From: Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com Reply-To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Distasteful names - CrucifiedChrist Date: 27 Jan 2003 23:48:38 -0800
On lun, 2003-01-27 at 22:47, Jonathan Walther wrote:
On Mon, Jan 27, 2003 at 10:37:11PM -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
CG used a number of login names from the same IP, including this one. All things considered, I'd say it's a huge improvement.
Blasphemy is as offensive as lewdness. He is still trying to deliberately provoke and offend people; hardly what I would consider a "collegial spirit of mutual respect".
The problem with these names is the disruption caused by other Wikipedians taking offense at them.
"Cumguzzler" received acrid complaints within hours and generated pages of screed *entirely from other people debating its lack of merits* within a couple days of its first appearence, while "CrucifiedChrist" has been used for almost two weeks *without a peep* from anyone until today.
In my book, that's a huge improvement. Now please stop feeding the trolls; we've got an encyclopedia to work on.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com) << signature.asc >>
Actually, Brian, 'CrucifiedChrist' has caused offence; I received five private emails about it so far (as well as the Wiki Mail stuff) after I mentioned to someone that I thought the term unacceptable.
However people feel 'embarrassed' complaining publicly about it because taking offence at religious references might make them seem like far right religious nutters. But the people who complained aren't fanatical religious folk; two described themselves as non-religious, one a lapsed Roman Catholic. It says something about public attitudes to religion (and the damage done to religion by the religious right) that they felt uncomfortable about complaining publicly and ended up sending me a message saying 'will you say something?'
Personally, as another non-religious person, I think CrucifiedChrist is FAR MORE OFFENSIVE than Cumguzzler. The latter is merely a childish wordplay on sex. CrucifiedChrist is a direct, deliberate mocking of the religious beliefs of millions of web users and large numbers of people using Wiki. I have been trying to get permission to use a set of pictures for Wiki, but was turned down. One of the reasons was that the person who has ownership of the pictures logged on to Wiki, saw references to CrucifiedChrist and took offence, arguing that if that is the standard of contributions and contributors made to Wiki, Wiki obviously isn't a serious attempt at an encyclopedia and he was withdrawing permission which he up to then was on the brink of giving. (And so we lost a set of photographs of world heads of state and prime ministers.)
So this is not a trivial argument, it is about the respect Wiki shows to ALL its contributors and ALL its users. Would it be seen as equally trivial or a 'huge improvement' if Cumguzzler had changed his username to a term that mocked jewish beliefs, agnostic beliefs, feminist beliefs, or that attacked the culure and values of African-Americans, Hispanics, etc? NPOV should mean equal respect for all. That includes christians. Either EVERY name, no matter what the offence caused, is acceptable, or we draw a line and few serious websites would turn a blind eye to a contributor who deliberately set out to mock the beliefs of many fellow users. So again, I want to find out what action Wiki proposes to take about a user who in their username mocks the central tenet of beliefs of many people on Wiki. His action remains unacceptable and needs to be dealt with.
JT
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On mar, 2003-01-28 at 11:53, james duffy wrote:
One of the reasons was that the person who has ownership of the pictures logged on to Wiki, saw references to CrucifiedChrist and took offence, arguing that if that is the standard of contributions and contributors made to Wiki, Wiki obviously isn't a serious attempt at an encyclopedia and he was withdrawing permission which he up to then was on the brink of giving.
That would have made a _much_ more effective opening argument -- thank you for following up with details.
Unfortunately, since Wikipedia didn't adopt a 'use your real name or post anonymously' policy, the selection of nicks, and the process of deciding what is and isn't acceptable, is always going to be arbitrary and ex post facto. (Does "Tokerboy" give the professional appearence we want to present to potential IP donors? Or even "Maveric149"?)
Cf. http://usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?UseRealNames on MeatballWiki.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
If this is going to become such an issue, might I propose that, to avoid debate in the future, we switch to UseRealNames (e.g., your handle is FirstnameLastname, or FMLastname)? This, it seems to me, is the only clear way to avoid arguments over what is, and isn't, offensive. I see no reason to avoid this; we can facilitate the process by either converting existing usernames, or we can just leave it up to people to redirect as they deem appropriate.
Of course, nothing prevents some jerk from choosing first name "Screw" and last name "YerMama", but this would then be a clear violation of policy, and we would not need to have these lengthy debates. If ever the situation comes up where the unfortunate John Crapper contributes to wikipedia, we can deal with such minutia then.
Thoughts?
SaurabhAsthana (Graft)
------ "We cannot buy the Sharon argument that his attacks are a reaction to the Palestinian violence. And I don't blame the Israelis if they also don't accept our arguments, that our violence is a reaction to the Israeli violence." --Ghassan Khatib, PA minister of labor
In message BAY1-F185fdxB7l9OtR0000120d@hotmail.com, "james duffy" said:
From: Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com Reply-To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Distasteful names - CrucifiedChrist Date: 27 Jan 2003 23:48:38 -0800
On lun, 2003-01-27 at 22:47, Jonathan Walther wrote:
On Mon, Jan 27, 2003 at 10:37:11PM -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
CG used a number of login names from the same IP, including this one. All things considered, I'd say it's a huge improvement.
Blasphemy is as offensive as lewdness. He is still trying to deliberately provoke and offend people; hardly what I would consider a "collegial spirit of mutual respect".
The problem with these names is the disruption caused by other Wikipedians taking offense at them.
"Cumguzzler" received acrid complaints within hours and generated pages of screed *entirely from other people debating its lack of merits* within a couple days of its first appearence, while "CrucifiedChrist" has been used for almost two weeks *without a peep* from anyone until today.
In my book, that's a huge improvement. Now please stop feeding the trolls; we've got an encyclopedia to work on.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com) << signature.asc >>
Actually, Brian, 'CrucifiedChrist' has caused offence; I received five private emails about it so far (as well as the Wiki Mail stuff) after I mentioned to someone that I thought the term unacceptable.
However people feel 'embarrassed' complaining publicly about it because taking offence at religious references might make them seem like far right religious nutters. But the people who complained aren't fanatical religious folk; two described themselves as non-religious, one a lapsed Roman Catholic. It says something about public attitudes to religion (and the damage done to religion by the religious right) that they felt uncomfortable about complaining publicly and ended up sending me a message saying 'will you say something?'
Personally, as another non-religious person, I think CrucifiedChrist is FAR MORE OFFENSIVE than Cumguzzler. The latter is merely a childish wordplay on sex. CrucifiedChrist is a direct, deliberate mocking of the religious beliefs of millions of web users and large numbers of people using Wiki. I have been trying to get permission to use a set of pictures for Wiki, but was turned down. One of the reasons was that the person who has ownership of the pictures logged on to Wiki, saw references to CrucifiedChrist and took offence, arguing that if that is the standard of contributions and contributors made to Wiki, Wiki obviously isn't a serious attempt at an encyclopedia and he was withdrawing permission which he up to then was on the brink of giving. (And so we lost a set of photographs of world heads of state and prime ministers.)
So this is not a trivial argument, it is about the respect Wiki shows to ALL its contributors and ALL its users. Would it be seen as equally trivial or a 'huge improvement' if Cumguzzler had changed his username to a term that mocked jewish beliefs, agnostic beliefs, feminist beliefs, or that attacked the culure and values of African-Americans, Hispanics, etc? NPOV should mean equal respect for all. That includes christians. Either EVERY name, no matter what the offence caused, is acceptable, or we draw a line and few serious websites would turn a blind eye to a contributor who deliberately set out to mock the beliefs of many fellow users. So again, I want to find out what action Wiki proposes to take about a user who in their username mocks the central tenet of beliefs of many people on Wiki. His action remains unacceptable and needs to be dealt with.
JT
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WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@wikipedia.org http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
rednblack@alum.mit.edu wrote:
Thoughts?
Well, most nicknames are just that, nicknames, and harmless. And if people want to be anonymous, that's fine with me. None of my business who anybody "really" is. But nicknames with an agenda, especially an agenda to offend, are not in the non-NPOV spirit.
Such things are great on sites where they belong. I curse like a sailor, in the proper context. I'm not stranger to offensive humor, either. Get me on a roll, and I could have the Pope laughing at pregnant Nun jokes.
But that's not the kind of environment we want in a serious encyclopedia project. We're doing something here more important than goofing around on the net.
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Such things are great on sites where they belong. I curse like a sailor, in the proper context. I'm not stranger to offensive humor, either. Get me on a roll, and I could have the Pope laughing at pregnant Nun jokes.
I'll have to remember that if we ever meet for a beer.. or two .. or three... :-)
Eclecticology
If this is going to become such an issue, might I propose that, to avoid debate in the future, we switch to UseRealNames (e.g., your handle is FirstnameLastname, or FMLastname)?
Not practical. We have made the choice, have thousands of registered users, can't switch now. Requiring this from new users only would be unfair towards existing ones and create lots of conflicts. Besides, you can bet there's plenty of people in our userbase right now who would be fiercely opposed to such a policy.
Regards,
Erik
There's no reason why existing users can't be grandfathered in, and also no reason why people can't use pseudonyms to maintain anonymity. I don't think it's so unfair to new users that it should prevent us from using this as a solution.
At any rate, since this is clearly an unpopular solution, perhaps it's not worth fighting it out.
Alternatively, perhaps we should make strong recommendations on what kind of usernames are acceptable, succinctly stated when creating a new login. (E.g., "Please choose a username that you do not think will offend people, or else members of the community may require you to change it.") This will cut out those people who create what may be an offensive username without intending to offend, but then get self-righteous about it when told they must change it, and thus clearly delineate who is a collosal jerk.
If this, also, seems crazy or ineffective, fine. But we should figure out some way to highlight who is choosing names because they want to make a statement or simply piss people off, and who is choosing names just because they don't know any better or are trying to be funny. And we should figure out some process of urging them to change it (cf. Votes for Deletion or VANDALISM IN PROGRESS), rather than thrashing it out here for a week every time.
Saurabh
------ Living in this country will always be hell until people stop demanding that the state imprison their neighbors.
In message <8elLGTGSpVB@erik_moeller>, Erik Moeller said:
If this is going to become such an issue, might I propose that, to avoid debate in the future, we switch to UseRealNames (e.g., your handle is FirstnameLastname, or FMLastname)?
Not practical. We have made the choice, have thousands of registered users, can't switch now. Requiring this from new users only would be unfair towards existing ones and create lots of conflicts. Besides, you can bet there's plenty of people in our userbase right now who would be fiercely opposed to such a policy.
Regards,
Erik _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@wikipedia.org http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On Tue, Jan 28, 2003 at 06:51:32PM -0500, rednblack@alum.mit.edu wrote:
If this is going to become such an issue, might I propose that, to avoid debate in the future, we switch to UseRealNames (e.g., your handle is FirstnameLastname, or FMLastname)? This, it seems to me, is the only clear way to avoid arguments over what is, and isn't, offensive. I see no reason to avoid this; we can facilitate the process by either converting existing usernames, or we can just leave it up to people to redirect as they deem appropriate.
Far simpler just to say that lewdness, blasphemy, and slurs of all types are unwelcome here. Names referring to vices (ie Tokerboy) are borderline, but until someone complains I don't think most of those who catch the significance of the name find it offensive.
Jonathan