On 10/12/07, Thatcher131 Wikipedia thatcher131@gmail.com wrote:
- Wikipedia has an obligation to protect its editors from harassment.
"Obligation" is too strong a word. But whenever it is possible to protect somebody from harassment without causing greater disruption to the remainder of the project and community, it's a very nice thing to do.[1]
- Interactions between editors are generally covered by the NPA and
harassment policies.
If you mean interactions on Wikipedia, I'll agree. Interactions elsewhere are not covered by en.wikipedia policy[2], instead falling into the frontier jurisdiction of common sense, [[Judge Roy Bean]] presiding.
- Notwithstanding #1 and #2, article content is generally covered by
a different set of policies (NPOV, reliable source, verify) and only in extreme cases should policies designed to cover editor interactions intrude into article space.
"Only in extreme cases" should mean "almost never", but in practice every case involving one or more external links criticizing Wikipedia users[3] is considered extreme.
With remedies like this:
- Links added to project or talk pages with the intent or effect of
harassing or intimidating other editors may be removed under the existing NPA and harassment policies, and repeat offenders may be briefly blocked by an uninvolved admin.
Let's consider the slight practical differences between the following: A. Writing a lengthy personal attack on somebody's talk page, and: B. Writing a lengthy personal attack on your blog and pasting it on somebody's talk page.
When the most noticeable factor is server load[4], you might as well be splitting atoms.
Beyond that, option B does make it possible for one to tone down the "attack" after the intended "target" has become quite offended, but before anybody else sees it, which could easily degenerate into "he said, she said", but it private communication would always be more effective for that.
Also, option B creates a BADSITES situation which will immediately make you the newest cause célèbre of two diametrically opposed factions who have absolutely no idea what is actually going on between you and the person you are apparently trying to attack.
Meanwhile, back on the mailing list, there will be a handful of reasonable people who don't really care one way or the other about this particular incident, and would prefer to meta-discuss it ad nauseum rather than take action, eventually passing around a new draft proposal because you've just proven that the last one wasn't good enough.
Either way, "remove personal attacks"[5] seems to have been for better or worse "rejected by the community", but people do it anyway (again, a "common sense" thing, for "extreme cases"), making this distinction more or less moot, as the second half of the suggestion merely provides that "repeat offenders can be blocked", which is already (and has always been) the case for personal attacks.
- Links added to article pages should be considered under article
content policies.
The key issue here should be whether the article contains (or could contain, upon further expansion) information relevant to the topic and obtainable through the link(s) in question. I doubt actual "content policy" for external links enjoys this level of brevity, but this is what makes sense to me.
- Disputed links in article space to be discussed on the talk page.
The normal dispute resolution processes (third opinion, RFC, mediation) apply, and the link will be obfuscated or unlinked during the discussion.
I suppose "obfuscated or unlinked" would be better than "referred to so vaguely that nobody knows what the hell we're talking about".
- The following editors are briefly blocked or desysopped for edit
warring over link removals:
Blocks for edit-warring are common enough, but has anybody ever been desysopped for it (i.e. for edit-warring on a non-protected page)? That strikes me as an unusual "remedy".
—C.W.
[1] http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?DefendEachOther [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:NPA#Off-wiki_personal_attacks [3] (other than Essjay, that is) [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:DWAP :p [5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:RPA