[WikiEN-l] Terrorism

Mon Jan 19 01:49:16 UTC 2004

Geoff Burling wrote:
>Saying that Usama ben Laden is considered by many people as a 
>terrorist doesn't offer anything more than a possible widespread 
>opinion -- unless it is linked to the fact that he is currently hiding 
>in Pakistan or Afghanistan from the US government, who are looking 
>for him for that very reason. 

A linkage would of course improve such a statement. But if a very large 
percentage of the population in the West would define OBL as a terrorist, 
then that opinion is very valid and relevant to an article about him. Like I 
said before, that widespread opinion about him is one of the major, perhaps 
/the/ major, reason why he is famous. That type of info needs to go in the 
lead section of an article about him (probably in the lead paragraph). 

>Having written more than once words to the efect "it is widely 
>believed that", my excuse is that I can prove this statement, 
>but in the press to get _something_ into Wikipedia, I'll use those 
>5 words, or a variation on them. However, I also try to qualify those 
>words with something like: "a significant minority, however thinks Y 
>because" or "an eloquent minority dissents". There are people who 
>think Usama ben Laden is a freedom fighter, & I think their reaons 
>are worth noting -- although I may not agree with them. 

Adding qualifiers stating counter opinions is always a good thing. I in fact 
did this for the OBL article but my qualifier stating that 'in large parts of 
the Islamic world he is viewed as a freedom fighter' was first neutered by 
somebody taking out "large" and then the whole qualifier was taken out. 

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)