[WikiEN-l] Terrorism

Sat Jan 17 09:52:56 UTC 2004

zero 0000 wrote:
>Other uses of "terrorism" in Wikipedia just make me cringe.
>"Many people regard this to be terrorism" is about my least
>favorite.

If that is true that many people think that then we *report* it. 

>In my view the majority of similar sentences in
>Wikipedia were put there by people who wanted 
>to insert their own opinions.

Where? Not for Osama bin Laden or al-Qaeda. In those cases "widely regarded as 
terrorist" is factually correct, not just an opinion of the writers. 

>Of course if a key aspect of the topic of the article
>is public opinion that would be a different situation 

No, the key topic of the article is the subject of that article and different 
people will have different views on what that subject is or a part of. For a 
great many people Osama bin Laden is a terrorist and al-Qaeda is a terrorist 
organization. So we report that! 

>(but then I'd hope to see some actual opinion poll data or something).

Oh please. Some things are so obvious that they don't need to be backed up 
with polls. 

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)