User:Ruhrjung
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 — and of truth.
The Wikipedia-idea might, under lucky circumstances, be one step on the road away from this peril.
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 Wikipedia:Dispute resolution guidelines are fairly good, if followed!
"Some have described this as a war crime" 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 Conservative¹ 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
¹/ Maybe it's necessary to note that usage of political labels differ quite a lot between the US and Continental Europe.
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 (particularly the users 172, Graculus and Wik). But I do still log on occasionally, maybe out of curiosity, to see what has happened with my old contributions - and if the project seems to have matured.
Last time I scored 57 at the Wikipedia:Are You a Wikipediholic Test.
There is also a User:Ruhrjung/bragpage.
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
- 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).
My location
Since December 2000 I live and work in Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark. Or, more precisely, I live in what's evolving into Copenhagen's easternmost suburb, the town Malmö in Sweden.
I lack a place which feels as home. The remnants of my family live in Berlin, that's a great-aunt, my mother, my sister and her husband. (We have no contact with my father's family.) A bunch of more distant relatives live in former DDR, 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.
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. 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 — not the least dangerous for the ex-members of the Warsaw Pact.
Please direct comments to my talk page.
I sent you an e-mail about a month ago apologizing for the way Graculus and I handled the Continuation War dispute. I'm repeating it here just in case it wasn't received. I hope that we can start off with a clean slate in the event that we work with each other again. 172 21:03, 20 May 2004 (UTC)