User:I sterbinski

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).


Hellou to all of you guys. As you read at the topic, this is our (you will see latter why "our", instead of "mine") final post here. It took quite a lot of time to manage to persuade our boss to let us reveal all the story at the end of our research, or at least a part of it. But, let us start from the beggining and explain well.
Behing the nickname "I_sterbinski" was a team of 6 people of different nationalities and ages, members of an international organization for protecting human rights, plus a computer expert which helped us staying anonimous on the internet network and who explained us how Wikipedia works. Some of these things were intentionaly mentioned in our previous posts, but please read further in order to understand well why we got involved in this.
Here, at the same beggining we should explicitly note that we are not allowed to reveal more informations concerning our organization. Its nothing secret, but we have to protect our members all over the world from presure over their work. We also want to stay anonimous, so we can not reveal to you nothing more than our first names.
So, this is how everything started. About 2 weeks ago Mr. Igor Šterbinski (he already revealed his real name) called us and latter got in our office to complain about the texts that are placed on Wikipedia concerning Republic of Macedonia, the Macedonians, their history, culture, language etc. We were aware that the internet is completely free and uncontroled media, but the problem was that Wikipedia is encyclopedia which clearly states its neutrality and we had a person who beleives that his basic human rights were broken by Wikipedia. We tried to guess how would a basic user react. It was obvious for us that the basic user would beleive almost everything that is written on Wikipedia, because of Wikipedia's concept on "neutrality". Also, we concluded that the fact that anyone can edit Wikipedia won't have much meaning to a regular user, because he would always beleive that there is some team of people who is responsible for checking every text before beeing published.
After checking our databases, we noticed that there were several complaints against Wikipedia all over the world from people who beleived that their basic human rights were broken. Most of the complaints were concerning pages involving history, ethnicities and culture. Also, about 1/2 of them were conected to the "Macedonia" issue and one more issue that we would not like to reveal.
We informed our center and we were instructed to form a team which will make a report about Wikipedia, concerning the issue of Macedonia. So, we formed a team and we started posting (using the nickname of I_sterbinski, in order to keep continuity). The instructions that we were given, including the way of functioning of the team can not be revealed.
All we can reveal is that, before making some post, all the team had to agree with that decision. Also, every single point that we made in our posts was a subject of research and confirmation from our center (some "sensitive" topics will be given as example latter).
The English language used for the posts (including this one) was intentionaly on the level of the first post of I_sterbinski.
As already mentioned, because of neutrality, the team was formed of people with different nationalities: 2 Macedonians, 1 Bulgarian, 1 Greek, 1 Albanian and 2 citizens of USA (including the computer expert). There was no case more than 2 of them to live in the same country. This is a normal practice of our organization for every research we make.
Every claim (or POV) that we posted was agreed between the team and every information was confirmed by our center. We have to explicitly note that in order to be a part of our post, every information or claim had to have at least 20% of support in the public, including experts in the field from "neutral" nations. This information was provided to us by the center of the organization. Also, every member of the team had to agree with the (possible) legitimacy of the information. We did not reveal most of our sources because we could not personally contact all the experts, scientists and universities involved.
Now, we would like to reveal some things that we see as very sensitive and important, concerning our work on Wikipedia. Of course, many things will stay protected, because of the same reasons mentioned above.
1) It is important to note that the team was completely aware of the history, historical facts (including the doubts about some of them), geography, demography etc. All those information were provided by the centre, after intensive consultations.
2) Sometimes some provocative posts were posted. That was made intencionally, in order to provoke reactions from the other users. These posts (or parts of the posts) can be noticed easily, because we were abandoning the support of them after a short period of time (usually the right next day).
3) The topic that caused most of the reactions was the genes researches. We should note that we completely agree with the claim that the "genetic researches" can not be a proof of someones nationality. It is accepted world wide that the nationality of the person is his personal feeling of belonging to some group (or ethnicity/nationality) and that is his basic human right. Genes can not provide that kind of information.
On the other hand, the genes researches (especially HLA genes researches) are expected to change the history of the world in the future. But, that day is still to come and at least 30-50 years away from today. In present time, we can only make assumptions.
