[WikiEN-l] Re: I am very concerned by the arbcomm decision against jguk

Sun Jun 19 14:50:57 UTC 2005

On 6/19/05, Jon <thagudearbh at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> On the "offensiveness" point, my opponents have offended me and (as they have admitted themselves) deliberately so. SouthernComfort's "offence" is so acute that when he wrote his paragraph supporting Slrubenstein's proposal, he did not even think it worthwhile mentioning it. Indeed, none of Slrubenstein's supporters actually claimed to be offended themselves by BC/AD notation. So, as RickK said to begin with, shouldn't WP ignore the "I am offended" argument rather than pander to it?

You're right that offense shouldn't be a part of our decision on what
to use, but it is a part of civility. Following someone around and
making changes that offend them is not polite. However. some people
are offended by things which do not push their point of view, so we
really don't have a choice but to change things. In other cases we do
have a choice, such as in the linguistic dialect issue.

The primary argument against using the BC/AD notation, after you cut
away the offense cruft, is the claim that it is a violation of NPOV
and that it is the more common language used in scholarly research.
The primary counter argument is that time and commonality has washed
away any POV status and that BCE/CE is not commonly enough understood.
..and it appears that the counter counter claim is that the counter
claim is bogus since many academics have moved to BCE/CE due to
perceived POV pushing and that any lack of understanding can be solved
via a wiki-link.

In all of the discussion it seems to be that the majority of wikipedia
is not convinced by either argument and is willing to tolerate both
usages. In the future this position may be clarified, but today it is
where we appear to stand. As a result, no one should begrudge you for
using BC/AD in articles as you add content.

However, that isn't the issue in question here.  This isn't a content
issue at all as the largest part of the complaint appears to be about
follow around users using the acceptable CE/BCE notation and changing
it to the BC/AD... That the users here are offended by that usage is a
matter of merit because it what takes your behaviour from simply being
against the majority and makes in an uncivil act towards other
editors.