Bryan Derksen wrote:
More seriously, it's a meaningless analogy that provides no useful insight. Who's appeasing who? Perhaps Wikipedia is appeasing SlimVirgin by giving in to her demands that any mention of this gossip be suppressed, in which case the same analogy supports the exact opposite conclusion. "Appeasement" is not inherently good or bad, one has to look at the details.
It was pointed out to me offlist that it looked like I was claiming SlimVirgin was demanding this gossip be suppressed. That wasn't my intention; I don't know who specifically is driving the suppression efforts and don't think it's actually all that important to name names here. My intent was just to point out how bad an argument the analogy was by showing it can be used just as well to support the opposite outcome.