PrudenceBumpkin

Welcome!

Hello PrudenceBumpkin, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

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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 have any questions, check out Wikipedia:Where to ask a question or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome!  Izehar (talk) 16:41, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Advice

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Please stop targeting one or more users' talk pages for abuse or insults, unwarranted doctoring or blanking. It can be seen as vandalism and may get you blocked from editing Wikipedia. Izehar (talk) 16:25, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Sorry...these users are constantly defacing the article on Greek Macedonia. I didn't post anything offensive on their user sites...I just asked that they stop defacing the article.

Re: Greek Macedonia

Look, this is a very subtle issue - the best thing you can do is to take the discussion to the talk page if you haven't already. To answer your other statement that Greek POV should take precedence (sic), I'm afraid you've got the wrong idea - no one's POV should take precedence. Articles should be written from a neutral point of view. This is Wikipedia policy (see WP:NPOV). What you shouldn't do is harass other users and never edit their user pages. You can only edit their user talk pages (discussion pages). Can't you come up with a compromise over the Mecedonians issue? Call them something like ethnic-Macedonians or Slavic-speaking Macedonians, names like this have been proposed on talk pages, but for some reason have never been used. Izehar (talk) 16:37, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

My point here is that this article CANNOT be neutral. It will either weigh on the Slav Macedonian side or on the Greek side...there is no middle ground. Given the fact that we are talking about a modern region of GREECE, I don't think its necessarily fair to favour the Slav Macedonian side; and be very clear that any mention of this ethnic group as simply "Macedonians" is doing just that. This is offensive, and I think it could be subject to legal action ala Siegenthaler.--PrudenceBumpkin 16:52, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Naming policy

Wikipedia's naming policy encourages us to use whatever name the subject identifies with, to use the most common English name and to use shorter names. Adding "Former Yugoslavian" before the Republic of Macedonia and adding "Slavic" before every mention of Macedonians (ethnic group) is therefore likely to be removed. That said, I am concerned that Wikipedia currently is doing a poor job of presenting the entire region and the issues involved. The best way to correct this is to find solid references for the perspective that you would like to see better-represented and discuss the issue on Talk pages. Edit-warring with the pro-RoM editors here won't get anyone anywhere. Thanks. Jkelly 18:23, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

3RR

Will you stop denying what some historian has said, or I'll report you for violating the 3RR (Three revert rule). Go to the link related to Simovski, and you'll see that he clerly states "Macedonians" among other ethnicities. Regards, Bomac 16:40, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

My point here is that this article CANNOT be neutral. It will either weigh on the Slav Macedonian side or on the Greek side...there is no middle ground. Given the fact that we are talking about a modern region of GREECE, I don't think its necessarily fair to favour the Slav Macedonian side; and be very clear that any mention of this ethnic group as simply "Macedonians" is doing just that. This is offensive, and I think it could be subject to legal action ala Siegenthaler.--PrudenceBumpkin 16:51, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

And for me is very offensive my country to be called FYROM. So quit it. Bomac 16:55, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

I cannot change a United Nations resolution, and Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia is the official international name of record, and will be until a mutually acceptable solution is found...i.e. one that forestalls the misappropriation of Hellenic history. Regards! --PrudenceBumpkin 16:59, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, a United Nations resolution putted-on by Greece. I think that Greece is histerical regarding this issue. Gee, I guess many countries are not holding-on to that greek resolution, like the USA, Russia, China and more than 100 others. Cheers, Bomac 17:08, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

It's not over until it is over...I am confident that Greece will prevail, as they are historically and morally correct. Thank God for Veto power!!--PrudenceBumpkin 17:20, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

