[WikiEN-l] Speaking up against the mob

Fri Oct 10 21:44:31 UTC 2003

[Sent to both <wikiEN-L> and directly to RickK by email,
since RickK seems to have requested that.]

RickK wrote:

>Louis Kyu Won Ryu <lazolla at hotmail.com> wrote:

>>The first edits under the name Jesus_is_Lord! began October 6. 
>>Generally, the edits appear helpful and in good faith. Most have been 
>>made to articles addressing homosexual issues. In contrast to the 
>>assumption many have made (me included until I read through the 
>>history), the edits do not reflect an anti-gay bias.

>Really?  A scatalogical definition of "Fudgepacker"
>is not indicative of an anti-gay bias?

But isn't that what the word in fact means?
To report on anti-gay prejudice is not to be anti-gay;
quite the contrary.

I found the article informative, and I'm hardly anti-gay.
While I have grave suspicions about JiL's intentions here,
I must protest the condemnation of this article /as such/.
If JiL is anti-gay, then he is being more subtle about it
(as any decent troll would be) than you seem to be inferring.

Indeed, this is the perfect edit for a troll;
it would let a troll call us "fudgepackers" in its heart,
while not explicitly condoning the word's usage
in any of the article text that the troll actually writes.
But the proper response is to neutralise the troll's activities --
say by incorporating the information into [[Homophobic hate speech]]
on the grounds that Wikipedia is not a dictionary,
thus avoiding a proliferation of articles named after slurs
without any appearance of direct censorship --
rather than to attack the troll directly, which only feeds it.
(I'm not committed to the position that JiL is a troll, BTW.
But I find it a plausible hypothesis, and I'm willing to accept it
for the sake of this argument.)

-- Toby