Without explicitly entering into the question of de-sysopping, let me once again voice my total support for what Mark is saying here.
What in the world is the meaning of NPOV if we're going to be banning people based on their ideology, no matter how abhorrant? "We strive for a neutral point of view, unless your point of view happens to be X, in which case we are not at all neutral."
Absolutely not. Banning users only on the basis of their POV -- not due to unacceptable behavior, but only due to their personal beliefs or opinions -- this is exactly contrary to a bedrock principle of Wikipedia.
Additionally, I would say that to ban any username containing"88" is surrendering far too much to the Neo-Nazis. Why should the world in general (or Wikipedia in specific) give up a perfectly good two digit number simply because the Neo-Nazis adopt it as "theirs"? How much power are we going to donate to the Neo-Nazi cause?
-Rich Holton
On Sat, 19 Feb 2005 20:33:05 -0500, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Zoney wrote:
There are views which are unacceptable in civilised society.
And which, exactly, are those? Which civilised society? Is Wikipedia going to be on the business of deciding which views are acceptable and which aren't?
Neo-Nazis have a particular ideology, which happens to be extremely unpopular. They are hardly the only ideology I personally find abhorrent; it's just the easiest to criticize.
What about any of the following: -- Those who support attacks on Israeli civilians (e.g. terrorism) as a legitimate means of warfare. There are several tens of million people int he world who hold this viewpoint; are they all to be banned on sight? -- Those who support fascism as a political ideology, but do not support Nazism in particular. -- Those who support Maoism, Stalinism, or other "left-totalitarian" ideologies.
If we're going to start banning certain ideologies on sight, someone needs to come up with criteria for how we decide which are unacceptable.
-Mark
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