There are a BIG incomprehension in this debate (perhaps due to our poor english). We are not obscurantist who want to hide the reality and show a clean world where everyone are friends ! I think we all agree the better way to speak about racism is to explain with a neutral point of view the different way of thinking. And we don't think the actual version of articles we re-wrote are good articles.
Philippe created articles he describe himself as not NPOV. But more than not NPOV, many french wikipedians think they were false, racist or anti-Semite. Create a good article on racism can't be done speedily, so our problem was, what to do with those article until we will be able to propose a NPOV version. My solution was to put the article in the talk page and use the usable information of his articles (there are some) and add our own research.
Aoineko
Wow! This was a fantastic paragraph, buried in Brion's longer letter, and it was so good I wanted to just reproduce it here to highlight it.
Brion Vibber wrote:
The current versions of these articles aren't necessarily the best way to handle it; I think they would do better to discuss *and debunk* racist notions as much as possible, putting them in the proper context so when some kid hears about "racialism" or "reverse racism" and then looks it up on Wikipedia they'll see a rational, neutral explanation of what makes some people think and speak that way -- so they'll _understand_ why to discount those ideas. Pretending the terms don't exist or saying "oh, that's just what RACISTS think, if you touch them it might rub off on you! stay away!" strikes me as ineffective, or even counterproductive ("look, those Wikipedians are so biased they're afraid to take us on rationally!"). There are lessons to be learned from the evil that men do.
--Jimbo _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@wikipedia.org http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l