WP:NLT

PrudenceBumpkin, we have a policy against legal threats (see Wikipedia:No legal threats). You have just made one - don't do it again or you may be subject to a ban. Thanks. Izehar (talk) 17:03, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Oh please, that was hardly a legal threat. I was just saying that Wikipedia could be seen as "taking sides" when they are preferring the POV of one side (side "A") in an article that discusses the other side (side "B"). Anyway, sorry, it won't happen again.--PrudenceBumpkin 17:08, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Don't worry about it - you'll get used to our bureaucracy in no time if you choose to stay :-) Izehar (talk) 17:10, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, I just want to make myself clear. Referring to Greece's Slavic-speaking minority as simply "Macedonians" is taking FYROM's side....this is HARDLY NEUTRAL, especially when so many other options exist to describe this ethnic group. I think "Slavic Macedonians", even though neither side particularly likes this term, is a term that is not utterly offensive to either side. I'm just asking for some sensitivity here...--PrudenceBumpkin 17:13, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Look, Wikipedia has a tradition of referring to people in the way they refer to themselves, not the way other people refer to them - please bear that in mind before trying to reorganise the entire naming system. In Wikipedia, under the principles of the right to self-determination, the UN are effectivly ignored - that is why the article Israel lists Jerusalem as it's capital and we have an article on the Republic of China. Bear all this in mind before embarking on your crusade. Izehar (talk) 17:29, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

That is a cop-out, and if you don't know it, you ought to! I'm not sure if you understand the political implications of this issue, but its definitely not just a "name issue". In Greece, there are over 2 million people who refer to themselves as Macedonians in the strictly regional sense. Accordingly, a qualifier is needed with respect to this particular article. I'm not on a crusade against Wikipedia's naming system...do you see me editing any articles relating to FYROM?--PrudenceBumpkin 17:34, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Hello there. I'm a Greek too but you shouldn't get emotional with Wikipedia. The thing is that the Greek people who live at that area, called themselves Macedonians, therefore a disambiguation term like "Slavic Macedonians"(sic) should be used for the people of RoM. Please read Help:Contents, starting from WP:NPOV and the five pillars. Take care. +MATIA ☎ 17:42, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks Matia. I'm sorry if I seem to be getting "emotional", but the article on Greek Macedonia should be as neutral as possible (one of the five Wikipedia pillars). By adding the qualifier [Slavic] to Simovski's quote, I am doing just that; making the article neutral. Without that qualifier, the demography article is necessarily BIASED. Again, this is not emotion, but logic. Thanks.--PrudenceBumpkin 18:09, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Hi

Hi there Prudence Bumpkin. I stumbled upon your page, and I thought that I would send you a warm welcome. I have written my own little piece for new users here: User:Zordrac/newbies which you can read if you like. But I will take the time to write to you something specific.

First of all, I fully understand your frustration, and you have made it clear why you are here. When I first came to Wikipedia in 2002, it was because I was looking something up and found a Wikipedia entry which, while it told me a lot that I didn't know before, also had gaping errors in it that needed fixing and I *KNEW* was wrong. Thus, I fixed them. And I think that this is essentially the same situation that you are in. I was in basically the same situation many times. And, like you, I didn't know anything about their rules. I saw huge chunks of false information that was totally unreferenced, and, like you, I thought that there was hence no obligation for me to provide any references when fixing it up. I thought that what we were supposed to do was to just put in our point of view. But, like you, my edits got reverted. I got called a vandal (and I didn't even know what that meant in terms of Wikipedia), got abused, and generally made to feel very unwelcome, with enormous numbers of personal attacks on my talk page and in edit summaries.

This was what pushed me away from Wikipedia, and why my visits were always infrequent. Sometimes I'd only make one edit and I couldn't bare to look at what happened, and then would come back a year later to see if it was still there. I think that Wikipedia has a major problem with newbie abuse. They have a recommendation Wikipedia:Don't bite the newbies but nobody agrees to it, and few people follow it. For new users, this is probably one of the worst places that you can possibly go.

Anyway, I know that you probably feel like you are under attak (and you're probably right!) and hence your reaction is to fight back, but you probably realise that there are more of them than there are of you, and hence you will end up falling down. I can see what will happen from this. Eventually, someone will put in a Request for comment against you, then it will head to Arbitration, and you'll be banned. Its what always happens in situations like this. And the only way to avoid that is for you to do what I always did, and just quit - or better yet, never register to begin with.

But there is another way to deal with this, and I will see if I can explain this to you. Please feel free to write to me on my talk page if you want some more help.

Put simply, what you need to do is to settle down a bit, and look broadly at what is going on. Yes, you are right, and it is important for your point of view to be included. But is it truly neutral? No, its not. Because, whilst the slavs might be a tiny minority, they are still people too. So you need to find some way where its not offensive to Greeks OR Slavs. Can you do that? If you can't, then the only alternative is to mention BOTH viewpoints - or else neither. Can't just list one. I think that that is basically what people are trying to say here.

