On May 22, 2006, at 2:54 PM, Steve Bennett wrote:
That's a
reasonable thing to say about communists, anarchists,
radical feminists, furries, polyamorous transsexuals, anarcho-
capitalists, or almost any fringe group. The difference with anti-
Semites is that we have Jewish editors. If there were people on
Wikipedia who happened to be white supremacists or Islamists and you
had no way to tell they were either of these things from their edits,
that would be one thing. If you make your anti-semitism known,
however, I don't see why you should be welcome on Wikipedia. The very
act of accepting these types into the community would be an insult.
It's a pity we're using the example of anti-Semitism. Maybe we
could keep
this more abstract? Say I'm a rabid anti-Pokemonite (not far from
the truth
:)). Does the existence of Pokemon fans on Wikipedia make me
unwelcome? Nah,
I just keep my distance.
That's different for so many important reasons. One big reason is
that there are no actual Pokemon editing Wikipedia, because Pokemon
don't exist in reality. Jews do.
You might find similarities in the fact that we have
both sides of
various
ethnic conflicts, in Yugoslavia or Israel and whatever. We also have
anti-abortionists and pro-abortionists. Do they bicker? Yep. Does
the very
fabric of Wikipedia fall apart? Nah.
Imagine if we had editors who belonged to the KKK as well as large
numbers of black editors. Still don't see the problem?
--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch