On 4/24/07, John Lee <johnleemk(a)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