I've noted that the proposed FoF 6 is trivially factually incorrect - it only applies to US academia, and even then only a certain portion thereof. It notably does not apply to e.g. UK academia. I've written a proposed FoF 6.01. Comments welcomed. (The sentence construction could almost certainly do with improvement, for instance.)
FoF 6:
6) "CE" or Common Era has recently come to be preferred among scholars and those who seek to avoid offense in inter-cultural dialog. "AD" spelled out in its full original form is Anno Domini Nostri Iesu Christi ("in the year of our Lord Jesus Christ) and thus potentially offensive, see research by El_C.
FoF 6.01:
6.01) "CE" or Common Era has recently come to be preferred among certain portions of US academia and those who claim to seek to avoid offense in inter-cultural dialog. "AD" spelled out in its full original form is Anno Domini Nostri Iesu Christi ("in the year of our Lord Jesus Christ) and thus regarded by them as potentially offensive, see research by El_C. This does not necessarily hold elsewhere, e.g. in UK academia.
This sort of thing is why I am profoundly sceptical that content arbitration will not be an utter, utter disaster and just another hammer to use in pushing a POV.
- d.
On 6/19/05, David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au wrote:
6.01) "CE" or Common Era has recently come to be preferred among certain portions of US academia and those who claim to seek to avoid offense in inter-cultural dialog. "AD" spelled out in its full original form is Anno Domini Nostri Iesu Christi ("in the year of our Lord Jesus Christ) and thus regarded by them as potentially offensive, see research by El_C. This does not necessarily hold elsewhere, e.g. in UK academia.
This sort of thing is why I am profoundly sceptical that content arbitration will not be an utter, utter disaster and just another hammer to use in pushing a POV.
Can you actually provide any citations to support your position? I only ask because in my experience the BCE/CE notation is really quite common and has been used in the majority of scholarly research I've read (well the majority hasn't mentioned an era at all, but what does uses BCE/CE). I am aware that it isn't so universally used in all fields, but I was taught the BCE/CE notation in grade school... Perhaps this is just because I am in the United States.
Your rewrite makes it sound like it is only used by an insubstantial minority.
In any case, the arbcom isn't and shouldn't be deciding if we should use AD/BC or CE/BCE as it appears the larger community has decided that the issue isn't currently clear enough and we don't care.
Gregory Maxwell (gmaxwell@gmail.com) [050620 00:58]:
Can you actually provide any citations to support your position?
You mean, like papers using it?
Perhaps this is just because I am in the United States. Your rewrite makes it sound like it is only used by an insubstantial minority.
I said it needed tweaking. Call it substantial minority. And noisy.
In any case, the arbcom isn't and shouldn't be deciding if we should use AD/BC or CE/BCE as it appears the larger community has decided that the issue isn't currently clear enough and we don't care.
Well, yeah. That's why I was ignoring this - as a storm in a teacup - and why I'm appalled its advocates have tried to push it this far. Those seeking to push a POV will not be put off by content arbitration - they'll just try to use it as a further bludgeon for their views, as we see in the present case.
- d.
Can you actually provide any citations to support your position? I only ask because in my experience the BCE/CE notation is really quite common and has been used in the majority of scholarly research I've read (well the majority hasn't mentioned an era at all, but what does uses BCE/CE). I am aware that it isn't so universally used in all fields, but I was taught the BCE/CE notation in grade school... Perhaps this is just because I am in the United States.
Your rewrite makes it sound like it is only used by an insubstantial minority.
In any case, the arbcom isn't and shouldn't be deciding if we should use AD/BC or CE/BCE as it appears the larger community has decided that the issue isn't currently clear enough and we don't care.
So why does web of knowledge throw up far more results for BC than BCE?
Doesn't this just get at the first and most primary difficulty in content arbitration: Whose authority to go by?
If it was me, I'd ask the people who run Chicago Manual of Style. But I know what they'd answer: In academia, this actually isn't that contentious a battle, you go with what you feel most, and those who use BCE/CE consider it less offensive, those who don't, don't. Which doesn't give policy.
Would they call up some professor and ask them what they thought we should do? Would anybody abide by that?
Would it be a quantitative thing? Would we add up all the citations on one online search engine versus another? (Would we be careful enough to realize that a search for "BC" is likely to also pick up any usages of "BCE" on most of them?) Do these search engines necessarily reveal academic consensus? (Academia is a culture in which quality matters a lot more than quantity, in my opinion; a few major players insisting on something often matters a lot more than a lot of minor players doing things their own way).
