Talk:Southeast European Cooperative Initiative

Edit request from Bl8y, 31 May 2010
The last section of this page ("Future of the SECI and SEE") states personal opinions and is written in first-person perspective (e.g. "I believe..." and "by my standards..."). It should either be removed or rewritten objectively and with citations.

Bl8y (talk) 10:27, 31 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Removed.  Chzz  ►  13:54, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

✅

Vandalism
@Joel B. Lewis: You keep changing the lead without consensus. Please discuss the changes here that you want to make before editing the article. You cannot just simply remove a chunk of valuable information and it's source. Thank you! -Debrecenzo (talk) 16:16, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

Pending changes
This article is one of a number selected for the early stage of the trial of the Pending Changes system on the English language Wikipedia. All the articles listed at Pending changes/Queue  are being considered for level 1 pending changes protection.

The following request appears on that page:

Comments on the suitability of theis page for "Pending changes" would be appreciated.

Please update the Queue page as appropriate.

Note that I am not involved in this project any much more than any other editor, just posting these notes since it is quite a big change, potentially

Regards, Rich Farmbrough, 00:07, 17 June 2010 (UTC).

removing POV tag with no active discussion per Template:POV
I've removed an old neutrality tag from this page that appears to have no active discussion per the instructions at Template:POV:
 * This template is not meant to be a permanent resident on any article. Remove this template whenever:
 * There is consensus on the talkpage or the NPOV Noticeboard that the issue has been resolved
 * It is not clear what the neutrality issue is, and no satisfactory explanation has been given
 * In the absence of any discussion, or if the discussion has become dormant.

Since there's no evidence of ongoing discussion, I'm removing the tag for now. If discussion is continuing and I've failed to see it, however, please feel free to restore the template and continue to address the issues. Thanks to everybody working on this one! -- Khazar2 (talk) 14:23, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Is there a new consensus?
The consensus of the article from the beginning has been to describe the participating countries as southeastern European. This has been unchallenged until March this year, when an editor started to make a point of stressing that one particular country, Hungary, is not usually called southeastern, but usually described as belonging to Central Europe. This was reverted by, but has since been reintroduced in slightly differing versions by and  plus a number of IPs, all of which possibly the same editor. Until today, not one single of the editors have tried to discuss this in the talk page in order to create a new consensus. Therefore, the old consensus is still standing. Today, Debrecenzo has started a section in the talk page with the title "Vandalism", but there is clearly no vandalism involved by any of the editors. I will reinstate the current consensus version, and I will start a RfC where I invite the involved parties and others to discuss in order to find out if there is a foundation for a new consensus. Personally, I so far remain neutral. --T*U (talk) 22:31, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

RfC about mentioning Hungary in the lede

 * The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Should the lede mention Hungary as being a Central European country? --T*U (talk) 07:49, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

Background
Please see section "Is there a new consensus?" just above. --T*U (talk) 07:49, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

Survey

 * Neutral initially, awaiting arguments from both sides. --T*U (talk) 07:49, 15 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Change !vote to No. 's solution is very good. That way we also avoid the question about whether Slovenia and Croatia are in Central Europe. --T*U (talk) 17:01, 24 December 2017 (UTC)


 * Yes - or at least "run by the countries in Southeast Europe" (which is rather awkward regardless) should be modified. Hungary can not be described as being in Southeast Europe, and the lede is misleading in this regard.Icewhiz (talk) 11:08, 18 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Pincrete's suggestion of "mainly Southeast European countries" is sensible - in which case Hungary could be omitted as an exception.Icewhiz (talk) 15:21, 24 December 2017 (UTC)
 * No, certainly not. --JBL (talk) 16:03, 18 December 2017 (UTC)
 * I also find 's suggestion acceptable. --JBL (talk) 16:16, 24 December 2017 (UTC)


 * Not necessary see fuller comment below. Pincrete (talk) 13:02, 24 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Not necessary - summoned by bot. I think it reads fine the way it is.  Of greater import - I started to rewrite the article to make it less POV/Essaylike, and stopped when I realized all the external links are dead.  Possibly a defunct organization? TimTempleton (talk)  (cont)  01:48, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

