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(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 5/29/07, Slim Virgin <slimvirgin(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 5/28/07, John Lee <johnleemk(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/29/07, Slim Virgin <slimvirgin(a)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(a)lists.wikimedia.org
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l