Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Macedonia 2/Evidence

Delete/Disregard Ethnic polarisation

IMO the paragraph on Ethnic polarisation must be deleted and all contributors and administrators directed to ignore any inferences it may contain.Politis (talk) 13:46, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree. I have touched on the subject in my section [1]. I think it's offensive (bordering on WP:OUTING) and demeaning towards people, judging them by where they were born instead of the content of their posts. --Radjenef (talk) 17:01, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I oppose the deletion of evidence. One of the main issues that this arbitration is attempting to decide is the effect of nationalistic and parochial points of view on the stonewalling and failure to reach any consensus in articles such as Macedonia. This is a serious problem in Wikipedia and needs to be addressed. There is no outing here since all such identifications are based on self-identifications by the users themselves. This is the fundamental problem which lies at the root of this arbitration. If the Greek side in this issue had not made a point of it themselves, then it would not be an issue, but time and time again, we see the vandalism of Macedonian articles linked to Greek politics with overt statements in the edit line. We see statements such as "Greeks will oppose this name until we die", etc. scattered throughout the talk page at both Talk:Greece and Talk:Macedonia. The issue is an issue of entrenched and uncompromising nationalism. That is the issue that needs to be discussed. (Taivo (talk) 17:34, 22 April 2009 (UTC))

Did all of the users listed write "Greeks will oppose this name until we die" in the edit line or are you referring to other users? I haven't seen any diffs linking the people that were listed to such statements. I also fail to see why such statements from a minority of users would justify disregarding the arguments of one-or-another ethnic group. Wikipedia arbitration decisions were never based on the number of flags appearing on either side; they were based on the merits of each side's arguments. To ask that the content of a person's post be disregarded because of where they were born is demeaning and offensive. As far as WP:OUTING goes, I agree that it doesn't apply to users who self-identify as Greeks, but ChrisO's ethnic polarization argument also tries to deduce the ethnicity of users who are not self-declared Greeks ("unknown, but blah blah blah probably Greek"). --Radjenef (talk) 19:45, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Make your case in the Evidence page, either present counter-evidence or state that the evidence provided by somebody else is not well supported, however trying to remove evidence has a distinct skunkish perfume to me. man with one red shoe 19:53, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I couldn't agree more with you man with one red shoe. Trying to remove evidence would be a dubious thing to do, which is exactly why I haven't tried to remove them. Trying to do something and agreeing that it should be done are two completely different things. I reserve the right to express my opinion that the ethnic polarisation paragraph should be deleted/disregarded by the arbitration committee. If my name ever appeared on such a list, my tone would have been considerably less friendly. --Radjenef (talk) 20:26, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Ok, I see that you added "disregard" that makes more sense to me, you can make a case to disregard some evidence, asking for deletion is not OK in my view. man with one red shoe 21:07, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

(ec)I didn't say that all Greeks made these statements, but these statements and similar nationalistic ones have been made by persons involved in the discussion at both Talk:Greece and Talk:Macedonia (they are, after all, the same discussion). And no one says that your comments should be ignored. What we are saying is that when one nationalistic or other parochial group blocks all attempts at compromise and and the application of Wikipedia policy within their "walled garden", then there must be a procedure to break the deadlock besides simply allowing the nationalists to build an unyielding wall around their "topic". That is what this arbitration is fundamentally about. If the evidence is bad, then the arbitrators will recognize that and weigh it appropriately. But disallowing any party to present whatever evidence they deem relevant to the issue is censorship of the most wretched sort. Do you want us telling you what you can and cannot say when you present your evidence? I think not. (Taivo (talk) 20:00, 22 April 2009 (UTC))

Ok, I understand what you're saying. I still don't see why these people bring a "deadlock" or build a "walled garden". Are you implying that their votes prevent proposals from materializing? As far as I know, it's not the number of votes that really make a difference but the arguments that people present as comments next to their votes. If what you're saying were the case then the article would never have had a name containing the word "Macedonia" in the first place! Anyway, let's not start imagining cabals everywhere, this whole thing sounds too conspiracy theory-ish for me to take it seriously. --Radjenef (talk) 23:02, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Comment I also disagree with this list and it should be deleted. I don't even think the list is correct, wasn't it terminated halfway through the straw poll? Jack forbes (talk) 17:38, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I oppose that's key to this case. It's Greek POV fought teeth and nails by mostly Greek editors. Present your own case and your own arguments, let the commission make up its mind after reading all the evidence presented, militating for removing arguments and evidence presented by one party is unfair in this context. man with one red shoe 17:43, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I think we have to keep all the evidence. It isn't for us to decide what evidence is or is not relevant. Also, honestly, if the arbitrators find some of the evidence presented to them faulty or evidence against the person presenting the evidence, that's acceptable too. But we should leave all the sections of evidence presented by everybody alone. Only those person adding the evidence contained in a particular section is supposed to edit that sections, anyway. John Carter (talk) 17:49, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I have to disagree with you. The evidence from both sides should be looked at and if there is a very obvious lack of references and good arguments from either side then and only then should they look at the reason for it, whether that be nationalist POV or not. The list being presented now may initially sway the opinion of admins before they look carefully at the arguments being presented. Jack forbes (talk) 17:54, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Give the admins some credit--they're not stupid and won't be easily swayed just because someone posted their evidence first. Post your evidence against the nationalist label. They are smart and will decide for themselves what is and is not relevant. They were selected to be the neutral arbitration committee exactly because they are not easily swayed by pretty colors and will carefully consider all evidence whether presented in a graphics-heavy Powerpoint presentation or typed on a Smith Corona typewriter. (That's figurative, of course.) (Taivo (talk) 18:17, 22 April 2009 (UTC))

How can anybody propose to remove any evidence? Let everybody present the evidence they want, present counter-evidence if you don't agree show why the other evidence is wrong or incomplete and let the judges judge which evidence is compelling and let them decide what to believe -- but to argue to remove evidence leaves me without words... man with one red shoe 18:03, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Or in other words, "the evidence may harm my case so please remove it!". The mind boggles... -- ChrisO (talk) 18:19, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. But, having dealt with you, Chris, the rest of us are used to that by now. John Carter (talk) 18:21, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Do you suppose you could omit the personal attacks? It's not helping anyone, least of all yourself. -- ChrisO (talk) 18:46, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

My comment was about how virtually everybody so many others, including parties with no personal interests in the subject like myself, have been more than shocked remarkably disheartened by your actions, which is not a personal attack as per WP:NPA. Misinterpreting the statements of others to make them appear to be something they aren't hardly helps your case, Chris. John Carter (talk) 18:53, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't think there's any need for you to characterise the views of "virtually everybody" else. They can speak for themselves, and I'm sure they will. Bickering outside the arbitration proceedings isn't constructive, and I'm not going to continue this dialogue any further here. -- ChrisO (talk) 19:14, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree. I wish you would stop the bickering yourself with your misrepresentations of the statements of others, and am grateful that you agreed to do so. John Carter (talk) 19:24, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

You don't speak for me, John Carter, and I could name several others. I was neither shocked nor offended by ChrisO's actions. Your characterization of "virtually everybody" is total exaggeration and grandstanding. "Majority" may be accurate if you've counted, but "virtually everybody" is not. (Taivo (talk) 19:33, 22 April 2009 (UTC))

John Carter, you don't speak for me either, I'm was not shocked by ChrisO actions, I find them based on policies and actually supported by ironclad argumentation, stop using this page to make accusation or insinuations about him, use the evidence part to argue your case, don't try to remove the evidence brought by others or use this as an excuse to make personal attacks. man with one red shoe 19:35, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree with John Carter. At that time, I, non-Greek, was shocked and considered the move not based on policies was totally inappropriate .--Caspian blue 19:41, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

(e-c response to The man with one red shoe) Sir, I apologize for bringing about your reaction, and for having misrepresented your opinion. That was not my intention. I would also appreciate it if you did not misrepresent my statements. If you can point out anywhere where I said I sought to remove the information, I would welcome seeing it. I believe I was saying it should be included, because it is not acceptable to edit another person's sections. If you can find where I said anything differently, I would welcome seeing it. Thank you. Oh, and, by the way, I'm a German who doesn't have a dog in this fight one way or another. I am simply looking at the policies as I have read and seen them. John Carter (talk) 19:42, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I was replying to your "it should be deleted" argument, I probably misunderstood who you meant to delete it. If you were urging ChrisO then that's probably OK, if he does, I will add it myself though since this is one the key issue here, the conflict of interest and POV that some editors display. man with one red shoe 20:04, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Where did I make this "it should be deleted" argument. Please point it out to me. Thank you. John Carter (talk) 20:18, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

If I may interject... John, I think people have your comments confused with those of Jack forbes. Hiberniantears (talk) 20:42, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Oops, silly me. My bad, sorry.man with one red shoe 21:06, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, it was me guv! I became involved in the subject to object to the use of an ethnic list of voters on the straw poll. Now as then I don't agree with this as it takes away from the arguments put forward. It is of course only an opinion of mine which can be ignored by the editor concerned, or indeed anyone else. Cheers. Jack forbes (talk) 22:19, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

The list here is highly relevant to the proceedings, as it demonstrates an ethnic/nationalist ganging up on an article to impose a nationalist POV on the article, something clearly contrary to Wikipedia policy. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 23:48, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree to disregard the paragraph on Ethnic polarisation on principle and because it is flawed. The list presented by ChrisO regards only the supporters of the use "former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" vs. "Republic of Macedonia" on the Greece page. In the recent survey on the equested reversion of move, of the 16 supporters or renaming the article "Republic of Macedonia", only 5 have any sign of afiliation with Greece, one with Bulgaria.  Andreas  ^(T) 01:49, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

These are in fact two different issues. The conflict at the Greece page is what originally brought us here, and the ethnic polarisation there, which precisely mirrors the permanent stonewalling that had been going on previously in all the related debates since 2005, is the one reason why we are having this case in the first place. Chris' move of the country page has of course been more controversial and responses to it have been more mixed, that's correct, but that shouldn't stop us from addressing the underlying reasons of the conflict here. Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:46, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Note

As a clerk out of retirement, currently not the clerk of this case let me explain a few things. First off anyone is free to provide whatever evidence they like within the evidence section. However participants are asked to keep their evidence as concise as possible. The arbs will sort through what they are given. You guys are free to refute each other's evidence, but remember the longer this page gets, the more time it will take for arbcom to review the case, so try to stick to relevant issues. Additionally you guys can analyze evidence in the workshop, see Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Macedonia_2/Workshop#Analysis_of_evidence.

I also would like to advise all participants that their behavior on this page should adhere to WP:CIVIL. Try to avoid insinuating things. If any place is a place to be on your toes about civility, this case and related subpages is it.

I may be wrong and I will defer to tiptoety should he contradict anything said here. —— nixeagle^{email me} 05:26, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Comment on policies vs. guidelines

Somehow since to one side it seems that WP:NCON is especially damaging some people claim that we are supposed to use "policies" not "guidelines", but look what it says in the WP:NAME policy page: "Use the naming conflict guideline when there is disagreement over the right name to use." (my bold) So it clearly says that if there's a disagreement about the name we should use the guideline, I think the argument made in the "Evidence" page about policies superseding guidelines is dead on arrival. There's another problem with that argument, it claims it quotes from a policy page WP:NP but I could not find that page, I assume it's WP:NAME, however in that page I could not find the claimed quote "...use the most common name of a person or thing that does not conflict with the names of other people or things" can I have a confirmation that that exact quote does appear in a naming policy? Please provide a link. Thanks. man with one red shoe 22:48, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Where is this link to WP:NP? I can't find it, but if it is a dead or red link it should be noted as such. John Carter (talk) 22:54, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Strike that I confused WP:NC with WP:NP, second confusion today, I guess I'm tired, the question about quote remains. man with one red shoe 23:08, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

You didn't confuse WP:NC with WP:NP... I had a typo in my statement and fixed it in the meantime. I meant to write WP:NC, not WP:NP, sorry. --Radjenef (talk) 23:12, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

OK, can you clarify where did you get that quote from? man with one red shoe 23:14, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm not quoting, I'm paraphrasing, so you'll probably won't find it using the exact wording. The part of WP:NC that I was referring to was WP:NCCN where it reads (and this time it is a quote): "title an article using the most common name of the person or thing that is the subject of the article. Make the title unique as described in the disambiguation guideline." I understand what you say about using WP:NCON in cases where there is a disagreement. I never said that WP:NCON is not to be used at all; what I said was that it can be used as a guideline, but WP:NC will always take priority because it is a policy not a guideline. I am willing, however, to edit my evidence section to make this clearer, thank you for the input.

If you paraphrasing, then don't use quotes, it is misleading. Thanks for correcting. man with one red shoe 02:11, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Even if one is to use WP:NCON as a guideline in this case, it clearly states that "If the name of an inanimate or non-human entity is disputed by two jurisdictions and one or more English-language equivalents exists, use the most common English-language name." I believe this goes along perfectly with what I explain in my evidence section: For the time being, there are only three reasonable candidates; "Macedonia", "Republic of Macedonia" and "former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia". "Macedonia" is an ambiguous name because it could apply to two jurisdictions, so we are left with the other two. Of these two, the most common one ("former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia") takes precedence. --Radjenef (talk) 00:13, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Just a factual point: it's three jurisdictions rather than two. Apcbg (talk) 10:41, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

That last paragraph doesn't belong here. It belongs either in your Evidence or at Talk:Macedonia. We shouldn't turn this into another endless head-banging session (in other words, Radjenef, you will convince no one here). (Taivo (talk) 00:33, 23 April 2009 (UTC))

I do not understand why you deal in absolutes. That paragraph belongs here because it is a part of my revised Evidence statement and it helps in answering the clarification question that was asked to me. --Radjenef (talk) 01:28, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

If it's part of your evidence then put it there. This page isn't for a continuation of Talk:Greece and Talk:Macedonia. (Taivo (talk) 03:39, 23 April 2009 (UTC))

If you read WP:NAME, how did you miss this? "Any proposal to change between names should be examined on a case-by-case basis, and discussed on talk pages before a name is changed." And just to be sure that our case falls within the remit of this policy: "An incomplete list of controversial names includes: Roman Catholic Church vs. Catholic Church; BC/AD vs. BCE/CE; Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia vs. Republic of Macedonia vs. Macedonia; Palestinian Arabs vs. Palestinians vs. Palestinian People". That's part of the dozens of policy violations I've gathered for ChrisO, you'll see it all soon (probably in the weekend - too busy with work right now).--Avg (talk) 23:09, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

This is not the issue I raised, please don't filibuster my questions, open a new discussion, or write in evidence page, OK? man with one red shoe 23:14, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I know this might be seen as being off-topic, but I wanted to fit it in anyway somewhere. My apologies to the man with one red shoe if he doesn't want it here. But the specific phrasing used in the policy quoted above is the phrasing I suggested earlier needed to be changed. My concern is with the order in which the alternatives are presented. Roman Catholic Church is the name for the name for the article on that church. The fact that it is followed directly by Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia could cause some to think that, using parallelism, that would be the proper name of that article, although it wasn't even before this all happened. I think that phrasing needs to be rewritten so that it states a bit more clearly which are the preferred names and which are not. My apologies if it is in the wrong place. Please feel free to move or delete as you see fit, man with one red shoe. John Carter (talk) 23:18, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

MWORS this is the very issue, because your clear objective is to raise WP:NC to equal level with WP:NAME. A policy violation has clear precedence over a guideline violation. But you know what, I will follow your advice and leave all this for the evidence page and the workshop. Please feel free to delete all my comments from your topic.--Avg (talk) 23:22, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

This Page

I want to be clear that we have not crossed the line here yet (I don't think). But we've gotten close. I think that we need to be very careful on this page that we talk only about the formalities of the arbitration and don't turn it into Talk:Greece or Talk:Macedonia. I'm talking to myself as much as to everyone else. Let's just be careful so that we don't wear out our welcome with ARBCOM. (Taivo (talk) 23:45, 22 April 2009 (UTC))

On the other hand if the commission has a taste of what goes on every day on Talk:Greece and Talk:Macedonia it would help them make up their mind faster :D OK, no joking from now on... man with one red shoe 02:14, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Right, you guys want to try to avoid re-hashing the case over again on the various case talk pages. Bringing up new developments on the disputed subject area etc is ok if those developments would impact this case. At this point, parties should focus on providing evidence and the workshop. Most discussion and possibilities will appear in the workshop as that is where folks start to bring up what they feel should be the result of the case. There is purposely places for parties/others/and arbitrators to comment on the workshop :). —— nixeagle^{email me} 05:30, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Error in Radjenef's evidence

I'm not going to bother refuting this evidence on the main page because it really doesn't belong here anyway, since this case won't directly decide the result of the naming dispute. Still, I think it's important to note that the Google evidence Radjenef cites is highly flawed, and not only because Google searches aren't reliable indicators of commonality. His use of " -"former yugoslav" " doesn't just omit results that use the name FYROM; it omits any result that so much as once uses the phrase "former yugoslav", thus omitting any result that calls the country ROM but mentions FYROM as an alternative name (for example, our own article which is still cached under the name ROM on Google). Heimstern Läufer (talk) 02:24, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

The difference in numbers in my results is huge. Wikipedia articles are too few in comparison. There are 821,000 hits containing the name "Republic of Macedonia" without containing the provisional reference "former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia". Are you suggesting that there are more than 80% additional websites containing both denominations? This is what would have been required: 821,000 + 0.80 * 821,000 = 1,477,800 --Radjenef (talk) 13:46, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Given that it is an alternatively used name, yes, I'd say it's likely that a huge percentage of references to "Republic of Macedonia" also mention the alternative, longer form. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 14:01, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

"Outing"

I have seen this term pop up several times (both in the evidence section and in comments elsewhere, such as WP:AN/I and Talk:Macedonia); it needs to be stopped, because it's being misused.

