Stevertigo wrote:
Toby Bartels wrote:
Yeah, /I/ know what it means? Do you???
If you dont think "Jesus is Lord!" (dont forget the exclamation !) isnt inflamatory-- I dont know what to tell you.
Eh, that post was a bit over the top, and not very sensible. I think that I meant that it seemed rather circular to claim that a name must be changed because it's "inflammatory" ("of a nature to rouse passion, anger, or animosity" -- OED) when the only passion, anger, and animosity that it raised was in the business of changing names in the first place. There was no mention (there was eventually, but late in the process) of any emotions being aroused by the name /other/ than the desire to ban it on the grounds that it was "inflammatory".
But that is hardly what I said; which, as I mentioned, was not very coherent. And was overly combative. And rude. Sorry about that.
Youre usually pretty straightforward and practical Toby--in this case you seem to be making a strange quasi-principled argument against a policy -- let me repeat it-- 1. Wikipedians can vote to change a username. 2. There are no standards, save the will of the community.
Yes, I am absolutely arguing against that policy. A more detailed case, from principle, is in my most recent post, which is a lengthy reply to a post from mav.
The second one require some wikitrust or better yet: http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikifaith
According to that article, Wikifaith is faith in the wiki process. That's neither here nor there when it comes to personal usernames. I have a great deal of faith in the wiki process these days -- more than I did when I first heard of it! ^_^
I also have faith that Wikipedia will generally do the right thing; perhaps that is what you meant. To the extent that money measures faith, note that I made the largest charitable contribution of my life to date (by a factor of more than 3) on the basis of this faith, last week. Still, this faith is not blind.
So, maybe LD's experiment was useful after all-- but only to prove my original point (which isnt really "my" point alone, is it-- 19 to 5 vote ) that "WP reserves the right to rename you. " ie: http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Toby_Bartels/namechange
See, if that ever /really/ went through, I would leave. Hell, if it were ever a serious issue, I'd lose a lot of faith (in Wikipedia, but not much in the wiki process in general). OK, that might not be entirely without doubt; I know the danger of making absolute statements. But I'm having a hard time thinking of a plausible situation where such a name change would be remotely a good idea -- I mean for the community to attempt to impose on me by force.
I suspect that the world would be a better place if we didn't have the technical means to enforce some rules. If people couldn't do anything to change Drolsi's old name /other/ than to talk to him on a personal basis and try to convince him that it would be a good idea, then that might have been what people tried in the first place! This suspicion, like the rambling at the end of my reply to mav, is also much broader than just Wikipedia -- and as in that case, Wikipedia is much closer to my ideal than most insitutions are. This is even -- dare I say it? -- a big part of Wikifaith to me. In wikis, people /can't/ stop others from editing their text; and this forces collaboration instead of single authorship. Instituting banning and page protection -- even if necessary, in the end, because of vandalism -- can be a bad thing too, like anythin that interferes with the wiki process (in which I have so much faith).
-- Toby