[WikiEN-l] Sep 11
Ray Saintonge
saintonge at telus.net
Fri Jan 16 10:13:53 UTC 2004
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
>
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