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Evidence presented by ChrisO

Actions by User:ChrisO

On 15 April 2009, I moved the disambiguation page at Macedonia to Macedonia (disambiguation) . The content of the page was not changed - the only modification was adding "(disambiguation)" to the title of the disambiguation page, per Misplaced Pages:Disambiguation#Naming the disambiguation page, as I noted on the talk page.

On 16 April 2009, I moved the article Republic of Macedonia to Macedonia, in the process overwriting the redirect that I had created with the move of the disambiguation page . I explained the reasons for the move on the talk page and will be expanding on those reasons in this arbitration.

Both pages already had move permissions set to sysop only. I made no changes whatsoever to the protection status - the protection settings were automatically transferred from the old titles to the new ones.

To the best of my knowledge, no other Macedonia-related articles have been moved or renamed between my move of these two articles and the Arbitration Committee's injunction on further moves.

Locus of the dispute

The locus of the dispute is the conflict between Greece and Macedonia over the latter's use of the name "Macedonia". This dispute has been ongoing since at least 1944, which Macedonia was established as a republic within Yugoslavia and has been particularly intense since Macedonia's independence from Yugoslavia in 1992. The Greek position is that the Macedonia does not have the moral or political right to use a name that Greece regards as part of its own cultural heritage, and that the usage of the name represents a claim on Greek territory. Because of Greece's objections to Macedonia using that name, the country participates in international organisations under the provisional reference of "the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia". Greece insists that Macedonia must change its name and has carried on negotiations with the country for the last 17 years to achieve this end, so far unsuccessfully. This political dispute has spilled over onto Misplaced Pages articles that mention Macedonia and Macedonians.

Greek position

The Greek government formally recognises Macedonia as "the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" or "FYROM" for short. In popular usage, many individual Greeks reject any use of the term "Macedonia" in relation to the country and call it "Republic of Skopje" and the inhabitants "Skopjans" or "Pseudomacedonians" . In practice, the Greek government also frequently avoids using the term "Macedonia" in relation to the country and often refers to it simply as "FYROM" without explaining the acronym.

Macedonian position

Macedonia identifies itself formally as the "Republic of Macedonia" and uses the common name "Macedonia", and its people identify as "Macedonians".

International positions

Macedonia was admitted to the Unied Nations under the provisional reference of "the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" pending a resolution of the dispute. Most international organisations follow the same convention, following the UN's lead. Approximately one-third of UN member states use the same terminology. Sources that specifically address the status of the provisional reference state that it is treated as a descriptive term (cf. "the 💕 that anyone can edit"), not a name. The remaining two-thirds of UN members recognise the country as the "Republic of Macedonia" or Macedonia for short. All of the Balkan states with the exception of Greece and all of the major English-speaking states with the exception of Australia use the latter terminology. The number of states using the latter terminology has increased steadily since the dispute began in 1992.

Persistent vandalism and disruption

Vandalism and POV editing relating to the name of Macedonia is persistent, regular and widespread across Misplaced Pages. It originates from a variety of signed-in users and anonymous IP addresses, very often tracing to Greece or Cyprus. Any article that merely mentions Macedonia, even tangentially, may be targeted. Statements of overt ethnic hatred (e.g. "Fyromian fascists") are not uncommon. Such vandalism invariably seeks to promote the Greek POV described in the section above.

On 30 March 2009, Dragons flight established abuse filter 119 to track instances of the name "Macedonia" being removed from articles. It has been triggered more than 200 times in less than three weeks, excluding bot edits. The following examples are taken from just this three-week period and are typical of the disruption that occurs across Misplaced Pages on a several-times-daily basis, occasionally sparking edit wars between established editors and vandals.

Abusive editing on this issue generally takes three approaches, sometimes in combination:

• Replacing all instances of "Republic of Macedonia" with "Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia". , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . This is especially prevalent on articles covering subjects related to Greece, where Greek editors are (naturally) most active.

