Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Anti-Israel and anti-Arab states userboxes

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 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the miscellaneous page below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the discussion was:  keep. ‑Scottywong | [yak] || 02:20, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

Anti-Israel and anti-Arab states userboxes

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According to the arguments on Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:UBX/onemanonewoman 4th nomination, userboxes should be deleted if they are "inflammatory or divisive" or exhibit discrimination against a group. According to the article on Anti-Zionism, it largely means opposition to the state of Israel. Therefore, if a statement that one thinks marriage is between a man and a woman is discriminatory against gay people, a statement that one is an anti-Zionist is discriminatory towards Israelis and should be deleted. The article on anti-Zionism does say that many people do not think it is linked to anti-Semitism. But in the same way many say that the belief that marriage is between one man and one woman is not linked to homophobia. Nevertheless, those userboxes were deleted.

The 1967 border userbox similarly amounts to advocacy or discrimination against a group. This suggests taking land away from Egypt and Palestine to give to Israel. According to the reasoning expressed, this suggestion would express discrimination against non-Israelis.

Finally, the revisionist Zionist userbox suggests that the states of Jordan and Palestine should not exist, which would be seen as advocacy against the people of Jordan and Palestine. This is very much divisive just like the Anti-Zionist userbox.

— Naddruf (talk ~ contribs) 15:27, 24 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep None of these express discrimination. They express dislike against a state; wanting territory from a state has nothing to do with a group of people. I will say that anti-Zionism is very, very, close to anti-Semitism, but they are two distinct things; anti-Zionism wishes for the destruction of Israel, not discrimination against the people that live there. Once again, although I strongly disagree with all of these, there is no doubt that disliking, wishing to eliminate, or wanting to take territory from a government does not equal discrimination against a group of people. I repeat from the previous discussion, every single userbox is inflammatory or divisive to a degree; we can't just delete the inflammatory ones we disagree with and keep the rest, and we don't; policy so far is to delete blatantly discriminatory userboxes, but not simply delete everything that is inflammatory or divisive. Zoozaz1  talk 19:47, 24 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep My userbox does not express discrimination, but is a statement of my political philosophy, similar to dozens of others on Wikipedia. The current box is in fact the result of a similar AfD about fifteen years ago, as a result of which the original (which displayed a flag of Israel with a red line through it) was replaced by the current version. There are several Zionist userboxes, used on many pages, which are also arguably inflamatory, divisive and discriminatory. But it has never occurred to me to request their deletion, since I actually find it useful to learn that an editor holds this view; I would imagine that the same is true for my box. The proposal should be rejected, and all of these boxes should be kept. RolandR (talk) 20:44, 24 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep all despite the anit-zionist box being also offensive, they are just political statements of opinion. I think it is misleading to include the title "anti-Arab states" on this debate as it appears only one state is at stake, and nothing is spoken "against". Graeme Bartlett (talk) 03:17, 25 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Keep Just political statement and anti Zionism is not the same as Anti Semitism 🌸 1.Ayana 🌸 (talk) 10:50, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment Since this nominiation is based on rationale WP:OSE then how would You feel to discuss around Category:Satanist Wikipedians, discuss around Category:Antitheist Wikipedians (IMHO category atheism is properly on pair with religion but category on antytheist Wikipedians is something what remind and could be discuss around Category:Users who support discrimintion of atheism) or eventually changing Category:Pastafarian Wikipedians for something less controversial like Category:Users interested in Parody religon ? All the best. Dawid2009 (talk) 11:41, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
 * For now I only nominated these userboxes because they are apparently too controversial for Wikipedia. If that's accurate, then "anti-theist" and "support discrimination of atheism" should probably be deleted too. We can't let only certain opinions be heard, especially when some of these are held by about one-third of the US population. If those need to be deleted, we need to apply the same logic to other things.— Naddruf (talk ~ contribs) 16:16, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I just realized "support discrimination of atheism doesn't exist" so I'm not sure what you meant by it. — Naddruf (talk ~ contribs) 16:18, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep all - and find something better to do with your time.  nableezy  - 19:53, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Weak Keep - These userboxes may not be very effective at fostering cooperation among people, but at the same time Wikipedians are allowed to express their own views on their pages per WP:NOTCENSORED and WP:NOTTHOUGHTPOLICE. Plus anti-Zionism is not equivalent to antisemitism, while the vast majority of Jews do support Zionism there are some notable outliers such as Neturei Karta, Norman Finkelstein, Itay Tiran, etc. (see Category:Jewish anti-Zionism for more details). In short, while some users may object, deleting these userboxes will probably lead to deleting all userboxes take display any form of ideology (aka 99.999%). Inter&#38;anthro (talk) 01:02, 26 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Comment:
