FT2 wrote
> 1 -- If a fact is not notable in an article, it can be ignored.
"Notability" we apply to topics, not individual facts. Verifiability applies to facts. You may find it helpful to use the concept of saliency. Verifiable but non-salient facts can often be removed from articles, and sometimes should be (in line with WP:BLP or WP:COI).
Charles
-----------------------------------------
Email sent from www.virginmedia.com/email
Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software and scanned for spam
On 20 Oct 2007 at 04:16:18 +0100, "David Gerard" <dgerard(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
> We do it for shock sites, and antisocialmedia.net is odious enough to
> deserve not being linked.
I could see doing it for "shock sites" in the sense of things that
would likely shock the sensibilities of anybody who stumbles on it
unawares, like hard-core porn, shock-jock-style humor, ethnic hatred,
and so on, to make people pause and think about just what they're
going to and be aware of what they're getting themselves into --
though some might still argue that this was inherently a POV
judgment, and insulting to the reader's intelligence; those same
arguments were made with regard to the use of spoiler warnings
earlier. But I can still see the point of doing it. However, ASM
isn't such a "shock site" which would be inherently offensive to
those not deeply involved in the struggles and controversies that
site pertains to. It's not full of nudity, foul language, crude
sexual references, and the like. It just has discussion of people
and their alleged character flaws and bad actions. The New York
Times found it suitable to link to when they did an article on the
controversy. Parents are unlikely to find it grossly unsuitable for
their children to read, though the kids would likely be totally bored
by it.
--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/
On 19 Oct 2007 at 17:08:26 -0400, Steve Summit <scs(a)eskimo.com>
wrote:
> William Pietri wrote:
> > ...the question of external links in other spaces would yield to a
> > similar approach, but it's not as directly analogous.
>
> At the risk of prolonging a discussion that's already rather
> egregiously long in the tooth, what do people think about those?
> One of the larger objections to BADSITES and its resurrection
> in WP:NPA#EL concerned the prohibition of links to attack sites
> even in talk and project spaces, even as part of sober discussion
> of the alleged personal attacks. Is there still any sentiment to
> keep trying to ban those kinds of links?
Apparently, JzG does... despite the ArbCom having no interest in his
attempt to get them to "clarify" their recent decision into a flat
ban on linking to Wikipedia Review, he's gone on a one-man scouring
of the Shire tonight, going and removing links to that site from
various talk pages and such, some of them in posts from a year ago
that didn't seem to offend anybody at the time (in some of the
threads involved, JzG is one of the people who replied back when they
were originally posted, and didn't seem at the time to find it to be
beyond the pale that there would be a link to a site that had
something relevant to the discussion).
--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/
On 19 Oct 2007 at 19:02:42 -0700, William Pietri
<william(a)scissor.com> wrote:
> For those wondering, this is the site in question:
>
> http://lunasantin.blogspot.com/
I think it's some kind of WP:POINTedness, probably an attempt at a
reducio ad absurdum of the BADSITES policy and its relatives, falling
rather flat because nobody can even see the slenderest thread by
which the blog in question can be seriously labeled an attack site.
If somebody really wanted to start trouble, fighting over Kelly
Martin's blog, which has had some pretty pointed criticisms, would
probably be more effective at generating heat and drama.
--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/
-----Original Message-----
From: George Herbert [mailto:george.herbert@gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, October 19, 2007 04:44 PM
To: 'English Wikipedia'
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Harassment sites
On 10/19/07, Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)wikia.com> wrote:
> Eugene van der Pijll wrote:
> > Jimmy Wales schreef:
> >> The only real question is where and how to draw the line, but we are
> >> actually fortunate in this regard: there are virtually no borderline
> >> cases as an empirical matter.
> >
> > They may be a minority, but most of the recent discussion was about
> > borderline cases. The Nielsen Hayden blog, the WikipediaReview Signpost
> > article, the Michael Moore site.
> >
> > Perhaps you don't hink these are borderline, but in each of these cases
> > I've seen people arguing on both sides.
>
> Fair enough, the middle does need to be clarified. And maybe the
> conversation can proceed in a calm way if we remember that we do have a
> pretty easy consensus on the extremes and are quibbling thoughtfully
> over some middle points.
