(There must have ben some problem with a mail server somewhere. I
received 4 copies of this email, none made it to the list, & I've
been seeing a number of responses to emails I never saw the
first time around.)
On Tue, 17 May 2005, Skyring wrote:
> On 5/17/05, Geoff Burling <llywrch(a)agora.rdrop.com> wrote:
> > On Mon, 16 May 2005, Skyring wrote:
>
> > >
> > > CE/BCE is already a standard in many disciplines. Make it so in WP.
> > >
> > And here we can see several reasons why this proposal stirs up so much
> > resistance.
> >
> > * The assertion that because the style "CE/BCE" is "common usage", it
> > should be exclusive usage. A confusion of categories: is there any proof
> > that if an academic or scientist uses the style "AD/BC", that the
> > editor will change it or reject the submission?
>
> We're talking about a standard usage in a single publication. I make
> no doubt that many organisations and publications have similar
> standards and will edit submitted articles to conform to the standard
> unless there is a good reason not to do so.
>
No, I think you mean *you* are. And you don't offer proof: just confidence
that your assertion is correct. So let's take a look at the possible
evidence, courtesy of Google.
I spent a couple of hours last night with Google, first searching for
"style manual", then two searches within the results: first for "AD BC",
then for "CE BCE" & looked at the first 20 pages returned. I discarded
duplicates, links to Wikipedia (which appeared in both sorts) & Wikipedia
mirrors, then studied -- I did not count -- the opinions of the remaining
29 sites.
(A bone for those of you who are growing tired of this debate, but have
read this far: the Iraq Museum's Internation Open Encyclopedia mirrors
Wikipedia's article [[Common Era]]. Not only do they give credit to WP,
but they also direct readers to Wikipedia to make edits there, content
to show only the most recent copy. I thought that was rather clever.)
While the pages this query produce do not exclusively report from academic
sites (only 22 samples are clearly either from university or academic
sites), it did return pages from a variety of different sites, all of whom
have given this subject some thought, & it provides a rather intreguing
snapshot of opinions on this issue. In brief, this shows that most writers
still standardize on AD/BC, in a manner that suggests they accept it
without any thought of the existence of an alternative by a margin
approaching 2-1; & it shows that those who standardize on CE/BCE are
far more vocal that other people should use it.
The details are as follows. Not all of these 28 pages that concern the
style of its contributors explicitly state whether papers should use either
AD/BC or CE/BCE; only 11 explicitly offered guidance over which style
should be used. (I guess this issue is not as important in academia as
some think it is.) For most, I had to infer what they expected from
the examples the guide provided: if the guide only talks about how to
use "CE/BCE", I scored it as "implicitly for" that style; if the guide
only talks about how to use "AD/BC", I scored it as "implicitly for"
that style.
The results broke down this way: 11 were implicitly for "AD/BC", including
the University of Hawai'i (which I believe has a multicultural student
body) & Middlebury College (which also includes a section about bias-free
content. There was only one site which insisted on using "AD/BC",
commenting "Use 'C.E.' and 'BCE' only when you're joking." (This
comment can be found at
http://response.adv100.com/responsemag/static/staticHtml.jsp?id=31822 --
If this comment offends you, gripe to them, not me.) Because this did
not appear to be an academic site, I almost tossed this response out,
but decided to leave it in after examining all of the results. Even though
I felt the writer would be happier in a place where showing concern for
other people's sensitivities wasn't important -- like the weblog Little
Green Footballs -- I came to understand his POV.
There were 3 guides that showed preference to AD/BC, yet allowed CE/BCE
if the contributor used it; the intent of this stand seemed to give
the individual contributor permission to exercise her/his best judgement.
Four more guides showed no preference for either style, & only provided
guidance on how to use both correctly. One guide -- the American
Anthropogical Association -- provided examples for both on different
web pages, which made my tally a little harder.
One site implicitly assumed contributors would use CE/BCE: the Tibetan &
Himalayan Digital Library.
And 7 guides explicitly required CE/BCE -- although two sites addressed
submissions for books under production for the same editor. And one
college -- the Office of Publications for the College of Staten Island --
insisted that C.E. be placed before the year, not after. (I thought about
removing one of these as a duplicate, but instead decided to leave the
snide comment about CE/BCE in the count.) I was more than a little
surprised at that twist; although I be surprised if that was some
form of protest, it could also be a clue to the erudition behind this dictum.
In short, while the style CE/BCE has many supporters in academe, neither
all academics nor the majority of them support it. Some people may think
the majority *do* support it because its supporters are more vocal; based
on this quick survey, more users of AD/BC are willing to allow others to
use CE/BCE than the other way around, & could be seen as more tolerant
or understanding of other POVs.
But then, I may have misunderstood Skyring's point: that journals must
standardize on one style. If this is the case, then either it does not apply
to Wikipedia -- where in many cases articles are written in different
styles -- or is irrelevant because Wikipedia currently insists on the
same style being used through the article.
Geoff
Geni wrote,
>Big deal. There is a picture on wikipedia that I know will offend
>~5million people. That image isn't going anywhere.
