdly, that this is Wikipedia, where you can put much effort on a detail, or more, only to see it removed half-a-year later by someone who didn't even realize the effort put into it. I mean: I "can" read Estonian, but in order to make a reference to a statement in Estonian, I must have someone do the translation for me, otherways it wouldn't be reliable. With regard to all other languages of interest here (the rest of the Vilnius ten) I have to rely on second and third hand reports, that aren't useful for quotations.

"I also agree that the article need improvements to get better balanced, but Johan makes a good point. We must remember that also Czech and Bulgarians and French and Iraqis are potential readers, and it's very likely that what appears as "NPOV" for an English speaker appears as rather biased to many non-English readers. Ergo: The English reader must be prepared to face messages and worlds of thoughts that are not totally congruent with their closest surroundings, when the scope of the article is far away. And that's exactly the case for this article.

"With regard to myself, I'm clearly knowing of my own biases. Greatpower invasions remind me much of the Winter War, that is very central to the world view and history understanding one gets if one grews up in a Finnish home. But the US has made quite a few of these, and after three years of studies in political science, I'd no illusions with regard to the military and policing aspects of the invasion. As a student of Arabic, I have of course more access to alternative views, but that doesn't change the fact that I am a Westerner, and that much of the rhetoric surrounding the war was sympathetic to me. The thing I really do dislike with this event, is that it as far as I can judge is in the process of totally disillusioning those pro-Western Muslims and Arabs who were our (Europe's and the US') best hope for a peaceful evolution towards civil rights, democracy, stability and co-existence.

"The diplomatic coersion in connection with the diplomatic "crisis" during the run up to this war, however, were of an unusual magnitude, and are in my opinion very much worth articles in this encyclopedia. In my opinion, the important thing is to report facts without judging. For me, personally, what interests me, and what I consider central for this article, is the paragraph:

"Central European press had pointed out the foreign policy problem their governments faced wasn’t primarily connected with Iraq but with the clash between the regional powers of the European Continent; Russia, France, and Germany on one side, and the Atlantic powers, the United States and the United Kingdom, on the other."

/Tuomas 12:19, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I admire your worldliness. But the fact that you can speak 9 languages doesn't necessarily make you a better judge of right and wrong than (say) George Bush. I don't agree that we should go out of our way to try to 'understand' the way Slovaks/Estonians/Arabs see US foreign policy - at least not for the purpose of this article.

I studied history at university and I am a great believer in the sacredness of fact. A fact cannot be relativised according to culture; it is universal. And I just don't believe it is impossible to separate fact from opinion in this article.

I think I detect a strain of cultural relativism in your views. I live in France so I am fairly familiar with this. A perfectly respectably view of the world, but one I personally just do not accept. Rollo 15:32, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Eh? 9 languages? Obviously my wordiness has served me bad. I'm actually rather disabilited with regards to languages. What I wrote was that the only of the languages spoken by the Vilnius ten that I can read myself is Estonian, and that is "read" with a rather low degree of expertice. You living in France was my guess from your handle, ;-) Gånge Rolf, or Rollo Dane or... — and so far I think your improvements of the article are splendid. /Tuomas 17:06, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thank you Tuomas for the complimentary remarks among your comments. Having read your user page, I can't resist making a couple of comments. Firstly (and not importantly), you should be aware that writing about oneself in the third person is considered decidedly pretentious in English - the sort of thing monarchs do. Second, I am eternally fascinated by the obsessive anti-Americanism of you Nordic folks. I see all the myriad faults of American society and policy and I am pleased not to be an American myself. But the world is not a warm, fluffy, comfortable place inhabited by rational, cooperative human beings, like Finland. It's dirty, dangerous and chaotic. This is not a pessimistic view, it's realism informed by history. There have always been empires, and into the foreseeable future there will continue to be. America is the world's original popular democracy. It is therefore - despite its unpleasant, violent edge - about as unthreatening as an empire will ever be. It replaced other empires, generally much worse - German, Japanese, Russian, as well as British. It has only lasted fifty years and almost certainly won't last another fifty. Be realistic, consider alternatives. Because unfortunately the world is not going to look like Finland any time soon. Rollo 13:28, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] RER rewrite

Wonderful re-write and reorder of this article, thanks for the effort you put into it! Swarve 23:39, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks Swarve, I appreciate that. I haven't finished yet, either! Très cordialement, Rollo 21:47, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] RER stations

You redirected a number of stations into thin air. Were you aware that they had been stubs before they were redirected? Susvolans ⇔ 17:04, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

That would not have been my intention, obviously. More information needed. Rollo 17:38, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Unnecessary cleanup tags on RER Line articles

[Posted to User:Jareth's talk page.] I have removed cleanup tags on four RER Line articles, as done previously by Metropolitan. These seem clearly unjustified, given that the articles in questions are informative, reliable, well-written and reasonably complete. If it is the categorisation which needs "cleaning up", please let this resolve itself, or at least find a way of addressing it without the use of unsightly and misleading banners across the top of the articles. These articles do not need cleaning up. Rollo 18:08, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Not sure why you're telling me, I've never edited any of the articles you mentioned. I did get involved a while back when User:Metropolitan got into an edit war when a cleanup tag was first placed on another article, but I don't know what that would have to do with these. .:.Jareth.:. ^babelfish 18:12, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

True, you didn't edit any of these articles. Sorry for implying that. But you did write the following on Metropolitan's talk page:

"I noticed you've been removing the cleanup tag from RER A -- please don't. The tag is there so that other editors will be notified that the article needs some work".

...which duly incited Metropolitan to put back all the cleanup tags. Anyway, end of story. The articles are now fine and the tags have gone. Rollo 21:46, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] CTRL - metric/imperial?

Having recently come across this article it seemed very odd to me that it was still in imperial units, so I've added my vote to it. I'm mentioning it here just so you know that there may be more interest in this discussion. Willkm 21:59, 7 January 2006 (UTC)