On Sun, Aug 3, 2008 at 6:31 PM, WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
We're not babysitters and we shouldn't act like cyber cops. If people call each other hateful names, that's what they did. The entire blame for their actions rests solely on their own shoulders. I feel no responsibility for what someone else did, and that they did it, knowing full well that others would and have seen it. That is the very nature of a public forum.
This is just a vile point of view since it's heartless to people who may have extremely nasty crap posted about them on Wikipedia, probably the site on Earth with the most Google firepower of all time. So if there was an article, [[Will Johnson]] about yourself, and the talk page came up near the top of the searches with extremely inappropriate and negative commentary about you for clients, possible employers, and family to find, you'd have no problem with this?
Even if YOU have no problem with yourself being defamed online, other people do. Since BLP is supposed to apply in even strength everywhere on Wikipedia, but talk pages rather stupidly tend to be a free for all, this will keep any nasty crap that may get editors or the WMF itself sued out of the search engines. It's a step in the right direction to protect a whole lot of people from extremely unpleasant material being online about them.
If I seem to recall, you have gotten into extremely nasty BLP fights with subjects of articles like that Matt Sanchez guy, right, and others, and have pushed to include negative or loosely sourced material on BLPs? Your voice and opinion here then as the sole major dissenting voice isn't worth much of anything, if that's the case. BLP trumps a whole lot of everything else.
- Joe