Talk:Language legislation in Belgium

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[edit] POV and reference tag

This article needed to be written. It is a translation of the Dutch article on WP. It shows up the POV of the Flemings only and need to be reviewed by Belgian French-speaking editors. Adding well-balanced references is an urgent task which need to be done. Both tags should stay there until both points get addressed. Vb 15:03, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

You are quite correct about the point of view from which this article had been written, but I had already eliminated several obvious breaches of WP:NPOV and you eliminated several such statements that were still remaining. I'm not so sure about Hammurabi though, that sentence was informative in situating the historical point of view and strategy of the Flemish (which itself has nothing to do with POV of the WP article, but it might have been phrased in a less suggestive POV way rather than be removed). I had also switched the language of place names (most of which do not have a common English usage) from all Dutch to that of the relevant language area. Nevertheless, there were also some French-speakers POVs depicted, such as the usage of the French-inspired 'linguistic region' instead of the in English far more commonly used 'language area' (which I switched) and the mentioning of the somewhat reluctant rendering of language facilities by the Peeters directive, whereas the article does not yet mention that precisely that kind of treatment of Dutch-speakers had since much earlier been normal in the French-speaking and bilingual areas.
Whereas I agree with the FACT tag, for the POV tag it is your burden to show on this talk page where there would now still be POV (or rather, no correct NPOV), according to what the POV tag directions state. Indeed, people do not have to start guessing what could now still be meant. Your claim that reviewers should be Belgian French-speakers violates the WP position on NPOV, though in this case I can understand your concern. You, however, are such French-speaker; so please continue what you just did, and it would not be a bad idea for you to find some proper sources either, who else is going to do it this time, do you think? — SomeHuman 18 Aug 2007 17:37 (UTC)

Hello - I am neither French nor Dutch speaking and I am not Belgian. However, I do detect a distinct bias against Belgian French-language speakers in this article that I believe must be addressed. While I understand and believe that the Dutch-speaking peoples of Belgium were subject to linguistic discrimination by what was then the French-speaking elite of the country. I am equally certain that there was a point of view from their side that should be reflected in these articles.

More importantly, my understanding that the dispute today has resulted in unfairnesses against both linguistic populations. The current situation deserves (and readers should demand) a greater level of ballance and fairness when speaking of this conflict today.

It is shameful that either side should use Wikipedia to continue this conflict. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.245.21.175 (talk) 15:54, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

The linguistic tensions of Belgium are a historic fact. Language legislation was (and is) required to "create a level playing field." In order for the reader to fully understand the Belgian condition there must be an explanation as to why the field was not even. You may be uncomfortable with the labels (French, Flemish, Dutch) but how else will the reader be informed? If the article was about Cival Rights legislation in America in the 1960's, it would require historic background. The uninformed reader would need to be informed of the horrific status of a segment of American society that led to the changes in Law.--Buster7 (talk) 14:27, 4 May 2008 (UTC)