User talk:Dahn/Archive 19

Eliade

Thanks. I agree 100% about the list of Eliade's works--fiction and non-fiction. They are unruly and need a serious cleanup. I see your point about the references, or "critical works" but I actually think that most entries do include them, just simply as "references", "further reading", or "secondary literature". In fact many or most pages that list "references" are incorrectly using that subheading for texts that contain information about the individual that isn't being cited as a specific reference for the entry. Anyway, I like "Secondary Literature" personally (see for instance Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel). Either way I think we should keep the literature listed on the main page because as you pointed out, maybe it will spark someone to do some reading and to add to it. Maybe the list is too long though, but I am not the person to say which works are more important than the others. Likewise, and unfortunately, I cannot add anything to a section about Eliade as a fiction writer (since I know nothing) but I'd be happy to help in any way I can. What do we do?PelleSmith 14:02, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Of course also, as we both know there are alot of differences in formatting between entries on invidividuals. Wikipedia is an unruly place itself, but as I said, I like the inclusion of secondary literature because it provides readers who want more than a wikipedia entry with direction.PelleSmith 14:05, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

I have provided an "answer" on my talk page. Best.PelleSmith 19:36, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

DYK

On November 8, 2006, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Geo Bogza, which you created. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

Blnguyen (bananabucket) 03:03, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

On November 29, 2006, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Ion Caramitru, which you created. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

Hello Dahn. JMable kindly nominated this article for DYK. The majority of entries are self-nominated so please don't feel shy in future! Blnguyen (bananabucket) 00:03, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Phanariotes

I was asked a little while ago if I would intervene as an outside party to help resolve the dispute about the lead of this article. After a bit of a delay, I've made some proposals on the talk page; could you take a look at them and see what you think? Thanks, --Robth^Talk 05:51, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Eliade and Timur

Dahn, I have also written to Timur directly on his user Talk to see what may come of it. I really think we can have a fresh start if the accusations don't start flying out of control. Lets all try our best to discuss the "text only" on the talk page, as I'm sure you will, which may mean not humoring ad hominem attacks by other user(s) and inappropriate discussions about other users (as I see Timur has already started). I figure if you think someone else is being a troll, or is using sockpuppets, it isn't worth mentioning on the talk page of the article. If it is serious enough then a case should be made for arbitration. Name calling only feeds flames. Lets try our best not to get back to where things were before the block happened. If Timur is willing to work in good faith then lets give him a chance, if he is a troll then lets not feed him.PelleSmith 19:22, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

By the way I just noticed that the recent comments are by Timur Stultorum with a "u" and not Timor Stultorum with an "o". They are two different accounts. I wont speculate on the obvious, as in whether or not it is one user or two. PelleSmith 19:47, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

DYK

On 9 November, 2006, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article National Liberal Party-Brătianu, which you created. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

--Allen3 ^talk 16:04, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Greater Romania

Hi Dahn. You know that I don't agree with the following statement, but that I learned to live with it.

For one, the constant usage in English to signify the notion of România Mare is, always, Greater Romania, as all the English-language sources conteporary with Greater Romania will show. Since it is obvious that that was the source for the party name, we could just as well stop at this.

However, I'd really like to have these sources you talk about. Dpotop 21:08, 9 November 2006 (UTC) PS: I write here because I don't want to get into your argument with Paul. I'd certainly support him and I don't have time for an argument with you. :) Dpotop 21:08, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Ok, now I'll tend to support you, given that a disclaimer is provided (written by me, I presume) in the Greater Romania article. The argument is that Greater Romania is an expression that has a different origin than the expression Romania Mare, justifying its different status. And problems come from the fact that westerners use one expression to translate the other.

The only question that remains: Does the "Romania Mare" party have the power to decide how its name is translated? You would probably say "no, it's the usage that defines it". Dpotop 08:59, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Just as a note: the party itself would have power to decide how its name is translated, but there seems to be no version of its webpage in English. If the party itself prefers Great Romania, then that should be the name given, just as Kolkata is at Kolkata. Ronline ✉ 11:27, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Even though all other English-language sources say otherwise? And this rule does not apply to the country name because there was no official regulation? Dpotop 11:49, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

I think we're approaching a full agreement. Still, you say:

The term was created before WWI to refer to the policies of a would-be Allied power (Italy), that decided to go into war on the basis of reuniting all territories inhabited by Italians - which is basically what happend to Romania.

