On May 24, 2006, at 7:48 AM, Steve Bennett wrote:
It seems fairly clear to me that there is some
inconsistency
applied to
issues such as these on Wikipedia.
1) For "bad" people, Jewishness must be proven beyond all doubt,
and must
not go in the lead. I couldn't actually find any examples of Jewish
criminals - there doesn't seem to be a "Category:Jewish criminals" for
instance.
2) For "good" people, Jewishness must merely be asserted, and
should be
applied as a category. Occasionally it goes in the lead ([[John von
Neumann]]), other times as "born into a Jewish family" ([[Alan
Greenspan]]),
other times it's not even mentioned except for the category. There are
around 15 "Jewish Xs" categories, some with subcategories like
Jewish-American scientists.
Hey, check out our verifiability policy. If we can't verify that
someone is Jewish or comes from a Jewish family, it shouldn't be in
the article either way.
That said, mentioning that a famous scientist or economist is Jewish
isn't offensive, so it's not enforced as strongly there for
understandable reasons.
--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch