Talk:Protest Warrior/Archive 5

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Contents

Banning, dissenting opinions, and negligibility

Okay, look. There are three things that get you banned on the Protest Warrior boards: Stalking, posting pornography, and using multiple accounts. Holding a dissenting viewpoint from that of the organization's founders is not on the list. As a result of this, the Liberty forum is absolutely overrun with liberals, some of them there for reasonable debate, but many who are present merely to troll. Even the trolls are not banned until they break one of the three conditions given above. A simple look at the forums will tell you that their numbers are not "negligible" or even "small." However, since "many" obviously isn't going to get a consensus, I recommend changing it to "several" or a similar term. Rogue 9 23:06, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

I can agree with "several" but do you have any evidences for your claim that only stalking, pron and multiple accounts get you banned, do you have a list of members that got banned, are you an admin or a moderator on PW who knows who got banned, did the admins inform you who got banned or are you making things up? Do you have ANYTHING to back up your claim?

Bijoux

Extensive personal experience. I cannot document it effectively, particularly with the forum search function disabled, hence the fact that I didn't put it in the article. Besides: If I'd answered yes to any of your last questions, you'd nail me for original research.  :p Rogue 9 16:04, 17 October 2005 (UTC)


Bijoux, I can only assume that you have evidence for people being banned for dissenting opinions? as Otherwise you are challenging someone to prove a negative with evidence, when you can't prove a positive with evidence. in a debate, the burden is on you to prove a positive. especially now that the article included that positive, with as far as I can tell, no evidence.

History

An editor made some changes with this edit summary:

  • Heck, I thought it was established some time ago that events in the organization's history don't belong in the article in the first place.

Regardless of the edits themselves, this view is not correct. Of course this article should contain information about the history of the the Protest Warriors. What reason would we have for excluding historical information about the articles of current groups? -Willmcw 00:45, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't know what reason you would have, but somebody had it; the "notable moments" section was removed some time ago. Rogue 9 21:33, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
The issue with "notable moments"[1] was not that it did not refer to the history of the PW, but rather to a funny clip of a protester saying something (perceived as) stupid. That kind of material does not add anything to summarizing PW. The Crawford matter, which concerns PW itself, is entirely different. -Willmcw 22:02, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
Ah. Sorry for the misunderstanding; I had just assumed that it was relevant. My apologies. Rogue 9 22:06, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

think

"Liberals in America have taken and warped the laws around that govern child abuse and made the laws very open and broad."

"We can see the evil effects of social liberal acceptance of homosexuality by the increased number of pedophiles, child pornography cases..." etc

"The "Brown shirt" tradition was brought to America by the great Commander George L. Rockwell, founder of the original American Nazi Party."

Wikipedia is not a chatroom. Jpers36 23:39, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
Look you ...(name calling removed by Fire Star 08:05, 17 October 2005 (UTC))..., I grow tired of your constant attempts to relate everything you don't like to Nazism. If anyone's interested, look at his edit history. He attempted to rewrite the page on the National Socialist Movement to make it a slam at conservatism in general last night. Further, he posted a large section of the NSM FAQ on the talk page of the Kfir Alfia article for no apparent reason. 132.241.245.132 is a vandal and nothing but. 132.241.245.132, Godwin's Law says you lose. Thanks for playing. Rogue 9 00:41, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
Rogue, if you're worried about 132.241 aka Grazon's detrimental edits, it would be helpful if you'd visit Talk:Swift Vets and POWs for Truth and Talk:Pat Tillman and attempt to reason with him. He keeps making POV additions to those two articles as well as this one. Rhobite 04:52, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

...


External links

An editor remoevd a links with the summary:

  • Remove slander page. A site as POV as RocknRev's would not be allowed as a source in other Wiki articles; why here?

External links are not required to be NPOV. In fact, presenting critical websites is almost a requirement in order to achieve NPOV in the article. The criteria is not whether they are NPOV, but whether they present significant criticism or factual material that would aid readers. Sites that are pure slander or are just puerile parodies with no significant criticism would not be suitable, for example. I haven't looked at this site so I don't know its quality, but simply being POV is not sufficient reason to remove it. -Willmcw 00:40, 18 October 2005 (UTC) (That's my interpretation. The actual guideline is here: wikipedia:external links)

The site is largely juvenile slander; a twelve year old could make a better site layout, and the main line of attack is to post outrageous claims concerning the organization, puerile insults, and Photoshopped pictures of PW members. The only part of the site that even makes an attempt at genuine argumentation is the part about the constitutionality of counter-protesting, making the claim that the First Amendment right to freely assemble is only protected when used to petition the government, and not at any other time. This is, of course, a ridiculous line of argument; either the author is monumentally ignorant or he is intentionally lying, but I suppose one must entertain the view if adhering to Wikipedia's seeming policy of entertaining any viewpoint so long as it's presented on some Web site somewhere. However, this section of the page is promptly drowned out by all the noise.
Also, the author of the page is known to be engaged in a Google-bombing campaign to raise it's rankings on search engines, as evidenced by the fact that the page contains a massive field of links that simply lead back to the same page. I have reason to believe he initially added the link himself, and as such it's presence violates the policy against posting your own site. Rogue 9 05:45, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
Those are better, and sufficient, reasons for deleting a link. Thanks for taking the time to explain them properly. Cheers, -Willmcw 06:09, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Wiggum, you are blatantly incorrect about the content of the external links. The Salt Lake City Weekly article linked to is, in fact, criticism of Protest Warrior, and criticism that doesn't involve lies and juvenile insults. I'll leave it up for now to give you a chance to respond, but if you don't, it's going down again. Rogue 9 17:57, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

I finally took a look at the "RocknRev" site. It doesn't seem to have much solid info, it mostly looks like a rant about the author's conflict with PW. (I might say that PW's collective response to RnR appears even more puerile and less coherent, but that is beside the point). If RnR were the only source of outside opinion then we might need it, but with articles in the mainstream press there is some critical coverage to provide NPOV. It's near the borderline - if RnR were more cogent, more informative, (more readable), and less obsessive then it could become a reasonable source of criticism. Until then let's stick with with better links. Further, the fight between RnR and PW does not appear to be noteworthy. I searched and found over 300 messages with "RocknRev" in them, and probably more than twice also address the topic, but even 1000 messages out of over 2 million, .05%, does not indicate that the PW folks are having a major feud with the RnR people. If they were having a famous battle that would have been another reason to include them. -Willmcw 07:37, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
Strange. Really strange. I would really like to get an explanation how you are able to do a search on the Protestwarrior forums. The search has been disabled for members (and still is right now), and unless you are an admin of Protestwarrior you can not search for any messages. But that is what you claim you did. When you are an admin or a member with additional powers on Protestwarrior then you have any reason to object RocknRevs page, we all know why. When you are not then you can not search and your post above is a fake and the link will go back. Explain yourself. Tennik 12:29, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
There's a simple answer to your question: Google. Advanced search, set it to search only forum.protestwarrior.com, and enter the search term. Once you've searched tell it to show you all results. It's not as good as the forum search, but it works. Rogue 9 16:04, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
Good to know. A similar search for Protestwarrior owner Kfir on Google turns out 2800 results. Rocknrev having 400 + several hundreds with a different spelling makes a perfect reason to have that site linked here. RocknRev has appr. 30% of the search results Kfir has, now that is proving that RocknRev is a major issue on Protestwarrior. Link goes back.
If it's felt we need more criticism of PW in the article, there used to be several more coherent criticisms than RnR's in the article back in the early revisions; I'm not sure why they were removed. We could always put some of them back. Rogue 9 18:12, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
juvenile slander? Rev is a guy in his thirties, its not slander its a well researched case. And the case is PW.
a twelve year old could make a better site layout? Doesnt matter at all, the PW layout sucks as well
outrageous claims? Each claim is carefully proven, that is the point of that website
Photoshopped pictures? That is exactly what PW has done and Rev is proving it
Google-bombing campaign? That is what PW is doing all the time, check their forums
violates the policy against posting your own site? You must be kidding, you PWs are doing that all over here, trying to maintain your completely biased article version
I have reason to believe.....? Now that really matters, what a great point! I have reason to believe that you are a highly active PW member whose viewpoint is biased as hell
Summary - each of your points has been refuted, there is no reason to remove that link, as much as you PW wish it would disappear. Sortenos 23:58, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
Oh yes, the case is very maturely presented. Uh huh. As for well-researched, he opens with blatant lies about Constitutional jurisprudence; no court in the country would agree with his arguments concerning the right to free assembly.
The PW site doesn't have a massive block of links leading back to itself smack in the middle of the page.
  • Chuckle* No, they really aren't. The ones that he has backed up are specious in the extreme, and the ones that might actually matter were they true (which mainly consists of his argument that counterprotesting is illegal) fall flat on their faces.
Tu quoque fallacy.
Ummmmmmmm... Where do you get that from? PW doesn't need to Google-bomb; it's already the top result for the search for Protest Warrior on Google without even trying.
Not kidding. Posting links to a site you own (presuming I'm right about Grazon being Rev Tyler; Rev's writing style on his site and Grazon's writing style here are remarkably similar, as are their attitudes towards Protest Warrior, but it could just be a coincidence) is specifically discouraged in the policies of Wikipedia, while editing information into an article (whether you perceive it as biased or not; I'm prone to say I'm sticking to the facts). However, since he seems to have support in it, that objection no longer applies.
I outlined my reasons above; when I've made an informed guess at identity based on typing styles it's very rare for me to be wrong. You don't have to believe me on that, but it's true. As for me being highly active, not particularly. I'm strictly local to my university; never traveled to a national protest. But yes, I am in the organization, and as I'm not hiding it, there's no problem with that.
So no, you have not refuted all of my points, and further, other editors not involved with either side have agreed with me about the quality of the link. It is not, therefore, a simple case of me violating consensus; I have consensus. The matter isn't closed either way. Rogue 9 00:27, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Errors on the history page?

