Talk:Maurice Benyovszky

Definitelly it is not a Slovak version of Wikipedia. Bear it in mind when you create this article. Benowski was born in Hungary so, altough of Slovak origins, technically he was a Hungarian. Many Poles regard him as a Pole as well. In fact he was a citizen of the world. In such circumstancies it would be kind to limit nationalistic sentiments. I think that the article should be carefully re-edited. According accepted rules of Wikipedia articles should be written from a neutral point of view, which means that articles should represent differing views on a subject fairly and sympathetically. I decided to change parts of your contribution, which is unacceptably "slovakocentric". I removed the parts which does not introduce any important information but make artificial mess. Regards Von Fiszman

The changes you made are excellent, but one point is simply not through - technically he was not a Hungarian, he was a Hungarian only formally (if at all), because if he was a Hungarian, then this would imply that any Slovak,Croat,Romanian etc.(and especially any noble) was a Hungarian before 1918 only because he spoke Hungarian and did not "attack Budapest" all the time. He also had nothing to do with present-day Hungary - but he had a lot to do with present-day Austria. So if we use your logic, he was actually an Austrian. Also,the original text explicitely says that he is considered a hero by the Madagscarians and the Poles, and it contains a lot of reference to his activities in the USA, although I could have written a lot more about Slovakia and leave e.g. the USA out, but I thought that this was important for an English Wikipedia. It also said that he was the first European etc. who explored ...and not the first Slovak or so. So -as I see it - your real problem is that the article does not claim that he is an important Hungarian or something like that. And ... if nationality is not 100% defined by the country where a person and his family was born, where he spent at least the first 18 years of his life, whose language was his mother language,where he was educated, where his home house - to which he came back whenever it was possible - was situated, and where his wife came with his daughters after his death and died, then I really do not know how else nationality can be defined. If you do not like this definition, then you do not like the term nationality. However, the above is how nationality is usually defined and used in encyclopedias to describe a person for the reader. And, of course, even if one says that someone has a nationality X, that does not mean that he cannot be a "citizen of the world", which Benovsky surely is. But, if you personally are a Hungarian or something like that, then of course you cannot be convinced and always keep in mind that I in turn think that you are unacceptably "hungarocenthric". And if I would have tried to really make a nationalistic article than it would surely have looked differently. Juro