Wikipedia's policy on revealing personal information is quite explicit in what is and is not considered outing, and the list compiled by User:Husond at Talk:Greece (and reproduced on the evidence page by User:ChrisO in the "Ethnic polarisation" section) doesn't qualify. (Since all of the editors squawking about this are Greek, I will limit the discussion to them.) Every single one of the editors who has a nationality assigned to him has an explicit reference on his user page (or, in one case, it's in an archived version of the userpage). It's not outing to point to someone's userpage, especially when the information was added by the editors themselves. Husond actually was quite conservative; only people with explicit references got Greek flags; the rest got the UN flag, even if their edits consisted solely of edits to Greek topics (like this editor or this one), their userpage contains nothing other than Greek language statements (such as this one or this one), their username is comprised of Greek letters (like this one), or have identified as Greek on discussion pages elsewhere (like this one). None of these have anything to do with the revelation of personal information, and even if they did, it's all self-revelation, not outing. The outrage seems to be motivated more by the clarity produced by the visual than any real policy-based opposition. Horologium (talk) 07:22, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

I strongly disagree with you on this one. The fact that someone added an item on his PERSONAL userpage, does not mean this information may be distributed around the wiki and wide internet community. It has been placed at one page and that does not give anyone the permission to show it around the google search pages! Also, I do not aggree with the method of "flagging" people, in terms of profiling, in any case. These are methods used in obscurantic periods of history. This is one way or another personal data. Just because an internet user adds a simple piece of data like his email on a facebook page, it is illegal or least immoral to distribute his email here and there within the network, for example. And I fail to see how a person's flag automatically undermines his opinion! Everyone deserves an opinion, as far as I know. And I am not so sure whether this person may be charactetized conservative after comment cleansing on his page [2] and then thinking that hidding the personal data profiles within his pages as if he owns it somehow would be a nice idea [3]. Userpages are either personal or not. Decide. --Dimorsitanos (talk) 14:03, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Indeed. Certain users have been running through the wiki shouting and hollering about this terrible "ethnic profiling" or "outing" ever since the conflict began, weeks ago. They have been forum-shopping with their protests and were told by an overwhelming consensus of uninvolved observers that they have no case and should shut up, time and again. Of course the evidence will stay – it documents the one cause and reason why we're here in the first place. Although I would recommend Chris might want to replace his presentation of it with something more streamlined (and more up to date), along the lines of my summary here. Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:51, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the link, Fut. Perf. I'm running up against the word limit on my own evidence, so I might simply link to your presentation as an alternative. -- ChrisO (talk) 07:56, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, those wondering about what kind of collaboration (whithin wikipedia or even behind the lights? who knows...) occurs among these two users got their answer...--Dimorsitanos (talk) 14:20, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, correct me if I'm wrong Horologium, but I think you are referring to WP:OUTING not WP:OUT. In any case, I never said that the list compiled by User:Husond and reproduced by User:ChrisO constitutes WP:OUTING. I said that it is bordering WP:OUTING and I continue to believe that it is a dangerous path to take. Dangerous with regards to users' privacy that is. Whatever the case, the crux of my argument still stands: I sincerely think that it's more important to pay attention to what people are saying (i.e. the validity of their argument) as opposed to where they are from. --Radjenef (talk) 08:01, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

How is privacy compromised when they've stated their nationality / location on their user pages? As I noted in the evidence, Wikipedia's policies aren't ethnically biased, so there's no reason to expect members of a particular nationality to all take the same side if all they're considering is Wikipedia's policies. The fact that one side in this dispute consists almost entirely of editors from one ethnic group shows very clearly that external political factors are determining their position. -- ChrisO (talk) 08:12, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Chris has fairly accurately summarized my views on the matter. When I protected Greece, I had little idea of the scope of the dispute within Wikipedia, although I was aware of the real-world dispute. Once I began reviewing all of the arguments on that article's talk page (and the talk page of related articles), it was immensely clear that there was an ethnic bias at work; one country's editors supported one view, and the other side was composed of editors of many other ethnicities. What is more striking is the summation compiled by Fut.Perf from the straw poll; there was one admin who supported using "FYROM", and 14 who supported using "RoM". (I didn't participate in that poll, but I would have thrown in my lot with the RoM group, making it 15 admins.) Those 14 admins come from at least five different countries, on three different continents. There is a slight imbalance there, and that was on the matter of using "FYROM" or "RoM", not "Macedonia". Horologium (talk) 08:40, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Administrators are no different than regular editors when it comes down to making decisions; all are equal in the eyes of wikipedia. How was the vote split? If the result was 14 to 1, then I do not see how that one person could be causing that much trouble. In any case, polls aren't really meant to be decided based on the number of votes anyway! Were the arguments presented by the "fYRoM" side not convincing enough? If they were/weren't convincing, then what's the problem here? I don't get it! --Radjenef (talk) 09:56, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Admins are no different, but the core issue was edit-warring, and admins are the ones who are responsible for applying blocks. With that in mind, it appears that the admin corps was squarely against the "FYROM" faction. The problem is not "who's convincing" and "who's not convincing"; the problem is that Greek editors immediately accused anyone who disagreed with them of anti-Greek sentiment, regardless of their arguments. (I was the one who originally suggested arbitration over the terminology issue, but several Greek editors specifically objected to me even filing the request, because I disagreed with their position. Fut.Perf, who was responsible for nuking the original RoM WikiProject when it began to be used as a PoV coordination site, and who used to be the "go-to" admin for Greek editors, is now accused of a vendetta against the Greeks because he disagrees with their PoV on this issue. There are other examples out there; I'll not link to all of them. Horologium (talk) 10:16, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

I still fail to understand how this addresses the case at hand. Many users claim that by using "the most commonly used term" over "self-identifying terminology" we are more strictly abiding to wikipedia policy. ChrisO makes a case that the people sharing that view are largely of Greek descent. You rehash these old stories to me but I do not see why that should make the arguments of those people any less valid. All I see is that, throughout the years, people have been discussing factions and behaviour instead of the arguments at hand. --Radjenef (talk) 11:13, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

FYROM is not a name; it is a provisional label, created because of the Greek government's position on the word "Macedonia". The people of the country call themselves "Macedonian", the country's common name is "Macedonia", and the official name is "Republic of Macedonia". More than 60% of the countries of the world refer to the country as the "Republic of Macedonia", including four of the five permanent members of the security council, and (most relevant here) a sizable majority of the nations in which English is widely spoken. (Only Australia and New Zealand use "FYROM"; the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and India all use "Republic of Macedonia".) One can pull up many documents which use FYROM, but they are 1)older documents (for example, the US did not use RoM until 2004) 2) International organizations (which follow the UN if Greece is a member) or 3) from countries which use FYROM officially. Even in nations which use FYROM, most of the people will use "Macedonia" to refer to the country, except for Greece. It's improbable at best that "FYROM" is the more commonly recognizable world worldwide. The location of the article at "Republic of Macedonia" was a concession made to placate the Greek editors, and it apparently wasn't enough, because of the constant edit-warring to change RoM to FYROM across dozens of articles. That is why the whole argument that "FYROM" is the most commonly used term is poppycock. Horologium (talk) 11:49, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Now, now... no need to get all upset and foul-mouthed. The people of the region in Greece call themselves "Macedonian", the region's common and official name is "Macedonia". I believe 100% of the countries in the world refer to the region as "Macedonia", including all security council members and English speaking countries. Obviously, there is a conflict and there is no reason why the Republic should gain precedence over the region just because it's a larger entity. Besides, the term "Macedonia" is totally confusing and ambiguous to everyone involved. I believe this clarifies my policy argument on why "Macedonia" is really not an option in this dispute. As far as the other two naming options go, country references change quite often as you've already pointed out. I think that online content or international organizations provide a better measure of which term is used more often. They certainly provide one that won't be prone to change as often. I understand that "former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" is not really a name, but at least it's a provisional reference both sides agreed to, so why not have it provisionally in wikipedia too? That way we can say that the article is not named but provisionally referred to, we'll be using something that will stop both sides from bickering since they've both agreed to it, and we'll be able to focus on the more important tasks at hand. I want to say thank you; I believe that our dialogue has given me a great idea on how to compromise. --Radjenef (talk) 12:52, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Radjenef wrote: "... there is no reason why the Republic should gain precedence over the region just because it's a larger entity." Quite untrue actually, for the Republic constitutes just 30-odd percent of the surface area of Macedonia (region), while Greek Macedonia accounts for over 50 percent (including the historical primary city of the region, Thessaloniki / Solun), while yet another part of the region — Pirin Macedonia — belongs to Bulgaria. Apcbg (talk) 15:38, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

I'll admit to being a bit upset (irritated would be a more precise characterization), but foul-mouthed? I don't think so. Horologium (talk) 15:11, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Ah, foul-mouthed was referring to "poppycock". Don't worry about it, however, no hard feelings on this side of the house. --Radjenef (talk) 16:52, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

You've got to be joking. "Poppycock" is about as prim and Victorian as "darn" and "drat". There's nothing even remotely foul-mouthed about that. Horologium (talk) 20:24, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, though some other Victorian words have changed their meaning rather unfortunately... "Judge Cloud's heavy features clouded. 'Poppycock!' he ejaculated explosively." - Cimarron Bend, L.W. Emerson. -- ChrisO (talk) 20:36, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry, Radjenef, but did you actually just claim that FYROM is a "great compromise"? That is why this case is in arbitration--the unswerving loyalty of one national faction against the world. That is why it is important to discuss the issue of uncompromising and unwavering stances on the part of national or parochial interest groups. The "compromise" offered is nothing more than the same filibuster that has been unwaveringly promoted by the Greek nationalists for years now with the same argument based on U.N. usage. It's as if weeks, nay months and years, of discussion here in Wikipedia had never happened. That is the fundamental problem that is being discussed here--how to prevent one nationalistic group from monopolizing the discussion without ever reaching a consensus or following Wikipedia naming policy. (Taivo (talk) 13:21, 23 April 2009 (UTC))

You must have misread my statement; I never said that. Perhaps, however, it would be wise to continue this discussion in another page. --Radjenef (talk) 13:52, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Yet another perfect example of "IDIDNTHEARTHAT" tactic that people employ to no end. The issue discussed here is that's not WP:OUTING, admit it and drop it. Then, if you want, we can discuss if it's relevant or not. man with one red shoe 12:30, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. Repeating something about someone that the party themselves has already said is not outing. All we're supposed to do in wikipedia is repeat what others have already said anyway; it is by definition what we do. We can't really condemn someone for doing something that is so essential to the encyclopedia. John Carter (talk) 12:50, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Please don't equate me to other people; I am an individual. Also, please do not respond by launching accusations, I would prefer it if you constructively engaged my arguments. I believe I have responded with sound arguments to what Horologium said. To be honest, I do not recall saying that this was WP:OUTING. Thanks for making me aware (through speculations) that some users might somehow be connected to Greece; I wouldn't have been able to do that myself because I don't speak Japanese. I sincerely think that it's more important to pay attention to what people are saying (i.e. the validity of their argument) as opposed to where they are from. --Radjenef (talk) 13:14, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

The problem is that for certain groups of people, where they are from is part of the issue, since we have people from Greece claiming they are from Macedonia, and we have people from Macedonia claiming they are from Macedonia. If "Macedonia" is taken off the table, then the ones from Greece can (and usually do) claim they are Greek, from Greece, but the Macedonians are from...where? FYROM? I don't think so. Greece does not have a monopoly on "Macedonia". I unwittingly entered into this debate three weeks ago without a strong opinion one way or the other, but watching the tactics being employed by some here (including you, Radjenef), I have developed an opinion, but it's not likely to meet with approval with those who support your views. Horologium (talk) 15:11, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

I see. I believe my actions (you call them tactics) so far have been very clean. This would not be the appropriate venue to discuss them, however, if you disagree. Feel free to start a discussion in my talk page. I am an incredibly cool headed individual, so you shouldn't worry about me acting weird. I am not from Macedonia by the way. --Radjenef (talk) 16:52, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

You need not worry, I was not under the misapprehension that you were. Horologium (talk) 20:24, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

This is getting ridiculous, especially the explanation that while is not OUTING, but it's bordering OUTING, that's like saying that bonding sex is bordering rape.... What does that "bordering" means, absolutely nothing in the context of Wikipedia policies. I think this is an example of fake outrage and filibustering that we talked about. It's clear that's not OUTING, the guy himself admits that, but he still accuses somebody else of "Bordering OUTING". Geez... man with one red shoe 16:09, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Note

It is very unlikely that the arbitrators will put a temporary injunction on this "outing" topic for the duration of this case. As far as the topic for the future, you might want to discuss that in evidence, eg show one way or the other why the practice of associating editors with nationalities in a list is good or bad. (If I'm following the issue here correctly).

There is discussion on this talk page that there is more issues to this case then just the naming dispute. If this is the case, these issues should be presented in the evidence, not discussed here. In otherwords, discuss the issues in the evidence under its own header and explain why the issue needs to be resolved here and what exactly the issue is. The arbs will review.

As far as guiding the case along hopefully an arbitrator will be along in a few days to clarify matters. If a temporary injunction is desired, requesting one on the workshop page is a possibility, however reasons for the injunction would have to be supplied in the evidence section. (eg evidence that the behavior is harmful to the completion of this case or disruptive enough to the encyclopedia that presenting it publically should not be done).

• 'Again I am not the clerk of this case, I am just out of retirement: anything said here can be overrided by tiptoety if he feels I have erred. —— nixeagle^{email me} 21:38, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Evidence length

From the instructions on the evidence page:

Please limit your main evidence to a maximum 1000 words and 100 diffs and keep responses to other evidence as short as possible. A short, concise presentation will be more effective; posting evidence longer than 1000 words will not help you make your point. Over-long evidence that is not exceptionally easy to understand (like tables) will be trimmed to size or, in extreme cases, simply removed by the Clerks without warning - this could result in your important points being lost, so don't let it happen.

