Talk:Murder of Mollie Tibbetts/Archive 3

Frankly I don't care if CNN uses a slur. Calling a person, even somebody accused of a serious crime, a slur is not something that should be done in Wikipedia's voice. This is a violation of WP:NPOV and not something to be inserted without getting consensus first. Simonm223 (talk) 13:56, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Alien is not a slur, it's a widely used legal term. We don't use euphemisms here. Natureium (talk) 14:09, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Immigrant is much clearer and doesn't have the... dehumanizing... context of alien. Simonm223 (talk) 14:12, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Alien is a legal term, regardless of connotation. I disagree with the notion that it violates NPOV. Strikerforce^Talk 14:15, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Me too. It's a label shared with hideous bug-eyed mutants from Mars, but that's just because they're from Mars, nothing about their tentacles or personalities. InedibleHulk (talk) 14:21, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, I apparently cannot find the part in WP:NPOV where it says to use the legal term for things over what sources use Galobtter (pingó mió) 14:29, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

But it does not matter what the official or legal term is, at all. The Diaz, that the justice department wants people to use illegal aliens does not matter one whit. What matters is what sources use. In general, news sources use undocumented or illegal immigrant (as noted in that CNN piece), and so do high quality academic sources. In this specific case too, illegal or undocumented immigrant is the most used term. Galobtter (pingó mió) 14:29, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

As a more general question not directly related to this, is it a policy that we use the exact words that sources do? What if reliable sources use a slang term for something? Natureium (talk) 14:36, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Alien is a legal term, and it is appropriate (see linked article). Can @Simonm223: bring a source by a reliable source that it is a slur? It's his onus to do such, since he is making such claims. --1l2l3k (talk) 14:41, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Without weighing on either side of this, here is an interesting source. GAB^gab 14:46, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

The "illegal" part is definitely a bit sketchy. InedibleHulk (talk) 14:52, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

GAB, with all due respect for the WaPo, I'd request for this a less partisan source than that. The article is completely unusable for this purpose. WaPo has been fighting this administration since day one and is not independent (given all the issues of Bezos with Trump). Alien is still a legal term. Sentences such as In recent years, there has been a push to change the vocabulary surrounding immigration to avoid the term “illegal.” that the article uses, without making any reference to who is pushing, and making the word illegal taboo, does strike me as the article is not a reliable source for this purpose. --1l2l3k (talk) 14:58, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

It's the "they" that isn't pushing to erase the equally-sketchy "undocumented". Only ever two sides to American political debate. As a Canadian, I suggest going with plain "alien" or unqualified "immigrant". Maybe just "Mexican". InedibleHulk (talk) 15:10, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

You are trolling. Both "undocumented" and "illegal" are perfectly fine words, and so are "alien" and "immigrant". Neither of them is a slur and continuing this discussion is feeding the trolls. The connotations given to words may become political weapons by whoever has the power to make changes to the freedom of speech. One day things can change further and one can be accused of breathing, but until we have a reliable source that breathing is bad for thy neighbor in wiki, we'll still accept terms that are perfectly fine. --1l2l3k (talk) 15:38, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

I don't troll and when I do, it's subtler than this. They're both sketchy per the valid points in two sources about them. At least when combined with aliens and immigrants. InedibleHulk (talk) 15:45, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Well, you ironically suggested "Mexican", correct? That was not called for. Anyways, we have to go for what the source says, so I'll comment down below.--1l2l3k (talk) 16:00, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Nothing ironic about it. He's a Mexican (meaning someone from Mexico). I think that conveys he's not from Iowa adequately. InedibleHulk (talk) 16:03, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Oh I see, my apologies then: I thought you were talking in general. While I have nothing against using his nationality in the article, the discussion here is merely for the use of the word "alien", someone is saying it's a slur, and my point is that it is not. --1l2l3k (talk) 16:30, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

And my point is that neither of you are (probably) going to get so wound about "Mexican". There doesn't always have to be a lesser of two evils. But you're right, it's not a slur, just something someone has associated with something worse. InedibleHulk (talk) 17:17, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

