On 01/06/07, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/1/07, Stephen Bain stephen.bain@gmail.com wrote:
It's a consequence of the endless debates about these various lists of Jews that have been raging since the dawn of wikitime. It's to counter the criticism that "how can you incontrovertibly declare that so-and-so is Jewish?"
Yeah it's a strange sort of category. I don't know whether it's Jews in particular doing it, but there have been some pretty concerted efforts to go around labelling as many scientists as possible "Jewish scientists" etc. I assume the intent is to promote or recognise the religion in some way, rather than to "out" the people in question, as the first post suggested.
I don't feel the intent is to out people - after all, the proect has a page thanking people for being so proud of their gay friends, I think we can assume well-meaning editors for actual content :-)
It's just that when read in conjunction with something about outing, it does seem a little... uh. Slightly not quite right, you know?
Imagine, hum, "The following list of people are cigar smokers. The list contains individuals who, in accordance with Wikipedia's verifiability and no original research policies, have been identified as cigar smokers by reliable sources."
Something about that sort of notice just oozes suspiciousness.
[I do *also* have issues with labelling people as Jewish or as "of Dutch origin" or whatever based on inferences from known relatives or the like, when they don't self-define as part of that grouping, but that's another matter, one to do with article content, and partly stems from an American/not-American cultural divide.]