[WikiEN-l] Policy proposal

Mon May 16 21:04:50 UTC 2005

Bill Haggett wrote:

:Does NPOV require that we reject the name of the month of June,
:because it is based on the name of a Roman goddess?

Using the name June for a month doesn't assume that there is a goddess named June, just as referring to days of the week as Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday doesn't assume that these Norse gods exist.

:It is likely that the overwhelming majority of people consider "BC"
:and "AD" as simply labels -- giving little (if any) more thought to
:their religious context than they give to the label "June".

That argument doesn't fly, for reasons that should be obvious.  Fifty years ago, the overwhelming majority in certain southern communities would refer to African-Americans as "boy" or "nigger," without giving it any further thought.  

As it is, AD and BC mean something; their usage explicitly assumes a religious belief that everyone doesn't share.  The fact that people don't give it much thought - or don't even know - doesn't change the meaning.  "BC" means "before the Anointed One," and "AD" means "the Year of Our Lord."

:It is possible that rejecting a commonly held and accepted
:nomenclature in favor of one which many would perceive as being
:artificially neutral could be considered as the violation of NPOV.

I don't know what "artificially neutral" even means.  I think what all this comes down to is that the "overwhelming majority" can't be bothered to change their ways because it doesn't bother them, and they want the minority to lighten up and get on with things.

I was not too bothered by the practice of BC and AD in this encyclopedia, except when some bonehead corrected BCE/CE in an article with Jewish content.  But now that I see the attitudes toward this, I'm definitely becoming more insistently supportive of the proposal.  

Leif