I think I would go with the "clueless politically" explanation - he did have it in his mind that [[Essjay controversy]] could get promoted to Featured Article status...
Risker
On 5/31/07, Slim Virgin slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/31/07, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
Within a week, DennyColt disappeared, after having escalated his
language
with respect to BADSITES to calling Wikipedia Review a hate site,
becoming
verbally aggressive on a Request for Clarification from Arbcom, and
being
named in an RfC. By that stage, a lot of people were wondering about
him.
But the BADSITES proposal closely parallels earlier writings by other editors, and interestingly a much-watered-down kernel of the proposal in BADSITES is nearing consensus on the WP:NPA policy.
Risker, the situation was that a bunch of admins had been removing links to attack sites for about 18 months. Not in any kind of systematic way (i.e. not hunting them down so far as I know), but just removing them if they noticed one. That was the de facto policy. That's how policy develops, by admins doing things. It just wasn't written down anywhere.
It also wasn't an organized group of admins, just self-selecting individuals who had different criteria. Some removed links that I wouldn't have removed, for example. There was no communication between us about it (that I know of), no planning, no intention of creating a written policy.
Then DennyColt turned up with the proposal. It was worded a little hysterically, but it basically described what the de facto policy was. But then a bunch of people who post to these sites (WR and Encyclopedia Dramatica) turned up -- led by Squeakbox and Mangoe, judging by the top posters on talk http://vs.aka-online.de/cgi-bin/wppagehiststat.pl -- who didn't want it to be written policy, and they started kicking up a fuss.
Well, at that point, you're in a quandry. You don't particularly want it to be written policy, because there's no need and the fuss about it is tiresome. But you also don't want anyone to be able to claim it was rejected, because then what? Would that mean links could no longer be removed? So for that reason people felt they had to defend it -- even though I don't think anyone particularly wanted it!
If he was a strawman sock, he was very clever. Rigorously enforce and spell out a practise you want to get rid of in order to make it look extremist; give it a shortcut that makes sure everyone's first thought about it is "censorship!"; get people who don't really want it to feel they have to defend it just to make sure the idea of it doesn't fail entirely; then bugger off and leave them holding the baby. On top of all that, factor in the unforeseen blog situation, where the definition of "attack site" is extended beyond what anyone ever intended (and why not? we're talking BADSITES after all, not "attack sites"), and hey presto -- chaos, and otherwise sensible people falling out with each other all over the place.
We'll probably never know whether he was a strawman sock or just so clueless politically that he ended up looking smart and Machiavellian.
Sarah
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