On 10/14/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Steve Summit wrote:
Fred Bauder wrote:
Obviously we need to make an exception for prominent people whose viewpoint we support. And by the way, I am not joking.
Oh, my. I really thought you were. How, then, is this remotely compatible with NPOV?
We're already breaking NPOV simply by trying to suppress article-space links that specifically attack Wikipedia users, IMO. It puts Wikipedia users in a privileged position with regards to article contents.
Would BADSITES have lasted even five seconds if it had been about suppressing links to websites that were critical of Republicans, or Democrats, or whatever other group one cares to substitute? You'd have been able to see the crater left by the NPOV Hammer from wiki-orbit.
The difference is, of course, is that the sets of Democrats or Republicans are not even close to completely congruent with the set of Wikipedia editors.
We can and should protect our editors from harassment and the like, but not at the cost of the encyclopaedia. BADSITES, and policies which resemble it, harm the encyclopaedia. Fred may be right in that we eventually avoid ludicrous outcomes (e.g. michaelmoore.com was eventually restored to [[Michael Moore]]), but not at the cost of immense wikidrama which we could do without. If the policy needs so frequent debate about what exceptions it needs, there's a good clue that the policy is broken and needs restructuring.
Johnleemk