On 6/1/07, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
On 01/06/07, Steve Bennett
<stevagewp(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Yeah it's a strange sort of category. I
don't know whether it's Jews
in particular doing it, but there have been some pretty concerted
efforts to go around labelling as many scientists as possible "Jewish
scientists" etc. I assume the intent is to promote or recognise the
religion in some way, rather than to "out" the people in question, as
the first post suggested.
It appears to be ethnic promotion. Look at the wranging over which
nationality makes it into an infobox.
The two main reasons that people add to these lists are
1. Ethnicity boosting, and
2. Outing.
Thus, ironically, the interests of Judeophiles and antisemites
coincide here, which is what makes these lists so hard to get rid of
or even conform to policy. Of course, their interests don't always
coincide; the former tend to be interested in populating lists of Jews
scientists and Nobel prize winners, the latter lists of Jewish
criminals. You'll also see this dynamic in articles, with Judeophiles
tending to describe people they are proud of as "Jewish" in the lead,
whereas antisemites like to describe criminals, or controversial
political figures, or Russian oligarchs, as "Jewish" in the lead.
Why aren't these categories being removed as
blatant NPOV violation
and incitement to more? Is NPOV up for a vote at CFD or something?
Because it turns out to be very hard to get these things deleted, in
practice. See, for example, this CfD:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_A…
By the way, on the latter you will note that four of the Poetlister
sockpuppets voted "keep".