On Feb 5, 2008 7:58 PM, Ian Woollard <ian.woollard(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 05/02/2008, Chris Howie <cdhowie(a)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.
--
Chris Howie
http://www.chrishowie.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Crazycomputers