[WikiEN-l] Terrorism

Sat Jan 17 18:05:22 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. In my view the majority of similar sentences in
>Wikipedia were put there by people who wanted to insert their
>own opinions.  They knew they couldn't write "It is terrorism"
>or "I think it is terrorism" so they wrote "Many people regard..."
>instead.  Of course if a key aspect of the topic of the article
>is public opinion that would be a different situation (but then
>I'd hope to see some actual opinion poll data or something).
>  
>
The exception I take to this is cases where it *is* very widely 
considered terrorism.  For example, Osama bin Laden is nearly 
universally considered a terrorist in the West, and is labeled as such 
by most governments in the world (including most Arab governments).  I'm 
not sure there are any polls asking "Do you think bin Laden is a 
terrorist?", because in the West at least this is sort of like asking 
"Do you think killing an innocent person without cause is murder?"  But 
if we were to fail to mention this fact, it would make it very confusing 
for the reader who wasn't already familiar with events (say, a reader 
100 years from now) who might wonder why this "Islamic militant" is 
somehow connected to a "War on Terrorism".

I'm not sure what the best way to phrase it is, but to be complete, 
[[Osama bin Laden]] does need to mention somewhere that he's considered 
an arch-terrorist of sorts by a large segment of the world's population, 
and an even larger proportion of the world's governments.

-Mark