KnightLago (talk) 19:50, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Can you clarify if posting a link to another page with more evidence is an effort to bypass this restriction and should therefore be avoided?--Avg (talk) 20:08, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

It is on a case by case basis. Evidence posters are asked to keep their statements under 1000 words, but if you must go over because you simply have a ton of evidence we won't be deleting the statements. However if possible don't restate what someone else has already said in your evidence. If that happens clerks may redact some of the evidence being as its listed twice. Generally use good judgement. If you start to go over 1250 words or so of dense concise evidence ask one of the clerks of the case (tippy or KnightLago) and they will explain what should be done. —— nixeagle^{email me} 22:12, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Oh! I forgot the important part of my statement, linking to subpages is generally not advised at this time. Try to keep all the evidence on the /evidence page. —— nixeagle^{email me} 22:14, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

General tips...arbs have a lot of stuff to read, be brief and to the point, and provide solid diffs. The more you ramble on....you get the idea. — Rlevse • Talk • 22:16, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Request to clerks

The evidence page has been swamped by discussion sections that are not evidence, some by new editors with no experience of the dispute, who by the nature of their (non-)involvement obviously can't have any evidence to offer. I'm speaking of the sections "Evidence presented by z" (unsigned, by an anon IP 76.90.31.1), "Evidence presented by Alfadog777" (a short-lived SPA edit-warring account with 15 edits prior to 23 April, containing no evidence), and several subsections in the section by Shadowmorph, which contain only discussion but no evidence. Can a clerk please remove these? Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:19, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

The main reason why these SPAs and IPs appear to be turning up is most likely to be the meatpuppetry of SQRT5P1D2 (talk · contribs) - see Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Macedonia 2/Workshop#SQRT5P1D2 has solicited meatpuppets. -- ChrisO (talk) 09:28, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

AFAIK, assuming good faith is a core principle of Wikipedia and the term "meatpuppet" is derogatory and should be used only with care. All I did was informing people about the case, as I was informed by others. I did not ask them to support any position; quoting myself "whoever wants to participate". People that contributed to Macedonia-related articles in the past were celebrating Greek Easter (there are established Wikipedians like John Carter, supporting that you took advantage of the holiday season). They were informed by my original newsgroup post, while you accused me of recruiting people through my blog (!), presenting no evidence that a) I have a blog and b) I'm engaging in these actions. You shouted ""Greek nationalist canvassing off-wiki". How's that for assuming good faith and being civil? In any case, since the jury is out, you remain involved in the case. That means that your actions are also part of the scrutiny. When supporting conspiracies, you should be more careful; after all, it would be more practical to conspire using private communication means. If other Wikipedians do that, I feel sorry for them. If I have anything to say, whether I'm right or wrong, I'm not afraid to say it publicly. SQRT5P1D2 (talk) 13:27, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

People are responsible for their actions, SQRT, whether their intentions were good or ill. Your actions directly led to the invasion of this discussion by new editors with no experience in Wikipedia, let alone in this dispute. You claim to be a long-time anonymous editor on Wikipedia. If so, then you should have realized what the consequences of your off-Wiki call to participate would be. (Taivo (talk) 13:58, 25 April 2009 (UTC))

Regarding the evidence, I have been leaving notes asking users to review their evidence in light of Wikipedia:Arbitration guide#Evidence. If there is no response in due time the situation will be addressed. But I plan to give people a chance to rectify the situation before removing anything. Regarding SPAs and IPs, the Arbitration Committee is aware of the situation and is looking into it. There is no need for accusations or heated discussion. KnightLago (talk) 14:44, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Taivo, me and other people already responded here and here. My post was in WP:CANVASS's green area. KnightLago, I just came back and I plan to start working on it later. Hopefully I'll be done during the next 48 hours. SQRT5P1D2 (talk) 16:59, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Response to Avg

Avg, in one of his usual turns of "assume bad faith", has entered a piece of "evidence" about alleged "illicit" collaboration between ChrisO and myself in the preparation of the Macedonia move and my WP:MOSMAC2 draft. Here's the full disclosure of what happened:

1. Chris and I have exchanged a few e-mails and IRC chats discussing various aspects of the affair during the past few weeks. There is of course nothing illicit in this. I have had similar contacts with other users too.
2. I had been working on the text of MOSMAC2 off-wiki for some time since the Greece dispute erupted. I shared an early draft with a handful of people privately for consultation: ChrisO and, if I remember correctly, Husond and Ev. Chris made a few tweaks to it, though not to the passage dealing with the titling of the Macedonia article.
3. My original draft did not contain the passage proposing that the country article should be at Macedonia. Instead, it had a brief discussion saying that such a titling might be objectively justified under the principle of WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, but that it would be difficult to get consensus for such a move and that I would personally recommend leaving it where it was.
4. The page view statistics that I posted to Talk:Macedonia (disambiguation) two or three days prior to the move had originally no connection to any planned move of Republic of Macedonia, but were purely intended as support for a discussion of the internal structure of the dab page.
5. Chris first mentioned to me that he was playing with the idea of the Macedonia page move about a day before the event. I did not at that time encourage him to go ahead with it. (But, evidently, it's true I wasn't completely taken by surprise when it happened.)
6. I changed the language of the MOSMAC2 draft to fit with the new developments, after his move and shortly before posting the draft on-wiki, since I had in the meantime publicly agreed with him that I thought it was objectively the better solution (an opinion which hadn't changed since before.)

That's all. I see nothing illicit here. Fut.Perf. ☼ 17:34, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for writing down your view of the events. It is up to the arbitrators to examine the veracity of the claims and the appropriateness of this kind of behaviour. Also I would appreciate if you didn't edit my own section of Evidence. Thanks.--Avg (talk) 17:44, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

I hope this isn't taken the wrong way. But you say above that you didn't encourage Chris to go ahead with his plan. It might be helpful if you were a bit more specific as to what kind of response, if any, you actually did give him, like advising him against doing so, being neutral or not responding at all, maybe advising him of possible problems if he were to do so, whatever. I only say this because your statement as is could be seen to indicate that you may have responded in some way, but doesn't give any indication of what that possible response might have been. John Carter (talk) 00:53, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I did tell him I "wasn't sure it would be a good idea" or something to that effect, together with a request for clarification if he really meant renaming the article rather than just references to it, as that hadn't been quite clear to me from his initial wording. He later confirmed that in a second mail, but that was after I wrote the comment picked out by Avg below. When I wrote that, I couldn't yet be certain about how serious Chris was with his plan, and I wasn't really expecting he'd go ahead with it. Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:38, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Since you communicated off-wiki with ChrisO, we really have no way to find out what was the content of his messages. Just a thought: would you consider to post these mails, if ChrisO agrees? SQRT5P1D2 (talk) 12:46, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

No. It's none of your business. I would perhaps consider sharing such data with people who I respect as intelligent and honest partners in discussion, and who I could trust to draw intelligent and honest conclusions from the information, if they had a legitimate interest in seeing them. But as there are few such people around here, and most of the ones who've shown an interest are just here to throw mud, I won't. Fut.Perf. ☼ 13:02, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

It's not my business, but Wikipedia's business since you admitted that you communicated off-wiki with ChrisO and your correspondence could provide instrumental evidence for the case. I understand concerns about privacy, though I remind you that this is about a Wikipedia entry and not a personal matter. If we don't review the contents of these mails, someone might accuse you of something that you didn't do, for example hiding crucial evidence; even for collaborating with third parties. If we do, we could still not be sure if they are forged, but in the spitit of good faith they are acceptable. Regarding of what you consider intelligence and honesty, honestly, this is yet another incident which you need to be reminded of WP:CIV. SQRT5P1D2 (talk) 13:12, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure where you imagine you are, Fut. Perf. is not under investigation in a criminal case and doesn't have to disclose to anybody his private discussions. man with one red shoe 13:23, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

This is not a legal proceding, SQRT, and Future Perfect can keep his private discussions private. Private discussion of Wikipedia matters with another editor is not a crime--either in the real world or in the Wikiworld. There is no "crucial evidence" to hide. Everything that is relevant to the issue of what to call Macedonia in Wikipedia is right here for the arbitrators to see. You, as a new user, may not realize this, but there are more important matters to discuss here than whether Future Perfect and ChrisO exchanged a few emails. This arbitration is about the issue of naming a country in Wikipedia and how to prevent national and parochial editing blocs from disrupting Wikipedia processes. It's not about the personal vendetta against two opponents that one party of this dispute seems to be waging against the other to the near exclusion of the naming issue. Get some perspective, SQRT. (Taivo (talk) 13:27, 30 April 2009 (UTC))

I'm not sure if off-wiki e-mail discussions about moving Wikipedia entries should be considered private and that's why I asked publicly about his thoughts on that. Another administrator also thought that it " might be helpful" if he was "a bit more specific". Of course, he has the right to refuse and that's what he did; I'll leave it to that. SQRT5P1D2 (talk) 13:37, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Privacy is privacy, and I'm really stringent and non-flexible on these issues. However, since the character of these off-wiki e-mail discussions is questioned and is used as an argument for off-wiki plotting, if I were in Fut's position, I would voluntarily forward them to the ARBCOM members (privately) as well as to a user who may not be necessarily on my side (or fully supportive of my views), but who's credibility and honesty is not questioned by nobody here, e.g. John Carter in our case.--Yannismarou (talk) 15:43, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

So I guess AGF is out of the window if you request poof and private info from somebody to prove that he's honest. Nice going... man with one red shoe 16:01, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, man. But Fut. has already threw AGF out of the window. His attack against a contributor like Nikos is just an example of that.--Yannismarou (talk) 18:10, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Huh? What are you going on about? I have never assumed bad faith on the part of Nikos. Are you sure you are quite clear about what "assume good faith" even means? Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:35, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, Fut. Inaccurate indeed! Let me rephrase: you assume good faith on behalf of Nikos, but nevertheless you regard him as a serious disruption for the project and a POV pusher who once upon a time used to be a good editor, but now sucks! Great AGF! Better now?--Yannismarou (talk) 10:08, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

In the extremely unlikely event that the arbs should find this worth looking into, I might consider letting them see it, but I would first want to hear a good reason from them why they would consider it their business. I can't of course speak for Chris here. For the moment, I'm not considering this an aspect of the arbitration case itself, but merely a case of attempted harassment and mud-slinging by Avg and SQRT. Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:09, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

You made an assumption about Avg lobbying externally, due to some blog post's writing style. I made an assumption about ChrisO violating policies, after you admitted that he contacted you regarding this matter. This is not Orwell's Animal Farm and your assumption is not better than mine. In Avg's case, there is no evidence. In your case, you admitted that there was some kind of an off-wiki discussion about this case, that arbitrators, parties and other editors are not aware of. This is the difference and I was not the first to ask about it. I'm just questioning off-wiki matters relevant to the case, while others distort policies to accuse people for matters irrelevant to the case. SQRT5P1D2 (talk) 17:00, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

These emails are not only relevant, they are of utmost importance to the case and I think should be provided to ArbCom members asap. Let us all remember that it was ChrisO's slip of tongue that his move was influenced by Fut.Perf.'s essay (which was proven to be posted later than the move) that actually forced Fut.Perf. to write the above post. There is no doubt that, had ChrisO not made this error, Fut.Perf. would never write the above post. If he wanted to voluntarily disclose this information, he would have done so days ago, in the Macedonia pages. So, it was only a very unfortunate moment for ChrisO that revealed their collaboration. I do not think Fut.Perf. is in a position to demand anything regarding this matter, nor resort to his usual accusations. If you have to blame someone for this, you should blame first ChrisO who revealed it and second (and foremost) yourself for engaging in such behavior. There is tangible evidence that something had been going here behind the scenes regarding the article move and any evidence that can shed more light to this matter should be provided to the Arbitrators. It doesn't get more relevant than this. --Avg (talk) 19:16, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

How long will we have to endure the permanent stream of bile from this person? The level of harassment and bad faith assumptions is intolerable. I demand that Avg be blocked right here and now and excluded from further participation in this case. Right here and now. Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:05, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Then post a motion to that effect on the workshop page, because I think we both know that is the only way it will happen. I assume however that you know that no one other than an arbitrator would do that while a case in ongoing, and, thus, that the above statement is evidently supposed to be taken rhetorically. However, I have to say making such out-of-process demands doesn't necessarily help convince others of your own judgement and/or temperment. John Carter (talk) 21:21, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Participation in an arbcom case doesn't give a person carte blanche to misbehave in whatever way they like as long as the case is ongoing. These are blockable levels of personal attacks and ABF; any administrator can step in to stop this, and the clerks definitely should. Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:25, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

"Participation in an arbcom case doesn't give a person carte blanche to misbehave in whatever way they like as long as the case is ongoing." - At long last, we agree about something (/me takes a note) :) And may I remind you that we're all under scrutiny? While me, John, Yannis and others assume good faith (and despite your unjustified attack, I personally stated in my talk page that I don't believe that you are one to blame), we also see relevance regarding ChrisO's actions. Your privacy is of utmost importance, but try to understand that at least in two circumstances, ChrisO and you admitted that you knew about each other's actions beforehand and off-wiki. This doesn't look good for people examining the case, even if there are no wrongdoings. Now, I would ask everyone to calm down and think rationally. Maybe there are numerous reasons for banning several parties, but this doesn't help resolution. Even if X and Y don't like each other, they should be tolerant. SQRT5P1D2 (talk) 22:53, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

This person is requested to cease and desist harassing and threatening me and to not ever refer to my name again. As far as bad faith assumptions go, they have not yet even apologised for their false accusation. Please someone do something. This has gone beyond anything I have ever seen in Wikipedia. --Avg (talk) 21:29, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Note (2)

Clerks or parties don't remove or change evidence based on their analysis of what happened. This whole section should be trimmed up and placed as a response to Avi's evidence in Fut.Perf's evidence section (by Fut.Perf of course as no other party is allowed to edit Fut.Perf's section). Secondly a reminder to all parties that civility and good faith assumptions apply here on arbcom cases just as they do elsewhere, probably even more so if that is possible. —— nixeagle^{email me} 17:50, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

No, it isn't "evidence" and isn't meant to be; it's just a personal explanation, so its place is here. Also, I won't waste the limited space of my evidence section for refuting Avg's drivel. I have more important stuff to place there. My response stands here as a service to anybody who might have some curiosity about the issue Avg raises; in the unlikely event that the arbs find anything worth investigating about his allegations, I'm afraid somebody will have to point them here. It's not my fault if Avg doesn't want a link to this response in his evidence section to help the Arbs; if his intentions were to help the Arbs inform themselves most efficiently (rather than just to sling mud) he would of course place the link himself. As for "assumptions of bad faith", well that one indeed will go into my evidence section, because it's a very pertinent issue about a long-standing disruptive pattern in Avg's behaviour. Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:12, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Fut.Perf. You intend this to be read by the arbitrators but you are placing the burden of linking to your response on Avg. Things that are intended to be read by the arbs as evidence or a response to evidence go on the evidence page, which is why I suggested you place your comment that was here to the evidence page. You are free to check in with one of the case clerks if you like. —— nixeagle^{email me} 18:21, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

No, responses to evidence which do not themselves contain evidence go here; that's what the talk page is for. And yes, it's Avg's topic, he brought it up, so I assume he should be interested in having the Arbs get all the relevant information about it as easily as possible. I personally do not expect the Arbs would give a damn anyway, and as I say, I have no space to waste in my evidence section. Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:27, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

If you are worried about space, I don't think anyone will frown on you using an extra 100 or 200 words to respond to evidence that is directly against you. —— nixeagle^{email me} 03:30, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

I would caution all parties from seeking to malign the behavior of others. The assumption that one party is somehow required to add a link to what someone else said in their own statements, which seems to be at least implicit in the above, is one which I personally have a very hard time even beginning to understand. Such statements themselves seem to clearly assume bad faith, possibly for less than adequate reasons, such as the presumption that someone would link to other, subsequent, statements of others in their evidence. I personally have no doubt the arbitrators will look at the talk pages. They also do, so far as I have ever seen. I think the situation should be regarded as resolved, pending any questions or further requests from the arbitrators themselves. John Carter (talk) 18:17, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

This is typical Fut.Perf. Now somehow it is my fault that he's not allowed to edit my Evicence section. Also comments like this have to be seen in a totally new light since Fut.Perf. has admitted collaborating off-wiki about changing the status-quo of Macedonia articles.--Avg (talk) 18:25, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, I wrote that comment after I had heard from Chris that he was toying with the idea (but had myself already discouraged him from doing it); and of course also after I had given the question some thought privately, while drafting the essay. Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:32, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

You dismissed my post as irrelevant "as long as we don't change the names of the articles". But you knew that ChrisO was "toying with the idea". So my post was very relevant and you just admitted that you knew it was relevant, but you chose to conceal this information and present a wrong version of events. --Avg (talk) 18:43, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Responses moved from Evidence page after being mistakenly placed there by me

The following material, including a comment mistakenly placed by me on the evidence page, for which I profoundly apologize, has been removed to the talk page here for discussion.John Carter (talk) 18:13, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

External lobbying

In addition to the admitted canvassing from SQRT5P1D2 through Usenet, there was also this apparently independent piece of illicit external lobbying, evidently from a long-term insider and involved party here: [4] (my translation) Confirms plain political motivation behind the dispute and intention to use Wikipedia for advocating national interests. Can the culprit please stand up? Fut.Perf. ☼ 17:50, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Does the language used bear any similarities to that of any individuals who have been involved in this case? I will confirm to anyone that I can't read, let alone write, in that language, so it wasn't me, but do think whoever was involved should be subject to sanctions for this action. John Carter (talk) 18:01, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

We should probably move this discussion somewhere else, since we're not supposed to do threaded conversation here (talk page? Workshop "analysis" section? You choice.) Short answer: No, I don't see any clear evidence linking it to any particular account, but I find it pretty obvious it must be a core player with intimate knowledge of the Wikipedia internals. The style and political tenor does remind me of Avg, but that's just my personal suspicion and I can't prove it. Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:06, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

