[WikiEN-l] Harassment sites

[fredbaud at waterwiki.info]

-----Original Message-----
From: John Lee [mailto:johnleemk at gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, October 17, 2007 01:17 AM
To: 'English Wikipedia'
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Harassment sites

On 10/17/07, Will Beback <will.beback.1 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Moore is notable as a filmmaker. He is not notable as a blogger. His
> blog is not encyclopedic. We are only providing a link as a convenience,
> and a very minor convenience because it it the first link that comes up
> on Google. So we are saving our readers about .5 seconds out of their
> lives. We aren't preserving NPOV, we aren't taking a stand against
> censorship, we're merely saving some readers a tiny bit of time. I don't
> begrudge anyone even half a second. But if the tradeoff we're looking at
> is linking to harassment of Wikipedia editors versus the slightest
> inconvenience (hopefully temporary) of our readers, then I don't think
> we should have a question. For completenes inthe article we can say the
> guy has a blog (who doesn't), but unless the blog is notable I don't see
> the overriding need to promote "convenience" above "no personal attacks".


It's an official website, not merely a blog. And even then, I'm pretty sure
we frequently link to the official blogs of prominent people. The question
is, why are we making an exception for Michael Moore? Is it motivated
because of some editorial reason (i.e. including the link reduces the
usefulness and value of the article), or because we're Wikipedia and we
don't like how Moore treated one of our editors? If the latter, it's a
pretty clearcut NPOV violation.

Johnleemk
_______________________________________________

That's the real dilemma. We don't much like that editor ourselves and we do like Michael Moore, enough of us anyway to over-ride our policy regarding harassment of users. Neutral point of view has nothing to do with it. NPOV has to do with the content of the article, not a link to a site which was harassing a Wikipedia user by inviting vandalism of his talk page.

Take a real good look at this:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/29/Arbcom.jpg

Is Michael Moore so wonderful, that such behavior is excusable? What harm is done by removing the link to his website for so long as that is its content?

Fred