On Nov 21, 2007 2:42 PM, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Quoting jayjg jayjg99@gmail.com:
On Nov 21, 2007 2:03 PM, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Quoting jayjg jayjg99@gmail.com:
On Nov 21, 2007 1:31 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 21/11/2007, jayjg jayjg99@gmail.com wrote:
On Nov 21, 2007 1:02 PM, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
> > doing so was the same. Crappy links are deleted for all sorts of > > reasons, mostly because they're crappy, even if they would
also have
> > been deleted under that strawman BADSITES policy.
> Except none of these were crappy links.
They looked like crappy links to me, but I could be wrong. Any
specifics?
The deletion of encyclopedic links to nielsenhayden.com by Will Beback.
That old chestnut? It's the other strawman used as the rallying cry. Will realized he made an error, and apologized profusely. The whole issue was over long ago, but anti-BADSITES people bring it up again and again and again, as that one incident has been extremely useful.
People misapply *real* policy every day, we don't then say OMG BAD POLICY, IT MUST GO!!!!!
> These were links that would have been > included in article space but for the fact that they contained
material we
> didn't like.
Err, "containing material we don't like" pretty much covers every link ever deleted from Wikipedia.
... for other than encyclopedic reasons.
One man's encyclopedic reasons...
Jayjg, kindly make up your mind. Are you defending things like the removal of Making Light or not?
Please don't make the Fallacy of many questions. I've never defended the removal of Making Light, as far as I can recall, so I don't know what I would have to "make up my mind" about.
Well, you seem to be asserting that it is encyclopedic to remove links that mention information or speculation about Wikipedians. That's precisely what was at issue with Making Lights.
I'm not making general cases or policied. When I edit I I add or remove links based on their individual merits. You're the one who wants to generalize, then point and shout BADSITES, BADSITES!!!
At the top of this post you assert that such things were wrong, and at the bottom you seem to be arguing that removal of otherwise good external links is
"Otherwise good external links". Therein lies a whole universe of ambiguity.
No it really doesn't. Links that we would contain but for the fact that they have information or speculation about Wikipedians. That's precisely what is at issue.
So, links that we might want to link to except if it happens that we don't want to link to them?
ok and moreover constitute an encyclopedic reason to remove the links which is hard to understand given the serious NPOV violations that it entails
"Serious NPOV violations?" Hardly. That's an argument I've seen several times, and, frankly, it's specious. A link isn't a POV, much less a *significant* one.
Of course links are POV or not. If we remove all links to a major critic or proponent of something that's the height not NPPOV. And yes, that is a serious breach of NPOV since many people use Wikipedia precisely to find out where else to look at things. And regardless, NPOV is not negotiable. A serious violation is unacceptable as is a minor one.
If there is an important or significant POV contained in a link then it should be in the article; *that* is where NPOV would be violated. And if there are no reliable sources for a POV, then it's not a significant POV. Let's get down to specifics; what important POV was "suppressed" by the removal of the link to Black's blog? Please list the exact *significant POV*, and the reliable sources that make that POV encyclopedic.
and the fact that these are links that but for the mention of Wikipedians we would have in the articles.
Just because we would typically do something doesn't mean that we *must* do so, even *should* do so in every single case. That's not really an argument, and external links should be evaluated on their overall merits.
No one is claiming that links shouldn't be evaluated on their merits. But our personal feelings cannot effect what we do or do not put in article space.
Let's not denigrate the motives of others, or pretend that our own actions are always purely rational, ok?
And t to argue otherwise is exactly what has led to these repeated problems, whether it be Making Lights, or MichaelMoore.com or any.
"Repeated problems"? Only if you mean "repeated" in the sense of "a couple of incidents repeated a thousand times by anti-BADSITES proponents".