[WikiEN-l] Sep 11

Fri Jan 16 02:35:32 UTC 2004

Viajero wrote:
>"Terrorism" is a lot more than just a technical term; it carries 
>emotional baggage and implies a moral judgement (like calling 
>someone a "vandal" in Wikipedia!). 

Like the words 'racism', 'holocaust' and 'massacre'? I guess the articles on 
those topics will have to be renamed as well.  

>Passing moral judgements on subjects is obviously 
>incompatible with NPOV. 

And NPOV obviously cannot operate in article titles since we have to choose 
just one term for the title (thus choosing one POV). Common usage with the 
caveats of ambiguity and unreasonable offensiveness is our rule for page 
titles. Applying NPOV to titles would result in ponderously long titles that 
would for practical reasons be useless as titles and near impossible to 
remember for linking purposes. 

>Moreover, if we label Al Queda or Shining Path terrorists, one can 
>make the argument for labelling the US government a terrorist 
>organization for mining the harbor of Managua in the 1980s, or 
>destroying the Al Shifa pharmaceuticals plant in Sudan in 1998, 
>or causing 500,000 Iraqi children to die of malnutrition during the 
>1990s by means of sanctions. Passing moral judgements can go both ways.

See my response to Toby on this point: 
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-January/009600.html

>On the Talk page of [[King David Hotel bombing]] Zero wrote 
>something awhile back to the effect that the word "terrorist" 
>should be banned from every article except [[Terrorism]]. I 
>am inclined to agree with him.  

I'm sorry but this is an absurd position to have and I do hope you re-consider 
it. Not only would it result in  [[Terrorism]] becoming an orphan, but it 
would whitewash a great many articles. If and when it is relevant to say that 
X said Y about Z then we should say it! 

Again blacklisting terms is *very* bad and reminds me of something I read in 
the appendix of the book 1984 in which Orwell described Newspeak. The goal of 
the totalitarian state in 1984 had with Newspeak was thought control: By 
dropping certain terms from the language the concepts behind those terms 
would fall away from the conscious thoughts of people. Eliminating the word 
"freedom" for example, would help to stop the transmission of 
freedom-oriented ideas and thus would ease any want in the population for it. 

Eliminating 'terrorist' from Wikipedia would cover-up the fact that many 
people consider terrorism to be a real thing and something that is in a 
special class of atrocities. 

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)