Wikipedia:Geopolitical, ethnic, and religious conflicts noticeboard

Welcome to the geopolitical, ethnic, and religious conflicts noticeboard
This page is for reporting issues regarding ethnic, national, and cultural editing conflicts. Consider including some background information, not only relating to the specific dispute, but also the relevant ethnic or religious conflict. If you do this you are far more likely to get an effective response. Situations requiring immediate administrative action should go to the incidents noticeboard. Situations requiring immediate enforcement of the arbitration committee remedies should go to the enforcement noticeboard. Volunteers: To mark an issue resolved, use {{Resolved|Your reason here ~~~~}} at the top of its section. Sections older than 7 days archived by MiszaBot II. (For help, see Wikipedia:Purge) If you mention specific editors, you must notify them. You may use {{subst:CCN-notice}} to do so.
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Canadian Sikhism

There is one editor in particular who has been of issue with regards to posting acceptable sources with regards to population figures and population figures in general. While that issue has been discussed and partially resolved I suspect other edits made by that editor may perhaps be pushing advocacy in other parts of the article. I myself do not have enough personal knowledge on the article subject but perhaps a review of the article can be made to see if any issues are present? Duhon (talk) 08:33, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

Van cat controversy

The article Van cat is frequently the target of anti-Turk, anti-Kurd and/or anti-Armenian racist editing that borders on vandalism. The most common bits are removal of Kurds/Kuristan and/or mention of Armenians by pro-Turkish editors, especially from the infobox and lead, and anti-Turkish political rants, especially in the "#Naming controversy" section, merged in from an excessively POV-pushing content fork. I don't think any blocks are warranted at this time, but this article and the related one at Turkish Van (which also sees such disruptive edits) could use more watchers. I've warned (with a general post on the article talk page, not individual editor-chastising) that any further ethinic-attack edits will result in a filing at WP:AN/I for blocking, so hopefully it just won't happen any more. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 21:56, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Amritbani Guru Ravidass Ji

There seems to be a bit of a war going on at Amritbani Guru Ravidass Ji and some of the surrounding articles such as Ravidassia Religion, which appears to be a newly-formed religion based on the teachings of a 14th century Indian guru, of which Amritbani Guru Ravidass Ji is the holy book. It's way out of my league, I only came across it in passing whilst assessing articles, but the respective talk pages detail some of the accusations which include edit-warring, facts not being supported by the supplied references and POV pushing. Would some kind soul care to have a look? FlagSteward (talk) 17:24, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

I just wandered into the same series of articles in "WikiProject Ravidassia", and agree that there's some significant POV-pushing and historical revisionism involved. Very long story short, the Ravidasi were apparently generally aligned with Sikhism (low-caste "untouchable" Indians forming their own subset of Sikhism due to being unwelcome among "higher caste" Sikhs). The Ravidassi and Sikhs had a major falling-out in 2009 when Sikh radicals murdered Ravidasi clergyman Ramanand Dass in Vienna, so they severed ties and literally wrote a new holy book to replace the Sikh one they were using. Fascinating story, but the trouble is some major contributors at the page have been working to remove any mention of Sikhism from the article, and instead portray Ravidassia as a cohesive independent religion back to 14th Century India. MatthewVanitas (talk) 14:58, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Al-Ahbash

this whole article is inaccurate and not NPOV but editors are refusing to allow any contribution by other editors..i have tried discussing it but it was to no avail. Baboon43 (talk) 18:43, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Azawad and its regions and cercles.

Azawad has recently declared independence from Mali but remnains unrecognised. However there seems top be an effort to edit articles on the relevant regions of Mali to describe them primarily as located in Azawad and then mention their global recognition as part of Mali as an afterthought. I have changed Tombouctou Region but it's late here and there are a whole bunch of other places that need fixing.--Peter cohen (talk) 22:45, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Nelly Furtado

The English page of Nelly Furtado keeps on having someone who deletes the fact that she is Portuguese Canadian, first based on the argument that her being Portuguese was a matter of ethnicity (but not being Canadian, apparently), and second based on the fact that there is no "direct proof" that she has Portuguese citizenship. I might add where is the "direct proof" that she has Canadian citizenship, either?

The whole point being brought up constantly in the editing of this article is based on an "Amerocentric" perspective of what is citizenship. To constantly erase the fact that she is both Portuguese and Canadian from her article, is a xenophobic attitude in nature, as it considers one nationality law to have more value than a different nationality law. That is simply wrong, both when it comes to its accordance with the truth, and also regarding the principle of no supremacy of any human being or nation over another. Dual citizenship at birth is a very common thing, exactly because not every country awards citizenship in the same way. I truly don´t understand the need to deny this, other than in a context of extreme nationalism.

In the Americas (for most countries), citizenship is automatically granted based on the "ius soli" concept. This means a person is Canadian, American, Brazilian, whatever, mainly if they are born in the country.

But in most european countries, citizenship is based on "ius sanguinis". Citizenship is automatically granted according to the parents´ nationality.

To say that she is Canadian "because she was born, lives and works in Canada", makes absolutely no proof of any kind regarding her nationality, if you don´t know Canadian law. Since we do know, we know she is Canadian, of course. In exactly the same way, if you know Portuguese law, and know that Portugal automatically grants citizenship to anyone whose parents are Portuguese and were born in Portugal, then you know there is nothing to argue about in this matter. She is Portuguese, just like she is Canadian.

One nationality should not require the need for some kind of "ultimate proof" over the other. She possessed dual citizenship right at birth, Canadian and Portuguese, since both countries grant automatic citizenship in different ways.

