Are they all crazy at German Wikipedia?, Wondering after a specific incident Options

[Law Lord]

(I am posting this here instead of the German forum, since my German is rusty and I prefer an outside view.)

I rarely (never) edit deWiki but a sudden piece of interesting information about the late Hans Diller came to my attention. As far as I could tell, an article on him was only present at deWiki.

I inserted the info (in German). A user reverted. I asked for the reasoning. None was given. It seems said user thought that it is good for the mutual respect that instead of participating in a discussen about an article, you write your admin friends in private and have them threathen anybody you disagree with.

So, asking again made this being entered on my user page:

Please stop your editing without references, which, by the way, looks like „on the wrong side of the enyclopaedic border“. And if you revert that again, I'd have to stop you by efficient means.

The poster was a German administrator, and he has a very anti-French image on his user page.

I posted a request on the bottom of his user page for the removal of said image:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer_Disk...hateful_content

This led to immidiate reaction by 3 different user, none of them adressing the issue but rather "shooting back" at me. The 3rd one write in German calling me a "troll" and stating I have no interest in "encyclopedic coopoeration" and asking for my immidate block.

Certainly, the culture at deWiki is very different from enWiki.



Any thoughts?

Cheers,
Law Lord

[Gandoman]

The German Wikipedia does have certain cultural differences from the English one. For one, it's more authoritarian. While the English Wikipedia at least attempts to keep up the appearance of assuming good faith, the German one has a policy called Sei grausam ("be horrible"), which says that if someone is out of line, it's better to just come down with the banhammer as quickly as possible. Basically, admins are the bosses, and if someone disagrees with any action performed by an admin or contributor with more seniority, they're likely to get booted real quick.

[Law Lord]

Basically, admins are the bosses, and if someone disagrees with any action performed by an admin or contributor with more seniority, they're likely to get booted real quick.

Definitely that is how it works; which is why I stand by my previous conclusion that these people are in need of treatment. They are also bad people because they refuse treatment and continue their sick ways. However, having a sectarian cultural interface is probably difficult to treat?

I understand now, what it is in German spirit that has resulted in some very poor choices over the course of recent history. How sad that this is reflected so clearly by the behaviour of the members of deWiki.

When these people (deWiki people) make so poor choices in simple human interaction (rendering themselves the Herrenvolk and every outsider an inferior) it certainly poses the question: how can anybody trust the validity of anything they write at all?

[Somey]

I understand now, what it is in German spirit that has resulted in some very poor choices over the course of recent history. How sad that this is reflected so clearly by the behaviour of the members of deWiki.

To be fair, I doubt that a cultural emphasis on efficiency, order, and "security" normally results in a mass tendency towards racism, religious persecution, or the devaluation of human life - at least not in most societies. It probably does result in authoritarianism though, along with a rigidly hierarchical power structure and a near-obsession with rules, making it an ideal proving ground for Wikipedianism.

Germans are NOT stupid people; most of them know that the mistakes of the past must (or at least should) never be repeated. Unfortunately, they've yet to realize what a mistake Wikipedia is... Hopefully, time will fix that.

When these people (deWiki people) make so poor choices in simple human interaction ...(snip)... it certainly poses the question: how can anybody trust the validity of anything they write at all?

Well, THAT you could say of almost any culture that produces a Wikimedia project. Each national/ethnic culture has its own idiosyncrasies, and any encyclopedia-like websites produced by those cultures will reflect them. That's just another reason why people should want their encyclopedias to be produced by properly-trained, unbiased academics and publishers, rather than cultures.

[GlassBeadGame]

Germans are NOT stupid people; most of them know that the mistakes of the past must (or at least should) never be repeated. Unfortunately, they've yet to realize what a mistake Wikipedia is... Hopefully, time will fix that.

It has impressed me greatly the generations of Germans since WWII have conducted themselves in a manner that is just about everything you could ask from a people whose nation has a recent past of horrible wrongdoing. As a society they have faced their past without avoiding blame or making excuses, readily acknowledging responsibility.

[Random832]

It has impressed me greatly the generations of Germans since WWII have conducted themselves in a manner that is just about everything you could ask from a people whose nation has a recent past of horrible wrongdoing. As a society they have faced their past without avoiding blame or making excuses, readily acknowledging responsibility.

