Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Katangais/Userboxes/Ian Smith (3rd nomination)
- 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: no consensus. ✗plicit 12:55, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
I am taking the liberty of nominating this userbox for deletion again (this is its third nomination so far). It is an obvious violation of WP:UBCR, and very inflammatory and divisive. Its message of support for the premiership of Ian Smith, the leader of the former White racist state of Rhodesia, is not different than showing support for apartheid in South Africa, or any other racist system in general. — Sundostund mppria (talk / contribs) 10:07, 1 April 2025 (UTC)
- Delete, in my opinion any box supportive of a specific politician is already in breach of WP:UBCR, but this one is fully in dog whistle territory as well. Choucas0 🐦⬛⋅💬⋅📋 09:55, 2 April 2025 (UTC)
- Weak Keep, I think Userboxes showing support for certain figures can be useful sometimes. Imagine if someone is a prominent editor of the Ian Smith or Rhodesia articles, it would probably be useful to know their preconceived bias to know what to look out for in their editing. Maybe even userboxes like this could be used to show what topics the user should probably stay away from editing, due to professed bias regarding the subject. On the topic of Ian Smith's beliefs, I think he was of course a horrible person, but Wikipedia is something anyone can edit, and this includes people with beliefs most of us would find repugnant. -Samoht27 (talk) 16:16, 3 April 2025 (UTC)
- Weak delete Not very appropriate for Wikipedia 𝕒𝕥𝕠𝕞𝕚𝕔𝕕𝕣𝕒𝕘𝕠𝕟𝟙𝟛𝟞 🗨️ 🖊️ 14:42, 4 April 2025 (UTC)
- Weak keep. While consensus can change on Wikipedia, I don't think anything has truly changed since the last 2 MFDs of this very user box, one of which ended as Keep and the other as No consensus. This particular userbox is clearly an edge case between our fundamental tolerance for people expressing support for controversial points of view -- which has been used to successfully justify userboxes expressing support for public figures who are viewed as controversial -- and the disallowance of "inflammatory" userboxes per WP:UBCR. Those 2 principles can clearly sometimes clash, and this is an example of that. We've twice before failed to reach consensus that this one is far enough over the line, and I don't see anything having fundamentally changed since then. (By the way, it is worth noting that WP:NORACISTS is an essay, not policy; so as justification for deletion it at best can only serve as evidence that expressing support for people who have acted in a racist way is indeed viewed as sufficiently inflammatory, not as an automatic policy-based reason to delete this.) Martinp (talk) 16:40, 4 April 2025 (UTC)
- Delete. Pretty inflammatory.—Alalch E. 00:51, 7 April 2025 (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.