[WikiEN-l] Terrorism

Mon Jan 19 06:15:35 UTC 2004

Toby Bartels wrote:
>I've heard of deceiving people by leaving things out,
>but that's definitely not what happens in an NPOV dispute
>when somebody removes a "Many people think ..." statement.
>This is deliberately a choice to refuse to state an opinion.
>And in this NPOV dispute, the person taking Ec's position
>is even open to including a more carefully worded, documented statement.

And there is nothing wrong with making the statement better, It makes for a 
better article. 

>It's also insufficient to cry "common sense" and say
>that everybody ''knows'' that OBL is widely considered a 
>terrorist. 

Why? Some things just go without saying because they are so pervasive. That is 
common sense. Taking out attributed references to OBL being a terrorist and 
then having to prove that he is (or is widely regarded as so) in order to 
have those references put back it, would be like having to defend statements 
in our article on the Apollo moon landings that indicate that they actually 
happened.

When things go against common sense like that the burden of proof should be on 
the opposing party. And don't give my any of the relativistic crap stating 
that there is no such thing as common sense - I don't buy it in this case. We 
needn't entertain the the ravings of every kook by having to defend very 
obvious things. 

>In this case, I don't know it until you add "in the  
>west", and Ec may not know it in any case.  OK, so we're 
>wrong! But this is where NPOV comes in and says
>"If people don't agree on the claim, then state the 
>reasons instead." Common knowledge cannot replace 
>NPOV when it's not, in fact, common. 

That's all nice and academic, but has little to do over the fact the OBL is 
widely considered to be a terrorist in West. We could even add *especially* 
in the United States too. Sorry, but polls don't exist for everything - why 
would somebody think to have a poll on such an obvious thing? But his article 
last time I saw it stated that he was the head of Al-Queda, which is widely 
regarded as terrorist organization in the West. That is OK (but not ideal) 
with me. 

The same question applied to other people, such as Arafat, would be much less 
clear cut.  Arafat at one time was considered to be a terrorist, but I've 
seen far fewer remarks to that effect since he changed hats from head of the 
PLA to the PLO. So we could not state "in the West Arafat is widely 
considered a terrorist", because that would not be true (unless you parse 
"widely" liberally). 

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)