[WikiEN-l] Unacceptable behaviour

Wed Jul 23 18:23:35 UTC 2003

Robert wrote:
> I am, however, opposed to what the U.S. State Department
> condemns as Palestinian terrorism...and this last fact
> alone has caused me to be repeatedly slandered as a bigot,
> as a racist, etc. And no one on Wikipedia objects to these
> false characterizations of me.

For whatever it is worth, I object to those false characterizations
of you.  And for two reasons:

1.  These characterizations are, as far as I can tell, completely
false and without merit of any kind.

2.  And in *any event*, characterizations of this sort have no place
in the neutral wikipedia community, whether true or false.  It's just
not the kind of environment that we want to foster.

On the other hand, I will say that I sometimes find RK's
characterization of the harassment he has personally received to be a
bit overstated.  

Of course, different people will evaluate these things differently,
and it's easy for me to stand *outside* RK's situation and say "Oh, it
isn't as bad as all that."  I understand that.

Even so, I think it's worth remembering what we're all here for, and
that Wikipedia Is Not Usenet.  We fundamentally aren't about flame
wars and personal slams, at least we should try hard not to be about
that.  The medium in which we are working (wiki) pushes us to a different
kind of interaction, interaction which is co-operative rather than
competitive.

--Jimbo