[WikiEN-l] JzG's banning Private Musings regarding BADSITES debate

[Fred Bauder]

> Alec Conroy wrote:
>> There is now an ever-growing consensus that BADSITES is rejected, and
>> that linking  to "badsites' for encyclopedic purposes is permissible
>> in some circumstances.
>
> Setting aside the question of the block for a moment, I'm curious about
> the incident that triggered the block.
>
> If I understand rightly, [[Robert Black (professor)]] is a respected
> Scottish law prof who is from Lockerbie, who has taken a great interest
> in the Lockerbie case, and was involved in setting up the Lockerbie
> trials of the Libyan agents.
>
> In response to recent activity in the case, in early July he set up a
> blog to discuss it. We briefly mentioned the blog and added a link to
> it. That link stayed in place until a few days ago, when he gave a
> one-sentence mention of the allegations that SV "systematically altered"
>  the Wikipedia Lockerbie articles, mentioning what some claim is her
> true  name. He doesn't claim that they are true, just that they are
> interesting.
>
> The link was removed within 24 hours by a newly created account called
> "Privacyisall", which has only edited around this, and shows enough
> instant facility with Wikipedia that the account could well be a sock.
> The edit summary: "Remove blog which outs and attacks our editors as per
>  Arbcom ruling."
>
>
> So if I got that right, it seems to me that here we have another case
> along the lines of Micheal Moore.
>
> Prof. Black is an intentionally public figure talking about a topic on
> which he is a credentialed expert. He starts an official blog, which
> seems relevant, so we mention it. We include a link, both because
> statements in articles should be verifiable, and because if somebody is
> interested enough to read about Robert Black, they could well be
> interested in reading his blog.
>
> However, once Black mentions something we personally don't like, we
> remove the link. He's not attacking anybody, the mention is clearly
> pertinent to his field of interest, and the link on Wikipedia couldn't
> possibly have been included as part of an attack. But still, putting the
>  link back is considered a serious enough offense that the account
> involved is blocked, and there seems to be a fair bit of support for the
>  blocking.
>
>
> If we can have this much drama, it sounds like we don't have enough
> consensus yet. What can we do to create more?
>
> William
>

He has published defamatory information when he admits he's not sure it is
valid. Why would we link to defamatory information?

Fred