• If we want to get technical, an alien is everyone in a country who is not a national, and this includes people visiting temporarily. An immigrant is a person who comes to a country to live with the intention to stay permanently. Immigrants may or may not be also aliens. An immigrant who has become a naturalized citizen is not an alien. A citizen born abroad who travels to the country to live is also a non-alien immigrant. A person who travels to the country to stay temporarily (or is in a legal status that allows them only to stay temporarily even if they may transition to an immigrant status at a later date), is legally a non-immigrant. A non-immigrant non-alien would be someone who has dual citizenship, or a national living permanently abroad, who travels to one or the other country in which they do not reside, in order to stay temporarily. GMG^talk 14:59, 28 August 2018 (UTC)
• Alien is a legal term.E.M.Gregory (talk) 15:04, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Use what reliable sources use. "Legal term" ain't got nothing to do with it. Volunteer Marek 15:18, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

If you want to make that argument, please answer my question above. Natureium (talk) 15:22, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

For shits and giggles, here's the first dozen sources that come up in a google news search for "Mollie Tibbetts" (in quotes) and the terminology they use (paywall sources ignored).

So it does look like "immigrant" wins out by a good margin given this small sample of today's top news results. Only three mentions of "alien" and all quoting the White House or Trump himself. Even Huckabee Sanders uses "illegal immigrant". GMG^talk 15:44, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Please answer my question above. Natureium (talk) 15:50, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Yes. We generally use the wording that the preponderance of independent reliable sources use. Thus big table of sources taken from a neutral search term (i.e., one that does not include either "alien" or "immigrant"). GMG^talk 15:53, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

That didn't answer my question. I asked what policy says that we need to use the exact wording of reliable sources. FWIF, I don't have a strong opinion on what term we use here, but if people keep saying that we need to use what sources say, they need to say where they're coming up with that rule. Natureium (talk) 15:56, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

No, there's no policy. Unless it's a proper noun or quote. We're meant to paraphrase general things. It's just the facts that need to be consensually agreed. But if we can figure out which phrasing pisses the fewest people off in a small sample, it may translate to how well we avoid irking a majority of readers. And I can't find "illegal immigrants" in the Snopes story, for what that's worth. InedibleHulk (talk) 15:57, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Mainly WP:YESPOV and WP:LABEL I would imagine. GMG^talk 15:59, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Per WP:SET Illegal alien is preferred to Illegal immigrant. In googlebooks, as per research below, we have:

Illegal alien - 165,000 results

Illegal immigrant - 137,000 results

As such illegal alien is preferred. The difference is not big, but why disregard the expression illegal alien when is supported by scholarship? --1l2l3k (talk) 16:08, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

In the first page of alien results, I see The Way of the Shadow Wolves, by Steven Seagal. That's not very scholarly. Is it? In any case, the "about" numbers don't really mean anything. Directly following your links, it tells me 118,000 for alien and 75,200 for immigrant. InedibleHulk (talk) 16:24, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Yes, this is a poor metric as it measures usage across the English language without context. It's also going to be biased toward 19th century sources that are available in the public domain in their entirety. Compare homosexual (5.8 million), gay (32.5k) and faggot (583k). Clearly one of these is the preferable term in the modern context, and there's no way to tell how many of these are talking about people who are happy or about bundles of sticks. It's much better to examine specifically the verbiage used by mainstream sources in this particular context. GMG^talk 16:36, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

^yup Galobtter (pingó mió) 16:41, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

InedibleHulk, Googlebooks helps us see the use in English language of a certain expression. The number of pages is important, but the number of hits is more, as it shows the times an expression is used in English. My point is the expression "illegal alien" is used, and a lot, and is not a "slur" expression. Who is pushing such position needs to argument it well, and not with cherrypicked sources. The comparisons with "gay" words are irrelevant. GreenMeansGo says that MSM is preferred to GoogleBooks to 19th century sources in English language? Hm, and why should we think that we are smarter than the 19th century scholars by running towards the MSM and not our forefathers, who perhaps were smarter than we are? And why should we bypass the wikipolicies? Besides, I don't see it in the policies that MSM is preferred to scholarship and books. --1l2l3k (talk) 16:45, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

The comparison above was chosen specifically because one of them is obviously a slur. Similarly, you can find many uncontroversial slurs that were common (and fairly neutral at the time) terms in the 19th Century that we would not dream of including in mainspace today (things like "colored" and "mongoloid" come to mind). I'm not arguing that "Alien" is in fact a slur. What I'm arguing is that if it were, your test wouldn't tell us one way or the other. The same test would tell is to prefer in mainspace, homosexual, faggot, and gay in that order, which is obviously ludicrous. GMG^talk 16:51, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Reading the books can help, but counting the numbers won't. I get a million more homosexuals than Green does, and about a third fewer gays and faggots (not that there's anything wrong with that). A lot of your results may not have had the words in them at all; I certainly didn't see them bolded in the blurbs. It may be a way to find a hint, but there's no easy answer there. That said, I don't have a better idea for ennumerating the way people talk. InedibleHulk (talk) 16:54, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

