On 9/5/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 05/09/06, Guettarda guettarda@gmail.com wrote:
major ISSUES in the debate were, on one side, that BC/AD violated NPOV and on the other a mixture of "well so does BCE/CE" or "common usage trumps NPOV". And, as a result, an exception was voted to NPOV.
And this shows the major WTF assertion. "Before Christ is a violation of NPOV, because it speaks in terms of Christ, whereas Before Christian Era ... hold on, I'll come in again."
- d.
You know, if you want to find out what an abbrieviation stands for, there is this great online encyclopedia ;)...... CE doesn't stand for "Christian Era", it stands for "Common Era" (which is why geni slyly tried to make a joke using VE, or "Vulgar Era", but everyone missed it). More to the point however, it's not the BC that people have a problem with, it's AD. AD stands for "Anno Domini", so "2006 AD" means literally "in the year of the lord, 2006".
I think that the NPOV argument is rock-solid, it isn't NPOV to refer to years as AD. I remember hearing a debate a while ago that people had on the Arabic wikipedia. I don't know if it was a big thing, or if it was even that big of a deal, but I think it serves well to put some perspective on why people might not like AD. The thing was that on the Arabic wp, people tended to write PBUH in Arabic everytime a martyr or prophet was mentioned. Incase somebody doesn't know, PBUH means Peace be upon him. One could argue for allowing that under NPOV using basically the same argument that's used for AD, saying that it's "common practice" and using that convention less people will be confused/offended /whatever.
Again, I don't really know anything about that dispute, it might be completly resolved, or not much of a problem to begin with. I just think that it serves as a way to get perspective on NPOV, viewing a very similar issue but in a different culture.
I say, no silly religious conventions should be used! Who's with me?!