We should also note that every information and every claim we had about this issue was double checked by our experts.
4) Concerning Mr. Arnaiz-Villena and his researches, we feel that we should explain our position about the issue.
It is completely true that some of his researches caused strong reactions all around the world. But, in the same time, it is completely truth that Mr. Arnaiz-Villena is one of the most important and respected scientist in the field of genetics.
The most of the reactions were around the denial of his researches. Here, we strongly keep our position and the position of our expert team: He never was scientifically denied. No one ever provided a real research which will prove mistakes in Mr. Arnaiz-Villena's researches. The denials of him mostly come from political, demographical, ethical and religios point of view. They were writtent by priests, scientists, doctors, politicians etc. But, no one ever gave a scientifical proof in a form of a research that denies the previous researches of Mr. Arnaiz-Villena.
Let us explicitly note that our team does not support or deny the results of his researches. But, in absence of specific scientifical research that denies his results, that is the only conclusion we could make.
In simple words explained: No one till today found a scientifical proof during any research that the Spanish, Egyptian, Italian or any other nation has different HLA genes structure than the one that Mr. Arnaiz-Villena's research claims.
In the same time we should note that this team is aware that this position will probably cause some strong reactions. Regardless, we have to keep this position, because we were informed by our expert team that 83.2% of the sources they consultet support Mr. Arnaiz-Villena's work. In the same time, our organization was highly involved in the mentioned incident of removal of the Mr. Arnaiz-Villena's article from a specific magazine and the reasons that lead to it (information that was confirmed by our center today), so we had to take that into account for our final position on this issue. It was confirmed by our center that the reason was from "political" background.
5) As metioned before, all the information we presented are confirmed with at least 20% probability, but most often with more than 40%. That means that the probability can be between 20% and 100%. Under the term "Probability" is ment estimation of the support in the science world, made by our experts. We won't reveal how much probability our experts estimated for every information we discussed here because that information is not made available to us.
6) The issue of Macedonian troops in the Balkan wars was a provocation. The posts that followed after the reaction of one of the users are confirmed information by our expert team.
7) This team finished their work with this post. We do not ask for any change of content to any of the Wikipedia's sections, because that is not a part of our work. In the same time, we will point out that no other posts of ours will follow. Any further use of this nickname is given to the discretion of the real owner of the nickname.
8) Our posts, including this one was not ment to have effect on someones beleives concerning this issue. We strongly encourage different point of views between the people.
9) We strongly protest against every nationalistic comments of some of the users of Wikipedia. We would explicitly point out the following comment from "User:Theathenae":
"And, when you already got a part in this conversation, explain why Greece runned away 300000 Macedonians and 100000 Bulgarians from Greece during the last 50 years, people that are still not alowed to enter Greece? Why did you burn my grandfathers house and shoot at him? I sterbinski 17:23, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
Because I didn't like his face. What are you gonna do about it?--Theathenae 18:31, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
This is the only case that took a part in our final report. Theathenae's real identity will be strictly protected and it did not take a part in the final report.
10) Through our posts we were using several personal informations about family members and family history of one of the persons in our team. Concerning her family, those information are all double checked. Intentionally, sometimes we mixed the subjects "grandfather", "grand grandfather" and "grandmother" (including this post), in order to cause confusion and protects Biljana's real identity. Also, Biljana's 94 year old grand father was consultet only in the first 6 days of our work, because this topic was obviously having negative effect on his poor health.
Also, very few personal information of the real Mr. Šterbinski were used, but mostly as a proof of some point.
11) The team did not ever intentionally vandalise or erase any Wikipedia content.
12) Some mistakes in using of the Wikipedia were made intentionally, in order to hide the work of our computer professional.
13) We were aware that the Antique Macedonians were mostly Hellenized before the arival of the Slavs and they did not use the name "Macedonian" for themselves in that time, but in the same time we were aware that Hellenic most comonly represents culture, not ethnicity or nation. This is a position that was sugested to us by a department of a famous US university which explores the Hellenic civilization.
Our team was conctantly checking the historical facts, versions of them and their importance. A international expert team based in neutral country was responsible for confirming the probability of each information or historical fact.
