http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Mis...ust_4_userboxes

Just delete them all!

What does any of this have to do with "creating an encyclopedia"? Do you think that Britannica editors would put up with this for one second?

Most userboxes are useless; what does it hurt? The hair color ones are especially innocent.

Such userboxes would have no place on a serious project.

Still, it’s funny to see how probably the most common and normal of the sentiments listed here - a (presumably male) user liking blonde women - is the one targetted.

Throughout most of the world, and even in most of the west, the sentiments expressed in userboxes such as…

…providing they were understood at all, would be far more controversial and inappropriate.

On Wikipedia, it’s the exact opposite.

Agree. Why should any editors sexuality or preferences get special status on building an encyclopedia. If editors like to state such things on their user-page, then that should be enough. All user-boxes should be banned. Who wants to know, unless throllers and barnbots, a complete pain in the a.

When hair colour preferences help the encyclopedia, let me know. They're useless compared to pop-culture boxes.

For the record, I think red head lovers are more likely to..., well, let's say writing about pizza is less likely.

I would content that MfD discussions on userbox deletions does not help to build the encyclopedia and that all discussions on what user boxes should be kept should be deleted for this reason.

Interesting that there are some apparently female editors who say these userboxes should be deleted because they are sexist. They are sounding like a lot of feminazis.

*takes a shot*

I agree.

I actually said that there. You calling me a feminazi? You're sounding a lot like a wanker right now

(There! Now that the name-calling is out of the way, where does that leave us?)

I make it Feminazis 1, Wankers 1.

Nevermind! I'm sure there'll be a few more wankers along in a minute to break the deadlock.

The more I watch of this debate on WP, the more I am becoming convinced that the 19th Amendment was a stupid idea.

(Now hiding from Alison )

But claiming territory over land that isn't yours is rather dodgy, and I'm glad the Good Friday agreement cleared that up.

Was it the Man Show that did the stupid bit at the farmer's market in LA, where they had women set up a booth to end women's suffrage, and 99% of the doofuses were like yes, lets end women's suffering! and signed the poll? I seem to recall one insane lady actually got it and totally endorsed taking away the vote, however. Bizarre.

I am bad. Here's my point (WP:POINT): Calling someone "sexist" and "misogynist" are insults, but people are allowed to use these insults freely without repercussions. I consider it totally appropriate to use the insult "wanker" in response to someone who uses the insult "feminazi", but what would be the appropriate insult be to someone who uses the insult "sexist"? ("feminazi" is the only term I can think of, saying "you user of sexist where it does not apply person" does not seem to work).

Darwin did do a scientific study to determine whether or not men prefer blonds: Do blondes have more fun?

Calling someone "sexist" or "misogynist" is a statement of fact, or a statement of opinion depending on your perspective. There is no inherent insult in the terms, hence "feminazi" is not the inverse response.

People are not allowed to use those terms freely, without repercussions. You have every right to refute them & it's that simple.


Rarrr!!!!

On an anniversary of the signing of the Bill of Rights some group thought that it would be a great idea of going around asking common people to sign a copy of the Bill of Rights. Things did not go according to plan. Not only did many people not recognize the Bill of Rights, but many refused to sign because they disagreed with what the Bill of Rights said.

Actually, I thought about that segment too; it was hilarious. Of course, there was one uptight woman who knew what it meant, and she went postal on them.

The word "sexist" here means nothing more "associated with prevailing male heterosexual preferences and expression." By the logic of feminism, when a man looks at a woman in a lustful manner - a perfectly healthy and normal thing to do - he has objectified her: a form of oppression. It is also true that the ones complaining about this objectification are not necessarily its targets.

Suffragette: female who is into bondage a little bit.

Is it sexist to have a sexual attraction to one sex is preference to the other? Yes. Is it silly to make a fuss about people feeling this way? Yes.

Are these userboxes any more sexist than that? No. Are they maybe a little creepy? Yes. Are they encyclopedically helpful? No.

Of course, one could make sex-reversed userboxes, but I think you would see mostly gay men using them. And with good cause. If a female editor editor had a userbox that said "This editor digs men with red hair", all the redheaded male editors would turn up at her userpage.

Unless maybe their wife stalks their edits.

Yes, but recently the evolutionary psych people have been calling BS on these folks a lot. Of course women objectify men at least as much, but merely by other standards involving social power/social-rank, as well as looks. Money/wealth is merely a proxy for this. Why else do women prefer to see clothes and other markers of a man's social status? Any man who becomes famous will tell you about the flood of "take me, I'm yours" offers he gets. Henry Kissinger was famously shocked at this (and should have been).