>
> I still think it is not that hard, but I suppose I might be coming at
> this from my own perspective (that it is overboard to hastily remove
> links to a legitimate blog or to Michael Moore's site which is doing
> something irritating at the moment).
I agree with your position that these actions were overboard; the
problem is, they were both done, they were both actively supported by
a noticable fraction of active admins/senior editors at the time they
were removed, and it was not clear to anyone (objecting to the
removals or neutral) what policy actually had to say about it.
During the runup and early bits of the Moore removal, I objected to
removing the links, but I couldn't tell if restoring them and warning
the removers was the right thing to do, or a blockable offense I'd be
committing. So I made some ANI comments and sat on my hands.
-george william herbert
_______________________________________________
You didn't edit war or wheel war. That is righteous. You discussed the matter on an appropriate forum.
Fred
The question you ask, Eric, is a part of the mildness we generally applied to this matter. It was made plain that a user could edit on both ED and Wikipedia. We just asked them to wear their Wikipedia hat when they were here. There was no witchhunt, although those who were actively harassing MONGO were sanctioned. We really haven't had users who have made extensive links to ED pages trashing our users. What we have had is "BADSITES" activism. Which I think drives traffic to their site as well as occassional links would. However, we don't have "cool" users with ED links on their userpages. It disrupts their use of Wikipedia for networking.
Fred
-----Original Message-----
From: Erik Moeller [mailto:erik@wikimedia.org]
Sent: Friday, October 19, 2007 04:24 PM
To: 'English Wikipedia'
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Harassment sites
On 10/20/07, Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)wikia.com> wrote:
> The only real question is where and how to draw the line, but we are
> actually fortunate in this regard: there are virtually no borderline
> cases as an empirical matter.
I'm not sure why it has to be a discussion about websites at all. If
someone is going around adding links to ED, then I have to wonder what
the .. they are doing on Wikipedia in the first place. It seems much
more promising to me to look at the substance of someone's actions,
rather than at the patterns of URLs.
--
Toward Peace, Love & Progress:
Erik
DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 19 Oct 2007 at 12:20:49 -0400, "David Goodman"
<dgoodmanny(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> I've just come across a link to Wikipedia Review in an AN/I archive.
> It was inserted by a member of ArbCom in the announcement of an action
> of theirs to give the justification.
That doesn't surprise me. When I was compiling evidence to present
in the recent ArbCom case, I came up with several examples of people
who clearly regarded sites such as that as horrendous scum... and who
linked to them in order to make whatever point they were trying to
make about the sites or the people who participate in them. Being
restrained from linking to something that's relevant to a point
you're making is not something that comes naturally, even to many of
the people who find the sites in question to be repugnant. Back
before various editors, admins, and the ArbCom began making a fuss
about linking to so-called "attack sites" about a year ago, it was
very commonplace to link to them in order to criticize them (putting
the lie to assertions, sometimes heard, that it was "always" the
common practice to ban such links and that the ArbCom was only
ratifying this "common sense" practice), and even after that it has
sometimes happened despite all the wikidrama about such links.
--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/
By and large, it seems like the BADSITES-equivalent proposals are
"mostly dead"-- I think everyone recognizes that "Never link to any
'site that is sufficently bad', deletion exempt from 3RR" has been
rejected by the community. (Rejected in the formal sense-- it's hotly
disputed, doesn't have consensus, and that isn't likely to change
anytime soon).
Such proposals may be mostly dead, but of course: "MOSTLY dead" isn't
"all dead". I see there's at least one BADSITES-equivalent proposal
still floating around here on the list, namely the proposal that says
"Any site that is sufficiently bad shall be declared unreliable, and
may not be linked to". And, like any perinneal debate, I'm sure
there will be more such proposals for the foreseeable future.
Therefore, I'd propose the following question to anyone proposing new
policies on this subject:
How would your policy prevent incidents like MakingLights and the
MichaelMoore from happening again in the future?
----------------
DISCLAIMER:
Just to remind us all, I'll recap the Making Lights saga, but I won't
name the person who was involved, and I sincerely would ask everyone
else not to criticize someone today for something they did months ago.
