New subject: Harassment sites

15 Oct 2007

-----Original Message-----
From: George Herbert [mailto:george.herbert@gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, October 15, 2007 03:34 PM
To: 'English Wikipedia'
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Harassment sites

On 10/15/07, fredbaud(a)waterwiki.info &lt;fredbaud(a)waterwiki.info&gt; wrote:
...

 -----Original Message-----
 From: David Gerard [mailto:dgerard@gmail.com]
 Sent: Monday, October 15, 2007 03:04 PM
 To: 'English Wikipedia'
 Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Harassment sites

 On 15/10/2007, David Gerard &lt;dgerard(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
  On 15/10/2007, fredbaud(a)waterwiki.info
&lt;fredbaud(a)waterwiki.info&gt; wrote: 
  > The encyclopedia is the work of the
community, its creation. Thus the encyclopedia is dependent on the viability and integrity
of the community. 
  Yes, but if it comes down to one or the other ...
then what? 

 And let me say that I consider removing the michaelmoore.com link from
 [[Michael Moore]] to obviously constitute damage to the encyclopedia,
 and if the community comes up with a rule that makes that a good idea
 then the community is *wrong* and the rule needs removal. That's NPA
 vs NPOV, i.e. the BADSITES arbitration.

 - d.

 _______________________________________________

 There is threatening to remove the link, temporarily removing the link, using removal of
the link as a negotiation point, negotiating, etc. And saying that due to his high status
(and the low status of the editor who offended him) we should shine it on. 
Is it possible to outright block any edit attempts with an external
HTTP referrer?

We could probably safely do that as a blanket policy.  Someone could
still say "go here, and then click on edit" with the link to the page
to edit, but that requires more steps for the abuser hordes, which
cuts down on the number that will follow through.

-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert(a)gmail.com

_______________________________________________

That might be a bit of a coding problem as the link is not to a discrete page, but it
might be possible to redirect a user of the link to a page which explains the
inappropriateness of the request. We could redirect the targeted user page to a policy
page, for example.

Fred