On 5/28/07, John Lee <johnleemk(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 5/29/07, Slim Virgin
<slimvirgin(a)gmail.com> wrote:
John, I don't think anyone is arguing that
extreme position. It's a
strawman. The whole BADSITES policy proposal was a strawman started by
a sockpocket. All that's being argued is that sites *devoted* to
outing and defamation -- the purpose-built attackers, where it's all
or most of what they do -- shouldn't be linked to.
Then that's eminently reasonable (with the caveat, of course, if that
such a
site ever makes the headlines worldwide, our
article shouldn't be
excused
from linking to it just because it attacks
Wikipedians). The problem is,
many people I've seen enforcing this idea - Will Beback just being the
most
recent example - don't take such a reasonable
stance. It's not even
based on
the rejected BADSITES proposal; I've seen
people basing their ridiculous
claims solely on the arbcom decision's wording.
The ArbCom's decision is good as a rule of thumb. Note that it says:
"[a] website that engages in the *practice* of publishing private
information concerning the identities of Wikipedia participants will
be regarded as an attack site whose pages should not be linked to from
Wikipedia pages under any circumstances ..." (emphasis added). That
doesn't include an otherwise decent website that happens to repeat a
Wikipedian's name without that person's consent. It's not a good thing
that someone has been named, but that one act doesn't tranform it into
an attack site.
People who want to be able to link to the dedicated attack sites are
exaggerating the arguments to make their opponents look nuts. Common
sense has to be applied, as always.
All well and good, except for the problem that a lot of our opponents *are*
nuts.
Johnleemk