Seriously. We've all made mistakes, they're over and done with, and
I _sincerely_ am not trying to relive this past saga-- I just don't
want to relive it in the future either.
Ordinarily, I'd use a hypothetical example here, but I've found that
in this debate, hypothetical examples are invariably dismissed when
someone says "Oh, that could never really happen". So I actually do
have to use a real-world example if we're going to talk about this.
----
The Making Light Story
MakingLights is a famous blog, run by a famous person. People on
that site's forum got into a flamewar of some sort with somebody.
Some very-not-nice things were said, and apparently some personal
information was posted. (Ostensibly the person's real name could be
found just by typing his username into google, but I haven't confirmed
that).
Unfortunately for MakingLights, the person who was flamed turned out
to be a Wikipedia administrator. He came to Wikipedia, declared
Making Lights an "attack site", and in less than two hours, he went to
23 different pages and deleted all the links to Making Lights and its
affiliated sites. When members of the community objected to the
deletions and restored the links, the same admin performed 22 seperate
reverts in under two hours.
When questioned, the admin justified his actions by arguing, in part,
that the site's alleged harassment of him "calls the website's
neutrality into question. If the editor [of Making Lights] is engaged
in ongoing disputes with Wikipedia and its editors, can it still be
viewed as a reliable source?" The admin also offered a quid pro quo,
whereby if the objectionable content was removed from Making Lights,
the Wikipedia links to ML would be restored, but if the content
remained on Making Lights, he promised to continue to remove the links
to ML indefinitely.
The whole experience was extremely upsetting for all involved, and if
you look around on Sci-Fi community blogs, you can see that Wikipedia
lost a lot of respect in that incident. Many in that sci-fi-blogger
subculture seem to have some harsh words for Wikipedia as a result of
the experience, and I'm sure we alienated a lot of people who could
have been valuable contributors. The people who edit and read Making
Lights felt bullied, abused, and harassed.
Speaking as a reader/editors of Making Light, Sci Fi megagenius Cory
Doctorow summarized the experience thusly:
"This is unseemly. You appear to be attempting to punish someone who
dislikes you by removing references to her site. This seems like
retaliation, not an effort to improve Wikipedia. What's more, the
repeated demand to change something posted to her site seems like
extortion, not an attempt to improve Wikipedia. TNH claims that
Wikipedians pursue petty vendettas at the expense of quality. Please
conduct yourself in a way that does not lend itself to this
interpretation of the project."
Ultimatlely, that particular incident came to an end when the disputed
material was deleted from ML, at least temporarily, and the links to
ML were restored.
------------------------------
Now, let's not obsess over WHO did this. I swear, I'm not bring this
up to get in a dig at anyone. The admin in question admits at least
having "overreacted", and as long as the behavior has stopped, it
doesn't matter WHO did this-- so by bringing this up, I'm sincerely,
sincerely not trying to pick on anyone. We've all done things in the
past, on wikipedia or elsewhere, that we shouldn't be throwing stones
over this past thing right now.
----
But that said, I can't help but notice that this sort of abuse seems
inherent to any BADSITESesque polices of the form "no linking to
sites that are sufficiently bad".
My questions for Will Beback, or anyone else in the future who
proposes a new policy that forbids all links to "sites that contain
attacks" are this:
#1. Do you agree that the Making Light case was an abuse of power (or
at least, incorrect. .-- i.e. Do you agree Making lights should NOT
have been purged)?
#2. And if so, how will your new proposed policy prevent this sort of
abuse when the old policy was unable to. That is-- if we all
magically decided to enact your policy today, what's to stop you (or
me, or anyone) from turning around tomorrow and having a complete
repeat of this whole fiasco tomorrow.
---
I believe any future policy, in order to be successful, must recognize
the past abuses of BADSITES, and must include reasonsable assurances
that the proposed policy won't lead to the same kind of abuses in the
future.
If an anthropomophic proposal's answer is "MakingLights and
MichaelMoore should have been deleted, and if I get enacted, I will
make sure they get deleted again if a similar situation arises", then
I personally think such a proposal is unlikely to ever achieve
consensus.
---
Alec
