On 4/24/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
I am honestly speechless. Since when was it permissible to enforce a proposed policy? In any other day and age, those responsible would have been ticked off appropriately. It seems that the Mongo judgment may be being stretched a little here; perhaps it would be appropriate for the Arbcom to clarify their judgment?
(speaking as a single Arbitrator and not for the committee as a whole ...)
The Arbcom judgment was specifically about Encyclopedia Dramatica and did not explicitly state that it should be extended to other attack sites, so it is inappropriate to say that removing links to another site is 'enforcing the MONGO decision' since we didn't say anything about removing links to any other site.
It's appropriate to cite our decision as supporting an interpretation of policy that generally allows for the removal of links to attack sites, however. It's important to remember, however, that Arbcom generally does not make policy itself - we do decide on the interpretation of policy, but generally NEW policy is set by the community.
Thus, it is appropriate to see our decision as support for the idea of removing links to attack sites in the general case, but not as the actual policy that allows it.
It's also worth noting that very little on ED has any value for Wikipedia, as far as I can see, while WR, although generally a trolls' nest as well, has content for which there is a much better argument of relevance.
-Matt