[WikiEN-l] Subjectivism

[Daniel R. Tobias]

Given that Jimbo is apparently an advocate of Ayn Rand's Objectivism, 
I wonder what he thinks of all the subjectivism that seems to be 
driving policy around here. I'm referring in particular to the 
frequent assertions that the subjective feelings of editors are of 
such great importance that they often trump other concerns. In this 
diff:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_
noticeboard/Incidents&diff=prev&oldid=155921054

an editor asserts that "You are welcome to your own opinions 
regarding threats that are leveled against you. Attempting to 
evaluate my concerns using your own metrics is inappropriate." (This 
is in the context of supporting a permaban against a user for alleged 
legal threats, where others dispute that there were any actual 
threats aimed at the complaining user.) Basically, in the ideology of 
some editors, objective reality and logical discourse are irrelevant 
compared to the feelings of an editor who claims to have been 
emotionally hurt. Of course, taking action based on this (such as 
blocking or banning another user, banning links to particular sites, 
and so on) will likely cause emotional hurt to the targets of this 
action, but that is apparently resolved in terms of status in the 
Wikipedia hierarchy; emotional hurt to a higher-ranked editor is more 
important than hurt to a lower-ranked one. If you're way up in the 
hierarchy, and you act like a drama queen, then you can force 
everyone and everything on Wikipedia to bend to your will; if you 
claim to be emotionally hurt by people saying the word "rutabaga", 
you can probably get it banned.
-- 
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