On 5/31/07, Steve Summit <scs(a)eskimo.com> wrote:
Contriving an "indirect" personal
attack against another
editor, in the form of a link to an off-wiki site which
makes such an attack, is tantamount to a direct personal
attack and is likewise disallowed.
I disagree. People who follow links out of Wikipedia ought to
understand that those sites aren't going to play by Wikipedia's rules,
and therefore may be more rough-and-tumble (or differently
rough-and-tumble) than Wikipedia is. A bare link to WR with no
explanation isn't a personal attack. Period. Linking to it in the
context of telling someone on Wikipedia to find some dirt on another
editor may be an attack-- it's a bit of a grey area, since if the
information is true and germane, it cannot be construed to be the kind
of response that NPA is directed against.
The thing is that none of the controversial cases since the beginning
of April have involved this kind of insinuation. This is definitely a
place for AGF, whereas it seems to me that part of the subtext of this
is that we are supposed to be getting the message that linking to (or
for that matter, participating on) WR is prima facie evidence of
malign intent.