The problem is that I have never seen a pre-WWI source speaking about "Romania Mare". Therefore, as far as I know it, "Romania Mare" was not invented in the irredentist period.

I certainly do not contest that pro-Entente politicians were irredentist. I even presume there were undeclared irredentist in the pro-German party (just like during the Serbian war of the 1990s many politicians supported Serbia and yet agreed to sanctions). Dpotop 11:49, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

I am not sure of correctly understanding what you mean by:

simply mentioning that it was used in retrospect would spare us that POV (let readers draw their conclusions based on facts).

For me, given my knowledge of historic texts, it is obvious that the original term was not expansionistic, nor irredentistic, because it appeared after the expansion took place. Of course, as is usually done in history, I assume that my knowledge of that period is broad/representative enough to allow a generalization. You point well that this is not OK from a mathematical POV, but history is not math, as you know. Dpotop 13:32, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

PS: let's continue the discussion here. I'll watch your page. Dpotop 13:32, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I had added to my reply before noticing this message. Give me a minute. Dahn 13:39, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

The current version says: "The original Romanian term România Mare did not carry the expansionist and irredentist sense of its English translation." This implies that it should have this meaning in English, which is not necessary (Greater London or Greater New York are not the results of "expansionism" or "irredentism"); furthermore, as I have noted, the Romanian expression did carry an irredentist notion (textbook: the extention of rule over all territories inhabited by Romanians, which has been achieved) and does carry one (textbook: the extention of rule over all territories inhabited by Romanians, which has been achieved and should be achieved again). The name had clear territorial connotations (it was not "Great" for any reason other than being "big"); wheteher the "-er" transmits them (justly) into English is an original opinion we could do without.

"Greater" country names are always expansionist in some sense. As for cities, they can only be expanding, not expansionist or irredentist. This is common sense to me, as well as logical. Dpotop 14:28, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

You are no more expansionist after expansion. Hungarians were not expansionist in Transylvania before 1916. But indeed I feel that the name had a territorial connotation. Non-expansionist, though. Dpotop 14:28, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Having said these: would it hurt your point to move the reference to the literal name (which, given the context, may even actually be "large Romania"or "big Romania" - but I'll leave that aside) to the first paragaph, drop the didactic and unreliable mention to expansionism and irredentism, and simply indicate that it is a reference in retrospect comparison to pre-1920 (which is more accurate than "pre-1918")? You would be avoiding your fears while avoiding the belletristic tone of that sentence. Dahn 13:52, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Regardless of our theoretical debate, I believe that this section is the least we can leave of the whole argumentary I made here, and which is the POV of many Romanians. I believe that removing it is not NPOV because it is not balanced by the POV of Romanians (which are probably half the people interested in the matter). Note that I consider myself as quite mainstream on the matter, today. Dpotop 14:28, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

You cannot say "regardless of our theoretical debate", D. As it is, that paragraph answers to concerns that you or -Paul- have had based on a subjective perspective - corresponding with the meaning of "greater" in its first translation version back into Romanian. As I have said, the word itself does not imply anything of that sort to most native English speakers (we have brushed with this back on the Romanian Communist Party article). Rest assured, people who want to use the term to indicate Ro irredentism will continue to do so - especailly since they would be mostly right (it is surreal that we are debaying whether it has such connotations when a present-day party has picked the syntagm to indicate its irredentism). That sentence is a flaw in the article (it is equivalent with a sentence in the Adolf Hitler article that would begin with the words "despite what some Jews may think..." or one in the George Walker Bush one reading "The Democrats might have thought it was true, but..."). I think it is a simple form of begging the question. Dahn 16:31, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I believe that you are a bit unreasonable here, from several points of view (I repeat myself a bit):

1. Theoretically: According to historical practice, the fact that none of us found a reference to "Romania Mare" before 1918 means that we can safely say it didn't happen. And then, saying that "Romania Mare" was an irredentistic and expansionist expression before 1940 is illogical. How can I be expansionistic when I don't want to grow any more? If you want to say that the expansionist and irredentist objective of incorporating Transylvania, Banat, Bessarabia, and Bukovine existed before 1918, I agree completely. But saying that the expression "Romania Mare" or its English translation was used in an expansionist discourse between 1918 and 1940, I still have to see some solid proof.
2. NPOV: According to NPOV, the various POVs must be represented according to their due weight. And there is a non-negligible part of the Romanian public that resents the labelling "Romania Mare" as expansionist in historical contexts. This position must be represented here.
3. Inter-editor relationships: Finally, I think that you should accept that paragraph as a token of good will. Anyway, you say that most English speakers don't feel the expansionist note. In this case, that paragraph does not alter the meaning of the word.

