[WikiEN-l] BADSITES ArbCom case about to close

[William Pietri]

John Lee wrote:
> On 10/17/07, fredbaud at waterwiki.info <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:
>
>> Please don't republish personal attacks on other users.
>
>
> [...] I
> guess we should lock up everyone who gathers evidence of personal attacks
> for evidence pages, since they've been linking to these by the shitload.
>   

And this is a fine example of how I think the delete-all-links and 
do-not-speak-of approaches are at best self-defeating. And at worst 
eternal sources of arguments like this one.

One of our unifying characteristics is a big dose of "show me". 
Surprising claim? Show me the source. Hypothetical problem? Show me the 
actual problem. Someone's misbehaving? Show me where. It's a bedrock 
piece of our culture, and it's absolutely vital.

Those approaches systematically remove the community's ability to verify 
a problem.  That means a continuous rolling argument about whether there 
indeed is a problem at all, and if so, how severe it is. Forever.

William


-- 
William Pietri <william at scissor.com>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri