[WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Saints

Thu Oct 23 22:43:07 UTC 2003

>From: Delirium <delirium at rufus.d2g.com>
>Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Saints
>Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2003 14:48:09 -0700
>
>James Duffy wrote:
>
>>As we have an agreed naming convention, applied to thousands of articles, 
>>by a range of people from professional editors like Zoe and bookworms like 
>>Deb to experts on constitutional history like John Kenney, any unilateral 
>>attempt to abandon what has been agreed because Mark has a POV he wishes 
>>to push, would be a gross abuse of  wiki and grossly insulting to the many 
>>people who solved what had been a glaring problem. Mark may not like 
>>titles, but the fact that they exist. Covering them accurately and 
>>factually is NPOV. Trying to push an agenda that says 'I don't like them, 
>>therefore I will remove them', is pushing a POV, is unencylopædic and 
>>grossly disrespectiful to the large numbers of people who debated the 
>>issue, made observations and have spent a year implementing the agreed 
>>wikipedia policy in a professional, encyclopædic NPOV manner.
>
Mark wrote:
>
>I disagree strongly, and your attempt to leverage credentials is both a 
>logical fallacy (look up "appeal to authority", or the equivalent Latin 
>phrase if you prefer) and grossly un-wiki.
>
>The issue is that Wikipedia is endorsing certain titles, and not endorsing 
>others, which is inconsistent and POV.  When we use Sir, Blessed, and so 
>on, and refuse to use His All-Holiness, His Excellency, and The Honorable, 
>this is a POV judgment, and unacceptable in a professional encyclopedia.
>
>If you do wish to use some honorifics, I would like to see some conventions 
>adopted indicating which we should use, and which we should not.  Why 
>should the article on [[Mother Theresa]] start off "Blessed Mother 
>Theresa", while the article on [[Clarence Thomas]] does not start off "The 
>Honorable Clarence Thomas"?  Is there a principle behind this decision?

:-) If you are going to discuss titles, honorifics, styles, etc, do try to 
know what they are!

Sir is not the same as All-Holiness. One is a manner of address, one is when 
inherited or awarded as part of one's name. 'Blessed' is not the same as 
'The Honourable'. They are two fundamentally different things.  'The 
Honourable' is not part of a name, but a mode of address, the diplomats and 
most presidents are 'His/Her Excellency', monarchs are 'His/Her Majesty', 
popes/Dalai lamas are 'His Holiness. 'Blessed' becomes in effect part of the 
name of a beatified person and over time the standard reference when 
referring to them. They really are fundamentally different concepts, which 
is why wikipedia has clear agreed rules for how one uses styles, titles, 
courtesy titles, honours, etc. They are fundamentally different things, a 
fact your comments here and elsewhere suggests you have completely failed to 
grasp.

To give a practical example, courtesy titles are often so identified with a 
holder that they are almost impossible to recognise without them. So anyone 
who has ever studied British or Irish history knows immediately that ''Lord 
John Russell'' is the British Prime Minister in the 1840s. Nobody would have 
a clue who the article was about if it was referred to as ''John Russell'', 
because no-one but his mother ever called him that. But Bob Geldof, Ronald 
Reagan and Ted Health, who were awarded knighthoods, are recognisable 
without using 'Sir'. So there is no question of including the 'sir' in the 
article name. This was all discussed in intense detail and a structure for 
when to use what, and when not to use what, agreed and followed by wikipedia 
ever since.

JT

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