Quick response you gave. Here's one back. ;-)
On Jun 1, 2006, at 2:51 PM, Delirium wrote:
Jesse W wrote:
This is a semi-straw man argument. Userbox templates *ARE NOT ONLY ON USER PAGES*. If they were, the conflict (while possibly still present) would be vastly reduced. Userbox templates are a number of other places as well as being on userpages. Specifically, they are 1) In Template space. 2) In subpages of Wikipedia:Userboxes. I look forward to your thoughts on the degree of problems (or lack of such) of having people say what their religious beliefs are in the two places I mentioned. Thanks!
I guess I don't see those as "being" anywhere. Template space and lists of templates are implementation details, not articles.
It's only important in that user pages have different customs than most everywhere else on Wikipedia, and extending these customs to shared little boxes creates various forms of endemic confusion and upset.
As far as neutrality goes, I don't see a particularly large problem with a giant list of all possible opinions anyone could hold. In fact that seems like a pretty neutral way to do it!
That is a good point, and I thank you for reminding me of it. Of course, one of the general guidelines of Wikipedia is not to fork subjects - to fight over one consensus narrative of a subject rather than hosting lots of forks with different perspectives - but maybe this guideline should not apply for shared bits of personal expression. (Of course, that in itself might argue against the use of Wikipedia for such things...)
Jesse Weinstein