Some people have suggested using real names for user names. I would oppose that as many people would feel uneasy using their real names and it might lead to some people deciding not to contribute anymore. But there is a solution.
«WHEN SOMEONE SIGNS UP, THEY ARE GREETED WITH THE FOLLOWING MESSAGE:«
In using Wikipedia, you are requested to use a User ID. In chosing that ID, remember, people from many different cultures, traditions, faiths and countries use Wikipedia, as readers, contributors, or both. In an effort to avoid causing offence (however inadvertent) to people from diverse backgrounds you are asked in chosing your user ID to follow one simple rule:
1. No user ID is to be used that has a a) sexual b) religious c) cultural d) political meaning that could cause offence to other users of, and/or contributors to, Wikipedia.
Options for User IDs include * any set of initials, eg RHK * numbers, eg 115, 8724 * words or a combination of all three, eg, Mangus099, RHK115. It is up to you. Once you follow the simple rule of avoiding terms that might cause offence, you have absolute freedom to choose whatever combination you want.
2. If however, perhaps inadvertently, you choose a User ID that does cause offence, Wiki will notify you and ask you to change it to a different option.
3. Remember, in those circumstances, you 'have' to change, within 48 hours. Members who persist in using terms that could be offensive to others will be banned from Wikipedia and all contributions made by them WILL BE REVERTED, irrespective of content or quality.
(The last line is to act as a double deterent. Some may think that if banned they can simply sign on as a different user and continue on where they left off. However the threat that all their hard work would automatically, irrespective of contribution or quality, be undone, may well make users who want to be on Wikipedia think twice before endangering their work by using a potentially offensive name.)
Any observations?
JT
From: Tom Parmenter tompar@world.std.com Reply-To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org CC: wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Why is 'CrucifiedChrist' less offensive than a pun on oral sex? Date: Tue, 28 Jan 2003 20:43:12 -0500
What Brion said. In the policy we put together, we stated that offense was to be in the eyes of the offended, not in the inoffensive motives of the creator of the name. Certainly there are all kinds of religious belief and practice, sincerely followed, that may be offensive to others, even to co-religionists.
Tom Parmenter
|From: Sheldon Rampton sheldon.rampton@verizon.net |Date: Tue, 28 Jan 2003 18:19:36 -0600 | |Brion Vibber wrote: | |>Offense is only taken, not given. There is no objective measure of |>offensiveness that I can perform; actual reactions and quanitifable |>results as to how the project is affected are much more convincing to |>me. | |This is a good point. There's no way of knowing simply from the |phrase "Crucified Christ" whether the speaker means it as a joke or |as some sort of actual statement of religious belief. | |Mormons actually regard the crucifix itself as offensive. They argue |that using it as a religious symbol is tantamount to worshipping the |weapon used to murder Christ. Obviously, most traditional Christian |religions don't share this attitude, but it has a certain logic to it. | |I remember taking a Japanese Buddhist on a visit to a Catholic church |once. She walked around the chapel, looking at the depictions of the |stations of the cross, with Jesus dragging the crucifix and being |tortured with his crown of thorns and blood dripping down his |forehead. I don't know if she was "offended," exactly, but she |certainly found it scary. |-- |-------------------------------- || Sheldon Rampton || Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org) || Author of books including: || Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities || Toxic Sludge Is Good For You || Mad Cow USA || Trust Us, We're Experts |-------------------------------- |_______________________________________________ |WikiEN-l mailing list |WikiEN-l@wikipedia.org |http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l |
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On Tue, 2003-01-28 at 22:56, james duffy wrote: <"how to pick a politically correct user name" instructions snipped>
Any observations?
At the risk of being offensive, this is getting even more ridiculous.
My username makes reference to a Roman general. This might be offensive to people who think that I'm advocating militaristic imperialism, or that I'm critiquing the Roman empire.
Moreover, people have believed that my name is somehow vulgar ("a pun on dictator").
Should we ban everyone from using their real names, too? What if someone's first name is Dick? Or Jesus? Or Moses? If their last name is Johnson? Or Matsushitsa? Or Fokker?
Instead of trying to prescribe usernames, a much better solution would be some equivalent of ostracism. For example, allow people to choose on a case by case basis to see users by userid instead of username.
Thus instead of seeing entries by CrucifiedChrist you'd see entries by 5406 or whatever.
If some number of people do this, then (and only then) would we need to consider taking some more serious action (like an automatic warning requesting a change of username; if more people continue to "shun" that user, the username change might be automatic. however, i dislike this idea because it could lead to some ugly tyranny of the majority situations).
Just my two cents.
--tc
The Cunctator wrote:
My username makes reference to a Roman general. This might be offensive to people who think that I'm advocating militaristic imperialism, or that I'm critiquing the Roman empire.
Moreover, people have believed that my name is somehow vulgar ("a pun on dictator").
The standard is not that a name might conceivably be offensive to *someone* with some fabricated grievance. My own nickname, "Jimbo" might be perceived by some as a slight against the American south. But clearly, it is not, since I'm from Alabama and it's actually a real nickname in the South.
The idea that because there are borderline or difficult cases, we can't do anything about extreme and obvious cases like "Cumguzzler" or "CrucifiedChrist" is not persuasive to me.
In the event of borderline cases, we will accomodate as best we can, making a specific judgment in individual cases as necessary.
Should we ban everyone from using their real names, too? What if someone's first name is Dick? Or Jesus? Or Moses? If their last name is Johnson? Or Matsushitsa? Or Fokker?
An absolute defense to offense is that the name is, in fact, someone's real name.
There used to be a professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville named, I kid you not, "Fat Ho". Chinese. Engineering prof. Anyhow, if he shows up on wikipedia, he can use that name. No one else can.
Instead of trying to prescribe usernames, a much better solution would be some equivalent of ostracism. For example, allow people to choose on a case by case basis to see users by userid instead of username.
This is convoluted. Imagine: parents read about wikipedia in the newspaper and come to check it out, with an eye toward recommending it to their children as a resource. They click on recent changes and see 'cumguzzler' and 'throbbing monster cock' and 'pedophilejesusdotcom' (I made that one up, pretty good, huh?).
Or, imagine: a Nobel Prize winner reads about Wikipedia in the newspaper and thinks, oooh, if this is a serious project, I'd like to chip in and work on it, and ask all my Nobel Prize pals to chip in, too. What a great resource. And again, they see our merry band of jerks and decide to pass.
To respond to these cases by saying "Oh, but if Milton Friedman doesn't like those names, he can go into his user preferences and block them on a case by case basis, or choose to view numbers instead" is pretty weak, I think.
--Jimbo
On 1/29/03 6:23 AM, "Jimmy Wales" jwales@bomis.com wrote:
The Cunctator wrote:
Instead of trying to prescribe usernames, a much better solution would be some equivalent of ostracism. For example, allow people to choose on a case by case basis to see users by userid instead of username.
This is convoluted. Imagine: parents read about wikipedia in the newspaper and come to check it out, with an eye toward recommending it to their children as a resource. They click on recent changes and see 'cumguzzler' and 'throbbing monster cock' and 'pedophilejesusdotcom' (I made that one up, pretty good, huh?).
Or, imagine: a Nobel Prize winner reads about Wikipedia in the newspaper and thinks, oooh, if this is a serious project, I'd like to chip in and work on it, and ask all my Nobel Prize pals to chip in, too. What a great resource. And again, they see our merry band of jerks and decide to pass.
To respond to these cases by saying "Oh, but if Milton Friedman doesn't like those names, he can go into his user preferences and block them on a case by case basis, or choose to view numbers instead" is pretty weak, I think.
You cut off the section of my proposal that after some number of people commit the ostracism the username has to be changed. I.e. this is a voting mechanism, ala Erik. Please don't attack my proposal for faults it doesn't have.
I honestly don't think this is convoluted at all. Perhaps I did not explain it clearly.
The Cunctator wrote:
You cut off the section of my proposal that after some number of people commit the ostracism the username has to be changed. I.e. this is a voting mechanism, ala Erik. Please don't attack my proposal for faults it doesn't have.
I honestly don't think this is convoluted at all. Perhaps I did not explain it clearly.
O.k., it makes more sense now. I thought that the voting part was a concession you were making, rather than a central part of the proposal.
Stepping back from this particular issue, I'm a bit surprised here that you seem to favor some kind of voting or formalization. I would have intuitively guessed that you'd be opposed. I am guessing that you _do_ think that there are dangers to voting mechanisms, particularly if they can be abused to carry out agendas for which they were not originally designed.
In this case, any formal process would have to be somehow insulated from being a mechanism for a determined group to hassle people of a different political viewpoint, with an eye toward politicizing some entry or set of entries. At least some simple rules are dangerous in that regard.
For example "If three people say your name is offensive, then you have to change it". Will libertarians use this to harass a socialist? Will Greens use this to harass a free market environmentalist?
I'm not saying that all formalization leads to bad outcomes! I'm just saying that one benefit of an informal approach is that it can be flexible and is harder to abuse.
For example "If three people say your name is offensive, then you have to change it". Will libertarians use this to harass a socialist? Will Greens use this to harass a free market environmentalist?
Well, that's not really voting. You also have to count those who oppose the proposal, i.e. think that a name is not offensive. Which brings us to Magnus' planned consensus module again, which IMHO would be useful for this type of decision.
