On 5/16/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 5/16/06, Nick Boalch n.g.boalch@durham.ac.uk wrote:
Peter Mackay wrote:
Jimbo's word on the matter:
The point is, we don't act *in Wikipedia* as a Democrat, a Republican, a pro-Lifer, a pro-Choicer, or whatever. Here we are Wikipedians, which means: thoughtful, loving, neutral.
With all due respect to you and Jimbo, that's not the way it happens. Thoughtful, loving, neutral, touchy-feely gets good marks, but editors don't suddenly turn into opinionless automatons. Nor do we want them to. We want Republicans to have input into articles on the Republican Party. We just don't want it to be Republican propaganda.
With all due respect to you, I think you're slightly misinterpreting what Jimbo (and I) actually mean. I don't think either of us are suggesting that editors should be 'opinionless automatons', just that they shouldn't let their opinions influence the way they write articles.
I'd say that's pretty much impossible. If nothing else, what you believe is going to affect what you know, and that's going to have a significant influence on the way you write an article. IMO the way Wikipedians should produce an NPOV article is through the consensus of people with multiple points of view. Templates regarding points of view can very much support this.
That isn't to say that I think a template which says "This user think George W. Bush is a moron" is an example of such a template. Actually I'd say a person using such a template is showing a lack of the skills needed to work with others. But "This user is an atheist", or "This user is a Linux user", on the other hand, I think is not only non-harmful, I think it is helpful.
Apparently labelling yourself is divisive and inflammatory, taking the most general definition of divisive (aka. categorising) and saying that because you disagree with atheism this person is deliberately trying to inflame you or some other person. On the other hand, when you are making personal attacks on someone it is clearly inflammatory to people who believe that you shouldn't say things like that about the US president, or any other figure. How did a simple statement about your faith in a certain religion get put together with being divisive?
Again just my opinion, but I don't think there's a consensus on this matter, and his majesty Jimbo has explicitly stated that he has not made an edict on the matter, so speedy deletion should be out of the question.
Anthony