Viajero wrote:
"Terrorism" is a lot more than just a technical term; it carries emotional baggage and implies a moral judgement (like calling someone a "vandal" in Wikipedia!).
Like the words 'racism', 'holocaust' and 'massacre'? I guess the articles on those topics will have to be renamed as well.
Passing moral judgements on subjects is obviously incompatible with NPOV.
And NPOV obviously cannot operate in article titles since we have to choose just one term for the title (thus choosing one POV). Common usage with the caveats of ambiguity and unreasonable offensiveness is our rule for page titles. Applying NPOV to titles would result in ponderously long titles that would for practical reasons be useless as titles and near impossible to remember for linking purposes.
Moreover, if we label Al Queda or Shining Path terrorists, one can make the argument for labelling the US government a terrorist organization for mining the harbor of Managua in the 1980s, or destroying the Al Shifa pharmaceuticals plant in Sudan in 1998, or causing 500,000 Iraqi children to die of malnutrition during the 1990s by means of sanctions. Passing moral judgements can go both ways.
See my response to Toby on this point: http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-January/009600.html
On the Talk page of [[King David Hotel bombing]] Zero wrote something awhile back to the effect that the word "terrorist" should be banned from every article except [[Terrorism]]. I am inclined to agree with him.
I'm sorry but this is an absurd position to have and I do hope you re-consider it. Not only would it result in [[Terrorism]] becoming an orphan, but it would whitewash a great many articles. If and when it is relevant to say that X said Y about Z then we should say it!
Again blacklisting terms is *very* bad and reminds me of something I read in the appendix of the book 1984 in which Orwell described Newspeak. The goal of the totalitarian state in 1984 had with Newspeak was thought control: By dropping certain terms from the language the concepts behind those terms would fall away from the conscious thoughts of people. Eliminating the word "freedom" for example, would help to stop the transmission of freedom-oriented ideas and thus would ease any want in the population for it.
Eliminating 'terrorist' from Wikipedia would cover-up the fact that many people consider terrorism to be a real thing and something that is in a special class of atrocities.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
Daniel Mayer wrote:
Viajero wrote:
"Terrorism" is a lot more than just a technical term; it carries emotional baggage and implies a moral judgement (like calling someone a "vandal" in Wikipedia!).
Like the words 'racism', 'holocaust' and 'massacre'? I guess the articles on those topics will have to be renamed as well.
That's trivialization.
Passing moral judgements on subjects is obviously incompatible with NPOV.
And NPOV obviously cannot operate in article titles since we have to choose just one term for the title (thus choosing one POV). Common usage with the caveats of ambiguity and unreasonable offensiveness is our rule for page titles. Applying NPOV to titles would result in ponderously long titles that would for practical reasons be useless as titles and near impossible to remember for linking purposes.
You apply NPOV to titles by avoiding characterizations. This makes titles shorter, not longer.
On the Talk page of [[King David Hotel bombing]] Zero wrote something awhile back to the effect that the word "terrorist" should be banned from every article except [[Terrorism]]. I am inclined to agree with him.
I'm sorry but this is an absurd position to have and I do hope you re-consider it. Not only would it result in [[Terrorism]] becoming an orphan, but it would whitewash a great many articles. If and when it is relevant to say that X said Y about Z then we should say it!
If so, say it in the text.
Again blacklisting terms is *very* bad and reminds me of something I read in the appendix of the book 1984 in which Orwell described Newspeak. The goal of the totalitarian state in 1984 had with Newspeak was thought control: By dropping certain terms from the language the concepts behind those terms would fall away from the conscious thoughts of people. Eliminating the word "freedom" for example, would help to stop the transmission of freedom-oriented ideas and thus would ease any want in the population for it.
Orwell's society did not ban the word "freedom". It just reserved the right to insist that you understood it in a politically correct way. Totalitarian principles are more effectively spread when the subject population believes that it has freely adopted those ideas.
Eliminating 'terrorist' from Wikipedia would cover-up the fact that many people consider terrorism to be a real thing and something that is in a special class of atrocities.
I'm not saying that the word should be completely banned; there are places for it. Just not in most titles.
Ec
Eclecticology (Ray Saintonge) wrote in part:
Maveric149 (Daniel Mayer) wrote:
Again blacklisting terms is *very* bad and reminds me of something I read in the appendix of the book 1984 in which Orwell described Newspeak. The goal of the totalitarian state in 1984 had with Newspeak was thought control: By dropping certain terms from the language the concepts behind those terms would fall away from the conscious thoughts of people. Eliminating the word "freedom" for example, would help to stop the transmission of freedom-oriented ideas and thus would ease any want in the population for it.
