User talk:Skiasaurus

your edit yesterday

I'm curious why you edited the descriptor for United States of America (Q30) - "federal republic" is more specific than "sovereign state". Arlo Barnes (talk) 00:57, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

@Arlo Barnes: It's more objective, and less political, to call sovereign states just that. To take an example: North Korea (Q423) has the word "republic" in its full name ("Democratic People's Republic of Korea"). It would be a more than a little disingenuous to simply take that at face value and include the word in the description, but a politically charged description like "Stalinist dictatorship" is equally objectionable for a project like Wikidata. And while North Korea is obviously an extreme example, a number of other states' descriptions have precisely the same issue, and I think they should be changed as well. I changed the one for United States of America (Q30) because I feel it's only fair (and, again, more apolitical) to treat every state the same in this regard, and because anyone who wants to know more about its form of government can get it in the first few instance of (P31) statements. I plan to do the same for every other state listed at w:List of sovereign states. (The words "country" and "nation" have their own issues because both are less precise—the former can also mean a geographical region that isn't necessarily sovereign, and the latter can also mean a group of people of common origin without regard to geography.)

And I guess I should also say, for the record, that I am myself a US citizen, and I have no personal agenda here—my own political views are much closer to the center than to any fringe. For me, this is strictly about being as objective as possible. :-) Skiasaurus (/ˌskiːəˈsɔːrəs/) 03:34, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

I see. Well, I wish you luck with your project then, although I'm not sure asserting sovereignty is less controversial in some cases :D Arlo Barnes (talk) 17:45, 26 April 2020 (UTC)