User talk:KristinaAlbania
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You are in danger of violating the three-revert rule on Teki Dervishi. Please cease further reverts or you may be blocked from editing. - Alison ☺ 22:02, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
Legal threats
[edit]Hi KristinaAlbania,
I know virtually nothing about the topic of Teki Dervishi. I don't even know a whole lot about that whole region. I can easily see the passion that you feel about this topic. I also noticed your account was registered recently, so I just wanted to give you a heads up to the Wikipedia:No_legal_threats page describing the policy of legal threats.
Passionate editors often make for great articles, so I hope you don't get discouraged, but you might want to try one of the resolution strategies discussed there rather than resorting to legal threats. People tend to immediately get their feathers ruffled when such threats come up, and it discourages editing. If you have any questions let me know. If I don't know the answer I'll help find out for you. --Cheers, Komdori 23:40, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
- Hi
- I am finishing my studies and have a family to take care of, so I really, really don’t find it amusing, funny or easy to threaten people or institutions with lawsuits. However, I will NOT let this one go, so let me explain why, my side of the story, and how it came this far.
- As you noticed I am passionate when it comes to this writer, I opened the account here only to be able to contribute for his article. Nevertheless, user Ev was obviously and openly unhappy with my contributions, and changed them constantly. User Ev cannot read Albanian; hence he could not have any genuine interest in this writer, as a writer. His only “interest” on the disputed article was political, he being very Serb – friendly or Serb, and the subject of the article being Albanian. And Serbs have gotten used to trample upon us Albanians for the last 200 years, and are very unhappy about their new not so favorable position, but think they continue to bully us in every conceivable way, hiding behind “neutral facts” or what due to a long period of very unequal power relations, has come to be perceived as “facts and neutrality”.
- He has nothing to contribute with in the concrete and disputed article; all he was constantly doing was the following.
- 1. Writing ethnic Albanian, instead of only Albanian. (this probably to emphasize that he is not an Albanian national/citizen, but “ethnic” Albanian living in a “Serbian province”). While the ethnicity of people might matter very much, I as a literature loving person think that writers (as opposed to other “lesser” creatures) are “categorized” by the language (which is usually attached to a culture, but not necessarily ethnicity) they write in. Therefore, while Teki Dervishi is indeed ethnically Albanian, it is not for that reason that someone opened an article about him, and in principle his ethnicity is irrelevant. What is relevant in an article about a writer is the language he writes in, and that is what makes a poet an Albanian poet, or an American poet etc. Once again I really CANNOT see, why he was insisting on writing ethnic Albanian, every time I deleted the word ethnic, unless his sole purpose is to be provocative and arrogant.
- 2. He was replacing Gjakova with Djacovica, or the Albanian name of the writer’s very Albanian birthplace with its Serbian name. Teki Dervishi was born in the town of Gjakova, the population of the town being 98 % Albanian, the town is one of the most Albanian places on earth, it was founded by Albanians (after the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans, and its original name was Jakova) so it has no Serbian history whatsoever, as opposed to many other towns in Kosova that are disputed between Serbs and Albanian. It very accidentally and surprisingly became part of Serbia in 1912, by brute military conquest and against the desire of its population. User Ev insists that the Serbian name of this town is the neutral and correct name, which I quite simply REFUSE to accept. I then thought, in order to avoid disputes, that it would be reasonable to only write: “Teki Dervishi is an Albanian writer born in 1943.” (look in the history of the article) This would leave both Serbian, but unfortunately also the Albanian names completely out, but it was a compromise I could live with. But not user Ev. He naturally came back to “restore Serbia”.
- 3. As in Gjakova/Djakovica, user Ev would replace Kosova with Kosovo, Prishtina with Pristina (i.e. he would replace Albanian names with Serbian ones). Furthermore, he kept adding phrases/”information” as “Serbian province”, “administered by UNMIK”, and “in the Axis occupied Greater Albania”. This is the usual “Serbian - drill”. Obviously they cannot live and leave their neighbors alone, and must annoy them and bully them in some way. And just as obviously I cannot wage war against everything Serb, and against everything that Serbs do to make life miserable for Albanians, but I find Serbian names in an article about an Albanian writer deeply provocative. This was user Ev’s intention: to provoke, and I must admit he succeeded.
- All in all, I strongly believe, that articles about writers, should not be used to display political beliefs, and writers should be presented in as much a dignified way as possible. Unless a person admires a writer, or has something (also critical) to say about his/her WRITING, (not ethnicity and who happens to rule this writers homeland) and has actually read the writer, they should not be allowed to contribute in these articles.
