Talk:Hezbollah

Name

Howard--a pre-emptive strike (groan)...the reason for "Hezbollah" is very obvious: it is the common name in English. This should be our starting-point. If you want to argue, heroically, that it should be "Hezballah," be my guest, but we are going to start the article as "Hezbollah." --Larry Sanger 21:41, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Larry, please cite an authority for that it is the most common single transliteration in English. I am trying to create an article, to which there will be multiple redirects for every transliteration I know; I'm not trying to provoke naming arguments.

If you want the correct English name, it is Party of God, which then can be transliterated Hezb Allah. That being said, there are multiple transliterations. Can we try to get the article written with appropriate redirects and not stop the content from being written over transliteration arguments? When I worked for the Library of Congress, one of my projects was the multilanguage, multialphabet computer interface. Although that was before this group was formed, I am intimately familiar with both the problems of transliteration and the need for cross-indexing.

Now, if you were to go, for example, to the Library of Congress Subject Index, I would be happy to use whatever it considers the primary indexing term for this organization. Honestly, I don't know what they use. You will see, in my citation to Globalsecurity, a very well respected resource in politicomilitary affairs, that they use four different transliterations and explain the derivation. Please do me the same courtesy of citing the use of the name, and at least stop changing until I can get the redirects in place. I'm not trying to pre-empt anything. Howard C. Berkowitz 21:57, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

I know that everyone except stupid old me absolutely deprecates the use of Google as source for referencing how common some word or usage is (except, of course, when Google agrees with their own particular assertion), but I just did a Google for both "Hezbollah" and for "Hezballah", fully expecting that it would overwhelming support Larry's assertion. To my surprise, however, Google shows 5,610,000 hits for Hezbollah and 5,650,000 for Hezballah. That's really astonishingly close. So I'll leave it up to you gentlemen and any others to argue this particular one. Hayford Peirce 22:24, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Hayford, my point is that is there is no single spelling or "common usage" of many of these terms, especially across languages and orthography/transliteration. If one wanted to title the article "Party of God", and then have every redirect possible to it, I'd be absolutely fine with it. For user accessibility, the best we can do is lots of redirects, and, for that matter, to supplement with less common names in text, which Google, etc., will find.

No, I can't say I agree with Google as a source of usage. There are, in many fields, authoritative naming criteria, such as Medical Subject Headings; I'll check if the Library of Congress subject heading index is on the Internet (when I worked there, I had in-house access). Howard C. Berkowitz 22:29, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Neutrality and "best known"

For the record, I absolutely agree the Party of God uses the tactic of terrorism. As Francis Fukuyama put it, declaring a "war on terror" has the semantic rigor of declaring a "war on submarines". Terrorism, to any serious military analyst, is a tactic/doctrine. It is different than many organizations using that tactic in that it holds territory and provides governmental services; it is not limited to clandestine attacks.

Is the U.S. Army a "AirLand Battle" organization? The Royal Navy a "Sea Dart and Amphibious organization"? Agreed that that there are organizations that conduct terrorism. Nevertheless, the most important thing about this one starts with its reason for being: it is Islamic, Shiite, anti-Western, and anti-Israel, with alliances with Iran and Syria. Do I have to make an Editor Ruling that "terrorist organization" is not professionally accepted as a descriptor, although the media and politicians love the term? Might CZ: Neutrality Policy come to mind? When changing something I was actively editing, to the point of edit conflict, was that "writing sympathetically?" Howard C. Berkowitz 22:18, 8 March 2009 (UTC)