On Tue, 27 Nov 2007 16:08:38 -0500, "The Mangoe" the.mangoe@gmail.com wrote:
True - but not the one you were thinking of. There exists on Wikipedia a small group of people who will reflexively revert any removal of any link to external harassment, shouting "ZOMG! BADSITES!" and calling the world to come and look.
Part of the problem, Guy, is that when you say "link to external harassment" you stretch things considerably. There is no meaningful sense in which a citation sitting innocently in an article is transformed into such a link just because someone puts up some content elsewhere on the site to which someone on Wikipedia takes offense. Other links are perhaps not so innocent, but the work needed to dig them up really takes the sting out of them.
That applies, as far as I can tell, to slightly fewer than half a dozen articles, and in every case editorial common sense rapidly prevailed.
How about the 180 or so links to Wikipedia Review scattered around the project? None of them in main space.
Indeed, one wonders why in two separate arbitration cases the committee have found it necessary to underscore the fact that linking to external harassment is unacceptable.
For the victims of offsite harassment, this is a really bad atmosphere. They have only two choices at present: leave harassment in place, or have it shouted from the rooftops.
It's also an overstatement to claim that whatever mutterings go on at WR are harassment, even if word of them leaks out to Wikipedia.
I don't recall claiming that. I do recall stating that in my view it is currently a cesspit, and I stand by that. Any thread on WR has the potential to go downhill fast.
Simple solution: don't link to sites that are substantially composed of harassment and attacks.
Guy (JzG)