User talk:Boleynn

Tone
Boleynn, I am very concerned about your tone in recent comments. It is extremely rude to accuse me (or anyone else) of bias, on the basis of exactly NO EVIDENCE. The article is fully-cited, and everything that is said is based directly on the cited sources. There is no opinion of mine in the article.

The fact is that the existing sources, both culinary and academic, have largely neglected the parts of the Mediterranean Basin in the Balkan region. This is not my fault! You shared the attempt at finding sources, and had the same experience of difficulty as I did: that means, the sources just aren't there (yet).

You have seen today that I immediately dropped whatever else I was doing and looked for suitable sources for the Balkan part of the Mediterranean Basin. It was hard to find anything very much that was even slightly usable: that is just the state of the culinary and academic sources in 2021. No doubt in a few years time, the situation may improve; until then, we simply cannot say much. That is not bias, that is proper editing using the information available.

When the sources have discussed the cuisine of Montenegro and Albania in detail, reliably, then we can cite them. I do hope this is clear: this is how Wikipedia is supposed to work. With my best wishes, Chiswick Chap (talk) 17:21, 15 March 2021 (UTC)


 * Good evening, I won’t say sorry for my tone because I was not yelling and I didn’t verbally abuse anyone, I was only sharing my thoughts. It was you yelling at me with your capital letters. Whoever wrote it possibly was a victim of much larger, academic bias. And now I will try to explain it the best I can, and maybe then you can say that I am the one who is biased.


 * As someone with Balkan origins (Serbian and Croatian, and even Austrian and Persian) but living in the Netherlands, I have seen to which extent people are not really aware of geopolitical, historical, economic, ethnic, cultural and other location of Balkan within the continent. In the Netherlands in particular people confuse European Union with Europe, so for someone from let’s say Belarus they would say he doesn’t live in Europe (while actually thinking European Union). Be it poor education or in some political way motivated omission, the unawareness exists. In the case of the Balkan cuisine — if it is not Mediterranean, not Eastern European and not Central European, then the logical question would be what is it then? It must be something, right? At least, a reader can be left wondering. And in case of Balkan states there are many more complex problems. Recently I was reading one interesting Italian article exactly about how that region was always making part of those large Southern civilizations, and how in European publications from the time of Yugoslavia it suddenly started to become Eastern. It is of course another topic, but there are consequences. Overall, similar problems exist in the region which is quite difficult to define: San Marino is not Mediterranean country because it is landlocked. Is the Italian peninsula in the Mediterranean? — Yes. Entire Italy? — Yes. So where is San Marino then? I mean, it cannot be on Jupiter, right. And I do understand the article is not about the states but about cuisines, it is only that those cuisines I mentioned really exist, they are in the South and yet they somehow don’t belong anywhere. Like San Marino.


 * Anyway. Not enough sources is a valid reason and I will back off. I am sorry you took it personally. I was only trying to point out what is missing. Best, — Boleynn (talk) 18:35, 15 March 2021 (UTC)