User:Ruhrjung/old frontpage

Please direct comments to my talk page.

...and yes, I know, my English sucks! You are hereby granted permission to correct it everywhere: on talk pages, in articles, below, yes, really everywhere!

On the Wikipedia projects
There are, in my opinion, plenty of issues to address on the World Wide Web. One such issue is that the links are broken between trusted authority and stated truths. Not always, but too often. Thus the reader doesn't know, and can't know, if a statement found on the WWW is credible or not. In the continuation of this process, I see the devaluation of empiricism &mdash; and of truth.

The Wikipedia-idea might, under lucky circumstances, be one step on the road away from this peril.

However, I am wary of the Wikipedia project's development. When I examine my watchlist, and study the most recent changes to articles I've been somehow interested in (and have some understanding for!), I more often than not feel that the last change made to an article (that isn't a revert in itself) makes the article less valuable for an international or super-national encyclopedia. For instance, during nearly two years of following Wikipedia, I believe to have perceived a substantial increase in the use of Wikipedia to inflate the importance of fringe opinions and theories.

I'm also sorry to recognize my feeling, that correct and relevant information too often tend to get edited away from good and ripe articles if they, e.g., disturb certain nationalists sentiments. It most definitely seems to me, as if well-written articles having passed the stub-level ought to be somehow better protected against bold rewrites and even rather small deletions. To start with, I think a week's delay in the visibility of proposed changes to non-stub non-news articles would be called for &mdash; but that would of course open up a can of worms, as it would require some kind of scheme to establish which of concurrent proposals to promote; a scheme that isn't too sensitive for filibustering or sock puppets.

On Edit Wars
Stay cool when the editing gets hot! ...If you don't, I fear you'll get burned out and leave the project too soon, ultimately leading to only insensitive wikipedians remaining here.

Wikipedia is obviously a suitable ground for people who need to inflate their egos through combativeness instead of cooperation. My conviction is that "protection" is an effective means, but it must then be employed long enough for the warring parties to conclude a compromise.

The Dispute resolution guidelines are fairly good, if followed!

Overuse of "some think" and similar constructs
I am sick of timorous wordings that hesitate to give the reader relevant information on whom, which, where and when! In my opinion, Wikipedia would gain tremendously much from following the guideline to avoid "weasel terms".

On me
My interests are for strange reasons centred around a line from the French Alps to Helsinki.

Having moved quite a few times in my life, both as a child and as an adult, I have a certain interest for Xenophobia and nationalist prejudices. The fate of linguistic, religious and ethnic minorities in Germany, in the European Union and in Europe as a whole, can usually get me heavily involved in boring discussions on transculturation and language acquisition. It will be hard, but I am doing my best to avoid that while here.

I consider myself (among other things):
 * a post-Nationalist
 * a Social Conservative&sup1; Environmentalist
 * a cautious believer in Parliamentarism and Democracy
 * an anti-Pacifist
 * pro-Jewish
 * an admirer of certain aspects of Quakerism, Taoism and the Salvation Army
 * for integration, not primarily assimilation, of Muslims in European societies (see also the U.S. approach: Melting pot)
 * for education on mother tongues, not only in

&sup1;/ Maybe it's necessary to note that usage of political labels differ quite a lot between the US and Continental Europe. In my case "Social Conservative" should be interpreted in the context of Bismarck and Catholic criticism of early expressions of unhampered capitalism and industrialism.

My formal education is limited, to express it mildly. I wasn't tuned in on school and homework when I was in that age. Much of my life ever since has been sort of a compensation for that. My Wikipedia editing also - for sure!

Me as a wikipedian
My contributions to Wikipedia were numerous during spring and summer of 2003. However, I got tired of what I perceived as un-cooperative and disruptive behaviour of certain contributors. But I do still log on occasionally, maybe out of curiosity, to see what has happened with my old contributions &mdash; and if the project seems to have matured.

Last time I scored 57 at the Are You a Wikipediholic Test.

There is also a User:Ruhrjung/bragpage. (...and a list to keep track of related redirects).

