User talk:Hermitian/archive3

Welcome to my talk page. (archive)

Rookiee

User:Rookiee's page listed a cause ("boyloving") that he advocated; his signature contained a mirror image of "boylover". If I understand correctly, he was not advocating breaking laws, but changing them so that certain acts become legal; but regardless, this was still advocacy.

Advocacy on Wikipedia user pages is at best tolerated; remember that WP:NOT clearly states that Wikipedia user pages is not web hosting. The reason is that the general public does not necessarily distinguish well between encyclopedic articles, and user pages expressing individual opinions. They appear from the same site, there are internal links between the two, and so on. Basically, the average person thinks that if some Wikipedia user advocates a cause, it is somewhat endorsed by Wikipedia.

Remember that the goal is to build a free encyclopedia. User pages are not a right, they are meant as a tool for reaching that goal. If such or such user page, is an impediment to the goal (for instance, by attracting controversy without helping in the construction of encyclopedic content), it has to go. If the user remakes again the same user page, then he has to go too.

The obvious answer, of course, it not to put one's personal advocacy on one's user page. I'm personally involved in certain political actions (in the broad sense: influencing policy through information, not in a partisan sense), yet you'd be hard-pressed to know which by looking at my Wikipedia user page or signature.

Apart from that, I have to link whatsoever with this Perverted Justice site. I don't even hail from the US, and I bash nobody. David.Monniaux 15:56, 21 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Not Fixing What Isn't Broken

Ta for the nice comment at User talk:Jimbo Wales#Not Fixing What Isn't Broken. It strikes me that Britannica is intelligently designed, while Wikipedia evolves. With lots of messy or failed attempts, but remarkable results in the long run. ... dave souza, talk 23:32, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi again! Interesting question about Electrowinning, which I must admit never having heard of before. Have found one source, hope you can find a better one and further improve the article. Ta, dave souza, talk 20:59, 26 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

XavierVE

While I appreciate your sentiment, I'm not sure it'd be fair to mangle his statement (which would be required) and repost it. In fact, given the ... problems hanging around in it's history, I'm tempted to delete the page and just replace it with a notice that says "This User is Banned" or words to that effect. Wily D 14:33, 15 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This is about the closest I could do to "balancing" the page. I known User:Squeakbox is thinking about trying to counsel Xavier off-wiki about the whole situation - you might try speaking with him. I'm not sure what help I can really be. Wily D 14:44, 15 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Justin Berry

It seems Phil Sandifer and Jimbo Wales have embarked upon yet another crusade to sanitize negative material in the Justin Berry article. I've just been blocked til the 26th, and Phil has deleted about 8 paragraphs written by me from the Justin Berry talk page, claiming they were "slander", when in fact, they were a criticism of his using WP:BLP as an excuse to remove sourced material he didn't like. While some descrepancies between reality, and the Justin Berry story Jimbo and Phil wish to present on Wikipedia, were discussed in my remarks, Phil could have blanked those specifically, instead of, as is usual on Wikipedia, invisiblizing one entire side of an unwanted argument.

This lowers my respect for Wikipedia[1] from epsilon to about a tenth of epsilon. Good work, guys. Hermitian 16:30, 24 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I am not commenting on your block but the deletions increase my respect for this project, one man's broth is another man's poison I guess, SqueakBox 19:38, 24 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]