- User Ev, was openly and obviously only trying to provoke, be arrogant (and immoral), and marking “political territories off”.
- Before I made a “legal threat” (and I do intend to go to the end with this matter, if nothing changes), I tried the following:
- 1. Compromise (removing both Serbian and Albanian names in the article)
- 2. Asked for the assistance of the two users, that where involved in the dispute, one of them sending me a warning (user Alison, and one of them putting the article under “protection” saving user Ev’s version of the article.)
- User Alison was polite, but did not want do get further involved, while user Majorly was anything but polite and was very clearly taking Ev’ s side, by avoiding, twisting and mocking my questions and requests without explanations (other from me being totally “unreasonable”)
- Unreasonable or not, if I am not to pursue this matter any further one of the following things has to happen:
- 1. Delete the article about Teki Dervishi from the English Wikipedia. (I don’t like this, but I like it less having openly Albanian – hating persons editing articles about Albanian poets).
- 2. Remove the “protection” from the article, and block user Ev from editing this article. (I don’t know how helpful this would be since I am sure there are many “evs” out there ready to take his place, and I do have a life to live)
- 3. Change the policy of Wikipedia so that nationals from openly hostile nationalities CANNOT edit articles about each other’s writers. This will not end conflict, either in the real world, or in wikipedia, but it will end disputes in articles where these hostilities don’t have a place. I strongly believe that we should treat poets (of any nationality) with some respect.
- 4. Some other suggestions that you might have (that does Not endorse ev’s version of “absolute truth”)
- And naturally to remind you, that my anger is by no means directed towards wikipedia in general or its users, but only Ev and Majorly.
- Best regards
- Kristina Albania KristinaAlbania 15:38, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
- Kristina Albania,
- Thanks for taking the time to respond. I read through everything you wrote. Here are a few tips on how I think is the best way to proceed:
- * First, it seems you believe the article is too slanted toward one side or the other. It seems that you may think there is an attempt to downplay the author's origin or status. Perhaps the author in general is very vocal about being Albanian, or as you mentioned writes exclusively in this language. The best way to deal with this might be to find some sources and add information to the article. Right now there is very little on this page. It might be one of the reasons that you feel the name is so important--out of the few sentences on the page, a big percentage is talking about him in terms you feel are not reflective of his beliefs or activities. I might be wrong, but it seems he writes only in Albanian, so you think this is a reason to change what's there. What might be more appropriate is to first add the information that his work is done in Albanian, or has certain Albanian qualities to it. If you can find any discussion of this (there probably is since you so strongly identify him as Albanian) then the information will be able to stay, with other editors will protecting it as long as its appropriate.
- * Second, you seem to have an issue about the name of the city he was born due to the political history of the place. That city's article currently sits under the name Đakovica instead of Gjakova, so if there were to be some discussion to change this it would probably have to happen on that article's page. On the other hand, if the author has strong feelings about it, he may have written something on this topic, or someone may have made some connection about his feelings when reviewing or discussing his work. By adding this type of information, you might be able to avoid this topic.
- * Third, you seem to believe there might be some editors who oppose your changes perhaps because of their point of view, which might be opposing to yours. The way to counter this and come up with a neutral version is not to just give up, but try to work within the framework we have set up, such as using dispute resolution. Almost without exception users are blocked indefinitely for mentioning legal threats. This wouldn't help anything for you, you can't help get what you want included if you are blocked.
- * Fourth, it is Wikipedia policy to be very careful in the biography of living people. If you have time read this. It might help you understand what the options are in this kind of case. It's very tough to consider a place of birth being libellous as it's a pretty straightforward fact. On the other hand, it's important to have people watch out for unacceptable statements in the biographies of any living person that are factually untrue. If you are able to indicate that what is said on the page is actually untrue you can do something about it--if you aren't blocked for making legal threats.
- Your name was brought before the administrator notice board, probably because saying things about legal threats tends to result in an immediate block of the user. If you are able, I suggest you make a statement that you would like to help the article and don't intend to do anything legally. This would go a long way to helping ensure you could continue to edit. I would also suggest you ignore the birthplace right now and just add as much sourced information to the article as you can. Ultimately, it would outweigh any initial statements.
- Lastly, I would like to let you know Wikipedia has some guidelines on resolving disputes here. If you get a chance, read about them and it might help, too.
- I am involved in several very controversial articles and would like to let you know that from personal experience, the best way to help make sure the article represents reality is not to lose your temper. If you have any questions or want clarification or anything, please contact me, I'd be happy to try to help you if I can. --Cheers, Komdori 21:15, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
- ps, I formatted your response to be a little easier to read, I hope you don't mind.