Bill Konrad said:
I do not understand how you can maintain that all editors would have to bowlderize all of their edits when for more than 99% of the articles there is no consideration whatsoever of bowlderization being an issue.
Well there you go. Who said that it wouldn't be an issue in all edits, for all editors? Suppose we had a rule saying "no use of the word 'sparrow'". You could argue that only a tiny minority of articles would need to be changed to conform to this rule, but the end result would still be an encyclopedia missing the word "sparrow", and into which it was not permitted to edit an article to make it include the word sparrow. Thus all edits, all editors and all articles would be affected by the anti-sparrow rule. For people who hated the word "sparrow", it would be a lot easier for them to produce a filtered snapshot of Wikipedia that did not contain the word sparrow, and this would also keep instruction creep to a minimum. People who don't care about the word "sparrow" can use it in articles in complete ignorance that it is anathema to a certain target audience, choosing to use it whenever they think it is appropriate. Thus references to the utterances of Robert Hellenga, Nigel Balchin, Salim Ali, Val Henry Gielgud, Kent L. Koppelman, Caroline Chesbro, Fred Bodsworth, Terry Lane: Sparrows Fall,, Mary Kevin O'Rourke, Janet Green, Benjamin Franklin, Dick Cheney, Alexander Pope, William Shakespeare and of course the bible would not need to be bowdlerized for the sake of sparrow-haters. The word could be used when its use was appropriate and encyclopedic.