Wikipedia is goingto be a safe and pleasant place for people to work. We will respect ourusers and do what we can to protect them from harassment.
Fred
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Rich Holton [mailto:richholton@gmail.com]
>Sent: Wednesday, July 4, 2007 06:40 PM
>To: 'English Wikipedia'
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] FredBauder"clarifies"onattackkkkk site link policy
>
>jayjg wrote:
>> On 7/3/07, Steve Summit <scs(a)eskimo.com> wrote:
>>> jayjg wrote:
>>>> On 7/2/07, Steve Summit <scs(a)eskimo.com> wrote:
>>>>> jayjg wrote:
>>>>>> and no-one is going to insist on a banning if there is some incredibly
>>>>>> important reason why one must be linked to under some bizarre and
>>>>>> unforeseen turn of events.
>>>>> But those turns of events are not, in fact, so bizarre or unforeseen.
>>>> Yeah, they pretty much are. Rare events, and generally involving
>>>> wiki-drama, not actually building an encyclopedia.
>>> I'm not talking about wiki-drama, I'm talking about hypertext.
>>> Wikipedia is a website. Websites link to each other. It turns
>>> out it's an incredibly powerful and useful concept. If whenever
>>> we're talking about something said on site X -- whether this is
>>> in an RFC or Arbitration case, or a topicality debate in project
>>> space, or wherever -- and if site X happens to be on a secret
>>> list of Sites One Must Not Link To, such that instead we're
>>> supposed to use circumlocutions like describing the site in
>>> words, or emailing a URL, instead of just making a hyperlink
>>> like Time Berners-Lee intended -- if we insist on going through
>>> this cutting-off-our-nose-to-spite-our-face exercise, just so we
>>> can feel good about not "endorsing" a site that has (perhaps
>>> egregiously) wronged one of our editors, that's just an
>>> incredibly frustrating and pointless waste of time.
>>
>> It's only useful to link to sites that have useful content. Wikipedia
>> has all sorts of rules about not linking to useless sites.
>>>>> You claim that the blanket ban is acceptable because reasonable
>>>>> people can decide to make exceptions if necessary. But why go
>>>>> that route? Why not say that links -- to any site, anywhere --
>>>>> which serve as attacks, are attacks, and are banned under NPA?
>>>>> Why not let reasonable people realize that this is a sufficient
>>>>> policy, that will disallow all the troublesome links just as
>>>>> effectively as the blanket ban would? What additional protective
>>>>> power is gained by proactively applying the blanket ban?
>>>> Well, let's say one links to the front page of an attack site, which
>>>> doesn't actually contain any attacks, but just links to all sorts of
>>>> other pages that do.
>>> So what?
>>>
>>> I wish you'd answer the question. Why do we need a blanket ban?
>>> How does it prevent Personal Attacks (in ways that WP:NPA can't)?
>>> How does it help us build an encyclopedia?
>>
>> That has been explained at length. Wikipedians volunteer their time to
>> help in this project; as a result of that volunteer work, they are
>> exposed to often vicious harassment by a small number of banned
>> editors on websites. We should not in any way bring attention to those
>> websites. It's common sense, good policy, and basic decency. Stop
>> doing it.
>
>Jay,
>
>This does not explain the need for a blanket ban. It does explain the
>need for not linking to personal attacks, etc.
>
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You just don't get it. Wikipedia is going to be a safe and pleasant place for people to work. We will respect our users and do what we can to protect them from harassment.
Fred
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Daniel R. Tobias [mailto:dan@tobias.name]
>Sent: Wednesday, July 4, 2007 07:27 PM
>To: wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] FredBauder"clarifies"onattackkkkk site link policy
>
>On 4 Jul 2007 at 19:40:47 -0400, jayjg <jayjg99(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> The link removal from the Signpost was a bad idea? Just because Dan
>> Tobias doesn't like something, it doesn't mean it's a bad thing.
>
>While I'm impressed that anybody is willing to consider me the "standard" for Wikipedian
>discontent, there have been a number of other people who have expressed concerns along
>the same lines on this list and on Wikipedia.
>
>Dan
>Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
>Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
>Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/
>
>
>
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>
On 7/3/07, Florence Devouard <anthere(a)anthere.org> wrote:
> Dear Wikimedians,
>
> Please join me in welcoming Mike Godwin as our new General Counsel and
> Legal Coordinator.
Ah... It's nice that we've finally hired some staff where we won't
have to worry about Wikipedians arguing if being WMF staff alone is
enough to justify an article about them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Godwin
Welcome Mike!
Amusingly enough, the fact that I did not go with Kat to meet you
tonight means that I get to congratulate you before her.
On 4 Jul 2007 at 19:40:47 -0400, jayjg <jayjg99(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> The link removal from the Signpost was a bad idea? Just because Dan
> Tobias doesn't like something, it doesn't mean it's a bad thing.
While I'm impressed that anybody is willing to consider me the "standard" for Wikipedian
discontent, there have been a number of other people who have expressed concerns along
the same lines on this list and on Wikipedia.
Dan
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/
...until you want to stab yourself in the eye with a fork to end the
sheer horror of it all.
For example, see [[The Mysterious Planet]] and [[The War Games]],
articles which describe episodes of [[Doctor Who]] (and some others as
linked from [[The Key to Time#The Trial of a Time Lord]]). Now, I used
to like "Doctor Who" when I was a teenager, but this is just too much.
Are we allowed to take a machete to articles that look like this, or
what?
Before anyone says {{sofixit}}, I can tell that trying to do so would
lead to ugly scenes with the enthusiasts; so please forgive me if I
only raise my concerns here.
--
Earle Martin
http://downlode.org/http://purl.org/net/earlemartin/
On 2 Jul 2007 at 09:33:36 +0100, "Tony Sidaway"
<tonysidaway(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/2/07, David Goodman <dgoodmanny(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> > and a matter to be considered in future elections. as a reference
> > point, Fred's term expires at the end of 2007.
>
> My! You're a nasty bit of work, aren't you? Fred didn't make that
> decision alone.
Given that the pro-link-ban side has been known to use their cliquish
power to torpedo people's election (in RfAs) using political litmus
tests, why is it so absurd to do the same on the other side? The
time I declined to descend to the same tactics, and supported rather
than opposing ElinorD for admin despite disagreeing with her position
on the issue, it came back to bite me when she made enforcement of
the so-called policy a top priority, even taking it to levels beyond
other pro-link-ban admins by actually deleting talk pages and
recreating them with offending link insertions removed from the
history. This makes me inclined to emulate the other side and take a
zero tolerance approach to electing anybody to any position if they
are involved in making or enforcing this link ban. That would likely
include others in the next election in addition to Fred, so he
wouldn't be singled out, though lately he seems to be taking the most
visibly ridiculous stance on the issue.
The way Fred is currently extending the original ArbCom decision,
it's like because a Supreme Court decision once observed that yelling
"Fire" in a crowded theater wasn't protected by the First Amendment,
now judges at all levels were enforcing this as a ban on saying or
writing the word "fire" in all contexts, like for instance censoring
the show "The Apprentice" because Trump says "You're Fired".
--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/
There was a thread about this in the list back in January, but nothing
happened because of it. So I started an on-wiki proposal about this (which
was adding a certain edit count to the autoconfirmed threshold) at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Autoconfirmed_Proposal . I hope that
everyone goes there and at least gives an opinion (and maybe this email will
actually make it to the list this time).
--
-Royalguard11