[WikiEN-l] blocked for a week for these edits

[Philip Welch]

On May 22, 2006, at 2:54 PM, Steve Bennett wrote:

>> That's a reasonable thing to say about communists, anarchists,
>> radical feminists, furries, polyamorous transsexuals, anarcho-
>> capitalists, or almost any fringe group. The difference with anti-
>> Semites is that we have Jewish editors. If there were people on
>> Wikipedia who happened to be white supremacists or Islamists and you
>> had no way to tell they were either of these things from their edits,
>> that would be one thing. If you make your anti-semitism known,
>> however, I don't see why you should be welcome on Wikipedia. The very
>> act of accepting these types into the community would be an insult.
>
> It's a pity we're using the example of anti-Semitism. Maybe we  
> could keep
> this more abstract? Say I'm a rabid anti-Pokemonite (not far from  
> the truth
> :)). Does the existence of Pokemon fans on Wikipedia make me  
> unwelcome? Nah,
> I just keep my distance.

That's different for so many important reasons. One big reason is  
that there are no actual Pokemon editing Wikipedia, because Pokemon  
don't exist in reality. Jews do.

> You might find similarities in the fact that we have both sides of  
> various
> ethnic conflicts, in Yugoslavia or Israel and whatever. We also have
> anti-abortionists and pro-abortionists. Do they bicker? Yep. Does  
> the very
> fabric of Wikipedia fall apart? Nah.

Imagine if we had editors who belonged to the KKK as well as large  
numbers of black editors. Still don't see the problem?

-- 
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch