[WikiEN-l] Announcing a policy proposal

[steven l. rubenstein]

David 'DJ' Hedley wrote...
>The argument of AD vs. CE is probably the most ridiculous one i've seen so
>far. What next - Will [[Gingerbread Man]] be made [[Gingerbread Person]] to
>not upset the gender equality pushers? Or how about renamed Wikipedia to
>Wikipédia to not upset heavily pro-French language-ists? Just about
>everything can be made POV in one way or another.


mvh Björn wrote...

>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?
>--
>mvh Björn

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 
'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 
century; or complain about how unfair it is that they are being asked not 
to be offensive.  Sometimes, when telling the truth, some people do of 
course get disturbed, hurt, or angry -- these cases cannot and should not 
be avoided.  But sometimes there are little things people do which, if the 
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.

Steve








Steven L. Rubenstein
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701