[WikiEN-l] The admin problem

Mon Jun 5 10:13:53 UTC 2006

On 6/4/06, Sam Spade <samspade.thomasjefferson at googlemail.com> wrote:
> my version of the God intro:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=God&oldid=46819733
>
> or the current version:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God

For what it's worth, and only because you asked, I vastly prefer the
current version.

"God denotes the deity believed by monotheists to be the sole creator
and ruler of the universe."

as opposed to

"God is the term for the Supreme Being believed by the
majority[1][2][3] to be the creator, ruler and/or the sum total of,
existence."

"believed by the majority" is an awful, weaselly, phrase (majority of
whom?) that has no place in the first sentence of such an important
article. I also take exception to "X is the term" articles - see
[[Wikipedia:Grapefruit]].

The fact that a majority of people in some sphere (all humans? all
Americans?) believe in God is highly relevant, but at the end of the
day, it is a belief system, and most people recognise that. I imagine
that most believers are happy with the statement "I believe in God,
but I recognise that others don't", rather than requiring "God exists,
but some people refuse to recognise that".

> And finally, what is abetter version of Human, the featured article
> version i endorsed:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Human&oldid=24562750
>
> or the secular humanist version we find today:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human

Fwiw, I don't like your version here either. The initial sentence is a
bad definition "X defines itself in terms of Y"???

Since you asked.

Steve