Fred Bauder wrote:

Fred, with all due respect, this sounds uncomfortably close to the fallacious arguments that keep being made in support of the failed BADSITES policy. 1. "Site X has been doing unspeakably horrible things to Wikipedia editors, so obviously we need to ban hyperlinks to Site X." 2. "If you disagree with this ban, I guess you condone those unspeakable things." #1 is fallacious because it is not obvious that banning links is an appropriate or effective remedy. #2 is fallacious on its face. I get the impression -- and I'm sorry if this analysis offends anyone -- that the primary motivation behind blanket link bans goes something like this: Site X (Encyclopedia Dramatica, Wikipedia Review, Wikitruth, whoever) has done something unspeakably horrible. Unfortunately, what they've done is not actually illegal or anything. Also, there's absolutely nothing we can do to stop them, because they're not a site that's under our control. But we *must* do something, we must punish them somehow, we can't stand idly by and do nothing, because silence = assent, and we have to show the aggrieved Wikipedia editors that we care, that we're absolutely *not* going to let Site X get away with this. So we apply the only sanction we can, which is: ban links to those nasty, nasty folks. "And if you don't stop being nasty, we'll... ban links to you some more!" But there are several problems here: banning links to them is no "punishment" at all. It doesn't hurt them, it doesn't stop them, it doesn't make their information any less accessible. All it does is makes some of us feel a little better. And it also exacts a significant price, because making blanket bans against all links to a certain site, for any reason, is a draconian, censorious rule without precedent in the five pillars or anywhere else in Wikipedia policy (that I know of). Unthinking blanket bans do hurt the project. They shouldn't be necessary, if the activities they ban are already proscribed by existing, less-draconian policies (i.e. WP:NPA, minus the controversial "attack site" wording). They make it difficult or impossible for people to make reasonable exceptions. And they (the bans, that is) are just about guaranteed to end up being bandied about in unintended, abusive ways.