[WikiEN-l] Harassment sites

[joshua.zelinsky at yale.edu]

Quoting Will Beback <will.beback.1 at gmail.com>:

> I can't speak for others, but that's not a fair summary of my position.
> I think that removing material is a standard part of editing. I think
> that the project has been improved by removing all kinds of material. I
> think that links to self-published sites actively harassing Wikipedia
> editors are not reliable sources and should be removed just as we remove
> other unreliable sources. Doing so makes for optimal encyclopedia content.


Will, this still misses the basic issue. There's no good reason to 
treat Michael
Moore's self-published site which we link to on his article any different than
say Richard Dawkins, or Jonathan Sarfati simply because one of them choose to
harass Wikipedia users. If the concern is solely that these aren't reliable
sources then we should be removing all of them. The site's reliability has
nothing to do with whether or not it attacks Wikipedia users.

> "Highly negative opinions" are fine, harassment is not. They are
> different things. The New York Times is not a self-published site, which
> is all that my proposal addresses.

So if a major newspaper got into a fight with Wikipedia and actively harassed
editors we would still link to them but not if it is a dinky one? Please
explain  how the harassement issue is any different? The only 
difference that I
see is that advocating for the removal of the NYT links would heighten the
absurdity of the position and so logical consistenct is sacrificed for
rhetorical convenience. That may be harsh, but I really don't see any other
explanation. If there is one, I'd very much like to hear it.