Cool Cat wrote:
Perhaps, but changing the manual of style is premature at this point IMHO.
A good number of the votes were as per those comments pointed out here, which is rather troublesome of course. But, I think the issue at hand is not the number of uncivil comments directed at me, but the topic at hand.
I think it is good practice to toss in "people" after any ethnicity or nationality. Some of the terms can have multiple meanings at that was the original reason for this IIRC. What do you guys think?
On 2/5/07, Thomas Dalton wrote:
"...Also without assuming bad faith I have to ask why people would be so concerned with moving this category..- Moshe Constantine Hassan Al-Silverburg"
I interpreted that as assuming bad faith against the opposers, not the proposer. It's rather ambiguous.
"Strong Oppose per IZAK, frankly I'm shocked that this is even up for discussion. ... -- Chabuk" "Oppose. ... Share Chabuk's outrage that we're even voting on this. JFW"
Agreed, those are baffling and offensive comments, and should result in warnings to the commenters. However, they are just 2 people - the vast majority of people commenting did so with no problems at all.
It's just another exercise in political correctness. All sorts of words can have multiple meanings, and freezing out a term because some minority wants to read additional connotations into the use of the word does not warrant suche an exercise. Are we also changing "Buddhists" into "Buddhist people", and doing the same for all the other religious groups? Such a discussion would be better placed at that general religious level instead of singling out the Jews.
Whatever I may think of the specific issue I also think that anyone who finds those opposing comments to be offensive is only looking for excuses to be offended. Also assuming that the the other person assuming bad faith only seems to elevate the conversation to the silly level of meta-bad-faith.
Ec