Talk:South Ossetia
From Wikitravel
[edit] Situation in South Ossetia
I earnestly ask anyone to rewrite the news about a situation in South Ossetia. Current Piter's edition is no neutral point of view in my opinion (e.g. compare with neutral in Wikinews statements in [1]). It's impotant for us to clear a tragedy of the situation but not a political estimation. To do this, you can use a some numbers reported by Russian TV: about 2000 killed civilians in Tskhinvali and more than 30000 refugees from South Ossetia. -- Sergey kudryavtsev 11:38, 10 August 2008 (EDT)
- I'm not sure what's non-neutral about my write-up (although, of course, we don't aim for neutrality. But also, we should neither be getting into politics nor writing about tragedies—as a travel site, all that we need to do is warn travelers. And right now, I think what a traveler needs to know is: there is a war, it's dangerous, don't go there. That's what I tried to write. In the future it will be necessary to write about these events in more detail in the understand section of South Ossetia, but I don't think we should do that until after the conflict (since we're not a news site). --Peter Talk 23:31, 10 August 2008 (EDT)
- In "Political disputes" of Wikitravel:Be fair says: The best way out is to stick to the bare minimum of facts necessary, presented as neutrally as possible, while keeping a firm focus on the traveller's interests. A non-neutral statement is bolded: War has broken out in the Caucasus between Georgia and Russia within the separatist region of South Ossetia, ... (because Russia is not in a war state with Georgia; Russian troops just perform a peacekeeper mission incumbent by UN). I suppose only to remove a bolded text. Are you agree? -- Sergey kudryavtsev 02:27, 11 August 2008 (EDT)
- Prime Minister Putin on 8/8/08 called the current conflict between Russia-Georgia a war, Georgia has mobilized all its armed forces and recalled 2,000 troops from Iraq to fight the Russian forces there, Russia has bombed Poti, all major Georgian airports, Bolnisi, and Gori. Prior to 8/8, Russia's presence within Georgian territory was only peacekeeping, but that has changed. The point is, regardless of what anyone calls it, from the traveler's perspective a war has broken out, so travelers should not visit the country! Were this still an ongoing conflict between the Ossetes & Georgians within South Ossetia, then travelers could visit the rest of the country, but that's not the case right now. I still don't see what is non-neutral about the statement as is (it doesn't take sides, does it?) and I think it mentions the bare minimum of facts necessary. Over explaining the conflict would include what I just wrote here, as well as explaining the sources of the conflict, which I think we should avoid, since there are competing narratives, and the reasons why this is happening are controversial. --Peter Talk 03:13, 11 August 2008 (EDT)
- If it looks like war and sounds like war, it probably is war. And considering Russian and Georgian troops are involved, I don't see how the war could be between anyone else but Russia and Georgia. You could, I suppose, replace "war" with "intense fighting" and "Russia" with "Russian troops", but both changes strike me as needless weaseling. LtPowers 08:30, 11 August 2008 (EDT)
- I change the news item per LtPowers' proposal. -- Sergey kudryavtsev 13:49, 11 August 2008 (EDT)
- It wasn't really a proposal; I was explaining that the current wording was accurate and concise and that any changes to the wording would be "needless weaseling". LtPowers 16:50, 11 August 2008 (EDT)
- There is a full mutual misunderstanding. You may revert a changes. I already regret that i was started this discussion. It's complicated for me to explain my opinion using a foreign language. I don't want to continue a useless discussion. -- Sergey kudryavtsev 03:06, 12 August 2008 (EDT)
[edit] "Capital"
I've removed the inverted commas around "capital" for Tskhinvali. Tskhinvali is recognised as the "capital" of South Ossetia regardless if one accepts that SO is an independent country or not, just in the same way that, say, Edinburgh is recognised as the capital of Scotland within the UK, or Grozny the capital of Chechnya inside the Russian Federation. Shotlandiya 17:18, 25 June 2009 (EDT)
- That's not accurate. South Ossetia formally isn't even a region of Georgia, unlike Abkhazia. It is an ethno-political conflict region, which overlaps the official administrative regions of Racha & Shida Kartli (the majority, of course, being in Shida Kartli). Tskinvali also does not wield control (formally, or even practically) over the whole of the South Ossetia region. It's the capital only in a figurative, assertorial sense. The only real meaning to the notion of capital status is that would likely be the capital of an independent South Ossetia, and that it is the cultural and population center of the Ossete population on the Georgian side of the border.