I will repeat it: you cannot write based on guesses. Dahn 13:39, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

BTW: Maybe what you want to say is that there is a difference between what "Greater Romania" and "Romania Mare" meant between the 2 WW. I could see this as possible, not only from some neighbors, but also from western sources such as the British.

Dpotop 21:14, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

That's absurd. Dahn 13:39, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

No, you are absurd for wanting to preserve ambiguity. I just want to say that there is no source claiming "Romania Mare" was "expansionist" or "irredentistic" between the 2 WW. If you challenge this, find yourself a source. Dpotop 16:38, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Will you please understand, Dpotop? The issue is not whether it was an "expansionistic state" - that would contradict both the definition (it is, after all, "a period"; it is also, obviously, at most the result of irredentism - which is not the same as expansionism). This is about whether your deduction that a person reading "Greater Romania" would assume that it was so! D, that is not the case, and the implications of those sentences are embarassing: "a certain user has read the title of this article, and was frustrated by the marginal implications this may have, even though that user is aware that the concepts of Greater London, Greater New York, Greater Greece etc do not carry that meaning" (in fact, such reasoning may even put people off: this type of amateurish "aside" assurance is usually present with the most stupid of arguments - precisley like "despite what some Jews may think..."; "assuring people" that, despite what they may read, "x is not the case" only serves to give the impression that care is taken to avoid talking about how true x actually is, regardless of x actually being true or false! it is a "don't think about elephants"!). I believe I have indicated this concern 14 times by now. For God's sake, man, this is about the respectability of the text. Dahn 13:54, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Regarding your question to Ronline: where there was no official regulation (and the main topic is always going to be informal), wikipedia goes with popularity and notoriety. Dahn 13:30, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. Dpotop 14:18, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Oh, btw. Please review the template for history of Romania (present in the Greater Romania article): it should read "Kingdom of Romania and Greater Romania" (on the same line), not a clear separation; like me and Jmabel did with the listing "National awakening and Regulamentul Organic". The latter is always a subsection of the former, and we should see about how we direct and select information (for example, will the Kingdom of Romania article become too large - I plan to work on it - and will we need to divide into sections? if so, will Greater Romania become a section where we deal with actual 1918-1940 history rather than an over-inflated explenation of a historical and informal term?). I tried to do it myself, but I kept coming up with a weird result - perhaps you'll be able to fix it. Dahn 13:38, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree with your proposal. Even Kingdom of Romania alone would be OK to me, with two sub-categories Small Romania and Greater Romania. Dpotop 14:18, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

I have explained why we would perhaps need the subsection. There are countless issues involved in why I would not favour splitting it further. The opposite of Greater Romania is not Small Romania (let's not invent language), but Romanian Old Kingdom. I beseech you not to advocate splitting the text along those lines - the pre-1918 article would be small, continuity would be broken, and the division is not present as such in any historical analysis I know of. Dahn 16:31, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Makes perfect sense to me. Dpotop 21:14, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Current version:

The original Romanian term România Mare did not carry the expansionist and irredentist sense of its English translation. The literal translation in English is actually Great Romania. The name was coined right after World War I, when Romania came to include all the historical Romanian provinces, by comparison with Small Romania, or the Regat, which did not include the provinces of Transylvania, Bessarabia, and Bukovina. An alternate name for România Mare, coined at the same period, was România Întregită (Whole Romania or Integrated Romania). România Mare was seen (and is still seen by many) as the natural national Romanian state, and a symbol of national renaissance.

How about:

The name was coined right after World War I, when Romania came to include all the historical Romanian provinces, by comparison with Small Romania, or the Old Kingdom, which did not include the provinces of Transylvania, Bessarabia, and Bukovina. An alternate name for România Mare, coined at the same period, was România Întregită (Whole Romania or "Romania Made Whole"). România Mare was seen (and is still seen by many) as the natural national Romanian state, and a symbol of national renaissance.

Between 1918 and 1940, the term "România Mare" was not used with an expansionist and irredentist sense. The literal translation in English is actually Great Romania.