Threaded discussion

 * Comment: The problem seems to be the use of categories like "Southeast Europe" and "Central Europe", terms that are seemingly exact, but in reality not well-defined. There are no fixed borders between them, and different sources use the terms differently; Slovenia and Croatia are often included in "Central Europe"; Moldova is usually included in "Eastern Europe", very seldom in "Southeast Europe"; Albania is sometimes mentioned as "Southern Europe"; Greece can alternatively be mentioned as "Southern Europe" and even "Western Europe"; Turkey is mainly a country in "Western Asia". Could we avoid the whole problem by not using any of those terms in the lede, just stating "owned and run by countries in the southeastern part of Europe" and not linking the sentence to "Southeast Europe". Just a thought. --T*U (talk) 07:49, 15 December 2017 (UTC)


 * Comment: Context matters. Southeast Europe is a region of Europe that frequently refers to that of the Balkan peninsula and to nations who have been under substantial Turkish influence for nearly half a millenia before gaining independence shortly after World War I. It not only refers to geographical barriers, but to that of cultural and religious as well. To start off with my argument; the first is rather easy and obvious: Hungary is not in southeast Europe nor anywhere in the southeastern part of Europe and/or the Balkans. It is a nation in Central Europe and is geographically located in the center part of Europe. By that simple default logic, it should include the mention of Hungary being a Central European nation.
 * Secondly, the history of Hungary is different from that of the history of Balkan (Southeast) European nations. Regarding this initiative and the nations in it, almost all are Balkan and share political, cultural, genetic relations that cluster them into belonging of a similar ethos and culture. Hungary is a key exception as it never was part of that culture and ethos because it differs in all of these aspects mentioned. Hungary shares more political, economic, cutural and genetic ties with their other fellow Central European neighbors, specifically the Visegrad nations (Poland, Czechia and Slovakia) as opposed to the nations of Southeast Europe/the Balkans. Because of these substantial differences, the mention of Hungary being part of Central Europe is important.
 * If a user were to see this page and see that Hungary is not mentioned as being part of Central Europe, they might assume that Hungary is a southeast European country no different from the others in the initiative when it clearly is. -Debrecenzo (talk) 09:45, 16 December 2017 (UTC)
 * (I edited the indent for better structure.) Question: Would not much of the same apply to Slovenia? --T*U (talk) 10:17, 16 December 2017 (UTC)


 * Comment No way!.. No goddamn way!.. :-) Nope, I will definitely not be getting involved in another bit of Wikipedia silliness about where in Europe is a certain country. That inane and frustrating back and forth about Poland was enough!.. Poland is in western Europe, alright? Happy now, gents? Now, away from me, Time-wasting Bandits!.. :-) -The Gnome (talk) 12:10, 16 December 2017 (UTC)
 * The insistence on calling out particular countries is born of an insane NPOV nationalism and should be avoided at all costs. The attempted changes lack any sourcing, are being done in a particularly thoughtless way (look how many times this idiotic and nonsensical change has been made, by allegedly different editors!), and lack any basis in either common sense or policy.  This is an article about an institution that happens to have "Southeast Europe" in its name.  The nations that join it evidently feel that they have a connection to SE Europe sufficient to justify joining such an organization.  Any discussion of whether individual nations "really are" in SE Europe is completely off-topic to the article.  I would also suggest removing the discussion as it pertains to some of the former Yugoslav nations, particularly as all such discussions seem to be uncited.  --JBL (talk) 16:15, 18 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Comment: At the moment, the lead para fails the basics of what, where and when (formed). Having addressed that, it is simple enough to use 'mainly' SE European countries, or 'initially' or similar. All these z-ern descriptors are loose, vague, overlap and used to mean different things in historical, geographical, political and cultural contexts. There is simply no need or useful purpose in getting into excessively detailed or obscure arguments about whether country X is wholly/partly/sometimes/never in z-ern Europe, when the subject of the article is this initiative, not country X. Countries' specific resistances to joining, for their own reasons, belong in the body. Pincrete (talk) 13:15, 24 December 2017 (UTC)


 * The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.