I have to agree that the person seems to know wikipedia fairly well. They also apparently have no love for Gruevski, but that may not help identify them much. I don't know if we would be able to get an IP from the site the message was posted on, and I unfortunately rather doubt we would, but it would be great if we could. If we can't, I do hope that whoever posted it realizes that until we know who did write this piece the integrity of all parties who have taken a position similar to that of the message is compromised, and hope that they have the character to come forward and identify themselves for the greater good. John Carter (talk) 18:19, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Excuse me? I just saw this. This is the ultimate proof of bad faith from Fut.Perf.'s side. I deny on the strongest possible terms any involvement with the above blog post. And let me say I personally find such posts to sites rather daft, since it is obvious they will be picked up by Google immediately and they can be easily found and used by the opposing side. Fut.Perf. I request an immediate apology.--Avg (talk) 19:38, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Uhm, what for? For assuming you might do something daft? Fut.Perf. ☼ 19:58, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

I would kindly request any third party to protect me from the aggression of this person.--Avg (talk) 20:08, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

The "assuming you might do something daft" phrasing, is interesting. Assuming means to act as though something was true, although acknowledging that not all evidence is in. Assuming bad faith, is one thing; assuming good faith, is another. SQRT5P1D2 (talk) 20:44, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

While being instructed to "shut up" about my "proposed decision" in my proposed findings section, I beg to differ. I'm not affiliated with any other editor or external party; but how convenient this hypothesis is for people that knew off-wiki about the move, as demonstrated in the evidence section. How's that for external collaboration? Regarding WP:CANVASS: a friendly notice is defined by a limited posting scale, neutral tone, nonpartisan audience (WP:AGF) and openness in the form of transparency, as in my case. This should be helpful if the mud throwing contest continues. SQRT5P1D2 (talk) 19:11, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't think anyone considered that this comment might be from you, SQRT5P1D2. I know I didn't. And I agree that your posting probably doesn't qualify as "canvassing". But this comment is a different matter. It doesn't seem to be directly requesting input, but the tone very definitely seems to be likely to inflame some of its readers, and that is at best troubling. I do think that we'd be best off not trying to hard to try to determine the culprit. Excessive speculation would almost certainly rise to levels most often encountered in dealing with the men in black, and the men in white coats generally aren't far beyond when that happens. John Carter (talk) 19:22, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

The problem is that there is an apparent movement by some parties, in order to associate my presence here with everything that seems opposed to their rationale on certain matters. I find myself regularly trying to prove that I'm not an elephant; this is frustrating and time-consuming. While working long hours and having family obligations, I try to draft for some articles (music related) and participate in this case (learning tons of policies and guidelines in a few days, making mistakes on the way), but I'm constantly distracted and discouraged by attempts to ridicule me or Greek editors in general. Talk about productivity and mood swings. SQRT5P1D2 (talk) 19:39, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Sections removed from main evidence page

The following has been removed from the main evidence page as it does not fit Wikipedia:Arbitration Guide#Evidence. KnightLago (talk) 20:50, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

In short, evidence can only be of behaviour, not of the real world or of Wikipedia practice? This will make this case, in which the last two are key, very difficult to present. I will be adding a link here to make the conmversation in reply to this comprehensible.

If others disagree with this narrow definition, they should say so.Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:52, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Evidence presented by z

Not a naming dispute

People from Republic of Macedonia want the name in order to claim heritage to Alexander. That's one of the pillars of the historical doctrine of Republic of Macedonia. Greeks are right to protect their history.

Another pillar of that doctrine is the state of Samuel, which Republic of Macedonia does not recognize as Bulgaria, despite the overwhelming historical evidence against them. That talk page contains basically the same silly argumens.

The point is that this is not a naming dispute. Whatever the usual procedure to resolve naming disputes is, it has no relevance to this particular dispute; in particular arguments like what use of Macedonia is more common are irrelevant.

In agreement with Reaper7

The words Macedonia and Macedonian are overloaded in the Balkans. For example, all Bulgarians call fellow Bulgarians living in Pirin Macedonia (the part of the Macedonia region within the Bulgarian borders) Macedonians. This does not imply nationality, as all Macedonians I know have Bulgarian self consciousness while also calling themselves Macedonian. It is like calling people living around Sofia Shopi. This is the same as calling someone from Texas Texan, they're still Americans.

Of course, most Bulgarians also call people living in Republic of Macedonia Macedonians. More often than not, this use of the word implies both their different self consciousness as well as the fact that they live in the greater Macedonian region that is separated by state borders.

So, for everyone but the people living in Republic of Macedonia the word Macedonia is naturally ambiguous, in practice. This is why it should bring up a disambiguation page, at least in non-Macedonian (in the Republic of Macedonia meaning of the word) Wikipedia articles.

Evidence presented by Septentrionalis

Response to Vanakaris

I don't see why having a primary usage is impossible; we exist fine with New Brunswick and New Brunswick, New Jersey, as divisions of neighboring countries. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:27, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. Brunswick is a disambiguation, Britain is a disambiguation, and if i'm not mistaken Macedonia was disambiguation recently. Anyways, I don't know the whereabouts of en:wiki. I edit a little bit the el:wiki. My personal opinion is that wikipedia is more about getting the gross (coarse) facts fast and less about accuracy. I see some greek editors here that I have never or rarely seen on el:wiki, so I would like to take advantage of this post and remind them to come by el: more often. Cheers.--Vanakaris (talk) 12:04, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Please note that this is New Brunswick; Brunswick has a much wider range of ambiguity. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:20, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Ok New Brunswick, I am sorry. Also, Brunswick might be a hypothetical analogy. But analogies, now that I think about it, may be misleading. How about Britain? Also, since maybe u like analogies imagine a fictional situation where at a particular point in time the Scottish people were hit by mass amnesia, rejecting altogether the term Scottish, and decided to call themselves Britons and decided to a new name for Scotland!! From now on (ex-)Scotland will be named ..

T h e R e p u b l i c o f B r i t a i n

Hehehe. What did the English do? They hopelessly tried to explain that Britain is a king-dome, trying to make poor Scotts come back to their senses. Oh, I shouldn't forget to mention that in this parallel universe Scotland was under Soviet involvement, and various studies attempted to determine whether this involvement was somehow connected with the Epidemic Amnesia. Hehehe, i'll add this in frikipedia.--Vanakaris (talk) 18:52, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

• That's not Scotland, that's Wales. Just see Thursday Next. ;->Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:01, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
• But more seriously, and avoiding intra-British snark, this case is not going to be decided on the horror Macedonians of one nationality supposedly feel at the existence of other Macedonias. Trying to make our flesh creep is not a useful strategy here. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:10, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Trompeta

No ghettoization of users

Regrettably, the changes proposed (or imposed) are not really the product of reason but mostly of a misleading presentation: of presenting ambiguous edits as acts of nationalistic vandalism. Just look at the 'evidence' presented by Fut.Perf. [5]. The users that are quoted here say normal things, engage in what they think is constructive edits, or revert in a topic where everybody involved here is 'guilty' of reverting! The evidence is a symphony of unconvincing references and leaves me a little frustrated.

The ghettoization: One could say that some Users have been ghettoized into a list as ‘Greeks’ by administrators ‘ChrisO’ and ‘Future Perfect at Sunrise’, and then systematically cut down! Why? Because some Users can cite the UN, the EU, the IOC, etc, to argue their case?! These users, argue that ‘Republic of Macedonia’ can be sometimes called ‘Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia’, and that the article on the modern Macedonian republic remains ‘Republic of Macedonia’. (naturally I reject vandalism).

So who is at fault?... 1/ Is it the EU, UN, etc? 2/ Is the Users who cite those global organisations? 3/ is it the Wikipedia administrators who accuse them?

The absurdity of the changes: The article on Greece has been blocked because of two words (former Yugoslav), even though these terms are always used by the UN, EU, etc! The Article name, (Republic of Macedonia), has been brusquely changed by ChrisO to ‘Macedonia’. But in our post-1991 world ‘Macedonia’ occasionally needs disambiguation as in Wikipedia; ‘Dalmatia’, ‘Montenegro’, ‘Macedonians’ (the Slavic nation) do not, that is evidence itself.

Return to normality: a deus ex machina solution is, * to add the ‘two words’ to the Greece article and where appropriate. * To keep the title Republic of Macedonia and not FYROM. * To resist some edits (no Fyromian, no imaginative accusations against ‘Greeks’ or 'Macedonians' or 'anyone', no light accusations [6] of POV drama, etc. Trompeta (talk) 18:56, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Response to Fut.Perf's personal attack in his evidence

Apparently Fut.Perf thinks I'm stupid or illiterate (I did have to look "obtuse" in the dictionary). I stand in support of all that I said in the diffs about me[7]. Just some clarifications: this essay[8] I linked to I just thought it is relevant about the motives of all parties. I stand by that assertion. The link I gave to Yahoo Answers was to illustrate what pops into the mind of a "common English speaker" that we so care about, when he reads the phrase "ethnic background"[9]. I myself know the difference and still the whole of the reasoning about "collective" behavior of "Greek editors" sounds racist to me. Shadowmorph (talk) 08:43, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Even if Fut.Perf found a thousand diffs to show the behavior of certain Greeks it wouldn't prove that all Greek editors behave the same. Maybe he is right about all of the ones mentioned in his diffs but the language he uses shows his state of mind. That's the borderline racism I was talking about. I, for example, never showed a diff to prove the behavior of all "Macedonian editors" and I never used that phrase. There are still editors in the aforementioned Husond/ChrisO list for whom he found no diff to mention of course. I was assuming his good faith up to a point, now he totally broke that assumption and I'm sorry about that. Shadowmorph (talk) 09:03, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

I myself have spoken only about the object of the case and two specific administrators, User:ChrisO and User:Future Perfect at Sunrise. I have never made any reference to their ethnicity or race (irrelevant) to prove any of my points. Shadowmorph (talk) 09:07, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Future Perfect included me, Shadowmorph, a new user, in a "stable core of a handful of editors". I made 10 edits of NPOV nature in one article (Macedonian language) in 2008[10]; then I resurfaced only in April's Fool 2009 so I guess I'm a fool. I edited only a mere handful of disambiguation pages when I was caught in the middle of this with ChrisO's moves. ChrisO said in the workshop page: "the only people protesting are all members of a clearly defined ethnic faction". Well since I made the statement of being Macedonian (Greek), I guess he included me just to prove that all Greeks act the same. Of course, I could also be American [11], Bulgarian[12] ore even Finnish(?). Here is me referring to the Greeks in the third person, here[13] and here[14]. Shadowmorph (talk) 11:26, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Maybe he is suggesting me to change my nickname and from now on be known in Wikipedia only as Shadowmorph the Greek(!) Maybe User:John Carter should do the same :D "We are all Greeks"[15] too romantic,like this user?

moved here from the evidence page as it may constitute of personal views and not direct evidence about the case Shadowmorph (talk) 19:30, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Good christ, what a circus.

You arbs have my sympathy for having to sort through all this stuff. Jtrainor (talk) 00:36, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I regret to say I agree, but I do. Cases like this one do tend to bring out the worst in people a lot of times. John Carter (talk) 13:29, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Unbelievable. No wonder Jimbo once said that Wikipedia is like a sausage. Most would like to taste it but few would necessarily like to know how it is made. Dr.K. logos 16:45, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Did anyone really expect that a UN pending case for an area on the verge of another bloodbath, would be an easy one for Wikipedia? I think not. SQRT5P1D2 (talk) 17:16, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

If people would follow NPOV there would be no circus and no drama, the circus is to me the clear proof that real-life drama leaks into Wikipedia in a way that's not acceptable. And "verge of bloodbath" [citation needed]]... man with one red shoe 17:29, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

So, I take it that you didn't hear any news about Kosovo lately and you're not aware of the Ohrid agreement. SQRT5P1D2 (talk) 17:38, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

past events != verge of bloodbath, but let's not get into these arguments irrelevant to the present discussion. man with one red shoe 18:06, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Balkanians are always up for it and the current Albanian agenda is not a past event. That's why a peace force was established. You asked, I answered but there should be no more to it, I agree. SQRT5P1D2 (talk) 19:24, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Show preview

Could the people involved here use the "Show preview" button occasionally, please? It is almost impossible trying to follow the evidence in this case when it is buried under a metric ton of minor edits and shifting rationales. Horologium (talk) 19:38, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

• Oh, hai. Wut meens "show preview"? You meen de litul buton next to "save page"? (Some people might not be familiar with it, yeah, including me.) John Carter (talk) 19:41, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes. Help:Show preview may explain further details. :-) Best, Ev (talk) 19:49, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

(E/C) Yes. One of the editors here has 118 edits to this page in the last six days, and another has about 15 consecutive edits to a single section of evidence within a 35 minute period, followed by another 20 or so edits to another section over the next hour or so. Since there are no edit conflicts when editing a section, there should be no need to save incremental edits every minute or three. Horologium (talk) 19:53, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Behavior of parties in the case

I'm posting here, on Avg's page, and FP's talk pages. I've already had enough of the sordid behavior, from many parties on this case. I strongly suggest everyone shape up very quickly. — Rlevse • Talk • 22:28, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I should have remembered you were handling this case, not NYB. I hope I'm not in too much trouble for my own one-show-only sock in this case. John Carter (talk) 22:33, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Timeline evidence

I've just added a timeline section in my evidence. Clerks, I'm not sure if that brings me over the size limit, but from a remark by Risker [16] I took it arbs like to read timelines, so now they got one. Fut.Perf. ☼ 14:04, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that defiantly takes you over the limit (about ~,2600). I recommend that you move the time line to a subpage in your userspace and link to it in your evidence. Cheers, Tiptoety ^talk 19:27, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

If you think that makes life easier for the arbs... I mean, it's supposed to be a service for them. But okay, no prob. Fut.Perf. ☼ 19:47, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, linking to it would be easier for the Arbs. Thanks, Tiptoety ^talk 00:35, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Disambiguation discussions

Some of the evidence links to disambiguation discussions. Is it possible for someone to list and summarise as many of the disambiguation discussions as possible? I'm particularly interested in whether the discussions have been mainly between two options, or whether there has been a single discussion covering all the main options. From what I can see, there are five options:

• "Macedonia" as disambiguation page
• "Macedonia (region)" placed at "Macedonia" - hatnote to "Macedonia (disambiguation)"
• "Macedonia (ancient kingdom)" placed at "Macedonia" - hatnote to "Macedonia (disambiguation)"
• "Macedonia (Greece)" placed at "Macedonia" - hatnote to "Macedonia (disambiguation)"
• "Republic of Macedonia" placed at "Macedonia" - hatnote to "Macedonia (disambiguation)"

If there has been a discussion covering all the above options, could it be pointed out? If there are other options that should be there, please note that as well. Thanks. Carcharoth (talk) 14:25, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, disambiguation has not been (although it ought to be) the principal focus of most discussions. The chief issue has been what to call the Republic, with dabbing as an argument, variously used to rule out other positions. I would be surprised if the fivefold discussion ever took place; putting Macedonia (ancient kingdom) at Macedonia is not primary usage (even if there is one), and serves neither of the main ideologies here. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:03, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

That is not to say it might not be a good idea to have that discussion; but it would have to be carefully and neutrally worded, unlike WP:DATEPOLL. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:08, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

(ce with Pma) As far as I know, the naming of the main group of articles was not under serious debate during the last few years. The last big debate over the naming of the main country article that I'm aware of was in 2006 [17]. The "Macedonia" title was apparently in use for the current "Macedonia (region)" topic (your option 2) before 2005 [18] and seems to have been constantly the dab page ever since (your option 1), until ChrisO's move. Your options 3 and 4 have, to the best of my knowledge, never been under serious consideration. The debating during the past years has been over a variety of side issues such as how much disambiguating qualification is needed in article text in other pages, and the titling of various sub-articles. These debates are spread over a multitude of talk pages, as long as they are not centralised on WT:MOSMAC. Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:09, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

PMA and FPaS got it. There is 'special disambiguation' happening across a multitude of articles, focused on references to the Republic of Macedonia. The idea of just disambiguating as necessary does not seem to be followed at all, and as it comes up... what follows is why this is at arbitration. Jd2718 (talk) 15:19, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Could you explain what you mean by "special disambiguation"? Carcharoth (talk) 15:52, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Moving the name of the Republic along the spectrum Macedonia ->Republic of Macedonia ->former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia->FYROM->Fyromia->Vardaroskoplia. Each step in this is a further imposition of the PoV of the present Greek Government or of the nationalists to its right (who contend, as the Government does not, that the Republic should not be called Macedonia at all, however qualified); and it is done, all too often, when there is no rational prospect of confusion at all. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:21, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Ah, edit-warring in article-text as opposed to warring over the page titles. Got it. Thanks. Carcharoth (talk) 16:27, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, specifically warring for a tendentious form (as opposed to putting in Republic of, Province of, the modern region when there is a real risk of confusion). My conflict with Avg was over t-mobile in which Avg insisted in making the list of distributorships say Republic of Macedonia not Macedonia although the entire list is a list of countries (Russia, not Russian Federation) - and that's a comparatively reasonable example; many would have revert warred for Former Yugoslav Republic...'. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:45, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

