[WikiEN-l] Re: Announcing a policy proposal

Tue May 17 21:55:58 UTC 2005

> >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.
> 
> First off, I really appreciate your thoughtful response.
> 
> Well, it is true that I believe very firmly in the interpretation of NPOV
> (or rather, the spirit behind it) that I presented.  But I also felt I was
> addressing NPOV at a rather abstract level.  My point is, I do wish that

That is a problem with how you and many other policy-makers have
reasoned. You are raising the debate from the fairly concrete question
"AD/BC on [[Jesus]]?" to he more abstract "AD/BC disallowed in
Wikipedia?" to some really abstract discussion about NPOV. I like many
other people are not comfortable in arguing and such an abstract level
and therefore you get misunderstood. It would have been better if you
had started the discussion at the level of abstractness you intended
because the shifts from particularity to generality is confusing me.

> I appreciate your generous comment.  I also agree with you -- I have to,
> since it is clear that I really do not understand why so many people are so
> irritated by BCE/CE.  But I have to say this: although I have read some
> very reasonable objections to my proposal, I don't think anyone has been
> able to explain to me why BCE and CE so upsets them.

It is not so much the phenomenom as much as the transition to it that
upsets them. See other peoples mails in the threads in which they
describe how certain things would explode if certain governments
decided to measure certain things with different units. But which
"USA:ian" can explain why SI-units upsets them? My only argument in
favour of AD/BC is that for me it is slightly easier to interpret 75
BC - 20 AD than BCE 75 - CE 20.

> But to be honest with you, I still don't understand why people see BCE and
> CE as "American" or any kind of POV.  And I still don't understand how
> people can claim BC and AD are not POV, although I recognize that many feel
> this way.

With my analogy I was not trying to put you or anyone else in the
impossible position of defending the "unfair" usage of the word
American and at the same time advocating changing the usage of AD/BC.
My point is that "American" is very similar to AD/BC. Certainly a
misnomer, and certainly a thing that irritates some people.

> In my argument, "offense" is not a reason for calling AD/BC POV.  In my
> argument, I bring up offense only as an example of one way that one group
> signals to a second that the second group has an unconscious bias.  It is
> true that I believe that once you know BC and AD offend me (in secular

I thought you were arguing with two arguments:

1. AD/BC is offensive to some people.
2. AD/BC is POV.

The argument I have tried to refute is 1. Yes, it may be offensive but
much less so than hundreds of other words and expressions that
changing it because of offensiveness would require you to change so
many other words and expressions that the situation would become
absurd. I can't debate your other argument. Because to me AD/BC is
pronounced Ay-Dee slash Bee-Cee and BCE/CE is Bee-Cee-Ee slash Cee-Ee.
So not so much POV with either abbrevation.

Note also that the situation is very much different in other languages. 

> >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.
> 
> proposals which, I presumed, were made a while ago and are still in
> proposal limbo.  I thought that would happen to my proposal too.
> In any event, we are building an encyclopedia, and all committed to NPOV,
> and if as you suggest the world may slowly change, surely a small bit of
> that slow change will happen here.

Atleast you have raised people's awareness of the issue. But both
sides already have entrenched and it doesn't seem like either side is
going to give up right now. In the real world, outside Wikipedia, the
debate is also ongoing between the two date formats. Right now there
is no clear winner, just as the situation is in Wikipedia. Isn't that
perfect? Wikipedia is doing what it should do, mirror the reality. I
believe that in a few years the BCE/CE side will win. Naturally,
Wikipedia should also change when that happens. But for Wikipedia to
advance past the real world I think is a dangerous mistake. It doesn't
create NPOV, but a "Wikipedia-POV."

-- 
mvh Björn