User:DesertPipeline/Loaded words and terms on Wikipedia

On Wikipedia, words and terms are sometimes used which implicitly push a point-of-view simply by their use. While Wikipedia should certainly state that these words and terms are used, and attribute their use to sources, it should not state them in "Wikipedia's voice" as if they are fact; doing so causes Wikipedia inherently to appear to be agreeing with the point-of-view expressed by the word or term, even if that is not the intention.

Some might consider this essay to be a suggestion to violate WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS; however, being neutral, even when the point of view being pushed is so widespread and accepted, is not righting great wrongs. It is simply not making things worse.

High priority

1. "Consumer" and "consume"

These are the highest priority loaded words because of their prevalence. They are present in a large number of articles; some even contain one in their titles, such as Consumer electronics (at the time of writing, in March 2021). The words are both non-neutral and non-literal; Wikipedia's Manual of Style recommends literal wording, as this is an encylopedia. Essentially, the word "consumer" means people. It is true that people are consumers, at least in the sense that they consume food and drink. This is not what is being referred to, however. It is metaphorical, and equating "purchasing" with "consuming" – even though many things that people purchase are not consumed by their use. Electronics are a good example – using them does not "consume" them, except in the sense that they will eventually wear out and stop working. This is not at all comparable with food and drink, however: such things are immediately used up by their use.

The metaphor is ridiculous when it comes to items that are not used up immediately by their use; it is even more ridiculous when applied to software – and digital works, such as books, music and games – which by the nature of digital data cannot be "used up" at all, no matter how much they are used.

The use of this word by the public is beneficial for corporations who would rather we think less and purchase more. Wikipedia's rejection of this word would serve to make our writing more neutral and more literal.

• Replacements for this word: "person", "persons", "people", "the public", "the general public". If purchasing is directly relevant to the sentence, then it is okay to use words such as "purchaser", "customer", "buyer".
• In the specific case of the article title mentioned above, a neutral and literal replacement would be "Personal-use electronics" – because that is essentially what that term is trying to convey.

2. "Intellectual property"

This term is only second because it is less prevalent on Wikipedia than "consumer". However, it is certainly no better. In fact, the message that this term intends to communicate is a falsehood. There is no such thing as "intellectual property" – the term merely groups together separate laws, the only relationship between them being that they apply to intangible concepts and ideas. "Intangible" is an important word here – something that is intangible cannot be "property", a word which applies only to physical objects which a person can be deprived of.

By contrast, concepts and ideas cannot be stolen: if a person mentions an idea they have had to someone else, it is true that the listener can copy that idea, but the person who came up with the idea has not been deprived of it; where originally one person had an idea, now two people have the same idea. Corporate interests would have us believe that this is a negative thing, because they can achieve higher profits if nobody else is allowed to copy any good ideas they come up with.

As mentioned earlier, this term is grouping together laws that are unrelated to each other. In practice, this means that the public gets the idea that said laws are all designed to work together to achieve restricting anyone from doing anything with another person's idea, unless it is "sufficiently original". This then results in those laws becoming what corporate interests desire them to be, rather than what they were intended to be. For instance, copyright is supposed to be a trade: the public loses some freedom, while gaining works from authors who would otherwise not publish them with the presumption that they would not benefit. That such a trade is worth it is debatable; however, because copyright has now been twisted into something it is not, the public loses even more freedom than was originally intended. Even if the trade works, it has become unbalanced. It is often not even the authors themselves who push for stricter laws relating to intangible concepts and ideas; most of the time, it is the publishers, who are the real beneficiaries of doing such things.

Avoiding this term on Wikipedia will be difficult, because it is deeply embedded, and purposely so. The solution is to attribute the term to proponents of the idea, rather than – for instance – stating directly in "Wikipedia's voice" that all the separate laws which it groups together should be grouped together by using it to describe those laws.

• For this term, there are no replacements, as it describes a concept which does not actually exist. As mentioned above, the term should not be used in "Wikipedia's voice", because this implies agreement with the point of view that it pushes.

3. "Digital rights management"

From the perspective of those who benefit from this term, they may well think it is their "right" to impose technical restrictions on the copying of software and digital works. This is an opinion, however, which Wikipedia should not appear to agree with. Replacement terms are "digital restrictions management" and "digital restrictions mechanisms". While these may appear to be non-neutral as well, they simply describe what such mechanisms actually do, which is restrict the user.

4. "Piracy"

Unauthorised or prohibited copying is often referred to by this smear word. Actual pirates were known to be violent individuals; this word implies that the act of copying without permission is equivalent to attacking ships and kidnapping and murdering people.

• Replacements for this word: "unauthorised copying", "prohibited copying" (when it is illegal).

