Talk:Macedonia (ancient kingdom)/Archive 6

Ancient Greek Kingdom versus Ancient Kingdom
Dear all, I have experienced once more that this page has been a battlefield between grecomacedonians and slavmacedonians about how greek or how slavic ancient macedonia was. the resulting edit wars have lead to a compromise of the quality of this article and of wikipedia in general. Lets communicate your arguments here and make a conclusion before editing the final site.

Stevepeterson (talk) 06:37, 29 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Now, I will be going against the Greeks here, but there is only one reference saying it is a Greek Kingdom in the article, and it is contrary to the many authors/science which classify Macedonia as a separate Kingdom from Greece. Ancient Greece didn't have Kings, but thats not the point. There are many sources saying it is/isn't Greek, so I am going to change the subject line as it shows bias to one side of the argument. Also, the writing is inscribed in Greek, even though we do not know the runes (yes, runes, we do not know)/lettering system the Ancient Macedonians used. I await thy response and look forward to it. Luxure (talk) 06:45, 29 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Of course you will go against the greek Mcdonians because you are biased towards the Slav Macedonians for your own reasons. You wouldnt be so emotionally charged to go into edit wars otherwise. Can you please provide any reference from some of these authors/science that classifies and gives a definition of Greece at that time (separate or not to Macedonia, I am not interested to know)? Eben though I am not a historian but to my knowledge there is no such country as ancient Greece; but ancient states in South Balkan and the islands with names such as Corinth, Sparta, Athens, inhabited by people speaking Greek and believing in Greek polytheism (definition of the Greek ethnic group). These Greek states were first united by Alexander (with war like most unifications) and a new panhellenic identity that lead to the Hellenistic civilisation of Greek (Macedonian/Athenian/Corinthian/Spartan etc). Stevepeterson (talk) 07:06, 29 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Not only is he a vandal, but it's pretty obvious that he is here to sneak his ridiculous POV pseudo-historic propaganda through the back door. The next time he removes reliable sources without justification, I am taking this matter to the administrators. The worst thing here is not the propaganda and the agenda of users like Luxure. The worst thing is that wikipedia allows users like him to vandalize, remove reliable sources & solid evidence and impose their agenda with impunity. Gtrbolivar (talk) 05:59, 30 August 2014 (UTC)
 * For you to make the comment about "grecomacedonians and slavmacedonians" is ridiculous. Not once has any serious editor here claimed that ancient Macedonia was Slavic.  Not a single time.  So get off your nationalistic anti-Macedonian high horse and be serious in your comments.  Ancient Macedonia was a mix of Greek and non-Greek elements, not Greek and "Slavic" elements.  Your claims that Macedonians spoke Greek are simplistic and misguided as well.  As with their culture, there are both Greek elements and non-Greek elements in the limited evidence that we have of the Macedonian language.  There is no unanimity on its precise relationship to Attic Greek among linguists (it also was not Slavic, so you can forget your anti-Macedonian rant).  Readers can read the details of the description in the article and make their own determination as to how similar or different ancient Macedonia was to the Greek city-states.  By trying to raise the unquestioning Greek flag over ancient Macedonia in the first sentence of the article, you needlessly prejudice the reader and promote needless conflict from those who might disagree with that assessment.  --Taivo (talk) 17:47, 29 August 2014 (UTC)
 * To Taivo: You are showing blatant disregard for the sources. Excuse me but, who are you? Nobody cares for your own opinion, or for your POV understanding of history. Wikipedia doesn't care about your opinion or mine. Wikipedia is about reliable sources, about historical evidence, about Herodotus, Arrian, Hummond etc. It's so frustrating and absolutely unbelievable that an editor like you is trying to impose his own opinion and his own understanding of history by disregarding the plethora of historical evidence that prove beyond any reasonable doubt that Macedonians were Greeks. I am going to pursue this, I will take this to the administrators, because unfortunately wikipedia is sliding towards becoming a POV pseudo-historic, propaganda-driven project. Taivo, you are not an expert, you are not a historian, and this encyclopedia