On 5/24/06, Sarah slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
Anyone thinking about whether the indefinite block of Abu Hamza is justified ought to consider (apart from the various policy violations) his determination to add to the introduction of [[Harold Shipman]] that he was a *Jewish* British serial killer. It's not just that there are no reliable sources for this. It's the obsession with trying to add an entirely non-notable reference to a person's ethnicity in order to make that ethnicity look bad.
Can you clarify: when you say "determination" do you mean "he was determined to do this" or "he is determined to do this". If he overstepped the mark and got hit for 3RR, that's one thing. If you think he's going to do the same thing to the same article, that's another.
We regularly have anons turn up at [[Ron Karenga]], the founder of the
African-American holiday [[Kwaanza]], who try to describe him in the first sentence as a "convicted felon,"
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ron_Karenga&diff=45070575&... and they do it because he's black and they're racists. That makes them useless Wikipedians, not because they're racist, because no one cares
Useless? Nah, no reason they couldn't sort stubs, fight vandalism or work on Pokemon articles. Has anyone seriously made a push for Mediawiki supporting article-level bans? As awful as it sounds, it would actually be useful for us to tag articles [[Black people]] and blocking certain people from editing such articles.
if they keep it to themselves, but because they're not willing to be
Wikipedians. I could give scores of examples of the persistent addition of racist, Islamophobic, anti-Semitic, misogynist slurs designed to make a person look bad, or to make Islam look terroristic or Judaism fascist.
If that's their *only* goal at Wikipedia, that's one thing. If they just happen to strongly believe that and attempt to "correct" these articles when they come across them, well, they need guidance.
That kind of editing is the polar opposite of what it is to be a
Wikipedian. In Abu Hamza's case, it's compounded by the sockpuppetry and the deceit about it, the reverting, the bad use of sources, and so on. But it's the lack of even the most basic grasp of what it is to be a Wikipedian that makes me support an indefinite block.
Also from looking at his contributions, virtually every single one was reverted. Useless indeed.
Steve