Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2016 June 26

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June 26

Reference of Liberland page for italian language readers.

As everybody can find looking for the argument "Liberland" in Wikipedia there are a lot of articles in several languages who gives appropriate informations about the matter of Liberland and his battle to achieve the status of nation trough his diplomatic activity. That is effective all around the world except fot the italian localization of Wikipedia. Every attempt to restore the page "Liberland" ends in a frustrating banning withouth any further explication. May be someone from international Wikipedia could suggest a different policy to the italian editorial staff. Any help is welcome. Best regards Umberto Fabbiani — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.38.70.172 (talk) 14:49, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

It's fairly unlikely people in the Italian wikipedia will take kindly to people from any of the other international wikipedia tellings them what to do. We here on the English wikipedia definitely don't. Note that without speaking on the merits of the Liberland article on the Italian wikipedia, continually recreating a deleted article without establishing sufficient reason why the previous deletion was in error or there's now merit to an article when there wasn't before, is the sort of thing liable to get you blocked where you try it. It definitely happens here on the English wikipedia, and I'm fairly sure will also be the case on other major international wikipedias (e.g. Spanish, French, Chinese). Once an article has been deleted several times, you should general discuss first not after. And such a discussion should be based on the wikipedia's own policies and guidelines, not what other wikipedias do. If you've already been blocked, you've likely lost your right to discuss and depending on the circumstances it may be hard to earn it back. Nil Einne (talk) 16:39, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

Looking at the Italian Wikipedia, the article has been deleted several times under their equivalent of WP:CSD (it:Wikipedia:Cancellazioni immediate) but without a rationale being given. This userpage comment might also be relevant. However, this is not an issue that the English Wikipedia can influence. Tevildo (talk) 17:45, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for your contribution. I'm not the author of the page but i'm interested in the matter as user and scholar. There is no way to open a conversation in the italian edition neither to get some motivated explanation. So i suppose there is some ideological prejudice. I'll not proceed further and will stay with some doubt in my mind. best regards, Umberto. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.38.70.172 (talk) 19:16, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

Why do you say "There is no way to open a conversation"? You haven't said anything suggesting anyone has tried to start a proper conversation and my quick look at what happened there doesn't suggest anyone has tried to start such a conversaion. As I said above, a proper conversation would likely be taking about it in a suitable place, explaining with evidence why you think the decision was wrong based on the Italian wikipedia's policies and guidelines and in many cases it may very well be you or whoever believes the article should exist who would need to start that conversation. Continually recreating the article in main space (whoever did it) is definitely not the way to open a conversation and in fact is probably going make it difficult to have a proper conversation. However it should still be possible if someone makes the proper effort and you've said nothing to suggest anyone has even tried. (Note also the way wikipedias handle articles which may have merit but where the current version of the article clearly fails to demonstrate that or worse is clearly unsuitable varies. In some cases deleting the article may very well be the norm. In that case particularly after the second attempt, whoever did it, you may very well have to write the article somewhere other than mainspace although again you probably should discuss first before starting. In other words, start with explaining with evidence why you think there's merit for an article according to the policies and guidelines of the Italian wikipedia i.e. not stuff like "there's an article on the English wikipedia" and if you can convince people that maybe you're right but they can't see it in the old version, offer to create a draft somewhere for them to review.) Notably assuming there is some sort of "ideological prejudice" when there doesn't seem to be any evidence for that doesn't help anyone. Nil Einne (talk) 06:30, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

Recovery of the British stock market only - why?

Most stock markets in Europe lost roughly 7 % due to Brexit; however the FTSE in London then recovered significantly to a minus left of -3.20 %, while markets in continental Europe stayed "on ground". What might be the reason? Is it just the time lag of one hour? When it became apparent that the downfall had stopped, continental European markets didn't have the time to significantly go up anymore, but London did have the time? Or are there probably other reasons? --KnightMove (talk) 17:35, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

Did the FTSE lose ground in the days leading up to the vote, over uncertainty ? If so, that might explain why there was less of a net drop after the vote. StuRat (talk) 04:37, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

No, as all other stock markets it had a sharp drop, literally vertically downwards, directly after the vote. But it recovered more than others. Compare the English FTSE weekly chart vs. the German DAX. --KnightMove (talk) 11:20, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

The FTSE 100 and other UK indexes also rose sharply in the days immediately before the referendum, on the expectation of a "Remain" vote, so in a sense the dramatic falls on Friday were just a "correction" to that, but it had also been very volatile in previous days. It was down another 2.5% today. Thanks, Dave... AndrewWTaylor (talk) 20:26, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

