On 5/30/07, Slim Virgin slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
What this debate boils down to is what kind of atmosphere we want on Wikipedia. Some people are arguing that we don't want an atmosphere of censorship, and that's a valid point of course. My argument is that we shouldn't want an atmosphere in which some people are being outed, attacked, ridiculed, and having their families and their friend's families contacted by lunatics. And when it does happen, Wikipedians should stick together, no matter their editing differences, and should make clear that it's totally unacceptable behavior.
There have been a couple of comments in this thread from people who are coming very close to saying some people deserve to be outed and attacked. It's a sad day to see that from anyone posting to this list.
Common sense and basic empathy need to guide us here, just as they do over other BLP issues. This *is* a BLP issue, unless we're assuming we're not really flesh and blood behind these keyboards.
I would prefer one where we're open to issues people have with us to one where we squelch all criticism.
We, ourselves, are built on principles of openness. Just because some articles on Wikiepdia are bad, doesn't mean that you don't use the whole website. Likewise, just because WR has done some bad things, doesn't mean you don't link there if they have an insightful idea or comment. ~~~~