14) We noticed that some users constantly change their signatures when posting. All our team agreed that this might (not always) be a strategy which should result in Wikipedia's users to think that the posts are made by several people. The other users might get impresion that several users agree on the specific issue, but actually all the posts were from the same user.
15) Our final report includes evidence that at least 4 Wikipedia users included in the editing of pages concerning the Macedonia issue are a part of organizations that are sponsored by people, other organizations and even goverments to protect some specific nationalistic clausa. They belong to 2 or more different nations.
Also, at least one more report on Wikipedia in the past noticed this practice concerning several different issues.
For us, this was a sugestion that a big percent of the users that are included in Wikipedia's edition are motivated by financial benefit. These users are usually strictly concentrated in editing history, goverment and culture based pages of Wikipedia.
In the same time, many Wikipedians are using 2 or more nicknames for their edits. Again, we beleive that this might confuse the readers and make them think that several users support some edit, when actually it is the same person all the time.
All this anomalities are a part of our final report.
16) Our final report includes our beleive that any edit might be included in Wikipedia if you outnumber the oponents of that edition.
Also, we noted that the majority of the Wikipedian administrators and users are aware of this.
17) It was of great concern for our final report that the pages of Wikipedia concerning Macedonia are predominantly edited by people of Greek origin, with smaller contribution from users with Bulgarian origin. Most of them are connected and support each other, even closely woking together on specific goals very often closely connected with nationalism.
The private pages of those users (and many others) are completely dedicated for spreading some nationalistic causa. More than 10 examples of these user pages are included in our report, but we are not allowed publicaly to reveal any of them before our organization does.
The users of Bulgarian origin are not very active, so it was our conclusion that it is the interest of the Greek users of Wikipedia to present the Macedonian nationals as Bulgarian and as a creation of the former Yugoslav president Josip Broz Tito. Unfortunately, for a regular user it seems that Wikipedia supports this politics.
The users of Macedonian (Macedonian Slav, like Wikipedia addresses them) origin are regularly outnumbered. That has a direct negative influence over the texts in Wikipedia concerning the Macedonia issue. Even when having valid grounds for their edits, they end up reverted and simply ignored. Organization is reported between them too, but their power is strictly limited because of the low number of users.
We would like to note the user FlavrSavr as the one who had the most neutral comments, edits and posts. Despite he is a member of nationality which is highly concerned with this problem, his behaviour could never be characterised as nationalistic or assimilative.
The most of the other users of "neutral" nationalities are not personaly connected to this issue, so their interest is in low level, which directly contributes to loosing Wikipedia's neutrality.
18) Sometimes we have used some offensive language as an answer to another offensive post and as a mean of intentional provocation. We appologise for every example of that kind of behaviour.
19) The team (supported by our computer expert) was always using an IP address from a Macedonian server, aldough the posts were made from 3 different countries, depending which member of the team makes the post. As we already said, this was done to keep our identity on the internet secret. In the same time, we wanted the Wikipedia users to think that the posts were sent by only one user based in Macedonia.
20) A part of the material on Wikipedia is copyrighted and without a permission for use. Anyway, these cases are rare.
21) It was suprising for us that many of the neutral users are aware of these problem described above, but they can not influence over them.
22) We had an official govermental informations that the percent of the countries that recognized Macedonia under its constitutional and desired name "Republic of Macedonia" is larger than the number of countries that recognize it under the temporary name "Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia".
Also, in dirrect communications, during the last 4 years, more than 92% of the goverments and organizations use the constitutional name of the country, "Republic of Macedonia".
Wikipedia promotes a different and wrong information about this problem.
23) The use of the name "Macedonians" for the modern Macedonians is predominant in the today's world, including in govermental (official or unofficial) communications. Therefore, the use of the name "Macedonian Slavs" in Wikipedia was our biggest reason to start our research.
It is a basic human right of every person for self identification. We were informed by our expert team that consequently, the name of the nationality of modern Macedonians was never a subject for any negotiations.
Also, through our posts (including this one), research and final report we use the name of the nationality "Macedonian".
