Sean B. writes:
Please explain to me how speech can kill someone. For extra credit, explain how words on a Web page can do any physical harm.
Do you really not know the answer? Ok, I will answer your question honestly, and accurately:
Many people used to say and write "I hate the fucking Jews. Kill the Jews". Then some people did kill Jews.
Many people used to say and write "I hate the fucking niggers. Kill the niggers". Then some people did kill blacks.
Many people used to say and write "I hate the fucking queers. Kill the quuers". Then some people did kill homosexuals.
Just read the newspapers, and you will see stories of homosexuals being beaten, assaulted, and even murdered, all the time. The same is true for Jews; attacks on Jews all across the world are on the rise. Synagogues are being burned, Jews are being beaten in the streets, houses are being covered in Nazi swastikas, etc. This is not theoretical; this is real. (Even in my hometown a synagogue was torched.)
In the real world, repeated hateful words often lead to violent actions. Anyone who claims otherwise is a poor liar.
The way that Wheeler is attacking SLR is a violation of SLR's civil rights, and is anti-Semitic in of itself. The way that Ray is pushing JewWatch neo-Nazi arguments to slander all Jews is also wrong. Both Wheeler's and Ray's exact arguments, common on Nazi websites, have as their goal the advocacy of discrimination towards Jews.
The question is this: Should we allow Wikipedia to deviate from its original goal (working on a factual, NPOV encyclopedia)? Should we allow Wikipedia to become a safe haven for racist hatespeech? In the past, such speech was not tolerated at all, and was reason enough for a ban. Back when Jimbo and Larry were mostly in charge, hatespeech was off limits.
But in the last year hatespeech seems to have become acceptable, and those who use it have been rewarded, while victims of it are attacked. This is a sad turn of events, and will cause Wikipedia's repuation to suffer terribly. Already many academics I know view Wikipedia as hopeless; but if this phenomenon spreads its reputation will be hopelessly tarnished.
It doesn't matter if the hatespeech is towards Jews, blacks, homosexuals, Muslims, or anyone else. It has no place in an encyclopedia project, let alone in a society where we claim to respect human life.
Robert
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Robert wrote:
Sean B. writes:
Please explain to me how speech can kill someone. For extra credit, explain how words on a Web page can do any physical harm.
Do you really not know the answer? Ok, I will answer your question honestly, and accurately:
Many people used to say and write "I hate the fucking Jews. Kill the Jews". Then some people did kill Jews.
People? Wait a minute, we were talking about words killing someone! Where'd these people come from?
Many people used to say and write "I hate the fucking niggers. Kill the niggers". Then some people did kill blacks.
People? Wait a minute, we were talking about words killing someone! Where'd these people come from?
Many people used to say and write "I hate the fucking queers. Kill the quuers". Then some people did kill homosexuals.
People? Wait a minute, we were talking about words killing someone! Where'd these people come from?
In the real world, repeated hateful words often lead to violent actions. Anyone who claims otherwise is a poor liar.
Nobody that I know of is claiming that. The claim was that words alone, with no help from anyone, were killing people.
On 07/04/04 15:02, Robert wrote:
It doesn't matter if the hatespeech is towards Jews, blacks, homosexuals, Muslims, or anyone else. It has no place in an encyclopedia project, let alone in a society where we claim to respect human life.
Define "hate speech". With a definition that is likely to achieve consensus agreement. A consensus definition is an absolute minimum requirement for what you're asking for.
- d.
Part of the definition is making a false generalization, "Blue-eyed devils" can serve as an example. This stands for the proposition that all White people are active evil-doers. True enough in the case of isolated individuals, sometimes true of pretty good size mobs, even entire nation-states, but considered seriously, false and resulint in incitment. Intention is another part of a reasonable definition as an aggravating factor. Hate-speech is intended to produce action, or at least change in behavior, perhaps from tolerance to rejection.
Some problems exist with that definition, for example as Bush or Kerry campaign both attempt false generalizations intended to produce change in behavior. So it is also a matter of degree, a change in voting being at one extreme, the holocaust the other, thus addition of the qualifier "extreme".
So hate speech is a false generalization about an ethnic group, religious or political orientation or other identifiable group which tends to produce a change in behavior that is extremely unfavorable to that group. Calculated intention is an aggravation of the offense but not necessary.
Fred
From: David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Sun, 04 Jul 2004 16:04:09 +0000 To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] in the last year hatespeech seems to have become acceptable
On 07/04/04 15:02, Robert wrote:
It doesn't matter if the hatespeech is towards Jews, blacks, homosexuals, Muslims, or anyone else. It has no place in an encyclopedia project, let alone in a society where we claim to respect human life.
Define "hate speech". With a definition that is likely to achieve consensus agreement. A consensus definition is an absolute minimum requirement for what you're asking for.
- d.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 07/04/04 16:21, Fred Bauder wrote:
So hate speech is a false generalization about an ethnic group, religious or political orientation or other identifiable group which tends to produce a change in behavior that is extremely unfavorable to that group. Calculated intention is an aggravation of the offense but not necessary.
"which tends to produce a change in behaviour" is an ambiguity you could drive a truck through.
This is still coming down to "I know it when I see it" and is not suitable material for a policy. e.g. I think a lot of your opinions on left-wingers are *wrong*, but I certainly wouldn't call them *hate speech*. But I'm pretty sure others here would.
In dealing with the case we're actually talking about, i.e. WHEELER, what about this case is not amenable to the current dispute resolution process? The AC is quite slow so far, but has dealt properly so far with cases brought against egregiously offensive users (MNH, Irismeister, Paul Vogel).
I completely fail to see why an RFM and then if necessary an RFA can't be brought against WHEELER. Based on his obnoxiousness so far, I could write it myself if I could be bothered. I shouldn't have to, though, because anyone else sufficiently concerned to flood wikien-l with messages about his "hate speech" should have the energy to proceed using the tools in place.
This is a single case. I have PROFOUND qualms about making new policy based on a single case that should be susceptible to the tools we already have in place.
To those who have been writing to Wikipedia advocating that WHEELER be thrown off for his egregious offensiveness: please at least attempt using the tools that are already to hand.
- d.
On 07/04/04 15:02, Robert wrote:
But in the last year hatespeech seems to have become acceptable, and those who use it have been rewarded, while victims of it are attacked. This is a sad turn of events, and will cause Wikipedia's repuation to suffer terribly. Already many academics I know view Wikipedia as hopeless; but if this phenomenon spreads its reputation will be hopelessly tarnished.
This sounds like circular discussions with 142/entmoots on IRC. He says Wikipedia's policy direction is hopelessly flawed and he wants to change it to protect the 'GFDL corpus'.
If you think Wikipedia is hopelessly flawed and already doomed, why are you still here?
That question doesn't mean 'go away'. It means 'why not fork?' The text won't be lost - that's what 'open content' means. Text can flow back and forth.
This is not a meaningless suggestion - this is precisely what happened to es: to form Enciclopedia-Libre. The volunteers didn't like a floated policy and got up en masse and went elsewhere to form a project that is still vital and going strong. Volunteer motivation is incredibly powerful, but incredibly fragile.
RK, if you really believe Wikipedia needs the policy you advocate: make a fork and proceed. The text will be fine. If you are right, the volunteers will follow you. If you are wrong, they won't.
(These are probably in no way the opinions of the Wikimedia Foundation. I think active forks may well be a good thing; I think many others will strongly disagree ...)
This, by the way, also answers entmoot/142's arguments that Wikipedia needs factions. No, it needs *forks*. So 142, Lir, Plato, Mr-Natural-Health and Irismeister can work on Redpedia, producing GFDL material their way and using anything they want from Wikipedia. What they cannot do is force the volunteers to want to put up with them.
The text will remain GFDL. But the volunteers are what make a project active. will the volunteers want to work under your policies? So far they want to work under the present ones. But if you push through your favoured policy and they don't like it, they *will* get up and leave.
- d.