Brexit and the British Economy

What are the economic implications of the Brexit, and why did the Pound lose value so quickly? Jwilliampomeroy (talk) 21:07, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

on economic implications, that if it does exit from the European Union then 1) it has to renegotiate trade deals with all the world, creating uncertainty and, until such deals are done, subjecting British exports to adverse tariffs 2) that it has to resolve the basic conundrum that to get access to the European Single Market (i.e. to avoid import tariffs when exporting to Eurpoe) it has to allow freedom of movement and pay contributions to Europe, exactly two of the issues on which Brexit was predicated - and failure to gain access to the market will impact negatively on British exports to Europe and 3) companies making (or having made) inwards investment in Europe are hardly likely to put the UK at the top of the list, if it is no longer a domicile from which the European market can be addressed: so think jobs & companies and tax revenues leaving the UK, or being foregone 4) all of which is exactly the climate in which any investor will think twice about investing: so expect to see decreased capital expenditure from business, which as is the way of these things, creates a negative feedback loop. Eventually all this may lead to some sunny upland, according to the Leave campaign, or not, according to pretty much eveyone else. --Tagishsimon (talk) 21:36, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

The reason the markets are so worried and the pound has fallen is because no-one actually knows what the economic implications of Brexit will turn out to be. No-one thought it would actually happen, and there is no previous experience to base expectations on, so everything is uncertain - and the markets dislike uncertainty. Wymspen (talk) 21:43, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

That's quite true, but we can say more: the price of Sterling, denominated in Euros or Dollars, falls because there is less demand for it as the rest of the world declines to buy Sterling to invest in Britain, and because there is an expectation that the value of Sterling will fall, and so it ceases to be considered a sensible thing in which to hold wealth: holders of Sterling sell, and the price goes down. --Tagishsimon (talk) 21:50, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

Where to begin? - 1) the government has collapsed, so any investment plans made on an expectation of stable government in future have evaporated (like Greece), 1a) we face an endless go-around of this, since a rejoin-the-EU movement looks inevitable even if we did quit 2) financial services suspect that they may have to leave the UK, so will soon start to talk about moving to Dublin 3) this will crash the London property market (not necessarily a bad thing tbh) which will lead to cancellations of planned housing developments 4) many businesses selling to Europe are frantically finding a way to relocate to Dublin 5) Scottish independence seems inevitable 6) none of the prospective new prime ministers inspires confidence about their ability to fix any other coming crises, especially since civil servants will be diverted away from other work to trying to patch things up with Europe 7) all imports are now more expensive, so importers will do worse 8) many manufacturers depend on imports to manufacture things, so actually a weak pound may not help them as much as you'd think 9) more positively (?) a declining number of immigrants (or prospect of same, or the UK becoming less desirable to migrants) may push wages up. 10) Tourism probably got a lot more attractive, since the weak pound can help here, but it's mostly too late for people to take advantage of this to book summer holidays in the UK. Basically, nobody knows, but nothing about this sounds good. For a specific case study, let's examine the writings of arch-Brexiteer pundit Allister Heath, who went in two days from "the premises of Project Fear – that Brexit would trigger economic dislocation, a trade war and a recession – are utterly bogus" to "warnings of economic Armageddon...will doubtlessly become partly self-fulfilling in the months to come." Blythwood (talk) 21:54, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

As a more speculative assessment, I think the Brexitters in the City of London rather fancied the idea of turning the UK into one gigantic hedge fund, another Iceland - no or fewer treaty obligations to apply regulations, massively reduced regulation, lower taxes, much more financialised. But this is likely not politically possible, since such people (although they have or control a lot of money) are outweighed by the rest of business, which trades heavily with Europe and are broadly OK with the EU - certainly more OK with it than with tariffs on the border and all major US banks quitting the UK for Frankfurt and Dublin. Except keeping that looks difficult too, since we can't keep that if we don't keep free movement of people, and that's not what the anti-immigrant voters thought they were getting. So there now follows a collision coming between about 99% of the 1%, who have much to gain from being in the single market, in coalition with younger people, and a coalition of the 1% of the 1% who don't, the poorest and the oldest (who are often set for life having bought houses at a tenth their current value). This paves the way for decades of internecine political conflict. Blythwood (talk) 22:09, 26 June 2016 (UTC)