Our beleive is that Wikipedia is breacking (or at least contributing to breaking) one of the basic human rights.
Therefore, this took an important place in our final report and it was a part of our final conclusion. We want to note that this is the oppinion of our team. The final oppinion of our organizations will lickely be (but not always) similar to ours.
24) Concerning our final report, Wikipedia is further criticized for many of its pages concerning Macedonia, in the context of (self promoted) neutrality.
It is a private impresion of this team that Wikipedia should include a warning in the "NPOV" page that sometimes (mostly in historical, cultural and govermental pages) the neutrality can not be confirmed and is vulnarable by different propagandas.
25) During the final days of our research (15-20th August 2005th), several edits of the Macedonia page were done, all of them by Greek nationals. After this, the Wikipedia page on Macedonia got significantly more pro-Greek (even more than previous), supporting completely the Greek propaganda for the region. The other oppinions and facts are sometimes included, but most often completely ignored or hidden in the text till the point to look like irrelevant.
During this final days, the events that happened at the Macedonia page can only be characterised as assimilative and nationalistic.
We will note that if we were starting our research now, the final report on Wikipedia would be much more negative concerning this issue.
This conclusion will be a part of our final report, supported by relevant screenshots.
26) The Wikipedia's annomalities spotted concerning this issue could easily happen concerning any other issue. We strongly beleive that these annomalities make Wikipedia completely unreliable source for anything that concernes history, culture, politics and similar issues.
This also is a part of our final report.
27) Our team spoted several corespondence between users or different nationalities where they deal of "joining forces" against a third nationality, all in favour of promoting their point of view.
Our final report includes more than 10 examples of that kind of correspondence between the Bulgarian and Greek users. During this correspondence, several claims that lack any valid proof were spotted.
Our final report also includes posts of users from Macedonian nationality asking for help in deffending their interests from users of other nationalities, mostly Serbian, Turkish, Russian, Slovenian and Croatian.
28) Our final report has 78 pages of text and 171 pictures/screenshots and was sent to our center and will be a part of the data we have concerning Wikipedia. It is on discretion of our center to decide for the next steps they would take.
Our final report will be for internal use only, but that does not exclude the posibility parts of it to be used in some future publication, announcement and report that will be publically displayed.
29) We point out that we never made any anonimous edits. We strongly deny all accusations in this sence. Actually, leaving anonimous notes was strictly forbiten to us by our centre.
30) Concerning the issue of "Jovan and the Ohrid Archbishopric", we would like to state that we strongly protested against his imprisoning. But, we have to explain that all the critics were towards the court that sentenced him, not toward the goverment of Republic of Macedonia.
This is because in every democratic system, the goverment can not have any influence over the court decisions. Therefore, we have to exclude the responsibility of the goverment of the Republic of Macedonia in this case.
31) Some edits that we could notice through Wikipedia (pages concerning Macedonia issue and the Balkan) include claims that the modern Macedonians are Bulgarians. Also, some claims are noticed that the Croats (Croatians) are Serbs (Serbians). We characterise all this claims to be of completely nationalistic and assimilative.
We strongly protest against this position of some persons included in Wikipedia. Also, these edits, including the names of the authors will be included in our final report.
At the end, we would like to note that our organization never send an open critics towards Wikipedia because we understand that it is hard to control an open system like Wikipedia is and to keep the neutrality of its contents. We noticed that many Wikipedians are aware of this weak link.
Therefore, our team beleives that Wikipedia will not be a subject to open critics from our organization in the following period. Anyway, this situation can be changed in the future. We have to note that this is the team's personal beleive, not a final decision of our organization. Also, we want to explicitly note that our final report does not exclude the people and subjects that stand behing the "Wikipedia" project (including its creators) from the responsibility of breaking basic human rights (if our organization identifies presence of that kind of elements in this or any past or future case).
Despite the internal character of our final report, we have to note that Our organization is sponsored by govermental institutions of several countries from 4 continents. Therefore, we are obligated to inform these institutions about our activities, work and conclusions we have, including this report.