Dpotop 14:01, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Good. There are some copyedits needed, for it as well as for the entire article, but I'll get to that in due time. Thanks. Dahn 14:09, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

:) Ok, then you misunderstood what I stood for. And, sincerely, we made a lot of fuss for almost nothing, because there is no actual semantic diff between the two. :) Just a change of emphasis. Dpotop 16:32, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Ethnicity terminology

Hi. Yes, I agree that we shouldn't have separate pages for "Greek-Romanian" and "Greeks of Romania". My intention when creating those pages was to refer to the actual ethnic minorities who self-identify as those groups, not necessarily for ancestry. However, I agree that when glanced upon from this perspective, they are pretty much the same thing. Consequently, the articles, in the form "XGroup of Romania", should contain information both about the present minority situation as well as their history and significance. Ronline ✉ 11:25, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Our friend

Yes, I think he just wants to change his username, which is not sockpuppetry. On a more serious note, I saw this, and noticed that the anon was later blocked as an open proxy. Do you think there's any connection with our other friend, 212.227.103.74? Do you see a similar behavior pattern between him and Timor/Timur/Vintila? If the answer is yes, perhaps it's time to go to WP:RFCU. La revedere, Khoikhoi 02:13, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Sure - when you do, please let me know! Khoikhoi 22:00, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Romanians statistics

I think both you and I noticed the use of numbers that are innapropriate to the totally counting of ethnic Romanians on this page. Yet, the number of 28 million still stays. I wish to go through all 8 of those sources and prove how they are not relevant to the scope of the page (ie: including workers abroad twice, including non-ethnic Romanians) but I can't do it alone. I wish to see if you can help. Horvat Den 04:34, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

PSD

I wonder if we could clarify when the PSD merged with the Communists. Our article gives November 1947, but this article, next to the poster of the worker, gives 21-22 February 1948. Biruitorul 19:57, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good. Filling up fast... By the way, I put in an infobox for Ion Gheorghe Maurer and I did some work on that of Adrian Năstase, but I left the latter incomplete for now because he's been PM, FM and Chamber of Deputies President. Is there a rule that says in what order these should go? For Maurer as well, there is some ambiguity, as he was FM first, though PM was (de jure) the more powerful post. Biruitorul 00:55, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Too bad the order of precedence is so short. Anyway, I too would like PM to always be first (unless the individual was also president, which I believe has only been the case for Dej so far). As for what lines to draw, it's difficult to say: on the one hand, we should strive for brevity so obviously things like Health or Agriculture would be out. Perhaps we could import the British notion of Great Offices of State: PM, Foreign, Finance and Interior Ministers, plus President and Chamber/Senate President. True, in a few cases templates would balloon, but probably not that often. Anyway, for Năstase, I tried to put in his FM service but it only allowed for two offices, so he stays like that for the time being.

That was funny; see also these boxes. Of course the Antonescu and Codreanu ones jump out, but I can't quite understand why they chose Dej as the symbol of Communism. Assuming the person has to be Romanian (which he doesn't, especially considering Communism's internationalist character, but regardless), couldn't they have found a slightly more inspiring figure? Although I suppose the ranks of Romanian Communists were altogether a pretty uninspiring bunch. Speaking of which, two videos of Pârvulescu's anti-Ceauşescu speech have made it to the Internet. I'm thinking of linking in the article on him to the shorter one, but they're both good to watch (and rather unnerving–this display was just 26 years ago). Biruitorul 22:57, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Indeed. PM first is what I wanted. I believe that can be justified because the PM is more powerful and because the current order of precedence dates only to the early 1990s; perhaps it was different in the past. In any case, I think the only people to have been PM and Chamber or Senate president are Năstase and Văcăroiu.

By the way, I wonder if the article called Order of precedence in Romania is not misleadingly titled: according to the Constitution, this is actually the order of succession. In the US, for instance, they differ. They're probably the same in Romania, but I imagine that the order of precedence (a symbolic notion) extends further than three people; at a parade, for instance, I doubt the PM would just stand with the crowd; he'd probably be right behind those first three figures. Biruitorul 00:24, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

I have no idea either; I suppose one could e-mail the government, but you know how likely that is to yield a response. As for the Cabinet business: maybe it's a good move, but presumably when he leaves office it will become "Tăriceanu Cabinet" once again, right? As I see it, this sort of thing is ultimately our goal. Biruitorul 01:50, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Oh, well. I suppose the consequences of this won't become fully apparent until Tăriceanu falls, an event that has been predicted since around March 2005, but which never seems to materialise. Perhaps we have another William Lyon Mackenzie King in the making and won't have to worry about it for a while. Biruitorul 02:20, 14 November 2006 (UTC)