Well, that is your point of view. But I have a different point of view
(not that offense itself should dictate policy, but that it is relevant and
should be taken into consideration along with other variables, for reasons
I tried to explain in my proposal).
So there you have it: you have your view, I have mine.
And this is precisely why we have, and need, our NPOV policy.
S
Steven L. Rubenstein
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701
I think that in the interest of NPOV we should change all references to
days of the week to First Day, Second Day, Third Day, Fourth Day, Fifth
Day, Sixth Day, and Seventh Day.
Oh, wait... that would be imposing a Quaker POV. Never mind.
--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith(a)verizon.net
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/
mvh Björn wrote ...
> 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.
First, I appreciate your saying that I have raised people's awareness of
the issues. As to your suggestion: I can't criticize it, but I do not
think I know how to do that. I encourage you, if not now then sometime, to
try to re-start the discussion at what you think is a reasonable or
constructive level of abstractness. I don't mean to tell you what to do,
but from your comments it seems to me that you are interested in this
issue, and have something to say. Maybe where I went wrong, you can go right.
Steve
Steven L. Rubenstein
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701
mvh Björn wrote,
> > 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.
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
everyone agreed with what I wrote about NPOV in the prior e-mail. But I
certainly believe someone can agree with everything I wrote in that e-mail
about NPOV in general and disagree with my proposal concerning
BCE/CE. Obviously I still think I am right about that, but there are
several people who have voted against my proposal whose stance I fully
respect: Jyolkowski, Tomer, KHM03, Doc Glasgow, and Theo for example.
So it isn't that someone disagrees with me concerning my proposal, that is
proof to me that they do not understand our NPOV policy. It is only when
they disagree in a particular way, for a particular reason. In other
words, I believe that there are people who fully understand and are
committed to our NPOV proposal and reject my proposals for reasons I may
not particularly like, but must respect. But there are people who reject
my proposal and I think their explanations are just absurd and disregard
specific explicit parts of our NPOV policy. I don't want to go on and on,
but I hope that between the e-mail I sent concerning my general view of
NPOV, and the specific elements from our NPOV policy that I quoted verbatim
in my proposal, you can understand my point about NPOV (even if you still
disagree with my proposal ;-)
> > '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.
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.
As for "American," well, that is a funny thing. I work in Latin America
and when in the US with Latin Americans and whenever they use the word
"Americano" referring to us gringos, I reply "Todos somos Americanos" (all
of us are Americans); they usually smile and shrug their shoulders. I once
had a conversation with an old friend of mine who lives in Ecuador, and he
complained about how we gringos call ourselves "Americans." I said to him,
"Well, there is nothing stopping Ecuadorians from calling themselves
"Americanos, why don't they" and he had no answer. Here is what I think:
the real problem is not that the USA has appropriated for itself as a name
"America." The problem is the USA economically and politically dominates
Latin America in many ways. And that is what really pisses off my L.
American friends. Contention over the use of the word "American"
symbolically represents other, more concrete (and higher stakes) issues --
which is why it is a matter of contention, but one that at least in the
eyes of my friends, is not really worth fighting about; they recognize that
the real fight is elsewhere, and when they can, they really do fight it.
But to the issue at hand: anyone in N, C, or S. America has a legitimate
claim to call themselves Americans. No one can stop them. Perhaps the
word "American" has become so identified with the USA that many Latinos
don't want to call themselves "Americans." I certainly know tons of
Argentines and Brazilians who think "Argentine" and "Brazilian" are better
than "American."
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.
>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.
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
contexts), I think it is only courteous that you avoid using them (unless
of course you are a Christian and talking about your own holidays, seminal
events, etc., then I wouldn't at all be offended). But I do not claim
offense=POV. My argument that AD and BC are POV is simply that AD means
"in the year of our Lord" and BC means "before Christ" and that Christians
are free to believe that Jesus is Lord and Christ which is why they
represent a Christian POV -- and are thus, necessarily, not NPOV (in
non-religious/Christian POV contexts).
> > 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.
You may be right. I also wonder if it was a mistake for me to invite votes
immediately when I wrote my proposal. Honestly, I thought that like so
many proposals it would languish for a long time as people decided how
interested they were in it, and what they thought, and that it would take
quite a while to see what the majority thought, or even if anyone
cared. Before I wrote my proposal I went to the "Wikipedia: How to create
a policy" and then to "Wikipedia Policy Thinktank" and discovered lots of
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.
As to Pcb21, I didn't start a debate in which only one side had an
opportunity to present its case. I made a proposal, and on the proposal
page I provided space for general discussion as well as debate between
opposing and supporting sides. To say that I notified other wikipedians
that I was proposing a modification of one of our most important policies
is "spamming" is absurd, and certainly not relevant to people actually
discussing the issues. Finally, Nygaard didn't "merge" my proposal with
anything. He distorted my proposal. Disagree with my proposal. Express
your criticisms of my proposal in the discussion section. Vote against my
proposal. But do not try to turn my proposal into something it isn't. If
you don't like it, vote no and move on. If you have a better idea, come up
with your own proposal. These are two legitimate and available
options. Changing the title of my proposal because you do not agree with
my proposal is not.