Our computer expert beleives that the warning for desputed neutrality (similar to the one on the Macedonian Slavs page) should be more used, concerning sensitive issue like Macedonia is. He also beleives that that warning should be much more noticable (actually it should be more noticable than any other object on that page) and it should be breafly explained the reason for it.
We are pointing out that this is not a official position of our organization. It is only an idea of some of the members of our team. The organization itself does not involve in technical issues. Also, official advices can be given only if specifically asked for, and only after a completed research and report on the subject, including several expert oppinions.
We would like to repeat that we are all aware that this final post might pull some critics, doubts and even attemps of misleading or denial. Despite of any comments that will follow, we will not make any personal or team attempt to answer. This final post was long enough and all the information that we were allowed to reveal can be found here.
We would politely ask you to try to avoid giving comments of this text, because we will not be able to give you an answer.
Important: We would like to ask all users who decide to leave any comment to this text to do it after the text. Any breaking up of the content of our final post will be characterised as a try to hide the facts and change our impresions.
Also, any erasing or changing of this text, including erasing the links that lead towards it will be characterised in the same way.
Therefore all attempts of that kind of behavious will be sent as additions to our final report.
Finally, we would like to explain why Wikipedia draws attention to a organization like our is. As many of you know, Wikipedia is very popular project and we beleive it has very bright future. Concerning the influence Wikipedia has on its readers, it is more than obvious why we decided to dedicate some time on it.
We would like to thank to all of you who took part in this corespondence with us, regardless their point of view. We appologise because of keeping the biggest part of our identity as secret till now.
We would also like to ask for your understanding of our wish to keep our personal names unrevealed.
Wishing all of you success in your lifes. Wishing all the best to Wikipedia too. Aldough we beleive that Wikipedia will have many problems (similar like the one with "Macedonia" issue, or from some other background), but we strongly beleive that this problems will be solved and Wikipedia will be a succesful and long story.
Important note: The behaviour of specific Wikipedia Users and their posts will be a subject to pasive but continued observation in the following period. Same observation will be done to the Wikipedia pages concerning specific issues.
We want to note that we are allowed to send an annex to our final report at any time, if that is agreed between the team members. Any possitive or negative behaviour will be noted.
Important note: The publishing of this text is intentionally set to be today (27th of August 2005), aldough our official research ended several days ago. In some of our previous posts we stated that another big European Union country will recognize Macedonia's constitutional name in the following period. That happened yesterday (26th of August 2005th), when Poland recognized Macedonia under its constitutional name "Republic of Macedonia". We should state that Poland is one of the biggest EU countries. Also, Poland will continue to use the reference "FYR of Macedonia" only at international forums (where Greece takes part in) untill the EU officially recognizes the constitutional name "Republic of Macedonia".
With this we just wanted to show that our information are relevant and very accurate, even when concerning future political events.
We would like to state our beleive that in the following couple of years several similar moves of the rest of the European Union countries (the ones that still haven't done the same) are expected. The parlaments of several of those countries already recomended their goverments (including Germany, Italy and Great Britain) to recognize the constitutional name of "Republic of Macedonia".
Also, we want to state that this does not represent our official position in the naming despute between Greece and Macedonia.
We would note that Poland is 112th country that recognises the country with its constitutional name "Republic of Macedonia". Wikipedia is calculating with numbers of "at least 40" or "more than 20", which only shows how inacurate the information are and how much they are influenced by editors which try to push their own POV and hide the facts that are not supporting their claims.


Best regards,
Aleksandar, Biljana, Asparuh, Christos, Valjon, Michael and Ana Luiza.
P.S. Mr. Igor Šterbinski asked us to inform you that after this he won't be using his nickname anymore, in order to avoid confusion. He is willing to keep contributing to Wikipedia, but he does not hide his disapointment from it. Till this day, he still haven't made his final decision.
P.P.S. Everything in this text was personal message and point of view of the team. The organization we represent still have not made its final conclusions and position about Wikipedia.
P.P.P.S. Concerning the protection of the content of our final report, we should note that Mr. Šterbinski is intentionaly not informed about our work or the final project.
I sterbinski 23:56, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../i/_/s/User%7EI_sterbinski_bc08.html"