[WikiEN-l] Sep 11

Fri Jan 16 10:13:53 UTC 2004

Daniel Mayer wrote:

>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.  
>
That's trivialization.

>>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. 
>
You apply NPOV to titles by avoiding characterizations.  This makes 
titles shorter, not longer.

>>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! 
>
If so, say it in the text.

>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. 
>
Orwell's society did not ban the word "freedom".  It just reserved the 
right to insist that you understood it in a politically correct way. 
 Totalitarian principles are more effectively spread when the subject 
population believes that it has freely adopted those ideas.  

>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. 
>
I'm not saying that the word should be completely banned; there are 
places for it.  Just not in most titles.

Ec

>