Though that in turn requires one to take it as read that an individual born after 1945 should take "responsibility" for the events of WWII (which is of course distinct from the responsibility to do their part to prevent such things from happening again)

This post has been edited by Random832: Mon 21st September 2009, 4:43am

[Somey]

Though that in turn requires one to take it as read that an individual born after 1945 should take "responsibility" for the events of WWII (which is of course distinct from the responsibility to do their part to prevent such things from happening again)

There's a scene in The Reader (which takes place in a university lecture hall, of course) that touches on this. It suggested that Germans born after 1945 were, more than anything, quite angry at their forebears for putting them in the position of having to rebuild both the country's physical devastation and their national reputation within the civilized world. (As one would expect, I suppose.)

But what we were originally talking about in this thread wasn't really anti-semitism or genocide or even out-of-control military expansionism - we were actually talking about France-bashing, and there are plenty of Americans and English folks who do that (among others). Most of it is unwarranted, IMO.

There's a spy novel I like to recommend called The Spies of Warsaw by Alan Furst, in which a (note: SPOILERS!!!) French attache in 1938 Warsaw all but proves that the Germans are going to send their tanks through the Ardennes Forest in Belgium to invade France, rather than challenge the Maginot Line, but the French General Staff ignores him because Marshal Petain's reputation depends on that not being a possibility. There's a legitimate argument that if it hadn't been for Petain's insistence on this, the Germans could have been stopped in Northern France, and it would have been a simple matter for British and American forces to land on the continent and help drive them back into Germany. OTOH, if that had happened, it's also possible that the Nazi regime might have made peace with the French, and even survived long enough to develop atomic bombs. So who knows - maybe Petain did everybody a favor.

Ahh, the vagaries of history...

[Herschelkrustofsky]

There's a spy novel I like to recommend called The Spies of Warsaw by Alan Furst, in which a (note: SPOILERS!!!) French attache in 1938 Warsaw all but proves that the Germans are going to send their tanks through the Ardennes Forest in Belgium to invade France, rather than challenge the Maginot Line, but the French General Staff ignores him because Marshal Petain's reputation depends on that not being a possibility. There's a legitimate argument that if it hadn't been for Petain's insistence on this, the Germans could have been stopped in Northern France, and it would have been a simple matter for British and American forces to land on the continent and help drive them back into Germany.

Well, that's interesting, because at least on the surface you seem to agree with LaRouche on this point:

I have warned against the silly, but popularized myth, the myth that it was France's preoccupation with the development of the Maginot Line which facilitated the German victory on that occasion. The rout of the greater part of France's military forces then, was chiefly the contribution of a pro-Synarchist "Fifth Column" inside the leading French military and other institutions, in the sense of the role of the "Fifth Column" which had just previously produced the victory of the fascist dictator Franco in 1930s Spain. The Synarchist influences from inside France's institutions left the gate wide open for what should have been considered the probable German course of action.

...That "Fifth Column" inside 1940 France was what is known as the same Synarchist International later represented by the regimes of Nazi-occupied France, as represented by the offshoot of Lazard Freres-related banking groups known as Banque Worms. This circle within France, had been the pivotal element of the post-Versailles Treaty drive toward the use of fascism as a tool for creating a globalized system, echoing the ultramontane imperial system of the Venetian financier-oligarchy and Norman chivalry, and also the Napoleonic model. (1)

[Somey]

...at least on the surface you seem to agree with LaRouche on this point:

I have warned against the silly, but popularized myth, the myth that it was France's preoccupation with the development of the Maginot Line which facilitated the German victory on that occasion. The rout of the greater part of France's military forces then, was chiefly the contribution of a pro-Synarchist "Fifth Column" inside the leading French military and other institutions, in the sense of the role of the "Fifth Column" which had just previously produced the victory of the fascist dictator Franco in 1930s Spain. The Synarchist influences from inside France's institutions left the gate wide open for what should have been considered the probable German course of action.

I dunno, that sounds like a failure to apply Hanlon's Razor to me. Besides, it wasn't so much a "preoccupation with the development of the Maginot Line" - they'd already developed it by the late 30's. For whatever reason, they didn't worry about the border with Belgium, and if that was because of a "Synarchist Fifth Column," well... it's not like I was there in person, but the "Petain was stupid, vain and arrogant" argument just sounds more plausible.

...That "Fifth Column" inside 1940 France was what is known as the same Synarchist International later represented by the regimes of Nazi-occupied France, as represented by the offshoot of Lazard Freres-related banking groups known as Banque Worms. This circle within France, had been the pivotal element of the post-Versailles Treaty drive toward the use of fascism as a tool for creating a globalized system, echoing the ultramontane imperial system of the Venetian financier-oligarchy and Norman chivalry, and also the Napoleonic model.

...And as for that part, it's hard to agree with something I can't even make sense of!