There are also many examples of editors edit-warring to remove all mentions of Macedonia, replacing it with "FYROM" as the actual name of the country. See [19] for an example 2 days ago. Such edits invariably result in nonsense, breaking links and templates and often producing results that are anachronistic (e.g. [20]). This is quite common. Examples of editors going further to the right of Sept's spectrum are rarer, but they occur from time to time. -- ChrisO (talk) 18:05, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

My concern is what Septentrionalis has said above: "putting Macedonia (ancient kingdom) at Macedonia is not primary usage (even if there is one), and serves neither of the main ideologies here" The focus should be on what best serves the readers of the encyclopedia, not what serves the main ideologies here. When I consider the reader of the encyclopedia (a nebulous concept, I know) my assumption is that you either have people who have read about Macedonia (the modern republic) in the news or in travel literature (for example), or who have read about the break up of Yugoslavia (the 1990s history), or who have read about the earlier disputes (Ottoman era and early 20th century), or who have read about Alexander the Great, or who have read about other uses of the term Macedonia from elsewhere in history or in the present-day world, or even those who have read about the actual naming dispute (the real-world one, not the one on Wikipedia). The question (for the community, not ArbCom) should be: is there a primary topic that most people will be looking for, and if not, are there reasons not to have a normal disambiguation page at "Macedonia"? The other question is whether it is possible to have a proper discussion about that without tones of the real-world naming dispute colouring the debate? If, for example, most people come here looking for information on ancient Macedonia, should they be forced to sidle past an acrimonious modern-day dispute to get there, or should those looking for the modern-day stuff be routed there via the ancient history, or should everyone go through a disambiguation page? My currently-forming view is that while ArbCom can't rule on the actual content (the title), we can direct that a proper discussion take place and lay down some ground rules for it. As far as I can see, there are some very good arguments being presented on all sides here, but what is needed is to lower the heat of the debate and improve the quality of the debate, as well as find a mechanism to come to a conclusion and come up with a mechanism for a binding resolution (for a set period at least), and then direct people to go back to writing and improving articles. The question of style to use in articles themselves is a bit more tricky, and a consensus version of MOSMAC needs to be completed and discussed to resolve that (being aware that consensus can get skewed when nationalist issues are under discussion). I'd also be interested in whether there has been general disambiguation discussion of whether modern or ancient uses of a topic should take precedence over the other when there is conflict not just between two modern-day terms, but at least two terms referring to historical regions and concepts. Carcharoth (talk) 15:52, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

The discussions I know of both deal with the slightly different question of what we do when the modern and ancient terms for the same place differ, and are at WP:GREEK and WP:NCGN. In short, one says "use Mytilene, not Mitilini, when the ancient name is more common", the other says "use Byzantium, Constantinople, and Istanbul, each in the time period where modern English does." Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:32, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

That is for what to use in article text, right, and doesn't cover titles? Or does it touch on what to use in titles? I can't find the 'Mytilene' example in what you have linked. I did find this: "If the article concerns a concept that is significant in the Hellenistic period or before (i.e. would merit its own article even if the modern concept did not), use the archaic spelling. If the article concerns a modern concept merely derived from an ancient word, use the modern version. If a modern word whose meaning has no overlap with the ancient word from which it derives, create two articles, but consider including a disambiguation message at the top of each page." Does that relate at all to "Macedonia (ancient kingdom)"? I also found a discussion on "Macedon" - anyone know what the story is there for Macedon versus Macedonia? I also, confusingly, found references to the ancient region of Macedonia being different from the "Kingdom of Macedon", but I suspect no-one really wants to go there, or has the energy to do so. This is getting a bit off-topic though. My point, related to conduct, is whether the guidelines are consistent on this, or contradictory? When guidelines are not settled, it tends to lead to difficulties where conduct goes downhill (even outside of the extremes). Carcharoth (talk) 16:43, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

• No, both are primarily about titles, although text really should follow the same rules. (Text should also say "Leghorn, now Livorno", when necessary, but titles can't). Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:05, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
• Mytilene is an example of the sort of issue which that long text is intended to resolve; I thought it would be clearer than quoting in full. I don't think the Kingdom of Macedon was thought of in framing that. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:13, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
• I don't think the choice between "Macedon" and "(ancient) Macedonia" is a central issue here. Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:55, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm sure Pma's remark about "serving ideologies" was just meant as saying that few of the nationally motivated editors would have had much incentive of pressing for such a solution. Other than that, you are of course correct that in an ideal wiki-world, we'd be discussing these things just under perspectives like the ones you sketched out. The important thing about such a discussion would be that all the political considerations about names being offensive or historically unjustified or somebody else's property must be excluded, and that exaggerated demands of "disambiguation" must not be allowed to be used as a pretext for flagging names as problematical for POV reasons. As for how to best serve our readers to reach the right articles most efficiently, my own investigation of usage patterns, reader interest, web hits and corpus attestations leads me to believe that most of those who type "Macedonia" are indeed best served if led to the country article. (That reader group is the only one that is ever affected by the article title choice; everything else is just a matter of correct choice of links.) Don't underestimate the importance of the MOSMAC-type style choices; those are in fact much more tricky and more important than the article titles themselves. Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:40, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I was describing what WP has done, not what it ought to do. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:47, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

The disruption, edit-warring, dispute, however you end up describing it, it is focused on how the Republic of Macedonia is referred to, primarily within articles. Septentrionalis' description of the continuum is good, however it should be noted that there are other ways that the word "Macedonia" gets stripped from or reduced within the name of the Republic of Macedonia. ("The Republic" or "Skopje" for example). What "Macedonia" brings us to (Republic of Macedonia or a dab page) and whether the article is Macedonia or Republic of Macedonia, these are a relatively small part of the dispute. Jd2718 (talk) 17:10, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

I think it's worth mentioning here the factors driving usage. There have only ever been two high-profile political entities conventionally called "Macedonia" - the ancient kingdom and the modern state. Greek Macedonia is a geographical region, not a political entity, as is of course the wider modern region called Macedonia which is now split between five countries. (There was also a Roman and Byzantine province called Macedonia, but this is fairly obscure and had very different boundaries to the modern region.) In everyday use, news references to Macedonia are overwhelmingly likely to refer to the state. This is to be expected - the state does all the usual newsworthy state-level things, such as diplomacy, international finance, multinational cooperation, military activities, national elections and so on. Greek Macedonia is not a single political entity; the affairs of its constituent provinces (which are of course not named ambiguously) may be newsworthy in Greece but don't attract as much attention internationally. Discussions of ancient Macedonia are of course invariably in an historical rather than present-day context. If you want a comparison, a good example might be Ancient Rome versus Rome (the modern Italian city). Note the hatnote at the top directing people to the ancient city of the same name.

As for which is the primary term - well, when you see the overwhelming majority of news sources, encyclopedias, maps and atlases all using the same term, it's pretty obvious, isn't it? -- ChrisO (talk) 17:03, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

There are other possibilities. The nineteenth century region of Macedonia was also fairly high-profile, having provoked three wars and a number of diplomatic crises. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:13, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes - the infamous Macedonian Question. That would certainly have been a prominent meaning back in 1909. However, the fact is that in 2009 the use of the term to refer primarily to the country is well-established. There's only one state anywhere in the world that uses that name for itself, and being a state it gets a lot of attention. -- ChrisO (talk)

(ec) The Rome and Ancient Rome example is a good one (though try a survey of reference works to see what terms they use, and do the same for Greece and Ancient Greece - the terms "Ancient Greece" and "Ancient Rome" have long been established in common usage). Regarding the last point, surveying reference works for the term they use for the country does not help resolve the "primary term" issue. To resolve that, you have to also examine what terms the same reference works use for the corresponding terms on Wikipedia. If the same reference works also use "Macedonia" as their titles for their article on the ancient kingdom, then they are not engaging in disambiguation. As I said over on the talk page for MOSMAC2, the way paper works disambiguate is not in article titles, but in their indices and content pages. Look there and see what terminology they use there (you may have to find a paper version, not an online version). And at this stage, I'm going to withdraw from this discussion, and wait and see what further evidence is provided on the conduct surrounding this case. But as I said below, it really will help if the evidence about conduct is separated out from the evidence about usage of the names. Carcharoth (talk) 17:17, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

It is pretty obvious from the discussion above that the issue is not some Greek faction disrupting Wikipedia by trying to impose that Macedonia is only Greek or anything similar, but a small but determined group of editors who push their own POV that Macedonia almost always means the country and any other meaning is too marginal and has to be confined to a secondary page. The evil "Greek POV pushers" never wished that Macedonia means exclusively the Greek region (or the ancient one) so your options 3 and 4 were never proposed by anybody. Macedonia was always a disambiguation page, this was the consensus for years and this is what this small group of editors is trying to subvert by having staged this coup a month ago. --Avg (talk) 20:35, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes! Yes! I confess; we're all a cabal. My preference for calling the article on the Republic Republic of Macedonia is irrelevant, and our foolish attempt to conceal the obvious from this perceiver of conspiracies has been foiled. "Curses, foiled again!", as the turkey said to the oven. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:48, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't understand the irony and particularly I don't understand why you take it personally. Is the situation right now as we speak that the article of the country is in "Macedonia" after a coup last month after abusing the admin tools? Is ChrisO along with Fut.Perf. the only two editors who vehemently try to keep it there, against the will of the majority of the other editors who want it back to "Republic of Macedonia", where it was practically since Wikipedia started? By restating your preference, you're simply reaffirming what's going on. --Avg (talk) 22:00, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Stop lying. It's not only two editors. man with one red shoe 22:32, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

There certainly are some editors who have jumped on the bandwagon after the move and the release of MOSMAC2 because it suits their POV (this is why I refer to the majority of other editors and not "all other editors", so why don't you read more carefully before throwing accusations?), but it is ChrisO and Fut.Perf. who out of the blue decided that "Macedonia" will refer to the country. So yes, it is them and only them who are responsible for and are still the driving force behind this. --Avg (talk) 23:08, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, of course, the half of the last survey that supported the present location was all a bandwagon led by the diabolical FutPerf and ChrisO; nothing else could possibly account for the opposition to the Most Important Thing. Whatever issue becomes the Most Important Thing, even more trivial ones than this, like date-linking, Single-Purpose Accounts will insist on diabolism and conspiracy theories. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:46, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Can I ask you please to stop the irony Pmanderson? Have I been ironic to you? The fact that ChrisO and Fut.Perf. planned the whole thing is now proven and you can see it in the evidence section. It's your choice to ignore it of course, but it is there.--Avg (talk) 00:09, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Irony is the appropriate response to collective self-pity and conspiracy theories; there is, after all, classical precedent in using irony to deal with such unreason as the lesp from ChrisO telling FP that he was considering the move to their "planning together" like Boris Badenov and Natasha. But don't deserve irony, and you should cease to get it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:36, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Well, planning together, except having the discussion over the move itself, also includes off-wiki collaboration on MOSMAC2 and a series of emails on the issue (all this by Fut.Perf.'s admission). Irony will not help in discrediting evidence. I personally think it weakens your other arguments as well. And, generally, please try to be polite, it doesn't hurt.--Avg (talk) 00:50, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

There is no civil response to this save irony: Gasp, shudder, two admins worked together off-line in summarizing WP policy and guidance on the naming of the Republic! Worse yet. they summarized almost exactly what our naming conventions say, and, as far as I can judge, how they were intended to apply to such subjects! How ever will Wikipedia survive? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:03, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Quite seriously, there is no conspiracy here, on either side; there may be a certain lack of imagination on both. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:02, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Well, I guess some call for Wikipedia to became editorial and not "everyone can edit". Suggesting topic ban on all "the Greeks", block out all the anonymous (already happened), block out all uninvolved admins (they don't know better, they will just "wheel war" on the name), block out the SPAs (we don't care if they are experts about Macedonia). Then appoint ChrisO and Fut.Perf the sole guardians of all things related to Macedonia. The things they chose to do and when they chose to do them, just call the other admins who conform to their POV to ratify their decisions. Other views by like e.g. John Carter and some others in the polls? Ignore them. Consensus? Should change its definition to Consensus not including one ethnic group. One word. Discrimination. If that is your vision of a wiki, it is not mine. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 01:10, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

No one has supported a general topic ban (and I have expressly opposed one); banning a few editors who have no better contribution to make than warring over this issue is a different matter - after all, what do they offer the encyclopedia but disruption? Whether we should ban SPAs in general is another question, but one not proposed here. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:23, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

• As for the idea of a Wiki that will duly include each PoV, and give each a walled garden to run around in, shouting its warcry: Wikinfo is this way. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:27, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

I suggested Macedonia (region) as main topic, on the grounds that it is common practice in Wikipedia for disputed subjects and location names[21] (e.g. Taiwan). As far as I remember, all the others were for country vs disambiguation page. Macedonia (ancient kingdom) is also a very likely candidate for an encyclopedia without Recentism.

It was me (the new, "SPA", "clueless", "Greek" editor) who moved Macedon to Macedonia (ancient kingdom). Brittanica and the rest use Macedonia for the kingdom. More reasons I gave in Talk:Macedonia (ancient kingdom). Erroneously most of Wikipedia content uses always Macedon. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 02:03, 11 May 2009 (UTC) No admin ever cared to move that article, why? Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 02:33, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

• Because it should not have been moved. If Macedon and Macedonia were equally used in referring to the ancient kingdom, we would still prefer Macedon to Macedonia (ancient kingdom), just because the first is simpler and easier to link. But they are not - see the Oxford Classical Dictionary; Macedon is the common usage in ancient Greek, and the technically correct usage in English; Macedonia is largely a Latinism, or a reference to the ancient region, which normally did not coincide with the State. (This last is more or less the same distinction as the one between Sparta/Lacedaemon, the State, and Laconia, the region.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:05, 11 May 2009 (UTC) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:54, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

  You're not arguing just above about Macedon being the "correct" term are you? I thought our prime concern in Wikipedia is what is the currently most commonly used term? Because, speaking of "correct" terms, I have some comments myself for some other issues.--Avg (talk) 18:42, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

  Macedon is both correct and common usage (indeed, common because correct; but common usage anyway): "There is a river in Macedon, and there is also, moreover, a river at Monmouth. It is called Wye at Monmouth, but it is out of my prains what is the name of the other river. But 'tis all one; 'tis alike as my fingers is to my fingers, and there is salmons in both." Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:19, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

When I was studying ancient history, Philip and Alexander were almost always referred to as "of Macedon", not as "of Macedonia". "Macedonian" was the adjective form, but "Macedon" was the nominal form in English. I don't have any of my old college textbooks to give you a verifiable reference, however. (Taivo (talk) 20:44, 11 May 2009 (UTC))

block out the SPAs (we don't care if they are experts about Macedonia) - if you bothered to look you'd see that the SPAs are morons. BalkanFever 05:04, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Faulty generalization. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 06:20, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Prove me wrong. BalkanFever 08:38, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Later. Shadowmorph ^{^"^}

(outdent) Macedonia comes from "Μακεδονία" , the ending -ia is a Greek ending like Germania, Italia, Hispania, Andalusia... Those endings are preserved in Spanish (e.g. they say historiografia) and the english actually prefer to make -ia into -y like in historiography. The word ΜΑΚΕΔΟΝΙΑ appears in epigraphical text in antiquity. There is no latinization involved in the prefix -ia. The correct term would actually be "Makedhonia". If in your class they said "Alexander of Macedon" it is a latinization of "Αλέξανδρος ο Μακεδών". "Μακεδών" is the adjective (Macedonian) of Macedonia. The phrase "of Macedon" is the latinization of "o Makhedon" which means "the Macedonian". For example the Greek word "άγων" (the one who stresses) becomes "αγωνία" (stressing situation). Just to clear out the. Its all written in the articles about the etymology of the name and more in you know ...books (you can find them in the little text under the Wikipedia articles). Shadowmorph ^{^"^}

About the simpler name we should use Macedonia (just that) for Macedonia (ancient kingdom), that would be the simpler correct way. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 12:39, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

You mean "suffix" -ia. That's a nice lesson on Greek derivation, Shadowmorph, (thank you) but the question is not the Greek derivation, but English-speaker understanding and common usage. If Americans in the 1960s and 1970s were plugging "Macedon" into their brains, that's all that matters. (It's a common linguistic process where the derivation of foreign words is lost in the process of borrowing.) Today, the majority of uses of "Macedonia" in English are to the modern country. That's the factual content of the question here. The entire question is, "When an average English-speaking user comes to Wikipedia, what does that user expect to find when 'Macedonia' is typed in the search box?" All the historical, political, moral, ethical, nationalistic, linguistic justification is just dust in the wind at that point. It's a very simple question. (Taivo (talk) 12:54, 12 May 2009 (UTC))

I just wanted to set the facts straight. Now about the "Macedon into their brains" what are you saying that Britanicca is not english speaking? How about the BBC documentary about "Macedonia". How about the english-speaking movie "Alexander" where "Macedonia" is always used. Who are those english speakers that use Macedon, I care to know. The burden of proof lies on you. I don't know what else I can say, google searches, everyhting points to Macedonia or ancient Macedonia being more common than Macedon or ancient Macedon. Only when talking about " of Macedon" is Macedon common and that is not exclusive and it is because of what I explained above. It wasn't an "ethical, nationalistic justification" it was an explanation about why the word is used they way it is. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 13:10, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Its the ending -ia. e.g. Germania was never called German and someone added -ia to it. Those words always had the Greek ending. There is no "Greek derivation", I am talking about how the words were handed over to the English-speakers. Get over that. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 13:18, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Here is "Macedonia" (not Macedon) in the bible (from the English translation)

"man of Macedonia"

— (Acts 16:9), Paul(not the Beatle, the apostle)

Paul was summoned by the vision of the "man of Macedonia" to preach the gospel there.Check it here. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 13:18, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Calm down, Shadowmorph, I'm not attacking you or disparaging your knowledge of Greek derivation (that is the correct linguistic term for the process of adding the derivational suffix -ia to a Greek word). You misunderstood my point. I'm not advocating that Macedonia (ancient kingdom) should be renamed. What I'm saying is that your assertion that everyone looking for the ancient kingdom goes only through "Macedonia" is incorrect. There is a significant portion of people who will reach Macedonia (ancient kingdom) through "Macedon"--specifically, the over-50 crowd. (Although I would suspect that most of the people wanting information on the ancient kingdom are actually coming through a link after searching for "Alexander the Great".) You already know that Google searches are meaningless so I'm not sure why you keep throwing them around as evidence of anything. And you need to read the summary of my comment carefully--it's not an attack on your knowledge of Greek derivation, it is simply a summary of the entire issue before us. That is, in the end, the crux of the matter--what does the average English speaker expect to find when he or she types "Macedonia" in the search box and presses <Enter>. (Taivo (talk) 13:28, 12 May 2009 (UTC))

Shadowmorph is expressing himself misleadingly. This is not parallel to a hypothetical *Γέρμαν, which would indeed be invented; the word is Γερμανός - and, as Strabo says, it's a loan word from Latin.

Μακεδών is the base form, and appears as such in Herodotus, Aristotle, Plutarch, Arrian - all the usual sources; Hesiod uses Μακηδών. It is the name of the people, but so, often, is Λακεδαίμων for the Spartans. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:19, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Don't (note: since you rephrased, the don't refers to the question about his knowledge of ancient greek). Understandably, the greek language is complex and many could easily jump to wrong conclusions. "Μακεδών" is NOT the base form; it's mostly used when referring to people. "Αλέξανδρος ο Μακεδών" (Alexandros o Makedon) = "Alexander the Macedonian". "Alexander from/the Macedon" is wrong. "Macedon" when referring to the ancient kingdom or the region in ancient times, is also wrong. The region was called "Μακεδονία" ("Makedonia" = "Macedonia"). The origin is "μακεδνός" ("makednos"), from "μάκος" or "μήκος" ("makos" or "mikos" as in "meekos" - some regional differences). "Μάκος" is "length". "Μακεδνός" means "tall", "highlander". That's how "Μακεδον-ία" (region/kingdom) was formed. Liddell&Scott: "Μακεδονία", "Μακεδών" (notice the examples from Herodotus in the right side). It's the same case as in "Ίων" or "Ίωνας" (Ion or Ionas) and "Ιων-ία" (Ionia). Ion is the person, Ionia is the land. SQRT5P1D2 (talk) 16:13, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

SQRT, you don't understand the meaning of "base form" (or root). It is the simplest form from which other forms are derived with derivational affixes. Makedon (I'm not going to bother with the Greek alphabet) is the root or base form. You then add derivational and inflectional affixes to that to get Makedon-ia, etc., which are not base forms, but derived forms (same with Ion, Ion-as, and Ion-ia--Ion is the root). Alexandros ho Makedon is always translated "Alexander of Macedon" (same with "Philip of Macedon", etc.). Thus, because of this translation (or transliteration, take your pick), English speakers often associate the name "Macedon" with the name of the ancient kingdom. It may not be linguistically accurate in Greek terms to think of Macedon as the name of the country, but it makes perfect sense in English. And since this is the English Wikipedia, the common usage in English is an important consideration. (I'm not advocating one way or the other for changing Macedonia (ancient kingdom) to "Macedon", I'm just providing linguistic perspective here.) (Taivo (talk) 16:33, 12 May 2009 (UTC))

I do understand the meaning of base form, but you don't understand the context. Greek is not english. The name of the ancient kingdom was Μακεδονία, not Μακεδών. Mάκος (length) and Μακεδνός (highlander) led to Μακεδoνία (the land/kingdom) and Μακεδών (a person from this land/kingdom). It's absurd to argue about "greek terms" on that. This is an encyclopedia, hoping to educate readers. We shouldn't care if an uneducated common reader thinks X and X is wrong. If you translate "Αλέξανδρος ο Μακεδών" as "Alexander of Macedon", you're simply wrong. The correct translation is "Alexander the (ο) Macedonian (Μακεδών)". SQRT5P1D2 (talk) 16:54, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Sigh. SQRT appears to be one of those Demotic-speakers who assumes that the Greek language hasn't changed in two thousand years.

• Ionians (nominative plural) is now Ίωνας, but in Alexander's time it was Ἴωνες.
• The name of the ancient kingdom was οἱ Μακεδόνες, as in Herodotus 7.185.3: πεζοῦ δὲ τὸν Θρήικες παρείχοντο καὶ Παίονες καὶ Ἐορδοὶ καὶ Βοττιαῖοι καὶ τὸ Χαλκιδικὸν γένος καὶ Βρύγοι καὶ Πίερες καὶ Μακεδόνες καὶ Περραιβοὶ καὶ Ἐνιῆνες καὶ Δόλοπες καὶ Μάγνητες καὶ Ἀχαιοὶ καὶ ὅσοι τῆς Θρηίκης τὴν παραλίην νέμονται... Hence English Macedon.
• Similarly, Sparta as a state was always οἱ Λακεδαιμόνιοι, the Peloponnesian League οἱ Λακεδαιμόνιοι καὶ οἱ ξύμμαχοι "the Lacedaemonians and their allies", even in the most formal context.
• He also displays provincial views on the nature of translation; but if he confines himself to this talk page, he may not do much harm. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:15, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

SQRT, you are right. English is not Greek, therefore we have Greece and not "Hellas". And it still doesn't matter what the Greek forms are, in an English encyclopedia we use English forms. "Macedon" is one of the names in English for the ancient Greek kingdom. We use "a Cajun" instead of "Acadienne", for example. When English restructures or reanalyzes a form borrowed from another language, the structure of the original doesn't matter anymore. Only the reanalyzed and restructured English form matters in an English encyclopedia. (Taivo (talk) 17:53, 12 May 2009 (UTC))

Summary of external and internal usage and analysis

There is some use of statistics and summaries of internal and external uses of the terms, and criticisms of the summaries and statistics gathering methods. Could a summary be made of these to separate them from the actual behaviour of people over this isue and this case? Specifically, stuff like the list of articles in other Wikipedias, and the listings in other sources (this should be done for all uses of the term, not just the country), and the variation in such over time (e.g. did the pages in other wikis change recently), and evidence such as this. Regarding that graph, I'd be particularly interested in critiques of the method used there - what is this Google resource being mentioned that sorts citations by date or period discussed? I'd also be interested in further analysis and critiques of the use of abuse filter stats and pageview stats (such as this one). There doesn't seem to be (yet) a graph showing the trends in abuse filter stats (that would relate to abuse filter 119). But all this would need to be done at a separate location. Does such a location exist? I also commented here (MOSMAC2) asking for one of the surveys of reference works to be repeated for the other articles. Carcharoth (talk) 16:25, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

• The advanced search page of books.google.com. Not entirely reliable; it has taken Google some time to sort magazine articles by date of publication, not the date of the founding of the magazine. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:02, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Wrong. This wasn't the tool I used. Check my evidence, I used Google News Archive Search[22] and restrained it in books.google.com. Google is not broken Mr.Anderson, especially only when we don't like the results. Keep in mind that non-book news sources would be biased to countries just like Weather Channel is biased to report ...weather :) Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 01:24, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Beginning, I see, with news articles on the birth of Aristotle, centuries before newspapers. What figment is this? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:32, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Well, I am impressed. Who knew that Google News existed in 384 BC? -- ChrisO (talk) 01:35, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Irony, Irony. The date isn't the date of publication. If someone in a book say Aristotle was born in 384 BC that is a date. If the same book later on says Republic of Macedonia declared independence in 1992, that is also a citation. The same book can use Macedonia for those two time periods. Books can be news sources. Actually Books are news sources since CNN.com didn't exist in 1995. What does that mean, that there weren't any news back then? Shadowmorph ^{^"^}

Actually, who cares if the books aren't news sources, this is an encyclopedia here, not wikinews. Isn't 15,500 books a large English speaking sample for you? Because you accepted Fut.Perf's pitiful 50 book-sample (that incidentally also shows the same trend)Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 02:18, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

You see this is the kind of attitude I am talking about, first they misquote my source. Then they attack me with irony and refusing to get the point: that we are talking about English books citations which are relevant. By the way mr. Anderson do you still hold on to the "Google is not reliable" position? Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 02:21, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

And something more, I really don't believe that anyone could mistake "Google news archive search" for "Google News archive search". But I guess people do. It is the first one. Google news archive search, as in searching in the news archives. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 02:25, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Here is a news clip I made up just to prove that ancient dates can exist in news sources: "Recent archaeological discoveries in Pella, Macedonia found more about Phillip II who lived in 300 BCs)". Shadowmorph ^{^"^}

The problem with that example, Shadowmorph, is that no English-speaking news source would report it that way. They would say, "Recent archaeological discoveries in Pella, Greece, the capital of ancient Macedonia...." English language news sources never name provinces of other countries, they just name the country. (Unless the provinces are very well-known as the Canadian provinces are.) (Taivo (talk) 02:57, 11 May 2009 (UTC))

Really, never? Real world examples: Macedonia, refering only to the prefecture of Greece, here[23], Macedonia refers to the ancient kingdom only, here[24]. Both clips specifically about Pella findings. Here is "Pella in Macedonia" (alone, no qualifier like ancient kingdom), National Geographic, here is a quote about Vergina: "This is one of the most rewarding archaeological sites to visit in Macedonia", meaning Macedonia, Greece, worldheritagesite.org. But yes, CNN and most others will not commonly do that. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 04:44, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

You need to read more carefully and discriminately, Shadowmorph. In all of these articles, the reference is to, literally, "ancient Macedonia", not to "Macedonia" as in the Greek province. The word "ancient" appears quite literally there. "Macedonia" is not used alone except in the National G article which very clearly states in the sentence preceding the word the BC date of Philip. The context is quite clear. Nowhere do we see a sentence that calls ancient Macedonia simply "Macedonia" without the context already being clearly made that this is "ancient Macedonia". And the reference to the Greek province is not just "Macedonia", but North Macedonia, the proper name of the province. When the news media refers to Pella in the first sentence of a news report they either say "ancient Macedonia" or "(northern) Greece" (just as all your references do. Virtually nowhere does simple "Macedonia" in the introduction to an English news report mean anything other than the modern country. Sure, you might find one or two places (especially in articles that are written by Greek writers or based on Greek funding) where "Macedonia" in the lead sentence might refer to the ancient country or to the Greek region, but we're not talking about isolated instances. We're discussing the vast majority of instances in the English-speaking media. "Macedonia" without qualifiers is the modern country virtually always in the English news media. (Taivo (talk) 06:32, 11 May 2009 (UTC))

Sure but the news sources rarely report Vergina. They report national basketball teams, elections, and international politics, etc. In these contexts there is no need for disambiguation. The very fact that you read something on CNN means that the report is about a country not an ancient kingdom. Shadowmorph ^{^"^}

Yes, Shadowmorph, thank you for making our point--the vast majority of news media reports are about the country, therefore no disambiguation is necessary because that is the most common meaning of "Macedonia" in the English news media. (Taivo (talk) 07:10, 11 May 2009 (UTC))

Thank you for making my point--that you confuse Wikipedia for Wikinews. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 07:15, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Taivo: the name of the Greek region is not "North Macedonia", it is plain "Μακεδονία", part of "Northern Greece" that is composed of the two regions of Macedonia and Thrace, see Regions of Greece.  Andreas  ^(T) 13:51, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Actually, it's called Central Macedonia in English. I made a mistake in calling it "North Macedonia". Thanks for the correction. It's also called "Central Macedonia" in Shadowmorph's reference. At least I remember my kids' names (most of the time) :) (Taivo (talk) 18:59, 11 May 2009 (UTC))

Well, there are West Macedonia, and Central Macedonia and East Macedonia, the of the administrative regions together make the diamerisma (region) of Macedonia (Greece). Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 19:27, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

The articles you cited do not mention the entire region, just the specific province of Central Macedonia or "ancient Macedonia". Don't claim that your examples say something that they don't. The National Geographic article says "Macedonia", but only at the end of a sentence (near the end of the article) which begins with the name of "Philip II" and a date in the 4th century BCE. (Taivo (talk) 19:53, 11 May 2009 (UTC))

From the above: "shed light on the culture of Macedonia", "to visit in Macedonia". the word is used without qualifiers. Anyway, they are just examples Ok? Archeological findings news are hard to find because there weren't any new ones in Macedonia (Greece) since before the internet. That doesn't mean that when they exist that Macedonia is not used trivially to refer to the Greek region or to the ancient kingdom, even in news sources. My point from the start was that we shouldn't only focus on news sources. This is not wikinews.Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 12:48, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Vergina is a modern Greek city near the ancient Aiges. Vergina in Macedonia cannot possibly refer to a Vergina in ancient Macedonia because there was no such thing. Here are some clips that refer to "Vergina in Macedonia" University of Texas, historyworld.net, ancient sculptures gallery. The examples are countless, no need to give more. Shadowmorph ^{^"^}

Most of these clips use Vergina for the archaeological site, which is almost certainly ancient Aegae (note English spelling, please); many of them are using it as a synecdoche for Aegae, describing events (like Philip's murder) for which there is literary, not archaeological, evidence. Philip II was murdered in ancient Macedonia, methinks. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:13, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

And not just that, but anything related to the behaviour and not to the content dispute, should be separated out. The content dispute should be background stuff to explain or condemn the behaviour, not a re-run of the actual dispute. That content dispute should be consolidated elsewhere and the debate slowly improved and moved forward, one day reaching a point where people can read about it and understand it in a reasonable amount of time (e.g. if taking part in a hypothetical poll, or as part of a group assigned to coming to a binding decision). Carcharoth (talk) 16:30, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

The executive summary about the usage statistics is that in all contexts focussed on present-day situations, such as journalism, politics, geographics, sports, culture, travel and so on, the term "Macedonia" has a very clear primary meaning, the country being overwhelmingly the most common referent. If you give historical literature and older publications a higher weight, then the ancient meaning has roughly equal prominence with the modern country. Note: Please take Shadowmorph's data with more than a grain of salt, he's been misrepresenting findings systematically. Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:48, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

The Republic has been much more discussed since independence in 1991. It did not exist before 1912 as an administrative subdivision, and it was called "South Serbia" up to 1929 (and informally up to 1944). A different nationalist imposition: all the Slavs south of Belgrade are Serbs. (I do not mean to deny that the government of the Republic has its own axe to grind too.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:02, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

In general, I'd strongly agree with Carcharoth that these content issues should be separated from the behaviour and governance issues – which is why I'm not entirely sure why we're discussing it right here and now. It's a bit difficult to give a concentrated account in this situation. I'm pretty sure that reasonable people who really only had the thought in mind how to best help our readers navigate to the article they are looking for could very quickly reach a reasonable consensus on what the best titles of those pages should be (and I certainly don't exclude that that solution might be something different from having the country at Macedonia). But it will be impossible to have that discussion as long as people with obvious political-national interests at stake will be allowed to hijack it, because they will overburden it with their political concerns, and they will misuse practical pseudo-arguments as a pretext for arguing in favour of their political preferences.