When I try to go to the history page of this article, I keep getting error messages instead of the page. When I back up and try again it works, but it's still annoying. Is it just me, or is this happening to anyone else? Rogue 9 23:22, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

I've had the same thing happen to me on a variety of pages from time to time. I believe it is related to the amount of traffic on the website and usually clears up. Long searches (500 diffs) might be more prone to hiccups, so maybe 50 or 100-diff searches would work. -Willmcw 23:36, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
There seems to be a chunk of page history missing from about October 6 to October 10. This is a technical issue, I have no idea what's going on. Rhobite 23:57, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
No, that one was my fault. When I compared the user history with the edit history here, I was looking at the year 2004 in the user history and 2005 in the article history. Mea culpa. Rogue 9 00:42, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Protestwarrior and Islam

Everybody who ever visitied the Protestwarrior website or the forums knows that PW sees Islam in fact as a threatening, dangerous and oppressive religion. Rogue 9, you are trying to hide that fact by playing word games: On PW nobody makes a difference between Islamism (what you call "militant Islam") and Islam itself:

- literally hundreds of thousands of posts on PW are dealing with one issue: Islam is evil (Those are barely the "forum idiots" like you say, that IS the forum.)

- On all Protestwarrior signs that are dealing with Islam, the religion is shown as a threat, as oppressive or as a danger to western civilisation at least (just have a look at the very sign in this article!)

- The PW founders A.Lipton and K.Alfia have not once taken action against any PW member who was disgracing, attacking or even spitting on Islam, they are actually very much supporting that stance and made it very clear that Islam itself is a danger.

- "PW is working with Muslim groups", that unproven claim aside, many PW members do know their "good Muslim" what doesn't change the fact that the vast majority of members is expressing blatant hate for the entire religion every day.

- "Mohammed is a pedophile" is one of the most quoted messages whenever Islam gets mentioned on PW.

Rogue9, on PW nobody is ever caring about the difference between Islam and "militant Islam" like you are suddenly doing it here for obvious reasons, rather than that Islam is one of PW's main targets and PW is antagonizing every person trying to defend Islam as a religion. PW is pro-Jewish and even more clearly anti-Islam, this might not be your point of view but it is the one of PW, whether you like it or not. Ánd this article is about PW and not about you. Bijoux

An exercise in futility, I'm sure, but try this poll. Thus far, 77% against legal action against Islam... Rogue 9 21:09, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
What are you trying to prove with your poll about the first amendement on an American website?? "Should Islam be banned by law, or Constitutional amendment?". Such a poll is directed against the first amendement and not many Americans are going to vote for "yes", not matter the issu. Amazingly on PW more than 20% actually voted for that option!
Now, I took my time and signed up on the PW website and started an EXTREMELY FAIR AND BALANCED poll that MADE IT REALLY HARD for the PW members to vote for "oppressive, dangerous or threat" by adding options like "Islam is a religion, nothing else" or "a religion, like any other", and ALTHOUGH YOU, ROGUE9, DELIBERATELY SPOILED THE POLL, FEARING THE INEVITABLE by posting "(The one who started the poll, Bijoux, is ) A guy on Wikipedia who's out to prove that we're all bigots so he can put it up for all the Web to see." and thus made the Protestwarrior members vote for options they would otherwiese not have voted for, PW voted for what everybody knew they would vote for beforehand. The entire topic gives you a very good idea about PWs stance on Islam, Yes, Islam that is and not Islamism!!
The results and the messages (Islam: threat, danger, Mohammed was a pedophile, preteen sex, rapist,..) can be seen here: Protestwarriors ideas about Islam
Bijoux

Agreed upon? You merely restated your case and ended the argument. Islamic Fascism is the correct term to use on the page. Stop trying to paint those who disagree with you as bigots.

Anon, read the Talk and the archive. The issue issue has been agreed upon even by your fellow Protestwarriors. We had an identical discussion before, so cut it. --Bijoux 01:51, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Worldwide organisation ?

Where exactly is Protestwarrior organised outside of the United States? Bijoux

France and the Netherlands are the two that spring to mind. Also, if Willmcw is a Protest Warrior member, I've failed to notice. Rogue 9 21:31, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
Despite of the size of these 2 "organisations" in France and the Netherlands, they don't make PW a worldwide organisation at all. Every website has members from several countries, that doesn't make them "worldwide".
Can we describe the organization as international, then? Rogue 9 15:19, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
The UN, the NATO or the Red Cross are international, worldwide organisations, but not Protestwarrior. After all Protestwarror is not even an organisation but a group with very few activists and overhelming majority of inactive website members, forum posters. The fact that the website and these forums have members from other countries but the United States does not make Protestwarrior international or an organisation, the internet itself is international, therefore every website is. Protestwarrior is as international and as organized as any other website that requires registration. Bijoux

I'm talking about active chapters, not the web site. The web site is not Protest Warrior, particularly not the public forums. And the fact is that Protest Warrior has chapters in more than one country; this is the very definition of international. Or did you fail to follow the links I gave above? Rogue 9 16:50, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

You know, when I was listing international chapters, I forgot Australia. Haven't heard from them much lately, though. Rogue 9 05:50, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Protestwarrior exposing IP address and full address of Wikipedia editor

The Protest Warrior rogue 9 exposed the IP address of a person who edited this article on the Protestwarrior forums: Hey guys! I know Sputnik's IP address!

The goal was to expose all available personal data of that person and that goal was achieved, also it was suggested to start a hacking attack against that IP address. The full address of that person was published and what Protestwarrior is using it for can be read in the topic.

Just so people here know with whom they are dealing with. Editing this article can have serious consequences for you. Tennik 12:48, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Now I see that rogue 9 is the same person who is trying to keep this article in line. What a lovely coincidence. Tennik 12:53, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

He revealed it himself when he vandalized the article. Note that I did not hand over the IP address; I pointed out that he was stupid enough to edit anonymously so it could be read; it was public knowledge at that point. Also note that: *GASP!* Nothing has happened to him or his site! The person in question was banned for creating 22 separate accounts and using them to vote in polls; after his banning, he constantly returned under a multitude of different aliases to spam and post pornography. He challenges users to fights, and made an abortive attempt at stalking a forum member who lives near him in Texas. It was an attempt to shut him up, nothing more. No action was taken and no action will be taken. Furthermore, the WHOIS information on protestwarrior.us is public knowledge by definition. Anyone can get it at any time; it's kind of a fact of the Internet. You're making a flap over literally nothing. Nobody is in any more danger from anonymously editing this article than they are for any other. Rogue 9 16:01, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
Editing the article here doesn't equal revealing it to Protestwarrior and having the IP and the full address exposed for all kind of attacks. You are not going to fool anyone. You made that information known on Protestwarrior and linked it to a username that was not mentioned here because you wanted to harrass that user, nothing else. You knew what would happen and you wnated it to happen, that was the only reason for you to post it. Next, WHOIS data is absolutely not public knowledge, you have violated the WHOIS terms of usage: By submitting a WHOIS query, you agree that you will use this data only forlawful purposes and that, under no circumstances will you use this data: (1) to allow, enable, or otherwise support the transmission of mass unsolicited, commercial advertising or solicitations via direct mail, electronic mail, or by telephone; (2) in contravention of any applicable data and privacy protection laws; or (3) to enable high volume, automated, electronic processes that apply to the registry (or its systems). I am not making a flap over nothing, actually you should get banned from Wikipedia for this. I suppose you would like it to have your full address exposed on a site like stormfront?
First off, Protest Warrior isn't a site like Stormfront; secondly I don't particularly care if someone has my IP, as I employ an arcane piece of software known as a firewall. If you really want it, I made some spelling edits to the article on gun politics in the U.S. a couple days ago without logging in; it's there for all to see. Any anonymous editor reveals his IP to anyone who cares to read it. The only way to change this is to change the way Wikipedia logs edits. Further, in case you failed to notice, the user in question used to post at the forums; if we want his IP for malicious purposes besides laughing at him for being an idiot, we've already got it. As for WHOIS, the information was not used to spam him or sign him up for junk mail, there is no privacy law against simply using WHOIS, and no "high volume, automated electronic processes" (by which I presume it means a DDoS attack or similar) have been employed; nor will any of this happen. (Though applying the WHOIS use to me is misdirected anyway; I didn't do that.) All you've got is me laughing at a well known troll for being idiotic; nothing more. I didn't even name the IP or link to the edit in question, which is less than what Wikipedia itself does to blocked users. And beyond all that, what little I did occurred on a completely different site, and my actions there are not Wikipedia's job to police. You're on a witch hunt, and it isn't going to work. Rogue 9 00:09, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
If you don't want your IP address revealed to everyone, you shouldn't edit Wikipedia without logging in to an account. Rhobite 21:26, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Current POV dispute

I don't see many glaring POV issues with User:Jpers36's edit - if you have specific criticisms, please point them out instead of reverting ALL of his edits. Many of the changes are legitimate fixes which should not be removed, such as changing "protestwarrior" to "Protest Warrior". What problem do you have with this sentence? "The group's emblem depicts a man facing to the left with a sword poised to strike, while embracing a protest sign." What is wrong with saying "the Bush administration draws criticism from many members of the organization due to certain of its policies regarding immigration, the economy, and domestic security."?

I do have a problem with some of the additions in User:Sortenos's edit, however. This sentence is definitely not neutral: "The group engages in protests of their own, often against what it considers to be organizations in support of terrorism in the USA and around the world, or for companies and people it adores, like Haliburton and George W. Bush." The sentence is overly dramatic, and incorrect - it is not true that PW as a whole "adores" GWB and Halliburton. Sortenos should stop insisting on reverting the entire edit.

I have reverted to Jpers36's edit, minus these two opinionated sentences: "Others believe that the previously-expressed opinions were generated by the very groups opposed to Protest Warriors to help guide opinion against Protest Warriors and to shield the very leftist groups that Protest Warrior contests." and "Protest Warrior mocks the modern pacifist movement, viewing it as a pawn of the modern leftist agenda." Is that OK with you Sortenos? Rhobite 21:41, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Issues:
Protestwarrior emblem, are we going to have emblem descriptions in every article here? If you want it to mention here then add what many people are seeing in that emblem: Nazi art.
left's ideas -- if allowed to fully mature -- will result in police states, clearly POV
Islam as a dangerous, threatening, and oppressive theopolitical world movement, POV. Islam is a religion even in PWs eyes.
Bush, PW is supporting Bush by all means. POV.
protests of their own.........or for people, businesses, and organizations it supports., POV. They support particularly Bush and Haliburton, not people and busninesses.
which is common for any protest group, POV. Those signs are very uncommon for other protest groups, it's unique PW provocation style.
Some claim that Protest Warriors are deliberately confrontational and hostile, POV. Almost all editors from PW are trying to insert 'some' when negative for PW and 'many' when positive. Almost all who have confronted PW protestors are seeing them as hostile and aggressive.
but typically fail to engage in dialogue with members, completely POV and untrue as well. Their own videos are proving it.
There is some history of comment deletion and user banning, 100% POV. Deletion and banning is common practice on PW, besides of countless facts that are proving that practice, a Google search for posts of critical members reveals that thousands of posts were deleted. The suspected number of banned members is in the hundreds. Earlier, the PW admins were admitting to that practice and even now the PW members are enjoying discussions about the most recent bans and deletions.
All of the above were edits of Jpers36 --Sortenos 22:58, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
My edit was a revert to a less POV version of the article, combined with some grammatical and other fixes of my own. As I stated myself in the edit summary, I wasn't able to completely remove POV from the article, but due to time restraints restricted myself to removing the most egregious examples. If you would like to contribute to removing POV rather than reverting wholesale to a worse version, please feel free. Also, (a) it's Halliburton, and (b) Godwin's law is fascinating. Jpers36 02:10, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
You didn't remove POV, you added it. For the grammatical and spelling fixes, good you did, but apparently you did it to add POV. Godwin's law doesn't apply here, the Protestwarrior emblem is perfectly resembling Nazi art and this has been criticized by many. Why does Rogue 9 explain the changes you made? --Sortenos 09:40, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
I explained the changes for you, child, because the reasons behind them are blindingly obvious. That you are incapable of pulling your head out long enough to see it is not my problem. You may persist in calling PW a Nazi group if you wish, but rest assured that it will not stay in the article. Rogue 9 15:27, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
I suspect you are one of the 70% of Protestwarriors who are below the age of 18. Therefore I explain it to you really sloooow: I didn't call PW a Nazi group (though many think you are, for one reason or the other: racism, intolerance, hate speech, superiority concept, fundamentalism, acceptance of torture and terror as means of (not only) war, right-wing extremism, Fuhrer-like adoration for American leaders as well as for PW-leaders and many more of these goodies) and I also didn't add it to the article, like you want to make it look. I merely pointed out, in the talk about the artice that was, no it in the article, that your emblem is resembling Nazi art, what has drawn criticism from all sides. By the way, when you and your fellow Protestwarriors here think that you own this article then you are plain wrong. A quick research on Protestwarrior resulted in several topics where you are openly admitting that this article should get proper PW-treatment for propaganda reasons, although Wikipedia is a liberal hellhole that sucks completely, like you and your fellow PW brats are seeing it. This won't work. Never. --Sortenos 16:42, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
Actually, I'm 20 and a university student. If you'd read my user page, you would learn this. However, as you are evidently here just for this article and nothing else, I wouldn't expect you to actually bother with that. (By the by, where'd you come from with such a mission? IndyMedia? The DU?) And yes, I do think that Wikipedia has serious problems, but not because it's a "liberal hellhole," but because it has serious quality issues and flawed policies. It is also one of the most read sites on the 'Net. Of course I have an interest in not having an extremely negative article on it. You're twisting what I said on the board; if you'll actually look at what I've done with this article, you'll note a distinct lack of attempts to turn it into a glowing endorsement piece, because that isn't what I called for. This is far more than can be said for the extremely organized control that Democratic Underground and Free Republic exercise over their own articles; if you're going to complain about that behavior, go whine to them. Except, again, your edit history reveals an interest in nothing besides this article. Protest Warrior has it's own problems; I recognize that. Kind of hard not to; I expend more effort fighting them than I ever do with this article. But that doesn't mean I'm going to sit idly by while you push the limits of NPOV, not to mention the truth, in the writing of the article. Rogue 9 06:52, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
Can we please agree to drop the Nazi thing? We were only discussing whether the article should describe the PW emblem - nobody has suggested that the article should compare the emblem to Nazi imagery. Let's try to stay on the topic of actual edits to the article. Also both of you may want to re-read Wikipedia:Civility. It's policy. Rhobite 17:23, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
In order:
Ah, the tired old Nazi comparison. First, Godwin's Law. Secondly, do you honestly believe what you just said? Consider: Both founders of Protest Warrior are Jews. Kfir is Israeli-born and Alan is on record saying that his people did not want to set up a Jewish state in Germany because "they had just killed six million of us." These are not likely candidates for neo-Nazis, nor is anyone who follows them.
Yes, that is POV, because it is PW's POV. It is clearly marked as such; the edit was not editorial opinion, but documentation of the organization's viewpoint.
No argument.
Heh. I wrote in McCain in the 2004 election, and I'm not the only one who didn't vote Bush. A lot of members voted for Badnarik. PW is opposed to International ANSWER primarily, anti-war protesters in general (for various reasons) second, and is in favor of fiscal/foreign policy conservatism third. Social libertarians and social conservatives are roughly equally represented, and the organization's position is silent on most hot-button social matters; you will not, for instance, find PW protesting abortion clinics and so forth. Bush has quickly proven himself to be not fiscally conservative, he's not doing a thing to secure the borders, and as the article says, a lot of us are not comfortable with the domestic security arrangements. Nominating his personal lawyer to the Supreme Court was the last straw for a lot of members; a simple look at the threads dating from Miers' nomination will show that.
The Dallas chapter counter-protests the picketers outside Halliburton's HQ. This is because the protesters are there. The same thing happened when people protested Caterpillar in the wake of Rachel Corrie's death; are you going to rewrite the article to talk about how we're all shills for CAT now? If a bunch of protesters were to go picket AT&T or something and blame them for the war for some reason, PW would likely show up there as well.
You think that your average protest sign isn't provocative? You've evidently never been to a protest. Of course Protest Warrior's particular signs aren't common in other protest groups; that's the point. But provocative messages in general are the norm. Unless, of course, you think that placards calling for troops to shoot their officers, comparing one's political opponents to Hitler and Satan, and talking about how socialist revolution is necessary in this country isn't provocative and isn't meant to be.
I take it you've talked to most of the people who have encountered Protest Warriors on the streets to confirm this, then? It benefits ANSWER, UFPJ, and IndyMedia's usual contributors to portray PW as aggressive and, if they think it possible, criminal. Regardless, I have only ever heard of one Protest Warrior that ever started a physical confrontation, a student at Penn by the name of Scott Robinson. He assaulted a protester inside the RNC and was promptly drummed out of the organization.
Really? I've watched the videos. "Don't talk to them. They're with Protest Warrior." "You're Nazi scum." "Did I say you could talk to them?" "You're with them? I don't have anything else to say." "I don't have to be factual, 'cause they're not." *Waves a Palestinian flag and walks away when asked questions.* That's supposed to be meaningful dialogue? There are some people who will talk, but they are by far the minority. They get more time on camera, but that's because they actually talked instead of either tossing off a one-liner and leaving or deciding to stick around long enough to tear up a sign.
Yes, I'm sure the ban list runs over a hundred. Sputnik got a quarter of the way there all by himself with the 22 accounts he created for poll cheating and the subsequent accounts that were banned for trying to circumvent the first ban to troll. Then there's NeoconsBeGone, who created a dozen accounts that were variations of the Stormfront URL in an attempt to Google-bomb the boards into coming up on the search for Stormfront. Kfir said straight up he'd ban him if he made one more post from any account other than his primary. He followed the directive for about a week, then made more accounts, posted pornography with them, and was banned for it. Then there was the infamous Penis McWrinkle 2.7, who simply made dozens of nonsense threads with the intent of clogging up the forums; I do not know an admin on the 'Net who would not ban such a poster. There were probably others before my time. Note, though, that while there are probably well over a hundred banned accounts, a large portion of them are sock puppets, and having sock puppets is a bannable offense. Note, though, that none of them were banned because of their viewpoint. There are currently multiple dissenting board members who are not banned, including some of the most crass trolls I've ever encountered online. If ever someone was going to get the boot for advocating not just a liberal but an outright socialist viewpoint it would be the poster known as Socialist; he does nothing but glorify Karl Marx and Noam Chomsky while insulting the intelligence of everyone else in the thread, yet he's still around and has been for well over two years. To give a short and hardly exhaustive list of other such, there's Communist, BOgg, ahhwaa, EliteBlondeSociety, Siegfriedson, The Big Pickle, Yukon, blad, fightindaman, proof of purchase, Neocons42, USS Canberra, CD, and Garibaldi. These run the gamut from Marxists (Communist) to anarchists (blad, fightindaman) to neo-Nazis (Siegfrienson, The Big Pickle, and sometimes Yukon depending on what he feels like masquerading as that day) to run of the mill Democrats (CD, Garibaldi) to disillusioned soldiers (USS Canberra) to outright trolls (EliteBlondeSociety, proof of purchase, and definitely Yukon). This is simply a selection of the most prominent; I could go on at length. If viewpoint discrimination governed the ban process as it does at Free Republic and the Democratic Underground, these people would be long gone from the forums. You'll notice they aren't. Rogue 9 03:02, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
New Edit
Removed the reference to "User moderation and banning is well documented..." as it's POV - it's not well documented. This claim comes from a liberal user, twiw, who was unable to understand that the founders got rid of some old posts to make the server run faster - not just his. --Neverborn 09:32, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
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