From: "Poor, Edmund W" Edmund.W.Poor@abc.com Subject: [WikiEN-l] The word 'terrorist' (was: User HectorRodriguez) Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2004 09:13:41 -0500 To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@Wikipedia.org
There's nothing wrong with removing the word "terrorist". It's a loaded word, and probably doesn't belong in the plain text of any article other than [[terrorism]] itself.
On the other hand, if a prominent figure or body has a relevant quote, and a user suppresses that quote for no other purpose than to eliminate the word "terrorist", then this is censorship and shouldn't be encouraged.
We can say:
- Clinton called the 9/11 hijackings "terrorism" and
helped provide bi-partisan support for a military campaign to punish the "terrorists" responsible.
This way, it's not the Wikipedia which says that the hijackings or crashes or civilian deaths are acts of terror, but a particular, well-known spokesman for a large and influential group.
Ed Poor Ancient Wikipedian
Remember, NPOV isn't about making every sentence completely indisputable and wishy-washy, it's about making the article as a whole unbiased. Censoring the word "terrorist" from Wikipedia would be very destructive to it as an encyclopedia. We can use the word "terrorist" and even say that someone is a terrorist without using quotes; all we have to do is present both sides in the article. Here's my example of the same thing:
According to most Americans, the 9/11 attacks were terrorism. [later in the article] Clinton helped provide bipartisan support for a military campaign to punish the terrorists responsible. [even later in the article] Some people said that the 9/11 terrorist attacks weren't terrorism and...
Otherwise your article has sentences two times longer than they need to be and with a feeling strong of skepticism that they were terrorists.
Daniel Ehrenberg
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