A-men! I also strongly support *either* not deleting (nearly) any userboxes *or* deleting (nearly) all of them, rather than the current horrible debacle. I'm hoping that Jimbo will take action on one of these directions.
Jesse Weinstein
On Mar 8, 2006, at 7:36 AM, John Lee wrote:
The userbox debate, on the other hand, has both sides assuming bad faith of the other, and those taking a stand who don't ABF or otherwise act like dicks are in the clear minority. It's the opposite of the deletionist/inclusionist debate. Most of the "anti-userboxes" people I've seen love to speedy/support speedying as many userboxes that might be deemed factionalist as possible, regardless of disagreement because "it's the right thing to do". Most of the "pro-userboxes" people I've seen will immediately yell "ZOMG ADMIN ABUSE" when an admin blocks a pro-userboxen fellow because they *think* the admin blocked the fellow for that reason, or when an admin speedies a userbox, regardless of whether it really is divisive. (Case in point: the deletion of the UDUIW userbox, which I already brought up on the list.)
The userbox debate has been particularly poisonous to the Wikipedian community because of how starkly the lines have been drawn, and how belligerently those on either side of the line have behaved towards one another. Whereas once the rogues were in the minority in the deletionist/inclusionist spectrum, it is now commonplace to see people yelling assumptions of bad faith and incivil remarks from the tree-tops, while the voices of those trying to be reasonable/civil on either side are drowned out.
I think those trying to speedy delete/keep all userboxes have got it wrong -- userboxes are not important in the long run to the fate of Wikipedia. What's important is reasoning with each other, assuming good faith, and spreading WikiLove. If we can't do this, we haven't just lost the "userbox war", we've lost the war to build an encyclopedia through the wiki process. And that, my friends, is where I believe we are headed. And please, don't cast the blame on "rogue deletionist admins" or "unacculturated newbies". Practically *everyone* involved in this dispute has been up to their neck in bad faith and WikiHate. I don't know about you, but if sacrificing userboxes (or sacrificing the deletion of divisive userboxes) is what it takes to restore good faith and WikiLove to the community, I'd take the latter over the former any second.