Also, I repeat: the naming of the articles themselves is not the main issue. The real beef is about things like: can we say in some other article that the Florina "borders on the Republic of Macedonia", or that "the Macedonian entry got 12 points in the European Song Contest", or whether we may say that "Macedonia began membership negotiations with the EU", or instead have to repeat "the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" every time we mention the country in relation to that organisation. Fut.Perf. ☼ 17:13, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Agree with both points. (Please note that there is also a much smaller group of editors, perhaps three, striving for the political/national interests of the Republic, and at least one striver for the political/national interests of Bulgaria. Fortunately the profressional Serbs seem to have other concerns.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:19, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, this point needs to be emphasized: the main issue is not what title to use for the country's entry, but what wording to use in the body of articles that refer to the country (and eventually in the titles of other articles, such as "[country] & Eurovision/EU/NATO/UN"). – The problem is the ridiculous assertion by some Greek editors that without gargantuan disambiguation measures (that happen to disallow using the isolated Greekest of Names for that other country) our readership would be confused.

The fact that the premature filing of this arbitration case was triggered by ChrisO's bona fide move of "Republic of Macedonia" to plain "Macedonia" may have obscured the main issue to some degree. - Ev (talk) 19:49, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) Help page about the tool used for the graph you mentioned is here: http://news.google.com/archivesearch/help.html Check the section about "Timelines".

How do you create the timelines? Our timelines are generated entirely by computer algorithms. We look at all articles relevant to your query, try to identify the most relevant time periods, and select one or more results in each period. We then display the results in chronological order. Eg, the timeline for Duran Duran allows you to follow the band as it matures from teeny-bopper music to 80's MTV sensation and onward through multiple revivals. Since no humans are involved, the timelines may not always be perfect – but we'll keep working on learning new ways to automatically organize search results in this way.

The service included all digitized books as news sources. It also includes Wikipedia as a news source. You can try the same tool for

• "Macedonia" in books[25]
• "Macedonia" in Wikipedia[26]

modern news show bias

• "Macedonia" in Wikinews[27]
• "Macedonia" in CNN[28] and

English speaking locations

• "Macedonia" in .org sites (includes Wikipedia and archive.org) [29]
• "Macedonia" in .ca (Canadian) news sources[30]
• "Macedonia" in .au (Australian) news sources[31]

noticable shift in POV-ish locations

• "Macedonia" in .gr news sources [32]
• "Macedonia" in .mk news sources [33]
• "Macedonia" in .bg news sources [34]

Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 01:49, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Of course all the above also include results that use "former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" or "Republic of Macedonia". Shadowmorph ^{^"^}

I have seen that some parties refer to Dow Jones Factiva for finding out common usage. Of course, financial news will refer overwhelmingly more to a country and not any subregion that has no independent financial administration. Well, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and not a financial news web site, he have to consider the region and the ancient kingdom. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 05:12, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

So what it sounds like you are saying here and at other places is that since the news media talk about Macedonia as a country and the financial news talks about Macedonia as a country, they should be ignored. In other words, "ignore all those areas where 'Macedonia' only means the country and focus on those areas that support my POV". Sorry, Shadowmorph, but all areas of common English usage should be considered. Most English speakers interact with the world through news media and through financial news, not through some ancient history textbook. All reliable sources and areas of usage must be weighed in determining common English usage, not just the ones that favor your POV. (Taivo (talk) 03:24, 12 May 2009 (UTC))

• In short, as WP:NCGN says, no search engine should be trusted without looking at the results. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:27, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

To Taivo: Yes, but the focus should be to the more relevant usage, the one by Encyclopedias. It should include the common names in those encyclopedias for all the entries about Macedonia (unlike what appears in MOSMAC2). Not only how an encyclopedia refers to a country but also how it refers to the other entries. Printed encyclopedias would be better. It would take a lot of time to find that data which I don't have to have them here . I mentioned Brittanica, there are more. If any of them gives out any indication of primary topic we should mention that. For instance Merriam Webster entry lists the the region first, the country second. Evidently so does the wiktionary entry as of right now. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 12:58, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Encyclopedias are one of six classes of evidence WP:NCGN recommends. Relying on them alone is cherry-picking. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:49, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

So is relying solely on news sources. Let's check some of the other 4,

• Enter the proposed move at WP:RM. If it is the consensus that a given name is the English name, then it is presumably widely accepted. — didn't happen, in fact the exact opposite is what happened.
• Consult other standard histories and scientific studies of the area in question — When someone mentions the word history the supporters side says it is irrelevant and we should look into news sources.
• Consult Google Scholar and Google Books hits. I made some points on Google Books, what I received was. "that is cyber-world, not real-world" (Taivo) and "Google search is not reliable".

So, who is doing the cherry picking here? It's not me.Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 16:57, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

The policy also mentions to use the names in the United States Board on Geographic Names and its GeoNet server.Searching there for Macedonia there is along results page indicating the need for disambiguation. About the country here is what it is found there:

• Macedonia, Republic of (BGN Conventional). "independent political entity"
• Makedonija, Republika (BGN Standard), "independent political entity"
• Macedonia, The Former Yugoslav Republic of (general) , "independent political entity"
• Macedonia (BGN Standard), "region"
• Macedonia, The Former Yugoslav Republic of (general) , "region"

Of course the cherry picking by the supportes-of-the move side didn't pick that cherry because it indicates graphically that there is not a single name that is considered standard in United States even after their official recognition.Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 17:16, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

What WP:NCGN actually says on the BGN and names outside the United States is: Similarly, its GEOnet server normally prefers local official usage in the country concerned (for example, Frankfurt am Main); in a handful of cases, like Florence, it has a conventional name field. Where it acknowledges a conventional name, it is evidence of widespread English usage; where it does not, it is not addressing our primary question.

In short, Shadowmorph is using a guideline to cite a source of evidence it expressly and intentionally discourages Wikipedia from considering. This may be carelessness, or lack of fluency; if the above section is struck, I will not have to decide whether a Fof that Shadowmorph is a liar is appropriate. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:27, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

In fact, this consists of one name (Republic of Macedonia) for which it provides "evidence of widespread English usage"; it is possible we should use it, although we usually use short forms. The other forms found when searching for Macedonia and meaning the Republic are in fact:

• Macedonia, Republic of (BGN Conventional)
  • Macedonia (Short)
• Makedonija, Republika (BGN Standard)
  • Makedonija (Short)
  • Republika (Generic)
• Macedonia, Peoples Republic of (Variant)
• Macedonia, Socialist Republic of (Variant)
• Macedonia, The Former Yugoslav Republic of (Variant)
• Macedonia (BGN Standard)
• Makedhonia (Variant)
• Makedonia (Variant)
• Makedonija (Variant)
• Makedoniya (Variant)

Most of these are transliterations from the Cyrillic. For what it's worth, Geonet has a field for the country in which they lie: and fills it with Macedonia. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:51, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

What is a Fof? "Macedonia, Republic of (BGN Conventional)" is not a transliteration and it is conventional for the "independent political entity". There is also FYROM (long form) tagged as general. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 21:55, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Finding of Fact; since Shadowmorph has posted a dozen of them, I did not think the acronym obscure. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:49, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Anyhow, I just wanted to point out the things that were left off in the assessment of policy by some parties. I didn't see any comments on the other 3 quotes (out of the 6 classes) in the WP:NCGN. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 21:57, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

That's because the other comments are mere nonsense; not, as this one, manifest misunderstandings of what the guideline says. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:49, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

You know I am getting tired of my arguments being called names. Don't you have anything better to say? Repeating the "nonsense" here:

• Enter the proposed move at WP:RM. If it is the consensus that a given name is the English name, then it is presumably widely accepted.
• Consult other standard histories and scientific studies of the area in question
• Consult Google Scholar and Google Books hits

Again I request anyone to comment . They are straight from the WP:NCGN so they are not nonsense. I mentioned them because you said that I did "cherry picking of the 6 classes of WP:NCGN" - your words. I responded to that accusation. Exactly when have the above been used by ChrisO's and your rationale? Shadowmorph ^{^"^}

And I haven't really understood why using other Encyclopedias is cherry picking and not the most helpful way to find the names and the primary topic if any? It is all the others that are secondary and additional since Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 23:30, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Few more questions

• (1) Currently, when a Google search is done for "Macedonia", the Wikipedia article of that title is the first hit. Can anyone explain why "Macedonia (ancient kingdom)" is the sub-hit in Google on that search (the indented one below the first one)? Is there any way to find out what the results were before the move took place. Was it the disambiguation page followed by the ancient kingdom? Or the disambiguation page followed by the republic? Or no indented sub-hit? And would there be any explanation for the patterns seen there?

• (2) When I seach for "ancient macedonia", I get a website of that name as the first hit, with the Wikipedia article on the ancient kingdom a bit further down. I may be opening a can of worms here, but how reliable is that http://www.ancientmacedonia.com website? It seems to be hosting some scholarship dating back to the 19th century.

More generally, how much of this dispute revolves around disagreement over reliable sources, and how much around just out-and-out reverts by SPAs and new editors? Carcharoth (talk) 02:07, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

In answer to the first question, I don't think there is any rhyme or reason for it doing that. Occasionally I search for my username on Google, just to see what it comes up with. It always lists my main userpage as the first result, but sometimes it lists my talk page as a sub result, and sometimes another of my subpages, and sometimes no sub results at all. Same goes for my pages on other projects. J.delanoy^gabs_adds 02:11, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

(1) Before the move, Republic of Macedonia was the #1 Google hit for the term "Macedonia". Likewise Macedonia is now the #1 Google hit for "Republic of Macedonia".[35] Ancient Macedonia was, as at present, the secondary hit. (Note that this relates to Google UK - I don't know if you get the same results from other localised Googles.) This is to be expected - Google's PageRank algorithm prioritises the pages that have the highest number of incoming links. It corroborates the data posted at Talk:Macedonia that indicates that Republic of Macedonia had far more incoming links than any of the other Macedonias, followed by Macedonia (ancient kingdom) (which was then at Macedon). Ancient Macedonia is displayed as a sub-page simply because it is linked from the page immediately above it on Google's results. The disambiguation page did not and does not have a very high profile because generally we tried to avoid linking directly to it, other than in hatnotes, and linked directly to the disambiguated articles instead via pipes (e.g. [[Republic of Macedonia|Macedonia]] rather than [[Macedonia]]). This is reflected in the relatively low ranking that it gets on Google.

(2) I would say that website's not at all reliable. It's clearly a personal website (registered to an individual with a Macedonian or Bulgarian name in Toronto [36]), the scholarship it hosts is out of date and in any case we don't link to it at all.[37]

The dispute does not have very much at all to do with disagreements over reliable sources. There have been a few attempts to dismiss certain authors as unreliable because they're "biased", but that has only really been a fairly minor side issue. The main issue is the naming of the country Macedonia - not the wider region or the Greek region or the ancient kingdom, none of which is controversial. There are three distinct sub-issues: (1) what the country article should be called; (2) what terminology should be used in general, and in particular how it should be referred to in articles relating to Greece, where a number of editors have sought a special dispensation; and (3) the ongoing daily war against that country's name across the whole of article space by an endless series of SPAs and IPs, as reflected in the abuse log. -- ChrisO (talk) 08:13, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

In addition to what ChrisO says: The website [38] is just one among a great number of tendentious partisan websites hosted by amateurs from the various national camps. Some of the texts mirrored on it are interesting (such as the Badian article), but the whole thing is clearly partisan (in this case: pro-(Slavic)Macedonian). As for Carcharoth's last question: neither the one nor the other. Sourcing is not a main issue in this conflict, because the conflict is not a classical content dispute. There are content disputes in some related domains, including for instance the ethnic character of ancient Macedonia, but that is unrelated to the naming dispute we are trying to solve here. With respect to the naming dispute, there is no disagreement about the facts out there (who in the real world uses what names for what entities and why); there's only a disagreement over how Wikipedia should react to these facts. Which is not something that "sourcing" of whatever kind can solve. (One might also say: the very suggestion that questions of related content issues such as the Ancient Macedonian one might have any bearing on our naming practices brings us right into the Greek POV position, because it implies we should do an evaluation of historical rights and wrongs, of whether a certain naming is historically "justified" and all that. It's the Greek POV position in real life that the world should be doing that, and it's Wikipedia's explicit policy that it should refuse to do it.) Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:31, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

About #2. That site is not at all reliable (e.g. "Greeks are racists", deleted its own "about us" information etc.). It only appears because it has the words right next to each other in the domain name and possibly. That us an important factor for Google ranking the other one is pagerank leeching from nationalists blogs. For instance try to search for "Macedonia info" you get macedonia.info an analogue site from a Greek site representation. Shadowmorph ^{^"^}

@Jdelanoy. Again the "Google must be broken" meme. There is a reason for the ranking, it's called pagerank and it is the reason behind Google's billion making. Your talk page has a small pagerank mainly because of Wikipedia leeked pagerank, and other comperative large factors like occurrences of your name in that page that are variable (a talk page changes constantly). That is not the case for high profile searches. The fact that Google leaks traffic to Wikipedia cannot possibly be considered a small factor. I am only telling this because much is made about page hits. I bet my right hand that 50% of the traffic to Macedonia in Wikipedia comes from Google. Someone with access to hits demographics and organic traffic stats (maybe Jimbo) could verify that easily. Please assume my good faith, I tell you because I have technical knowledge of that subject. That is why I have talked about the page move being a google bomb, which I repeat here and I will explain in detail in the following response. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 08:51, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia & Google (Google bombs and worlwide information flow)

About #1. The important question. It is misleading and untrue to say that Google listed Republic of Macedonia first before the page move. Firstly ChrisO provided us with a link from Google.co.uk, we should better just talk about the international Google site and not go down checking all the locales.Google search for Macedonia.

Check the url under the result. Strange? Here is the explanation:

Before the move Google listed two pages.

• Macedonia {//en.wikipedia.org/Macedonia}, first (the disambiguation page at the time)

• Republic of Macedonia {//en.wikipedia.org/Republic_of_Macedonia} as an extra result

That is no surprise since a prime determining factor for Google ranking is the name of the url and the title in bold of a page. The republic had the word only in part in both the url and the title, while the dab page had it as a whole. Now I could say that ChrisO lies about the past here but I won't and maybe has just not gone into detail. (or it has something to do with the different .co.uk page ranking).

This was the case, I am telling the truth. I have to emphasize that I am telling the truth since my bad faith and SPA status is considered default in here. Even after the move, in the time before Google indexing was affected, Google listed two results but... the disambiguation result also redirected to the country because Google hadden't indexed the change in the url of the page because of the page move. That is why Google now stopped listing the dab page as a separate result because it flagged it as being the same page. (because the url http://en.wikipedia.org/Republic_of_Macedonia redirects to http://en.wikipedia.org/Macedonia). Check out the url in the Google search as of right now:[39] it is "en.wikipedia.org/Republic_of_Macedonia". That means that Google does not actually list that page first but just hides the en.wikipedia.org/Macedonia page because it the same with the other!

For proof I give this diff [40], my own testimony at the time about the same thing, which was actually called "obtuse, inane and clueless argumentation" by Fut.Perf. Curiously he doesn't say the same now that an arbitrator asks, although it is about the bloody same thing. It cannot be possibly prove it another way unless I could offer screenshots which I don't have and they have image licensing issues. Anyhow if ChrisO hadn't surprised us with the move, I could have previous data posted in a talk page. We could see that is the case, if we reverted to previous situation and wait a month.