Do we even think "Academia" is the gold standard? Aren't the editors of the Catholic Encyclopedia just as erudite and scholarly?
I go both ways on content arbitration. Part of me says, "Yes, call up a well-respected academic, they'll tell you what the 'mainstream' consensus is; most of us know that pretty well, our full time jobs involve doing nothing but reading things other academics have written!" The other part of me realizes that this is a not entirely defensible position, and that wars of experts won't work unless somebody "from above" (i.e. Jimbo) gives a hard and fast rule determining how these things will work, and doesn't worry about whether it is logically or ethically defensible.
The other problem I have is that I know that other institutions that rely on "expert advice" from outside often take care to pick the experts that reflect their version of "consensus." This happens again and again in politics, in the courts, in journalism, in academia itself. I don't see any reason that this wouldn't happen on Wikipedia. There is, by the way, a large literature on the use of "experts" out there, in sociology, science studies, legal studies, etc., so we don't necessarily have to re-invent the wheel as we hash this over.
FF
On 6/20/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Can you actually provide any citations to support your position? I only ask because in my experience the BCE/CE notation is really quite common and has been used in the majority of scholarly research I've read (well the majority hasn't mentioned an era at all, but what does uses BCE/CE). I am aware that it isn't so universally used in all fields, but I was taught the BCE/CE notation in grade school... Perhaps this is just because I am in the United States.
Your rewrite makes it sound like it is only used by an insubstantial minority.
In any case, the arbcom isn't and shouldn't be deciding if we should use AD/BC or CE/BCE as it appears the larger community has decided that the issue isn't currently clear enough and we don't care.
So why does web of knowledge throw up far more results for BC than BCE?
-- geni _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
By the way, on this question in specific: I can't search the full Web of Knowledge, apparently (I'm only getting the Web of Science), but it seems in the results I am getting (and logically speaking) that "BC" can stand for a lot of things besides a date usage, whereas BCE seems to be primarily only used in designating eras. Additionally I'm having a hard time telling if searches for "BC" don't also bring up articles which use "BCE" as well.
Which indicates only that if one were to use a quantitative search for these sorts of things (differentiating between one usage and another), one has to make sure we understand how the engines in particular function, as well as thinking about the queries in question (I've had people give #s for Google Scholar searches which simply wouldn't give the information they were trying to get, just because they weren't thought out that well). There's also the bigger question about whether quantity matters more than quality, but that's even harder to parse out.
(In any event, I don't care either way. I don't think there needs to be a universal policy on this; I think it should fall under the English/American spellings clause. But alas..)
FF
On 6/20/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
So why does web of knowledge throw up far more results for BC than BCE?
-- geni
From votes on the subject I would say Wikipedia opinion is about evenly divided, thus the style guide which permits both usages.
Fred
On Jun 20, 2005, at 10:53 AM, Fastfission wrote:
By the way, on this question in specific: I can't search the full Web of Knowledge, apparently (I'm only getting the Web of Science), but it seems in the results I am getting (and logically speaking) that "BC" can stand for a lot of things besides a date usage, whereas BCE seems to be primarily only used in designating eras. Additionally I'm having a hard time telling if searches for "BC" don't also bring up articles which use "BCE" as well.
Which indicates only that if one were to use a quantitative search for these sorts of things (differentiating between one usage and another), one has to make sure we understand how the engines in particular function, as well as thinking about the queries in question (I've had people give #s for Google Scholar searches which simply wouldn't give the information they were trying to get, just because they weren't thought out that well). There's also the bigger question about whether quantity matters more than quality, but that's even harder to parse out.
(In any event, I don't care either way. I don't think there needs to be a universal policy on this; I think it should fall under the English/American spellings clause. But alas..)
FF
On 6/20/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
So why does web of knowledge throw up far more results for BC than BCE?
-- geni
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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David Gerard wrote: <snip>
FoF 6:
- "CE" or Common Era has recently come to be preferred among scholars and
those who seek to avoid offense in inter-cultural dialog. "AD" spelled out in its full original form is Anno Domini Nostri Iesu Christi ("in the year of our Lord Jesus Christ) and thus potentially offensive, see research by El_C.
