joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Quoting Will Beback will.beback.1@gmail.com:
I can't speak for others, but that's not a fair summary of my position. I think that removing material is a standard part of editing. I think that the project has been improved by removing all kinds of material. I think that links to self-published sites actively harassing Wikipedia editors are not reliable sources and should be removed just as we remove other unreliable sources. Doing so makes for optimal encyclopedia content.
Will, this still misses the basic issue. There's no good reason to treat Michael Moore's self-published site which we link to on his article any different than say Richard Dawkins, or Jonathan Sarfati simply because one of them choose to harass Wikipedia users. If the concern is solely that these aren't reliable sources then we should be removing all of them. The site's reliability has nothing to do with whether or not it attacks Wikipedia users.
We use a variety of standards to decide if a source is reliable. I'm proposing an additional test. I don't know what you're referring to when you say "these". If you mean self-published experts then you may be right. The exception that allows them was controversial and maybe it should be revisited.
"Highly negative opinions" are fine, harassment is not. They are different things. The New York Times is not a self-published site, which is all that my proposal addresses.
So if a major newspaper got into a fight with Wikipedia and actively harassed editors we would still link to them but not if it is a dinky one? Please explain how the harassement issue is any different? The only difference that I see is that advocating for the removal of the NYT links would heighten the absurdity of the position and so logical consistenct is sacrificed for rhetorical convenience. That may be harsh, but I really don't see any other explanation. If there is one, I'd very much like to h
If the President of Uzbekistan engaged in harassment of Wikipedia editors, how would we treat it? I don't know and I think we need to worry about it. Virtually all of the harassment of Wikipedia editors has come from blogs, forums, and wikis, so those are the focus of my proposal. When the NYT starts harassing editors we can decide what to do about it. Let's not make this more complicated than it has to be.
Will
ear it.