[Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia-l digest, Vol 1 #839 - 15 msgs

Mon Nov 11 18:07:23 UTC 2002

elian wrote:

>tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com> writes:
>
>>Matt M. wrote:
>>
>>>How are they any different from the geographical Wikipedian pages? I don't
>>>see how asserting I'm Queer is any different from asserting I'm Canadian.
>>>
>>Sure.
>>But then why are users being prevented from asserting their opposition
>>to the US in its current state as a polluting warmonger ruled by an
>>oil baron despot?
>>
>Because of the "Anti". Enlisting as a queer user says nothing about your
>attitude about non-queer people. Positive categories are fine (ecologists,
>human right or peace activists, atheist, christian or muslim), negative
>categories are evil: "anti-christian", "antisemite", because they don't say
>only something about the self-categorized person but also insult other
>people.
>
I'm prepared to tolerate the "anti-" pages.  If people want to paint 
targets on their foreheads for everybody else to shoot at, I don't think 
that the rest of us need to jump in to prevent their suicide.  People 
who choose to put their names on these lists need to know that being 
there may say something to the rest of us about their credibility. 
 There can even be several pages that seem to say the same thing 
(anti-american/anti-yankee or anti-gay/anti-queer/anti-pervert) with 
each expressing a different perspective on the subject.  

If some of the sillier debates can be marginalized to these personal 
anti-pages, the more serious contributors are likely to ignore them 
completely, no matter how offensive they get.  Individual user pages 
don't quite do the job for the people on these pages; they often need to 
feel that they are a part of a group, even if it is a group of one.

Eclecticology