[WikiEN-l] jguk case: amended FoF brought

Sun Jun 19 14:58:08 UTC 2005

On 6/19/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
>   6.01) "CE" or Common Era has recently come to be preferred among certain
>   portions of US academia and those who claim to seek to avoid offense in
>   inter-cultural dialog. "AD" spelled out in its full original form is Anno
>   Domini Nostri Iesu Christi ("in the year of our Lord Jesus Christ) and thus
>   regarded by them as potentially offensive, see research by El_C. This does
>   not necessarily hold elsewhere, e.g. in UK academia.
> 
> This sort of thing is why I am profoundly sceptical that content
> arbitration will not be an utter, utter disaster and just another hammer to
> use in pushing a POV.

Can you actually provide any citations to support your position?
I only ask because in my experience the BCE/CE notation is really
quite common and has been used in the majority of scholarly research
I've read (well the majority hasn't mentioned an era at all, but what
does uses BCE/CE). I am aware that it isn't so universally used in all
fields, but I was taught the BCE/CE notation in grade school...  
Perhaps this is just because I am in the United States.

Your rewrite makes it sound like it is only used by an insubstantial minority.

In any case, the arbcom isn't and shouldn't be deciding if we should
use AD/BC or CE/BCE as it appears the larger community has decided
that the issue isn't currently clear enough and we don't care.