On Monday 11 November 2002 03:12 pm, Bridget [name omitted for privacy reasons] (aka Lir) wrote:

We must end the nonsense. Never again must a page like, "Anti-American Wikipedians" be deleted on the say-so of some elitist. We must vote on such issues. Never again should the name of Munchen or Colombo be decided by some American with administrative powers. We must vote on such issues and we must start this voting process soon.

The Anti-American page was POV nonsense that is counter to our goal of creating an NPOV encyclopedia and a cohesive community. It has therefore been moved to meta where it belongs.

Naming conventions have been shaped through many many months of hard work and discussion by many different users. Unilaterally and deliberately going against that is a slap in the face of everybody who has worked to shape these conventions. So the only person acting unilaterally here was the person moving the page from the naming convention-compliant title to the non-compliant title.

Voting is fine if it refines established law. But voting is dangerous without protections in the form of a clear set of rules, conventions and case history to act as a stop-gap to control mob rule.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)