Regards,
Erik
On 1/29/03 9:23 AM, "Jimmy Wales" jwales@bomis.com wrote:
The Cunctator wrote:
You cut off the section of my proposal that after some number of people commit the ostracism the username has to be changed. I.e. this is a voting mechanism, ala Erik. Please don't attack my proposal for faults it doesn't have.
I honestly don't think this is convoluted at all. Perhaps I did not explain it clearly.
O.k., it makes more sense now. I thought that the voting part was a concession you were making, rather than a central part of the proposal.
Stepping back from this particular issue, I'm a bit surprised here that you seem to favor some kind of voting or formalization. I would have intuitively guessed that you'd be opposed. I am guessing that you _do_ think that there are dangers to voting mechanisms, particularly if they can be abused to carry out agendas for which they were not originally designed.
I believe in "vote with your feet" mechanisms, rather than "go to the polls to select from a ticket" mechanisms. Vote with your feet mechanisms allow for everyone to be individually satisfied until a critical mass
In this case, any formal process would have to be somehow insulated from being a mechanism for a determined group to hassle people of a different political viewpoint, with an eye toward politicizing some entry or set of entries. At least some simple rules are dangerous in that regard.
Yes.
For example "If three people say your name is offensive, then you have to change it". Will libertarians use this to harass a socialist? Will Greens use this to harass a free market environmentalist?
I think the number of people finding a name offensive to instigate an automatic change would have to be considerably higher. Also, my mechanism would trigger a warning first, which would allow that user time to make his case etc.
I'm not saying that all formalization leads to bad outcomes! I'm just saying that one benefit of an informal approach is that it can be flexible and is harder to abuse.
Well, open to abuse in very different ways. However, if we've got you as benevolent dictator on this issue, then we can take advantage of that: instead of there being some automatic cut-off, there would just be a page listing the offensive names and their ranking (preferably viewable only by you) that you could act upon using your judgment.
--- james duffy jtdirl@hotmail.com wrote:
Some people have suggested using real names for user names. I would oppose that as many people would feel uneasy using their real names and it might lead to some people deciding not to contribute anymore. But there is a solution.
�WHEN SOMEONE SIGNS UP, THEY ARE GREETED WITH THE FOLLOWING MESSAGE:�
In using Wikipedia, you are requested to use a User ID. In chosing that ID, remember, people from many different cultures, traditions, faiths and countries use Wikipedia, as readers, contributors, or both. In an effort to avoid causing offence (however inadvertent) to people from diverse backgrounds you are asked in chosing your user ID to follow one simple rule:
- No user ID is to be used that has a
a) sexual b) religious c) cultural d) political meaning that could cause offence to other users of, and/or contributors to, Wikipedia.
Options for User IDs include
- any set of initials, eg RHK
- numbers, eg 115, 8724
- words or a combination of all three, eg,
Mangus099, RHK115. It is up to you. Once you follow the simple rule of avoiding terms that might cause offence, you have absolute freedom to choose whatever combination you want.
Though I understand concerns about offensive names, that whole conversation looks pretty aerial to me. The very idea of asking people to register under their real name is pretty bad, and I am sure many would quit if it had to be so. Me first. May I mention that this would have sense only if identities were "checked" ? Social security number maybe ? Id card ? Blood group ? Education background next ?
Not only would I quit by myself, but I am actually in that situation where my real name looks very much like a slang word, which some of you might think offensive, and others probably ridiculous. (French speaking only of course, but though that conversation takes place on the en.list, I gather it would be extended to the whole wikipedia, otherwise it would not have sense).
I don't care for my name in real life, but I know what I would write would "carry" a "sort of" stigmate. And maybe some people would recommand me to go to change my name to keep up with the serious image we are supposed to display. Should I go to the civil office then ?
As for recommandations to respect people faith, religion...when picking up an IP, I would just add two things
1) Offenses are perceived very differently depending on culture, political stances.... 69 is barely a number, but might be sexually offending, 1789 carry political weight, white or black : are they just colors....the list could be endless
2) If sexual orientations, political stances and religious faiths could be first "tolerated" on wikipedia, and editors reporting extremist views "tolerated" (I am not even daring to say accepted) as editors as well as the others, and respected as the others are "requesting" to be themselves, I would be much happier. You are just considering a straw in your eye, when some people are beaten with tree trunks everyday on wikipedia. This is a matter of concern to me. Not names.
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James Duffy wrote:
Any observations?
Yes. In spite of my warnings, what I was afraid of is increasingly happening: the "no offensive usernames" policy is used for extensive discussions about "offensiveness", the creation of a "name police", long warning messages about all kinds of "lewdness and blasphemy", and so forth.
This whole debate should have ended 10 messages ago. Either appoint a single benevolent dictator who just says "Yes/No" to usernames without much discussion, or use voting. This is the perfect example where voting makes sense to reach a quick conclusion.
Regards,
Erik