On 30/05/07, jayjg jayjg99@gmail.com wrote:
I am saying that if we want to prohibit linking to Wikipedia Review, we come out and say so directly and simply and clearly. Don't beat around the bush with vague talk of "attack sites" that someone can come back to later and twist around to play silly buggers with - because they can and will.
People will always wikilawyer any rule, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be made. The remedy for wikilawyering is common sense, as always. Moreover, rules should be as general as possible; Wikipedia shouldn't have a policy about one specific item.
We have a situation where the problem is with a couple of specific sites. We have people wanting to ban linking to those sites. Every discussion involved seems to be about those two sites.
This is a perfect example of when it makes sense to be specific.
When we want to make a rule to deal with a specific thing, we should be specific. Writing it in general terms, whilst everyone involved knows and understands we're talking about one specific thing, is just silly - are we doing it so it looks better? Far better we state clearly up front what we're talking about than leaving it be and hoping everyone Understands The Unwritten Meaning two or three years down the line.
Otherwise, we just get another Making Light farce each and every month, as one of our less cool-headed idiots gets in a fight with someone else on a comment thread buried deep somewhere on a site, then decides - oh no! attack site!