Skeptic77

hi there! Just thought it was time for some virtual tea... Didn't know wikipedia had userpages. I thought it was against the rules to create personal pages... Tamira C. 00:23, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Welcome, have a cup! Of course it isn't against the rules, just click on your own name and a page comes up that says you can! Although others can do it for you, as this is Wikipedia after all. ;) Skeptic77 00:34, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Welcome!

Hello, Skeptic77, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question and then place {{helpme}} after the question on your talk page. Again, welcome!  Arnoutf 19:40, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Reading your edits I thought you were an experienced contributor. Apparently you are new, so here the official welcome message. Reading your user page I thought you might be interested in joining the Dutch military history task force, just add you user name to the list and you are in. No strings attached. (My personal agenda in that project is getting the Eighty Years' War article up to featured article. I think the text is almost there but we need a lot of inline references througout the article. Anyway; whether you want to join or not; a very warm welcome and happy editing. Arnoutf 19:40, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Ah, thank you. Well, I've done my bit here and there, but I usually spend some time on a few little things when I come across them, but that has mostly been it for now. Thanks for the compliment anyway. ;) I think I'll take it easy for a while at least, I need to get a lot of work done for my study. But I'll take a look at the article about the Eighty Years' War and will try to help out if I can. Skeptic77 22:14, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Red flag claims at Dutch (ethnic group)

You asked me to state the problems at the article Dutch (ethnic group). I had already stated the problems at the Request for Comment, and I would prefer that you read the article's talk page, since that will avoid unnecessary repetition. Nevertheless, here they are in summary: please also read irredentism and Greater Netherlands...

The article was originally titled Dutch people but the title was unilaterally changed by one user. The article, as it was about 4 months ago, contained pseudo-historical and irredentist claims, about an ethnic group of 30 million people who inhabit the whole of the Low Countries, and part of northern France. These claims are nonsensical, and unbalanced the article: some of them are still in place. Much of this material was translated from Dutch-language far-right websites, which were only later identified as sources. Similar pseudo-historical claims appeared at Flemish people and Greater Netherlands, most of them posted by one editor.

There is no 30-million-strong Dutch ethnic group. The Dutch do not see Flemings as Dutch, much less the rest of the population of Belgium. Flemish do not see themselves as Dutch, but as Flemish, with a separate Flemish history. Almost no-one in the Netherlands thinks that 'ethnic Dutch' inhabit northern France. These views are confined to a tiny minority, most of them on the far right, most in Flanders. The disputed content presents the views of less than 0.01% of the population, as if it were historical fact.

Self-identification by a Dutch person as "Germanic" is also extremely rare, and almost entirely confined to neo-nazi websites. "Germanic" is a bona-fide linguistic term but does not apply to modern ethnic groups. The Germanic peoples were assimilated into later ethnic groups, including the modern Germans, by the end of the Middle Ages. Most Dutch people do not consider themselves Germaans (Germanic).

The red flag claims at the article include any explicit or implicit claim that Flemings and Dutch constitute a single ethnic group, that is totals 25 million or 30 million people, that it inhabits/inhabited the entire Low Countries and present-day northern France, that any "Dutch people" (Nederlanders) existed prior to the mid-16th century and the Dutch Revolt, or that every Dutch-speaking ethnic group is thereby part of the 'Dutch ethnic group'.Paul111 11:13, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

I have read the talkpage, or at least most of it, despite the fact that a huge part of it consists of all kinds of claims by you and that you seem to disagree with a wide array of topics. I would prefer to keep this discussion there, but I will reply here. In the future, please keep this on the talkpage or before long I'll have to throw out entire pages of comments.

I have participated in a discussion about the possibility of renaming the article in an attempt to reduce the possibility for nationalistic / racist bias, a discussion which you seem to have ignored.

I've seen you take unilateral action yourself, by editing the entire article wholesale to make it into something -you- can agree with. I feel that in this case you are pushing your own agenda at least a little bit and that this has resulted in an edit war. By editing the entire page at once, including things which are being discussed, all you manage to accomplish is that you force others to revert everything to its previous stage, rather than just discuss this a single issue and then proceed to address it. Unless we all agree 100 percent which your views (which we don't seem to), most of the people discussing this page will prefer to stick with what we had and then proceed from there.

I agree at least in part with several points you've made, but I do feel that you're stepping across the line in dealing with these issues. Several claims you make, however, are only partially true at best, so I feel that you can not just do what you think is right even if your intentions may be benign.

In short, I feel your intentions may be good, but that the way you proceed makes it harder even for people who agree with you to come to your aid. I prefer fixing things by first discussing the situation on the talkpage and reaching at least some kind of agreement and then carrying out whatever decision has been taken collectively, rather than wholesale editing and then wholesale reversion.

Two cases in point: the concept of the Greater Netherlands is not confined to right-wing groups, the preface to Blok et al, Geschiedenis van de Nederlanden mentions the concept as well. The same book, in chapter one, refers to Germanic tribes settling in the Netherlands. So merely saying that the Dutch descend from Germanic tribes doesn't seem so farfetched to me. Also, a pet-peeve of mine, the word "allochtoon" was invented in the Netherlands specifically to designate people whose parents were not both born in the Netherlands/did not both hold the Dutch nationality or even those who are descended from people who fit those criteria. Although I consider the word to be offensive and divisive myself, it is widely used. So there clearly is a cultural distinction between Dutch and non-Dutch, which goes very far. Although I think that this is an unfortunate development, I think it is real and therefore worthy of attention in an encyclopedic article. I intend to address this issue in the article or, alternately, in a new, separate article about the Dutch as a more broadly defined group.

So I think that it's clear that I'm not some kind of right-wing wacko and that I intend to help to address the issues you've pointed out, but -not- by just editing an entire article at once. I urge you not to further alienate other people from your views by just pushing your own agenda and to allow for debate and consensus.

Please make any further comments along these lines on the talk page for the article.

The disputed issue is not whether there were Germanic tribes in the Netherlnads but whether, as user Rex Germanus claims, that makes the modern Dutch a Germanic people. The disputed issue is not whether the Greater Netherlands ideal exists, it does, but whether it is currently supported by anyone except right-wing groups. Blok and his co-authors do not support the ideal, and can not be presented as evidence of support for it. It was once more respectable than it is now, and there once was a Netherlandic school of historiography, but Blok makes it quite clear in the preface that the book treats the history of a geographical entity. Since the 1930's the idea has been associated with fascism.Paul111 13:04, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Please make any further comments along these lines on the talk page for the article and see my comments there. Skeptic77 13:11, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Removal of citation-needed tag

Please do not remove these tags immediately after thay have been placed. If they are left in place for a long time without a response, then removal of both the tag and the unsourced material is the best option.Paul111 13:28, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Please make any further unfounded comments along these lines on the talk page for the article and see my comments there! Skeptic77 13:54, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Mediation

User:Paul111 has gone too far with his unwiki-like behaviour and biased deletions based on nothing but his own opinion. I hope you'll join this mediation (Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/Dutch (ethnic group)) and share your thoughts.Rex 13:32, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

I have, I have no intention of playing host to a debate on one (1) specific article on Wikipedia, while being accused of various things at the same time. Skeptic77 13:53, 2 March 2007 (UTC)