[WikiEN-l] blocked for a week for these edits

Sun May 21 04:13:11 UTC 2006

Steve Bennett wrote:

>On 5/20/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
>  
>
>>"John Allen Muhammad (born John Allen Williams on December 31, 1960)
>>is an American serial killer. Together with his younger partner Lee
>>Boyd Malvo, he carried out the Beltway sniper attacks in an apparent
>>attempt to extort $10 million dollars during his shooting spree."
>>    
>>
>Out of curiosity, why do you think nationality ("American") is relevant, but
>not race, place of birth etc? Can we formalise some guidelines? When is race
>relevant? Presumably if someone is the victim of a race hate crime...but
>when else? I don't think in an encyclopaedia we can ever refrain from
>mentioning something like that, but we can take "not relevant" to mean "not
>in the lead".
>
In this case it is probably harmless.  It localizes events in the 
killer's own country.  It would be a little trickier if the killer were 
not American. 

The fact that he adopted the name Muhammad (a typically islamic name) 
could be problematical. 

Ec