Orwell's society did not ban the word "freedom". It just reserved the right to insist that you understood it in a politically correct way. Totalitarian principles are more effectively spread when the subject population believes that it has freely adopted those ideas.
Point of information:
I read 1984 again just last month, and this very word (well, the adjective "free") is addressed in the appendix.
Newspeak /did/ ban the word "free" (in its political sense) /entirely/. They did /not/ merely insists that you call Ingsoc free and dissent unfree. They wanted to make it /impossible/ for somebody to say something like "Hold on a minute -- maybe Ingsoc is not free after all!". A big point of Newspeak -- and how it went /beyond/ efforts in the USSR -- was the elimination, not merely restriction, of terms, for this reason.
BTW, the word "free" did survive in Newspeak, but in a different sense. You could say "My apartment is not free of cockroaches.", but not "My life under Ingsoc is not free." -- /that/ would be meaningless.
All in all, comparing Newspeak to political correctness is a huge exaggeration -- Newspeak just goes beyond anything that has occured in the real world (and thank goodness!). That was part of Orwell's point -- the other part of his point being that Newspeak might not be such an exaggeration in 1984. (Thank goodness that it still is!)
-- Toby
I respond below to some of the issues Mav and others have raised in recent posts, arguing that labelling people like Bin Laden "terrorists" is passing a moral judgement, and if we indiscriminantly do so, then others can insist that the actions of our governments (US/UK for the sake of argument) should also be labelled "terrorist". My conclusion is that it is not in the interest of Wikipedia for the CIA to be labelled a "terrorist network".
On 01/15/04 at 06:35 PM, Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com said:
Viajero wrote:
"Terrorism" is a lot more than just a technical term; it carries emotional baggage and implies a moral judgement (like calling someone a "vandal" in Wikipedia!).
Like the words 'racism', 'holocaust' and 'massacre'? I guess the articles on those topics will have to be renamed as well.
No, I would argue that "terrorism" is really sui generis. Given its highly controversial nature, its strongly negative connotations, and its primacy in current affairs, I don't think we should draw any general principles.
Moreover, if we label Al Queda or Shining Path terrorists, one can make the argument for labelling the US government a terrorist organization for mining the harbor of Managua in the 1980s, or destroying the Al Shifa pharmaceuticals plant in Sudan in 1998, or causing 500,000 Iraqi children to die of malnutrition during the 1990s by means of sanctions. Passing moral judgements can go both ways.
See my response to Toby on this point: http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-January/009600.html
Ok, here it is:
Toby Bartels wrote:
Well, what /was/ the purpose? Given the NY attacks, terror is likely. As for civilian deaths, remember the infamous Gulf War "collateral damage". Was that a terrorist attack by the United States armed forces?
No for three reasons: 1) the intent was not to terrorize the civilian population, 2) very few people call it that, and 3) by definition governments cannot commit terrorism.
The Gulf War is not a good example, But I think we must acknowledge that there are a lot of people in the Third World, using *their* definition of "terrorism", who believe that the US has committed "terrorists acts" against civilian targets. As others have already pointed out in this lists, a "terrorist" or a "terrorist act" is largely in the eye of the beholder.
As for 3) "by definition governments cannot commit terrorism": It seems to me that this qualification is selectively applied. "State terrorism" is a contradiction in terms where Western governments are concerned but not when it involves our "official enemies". Do a Google query on "libya + support + terrorism" (190,000 hits) or "Iran + support + terrorism" (476,000 hits) and you find documents containing such texts as:
Does Iran sponsor terrorism? Yes. The State Department calls the Islamic Republic of Iran the world's "most active state sponsor of terrorism." (http://www.terrorismanswers.com/sponsors/iran.html)
Over the past twenty years, Libya has been foremost on the list of countries supporting terrorism. (http://www.ict.org.il/articles/article3.htm)
If "sponsoring" or "supporting" is a meaningful distinction (I think not), than someone could argue that bin Laden is not a "terrorist"; he only supports it. In any case, it is beyond a doubt that the Reagan adminstration "supported terrorism" (first legally, later illegally) by its backing of the Contras whose goals were very much which Mav defines above, ie "to terrorize the civilian population."
One reason why terrorism is often seen as being worse than atrocities committed by governments, is that there is no clear thing to retaliate against when it is committed.
I regard this is strictly a tactical problem -- not a moral issue!
