This is very interesting.
93.107.68.59 makes an
edit to change the British Isles text in an article. If you look at that IPs contributions, then you will notice
several of the same changes.
ThrankunColl calls it vandalism:
QUOTE
Please stop vandalising pages by imposing political viewpoints on them. Otherwise you will be reported for sockpuppetry. TharkunColl 14:40, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
On the RFAR appear, Flonight makes an assertion that appears to include such comment as above by TharkunColl:
QUOTE
Accusations of wikistalking, misuse of edit summaries, labeling another user's edits as vandalism are several problems I noticed when taking a quick look. Likely that these issues are preventing the resolution of the content dispute. FloNight♥♥♥ 13:52, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
The heart of the dispute, on the RFAR:
QUOTE
Statement by Kendrick7
This is rather silly. They haven't been the British Isles since 1919. That Americans still lazily refer to them as such is simply a reflection of our own ignorance of European history. I applaud any editor fighting such ignorance; if this appears to be an "obsession" it's only because the anachronism is so widespread among our pages. -- Kendrick7 05:24, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
Statement by Bastun
A quick read of the article and its associated articles and talk pages clearly shows User:Kendrick7 is incorrect - the term is still in use worldwide, including by a minority on the island of Ireland (and I've just reverted his change to the lede of the BI article making it 'past tense').
On the RfA itself - User:Bardcom does seem to have an issue with the term and does try to eliminate it from many articles, some removals being dubious, some being valid, in my opinion. But its a content dispute and certainly not yet appropriate for an RfA. Bastun 09:17, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
There is some related history in The Trouble case, but I only glanced at that one, so far.
WMC's involvement in this relates to another event with
93.107.68.59,
subthread link.
This RFAR makes it look like 93.107.68.59 actually fixed it to modern terms, but the dispute is to continue to use the old terms (BI), and Ireland is the rope in the tug of war.
Is there a WR-Popcorn fund?