User:Rex Germanus/Rex' nationalism scale
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My scale of nationalism on Wikipedia:
Contents |
[edit] Nationalism scale I
Small nationalism. It's not extreme and could in fact just depend on the person who wrote it. If the editor always refrains from nationalist edits, the intention most likely was to insert a fact but just happens to look like nationalism. In this case minor rephrasing solves the problem. However if the user does engage in regular nationalistic behaviour, I generally see this as sneaky or suggestive nationalism.
The example above, we can see suggestive nationalism. The author wants to suggest that Gdansk, a frequent source of controversy, was formally a German city. The claim itself is true. Gdansk was under German control for a reasonable part of its history, and had the author not been making regular nationalistic edits in the past, minor rephrasing would be the solution. But this was not the case. Also, the newer version tends to suggest Gdansk was originally a German city, which it of course wasn't.
[edit] Nationalism scale II
This is obvious nationalism, which is usually marked as vandalism. Remarks such as "Ratko Mladić is my hero" or "The Dutch are the best" and similar. Generally the editors who make their posts are anonymous IPs and don't expect their edits to last. I revert this form of nationalism/vandalism on sight. A variation is the adding of unreferenced claims on a certain peoples accomplishments. For example "The British are the best at [...]" or "The Chinese were the first to [...]".
[edit] Nationalism scale III
Before I explain this type of nationalism, I'd like to quote Lysy, a Polish wikipedian who posted the following statement on the talk page of a German nationalist:
| “ | Regarding one of your recent edit comments: German is not equal to "Nazi" - weren't it the Nazis who invaded Poland in 1939, or murdered the civilians in Warsaw in 1944 ? It always surprises me how German public opinion conveniently substitutes these terms. It almost seems as if Germany was occupied by Nazis, but then they instantly disappeared and only "good" Germans remained. | ” |
Wikipedia is here to be objective and factual but this should not be an excuse for nationalists to revise or soften for example warcrimes of their respective backgrounds. This is what I consider to be the worst kind of nationalism, because the authors actually plann how to influence history and implement premeditated nationalism. If it were up to me, users who, after being warned, continue to display this behaviour should be banned from wikipedia.
In the example above, a nationalistic wikipedian tries to revision Nazi warcrimes. I advise other wikipedians never to fall for arguments like the ones above. Remarks like "it was a lot worse there" are ridiculous. If we start to compare crimes with crimes then why do we even have an article about the Bosnian Genocide? after all in terms of victims it doesn't compare to the Holocaust.
[edit] Disclaimer
Scale I and III use (nationalistic) Germans as examples. This is because of my personal experiences with these particular editors. If I would have found even better examples of nationalistic edits I would have naturally have used those instead. (If you yourself have found better examples just drop a message on my talk page)
