This situation is disturbing to me. Lucky 6.9 was following procedure throughout the dispute as far as I can see. While Brainhell is a new user, this does not excuse direct personal attacks on Lucky (recorded here), nor does it excuse vindictively trying to get Lucky de-adminned after the fact. Brainhell seems to have a him-or-me attitude towards this dispute, which is poisonous and completely unwarranted. Lucky unblocked Brainhell after the first one-week block, and graciously offered to drop the matter and move forward. Brainhell (I don't know how) managed to construe this as "Bargaining the use of administrative powers (the unblock) for purposes of self-protection" (see User talk:Brainhell). No, actually it's called assuming good faith, something Brainhell could learn a thing or two about. What good can come from this campaign to get Lucky de-sysopped? I am also disappointed that Kelly Martin unblocked without giving Lucky the benefit of the doubt that he wouldn't block a user without a legitimate reason. Doesn't Lucky deserve a lot more respect from the community than this? We should be ashamed of ourselves for the treatment Lucky received.
From User talk:Jimbo Wales I wonder if you might consider... I wonder if you might consider simply removing your political/religious/etc. userboxes and asking others to do the same. This seems to me to be the best way to quickly and easily end the userbox wars.
Userboxes of a political or, more broadly, polemical, nature are bad for the project. They are attractive to the wrong kinds of people, and they give visitors the wrong idea of what it means to be a Wikipedian.
I think rather than us having to go through a mass deletion (which is what is likely to happen if the userbox fad doesn't go away), it will be better to simply change the culture, one person at a time. Will you help me?--Jimbo Wales 10:53, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
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The current situation with these things being in the main Template namespace, and promoted as if healthy and normal in the Wikipedia namespace, is that they are damaging to our culture. They are attracting the wrong sort of people, and giving newcomers the wrong idea of what it means to be a Wikipedian. That's why they need to go. Not to censor people's self-expression, but to make it clear that as a whole the community considers these things to be divisive and inappropriate. Jimmy Wales (jwales at wikia.com) Mon Feb 20 19:34:13 UTC 2006 |
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'It should be noted that use of such userboxes is strongly discouraged at Wikipedia, and it is likely that very soon all these userboxes will be deleted or moved to userspace soon. Their use and creation is not recommended at this time.Jimmy Wales Mon Feb 20 18:01 UTC |