Jimmy Wales wrote:
SCZenz wrote:
I've become more and more convinced that the inmates are indeed running the asylum on these issues, so my question to you is: what do you think we (as ordinary users who agree with your non-decree) should do?
Work gently to build a friendly loving culture in which outright partisanship is discouraged, while individuality and an appreciation for differences is valued. Sometimes, of course, individuality and differences are manifested in outright partisanship, so there's no simple answer to how to draw the line between the two.
I mostly worry about userboxes being a leveragepoint for the building of political factions within Wikipedia. (And I don't mean "wikipedia politics" like "deletionists/inclusionists" but actual politics like "The Association of Anti-Evolutionist Wikipedians" who might want to turn wikipedia articles into ideological battlegrounds.)
Mostly I would like to see people not beating each other up about this. :) I have a preference here for a social attitude that "here we are Wikipedians," meaning: let's leave our political fights at the door to the greatest extent that we can.
--Jimbo
I strongly agree with this. IMO, attempting to factionalise (not merely putting a userbox identifying your political affiliations) is putting us on the slippery path to POV pushing/warring. I believe we need to, as Jimbo said, leave our views at the door while editing. For instance, I have very strong negative opinions of [[Article 153 of the Constitution of Malaysia]], [[Ketuanan Melayu]], [[Bumiputra]], etc. However, on [[Talk:Bumiputra]] I have strenuously argued against certain edits which I would ordinarily (in real life) agree with. However, leaving my political views at the door, I viewed those edits as unacceptable under our NPOV policy. If this is something we can all agree on, I would have no problem with "political" userboxes; after all, I have one of them myself.
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])