Δρακόλακκος

Kosovo

If you can, keep an eye on the Kosovo page. I intereved in the last 24 hours to ease matters concerning talk of "conquest". To do this, I diverted attention to the actual events which were relevant, those of the Treaty of London, 1913. However, a user called Interestedinfairness took it upon himself to erase my edits, reinsert "conquered", and expand the paragraph to include unreferenced irrelevant nonsense about "Kosovo enjoying 500 years of status." I don't know whether Kosovo continuously existed over 500 years but it appears that neither does he. My fury towards this particular user is the shocking remarks he made when addressing you that Noel Malcolm is "neutral". He is as neutral as Nataša Kandić. My point is that the rubbish that comes out of these people's mouths is so "neutral" that it is used to bolster the propaganda campaigns of opponents of the Serbs affiliated to the 90's movements; whilst those very Serbs, and a catalogue of other non-West sympathisers, are highly critical of such individuals. Malcom is no stranger to criticism; and I too, far from being an expert, consider this man largely a comedian. He gets dates wrong, facts mixed up, and produces erroneous statements. He calls himself a "historian" but is at most a biased commentator who has browsed into the past, if only to pick out items he think will help his prejudged aspirations. Never the less, that user cannot be allowed to have his version stand. So if you'd be so kind, watch this article. Much appreciated. Evlekis (talk) 01:52, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Hi Evlekis, i wasn't very active the past couple of days. I didn't know Malcolm's background, but what he was trying to do in his little "summary" there is more than obvious to me. Funny how some people endorse this kind of historical revisions to assert a notion of continuity to the moral rights of the Albanian side and at the same time accuse the Serbs of nationalism for doing the same thing. Kosovo will be in my watchlist from now on.--Δρακόλακκος (talk) 04:38, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

No problem Drakolakkos (if it's all right to use the romanised version of your user name). There has been a development this past day, User:Interestedinfairness has made one amendment and replaced "conquered" with "partitioned", so let's be reasonable with him and allow him to use his Noal Malcolm joke page as a reference. I don't like to play Mr.Heavyweight on articles. To be honest with you, Malcolm is a clever man: he promotes present political views by diving into the past, and manipulating events: denying certain things and fabricating others, leaving the few actual statements somewhat distorted. People who appreciate his Yugoslav theme publications fall into two categories: 1) individuals who are anti-Serb, 2) individuals who are not experts on the given subjects, largely non-locals. It is easily done; here in the UK where international ignorance is common, I could easily convince a person working in a supermarket that Greece was a part of the Latvian Hindi Empire from 1582 to 1925, and its official language was Icelandic! She'd believe me because I provided details including dates, and sounded like I knew what I was talking about. But I won't insult another person's intelligence just like that!! Surely Malcolm must know that the internet is full of responses to him and criticisms of him, but fans of his won't look for those things; they'll declare him objective and leave it at that. The striking factor where we were concerned was that his publication was featured in the Guardian which is a certified "reliable source" here. But, it wasn't news, it was analysis; and Malcolm is not a journalist for the paper either, he was giving an answer to a question. But you can blame the Guardian's editors here for provocative behaviour. They must have known what kind of answer they wanted, first by approaching this man in particular ("we ask a historian"), and second, by the nature of the question ("Is Kosovo Serbia?"). In such scenarios, the answer is invariably "No!" Imagine the following passage: "Scholars say that millions of Jews were killed between 1939 and 1945, but were they really? We ask a blue-eyed Norwegian historical expert from Stormfront." With such an opening, you know to expect a statement which will defy the question! Alternatively if you present: "Holocaust denial is on the rise, but are people forgetting certain things, is the number of victims really exaggerated? We ask a Jewish advisor to the Israeli cabinet for his views!", again, you know not to expect "yes it is actually!" If you're interested in Serb views towards Malcolm, or opinions in general, these may help, they're not sources which can be used for anything, but they make interesting reading: An Orthodox article, article on his Guardian speech. Evlekis (talk) 21:16, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Macedonia request for comment

Since you have in the past taken part in related discussions, this comes as a notification that the Centralized discussion page set up to decide on a comprehensive naming convention about Macedonia-related naming practices is now inviting comments on a number of competing proposals from the community. Please register your opinions on the RfC subpages 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.

Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:49, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Maniots

Actually each term has a different meaning. According to this [[1]] and [[2]] Turko-Albanians were groups of both (muslim) Turks and Albanians. It was to describe the (Muslim) Ottoman authorities, no matter their ethnicity. Since the Ottoman authorities in most of Greece were mostly Turks or Albanians the term Turko-Albanians was widely accepted.

Moreover the term is a historical one, used as such in English bibliography [[3]][[4]]. Off course a Muslim Albanian after 1912 can't be defined as Turko AlbanianAlexikoua (talk) 22:06, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!

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ArbCom elections are now open!

Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:10, 24 November 2015 (UTC)