Talk:Václav Klaus/Archive 1

message: Ad recent edit (15:57, 7 Feb 2004 edit)
- change the wording, which is propably quite bad english, but I'd not like to see complete rv
# even mainstream right-wing media call many his recent move populisticIn presidential elections Klas declared he would change his style as a president  and he would be "president of all". In practice it means at least for domestic public Klaus is no longer free market evangelist, instead he's visiting small villages, shaking hands with anybody who is eager to see live president. He says things which public wants to hear, as measured by polls. (In cotrast to Havel, who was prominent critic of his nation.)To popularity gain, not only such serious topis as war or EU are contributing. Leading commercial TV Nova with >50% market share had policy of attacking Vaclav Havel by any means possible at every occasion. In contrast Nova is more than friendly towards Klaus, broadcasting his New Year speech, and even somethink like regular "hour with Mr. President" (and servant journalist) was proposed. 
# critics of Klaus Previous article wording may suggest he was criticized mostly from some anti-capitalist or anti-liberal positions. At least now serious  critics focuse on the thesis that "free market" by Klaus was "free market without law". There is a famous Klaus quote meaning something like "now we switch off the light, state property will find its owners, and then we switch the light on again".
# 1997 government crisisIt should be noted why lost PM post in 1997. Scanal with party financing was similar in scope to that of German Helmut Kohl and CDU. Whole two paragraphs are devoted to that scanad on Kohl page. 
So, IMO, if 1997 scandal and government crises was completely omitted in Klaus pages, article was concealing importat thing, in another words pro-Klaus biased. (Compare- Kohl would certainly also prefer to omit financial scandal from his biograpy.)
(by User:Wikimol, 17:07, 7 Feb 2004 UTC, than wikinewbie, unlogged, unsigned] (signature added Wikimol 21:31, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: Is Vaclav Klaus of German descent? Is the answer is positive, is he a Sudeten German? Meursault2004 20:33, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: No. He tells his descendants come from a Czech village. German sounding names are quite frequent in Czech Republic. Some people claim his parents moved into todays Czech Republic from Galizia, before WW2, and their family name was Pruzhinski.
In Czechia, there is no one of 'pure' blood. Since ages, this pot in the middle of Eastern Europe got people coming in from all around. Before WW2 Czechs, Germans, Hungarians, Jews, Poles, Roma, Slovaks, Ruthenians/Ukrainians lived in Czechoslovakia, before WW1 the kingdom of Bohemia (included Moravia and part of Silesia - today called Czechia) was part of Austria-Hungary, in the middle ages, Italians, French among many other also came in... --Wiki-vr 14:11, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vaclav Klaus of [[Germany|German]] descent? 

message: IMO the terms vandalism and spam should be used in their general Wikipedia meaning. Offensive remarks pushing some point of view are not vandalism since their purpose is not to damage the Wikipedia; of course sometimes they deserve deletion, but vandalism should not be given as a reason.  Similarly, not  every link someone dislikes is spam - link to a newspaper article obviously is not spam, since its purpose is not advertizing or PR. This refers to two recent edits. --Georgius 09:30, 1 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vandalism and spam 

message: Are you sure that Spidla was acting president? Because Czech constitution has no term "actin president". When Czech Republic does not have any president then some authorities are assigned to Prime Minister and Chair of parliament while other authorities remains unassigned.
I think that more clean is to write that preceding president was Vaclav Havel. 
--Petr.adamek 23:12, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It had happened quite often throughout history of Czechoslovakia and Czech Republic and all other "acting" persons are mentioned in infoboxes. It may be possible find better word (or add description but this feels as nitpicking). Pavel Vozenilek 00:42, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Acting president Spidla 

message: If there's an actual consensus that the interview by Fund is actually worthless by folks who better understand Klaus' life and career than I do, I've got no problem with it, but I would note that the article at the moment isn't particularly rooted in source materials, the interview appeared in a journal (with an ideological orientation similar to Klaus' own, for better or worse) with a fairly wide circulation, and contains information that isn't in the entry itself.  It is of some age, though (it's from June 1990), and I'm not emotionally wedded to it being part of the entry.  I'll just note that I don't personally find the interview "worthless" and leave it to the consensus beyond that.Adbarnhart 18:24, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  The adjective "worthless" is a bit harsh, I would keep it there and wait till somebody finds a better one. However, I agree with Pavel Vozenilek that is it merely a chit-chat (V.K. was 48 years old, date can be calculated :-) JanSuchy 22:18, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  That's probably a fair enough assessment.  Pavel Vozenilek suggested on my talk page that there's an enormous amount out there on the man and that this particular interview doesn't stand out.  That could very well be the case, but we only have the three external links (only two in English), and they're all of an official nature, in some measure.  I think the page would benefit from identifying at least a small handful of sources that would help round things out a little would go a long way to strengthening the effectiveness of the page.  In any event, I've not restored the link to the interview; I think perhaps someone with greater expertise can sort out what source materials will work best here. Adbarnhart 08:02, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Interview by Fund 

message: I added the tag, since there are quite a few parts which clearly contain too much spin and the section as a whole doesn't represent IMHO a NPOW. For example (but not only) the 2nd paragraph of this section. Also some other controversial statements in this section would benefit from references. Rgilnitram 05:46, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Weasel words tag

message: :I agree. 
:Whether or not the people editing this agree with Klaus is irrelevant, IMO. 
:The page needs to convey information about him and his political career in an impartial, encyclopedic manner. 
:I also think his opinions on the relative merit of global warming are worth mentioning.
:To wit,
:http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/02/vclav-klaus-about-ipcc-panel.html Ruthfulbarbarity 21:59, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that Klaus' stated opinions on Global Warming/Environmental policy are notable. In satisfying WP:RS and therefore WP:V, however, blogs are typically not accepted as sources. I would however vouch for this blog source as seeming to have the same text as the text posted as a "Flash" on the Drudge Report (accessed 19:30 EST). The link is here, but these flash pages don't typically stay at that URL for long. I think Drudge is mainstream enough to be considered a notable/reliable source, at least until someone else finds a static URL. DickClarkMises 00:37, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Dear Fellow Wikipedians, I admire Drudge Report but don't you think that if Drudge Report cites my blog page as the source of the text and the translation, Wikipedia should respect that the source of this info is not Drudge Report but rather my blog? ;-) Alternatively, you can link to the original Czech pages with the interview but it would be less useful to English readers. Thanks for your consideration, All the best, Lubos Motl --Lumidek 03:17, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I would note only that Drudge Report seems to be citing the same source as the blog in question, not the blog itself. DickClarkMises 07:22, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry, I think that there is some confusion here. The Flash article  cites, at the bottom, a page of my blog (motls.blogspot.com) as the source of the translation. Best wishes, Lubos --140.247.123.226 02:05, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Bias

message: I can understand if some people don't like him, but Klaus's job approval sits at 82% in the Czech Republic (http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/02/vclav-klaus-about-ipcc-panel.html) and this article hardly reflects this. Present positive aspects of the man as well as negative aspects. 70.16.18.49 02:12, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The article was negative due to a rather active group of his opponents. It's impossible to regulate these things. I have reformulated some of the statements to reduce the obvious negative bias in them while trying to preserve all the content (including the arguably redundant content that was introduced and twisted by some of the critics). It was a non-trivial amount of work, so please don't revert it. It would be good if non-Czech editors helped to optimize the grammar and style and reformulate the remaining negatively sounding/biased sentences whenever it's clear how a neutral editor would express the same idea. It would also be a good idea to revert future changes whose only purpose is to introduce bad mood and/or personal accusations into the article. Thanks for your collaboration, Lubos --Lumidek 00:43, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Oh, this is much better than the previous article. I have two minor points: (1) the article mentions Milos Zeman and others to have recently started respecting Klaus. I'd say that Zeman and Klaus always respected each other. They just very strongly disagreed. Unfortunately, I don't have a quote right now, but I remeber reading expressions of mutual respect in their books from the end of the nineties (2) Shouldn't a definition of "Opposition agreement" be added ? Something like: a public written contract of ODS and CSSD, where ODS pledged to support the CSSD government in the confidence vote, but was not bound to support any laws send by the minority goverment to the parliament. For this support ODS got centrain positions in public administration and firms in public ownership. (Vonkad 16:03, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quite Negative! 

message: Hi, I removed the trivia section about the CNN bloopers. While amusing and well referenced, I don't think it belongs to this entry (perhaps to an entry about CNN). It doesn't document anything VK did or any criticism by others, it is just a slip of a tongue. It happens in the broadcast media all the time (sadly). However, if you still feel it is a piece of relevant information, feel free to revert it back.
Martin
216.165.126.11 10:07, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Trivia 

message: The second sentence begins, "A delusional free market oriented economist and a relic of the Cold War,..." This is so biased. Even if he is exactly this, it can be stated so much more effectively, "Klaus is a self-assured, yet very much out of the mainstream, free market-oriented economist. Much of his current ideology is deeply influenced by his time living under communism. He is criticized as remaining too firmly rooted in the past -- a relic of the Cold War...." Hmm. That actually is good enough for me, and I don't think it changes the meaning of what anyone has up now.
Gregconquest 14:46, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Biased opening