doesn't care about what you believe or think. It cares about Herodotus, about Arrian, about Strabo, about Hummond, about Theodor Birt, about hunderds of distinguished historians all around the world. Besides that and because you keep evading and evading, can you please tell us about the religion of Macedonians? Can you tell us about their participation in the Olympic Games? About their Arcitecture and their customs? About what Macedonians themselves believed about their Greekness? And finally can you provide a shred of reliable evidence to prove that Macedonian language was not Greek? Can you produce one iota of evidence regarding the "non-Greek elements" of Macedonians? What were they? If non-Greek then what? What about the thousands of sources that clearly prove that Ancient Macedon was Greek? And -for the love of God- stop rambling about the "Greek flag over Macedonia". There is no flag. According to all the reliable sources, to all the distinguished historians and professors Ancient Macedonia was a Greek kingdom, like it or not. Wikipedia isn't interested in your convictions. According to Verifiability wikipedia is interested in reliable sources. You have no right to remove sourced material, you have no right whatsoever to remove the sources and the evidence. This is blatant vandalism and next time I'm going to report you. Gtrbolivar (talk) 05:59, 30 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Its not me who raises nationalistic flag of Greek Macedonia, but you Taivo. And you prefer to take teh road of edit wars, vandalising the site (together with sockpupets who even edit my words in this talk page), instead of discussing here. Modern greek-macedonians do the obvious, consider ancient artifacts and an ancient kingdom found on their land, which uses the same language and Ancient Macedonian pre Slavic Script that Gruevski regime likes to call the Greek alphabet. Where are the scripts on non-greek language that you have found in Ancient Macedonia? I havent come across any to be honest. And why these scripts (if they exist) are so important for the Slav Macedonians, if not for nationalism? Grecomacedonian Nationalism? Yes it indeed exists among many Greek macedonians who dont accept the existence of other Macedonians. It still never surfaces at givernment level but only in pubs. But what about those who YOU support here Taivo (im not interested in whether you are a Slav Macedonian or a Greek Macedonian, or an Albanian Macedonian)? They claim at a higher, Governmental level, ancestry on artifacts found on their southern neighbour (apart from Herakleia, majority of archeological findings of the ancient Macedonia of Alexander and Philips are within Greece), which makes many young people falsely believe that greek macedonians are settlers in their own lost land. They claim an exclusive right of the use of the term Macedonian, despite being 1/3 of total number of people self identifying as Macedonians in 4 countries and even within their own borders against their Albanian Macedonian minority. So before you accuse me of grecomacedonian nationalism, cool down, discuss here and stop vandalising the main page because you compromise the quality of thr article you claim trying improving. Stevepeterson (talk) 04:34, 30 August 2014 (UTC)


 * And to answer your argument about how simplistic and misguuided comment that Ancient Macedonians spoke a Greek language (i never mentioned Attic Greek) I visited the same site that you referred to (i was not aware and thank you for the link): Ancient_Macedonian_language "The volume of the surviving public and private inscriptions indicate that there was no other written language in ancient Macedonia but Ancient Greek,[5] and recent epigraphic discoveries in the Greek region of Macedonia, such as the Pella curse tablet, suggest that ancient Macedonian was a variety of the Northwestern Ancient Greek dialects". As far as I know, modern grecomacedonians and most other modern greeks speak an evolution of the koini Greek the language of Alexander's Macedonia, rather than Atic Greek. Stevepeterson (talk) 05:28, 30 August 2014 (UTC)


