Welcome

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Hello MrWardington and welcome to Wikipedia! We appreciate encyclopedic contributions, but some of your contributions, such as the ones to Wim Hof, do not conform to our policies. For more information on this, see Wikipedia's policies on vandalism and limits on acceptable additions. If you'd like to experiment with the wiki's syntax, please do so in the sandbox (but beware that the contents of the sandbox are deleted frequently) rather than in articles.

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Wording for suicide

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I've reverted your changes to David Foster Wallace‎‎. The wording of the category cannot be changed like that; you would need to discuss to get the name of the category changed. I can see where there may be concerns with the wording in the prose. I'm not sure if it's covered anywhere in the Manual of Style, but my hunch is if "committed" is used in the category name, that's the consensus of what to use in the prose as well. —C.Fred (talk) 02:21, 31 May 2019 (UTC)Reply

Hello, I can understand your point regarding maintaining the category name, even if I disagree with it and would require discussion to change. But in terms of the wording, it's incorrect and has a horrible history which implies stigma. The reason we've come to use the word "commit" to describe the action of suicide is due to the fact it was criminalized in the early 20th century. By virtue of that history, using commit implies criminality and is stigmatizing language. I rarely edit on wikipedia, but when I see the word committed in relation to suicide, I correct it with neutral wording. This isn't just my opinion, it's common practice within psychiatry to use neutral descriptors. You should read this article to understand the controversy around the wording. If anything as users of this site and contributors, we should seek to not imply bias or judgement but maintain neutrality in speech. I hope you can agree and we can adapt the wording to suit. MrWardington (talk) 02:57, 31 May 2019 (UTC)Reply