Steve Summit wrote:
Fred Bauder wrote:
The question I have is how can we establish a workable procedure to delete destructive user boxes, one that doesn't generate a lot of conflict and wheelwarring. AND make it vary clear that userboxes which just express opinions are perfectly acceptable... ...I like to not have to worry about things going wrong there.
Even before establishing that workable procedure, I think there needs to be more consideration of whether we truly want such a procedure. Jimbo's informal wish that people voluntarily remove divisive and polemic userboxes doesn't seem to have done much to defuse the current situation, but the initial few rounds of deletions certainly haven't, either.
At the very least, we need a clearer consensus on what a truly "destructive" user box is, so that we don't have people speedily deleting, say, the UDUIW one.
I've already clarified my stance on this on the talk page for [[WP:CSD]] (yes, I'm the Commienazi who deleted the UDUIW userbox): I couldn't care less about political userboxes. Whether those go or stay, it matters little to me. What concerns me is the existence of userboxes and categories that exist solely for the purpose of factionalism. To me, the UDUIW stuff fits that definition to a tee, splitting Wikipedians into "us and them". Ideological userboxes (i.e. "This user trusts Jimbo") are arguably factionalist, but not blatantly so, as evidenced by the split in the community over polemical userboxes. However, the only argument put up for keeping userboxes like UDUIW I have seen is "T1 doesn't apply in userspace, undelete and kick that fascist Johnleemk in the balls!" If Jimbo won't make a *clear* and final stand on polemical userboxes (something I wouldn't blame him for not doing), the least he could do is make such a stand on blatantly factionalist ones.
John