[WikiEN-l] Nazi userboxes

[Jimmy Wales]

Jim Schuler wrote:
> On 12/1/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>> Rob wrote:
>>> This is an absurd comparison.  Rational people are completely capable
>>> of distinguishing between normal partisan politics and a group which
>>> advocates mass extermination.
>> And furthermore, and this is important in this particular example,
>> rational people are completely capable of distinguishing between someone
>> with sincerely held but deeply misguided beliefs or attitudes who is
>> sincerely trying to nevertheless work well with others to create a fair
>> encyclopedic set of articles on difficult topics, and someone who is
>> just slapping stuff on a userpage to try to yank people's chains.
>>
>> This is not a case of censorship of the poor repressed Nazis.  This is a
>> simple simple simple case of blocking a troll and moving on with life
>> without worrying about it.
>>
>> --Jimbo
> 
> 
> No disrespect, Jimmy, but I don't think anyone was defending Nazis.  It
> seems to me that some of us were attempting to hold a philosophical
> discussion on a broader topic, not a topical conversation on the banning of
> one person.

Right, me too. :)  The point is, if the broad philosophical question is 
"Do we ban people for merely holding unpleasant or unpopular beliefs?" 
then the answer is "no, we never have, and there seems to be very little 
support for doing so".  If the point is "Does asserting unpleasant or 
unpopular beliefs automatically get you a free pass to be any sort of 
jerk you like, because we are planning to bend over backwards to make 
sure we don't ever ever ever discriminate against Nazis?" then the 
answer is, "no, being a disruptive troll is still being a disruptive troll."

The day a kind, thoughtful, productive and intellectual person shows up 
to help us with the encyclopedia project while simultaneously asserting 
with all seriousness that the Nazi party of Germany was or is worthy of 
support, we'll have a hell of an interesting case on our hands.  But the 
reality is, that hasn't happened and seems very unlikely to ever happen.

--Jimbo