On Feb 5, 2008 7:58 PM, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com wrote:
On 05/02/2008, Chris Howie cdhowie@gmail.com wrote:
This is, for example, not racism (or "religionism") at all. What we are dealing with is a fundamental incompatibility between the goals of our project and the beliefs of a particular religious group.
So you say, but then you suggest remedies that would disadvantage minorities.
There is a difference between oppressing a minority by such methods as violence, social norms, etc, and refusing to be bossed around by a minority.
Racism is, IMO, treating members of another race differently than you treat members of your own race. If another race/group/whatever imposes a rule on themselves then it is not racism to bend over backwards to make sure what you do doesn't break their rule.
In short, us doing bad stuff to them is racism. Them being upset about some of the stuff we do because they don't like it is their problem.
I could form a religion that hates the word "taco" -- are we gonna cater to that too?
Since you don't even want to cater for religions that take up about 20% of the worlds population, I would assume the question is entirely moot.
Christianity is more widespread than 20%. I am a Christian. And yet you don't see me raising a fuss because there are pictures of breasts on Wikipedia. I stay away from those articles out of my own choice.
But yet my "taco point" stands. Some group making rules about what content is acceptable and what isn't doesn't mean they get to force that on the rest of us, unless it comes from within the project with the goal of improving the quality of the encyclopedia. I do not see how any sane person could argue that this will make Wikipedia higher quality. Not one bit.
OTOH you yourself are in a minority (everybody is), so it might be in your own best interests to ensure that minorities in general are not disadvantaged in the wikipedia and elsewhere.
I don't care if I'm "disadvantaged on Wikipedia" if it means the project doesn't degrade into a PC POS.
How nice would it be for you to not have to accidentally see 'political correctness' in the wikipedia for example? ;-)
It would be great, but I'm also generally not naive and irrational.