What I think that people are trying to do is to make this wholly factual, rather than mostly factual. Mostly factual is to only refer to the Greek elements, and the Greek point of view, whilst wholly factual is to refer to both.

Now, that might sound silly to you, and even offensive, but its how it is.

Perhaps to help you to understand, well, imagine an official story that you have heard. I will give you a recent example that you might have heard about - the war in Iraq. Now, in that story, the official story was that we went there because of weapons of mass destruction, and most people believed that. But some, a minority of people, thought that that was a lie. And now, there are many different stories. Now, should Wikipedia report only from the official point of view? Would you like it if the encyclopaedia said that Saddam Hussein was evil, Iraq wants to be a democracy, USA is wonderful, the insurgents are all due to Saddam Hussein's influence, and its a very simple case? Do you think that if the encyclopaedia only talked about that story, which is the official story and the majority view, that it would be a good encyclopaedia? Would it be useful to people?

I think that people need to know all sides of things. Whilst your side is the majority side, we also need to see the minority side. Then we can think more! And this is very important. At some stage, everyone is going to be in the minority.

I would just like to encourage you to make peace, as I think that this will only get worse if you do not. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 19:16, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Oh, another little addendum:

What you are saying with regards to the neutral point of view policy is relevant. What I think would be a good idea is if you were to write on the talk page of the neutral point of view policy. Click here to go to the talk page: Wikipedia_talk:Neutral point of view. You will find that people who respond to you on that talk page will treat you well and will listen to your argument. They might not all agree with you, but they will be respectful. And perhaps you will also find that they will help to explain to you why they think that an article should be neutral, and then you might change your mind. I think that this is a good thing for you to do. And try not to become distressed! This is just a web page after all. Your life does not depend on it. :) Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 19:42, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

 Thanks Zordrac! I appreciate the info you provided about your own experience here, and also about Wikipedia in general. 

Unfortunately, I already have a 'bad taste' in my mouth as a result of what's happened here. I know that I'll eventually "get over" it, but it may take a couple days.

I just want to give you a little insight into why this is such an important issue for me:

The thing is, I began fighting this anti-Greek propaganda in 1991...letters to the editor, protesting in Ottawa, Canada in February 1992 (in the freezing cold), etc. For the longest time though, I sort of forgot about the whole thing. I thought that I should take a more moderate approach, because I thought that people needed to get educated and they would eventually see the historical truth. Unfortunately, I now realize that this will probably never happen.

Greece did not treat its Slavic minority very well, and shame on them for that. However, as the cliche saying goes, two wrongs don't make a right...and it will never be right to refer to this Slavic ethnicity as "Macedonian". In doing this, it necessarily implies that Greek and Greeks are non-native to a region that has continuously been part of the Greek-speaking world since antiquity. Slavic did not arrive in the region as a language until over a millennium after the ancient Macedonian kingdom emerged. Alexander the Great spread Greek culture and language, and not Slavic or any other culture/language, around the known world.

Now, we have these Slav speakers making dubious historical claims in order to steal an important part of Hellenic history away from the Hellenes. I understand that they emerged as a separate ethnicity in the 1880's, separating themselves from the Bulgarians. They have every right to be a separate ethnicity. However, they do not have a right to misappropriate another nation's history.

If, for example, Slovenia decided to rename itself ‘Republic of Venice’, do you not think that Italy would have a problem with this? What if they started circulating maps saying that Venice in Italy was their true capital?

People try to bring up Luxembourg as an example. However, they fail to realize that the situation in northwestern Europe is much different than it is in the Balkans. --PrudenceBumpkin 21:35, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

It sounds like a similar situation to all of the racial divides in South Africa, between English South Africans, traditional Dutch South Africans (Afrikaans), the various local tribes (including Zulus), and all of the others. Anyway, if this is a problem that also exists in the country, then it needs to be addressed there rather than on Wikipedia. Wikipedia is meant to just report on things. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 07:09, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't know about the situation in South Africa, but I doubt it is similar to the situation in the Balkans. The political backdrop to this entire thing boils down to irredentism (i.e. territorial claims) of the former communist bloc countries -Yugoslavia and Bulgaria- against Greece. (They wanted to annex Greek Macedonia in order to have access to the Aegean & Mediterranean Seas through the major port city of Thessalonike). Most people, understandably, are ignorant of all of the reasons behind this entire debacle, including the poor Slav Macedonians who have been caught in this political tug-of-war.

