World War II, The anti-US version Options

[Emperor]

When will Oberiko and his group stop?

He's won just about every argument he's had, and still keeps going.

He's got the article under constant semi-protection.
He's deleted the American picture from the lead montage, and now there are 2 Soviet, 2 Commonwealth, and 2 Japanese.
The Intro and infobox refuse to say that the war started in 1939, and the 1937/39 debate continues.
The Intro and infobox don't list the major combatants
The major commanders aren't listed anywhere in the article. (For fun, try to find "Eisenhower" or "Zhukov" anywhere on the page using Edit --> Find on this Page.)

The entire article is written in Oberiko's weird wiki-summary style where the proper names of events are hidden within Wiki-links. See the Normandy Invasion coverage, in its entirety:

In June, 1944, the Western Allies invaded northern France

And check my favorite passage:

The Soviets decided to make their stand at Stalingrad which was in the path of the advancing German armies and by mid-November the Germans had nearly taken Stalingrad in bitter street fighting when the Soviets began their second winter counter-offensive, starting with an encirclement of German forces at Stalingrad[94] and an assault on the Rzhev salient near Moscow, though the latter failed disastrously.[95

I've been following the article for years now, and seen people come and go but basically anyone who doesn't agree with Oberiko gets frustrated and leaves. He's not afraid to swing his administrator status and have people blocked who edit war with him or Parsecboy.

I could go through line by line and point out not only anti-Western and anti-American bias, but also outright errors. Take the first line of the Background section:

In the aftermath of World War I, the defeated German Empire signed the Treaty of Versailles.[7]

How does anyone not notice this for months and months? I've been watching it as an experiment to see if Wikipedians will ever get a clue, but, well, you see. Later in the background you'll find out that Germany's goal with Austria was to make it a "satellite state". Both of these statements are referenced too?

Insult to injury: the Holocaust is described as "the systematic purging of Jews in Europe". Well I'm pretty sure English isn't Oberiko's first language, but then why doesn't anyone help him? Oh right, because it's so obvious that the article is Owned that you'd be an idiot to try to help.

I know this breaks my rule of thumb not to help Wikipedia myself, but it is the number one search result and I'm feeling a bit of remorse just letting it fester, with it being around D-Day this week and having just recently talked to guy who was a B-29 pilot based in Saipan. I can't believe a generation of kids might be seeing their first encyclopedia article about WWII on Wikipedia.

This post has been edited by Emperor:

[BelovedFox]

If I could be bothered with it, I'd probably take a stab at improving the World War II article. Unfortunately it would essentially require marginalizing a good half of the editors, but hey, what else is admin status for? (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/tongue.gif) I'd rather fritter away my Wikipedia time improving articles that no one else will improve and are far easier.

In these kinds of disputes it's often frightening about how entrenched people get over trivial details. Some people read the first book on WWII and then warp the reality to fit was they learned back then.

[Emperor]

If I could be bothered with it, I'd probably take a stab at improving the World War II article. Unfortunately it would essentially require marginalizing a good half of the editors, but hey, what else is admin status for? (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/tongue.gif) I'd rather fritter away my Wikipedia time improving articles that no one else will improve and are far easier.

In these kinds of disputes it's often frightening about how entrenched people get over trivial details. Some people read the first book on WWII and then warp the reality to fit was they learned back then.

We wish there was a "back then". Instead of reading authors like Churchill or Keegan, these kids are screwing around on Wikipedia and learning by Google search.

[radek]

If I could be bothered with it, I'd probably take a stab at improving the World War II article. Unfortunately it would essentially require marginalizing a good half of the editors, but hey, what else is admin status for? (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/tongue.gif) I'd rather fritter away my Wikipedia time improving articles that no one else will improve and are far easier.

In these kinds of disputes it's often frightening about how entrenched people get over trivial details. Some people read the first book on WWII and then warp the reality to fit was they learned back then.

We wish there was a "back then". Instead of reading authors like Churchill or Keegan, these kids are screwing around on Wikipedia and learning by Google search.

Not sure if either Churchill or Keegan are adequate for learning about World War 2.

The first wrote more or less for self-propaganda purposes and though the writing's great and really entertaining I'd hardly call it "history" (as in the kind of thing that "historians" do - though I guess for certain purposes it can be considered a primary document).

And Keegan - while he's great on stuff like psychology of soldiers in combat etc. - appears to be almost completely clueless about anything that didn't involve the British directly. For anything that happened east of Berlin remove the "almost" from the preceding sentence. And we're talking obvious mistakes here - IIRC in one of his books he blithly confused the Home Army with the 1st Polish Division (Soviet controlled), or something like that - the kind of stuff that a decent editor at a publishing house should pick up on.

For the realz I'll take Martin Gilbert or Norman Davies "No Simple Victory" for general stuff. Antony Beevor ("Crete", "Stalingrad", "Berlin") for how military history should be done, though each work is more limited in scope - excellent writer too. For the real enthusiast of military stuff and the nitty gritty you got to go even more specific, like with Glantz and House's "Battle of Kursk".

Dang it I wish I wasn't topic banned!

[Emperor]

Dang it I wish I wasn't topic banned!

ha ha, you're topic banned!

One of the things to avoid in a general encyclopedia is revisionism (the world has been overlooking x and now everyone ought to know!!!!!!!) and too much detail.

Whatever Churchill's faults (and he admits to them), he explains why the invasion went in at Normandy rather than Calais. Something Wikipedia fails at.

Why were you topic banned? Arguing about the infobox?

[radek]

Dang it I wish I wasn't topic banned!

ha ha, you're topic banned!

