[WikiEN-l] Could we tone down the language a bit?

[Daniel P. B. Smith]

Someone on this mailing recently started a thread:

> Subject: [WikiEN-l] psychosis and wikipedia.
>
> I'd love to see some psychology-oriented individual do a case study  
> on what
> kind of people are attracted to editing on Wikipedia.  What  
> psychological
> defects lurk behind the computer screens and the keyboards.

Could we please, please, _please_ try to tone down some of the use of  
wildly exaggerated language and hype in this mailing list?

Psychosis means "A severe mental disorder, with or without organic  
damage, characterized by derangement of personality and loss of  
contact with reality and causing deterioration of normal social  
functioning."

As in schizophrenia.

It does _not_ mean a difficult person, a jerk, a bastard, an arrogant  
adolescent, etc. Nor does it mean a person obsessed with an ideology  
and a pitbull determination to inflict it on everyone.

I'm no psychologist, but in my fifteen years as a USENET participant,  
I have perhaps _twice_ seen postings that I thought might, in fact,  
actually have been made by someone suffering from schizophrenia. I  
have yet to see anything similar on Wikipedia.

Words _do_ have meanings.