[WikiEN-l] Announcing a policy proposal

Mon May 16 20:46:58 UTC 2005

> >AD and BC might be offensive to some, who knows what the abbrevations
> >actually mean. Good stuff that so few know about it. But what ACTUALLY
> >MUST be extremely offensive to a huge number of people is the
> >imperialist use of the word "American." Therefore, if we change all
> >instances of AD/BC, shouldn't be also change all instances of
> >"American" to something that will not offend the majority of all
> >Americans?
> >
> I have observed that most of the objections to my proposal fall into one of
> three camps: people who simply do not understand our NPOV policy (which I
> addressed in my last message), and people who, as in the cases of  David

I read that. To me it mostly sounded like a "I'm right, you are wrong"
argumentation. It would be good if you could describe in which ways
your opponents have not understood our NPOV policy. That they just
disagree with you does not suffice.

> 'DJ' Hedley and mvh Björn, either fantasize about more and more absurd and
> entirely hypothetical cases, which is just a means to avoid a specific and
> concrete proposal that addresses different views actually held by millions
> of people, and practices that are and have been going on for at least a

Your analysis of discrimination on the debate page was very
enlightening. You said that those who are not discriminated have a
very hard time understanding those who are discriminated and what they
feel is discriminating (kindof, I cant quote it all here). But I think
you are yourself as blind as those of us who do not prefer AD/BC over
CE/BCE. I can bet alot on that millions of Americans get really
irritated every time the word America is used in reference to USA.

Therefore, the offense argument doesn't hold. There are hundreds of
words, names and expressions in the English language that are a
hundred times more loaded than AD/BC.

> people were asked to stop doing these things so as not to offend, would
> involve no real sacrifice, no loss of integrity or honor.  I will never
> understand why in such cases such people not only refuse to make the small
> change asked for, they actually seem to relish and take pride in offending
> people.

In a few years it is not implausible that CE/BCE will have "won." But
currently AD/BC is much more popular according to Google. Google also
reveals an ongoing debate between supporters of the two year-formats.
Should Wikipedia really take a stand on the issue? I also think that
many people feel that the idea that they would be FORCED to use the
date format they do not prefer and are not accustomed to is offensive.
The change in itself might be what is most offensive. Check the vote
comments, there seem to be quite a few feelings there.

Let it just rest. In a few months there will be a feature for
selecting your preferred dating format and then everyone can be happy.

-- 
mvh Björn