 * - WP:Userboxes is a guideline and therefore does not have the weight or interpretative strictness of policy.
 * - I don't think that the outcome of the onemanonewoman_4th_nomination miscellany for deletion case was particularly good for Wikipedia. In a contentious topic area, it has effectively, for the moment at least, labelled one viewpoint as unacceptable. That is, by itself, divisive. Much of the reasoning is highly subjective, being based on personal opinions about what is acceptable. It's fairly predictable that, in other cases, the commenters would decide that some forms of discrimination were "good" or "correct". Judgements about whether discrimination was deleterious or divisive would become arbitrary, being based on opinion.
 * - The purpose of userboxes is supposed to be "to directly or indirectly help Wikipedians collaborate more effectively on articles." Usage should be governed by the the following rule: "Wikipedia is not an appropriate place for propaganda, advocacy, or recruitment of any kind, commercial, political, religious, or otherwise, opinion pieces on current affairs or politics, self-promotion, or advertising." On those grounds, many, if not most, userboxes should be removed, perhaps particularly the Politics ones. There is a widespread use of userboxes to convey information about personal beliefs or interests which has nothing to do with improving collaboration. To my mind, consistency is desirable. There are attitudes or beliefs that are offensive in the extreme, but, beyond those, either all userboxes whose usage doesn't match the criteria should be removed or all left.
 * - The reasons given for deletion are a mixed bag. These have been framed in particular ways so as to claim discrimination. However, alternative framing could have been used so as to claim non-discrimination.
 * - Given that Revisionist version of Zionism is the tradition in which the currently dominant forms lie, it's curious that, of all the userboxes whose purpose is to indicate support for Zionism (some other examples being here), the "This user is a Revisionist Zionist" one is being singled out.
 *    ←   ZScarpia  12:01, 28 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Delete. WP:NOTCENSORED is about content. The ruling policy in discussion, including user pages, is WP:CIVIL and various parts of WP:NOT. A userbox that directly attacks an immutable facet of some Wikipedians' lives, such as living in the occupied territories or being a Zionist, is not conducive to collaboration. Zionism is an edge case in that supportiong Zionism implicitly excludes some Wikipedians (in a way that supporting the right of gay people to be gay, does not: anyone who feels threatened by allowing the humanity of people their pasto tells them are squicky, is probably not a good fit here). Guy (help! - typo?) 12:56, 30 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I"m going to be frank with you here; I utterly disagree with you. First of all, where you live or what you believe is not some immutable facet of your life. The argument to keep isn't not censored; it is simply that we should support the idea of free speech. Zionism is not an edge case, nor does implicitly exclude some people. We welcome Israelis wishing for a state just as we welcome Palestinians wishing for one. One could quite literally say any political position "excludes wikipedians:" supporting liberalism "excludes" Nazis, and vice versa, supporting Armenians "excludes" Azeris, supporting Labour "excludes" some Jews, supporting Democrats "excludes" Republicans, and on and on. That's just what freedom of speech is; people disagree with other people. That's not excluding people, it's a recognition that we live in a world with different people and different opinions. Zoozaz1  talk 13:43, 30 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep all None of these express discrimination. Political statements are allowed. Lightburst (talk) 21:29, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
 * It looks like it is a time for an RfC on userboxes. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:34, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete I don't agree with the nominator's reasoning that these userboxes constitute support for discrimination, and I think they are better viewed as statements of opinion on political issues. However they are expressing divisive and inflamatory opinions on a highly controversial topic, and I don't think that's a suitable use of userspace. It is likely to create division and cause offence amongst editors with different views. WP:UP forbids Polemical statements unrelated to Wikipedia, or statements attacking or vilifying groups of editors, persons, or other entities. The anti-Zionism userbox in particular seems to me to be attacking Israelis or the state of Israel. The Israel 1967 borders one is expressing support for the return to Israel of land which is part of other countries and which Israel conquered in 1967 through military force. Wikipedia isn't an appropriate platform to fight the Arab-Israeli conflict.  Hut 8.5  09:43, 3 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment Can we just get rid of all of the userboxes in Category:Political user templates already? I bet a majority of them fall into WP:UP and WP:UBCR in some way shape or form. These deletions threaten Wikipedia's stance on a WP:NPOV (WP:5P2) "Editors' personal experiences, interpretations, or opinions do not belong on Wikipedia. " - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 18:52, 4 October 2020 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.