On 5/28/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/29/07, Slim Virgin slimvirgin@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.