The important part is the actual result of this happenings. In effect the page move changed the flow of information worldwide. Anybody searching for the word in the internet and is uninformed about "Macedonia" gets his information through the first result which is now changed — by ChrisO's move — . In essence this is an excellent example of how Wikipedia manipulates the world view on a subject. It was a google bomb, not just an administrative action for a technical reason. That could also be the yet unclear motive behind the move. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 09:32, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

What Google thinks — actually what the internet usage suggests — is the main topic for "Macedonia" can be illustrated in this map from my evidence

• "Macedonia" places (represented by cities), by Google (zoom in/out,click update). Not a surprise that Rome appears. Anyway it doesn't show the relative weights of each locale, I give it just for indication purposes. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 09:50, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Macedonia (ancient kingdom) did not appear in Google results for "Macedonia" before because it had the url and the title "Macedon" that did not include the whole word Macedonia. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 17:47, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Sigh. This talk of "Google bombs" is tiresome and ridiculous. As I said, the Republic of Macedonia article - now at Macedonia - has been the top Google result for a long time. Shadowmorph seems to be ignorant of how PageRank works - it has nothing to do with the name of the url and the title in bold (otherwise search engine optimisation would be much easier!). The same thing is visible in other localised Googles even where the article name is at the equivalent of Republic of Macedonia. The equivalent of the Republic of Macedonia article is the #1 Google link for the equivalent of the term "Macedonia" in French Google [41], Spanish [42], Portuguese [43], Italian [44] and so on. In languages where Macedonia is already in use for the country article (e.g. German - de:Mazedonien), the equivalent of the term "Macedonia" goes straight to the country article: German [45], Polish [46], Danish [47] and so on. Of course, none of this is a surprise: it's simply a reflection of the fact that the term "Macedonia" is used primarily in basically all major European languages except Greek to refer primarily to the country. Therefore there will be more incoming links to the article about the RoM, therefore that article will have the top PageRank for "Macedonia". This has been the case for a long time. -- ChrisO (talk) 21:54, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Neither you nor me can prove what was the case before your move. Its your word against mine. Other languages that use other transliterations. Incidentally all the examples you mentioned, the country is at "Republic of Macedonia" or "Macedonia (country)" while at "Macedonia" there is a disambiguation page. All the searches list both of them in the top like it was the case before. In English it is you who made the disambiguation entry disappear completely. Tell me why does the disambiguation page appears there if it has no pagerank? By magic? No, its because of the url and the title.

You said "has nothing to do with the name of the url". Do your reading, you don't seem to know how Google ranks. I never said that pagerank uses those, but the other ranking factors of Google do. Here is for your information: Google URL and Domain Name. Google Ranking Factors. I don't have to explain technical matters since you don't seem to assume my good faith in doing so. You say I seem ignorant when I said that I have expertise on the subject. I know you never said that you have expertise on Google and SEO. I want say anything more. All the info is there. You can't answer why Google doesn't list the country at ://en.wikipedia.org/Macedonia but instead at ://en.wikipedia.org/Republic_of_Macedonia. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 22:22, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Also of note is that the country page is "stealing" pagerank from the en.wikipedia.org/Macedonia which was for years about the disambiguation and people linked there for that reason and not for the country. It had its own pagerank, now they are merged. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 22:31, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Dear Heavens. We are not about pagerank; we are about making the most useful encyclopedia possible. It would be better for us if Google's preferences were drowned in the midst of the sea, and we could concentrate on our tasks without all the infantile publicists and followers of causes attempting to use us as a megaphone. If true, this is entirely to ChrisO's credit, and should be counted in his favor. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:00, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Google's preferences do have one thing in their favour - when it comes to Wikipedia, they provide a fairly objective assessment of the prominence of individual articles. Obviously off-wiki pages can be (and are) skewed by SEO spammers, but Google's stats relating to Wikipedia are fairly unpolluted. As I said above, it goes to show that across the board, in multiple languages, anyone searching for "Macedonia" is getting the article on the country as the first on the list. I really don't know why Shadowmorph has brought this up; it dents his own case rather badly. -- ChrisO (talk) 23:18, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

The dab page was artificially deleted from Google results page via your move. Ever since, it has lost all its traffic. That serves only one POV, the one that is for hiding all mentions to any other use that the Republic's. People linked to the dab page for years, they wanted to show something, now all those links are not just broken but worse redirected to the page of the country only. Reminder to PMAnderson: I responded to a question asked by Carcaroth. He thinks Google is relevant. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 23:36, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

I see now that you have abandoned the English usage and trying to focus on other languages. There is a reason that Google lists both the dab page and the country on the top. Unfortunately the international Google now doesn't. Before the move, international Google listed the dab page first. The real issue is not what was first but that you killed the dab page which was a top result. That is a Google bomb Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 23:44, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Shadowmorph this excellent presentation above is actually a very important Finding of Fact about the external consequences of ChrisO's disruptive action.--Avg (talk) 23:59, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

It's complete drivel. The international Googles haven't been affected one jot by any action of mine, because the international Googles are returning results in their own languages. I've not made any changes to any other wiki's naming of the Macedonia article. No changes to the English article are going to influence the French or German Googles, which preferentially return results from the French or German wikis. The simple fact is that searches for "Macedonia" in a range of European languages have for a very long time gone straight to the Wikipedia articles in those languages about the country. Here's a simple test. Go to Google's search tools page and select any European language except Greek. Type in that language's equivalent of "Macedonia". Click the "I'm feeling lucky" button (the right-hand one of the two). Which page, of all of the trillions of pages on the Web, do you get when you do that? -- ChrisO (talk) 00:18, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Declaration of interest

Following on from the above, one thing this case has done is get me interested in classical history again. I just purchased in a bookshop today The Classical World - An Epic History of Greece and Rome by Robin Lane Fox (originally subtitled An Epic History from Homer to Hadrian). This is one reason why I've been asking for the content stuff to be separated from the conduct stuff. I do have more of an interest in the classical history than the modern stuff (the first reference I ever saw to Macedonia was in a context relating to Alexander the Great).

What I think is happening here is that I'm developing an opinion on the content issues in the course of reading into and around the sources, both from personal interest and in trying to judge editor behaviour here. Accordingly, I intend to abstain on any findings of fact that veer too far from conduct issues towards ruling on content issues (it can happen sometimes, though we try to avoid it). Pure conduct issues I will still be voting on. If anyone has any questions related to this (or thinks I am being too cautious here in declaring this interest), please feel free to reply here or at my talk page. Carcharoth (talk) 02:07, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Can I make a comment on this? I feel the history has nothing to do with our case, here's a naming issue that is not decided based on historic merits, but on Wikipedia naming policies and guidelines (and present use, history has nothing to do with it). man with one red shoe 02:48, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

I have to agree. Carcharoth, I think you are being too cautious. As MW1RS says, this issue is fundamentally about our naming policies and guidelines and assessments of present usage. That is something that can be determined objectively: we have clear criteria, have those criteria been met? I think you can tackle that question whether or not you have any knowledge of the ancient history of the region. -- ChrisO (talk) 08:35, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Allow me to join the chorus. Carcharoth, this case is not about actual content, but merely about the style in which that content is presented... merely about the names & clarifying wording our articles should use to refer to the various Macedonias out there. – The question is how much disambiguation is required by our naming conventions (& common sense): would our readers be confused by "Greece borders with Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria and Turkey", so that instead we should write "Greece borders with Albania, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Bulgaria and Turkey" ? – Furthermore, is it biased against Greece to refer to the country as plain "Macedonia" or "Republic of Macedonia" in our entry on Greece itself despite the fact that the Greek government -and part of its population- uses the provisional reference FYROM ? Would such wording infringe our Neutral Point of View policy ? - Reading about local history shouldn't affect your views on such issues of style :-) Best, Ev (talk) 20:48, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

What Carcharoth says above is directly related to the disambiguation issue. --Avg (talk) 21:07, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Carcharoth, historical knowledge about the subject in question is actually in the pros not the cons for participating. Having the knowledge to understand what the primary topic is, is a reason for the opposite of chosing to abstain. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 09:45, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Always ensure that names are used in an historically accurate context

— WP:Naming conflict, ChrisO

I just though the above quotation[48] would be relevant. Besides shouldn't the "policies and guidelines" specifically refer to historical concerns? Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 12:04, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

oh man, here we go again explaining the meaning of snippets of text. Context is important of course, it is actually a good disambiguator, for example if somebody talks about Alexander the Great and mentions "Macedonia" the context determines clearly that's about Ancient Macedon(ia). If somebody talk about current international affairs and that for example "Macedonia sent troupes to Iraq" is evident that they talk about "Republic of Macedonia". By "historically accurate context" it means exactly that: we can't talk about "Republic of Macedonia" before let's say 100 AD and we can't talk about Ancient Macedonia when we discuss current matters. It doesn't mean "we can't use a name because it was used in history" (which I think you want to infer from that snippet). man with one red shoe 15:57, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Naming conflict - ChrisO's COI with this arbitration

I just found out that ChrisO wrote the WP:Naming conflict guideline. That puts his rationale that he based the move on policy, rather conflicting. Anyone could write a policy and then base anything on what he wrote. The really strange and conflicting issue is that the policy he himself wrote, said to not make the one-word geographic name the title of a country article if it conflicts with other entities by the same name. Here is the edit by ChrisO[49]

Maybe that was his prior opinion, he has the right to change it. Arbitrators have said that they can't write new policy but only base on current ones. But can the Arbitrators really decide on ChrisO's conduct (that he claimed was based on policy) based on policy using the same policy that ChrisO wrote? A kind of Wikipedia mistrial? Just a thought. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 11:25, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Rather than a COI, the expert on Wikipedia's naming policy should be the person we defer to in all cases of naming things. If I am confused over the meaning of a policy, who better to interpret the meaning than the person who wrote it? (Taivo (talk) 13:01, 12 May 2009 (UTC))

And if there had been large disagreements with it (as, for example, with MOS), there would be evidence of them in the history, on the talk page, and in the block log - or it would have been changed. Without this, the policy in general is likely to be the consensus of those who worked on it since. (Those who disagree with it now are free to start an RfC whether it still has support, on whatever points they dispute.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:48, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Actually it just means that he knows better than you and me how to apply that guideline. "Anyone could write a policy" -- I wonder if this statement is... true. Have you wrote a policy? Policies and guidelines are vetted from what I know, even if we assume some specific intentions from ChrisO when he contributed to the guideline the fact that the guideline is vetted by the community it means that what he wrote is approved by the community -- or maybe you claim that the community has a conflict of interest too? (since that's where your logic leads) man with one red shoe 15:48, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Let me rephrase "Someone with authority could write a policy". It would help if that someone followed that policy. Did you read it? Tell me, exactly where does it support what has happened here. It specifically mentions "Macedonian" as needing disambiguation. It also concludes with "In the end, if all else fails, just leave the article at its original name. If there is such ambiguity that the possible title of an article could go 50-50, chances are there isn't that great of a need to move it in the first place. On these articles, endless discussion and bi-annual straw polls will likely only lead to more arguing and therefore the title should be left as its creator titled it.". So what exactly is the policy we should follow? Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 17:28, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Also from that policy: International organisations. Search for the conflicting names on the websites of organisations such as the United Nations, NATO, OSCE, IMF, etc.

Also it says When "Ireland" is used to mean the country, it is often pipe-linked to the Republic of Ireland article. It suggests directly to use "Republic of {Country}" for the article and {Country} only in pipe-links , in cases where the name conflicts with the greater region name. Shadowmorph ^{^"^}

So does the "expert" actually know what he is talking about? Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 17:28, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

What happened is that ChrisO picked only the parts of that consensus policy that he himself wrote and ignored the rest.Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 17:38, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

I wonder if this is a good example filibuster that we talked about, we were talking here about COI and I explained why is not and why ChrisO contribution to the guidelines is not an issue, why do you go on about how to apply the policies and their interpretation which is a totally different subject? I don't plan to discuss policies here and not with you, what I did is dispel the notion that contributing to a guideline somehow doesn't make you apt to get involved in its application. man with one red shoe 17:45, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

I responded to the "he knows better than you and me how to apply that guideline" and "who better to interpret the meaning than the person who wrote it". That is what I did. It is not a matter of interpretation but of contradiction and selective application rather than application. That is what I showed, how is that filibuster? There is nothing I say that you will accept. Even clear facts like the fact that ChrisO wrote a policy and now has to be judged by the arbitrators based on the policy he wrote. I think is COI, you think it is not. The other fact is that he didn't even follow the spirit of the policy he wrote. But that is all Greek to you, I guess. If you don't want someone else's perspective then you are right, don't discuss this. I will quit this discussion for now. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 18:11, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

I just don't want to get into another endless policy debate with you. As for COI I explained clearly why is not the case, the policy is vetted by the community, it belongs to the community not to individual people who contributed to it, therefore the people who participated don't have a COI in the matters that pertain to applying the policy to which they contributed. I'd be amazed if arbitrators find otherwise. man with one red shoe 18:20, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

(Responding to "red", which is easier to pronounce than "mwors") Well, WP:NCON isn't a policy, it's a guideline. Guidelines do not have anywhere near the same degree of formal vetting as policies, because they're generally seen as being just implementations of and elaborations on existing policies. The fact that I don't see any sort of ratification or formal vetting discussion on the talk page is one clear evidence of that lower standard of vetting. Now, by saying this I'm not in any way trying to "diss" ChrisO's work on the page in question, which seems fairly good. Just saying that they don't tend to be as minutely reviewed as policies, and like I said, this one doesn't seem to have been reviewed for "vetting" purposes much at all. And anyone can write a policy or guideline, although most people are too sane to want to try. I can't see how there would necessarily be a COI between helping put together the guideline and acting in this instance, although like with any other court case there's always the possibility that something might be found somewhere which changes things. John Carter (talk) 18:37, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Still, Shadowmorph's logic would imply that anybody who writes a guideline or policy should not get involved into applying it, which doesn't make much sense to me. What he could try is to go to the guideline page and argue to change/expunge things written by ChrisO because "he's biased" because of his participating in this case, but I don't see that succeeding either. Bottom line, it's a good guideline, and it's pretty well explained, I don't see why 1. we shouldn't apply it because one of us was involved in writing it, or 2. somebody who wrote it shouldn't participate in any discussion where that guideline would apply. Neither position is valid. man with one red shoe 18:56, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

The guideline may well have been written with early experiences of Macedonia debates in mind, but the main point about it is the fact that it has stood its test by being applied to a number of the worst POV conflicts all across the wiki. If it has survived being cited over the Sea of Japan, Mogilev, the Shatt el-Arab, the Persian Gulf, the Balti Steppe, and Vilnius, without getting torn to shreds by the various warring parties, it can't be that bad. Fut.Perf. ☼ 19:01, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

And that is of course the most important point. I actually wrote the guideline with the infamous Danzig dispute in mind, more than Macedonia. The objective was to provide some guidance for dealing with naming conflicts in general, not just one specific conflict. -- ChrisO (talk) 21:11, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

I refer to your involvement with NCON in my relevant evidence section (The WP:NCON guideline). You still have not explained why you did this edit though, have you? Perhaps it is a good opportunity to do it now?--Avg (talk) 21:17, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

That edit is from Feb 2008, do you claim that he premeditated that change before he even made up the mind to move the page to "Macedonia"? What's your point? man with one red shoe 21:32, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

I know when it is and I mention it in the evidence, it is at the time of the big templates dispute (when ChrisO also changed Republic of Macedonia to Macedonia in a protected template[50]). Modifying the guideline is just another one of his ways to try to win a content dispute. I can't think of any reason to change "official" to "self-identifying", especially when just below in the objective criteria "official" is above "self-identifying", apart from diminishing the prominence of a name which, while it is official, is not used by the state itself (FYROM). --Avg (talk) 22:08, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

I suggest you read the edit summary: the change was made simply for consistency, since the term "self-identifying" was used elsewhere in the guideline and clarity was best served by using it in that line as well. It had nothing whatsoever to do with the template change and wasn't even invoked in that context. Conspiracy theories don't serve your cause well. -- ChrisO (talk) 22:13, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

And that's exactly what I point out in my evidence. You mislabeled the change as "Tweak for consistency", while just a few lines below, it was obvious that "official" had greater prominence than "self-identifying".--Avg (talk) 22:20, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Someone said that no objections were raised at the guideline. What I see is that objections that were raised there were reverted as "non-agreed" by ChrisO. That leaves me thinking that only the additions that had the permision of ChrisO were added. One addition was specifically about using non controversial names[51], and it was not by any Greek editor by the way. Besides ChrisO's action contradicts the guideline he wrote.Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 22:43, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) The contributions of User:Itzse to the guideline WP:NCON reflected the Wikipedia:Naming_conventions#Controversial_names which is an official policy. So they were by the book. But ChrisO removed them as "non-agreed". Strangely Itzse also edited in another arbitration[52] where ChrisO was involved[53]. There he was mentioned for his conduct in Kosovo and in the other arbitration about Israeli apartheid, where ChrisO was again accused of "teaming up" with a user and "blocking people that provided sourced information"[54]. After that User:Bhouston who got into the argument with ChrisO decided to leave Wikipedia altogether as it seems. ChrisO was admonished at that arbitration[55]. "The AfD, the many merge attempts, the repeated questioning of motives, and coordinated team actions, all seem to be about censoring information based on political POV" that User:Bhouston wrote sounds very familiar and relative for this case too. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 23:04, 12 May 2009 (UTC)