At least in the Cold War we could rely on the concept of mutually assured destruction to keep the Soviets from nuking us (and vice versa). We cannot rely on that for terrorist acts since the organizations the perform terrorist acts do not have nearly as much to loose as a nation performing the same act would.
This rationale does not hold water since countries like Libya and Iran. which we can assume do have something to loose, still appear to support it.
On the Talk page of [[King David Hotel bombing]] Zero wrote something awhile back to the effect that the word "terrorist" should be banned from every article except [[Terrorism]]. I am inclined to agree with him.
I'm sorry but this is an absurd position to have and I do hope you re-consider it. Not only would it result in [[Terrorism]] becoming an orphan, but it would whitewash a great many articles. If and when it is relevant to say that X said Y about Z then we should say it!
Again blacklisting terms is *very* bad idea
I take it back. "Banning" was too strong a word. No, you are quite right: we do not want to "ban" words or ideas from Wikipedia. But I think we need to look carefully at how the term is used.
To begin with, in recent days, two discussions have taken place on Talk pages ([[Osama bin Laden]] and [[Shining Path]]) over the insertion of the phrase
"... is considered by many people to be a [terrorist | terrorist organization]"
I am opposed (along with several others) to the inclusion of this phrase. I believe it uses weaselspeak to insert a moral judgement on the subject. We should simply allow the facts to speak for themselves. In the case of Shining Path, its atrocities were numerous, unambiguous, and well-documented. The case, as it were, speaks for itself.
In [[Shining Path]], in response to the above, another user replaced it with the following text at the end of the article:
Internationally, Shining Path is widely regarded as a terrorist group. The organization is on the United States Department of State's list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations, meaning (among other things) that it is illegal for US citizens to provide any aid to the group. The United Kingdom and European Union likewise list Shining Path as a terrorist group and prohibit providing funding or other financial support, although membership is not prohibited.
This is an improvement. However, the assessment of an organization as "terrorist" is hardly just a technical, bureaucratic matter; it is not like declaring it in arrears or something. It is a moral judgement, and given that a state is not a moral agent (unlike say the Catholic Church) I would question the appropriateness of any government taking the high moral ground in this way, above all the US and the UK, given the fact they recently launched an illegal war against Iraq. "Let he without blame cast the first stone".
However, in another article, [[Binational solution]], which many of you may have seen since it was one the Main page over Christmas, there is an instance of the use of the word "terrorist" which is appropriate. It forms an integral part of the historical narrative and is not included essentially as a moral judgement:
The 1973 Yom Kippur War was both a military and a political disaster for the Arabs and the Palestinians in particular. The crushing defeat of the Arab armies prompted a fundamental political rethink among the Palestinian leadership. It was realised that Israel's military strength and, crucially, its alliance with the United States made it very unlikely that it could be defeated militarily. In December 1974, Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) -- regarded as a terrorist group by the Israeli government - declared that a binational state was the only viable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The change in policy was met with considerable confusion, as it was official PLO policy to replace Israel with a secular state with a full right of return for all displaced Palestinians.
As I said in an earlier message, passing moral judgements -- directly or by means of weaselspeak -- goes both ways. If we insist on labelling Al Queda "terrorist", others can do the same with the CIA for example. Aside from whether I personally agree with this (an irrelevant matter), having the CIA labelled a "terrorist network" in the interest of balance is, from a strictly utilitarian point of view, counterproductive; it will only alienate an important part of our audience. Hence, lets not go down the slippery slope of labelling -- gratuitously at least -- bin Laden et al with moralistic, emotionally-laden terms like "terrorist".
V.
Mav wrote:
Toby Bartels wrote:
Well, what /was/ the purpose? Given the NY attacks, terror is likely. As for civilian deaths, remember the infamous Gulf War "collateral damage". Was that a terrorist attack by the United States armed forces?
No for three reasons: 1) the intent was not to terrorize the civilian population, 2) very few people call it that, and 3) by definition governments cannot commit terrorism.
1) Yes! So one cannot argue that /because/ there were civilian deaths, the act was terrorism rather than warfare. One must look at the /intent/: an intent to terrorise. Which is what I did; that was my only point there.
2) This is also a good point. But as far as articles /titles/ go, we need to look at this more thoroughly. If more people refer to the terrorist attacks on that day as "the September 11 attack(s)" than "the September 11 terrorist attack(s)" (as one would expect), then the common-name naming convention suggests that we prefer the former. /If/ they called it, say, "the September 11 terrorism", then [[September 11 terrorism]] would be a reasonable title, despite its rather blatant POV content. But they don't.