On the matter of Portuguese nationality, please see the following: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_nationality_law

Furthermore, just making a fast random search on the internet, I found an interview of Nelly Furtado to a Brazilian TV (in Portuguese), where she herself admitted she was both Canadian and Portuguese. Further ahead, she even added that "her heart and sould where Portuguese": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3n_ZA4r6Do

On an interview at BBC, she was telling the hosts about how singing in Portuguese was so natural to her, and that she learned Portuguese even before knowing English.

But this things are not the main point, at all (even if it would be very weird for her to say she was Portuguese without being Portuguese, quite obviously).

Resuming, the issue is exclusively legal, and my question is why is one nationality law accepted as enough proof, and another country´s nationality law is not? One truly doesn´t need to know anything else other than that both her parents were born in Portugal and were Portuguese to know for a fact she is Portuguese by birth. It´s the law. Just like no further proof of her Canadian citizenship is required for that statement to be made on the article. It is simple, both countries´ laws automatically grant citizenship to someone in her situation, right at birth. It is partial, and not a neutral position, to say the least, to consider that a specific definition of a person´s nationality based on the perspective of a certain country, is accepted as such with no problems or objections of any kind so to be introduced on wikipedia, while a different one, from a different country, needs some kind of "direct proof".

Wikipedia should not be the place for this kind of behavior.

Thank you, and I hope this situation can be adequately solved. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.79.73.25 (talk) 18:57, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Actually, the article is very clear that she has Portuguese ancestry, is born to Portuguese parents, and has released Portuguese albums. The lead sentence, as directed by MOS:BIO, describes her as "Canadian". There's no effort to suppress or hide anything, just an effort to keep the article in line with consensus, policy, and guidelines.—Kww(talk) 19:18, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

joseph neubauer

Joseph Neubauer's nationality is shown as "Jewish-American." There is no such nationality. He is American. And he is Jewish. That does not make him Jewish American. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jeankay (talk • contribs) 14:50, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Please make sure there is actually a dispute before reporting it. The fact that you posted here before editing Joseph Neubauer indicates that this dispute does not exist. Danger ^{High voltage!} 19:08, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

No 1 cause of edit wars: Nationalist school systems -> Solution: create Wikipedia page warning about it

Isn't it weird that most of these edit wars concern nationalism? The reason these edit wars exist is because most people were educated in a school system that has heavy bias towards its own nationalism. You would think that what they teach you at school is all true and impartial. But that's not the case!

For example, the first time I came to Wikipedia, it was a real shock to me. I made significant contribution to Hungarian history based on what I learned at school. Only later did I see that most of my edits were reverted or changed because someone from Slovakia had a different opinion and he was taught something totally different at school than I was.

For instance, when Romania occupied Hungary for a brief time, in Hungary they call it the Romanian oppression, but in Romania they teach it as the Romanian liberation. Croatia is taught in Hungary as a province, but in Croatia it is taught as an independent country. In Hungary, Hungary is taught as the most significant part of the Hapsburg Empire yet in Austria, it's taught as a province. What's more, in Hungary I didn't even hear about the term Magyarization before because they simply don't teach that at school. In Slovakia, this is taught as a major element of curriculum.

What they teach us is that our country is great, our nation is great and that there are a few people who are our national heroes, and whenever "we" suffered it was unjust. For God's sake, even the Anthem of Hungary that every Hungarian has to know by heart is about the fact how great the nation is and that it suffered so much unjustly throughout the years. Nothing is ever mentioned about bad things that Hungary might have done to other nations. What's more, if a great man who invented great things hundreds years ago was born in Hungary, I'm supposed to feel proud of him, but if he was born a few kilometers on the other side of the border, I don't even know his name because it's not in the curriculum.

Why do I refer to another Hungarians as "us" but to a Slovak as "them". For the most part, most Hungarians do not ever leave the country so they live their life in the belief that they are great and other nations are bad. However, on the rare occasion when someone comes and declares that our national hero is from a different nationality, people get angry, because it strikes them at the heart of their national identity since all their life they have been taught to look up to these national heros, because it is them who make the nation great.

This is a LIE. It's a big fat lie. It seems the whole education system of most countries in the world is a just pretext to promote nationalism and control the population. There is a heavy dose of nationalist bias that presents the so called "facts of history" through a tinted glass.

Question is how can we tell people about this so that they won't start their mindless nationalist edit wars? It is extremely rare that they will recognize it by themselves, because they take what they have been taught throughout their lives as the one and only truth. And when these people meet someone else from different indoctrination background as them, that's when the edit wars start.

It took me about 1 year to realize that the Slovak editors aren't hostile and malicious, but only refute what they were taught at school and I'm refuting what I was taught at school, and that our different education systems shaped our identities and beliefs differently so that it is always us that the good guys are and the other ones are always the bad guys.

Therefore, I propose to create a Wikipedia page that warns new users about the indoctrination aspects and nationalist biases of their own education systems that define their identities and beliefs. We should tell them that just because someone is subject to a different nationlist propaganda, he is not malicious in any way, and therefore they shouldn't take the expression of his different beliefs as ad hominem attacks.

It would have helped me incredibly to learn this before I started editing on Wikipedia and not engage in non-sense nationalistic edit wars, which I did for almost a year before I realized what I was doing! All I was thinking about that I must teach these people the truth that I knew. So that's why in my opinion a Wikipedia page would be a great idea to teach new users about this, and as a result there would be a significant drop in edit wars! --Bizso (talk) 05:07, 15 April 2012 (UTC)