On 28 May 2007 at 11:54:57 -0500, "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.
And referring to sites like that is itself pretty close to being a straw man, given that very few sites actually exist that strictly fit that description. Daniel Brandt's Hive Mind, perhaps, but even that was only part of his site (and has subsequently been taken down). The other sites that generally come up in these debates are definitely *not* devoted solely to outing and defamation; they have critical commentary, much of it crude and obnoxious, but "outing" individual editors is far from their primary focus. And other sites the policy has also been applied to, like the science fiction editor's site that's the subject of the latest controversy, has such activity only as a very minor sidelight to its major activities which have resulted in many pages that are considered reliable sources for a variety of Wikipedia articles.