Topics of obsession
My "post-formal" studies, if you allow the term, have followed no clear line:
 * German history
 * Hanseatic projections of Germanness
 * Secular aspects of the Reformation
 * the Napoleonic Wars and the reaction (Nationalism, German unification)
 * The chain of events from victories in 1864 and 1871 to devastation in 1945
 * Imperial Germany's influence in the Baltic Sea region
 * The relation between Prussian Germanness and Fennomania
 * History of thoughts
 * Jewish beliefs
 * Christian beliefs
 * Clan-societies versus Feudalism
 * Christian adaptations to Heathen practices and myths
 * swings to and from Aristocratic rule
 * development of egalitarian democracy and parliamentarism
 * popular reactions on (rejection of) the industrial revolution, Modernity and Modernism (i.e. "Back to nature-movements")
 * European history
 * Migration-period (a.k.a. Völkerwanderung)
 * History of Christianity (in Europe)
 * Basic Sociology
 * Sociolinguistics
 * Basic Linguistics
 * Cellular chemistry and Cell biology (for the pure fun of it, if nothing else!)

In retrospect great impacts and influences from friends and relatives are obvious, like when my closest friend celebrated his 18th birthday by proudly declaring he was to undergo Bris milah, learn Yiddish and start practicing Judaism, whereafter he moved off to Israel, or when my great-aunt revealed how her much beloved big-sister (that was my grand-mother) had been an enthusiastic local activist of Bund Deutscher Mädel, giving a picture of their perception of Nazi ideology which hadn't much in common with how it has become known after World War II.

My handle
It can be noted that it has nothing with reality to do. I've never had any RL connection with the Ruhrgebiet. My not-so-clever classmates did however not believe me, when I as a 12 year's old arrived in the class, telling that I came from a country-town in westernmost Germany, West of Osnabrück. In "Westernmost Germany?" They knew nothing but Ruhr there, and I made the mistake to try to correct the misconception with exaggerated enthusiasm, ...why the name stuck on me. ;->

My identity
There are about three nicknames on me, which some or all people who know me in RL do connect with my physical person. (This being one of them.) However, I've decided against disclosing any personal information like employer, physical address, birthday, phone number or photograph. People who know me in the "real world" can identify my internet personæ, but people who know me only in the virtual sense will not easily recognize my RL identity – at least not until we meet. I've considered this issue carefully, and feel that for all involved (including my employer and my lover) it's best this way.

Closetted status
I've never considered myself closetted, although ageing has led to re-definition (to some degree).

Wikipedians I know personally

 * I've met User:Johan Magnus in person, and look forward to the next time. His judgement on matters of Scandinavian culture and history, and his understanding for related controversies, seems outstanding.
 * User:Tuomas lives in the same collective as a very dear friend of mine. I've a a great amount of confidence for his judgement on matters of political science, the Middle East, and Latin America.
 * There are also a couple of Wikipedians with whom I've had e-mail and/or IRC contacts.

My location
I lack a place which feels as home. The remnants of my family live in Berlin &mdash; that's a great-aunt, my mother, my sister and her husband. (We have no contact with my late father's family.) Actually, I've kept a dusty appartment in former East Berlin while working abroad, but it's not yet become my home. A bunch of more distant relatives live in former East Germany, and an additional bushy branch in the Chicago-area – and there has been a surge of visits recently; but the more I learn them to know, the more strange do I find them and their country.

December 2000 to September 2004 I lived and worked in Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, which until now was the most prolonged stay at any one place since my teens. In fact, I lived in what's evolving into Copenhagen's easternmost suburb, the town Malmö in Sweden, where I still have close friends and aquantancies, and worked at the Copenhagen Airport (Kastrup), directly adjacent to the Oresund Bridge.

I have sort of emotional ties also with Southern Poland since my ex-lover (actually The Great Love of my life) moved back to Krakow after finished studies.

I've been a finnophile since my family's vacation at a deserted lake in Savonia. I was 11 years old, and that was my strangest experience ever. Later I've become somewhat of a danophile too.

My bias
Except for what can be concluded from above, the following might be relevant.

