Wikipedia talk:Dissent is not disloyalty

Intro
This grew out of a essay I wrote specifically for the BADSITES controversy: User:Alecmconroy/AGF_and_BADSITES. But it seems like a point that is worth making in general, rather than in regard to just one specific debate. Please help update it with non-controversial reasons that ad hominem arguments are bad, or whatever else anyone thinks would be helpful here. --Alecmconroy 16:43, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Image
I usually like to have some image on essay pages, just to spice things up, but I can't think of a good one in this case. Edward R. Murrow, the source for the dissent != disloyalty quote, might be a natural choice, but I think he might be too polarizing a figure, given his ties to US Coldwar politics and his status as a symbol among the contemporary US left-wing. The essay has nothing to do with McCarthy, or Communism, or Bush, and I wouldn't want to conflate the good advice about WP with political issues.

Anyone have any other ideas? --Alecmconroy 16:49, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Recent Changes
Dude, don't edit war a frickin essay. All the other sentences are very generic advice that can come up in any situation. The "use their correct names" is a specific reference to the current dispute about the use of the term BADSITES that's never gonna come up again.

I won't hammer this for the moment. I'm sure there's some rule or regulation that frowns upon co-opting essays and edit warring, and I'm sure I could figure out the right noticeboard to post this to and we could all have ourselves a right nice flamewar that would get everybody upset. But i don't think it would help the situation, it would just make things worse, so I'll just let it sit and wait for cooler heads to prevail. --Alecmconroy 23:56, 13 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Using made-up names to disparage a proposal is a form of shortcutting debate and indirectly, of accusing editors of disloyalty. I'd remind you that this isn't your user page, and that this essay is open to editing by anyone. I did not initiate a revert war. ·:· Will Beback  ·:· 00:45, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Userfy
This page appears to belong to user:Alecmconroy. I propose we userfy it by moving it to that editor's userspace so that he can edit it to his liking without having to worry about other editors. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 04:39, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Hmmm, I've already found this essay useful and wish it had been around sooner so I'm fine with it in project space. I am, however, having a hard time understanding the relevance of your assertion. People have been using "disparaging" shortcuts for as long as I can recall, e.g. WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS, WP:DICK, WP:RUBBISH, WP:GROWAPAIR, and -- yes I see the irony -- WP:BASH, to name a few. -- 146.115.58.152 21:25, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Disagree - Keep as an essay / nascent policy, dissent is the right and duty of any thinking person - Nigosh 22:42, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Disagree - I really want the community to help create a nice essay. Just because I disagreed with Will's specific changes doesn't mean I oppose changes in general.  --Alecmconroy 07:16, 16 October 2007 (UTC)