Talk:Volkstaat/Archive 2

message: I've cut down the external links section. A few of the links were to newspaper articles, which could make useful references (though they're fairly POV as a whole), so I've moved them here. I'm trying to keep the links down to directly relevant ones. -Kieran 14:43, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Rationalisation of External Links

message: I've removed the following passage: 
While some advocate a violent solution, specifically Die Boeremag, many of the Afrikaner community feel that the best way to safeguard their culture, heritage and people, is through self determination and obtaining minority rights peacefully. They point out that minority rights and separatism are "hot topics" in current international politics - such as the Palestinians, the Flemish in Belgium, the French-speaking people of Quebec in Canada, the Kurds in Iraq, the Tamils of Sri Lanka and the Basques in Spain.
Until someone can find a reputable source for this, it's either unreferenced or original research. -Kieran 01:28, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: More unsubstantiated text removed

message: Well, I've done some cleaning up of this article. In particular, I've started a references section, and begun including referenced facts about the history of the Volkstaat concept. It seems to have been a fairly important part of the negotiations surrounding the peaceful dismantling of apartheid, and I think this needs to be conveyed in the article, along with some facts about that process. An excellent source (not all of which I've read), is here. The book "'Volk', Faith and Fatherland", seems to be a second excellent source of information about the Volkstaat, and about right wing activities in South Africa generally. If someone feels like plowing through those sources, and finding a few more, and then incorporating some of the information therein into the article, I think that would really help. A third good piece of analysis on the subject is here, though it was written in 1997, so is somewhat dated.
Something that would also be interesting to include is some mention of parallels between the Volkstaat idea and Zulu seperatism. Some of the sources mentioned that these were two major forces in the negotiations in the early 1990's, which impacted on the final form of the current constitution. 
Anyway, what I'm trying to get at is that this article is currently full of generalisation by weasel words, and really needs to move towards more specific statements of fact. For example: 
"Some Afrikaners (the Freedom Front in particular) argue that the most feasible location would be the arid and undeveloped Northern Cape where Orania ... Other Afrikaners, however, wish to establish the Volkstaat around Pretoria". 
OK, this mentions that the Freedom Front are the main proponents of the Northern Cape Volkstaat. But, are they the only proponents of that model? Who else supports it, besides them? Maybe no-one? What about these "other Afrikaners"? Which Afrikaners, and where is the source to back this up? I would guess that the "other Afrikaners" would be the far right wing types who frequent sites like this one, the source of the map on the page.
I think it would be better (and more in line with Wikipedia policy), if statements about "some Afrikaners", could be changed to mention specific organisations, or else specific numbers of people, with a reference to the survey in which that number was found. The same needs to happen with all the other weasel words on the page, in accordance with WP:AWW. -Kieran 02:32, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: What this article really needs

message: As per my above post, I've put the weasel words tag on this article. The tag should go when we've qualified all the statements like the one above. -Kieran 02:35, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Kierano, please supply a list of the statements with whom you are unhappy so that they may be reworded in order for the tag to be lifted. --Gemsbok1 08:03, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

text: If no objections are made, by way of a list of questionable statements, by 31/08/2006, the tag will be lifted. --Gemsbok1 09:15, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Weasel words

message: I have truncated the huge introduction which duplicates information contained in the body of the article.  The introduction now only contains the central idea of the term "Volkstaat" for Afrikaners. - Gemsbok1 09:35, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Introduction 

message: I reshuffled the content to consolidate the South African government's response to the volkstaat concept at the end of the article, giving a fitting conclusion to the article. -Gemsbok1 14:33, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reshuffled content 

message: It would not be a NPOV to insert an opinion about the statistical data, as different readers will interperate the findings differently. I.e. one person sees only 30% support as being unpopular, while another would quantify 30% as meaning 750 000 Afrikaners supporting the idea, which is not unpopular and is in fact more than the total populations of 68 independent countries.  Refer List of countries by population.
It would be better to just present the statistics, which is neutral, and allow the readers to make their own conclusions. -Gemsbok1 10:45, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Including unpopular in introduction