[WikiEN-l] cancelation of the deletion review of the satanism userbox

Thu Jun 1 17:27:38 UTC 2006

On 01/06/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/1/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> > There's a difference, at least to the world outside Wikipedia, between
> > an individual Wikipedian making that personal statement on a part of
> > the site, and Wikipedia as an institution giving him a neat little
> > badge for the purpose of making the proclamation.
>
> Wikipedia as an institution is not doing that (Don't know of any
> foundation created userboxes off hand). And:

The world outside Wikipedia, with which I have a great deal of contact
through the joy that is OTRS, generally fails to understand that the
Foundation does not write the entire damn encylopedia itself.

When the issue is perception from the outside world, quibbling about
whether something was created by a user or created by Danny is...
irrelevant.

Somewhere downthread, I notice the comparison to hospital staff
wearing tags describing their political affiliation. Yes, there is an
ethical difference between one of the nurses handing out boxes of
little badges they made at home to their colleages, versus an
administrator handing out packets of them to staff.

But patients will write angry letters to the newspapers when they see
them, regardless.

I'm not sold that userboxes "bring the project into disrepute" - I
wish we didn't have the damn things and that this never got started -
but pretending that they're magically exempt from doing so becuase all
our readers know that something prefixed with "User:" isn't part of
the encyclopedia is just plain silly.

Because, trust me, they don't know it.

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk