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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Jtdirl (talk | contribs) at 02:50, 5 March 2003. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Old talk archived at Talk:'AIDS Kills Fags Dead' slogan/Archive 1 by Oliver P. 13:47 Mar 3, 2003 (UTC)

In many European states, Incitement to Hatred legislation prohibits the use of a term that by its usage or reportage can be conscrued, however unintentionally, as encouraging the expression and reinforcing the opinion of hatred, based on gender, orientation, disability, race or belief. In this context,

  • the use of the headline was unnecessarily provocative, in so far as other means could be used to convey the information;
  • it breaks general publishing ettiquete of usage regarding offensive slogans in encyclopædiæ and source-books, in which such slogans feature within the text of the article but not as the primary definitionary title; (such a title would never be used in any mainstream encyclopædia, for example because it would see seen as unnecessary provocative, POV and giving credence by usage to the term, even if that had not been the intention of the author or publisher, indeed they may have intended the exact opposite.)
  • As Jimbo Wales confirmed, it also ran contrary to Wikipedia's own rules and if it had not been renamed, would probably have been removed as a violation of Wikipedia's own mandate, principles and ethos.

While the US has established the freedom of the press under the 5th Amendment, no such 'absolute' right exists in almost any other jurisdiction. In covering issues like that espoused in the words of the slogan, most publishing organs (whether the media or sourcebooks), both as a matter of principle and also because of legal considerations, would not contemplate using such a phrase in a headline or title. Putting it in quotations in itself is no defence if the fact that it is in quotations is not clearly shown to be an unambiguous disclaimer. Even on a printed page, that is difficult, unless you use a bolded large font for the quotations than for the quote. On a computer screen, it is almost impossible to visually draw instantaneous attention to the quotes before the quotation. That is why such a quote is by definition not used in a title, certainly not when the title consists almost solely of those words. Similarly, phrases that are used like 'kill the infidel', etc are not used in titles, but given a neutral NPOV definition in the title which they leads to the article explaining the quote, its meaning and context. Saying that you are simply reporting or explaining facts is no defence if you had the option of conveying the information in a less provocative manner and chose not to do so. Equally saying the content of the article showed the article was not intended to incite hatred would be no defence, for the issue would be the title, especially as anyone looking through Wiki would see the article title but only a small number would go so far as to read it, especially as some would interpret the title as suggesting that the article was at best validating, even if not agreeing with the phrase.

While the odds on Wiki running into legal problems were slim, the biggest danger was that some journalist doing a goggle search or having come into Wiki would have found the article title, contacted a body like in Ireland the Equality Authority or the Director of Public Prosecutions' office asked for a comment, got a condemnation, and then ran a major story - US WEBSITE ACCUSED OF ATTACKING GAYS, ENCYCLOPÆDIA ACCUSED OF GAY ATTACK, etc and calls from politicians, the media and gay rights groups, for criminal prosecution under the Incitement to Hatred Act, promoting a lot of very negative publiciity for Wikipedia and damaging its reputation, all for the sake of a badly worded title that broke wiki's own rules in the first place and for which, as Svevertigo has shown, there was a clear, less offensive and provocative alternative. JtdIrL 03:06 Mar 3, 2003 (UTC)

Heh, with all the US-bashing of late (and mind you, I'm no fan of Bush), it's ironic that it's the US where something this difficult doesn't have to be hidden away. I guess this is a foretaste of what the wikipedia will have to be like for that 3-billionth reader... Stan 03:33 Mar 3, 2003 (UTC)

I've just run into an edit conflict with my last edit, and with all this bloody page moving, I can't tell if anything got lost. Somebody should check it out if they added anything. --Camembert

Turns out that my edit got lost. I don't know why I bothered, to be honest. I'll come back tomorrow when you might have all grown up a bit. --Camembert
OK, it wasn't "lost", but "reverted" and then put back at homophobic hate speech (which is where it was when I first made the edit). OK, I'm reasonably happy now. I'm not getting sucked into an argument on this one, by the way. --Camembert

Alright, forget all that I wrote above. I'm going back to the music pages until the morrow. They're quieter. --Camembert (to be clear, the version of this article that I put at homophobic hate speech before it ended up here in an edit conflict is this one

Im curious, JT, Mav, Zoe, other reasonable people... is the term "homophobic" itself too much of an adjective for a NPOV article? (Can't one be anti-gay in beliefs without necessarily being "homophobic")
With any subject there is a heirarchy and these are the articles I see as relevant by their order:

Thats about all that I can see thats relevant... theres about 200K worth of text to fill before having to get into specifics, and even then the "AKFD" slogan is... unwarranted. - Put politely. -&#35918&#30505 -&#35918&#30505

On Sun, 2 Mar 2003, Axel Boldt wrote on the wikien-l mailing list:

The title "homophobic hate speech" had been suggested as "better" by Oliver Pereira, and Tannin agreed.

It seems that I've been misunderstood again... Hopefully now that Jimbo has said the article is okay, the issue will be settled quickly, but just in case it isn't, I think I'd better clarify my position.

My words were, "perhaps a more general article on homophobic hate speech would be better". This was in a list summarising the arguments (as I perceived them) against there being an article specifically about the phrase "AIDS Kills Fags Dead".

Just to make sure it's clear, my summarising the arguments didn't mean that I agreed with them. However, in this case, I did agree with the statement, although I did point out at the end of the post that I wasn't convinced by it as an argument. That is, I agreed that a more general article would be better, but pointed out that no such article had at that time been written. I apologise if my meaning was not clear, but I meant that in the absence of a wide-ranging article which could comfortably absorb the information from the "AIDS Kills Fags Dead" article, the mere fact that such an article would be better if it existed was not a convincing argument for the removal of the "AIDS Kills Fags Dead" article.

I'm still not convinced by any of the arguments against the presence of the article (now thankfully renamed), and have now decided that the information is probably too specific to be comfortably absorbed into any more general article. I have therefore now decided that I support the existence of the article. (I'm still not entirely sure about the name, though. I think the slogan 'AIDS Kills Fags Dead' would be less startling. The current title might look at first glance as if we're making a statement, and requires reading to the end of the title to see that it's about a slogan.) -- Oliver P. 13:38 Mar 3, 2003 (UTC)

This article seems to be informative, what is the objection to it? . Susan Mason

The title, Susan, the title. JtdIrL 02:50 Mar 5, 2003 (UTC)

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