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(a)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(a)Wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org] De la part de David Gerard
Envoyé : jeudi 17 février 2005 15:29
À : wikipedia-l(a)Wikimedia.org
Objet : Re: [Wikipedia-l] Polite Thoughtful Neo-Nazis, was NSM88,deletion of
user page image, personal attacks
Fred Bauder (fredbaud(a)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=…
That's a crude example. I am certain there are much less crude examples
ongoing as we speak.
- d.
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