Misplaced Pages

Hello Sandstain, I hope you had nice hollydays. I took the chance to spend more time with my family and friends. However, I am very sad because of what happened. I am one of those passionate editors which have no aspirations of becoming admins, but I take my role here very seriously. As only child, I grew-up reading encyclopedias, so Misplaced Pages became a passion of mine immediatelly. Its interactive, you can complete info, correct, and, of course, debate. Misplaced Pages launched the seed of a potential biggest and most complete encyclopedia ever to have been built by human kind.

My case is this one, User_talk:FkpCascais#Notice_that_you_are_now_subject_to_an_arbitration_enforcement_sanction, which resulted from this report. As a personal remarc (after all, we are humans), I was dealing with sensitive situation in my personal life and it reflected in Misplaced Pages with me having much less patience than usually. What is really the problem? It is that all this nations have a minor groups of editors that work in synth in order to get the ideas they want to get trough the articles. However, this often means entering into conflict with other groups, or otherwise we wouldn´t have articulated the stories between the diverse articles. Another major problem is that fact that by cherry-picking sources one can write two totally opposite versions of one same event. That is when alliances between two against another are formed, I guess that this must sound comic for anyone normal, but it has been the norm in Misplaced Pages ever since. Editors are not here to find the truth but are here to impose their truth. The dispute resolution mechanisms often fail to deliver a quick and effective response, so POV-pushers know this, and when they cant have their own in the article, they will make endless discussions at talk-pages. If the opposing editor is persistent and seems to have a valid case, the next step is to try to eliminate that editor almost allways.

So what happened with me? I am one of a very few active Serbian editors. We are probably the nation with less active editors compared to country size. That is not a coincidence. That happened because many Serbian editors were constantly attacked and accused of nationalism for any minor thing. If a Serbian editor gatheres sources and stays strong, he would probably face an avalanche of attacks from editors from the neighbouring countries. Then we have also quite a lot of international editors which, remembering the 1990s, care many missconceptions and still apply the "Serbs are guilty" mentality. I am not saying they are wrong, each one is free to believe as he wants, but I just want to stress out that for us Serbs working on Misplaced Pages is much harder than the usual.

In this case what happened comes from about a month or two earlier. A series of Albanian (or Albanian origin) editors have been heavily rewriting all major articles related to Albania. That wouldn´t be a problem per se, however, the changes they are making is like making the articles look like a touristic brochure. I called the attention for it at Talk:Albania/Archive_11#The_article_is_becoming_a_turistic_brochure. There was added Misplaced Pages:PEACOCK everywhere, everything became the best, greatest, newest, oldest, biggest, etc. For me it all started when I saw a pic of the Tirana airport saying it was one of the bussiest in the Balkans. Since aviation is an area I work a lot, and I contributed substantially to the List of the busiest airports in the Balkans, I obviously knew how wrong was saying that when the airport was 10th. Then I tryied to add some edits which were promptly reverted. I was always carefull to use only English-language reliable sources. I cant see how the year Ottomans came first time to Albanian coast is irrelevant, or how is that Kosovo is always used as Albanian ethnic space whenever the context for them is favourable, but they disallowed me to add that at the Battle of Kosovo Albanian contingent fought along Serbian side against Ottomans (a fact quite interesting and well documented).

I guess it is not hard to understand that Albanian history was very much linked to its neighbours, Serbia, Greece and Italy. By time they rewrote the entire article, Serbia/Serbs mention was left on only two occasions, and both negative! To see how biased this is, we can just see Albania Table of Contents (from countrystudies.us) and see that just for the period between Antiquity to late Middle Ages, Serbs/Serbia are cited 6 times, and beware this is a concise version. What is happening is that editors broke Misplaced Pages:OWN and are writting the articles from their nowadays perspective. This is creating a highly unenciclopedic article where the best features are described and the rest hidden. For instance, the economy section speaks impressive numbers... but the fact that for a century Albania was known as the poorest country in Europe, is totally ommited. Just by googling thousands of results appear. Things need to be placed in context and reality must be shown. I wan´t feel good by Albania having been the poorest country, but I also don´t feel good with this propagandistic reinvention in which they also remove Serbian history and influence in the area.

Now, I understand everyone wants to present its country the best way, but giving green light to one group while eliminating the ones questioning certain issues, will not lead us to neutrality and objectivity. What we need is responsable editors from different places working all together trying to reach balanced articles.

The reason I was banned is because I brought a duzen of sources claiming Skanderebeg Serbian origin, and I was carefull not to bring any Serbian ones. I wasn´t trying to say Skanderbeg was Serbian, I just intended that the information about the number of sources backing Serbian origin claim to be added properly at the article. The area was by then ruled by Serbia, his grandfather fought at Czar Stefan Dushan army and receved property for his archivements. Those are important facts. We should discuss them and see a solution. I am not willing to accept that because of nowadays hateriot of Albanians against Serbs, this information is inconvenient, thus lets better punish the guy insisting on it. User:Deb had a perfect approach at the report. Calmed us all down and started looking for ways to solve this situation. I was alone, and the opposing editors found at my sandbox a text I translated from another author which I believe brings some interesting insigts about the fact that Serbian-Albanian conflict is a very recent event. I obviously don´t support all she says, neither am I racist, Islamophobist, or any of that. I grew up in a multicultural society, I love multicultralism.

User:Gerda Arendt was so kind that she considered me an awesome Wikipedian. And now I am topic banned for having brought 10 sources to raise a question and when ignored I asked for help at ANI and FuturePerfectSunrise (a admin I had many conflicts in past) sugests boomerang, and I am eliminated just like that? Sorry, but whoever sees the report can see how colaborative I am in trying to solve the issue, I even accepted my guilt that I have may been precipitated. And I receve a pure punishment, preciselly what should NOT happened, because[REDACTED] shoould block or ban preventivelly, not as punishment.

Sandstein, I believe you were too harsh on me, I honestly don´t even know exactly why I was topic banned? For taking a content dispite to ANI? For having a text in my sandbox which I never ever used anywhere at articles? I was never a vandal, I am an productive editor at many fields, but yes, they do all deal with the region I was born (I live in Portugal already 30 years) so that is how I kill my nostalgia. Would you please allow me to resume my normal editing? I promise I will obviously be extremelly carefull, and avoid disputes, btw, I have many football articles I have to update now. FkpCascais (talk) 00:31, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

Further in my defense, you can see how I help other editors, for instance, User:Bakir123 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), a new Bosnian football editor, you can see here how I have great cooperation with Albanian football editor Sadsadas, then here you can see the great collaboration we all have all from different countries, and you can even see BiHVolim, a stounch Bosnian nationalist, thanking me... All this editors see that I love my country, but that I am not a nationalist, and often count on me for helping them if they have doubts. Even my barnstars you can see I have from different nationalities, exemple, a funny one from a Croatian editor that says that even us disagreing and holding opposite views, we deserve half-stars for working things out. I cannot understand what view of me you got, but seems very wrong. I may have a bad day, but I am a staunch follower and defender of wiki rules and I usually try to do the best in each situation. This punishment has been very hard for me. FkpCascais (talk) 01:24, 13 January 2019 (UTC)