As for feminists, it's hard to talk about them as a group, because they come in so many different shapes and dress sizes, and hair colors....

The bottom line for me is this: Wikipedia is supposed to be an encyclopedia. It's not an online dating service.

If you want to date a Wikipedian, more power to you, but there is absolutely no reason in the context of an encyclopedia to have a box that says "I want to sleep with a Man/woman with body hair/blond hair/red hair/lots of curves/whatever.

This is simply no reason for any of these boxes to exist. And allowing this sort of thing to exist is probably about 50% of the problem.

If I were in charge at WP, I would do away with User pages and all social interaction. I would say "shut up and write those articles!"

What nasty bondage people you mix with. Nobody should suffer in bondage - at least not more than they want to.

Taxwoman
Jet-black hair

Hilarious pun!

Understand, but the imitation is hard to ignore. Yes I understand that BDSM, painful or not, is sort of like being at a Renaissance Pleasure Fair full of SCA people: if you get a toothache or cellphone call, no problem.

Now AlisonW is trying to say that the New York Times calls her and complains because someone has a userbox that says they like redheads?

Wow, some people live in an alternate reality.

You realize that about 99% of editors would leave the project? So long as the work is unpaid, you better throw 'em a bone every once in a while.

Wouldn't that be the point?

Perhaps 99% of the users would leave the project, but I suspect that would include a rather smaller proportion of the actual editors.

Something like this. How many userful writers would leave the project if they lost their userboxes?

But Jimbo likes to brag about the 40-zillion editors working on 4-gazillion-articles. Having the hoi polloi depart en masse due to WP no longer "being fun" might actually improve the project, but this would be Jimbo's worst nightmare -- Wikipedia losing its relevancy.

How many useful writers would even notice that userboxes were gone?

(I'd guess a handful...and even those would probably not care...)

Not all userboxes are bad : Here are some "useful" Userboxes...

Er- that's not what the article actually says at all. The sub-editor who made that heading doesn't appear to have read the rest of the article!

Another stupid debate. Who cares if User:X prefers brunettes? Doesn't help anything, doesn't hurt anything. And to call that sexist is ridiculous. It's not sexist. It's a preference. If I prefer no hair, does that make me sexist? Sure as hell doesn't. Poor argument. Sorry, Alison and whoever else. Would have been better to just drop a note on the user's talk pages and ask them to reword. Saves the drama.

Too much damn drama.

Begun again, the userboxen wars have.

finally a reasonable comment from someone without a y chromosome

Why don't they just for example replace the photo of the blonde girl in the blondes userbox so that no one can say it's sexist toward women?

Maybe they prefer blonde men, women, or dogs--lord knows I'd love to own a golden retriever or a very cute blonde hamster, if my cat wouldn't promptly kill the little guy. Then again, blonde is a type of beer.

This kind of attempting to adhere to 'high standards' kinda makes me laugh. You can't even agree amongst yourselves as to what is and is not appropriate, and there are tons of useless userboxes already. Personally, I'd rather take the ED/*chan route, and allow people to embrace political incorrectness if they want to, rather than this kind of laughable bullshit censorship on a website which is already one of the most uptight, anally retentive places on the internet. Offended? IMHO, that means you are probably too uptight, especially if it's merely the preferences in women's hair colour.

Oh yeah, and that story about the majority of women not being able to distinguish suffrage from suffering made me lol just a little bit.



I totally agree with this. What's normal is what is being demonised here. Also I must agree with Milton Roe's comment that women objectify men in other ways.

Personally, I prefer brunettes. Redheads can be fine too. Not a big fan of blondes personally.

One thing I'm actually slightly suprised about is that another factor relating to political correctness hasn't been brought in yet - race. Most women that are not of European descent have naturally black hair, and I don't see that a userbox proclaiming the beauty of black hair was ever created, nor anything to do with the texture of hair. But the only way that'd be likely to manifest itself in a userbox would be something along the lines of "this user has Asian fetish", and that would be sure to get deleted.

This kind of thing is not stirred up for principle, but because there is not enough drama™. Go put an "Historical" tag on the CL-SV-FM-JZG-V-TL;DR and edit war to keep it there and this whole MfD will be forgotten.

I don't see how you can call someone sexist for saying they prefer blonde women. That's not a statement of fact, or even opinion--a wrong opinion, perhaps--but it's still unacceptable and insulting. If a straight male puts that userbox on his page, it does not make him sexist. It makes him straight with a preference for blonde women. GASP.

Speaking of the "blonde" box. It would most likely not refer to men, who would be "blond". Just sayin'.

It certainly wouldn't bother me.