Daniel Lee Mayer wrote:
Moreover, one of 24's aims is to change the goals of the project and tell us what we 'should' (in his twisted world-view) be writing about.
My position on this is that so long as someone keeps their "change the goals" campaign on meta, that's fine. It's a waste of typing, though, because the one thing I'm totally dogmatic and inflexible on is NPOV and the concept of "encyclopedia". If NPOV is wrong, then so be it, wikipedia will be wrong. I'll gladly give an alternative community free hosting (until I can't afford it) just to defuse the objection that we're somehow suppressing alternatives.
If someone wants a non-NPOV encyclopedia, or if someone wants a site that is something _other than_ an encyclopedia, that's fine. But it won't be wikipedia.
The thing is, I'm an extremely ideological person. I'm a hardcore "libertarian" politically. I'm an _Atlas Shrugged_-toting-Objectivist philosophically. Compared to the average person, I'm "off the scale" in terms of ideological extremism. Don't ask me about religion or communism or the 'greens' unless you want to get an earful about reason, morality, and individual freedom. :-)
So I think I _understand_ the desire to write one-sided articles. Sometimes I'd love to go into articles on topics that I care about and write a diatribe. :-) But I don't. Because to do so would be _polemics_, not _encyclopedics_. If even *I*, an "ideological kook" if there ever was one, can keep the two straight, then so can people who are just as extreme in some other direction.
It would be wrong to turn Wikipedia into a platform for my opinions -- or 24s. It's an encyclopedia. It is a catalog of information aiming for an approximation to universal agreement. We have many simple techniques for achieving this, the most common and easiest being to "step out a level" and not _engage_ the controversy, but _describe_ the controversy.
In my opinion, he IS vandalizing the project by creating tons of pages that are really indefensible from a NPOV-encyclopedia standpoint. Banning him would certainly result in tirades of "those people/that clique doesn't like what I say, so they're oppressing me", but this may be the point where we have to make a call on policy.
I'd like to hear Cunctator weigh in on this topic. He's probably our current best "conscience" on such matters, in the sense that he's very opposed to cabalism, and clearly sees the risk.
To me, the risk is two fold. First, there's the possibility of the public tirades against our allegedly exclusionary policies, etc. But second, there's the danger that we go down a slipperly slope and start banning people for more and more minor infractions.
maveric149 wrote:
I really hate to say it, but I think it is time to at least consider voting 24 off the island. Maybe give him/her one more chance to reform.
I'm trying to see if I can raise him via private email. Perhaps I can talk sense into him.
--Jimbo