3) That is false. (Well, IMO, it's clearly false. Our article [[Terrorism]] should be NPOV about this.) Source: OED ^_^.
Viajero wrote:
On the Talk page of [[King David Hotel bombing]] Zero wrote something awhile back to the effect that the word "terrorist" should be banned from every article except [[Terrorism]]. I am inclined to agree with him.
This is far too extreme (as Viajero later admitted). But there /is/ a lesson in Zero0000's suggestion, all the same. Clichéd as this is, terrorism often /is/ in the eye of the beholder. We shouldn't leap to calling people terrorists when it's not necessary. OTOH, we should definitely cover, by the usual NPOV methods, accusations that somebody is a terrorist. Outside of such coverage, however, it'll be much more useful just to say what somebody did. Readers can decide if that's terrorism or not.
-- Toby
On the Talk page of [[King David Hotel bombing]] Zero wrote something awhile back to the effect that the word "terrorist" should be banned from every article except [[Terrorism]]. I am inclined to agree with him.
Since my remark indicated above has now been quoted several time, I thought I might explain it. I don't -really- think that "terrorism", or any other word, should be banned. Rather, I was making a comment on the usage of the word in Wikipedia: in my opinion it is misused so much that we would be better off without any uses at all. However, of course the problem should be tackled by education and not by legislation.
Let me suggest a golden rule that might be applied to many issues in addition to this one: Golden Rule: Tell the reader what the facts are; don't tell the reader what to think about them. According to this criterion, some usages of "terrorism" are just fine: "The US State Department added Microsoft Corporation to its list of terrorist organizations". Some usages are NOT fine: "A Microsoft terrorist blew himself up at the 2007 Apple Convention, killing 27 innocent Mac-heads". The reason I don't like this usage of "terrorist" is that all the information in the sentence is still there if the word is removed. Actually the word was used to sneak the writer's opinion into the sentence. We should just present the facts and allow the reader to form the opinions.
Other uses of "terrorism" in Wikipedia just make me cringe. "Many people regard this to be terrorism" is about my least favorite. In my view the majority of similar sentences in Wikipedia were put there by people who wanted to insert their own opinions. They knew they couldn't write "It is terrorism" or "I think it is terrorism" so they wrote "Many people regard..." instead. Of course if a key aspect of the topic of the article is public opinion that would be a different situation (but then I'd hope to see some actual opinion poll data or something).
Zero.
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Any characterization of behavior is subject to the criticism that it could be replaced with a description of the phenomenon. We use these forms as a shorthand for such descriptions. "Sneak attack", for example, can serve in place of a long description explaining how a plan to declare war at 6 AM and attack at 7 failed because of a delay in decoding.
The words "patriotic", "brave", "noble" and "democratic" come to mind in this context. These are words which express point of view. They don't need to be banned, just used consciously.
Fred
From: zero 0000 nought_0000@yahoo.com Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 01:28:11 -0800 (PST) To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Subject: [WikiEN-l] Terrorism
On the Talk page of [[King David Hotel bombing]] Zero wrote something awhile back to the effect that the word "terrorist" should be banned from every article except [[Terrorism]]. I am inclined to agree with him.
Since my remark indicated above has now been quoted several time, I thought I might explain it. I don't -really- think that "terrorism", or any other word, should be banned. Rather, I was making a comment on the usage of the word in Wikipedia: in my opinion it is misused so much that we would be better off without any uses at all. However, of course the problem should be tackled by education and not by legislation.
Let me suggest a golden rule that might be applied to many issues in addition to this one: Golden Rule: Tell the reader what the facts are; don't tell the reader what to think about them. According to this criterion, some usages of "terrorism" are just fine: "The US State Department added Microsoft Corporation to its list of terrorist organizations". Some usages are NOT fine: "A Microsoft terrorist blew himself up at the 2007 Apple Convention, killing 27 innocent Mac-heads". The reason I don't like this usage of "terrorist" is that all the information in the sentence is still there if the word is removed. Actually the word was used to sneak the writer's opinion into the sentence. We should just present the facts and allow the reader to form the opinions.
Other uses of "terrorism" in Wikipedia just make me cringe. "Many people regard this to be terrorism" is about my least favorite. In my view the majority of similar sentences in Wikipedia were put there by people who wanted to insert their own opinions. They knew they couldn't write "It is terrorism" or "I think it is terrorism" so they wrote "Many people regard..." instead. Of course if a key aspect of the topic of the article is public opinion that would be a different situation (but then I'd hope to see some actual opinion poll data or something).
Zero.
