User talk:Spideog

Ireland user box

Thank you for updating the Lunar Rover picture. I'm curious about your userbox, and I wonder what is behind the deviation for Eire not following wp:commonname. Is is Irish nationalists wanting to make a point that Ireland is not united, NI protestants who take the republic being called by its wp:commonname as a claim on NI, or both? Sorry if I'm being rude, but I thought it'd be ok to ask with it being in a box and all. I also find the question interesting because I participate in WP:RM discussions, and this kind of problem crops up from time to time. ^walk victor falk ^talk 11:38, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

There have been interminable, exhausting, and enormously tedious discussions about what title Irish articles should bear. There is an island of Ireland (article Ireland) which was partitioned by the British in 1922, creating a new statelet in the north called Northern Ireland. Because the island and the southern state have the same name, Ireland, different titles are required to distinguish a geographic article from a social-political one.

The official name of the state is Ireland, defined by Article 4 of the Constitution of Ireland: "The name of the state is Éire, and in the English language, Ireland." (Éire is the term in the Irish language.) It is neither officially nor unofficially called "Republic of Ireland", nevertheless, Irish Wikipedia editor opinion was outnumbered in discussion by foreign editors who forced through the decision that the article about the state should be called Republic of Ireland, even though no country on earth is officially called that.

(By order of FIFA, the national football team is called Republic of Ireland because for a number of years after Partition in 1922 , there were two football teams called Ireland, one on either side of the new border; now we have Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland in football).

There were proposals that we could have articles called Ireland (island) and Ireland (state), but what we wound up with was Ireland for the island and Republic of Ireland for the state.

There is a curious and fucked up policy now (I forget the name of the policy, but it is in Help) that wikilinks to the article about the state are to be coded thus: [[Republic of Ireland|Ireland]]. This idiocy drives me insane on three levels: Republic of Ireland is not the name of the country; it is inconsistent to pipe two names for one place into a wikilink like that; and every time I want to create a link to Ireland, I have to type out the whole damned thing, instead of simply [[Ireland]].

If you have a masochistic streak, you can find out where all the old discussions (fights) about this are, and read them. They will destroy your faith in humanity. I created my user box one day as a spontaneous cry of anguish at the absurdity and pure wrongness-in-fact of [[Republic of Ireland|Ireland]]. Imagine if United States editors had been forced to accept that wikilinks to the article about their country were coded like this: [[Republic of the United States of America|United States]].

I have no patience for this shit. It is a bitter pill to swallow – without being histrionic, it is a violation of reason and of self, and counter to the spirit of education of Wikipedia – to accept that the article about Ireland in the biggest encyclopaedia on earth is misnamed, and creates the false impression to all and sundry, including under-educated Irish people, that the official name of the country is "Republic of Ireland". — O'Dea (talk) 12:19, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

That's exactly the kind of thing that makes people say "wikipedia is made up stuff". It's locating the US article at the States, or the UK one at Blighty. It reflects poorly on the project. The straight forward answer from the policies and guidelines is "use a disambiguator", but one sees how "(state)" might be bit confusing, what with stuff like the Irish Free State and all. Also, as I see it, Ireland the state is clearly the wp:primarytopic compared to the island, which should be Ireland (island). Why can't people accept Ireland as wp:primarytopic? he asks naively. ^walk victor falk ^talk 13:09, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

I see now that Ireland article is not really about the island, but is wp:dabconcept; that's not entirely unreasonable. But that still leaves RoI. Skimming through WP:Ireland Collaboration, my impression is in one of literal entrenchment, the lines happen to be where they are just because they are there. I can understand your frustration. ^walk victor falk ^talk 13:27, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Costa Rica Updates

Thank you for adding the information from La Nacion regarding the legislative positions in Costa Rica!! It keeps those articles fresh and adds some much-needed "meat." Mvblair (talk) 16:07, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Ruben Salazar

Ruben Salazar Never used the accent, regardless what you'd like (I am not, btw, American, so don't make your assumptions, please).

http://rubensalazarproject.com/

This was funded *by his children*. If he used the accent, they would have corrected it.

It includes pictures of his bylines, that were *also* in Chicano publications that used the accent *when correct* on other names.

http://www.pbs.org/program/ruben-salazar-man-middle/

http://www.vividhues.com/BSS/chicanomovement.htm

You found one site, a left leaning place, that happens to use the accent. No where else; in papers from his children, in his own bylines, in scholarly works about him, nowhere, did he use the accent. It is just as disrespectful to insist on putting it in, despite the man's own usage, as it is to remove it from people who *do* use it.

The accent was used on his birth certificate, and his communion papers, and then it disappears from all his papers, including things that he himself wrote by hand, like his own signature (http://rubensalazarproject.com/timeline/). That's the important thing - *he* did not use it. I am, as an administrator, undoing your edits, and request that if you have further problems with it, you take it to arbitration, with a cite of more than one place that is incorrectly using the accented name, since original documentation from his life does not support you. --Thespian (talk) 10:36, 5 May 2014 (UTC)