FoF 6.01:
6.01) "CE" or Common Era has recently come to be preferred among certain portions of US academia and those who claim to seek to avoid offense in inter-cultural dialog. "AD" spelled out in its full original form is Anno Domini Nostri Iesu Christi ("in the year of our Lord Jesus Christ) and thus regarded by them as potentially offensive, see research by El_C. This does not necessarily hold elsewhere, e.g. in UK academia.
Not sure about "recently", but 6.01 explains who is pushing this particular POV a whole lot better.
This sort of thing is why I am profoundly sceptical that content arbitration will not be an utter, utter disaster and just another hammer to use in pushing a POV.
Which is exactly what content arbitration should avoid. Civility and NPOV are the goals, aren't they?
- d.
- -- Alphax OpenPGP key: 0xF874C613 - http://tinyurl.com/cc9up http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S. Lewis
On Sun, 19 Jun 2005, David Gerard wrote:
I've noted that the proposed FoF 6 is trivially factually incorrect - it only applies to US academia, and even then only a certain portion thereof. It notably does not apply to e.g. UK academia. I've written a proposed FoF 6.01. Comments welcomed. (The sentence construction could almost certainly do with improvement, for instance.)
FoF 6:
- "CE" or Common Era has recently come to be preferred among scholars and
those who seek to avoid offense in inter-cultural dialog. "AD" spelled out in its full original form is Anno Domini Nostri Iesu Christi ("in the year of our Lord Jesus Christ) and thus potentially offensive, see research by El_C.
FoF 6.01:
6.01) "CE" or Common Era has recently come to be preferred among certain portions of US academia and those who claim to seek to avoid offense in inter-cultural dialog. "AD" spelled out in its full original form is Anno Domini Nostri Iesu Christi ("in the year of our Lord Jesus Christ) and thus regarded by them as potentially offensive, see research by El_C. This does not necessarily hold elsewhere, e.g. in UK academia.
This sort of thing is why I am profoundly sceptical that content arbitration will not be an utter, utter disaster and just another hammer to use in pushing a POV.
I have no objections to the ArbCom's Findings until I reached section 6; what I found written there yesterday disturbs me greatly, for it appears that they are embracing one side in a POV dispute.
I, for one, would be far happier if the Committee simply dropped all comment about the AD/BC - CE/BCE controversy; I think it is clear to all but a few that there is no consensus either on Wikipedia or in the larger world about which style is preferred.
But if the members feel compelled to make a statement, I would hope they limit it to the observation that both styles are widely used in the English-spekaing world, & that there many arguments for & against each -- acknowledging that for Wikipedia to embrace either exclusively would be to violate our core value of NPOV.
Geoff
Geoff Burling stated for the record:
I have no objections to the ArbCom's Findings until I reached section 6; what I found written there yesterday disturbs me greatly, for it appears that they are embracing one side in a POV dispute.
Why are you disturbed? Only Fred is in favor, four of us oppose it and three are abstaining. Most of us on the Committee agree with you.
On Mon, 20 Jun 2005, Sean Barrett wrote:
Geoff Burling stated for the record:
I have no objections to the ArbCom's Findings until I reached section 6; what I found written there yesterday disturbs me greatly, for it appears that they are embracing one side in a POV dispute.
Why are you disturbed? Only Fred is in favor, four of us oppose it and three are abstaining. Most of us on the Committee agree with you.
The very thought that the subject covered by section 6 should be considered for a vote. And when I looked at the Findings Sunday, the voting was not complete.
My sense is that Wikipedia is fairly evenly divided over this matter. The ArbCom has shown a commendable amount of restraint so far with its powers, which have only helped to make its authority that much more powerful. I feel that if the ArbCom gets involved in this matter, it can only result with one side -- or both -- losing respect for the ArbCom.
And I haven't spoken up more about this issue because I find it hard to stately unemotionally -- & succinctly -- my opinions about this matter.
Geoff
On 6/21/05, Geoff Burling llywrch@agora.rdrop.com wrote:
My sense is that Wikipedia is fairly evenly divided over this matter. The ArbCom has shown a commendable amount of restraint so far with its powers, which have only helped to make its authority that much more powerful. I feel that if the ArbCom gets involved in this matter, it can only result with one side -- or both -- losing respect for the ArbCom.
And I haven't spoken up more about this issue because I find it hard to stately unemotionally -- & succinctly -- my opinions about this matter.
You're not the only one concerned. This decision is a fiasco, and is why it's in the process of being almost entirely overturned. I apologise for my part in it going this far.
-- ambi