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)