On 5/31/07, Sheldon Rampton sheldon@prwatch.org wrote:
Jayjg wrote:
Somebody asserted that it could be beneficial to Wikipedia to link to sites like WR. I challenged that person to provide concrete examples of how. Soon afterwards hysterical rhetoric ensued, policies and insults flying left and right, impassioned cries of "censorship", babies being murdered, death stars being blown up, heat death of the universe, etc. The usual.
This description is mostly mischaracterization of the discussion. The part about "babies being murdered," for example, is based on a complete misreading. Someone who supports the BADSITES policy argued awhile back that use of BADSITES as a pretext for systematically removing links to the "Making LIght" website was merely a case of someone misinterpreting the policy and didn't reflect badly on the policy itself. The argument was that the policy shouldn't be rejected simply on the basis of an instance of it being misused. The specific phrase used was "don't throw out the baby with the bathwater," where the "baby" meant the BADSITES policy. This in turn led to several subsequent postings that mentioned babies and bathwater, including one posting by an opponent of the BADSITES policy who said something about not murdering the baby. It was a bit of playful wordplay, not the sort of hysterical rhetoric you're making it out to be. Maybe you hadn't followed the whole thread and just didn't get the reference.
The same post that contained the "playful wordplay" about murdering babies also accused other posters of "damaging... articles and Wikipedia","breaking RFAs", "dropping poison pills", "disrupting Wikipedia for political gain" and other unsavory accusations. That's hardly "a bit of playful wordplay".
But since Jayjg says he doesn't support a policy of censorship,
Please review [[begging the question]]. The only possible response to a question predicated on that opening line is mu.