Talk:Nigger lover

Previous discussion from the Administrators' Noticeboard

And don't blame me for that title. Quite why an encyclopedia created after 1920 or so and (I had thought) primarily aimed at people with an IQ over 80 needs even a redirect for "Nigger lover" remains a mystery to me, but anyway it does have a redirect. WP:PREFER says Administrators should not protect or unprotect a page to further their own position in a content dispute. I've no particular position here, but I may have been guilty of protecting the right version. Second opinion welcome. -- Hoary (talk) 23:36, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

You did pick the original title, Hoary, so who else would we "blame"? There are lots of ways of calling for attention that do not leave this original phrase on everyone's watchlist for hours/days, or even here on the TOC. I was tired of looking at it, so, in a "be bold" move, I have moderated it. If others feel strongly, thery will make their own changes. // BL \\ (talk) 00:15, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

You were of course welcome to be bold and change it, but now it's somewhat misleading. The main question was about an inappropriate target for a redirect (although I did indeed wonder why any redirect was necessary). -- Hoary (talk) 00:26, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't see a problem with this; given its potential for being used for WP:BLP violations, seems like a good idea to have it permanently protected; and some users may type the phrase into Search looking for a particular use of the term. --Rodhullandemu 23:43, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

(ec)I don't think that an encyclopedia created after 2000 (note 80-year difference!) needs to censor nigger lover if there's an appropriate target for it, though we should be careful how we do so. In my opinion, Race traitor (which discusses all sides of the concept) is a better target than List of ethnic slurs, which does not have any content related to the term "nigger lover" (it discusses many variations of "nigger", for obvious reasons). According to Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Nigger-lover it apparently did appear there before, hence the redirect - but that's no longer the case. Naruto 2.0 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is definitely edit-warring, and he definitely is adding dubious material to List of ethnic slurs, but that doesn't mean he's wrong about this. Meanwhile, this is only useful as a redirect, and only if some target is appropriate — if neither is appropriate, and there's no other appropriate target, then delete it rather than trying to fit it to some existing article (and protect it either way). For the record, I note that nigger-lover has been undisturbed since 2006 - apparently autosuggestion isn't working as well as we thought ... — Gavia immer (talk) 00:04, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

You make some good points (as well as one with which I disagree). How about moving this conversation to, and continuing it at, Talk:Nigger lover? -- Hoary (talk) 00:26, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Given the potential sensitivity of the topic, that might be best. — Gavia immer (talk) 00:54, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Current discussion

The above is copied from comments at WP:AN, where there was some concern about sensitivity - there's a pointer there at the moment, so people can find this, but discussion should continue here. As I said previously, I think that it's reasonable for this (and the variant nigger-lover) to exist, and I think they should point to race traitor rather than List of ethnic slurs. The previous target assumed that there was appropriate content at List of ethnic slurs, but that's no longer the case. I am not endorsing anyone else's edit warring or other behavior at this title or the other involved pages; that's beside the point. What's important is whether this redirect improves or harms the encyclopedia, and whether we could better serve the encyclopedia by doing something different. So, any comments? — Gavia immer (talk) 01:30, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

You're right in that there's (now) no mention of "nigger lover" in List of ethnic slurs. I don't suppose that the term is used by anyone other than naughty children and older drunken bigots, and presume that when used it would be illocutionary rather than locutionary if not mere coprolalia, so its actual denotation would be rather beside the point. I also suppose that all this would also be true of "race traitor", and can't see any reason for the race traitor article not to go to AfD. If I may anticipate the charge (hinted at in the section above) that this would constitute "censorship", the huge majority of English words (let alone English collocations) rightly do not get encyclopedia entries. -- Hoary (talk) 01:55, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

You're right that we shouldn't aim to be a bad copy of Wiktionary. I certainly don't advocate making an article out of this, for example. I happen to think that, so long as we have the article race traitor, it's a reasonable redirect to it. For the record, if race traitor got deleted at AfD, I wouldn't have a problem deleting these redirects as well, for lack of a target (update: seel better target below)- so you might want to go ahead with that. So long as race traitor exists as a possible target, though, I think targeting these there is the right way to go. — Gavia immer (talk) 02:24, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Good. I rather feared that my comment might arouse the reaction "Well if you think it should go to AfD then take it to AfD already and stop wasting people's time." I'm testing the waters first -- and not least because the AfD process itself is a godawful waste of time. -- Hoary (talk) 02:31, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

I think I have found the correct solution for now: redirect to Nigger#Derived usage. "Race traitor" is not the same as "nigger lover", although the meanings overlap heavily. Unless you find a reliable source which puts the two terms together, doing so by a wikipedian would be original research. But when it will be done, the redirect may be retargeted. - 7-bubёn >t 02:36, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Excellent. I concur. -- Hoary (talk) 02:46, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

As do I - that's the better target. Oh, and shame on you for wasting your time finding a solution instead of properly debating back and forth endlessly. — Gavia immer (talk) 02:50, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Hey, let's start an "RFC" on the matter! Not. Meanwhile, I've been MOULD and re-redirected, per SemBubenny. (Taking advantage of my magic buttons again; yes, go ahead and have me desysopped.) -- Hoary (talk) 02:55, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Mind getting nigger-lover (with hyphen) as well? It's also protected. — Gavia immer (talk) 03:05, 2 March 2009 (UTC)