QUOTE(gmaxwheel @ Thu 8th July 2010, 3:30pm)
What the @#$ is wrong with you people at Wikipedia Review? You claim to care deeply by all the people being libelled as the collateral damage of the irresponsible operating operating policies of Wikipedia...
Actually, we claim to care deeply about the
intentional damage of the irresponsible
non-operating policies
and non-policies of Wikipedia, yada yada yada.
Still, you seem like you're probably a fairly nice guy on a personal level. (Do you play golf at all?)
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...but you're perfectly happy to let your own members spread the most vicious libel on your own forum?
Y'know, this is precisely the sort of problem we have when we register an old-guard type such as yourself. We
were actually thinking of banning Ottava again anyway (we did it once before, and he's currently on a one-post-per-hour restriction FWIW), but now that you're saying things like this, we feel like we have to keep him unbanned just to show that we aren't "giving in to WP pressure tactics."
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Perhaps unsurprisingly, this was enough to also get me branded... and now Ottava claims to be mass-mailing the media with evidence of my "promotion of pedophilia", smearing me here and on Wikiversity, etc.
Yeah, I wish he wouldn't do things like that. But didn't we move all that stuff to the tar pit already? (IOW, out of public view?) I mean, given that this is the internet and all, we're probably just going to have to move your refutation there too, so that the public doesn't get the idea that you're refuting slanderous allegations that don't exist.
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I've seen several newspaper editorials by Ottava attacking homosexuals seeking the right to marry, attacking the state for entertaining that right, but for the Catholic Church's continued mishandling of the pedophile priests debacle he offers only defence and claims that the critics are attacking the Catholic faith.
Yeah, I wish he wouldn't do any of that stuff either.
However, I personally believe you folks are missing the point a little bit when you chide us here at WR for not doing things that might lead us to be "seen as a respectable critics' forum," which would presumably include banning people like Ottava and various others. The point, really, is that Wikipedia exists in the real world as well as the internet world, has to somehow deal with the worst aspects of both, and can't really manage it - because it isn't really an "organization" in any real sense of the term and doesn't have the structure or the flexibility for that. (I'll admit, though, y'all seem to be doing a little better recently in areas related to nationalist/ethnic conflict and, of course, the Scientologists.)
As for us, we're
amateur critics. To me, that's a key distinction; amateur encyclopedists deserve amateur critics. Professional critics have more important things to do, like clipping their toenails and watching re-runs of the
The LeBron James Show on ESPN. (I hear the pros can even do both of those things at
the same time!)
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(Of course, if your goal is just to bring Wikipedia down— you should also stay clear of the drama. The almost infinite drama that exists currently hasn't killed it, so it seems no amount of drama will.
How do you define "bring down" and "kill" in this context? I hold that very few of us here are so unrealistic as to think Wikipedia will simply vanish someday, never to return. Even if it did, think of the scrapers!
QUOTE(gmaxwheel @ Thu 8th July 2010, 3:47pm)
As far as the Christian userbox goes... At least from my perspective the joke was that we were advocating that advocacy userboxes should have to be NPOV (Ben may have been more in it for the 'lulz' for all I know). The actual
text of the userbox was a complete NPOV not at all critical bit of writing...
I'm afraid that's exceptionally disingenuous of you, to say the least.
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At the time my perspective on the spinning cross the appeared at one point was just more sillyness — 'showing all sides of the issue'. This shows a more than a little bit of cultural ignorance and insensitivity: I was completely unaware that depicting the cross upside down is considered to be sacrilegious. It probably should have been obvious to me, but it wasn't, and I regretted any involvement I had in that part deeply once I was made aware of it.
I'm not religious either, but it was transparently obvious what your purpose and motivation was for that, er,
prank, or whatever you prefer to call it. Still, such an admission of regret is the first step towards accepting and forgiving the many flaws and questionable beliefs you perceive in your Fellow Man.
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I hope the text of the box makes it clear that I wasn't attempting to offend people in that manner.
It doesn't, I'm sorry to say. You'll just have to trust me on that one!