On 9/20/07, charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
Fred wrote
PLEASE, give us some guidance that can stick, if (collective you) are going to make the policy any more specific.
I'm not sure we (the arbitrators) would agree on this point (that it was ever proper to remove the link to MichaelMoore.com).
And actually, we didn't necessarily agree to consider that question. Should we?
I'm not sure the ArbCom should get into policy making, even in response to polite requests to do so. One of the clear problems of the reification (BADSITES as if there was a well-defined thing out there, rather than just the usual Web slop of forums for people getting things off their chests with improbable avatars) is that there is some assumption that there _must be a policy_. There can't really be a policy about how junky really junky junk has to be before people will be punished for linking to it. People who go around the site linking to junk are being a nuisance anyway.
A 'policy' would, for the usual reasons, be applied by people saying the junky junk they are linking to is not quite as junky junk as the policy specifies, and so linking to it is somehow OK. That is not how good policy operates. Good policy has some kernel that can generally be agreed (like 'civility helps'); and does not specify (a list of acceptable insults along with a list of definitely unacceptable ones).
Charles
The problem is that we've entered the worst of all worlds right now - we have evolved precedent via a couple of cases of sausage-making unpleasantness that true attack sites shouldn't be linked, but other stuff probably should be, but in both cases we've had edit (and to some degree wheel) wars over whether we should or should not, and everyone is left in the situation of knowing that people have threatened to pull large hammers out in future situations, but not under what exact circumstances the hammers will fall.
Ok, so a link to an attack site is making a personal attack on the user being attacked. Is making that link in the course of discussing an apparent violation of WP administrative policy ok (recent SV case, though the details turned out to not be a violation, I believe)? Is a link to Michaelmoore.com deletable when he has an edit link to a WP user or user talk page, but must immediately be restored if that edit link goes away? Is restoring a link to michaelmoore.com while there's a possibly violating link from there to edit a user talk page disruptive by nature and blockable or bannable?
It's really dangerous for Arbcom to wade in halfway. If you do, I can't tell what to warn people about, revert over, or what to block people about, where there will unambiguous agreement that I've done the right thing.
If the fact of the matter is that the community is unsettled about this, then Arbcom can either try to settle it, with enough specificity that I and other generally reasonable good-intentions people don't find ourselves scratching our heads next time going "Uh...", or make it clear that it's unsettled other than a few corner cases, and that AGF will still have to apply and that wheel-warring or edit-warring will be handled normally in grey areas where it's not clear what the right answer is (i.e., if you don't slow down and talk when an action turns out to be controversial, you will get in trouble).
Somewhere in the middle is the worst possible case, because it's still likely to leave reasonable admins and users unsure of what to do in an actual case, but aware that they're going to be judged more harshly if they make a mistake...