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Fred Bauder wrote:
The words "patriotic", "brave", "noble" and "democratic" come to mind in this context. These are words which express point of view. They don't need to be banned, just used consciously.
Exactly. "banning" is too harsh. "use with care" is what I would say.
Fred Bauder wrote:
Any characterization of behavior is subject to the criticism that it could be replaced with a description of the phenomenon. We use these forms as a shorthand for such descriptions. "Sneak attack", for example, can serve in place of a long description explaining how a plan to declare war at 6 AM and attack at 7 failed because of a delay in decoding.
The words "patriotic", "brave", "noble" and "democratic" come to mind in this context. These are words which express point of view. They don't need to be banned, just used consciously.
What's important about your comments is that they show that the same kind of problem can arise when the word in question has positive overtones.
Ec
As I have been saying on the discussion about [[List of war heroes]].
RickK
Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote: Fred Bauder wrote:
Any characterization of behavior is subject to the criticism that it could be replaced with a description of the phenomenon. We use these forms as a shorthand for such descriptions. "Sneak attack", for example, can serve in place of a long description explaining how a plan to declare war at 6 AM and attack at 7 failed because of a delay in decoding.
The words "patriotic", "brave", "noble" and "democratic" come to mind in this context. These are words which express point of view. They don't need to be banned, just used consciously.
What's important about your comments is that they show that the same kind of problem can arise when the word in question has positive overtones.
Ec
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zero 0000 wrote:
Other uses of "terrorism" in Wikipedia just make me cringe. "Many people regard this to be terrorism" is about my least favorite. In my view the majority of similar sentences in Wikipedia were put there by people who wanted to insert their own opinions. They knew they couldn't write "It is terrorism" or "I think it is terrorism" so they wrote "Many people regard..." instead. Of course if a key aspect of the topic of the article is public opinion that would be a different situation (but then I'd hope to see some actual opinion poll data or something).
The exception I take to this is cases where it *is* very widely considered terrorism. For example, Osama bin Laden is nearly universally considered a terrorist in the West, and is labeled as such by most governments in the world (including most Arab governments). I'm not sure there are any polls asking "Do you think bin Laden is a terrorist?", because in the West at least this is sort of like asking "Do you think killing an innocent person without cause is murder?" But if we were to fail to mention this fact, it would make it very confusing for the reader who wasn't already familiar with events (say, a reader 100 years from now) who might wonder why this "Islamic militant" is somehow connected to a "War on Terrorism".
I'm not sure what the best way to phrase it is, but to be complete, [[Osama bin Laden]] does need to mention somewhere that he's considered an arch-terrorist of sorts by a large segment of the world's population, and an even larger proportion of the world's governments.
-Mark
zero 0000 wrote:
On the Talk page of [[King David Hotel bombing]] Zero wrote something awhile back to the effect that the word "terrorist" should be banned from every article except [[Terrorism]]. I am inclined to agree with him.
Since my remark indicated above has now been quoted several time, I thought I might explain it. I don't -really- think that "terrorism", or any other word, should be banned. Rather, I was making a comment on the usage of the word in Wikipedia: in my opinion it is misused so much that we would be better off without any uses at all. However, of course the problem should be tackled by education and not by legislation.
I agree. "Terrorism", however, is not the only word in this class, Using them perpetrates misunderstanding.
Let me suggest a golden rule that might be applied to many issues in addition to this one: Golden Rule: Tell the reader what the facts are; don't tell the reader what to think about them. According to this criterion, some usages of "terrorism" are just fine: "The US State Department added Microsoft Corporation to its list of terrorist organizations". Some usages are NOT fine: "A Microsoft terrorist blew himself up at the 2007 Apple Convention, killing 27 innocent Mac-heads". The reason I don't like this usage of "terrorist" is that all the information in the sentence is still there if the word is removed. Actually the word was used to sneak the writer's opinion into the sentence. We should just present the facts and allow the reader to form the opinions.
This is a good approach.
Other uses of "terrorism" in Wikipedia just make me cringe. "Many people regard this to be terrorism" is about my least favorite. In my view the majority of similar sentences in Wikipedia were put there by people who wanted to insert their own opinions. They knew they couldn't write "It is terrorism" or "I think it is terrorism" so they wrote "Many people regard..." instead. Of course if a key aspect of the topic of the article is public opinion that would be a different situation (but then I'd hope to see some actual opinion poll data or something).
"Many people regard ..." carries a strong POV wallop It applies the logical fallacy that if a significant majority consider something to be true, then it must in fact be true. A statement founded on public opinion should be subject to verification just as much as anything else.
Ec