Anti-American bias
I've been visiting the United States quite frequently, with many short visits each year, for over 10 years now. Being brought up in Cold War West Berlin, where the history of the Berlin Airlift was at the very core of our common world view, I think I honestly can say that I for long remained more pro-American than pro-German. During the 1990s I sensed that the Atlantic widened somehow; that the public opinions in America and Europe were drifting away from each other. But in reality, that might well have been the result of my image of America gradually being adjusted to reality.

However, after the Kosovo War I've become increasingly interested in international relations in general and European security politics in particular, which as a spin-off effect has resulted also in a necessary interest for US political debate. As could be expected, this has led me to leave naïve sentiments behind. I do now recognize that I am "European" in views and values, and do no longer feel cozily close to America, in particular not to the "Political America", that in my view mocks both democratic values and other values I thought of as American values. Before September 2001, I was intrigued by what I saw as the US government standing much closer to Europe in its foreign policies than the American debate motivated. This has since been corrected.

In retrospect, my changed world view must be said to have been rather drastic and shocking an experience. Most of what I believed about international powers was within a few years put on its head. The axis this rotated around, was my sudden perception of a widespread American lack of affinity for other democracies and of respect for other constitutions than their own. Of course, particularly the disrespect among American friends and relatives for Germany's constitution, that according to Allied post-war demands prohibits participation in wars of aggression, which they can't understand why we don't change now when the US ask us to, and the Russians aren't strong enough to say no. Just imagine their reaction, if a foreign country had asked them to change their constitution.

For all of my adult life, I've been in frequent contact with people of many nations, but not the least Americans, wo are eager to point out that we Germans don't do enough to remind ourself about atrocities committed in our name. Today, I must conclude that it is the Americans who are in the direst need to start see the outrage perpetrated on other peoples (and races!) in their name. If German books, magazines or newspapers had depictured the German experience in a way similar to how it daily is reported on US ventures in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, or Korea &mdash; as purely American sacrifices and losses, making the victims invisible, and neglecting the huge negative net effect American interventions have had on the lifes of ordinary people &mdash; then, in Germany, the publishers had been put in jail, following laws imposed by the Allies after the war. I am particularly disturbed by my American friends' difficulties to see the racism in America's acts abroad. The term hypocracy is not really the right one. It's clearly more like a perception disorder. But I had expected better from the Americans I looked up to so much!

Today I am wary, rather than intrigued, by long-term tendencies in US foreign policy to antagonize Russian and Muslim interests, which in my judgment is quite contrary to European long-term security interests &mdash; not the least dangerous for the ex-members of the Warsaw Pact.

Anti-Scandinavian bias
Living as an immigrant in any country probably makes anyone more or less edgy about that country and its culture. Maybe one could say that I am disappointed over the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden not fully having lived up to my expectations, at the same time as I now and then get tired of never feeling to really know the culture that surrounds me. Swedish/Danish communication style, where dissent is much more disapproved of than dishonesty, makes me fly of the handle every now and then. Danish business partners all seem to think that negotiation is something carried out after an agreement is concluded. Having studied Swedish, I am rather disillusioned by the Swedes' liberal attitude on orthography and grammar in printed matters, and confused by the differences between "correct Swedish" in Southern Sweden compared to in the capital region. There is a series of hard-to-pronounce sounds that the Swedes themselves pronounce differently depending on which high-status variety they adhere to, and this makes not so few words totally ambiguous. I get so mad...

While I'm truly impressed by ...I am in no ways impressed by the use the Swedes do if this tradition. I hold Swedish public debate, politicians and journalists to act not much differently than their counterparts in the former East Germany, and my impressions of the hegemonic Swedish Social Democracy is not much different from my impressions of the East German Socialist Unity Party, that I as a teenager learned to know through East German TV over the Berlin Wall. Having stated this, I may have explained why I try not to edit articles on Sweden.
 * Sweden's & Finland's 500 years long tradition of letting the taxed peasantry participate through the parliament in the decisions on state budget;
 * their 50 years of 18th century parliamentarism;
 * by the Finnish–Swedish public access to official records that was enacted in the end of that experiment;
 * and by the parliament's role in the "peaceful revolutions" of 1680, 1718, 1772, 1789, 1809 and 1918;