The userbox controversy is about the biggest farce I've seen on Wikipedia in my nearly 2 years editing here. Much like the Israelis and Palestinians, both sides have completely squandered any potential sympathy I might have had for them through their actions. Time for some sanity.
What userboxes should be allowed? One school of thought is that anything should be allowed in a userbox, as it exists on a userpage, and somehow the 1st amendment is invloved. Not true. As many have pointed out, WP is not a free webhosting site. Obviously there is much wider latitiude allowed in the userspace than the article space, but anything within the realm of wikipedia is part of that project and reflects on it. While you may have the right to say almost anything you want, you do not have the right to use wikiepdia resources completely unfettered. So where are the lines to be drawn? One should also keep in mind that while userboxes exsit in the userspace, they also exist independently, in the template space. The use of them gives the appearance of being condoned by wikipedia as a whole.
Userboxes can generally fall into several categories:
- The least controversial seem to be ones directly related to wikiepdia, such as "this user is a fluent speaker of French", "This user is an admin", etc.
- Next there are those that really have nothing to do with Wikpedia, but are realitively innocent. "This user is of German ancestry", "This user plays chess", "This user likes cookies", etc.
- Slightly more controversial are those that express a political belief. "This user is a liberal", "This user supports GWB", "This user supports Amensty International", etc. I believe it was these and anything below that were deleted by Kelly Martin in the "New year's purge" or whatever they've called it, which proved more than a little controversial. I would certainly be very hesitant to believe there is a consensus to delete these en masse.
- Often being deleted now are ones that express opposition to other things. "This user does not support GWB", "This user is opposed to the ACLU", etc. the logic here is that there's a difference between saying you support something, and stating one's opposition to the opposite, especially when that opposite might include a fellow wikipedian. It's less divisive to say "This user is a Democrat" than "This user dislikes Republicans" (though they are not exactly the same thing). Of course, it gets tricky. "This user is against the death penalty" is an opposition template, but there is not an easy way of stating it's positive converse. "This user is in favor of abolishing the death penalty"? Tricky, that. There is also a difference in that "the death penalty" is a thing, not a person. This could nto be considered an attack on a user the way "This user is opposed to homosexuality" might be, which could be construed as an attack on other wikipedians.
- And then there are the ones that are often considered over the line. Attack templates (not just opposition ones), trolling, etc. "This user is a pedophile", "This user is a member of KKK", "This user wants to cut off the heads of communists and fuck the hole" etc. Threre seems to be a relative consensus that these should be deleted (Jimbo brought down the hammer on the first one), but little else is settled.
So we have 5 groups:
- WP related: unlikely ever to be deleted, unless userboxes are removed from the project entirely (at least that would be fair to everyone))
- Neutral ones: would be deleted if it were decided only userboxes that help the project are allowed. There is of course the question of whether something like "This user playes X-box" would be useful to people writing X-box related articles.
- Political "pro"-userboxes: stating one's support for a political ideology.
- Political "anti"-userboxes: Stating one's opposition to a political ideology (generally considered somewhat more divisive than the above)
- Trolling
So where should the line be drawn? Between 4 and 5? Between 3 and 4? some argue that userboxes with political statements have no place in a project that has NPOV as a strict policy. Others say that, as everyone has a point of view, it's helpful when they wear it on their sleeve. Both make valid points. The problem is, with the new CSD criterion allowing polemical or inflammatory userboxes to be speedied, people are taking it upon themselves to decide what's "polemical" or "inflammatory", when it is far from objective. People have recently been saying that "CSD trumps TFC", which I have never heard in reference to articles, anyway. There any speedy that's even slightly controversial is supposed to go to AFD (or {prod}, but that's a new/spearate issue). CSD T1 is far too vague. We need a discussion, not a shouting match, to decide what to do. The current system is getting us nowhere. Templates are TFDed, speedied during the discussion, brought to DRV, where again, admins can act unilaterally. Debates have become inconclusive shouting matches. People are making userboxes just to exacerbate the situation. And can we allow "This user supports MLK" and not "This user supports GWB"?
For full disclosure, I've tried to stay out of the debates, and have usually succeeded. The only one's I've voted on are ones I conisdered in group 5, when they appeared at DRV. Those were "pedophile", "KKK", "pacifist3" ("This user thinks pacifists make good target practice" advocating killing fellow wikipedians is hardly civil), and "Cannibal" (with no real enthusiasm)("This user is a cannibal" No. You're not. You're being dumb). I also voted to undelete "Thsi user is an atheist" so long as the comparable ones for established religions stayed. I have no real opinions otherwise, but I think an agreement needs to be made, and adhered to. There is no agreement on what "polemical or inflammatory" means exactly, nor even if that CSD is valid (though I would argue it is). the only thing I know for sure is that some people are too obsessed with userboxes, and not interested enough in writing an encyclopedia (not that they're mutually exclusive).