On 01/06/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/1/06, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
There's a difference, at least to the world outside Wikipedia, between an individual Wikipedian making that personal statement on a part of the site, and Wikipedia as an institution giving him a neat little badge for the purpose of making the proclamation.
Wikipedia as an institution is not doing that (Don't know of any foundation created userboxes off hand). And:
The world outside Wikipedia, with which I have a great deal of contact through the joy that is OTRS, generally fails to understand that the Foundation does not write the entire damn encylopedia itself.
When the issue is perception from the outside world, quibbling about whether something was created by a user or created by Danny is... irrelevant.
Somewhere downthread, I notice the comparison to hospital staff wearing tags describing their political affiliation. Yes, there is an ethical difference between one of the nurses handing out boxes of little badges they made at home to their colleages, versus an administrator handing out packets of them to staff.
But patients will write angry letters to the newspapers when they see them, regardless.
I'm not sold that userboxes "bring the project into disrepute" - I wish we didn't have the damn things and that this never got started - but pretending that they're magically exempt from doing so becuase all our readers know that something prefixed with "User:" isn't part of the encyclopedia is just plain silly.
Because, trust me, they don't know it.