Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2019-02-28/Essay

Patriotism is often dangerous, leading people to ignore the problems with their own country, to become nationalistic or tribal or xenophobic enough to exclude others or privilege certain people above others, and at worst can end in war. Better reason to edit articles about your own country or province or city are that as a local you have a lot of context about the subject, have access to and have been exposed to a lot of information others don't, and it's probably more interesting for you than others. -- Beland (talk) 21:58, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Hi, Beland. It's more of a guide for optimists, than by optimists. I, who wrote it, am not personally much of an optimist. I think patriotism —> nationalism —>tribalism is a major problem on Wikipedia, leading to tendentious editing and intemperate edit wars between, for example, patriotic Pakistanis and patriotic Indians. I also don't much believe that people who sprinkle their comments with acronyms like AGF or NPA are themselves particularly good-faith-assuming and polite (I think the opposite tends to be true). You'd have to be a pretty fanatical optimist to think so. But if you are, then here's your guide! Bishonen &#124; talk 12:01, 2 March 2019 (UTC).
 * That's cool that you and Bri published a secret link in invisible text to drama surrounding Cirt crying about hounding in the Signpost.   I've accidentally rewritten the Guide, but left that part in (as well as the famous Jimbo block).  I think Guide for the Perplexed might be as good a title for the new version as the Optimist's Guide.  If you detest the collaborative version, feel free to revert and I'll just quietly slip the new and  imPOVed version into my own space somewhere with a new name.  &mdash;  SashiRolls t ·  c 12:27, 2 March 2019 (UTC)
 * ✅ --> WP:GfWP. &mdash;  SashiRolls t ·  c 13:41, 2 March 2019 (UTC)


 * "Assume good faith even if it kills you," on an article describing WP:ROPE, is quite chilling for those of us with African American family members. It's one reason people like me won't post a user page, apply for scholarships or grants that require online documentation, or communicate on-wiki. Oliveleaf4 (talk)


 * I like it! :)  Yikes about other responses so far. --Doncram (talk) 18:06, 22 March 2019 (UTC)