On 7/1/07, Daniel R. Tobias dan@tobias.name wrote:
Unfortunately, this response is full of contradictions. Bauder is claiming that the ruling in question is "not policy", that it applies only to a "specific situation", and shouldn't be "generalized" and is not "good general policy"; furthermore, it should be applied only in "egregious circumstances" to particular sites that have been considered in a hearing. However, he is also saying that it's proper to block Kamryn because she was "warned"...
Bauder could have chosen his words more carefully, but there is not really any contradiction. As he says, arbitration rulings are not policy and should not be taken as such. What he leave out is the implicit corollary that rulings are applications of policy to particular situations, and similar situations ought to be approached in similar
The crucial point is that attempts to take the rulings from the Mongo case and turn them into *general* rules have not been constructive. The ways in which some people have chosen to extrapolate from the Mongo case have failed to take into account the nuances of the rulings.
The "links to attack site" principle in the Mongo case should not be read in isolation from the other principles in that case. Specifically, it should be read alongside the principles discussing harassment (and especially the "support of harassment" principle, which emphasises that linkers ought to be considered responsible for their linking). It should also be read alongside the "guilt by association" principle.
The other main way in which attempted generalisations from the Mongo principles have been problematic (aside from reading the principles in isolation) is the tendency for people to seek to supply a new definition for "attack sites". The Mongo case focuses heavily on the disclosure of private personal information, and harassment, both of which, I should point out, are behaviours which are blockable if performed on-wiki.
Part of these problems are to do with the way in which arbitration decisions are structured, which, with its highly condensed and simplified elements, can sometimes be prone to being misunderstood. But that's a debate for another time.
The thrust of the Mongo principles was essentially to say two things: firstly, that links to external sites which engage in certain types of behaviour which would be blockable on-wiki should be avoided, and secondly, that while no guilt by association test applies, people who link to external content are responsible for what they link to, and should not act to aid or abet behaviour like harassment or disclosure of personal information when it occurs off-site.
I don't want to comment on the particular situation involving this user, I just wanted to emphasise that that is what the Mongo case was about, and that, I believe, is more or less what Fred was getting at.