• Ditto, but replacing "Republic of Macedonia" with "FYROM", to remove any mention of Macedonia. , , , , , (note edit summary), , , , , ,

• Ditto, but replacing "Republic of Macedonia" with invented POV or pejorative terms (e.g. "Former Yugoslavic Republic of Macedonia", "Vardarska", "Slavomacedonia", "Republic of FYROM"). , , , , , , ,

These edits are often done using indiscriminate search-and-replaces. This frequently breaks internal links and produces nonsense such as (on one occasion) stating that the Macedonian national anthem is called "Today over FYROM." Vandalism has also come from official sources in Greece. When President of the Republic of Macedonia was on the Main Page on 8 April following the country's presidential elections, it was twice vandalised by an IP editor from the Greek Parliament. ,

Another common form of disruptive editing is to replace mentions of the term "Macedonians" with the invented POV or pejorative terms "Fyromians", "Skopjans", "Pseudomacedonians" or "Slavomacedonians", or replace mentions of the Macedonian language with related POV or pejorative terms (e.g. , , , , , , , ). Again, this results in links breaking and overt POV in articles.

Countervailing vandalism (i.e. editing articles about Greece to push Macedonian nationalist terminology) appears to be much rarer - the filter does not seem to have caught any instances of this. This may be due to the filter's limitations but I've not caught any such vandalism recently in my own watchlisted articles.

Ethnic polarisation

The dispute on Misplaced Pages is characterised by the existence of a block of editors who reject the use of the self-identifying name of Macedonia. These editors are predominately self-identified Greeks, use Greek usernames, identify as native speakers of Greek, edit anonymously from networks in Greece and/or edit largely or exclusively on Greece-related articles. Editors who support the use of the self-identifying terminology are from a broad range of nationalities, only a small minority of whom are Macedonians.

This dynamic was illustrated graphically by Husond following a straw poll on the use of the name "Republic of Macedonia" (rather than the descriptive term "former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia") in the article Greece. The proposition opposing using the name was dominated overwhelmingly by a clearly defined Greek faction. Husond comments: "Users from a specific ethnic group seem to be voting en masse. I think that the following record could prove in an interesting and colorful way how the outcome of a proposal on Misplaced Pages can be ethnic-induced, instead of community-wide, as it should always be."

Supporters

• User:Husond (self-declared Portuguese)
• User:Taivo (self-declared American with neither Greek nor Macedonian ancestry)
• User:Man with one red shoe (unknown)
• User:Future Perfect at Sunrise (German)
• User:Aramgar (self-declared American)
• User:Enric Naval (erm, Spanish?)
• User:ChrisO (British)
• User:Kwamikagami (unknown)
• User:Local hero (self-declared ethnic Macedonian from the US)
• User:EdJohnston (American)
• User:JdeJ (probably Swedish)
• User:MatriX (probably Macedonian)
• User:Ev (Argentinian)
• User:Arthur Rubin (from the US)
• User:Heimstern (from the USA)
• User:Balkanian`s word (probably Albanian)
• User:Colchicum (from Russia)
• User:Hans Adler (self-declared German)

Opposers

• User:Yannismarou (from Greece)
• User:Apcbg (unknown)
• User:Sysin (unknown, but speaks Greek at near native level)
• User:NikoSilver (self-declared Greek)
• User:Ioannes Tzimiskes (from Greece)
• User:Sakis79 (unknown, but username and talk page hint at Greek)
• User:Hectorian (self-declared Greek)
• User:Girisha-jin (unknown, although "Girisha-jin" means "Greek" in Japanese)
• User:Kapnisma (probably Greek, speaks Greek at a native level and bears a picture of Thessaloniki on userpage)
• User:Athenean (self-declared Greek)
• User:Cedric B. (self-declared French)
• User:Avg (probably Greek, speaks Greek at native level)
• User:Reaper7 (unknown, although declares on talk page that supports Greece)
• User:Yannisk (unknown, although username hints at Greek-related; less than 30 edits, most date back from 2007)
• User:Michael IX the White (self-declared Greek)
• User:Rizos01 (unknown, but speaks Greek, username hints at Greek; most edits date back from 2007, barely edited any other article but Greek genocide)
• User:CuteHappyBrute (from Greece)
• User:Cplakidas (self-declared Greek)
• User:Politis (from Greece, speaks Greek at near native level)
• User:Aexon79 (self-declared Greek)
• User:El Greco (self-declared American with Greek ancestry)
• User:ΚΕΚΡΩΨ (unknown, but with Greek username, and speaks Greek)

To quote Heimstern, there are clearly "two separate consensuses, one consisting almost entirely of people with a vested interest in a certain nationality, the other consisting of more or less everyone without any vested interest in that country." There is no reason to believe that Misplaced Pages's policies have any ethnic bias. It is reasonable to assume that the polarisation is due to external factors, i.e. the importation of an outside political dispute in which one national group has a strong vested interest.

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