We do not emulate the way people talk. Galobtter (pingó mió) 17:02, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

To an extent, of course we do. Plain English works best. But we don't go about learning the language by comparing round numbers generated by a mysterious proprietary algorithm that increasingly tells us what we want to hear. On that note, when I said "ennumerate", I meant "enumerate", not "emulate". InedibleHulk (talk) 17:31, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

To be clear, the policy is simply WP:NPOV, which requires us to represent fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all of the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic and that includes language usage. The sources I sampled are all comparatively reliable and on topic. The sources you have sampled are not, or if they are, we have no idea to what degree. GMG^talk 16:56, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Are you seriously saying that we should base our encyclopedia based on what 19th century sources says? Look, per NPOV and V we base our articles on mainstream reliable sources, the best ones we have - the sources that matter are the ones that are used, because those are the ones we base our article on. And those, which are currently just "MSM", use "illegal immigrant" over "illegal alien". That is the more prominent viewpoint, one could say. Leave alone that a google scholar search gets more hits for "illegal immigrant", but that's really irrelevant. Galobtter (pingó mió) 17:02, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Now what may be a useful SET is something like a news search for "Mollie Tibbetts" "alien" - 68,500 results, and "Mollie Tibbetts" "immigrant" - 526,000 results. Although as we've seen your mileage may vary, but surely shouldn't vary by almost an entire order of magnitude. GMG^talk 17:14, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Can you please provide links to those results, please? --1l2l3k (talk) 18:24, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Hmm. Not sure why I didn't to begin with. "Mollie Tibbetts" "alien" - 68,500 results[1], and "Mollie Tibbetts" "immigrant" - 536,000 results[2]. GMG^talk 18:27, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

I get 96,100 and 173,000. "Alien" gets 118 actual results, culminating in alien Floridan children. The second shows 109, ending in how old Ringo's gotten. InedibleHulk (talk) 19:15, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

I don't understand why we're consistently getting different results. I'm consistently getting the same, even on different browsers. GMG^talk 19:25, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

It's like that all over. Localized and personalized spaces for our "unique" thought bubbles, even if we thought we told them not to track us. Confirmation bias helps advertisers better serve mankind. And not like aliens serve us, either! More like how the aliens serve us. InedibleHulk (talk) 21:33, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Today it's 107,000 aliens to 110,000 immigrants (for me). InedibleHulk (talk) 17:30, 3 September 2018 (UTC)

Thanks! I believe that the fact that the left leaning Rolling Stone appears in the top of your search and says alien proves my point that alien is NOT a right wing slur, :-). --1l2l3k (talk) 18:34, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

One not need be a slur for the other to clearly be the more mainstream and therefore more neutral formulation. Also TRS is using the term in attributed quotes, and not in their own voice. In their own voice they say "immigrant". GMG^talk 18:48, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Regardless of whether alien is a slur or not, Wikipedia uses "Illegal Immigrant" as its terminology in other places, which is the terminology we should use for consistency. It's true that conservatives/right leaning people will tend to prefer "illegal alien" for whatever reason, because they think it's harsher or less politically correct or whatever.

What is frustrating me, though, is the constant POV editing of the "illegal immigrant/alien" descriptor into the lede. The lede needs to summarize the body of the article! If the body of the article says that there's a political controversy over his immigration status and that his status is disputed, that's what the lede should say, too. Throwing an unqualified descriptor into the lede that doesn't match what the body says at all is clearly indicative of drive by POV editing that violates WP:BLPCRIME. Please stop! Wikipedia is not your place to call out the suspect's immigration status to push your political talking points. – FenixFeather ^{(talk)(Contribs)} 17:04, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

I have not said that we cannot use "illegal immigrant". I am Ok using it as the sources say. Also I'm saying that "alien" is not a slur (just in case I wasn't clear enough in saying it probably 5 times by now). If some people start saying that it is a slur, just because their political ennemies use it, doesn't make it such. --1l2l3k (talk) 18:24, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement stated "law enforcement remains absolutely confident that we’ve correctly identified the suspect as an illegal alien from Mexico."[1]

(Emphasis added for clarity). XavierItzm (talk) 07:05, 29 August 2018 (UTC)