5. "Copyright owner"

Unlike the natural right of something in someone's possession being "owned" by them, copyright is an artificial privilege. People "hold" copyright; it expires after a certain length of time. Therefore, "copyright holder" is a neutral replacement, and describes the system fairly.

6. "Free and open source", "FOSS", "Free (libre) and open source", "Free/libre and open source"

The last two of these terms have been considered neutral, but they still carry an incorrect implication: free software and open source software are not directly comparable in the first place. Purely superficially, it may be true that they seem to be the same – but where the free software movement is concerned with freedom in computing, and considers anything less to be an injustice, those who support the concept of open source often only point out technical benefits. While often these different motivations produce similar results, it is better to recognise and acknowledge that they are indeed separate rather than often grouping them together for the sake of simplicity.
If they absolutely must be grouped together, it might be fairer to say "Free (libre) or open source software" – this suggests less similarity than "and", but it is not without its problems as well.

7. "User-generated content"

Not only does this term use the word "content", which devalues writing and other works, it refers to them as "generated", as if to imply that there was no creative effort involved. Therefore, it doubly degrades them, possibly with the intent of framing them as somehow sub-par compared to works that are written or produced by "official" authors. The purpose of this may be to justify maltreatment of the works of such people, and to exploit the authors themselves in ways that would be shunned if done to "official" authors.

• Replacements for this term: "user-submitted works", "user-written works", "user-submitted material", "user-written material" and possibly others.

8. "Industry"

An 'industry', as defined by the European Union since 2003, means "automated production of material goods". In the contexts of "software industry" and "game industry", those who push these terms would have us believe that software is developed in some sort of factory-like way (and while there are rampant problems with crunch time, that's beside the point). One possible reason for making us think this way is to encourage the idea in the public perception that software should be subject to patents. After all, all other (actual) industries have patents. Therefore, by using these terms, we are subtly agreeing with the point of view that patents should be applied to software.

"Entertainment industry" is another – likely an attempt to further increase perception of the commercialisation of art. Perhaps another implication is that we should accept the mistreatment of artists by publishers and simply consider them as "workers" in a "factory", producing "goods" to sell for the benefit of their employers.

In any context other than actual industry, the word "industry" should not be used. "Field" is often an accurate replacement – i.e. "field of work". "Business" can also be used; for example, "entertainment business", as distinguished from less commercialised authorship of entertainment.

9. "Protection"

"Protection", used in contexts such as "copyright protection" and "patent protection", implies that something negative is being prevented from happening, but this is the point of view of the corporations who benefit more when nothing can be copied and shared. It also highlights those who are benefitting from these laws while ignoring the many more who are restricted by them.

Using the word "protection" is also a misunderstanding of the purpose of copyright law and patent law. Copyright and patents are not intended to "protect" the work of authors or inventors; they are intended to modify their behaviour to the benefit of the public. It is presumed that, in order to encourage the publication of more art, or the development of new technology, authors and inventors must be given control over how their work is used for a limited time. That the outcome of this control may appear to be "protection" for an author's or inventor's work does not mean that this is actually what it is.

To be neutral, we should remove the word "protection" and simply say "copyrighted", "patented", etc.

Medium priority

1. "MP3 player"

MP3 is just one of the formats that digital audio players can play. Referring to them, therefore, as "MP3 players" promotes one format over all others. "Digital audio player", or simply "audio player" when that term is clear enough are two replacements for it.

Words and terms where there may be no clear solution

1. "Linux"

Many people refer to the kernel, Linux, as well as the free software operating system it is used in by the same name. This is confusing, but there is a more subtle problem: merely calling the operating system "Linux" ignores the work done by the GNU Project. Would the kernel, Linux, exist if the GNU Project did not exist? Perhaps. But the GNU Project is the reason that some people started to recognise the need for a free software operating system.

The name "Linux" also comes with unfortunate implications on the philosophy side: where the intention was user freedom, this is being discarded in favour of achieving mere "popularity". That something is popular is fine; but if the entire point of all this effort were simply dropped in favour of purely-technical considerations, we would be right back where we started.

One of the points in favour of calling the operating system as a whole "Linux" is that the alternatives are too awkward or cumbersome. Perhaps they are awkward, but sometimes it is not possible to say something simply without being incorrect.

This word is less easy to solve than any other on this list because of one simple problem: whether we say "Linux" or "GNU/Linux", it is technically a point of view. However, the point of view of those who say "GNU/Linux" is that knowing the history of the operating system is important to recognise why it even exists in the first place, and why it was made. It also cannot be said that the GNU Project is unrelated; it developed many tools that the kernel, Linux, needed. If in a situation where we must choose between two points of view, the sensible option should be to choose the point of view that is more reasonable.

• Replacements for this word: "GNU/Linux", "Linux/GNU", "GNU + Linux", "Linux + GNU".

External links

Words to avoid (gnu.org) – this essay's main reference point, which is probably worded a lot better