User talk:Oli1944

Welcome!

Welcome to Wikipedia, Oli1944! I am Marek69 and have been editing Wikipedia for quite some time. I just wanted to say hi and welcome you to Wikipedia! If you have any questions, feel free to leave me a message on my talk page or by typing {{helpme}} at the bottom of this page. I love to help new users, so don't be afraid to leave a message! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

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Marek.69 ^talk 03:45, 5 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Americas

Hispanic America means something different from Latin America, so you can't substitute your own experiences for what the sources tell us; sure, most Brazilians probably don't object to Americans being called Americans in English, but the same is true of most Colombians, Chileans, and so forth. However, there is a nontrivial, vocal minority in the Latin American countries (including Brazil) who do so. I don't totally get it, since it's usually accompanied on talk page/edit summary with anti-American screeds, and it seems like a non-American resident of the Americas would have to despise their own nationality to push the position, but there it is. I have certainly known a Brazilian who did, and I haven't known millions of Brazilians. All of the off topic material about other names for Americans and/or the United States needs to be removed. It's all off topic, and none of it belongs in the article. Adding bad material like this is a step backwards from the article, and has generally been a hallmark of pushing the point of view that Americans should be called somethings other than Americans, and that New Worlders should be called Americans. The French section is not a bad example of how it should look - only discuusing the Americas, and only mentioning America for those terms which might be ambiguous. If the last bit of the Portugeuse section bothers you, just remove it; The Americas are not discussed in it at all, so it doesn't belong in an article that's supposed to be about The Americas. The whole sprawling section is a big violation of [[WP:UNDUE] anyways. The amount of space in the article devote to naming and usage is absolutely shameful - it really needs to be mostly pushed to Americas (terminology) and American (word). Almost all the effort that should be going into bring the article not-terrible goes into making it not a screed instead. Similarly, other language was changed to push the article towards the point of view that America and it's cognates don't/shouldn't get used for America. In the midst of all of these bad, point-of-view and personal observation-type edits, I could believe that the point about Central America belonging in that list are valid, though I'd suggest you bring it to talk - and the issues separately. If you've got eleven bad apples spoiling the dozen, you're going to have to sell 'em as singles. Wily D 22:06, 10 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]