Quoting Will Beback will.beback.1@gmail.com:
K P wrote:
On 10/15/07, Will Beback will.beback.1@gmail.com wrote:
This proposal isn't about criticism of Wikipedia or its editors. It is about active harassment of Wikipedia editors. Real live volunteers just like you and me.
For some reason MichaelMoore.com seems to be the single example folks are interested in. But we also need a policy that can address non-celebrity blogs like ASM, forums like WP, wikis like ED, and any other self-published website that actively engages in harassing Wikipedia editor. Most of them are only usable as sources for themselves anyway, so the collateral damage of re-categorizing them as unreliable would be minimal.
There are many ways that we could help readers get more information on a BLP subject. We could post the subject's phone number or address so that readers could contact the subjects directly. We could provide links to their publisher's website. We could add external link to sites that charge money, or that are published in a foreign language. Yet we don't normally do those things for good reasons. Simply providing every possible iota of information isn't our purpose. We redact personal contact info from BLPs because we respect our subjects, and we shouldn't include links to self-published sites that are harassing Wikipedia editors because we respect our editors.
Will Beback.
Except that Michael Moore uses his website to give readers or fans or whomever more information about himself. He doesn't publish his phone number or address or hand it out at meetings that I know of. His publisher is available on his books, and his books should be listed in the article with their pbulishers, so we do this already. We're not providing every iota of information and no one is even suggesting that by publishing a link to his website we are also demanding to know how much protein he has in his eyelashes. Other sites all over the Internet publish Moore's web address when they write about him. But not Wikipedia, because, well, because then we'd have to publish his underwear schedule it seems.
KP
Moore is notable as a filmmaker. He is not notable as a blogger. His blog is not encyclopedic. We are only providing a link as a convenience, and a very minor convenience because it it the first link that comes up on Google. So we are saving our readers about .5 seconds out of their lives. We aren't preserving NPOV, we aren't taking a stand against censorship, we're merely saving some readers a tiny bit of time. I don't begrudge anyone even half a second. But if the tradeoff we're looking at is linking to harassment of Wikipedia editors versus the slightest inconvenience (hopefully temporary) of our readers, then I don't think we should have a question. For completenes inthe article we can say the guy has a blog (who doesn't), but unless the blog is notable I don't see the overriding need to promote "convenience" above "no personal attacks".
Will
It seems at this point we are just repeating the same essential arguments. Some people, like Will think that NPA can override optimal encyclopedia content. Others, like myself think that it cannot and should not. I, at least, find it is a bit ridiculous to not link to the official webpage of a famous person from the person's article simply because the person has a highly negative opinion about some Wikipedians. And I don't see this as substantially different as deciding not to link to say, the New York Times if they published an anti-Wikipedia editorial that attacked Essjay or published an article outing a Wikipedia editor.