 * To Taivo: You are showing blatant disregard for the sources. Excuse me but, who are you? Nobody cares for your own opinion, or for your POV understanding of history. Wikipedia doesn't care about your opinion or mine. Wikipedia is about reliable sources, about historical evidence, about Herodotus, Arrian, Hummond etc. It's so frustrating and absolutely unbelievable that an editor like you is trying to impose his own opinion and his own understanding of history by disregarding the plethora of historical evidence that prove beyond any reasonable doubt that Macedonians were Greeks. I am going to pursue this, I will take this to the administrators, because unfortunately wikipedia is sliding towards becoming a POV pseudo-historic, propaganda-driven project. Taivo, you are not an expert, you are not a historian, and this encyclopedia doesn't care about what you believe or think. It cares about Herodotus, about Arrian, about Strabo, about Hummond, about Theodor Birt, about hunderds of distinguished historians all around the world. Besides that and because you keep evading and evading, can you tell please us about the religion of Macedonians? Can you tell us about their participation in the Olympic Games? About their Arcitecture and their customs? About what Macedonians themselves believed about their Greekness. And finally can you provide a shred of reliable evidence to prove that Macedonian language was not Greek? Can you produce one iota of evidence regarding the "non-Greek elements" of Macedonians. What were they? If non-Greek then what? What about the thousands of sources that clearly prove that Ancient Macedon was Greek? And -for the love of God- stop rambling about the "Greek flag over Macedonia". There is no flag. According to all the reliable sources, to all the distinguished historians and professors Ancient Macedonia was a Greek kingdom, like it or not. Wikipedia isn't interested in your convictions. According to Verifiability wikipedia is interested in reliable sources. You have no right to remove sourced material, you have no right whatsoever to remove the sources and the evidence. This is blatant vandalism and next time I'm going to report you. Gtrbolivar (talk) 05:59, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps the two of you need to review WP:NPA, WP:AGF, WP:CONSENSUS, etc. because you don't seem to understand the way that Wikipedia operates. Neither of you is discussing the point here. The point is that the first sentence of any article is a brief summary of the topic. The remainder of the article is where you place your references and discuss the details. The first sentence of this article was worked out after a very careful discussion and a consensus (which I have placed a reference to above). Unless you actually build a consensus here, on the Talk Page, then the previous consensus holds. A consensus is not just you pushing your opinions through with tendentious editing, it is actually calmly discussing why you think your position on the first sentence is the better one and then building a consensus. You don't build a consensus by accusing other editors of bad faith or writing 20 repetitive paragraphs. You have not built a consensus at this point, so the previous consensus still takes precedence. If you want to get a clear picture of where you stand, then I suggest you place a Request for Comment here and then stand back and allow other editors to comment. --Taivo (talk) 11:00, 30 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Taivo, you are trying with edit wars (vandalism) to change a stable (for months) version of the page. And on top, you remove valuable sources and references, not because you dont find it important information for the brief summary but because, as yourself has admitted above, you disagree with its content. So stop being a vandal, you are just contributing to enormous edit wars rather than improving wikipedia's good operation. Stevepeterson (talk) 11:33, 30 August 2014 (UTC)
 * You don't get it, Stevepeterson. The lead sentence of an article is not the place for ridiculous spamming of references.  If you have details about ancient Macedonia that you want to place in the article, that is the place for your tendentious multiplication of repetitive references.  You also need to actually read WP:RS to learn that many of your references are not even appropriate to Wikipedia.  I'm not going to go through all of your referencing and point this out to you reference by reference since you should be capable of culling them yourself once you understand what is an appropriate reference and what is not.  But the point here is that your massive footnote isn't appropriate just to prove that you think the WP:POINTy addition of "Greek" in the first sentence is appropriate.  And the consensus for leaving "Greek" out of the first sentence reference to "kingdom" is years old.  Just because someone slipped "Greek" into the sentence a few weeks ago is irrelevant.  The consensus for leaving "Greek" out was actually discussed and decided long ago.  If you think that a different consensus might emerge after a discussion, then by all means start a formal request for comment discussion below, so that all interested editors are notified and you get a broad range of comment and opinion, not just the two of you, which, by the way, is not a "consensus" when there are at least two other editors who oppose your changes.  --Taivo (talk) 15:11, 31 August 2014 (UTC)