On Apr 4, 2006, at 6:28 PM, Justin Cormack wrote:
Now I really dont want to join into this but.
We were talking UnAmerican Activities I think as to the view of communists.
Rather than the actual behaviour of actual Russian communists.
It is not necessarily a reasonable comparison...
Right. I guess a more meaningful response is to say that we're not comparing the pedophiles directly to communists, but rather the remarks about pedophiles to similar anti-communist activity in the 1950's.
Long story made short, in the 1950's, certain Congressmen decided that communists had infiltrated American government, the American entertainment industry, and other important parts of American society. At the time this was considered a bad thing, as the United States was in the midst of the Cold War against all the communist countries, most notably Soviet Russia. You might remember Soviet Russia from those stupid Yakov Smirnoff jokes everyone keeps repeating on Slashdot...
Long story made short, no vast conspiracy was ever uncovered, and a lot of people were harassed and had their lives ruined for, most believe, no good reason. So McCarthyism (named after McCarthy, one of the guys who started this whole hunt for communists) has gone down in history as a bad thing. (1)
At the time, McCarthyism was compared to the old witch hunts that used to take place in old Europe and early colonial America, because witch hunts similarly disrupted society in order to chase after an imaginary threat. This point was perhaps best made by Arthur Miller, whose play "The Crucible" portrayed the witch hunts during the McCarthy era, leading many to draw the comparison.
I think the argument is that in worrying about pedophiles, we're disrupting Wikipedia's operations just to chase down some imaginary threat. There's a fear that suspected pedophiles (or even actual pedophiles (2)) will be harassed needlessly for no useful end, severely damaging Wikipedia's social fabric.
1. Some people are apologists for McCarthyism, believing that communist infiltration was enough of a threat to justify this. Since the fall of Soviet Russia, declassified information proves that the Soviets did try to infiltrate American society in order to subvert it towards communism. Needless to say, they failed for reasons largely unrelated to the congressional hearings. 2. Similarly, some of the victims of McCarthyism were, in fact, communists. This does not justify, in many people's eyes, the harassment and disruption of their lives that occurred. It is a matter of record that there are some self-declared pedophiles who contribute to Wikipedia.