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Jimmy Wales wrote: | Abe Sokolov wrote: | |>Only a handful of users seem to care about fostering pluralism, diversity, |>tolerance, and mutual respect on Wiki these days. Fortunately, site owner |>Jimbo Wales is the most ardent defender of a pluralistic community of |>users. His guidance is desperately needed at this point. |> |>Mr. Wales, whom I'm deeply respect for founding this experiment in |>applying a certain set of principles, needs to explain to these |>"anti-Communist" advocates of censorship the differences between liberty |>and fascism. | | | Yes, while not commenting on the specifics of this dispute, because I | just now looked at the web pages and couldn't come to a firm | understanding of what's going on yet, I will say that absolutely, | Wikipedia is *not* anti-communist, and that banning people for | ideological reasons would be a horrible precedent. | | --Jimbo
Ok, to clarify - first of all, I wasn't thinking, and posted late at night. This is of course not an excuse. I should have phrased my remark more carefully.
The issue is *one user* - the "red faction" vandal - who did things like replacing all of the village pump with "RED FACTION". I was replying to RickK's comment about that user's registering as User:Jesus Chirst (sic). This is a user who has gotten banned for vandalism of various pages pretty often, and has continued annoying me on AIM.
I do not advocate banning "all communists" any more than I advocate banning "all iridologists" or "all pepsi lovers." Personally, I think that, when handled properly, communism can be quite successful and respectful for all citizens. It is true that bad things have been done in its name, but bad things have been done in the name of the Bible as well, and few would say that that makes the Bible "bad."
To give an idea of what this person has "contributed":
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&target=...
Again - Wikipedia's place is not to make judgements or exclude communists or other belief systems. This should go without saying.
Nathan