Wikipedia, with its "NPOV", should be very careful when referring to the Slav Macedonians as "ethnic Macedonians". By doing so, they are not following NPOV.

The official Greek position is that this ethnicity should not be described at all with the name "Macedonia" or "Macedonian". The FYROM position is that they are just Macedonians. Accordingly, a true neutral position would be to refer to these people as "Slav Macedonians", "Macedonian Slavs", or with some other qualifier to the term "Macedonian". --PrudenceBumpkin 16:43, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Alexander the Great

Can I ask you a question? Was Alexander the Great Greek? I always thought he was, when he conquered Palestine, in is ofter referred to as a Greek occupation. On certain websites however, it says that he was not Greek, but Macedonian - weren't Macedonians Greek at that time? Izehar (talk) 23:17, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes, Alexander the Great was Greek. However, there are many people who grasp at straws trying to find any tiny shred of evidence to "theorize" that the ancient Macedonians were not Greeks, even though the very name "Macedonian" is derived from the ancient Greek word for "highlanders".

The ancient Macedonians spoke an archaic form of Greek (either an Aeolic or Doric Greek dialect), which would explain why their speech was not the same as the standard Attic dialect spoken in the majority of ancient Greece.

Slavic tribes did not arrive in the area until at least 900 years after Alexander's death, which begs the question: Why should a Slavic language be called "Macedonian"?--PrudenceBumpkin 23:49, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Alexander the Great was not 'Greek', he lived at a time where there was still a lot of tensions over the idea of Greek unity and 'the other'; ancient Greek commentators did not see the Macedonians as Greeks, but as borderline 'barbarians'. The idea of Alexander the Great as Greek is mainly due to the retrospective view of him as a great example of 'Greekness' due to his contribution to the liberation of Greek states from the Persians. However, contemporaries also criticized him as an 'oriental despot' - surely it is what contemporaries perceived that matters, rather than any geographical or semantic argument.

Reply to your message

Hello, darling. I'd just like to respond to the kind message you left on my talk page. I have been reading through your "theories" on the Macedonian dispute and after having had a good laugh, I decided to make a few points. Everything you said is hopelessly wrong; a more accurate version would be the following:

• Macedonian POV phrasing: to use the term "Macedonian" on its own
• Greek POV phrasing: to use the term "Macedonian Slavs". This can be proven by the fact that officially, these people are known in Greece as Σλαβομακεδόνες (ie Macedonian Slavs). This can be ascertained from the fact that, despite the fact that they are scarcely mentioned, Greek POV institutions, such as the national Greek Radio and TV and the Greek Wikipedia call them Σλαβομακεδόνες.
• A NPOV phrasing would be to append a neutral and factual disambiguation term to distinguish them from their surroundings who also claim the name "Macedonia". A good example would be to distinguish them based on ethnicity as opposed to regional identity. Oops, isn't that what we are doing already? Yes, I believe it is: Macedonians (ethnic group). We are saying the Macedonian ethnic group as opposed to the ethnically Greek or ethnically Bulgarian Macedonians. Therefore, guess what: Wikipedia is neutral, who woulda thunk it.

Anyway, it was nice hearing from you *snigger snigger*. You may want to have a look at this website, it's my personal favourite: it cites ancient Greek sources, which claim that the Ancient Greeks and the Ancient Maceodnians viewed each other as foreigners. Wow, what a shame we can't ask Demosthenes what he thought of the Macedonians? I'll tell you, he hated them ;-)

Anyway, sweetums. I'd better be off. Good bye, and if I ever hear from you again, it will be seventy billion years too soon. Rex^(talk) 12:25, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

God, I'm so tired of hearing the same old tired and IDIOTIC arguments from anti-Greeks. Just shut up already, because that Demosthenes thing has been explained to death already and I'm not going into it here. Plus, your "source" is obviously a pro-FYROM site.

Anyway, Balkan squabbles are totally pathetic, and this includes Greeks who are involved it them. Since I don't want to be pathetic anymore, I'm moving on to intelligent conversations.

I don't care anymore if the ethnic Bulgarians of FYROM want to call themselves "ethnic Macedonians"...everyone knows they are retarded for doing so.

For an Albanian, you're sure very interested in Greek matters. Go discuss your own country's un-history!--PrudenceBumpkin 20:45, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

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