One of the things to avoid in a general encyclopedia is revisionism (the world has been overlooking x and now everyone ought to know!!!!!!!) and too much detail.

Whatever Churchill's faults (and he admits to them), he explains why the invasion went in at Normandy rather than Calais. Something Wikipedia fails at.

Why were you topic banned? Arguing about the infobox?

The Eastern European mailing list. And the topic ban's just for Eastern Europe so I could still write about Crete (might have to dig out that Beevor again) or Normandy or Dutch Resistance (got buttload of materials from the DR museum in Amsterdam). But the Eastern Front is just so much more fascinating (often in the "may you live in interesting times" kind of way)

No revisionism from me. Don't really care that much about infoboxes either.

I should've been clearer about Churchill - it's definitely worth reading and yes, you can learn a lot about WWII from it, you just have to keep the limitations and nature of the work in mind.

Admittedly naval history is something I'm weaker on, in regard to WWII. I suspect BFox is right above in regard to strictly naval military history books. I'm not all that strong on the war in Asia either.

I've read Weinberg a while back and I remember having some minor issues with it but overall it is really good.

[CharlotteWebb]

The Eastern European mailing list. And the topic ban's just for Eastern Europe so I could still write about Crete…

I can almost guarantee that one or more admins will block you for that, on the basis that Crete belongs to Greece, which is a country on the Balkan peninsula, which is part of the Slavo-sphere, which is part of eastern Europe.

Sure would be nice if they actually defined eastern Europe for purposes of the topic bans somewhere on the case page. In the meantime I certainly would not count on many of these people to exercise common sense regarding any territory between the Salzburg and Orenburg meridia, widely construed.

Point being that any regional terminology is vulnerable to self-serving scope creep, see also "middle east".

[radek]

The Eastern European mailing list. And the topic ban's just for Eastern Europe so I could still write about Crete…

I can almost guarantee that one or more admins will block you for that, on the basis that Crete belongs to Greece, which is a country on the Balkan peninsula, which is part of the Slavo-sphere, which is part of eastern Europe.

Sure would be nice if they actually defined eastern Europe for purposes of the topic bans somewhere on the case page. In the meantime I certainly would not count on many of these people to exercise common sense regarding any territory between the Salzburg and Orenburg meridia, widely construed.

Point being that any regional terminology is vulnerable to self-serving scope creep, see also "middle east".

Yes, they were asked to do that several times during the case but never bothered just saying any bad faith attempt at gaming the definition which was not provided was going to be punished and the ol' "I know it when I see it" hubris.
I do think however that there is SOME common sense involved, if not by others than at least by the admins at AE and that the general understanding is that the topic ban applies to the UN definition (in red) + Baltics, reflecting mostly the nationalities/ethnicities of the folks on the list (though not sure why that would then cover Czech, Slovakia, Hungary, or Bulgaria as that doesn't fit neither the nationalities nor the areas of dispute, but whatever). So I really don't think they would put Crete in Eastern Europe. Honestly, I never even considered that someone might until this thread.

Also not sure how the Greeks would react to being put in the "slavo-sphere". Isn't that one of the running fights in the whole Macedonia dispute? Who's a slav and who's a hellene? Not that I wouldn't want to stay away from that whole mess as much as possible anyway.

[CharlotteWebb]

I do think however that there is SOME common sense involved, if not by others than at least by the admins at AE and that the general understanding is that the topic ban applies to the UN definition (in red) + Baltics, reflecting mostly the nationalities/ethnicities of the folks on the list (though not sure why that would then cover Czech, Slovakia, Hungary, or Bulgaria as that doesn't fit neither the nationalities nor the areas of dispute, but whatever). So I really don't think they would put Crete in Eastern Europe. Honestly, I never even considered that someone might until this thread.

I guess things would really be confusing had I been on that mailing list. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/rolleyes.gif)

Hah hah haaaa. How soon you forget, Charlotte.

I wish I had saved that map of Eastern Europe that Wikipedia had used. Can a Wikipedia admin retrieve it from here?

Actually I missed that thread, but I think defining it as Belarus, Russia, and the Ukraine would have excluded the national interests of easterneurope-l subscribers.

Maybe that's why the image was deleted. On the other hand it (in light of a couple paint-bucket failures) it might have roughly depicted areas with an east-Slavic-speaking majority prior to ethnic cleansing population transfer in the 1940s.

[Trick cyclist]

I think defining it as Belarus, Russia, and the Ukraine would have excluded the national interests of easterneurope-l subscribers.

Maybe that's why the image was deleted. On the other hand it (in light of a couple paint-bucket failures) it might have roughly depicted areas with an east-Slavic-speaking majority prior to ethnic cleansing population transfer in the 1940s.

The trouble is boundaries do change. Before World War I the German and Austro-Hungarian Empire would all have been Central Europe. Russia would all have been Eastern Europe. After World War I there was an independent Poland carved from Germany and Russia. After World War II Poland moved a good distance west. So for example the German city of Konigsberg (Central) is now the Russian city of Kaliningrad (Eastern).

By no stretch can the Baltic states be regarded as Central Europe, but they would condemn any attempt to lump them in with the Slavs. I think they like to pretend theyre Scandinavian. The term Northern Europe distinct from East or Central is a useful one for them.

[CharlotteWebb]

I think they like to pretend theyre Scandinavian.

(IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/laugh.gif)

[HRIP7]

I think they like to pretend theyre Scandinavian.

In the case of the Estonians, it's not entirely unreasonable. Estonian is closely related to Finnish. Lithuanian and Latvian are separate from Estonian, but they are not Slavic languages either.

This post has been edited by HRIP7: