Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:UBX/Trump Supporter

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: keep. ✗plicit 12:48, 18 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

User:UBX/Trump Supporter[edit]

Clear violation of WP:PROFRINGE, in that it’s promoting the dangerous conspiracy theory that the 2020 election was rigged/fake/whatever ~~bullshit~~ silly nonsense. Also fails WP:UBX as grossly inflammatory. Dronebogus (talk) 01:42, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy delete: as nom said, it promotes misinformation. Template:User pro-Trump and Template:User Donald Trump 2020 does the job better. Gerald WL 03:30, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - Promotes an opinion that is contrary to what is reported by the most reliable reliable sources. Robert McClenon (talk) 05:16, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: Could be fixed with a quick edit to remove " and believes the 2020 election was rigged and erroneous". – Jonesey95 (talk) 07:21, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
On the fence - It's wrong, foolish, and I cannot imagine why anyone would want to wear a badge telling Wikipedians about one's poor information literacy skills (or, I guess, uncritical reverence for the dear leader). It should call into question any edit someone with this box made to a controversial area. ...But WP:RS doesn't apply to userboxes. Userboxes can be wrong. If someone had a userbox that said e.g. "this user believes in the healing power of crystals" or "the moon is cheese", those aren't backed up by RS either, but I doubt we'd find them at MfD. The question is whether it's WP:POLEMIC or "inflammatory or substantially divisive". Given the nature of Donald Trump and attitudes about him, everything Trump-related is pretty divisive, but I don't think we should nominate the entire Category:Donald_Trump_user_templates, either. So the question is whether the language about the "rigged election" is sufficiently divisive beyond umpteen other things Trump has done, and I'm not sure. It's an egregious, toxic, antidemocratic thing, but I'd say people are less divided about the rigged election than about most of the rest of Trump's presidency (which is to say, it's a far-right fringe thing rather than a typical polarized left/right issue). I will say that I don't see the point in modifying it, since again we already have a lot of Trump userboxes. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 13:45, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
~~Undecided~~ - I can't find myself calling for this to be deleted unless we also find some way to ensure there is a balanced consensus in deleting political userboxes. Despite Trump's overwhelming propensity for spreading falsehoods, the very nature of politics here on Wikipedia means that we'd be hard-pressed to find a justification for getting rid of this that doesn't simply read as "We don't like Trump", even while recognizing that these are spreading lies.--WaltCip-(talk) 14:08, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Rhododendrites: @WaltCip: the reason I nominated it is because it’s essentially saying US democracy is now illegitimate and therefore endorsing whatever fucked-up means people use to “restore order”— which could easily be interpreted as a de facto endorsement of the 2021 Capitol Riot. This isn’t nonsense about crystal healing or flat earth, or just “orange man bad delet this”, this is borderline advocacy for insurrection. Rhondodendrites, you even outright stated it was an “egregious, toxic, antidemocratic thing” Dronebogus (talk) 18:25, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- The other TrumpBoxen are nowhere near as bad as this, which also emphasizes that this is an extremist outlier. Dronebogus (talk) 18:39, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Not a violation of WP:PROFRINGE since it's not in article space. You're misapplying the policy here; WP:PROFRINGE applies to people that go on articles or talk pages to promote fringe theories, not those who do so in their userspace. This is also a widely held belief in the USA and on a pragmatic basis banning politically mainstream opinions just alienates large portions of the population in ways that banning non-mainstream opinions does not.

On another note, let's examine exactly what's wrong with this userbox. More or less, you say that "the reason I nominated it is because it’s essentially saying US democracy is now illegitimate". So let's extend this logic for a bit and look at other templates that are implicitly against democracy. What about Category:Communism user templates? The key tenet of Leninism is that a Leninist vanguard party must take over the state and establish a dictatorship of the proletariat. Does this mean we should delete all Leninist templates, given that they also call for the destruction of democracy? Perhaps some do not believe in destroying American democracy, but what makes the US so special? Is this a new standard that being against democracy is not allowed? I have quite a few userboxes I'd love to nominate under this new standard.

All this of course assumes the template is truly against democracy. Leaving aside the fact that due to the United States Electoral College the Presidential election is not entirely democratic, all the template says is that the user "believes the 2020 election was rigged and erroneous" and seeks to have it overturned (as evidenced by the wikilink). But yet, there are plenty of userboxes that were against Donald Trump when he was elected in 2016 and implied his "reign" was illegitimate. We have User:UBX/Huge mistake which claims the election was a "huge mistake", User:UBX/Trump misguided which compares him to totalitarian dictators that illegitimately seized power, and User:UBX/Trumpism which "seeks to eradicate Trumpism". Implying Trump is a dictator along the lines of Hitler or Mussolini is saying he seized power illegitimately, much like this userbox implicitly alleges Joe Biden took power illegitimately. Likewise, calling an election "erroneous" isn't that much different from saying it was a "huge mistake". And isn't calling for the "eradication" of an entire political ideology anti-democratic, since how else would this be done but through anti-democratic means? There is a difference between referring to democracy as an institution is illegitimate and saying that specific instances of democracy are illegitimate, and all this userbox says is that one particular instance of democracy was illegitimate.

Applying the standard against claiming specific instances of democracy are illegitimate will cast an even broader net than being against democracy in general and be even more difficult to apply in legitimately disputed elections. What about the 2013 Venezuelan presidential election or the 2018 Venezuelan presidential election? Or when in the 2008–2009 Canadian parliamentary dispute opposition parties sought to overthrow Stephen Harper using tactics possibly against constitutional conventions despite him winning the most votes? Or what about the Faithless electors in the 2016 United States presidential election who sought to overturn the election of Donald Trump? What is the "correct" opinion in these cases? Are we going to do this on an ad hoc basis depending on what side MfD !voters take, or do we define some threshold where if enough people in the mainstream agree an election is legitimate you can't say it wasn't on Wikipedia anymore? Perhaps I just violated this standard by saying MfD is WP:NOTAVOTE and that we're not actually "voting" here.

Anyways, I'm going to !vote keep. I wrote all this stuff above to make a point about adjudicating the legitimacy of userboxes and deleting this userbox either makes us a) hypocrites or b) means we have to develop a complicated standard for userboxes to be allowable. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 01:50, 13 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

You've given me a lot to think about, Chess. Thank you for your well-thought out rationale. WaltCip-(talk) 19:04, 13 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Keep, a mainstream view is expressed. It really won't help the divisive nature of the world or the left lean of Wikipedia to delete this despite it being a pretty common viewpoint. Plus, if someone with this viewpoint becomes a major contributor to Wikipedia they are fairly likely to realise that this is misinformation – whereas the lack of userboxen representing this viewpoint in comparison to a plethora representing a view on the opposite side of the political spectrum a similar distance from the centre will only cause them to move extremer and view this 'supposedly neutral' site negatively.
FWIW, in my (certainly not right-wing) eyes this discussion screams "echo-chamber". And I don't like it. — J947 ‡ ^{message ⁓ edits} 04:48, 13 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The fact that we have to have this discussion about whether you have the right to WP:SOAPBOX extreme antidemocratic fringe positions (either left or right) is a good case for purging political userboxes, unless they’re for broad issues that WM explicitly takes a side on like LGBT rights (for) or climate change (against) or maybe generic self-identifications like “this user is liberal”. Plus if you believe this junk you’re more likely here to right WP:GREATWRONGS than build an encyclopedia. Political userboxes are something that very clearly violates WP:UBX but Wikipedia tolerates because there’s more important crap to deal with. But dealing with boxes on a case-by-case basis based solely on editor discretion seems more divisive than just saying “no you can’t have this end of story”. My only concern is borderline cases (i.e. is Black Lives Matter an uncontroversial statement of human rights or a political slogan?) Dronebogus (talk) 08:40, 13 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- Also WP:OTHERSTUFF isn’t a good argument. I never said I supported LeninBoxen or OverthrowTrumpBoxen or ProUtopistaniCoupOf2015Boxen, and would easily support deleting all of them. Dronebogus (talk) 09:08, 13 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - There are plenty of inflammatory userboxes out there, and I haven't seen any evidence that this one violates any particular policy that would require its removal. Furthermore, if a WP editor is brainwashed enough to actually sincerely believe that the 2020 election was "rigged and erroneous" (and dumb enough to proudly sport a userbox to broadcast that belief), I'd much rather know that about the editor than not. Anyone who displays this userbox is essentially admitting to a rather extreme bias when it comes to US politics, and their personal views can be taken into consideration when it comes to making editing decisions in articles. —⁠ScottyWong⁠— 20:10, 13 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- lol yup, that’s actually a really good point. Dronebogus (talk) 21:50, 13 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per Chess' excellent detailed reasoning. In a number of other userbox MfDs we've deleted on a wildly imbalanced basis, and avoiding that should be an aim. Nosebagbear (talk) 13:40, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per Chess's !vote. That and the OP is pushing quite hard to delete this, even stretching some arguments beyond reason and badgering... one has to wonder if this is personal. - wolf 17:41, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Keep I'm ultimately swayed per Chess's rationale. The whole process of going about and deleting these userboxes is taking on a cliquish undercurrent.--WaltCip-(talk) 14:51, 16 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Many good keep arguments have been advanced here, and there’s no point in letting this drone on any longer. I withdraw and recommend WP:SNOW closure. Dronebogus (talk) 02:27, 17 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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.