Eric Demolli wrote: I suppose my position on this is that I'd rather use the words "terrorist" and similarly-loaded words like "murder" as little as possible, because they add only opinionated connotation, and not really any factual information. Consider: * A group of Al-Qaeda terrorists crashed a plane into the World Trade center, murdering 3500 civilians. * Members of the Islamic militant group Al-Qaeda crashed a plane into the World Trade center, killing 3500 civilians. They contain the same information, but the second one is much more neutral, IMO, without being at all conciliatory. I think we ought to just present facts, and in many cases the facts alone are enough to damn those people who many of us would like to condemn, so we don't need to do so explicitly. I think we should even apply this to cases like concentration camps. Most of our concentration camp articles talk about how many people were "murdered" there, which reads strangely to me. It reads like the author was trying to make a point, not neutrally imparting information. I'd prefer to say how many people were "killed" there, which hardly condones the killings either. I do think we can use "terrorist" especially when it's informative, just not when we're trying to make it descriptive. For example, it should be mentioned that the Sept. 11 attacks touched off large-scale fear of terrorism in the US, and a "war on terrorism", and so on. -Mark

zero 0000 wrote: I too support this. People often fail to realize how much implicit POV is implied by one's choice of words. Ec

In our efforts to be politically correct we are unable to describe al-Qaeda as a terrorist organization or East Germany as a totalitarian regime. Thus we distort reality and drift off into a fantastic world where there is no black and white, no values and ultimately a rather poor encyclopedia that can't be trusted. Fred

On 02/12/04 at 06:15 AM, Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)ctelco.net> said: I see. And where is this world where issues are black and white and values absolute??? V.

Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)ctelco.net> writes: And every in single one of them, the definition as to what is black and what is white is different. Which is somewhat problematic. If we followed these lines, I'd end up writing Gazipedia, you'd write Fredipedia, there'd be Cuncipedia, Mavipedia each reflecting our own inate biases. -- Gareth Owen "I love the wikipedia, but sometimes I get the impression that certain people on this list are very bored, and so argue about something when there's really bugger all to argue about. Edit some articles, for god's sake." -- LP

I agree 100% with Fred. 172 is in the process of whitewashing the bio of every dictator who has ever lived. Robert Mugabe is being portrayed as a victim of colonial oppression, he's never done anything bad in his life, apparently. The only person on Wikipedia who seems to have ever done anything wrong in Hitler, and I'm surprised we haven't let Nazis come in and make him out to be a hero. After all, saying that he's responsible for the deaths of millions of people is POV. RickK Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)ctelco.net> wrote: In our efforts to be politically correct we are unable to describe al-Qaeda as a terrorist organization or East Germany as a totalitarian regime. Thus we distort reality and drift off into a fantastic world where there is no black and white, no values and ultimately a rather poor encyclopedia that can't be trusted. Fred --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Finance: Get your refund fast by filing online

Rick wrote never done anything bad in his life, apparently. Come on - when it says ''systematic murder of civilians''. Can't take this seriously. And the sky is falling on our heads, too. Charles