Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Apollonius 1236/userboxes/Gun control Totalitarian (2nd nomination)

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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: delete. &spades;PMC&spades; (talk) 20:56, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

User:Apollonius 1236/userboxes/Gun control Totalitarian


See WP:POLEMIC. "Polemical statements unrelated to Wikipedia, or statements attacking or vilifying groups of editors, persons, or other entities (these are generally considered divisive and removed, and reintroducing them is often considered disruptive)." This is comparing gun control supporters to the KKK and Hitler. See Nazi gun control argument for more context. This userbox serves no purpose other than to be divisive. – Muboshgu (talk) 17:55, 4 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep. I disagree with this interpretation of it. It refers to a common argument among American conservatives and libertarians regarding gun control, which is that in order to force an oppressive regime upon a population, the members of said population must not be able to resist said regime. To that end, the keeping of firearms by large segments of a population is useful for the prevention of tyranny and, similarly, the confiscation of firearms from said population is necessary to the introduction a tyrannical government. There is nothing among the aforesaid argument saying that all people who support gun control are wannabe tyrants, and I believe it is unfair for you to read that in this userbox. As a general rule, I'm not fond of userboxes that make political arguments; I don't see how they serve the project. But I believe that there's nothing inherently offensive about this one, and so deletion of it would only be justified by deletion of all other userboxes that advance political arguments. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 20:04, 4 May 2018 (UTC)
 * You don't see anything offensive about comparing gun control advocates to Hitler? The infobox says "totalitarians love gun control". – Muboshgu (talk) 01:18, 5 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't believe the userbox compares gun control advocates to Hitler. It says "totalitarians love gun control," which is a perfectly common and legitimate argument (see Gun politics in the United States). What you are reading out of the userbox, that "gun control is totalitarianism," is the inverse of what it says. I don't view the message as being inherently invertible, because the meanings of those two phrases are quite different, and I don't believe that it lends itself to being read as both things: there is no association fallacy here, and there was never intended to be. In other words, I believe you're reading a claim that isn't actually there. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 02:16, 5 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm not fully up on my logic, but when I see "totalitarians love gun control", I see that as the same as "gun control is totalitarianism". And when I see that on a userpage, that makes debate a lot more difficult. Don't fall victim to Godwin's law. – Muboshgu (talk) 04:56, 5 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete. Divisive and offensive political expression not related to Wikipedia. It is fine to express your politics in positive terms, but comparing gun control supported to Hitler is not. Compare with Godwin's law. There has to be a line, and this is definitely over it.  —SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:57, 4 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Comment: Looking at the previous MfD, another related MfD and WP:GUS, prior consensus holds that these types of userboxes are appropriate so long as they are in the userspace. See also Jimbo Wales on the matter. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 02:25, 5 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Those two MfDs were from 2008. Surely things have evolved on this site in the last ten years. Jimbo's comments were from 12 years ago, and he doesn't dictate what is and is not deleted. – Muboshgu (talk) 04:56, 5 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Comment - Similar to User:LightSpectra/Userboxes/TC, User:Mr A/User Stalin, User:LightSpectra/Userboxes/GMF, and especially Template:User nodemocrat (all "know" userboxes; Userboxes). Other things exist; the "[avoid] potentially divisive words" criterion should be applied equally or not at all. — Godsy (TALK CONT ) 06:52, 5 May 2018 (UTC)
 * User:LightSpectra/Userboxes/TC is factually inaccurate (trickle down economics has been proven to not work), but doesn't compare people who oppose tax cuts on the 1% to Nazis. The others also are not defamatory attacks against the "opponent". So your WP:OTHERSTUFF argument falls short. – Muboshgu (talk) 15:25, 5 May 2018 (UTC)
 * WP:OTHERSTUFF in regard to Userboxes; my argument is purposely only adressing guidelines that explicitly apply to userboxes. OTHERSRUFF examples in regard to your argument would be User:The Homosexualist/U/thugguns and to a lesser extent User:UBX/No guns. The former compares those who support gun rights to Hitler while the latter says those who do are against liberty and freedom (if we accept your premise that such userboxes imply things, which has been disputed above and is a point I prefer to remain neutral on). —  Godsy (TALK CONT ) 18:52, 5 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I think it would be plausible to object to User:The Homosexualist/U/thugguns, the reason being that limiting the scope to the use of firearms by right-wing terrorists specifically is not reflective of an actual political argument. Hate crime is not mentioned in the article on gun politics, and terrorism is only mentioned once, in an unrelated context; resisting tyranny has a dedicated section. Nor does specifying "right-wing thugs" accomplish anything useful, because "left-wing" and "Islamic" terrorists also use (and presumably "love") firearms. This userbox is, in my view, an association fallacy, because it goes out of its way to associate guns with right-wing extremism when there is no logical benefit to doing so over any other tpye of exteemism (or extremism in general). The User:Apollonius 1236/userboxes/Gun control Totalitarian, on the other hand, contains no information that isn't central to a legitimate and normally-inoffensive argument, with the exception of the word "love", which might be better replaced with "support". ("Knows" is also somewhat objectionable, and might do well to be replaced with some other word, but I have no good concise alternatives, and that's an argument affecting hundreds of userboxes.) —Compassionate727 (T·C) 20:31, 5 May 2018 (UTC)
 * A couple of the other mentioned templates also have minor tone problems, the most notable of which is Template:User nodemocrat, but all of those could be fixed easily be changing "knows" to "believes", "understands", or "thinks". Nothing warranting deletion. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 20:34, 5 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete - Goofy reductio ad hitlerum that looks like textbook WP:POLEMIC. If there's WP:OTHERSTUFF, nominate it. &mdash; Rhododendrites  talk \\ 20:06, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete especially per User:SmokeyJoe's points. Legacypac (talk) 22:02, 6 May 2018 (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.