User talk:85.54.249.240

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[edit] Re:About E.T.A. changes (¿¿NPOV??)

Hello Javier,

Thank you for your comments. I appreciate you taking the time to explain your reasoning to me. I do not disagree with you that E.T.A. is a terrorist organization. The changes I made were for a variety of reasons, which I hope I can explain to you.

Wikipedia operates on a Neutral Point of View (NPOV, sorry for not expanding the acronym) policy. This means that all information provided in Wikipedia articles should be presented without bias. While referring to E.T.A. as a terrorist organization is not necessarily biased, using the term to describe them overall may be seen as such (there has been some discussion about this at Talk:ETA.

More importantly, there are multiple policies on the use of the word "terrorist" in Wikipdia articles. It may seem silly, but lots of thought has gone into the reasoning behind the policy. There is an old discussion regarding the use of the word "terrorist" in articles at Wikipedia:Use of the word terrorism (policy development), which you might find interesting to read. However, Wikipedia:Words_to_avoid#Terrorist.2C_terrorism gives the most convincing (and most important) argument for use of the word "terrorist". Please take a look at that previous link. Although there are arguments before and against, the most important part is "The words terrorism and terrorist may be cited where there is a verifiable and cited indication of who is calling a person or group terrorist." For example, farther down in the first paragraph in the ETA article, the organization is described as a terrorist by saying: "ETA is considered by Spain, France, the European Union, and the United States to be a terrorist organization, with more than 800 killings attributed to it." These are verifiable facts. It is just important not to make a blanket statement, however true it may be.

I hope you understand. Please feel free to ask me anymore questions if you have them. If you would like to discuss more uses of the word "terrorism", you may want to bring them up at Wikipedia talk:Words to avoid. Good luck with your editing around Wikipedia. I hope that you continue to contribute. -- Natalya 00:43, 17 April 2006 (UTC)