For the record, calling them opponents just seems dumb. We're writing an encyclopedia, not engaged in a giant good vs evil war for the future of humanity. As soon as we start framing things in this way means we have started taking things to seriously and need to step back and breathe for a minute.
On 5/28/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/29/07, Slim Virgin slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/28/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/29/07, Slim Virgin slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
John, I don't think anyone is arguing that extreme position. It's a strawman. The whole BADSITES policy proposal was a strawman started
by
a sockpocket. All that's being argued is that sites *devoted* to outing and defamation -- the purpose-built attackers, where it's
all
or most of what they do -- shouldn't be linked to.
Then that's eminently reasonable (with the caveat, of course, if that
such a
site ever makes the headlines worldwide, our article shouldn't be
excused
from linking to it just because it attacks Wikipedians). The problem
is,
many people I've seen enforcing this idea - Will Beback just being the
most
recent example - don't take such a reasonable stance. It's not even
based on
the rejected BADSITES proposal; I've seen people basing their
ridiculous
claims solely on the arbcom decision's wording.
The ArbCom's decision is good as a rule of thumb. Note that it says: "[a] website that engages in the *practice* of publishing private information concerning the identities of Wikipedia participants will be regarded as an attack site whose pages should not be linked to from Wikipedia pages under any circumstances ..." (emphasis added). That doesn't include an otherwise decent website that happens to repeat a Wikipedian's name without that person's consent. It's not a good thing that someone has been named, but that one act doesn't tranform it into an attack site.
People who want to be able to link to the dedicated attack sites are exaggerating the arguments to make their opponents look nuts. Common sense has to be applied, as always.
All well and good, except for the problem that a lot of our opponents *are* nuts.
Johnleemk _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l