User:The Fat Man Who Never Came Back/Courtesy blinking
 | The following is a proposed Wikipedia policy, guideline, or process. The proposal may still be in development, under discussion, or in the process of gathering consensus for adoption. Thus references or links to this page should not describe it as "policy". |
From time to time, a discussion about an editor will degenerate to the point where, in the judgment of the community, its content may potentially cause harm to said editor's delicate ego and probably make him cry. This harm can range from jokes about a user's weight, to aspersions regarding his virility to general pugnacity and truculence. To make the offending language that much more difficult to read, the discussion should generally be blinked out of courtesy. Courtesy blinking can and should be performed indiscriminately, with verve and, when appropriate, with gusto.
Considerations
[edit]- Editors with blink reflex abnormalities may never be able to view the blinked text if their blink rate corresponds to that of the blinked text on a given computer system. So far, we have been unable to locate a study that examines variations in the blink rate of the HTML
blinktag across major computer platforms and processors. - Blinking has been known to trigger seizures in epileptics.
Acceptable variations
[edit]- Editors may also choose to blink and strike the text as a further indication of courtesy. For example, an unsavory comment's harm may be mitigated as follows:
The Fat Man's sockpuppets are especially smelly.A technical limitation of this variation is that the strikethrough line itself does not blink.
Template
[edit]The following template may be employed in such cases: