Given that Jimbo is apparently an advocate of Ayn Rand's Objectivism,
I wonder what he thinks of all the subjectivism that seems to be
driving policy around here. I'm referring in particular to the
frequent assertions that the subjective feelings of editors are of
such great importance that they often trump other concerns. In this
diff:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_
noticeboard/Incidents&diff=prev&oldid=155921054
an editor asserts that "You are welcome to your own opinions
regarding threats that are leveled against you. Attempting to
evaluate my concerns using your own metrics is inappropriate." (This
is in the context of supporting a permaban against a user for alleged
legal threats, where others dispute that there were any actual
threats aimed at the complaining user.) Basically, in the ideology of
some editors, objective reality and logical discourse are irrelevant
compared to the feelings of an editor who claims to have been
emotionally hurt. Of course, taking action based on this (such as
blocking or banning another user, banning links to particular sites,
and so on) will likely cause emotional hurt to the targets of this
action, but that is apparently resolved in terms of status in the
Wikipedia hierarchy; emotional hurt to a higher-ranked editor is more
important than hurt to a lower-ranked one. If you're way up in the
hierarchy, and you act like a drama queen, then you can force
everyone and everything on Wikipedia to bend to your will; if you
claim to be emotionally hurt by people saying the word "rutabaga",
you can probably get it banned.
--
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