geni wrote:

[[User:MarkSweep]] then deleted the nomination... [[User:MarkSweep]] then proceeds to block [[User:CFIF]] (the nominator) for 48 hours... He wasn't warned. We treat outright vandles better than that.

If that's what really happened, this is starting to really suck. I hate to sound like I'm siding with the userbox weenies (and I hate to use terms like "siding with" at all; factionalism is precisely what we're trying to *avoid* here), but I have to agree with the sentiment that this campaign against divisive userboxes is ending up being more divisive than the userboxes themselves. WP_IAR is one thing, but using it to quash dissenting voices in a retaliatory way (and especially when what the voices are dissenting against is a perception of that very kind of highhandedness) is a sure sign of incipient corruption, repression, and regression. We shouldn't be acting this way.

When Jimbo made one of the userbox-motivated-factionalism-is-bad- for-the-project statements which some admins are now hoisting up on pennants, I think he explicitly mentioned that he didn't want to see it get used as a battle-standard for a reign of terror. I don't know what all's going on over at TfD, but I would urge the admins to be as scrupulously diffident and fair in all of this as, for example, we expect editors to be when grappling over the POV issues in an article.

Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com