I have relatives who died in the holocaust, and I am against everything Nazis stand for, yet I will defend to the death their right to free speech and I believe that they should be just as welcome as anybody else in editing Wikipedia as long as they can maintain NPOV.
An image of a swastika upsets me very much. However it is not for the reason you might presume. Whenever I see a swastika, I think of a symbol which has been used for thousands of years in China, India, and elsewhere which was only recently used by such a hateful group of people, but which to over 2 billion people still symbolises luck and happiness. It upsets me that a group can take a symbol which has such a good reputation and commit such horrors that they take the lives of millions of people and use such a sacred religious symbol to stand for their actions.
My grandfather faught in WWII against Nazis. But as I said before, I don't see why we shouldn't allow these people to put images of themselves on their own userpage wearing a nazi uniform, except /maybe/ that it offends many people. We may be upset by their beliefs but if they play by the rules of Wikipedia, we have no right to kick them out just because they are filled with hate.
Mark
On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 16:17:05 +0100, Caroline Ewen caroline@web.lu wrote:
Now that I've watched the discussion, I have some things to say about this.
First of all, I *strongly* object to arguments like "nothing more 'graphic' than a 'Nazi uniform'."...wearing a Nazi uniform is quite a strong statement, at least for Europeans. "If I should upload an image of myself wearing a Democratic or Republican pin, for example, would that be "disruptive"?" -> How can one even THINK of putting a democrat or republican on the same level as a Nazi ?
I completely support NSK when he says that "the administrators were right to delete it. Neo-Nazis will not be tolerated in Wikipedia." Maybe people outside Europe don't get the point as much as we do, since we had grandparents fighting in WWII, lost family members, and obviously have already a different attitude towards all Nazi-symbols. Plus, on the lb wiki, the guy would have been banned from the start since nazi-symbols are considered to be illegal and must not be posted in Luxembourg (even if the servers aren't in Lux, the pages are written in luxembourgish and the public is luxembourgish).
Ok, maybe the way the administrator proceeded to make the blocks was not in the same way that someone else would have done them, but that's the only objection I have to make. How can we possibly tolerate a user who already by his username does offend a great deal of other contributors and moreover has links on his userpage to a site where I can't even find the words to describe it.
IMHO,
Caroline aka Briséis (lb, fr).
-----Message d'origine----- De : wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org] De la part de David Gerard Envoyé : jeudi 17 février 2005 15:29 À : wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org Objet : Re: [Wikipedia-l] Polite Thoughtful Neo-Nazis, was NSM88,deletion of user page image, personal attacks
Fred Bauder (fredbaud@ctelco.net) [050218 01:23]:
True and in our human attempt to adequately describe such folks we use the words "totalitarian" and "terrorist", in reference to such organizations and governments as the People's Republic of China and individuals such as Osama bin Ladin. Such folks do not hesitate to "mess up other things for the cause". There is every reason, based on their history, to presume that they will conduct themselves in that way on Wikipedia and in fact they routinely do so, some crudely, some with
a measure of sophistication.
Astroturfing in general is going to be a problem. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:204.251.90.242
The edit in question is here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Yahoo%21&diff=prev&oldid=1...
That's a crude example. I am certain there are much less crude examples ongoing as we speak.
- d.
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