[WikiEN-l] Grandfathering: an initiative to deprecate the spread of userboxes that are divisive

[Sam Korn]

On 1/21/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> I welcome Jimbo's forthright statement that "political or, more
> broadly, polemical, nature are bad for the project", and his
> thoughtful and considerate request that editors contemplate helping to
> reduce the userbox culture by "simply removing your
> political/religious/etc. userboxes and asking others to do the same.
> This seems to me to be the best way to quickly and easily end the
> userbox wars."
>
> I know this is going to meet resistance, so I'm trying to think of a
> way in which those who think that expressing their opinions on their
> userpages helps wikipedia and have so far chosen to do so using
> userboxes, can be asked to do so in a way that doesn't contribute to
> the very divisive culture that has ground up specifically around
> userboxes.
>
> I've come up with a suggestion as follows:
>
> 1. that if he disagrees with Jimbo's request, the user should instead
> consider using the subst command to place the content of the template
> directly into  his userpage. This would reduce the "viral"
> transmission of userboxes somewhat and, for the user, it would have
> the benefit of divorcing the fate of parts of his userpage from the
> fate of individual userboxes--whether editing or deletion.
>
> 2. that having done this, he should take the opportunity to edit the
> text so that it more precisely expresses his individual views.  In my
> opinion this would be more in keeping with the *good* effects of
> userboxes in enabling self-expression, while being more in keeping
> with the principle that Wikipedia is a wiki in which we edit content,
> and not a cookie-cutter website in which we reduce our complex beliefs
> as individuals into regimented blocs that serve no purpose but to
> emphasize the cultural divisions.
>
> I think of this as "grandfathering".  Ultimately we should be able to
> foster a benign culture of fearless expression of our editorial
> biases, without enabling the  subversion of our relatively fragile
> neutrality principle by alliances between single-issue
> campaigners--however justifiable they may feel this subversion to be.

Well said, Tony.  I agree fully.

--
Sam