Steve
Steven L. Rubenstein
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701
RickK wrote,
>Just because someone (and apparently a majority of the
>people who have expressed an opinion) disagrees with
>your interpretation of NPOV does not mean that we
>don't understand it.
>
>RickK
Rick, I do not think some people do not understand our NPOV policy because
they disagree with me, I think they do not understand (or are committed to)
our NPOV policy because of the way they explain their objections.
I have already shared with the list that there are some people who disagree
with my proposal but whom I respect for their thoughtful explanations. And
there are a few people I didn't mention. And in many cases, I told them I
respected their views in a comment to their vote, in the proposal page
itself. There are many "opposed" votes -- I haven't counted, but if it is
less than half it is still a large number -- that I respect and cannot
argue against. But there are at least as many votes, and comments on the
page, that convince me that many people do not understand or are committed
to our NPOV policy.
Steve
Steven L. Rubenstein
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701
James Trodel writes ...
>He gets a
>compromise on the Jesus page* (which he claims to support) on Sunday
>and follows it up Sunday night with this proposal.
>*The compromise was to use BC/BCE only and to avoid the use of AD/CE
>all together.
First, we need to keep the debate on the Jesus talk page and the debate
over my proposal separate. It is clear that the discussion on the
Talk:Jesus page over BCE/CE and BC/AD relates only to the Jesus page. This
became evident when Tomer added "applies to this article ONLY" on 7:59 9 May:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Jesus&diff=13466533&oldid=13…
Second, as to my then making a proposal, the reason is obvious -- the
debate on the Jesus talk page is limited to changes in the Jesus article,
and in the debate several people argued that there was no clear NPOV policy
concerning this question. Indeed, on 17:58, 9 May 2005 (UTC) Rangerdude
responded to one of my comments, "Re your statement "And if the policy says
BC/AD is acceptable, that policy should be changed." That's something for
you to take up with the policy itself then if you truly feel that way."
Rangerdude was right which is why I developed a policy proposal. Is Jim
Trodel saying editors are not allowed to make policy proposals?
Third, the compromise was to use both BCE/CE and BC/AD and I have kept to
that compromise.
James D. Forrester wrote ...
>No, SLR, this doesn't logically follow; I am of the same (or, at least,
>similar) beliefs as Alphax on this issue, which is that cloaking the
>Jesus-based calender behind more 'PC' terms is the exact opposite of NPOV,
>attempting to hide the western imperialism with a sop to 'minorities'. I
>have read your suggestion, and yes, you do mention this, but I disagree with
>your argument (and yes - before you suggest this, as you have done before -
>I did understand it).
James, you may be right. I am not sure, but I think I was responding to
something Tiwi said ("You know, I've always found this AD vs. CE debate
extremely stupid.") and not Alphax. Alphax, if this is so I am sorry. I
was trying to use something you said to raise a much bigger issue, and I am
sorry that (1) I didn't make it clear that the comment just led me to want
to make a comment, rather than that I was replying directly to your
comments, and (2) it may have been Tiwi's comment any way and my using your
name was a mistake. Please accept my apologies.
As to the point I was trying to make, I still think it is valid. People
with opposing points of vie often think that each other's view is
stupid. This is one of the main reasons we have an NPOV policy to begin
with. Saying that "this debate is stupid" is precisely the reason to have
an NPOV discussion, not to end it.
As to James' own argument against my proposal. James, I disagree with you
for all of the reasons set out in my proposal. But I do think you have a
reasonable argument, and I respect that. I honestly do,
Steve
Steven L. Rubenstein
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701
Hmmmm? I did not ask to be blocked. This is exactly the sort of overreaction I was trying to avoid. Since I haven't been very excited about posting anything to the talk pages lately anyway, it doesn't accomplish anything except hinder the discussion and hinder me from contributing to the encyclopedia. Any potential damage has already been done.
If you want, until the issue is settled, I won't post to any talk pages except my talk page. My talk page is already "disputed" so further posting there can do no harm. I don't want to bother posting to other pages until it is settled what technique can be used to post with no disagreement over "what's GFDLed and what's not"... if the extreme interpretation is used then I will have to make future posts using links. If what I've learned in my copyright research so far is true, then I should be able to post quotes which would be more convenient for everybody.
- Pioneer-12
--- "steven l. rubenstein" <rubenste(a)ohiou.edu> wrote:
> 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),
Just because someone (and apparently a majority of the
people who have expressed an opinion) disagrees with
your interpretation of NPOV does not mean that we
don't understand it.
RickK
Yahoo! Mail
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--- Delirium <delirium(a)hackish.org> wrote:
> It would certainly be nice if each use of units was
> quoted in both
> systems though, unless it makes no sense to do so
> (e.g.
> non-engineering-oriented science articles). Putting
> in miles is
> appropriate, but not providing a conversion for them
> is sloppy.
>
> -Mark
It's not sloppy if the editor doesn't know how to do
the conversion.
RickK
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